My name is David, I am 44 years old, and this is the testimony of how Jesus Christ saved me from twenty-seven years of homosexuality. I speak these things in love, not out of hatred. I speak these things out of somebody who has been there, who knows what it is like, who knows what it’s like to live in that (homosexuality), who knows how hopeless it is. Sure you may enjoy your life, you may enjoy aspects of your life, you may enjoy the sexual aspects of it, the alcohol, what have you, but there’s really no permanent joy in it. Eventually it goes away and you have to do more, seek more.
So, I ask you to look for the real love, the real joy, the real contentment that can only be found in being made right with God through Christ, through Christ’s work on the Cross. So, I speak these things from love, not from hate. I speak these things not in judgment. I am not judging somebody, I am just telling you what the Word of God says. The Word of God is what’s going to judge us. In fact, the Word of God is what says all these things are wrong, I am only telling people what the Word of God says. Like somebody should have told me.
My friend who did try to tell me, he tried to tell me in the nicest way, in a Christian way, that I was living a lifestyle that was contrary to what God wanted, not just in my sexual orientation but in every other aspect. He (my friend) knew I was not really a Christian. So I speak these things in love and I pray for your soul, and I pray that you will receive these things, and that you will cry out to the Lord to save you, and to make you a new creature because He is mighty to save and He will save you.
As I turned into my teens, we stopped going (to church) quite as much, my parents started having problems, and eventually my parents divorced. And sometime later my mom remarried and after she was remarried we started going back to church again and I remember being kinda glad that I was going back to church, but it was all superficial. I would listen to the hymns and get emotional and about that time my friends started going down front and making professions of faith.
So one Sunday, I was moved by feelings and by the music and what my friends had done and I went down front and made a decision for Christ. I didn’t really know what I was doing or understand what was really taking place. I just knew something was wrong. All my friends had done it so I felt compelled to do it. I walked down front and I sat down in the front pew and the deacon came over and told me I needed to accept Jesus into my heart and he told me to repeat this prayer. And I repeated the prayer and I remember thinking, “You know, is that all there is to it?” And the next thing I know, he is clapping me on the back and standing me up in front of the congregation and telling me that I am saved. Everybody congratulated me on the way out and we all left and went to lunch, but I left there just as lost as when I had came in.
About two weeks later I was just as lost as when I was baptized, because I never really understood what I was doing, I never understood the doctrines of grace and mercy. I lived a fake Christian life for a while, I had the Christian mask that I would wear and I would pretend to be religious. I was probably about 16 at this age and even then sinful desires inside of me were growing. I could remember actually being at church and having sinful thoughts about other people there and other young guys my age and I remember just telling myself, “Oh, they’ll go away, it will pass away.” But yet it grew worse and worse as I went along.
And sure enough it was in that same year when in my late 16, being 16, I actually slept with the first male I ever had the opportunity to sleep with. I remember at first being very ashamed of it and repulsed by what I had done, but yet this sinful nature in me was also satisfied in the pleasure of the sin itself. As time went on I became more comfortable with it and I just remember thinking that it was natural, that it was normal, and that I was just doing something… I felt that guilt because I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing at that age, but it was really because I was doing something against God, that’s where the guilt came in.
Before long I got a job and I started rebelling really against my parents pretty much in every way I could. I turned to drugs and alcohol and was exposed to it at work. I wanted to try to do as much as I could as a teenager and live as much as I could and rebel against my parents without really having to rebel and move out of their house. Eventually, my parents did kick me out of the house, we had a big blowout and I ended up leaving. And I tried to clean myself up a little bit after that, because it was hard trying to live on my own, so I tried to clean myself up and I thought, well, I’ll join the Navy, which had always been my dream, to be in the Navy. I wanted to be a sailor. I shipped out to boot camp and as soon as I got away from my parents, that was just like adding fuel to the fire, my sin really took off. I had an income, I had no parental people to answer to, I only had to answer to “Uncle Sam” and I was exposed in California to all kinds of sins.
It didn’t take long before I actually got in trouble with my sins. My sins, all of them, the drinking, the drugs, the sex, got me into a state where I actually had to go into the hospital. In the hospital they ran several tests on me and one of them was a drug test. And they discovered pretty much all of my history of drug abuse up to that time and also at that time my sexual sins came out and that was forbidden in the Navy, to be a homosexual. Within a few month’s time, my whole dream of being in the Navy as a career was gone.
