Responding to Christian Homosexuality Part 1

Conversations That Matter

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Responding to Christian Homosexuality Part 2

00:13

Before we get into the podcast today, I just wanna make a quick note to parents. There is some content that is more mature and young ears probably should not be listening to it.

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That is up to the parental discretion. It's nothing past some of the things that are outlined in scripture, but it might be more than younger children can handle.

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So with that being said, we'll jump right into it. Welcome everyone to the Conversations That Matter program.

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I am John Harris. We have a special guest with us today, Darren Mel, and he has a blog.

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You can go to darrenmelblog .com or you can go to voiceofthevoiceless .info and check out some of his stuff.

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He's got a lot of things he's written there that are very helpful. First though, we're just gonna hear

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Darren's story. It's a very compelling story. And this all started, I've been friends on Facebook with Darren for a while, but I had made a post right before Christmas on conversion stories and how people who have been under the law and just guilty and then coming out of that and realizing the grace of Jesus Christ.

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And I just asked people to share stories of that in your own life. How have you come out from under the law to find the grace of God?

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Or how has he reached down to you and shown you his grace? And so Darren shared a very compelling story that I just thought, wow, this needs to get out there.

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And so I asked him, would you mind coming on and talking about it? And he said, absolutely. So Darren's gonna talk more about his organization that he's starting and then also his story.

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And I'm just very excited to have him on and for what the Lord has planned in 2022. So welcome,

01:53

Darren. Thank you for having me, John. Appreciate it. It's great. You're very brave, I have to say, to even come out publicly and talk about some of this stuff.

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But why don't you just give us a little bit of a rundown first of your ministry, what you intend to accomplish in 2022, and then we can get into your testimony.

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Yeah, you had mentioned Voice of the Voiceless and Voice of the Voiceless was founded in 2013.

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I'm now the president since 2017, and I'm taking it full time in 2022.

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And the work of Voice of the Voiceless is defending the rights of the former

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LGBT or former homosexuals and supporting the families and individuals in that, and equipping the church to address this topic.

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And then I also, that's contending for the faith and exposing the work of the enemy and shedding light into that darkness.

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And then on the personal pastoral cares, Agape First Ministries, I'm an associate director at Agape First Ministries here in Minnesota.

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And we focus on, we have a conference called Freedom United, and we're traveling with that.

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And we do pastoral care for individuals. We have Sunday night services. We call it

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Freedom Watch and The Arc, two different services on Sundays. And then the one -on -one care, coming alongside the brothers, encouraging them in their faith and in the pastoral care work.

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And so the contending for the faith that with Voice of the Voiceless and the individual personal care missionary work, if you will, to the church with Agape First Ministries.

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Awesome. Now people might wanna know, how did you get into this? In this period of time where we live right now, this is extremely, it shouldn't be in my mind, but it somehow is even in the church now, very controversial.

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And the term that comes up most often is conversion therapy, right? And that's wrong.

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That's against the gospel. In fact, I remember, was it 2014, Al Mohler apologized for ever believing, for speaking against the reality of homosexual orientation.

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And then it was, I think not too long after that, he came out against conversion therapy. And this is someone who at the time, especially was basically at the top of the largest

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Protestant denomination in the United States. And we've seen other Christian leaders and organizations completely fall in step with that.

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And so that's the accusation that's often leveled. I'd like to hear from you, kinda we can get into the political stuff maybe a little later, but what compelled you to take a step into this controversial field?

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And I'm sure your story probably plays into that. Yeah, it's answering a call.

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It's lived experience of what Jesus called me out of. And I would say for such a time as this,

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I guess. It's being in a church body, in a family and having individuals and families struggling with this issue.

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And the church, even when I recognized that same -sex attraction was a sin in my own church that I got saved in or gave my life to Christ, that they didn't have the understanding of the issue.

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They just said, well, just be a celibate gay Christian. Just, yeah, you're same -sex attracted, just don't do it.

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And that was about it. That's all that I had at that time. And then having been married in 2005 to my wife and coming in as a, you know, knowing that I was in the gay lifestyle when my wife married me, she knew that, but spending seven years trying to pray the gateway and not having the church understand, well, you sinned, just don't do it again with pornography.

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It wasn't, I was faithful for seven years. And so the church struggling in this area to really, you know, they encouraged me to keep going, you know, follow

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Jesus, don't sin. And that was about it, doctrinally. And so getting into this ministry, if you will, or accepting the calling to equip the church and to do ministry in this space, when

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I was working my day job, I'd have people at my own church coming to me for help because the church didn't have, you know, the pastors didn't have what they needed.

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And so they'd say, well, talk to Darren. And there's more people that need help than what

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I can help working 40 hours a week. And then wanting to, you know, take the doctrinal position of our denomination and just teach that in Sunday school.

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And, you know, wanting to do that, but being denied that the church doesn't want to go there because it's too controversial, even the denomination's position paper.

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So yeah, I'm going in full time so that where churches want to be equipped with this, with the understanding and the full gospel of transformation and a renewal of the mind and a change in heart, not just managing sin by self -control or self -righteousness, but having a renewed mind.

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Like you can get in trouble in some spaces by saying that I'm transformed by Jesus and no longer homosexual.

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I don't desire sodomy with men anymore. And Jesus has healed me of those sinful desires, if you will, healed or set free.

