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Hi there! Belah here. Today I have Part I of Annie Lobert from hookersforjesus.net talking about her story from being coerced and abused in the sex industry. She has been through horrifying experiences, where she was beaten into submission by her then boyfriend who ended up controlling her as a pimp for years and how she was raped at gunpoint multiple times. Since her amazing transformation, she has now been married to an awesome man for 6 years and has 3 step-children, she shares hope in the midst of so much brokenness.

• Part II of her interview: delightyourmarriage.com/23
• Part III of her interview: delightyourmarriage.com/24

Scripture/Quote:

• But earnestly desire and zealously cultivate the greatest and best gifts and graces (the higher gifts and the choicest graces). And yet I will show you a still more excellent way [one that is better by far and the highest of them all—love]. Cor 12:31
• We are assured and know that [[a]God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose. Romans 8:28
• And He said to them, Come after Me [as disciples—letting Me be your Guide], follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men! Matt 4:19

You’ll Discover:

• We could spend our entire marriages in the verses of 1 Corinthians 12.
• What calmed her down when she almost went back to the patterns that were in her past.
• Identifying your triggers and how can you respond in a way that supports your walk with Christ.
• How Annie had been rejected originally from her father and how that still needs to be recognized to have a healthy marriage.
• What are her major struggles in her marriage even years after following Jesus.
• How she works with ladies in the sex industry and shares Jesus’ love with them.
• How her ministry works and when it began.
• How she began sex work without realizing the red flags along the way.
• How she was beaten even though she loved the pimp who abused her.

Resources Mentioned: (clickable image)

• Fallen: Out of the Sex Industry & Into the Arms of the Savior 
• Stockholm syndrome – is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.

Check out the great bands Annie’s husband, Oz Fox, plays in:

• www.stryper.com
• www.bloodgoodband.com
• www.vinyltattoolv.com
• www.letitrawk.com

Tweetables:

• If we can’t accept our partners’ flaws, we can’t accept them at all.
• Agape love is so different than romantic love because no matter what it loves the other back.
• I finally made it outside of the sex work and ended up losing everything overnight and went back to escorting and drug habit.

Thanks for listening! I hope you are encouraged to live in wholehearted intimacy!

Love,

Belah

—

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Trascript

0:00
to light your marriage episode 22

0:04
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs, and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host belah rose.

0:21
Hey there, and welcome back. This is Bella. And if this is your first time joining delight your marriage, I just want to say welcome. And thank you so much for being here. This is the show where we really dive into the stories of wives and intimacy experts and sex experts about how to have a fulfilling, wonderful, delighted marriage. And intimacy obviously, is a huge factor in that. So today, if the title piqued your interest, I’m really glad it did, because it is just an incredible story. Annie lo Burt, from an organization called hookers for Jesus, the organization that she started after having such an really horrifying life experience to tell of and then She’s so brave to tell her story boldly, in hopes and in order to help other women escape the same life that she was in for years and years, abused and beaten and treated like an animal. I mean, I just, it’s so heart wrenching. But she goes into that the thing I want to really share and ask you to pay attention to is how she talks about her relationship with her husband, she is married, and he knows everything he knows all about her past because obviously she’s you know, now in an founded an organization that helps women out of the exact same situations. So it’s just an awesome example of how Christ looks at us that we have an believable pass. And yet he accepts us because He paid the price for us. And so when we, you know, look at our spouses and want to judge and criticize and ridicule, I mean, look to the example of Jesus where he loves and accepts. Man, this is just the beginning of a phenomenal interview. I’m telling you what, so stay tuned and I’ll talk to you on the other side

2:39
Alright, welcome back to let your marriage listener I am. So I’m really thrilled to have Annie from hookers for Jesus. And she is just an incredible fireball, I already can tell you’re going to have a lot of fun. She’s got such an incredible story and lots to share. So Annie, welcome. Thank you for being here.

2:57
I’m so honored to be here and so excited as well. And you sound like a fireball yourself, by the way. Oh, well.

3:02
That’s awesome. So I’d love for you to just jump in and introduce yourself a little bit about your family and what your day to day life looks like.

