This is no April fool.

Two years ago today, on April 1, 2011, my book Dirty Girls Come Clean was published and released by Moody Publishers. It is an accomplishment that still baffles me, but I have been so blessed by the testimonials of the women who have read it and who are being set free through the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

To commemorate the occasion, I am giving away a total of 10 copies of my book to 10 people (one copy per person). Do you want one?

Just fill out the entry form below and you will be entered as many as there are options to enter (via facebook, twitter, etc.). Entries will be accepted until 12am, Saturday, April 6.

If you have already read Dirty Girls Come Clean, please leave a comment below sharing how it has helped you on your journey. I would love to hear your story!

By entering the contest you are opting to subscribe to our email newsletter.

Blessings,

Crystal Renaud
Author of Dirty Girls Come Clean
Founder of WHOLE Women Ministries

You remember all that hype surrounding the movie “Magic Mike” a while back?? Well, I watched it. And I have to say it was a complete waste of my time. At the time of the movie’s release several Christian leaders posted their thoughts on the movie and I was (and still am) in complete agreement with their views.

But the other night, I was bored & exhausted after a LONG week at work. I began browsing through Amazon’s rentals & saw “Magic Mike.” I wasn’t immediately drawn to it, but in all honestly I was truly curious about all the fuss that was made. My decision to watch the movie was out of pure curiosity and nothing more. I wasn’t excited to ogle at the muscular male bodies and I sure as heck wasn’t looking for a way to get turned on.

So watch the movie I did… and it was HORRIBLE.

The acting was horrible. The plot was horrible. The cinematography was horrible. Everything about it was, you guessed it… horrible. So horrible, that I didn’t even care about the $3.99 I’d spent on the movie & didn’t even bother finishing. I highly doubt the last 35 minutes redeemed the entire movie.

It’s a few days later and I just can’t shake the absurdity of this movie. I mean, Steven Soderbergh was the director for goodness sakes! And he’s directed some doozies… Erin Brokovich, Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, Contagion, just to name a few. You’d think with a resume like that he’d at least make an attempt to evoke some feelings other then lust & licentiousness. Guess not.

This movie clearly had one goal: to tempt. To tempt women into fantasizing about men who are not their husbands. To tempt women into spending money on strippers. To tempt women into believing that men’s bodies were created for sex and nothing more.

If I hadn’t been in recovery from sex & pornography addiction for almost 2 years, this movie would have thrown a serious wrench in my attempts at sobriety.

And that really pisses me off.

You see, Satan isn’t happy enough with the loads of men & women quietly addicted to pornography. No, he wants more. He wants to bring his distortion of sex & love into the mainstream market & show it to teenagers, single women, and wives in movie theaters. He’s been working at this for a while now & for the most part it’s been directed at men. But he sees that by attacking the men, he’s made some strides…

Most men now expect a certain type of woman in the bedroom. They expect to get physically intimate within the first few dates. They expect women to be loose with their morals. (Note, I said MOST men. Believe me, I know not all men have these expectations. This is a generalization based on my personal experience & observations.)

And in order to keep up with this expectation, in order to avoid loneliness, and in order to achieve society’s standards of worth, MOST women have given in.

Satan sees this. He sees that women are aching to be loved by men. He knows that God-driven love is pure, holy, and beautiful. And he’s working his booty off to make sure that we (men & women alike) DO NOT experience it…

Why?!

Because then we’d know the truth. We’d know that blatantly impure movies such as “Magic Mike” are just a trick to drag us down. We’d know that as appealing as casual sex & chiseled bodies may be to our libidos, there is so much more to intimacy & relationships. We’d know that God has something infinitely more beautiful for us.

Over the years, I’ve become incredibly disenchanted with the love & sex fantasy that Hollywood has so effectively shoved down our throats. That disenchantment came to head & quickly turned into anger as I watched “Magic Mike.” There is no entertainment value in movies, books, or TV shows who’s only goal is to sell sex and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. No, seasoned directors & talented actors are signing up for the “sex sells” campaign and it seems they don’t even care to try to make it entertaining.

So how do we as Christians fight back against the onslaught of impurity in our world?

Just today I read an article on pornography & masturbation in the church. This was the author’s final paragraph:

Let’s talk loudly about porn from the front row of the church. Cringe worthy – yes. Christians may still have the same issues as their secular friends, but let’s be actively doing something about it rather than being sucked into engaging with what presents itself as a current world of Sodom and Gomorrah.

AMEN?!

This is how we fight back… we talk loudly. Loudly about our brokeness, our addictions, and the redemption that God so faithfully provides. Let’s let our voices be heard not only vocally, but with how we spend our time & money and where we let our hearts lead. Without loud voices, others will never know that there is a way out. Satan’s message is one that distorts God’s truth about who we are and what we were created for. God’s message is one of salvation, restoration, healing… He has chosen me and you to be the voice that shouts that message.

Are you ready to join the crusade? I hope so!

Attention all Church Leaders, Women’s Ministry Leaders, College Ministry Leaders, Student Ministry Leaders and any other ministry leader who works with teen girls and/or adult women … we want to invite you to attend a very brief informational meeting on Saturday, April 6 about our WHOLE Women’s Conference, featuring Dannah Gresh, Annie Lobert and Lisa Whittle.

What makes our conference unique this year is that WHOLE 2013 will be held entirely ONLINE via web streaming and presented for FREE (on Saturday, September 7).

