Can you imagine struggling with some secret habit you’re deeply ashamed of? Maybe for years? Then you finally work up the courage to confess to your senior pastor, hoping for help but bracing for consequences.
Only to have that same senior pastor tell you to “just quit.” Nothing else.
Then years later, when that habit catches up with you, you’re fired for the very thing you confessed a year or two earlier. Seems unimaginable in a place that’s supposed to be safe like the church, right? But that’s exactly what happened to the young pastor in this next story.
Here’s the thing:
This story isn’t about bashing anyone in particular. It’s to show you that a lot of people (including pastors and leadership teams) still don’t understand the complexity of what we’re really dealing with—compulsions and “habits” driven by deeper emotional wounds and needs.
You can call it a sin-problem, a generational curse, or a self-control issue, but it’s not as simple as: “just stop.”
The tragedy is that for every person who doesn’t get the right help, acceptance, and safety they need is someone whose life could have been completely different. Someone whose narrative is unfortunately being held back by the systematic constraints they find themselves in.
Watch this video and hear the whole story of this young pastor.
Then ask yourself: What happens if there aren’t safe places like Live Free and XXXchurch? What happens when people cry out for help and only hear “just stop,” or if the person they turn to just doesn’t want to be bothered with it?
When you give to our Tell the Whole Story campaign, you’re creating those safe places.
You’re making sure someone is there with real help, real acceptance, and real hope. You’re giving to a ministry with trained leaders who will bewillbe there to bridge the gap. Leaders who care and will throw a life jacket when someone is drowning in shame.
You’re giving so that people are empowered to rewrite their life stories and turn them into something beautiful, amazing, and God-honoring.
👉 Watch his story now.
And after you watch, please consider giving to the Tell the Whole Story campaign.
Because without your support, without your financial help, we can’t keep doing what we do. And there will be more individuals who, unfortunately, get left by the wayside when they don’t have a safe place to turn.
Together, we’re creating the safe spaces people desperately need.