The Dan Scott Show Podcast

Dan Scott Show, Radio Episode 79 - Neil Getzlow (7-7-24)

Our summer replay series continues with a flashback to last year's conversation with Neil Getzlow. Neil's pornography and sex addiction nearly cost him his marriage, and much more. But then Jesus intervened, and new he and his wife do ministry together. Plus, Neil now leads a Celebrate Recovery meeting each week at his church in Kansas City. Check it out!

Duration:: 54m
Broadcast on:: 07 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

-The following program is a presentation of Grand Slam Ministries. [music] -Hi, good everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Dan Scott Show, presented by Grand Slam Ministries, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. I am Dan, it is great to have you with us. Hope and pray that everything is going well with you as we turn the page into the summer, and I don't know where you are, but here in South Carolina, summer came quite a while ago, even though the calendar just turned a couple of weeks back. But it has been very, very hot, devoid of much if any rain, but you know what, God is good. And we are just happy to be here and hope that everything is going well with you as we get into the second week of our summer replay series here on the Dan Scott Show. And we've got a good one for you today. The interview was actually done about a year ago, maybe just slightly over a year ago, with a guy by the name of Neil Getzlo, who had a tremendous pornography addiction, had no belief in God, had a sex addiction that went along with the pornography addiction that almost cost him his marriage. And then as happens almost weekly on this show, when we tell these stories, there was that moment that Jesus became real to Neil Getzlo, and that marriage was repaired and restored, and he and his wife are doing ministry together now. It's another amazing example of God's saving grace and the transforming power of Jesus in the lives of people. So you're going to hear from Neil Getzlo on this week's edition of the show first, however, as always, we want you to hear something about Grand Slam ministries. Every day there are children who leave school on Friday and eat little, and sometimes nothing until they come back to school on Monday. It happens in every community, including yours. Many of these children live in circumstances that deprive them of basic needs necessary for a quality life. At Grand Slam Ministries, we want to change that. We want to invest in our children, giving them hope for the future. That investment includes necessities such as food, clothing, school supplies, and a safe environment to play, to study, to live. Please visit our website, www.grandslamministries.org, to find out more about our ministry and how you can help. We're just getting started. Will you come alongside us for the children's sake? Again, that's www.grandslamministries.org. Want to see a listing of our affiliates? Check out videos or listen to past shows and explore our archives. It's all available at our website, danscotchow.org, and now, back to the show. This is episode 79 of The Dan Scott Show. Good to have you along with us, as always. Hey, if you have missed anything that we've done, if you're new to the show and would like to catch up, if there's something you'd like to hear again, whatever it is, you can go to www.danscotchow.org, navigate to the affiliates and archives page. Everything that we've done since the show began 79 episodes ago is archived at the podcast site. There's some bonus SoundCloud material there as well, and as you go through different parts of the website, you'll find out more about Grand Slam Ministries, how you can donate and help us. We would just love for you to navigate to the site, and then interact with us. Drop us a line. You can use a contact page there, or you can simply email Dan@danscotchow.org, and we will answer each and every one of them. If the old-fashioned way of writing a letter or sending a card is your thing, just send it to Grand Slam Ministries, PO Box 35, Central South Carolina, 29630, Grand Slam Ministries, PO Box 35, Central South Carolina, 29630. Let's get into this week's interview as we hit week two of our summer replay series. This is going all the way back to about a year ago. When we visited with Neil Getslow, who, as I mentioned in the first segment, pornography addiction, sex addiction, no real knowledge of God or who Jesus was until Jesus made himself very, very clear and evident in Neil's life and what has happened since it is something that only God could do. We began the interview by letting Neil tell us basically what's going on in his life right now. I am currently reside in Kansas City, Missouri with my wife, Amy. We have five boys between two previous marriages. They're all older, fortunately, so we only dealing with one in the house still, so almost to the empty nest stage, but I'd say we're pretty much there, but today I am a communication professional for my day job, where I help my company communicate down. We own a bunch of restaurants, so I help with that, but really, my main mission is serving God, and he is leading me to some places where I never thought I'd be leading, helping men overcome their struggles with pornography, serving at our church, hosting small groups, learning about the Bible, starting up hopefully soon, putting together celebrate recovery ministry at our church, and I have an opportunity to help sort of build that up from the ground floor, and so it's just God's continuing to lead me in ways where I'm just letting him go. You show me where you want to go? Just take me there. I'm yours. We as men have a hard time letting go of the will. Yeah, and saying that, and my problem, one of my multiple problems has always been trying to get ahead of God, and that's a disaster. The celebrate recovery thing is cool, though, I actually spoke at a Celebrate Recovery meeting, it's been about a month ago now, to a group who are going through that and shared some things, and it's really great to see churches, I know