Jimmy Needham: From Secret Shame to Saving Grace
CBN.com A HIDDEN ADDICTION
When Jimmy Needham was nine years old, he was introduced to pornography. He grew up in a home that was religious, but not Christian by any means. “We did the church thing, but I didn’t know God and neither did my family,” shares Jimmy.
For the next several years, what began as just a perverse interest for Jimmy progressed into an addiction. A few years after that, the internet made matters worse. He now had access to it in his house and in his friends' homes. Pornography was something that Jimmy kept hidden from everybody.
He recalls, “I used to pray at night, 'God, please don’t let my parents find out that I look at this stuff.'”
The summer before his sophomore year in high school, Jimmy’s addiction had gotten so intense that it was all he did that summer. “The stuff I was looking at became more twisted and more perverse…it was just a dark place,” says Jimmy.
Oddly enough it was during this time that Jimmy began to experience remorse and a general dissatisfaction for what he was doing. In hindsight, he believes the Holy Spirit was convicting him and allowing his heart to become tender again.
The first week of his sophomore year in high school, Jimmy was walking home with a friend who was a Christian at his school. Jimmy shared with his friend how his addiction was consuming his life. His friend then began to share how he also had struggled with the same addiction, but was set free by Christ.
“God gave me the grace to understand what that meant… that I could be free from this thing that was really affecting my whole life,” remembers Jimmy.
He went home and destroyed all the things that were contributing to his addiction. The battle with pornography became the hardest at that point. “The next few years of my life were probably worse because of the way I knew I was offending God everyday.”
One night in particular Jimmy remembers he was in his room. He kneeled down and cried out, “God, I don’t even know why You would want to interact with me anymore. I see myself as filthy, and You are so clean. It is probably better if You just left. So, if You want to leave, You can.”
At that moment, Jimmy says God gave him a vision. Jimmy saw himself kneeling on the ground just as he was. In the same instance, the Lord Jesus came into that image, knelt down beside him and placed a hand on Jimmy’s back. “No words were spoken, but God communicated something so loving and tender to me that hardly a week goes by that I don’t think about it. That was the most liberating thing for me,” shares Jimmy.
Over the next few years, Jimmy began to take baby steps away from the snare of pornography. In college, about four years later, he went a month without looking, then two months and so on. He has never gone back. “When I realize that His grace is enough…it sets me free and that is Christianity,” says Jimmy.
NOT WITHOUT LOVE
Jimmy signed with Inpop Records in 2006. His first album, Speak, was inspired by his realization that he “had shared the gospel with so many people in the flesh but all they knew was the Bible-beater.” Jimmy credits his new bride, Kelly, with opening his eyes and heart to the reality of grace. He says although zeal and passion for God is a good thing, if you don’t love people, it doesn’t count for much. “It is good to speak the truth, but it is so much better to speak the truth in love, he says. That’s what Not Without Love is all about,” says Jimmy.
On the album, Jimmy wrote a couple of love ballads for his wife – the fun and quirky, “Firefly,” and the more romantic, “Unfailing Love,” which he wrote as a proposal to Kelly. He also wrote about experiencing God’s love while struggling with his addiction to pornography in the song “Before and After.”
In concert, Jimmy shares with his audience about his own struggle with pornography. He says guys will often come up to him after a show and confide in him about their struggle with this same addiction. A critical step in being set free from this addiction is understanding that God loves you even in the midst of your struggle. “The more that we can talk about pink elephants the more God can work and liberate,” says Jimmy.