3:11
Okay, so some people might not know me, so we’ll pretend that we’re just meeting for the first time. Hi, Annie, and I am a lover of people. I was born in Minnesota. And I am living in Las Vegas currently, because I got coerced into the sex industry as a sex trafficking victim later in my life. And long story short, this is the city, Las Vegas where I met God and basically gave my life surrendered and started hookers for Jesus started Destiny house, a one year program for women that are coming out of sex trafficking. And this is also the city that I got married in and that I actually met my husband for the very first time. I’ve been married six years, and we have a blended family has three children that I love so much. And I personally have never had my own children. loves my family. And my family is all up in Minnesota and Wisconsin. So we’re all here in Vegas together and we love it. We love the desert. I tried to think the desert as a place of refinement. It compared it to, I would say the Old Testament. It’s like our promised land. In a way. It’s a beautiful city. And people here are beautiful. I travel a lot with my husband and without my husband to spread the message of what we do. And I do a lot of speaking engagements on different topics. And I love it. And I think Vegas is a great location to live because of the fact that we’re very centralized in the country on the West Coast. And it’s pretty easy to find anywhere in the world and the country from here.

4:53
That’s awesome. Thank you for that and I just can’t wait to dive in. Okay, well, let me just ask you a little bit about your personality. Your husband’s personality. What does that look like?

5:02
Okay, so pretty wild, pretty outspoken, pretty bold, pretty pushy and zealous and very opinionated. Okay. I will like what I think we love it and he is just reserved. He is in my sense of the word. I don’t know if anyone would else think this, but my husband, his name is oz Fox. And his real name’s Richard murkiness. He is actually the band striper. But that is the stage name. And everyone calls him oz. And he’s been in the band, 30 years. He’s a founding member. And I was going to tell you that he is conservative, would disagree because of the fact that he’s a rock and roller, and he plays in several different bands. He also plays in Bloodgood, which is another Christian band, fantastic band, just like Stripe, and he plays another band called vinyl tattoo. They play cover tunes, old 70s 80s Rock, and then also, he also plays in another band.

6:04
I want to I want to get all those links, because I want people to be able to check out his stuff. So yeah, okay.

6:09
But it’s really cool, because I think he’s conservative with his thinking when it comes to faith and the way we should live. And so that’s why I say my husband’s conservative, he is sometimes outspoken, but our personalities are so different. It’s not even funny. But then again, we think the same as well. He’s, he’s more quiet than I am. he contemplates a lot. He watches me a lot when I talk. And then he like, says his opinion, or he says his comment to me. He’s loving. He’s encouraging. He’s very embracing of my past my current work that I do. He’s my best friend. Like I, I know, you’re going to ask me the ultimate question too, by the way, already know. Okay. Right about? It was that was the question. I don’t know. But you know, it’s funny how we met. You know, I wrote a book called Fallon. And that’s is actually one of the chapters of how we met. It’s a beautiful, you know, completion of a Disney fairy tale love story. Basically, I’ve always wanted belah to be with a musician from since I was a little girl, I think and as a teenager, and so when I met him, I first thought he was some creepo trying to reach out to me on MySpace. And then I thought, oh, yeah, just another rocker trying to get some tail, right. And I was so far from that truth, because he ended up becoming probably the best thing that’s happened to me besides Jesus in my life. That’s incredible. And it’s been it’s been an incredible ride. And we’re learning each other. I’ve been married six years. And, again, this is a very young marriage. To me. It is. Yeah, honestly. And I think that there’s a lot of good times to come. And there’s going to be a lot of challenging times to come. Yeah. Because when you marry someone, you marry everything. That’s right, that’s marry their bad habits and their family and you know, their ideas, their preconceived notions about life, their fate, if you marry the bad things, as well as the good and that’s I think that’s why we take those vows of theater and say, for better or for worse.

8:30
Well, and that kind of brings me to my question about a scripture or quote that you could share with listeners what’s been central to your marriage so far?