there are several in our area here in the upstate of South Carolina, but I know it's branching out, and it's really all over the country now. It's great to see churches no longer turning a blind eye to this, and trying to embrace a way to help people who have addictions. Yeah, no, I think it's critical. That's one of the things that I've learned since I've just became a believer in 2020 and started going to church. That's one of the first things that I noticed that shocked me, right? I had this perception of everyone who goes to this church is holy, they are above reproach. What I've learned is that no, they're pretty much like me, still just woefully broken and they're needing a savior, and we're still stuck in our, as Celebrate Recovery says, our hurts, hang-ups, and habits that we all have, and I'm blessed our church is open to that and trying to lift people up. One of the best things that I did when I got saved over 11 years ago, a little over 11 years ago now, is about six months in, I started going to a weekly men's prayer breakfast that we have at our church, and our men's ministry is just incredible, and I still go practically every week. But the thing that I found out there, I was kind of like you, all these guys are, I had them up on a podium, they were all super Christian, and as I found out, guys who've been walking with the Lord for 10, 15, 20, 30, some 40 or 50 years still had story, still had struggle, still had battles that were in a lot of ways similar to what I was going through, six months in to my salvation story, and it's comforting to know that there are other men who've been down that road that you can go to and say, "Hey, this is what I'm struggling with." Yeah, that's one of the more interesting things that I found out, so last, and I know we'll get into all these details, last September though, my wife and I had a chance to share our testimony in front of the full church over a course of one weekend, and then following that, so many men have come up to me and continue to come up to me saying, "I'm struggling with pornography," and so it's inside the church, so that's what fuels me to know that if God can break me and break me clean from that, then He's telling me like, "Okay, I'm going to break you from this, but now I need you to help other men do the same thing if I'm going to heal you completely," and so that's my mission and I was to help men who are struggling with this, but really it too, just help marriages. I think that pornography ruins marriages, and when you're able to get yourself clean from that, it changes everything about every relationship that you have. And it's something that you have to remain diligent about every day, moving forward. Yeah, and we'll talk about all of that, but I wanted to kind of establish where you are, what you're doing now, and so let's go back and talk about how you were raised, you're Jewish by birth. Right, right. Yeah, Jewish by blood, both my parents were Jewish, so I'm grandfathered in for the fact that my mom was Jewish, so I have Jewish blood running through me. So I always joke, like I'm Jewish, but only for the culture and the food, right? There's no, you know, I didn't have a relationship with God. Well, and that's kind of where I was going to go, were you culturally Jewish growing up or were your parents practicing Jews as from their religion standpoint, what was growing up in that household life? Yeah, so my grandparents, they came over from Russia to Ellis Island in the early 1900s. Wow. Yeah. And they came, they were, they were Jews and settled in St. Louis. That's so that's where I grew up. And so they were very, very Jewish and probably, I'm going to get myself in trouble here when I start talking about this, they were Jewish and they were religiously Jewish, but it was again more, as you know, if you read the Old Testament, it's a lot of ritual, ritualistic thing. It's not, it's missing the, the actual relationship with God. So, but so you did all the traditions, all the holidays, they spoke Yiddish, you know, they, they were, if you put a picture, you know, picture a Jewish family in your mind, you know, that's what my grandparents and her brothers and sisters, that was them. But then of course, as the generations go on, it sort of becomes a little bit weaker and, you know, so for, so my mom and dad, they were, again, they knew the traditions, but they weren't, again, that was about it, really. My brother got bar mitzvahd, the age of 13. My sisters went to, you know, a temple on Sundays for, you know, Sunday school. I never went. So I had no, I had no exposure to religion at all growing up, but you know, I grew up in the suburb of St. Louis, very Jewish suburb, like all my friends were Jewish. They were all getting bar mitzvahd. I felt the connection to them because of my Judaism, but that, again, I had no idea when they would go through this bar mitzvah ceremony and read from the Torah. I had no idea what they were reading about, right? I, they were, they would go to, we'd have go to school during Passover and they'd bring their matzah crackers and, and eat that. And I would just see my regular lunch. I'm like, I don't know what you guys are doing. Like, why, why are you doing that? With me a while to learn that about 50 years. We're visiting with Neil Getslow on this week's edition of the Dan Scott show. So growing up that way with the, the, the cultural aspects of it, when did you decide in your mind that there was no God or was that a conscious decision? You just never grew up with any knowledge of God. Yeah. I, I don't know if I ever made a conscious decision necessarily, but I just didn't, when I got, you know, I, you know, my family was pretty, like most, a lot of families are, a lot of, this is where a lot of our, our trauma comes from is broken families and families dealing with their own generational sin, if you will, and, and mine was no exception, of course. So just, just no concept of religion or God or, or what it meant. And so by the time I got to college, you know, I was just living my life, right? And just thinking