"Christ’s Voice to the Sexually and Relationally Broken" Sunday, September 30 2018 PM

that we are a ministry here in Oklahoma City. First stone, we've been around for quite a while.

We're gonna look at just a few things up here about us. And so about our ministry, and we've been around for a long time.

Since 1976, we were founded by a mom and dad,

Frank and Peg Rogers, here in Oklahoma City. And we got our name from the

Gospel of John, chapter eight verses, well, the whole passage, but verse seven specifically says, let him who is without sin cast the first stone, right?

So you saw that there, and this is the story about the woman who was caught in the very act of adultery.

And why that's important in that particular passage of scripture is because of what Jesus did in that story.

And it's really pretty amazing what he did in that story, in that he, if you remember five chapters before, he said that he did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that there would be salvation through him.

And so he's wanting to draw the center of the sexual center to himself.

So in this story, the religious crowd are ready to stone this woman who was caught in the very act.

So picture this, she was probably thrown down at the feet of Jesus, probably with hardly any clothes on, if any, maybe a sheet thrown over, and her accusers, they knew her to be the center of the city, and they were testing him, which is ironic.

They knew her to be the sexual center, and probably some of those people actually knew her.

And so this is kind of the spirit in which Jesus was dealing with, and he said, you who are without sin, cast the first stone.

So when you think about that, you're thinking about really in the confines, in context of the church at large, and so much of the way that we treat people who are sexual centers, and yet we ourselves have sin.

But the interesting thing is a lot of people like to say, yeah, bro, don't judge me. You who are without sin, cast the first stone, but they take that meaning, lessening the actual grace and the holiness of God when actually in this place,

Jesus says, go and sin no more. And when we see that in a couple of other places,

Jesus says, go and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you. So that's really the picture of first stone in that this mom and dad in 1976 came to the church to get help, and they couldn't get help, and so they formed this ministry.

And at that time, there was a whole network of ministries. We have been full -time since 92.

And then in 2012, we formed a new network because of the former network called

Exodus really, unfortunately, segued from hyper -grace teaching into gay

Christianity. And so those of us that were more, the mature ministries formed a new network that was gonna stay sound on the biblical principles of the word of God that brings transformation and grace.

So that's who we are. And so we are a gospel ministry, and that is really the main focus is that we wanna offer the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives grace to the humble that brings transformation.

So that is really who we are as a ministry. And so we have some services. We offer discipleship, pastoral care, group ministry, public teaching.

And then we back here, we have some tables back in the back where there's free literature and information sign up.

And there's just like that table back there. And there's also a book table back there that has lots of books for sale.

We have an awesome website with all of this and much more.

So if you are in social media, some of you probably don't even wanna do social media, but some of you may.

What's really nice is on every article, you can send that to people very quickly and get information to people.

And we have this new resource, it's a USB drive. We didn't bring them, but we do have them.

We'll have them here next week. For those of you who like computers or computer tech, and would rather have a nice little

USB drive rather than a bunch of literature, we have that. So all of our articles up through May.

And what's nice about that USB drive is it's packed full of videos as well. I have a blog and then

I have a webpage for the book that just came out called

Freedom Realized, is the book I authored. And in this book, the reason for this book is in 19, actually, yeah, thinking 2012, 19, it was 20, 2012.

In 2012, the Exodus leader started saying publicly that nobody changes and you can't change.

Well, that was pretty infuriating for those of us who've actually experienced change and knew hundreds of people that had changed.

And one day I was sitting at my desk and I felt like a tap from the Holy Spirit. It's like, well, what about those 1 ,200 client folders in storage?

And we had actually, for the last 25 years, kept the intact files of people that we actually spent time with.

And that didn't include just people coming and going. So we had over 25 years of people.

So I thought, well, we'll put together and contact as many as we can. And so that's why this book was written.

This book also has 16 other leaders that contributed and it has my story in it and it talks about the

Exodus implosion. And if you get that book tonight, you also get this one free.

And this is a testimonial story about a woman who was raised by gay parents and really the impact of homosexual parenting in her life.

It's a pretty riveting story. So from that report, we ended up actually making it in its own book because it's all in color and this actually acts as a really powerful tool.

All of these are in ebook and PDF as well. So you can get those on our website and that's, you can either go to First Stone or freedomrealize .org.

And there's a fact sheet back there and later on, you'll see a few of the facts that I'll be talking about that are on that sheet.

Pretty amazing stuff. So we wanna talk about understanding homosexuality tonight.

And I think, and hopefully you have a handout and this is where we're gonna start on the handout.

And so we're gonna look at what it is. Can one be free? We do that through testimony, but also the word of God.

And then as one born homosexual, we do this through teaching, scripture, psychological perspectives, really just some common sense truth based upon what the

Bible teaches. And we wanna underscore giving you guys hope through this entire presentation.

So starting off with my little story, which was started in 1983 for me as far as salvation.

But before that, about a year and a half before that, the Lord intervened in my life in a way that made me think about heaven and hell, which was the death of my little brother.

In 1981 on Mother's Day, May 10th, we got word that Christopher had died suddenly in Germany.

He was in the army and he was 18 months younger than me. And it turned my life upside down in that I was just,

I was full of grief. I was living as a gay man. I had lived gay identified for eight years from 14 to 22.

At this time I was just turned 21. And I was just heartbroken.

And what it did is it started causing me to cry out, God, I wanna know the truth.

I wanna know the truth. Well, speed up about a year and a half later, and I am in a little trailer house in Nekoma Park, Oklahoma.

And these people are speaking about Jesus in ways I had never heard before. I was raised in a

Catholic home, in a parochial school, so I heard a lot about Jesus, heard a lot about the

Bible, heard lots of things about God, but did, no?

Okay. Anyhow, so I was there in this home and these people were talking in ways

I'd never heard. Jesus was coming and going out of their lives. Jesus was answering their prayers.

