With Well Over 20 Years In Ministry ~ Thousands Have Been Helped!
YES! Yes, people can change the direction of their lives. People change things in their lives all the time, in every place on earth. Can an alcoholic stop being one? Sure, but he may struggle! Freedom is not the absence of all struggle. Freedom is the ability to rise above life controlling circumstances and choose a different direction. I have chosen FREEDOM! Freedom for me is a totally devoted relationship to Christ as Lord and to His teachings. I have not arrived! I continue to press into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. Hopefully, to no ones surprise, but I press on towards the goal of the upward call in Christ Jesus my Lord, and leave the former things to embrace all things new!Bob Davies, Director Emeritus of Exodus International wrote seven points I think need review in this current debate about homosexuality. Click here to read: Seven Things I Wish Pro-Gay People Would Admit
SO... Is Freedom Possible? Well for me... it is dah... YES! without a doubt... 26 years later.
Here's a wonderful article from the ministry I work in compiled by Chris Morrison... VOICES OF HEALING. The complete article only has a very small portion of people helped last year. Here's one voice:
Acceptance and Love where I thought there was none...
"There are several ways First Stone has impacted my life. I think the thing that has helped me the most is seeing the true love of Jesus demonstrated by the staff and volunteers at FSM. When I started coming here a year ago I firmly believed I wasn’t deserving of love or God’s forgiveness because of my same-sex struggle. I believed a Christian shouldn’t be struggling with that. The compassion, Christian love, support and prayer shown to me when I first came here was just what I needed to show me I wasn’t unlovable or rejected by God. He wanted to show me the opposite was true. No judgment...no rejection...no ridicule....just God’s love and acceptance. That gives me the motivation and courage to explore the reasons behind my struggle and to seek and receive healing. I praise God He’s led me to a place where I can receive help and be ministered to by people who understand what I deal with. Their prayers for me have helped sustain me throughout this first year of my journey. FSM never fails to consistently point the way to Jesus as the only source of healing, and everyone involved with FSM has helped me to see that and believe it." -MR
"There are several ways First Stone has impacted my life. I think the thing that has helped me the most is seeing the true love of Jesus demonstrated by the staff and volunteers at FSM. When I started coming here a year ago I firmly believed I wasn’t deserving of love or God’s forgiveness because of my same-sex struggle. I believed a Christian shouldn’t be struggling with that. The compassion, Christian love, support and prayer shown to me when I first came here was just what I needed to show me I wasn’t unlovable or rejected by God. He wanted to show me the opposite was true. No judgment...no rejection...no ridicule....just God’s love and acceptance. That gives me the motivation and courage to explore the reasons behind my struggle and to seek and receive healing. I praise God He’s led me to a place where I can receive help and be ministered to by people who understand what I deal with. Their prayers for me have helped sustain me throughout this first year of my journey. FSM never fails to consistently point the way to Jesus as the only source of healing, and everyone involved with FSM has helped me to see that and believe it." -MR
Hello.
I came across your website by accident. As a gay male, who had no choice in his sexual orientation - I find your hateful blog quite disturbing. People like you are the reason Christianity is not respected by many intelligent, evolved people today. Hitler and many other evil people have always hated gays. Where does JESUS say gays are bad? Leviticus does, along with eating shrimp and mixing fabrics, but I am not aware of anything in the NEW testament where homosexuals, or their love, is evil. Loving a person, as I do, in a long term relationship, is just love. Does God not love love, in any form? God IS love - and what you preach is NOT love. I never had a choice in which gender I am naturally attracted to. I do have a choice about whether I choose to love and support, and be emotionally supported by a monogamous partner - or, as you would seem to prefer for me - to be alone and lonely, or worse yet, living in a sham marriage to a woman who I cannot be physically attracted to. In reading your short bio, I have to wonder if the abuse you suffered was by a homosexual, and that because of it, you hate all gays and their right to love. Sexual abuse is of course committed by many more heterosexuals than by gays, as you already know. Why else would you spend so much time trying to deny a certain type of people the right to be in a loving relationship?? I live a life which is the pretty much the same as any straight couple who has no children. I am a normal looking, masculine architect. I am not one of the parade-leading freaks that people like you like to point to in your hateful quest. I have heterosexual couples and singles (some who are REAL Christians) who know and accept me as a human being who is in a loving, long term relationship. Why can't you, so-called Christian, do the same? You should be ashamed of yourself for the thinly disguised hate that you preach.
By the way, when I was I naive, confused teenager, I prayed to God many times that I would be "cured" and nothing happened. My mother sent me to a shrink for the same reason - no effect. A few years later, the last time I read a bible, Paul said that you should be good to your slave. That is why it was the last time. Enslaving another human being is OK, but YOU say, being attracted to the same gender is not?? Give me a break - YOU ARE A HATER! GOD IS SICKENED BY YOUR HATE. You stand apart from the LOVE which was originally taught by the Jesus. The New Testament says nothing about gays. You and your outdated/bogus ideas are hurting yourselves - and people like me. A few hundred years ago you would be able to burn me alive, or cut off my genitals, in the name of Jesus. I thank GOD, that in some ways, the world has evolved enough so you can't do that to me and my partner of the last 19 years. While you are spending your time trying to prevent people like me from being in a loving relationship - I will say a prayer for you. THAT is the type of behavior that Jesus preached.
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Hello again,
In revisiting your bio in more depth, I see that my theory was correct. I have met other gay men who spent part of their lives with wives and raising children. And later - they go back to being their true selves, with devastated wives left behind. True, there is a spectrum of sexual preferences, and perhaps you are bi-sexual an have an option. But you have no right to say that ALL people must be with a partner of the opposite gender. You made your choice, and others have the right to make THEIR natural choice about which gender they were BORN being attracted to. JESUS never said ANYTHING about gays - and you do know that. So what gives YOU the right? I have provided my email address as your system requests. If I am flooded with hateful emails, I will understand how honest you really are regarding my privacy - but I am NOT ashamed of the way GOD made me.
BTW, I am not a rainbow-flag waiving freak. I am a normal looking masculine man who might live next to any of your readers, or be their brothers, or co-workers, or whoever. I do not deserve to be denied the right to be in a loving, long-term relationship. I just happened to come across this site and hoped I could prevent some amount of hate and ignorance about gay people.
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