Living Free Through Confession
Tommi Beers | September 2025
I grew up in a Christian home, going to a private school, going to camp, very much in a Christian bubble. Because of that, I knew the stories of the Bible, who God was, what Jesus did, and I thought that my knowledge was what made me right before God, that if I could give all the right answers, that made me a ‘good Christian’. It was probably when I was six or seven years old when the opportunity presented itself to get baptized. I knew that was something “Christians” did, but I did not understand what it meant at the time.
It wasn’t until later in my life that I realized it’s not about just knowing the facts about Jesus but knowing Him as my personal Savior because I know my sinful nature and need for Him. In 6th grade, I went to a church retreat and during our time of worship, I remember truly feeling the weight of my sin for the first time. Starting at a young age I struggled with lust and pornography. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but it was also something people didn’t ever talk about, so I kept my sin to myself too. I recognized that continuing in my sin was not God’s design and that I needed to repent, to stop following my flesh and follow God’s design instead. So I resolved to do just that while at that alter call, I was going to stop! I went up to the front and just sobbed. One of my friends came up and prayed over me, and though I acknowledged my sin before God, I did not talk to anyone else about it. I remember going home after that weekend feeling so refreshed and empowered to stop engaging with pornography and taking lustful thoughts captive. But a mere 20 minutes upon my return home, I was back on my phone, right back into my sin.
That continued having a grip on my heart, and I would just continue being a slave to sin, knowing that’s not good for me and it’s not God’s design, but not really caring enough to do anything about it.
In 8th grade, I started working at Bluegrass Christian Camp, where I went as a kid, and at the end of every week we would always do creek baptisms. Our whole staff would get in the creek to celebrate with kids who chose to follow in baptism, and one week a fellow staff member asked if he could be baptized, and was! Right then and there! I remember his boldness and immediately feeling conviction. I knew that I was baptized when I was younger, but I had no idea what it meant. There was no conversation about what baptism meant, I thought it was just something I had to do, not something I wanted to do because I understood what it meant. After camp, I talked with my parents and was set to be baptized at my church a month later.
I thought that this was my chance to get my sin under control, that once I got baptized I wouldn’t sin anymore. I told myself, “Once you are baptized you can’t live like this anymore.” But if anything that only made my sin more rampant until then, like this was my time to go ahead and do what I wanted because I couldn’t afterward. Oh how sorely mistaken I was… I was yet again mistaken on what the meaning of it all was. Knowledge, Baptism, Church, those things don’t save me, Jesus does. But I was still refusing to give Him full control of my life and held on to my sin because my flesh still loved it. I grew more frustrated in my battle with sin as it always seemed to keep winning, here I was doing all the right things! And still feeling just as stuck as before.
This started to change upon moving to college. I came to WKU in Fall of 2020 and immediately got involved with some of my friends at the Baptist Campus Ministry and Living Hope my freshman year. I wanted to be *that* girl. The one who was involved in a campus ministry, serves at church, and leads bible studies. I wanted to look the part. I cared more about upholding my Christian girl reputation than I actually cared about Christ at that time. I thought I had it all worked out! I had the awesome friend group, I did all the fun things, I started dating a cool new boy! Life was all falling into place I felt.
But I still had a lot of secret sin in my heart. I was building my life around activity for Christ and not Christ Himself. I was not honoring God in my relationship with boundaries and was making an idol of a person never meant to sustain me.
I began attributing the work God was doing in my life to this relationship instead of giving God the glory and credit. This boy was the first person to ever ask me about my sin and the first person I ever confessed my struggle with porn to. I remember in that moment of confession, it was the most seen and loved and free I have ever felt, not because of this boy, but because God was using His people to reflect His character and to bring light and life into the darkness of my heart and the things I wanted to keep hidden. The Lord met me graciously in that and began to break my heart over my sin. Even in my placing of another person on a pedistol, God kindly used it to teach me and to show me that I don’t have to live as a slave to my sin anymore and through that relationship taught me what It means to truly love God, and out of an overflow of love for Him, I obey and follow His design.
As I continues to idolize this relationship for the ways God was so evident in my life through it, we continued to struggle in sin with keeping healthy boundaries, and a few months later, he broke up with me. I was devastated. I felt like God was taking the best thing for me away. But He was showing me that the best thing for me is Himself.
