Wow! I’m at home, and as I was washing dishes, I just had a flashback of my life when I was in the 5th grade (11 yrs old) and tried to commit SUICIDE!!!!

My mom had a lady friend who lost everything she had and became homeless. This lady found somewhere else to stay, but she had a son whom she didn’t want to be in that environment with her, so my mom offered to let him live with us for a while. When the boy moved into our house, my mom made me share everything I owned with him, because he didn’t have anything. I had to share my clothes and shoes, my toys, my favorite snacks and even my bed. To be courteous to the guest, I often slept in my sleeping bag on the floor while he slept in my bed.
By me being the only child, you can imagine how spoiled I was. By me having to share everything with this boy against my will, I grew very selfish and angry in my heart toward him. I became bitter and full of hate. I used to fight him all the time and make him feel unwelcomed. And of course, I would get in trouble with my mom because of it.

I began to hate my mom too, because I felt like she was neglecting me by putting this other boy before me. I felt forgotten, rejected, and unappreciated. Even though it wasn’t true, and my mom did love me dearly, I was too blind by my own selfish and calloused heart to see that. So one day, I decided to take my own life. “If my mom wants to put this boy before me,” I thought, “then fine! I’ll just kill myself and he can take my place as her new son. This world would be better off without me anyways!”

I went into the kitchen one day when my mom wasn’t home, and I grabbed the sharpest butcher knife from the drawer and pressed it up against my chest. I was about to stab myself in the heart. The boy was in the house with me and saw what I was doing and attempted to stop me. But I wouldn’t let him. Even though I was afraid, I proceeded to shove the knife into my chest when all of a sudden I heard a voice in my head: “IF YOU KILL YOURSELF, YOU’RE GOING TO HURT THOSE WHO LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU’RE GOING TO HURT YOURSELF.” I didn’t know where that voice came from, but I thought about it. If I die, that’s it. I don’t have to live with the pain of loneliness, depression, rejection, etc. anymore. But on the flip side, my mom will have to live the rest of her life with the pain of a son who committed suicide. I grew convicted. Then I put the knife back in the drawer, ran in my room and cried. How could I have been so full of hate and selfishness?

I was not a Christian at that time and I didn’t know the voice of God, but I know now that it was Him who intervened in my life and saved me from contemplating suicide! Thank you, Jesus! I don’t believe I’ve shared this testimony with anyone before, except my mom, but that wasn’t until years later. But I just wanted to share it now since it ran across my mind.

If you are contemplating suicide, know that although you may be putting an end to your pain, you will be causing pain to the many others who love you. Don’t do it! Jesus saves. He can deliver you from depression, hopelessness, loneliness, rejection, self-hate, shame, or anything else that may be tempting you to want to end your life. Jesus loves you and can give you a reason to live! Trust in him!

When God starts the process of delivering us from our sins, he starts in our heart, and he begins to do a work from the inside out.

Specifically regarding those of us who are overcoming HOMOSEXUALITY, many spectators expect to see immediate change in our outward appearance, how we dress, our mannerisms, our gender roles, our posture, how we stand, how we walk, the pitch in our voice, etc., and when they don’t see outward change, they are quick to judge us because they think we have not encountered true deliverance. But they fail to stop and think about what God may be doing in our hearts and minds.

Deliverance from homosexuality starts from the inside out. In our hearts, God is dealing with us on our identity first and foremost–letting us know that we are sons and daughters, not homosexuals and lesbians. By us spending intimate time with God by reading our Bibles, God’s teaching us that we were not created by Him to be gay, but that we were born from our mothers wombs into sin and shaped in iniquity; and due to our sinful nature, outside influences and our personal experiences in life, we’ve developed a proclivity to homosexuality. But God’s also teaching us that although we were born susceptible to this behavior, we can be born again through the receiving of the Holy Spirit by the renewal of our minds. God is reaffirming our original and preordained identity as either male or female. And he’s reaffirming his purpose for our sexuality, that is, to be fruitful and multiply with our spouse of the opposite sex.

God is reassuring us, despite what we’ve heard, that he doesn’t hate us as people; on the contrary, he loves us unconditionally but hates our lifestyle decisions because they go against his will for our lives. Through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, God is pouring out his love into our hearts so that we may be filled to overflow and made whole. As a result, we don’t have to go looking and searching for love through other people or through sex, because we already have a relationship with God, who is Love. We are fulfilled in Him.