And I thought, these people are nuts, you know? And then I found out, oh, their assembly of God, they really are strange.

And so, but I was sitting there in their house and they were witnessing to their sister.

They weren't even talking to me. And I heard this voice, my heart started racing as I heard this voice and it said, if you do not accept me tonight, you're going to die.

And I thought, man, I need to know people. I need to know Jesus like these people.

And I thought, these people know Jesus in a way I'd never met. I'd never understood.

I never had my prayers answered like these people are talking about. I need Jesus. Well, I gave my life over to the

Lord that night, this man that was there. I said, I need to know Jesus like you did. And he said, brother, the

Lord is calling you. It's like my heart was pounding and I'm hearing this voice inside of me.

If you do not accept me tonight, you're going to die. I'm thinking the Lord is calling me. And so he said, well, let me pray with you.

I'm going to pray the sinner's prayer with you. And he prayed the sinner's prayer with me. And I didn't even quite understand what all was taking place, except as a

Catholic, I used to always see the crucifix every Sunday, right? This time I saw the living

Christ on the cross, suffering and dying. And all my sin was coming out of me and into him.

And I believed for the first time. And so on the way home that night, this girl

I was with, she said, well, does this mean you're not going to be gay anymore?

And I said, you know, I guess it means whatever Jesus has for me. And that really struck a chord in me.

And then that night I went home and my parents had this big table

Bible from the Catholic church, from the Pope. I mean, the Vatican, literally blessed by the

Pope, sings this thick and big old thing. And I lugged it down into my bedroom, blew the dust off of it and lugged it in there.

And I prayed over this Bible and I was like, where do I go? It has all these extra pictures and all this extra stuff.

And it's like you could barely find the Bible in the midst of the Bible because there was so much stuff. But I flipped open that thing and it literally landed on, just like you just flip open your

Bible like this. And literally it landed on Leviticus. And I had prayed over it and I said,

God, does the Bible anywhere say anything about this? And there it was in Leviticus 18.

My eyes fell down and it said laws on sexual immorality. And my eyes fell right down on this verse.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.

I looked at that word abomination and I thought, well, that doesn't sound very good. That sounds pretty bad.

And I was like, wow, it really does say that. And then I noticed that it also said it again in chapter 20 in verse 13.

And it says, if a man lies with a male as he has lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.

They shall surely be put to death. And when I saw that, I was not very happy. I was actually kind of angry.

Cause see, I had bought into the lie that I was born this way. And I thought, wow, how can

I be born this way? And this say the exact opposite. And the priest over here in my parents' parish was coming on to me at my sister's wedding reception and telling me later that it was all the more reason after my brother's funeral that God loved me and all the more reason to come to mass.

And I'm like, this isn't fitting together. And I made a choice that night to believe this.

And you know, for the last 35 years, I've made a choice to believe this over the traditions and doctrines of men.

And so I really did surrender my life to the Lord that night. I got down on my knees and I said,

God, I don't know how to change, but if you'll change me, I'll change. And that started off my walk with the

Lord. And I've been walking this thing out. And one of the passages of scripture that's dear to all of us on First Stone is

Second Corinthians chapter one. You don't need to turn there. It just basically says from about verse three down, blessed be the

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the God of all comfort. And he is the

God who comforts those that are in affliction. And in those places of affliction, it causes us to be able to comfort those as well.

And so that's what we do in this ministry is our heart is to comfort people with the same comfort that we have received.

Now you'll see on here that it's so important for if we're gonna have an understanding about homosexuality, we have to know that the

Bible actually does speak to this issue. And you can see on your handout that there are a few verses in the

Old Testament, which a lot of times people just will point to Leviticus. But what we need to do is we need to look at the beginning, right?

And it's imperative that you as believers actually know the scriptures and believe the scripture, right?

Because if you're not equipped with the word of God, then you're not gonna be able to help people. But you have to have this belief system core in you so that you can, with authority, tell people the truth.

So the word of God is very important. And I learned that in that very night,

I saw that the law of God penetrated me and showed me that I was a sinner. And because I was a sinner,

I needed Jesus Christ. And in Galatians, Paul tells the Galatians that the law of God is a schoolmaster teaching us to come to Jesus.

And so the Old Testament scriptures are going to reveal that we are all sinners in need of the

Lord. But specifically on this issue, you can see that there's a lot of verses on this.

And we begin with the creation. The creation is foundation to this kind of ministry in giving identity and gender that God created us in His image, in the image of God.

He created them male and female, and it will never ever be anything other than that. And you'll see that that's so important in this day that we have so many lies that are coming against us with the message of orientation, that orientation is somehow legitimized, that somehow if you have feelings and desires, then that's part of who you are.

And yet the creation says that we're male and female. And of course, psychology gave us those words in the 1870s to kind of define desires and appetite sexually, but it's really about sexual brokenness.

So this foundation is very important. And then you can see that the rainbow, which

I think is interesting, the rainbow is a picture of a promise of God, right?

And a lot of people will talk about the rainbow and that the homosexual community have the rainbow and they've taken the rainbow.

And it's just not true. It's actually a six banner, six banner bands on their banner that represents man.

And it represents something that is not God's rainbow. God's rainbow has naturally, when you look at a rainbow in the sky, seven to 10 colors, and in heaven, it has millions.

Now, I think it's interesting that the gay community would have a six bannered flag that represents the rainbow in Genesis.

But folks, do you know what the rainbow is also a promise of? When you study your Bible, you also see that up here, that the next time that God judges the world, he's not going to judge it by water, but by fire.

Now, I hope that's a paradigm shift for you because it's heartbreaking for me. I didn't tell you this part of my story, but in 1983 in Oklahoma City, when he said, tonight, you're going to die.

Do you know that by the summer of 1983, we heard a terrible disease going through the hospitals?