8:39
You know, one of my favorite ones is it’s got to do with love. And it starts in First Corinthians 12. I love the Amplified Bible, by the way, so if y’all got to amplify getting down there, it says, But earnestly desire and zealously cultivate the greatest and best gifts and graces, the higher gifts and the choices graces, and yet I will show you a still more excellent way, one that is better by far, and the highest of them all, love. And then of course, go into my favorite chapter in Corinthians, First Corinthians, which is the 13th chapter about love, and I really enjoy a word starts in you know, First Corinthians 13. Four, it says Love and doors long and is patient and kind. We could honestly live our entire marriage, our marriages off that Scripture because of the fact that it never ends it indoors long and yeah, and the fact that it needs to be patient, and it needs to find Yes, and if we accept our partners flaws, then we can accept. Honestly, no, I love It’s so different than romantic love and your glove, obviously, it is the best love because no matter what it loves each other back, no matter what’s going on in each other’s lives. And I really contemplated that this morning and I was discussing this with my husband. I’m like, Honey, you know, how do you look at our relationship? And he just was so encouraging, and I thought he was gonna bring up some of the arguments we’ve had. Maybe you know what? You respect me? You like you never disrespect me. And I’m thinking to myself, Mo Yeah. disagreements that I felt that I was pretty pushy on and don’t agree with me, then you need to apologize. I mean, come on. Yeah. It’s pretty arrogant. Right?

10:47
I know, I hear it. I

10:50
want to talk about this with you. Because my husband’s completely supportive. I said, Baby, I’m doing a podcast this morning about love and marriage. He was like, really? I said, Give me your two cents on it. And he just, he just encouraged me before I got here to do this. And I’m so happy. And again, fast forward maybe five or 10 years, maybe at night might not that maybe it might not be a good day like this. I mean, like I said, all marriages aren’t perfect.

11:18
Right. Right. Right, right. Oh, no, but and I’m so grateful that you said that in terms of, you know, this, this is not necessarily where you focus your effort on a day to day but you live marriage. I mean, that’s, that’s part of life. And so this podcast is really about getting the insight how we as wives can have a more fulfilling, more intimate, more loving marriage to the glory of God, because a good server had way more and better.

11:44
There there is, you know, one thing that I like to bring up if I can just kind of like you back off. Yeah, having love in our marriage, and how our marriage is patient and kind between each other. Yeah, is the fact that we’re surrendered to Jesus. And I truly believe if a man and a woman get married, and they don’t have the love between them, which is the God a love of Christ, they don’t have Jesus as a center of their life in the center of the center of their will surrender to God, between each other, that marriage is going to fail. It is going to fail eventually, if it’s going great right now great, you got a honeymoon, period. Keep skating, keep skating. Okay, keep swimming. But lesson, you’re going to handle some major sharks coming up ahead. Because something will happen in your life, that will deter you from loving each other, like you did when you first met each other. And you have to be able to hang on to that storm and to the chip during the storm, and be able to ride those waves with the sharks and just get through it somehow. And to realize that you have each other and that God is your center?

13:00
Yes, yes. Well, I love that you mentioned specifically about the storms, because that’s what I really want to dive into. And I think you’ve got just an incredible story that I know our listeners are interested in hearing how your past plays into your marriage as well. But can you tell us about a season or struggle in your marriage and it could have been even before it started?

