FIRST PERSON: Celebrating God’s Plan for Sexual Expression | Perspectives

When was the last time you heard the testimony of someone who left LGBTQ behind to follow Jesus and His plan for human sexual expression? Although almost everyone knows someone who has come out as LGBTQ these days, I would guess for most of you, you have never known someone to share their testimony of leaving LGBTQ behind for the Lord. But that’s exactly what I did!

While most of the world celebrates LGBTQ Pride this month, I am celebrating 31 years since I left behind my closeted gay life. It had left me in a hopeless captivity of sexual acts that were neither approved nor blessed by God, along with unhealthy emotional attachments to behaviors that contributed to emotional immaturity in my life.

I am already a born-again Christian and for nearly 30 years I struggled with the inner conflict between knowing God’s creation for sexual expression and the unwanted LGBTQ issues in my life that plagued me with shame for the things I never wanted to do, but I felt helpless to stop.

The first pastor I told about these undesirable behaviors in my life said, “Well, you know that’s a sin; stop it!” And that was all he knew about how to help me. I already knew that, but I was driven by something that I, as a young believer, couldn’t define. Other pastors in later years didn’t know the solution either.

In the years following my birth again, I continued to struggle. There was always an inner conflict because I knew that God’s biblical standard for sexual expression was that a man should be married to one woman for life, but at the same time I felt helpless to consistently live up to that standard.

Finally, in 1993, I began treatment for my sex addiction and was able to break free from the behaviors that had bound me for so long. Triggers and temptations can still arise, just as they do with an alcoholic or drug addict, but I am no longer compelled to seek sexual relations with men. I have not had sexual contact with anyone other than my wife in 31 years.

Ten years after beginning my recovery process, I felt a calling from the Lord who led me to the ministry of priesthood because there are other men who come after me and need to know God’s redeeming power. Not only these men, but also the Church needs to know that God redeems the homosexual from his sin, because unfortunately some believers do not know this truth and have believed the narrative of the world that they are born that way, which is a lie from hell.

God’s Word is true when the apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Corinth – a church full of followers of Christ who were also facing their own sexual problems – “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”

But the next verse contains God’s great promise to us! “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” ((1 Corinthians 6:9-11) This is where God tells me that change is possible. We no longer have to be bound or defined by our sin. We are new creatures in Christ, growing and moving from glory to glory.

During my 21 years as a pastor, I have led believers to celebrate righteousness and holiness before the Lord and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, encouraged them to choose daily life and peace rather than sin and death.

In 2008, I founded and direct Abba’s Delight, a ministry that helps believers overcome unwanted LGBTQ issues through lay counseling and support groups. We also provide group support for loved ones of LGBTQ people. We also provide lay sex addiction counseling for heterosexual men in need.

In 2020, during COVID, I founded the Transformation Ministries Alliance, a network of churches, Christian counselors and ministries all addressing LGBTQ issues from a biblical worldview.