It was called GRID, gay related immune deficiency. Do you know that within three years, half the people, after my wife and I got married, we got married in 1986, that summer, half the people that I knew in the gay community were dead.

So when I see this, I see destruction. I don't see something happy.

I certainly, it's not gay. My heart is broken when

I see that six bannered flag, and they actually call it the banner of pride.

Let that sink in for a moment. But God's word says that before destruction, pride comes.

So we see that the word of God, and what's amazing about this is the word of God.

I'm needing help. This thing is not wanting to move forward now. I don't know if my batteries or what.

Hello, can you move that forward for me? Is it

Earl? Edgar, the

Old Testament scriptures, if you see on your handout, let's just go there until we can get that to move forward.

Leviticus 18, 22 and 23. Now in context, the slide would tell you that in context, this is also so grievous to the

Lord because verse 22 doesn't stop the thought. Verse 23 is where the thought completes, and it's about bestiality.

And so when people, and even what's happening in the church is they're dumbing down the idea of homosexuality as just being normative as another orientation, but God looks at it as egregious, as detestable as bestiality, and that's usually not taught when this subject is taught, and I think it is important to address that to see.

Let me tell you, folks, I didn't really come into full repentance and find change until I saw that I was really worthy of hell and death, and until I dealt with my sin deeply did

I really find transformation. And then in Deuteronomy 23, all those verses through the end there, except for the

Deuteronomy 22 passage, deals with the idea of a male prostitute, or many of your versions of your

Bible would say cult, cult -like prostitution. And so the scripture really does deal with this thoroughly.

Every single place, the idea of two men in any way, and people would say, oh, but you don't understand the reason why

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is because they weren't hospitable and they weren't loving. And they'll go to the

Ezekiel passage and say that, but even in the Ezekiel passage, it specifically says they were haughty, full of pride, and because of that, they committed abominations before me.

They were full of themselves, self -centered. So when you see the passage in Romans 1, which

I have all the verses up there if we had them, in Romans 1, you gotta love technology when it works, right?

It's really great. So, but if you would go to Romans 1, love your word,

Lord. So Paul is speaking to the Romans, right?

And the Romans were pretty, we would consider them a pretty decadent society, would we not?

When you consider, when you think about those of you who actually know history, we know that Rome was full of decadence.

And so here's this epistle to the Romans, and it starts in verse 18.

It says, for the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifested in them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen and understood that they are made, even his eternal powerhead and Godhead, so they are without excuse.

In other words, nature itself, biology, innately, we are male and female, the way we are physically made to procreate as male and female, nature has already revealed this.

And we could get into a lot of the science and biology, and I'm gonna end with a little bit of hope with that in that regard tonight and next week.

But this is specifically saying that nature even reveals this. So we are without excuse,

I was without excuse. Verse 21, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God.

And one of the things that I think is really important to understand, I have never met anyone who is sexually broken or sexually perverse that had a grateful heart.

They were full of ungratefulness and became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they become fools.

Now, I'm gonna tell you something about the wrath of God. If you study the wrath of God in scripture, actually, it's being turned over to yourself and to the powers of darkness.

The wrath of God will allow you to believe in a lie. 1

Thessalonians, or 2 Thessalonians chapter two specifically says that.

So whenever I see the wrath of God, we're not talking about fire and brimstone falling down, we're talking about being turned over to a mind that believes what is false.

And he goes on to even say this, that they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools.

And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man.

Therefore, look at that, verse 24, God gives them over to the uncleanness of their lusts.

God is the one who allows this to happen into the souls. And why? Verse 25, you can see this right here.

It says, they exchanged the truth of God for, you know, your Bible say there, for the lie.

Do you know where the lie started? In Genesis. That's why Genesis, the

Genesis of the scripture is our beginnings and our foundation. The Genesis is this, hath

God really said? The lie is questioning, hath

God really said? And that's exactly what Satan is doing today with all of us. And today we have people that are saying, oh, this really isn't that big of a deal.

We should embrace gay Christianity and we should become welcoming churches.

As long as they don't act out, it's really okay. Everybody needs to have this. It's okay to have an identity.

And I'm telling you that is, that is an erosion that's taking place in the church. And they worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who's blessed forever.

For this reason, God gave them over to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature.

Likewise, the men also leaving the natural use of woman burned in their lusts, one for another, men with men committing that which is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due.

This is specifically talking about male, female, procreation, sexual activity between a man and a woman.

And gay people or gay theologians would try to explain this away and say, well, that was

Paul's mentality because he's a single guy and he just really didn't understand about gay love.

I'm telling you, that's a heresy. And we can see it so many other places in the scripture.

And there we are, all right, awesome. Let's try this again. So God gives them over to a debased mind.

God is the one. When I saw that, that put the fear of God in me. Do you know that the fear of the

Lord is the beginning of wisdom? It is the very thing that I know. And in my book, it's the shortest chapter in my book called

Coram Deo. Coram being in the presence of Deo, God, living in this way is what was the foundation for me to finally break free from my sexual addiction.

And every person I've ever ministered to, the only way they've ever gotten free is to have that.

So you can see that there's a lot of sin that goes on in Romans one, but the

New Testament is so clear on this, folks, and the Old Testament. Everywhere we see anything with sexual sin and idolatry that is practiced over and over, the scripture is very clear.

Anyone who practices these kinds of things shall not go to heaven.

I don't care if they prayed 10 prayers. I don't care if they have a membership in the local church.

The Bible says they will not go to heaven. Now let's look at it. In 1

Corinthians six, I think it's very interesting in this passage of scripture, there's a whole list of sins here, right?

But it says, do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, that's sex outside of marriage, nor what?

Adult, idolaters, that's loving anything outside of loving God, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites.

Those two words there, now I know a lot of people that they don't like New King James, or even

King James says abusers of themselves. I like this, you know why?

Because those two Greek words specifically mean a man receiving and a man giving, sodomy.