there's no, there's no, there's nothing more than this, right? So I'm going to, I'm going to live life to the fullest and enjoy the heck out of it while I'm here. There were a couple of times where, so I like, you know, at, in 1991, start of the first Gulf War, you know, so I'm, I've military age and can be drafted at that point. So I'm thinking, oh, well, is there something, you know, is there, is there a God? I think I actually went to a church once, just absolutely like this is not like I hated it. Not for me. And I wore this as a badge of honor to for most of my life as a very cynical, non believing atheist person that I consider myself like that was my, that was my badge of honor. That was my identity. And my identity was rooted in this world fully and I didn't care or want anything to do with what might be the truth, what might actually be another reality out there that I was just blind to for so long. You know, what's interesting is I'm listening to how you were brought up and everything. I told you that there are a lot of similarities between your story and my story and it just goes to show you that there's no blueprint for getting into that scenario because you came from a Jewish background, but little to no religion. My dad is a pastor and a preacher and still is at age 75 and is the godliest man that I know. So you grew up with basically no religion. I grew up with great Christian parents, you know, living out what it was supposed to be. I never, it was not that I didn't believe in God and know who Jesus was. I did, but I was just running a hundred miles an hour in the other direction for a long, long time. So it's just intriguing. And it's one of the things I love about doing this radio show, Neil, is because as I talk to people, there's such a diversity in where they were and how they get to the point and we're going to talk about that in a bit, but how they get to the point where God gets hold of them and becomes real to them, there's just no blueprint in how God works. And that's, you know, and I do, I do my own podcast called unmasked, so I'll give it a plug for the show. And so I talk to a lot of people who sort of have the same background as you as far as I think grew up with the church. They, you know, whether parents or, you know, churchgoers or religious or whatever, but for whatever reason, they slipped away and whether it's church, hurt or, you know, something else that happened, drew them, like the react, it's one of the things that I've noticed is the commonality in the stories that I hear is that people drift away because men and women are driving them away, not God or Jesus, but you know, the things that men and humans do to each other, that's what makes people think of, well, maybe God just isn't here for me. One of the things that we have in common is the pornography addiction. And I saw on your website as I was trying to research as much about your story as I could that you were first exposed to pornography at age nine. That's right. Yeah. Nine years old. It's right back in my childhood. We lived in a house at the time, like it was literally like 10 footsteps away from the playground of my school. So very close. It was awesome. But behind our playground, there was this wooded area and it was called the Playboy Forest. And we'd ride our bikes there after school and after the older kids got out of the way, we'd go in there and this little, you know, nook was carved out and on the ground of the, you know, forest, there were these ripped up pages of Playboy and penthouse magazines. And not the full magazines, but just enough, right, as a nine year old to be like, this isn't intriguing. And that's, that's where I got hooked. That's what filled up my heart. So it's interesting. This happened at the same time. I'm discovering pornography as my parents are getting divorced. So I'm moving schools, I'm moving away from all my friends, my dad has gone to live somewhere else. So I don't see him as much. He starts to work. So the common in my sisters and my two sisters and brothers, they were 10 years older than me. So they're already out of the house. So the theme here is alone. And that's what this is something that when I got saved out of this, I also talked to a faith based counselor, which is hugely important on my mental health journey. And he asked me this really, really interesting and intriguing question, which he said, what's the first thing you had to learn how to do when you were a little kid? And for me, I had to learn how to be alone because my, because all this was happening, I moved away from all my friends, my relationships had changed. My mom and I went to this apartment where there was no other kids around. That's what filled up my heart was pornography. I thought, okay, well, this is something I can latch on to. I don't know why. But at the same time, when we moved into this apartment, my mom and her room on either side of her bed where these two nightstands that were stacks of Playboy and Pentose magazines. So what's a nine, 10, 11 year old going to do all day alone in the summer is that's how I filled up my time because I just didn't, I didn't have anything else. And that's what I, and so that's, that's what started the rewiring of my brain, where now I'm thinking that love equals sex, sex equals love, you know, there wasn't a lot of affection and love shown toward me as a, as a little kid. So this is what I thought was normal. That's just what I thought it was. And at the same time, cable TV is just starting because I'm your typical latchkey kid of the 80s. But no, I'm getting HBO and Showtime and Cinemax bombarded at me right in my own home with again with images of sex and sexuality and sexuality being loved. And that's, that's what set me down this path. That's what I based on everything that I took in based on this hole in my heart that I was looking to fill. I filled it with, with things that were showing me, you know, the wrong way of how I viewed all this and, but that carried that with me in every single relationship for most of my life. You and I were probably about