God used that relationship to convict me of my sin and to break my heart over it, to start practicing confession and truly grieving my sin for the way it grieves God. Praise God that through that relationship God freed me from my addiction to porn and truly changed the desires of my heart. He taught me what it means to love God more than I love the people and things of this world, to die to my flesh and see God’s Word as a means of life, not restriction.
I realized I created a lot of superficial boundaries so that I could make myself feel more justified in my sin. “Well at least it’s not that” or “I know I can’t do that, but I can do this and be ok”. I did this so I could feel better about myself and have something to hold over others like I was more righteous because I kept myself from specific sins, but ultimately my heart is just as sick and sinful, and even more dangerous as it allowed pride to build up and create excuses for my sin. I would push boundaries as far as I could “without breaking them” but the sin is that my heart did not desire to obey God take Him at His Word but manipulate it to my advantage.
That next year, I started personally getting connected at Living Hope. I started having conversations with others about my sin. I opened up to my group of girls at the BCM, I joined a small group and shared with Hannah Taylor my struggle and how the Lord was redeeming it. As I talked about it more, it was so life-giving, this thing that once made me so full of shame and guilt and fear was now creating real, authentic relationships with people that I would never have otherwise, and was creating room for them to be honest about their sin struggles too!
Late that year, there was an event on campus, and they had a bunch of campus ministries come together, and they asked for a few people to share their testimonies. I had already given my testimony a couple of times at the BCM, and our campus minister asked me to share my testimony for this event too. The Holy Spirit was convicting me to talk about my struggle with lust and porn, that this was something people needed to hear. I knew if I didn’t do this, I’d robbing God of glory that is due to His name for freeing me from my sin, so I shared my testimony with 200+ people on South Lawn and talked about the freedom that God has given me in Christ from my sin.
One of the girls in my group came up to me and she said, ‘Tommi, the moment you started talking, everybody went silent, because people don’t want to talk about it.’ You could tell everybody recognized this is real. We want real, but we’re so scared of it because it puts us out there and it’s risky. He gave me the boldness to share in that way and used it to bring light into other people’s lives, because the Lord does not call us to walk into the room and flip the light switch on and turn it back off to hide in the dark again. No, you must walk in the light and give people an opportunity to be honest about it too. It’s not a perfect walk and there are days where it’s hard. I don’t do it perfectly, but I know that I have freedom in Christ and I’m not a slave to my sin anymore.
I’ve realized God’s kindness to bring conviction in my life. That while uncomfortable at first, it is a grace that God allows us to feel the weight of our sin so that we might turn from it and towards Him! I used to be sad over my sin in a worldly sense, fear of the consequences, damage to my reputation, or ‘messing up’ good things. My heart did not change toward my sin until God brought godly sorrow and grief over my sin that led to repentance.
When I fix my eyes upon Jesus and think about all He has done for me, it changes everything. Understanding the depth of His love, the riches of His grace and the kindness of His mercy, the fact that He does all of these things not because He has to or He’s obligated to, but because He wants to. He just wants my heart and He wants me to spend eternity with Him. He wants me to live in fellowship with Him and give me fullness of joy andabundant life. And when I walk in my own ways, that’s me choosing not to engage in what God wants to give me, and that’s when I live in fear and hurt. Following my own ways has never gotten me anywhere good.
God has given me freedom from my sin and it has been over 4 years since I’ve given into my flesh. While temptation is still there, God has been faithful to root me in scripture and community. He has made it evident those are the tools He has given us to persevere in this life and to fight sin. Practicing confession and being in Biblical community have been God’s gifts of grace to me in finding true joy and freedom. There are big victories to be attributed to Christ, but there are also moments of defeat due to my own sinful choices, that’s where God kindly meets me and reminds me that my sin is the very thing that draw His heart of compassion toward me and places me in a state of dependence upon Him. What a gift God uses even our sin for His glory as we practice repentance in running back time and time again to the foot of the cross for Jesus’ blood to cover & wash us clean! God has brought freedom and redemption to my life through the confessing of my sin and allowing Him to work in me and through me. I am eternally grateful for the ways God has healed me and the work He is doing in my life, and I want to be faithful to proclaim it!