James has been a friend of Reconciliation Ministries since he first attended Living Waters in 2018. He now serves as a member of our Living Waters leadership team. You can find more testimonies and recovery articles on the Reconciliation Ministries website at https://recmin.org/newsletter-archives.

When I was very young, I believed that there was something different about me. I remember back then that I knew that I didn’t match all the other boys in elementary. They liked to be rough and competitive and that created fear and anxiety in me. Even now, I don’t play sports because I can’t handle the rhetoric that occurs during the play battle. I quite clearly remember multiple times in my life thinking that somehow, I was born in the wrong gender. I was supposed to be a little girl and not a little boy.

While growing up, there was a moment with a childhood friend where we would play house. However, our playing turned into a scenario between the two of us where the things that happened turned the tide and solidified a deep longing and hunger for sexual intimacy with other boys. These interactions formed deep attachments in me for same sex longings. The deep longing often blinded me to reality and was a huge obsession. Overtime, I tried to satisfy my own needs by thinking that if I could just get the attention of, or be like the boys I idolized, that somehow I would become whole.

I remember in third grade setting on the front pew of my church and suddenly understanding that Jesus was reaching out his hand and asking me to trust Him. At that time, I was shy and didn’t go to the alter, but that night when we got home my mom and I talked about it and then I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart. The days and weeks that followed were freeing. As I look back, those days were also pivotal in that they created a deep anchor in me that would define which side of the same sex attraction battle that I would remain on.

Fast forward… It was during my twenties that I had the resolve that I would never act on my same sex attraction. Most of the times though I felt like I barely had the resolve. Admittedly, everything in my mind and body during those years yearned and hungered for that kind of encounter but the deep grounding I experienced formed a mysterious barrier between my desires and how I have acted on them. By the grace of God, I’ve not had sexual encounters with other men. But by no means was my life free of same sex desires and obsessions.

As I was getting older, there was a woman that I dated, fell in love with, and ended up marrying. She knew that I experienced same sex attraction. Early on we had a deeply satisfying and meaningful relationship. However, my same sex attraction was still a huge part of my life. For a while I was able to pretend and fake my way through life and present myself as what I thought was a full-fledged man, husband and believer in God. As the years went on however, our relationship disintegrated. In the end, we were going to adopt a child who experienced gender fluidity. In my mind I was totally okay with that because I felt like if God was able to bring me to where I was, then I would be able to love a child through his navigation of gender fluidity. Our church at the time would have also been a supportive environment; however, my wife didn’t think so. She leaned into the idea that her and our soon to be son would go to a church that was LGBTQ+ affirming. Due to the instability that I was experiencing in marriage and life, I ultimately had to give my vote to the adoption caseworkers that we couldn’t move forward adopting this child. That was the beginning of the end of the marriage, but was also a defining moment in my life between God and me.

As things were unraveling for me, I found myself in one of the largest battles of my life. How could someone I had been in a loving relationship with, and who I trusted, start thinking differently about God and church? I was caught between the battle of fighting same sex attraction and now being encouraged by the women I fell in love with to embrace it and even shift my beliefs and be gay. While we were separated, she encouraged divorce. In my wife’s view, she was freeing me to explore being gay. There were three days in our initial separation while my wife was encouraging me to be gay that I contemplated forgetting it all and just do it. However, I just couldn’t rationalize and forget about the anchor Jesus planted in me.

While I was in the middle of the storm of divorce and being tempted to dive into embracing being gay, my heart kept crying out to God for help. I knew that if there was a way to navigate this right, that God would have to do it. While crying out, God through His providence and grace placed it in my heart to search for some group or counselor that would help me navigate these storms and be faithful to God. That’s when I came across Living Waters program through Reconciliation Ministries. I signed up to go through the Living Waters program during the 2018-2019 season. Jesus met with me through Living Waters and the Living Water folks who know how to love hurting people like me. I learned about my sexuality with truth and grace and received the bolstering and support my heart desperately needed.

Building on the foundation that Living Waters provided, the Lord began to draw me out of faulty thinking that I learned and embraced during my formative years. Little by little, I’ve been challenged to turn away from harmful thinking that skewed my sexuality while also learning to understand the man I am in the context of my active relationship with Jesus. My heart was led again to go through Living Waters a second time which provided another transformative leap forward. The second season reinforced the truth of learning to live a sexually truthful and pure life for God. Out of this I’m learning to experience the reality of how the Truth will set you free and have true Peace and true Joy!!!

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Holding Onto Jesus: Overcoming Homosexuality - James

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