That's all it means. Now, gay theologians would try to twist that and say, well, that's not what it really means.

It means like a prostitute, or somebody who wants to have in a relationship with a child.

That's not what it means, folks. It just literally means, those two words, when you look at the

Greek, and the scholars will tell you over and over, it just means what it says, a homosexual or a sodomite.

One time I was in a big prison in Texas, and I was testifying, and you know, if any of you know about prison world, there are the people that think themselves not as homosexuals, but they practice the behavior, and they call the men that they use, they're little punks, and they have other words that they use, and they don't consider themselves.

So one time I was preaching, and there was like 7 ,000 men. It's the biggest prison in Texas. I said, by the way, this is what it means, and the warden just, and it was like a pin, you could hear a pin drop in that place.

And the warden said, I was so glad you didn't start a riot. It was like, because it felt pretty intense in that room.

But the reality is, is the word of God is forever settled in heaven, and we have to agree with it.

But see, it says here, those who practice such things, I didn't write it, folks, they will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But it's not, that's not the only place. And so, oh, and such were some of you, such were some of you, and some of you in here, such were some of you, but you have been washed.

You believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit comes to put you on a trajectory of holiness.

I'm so grateful for that, aren't you? For every one of us need the salvation of our Lord. So you can see that sexual impurity is forbidden throughout the entire scripture.

All sexual uncleanness, and anyone that practices those things, it's saying they don't go to heaven.

Now, you can see that in these verses, and so that's why I wanted you to print them, wanted you to have them.

You go home and you study them in your Bible. And you look at this, it literally says that.

And one of my favorites has been the Colossian passage and the Ephesians passage. You can know with certainty in Ephesians five, look at this.

In Ephesians five, for this you know with certainty that no one who practices these things, fornication, sexual immorality, sexual uncleanness, are greedy idolater.

It goes on to say, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. It's very clear.

What did we say was the beginning of a firm foundation of the beginning of wisdom? What? The fear of the

Lord. It's the love of Christ that compels us, but without the firm foundation of the fear of the

Lord, you don't have much wisdom. So it's important that you see this in the Bible. And isn't it very interesting at verse six, it would say these words, do not be deceived.

You know why? Because every single place in the Bible where it says do not be deceived is where we're being deceived right now.

Every place. It's amazing. First Timothy is revealing that the law of God is good, that the law of God does this work, and it actually says that in the last times in first and second

Timothy, Paul was addressing Timothy as a young preacher and telling them that men would be lovers of self, lovers of pleasure, and warning them that this would be happening in the last days.

And then we have the Jude passage and the revelation passages, which specifically cries out that these are reminders.

First Corinthians chapter 10, it also says is a reminder, a reminder of these things.

And I'm gonna go ahead and just skip through this because we're running out of time, but these people are creeping into the church and some unnoticed, and they are perverting the grace of God by saying grace is just kind of this magical covering, and you just believe and you've got your ticket punched.

And they're turning the grace of God into lewdness or the ability to practice sexual sin.

And I'm telling you folks, this is the warning right here. Look what it says they do. They deny.

They deny Jesus when they do this. That should be a sober warning because that's what happened with Exodus.

That's what happened with the leadership of these people that are promoting gay Christianity. And so we're gonna go ahead and it reminds you that even in this very

Jude passage, that specifically it was in context of even the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah of sexual uncleanness.

So now let's look at, and you can see the overall causes from a pastoral care, which a lot of times people when they are in the church and they've heard the scripture, they know the scripture, they're actually even more interested in this next part.

And that is that through the study of looking at some of the soulish part, the mind, the will, and the emotion, that you have perceptions, that people have a perception of the way that they think.

And because of that in their early childhood development, they will defensively detach.

And so when you have God -given personalities and temperaments like a boy who is kind of sensitive and artistic and emotional, he's labeled.

And now we're wanting to do this with all kinds of bizarreness and even pump our children with hormones and tell them that they can even transition their gender.

It's tragic what's happening in our culture. But a lot of times, and this is true in my story and you'll hear it in these people's story, that there's gender confusion and trauma that takes place in early childhood development.

I was sexually abused at six, at 10, at 13, and had terrible things that happened to me.

And my dad was all over the place and he wasn't there in my most formative years between zero and five and so I was over -feminized with having an older sister that actually kind of took care of me.

And so this was very true in my story so that when dad came into the picture, I was defensively detached.

I had a wall. I detached from my dad and this is what happens with so many people that deal with brokenness in their relationship with their parents.

And then this next part, well, on your sheet, if you'll turn here, in this next part, you see family history, sins of the forefathers, family background, the arrested emotional development.

In this part here, you're arrested in your emotional development when traumas and things happen.

It's like a guy trying to develop in his psyche as male and be good with male, but he's arrested.

So then when puberty comes along and he is looking at other males, he doesn't feel like them and so he is arrested in his development emotionally and now he starts comparing himself and now he finds himself attracted.

And that's because there wasn't the mentoring of the soul and the resolving of the conflict and the brokenness.

And of course, now we have these new social norms, the lowering. If you look on your sheet, you can see the causality and I'm gonna have

Laura Lee, who is our Director of Women's Ministries, come up here and explain point four of the second part.

And she is our Director of Women's Ministries. But before we go there, you can see it, that all of these areas, the absent father, the hostile or angry or being scarred by this relationship, the rejection, the ambivalence, the physical abuse, no affirmation of healthy masculinity.

In divorced homes, this is going on rampantly. This place where, bottom line, because of your arrested emotional development, you don't add up.

You're broken inside your soul and you don't add up. And it's just, you feel so powerless against being able to confront this thing where I'm supposed to feel normal and I have all these unresolved things inside my soul that actually need to be addressed.

Lack of mentorship. Strong feminizing influences in the male's lives.

We see this very consistently. And they detach from other healthy male relationships.

Same thing with females. Strong masculine influences and they detach. Mother wound, broken view of femininity.

