It’s been just over 10 years since Joshua Broome walked into a bank with the intention of going home and killing himself right after he deposited his last paycheck from his job as a porn star. From the outside, it looked like he had everything — good looks, money, fame — but inside he was filled with regret, disgust and shame. That changed the moment a compassionate bank teller did him a simple kindness.
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“As I’m trembling, as I’m shaking, as I’m white as a ghost because I’m moments from taking my life, she looks at me, [and] instead of just ignoring that moment, I think she responded to a prompting [by the Holy Spirit] and she said, ‘Joshua, are you okay?’” Mr. Broome recalled in a recent interview with The Washington Times’ Higher Ground. “And little did she know that I’d been going by a pseudonym for so long, living a counterfeit lifestyle so long, that I hadn’t even heard my real name in over a year. And when she spoke it, when she said that, in a very real way, she saved my life.”
For years, the North Carolina native had gone by his stage name in the porn industry and was fully immersed in that identity. At the same time, he had spent so long searching for love and acceptance in the wrong places that he didn’t believe he was worthy of the life he really wanted. But that day, when the bank teller called him by his real name, it gave him hope — hope that he could have a future that wouldn’t be defined by the things he had done.
“The father of lies, Satan, he wants to distort your thinking,” explained the 41-year-old, who recently released his first book titled, “7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life: What My Journey from Porn Star to Preacher Taught Me About the Truth That Sets Us Free.” “I thought if I make enough money, I’ll be happy. If I obtain enough notoriety, I’ll be happy. If enough people, you know, know my name, I’ll be happy. And I’d made well over a million dollars. I had won performer of the year. I’d done over a thousand movies and I’d done all this stuff and it didn’t work. And when it didn’t work, it amplified my anxiety. It deepened my depression and I wanted to take my life.”
“[God] allowed me to experience everything that I thought would fix me, and when it didn’t, I was in the pit, and in the pit, I was ready for death,” he added. “And in His kindness, I believe [God] prompted this person to speak into my pain … It allowed me to see what was true. Instead of taking my life, I ran for my life.”
Mr. Broome’s decision in that moment to reject Satan’s lies about who he was changed the trajectory of his life. And ultimately, led him to the Lord.
“We want approval from everyone except the only One that can give it to us. And that’s Satan’s greatest lie,” he noted. “It’s this endless cycle of trying to satisfy your soul with things that don’t work … And it’s like, there’s one Jesus. And Jesus is not created in your image. He’s not created in your presuppositions. He’s not created in your comfort or your preference. He’s God and you’re not, and through submission and surrender to Him, then and only then, you can see yourself rightly.”
The key, says the happily married father of four, is understanding that God sees your sin and loves you anyway. After all, no one is ever too far gone that God can’t change their life.
“God knows everything about you, the good and the bad, and in spite of all your flaws and all your inadequacies and your fears and your doubts and your frustrations and your failures, there’s a God that loves you and wants you to come to Him,” Mr. Broome said. “And He doesn’t want you to clean your life up. He wants to cleanse you. He wants to meet you right where you are, in the middle of your mess, in the middle of the muck … We are reluctant to come to Him because we feel dirty. But what is true is He’s the only one that can make us clean.”
Watch the rest of the interview here:
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Marissa Mayer is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her work has been featured in Christian Post, The Daily Signal, and Intellectual Takeout. Mayer has a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Arizona State University.