Brett's Story
History of Changing Lanes and the power of God to change the hopeless
Changing Lanes was been birthed out of a desire to follow God’s will. At the age of 8 years old I was exposed to the Playboy Channel in my home. The rest of my years growing up, my identity was engulfed by pornography. My secret was my life and I was determined to hide it from all the people around me. It was something I was embarrassed to admit I enjoyed. While in the middle of trying to find out how I should live my life as a male with a secret, I accepted Christ as my Lord. But there was no true repentance for this secret in my life.
At the age of 21, I married my beautiful bride, Christi. Early on in marriage, I tried to avoid porn. Each time ended in failure. I felt that I was alone. Ashamed and fearful to lose everything, I kept my secret to myself. Each year that I kept the secret alive, I dug deeper into the realm of sexual addiction: pornography website, cyber chatting, chatting on the phone, and finally meeting someone in person. Each time things escalated and I indulged in the sinful act, I would go to God and ask for forgiveness. I believed “It’s me and God, we can work this out.” Never did I see a change in my heart, the secret only continued to get worse as I ended up meeting more women. In my selfish desire for change, I forgot a few small things required to overcome the addictions and find grace. Finally at the age of 30, a trio of events prompted by God, opened my eyes to the need to confess my addiction. Through some prompting from God, I confessed to my wife and my men’s small group. Everyone offered their love and support. My confession brought relief and a removal of the burden of secrecy.
Jumping ahead 2 years, God again gave me a prompting to share my story with others. In October of 2006, I shared my story with my Sunday school class. Six months later, He prompted me several times to share with our church. Christi and I shared our story with Liberty Church in Broken Arrow, OK on June 3, 2007. Within a few hours of speaking to the church, God laid on my heart a desire to help others.
Starting in the fall of 2007, I have began to meet with men on a 1-on-1 basis to help them find victory over sexual addiction. Continuing the path of obedience, I launched Changing Lanes in a small group format in 2010 to give men a place to find hope through confidential, open and Spirit led groups.