What is DL? Originating in the African American community, the down low is a term used to describe any kind of slick, secretive behavior, including infidelity in heterosexual relationships. Anyone of any race, ethnicity, sex, gender or orientation can be on the down low. But more commonly, the DL has been used to describe men who classify themselves as straight, but who simultaneously sleep around with other men behind closed doors. Many DL men marry and have children, and though they engage in sexual activity with other men, they would never identify as gay or bisexual.
I thought I had the game on lock. As long as I kept in the closet, I could get away with anything. I was DL and no one was ever going to find out. I was taking my secret to the grave with me. I had the mentality that, ‘It isn’t breaking the law until I get caught. If I wanted to stop, I could do it tomorrow.’ I could turn my sin off and on like a light switch. I thought I was behind the wheels and had total control over the gas and brake pedal. But I didn’t know that I was actually strapped down in the backseat with a blindfold over my eyes, being driven by lust. You can’t serve yourself. You’re either being led by the Spirit of God, or you are on the puppet strings of Satan, doing whatever he tells you to do.
“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” Galatians 5:16-17
Though I morally knew that what I was doing was wrong, a messenger was sent to me to show me that homosexuality was not only a sin against God, but an abomination as well. If I didn’t get out of my sexual sin soon, then I would end up in a case of Bi-Curiosity Killed the Cat. But sometimes, if we don’t get an immediate consequence for our sins, we will stay in them. So because God loves us so much, and doesn’t want us to go to hell, he will sometimes have to put us in an uncomfortable and undesirable predicament so that we would call on him.
Therefore, because God loved me, he began to turn up the heat under my sin to the point that not even I could take it anymore. Temptation was coming at me heavily and from every direction, and my hidden sins were becoming evident as God began to expose me to the people and the familiar spirits around me. I thought I had mastered the DL game, but then I got caught slipping up. I soon became the one being played. Constant flashbacks of previous encounters, tormenting sexual dreams, mental paranoia, not knowing who I wanted to be or what my identity was. I felt like Rihanna; I was undergoing disturbia. I started losing control over my deceptive lifestyle, as it now started to have full control over me.
“For evils beyond number have surrounded me; My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to see; They are more numerous than the hairs of my head, And my heart has failed me.” Psalm 40:12
Not to long after I decided I wanted to get into a relationship with a guy I had previously met, God led me to go to church where he used a lady to prophecy to me that I was basically attached to a death stick. I was in a soul-tie with someone who was going to drag me to hell if I didn’t get out of the relationship with him. (Now, it wasn’t the friendship I had with him that was a sin, it was my lust and idolatry for him, and my disobedience to God in not getting out of the relationship that was the sin.) This startled me, because though I was able to fool man, I could not hide my lifestyle from God. Like Nikki Minaj, He saw right through me. In Him, there is no such thing as being down low. If you turn the lights off and stand in utter darkness, he can still see you. Like so many scriptures say, God is a God who sits high and looks low. His eyes are in every place, watching the good and the bad.
“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Hebrews 4:13
Then after the next couple nights, I began to hear the voice of the Lord as loud as day. “Get rid of him,” God would say.
“Ok. Ok. I won’t date him. But can’t we just be friends?” I would bargain.
“No.” God replied. “Being friends isn’t good enough. Get rid of him, get rid of him now. Obedience is better than sacrifice. I want to be your friend. I can love you better.”
Relationships mean everything to God. God taught me through Amos 3:3, Proverbs 1:10, 1 Corinthians 15:33, and 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 that I should not fellowship with the ungodly because we would not be able to walk in agreeance. Their bad company will corrupt my good character and entice me to sin. God taught me that light should have nothing to do with darkness, unless it is there to bring reproof. He told me that this guy was my forbidden fruit and not to become unequally yoked, because if I partake of him, then I would surely die.
Then I came across a song called Desires in Conflict by Christian rapper Flame. In it, Flame said, “He is faithful. God will never molest or disrespect his sons or daughters. You can count on this. His love is deeper than the ocean floor. The blood of Jesus is the open door to forgive us for our sins. And he can restore the void in the woman and he can restore the men to men from homosexual sins.”
Then God told me through the testimony of Christian poet and EX-Stud Jackie Hill, “If you would just learn to love me, then I would restore every ounce of love that you have ever needed for the opposite sex.” If God made your heart, he can change your heart.
“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” Deuteronomy 30:6
But I hardened my heart on God. I didn’t want to come into his marvelous light because my deeds were dark and evil and I loved it. … What was God talking about? I wasn’t GAY. No, in fact, I was so blind with fear of being labeled with titles, burdened down with shame and guilt of my indecent acts, and too prideful to allow my good reputation to be tarnished, that I would have never professed with my mouth that I was gay, bi, or even DL. To get suspecting people off of my back, to protect my sense of masculinity and to make the doubt and convictions in my heart numb down, I always classified as straight. It wasn’t really about my orientation. It was only about pure gratification. I simply wanted to yield to the desires of my flesh. Whether male or female, I just wanted to be with somebody–anybody who looked attractive to me–anybody who would make me feel good for that moment.
