Brittni De La Mora was 16 years old the first time she stepped on stage in a strip club.

Drunk and in Mexico, she found herself surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd. They were shouting “You’re beautiful!” and “We love you!” “I felt like I had finally found the love and the attention and the acceptance that I’d been looking for my whole life,” says Brittni in an interview with The Stream. By the time she got to college, she was dancing in clubs regularly. 

Looking for Acceptance

One night, when she was 18, some producers came into the club. They told her they made romance movies and to give them a call if she was ever interested. She knew that they were talking about pornography. That didn’t stop her. She thought, “Oh, I’m already promiscuous, I already take my clothes off for money. I might as well take it one step further.”

She was trying to hurt the people that she loved whom she felt hurt her. She called the producers. Looking back, De La Mora says that she was looking for acceptance — something she didn’t have growing up.

As a child, De La Mora felt rejected. “I just never felt good enough. I felt like nothing I did ever met these standards that my mom had for me.” She says since her household didn’t know God, there was a lack of love. Dancing, drugs and porn seemed to fulfill her need for what she lacked in childhood. 

‘I Met Jesus’

A few years and a heroin habit later, De La Mora wanted out. She found out that her grandfather was going to church and asked if she could join him. “I met Jesus at the altar that day and I was given a Bible,” she recalls. “I just started to devour every page that I could possibly read in one night.” She started with Genesis. 

“Obviously,” she says, “Satan was not happy with my decision, so he sent other men into my life. One of them happened to be a pimp.” Men were her weakness — she was easily persuaded by anything a man had to say. She became involved with a backslidden Christian.

While he took her to church and helped her get baptized, that soon changed. “When I finally started to encounter the joy of the Lord — and I was off drugs at this point — he told me that it was time to get me back into the industry.” She continued working in the industry another few years.

Then one day she got into a fight with him. She heard the Holy Spirit tell her to leave him. She asked the Holy Spirit, “Where am I going to go? Who am I going to call? I don’t have anybody at this point. I burned every bridge in my family.”

The Holy Spirit said her to call her mother. She said she couldn’t. “At the time we just kind of hated each other. So I said, ‘I’m not going to call her,’ and the Holy Spirit said, ‘Humble yourself and call your mom.’ And so I did.” Her mom showed up and helped her move.

Trusting God

De La Mora says as she was on her way to film a scene in Las Vegas, she began reading the book of Revelation. She got to chapter 2:20-23. “It basically — as I’m paraphrasing it — says ‘I have a thing against you. You tolerate that woman named Jezebel. She leads my people into sexual immorality. I’ve given her time to repent and if she doesn’t repent I’ll cast her and her children into a sickbed.’”

She explains: “As I read that Scripture it was like the Spirit of the Lord came upon me and I just started crying on the airplane. I was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and I started to repent. Then the Holy Spirit started to speak grace and said, ‘You know, Brittni, this isn’t the life that I have for you and I want you to know that the life that I have for you overflows with joy and peace and if you would take a step of faith and quit the industry today I’ll bless your life like no man ever could.’”

Step of Faith

She quit that day and began going to church. Within 2 months, she was off all drugs. “God just did a real work within me very quickly.” He told her to flush her drugs down the toilet and she did. “It was the first time in 7 years that I didn’t get real sick. So, God was just working, every time that I gave Him a step of faith and a step of obedience He really blessed it.”

She still had to wrestle with her demons, though. Although she committed herself to purity until marriage and a year of no dating, she still struggled with the need for affirmation. “If you want to overcome any issue in life, especially if it’s a need for affirmation, God is going to deny you of it, where you get it from no one so you recognize that the affirmation that He has for you is more than enough.”

It wasn’t easy. Finally, she surrendered it to the Lord. “I felt so incredible because I learned over that year that I don’t need affirmation from other people. The way that God sees me, the way that God speaks over me is more than enough.” God gave her an inner strength and an inner confidence because of the process He took her through that year.

God-Given Calling

De La Mora is now married, and she and her husband are evangelists. “I know that my God-given calling is to evangelize … not just in the church but in the world. God’s given me the opportunity to glorify Him in the world because I have such a huge heart for people who are stuck in the world because I was there. I don’t want anybody to ever have to live with the burdens that I had to live with.” She recently had the opportunity to appear on Watters’ World with Jesse Watters.

She’s also writing her autobiography. “I believe that is going to touch a lot of people — especially in the world because my testimony because of my past draws a lot of people. We know that millions upon millions of Americans — people all over the world — have a pornography addiction. My hope with that is that it’s going to bring light to people who are just living with the lights turned off currently.”

Only From Jesus

De La Mora warns other women to think about their future before getting into pornography. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for through money, fame or any of that,” she explains. She thought she would, but even with thousands of followers on social media, she didn’t.

“It didn’t matter how much they praised me, how much they affirmed me,” she says. “It still was never enough because your source of confidence and your need for affirmation can never come from the people around you. If you want to feel truly confident and truly fulfilled, it can only come from Jesus.”

De La Mora and her husband have co-authored a book called Fresh Fire to help couples rekindle the flame in their marriage.