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I've remained his disciple and in his word and his word has set me free. Jesus has revealed to me the clauses or the hooks that kept me in that identity and in that lifestyle.

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And it was all tied to sin and lies and what have you. And so where I'm at now with Voice of the

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Voiceless and Agape First is going out there and Jesus is worth everything.

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And he's not worth everything, he's not worth anything. And he changes people's lives from dark to light, from death to life.

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And that when scripture says that he has been given much, much as expected,

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I've been set free of death and I've been healed and restored to the creator's intention for me.

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And I found joy and happiness. And the dream that Satan told me that I had to give up, coming out gay was that I would get married and have kids.

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I always wanted to be married and have kids, but I was bullied into the gay identity and girls told me that no girl would ever date me and boys told me that I wasn't a guy.

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And I was like this other, transgenderism wasn't a thing in my school where I grew up, but at the time in the late nineties.

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So I'm surprised, that could have been what I struggled with because I felt like I was other,

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I wasn't a man, but through what God's brought me through, I now know who

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I am in Christ and I'm very much a man. And so those lies and sin and patterns of living in darkness,

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Jesus brought me out of that for real. You know, and that there's more to the doctrine of just confessing that Jesus is your savior, there is a renewal and a transformation that happens.

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And so I'm going public with that because honestly, voice of the voiceless,

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I'm trying to bring a voice to those people in the churches that are struggling and the churches aren't talking about it and it's creating a shame mentality for them that, well, if my church isn't talking about it and they're just saying that Jesus is enough, then

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I should, you know, it should be enough for me too. But that's, there is a sanctification that goes through and it's not just sin management, just don't do it, there's more to it.

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And if we're not gonna be bold enough to say that Jesus is

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Lord in all areas and sets us free in all areas, I'm not sure, well,

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I know why now, but why the church doesn't want to go there and speak, you know, other than where it says in scripture, first Peter one, five through seven, to your faith that virtue to virtue at knowledge.

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I think we will go as far as the virtue statement, but moving on to the knowledge and self -control and brotherly love and agape, there's a cost to that.

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And I want to be available to help the families who are my brothers and sisters who want freedom in this area to be equipped to find freedom in this area and to have brothers and sisters come alongside of the people fully equipped, not with more arrows in their quiver, you know, and in more understanding of God's righteousness, we can have a zeal for God, Romans 10, but not know

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God's righteousness. Well, I wanna go through some of the mechanics of that with you, the specifics, because I noticed exactly what you're saying on the more left end, if you want to call it that of quote unquote evangelicalism, the more social justice side, there's kind of this embracing of same sex attraction and identity of some kind, sometimes they'll use different words than homosexual, but that's basically what they're saying is they have that orientation and you have living out, you have the revoice stuff, and then the more mild iterations where in the

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Southern Baptist Convention and elsewhere, where they wanna take the stand against conversion therapy, but it's so vague, you know, what is, they never really quite define it so that it could even incorporate

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Christian counselors who want to do maybe even what you're talking about. And then on the other side,

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I see for the more conservative evangelicals who aren't on the social justice bandwagon, or at least so they say, they are very afraid, this has been my experience, most of them are very afraid to take really controversial stands.

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Something that's very popular, you know, when it became unpopular to be for Black Lives Matter, especially in evangelicalism, a bunch of people started coming out and I'm against social justice, right?

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And so it was something that they could still, there needed to be like a block of people it seemed like that were gonna be there for them, for them to kind of do that.

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But this is one of a few areas that I've seen has not been really touched, it hasn't.

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You look at the Christian conferences, even the big ones that are out there, this issue really isn't faced, it's not talked about, there's no prominent speakers, you're not getting invites to those places,

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I wouldn't imagine, I could be wrong, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think Rosaria and Jackie are filling those voids.

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Yeah, exactly, it's not. So I want to draw some lines here,

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I wanna see, okay, what's the difference between what Darren Nell says, and I will say also, to some extent, maybe what others have said on this podcast, what

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Bobby Lopez has said, what Ron Riesco has said, both ex -homosexual, and they say the same thing that you just said to me,

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I wanna draw the line between them, and then what Rosaria Butterfield, Jackie Hill Perry, and some of these other ex -gay,

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I know there's a bunch of them now in TGC, what are they saying that's different from what you're saying?

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And then also, maybe this is kind of the same thing, but what was it then in your church with people who sound like they're well -meaning, but they did not have, as you said, the tools to really help you fully, what was it that made you realize, wait a minute,

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I'm a man, I'm not homosexual, that's not who I am, and you wrote it very beautifully under my post, and you just felt the fullness of God's grace, and were set free from that.

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So take me through that a little, if you would. Yeah, we'll do it in reverse order there. I'll start with just one. Yeah, that's a lot, sorry.

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Yeah, my testimony, I came to Jesus Christ because I was doing occultishy things and manifesting demons and being attacked at night.

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Some people would label it night terrors, but having a demon at the end of your bed come and attack you is enough for me.

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And a lot of my friends in high school all got saved at the same time, all became

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Christians, or the clique of my friends, I should say, not the whole high school, but my closest friends, and they were burning their things that had to do with the occult, and I thought they joined occult themselves.