13:18
I remember the first fight we ever had married. I mean, it was pretty major. And I was actually at home in our first apartment we had together. And he was driving back from a trip from LA because he had to do a teaching different classes for guitar lessons. On the weekend. He was driving back from LA and he called me it was probably about 12 midnight. And I was kind of tired. I was actually watching, believe it or not Katherine Coleman. They were doing a rerun of her on some cable television. I love her. And I was listening to her talk about the Holy Spirit. And it’s so ironic because she was talking about the Holy Spirit and His love for us, and how he surrounds us when we have love in our heart for the people. And my husband calls me like baby, I’m almost home. And I then I was given him an update on what had happened that day. And I had an opinionated person that wanted to give money to our nonprofits that wanted to tell me where to put it. And this person didn’t see that there was a need that was stronger in another area for some girls that we were dealing with. And I was telling my husband about it that this person because they had given some money, they were trying to actually boss us around how to run the company. Oh no. When that happens with the nonprofit, it’s pretty it’s pretty hardcore, because you have a board of directors for a reason. A donor, be able to give a large sum of money and tell you exactly how you’re going to run your company and that was what was happening. designated funds or designated funds. We keep them in that place. Absolutely. But when the person gets in the driver’s seat and tries to run the company, that’s a whole nother ballgame. So I told my husband, this person’s doing this and Being very opinionated. And he knows this person as well. And so all that to say, he said to me, Well, you need to listen to the wisdom of that person. And I don’t yet because I felt like he took that person side. Yeah, right, right. And that became an argument. And I felt it like it was an attack or rejection towards me. Even more, it really wasn’t until he got home and hit the door and came up the stairs. He walked into the living room, and I was in the bedroom and I could see him walk in, because my door was open. Yeah. And I just looked at him. And I said, I can’t believe you came against me. You’re my husband. And for about an hour and a half, we didn’t talk. And it was like that sun go down and the anger thing. And I was thinking, I know that scripture. I know what God wants me to do. We just got married a couple months ago. And literally, we made up that night, but I’m going to be honest with you for an hour and a half. I wanted to cuss my husband out. I wanted to storm out the house. Might somewhere in screen. Okay. Yeah. But what brought me back to where I could call myself down. Was that through to the spirit called self control? Yeah. And I thought about my past, and I thought about my rages I used to have, when I add in my past Bella, I would run I would drive my car really fast. I would go get pie. I would go to the club, I would, you know, do crazy things. Okay. Yeah. And I thought about that. When I was in that moment of what did I do in my past that destroyed me. And so that type of trigger that you know, that could have happened, didn’t happen, because you know, when you’re surrendered to Jesus, yeah. Jesus gives you the wisdom. God gives you this, this beautiful wisdom, the Holy Spirit, and calms you down and gives you peace. So what I did was praying, yeah, I left the room, I sat on the couch, I sat actually, we didn’t have a couch. Then I sat on the floor. My pillows, and grade and I, I got my Bible out. I was like, Lord, you gotta help me. I don’t know how to deal with this. I’m really angry right now. Yeah. And my husband apologized to me, and then I apologize to him. Yeah. And I told him the reason why I felt attacked. And I think it was an old wound,

17:36
being not appreciated by my father growing up, not being encouraged. And when my father rejected me, my whole world crumbled, it crumbled. And see, and we can often compare things that happen to us in the moment, when if we don’t, you know, think quick enough about self control and the peace of God falling on us and the love of God via not us, we can actually fall back into those old triggers, and then react the old way. But see, when you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, and when you’ve been practicing self control, and you’ve been asking God, God, help me with my self control, please give me self control, you know, and you’re practicing the fruits of the nine fruits of the spirits, you know, God will test you on them, trust me. And he did in that moment. And so that that really was, I think, a defining moment in our marriage, a turning point of, I told my husband, I never want to get mad at you like this ever again. Because Bella had cried before he got back home. I tried for a long time. And by the way, I hung up on him twice, before. Yep,

18:38
well, I just want to pull out a couple of really great nuggets that you’ve shared so far. And, you know, one was really talking about old triggers. And I think anyone listening can recognize that they have their own triggers. And for you that rage was triggered. And you could have responded in the exact same way you always have. But you would have gotten the exact same results as you’ve always gotten. And the thing that Jesus asks us to do, as are as following Him is turning the other cheek and saying, Okay, you hit me one side here, hit me on the other side. And that’s what we have to do daily in marriage. So I love that you pulled that out. But I want to dive into something that I think our listeners and myself is really interested in, in terms of the trigger of imagining memories of the past. And since you know, my thing before getting married, was I was promiscuous and, and these kinds of things, and that’s my sin that I still carry. And I think there’s so many in in marriages where they are feeling that guilt and shame and the memories and and I just would love your insight, like how do you get past kind of those things that might still be on your mind? You know, as far

19:39
as the the shame and the guilt for what I have done that has God has really done an awesome work. Even if I look back at that argument, you know, five and a half, almost six years ago now. Yeah, that’s something that the Lord has really taken away from me. I think, my major struggle for my patience All relationships with my husband is the fact that when I do say the wrong thing, and I try to retract it, and or I do do an action that’s wrong, and I feel so guilty about right after I do it. It’s a terrible feeling. Because I think the hypocrisy of falling back into a moment just for a short period of time a reaction that’s a that’s You don’t even mean to be a gut reaction. It just happens because to trigger like, you say the wrong thing. Like, you know, there’s one time I told him I yeah, he didn’t hear me do it. But I’ll tell you guys what I did want to hear what it was. I flat out said eff you. Oh, yeah, I sure did one time to my husband. He never heard to this day. Now when he hears this podcast, he is going to know that

20:48
I Wait, he didn’t hear it. What do you mean?