This is both in male and female on point four, the first section. So you feel that femininity is unsafe.

There's manipulation, control, gender bashing. You see all these root problems here that causes the soul to say,

I can't connect that way, so I'm gonna connect this way, which is actually familiar with so many of us with over 55 % in this survey, but in other surveys, 60 to 80 % of men and women who were sexually abused as children.

Do you think that might have some causality? And now that we're giving this idea to the

California schools from K to 12, we're going to teach them that homosexuality is normal.

This is what's happening in our public school systems. So I'm gonna let

Laura pick up from here in dealing with female homosexuality.

This one? Okay, so I'm saving my testimony for next week, but along with all those other scriptures that Stephen spoke about, specifically naming homosexuality as a sin,

I did not identify my various issues through that lens.

I didn't ever call it anything, but I was living exclusively in homosexuality.

I think part of the reason that I never labeled it anything is I was never forced to label it anything.

The culture now will not tolerate that. They're trying to help kids identify as something early, maybe even early as preschool or kindergarten, but the

Lord did use the scriptures also to minister to me. Well, where I didn't identify with that word homosexual throughout scriptures, the scriptures clearly condemned the behavior of my life, and it was convicting.

In Ephesians 5, 11, it says, "'Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, "'but instead even expose them, "'for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things "'which are disobedient, due, and secret.'"

And my heart just burned with that truth. I was like, this is me.

Early in my Christian discipleship, I memorized 2 Thessalonians 1, 8 and 9, dealing out retribution to those that do not know

God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, and these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of God and from the glory of his power, and I was frightened out of my mind by that truth.

If I didn't know him, that would be one thing, but to not obey him also got me.

It was a double whammy to my heart, and I was convicted. And in 2

Thessalonians 2, it talks about people who did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved, and because of that, deluding influences come into their minds, and I recognized myself in those things, but ultimately, it was the word of God in Hebrews chapter four that got me, which says, the word of God is alive and active and sharper than any two -edged sword and piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joint and marrow, and it's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, and everything is open and laid bare before his eyes with whom we have to do.

Since then, we have a great high priest who's come through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confessions, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but one who is tempted in all ways as we are yet without sin.

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, and there receive mercy and grace to help in our time of need.

The word of God does have the ability to penetrate the heart, and it doesn't have to be just those verses.

You know, there's such a pushback about the obvious verses, which we want you equipped to know that they say what they say, but you know, the whole of the scriptures from Old Testament through New Testament still has a sexual ethic by which our culture is condemned, and by which my heart was condemned, and it called me to salvation.

In the issue of female homosexuality and family dynamics, we have mother and daughter issues, but particularly what happens when there is a breach in early mother -daughter bonding.

That earliest relationship for all of us is with our mother, but for girls, that is a lifetime bond, and when there is a breach in that place, it can leave a door open for homosexuality.

In father -daughter relating, sometimes it's absent father like Stephen talked about, greater identification in the father and with his interest and with his way of living.

That's not that it's uncommon, but when it comes following a breach with mother, it becomes a greater issue.

We also have to take into account what happens if there was abuse in the daughter -father relationship.

Also, girls being more intuitive can witness the parents' marriage or the mother's relationships, and they can form really strong views about the safety of being in interpersonal relating with the opposite gender.

I think we have to look at what gender rejection means for women. It means sometimes that just as I find, if something comes in and causes a breach in relationship with mom, sometimes in that defensive detachment, you can push back and reject the same gender and refuse to find your place beside her.

So for me as a girl, my rejection of mom for a few reasons, but my rejected of mom caused me to actually push toward relating with my dad more closely.

And actually mom lost her voice with me for many years. Judgments, internal judgments for one, am

I good enough as a woman? Do I make it? Am I as good of a girl as any other girl? Do I have my place among the women in my world?

Judgments like inner vows. Anytime we find ourselves, and you too, because I think it's a human thing,

I will never do that. I will never relate to them again. I will never say, I will never spend any time with that person.

But that inner vow, which is sourced in unforgiveness, kicks the door open to bitter, bitter judgments.

And they're hard to heal. In our culture now, feminism or feministic ideologies can cause distortions in gender.

And I would also say recently, we all witnessed the Me Too. Did you all see, who saw the

Me Too campaign that came through? It was women who were injured in their relationships and they say, okay,

I didn't have my part as a woman, or I didn't have my part because, because I was a woman, that Me Too campaign has actually caused a lot of women to collect pain into their hearts regarding their sexuality and feeling unsafe.

And finally, I would say, negative and harmful experiences with males. And more often than not,

I see women go into exclusive same -sex relationships, following a broken relationship with a guy that we're dating, or the lack of pursuit.

We have a culture now where, where boys don't pursue the girls for honor, for honor's sake or at all.

So there are a lot of people, for example, my age at 57, who've never married, and they were never pursued, not even once.

They never had somebody who was a serious suitor. And to do that in honor, it doesn't mean guys are supposed to come after girls or whatever, but it's just what it means to be pursued and find your place with others in your culture and that matters.

Peer pressure, I think, is something I'm seeing a lot in my office. That early pressure to identify as something.

So women, young women a lot of times will have an identification that says, you know,

I'm kind of open. I love who I love, especially when they're really young. And they haven't got a formed view of their sexuality.

And there's a lot of pressure to name who you are according to these sexual roles, particularly bisexual or lesbian.

And that's really confusing to preteens and to young girls. It's very, very confusing to them.

And so they want to leave their options open. But leaving those options open because they don't have the sophistication to process something like that, it's creating peer pressure.

And a lot of girls are coming out and saying, because I love my best friend exclusively,

I think I'm a lesbian. And everything gets behind them immediately and says, let's pursue that.

Which causes me to add on emotional dependency. Just a word about emotional dependency.

With that, I'm not talking about fidelity in your friendship or loyalty or honor or respect, but I'm talking about an idolatrous place of relating with our friends.