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But after I asked them, what about ghosts and stuff, and they said,

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Jesus has power over that. And I said, oh, okay. And so after I got attacked one morning,

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I ran to the high school, or school day, and I was going through the halls looking for any of my

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Christian friends, and I found Lindsay, and I said, Lindsay, I'm being attacked by what you call demons, and I think it's gonna kill me, and I need

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Jesus. And so she's like, well, I've never done this before, but let's pray for you to receive Jesus. So I received

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Jesus in the high school because I was being attacked by demons, not because I was a sinner, but because I knew that my life needed something, a bigger power than me.

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And I grew up a cultural Christian in the Methodist church and went to Sunday school, but my takeaways was

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Noah had an ark, Jesus died on a cross, he was born on Christmas, and he raised from the dead, and that's it.

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That's about all I knew. I knew that Bible was the word of God given to us, and that was about it.

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So I ended up going to church with Lindsay, and I shared my testimony, and the elders prayed, laid their hands on me, and I received the

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Holy Spirit. It was a supernatural experience of fire on my body. I didn't know anything about Christianity at the time, like the

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Holy Spirit, I should say, and I received the Holy Spirit. I believe that God impressed on me, that he loved me, and that I was his son.

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And so I started reading scripture, and I got to Romans or 1

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Corinthians 6, where it talks about homosexuality being a sin.

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I had the NIV study guide, back when NIV called it homosexuality a sin. And I came out to my youth pastor, and I said,

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I have this attraction to men that I think is homosexuality, and I know it's a sin, and I don't know what to do about it.

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And she said she understood, and we told our elders and pastors, and they supported me in my faith, and they said, just don't do that.

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Don't give in to that sin, and you'll be fine. And my pastor,

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Pastor Gary, he's still an elder to me. He's still my pastor. And he took me, at 17 or 18 years old, to Outpost Ministries, which was a founding ministry of Exodus.

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And I still have the papers. It was the first annual banquet. And coming from a small town in Minnesota, I didn't know anybody that was gay.

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I was told that I was gay by the boys and the girls, and I was teased. And so he took me to this thing where I didn't really understand even who

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I was and what this attraction to men was. I wasn't acting out.

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Honestly, I didn't know what sodomy was. I was attracted to men in a way that I didn't understand.

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But so I go to this conference, and it just went over my head, honestly. I remember a guy and a girl saying that they were gays, but they aren't anymore because Jesus changed them.

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And it just went over my head, so it was a miss there. And I end up going to college, and I kind of put the homosexuality on the shelf, just like, yeah,

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I'm not gonna do that. And I joined a street preaching ministry, a black preacher who was like a father to me.

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And I did street evangelism and feeding the poor and traveled around the

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Midwest with him doing revival meetings. I was his Timothy, did all the administration.

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So I just put that homosexuality on the shelf, and I lived as a Christian. A celibate, I guess, gay

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Christian at the time, to use some of the language out there. Still attracted, but just not acting on it.

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And when I went to college, I started having guys show interest in me. And the ministry got shut down that I was in.

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He was focusing on his family at the time. And so I was kind of left to walk it out, walk out my faith.

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And not having the solid ground, I would say

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I was on, built my faith on sand, if you will, as zeal can keep you from not doing certain things and self -control only for so long.

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But I didn't have the truth. And so I met gay Christians, and I started going to gay church, gay affirming churches, which before that word even existed in my vocabulary.

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The MCC Church in Minneapolis, and some other Pentecostal churches that ended up being gay affirming, but that's another story.

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And so I lived as a gay Christian. Of course, I go back to my founding church that I got saved in and told my friends, hey,

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I think I'm a gay Christian, and they Matthew 18'd me, which is like, you can't live that way.

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That's not scriptural. And they turned me over.

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They're like, we can't fellowship with you if you're gonna say that you're Christian and living that way. And it hurt, but I was like,

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I think this is love, so it's gotta be the right thing, and they just don't understand it. And so I lived with a partner, a guy, for a couple years, and lived in the gay

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Christian world for a while. I did have to come out to my family. They figured it out and said that they supported me and the way that I am, and that was that.

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So not having any stigma for my family. And I went into the gay lifestyle.

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There's other parts where I tried to walk a line of being a celibate gay

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Christian, but that ended up, I got raped by a man and the shame of that and the pressure of my gay

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Christian friends that were side A, gay Christians, and I was trying to be a side B, the shame of it all and the fight of self -righteousness to stay pure, if you will,

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I just came to the end of myself and went into it.

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And so I did have a friend from the church that I got saved in, who was the best man in my wedding,

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Jesse. He continued to call me and check in on me and remind me of,

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God's called me to share the gospel and am I going to church and just loving me.

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And he invited me to a prayer meeting and I went to a prayer meeting with him and he asked me, do you really think you're gay?

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And I said, I don't wanna be gay, but I've tried to pray away the gay and it doesn't change.

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And so I wanna love and be loved. And he says, I think you're just dealing with lust.

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And he explained how he deals with lust and that God gives him grace to not lust after other women, that the temptation is there, but God helps him not to do that.

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And then I prayed and he says, well, let's pray. And I said, God, if I'm not gay, if you don't want me to be gay, then you have to break me up with my boyfriend.

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It's not a thing that I can do because I'm like, I'm in a, what

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I thought at the time was a loving relationship. And so, you can take it if that's your will, then take it, but I can't do it.