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats to his foolishness.” Proverbs 26:11
But the deeper I got into the down low lifestyle, it eventually did become about my orientation. Nervous, yet comfortable with where I was, in my deceitful and wicked heart, I slowly began to acknowledge and accept the false identity of myself as being bisexual and got involved in more encounters with men than I had originally bargained for. I had become what the LGBT community would identify as a trade: a masculine male in both appearance and demeanor, yet either secretly or openly gay or bi. I never got into an official and committed relationship, though. Most of my relationships were either one night stands or friends with benefits. Shortly after, I started to have so many demonic dreams, visions, and visitations that it scared me. I was being shown that if I was to continue in my perverted and rebellious lifestyle against God, which is a form of witchcraft, then that would stir up God’s wrath, he would give me over to my reprobate mind, and that would eventually bring about my physical and spiritual Death: The greatest wage of sins!!!
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.” Romans 1:26-28
Soon enough, the fear of the Lord began to convict me to stop sinning. God used Pastor Donnie McClurkin’s testimony to tell me that, “The seed that was planted had to be first destroyed from the root and plucked up. I had to become tired of the torment and seek a genuine exit from the desire.”
So I began to examine my ways to see if what I was doing was worth my eternity. And I came to the realization that it wasn’t. After my temptations and wicked imaginations about lust and perversion started to overtake me and seemed to be mocking me, I tried everything in my power to fight it off. I tested myself and thought that if only I would date and talk to as many girls as possible, then that would make me straight. Once, I even proposed to one of my sisters in Christ whom I felt I was in love with, because I thought if I’d just get into this covenant with her, it would create a boundary and give me a reason to get out of the lifestyle. Marriage, I thought, would birth responsibility, character, commitment, integrity and self-control in me. But that didn’t work. In fact, if we were to get married, I would have only brought all of my drama and unclean spirits into her life, and my brokenness would have broken her. Christ alone, through the Holy Spirit, births these things in you. Marriage only develops and matures them out of you.
Then I told myself that I was just going through a phase. Yeah, that’s it! It’s just a phase! Maybe every normal boy goes through a season in their adolescence where they question their orientation and experiment with other little boys out of curiosity. If I just go along with this sin, then I would eventually come out on the other side and come out straight again. Besides, if God wanted me to change before then, he’d do it in me, right? WRONG. That didn’t work either. God doesn’t just give you deliverance. You have to want deliverance. Futhermore, phase or not, the longer I stayed in the sin and the deeper I got into it, the harder it was for me to want to come out.
And soon I noticed that salvation by man alone is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. With my lack of endurance and perseverance, faith and hope, sometimes I felt like just giving up and either getting completely ‘turned out’ or to even die because I couldn’t think ‘straight’. I dealt with all of these wars of the mind with no one to talk to or help me with my problem, until I sought diligently after God. I decided to finally have faith in, and obey God. I said yes to Jesus and confessed him, not only with my mouth, but this time in my heart. I allowed him to be my real Savior because what I was doing wasn’t working. Then I asked him to help me to love what he loves [holiness] and to hate the things that he hates [perversion].
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 2:5
Then one day, God told me to come out of the closet in order to break my bondage to fear and to gain my deliverance. The first person that he had me to tell was the person that I would have NEVER told: my mother. On June 12, 2009, my mother’s birthday, I shared my testimony on my deliverance with her for her birthday present. Then he had me to write my testimony on Myspace. Then on September 18, 2009 a vision was fulfilled from two months prior, when God also had me to buy an EX-Bisexual shirt from the Passion For Christ Movement and share my testimony on a platform at my college to all of my fellow colleagues, faculty and staff. Little did I know, that though I was still struggling with homosexuality, by confessing how God had saved me from it and renouncing my ties to the sin, I was actually prophesying deliverance over myself until I actually gained it for real.
“Whoever hides their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” Proverbs 28:13
Then God said to me, “In the world, you were down low, but in Christ you will be known as Transparent.”
God allowed my life to literally turn into a living hell just to expose me and my DL sin, because if he hadn’t, out of pride and fear of letting others know that I dealt with this, I would have never came out the closet or called on him for salvation. Then I would have literally made my bed in hell. But now, I know that for me being a good and faithful servant for turning away from my sins, denying myself even when temptation comes, believing in Jesus, and being a light and an example to others to get saved and delivered, I will have a crown of righteousness stored up for me in heaven, that once I finish my race, God will grant to me on that Great Day. I give God all the honor and glory for saving my soul from this sexual addiction. And I thank God that he grants me the grace to be delivered daily.
Dating people of the opposite gender and having repetitive sex with them will not deliver you from the spirit of lust and perversion. It only feeds it. Neither will getting married deliver you from homosexual desires. It just doesn’t deal with the issue. It only causes you to suppress it, and if you’re good at doing that. I had to learn that no matter what a man tries to do on the outward (sex, marriage, running away from or suppressing the problem, etc.), no external thing which he brings into his life will be able to change his condition. For man’s problem is not external. It’s eternal; It is within his heart. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, fornication, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Matthew 15:1 Man would have to be delivered, first, from his mindset and way of thinking before he could experience deliverance in any other area of his life. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Therefore, “…be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 Now, temptation will still come and you may not be able to control the thoughts and feelings that may consistently come at you, but your reaction to these thoughts and feelings will show if you are delivered or not. If you’ve confessed and repented from you sins and given it to God already, if you’ve mastered knowing what your identity is in Christ, and if you’ve mastered casting down all vain thoughts and imaginations in order to stand on the Word of God, you have a good ground for deliverance.
Transparent For Christ Movement 