In our hearts, God is restoring our hope that change is possible, because many of us fed into the lie of “once gay, always gay.” He’s restoring our nature as men to be leaders and not follows; pursuers, not the one being pursued. He’s shaping and molding us to be the top and not the bottom; the head and not the tail; the lender and not the borrower. For the women, he’s restoring their nature to be soft and feminine, not hard and masculine. He’s teaching them how to submits to man, instead of trying to compete with man. He’s teaching women how to be vulnerable and how to trust again. He’s reminding them that they are beautiful and precious, and teaching them to embrace their womanly qualities and curves, instead of hiding them under the baggy jeans and sports bras.

God is affirming us with his word, and he’s letting us know that our validation and identity can be found in his son Jesus Christ, so we don’t have to look for it among our heterosexual peers or among the LGBT community. God is delivering us from rejection, which caused most of us to turn to the gay lifestyle in the first place.

He’s giving us self control over our vessels, teaching us that our bodies are a holy temple and we shouldn’t just lay up with anyone in the bed. He’s delivering us from the shame, guilt and self condemnation that comes with the sexual promiscuity of that lifestyle. He’s letting us know that he washed our sins away with his blood, so we don’t have to feel bad anymore. He’s letting us know that there was an exchange on Calvary–That he became a homosexual for us so we can become the righteousness of God through faith.

Spectators don’t see all of this that’s taking place on the inside, though. All they see is our outward “residue,” saying things to us like, “You still sound gay,” “You still dress gay,” “You still act gay.”

But effeminate does not equate to homosexual. Tomboy does not equate to lesbian-stud. Femininity   deals with having female-like mannerisms, homosexuality deals with having same-sex preference/desires. Just because you have soft, flamboyant or woman-like characteristics, doesn’t mean you have homosexual desires or that you actively participate in homosexual behavior. I’m the same manner, just because you are masculine doesn’t mean you are heterosexual. There are many gay men (open and dl) who are macho. And vice versa with the ladies. Just because she is a tomboy and feels more comfortable in pants, a t-shirt and sneakers, and doesn’t like dresses, heels and make-up doesn’t mean she is a stud or butch, or that she wants to be with other women. Not every lesbian dresses like a guy. There are some lipstick or femme lesbians, who choose to dress girly. That’s why you can’t judge a book by its cover.

While it’s true that some flamboyant behavior are picked up due to your role in the gay lifestyle (e.g. twist walk, flinging wrist, rolling eyes, popping tongue, etc.), that’s not always the case. Some men have never been introduced to homosexuality, but they’ve been raised by women and have picked up their flamboyance from their mother, aunts, or female cousins and friends, or involvement in the arts. Some women picked up their masculinity from being raised around more men, such as their fathers, brothers, male cousins and friends,  or their involvement in sports.

While I do believe that God wants us as men to be generally masculine and women to be generally feminine, life happens. The way we are nurtured, or brought up in our environment plays a role in how we develop. And sometimes, it’s hard to change our mannerisms after we’re been groomed like that.

But God is able. Let’s keep praying that God builds our respective masculinity and femininity. But let’s not become discouraged when he doesn’t do it when we want him to. God is patient with us. So let’s be patient with ourselves. And let’s not try to conform to what society’s spectators says we should be. Let’s allow God to make us into who he wants us to be. God is the potter and we are the clay. We are in his hands; still a work in process, but in due time, we will be perfect as he is perfect.

I was introduced to pornography in middle school, around the 7th grade. You know how it usually starts off–in the home. I was snooping through my parents room while they were out. Being nosey, I ended up finding their secret stash, and took it back to my room to watch it. I didn’t know then, that my curiosity would lead me into a 10 year addiction, leading all the way through college.

Being a porn user has caused me more suffering than pleasure. I developed a distorted view of sex, and started to confused sex for love. I began to have sexual fantasies for anyone who I came into close contact with. Certain key words or phrases I heard during conversations would trigger me to think about sex. I couldn’t even go to certain locations like the gym, the bathroom, the basement or the swimming pool area without imagining myself entering onto a porn set. I couldn’t sit next to anyone on the couch without anticipating for it to turn into a foreplay scene, because that’s how it goes down in the movies. I was in mental torment every where I went. Porn caused me to stay up until 3-4 a.m., losing sleep every night; and it caused me to be distracted in school. It caused me to lose interest in real life relationships. It caused me to have perverted dreams and nocturnal emissions. It opened the door for a lot of demonic play in my life. Seeing naked men in heterosexual porn videos eventually awakened my curiosity for bi/homosexuality.