And women are very prone to this. Not that men aren't, but women can be prone to this. Having a best friend, but it can produce exclusivity, sometimes even to cutting out their husbands, cutting out their boyfriends, cutting out other friendships.

And that emotional dependency can be a hotbed when it comes to bringing sexual arousal and deeper interest, sexual interest.

And so emotional dependency or what we would call relational idolatry is a factor. So we're gonna finish up here with the causality.

If you look on your sheet there, you can see that the .5,

which is pretty common when we think about anyone dealing with sexual distortion, is there's going to be all of these places, if inroads, of bringing distortion to the brain.

What's interesting about this is now that we have some science about how pornography physically affects the brain structure.

It changes the brain structure. And how much more so if somebody is now not just looking at pictures, but they're adding to it by either using clothing, fetish behavior, meeting up with people, chatting, doing interrelating in video.

It is so formative to the brain. This is happening with all this technology in the hands of our youth.

No wonder there are more and more people that are saying, I think I might be gay, or I think

I might be, you know, I wanna try being a transgendered person.

So you have all of this abuse and these environmental effects that are coming in to bring such distortion to the brain.

And of course, when you're molested, you're gonna have, this is places of trauma and hurt or rape.

And like I mentioned, the percentage is really high in our ministry.

And of course, now they're saying one in four or one in three females, one in four and one in five males are sexually molested.

This is pre -pubescent years. This isn't even numbers at post -pubescent.

We're dealing with an epidemic in our country of sexual sin and perversion. It's growing rampantly.

And if we don't get a revival, it is going to continue to ramp up to where just like in California, they were trying to pass a law to actually make it illegal to do what we do in ministry.

Thank God, they decided to pull it off the table, but they're bringing it back in January. And we have people here locally that have their target on First Stone Ministries.

And they're demanding, they've got all the signatures at OU and an OU law professor to bring legislature to our legislators here in the state capital to formulate some kind of law that bans what we do, at least to minors.

It's really sad what's happening. Did say, digress a little bit, but let's look at some environmental factors on the temperament and the personality.

You see, if there's not the physical care, the touch, the relationship, there's so much in rejection.

And you'll hear in Jim's story and our stories that so much of us have dealt with such deep ridicule and bullying and identity conflicts of who we are in our growing up.

And this is true of every person I've ever ministered to that has dealt with homosexuality at varying levels.

And so, when you think about biblically, one of the main things that we need is self -acceptance and who we are in Christ.

And here, we have deep places of shame and darkness and the acceptance of who a person is.

And so, ridicule brings fear and doubt and the bullying. Bullying is real.

I remember in eighth grade, they followed me home and beat me. Black, you sissy, you queer.

And I went home with two black eyes and my dad was a Navy boxer. He said, well, I sure hope they look a lot worse than you do and no comfort.

And I was so broken. It was like, I'm just nothing. I'm so bad. I'm so broken. I'm such a faggot.

That's the way I felt and thought about myself growing up. Thank God for grace and the power of the

Holy Spirit to change the internal world and change me. I've been married now for 32 years, going on 33 years and three adult children and four grandchildren.

It's amazing what God can do. But if you're sensitive and artistic, you don't think you add up, right?

And if you're a female and you need to be rough and tough and tumble, then you're somehow, you don't wanna give into the feminine side because that would mean you're weak, just like what

Laura was saying. And so, you reject femininity. And males that are dealing with it enter into the feminine side of the creation, which actually are both good attributes, women that are strong and leading.

We don't wanna dumb that down. And we don't want men who are sensitive and artistic to feel like that they can't be, but both need mentoring in the good of who they are as gendered beings, right?

And so, this is part of the problem, is the place of arrested emotional development and having all this identity conflict and places of deep, deep ways of how they feel about themselves, how you feel, how

I feel. And psychology says, that's the main thing. How do you feel, right?

This is the lie, because how you feel about yourself is very fickle. And then how you see yourself, your mental picture needs to be based upon the truth rather than what the world is saying.

And yet, these two items are the things that are hitting people the most in this confusion.

So how you see yourself and how you see yourself mentally and how you feel about yourself, when in fact, what we really need is to have this, and that is acceptance.

And acceptance comes through knowing who you are in Christ, and you begin to really believe in the promises of God, and you build in that place, which means pastoral care.

And that's what we do at First Stone, a lot. And sometimes it's laborious. For some people, it's several years.

And then this area that's pretty actually more profound than people realize with adoption in dealing with places of rejection, because you never feel like you're good enough.

And people, if you talk to adopted people, they're always have doubts and fears in the back of their mind about who they are, where they came from, till they get some of those things resolved.

It's just like grief. And grief, love technology when it works.

When you're grieving, you need to talk it out and talk it through. And that's what we do.

We call it talk therapy or talk counseling. People think we're taking people down in a basement and shocking them or something.

I mean, it's crazy some of the stuff that's in the news, the conversion therapists, it's like ridiculous.

And of course, then these, I'm just gonna leave that alone, the peer pressures that are coming.

And there is a lot of peer pressure in schools today. I mean, I was talking to somebody last year and they were saying that in their school, well, actually it was two years ago, we actually helped this young man.

And he came to us saying, I am gay and I'm not changing to come all the way to Jesus.

But some of the people he was hanging out saying, you know, you can choose whatever you want, just kind of figure it out and do it in an

Oklahoma school. This is here in Oklahoma. This isn't the East Coast or West Coast. And so one of the big things that we'd like to do, and we're gonna be wrapping some things up here.

And Jim, I'm gonna truncate your testimony. I want Joseph to come up and share. We wanna minister hope through the power of testimony.

And I want you to, if we can get the technology to work, I want you to see some pictures and some things.

We have so much hope to give you because people and their lives, they change and people change.

This is Joseph Teason. He's been with our ministry now for 20 years. And he's our administrator.