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And then he said, if there was a woman that you can marry, who would you marry?

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I said, well, yeah, I wanna get married. And there's a woman, her name's Rhoda, but she's dating a guy that I broke up with.

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And she knows that I'm dating a guy. So I don't know how she would ever see me as somebody to marry, but God, if you want me to be married, then work it out so that Rhoda sees me and I can marry her.

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And so that, those are my two prayers. I'd say prayer with a faith of a mustard seed, but it was there, it was sincere.

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I didn't have any answers. It's just, so I gave it to God and said, here, this is all

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I can do. And so I get home from that prayer meeting and my boyfriend dumped me.

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So talking about immediate answer to prayer, that was really hard.

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To go through, I kind of rebelled against God because I didn't know. It's one of those cognitive dissonance things where you know what's right, but you're mad about it.

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And so eventually Rhoda did break up with that guy and I waited the customary two weeks and then asked him if I could date her.

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And he was polyamorous by, if you didn't figure that out, if he's dating her and had also dated me.

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And so - But this is all at a church, I just have to ask, is all three of these, she went to your church or how did you -

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No, there were all individual people off in our own worlds. I'm going to a church at that time when

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I met her, just a mega church so I could blend in and not have anybody -

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So you knew her outside of church? I knew her outside of it. I knew her through my friend that I once dated.

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He threw parties and we were all in the theater world together.

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I did tech for theater. I do want to just comment. I want you to continue, but real quick. I know there are some Christians out there who

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I think hearing this and you're saying you're saved and then you kind of went off the deep end for a little bit. I just want people to remember

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Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, that Christians can get into sinful situations.

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And the key though, I think is what 1 John says. You don't walk in that. That does not a forever thing. And so you're going to tell us,

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I know how you kind of came out of that and how the Holy Spirit used this. But these kinds of stories, as you know,

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Darren, they're not shared a lot in Christian circles. And so I'm just so grateful that you are sharing.

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You're opening up and that is an incredibly brave and vulnerable thing. And I just, anyway, please continue.

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Yeah, and to also add to what you just said, you know, the Matthew 18 thing,

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I think needs a lot more emphasis, but when scripture says to turn them over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh so that their soul may be saved,

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I'll integrate that into my testimony here. Sure, sure. I've lived that being turned over.

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And, you know, I came to Christ, not because I was a sinner, but because I wanted to be saved from the enemy.

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And then knowing that I was a sinner, but then being confused. And so I tried to push the truth down, the

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Holy Spirit down, but you can only like get into the bottom of your toes. You know, you can never really lie against the

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Holy Spirit. Maybe you can. It kind of scares me to even go there, but the

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Holy Spirit, the whole time I was living in as a gay identified man, the

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Holy Spirit was convicting me. And the scripture says that God doesn't snuff out a smoldering wick or break a bent reed.

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And that brother, Jesse, who continued to have relationship with me by the phone, you know, and encouraging me in the faith, like,

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I honestly think that he kept the, God used him as a lifeline to keep my flame burning, even though it was smoldering, right?

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And so to go back to where I was, you know, I asked my friend if I could date her and he's like, yeah, absolutely.

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And so Rhoda and I started dating and on her birthday, or we started hanging out,

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I should say. And on her birthday, she said, you know, so what are we doing?

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You know, and I knew that, like, okay, we're hanging out a lot. We're spending a lot of time together, but it's just as friends.

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And is there something more here? And I knew what that meant. And so I said, yeah, would you be my girlfriend?

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You know, and I said, but you know, like I struggle with homosexuality and, and, you know, so what do you think about that?

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And she's like, oh, I love you for you. You know, that's not an issue for her.

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And so we ended up dating and then I asked her to be my wife at a theater, a magic show at our

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Valley Fair, which is like a Six Flags at Alonzo magic show. And so brought her up on stage, asked her to marry me.

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She said, yes. And we were married December, 2005. And of course she knew that I'm struggling with same sex attraction.

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And, and she knows, you know, she knows that we're both seeking Jesus and she came out of Buddhism and, or she was a

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Christian that fell away and started going into Buddhism and, and then lesbianism and, you know, bisexuality with dating that guy.

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And it just, it's, we were both really messed up, but the Lord put us together and the sanctifying power of marriage and seeking

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Jesus. And, you know, I can say with a clean conscience, I didn't, neither of it, well, I didn't get married to straighten out.

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I just believe that God called us to be one flesh. And, and as God is my witness,

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I said, if we never have sex, then it is what it is. But you're going to have to deal with that God because I don't understand how that's going to work.

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And I have kids now and I fully enjoy marriage.

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But at the time I was addicted to gay porn coming into the marriage and it was really hard for her to really address that.

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Cause with her own brokenness, me not quote unquote desiring her, that created an interesting conflict for us to work through.

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And so of course we get married and we find a church and we moved to town, find a church. And I'd say

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I joined an Assemblies of God church and that was my family. And they walked alongside of me and God provided a brother in the faith that came alongside of me.

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And we prayed on a weekly basis. We became best friends and he just encouraged me in the

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Lord, you know? And when I faltered and did, you know, he knew that I was dealing with gay porn and it didn't really, you know, as a straight man, he wasn't scared of my struggles.