So I had nothing left to do but to follow my gay friends at that time. They were Canadians and they were living in the states but they were going back to Canada. So I followed them and I left my parents, I didn’t tell them where I was going, I just left and went. For about two years I lived up there in Canada and I didn’t tell my parents at all where I was at. I didn’t even contact them, for all they knew I was dead somewhere. And I remember times where I would get very depressed and think, “You know, is there nothing more to life than drinking, doing drugs, and this sin?” I was at a party and everyone was inside and they were drinking and doing all sorts of things. I was out on the patio of the balcony, I was just so tired of fighting in life and so tired of all of it and I was so disgusted with myself that I wanted to commit suicide and I told myself “I could just jump off the balcony.” And 22 stories later, 23 stories later, I would be dead and there wouldn’t be anything left. So, I decided I was going to do it and I really was going to do it, I felt in my heart that I was just tired of, tired of it all.
So I got up to the ledge and I was going to jump, and right before I threw my leg over the ledge I remember, these thoughts just came out of nowhere, and one of the thoughts was, “There’s always hope in God.” And I needed to find God to find that hope. Then the next major thought that really hit me was that I couldn’t do this because it was wrong, it was a sin to take life, even my own life. Then the last thought that I remember thinking was that I couldn’t dishonor my parents this way. I cried a little bit more and I ended up backing away from the ledge and leaving the party and I actually never saw most of those people ever again. I continued to live my life though in drinking and alcohol, I didn’t really clean up myself. I tried to, but it didn’t really work.
I eventually left Canada and went back home, I got caught working illegally in Canada and I got sent back to Texas. I remember when I got back to Texas, at first everything was good, I was glad to be around my family and everything, but then I started feeling guilty for my lifestyle around them and my drinking and all the things I was doing. I wanted so badly to get away from them again, so my partner at the time was getting transferred, and he’s like, “Let’s go to California.” And I jumped at the chance to run, to get away from them thinking that that would make me feel better, I could live my life how I wanted to.
So we went off to California. In California things didn’t get any better, I wasn’t a different person, I was just the same person I’d always been. Just with a little bit more money now, I had a decent job. I did all kinds of things I hadn’t done before, I continued to decline in my sin and do more grievous things. I remember thinking, “If I could just try these other things I would be happy.” That that would make me happy, that I would be fulfilled, that I would be at peace. I was never at peace with who I really was, there was always a part of me that deep down inside I knew it wasn’t right, but I still wanted to pursue it, it was who I had become. I continued doing drugs and drinking and finally I got really sick, I let myself get dehydrated really bad and I ended up spending New Year’s Eve in the hospital with the IV drip, getting rehydrated, and I didn’t realize it, but at the time I had pneumonia and I left the hospital, and I left there and I was really sick. Dehydration, getting hydrated helped make me better for a little bit, but eventually the pneumonia caught up with me and it ended me back up in the hospital and I just remember my partner taking me into the hospital and the next thing I know, it was the next day and the doctor was coming in and she was talking to me and she said that I had the worst case of double pneumonia she’d ever seen and I was massively dehydrated and had I not been brought in then I would have died.
And I just remember, I was grateful to God but I also remember thinking, “well I’m so young and so many things I hadn’t done. So many sins that I haven’t enjoyed.” And so as I lay in the hospital the next few days recovering, I mean I was grateful to God, I did say thank you, but not in the real earnest way and the sincere way. I was grateful that I had another chance to go out and commit sins against God, sins against Christ.
So as I lay in the hospital, I planned and plotted what I was going to do first, how I was going to fulfill my lustful desires. And sure enough, as soon as I was able, that’s what I did. I went out and lived for lust. I lived for drinking, I lived for drugs. Before long I was back in that depressed state again.
Well, about this time I started going to a political action thing and there was a friend there who was a Christian and he was asking me if I was a Christian and I said, “oh yeah, I’m a Christian. I’ve been since I was sixteen years old.” And he asked me what my conversion story was and I think my exact words were, “What is that?” And I really had no idea what he’s talking about and he said that’s the story of how God saved you. So I related to him my walking down the aisle at church story. He seemed rather unimpressed and didn’t really seem like he believed it and he kept asking me a few more questions and after he could sense I was a little bit irritated, he backed off but not before telling me he really didn’t think I was a Christian. He knew my lifestyle, he knew I was a homosexual, and he was trying to kindly show me that I couldn’t live in that lifestyle and be a child of God. I didn’t understand that, my eyes were blinded by the devil. I was living in unrighteousness and I was suppressing the truth as it says.
