Chapter 1 Excerpt of 7 Lies that Will Ruin Your Life by Joshua Broome
I was one of the world’s most famous porn stars before Jesus totally transformed my life.
Today, I’m a speaker who preaches to thousands about Christ, exposes the dark underbelly of the porn industry, advocates on Capitol Hill for legislation to make adult content less accessible to minors, and serves as the cofounder of a ministry that connects people all over the world from social media to physical churches.
Now that I have your attention, I want to share one of the darkest moments of my life. I was sitting on a plane that had just touched down at Los Angeles International Airport. I had just filmed a scene in Atlanta, hadn’t had a proper shower, and felt filthy. My head was pounding from the erectile dysfunction medication I was forced to take to do my job, and I had a folded payroll check in my pants pocket that added to my utter disgust.
This was before the days of Uber, so I took a cab home, and as I slouched in my seat, I replayed in my head the things I had just done, fighting off the ever- familiar nausea that so often plagued me.
As I got closer to my home in Sherman Oaks, California, I started thinking about how many pain pills I would have to take to end my life. I looked it up online and decided twelve would be the magic number— an appropriate amount to stop the pain.
When I got home, I laid the pills on the counter and separated them into four groups of three. My heart was beating so fast I could see it pounding through my shirt, but, in that moment, even as it felt like all my senses were heightened, I suddenly remembered the check still in my pocket, begging to be cashed.
It might seem like an odd thing to recall while preparing to end my life, yet it suddenly gnawed at me. In fact, it bothered me so much I decided to take it out and look at it. I suppose I didn’t want the degradation I’d allowed myself to go through to get that money to be a complete waste. And I assumed my mom or brother would end up with whatever money I had left in my account after my death, so I didn’t want to end my life with the check uncashed.
I looked at it and saw the title of the porn website I was working for scrawled on the memo line. Seeing the name made me actually vomit. It was a common occurrence for me to be disgusted by my behavior— but this was different. This was a new low.
With the pills still neatly prepared on the counter, I decided to pick myself up off the bathroom floor and take a shower. After I got dressed, I decided it only made sense for me to deposit this check in the bank before taking my life. The bank was across the street from where I lived, so I walked over as I usually did, planning to drop the check in the deposit box or use the ATM if there wasn’t a line.
On this day, though, I strangely felt like I wanted to be particularly self- destructive and have a personal interaction with a bank teller. I typically avoided these interactions by any means possible as I never wanted any other human to see the evidence of what I was being paid for and then have them look me in the eye in judgment and horror.
That day, though, for some reason, that’s exactly what I wanted. Perhaps desperate to simply feel something in the middle of my immense pain, I wanted to squeeze every drop of pain out of that day. So, I waited in the line and handed my check to this incredibly kind middle- aged woman who had brown hair with a touch of gray in it. She asked if I knew my account number, which I was far too irresponsible to recall, and then told me to swipe my card and enter my PIN.
I waited as she filled out the deposit slip, and my mind puttered back into my suicide plans. I pondered about how long it would possibly be before anyone found me and then worried what would happen if someone found me too soon. Then, something unexpected happened. The teller broke my streaming suicidal thoughts by looking me in my eye and posing a simple question.
“Joshua, are you okay?” she asked.
As I’ll explain in the chapters that follow, this moment changed the trajectory of my life, snapping me out of a wave of sorrow I was drowning in and launching me into the beginning of a newfound journey of hope— one that would ultimately lead me to the Lord.
Keep Reading: Download the introduction and Chapter 1 of 7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life.
A former porn star-turned-preacher reveals seven lies our culture tells us and guides us to the only thing that creates authentic happiness: a relationship with Jesus.
Joshua Broome knows this firsthand. He had a successful career in the adult film industry, making lots of money and achieving notoriety and all the markers of success. And yet he felt empty inside. After hitting rock bottom, he cried out to Jesus … and it was only then that he was fully redeemed.
In 7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life, Joshua examines seven things we are told will make us happy and shows how each of them points us back to our need for God.
Using his own journey as a point of reference, 7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life pairs his personal experiences with Biblical truths, demonstrating both how we can be deceived and the healing truth that comes when we realize that Jesus really is enough.