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And he just kept pointing me to Jesus. And on the seventh year of my marriage, five years into weekly prayer and seeking out being with my church and seeking to pray the gay away.

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And my prayer was consistently, God, I repent of lusting after men.

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Please give me the grace to not act out on those desires. That was my prayer for five years with my brother.

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And I mean, among other things, but that was the consistent prayer. And knowing that, you know, a righteous man falls but gets up seven times and that, you know, no weapon formed against me will prosper and nothing can separate me from the love of God.

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Like I had all the hope, but a hope deferred makes the heart grow sick. And on the seventh year on a business trip,

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I ended up cheating on my wife and breaking my vows with her in marriage by hooking up with a guy.

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And that was a horrible experience, spiritually speaking, obviously.

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And after the man left the hotel room, it felt like to me,

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I don't know how else to explain this other than it seemed like there was a demon in the bed laughing at me saying,

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I got you now. And maybe that's me projecting my guilt.

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But regardless, I felt like there was this demon saying, I got you now, you know, your wife is pregnant with your son and she's gonna miscarry again.

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We've had a couple of miscarriages before that. She's gonna divorce you. Your best friend's gonna break up with you.

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Say, look, we've been praying for five years, we're done. Your church is gonna excommunicate you. I, you know,

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I was as high as you can go as a volunteer before you become a staff, you know, helping doing all the church production services, tech service, budgeting,

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IT work, all that kind of stuff. It was my family and I served well. And I was gonna lose it all.

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And as I got in the shower because I felt absolutely disgusting spiritually and crying my eyes out.

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And I came to the end of myself in that moment, realizing that the whole time

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I was struggling with homosexuality, I thought, well, that isn't that bad of a sin. And to me, the sin that I would never do would be cheating on my wife.

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I'm a bastard child. I am a grandchild of divorce, a great grandchild of divorce, of cheating.

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It's been a sin that I said I would never do. And here I've done the thing that I thought

34:35

I could never do. And in that moment, I realized that I've been trying to do,

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I think God impressed on me, that I've been trying to do Christianity in my own strength. And that the self -righteousness of the whole thing and the cheap grace of it came to a head.

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And I told God, I said, God, I know that everything, all those judgments are true, that that's what the law says.

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And it would be reasonable reaction to my sin on everybody else's part.

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But if there's any mercy, would you please let that judgment pass? But even if it isn't there,

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I know in that moment, I knew that I was the sinner against a holy

35:24

God. And that even if I had all that judgment come to pass,

35:30

I would still follow God because in that five years, I knew that God was good.

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I knew that he was everything that is right and righteous and that I'm the sinner.

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Like I've known that. And in that five years, I've seen so many miracles in my marriage and in our church.

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And I just, you know that God is good. And so I'm like, God, I know that I'm the sinner here.

35:56

And so I'll still follow you even if all that stuff happens. Well, that was my prayer.

36:02

And I got home the next morning and I went straight to my pastors, which I've never called on my pastors in all the years that I was there.

36:10

But I said, I have an emergency and I need you. And so the pastor's husband, at the time we had a female pastor of our church, the daughter of the senior pastor, man who had passed it on to her.

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And so her husband came and I confessed everything. I told him everything that happened. And he told me, well, you confessed your sin.

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Just don't do it again. And don't worry, you don't have to tell your wife, just don't do it again. And the

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Holy Spirit told me that that was wrong advice and that I had to go to my brother. And I was absolutely terrified to go to my brother because I had been praying with him all these years to get over same -sex attraction and not acting out on it.

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But I did end up, we hung out and he could tell that something was wrong. And so I said, what's going on?

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And I just laid it out. I was again, I laid out in front of him crying, like total messed up my life.

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And he was the epitome of who I think Christ is or like the spirit of Christ.

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And he says, Darren, I'm gonna go through this with you and God's, we're gonna restore you.

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And that broke that fear, obviously. And that was an act of love rather than judgment.

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A lot of my friends had judged me and had nothing to do with me, but here he's going to restore.

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Scripture says a wise man will restore a brother. And he wanted to restore me. And he says, you've got to tell your wife, like that's not an option.

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And I said, yeah, I know the Holy Spirit told me. And so I ended up at church on Sunday.

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I'm in the control room. So I'm calling service, right, as a producer. And we have our time for prayer to come up.

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And I told the team, you got it, I got to run. So I went up for prayer and I said the unnamed sin and prayed with them.

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And after service, Rhoda, I was asking God, to help me to break it to Rhoda, cause

38:31

I don't know how to do it. And Rhoda came up to me after service. And she says, you know, I love you,

38:36

Darren. And I don't love you because you're perfect, but because you're the perfect husband, but because you love

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God perfectly. And though that's an overestimate on her part, but she said it.

38:49

And I felt like that was an opportunity to share with her what happened and confess. And, you know, this week, it had been a week.

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And in that week, I don't think doctrinally the Holy Spirit left me, but I've been trying to explain how

39:08

I felt and I'm still working on it. That week, I felt like I was a dead man walking.

39:15

Like I could feel the weight of my sin. And I don't know how else to say it.

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It's not like God forsook me, but just having the weight of your sin, maybe it's because I'm a believer and I can, and sin, the

39:33

Holy Spirit convicts you of sin. And it just feels like a fire when you sin. And I just,

39:39

I feel like I've been consumed by my sin at this point. And so it just, it's so heavy. And I confess to her.