I started listening to the radio show hosted by Todd Friel. And I remember thinking as I was listening to them talking. He was saying something about people that didn’t agree with the Bible usually had a low opinion of Scripture. So that got me to thinking: well, I really didn’t have a high opinion of Scripture, I cherry picked what I wanted to believe out of it. I wanted to believe I was a child of God but yet I lived a lifestyle that is completely contrary to what He asked. I broke pretty much every sin there was. I had stolen, I had lied, probably told 50 lies every day and it never bothered me. I did drugs, I lusted, I fornicated, I did all these things that were contrary to what a true Christian should do. I started paying more attention to the show and what he was teaching and comparing what I believed to be true to what the Bible said. I started reading the Bible.
And I discovered that none of my beliefs matched what the Bible said other than Jesus Christ died on the cross. That was the only thing that really matched up to what I believed. I realized I had a God up here I was living for, a God that was ok with my sins. As it says in 1st Corinthians 6 verse 9 and 10: There are multitudes of sins. I’m not trying just to harp on just homosexuality. Every sin will separate us from God. Every sin will doom us to an eternity in hell. That shows us how holy God is. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand how holy God is. Well, turn it around and look at what the word of God says, but look at it from backwards. An eternity, one soul’s eternity in hell paying forever. Punishment and torment will pay the wrath of God, will pay the fine against a Holy God. That’s how holy God is. He’s infinitely holy. More than we can ever understand. It is only Christ’s righteousness that is going to save us from that damnation, that’s going to save us.
It was about the same time that my partner at the time who had knew I was professed to be a Christian, he was always fine with it, but it was about this time that I really started reading the Bible and paying more attention to Scripture and comparing myself to what the Bible said. It was about this time that he started really being threatened by this whole thing. He really fought against me studying and reading the Bible. In fact at one point he became verbally abusive and started calling me all these names and talking about Christians and actually talking about Christ. And I remember when he talked about Christ, I remember something inside of me just felt the pain of how wrong it was. I knew that he was blaspheming the Lord who has given us all life.
And so I’m sitting, writing his words down. As little as I know, the Lord was actually going to use that to really open my eyes to the truth of His Word. So I kept studying His Word and kept listening to the radio show. I realized that I was really living in this life for me, not for God. I had never really been a Christian. At least I didn’t think I was. I thought maybe, maybe I needed to rededicate my life. So I started praying to the Lord to please have mercy and show me the truth and show me, you know, how to live for Him. About this time everything kind of fell apart. The only positive thing was: the Lord had taken away my desire for drinking. I no longer drank like I once did. He took away my desire for any sorts of drugs. I no longer did any drugs. I didn’t even smoke pot anymore, which was really glorious and I see now that it was God’s grace and God’s mercy in giving me those things and He was making my mind sober where I could be able to process and believe His truths. Once He opened my eyes to His truth, I just started diving deeper into Scripture and I realized that I needed to get away from there. That there was no way I could progress in my faith, my budding faith in Christ if I stayed there in that, in that environment.
So I moved back to Texas, my sister and my mom. I tried to, I tried to repent to God, I tried to call out for mercy and I realized I wasn’t saved and I begged Him to save me but I just wanted to keep one sin to myself, I wanted to keep homosexuality to myself. In the back of my mind I kept thinking “Well… I’ll find some way to justify it, I’ll find some way to make it ok, I’ll find some way to do it in secret. So the Lord obviously would never save me, and I spent from September 2008 up until December 2008 crying out to God to save me. I prayed that He would save me, and He wouldn’t save me. I have a Scripture here actually that… He wouldn’t save me until I actually repented of all my sins.
I went to my cousin’s funeral in Amarillo, where I’m from. His wife had died and at her funeral she wanted the gospel preached. The night before I had watched a sermon by Paul Washer called the “Shocking Youth Message” and in it Paul Washer talks about how it wasn’t a matter that we’ve sinned. It’s that all we have ever done is sin. And I realized that was true in my life. All I had ever done was sin. I had never really been converted. I had never done anything good. I may have been nice at times, but I was never, I never did anything but really sin against God. My whole life had been a sin against God. And I remember him saying that Jesus died for my sins and He bore my sins on the cross and I remember how it sank in that my sins were what put Christ on the cross. I was responsible for His death. He bore my sins. David’s sins.
