How Terry Crews Discovered the Power of Forgiveness
By Movieguide® Contributor
When Terry Crews’ life began to fall apart in his mid-40s due to pent-up hatred and lies, he discovered what it meant to truly be born again and learned to forgive.
After 20 years of marriage, Crews’ wife, Rebecca King-Crews, left him in 2010 because he had become too difficult to live with, having let hatred take over his life.
“There are times when you think you hit rock bottom and what you’ve done is you actually hit a cliff,” Crews told Relevant Magazine.
The former NFL player revealed he struggled with a pornography addiction at the time.
“Once the internet came out, even before that I remember going to bookstores. It was like my dirty secret. It was the thing that I couldn’t beat,” he admitted.
“It was eating at me, and I knew that I wasn’t right,” the actor said. “But because of the image, you have to keep it. And here I am successful, a churchgoer. But I knew I wasn’t telling the truth, and one day—we call it D-Day around our house—my wife just confronted me.”
After he admitted his addiction, his wife told him that she was leaving. In that life-shattering moment, Crews had the choice to continue letting sin rule his life or to give himself over to God.
“I realized I needed to press the reset button, for real, on my whole life, and this, this is where being born again meant something,” he recalled on TBN. “It wasn’t a phrase. It wasn’t something people said. You had to be a new person.”
“That hit me so hard,” Crews continued. “[Being born again] was something that I would say but never acted on. I would be the new guy in [church] and then the old guy outside. But it’s like Jesus said, ‘You can’t put new wine in old wineskins.’ You have to be new. And this realization…took me to my knees…I had to raze my entire life.”
To get over the hatred Crews felt in his heart, he pursued forgiveness and worked to replace the anger in his heart with love.
“I can be responsible, as a king now, knowing that God is my Father. Knowing that I am a child of God who can press the rest button in his life,” he explained.
This change in heart ended up winning Crews’ wife back, and she was able to show him forgiveness, too.
“I have discovered strength in vulnerability, for who was stronger and yet more vulnerable than Jesus, who loved the poor and weak and defied the Pharisees,” he wrote in a Guidepost article. “Who sacrificed his earthly life so we could live with him in heaven. What requires more vulnerability than to forgive and be forgiven?”
Faith and forgiveness continue to play a central role in his marriage.
“Through years and years, me and my wife, we went through tears, we went through pain, we went through counseling, we went through prayer, we went through everything and we were able to rebuild our marriage stronger than ever,” Crews said. “Now, I thank God every day, every day that our marriage was rebuilt.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
Actor and activist Terry Crews recently revealed how his marriage to Rebecca King-Crews nearly ended because of his pornography addiction.
The couple opened up about how Crews’ addiction affected their marriage on the “PEOPLE Every Day” show with host Janine Rubenstein.
“The best piece of advice I ever got was a good friend of mine, he was the first guy I called when Rebecca was like, ‘don’t come home.’ He said ‘Terry, you need to get better for you,’” Crews said. “You have to understand that was a watershed moment. In my culture, as a man in sports, you do things to get things. You do good things to get cookies, you know? You work hard to get money … but to actually improve just for yourself, that was a foreign thought.”
Crews, 52, noted that his successful career and time in the limelight did not help his willingness to address the issue.