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And when she tells her side of the testimony, she'll say, you know, she saw the death on my face, that I was repentant.

39:51

And I did not, you know, at some people, I've had brothers in my church that were in the same situation, but they chose, well, this just means that I'm gay and I'm gonna go live as a gay man, you know?

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And then they divorced their wife. Had that happen with some close friends in our church. And, but yet I don't believe that I'm gay.

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And I believe that God is good and that it's sin. And it just, and so she said that, you know,

40:22

God presented her sins on the cross and said that she could divorce me, that's the law, but that she won't be under the law of grace.

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She'll be bringing her relationship under the law. And she felt the weight of her own sins.

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And she said, no husband of mine is gonna, you know, perish under the, you know, under the sin. And so she forgave me and received me back.

40:45

And, you know, I told you about when, when the elders laid hands on me and I felt the

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Holy Spirit overwhelm me like fire. And when

40:56

Rhoda said that she forgave me and that she received me back, it was the first time in my life that I felt mercy, that I was given something that I didn't deserve.

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And I felt the oil flow over me and like the death wash off of me and that mercy of God come back.

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And, and it was so tangible, so real. And, and in that, you know,

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I go to prayer again with, with my brother, Jimmy. So she receives me back and I'm, I feel alive.

41:42

I feel that sin washed off of me. And when scripture says, you know, should

41:47

I divorce an unbelieving wife? You know, well, who do you know that your spouse might actually sanctify?

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You know, you may be sanctified through your spouse. I think that was that moment where she extended mercy and grace to me.

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Her in Christ did that and I received it. And in praying with my brother,

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I decided to go on a sabbatical into a prayer room. And I sought

42:17

God and I said, God, all this Christianity that I've done for 20 years has led to me cheating on my wife.

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I said, there's something missing in my faith and I don't know what it is. And I don't know how to get out of this.

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You have to lead me in this because I, you know, in spite of the church loving me,

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I'm not set free. And, and I just, the word says that you'll be set free. So you have to show me.

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And I ended up reading, finding a book called A Covenant With My Eyes by Bob Sorge.

42:57

And I read that and I took a covenant with God and said, God, when I see men that I know

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I'm attracted to, I'm gonna look away, but it's by your power that I'm not gonna look back.

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The double take thing, I haven't ever been able to figure that one out. And I said, God, you have to be the one to keep me from that sin.

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And I wrote on the darrenmelblog .com. I wrote my covenant out and my experience with that.

43:28

And I said some other things, you know, I said in my covenant that when I'm watching TV and something comes on, I'm gonna look away and turn the channel or whatever, you know, just some practical stuff.

43:37

And God, by his grace, cold turkey'd me from porn, from the gay porn there.

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And what I since learned is that the porn was poisoning the well.

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Jesus' well is deep, but I was poisoning it with this. You know, when scripture says that your eyes are the gateway and if you let in the darkness, how great is that darkness?

44:02

That really is what the pornography addiction was. And so God set me free of that by his grace.

44:11

And in the next year, and it was one year that my brother invited me to go to the gym with him and work out.

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And, you know, I told him, well, I'm kind of scared of that because that's where I used to pick up guys.

44:27

And, you know, that's lust galore. And he's like, no, you know, God will protect you.

44:33

And, you know, God will keep you and you're with me. And so for a while, it was like just staring at my brother and like not looking at any other guys, but then to see him walk up to other guys and say, hey, you know, your chest has got really good definition.

44:50

You know, how are you doing that? And it was kind of, it took me aback.

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Like he's complimenting a guy and he's not hitting on him and just watching him interact with other guys and then getting comfortable in the gym.

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And then there was this visceral time when he came up and I was, I don't know what exercise

45:14

I was doing, but he grabbed me on my shoulder and he says, no, you're using the wrong muscle. You know, you need to use it here.

45:20

And the flashback to, you know, guys rubbing my shoulder, you know, hitting on me kind of thing.

45:27

And knowing that he's not hitting on me, but he's touching me. And then realizing that the enemy had used my body and touch in the wrong way and being set free instantly of that.

45:42

And then seeing my body change and realizing in the next year that God brought me to the wound of the girls in middle school.

45:55

When I tried to take a girl out on a date to the dance, I was so excited. I got Kate. She said yes.

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And I went pick up Kate at her house, walking over to her house, right? She lived across the street from the school.

46:08

So I walk over to her house. I wait in the den. The girls are getting ready. And then they come down, three girls, total mean girl.

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And they cornered me and said what a joke it was that I thought that Kate would go to the dance with me, that no girl would ever date me.

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You know, I was just this queer kid, not queer, but, you know, gay or however they said it, that I wasn't a boy that any girl would ever date.

46:31

Like God brought me back to that and showed me how I had agreed with them that no girl would ever date me.

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I made a vow and a belief with them. And so I had to forgive them and break that vow over me that I made.

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I conscious vow. And then the boys in gym class for the longest time, he swings like a girl, kicks like a girl, throws a ball like a girl.

46:57

You know, when we pick teams, I'd be the last one and they'd huff and puff about, oh, we got Darren on the team.

47:02

And then the teasing in the locker room because I hit puberty later than everybody else, you know, oh, he's not a man.