At this time I really began to get a clear picture of what Christ was. What the cross was and what He did on the cross. Up until this time I never really understood what real repentance was, that it was a turning away from your sin, that it was more than just saying you’re sorry. So up until that time all I’d been doing was saying I’m sorry and trying to find some way to live in my lifestyle. But now I realize that I was without hope. There was no hope for me without Christ, I was doomed to stay in this lifestyle, I was doomed to live out in sin and then go to justice, where I belong to hell. So I cried out to God to save me and I went to my cousin’s funeral and I sat there and her last request was that, one of them was that the gospel be preached. So I sat at her funeral and I listened to the gospel and I heard the glories of the cross and what Christ did. And it just sank in to me: right now, that could be me in the casket and if it were me, right then at that moment I would be going to hell. I would be going where I deserve to go because all I’d ever done was sin.
So I cried out to the Lord to forgive me, to just give me time to get home and to repent on my face, the way He deserved. Later that night, when everyone had gone and I was in my room alone, I got down on the floor and confessed every sin that I could think of. I confessed my homosexuality, I confessed all my sins against God, all the ones I could think of, everything. And I asked Him to forgive me for them and to help me. I asked for Him to forgive me for the secret sins, the ones I couldn’t even think of at the time, the ones that I knew were sins to Him that I didn’t even know about. I asked Him to please forgive me for how I lived, forgive me for rebelling against Him. Because I had always known there was a God and that there was a Christ but I never understood what it meant to be in Him. What it meant to be redeemed by Him, what it meant to love Him, what it meant to serve Him, what it meant to be forgiven, what it meant to be regenerated. So that night I prayed and I begged Him please to have mercy, to forgive me, to help me. I didn’t know how He was going to help me, I didn’t actually even think it was possible.
To be honest, I really didn’t believe that He could help me. I never heard of anyone being saved from homosexuality. I had never heard anyone with a hope in being redeemed from it. So I just prayed “Lord, I’m going to jump into this with faith in You. Faith, that somehow You will, You will save me, that You will keep me from sinning, that You will make me able to stand the temptations, to stand what may come.” I went to bed that night not knowing if I was saved or not, but I woke up the next morning and I felt things were different. I didn’t feel the guilt, the pressure of the guilt, the pressure of being under some sort of cloak. The pressure of needing to make a decision, which had all been… the previous three months had all been that, they had been pressure and guilt and conviction. Now I know it to be conviction. So I knew something was different inside of me but still, a part of me didn’t believe that I could be saved from homosexuality. I still went on and I doubted the Lord. But then I found Scripture here that says that “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden.” I said, “I confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Psalm 32:5. And I remember thinking: finally, I had really repented. I understood what it meant to repent, I hadn’t kept anything hidden from Him. Even though nothing was really hidden from Him, I hadn’t tried to, I put it all out there and that’s why I felt different that day. That’s why I felt different in the coming days, because the conviction, the guilt was gone. He had lifted it because He had saved me.
And every day from that day forward I felt, I truly felt the desires for those things to fall away and now I stand and wonder, almost two years later. A year and a half later thinking “wow! God is so good!” Here I was. I didn’t believe in Him, leaped out in faith and yet He did what He said He would do. He would take me, take those desires away, He would make me a new creature just like it says in His Word. He’s given me a new heart with new desires and I thank Him and I rejoice for what He has done for me and I marveled at His goodness and His mercy to me, and His longsuffering and patience.
I feel compelled to share this Scripture. I have read it before. Obviously, anyone who is a homosexual and listened to preaching or read the Bible has discovered this verse before but there was a part of it I had never noticed before. It’s 1st Corinthians 6, verse 9 through 10. And it says: “do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor idolaters, nor homosexuals nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” I knew that part but verse 11 I had never known, I had never read before and when I read it, I remember glorying in the truth of it. “And such were some of you, but you were washed and you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God.” And I realized that’s what happened to me. I was finally justified by Christ and I was made a new creation. I was predestined to be a servant of His, to serve God.