And I'm just excited that he's gonna share a little bit about what the Lord has done in his life. Hello. So I was born into a family of three older siblings.

My mom was a homemaker, my dad a wheat and cattle farmer in Western Oklahoma. We attended church every time the doors were open.

There was faithfulness to work, faithfulness to church, and family values, strong ethics in my family.

But while having strong values, a relational gap brought great disappointment to me.

Before school age, my father expressed the word stupid and disgust over something that failed to work to his benefit.

Seeing an opportunity, Satan caused this word to pierce my heart. I then took on an identity that was never meant to be.

Anytime my work with my dad went poorly, I felt the sting of the words, you're stupid, ringing about in my mind.

I grew angrier with my father. In fact, I hated him. So birth order, being that I was born last, age gaps between my siblings and I, where my siblings went to school later in high school, contributed to how little

I got to know them growing up. The brother I was around most teased me for not being physically strong enough to do certain farm tasks.

Time with family was precious to me, but it was difficult to come by. Being cut off from quality time with people was met with great anger in my own soul.

I needed my dad's help through puberty, but now time was spent on more

Bible studies and church events in addition to all the farm work. An internalized hatred of self and a growing rebellion against those who loved me served as a perfect on -ramp to pornography addiction as early as 10 years old.

Increasingly, I looked to the men in these magazines as examples of physical strength and confidence.

Apart from my time in porn and alone in my thoughts, the devil reminded me of how unsatisfactory my mind, how

I thought, and my body were. Trying to repair my own brokenness, I engaged in sexual exploration with male schoolmates.

I even went through a time where I tried on mom's makeup and I was heavily addicted in masturbation.

Instead of facing challenges in life and school, I retreated to pornography and fantasy.

Scripture has always been at work in dealing with my rebellion and doing so in both, or God was doing this in firm and loving ways.

I had the witness of Scripture in my spirit against my sinful activities. Matthew 5, 27 and 28, with my strain of temptation reads, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a man with lustful intent has already committed adultery with him in his heart.

God was also promising me that he would bring me into a place of healing from all my brokenness.

Through the words of the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 36, a promise was extended to me.

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Hardened from the sin of unforgiveness, coveting, idolatry, unthankfulness, I needed a heart of flesh and a new spirit.

Cultivating agreement with God's word has helped in repenting. Wisdom is gained by believing in God's warnings concerning sexual sin and idolatry.

I've also had to erect boundaries on my cell phone and computer so that it's really difficult for me to find stuff that I should not be seeing.

And while those barriers are helpful, really the ultimate help is allowing God to search my heart, see if there's any wicked way in me.

It has been painful to recount how I have been sinned against and how in turn I have actually sinned against others and walled myself off from other people.

He revealed my profound self -hatred, places of unforgiveness and agreements with lies.

In this process, I chose to forgive my father and as a result, through godly relationships,

I have learned to renounce the lies of your stupid toward the truth that I am capable of success.

And even if I really don't know how to do something, I can humble myself and ask for help while at the same time believing that I have worth given to me by God.

Set upon a foundation of God's love for me, he introduced a new reality into my life. Nine years ago, at the age of 40,

I decided I should have a complete medical checkup. At that appointment, my understanding of myself changed quite dramatically.

The doctor introduced a term called Klinefelter syndrome and asked me to go home and read about it.

And then in a series of the next few appointments, we decided that a genetic test should be ordered.

I feel this is gaining momentum. So I learned from this genetic disorder that I have the sex chromosome, an extra sex chromosome.

Men genetically are XY, women are

XX. Mine, XXY. And I am along with one out of 500 men who have this condition.

My body produces little testosterone, so I have to take a supplement.

Because of the low testosterone, that's why I didn't have strength and my brother would tease me for it.

The self -hatred that I had of my body was deeper than what I had learned in pornography and in comparison with other men.

It was a real self -hatred. Being genetically different, what do I call myself?

Am I supposed to identify differently than other men who are XY? Am I a eunuch?

Other folks having my condition call themselves intersex, genderqueer.

Actually, intersex is the I in the G -L -L -G -B -T -Q. Intersex is actually the letter in there.

My condition is actually an intersex condition, but my gender is male.

Some people with my condition are more prone to not identify as male or female and they use other pronouns, which you've seen in the news.

And some are transitioning to the female gender. Knowing the struggle of folks like me,

God makes a special promise in Isaiah 56. And no eunuch should ever say, I'm all dried up, worthless, and empty, for this is what the eternal has to say.

The eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, make good choices, and follow the terms of my covenant will blossom with my blessing.

I will give them within my house an enduring memorial and a name better than if they had sons or daughters, a name that will never be forgotten and will continue to inspire and will continue to inspire and encourage forever.

What is true about me is that I'm created male by God. I'm also a conduit of God's tender, powerful, and affirming grace for both myself and for others in the body of Christ.

I need God's grace to walk out my male gender according to his ways while building up my emotions according to his will for my life.

I need God's grace to deny false idols of masculinity, false idols of confidence, false idols of strength.

I act in an act of solidarity with the soundness of God's word, I am choosing to delight in being fearfully and wonderfully made in his image.

While I still find myself attracted to my same sex, I am not a homosexual, I am made in God's image and I was created for pure relationships with men and with women, thank you.

Amen, thank you, Joseph. So I threw that in there, we throw that in there, we like doing this because almost always the genetic, the science, and the born gay question comes up and you may or may not have received an index card.

If you've been hearing and thinking about questions that you have, you should write those on an index card.

Does anybody need an index card? Anybody, raise your hand. And I would ask that everybody, when we do pick up index cards, if you would, write something, a question so that it doesn't make anyone feel singled out about what they're doing with their questions.

So what we, we have several offerings and resources for you.

One of the questions that we want to answer, which would have been great to see it on the overhead, there's called

Differing Views of Doctrine, Identity, and Homosexuality. This is a sheet that we have back there and maybe we'll look at a little stronger next week, but I do want to say that we are continuing on this discussion next week.