47:09

You know, he'll never be a man. And just the relentless body shaming just destroyed me.

47:16

And so I had to forgive them and then going to the gym with Jimmy. I mean, I know this sounds ridiculous,

47:22

John, but when I could flex my chest, that's like this moment when

47:28

I realized I really am a guy and it's just a matter of my body. I was a twig and I couldn't do sports.

47:35

I was uncoordinated and you could see my ribs. I didn't have any muscle on me. You know, I was that twig of a boy.

47:42

And so the Lord going through each of the agreements and the sins and the bullying and forgiving and denouncing my agreement with the identity statements, because everybody called me gay in high school.

47:59

My best friend was like, no, he's not gay. You know, I'm like, I'm trying to date girls, but I do have this same sex attraction thing that I was acting out in pornography on the side, but that wasn't really my core identity.

48:10

It was just a behavior that I got into. And even the root of that, like asking

48:17

God, God, I remember wanting to date girls. Like where was the seed that was planted?

48:24

You know, among other things. And, you know, there was a seed, a lie that was planted.

48:30

And yes, in the gym, in the locker room, I had a boy who was probably, well,

48:37

I'm almost convinced was being groomed by a gay man or abused by a gay man, teach me things in the corner secretly that isn't appropriate for two boys to do together.

48:48

And that was a seed that was planted. And so Jesus, in that year, set me free.

48:55

He also brought me to a class of discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and that changed me.

49:05

Learning about grace and cheap grace versus costly grace.

49:10

And I had realized that there's something about the rinse repeat model that wasn't working for me, wasn't working to set me free.

49:20

And after about a year of being in the eye covenant and not having any problems with porn and experiencing change in my body and change in my mind and being able to look at men as brothers in the

49:32

Lord and not sex objects and experiencing a change in my desires,

49:38

I was praying about something. And I don't remember what it is, probably being angry or short fused or something.

49:44

I said, God, what book should I read to get over this? What covenant can I make to be victorious in this space?

49:51

And I felt like God brought up the scripture that said, or the Holy Spirit brought up the scripture that says, my grace is sufficient.

49:57

I was like, yes, I know that that's sufficient, but guide me to an area where I can get victory in this.

50:04

And God says, I felt like God told me, Darren, in reading a covenant with my eyes, you took a covenant with me to experience my grace, but my grace is like an ocean.

50:17

And that covenant was just dipping your toe in the ocean of grace to see if it was wet. And he said, the covenant that you're looking for is

50:24

Jesus Christ. He's the new covenant. He's the covenant for freedom that you're looking for.

50:31

And in that revelation, or God telling me that, in reading D .J.

50:36

Bonhoeffer at Coffin Discipleship, it all came together. And I realized that I was living in self -righteousness and self -control, not a fruit of the spirit, but an imitation of it.

50:53

And so in that, with my brother, we're praying and I'm sharing what

51:00

I'm sharing with you. And he's like, man, they don't teach us that in seminary. And it was just like this big revelation that we're transformed in Christ.

51:12

Like there is something there in grace that you don't have to sin.

51:19

And so that really set me on a path in the last several years of realizing that my

51:31

Christianity was on sand, was built on sand. And cheating on my wife was a test.

51:39

And it came and it washed my entire house away. And my prayer since that day is

51:45

God, as you reveal your truth in scripture to me, may

51:51

I build my house with the pillars on solid rock. Give me doctrines of truth that I can put on Jesus, like the solid rock, like that's it.

52:02

I don't wanna be washed away again. I'm terrified. And in 2019, having seen several people fall away, several things happen, being present voice, the voiceless and in the advocacy space of contending for the faith,

52:17

I was seeing things that weren't adding up scripturally.

52:23

And I started recognizing that there are wolves, that there are hirelings, that there are false converts, there are false teachers.

52:32

I came across Hebrews 6 and the fear of the

52:38

Lord started to grow in me. And the experience in the last four years has been a continual growth in Christ and a transforming of my mind that scripture is infallible, that the meme

52:59

Christianity that I had lived for 20 years was incredibly shallow.

53:06

And Jesus loves me and my zeal for the Lord is enough. And in this space of struggling with our identity,

53:16

LGBT, and having the enemy constantly accusing our community, deleting our community, canceling our community, big tech, legislators,

53:31

Congress people, denying that we even exist. It's hard enough to walk with Christ in this space where the church themselves are saying, well, you're gay, just don't do it.

53:45

And you've got the revoiced people. Yeah, can I cut in for just a second? Yeah, yep.

53:51

Because I wanna talk about this more, that the political angle and what's happening in greater evangelicalism.

53:57

But as I was listening to your story, I wrote a few notes down and it seems to me you can correct me if I'm wrong here.

54:04

So you imbibe the devil's lies. And the main lie was you're really not a man. You're not the person that God designed you to be.

54:12

You're something else. And that created a lot of confusion. And you got saved and you saw a way to be forgiven.

54:23

You were forgiven of your sin. But there was still, even with that, still an identity crisis going on and a tug of war between the devil and what you knew to be true that took place for years.

54:35

And that moment that you cheated on your wife, that was what broke your pride. Because it sounds to me like you were doing things, you were sinning, but it wasn't as bad as like the worst sin in your mind.