So now I rejoice that He’s given me that new heart, that new desire, the new desire to go out and serve Him and do His will and to live for Him. Sometimes I’m still tempted but I know that there’s nothing wrong, there’s no sin in being tempted. Even Christ was tempted. So I know that I can turn to Christ in my time of temptation. So I take comfort in knowing that. And I also take comfort in 1st Corinthians 10:13, it says: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as common to men. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.” And I found that to be true every time I’ve rested in Christ’s strength to overcome temptation, He has helped me. Every single time and every single instance, no matter what the sin was. But every time I tried to make do with my own strength, in my own strength, I fall.
I’m not afraid of what the future holds because I know I’ve been made right with God through Jesus Christ, His Son who suffered and bore the wrath, God’s wrath, for me on the cross. I know that Jesus Christ has saved me from the power of sin and He can save you too. And my hope is that anyone watching this video will turn away from that lifestyle, will turn away from their lifestyle of sin, whatever it may be and be made right with Christ, be made right with God. And it’s only through Christ, through repenting of your sins and turning from them and casting all your faith and your hope on Christ. Just as I did at that time when I just leaped out in a leap of faith to Christ and He caught me and I remember thinking how impossible it was but yet He did it. And I stand here today a new creature in Christ knowing that He’s paid it all for me on the cross and I found my hope in Him. If you’re not in Christ, you have no hope, there’s no hope for you.
So I pray that you would please consider the truths you’ve heard in this video. Please consider turning your life over to Christ. Surrender to Christ. Fall at the cross and surrender all your sins. Don’t suppress the truth in unrighteousness as it says in Romans 1. We all do those things. I did it for many years even though deep down inside I knew it was wrong. Now looking back I realize that it was wrong and that’s the repulsion I felt at the beginning of it.
So I pray that will be true for you, that you will be forgiven in Christ. Christ paid my, paid for my sins on the cross. My past sins, my present sins and the sins I will commit in the future. Only Christ can do that work on the cross. We can’t do it ourselves. You can be freed from your sin, you can be truly saved, you can be truly set free from the bondage of whatever sin it is that’s dragging you down. Whether homosexuality, drinking, drug abuse, adultery, pornography, whatever it may be, Christ can set you free from all those things. That’s what He did on the cross. Romans 4:25 says that He was delivered to death for our sins and He was raised to life for our justification. That’s how we become justified, through Christ’s work on the cross. When heaven looks down at us, when God the Creator looks down on us, He sees me through Christ, through Christ’s blood. He sees Christ’s righteousness imparted onto me. It’s nothing that I do or that I will do. It’s only Christ that saves me, it’s only Christ that can give me hope, it’s only Christ that can bring true joy and happiness to my life and I don’t mean in a monetary way. I mean in the way that brings true happiness inside with being right with God, being right with Christ, being a servant of Him. It’s only through Christ that I felt that conviction and that guilt pass away. Without Christ there’s no hope.
If you are without Christ and you’re not saved, you’re facing God’s wrath, be it from whatever sin, homosexuality, drinking, alcohol, whatever it is. If you sin one time, which we all have, You’re guilty of breaking all of God’s laws. So the only hope that you have is in Christ’s redeeming work on the cross. So I ask you to please cry out to Christ, cry out to God. Cry out to Him to open your eyes to the truth that can be found in Him, to His truths in His Word. It’s only through Him. The God of this world, which is Satan, has you blinded to the truth and it’s only through God’s calling to you, through God’s taking the blinders off you, that you will see the truth that is to be found in His Word. The truth that is found in Christ, the truth that is found in the cross. And if you truly are seeking that, cry out to Christ. He is mighty to save and He will save you today. Jesus says that we must be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God. If we’re not born again we’re never going to make it, we’re never going to see Him, we’re never going to be free from the bondage of sin. It’s only through Christ. Only through that regeneration, that being born again, that we can be saved.
I want to read a quote from John Newton. It says “I am not what I ought to be. I’m not what I want to be. I’m not what I hope to be in another world. But still I am not what I once used to be and by the grace of God I am what I am.” And what I am is an undeserving sinner saved from God’s wrath by Jesus Christ on the cross. And I thank Him every day for suffering with my running, my turning away. And I thank Him every day for calling out to me even when I wasn’t listening. Even when I was running, He still cried out to me and I thank Him for my salvation and I thank Him for Christ and what He did on the cross. And I pray, someday, that those of you listening that are struggling with whatever sin it may be that separates you from God, that you will cry out to the Lord to repent. For repentance and forgiveness. And that you will truly repent and turn to Christ. If you’re not saved, you need to examine your life and see that you need Christ, and that you will never be happy without Him.