We are all about community here. So while attending a conference in one’s pajamas sounds great, we would very much LOVE and PREFER for women to gather together to attend this conference. And that’s where you come in. What better place to have women gather together than at a church, college campus or other ministry location in their own backyard … where true community is already taking place?

This non-committal informational meeting on Saturday, April 6 at 10am CST will serve as your opportunity to learn more about WHOLE Women’s Conference (speakers, topics, purpose, etc.), what it would look like for you to host (technology, promotional needs, etc.) and a chance to answer any questions you might have (you ask it, we’ll answer it). Please use the link below to register!

REGISTER NOW

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This meeting is not intended for women who are just interested in attending and want more information. For information about the conference itself, including how to register, visit WHOLECONFERENCE.COM.

Today we share Sundi Jo’s story. From her testimony she shouts the truth that the concept of failure is not of God, especially when it comes to addiction. There has been a lot of talk of failure on DGM’s community of late. And it is my opinion that this is a tool of Satan. He wants us to think that we have failed in our attempts to break free from the bondage of pornography & sexual sin. He wants us to think that there is no use in continuing in our efforts. THIS IS A LIE! Please repeat that to yourself now and anytime you feel discouraged after a relapse or a minor slip or even a moment of not being able to take captive of your thoughts. Our God is a god of GRACE, of MERCY, of COMPASSION, and of LOVE… not of failure. Thanks Sundi Jo for the much needed reminder! – Lauren
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Mark Batterson writes in The Circle Maker, “If you keep trying, you are not failing. The only way you can fail is if you quit trying. If you’re still trying, even if you’re failing, you’re succeeding.”

Oh how I wish I had read those words seven years ago. It was then I was in the deepest, darkest part of my sexual addiction. I was 21 years old, managing a multi-million dollar company; in a relationship I didn’t belong in, and had just given my life to Christ. To others my life looked good. I had everything I wanted. On the inside, however, I was holding a dark secret.

The first time I looked at pornography after my relationship with Jesus began; this thing hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t know what it was. It hurt. My heart hurt. It was conviction. Though I had always known in the back of my mind what I was doing couldn’t be right, this time I knew without a doubt my choices were wrong. I was ready to stop.

But it wasn’t that easy.

I was around five or six the first time I saw pornography. It was on the babysitter’s TV screen as I sat in a circle forced to play “Spin the Bottle” with a group of teenagers. In the back of my grandfather’s grocery store was a large wooden case with a blanket hanging over it. One day the blanket wasn’t covering the case all the way, and those familiar images I saw on the screen were lining the shelves. From that moment the pictures seemed to be embedded in my mind. Thus started the long journey of a pornography addiction that would last over 20 years.
Something in me knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t make sense of it. After all, I was being sexually molested at the same time. Things I witnessed strangers doing through the television screen were happening to me. There had to be something normal about it right? By the time I was a teenager, pornography was a routine part of my life. Using a fake id to get into strip clubs and porn shops with friends was normal.

I would love to say that was it, but things got worse. (That’s a completely different blog post.)

I wanted to quit. I knew the fact that I was keeping secrets from others made my addiction worse than I really thought it was. I tried to quit, but it never lasted. I finally decided it was just a part of who I was and that’s the way things were.

By the time I came to know Christ I didn’t know how to stop. After the conviction hit me, I knew I wanted to stop. I hated it. I was determined to quit. I’d swear I’d never do it again. Then the images would be on my computer within 24 hours. I had failed. I would try again and fail. I didn’t know then that even though I was failing, I was still trying.

In December 2006 I had relapsed, again. This time I didn’t swear I was done. I cried out to God in the middle of my living room floor and begged him for help. I was desperate. That was it. I stopped. I was done. I meant it.

Until August 24, 2009. My life was done. I was ready to quit. My heart was broken. The pain was too much and there had to be something to make it better. I picked up the church laptop and within seconds my eyes were fixated on the familiar images that had comforted me thousands of times before. God quickly snapped me back into reality. I picked up the laptop and threw it across the room. I had reached a new low in my depression.

Severely depressed and broken, I checked into the Table Rock Freedom Center. I spent the next 12 months digging into the roots of why there was so much pain in my life. Porn was only one symptom I had to face. Those walls came down one brick at a time. Here I am almost three years later pornography free. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because God’s strength is in me.

Does it still get hard? Absolutely! There are days I know it would be so easy to comfort my mind, if only temporary, with the images that were glued to my brain over the course of 20+ years. But with my God I can scale any wall. With Christ in me I can fight any fight. I smile as I say this with the assurance that because of Jesus in me, I can turn my head at the temptations from Satan. He loses. We win. Pornography may have at one time been a part of who I was, but not today. Not tomorrow. No more! The same goes for you.

Don’t let it define you. Let Jesus. And remember, as long as you’re trying, you’re not failing.

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Sundi Jo is an author, speaker, and social media marketing manager, making her home in Branson, Missouri. She blogs at sundijo.com. Her first book, Dear Dad, Did You Know I Was a Princess?, comes out next year. You can read her first eBook, Step Away from that Diet: Ten Steps to Losing Weight and Gaining the Confidence You’ve Been Searching For now. You’ll find her engulfed in the social media world, spending time with friends and family, hanging out in a pair of jeans, t-shirt, and flip fops, or writing. Find Sundi Jo on Facebook or Twitter