54:47

Like the worst sin would be cheating on your wife. And then when it happened, it was like you really needed grace at that point.

54:52

Like you saw your need for it even more, which as a Christian, I mean, I relate to this going through life.

55:01

Sometimes it's like a hike. It feels like you go to the hill of salvation. And then as you walk as a

55:07

Christian, you keep climbing to higher heights. And you almost think like, well, man, like this is so much greater grace as you compare it to an ocean, but this is a greater view, a vantage point than I had before.

55:20

And wow, that little understanding I did of what Christ had done for me, now I'm seeing it more.

55:26

And so you started climbing that and it was a put off, put on. You put off those lies and that identity.

55:35

You gave that to the Lord. You weren't gonna live in comfort with sin of pornography anymore. And then you put on.

55:42

And the interesting thing to me is part of the putting on wasn't just receiving Christ's grace as this abstract thing.

55:47

You said it was very tangible. It was actually learning how to be a man too. It was confronting directly the lie of the identity lie that you weren't really a man.

55:57

You confronted it directly. And part of that was going to the gym. And some people don't seem to understand this. It's not all the spiritual, physical, or connected.

56:05

It's not all this thing you do in your mind that I'm on a better path of sanctification because of this prayer

56:12

I prayed. There's actions and there's things in the real world we do that show that we have that faith and that commitment and Christ uses those things.

56:20

And I'm fascinated by that, by going to the gym and then gaining some physique and then learning from another man, this is how men relate to one another in a way that's brotherly and not sexual.

56:33

That was the put on part. And the motive, somewhere along the line, the motive wasn't, it became, it wasn't law.

56:43

It wasn't just that this is the right thing. Because that's what it seems like happened to you is initially when you said,

56:49

I struggle with this, people were like, well, this is the law. It's true, that's the law. Your motive became Christ. Your motive became, it's not about fulfilling some law that Christ has laid down in and of itself.

57:01

It's pleasing the master who wrote that law. That's what I'm seeing in this.

57:06

And I just think that it's helpful to hear because more and more as time goes on,

57:12

I think your story is not unique. There's a lot of people with that story. It doesn't get out as much.

57:17

And I think as time goes on, there's gonna be more of those stories from people with the coming from broken households, lots of confusion.

57:24

In fact, I don't have time to share it, but in seminary, there was a guy that I would go out to breakfast with, who

57:29

I met at the gym, who was homosexual. And I would share the gospel with him. And I remember he was so against it at first.

57:38

So like, I'm not gonna go to a church where they don't affirm homosexuality. I could never change.

57:44

And within like 24 hours, he's texting me. I've always wanted a wife. I've always wanted kids.

57:49

You know, he's telling me the truth and what's really down there, you know, and he's afraid to say it. And he didn't know what a man was.

57:56

It's so similar to what you're telling me now. I mean, he was asking me questions. At the time,

58:01

I thought this is really weird. You know, what kind of clothes do men wear? And I'm like, what? You know, questions

58:06

I never had to ask. But those are the, yeah, those are those identity things of, you know, trying to look at other men to take your cues, to figure out who am

58:16

I, what am I? And so you found out who you were in Christ, but also with the help of learning from another

58:26

Christian man and being accountable. And so anyway, that's what I'm getting from your testimony.

58:31

I think it's a beautiful thing. I think a lot of people could hear it who are Christians who've never had to confront some of these things and they can think, wow, look at all the mess.

58:37

Look at all the errors. Look at all the things you did wrong. Look at, and the thing is,

58:43

God, we all have those things. I wonder even how many people in the church who might have cookie cutter lives are looking at pornography, straight pornography, right?

58:52

Or looking or doing whatever the sin is that is not prominent, that you don't see the way they treat their wives or whatever the case is.

59:01

We all have sin. And this is the thing, at the end of the story, it's grace.

59:07

It is God's grace that's the motivating factor. Law isn't the motivating thing. It is the grace of God, who

59:12

Jesus is, and seeing ourselves the way he looks at us and not the way others look at us.

59:18

And so anyway, I just wanted to cap that off. If you have anything to add to that, please do. But I want to get into the political stuff now of how you see the church,

59:27

I shouldn't say the church, but many Christian organizations, quote unquote, failing, failing to confront this properly.

59:38

Yeah. I just want to throw one sentence in, is that God provided a male friendship, a healthy one, as brotherly love would be concerned.

59:56

And because I had that as a contrast to what I had with my boyfriend and comparing it to scripture, it really opened my eyes to what

01:00:06

God designed for me, and that I had exchanged that for a lie. And so now

01:00:12

I have what is true. When everybody told me, oh, Darren, you're so sensitive, you're just gay, you don't do what the guys tell you to do, because you know it's wrong.

01:00:26

Like calling me gay for that is actually, God put it on my heart to love people and to relate to people how

01:00:34

God wants us to relate from a young age. Like it just, it was there and the world labeled it that way.

01:00:41

But then having a brother come alongside of me and say, no, this is actually, you can relate that way.

01:00:48

That really was what changed me through Christ, as one of the things.

01:00:55

This has been part one. Part two will drop tomorrow, and we will talk in that particular podcast more about the political angle, what's going on in evangelical churches, the differences between different ministries that claim to be tackling this issue, and then where real hope can be found for someone who does struggle as a