the same age when I first saw those pictures from a magazine. It was kind of a similar situation. There was a place climb up on, on some rocks above a place where we used to play ball and in a hidden area, somebody, somebody had a magazine and, and I don't remember that having that much of an effect on me, but when I was a junior in high school, I saw my first pornographic film and, and, and that's where that road really, really started for me. Um, when it was almost like it was, it was, it was a rite of passage, right? Yeah. Like you would go, I'd go over to, um, next door neighbor's house and we'd play a little bit. And then the second, after we'd play outside, we'd come back inside and be like, all right, where, where's your dad's pornography stash? And we'd go rifling through the closets and drawers and boom, there it was. Yeah. You know, yeah, at nine years old, I'm imagining you weren't really comprehending everything you were seeing, but, but it, but it obviously had some effect on you. And I, I think that I can say this with some confidence that once you start down that road, it's like any other addiction that, that you need more and more and more to satisfy. And you never really get satisfied, but you have to have more and more to try to satisfy whatever you want to call it, the, the dark place that you're going to or whatever terminology you want to use it, but it's one thing, but there's, there's no going back. No, there isn't. And in that, right. And that it absolutely was that for me, you know, I, again, I had this hole in my heart. This is my medication. Right. For some people, it might have been at that age, maybe it's drinking a beer or smoking pot or, you know, having a cigarette, whatever it was, like for me, it was pornography. And so that was the cycle that started at age nine. And so as I went throughout my life, it became a shame cycle and that I would repeat over and over and over again, like I, I'd, I'd feel lonely. I'd feel unloved. So we're, I'm reaching out to my medication. All my medication is pornography. So I'm looking at the porn, makes me feel better for, for a few minutes. But then when I'm done looking at it, now the shame sets in. This is why nobody loves me. This is why I'm alone. I need to go look at porn. And so the cycle just continues as spirals on and on. But to your point, that only satisfies for so long. And then soon as I got older and had more access to additional money, more of my own time being a being home alone or being on my own when I got into my, you know, college and to my early twenties, you know, I had access to other things. So so early, you know, when I started, this was all, all magazines, right? But then you'd go to videos and then, you know, harder and stronger videos, more explicit, more, you know, and then the internet comes along. The internet comes and blows everything up and then, but it, you know, even before the internet, right, it was going to, there were adult theaters, go watch movies in a theater. There was strip clubs, obviously. So you'd go and try to get you'll, you're filled there and yeah, then the internet comes in and, and opens it up and, you know, for me that opened up a giant Pandora's box because it opened up the world to, to online sex and to look, you know, buying prostitutes online. You know, that's, that's, that is what that, that evil led me to, or most of my adult life. Visiting with Neil Getslow on this edition of The Dance Cat Show, did pornography then lead you to other issues, alcohol, drugs, those kind of things? I never had a necessarily an addiction to those things, but they, they all kind of worked together in their own way, like pornography was the thing I could not, was the vice I could not break. I could stop drinking if I wanted to, but probably I didn't really want to, like, I, I wanted to celebrate my sins. So I'd go out, drink, get drunk with my friends or smoke weed and just, just partake in all that. And then that would lead me to do other things, make it, it would make it easier to, to do other things. And of course, you know, in this, so I had, so I've been, I'm on my, Amy's my second wife, we'll talk about her here in a little bit, you know, my first marriage ended in, in an affair that I had with, with these addictions to pornography. But I really wasn't much of a, a drinker or at the time, but after I got divorced, that's when the drinking came in, the, the marijuana came in and so oftentimes I would, I would say, you know what? It was an addiction for me. And I guess on this show, I think it's appropriate to talk about sports, sports became an addiction to me where my identity was rooted in how my team did day in and day out. And if the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team had a good week, I'm flying high. But if we lost early in March, which happened, it happens more often than you want to admit to, but it does, then my month is ruined. Right? That's, that's where my identity was in. And so I'd spend, I'd just spend more time out at the bars with my friends watching sports at home, watching sports with my wife is upstairs in another room alone. Like I left her alone a lot and it, again, it all kind of works together and it was all working together to try to sabotage my marriage. And I was doing a very good job of that, by the way, baseball coach that I worked closely with about four or five years ago said something that really had an impact on me and talking to his team. He said this talking about coaching baseball is what I do. It's not who I am. Yeah, and that, that really resonated with me because even after I became a Christian, it's easy in my business, especially when, when they're exciting moments that your voice is attached to and, and, and people, you know, tell you what a great job you've done. It's easy to have your identity get lost in something like that. And I have to constantly remind myself that, you know, this is, this is what I do. It's not who I am and, and, and I'll share this with you very quickly. This past March, Furman men's basketball, made the NCAA tournament