Woman says surrendering to Jesus freed her from same-sex attraction, porn addiction
From the age of 8, Janiyah Castle says she had same-sex attractions that she believed would always define who she was. But years later after surrendering her life and sins to Jesus, she says she was radically transformed, and her lust for women has gone away.
Castle shared her transformation story in a video posted online Monday by Delafé Testimonies, a YouTube channel with over 700,000 subscribers that aims to create the world's largest archive of Jesus testimonies.
The 20-year-old said she was raised in the Church but didn't feel a connection to Jesus when she was younger. She struggled for years with same-sex attraction and pornography addiction after being exposed to porn at age 9.
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"Church was routine. It was repetitive. It wasn't really something that I really looked forward to. But, I respected God," she said. "I knew that He was to be obeyed, to be loved, but I didn't really know what that looked like personally for myself."
In elementary school, Castle said she was noticeably different from other girls her age.
"I was much taller. My voice was deeper. I was into a lot of different things that most of the girls weren't into," Castle recalled.
"I remember just being in elementary school, we would have recess and I wouldn't be the one playing the hide-and-seek [games] that the girls were playing. I would be in the grass playing football, wanting to be tackled, wanting to be the quarterback. There were just a lot of differences that I had from the girls my age," she continued.
"I remember not wanting to wear pink. I didn't want to wear dresses, skirts, anything like that. Because of these differences, our classmates and people around me began to give me a label of 'tomboy.'"
While in elementary school, Castle said she began to recognize that she felt an attraction to girls.
"I'm in elementary school. I'm having this identity crisis. People are calling me a 'tomboy,' and I made that my identity. I'm having these attractions to girls, and there's just a lot of insecurities happening while I'm still in elementary school," she said.
When Castle started middle school, she joined the basketball team and was given the nickname "Castle," which is her last name.
"I believe it was kind of a confirmation at that time for me that people called me that because [my first name] didn't fit. I felt like they thought it was too feminine for them and it was feminine for me. When they called me 'Castle,' I was like, 'this is a neutral term.' That deepened the confusion that I had at that age, and I began to really just become more confused," she recounted.
"Between sixth and seventh grade, watching porn became more of an addiction. It got to the point where I couldn't really do anything or go a long time without watching pornography. At that time, I was being exposed to more rap music, more profanity, and different things like that in middle school, and so I was just a mess. The more exposed to the darkness I got, the more dark I became, you know, more filthy."
She said that around the seventh grade, she made up her mind that she "must be bisexual" and started to wear collared shirts and pants all the time.
"I just felt like I had to keep up this persona of being gender-neutral," she said. "I didn't have a term for it. All I knew was I wasn't comfortable in the body that the Lord gave me."
Castle said while she struggled with same-sex attraction and porn addiction, her grandmother and mother never stopped praying for her.
By the time she reached eighth grade, she had suddenly felt a strong urge to stop saying cuss words and read the Bible.
"Why do I want to read the Bible, I get enough of this on Sunday and Wednesday night Bible studies," she recalled asking herself at the time.
"The next day, I remember going to school. I wouldn't want to curse. I didn't want to use my mouth in a way that was nastier or filthy. I know that that was the beginning of the Lord doing a great work in my life," Castle said, adding that she believes her sudden urge to follow the Lord came from her family's prayers beginning to take root in her life.
After months, Castle started listening to sermons by pastors online. She also began paying more attention during church services and listening more closely to her pastor's counsel.
"I remember going on the YouVersion app and just doing different devotionals about the fruit of the Spirit, the Beatitudes. I'm growing in the knowledge of God and I'm knowing the character of the Lord, but I still haven't repented of my sins or confessed them," she said.
A few weeks later, Castle said she felt tempted to watch porn but instead reached out to a Christian friend who was two years older than her to confess her struggles and seek guidance.
After confessing, her friend sent her an online sermon to watch.
"I clicked on it, and it was this video that was 58 minutes long. At first, I was like, 'I'll just watch the first 10 minutes, and then I'll turn it off.' But, … it was the Spirit of God that helped me sit there and watch that 58-minute video. It was Paul Washer. He was at a youth conference just speaking. He was preaching from Matthew 7 talking about when Jesus says that those who do the will of God will inherit the kingdom," Castle recalled.
"It just brought the reality of my sin to the surface. I remember the taste of any form of sin, pornography, just leaving from me, like the desire to sin, the desire for porn, it just all left. And so I was sitting there and I was like, 'Oh my god.'"
After some months went by, Castle said she continued to talk with Jesus, asking Him to break her free from porn addiction.
"I knew growing up that Jesus didn't just come to make us happy, but He came to set us free. … I remember repenting and confessing my sins to the Lord at about age of 15. I was saved after that," she said.
When Castle started ninth grade, she said she began forming a more intimate relationship with Jesus.
"This was a heavy transition because now I was no longer a child of the devil. I was now a child of the Lord. I was a new creation. I felt that way. I'm going into ninth grade. And I really defined being in high school as a really sanctifying time and I know that we're all sanctified and being cleansed. But, being in high school really opened the door for me to understand walking in the Spirit and walking in the flesh," Castle said.
Castle said that when she felt the urge to "fall away," she said the Spirit brought back into her remembrance that doing so "only leads to death."
"That's all I heard everytime, 'It only leads to death.' He would bring back to my remembrance Romans 6, like how can we continue in sin if we have been raised with Christ and baptized with Christ? We can't live in sin anymore. We are new creatures. So, I was really being delivered from those strongholds that were over me when I was younger. So, coming into this year, I surrendered to the Lord, and I found that after a deep, thorough heart examination, I had to realize that I really didn't want the attractions gone. That was hard for me to realize."
She said the same-sex attractions wouldn't go away until she authentically surrendered them to Jesus.
"So in this year, when I began just putting all my heart out to God, crying out to Him and actually wanting it gone, in February of this year, I noticed the attraction for women were gone," she said. "I was shocked. I felt this my whole life since I was 8 years old. For it to leave, ... that's the power of Jesus' blood and surrender."
Now, as a sophomore in college, Castle said she has connected with other like-minded Christian women and maintained meaningful friendships that are absent of lustful desires and feelings.
"Being in college, the Lord has done a lot for me and in me, and through me for others. One of the first things that he dealt with, especially this year, my sophomore year, was the way that I viewed myself. And so with pornography, it really defiled me. It defiled the way I viewed myself and defiled the way I viewed people and especially sexual intimacy between males and females," Castle said.
"There were a lot of attitudes and mindsets that the Lord had to deliver me from, and He's done a lot of that in this year. … Now, I'm able to be in a group; in the vicinity of women, in the presence of women of God, and have great fellowship, have godly conversation, and there's no lust. There's no urge to do anything with them. I love them with the love of Jesus."
Nicole VanDyke is a reporter for The Christian Post.
