Rob Saunders sits down with longtime charismatic Pastor Jack Hayford of Jack Hayford Ministries in this episode of Escaping the Hamster Wheel on the Charisma Podcast Network to talk about a very real struggle that many face, but few might admit to: pornography.
Hayford reflects on his introduction to pornography from a young age and how it was something he wrestled with in the most unlikely of ways. He says, “I thought it was just struggling with myself.”
What he would later come to realize was that there were evil spirits at work in his life, using the mild pornography he unwittingly viewed at the tender age of 8 to keep luring him into temptation. “It’s as though a hook had been put in my very being toward pornography … I later came to recognize that’s because that was attended by a demon spirit,” Hayford says.
After working through the problem as an adult, Hayford came to understand that his struggle was not purely his fault as a young, innocent and impressionable child. He says, “I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was defenseless.”
He touches on the reality that he thought if he just worked harder against this spirit that he would be able to overcome it. The Lord revealed to him that, “oftentimes we labor to try and overcome something of our human capacity for sin, which is very real” but we fail to recognize that there is more at work in this scenario than we may first recognize.
To hear more about Hayford’s story of redemption and how God is using him to bring to light how the devil is at work in this space, listen to the full podcast here.