for the first time in 43 years and then upset Virginia in the first round and a, an incredible comeback finish with the last second shot and my call of that opened CBS's national television coverage the next two days, the, the Twitter clip has been seen, I don't know, 200,000 times and just everybody telling you how fantastic it was. I did seven radio interviews the next day in the, the day between first and second round, two of them national shows. And then as I said at a church, just a couple of weeks ago when I shared my testimony, Neil, 48, 72 hours later, nobody knew who I was because everything had moved on. Yeah. And that was, that was, to me, God reminding me that that's what you do, but it's not who you are. Yeah. I love that. That's such a great, a great thing to remind her. And it's something that, gosh, I try to remind myself that now, like, and you know what the work I do is not, you know, it's nothing glamorous at all. It is just a typical, that's, that's where God has me positioned right now from a, you know, how I'm able to make money, he's put me in a job that just, I can do it, keep my head down and do it. My, my mission field is talking to other people there and, you know, some of the other ministry work that I do outside of that, but it's not a job that job doesn't define me anymore. We're in a way it used to, right. Visiting a nil gets low. So as, as you're in the throes of all of this and one marriage has suffered and died because of this and you're getting deeper and deeper into the pornography and now you add the drinking and the other stuff onto it. Is there anything at all going on in your mind that says, yeah, you know, you talked about the shame, but is there anything at all that says there's got to be something more there, there's, there's, you know, God, if you're up there, can you deliver me from this? Was that even a thought process for you? Honestly, no. Yeah. But up until the moment where God decided to hit me in the head with a two by four, no, there was, there was no consideration of it all what I would, the pain I was creating in them that I didn't never, never saw next to me and my wife didn't realize what she was feeling because I was just, you know, I, I wrote a book called unmasked, right? And that's, so that's what I did. I put the mask on shoved everything inside like a, like any, like that's how I thought men were supposed to be shoved, all the feelings, anything shoved it all inside. So nobody knew what was going on inside my world. And frankly, again, it was, it was a life I didn't want to, I didn't want to dig give up. I was not looking to give it up. I thought that I could do whatever I want. And I had this false confidence, like as long as I keep my mask on, I can, I can get away with this forever. But then God, God had other ideas. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to get to that here in, in just a moment, the, and we know that God has a plan and hindsight is normally when we see these things drop into place, but you had one marriage that failed because of your behavior. And then I don't want to say you tricked Amy into marrying you, but obviously she didn't know the person that you were, how did you get, how did you get into this situation and get remarried again? Were you hiding it that well? So it's interesting. You say the word she tricked or I tricked her to get married. So because I think she tricked me, I'll tell you why here. So between the time that I got divorced and the time I met Amy and we started dating, you know, that addictions subsided somewhat because I was, I was single. So I could go out and, but what turned what went from pornography to having a series of one night stands with random women that were not going to go anywhere and bouncing from one relationship to another. So it was very unfulfilling as I look back on it now. But when I met Amy, you know, she was not a, she was, she grew up Catholic, but she was not a true necessarily a believer. She definitely was not a follower of Christ when we got, when we got married. And so we were living a very glorious, sinful life together, going out and partying together. And, you know, we moved in before marriage and premarital sex and all that. Like we, we, again, we celebrated our sin. And then three months after we got married, she says, Neil, I'm a born-again Christian. I've found Christ. Three months after. And remember who she's talking, saying this to a Jew, like she, she is speaking, I feel like she is speaking at the time, this flames coming out of her mouth, right, right? And I, so I did everything I could for the next eight years to avoid her, right? Like, I didn't want anything to do with, with her. And I told friends she's gone crazy because she'd, she'd like looking back on and out, she did change, right? She, God gave her a new heart. She changed the things that we love to do together. We didn't love doing together anymore. Right. And so, so I think I, that's why, like, when you say I tricked her, I think she tricked me or the Lord trick, both of you, that maybe the more realistic answer there. So you said you spent the next eight years or so trying to avoid her, but, but you also said that you, you noticed a change in her life. Was there ever a point during that time where you found yourself privately saying, I want what she has? No, not once. Really? Not once. I had no idea this is, this was coming, Dan. I really didn't. No idea. This is coming for me. You know, I, again, I would be out drinking, you know, every weekend with my friends, well, I left Amy home alone all the time. She'd go to church. I went with her maybe one time on Easter and another time on Christmas and now I just knew it wasn't. Like, like most good Christians, right? Yeah. Right. Just didn't want any part of it. And she would, it's funny that she would play, I don't know if you're familiar with Ray Comfort, but he's a living waters ministry. He's got some great videos on YouTube about him doing some open air preaching and evangelism. She'd play me his videos every