Jerry Dirmann was raised in a Christian home. However, when he was in high school, he succumbed to peer pressure and eventually found himself held captive in a struggle with lust.
“I didn’t cover my ears and my heart very well, and that stuff got down inside me,” Jerry said.
By the time he graduated from high school, he was bound entirely with lust and could not shake it. “I repented and begged God to take it away,” said Dirmann. “I confessed 1 John 1:9, which says ‘If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.’”
He needed a real revelation to break this oppressive spirit. Jerry would go a few days without the struggle with lust, but it would come back. This frustrated and discouraged Jerry, but he kept seeking God.
Jerry was desperate. He knew that if this internal battle was not resolved, things would go badly in his life.
One day, as he was walking through his family room, he overheard his mom listening to a TV preacher. “I didn’t know who he was, and I’m not even sure she knew who he was, but I was hungry for help,” he said.
That preacher was Kenneth Copeland.
Jerry paused in the room and listened to what Copeland was teaching. “I don’t remember what he was talking about that day, but he advertised a series of messages that he had done. I had a part-time job, so I ordered it.”
A few weeks later it arrived, and the revelation it provided changed his life. Jerry popped in one of the cassette tapes and learned things he had never heard before. The teaching series was about God revealing His Word to you by the Holy Spirit.
By listening to those tapes repeatedly, the words got down into his heart and took root. He heard revelation that he was the righteousness of God in Christ as a born-again believer. That he had authority over the devil. That God loved him. That he had a right to receive the promises of God.
Those words of wisdom began to explode within Jerry’s heart. He learned how to meditate on the Word until it became big and real inside of him. As a result, he broke free from the bond of lust.
The Right Words In His Heart
This struggle with lust that chased him since high school is now his testimony because he let the right words get into his heart.
Romans 12:2 says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”
Jerry knows this firsthand.
After being set free from the struggle with lust, Jerry began feeling something different—confidence. No longer buried in shame, he sensed the Lord was calling him to full-time ministry.
“Suddenly, I had this extreme passion. Everybody must know about this,” he said. Because his life had been changed by listening to those teachings, he shared the series with his older brother, whose life was transformed as well.
Jerry and his wife, Kimberly, founded a church in Anaheim, Calif., where they serve as senior pastors.
“It is our utmost privilege to be able to preach the Word and to see lives changed,” shared Jerry. “I would never have been able to live this life we have and be in full-time ministry had it not been for what God did in my life by teaching me through Kenneth Copeland.”
From a high schooler bound by the struggle with lust to a pastor helping others find freedom, Jerry Dirmann found hope when he heard the truth preached and believed it could change his life.
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