20:52
Where I swear Bella, I thought he could. But I was at the other end of the house. And I was so mad. And I don’t even know what it was about. But he wasn’t hearing me. And what I was feeling was women were all full of feelings, right? We’re all our brains are completely different than a man’s. We’ve got a lot of receptors and connectors because we’re waiting we bear children. So, you know, I think of every worst case scenario of every situation that we have or good situation. Good case. And we were disagreeing on a subject. And he said, Yeah, whatever, Annie or something like that, oh, that’s when he tries to shut me down and tries to end the conversation with his last word. When he left the room and when I didn’t realize it, but the opposite end of the house, but I like lost it. And I don’t know if anyone else can relate out here. I’m a woman of God. Okay. And yeah, that F bomb came out. I had not sworn probably in years, and it came out. I was so mad. I was like, You know what said but girls and gentlemen out there listening, ladies and gentlemen. I know you get me. You don’t know that you haven’t thought these things? Okay. Yeah. Replacing words with like fudge flip flippin. Same thing as you get me. So, to this day, he has never mentioned it. He has never said it. But that is a point where I felt so guilty. Bella, I felt like for sure. He was going to call my pastor or one of our mentors and say, you know, I think Annie needs counseling? Well, I mean, I

22:33
appreciate that you’re pulling that out. Because I think that a lot of times we think that, okay, we’re following Jesus, everything’s gonna be fine. And our marriage is we’re not going to have trouble. But the thing is, that’s a constant daily thing. You’ve got to exercise those fruits of the spirit every single day with your husband. And that’s what I love about marriage is that it makes us it’s iron sharpens iron, we get sharper, it hurts in the moment, we get sharper doing that. So I love that you brought that out. And I just like to ask even Well, I think we skipped through the the day to day part. I wanted to hear more about your nonprofit, can you just do maybe a, you know, 62nd piece on what what your nonprofit does and how it works? And that kind of thing? Sure. So

23:09
in 2005, after a couple years of healing, because I got saved and set free, you know, surrender to the Lord on August 2 2003. Yes. And, you know, in 2005, I really felt this call on my heart prior to that, actually, too, but I had to get prepared for to go on the strip and just tell ladies that were working as sex trafficking victims and regular girls that were working without a pimp, that God loved them. He loved them right where they’re at. And he’s not trying to change them. And he wants to invite them into a relationship with him and invite the girls to church and give them gift bags. And just, you know, let them know, they’re beautiful. And that’s what started hookers for Jesus. And then that that branched into having our first Destiny house in 2008. And I’ve had the nonprofit for almost 10 years now, actually, the ministry itself, but the nonprofit got legalized in 2007. So that’s what we do. And we have a home for women. And we have a brand new property that we moved into in 2013. That’s probably quadruple the size. And there’s four, four buildings on the property. So we have women here right now that are recovering from sex work and recovering from being sex trafficked victims. And, of course, this is my past. And, of course, Romans 828, you know, God will use everything for his good. When you surrender, you love him. And so that’s what we’re doing here. And the women are being set free from their past. And one thing that I had to really, really get set free from was PTSD and most of the women on this program, have it so that’s what we do that and fishnet, and by the way, it does not mean prostitutes for Jesus. Now if you want to take that go for it. That word is dirty to you because you’ve allowed it to be dirty to you. What it means for us is Matthew 419. We will teach you how to fish for people. That’s what that’s the first four disciples. And that’s our mantra. That is our scripture for our ministry. And we look for people that are desperate to be rescued and desperate for life change. And that’s what we do.

25:16
That’s so great. Well, I mean, I just want to dive in. So can you tell us how how did this change in 2003? What happened?