night. I, I, I, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I, she'd play him before we go to sleep. So I would fall, cause I'd try to fall asleep as quickly as I could while she's playing these videos that may be subliminally like it's seeping into my heart and my mind perhaps. But it was, it was literally was going to take an act of God for me to finally, to finally wise up. Well, and, and we're getting there. But I always like when, when I'm dealing with somebody who has a story like this, because I know I got to a point where I hit rock bottom. Yes. What was rock bottom for you? Rock bottom for me. Yeah. It's, I say it was February 26, 2020, uh, I should say there's, there was like three steps to rock bottom, but I, so I had to hit a few rocks as I'm falling down there. The first rock that I hit was, uh, February, 2020, um, my addiction to pornography led me to, and led me to buying women online for sex, led me to a hotel room in Chicago on a business chip where I've made an arrangement to meet a woman, uh, went and met her. And as I was getting ready to leave the hotel, there was a second bedroom and that door pops open and there was a man dressed in drag he looked like an offensive lineman for the Chicago Bears, it says to me, uh, and he holds up his phone in his hand and he says, you're going to pay us more money or we're going to call your wife, Amy. And on his cell phone was my wife's Facebook page and her telephone number, it was all right there. Like, I'm just, so at that moment, I'm like, like I knew, like I knew I put myself in some dangerous situations before, but this is like the first time that I was like, I've kind of faced that moment of there's a chance I might actually dying this hotel room tonight or does it was actually in the morning. And so I did whatever I could to get out of that room. So it was about $900 later I paid this couple, it was all through app right through Venmo. So I didn't have to have the cash. I could just pay it right off a credit card, luckily only $900 out as I'm running down the hall though I can hear the door open. Hey, you're going to have to pay us more money or we're going to call your wife, but I made it out of the hotel room and this is where this is why I called my book unmasked because I went about my day, nobody knew I'd just been blackmailed by a prostitute, nobody. I went about, had my business meetings, they were great, had a great day, I didn't even think about it twice once I got out of the hotel. Amy picked me up from the airport that night in Kansas City. They hadn't called her yet, so she acted like nothing was wrong. So I'm like, this is great. I think I'm going to be okay here. They're going to get bored, they're not going to call Amy, it was just a way to get more money out of me. I'm going to call their bluff. But then exactly three days later, Sunday night, March 1st, 20, 29, 30 p.m. exactly. I'm on my laptop working in my office and my phone starts blowing up and it's this couple again and they're texting me saying, Hey, you're going to pay us more money in 15 minutes or we're calling Amy. And which again, I just, I just ignored. I'm not sure, like I think I might have been more in shock, like what do I do, like what do I do? I'm not sending them any more money. I'm just thinking, oh, I'm going to ease. They must have other marks. So I'm just going to ignore it and they'll get bored, move on. Fortunately at night or fortunately, depending on how you look at it here, 945 15 minutes later, I hear Amy's phone blowing up upstairs and it's this couple and they were sending her text messages, they were sending her pictures. They basically were ripping the mask off my face and she comes running down the stairs and I can just, I can still hear her footsteps growing louder as they, she comes to my office and the door flies open. She's like, are you cheating on me? And of course, no, I did what any good addict would do, which is I lied. I said, no, I'm not, this is the first time I'd ever done anything. I don't know why I did it. I'm never going to do it again. I want to work on our marriage. All those were lies, right? And so I was more sorry that I was caught than I was sorry about the pain that is right standing right in front of me. And so that led, that was sort of set off this wild chain of events over the next six weeks because you think about the timing of this. So this is March 2020, two weeks after this COVID-19 arrives, we are now locked down together. Both of our jobs were impacted by COVID. So we're now at home together for three months, like it was, this is God's way of saying, I'm going to take the way everything that you love in this world. I'm going to take away your pornography. I'm going to take away the sex with other women. I'm going to take away the drugs, the alcohol, the partying with your friends. What are you going to do? Now, what it led me to fast forward to April, April 14th, 2020. I had set up an arrangement to meet another woman in Kansas City. Even though I had this encounter, I had been blackmailed, it didn't stop me from wanting to meet somebody else. Right? I still had this addiction from me. Set up this other appointment. I did it all for my computer. Amy has no idea how to get on my computer. It's locked all the time. And she doesn't even, she has, she's not very computer literate, which I thought was good for me. So I go to meet this woman, but 10 minutes later, I get all these text messages. They're from Amy. I left my computer unlocked, which I don't ever do. And she got on there and took screenshots of these things. I was messaging this woman and rescinding them to me, which she has no idea how to do. If I asked her to do it now, she wouldn't know how to do it. There's God was absolutely like forcing my hand. So I immediately turned around, came home and I don't even remember what I told Amy. It was just a bunch of bunk. She wasn't buying any of it, rightly so. So, but she said to me before I went to bed that night, she's like, if you want to save this marriage, you have to pray to God and ask him for help. That's your only way you're