Matthew
My name is Matthew and I am a gay Christian. I'm a gay Christian. I grew up in the Pentecostal Church and only understood one thing clearly: homosexual behavior was bad and not part of God’s will for humanity.
For a while, I believed they were right. After all, the Bible talks about it, right?
Paul said in Romans 1:26-27 that men exchanged natural relations with women for unnatural ones with men. Therefore, the Bible is clear. After discovering that I was gay, I knew deep down that I was not being portrayed correctly in the scriptures, which led me to dive deeper into what the Bible meant.
Pronouns: he/him
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I soon discovered that there was nothing in scripture that prohibited anything I wanted: a healthy, Christ-centered, relationship with the same-sex.
This discovery baffled me because I was taught that “the Bible was clear about this.” I began to ask myself: why do people think that the Bible condemns homosexuality? That question fueled me to dive even deeper into how the Christians today got here.
Why does the church continue to teach something that the Bible doesn’t address?
I continued to have conversations with many fellow Christians, hoping to not only understand their point of view but to also have an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work through me in the effort to transform their hearts from “hearts of stone to hearts of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
I didn’t change scripture because of my experience, I was changed by the gospel when I dived deeper to understand what it means rather than just what it says. And my work is not finished, I will continue to preach the truth (John 8:31-32), to the ends of the earth (Mark 16:15), even if I’m considered a fool (1 Corinthians 4:10).
I am living proof that God is not changing people’s sexual orientation but spiritually transforming LGBTQ+ people into a new creation that is marked by the Gospel.
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