So this is part one and part two, we'll be ministering more hope in how to help people.

But you can see here theologically in some of the erosion that's taking place in the church, from the gay

Christian side to actually what we would call a biblical worldview or Christian.

And those are on the back table and we'll look at that more. I do want to mention that the

Freedom Realize Book Project also, oh, there it is. So when you look at these people and what they believe, the gay

Christian over here believes God made me this way and they enjoy partnership. There's also people that are embracing the gay identity and they're choosing to be obedient with my unchanged affliction.

But the problem is is that they're still running with this crowd over here and they're more bending this way rather than influencing people this way.

And so the scripture is very clear about when we hang out with fools or foolish people or hang out with angry people, what are we gonna become?

Foolish and angry. And you can see who these people are and they're actually being propagated by actually people you wouldn't think that they would be in the church at large, the

Gospel Coalition and people, a lot of people like Wesley Hill and these people right here on this second column here,

Nate Collins is the guy who promoted this conference for the first time in July called

Revoice. And they're actually promoting that the church needs to embrace

LGBTQ people as a sexual minority. And this is happening all over the church and it's pretty disturbing.

And then on this side, on the other side of the paper, we walk with a lot of people on the conversion side.

They actually have a biblical worldview and we're on the transformation side.

We believe that surrendering your false identity and sinful behavior and we believe that our hope is in Christ for a truly transformed identity.

And that's who we believe and what the Restored Hope Network of Ministries. But what's disturbing is the conversion side, you have all these people in the

Gospel Coalition and all these people that are being used in Acts 29 and lots of Southern Baptist churches.

And these people are saying we're gay and Christian and many of them are not saying they're gay

Christian yet. Some of them sometimes do, it depends on who they're talking to. And so it's very confusing.

And all of these people do not believe that their inner world is going to change with their attraction.

That's a problem because the gospel and grace actually does promise transformation of the inner man.

Like Joseph said, he's on a trajectory, he has some struggle with same -sex attraction,

I do not. And I was a sexually addicted man as a homosexual, but I've been in my walk for 35 years.

And if we're gonna teach true discipleship and pastoral care, we're never ever to truncate hope and faith that brings transformation.

And what's disturbing is some of the people that I know, even very smart

PhD people that I could name lots of names and some of you would be very disturbed are landing here in this column rather than believing for more.

And so we can talk more about that and some of you may have questions. And I talked about my book and the importance of that.

And so the fact sheet is back there. And the quotes, 25 years over 1200 people we looked at, 185 filled it out, their lives were completely changed.

80 % of those that came to our ministry and found help gave us over 700 positive comments.

These ministries really work. And the testimonies of change of the people,

I mean, like this one on Loralee, my life has been absolutely changed by the work of First Stone Ministries.

And through discipleship with Loralee for more 10 years now, I am so changed it's hard to believe the old ways of believing, thinking, and acting out ever existed.

And there are story after story, you can see them here, I'm not gonna read them all.

First Stone changed my life to believe. First Stone changed my life, all these things, living waters, the staff and volunteers were extremely understanding and helpful.

The idea that we're torturing people is what's being communicated and yet we have 700 comments to the contrary.

I'm glad we have the facts because what's coming against the church in November with this new movie that's coming out called

Boy Erased is going to hit movie theaters across the country. It is a propaganda tool to say that what we do in ministry has to be shut down.

That Hollywood is saying because it has Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman that is slated to receive several

Oscars. It is the biggest propaganda machine that we've ever seen coming against not just our ministries but folks, the church, it's happening.

And yet we have evidence to the contrary that I'm actually a compassionate person. Contrary to what, if you read about me out there,

I'm really mean, but I do tell it like it is and I tell the truth and people are gonna find freedom and help and hope and I want you guys to see some of this to know that it's not just about us, it's about hundreds if not thousands of other people that really have found change and freedom.

If you listen to the news out there, you'd think no one does and we need to stand as Christians to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ to change lives.

It's amazing what we have seen, what we have got to see and you gotta see this last statistic.

66 to 88 % of those who responded believed that support groups were great. 88 % loved our pastoral care, 55 % already told you were molested, but this on 92, this is the bottom one, 92 to 88 % when they first came were sexually addicted but guess what happened after at least one year of ministry?

They found freedom. After one year of ministry, 72 to 73 % found freedom.

Folks, it works. Did you know that these numbers are much better than AA, NA and SA?

These ministries work, our ministry works and I wanted you guys to have this and know this because you guys need to know that not only us but now the

APA is saying this. Look at this, this just came out in July of this year that actually mirrors my report.

Look at this, 76 to 77 are on a trajectory of exclusively homosexual, mostly heterosexual, somewhat heterosexual and equal but even if you take these numbers, it's still more than 60 % are finding freedom of men who wanted a religious offering and help in therapy.

So the idea that even the secular therapists that are helping religious men are finding freedom from homosexuality.

This is the truth and it's not being told. So we have lots of resources back there and I'm gonna stop here and let's take a break and then we can reconvene and then

Jim, you'll share your story next week along with ministering hope and we have more information to give you in the back as well.

So Michael. Thank you, we're gonna take a short break.

Use this opportunity to fill out your Q &A cards and we have two ushers in the back that you can just drop it off in our offering plates and we're just gonna use that to gather them up and that way we can ask a few questions tonight and don't worry if your question doesn't get asked.

Next week, we're gonna have an extended time for Q &A to be able to kind of flesh out a lot of these questions and answers.

Also, and this is more for the Sunnyside crowd, but we do have some love offerings in front of you, love offering envelopes in front of you and so tonight and next

Sunday morning and next Sunday night, Sunnyside, we wanna bless First Stone Ministries. So this is more for the

Sunnyside crowd. You can also drop in some love offerings to the ushers plates as well along with your question.