When I became a born again Christian, these were the many reasons why I asked God to deliver me from porn. I wanted to be renewed in my mind. I didn’t want those unclean spirits to torment me with sexual dreams anymore. I didn’t want to see my pure friendships in a perverted way. I didn’t want porn to continue to fuel bi/homosexual desires in me.

And just recently, I thought about something else… I’m engaged to get married. That means I’ll be having children of my own one day! I definitely don’t want to pass this generational curse on to my kids, as I have picked it up from my parents! I don’t want my kids to say that they found a stash hidden in Daddy’s room, or pornographic bookmarks saved on Daddy’s computer, and that’s how they became porn addicts. No, they will NOT go through what I went through! I rebuke that cycle in Jesus name!! It ends with me. Thank you Jesus for delivering me, and thank you for protecting my future kids from this addiction.

Mark 9:47
“And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell…”

Hebrews 12:1
“… let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

Pornography has had a stronghold over my life for almost 10 years. I was introduced to it in the 7th grade (by both classmates and family members), and the addiction followed me all the way through college, even after I got saved. It destroyed my mind and distorted my view on how I saw both women and men. I wanted to be free from the cycle, but in order to overcome my addiction, I had to apply the two aforementioned Scriptures to my life. Keep Calm. I didn’t actually gouge my eyes out. (This photoshopped image is just an exaggeration of what it would look like if I did. Thank God I didn’t take Jesus’ words literally, right? Lol).

But as an alternative to me cutting out my eyes, I started cutting off every access I had to pornography. I had to lay aside every weight that held me back from my full deliverance and from running with endurance the race that was set before me.

In just one day, God instantly took away my desire for pornographic magazines, VHS tapes and DVDs. It was sometime in the beginning of 2009, a few months after I got saved, when I was watching porn in my dorm room, and I suddenly felt the Holy Spirit sit next to me on my bed. The atmosphere became so thick as if I was on holy ground. I felt so filthy in the presence of a Holy God, and I knew I was being watched. The light had shinned in my darkness and I felt exposed. I became so convicted, I took all of the sexual pictures and movies I had, broke and/or ripped them up, put them in a plastic garbage bag and threw it in the dumpster. I have never went back.

God later convicted me about throwing away any books I had with sexually explicit content in them, including novels by Zane. At one point in time, I used to have satellite cable, which I used to watch the Playboy channel on when no one else was home. But that subscription was soon canceled. Cutting off all these avenues to pornography was easy for me to do, but staying away from Internet porn was the hardest, because I actually needed the Internet to take care of other important things, like: school work, job-related work, to pay bills, check email, etc.

But here’s the good news! It’s been over one year now since I have been without Internet at home! I didn’t get it turned off to avoid watching porn, but only because I can’t afford Internet right now. However, I did notice that ever since my Internet subscription got cut off, my struggle with porn decreased drastically! Sadly, when I purchased my first smart phone with Internet on it and found out that I could watch porn on there, I backslid and ended up watching it on there a couple times. But one day when I was downloading a porn clip, I received a pop up warning that said I was going to catch a virus if I did so. That freaked me out because I remember when I caught a virus on my laptop for watching porn and my laptop crashed. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to my phone, so I haven’t watched porn on my phone ever since. So, I basically cut off every access that porn had to my life (books, magazines, satellite, VHS tapes, DVDs, Internet, cell phone, etc.)

I’ve also been under the wing of Shelley Lubben, who is an ex-porn star! She taught me what really goes down in the porn industry. It’s definitely not glamorous. Through reading her book: “Truth Behind The Fantasy of Porn” and by reading up on all the porn facts provided through her anti-porn ministry “The Pink Cross Foundation”, it has given me a new found hatred for porn. Every time I click on a porn site, I’m contributing to the destruction of countless sex slaves in the porn industry. I don’t want to support something that is destroying lives.

I’m learning to give no foothold to the devil and no provision for the flesh. Through the help of God and ministries that advocate sexual healing, I’m managing to stay free from porn. Freedom is so refreshing!! I encourage you guys to do whatever you have to do in order to get/stay free as well. Cut off your resources to porn! Read up on how destructive it is. Stay prayed up. Ask for help. Know that freedom is possible, and forgiveness is provided through the blood of Jesus Christ.