going to save this marriage. So the next morning I woke up, she was already gone. She's upset. She'll go blow off some steam. So I'm laying in bed. And that's when I prayed for the first time and I just said, God, I don't know what I'm doing. I need help. Like if there if help is out there, will you just give me a sign and let me know? And I'll take it because I'm kind of this is I'm kind of that rock bottom. And the soon as I finished that prayer, the door pops up, the garage door pops up and it was Amy coming home. And Amy is the key to this entire story. She was the hope, the help that God had sent to me all along, which I never realized. And so later that afternoon, God put it on my heart to confess everything to her like and I don't I don't know why, but I did. And I sat her down and told her that for our entire marriage, basically, I was looking at pornography and I was cheating on her with women that I would meet online. And what happened next changed our lives completely, totally in ways that I just I still have fine heart to believe. She looked at me and she said, Neil, Jesus, forgive me for my sins. How can I not forgive you for yours? I forgive you. And I still think about it now and it's it's amazing. Like, and I know that like that's Amy forgiving me, but that's also Christ working the Holy Spirit working through her, say, I forgive you. And that was the moment the chains broke free for me. And I've been porn free now for three years, plus no, like and not even just no desire. I don't want anything to do with that old life. The old Neil is dead and gone and in its place is this new new person with a new heart with new desires with a love of Christ. My identity isn't God, I am a child of God, and it is it has changed our marriage in so many ways. And I know you're running out of time here. So I want to make I want to say this real quick because I want to make it clear because Amy got a lot of grief for this from some of her friends, like her forgiveness did not take away any of the accountability or responsibility that I had to do in my life to get my life right and to get our marriage right. That was on me. Right. Now her forgiveness made sure that there was going to be no bitterness along the way. But I had lots of work to do to rebuild trusts in our marriage. Two things I think about number one, April 14th is my birthday. Well, there you go. So good day. Yeah. And so that that next day when she said she forgives you is that that's when you prayed to receive Christ. Yes. She led you to Christ. She did. She didn't. It's interesting. So that was on a Tuesday on Saturday, Saturday evening, I'm laying in bed and like I am like doubled over like because I'm I'm under I'm literally under spiritual warfare. I didn't understand at the time, but I just like I couldn't move. I could barely talk. I felt like I was heavy stomach cramps and like what I looked over at Amy and she's she's looking at me like what's going on. I'm like, I don't know like I can't like I'm in pain here. And she just looked at me and she's like, you're having spiritual warfare. She's like the enemy knows that he's losing you. And this is his last attempt to try to get his hands on you. And as soon as she said that like it just evaporated, right, it was just it's amazing. But that was the week I gave my my life to Christ. So three years later, yeah, you and Amy are working together and sharing your testimony, sharing your story and and and taking the those incredibly awful, painful experiences and using it to help other people, men, other couples, it's just incredible what God will do. He'll bring you through a situation and then in a sense, put you right back in it. Only only now you're on the other side of it helping people who are where you used to be. So it's so it's so it's so amazing how God works. So the church that we go to the Rock of Casey in Kansas City, Missouri, that church, I believe in Kansas City is ground zero for the fight against sex trafficking. Our pastor for the past 12 years, we do a run to stop at event in October where we raise money with 100% of the funds goes to different organizations that are fighting against sex trafficking in our area. Like what are the odds of of all the churches in the world, God's going to set me down in a place where sex trafficking is such is talked about from the pulpit, what pornography and the evils of pornography are talked about by the pastors. Like it just you couldn't write this any there's only one person that could write this story. That's God. Right. Just to set me in that church where now I can actually do the work that that I was called to do, which is trying to help other men get out of it. So where do you see it going from here? So it's a gosh, I'm asking God that all the time, I'm sort of stuck in this and I'm trying to be patient. Like you said, like I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, like I'm just trying to let it come to me and I just keep walking in faith. I know God will leave me in the right direction. So like I said, I think a big thing coming up is celebrate recovery. I think that's going to be a huge, a huge piece of my story in this church. So I'm anxious to excited to start that and jump into that. I have my still have a podcast that I'm doing weekly, I hope you can check it out. I'm going to start writing again. I haven't done much writing since I wrote the book. So I'd like to start writing again and continuing to lift men up out of their and administer to men. But one other thing that I am sort of trying to take more of an active role and is speaking out against sex trafficking and the demand for pornography and the demand for sex trafficked women. Because I can speak from a pretty unique voice and I'm actually reached out to a local state representative in Missouri who introduced a bill that would make make buying sex a felony in the state of Missouri. And I told them, I'd like to provide testimony for this bill when the time, if and when the time comes. And so we're going to meet and talk about that. And I want to, we've got to do