25:24
Well, what happened to me was I was in the sex industry, I’d gotten to Las Vegas, because I invited my boyfriend, which I had no idea he was a pimp. He was a drug dealer, and I did not like that he was a drug dealer. And prior to that, a year, year or so prior to that, I had went to Hawaii with my girlfriend to a nightclub, and we actually turned our first trick. I turned my first trick in Hawaii. But I met these two men at a nightclub in Minneapolis first and they were pimps and we didn’t know it and I got turned out into a sex worker basically a prostitute a escort girl escorting, which a lot of people think well, that’s not prostitution. Yes, it is. Okay, Quitline, it ends up becoming prostitution eventually. So pretty much I got to Las Vegas and the first night that I got here with my boyfriend, quote, unquote pimp. He’d been living daylights out. I was basically thrown into sex trafficking. I was his sex slave, his bottom girl, his main girl and we he had girls come and live with us and, and underage ladies. It was tragic. It was tragic. I had to give him every single dollar here was the the cruelest dichotomy of everything was the fact that I loved him so much. And that I thought I could rescue and change him with my love. Oh my god, we can’t change people’s hearts only God can. And so I was with him for five years and then I got with another pimp that was just as abusive. He was less of a gorilla pimp he was more like a Romeo pimp but he ended up living off everything I made, you know, losses normal job, and that was another five years of complete utter tragedy and got addicted to painkillers later on without not on drugs at all during my work, the first 10 years but came down with cancer and then lost all my hair had Hodgkin’s lymphoma finally got away from the second guy and actually had a trick rescue me out of the industry. But we had a corporate business together. It was running smoothly for the first like, two three years, I got off the drugs got off the cocaine, and our business failed. And you know, it’s funny because corporate business to me I put that as an idol in my life, just like my escorting was because my escort I made I made a lot of money, and gave a lot of money to the pimps. And I wouldn’t say Gabe was forced to give the money to the pimps. And I had finally made it outside of escorting and high class escort prostitution. And I ended up losing everything almost overnight, again, with a horrible business. And I went to what I knew was familiar. What do you think that was? Yeah, right back to the Las Vegas Strip as an escort went right back to my drug habit. And about a year later, I overdosed on cocaine. And I want a Gosper that. Sorry,

28:21
wow, okay, well, before you get, you know, tell us that part. I just want to know, a couple of things. One is you mentioned that you were in love with this and it was controlling you, and sex like making you a sex slave and taking all your money. I mean, is that a common thing? Is that common to for women that are in the sex industry to be in love with their pimp?

28:41
Yes, in America style pimping in, I believe it’s going on in other countries as well. There’s all different kinds of sex trafficking itself and pimping in and in other countries in here. That’s happened. Some girls, some little boys, they get kidnapped and forced. And it’s called the Stockholm Syndrome. When your you fall in love with your captor, and you fall in love with the person that’s abusing you, because you want to please them. And I wouldn’t say it happens to every single sex trafficking kidnapping victim. But when it comes to the Romeo and guerrilla pimps here in the United States, the pimps approach the women as a Romeo type, a friend, a prince, a knight in shining armor type. And it’s her good graces, he gets her trust. And he starts to groom her into a romantic, beautiful relationship of, you know, flowers based school these ladies into believing that they love them and that they’re there for them and that they’re their boyfriend. And then they invite them into this lifestyle. They say, Oh, look, you can make a lot of money doing this. And then there’s another form of pimping that goes on sex trafficking where a girl is looking for a new job and she meets some people that have connections for modeling or for acting or for famous or doing music or whatever it might be, and then they get it introduce to the world of the sex industry which eventually becomes the sex trafficking world for them. And so within within pornography stripping, model nude modeling, and and escorting Of course, working in brothels, massage parlors, you name it, it’s everywhere. So the one that I got coerced into is he was my boyfriend. And I was already what was great for him is that I was already in the industry, I was already acclimated into the lifestyle and reaping the benefits, the great benefits, which was the money side of it. And I was already feeling very much in control of whatever I was making didn’t have a pimp. I was basically what they call a renegade, very, very opinionated, very independent, I did have some men get a little violent with me, I had a man pull a knife on me and a gun on two separate calls prior to boyfriend come around and become my pimp eventually. But I didn’t have a very good taste in my mouth from that. But I figured you know what, it comes with the job, no matter what, see, and that’s why you cannot regulate sex work. There’s no one in the room, no security guard or police officer that is willing to stand in that room with you while you’re having sex for money. That’s ridiculous. Who would do that? Anyway? Think about it. So that’s why when people say legalized prostitution, no, that really doesn’t help things for our society. That’s going to give men permission to abuse and throw away women and use them for that hot moment that they need to get relief from. Wow. So So yeah, it’s, it’s pretty. It’s pretty crazy nowadays. Because we have the internet, the internet has changed the sex industry so much, because of all these sites that you can post dating on. That’s a site where you go find someone to have a relationship with and then they pay you for that relationship.

