When Hayden arrived at the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program, he was a man full of shame and anger towards God. Yet, as the Lord began to show him the wickedness of his own heart, Hayden saw his great need for repentance and to have a genuine relationship with Christ. While confessing his sins to his counselor, he was met with unexpected  forgiveness and mercy! In response, he went running to the chapel crying, "Thank You for the blood!" Getting a sight of the Lord's mercy through his counselor radically changed his life and he's never been the same since.

For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. (Titus 3:3-6, NKJV)

Like most, I grew up in a Christian home. Growing up as an only child, I was very lonely and was almost always secluded by myself. For most of my childhood years, I sincerely considered God my best friend, talking to Him in the hallways at school even. However, my relationship with God was vague, immature, and fake at best. At about 11, I discovered homosexual pornographic images on my computer at home. I didn't know what I was seeing. I knew it was wrong, but something in me, however, wanted more of it.
       For about four years, I began to regularly view these images and give into self-gratification. I became angry and confused and incredibly bitter at God, who, despite my pleads and questioning, would not take this away from me. At one point, I said out loud, “God, if you don't take this away from me, then I want nothing to do with you.” Despite still going to church and hiding the truth of sin from my family, I began to run as far away from God as I possibly could. I even told people if there is a God, He is evil. I want nothing to do with Him, and I'd rather just believe He doesn't exist.
       So, I watched and read everything I could proving why God didn't exist. I openly and loudly supported evolution, abortion, humanism, anti-Christian media, and was openly homosexual online and with my friends. After graduating high school, I dove fully into sexual sin, dating multiple men at once, living on hookup apps, and regularly engaging in homosexual encounters multiple times a week. Even multiple times a day sometimes. Hiding the truth of my addiction, I lied and manipulated family, friends, and everyone that I'd ever known.
       I was slowly pushing everyone I knew away and diving deeper in anxiety and depression. Panic attacks happened daily and I even attempted suicide multiple times. I was hurting everyone around me, but I did not care. I was either going to get my sin or go to hell trying. But praise God, He had other plans. When my sin was uncontrollably forced into the light, I was told by my parents that I was going to Pure Life Ministries Residential Program. I arrived a month later. Then God changed everything.
       I don't know how and I don't know when. Perhaps through a sermon or my first counseling session. God became real to me. First, He showed me just how truly deceived I had been about everything. I spent late nights on the ridge, confronted with one thing after another by God–my skepticism on the things here, my distrust in the Bible, my very identity. I had to surrender everything I thought I knew and trust whatever my counselor said about me and whatever the Bible said about God as truth, however hard or unbelievable it may sound. The truth was, everything I knew was wrong. I needed God to tell me the truth.
       Quickly, He began showing me I'd never truly known Him at all. The lifestyle I was chasing after was not just wrong–it was sin against God Himself. I deserved to be dead. A real relationship with Him was my only hope. I was broken. How could someone who once hated God ever have a relationship with Him? It didn't make sense. How could He love me?
       So, God began to show me who He is. This came about through months of not being able to hear Him at all. Months of apathy, hopelessness, loneliness, and crying out, not knowing whether He could hear me or even wanted to. All ending with Him proving that He is always there. Random answers for prayers prayed for weeks in advance showed me that God is always listening and answering. Through that, He showed me that all those years of crying out to Him were not in vain, but that I was not only currently living out the answer to those prayers, He was always in control.
       He let me pursue my sin, knowing it would inevitably lead me to the place where I could discover Him like never before thought possible. Everything is mercy. One specific night, He taught me about His greatest mercy, the blood of His only Son, Jesus. I came late one night to my counselor to bring months of unconfessed sin into the light, trusting that if I was to be sent home, it must be God's will. After 5 or so minutes of bringing one thing after another into the light, Gabriel just looked at me and said what Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “You're forgiven. Go and sin no more.” Running out of his office, God showed me in that moment that as much as I was just forgiven, the blood that Jesus poured out for me offers that same undeserved forgiveness every day and is what has washed away my years of sin. Overwhelmed, I ran to the chapel crying, “Thank you for the blood! Thank you for the blood! Thank you for the blood!”
       For the first time, I understood what the cross meant. That, despite all the things I had done to hurt Him, Jesus willingly took all the things I'd done, and sins I committed, and was brutally killed so that I may be set free. He died the death I should have suffered out of His love for me. My life will never be the same because of it.
       I want to thank the staff and my counselor Gabriel for both the painful and encouraging words of truth. For endless mercy and for sacrificing your lives for us, the least of whom deserve it. Thank you to my family who through years of persistent prayer and unconditional love were the first example of God's unconditional love that I had ever seen. Thank you to my Heavenly Father for your Son, Jesus. I live only because You loved me first. I love You, Lord.