something about this demand and, but God is that that's the battlefield that God has put me on going forward. It's funny when you say you're trying to be patient shortly after I got saved within a couple of weeks, my dad called me and to see how I was doing. I said, I'm doing okay, you know, my life was a shambles at that time, because we were just starting to try to put our marriage back together. My wife and I, if we got allows us both to live until September 1st, it'll be 34 years. And I said, I'm just praying for patience. He said, Oh, son, don't do that. And then David Jeremiah said that somebody in his congregation asked him to pray for patience. He said, do you really want me to do that? He said, because the Bible says tribulation works patients. So if you pray for patience, what you're going to get are circumstances that teach you patience. So that's a good way to look at it. Be careful what you ask for my friend. Yeah. Well, I guess maybe the better way to better way to think about it is on God's timing, whatever it is, I want to be on his timeline, not my timeline. Right. Right. Yeah. As I shared with you earlier, when you get ahead of God, it becomes an unmitigated disaster. Tell everybody about the podcast, about the book, about the website, how can they find out more about this incredible story and what you're doing now? Yeah. If you go to neilgetslow.com, n-e-i-l-g-e-t-z-l-o-w.com, you can go there and learn more about my journey. You can learn more about my book unmasked over there. I'm also, like I said, I'm going to be doing some more writing. So I've started a sub-stack, not sure how that works yet, but I'll be posting some weekly blogs and updates, and then my podcast will be on there as well, unmasked. You can find that on Apple or Spotify or your favorite podcast player. And then you can also just, I'm on Twitter, @neilgetslow, Facebook, please don't hesitate to contact me if you know someone that's struggling. Reach out to me, and I'd love to be able to help guide the best I can. Hey, the internet has its evils. We know that, but I can't tell you how many of these interviews that we've done in six months have come from me doing just what I did to you, reaching out to you on Twitter and saying, "Hey, would you be a guest on the show?" So it's like any tool, if it's used for good, there's good that can come out of it. That's right. Absolutely. Thank you for your time. I thank you so much for the opportunity and again, just an amazing example of what God can do in somebody's life, the transformative power and saving grace offered by Jesus Christ. No get slow. Thank you again very much. Quick break, we will come back and get into wrap up mode for this week's edition of The Dance Guide Show right after this. Later at Grand Slam Ministries, our goal is to share the love of Jesus Christ through multiple platforms while at the same time executing our core missions of mentorship and helping children in need. The primary way we can effectively do all of those things is through The Dance Guide Show, our weekly Christian radio show that airs in multiple markets around the nation and the world. We are asking you to partner with us to not only sustain what we are currently doing, but to grow both our on-air, online presence and our ability to fund those core missions. Can you spare as little as $25 per month? How about $10 per month? If we can get 200 partners to join us at each of those small, sustainable levels, we can begin to accomplish everything we believe God has called us to do. So can you help us today with a donation of either $25 or $10 per month? Please go to www.grand slamministries.org for your donation to get more information or to ask questions that's grand slamministries.org. And thank you for supporting The Dance Guide Show and Grand Slam Ministries. Like what you hear, have a question or comment, maybe a guest suggestion. Drop us an email and let us know. And now, back to The Dance Guide Show, presented by Grand Slam Ministries. Back for a quick final segment of this week's edition of The Dance Guide Show, as we wrap up episode 79 and a second week of our summer replay series will probably go on for another four or five weeks or so. But replaying the interview we did from last year with Neil Getslow, just again. If you have any questions about God's ability to change lives and is Jesus Christ still on the throne, stories like this that should take away any doubts that you have. As we get set to wrap this up, I can't remember if we talked about this last week or not the last three weeks since my dad's passing have been kind of a blur. But we need prayers about a specific thing here at Grand Slam Ministries in The Dance Guide Show because we've got to make a decision in the next couple of weeks about whether or not to do this. But many of you know Lee Strobel and the incredible testimony he has, the author of the book The Case for Christ among so many others became a movie. We have an opportunity to get him in to our area to do a fundraiser specifically for Grand Slam Ministries in November. But we've got to make a decision as to whether financially we can pull it off. So ask for your prayers more than anything. If you'd like to inquire about how to help, then drop us a line, Dan@dancecottshow.org. But just prayers for God's leadership in this because we don't want to do anything that he's not leading us to do. So we'll just put that out there. We've got to make a decision, a final decision in the next couple of weeks. So join us in prayer about that. We'll look forward to seeing you again next week on another edition of The Dance Guide Show. Until then, I'm Dan. As always, God bless you and so long, everybody. Thank you for listening to this week's Dan Scott Show. To hear it again, catch up on past shows or find out more about Grand Slam Ministries, please visit our website, DanScottShow.org. And while there, perfectly consider making a gift to help us in our mission to share the love of Jesus Christ. That's thedancecottshow.org. [music] (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]