31:58
Oh, my gosh, what is prostitution? Is it not? Well, yes,

32:02
but the people that are doing it will argue with you. No, you know, we just have a relationship. And he only comes to see me once a month. And you know, if we have sex, we have sex, but he pays all my bills.

32:14
Oh my goodness.

32:17
Have you ever heard of Mr. Singh saying,

32:20
Oh, my gosh, well, okay, so give me a little bit more insight about who these these guys are. I mean, so often, when you’re kind of on the outside looking in, we assume that these are monsters. You know, these men are just crazy people. I mean, are these married men? Are these? I mean, business suit, guys? I mean, who are who are these people?

32:41
Are you talking about the sex trafficker pimps? Are you talking to clients? Yeah, okay. So the men that call are every walk of life you see every single day, from a blue collar worker, to a white collar worker to a government official to a political party, to to an NBA star to a famous singer to a lawyer to a rabbi to a pastor to a priest. I mean, I’ve had them all. I’ve met them. I think that, you know, one of the things that I that made me I think stay in the sex industry so long and in a victim was I had this hope in my heart, to one day meet someone that was very wealthy or very famous that could get me out of the industry. And I fantasized about that just like the pretty women scenario. Yeah. I remember watching that movie when it first came out with my pimpin theater, telling you, I cried, he goes, Why are you crying girl? She’s out of the industry now. Yeah. And I I’ve fantasized about that about the nice guy that was loved me enough to, to not hold my past against me and to accept accept me exactly. And had enough money to take care of me and also to give me my dreams, which I love that about my husband, because he might not be wealthy, but he lets me do whatever God’s asking me to do. And he encourages me and pushes me to

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praise God. Wow, is that not a picture of God’s love? You know, oz knows, and he’s passed. And in fact, he has to live in it so much because of the work that she does to help other women out of the same life that she was in. And yet, here he is boldly, courageously saying, you know, what? Neither do I hold it against you, my dear. If Jesus forgave me, what am I doing holding it against you? I mean, that’s the kind of love that marriage requires. All of our sin deserves death, every single part deserves death. because we can’t stand before a holy God with, you know, all this mud all over us that really, it’s not just mud. I mean, we don’t know the actual effects that sin has. But anyway, there’s that’s a longer theological discussion. The point is, our role in that is to forgive. Our role in that is to say, you know, honey, I know you and I accept you, and I love you. And I’m going to be to you what Jesus says to me, and that’s the picture of marriage that I think God paints throughout the Bible, that we have the opportunity of fulfilling for our spouse. And I have the same experience as Annie, God’s love has been able to permeate my heart in ways that I would not have imagined through my husband. And that is actually what brought me back to the Lord. And I talked more about this in Episode 20. Just amazing, amazing insights. Thank you, Annie, for being so generous with everything on your heart. And I just want to mention that this is literally the very beginning of the interview. It’s a three part interview this time, because I wanted to just make sure you got all of it, I didn’t want to trim it down. And, you know, let you miss part of the story that Annie shares. But here’s the deal, I wanted to ask you, if you would be willing to spend a couple extra moments and for this to a friend or your youth pastor or your ministry leaders, because I think that Annie has something really important to share. You know, the Bible tells us to be wise as serpents, but gentle as doves. You know, he says, Do not be ignorant of the devil schemes. And you can hear I mean, gosh, this is opening my eyes like nothing else. I had no clue how much the sex industry is affecting people. And you’re and like I said, I mean, you know, my paths, I guess should be aware of, but I just am not. And I think so many of us are not. And it’s wreaking havoc on our marriages and our kids and so much, so we need to be aware of this stuff. The point is, there are so many good things that are coming in these next portions of the interviews and so I just ask if you would, if this blessed you would you forward it along and get them hooked on this interview so that by the time the final part of the interview comes out, everyone who needs to hear this message will be able to hear it. The schedule is today’s Tuesday. First half is released. The second half is released on Thursday. And then the final portion is released on Friday is a bonus episode where I also include a really important message and challenge because I think it’s going to be just life changing for so many people. That’s my prayer and hope. Alright, well thank you so much for joining me. God bless you. May God just give you the grace today to look at your husband sin or your wife sin and say you know what? Jesus forgave mine too. And to go forward and accept and love them the same way that God loves you. Okay, goodbye. We’ll talk soon.

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Thanks for listening. If you’ve been blessed by this, why not share it? Until next time, live with love, wisdom and passion.