True Freedom Fellowship

Robb
I thought I would share. I wrote this to a dear friend that I love deeply who came out. This is my “Coming Out” story that I wanted to share with her.  I pray that it would encourage those in the LGBTQ+ community and to encourage those with family or friends that are in this community. There is Hope and there is Freedom. Here’s my Coming Out of the Dark Testimony:

I wish I could take you back to my coming out moment; the years after it as well as the years before it. I don’t know if you’ll read this or not, but in hopes that you will I wanted to share. I can’t physically take you back, but I hope these words will visually help paint the picture for you.

At a very young age I knew I was different than the other boys and I tried my hardest to fit in and be accepted as a boy. I started having desires of intimacy with other boys and sexual desires were increasing. Elementary school is where I first started to be bullied for being girly, and being labeled “faggot” became the norm. I was made fun of and harassed daily. Around this time, I was already introduced to porn magazines and started to have sexual encounters with older boys in the neighborhood. Also, at this time I was having sexual encounters with girls because I didn’t want to let others know what I was doing with the boys. I tried my hardest to fit in, but I knew I was different, and I wasn’t accepted by society. It was also around this time I heard how God hated fags. This added another layer to the madness that was consuming me. In fact, one of the older boys after we would have sex would begin to yell at me and tell me how he couldn’t keep doing this that we were going to hell because God hated us.

My junior high years were chaotic. I started dating a girl but I also had a boyfriend and when he left for college I thought that was it, I was done with being gay and focused on my relationship with my girlfriend. It was a highly sexual relationship.  I figured the more sex I could have with her maybe it would lessen the desires for sex with guys. Let’s just say I was a hot mess mentally. I had an alter ego, and I named her Trixie. Through this I was able to embrace my feminine side. 

This was during the time that being gay was not celebrated as it is today. There were no Hollywood elites celebrating it or talking about it. Society wasn’t embracing it; politicians weren’t promoting it and churches were not embracing it. It was looked upon as abnormal and I actually knew of some boys who were removed from school and sent to therapy because their parents found out. They went through intense psychiatric therapy and electroshock therapy to try to change their behavior, it destroyed them as I would find out later in life after hearing their stories. It didn’t “change” them. It was horrific what they had to endure. They became empty broken vessels. 

In high school I joined the drama club and though I didn’t fully come out I had a couple of friends that were gay and even though there weren’t any sexual relationships with them I loved being around them and I loved drama club! We were a bunch of misfits, but we were family. I also was still with my girlfriend on and off until she became pregnant. At that time, I said to myself that I couldn’t be gay because now I needed to take care of my girlfriend and the baby. But I was gay and being married with a baby didn’t change me. During this time Boy George was a star and I was intrigued by him, I wanted what he had, I wanted his freedom, and I wanted to be Madonna too. I also kept fantasizing about boys and I thought this was just going to be it, I would be a gay guy trapped in a straight world. I was created to just exist and never living out the true me.

My girlfriend and I were married at the age of 16 but a few months or so into the marriage I met an older guy and let’s just say I thought this was my true love and I soon embraced not only him but the lifestyle. I divorced my wife a year later and “boom” I kicked the closet doors wide open. But there was no celebration, there was no peace, there was nothing! Everything I thought I wanted I had but something didn’t feel right. Something way down deep in my soul was not centered. I figured it was due to being raped by this older man’s lover in the pool and while it was happening I looked up and my lover was standing there inside in the dark living room watching. After that night it became a threesome and nothing seemed the same. He wasn’t going to leave his lover, he wanted his cake and to eat it too. I soon began to hate this and I left and sought freedom in the gay community.

I remember the first time I walked into a gay bar. Literally I said to myself, “I am with family”, “these are my people”. The celebration I wanted happened and I joined the LGBT movement and pushed to advance the movement. I was out and proud and finally truly living as me, myself and I. I felt for the first time I was fulfilling my purpose but the drugs, the drinking, the multiple sexual encounters, the filth, the language; everything about me began to increase in so many areas. I got involved in the occult and every other religion out there because there was something missing. The more I would sense it, the more I pushed into everything else that would numb that feeling. I got involved in the drag shows and the Trans community. Again, these days were nothing like today. I loved being around this community; dancing and dressing up. I never got on stage. I worked it and worked it hard. There was the thought of surgery in order to look a bit more like a female which would have hallowed me to make more money if I performed and given me a fiercer look. However, I was quickly detoured because I don’t do doctors. I didn’t want to be a woman, but I wanted to be on stage. And if I wanted to be on stage, I needed to look the part. So, I settled for dong the choreography and stage set up for the shows. 

I decided to stop the multiple sexual encounters and began to want to be a part of the “change” that would allow the gay lifestyle to look monogamous. I started to have long term relationships and though I wanted to have this work and hope that the gay rights would move towards marriage equality it just didn’t happen. My relationships may have been long but they didn’t last. I had some pretty decent ones. I loved hard and gave all of me to the relationships. I had one encounter in which I thought I met the love of my life. My soulmate. No one could have told me different. But I was too much of a mess and he was still in the closet. It didn’t last but if it could be made into a movie it would be an amazing love story. Years after this relationship and multiple long term relationships I entered into one that I thought for sure was the one but he had Aids and he was very abusive. I was beaten regularly, and I lost myself in this relationship. I wanted to be his savior. We were in the middle of the Aids pandemic and the gay movement was advancing yet we had a lot of resistance and a long way to go. I had a lot of my friends die due to Aids and it was overwhelming. We had police raids in the bars and we even had to cross through the KKK protest lines at the bars. Coming out of the bars at night there were nightly beatings or a number of guys went missing. However, I wanted to be part of this revolution and this cause. I wanted my people to be free and accepted.

Years would go by, I got out of the abusive relationship and jumped from one to another and I became more addicted to porn, 900 numbers and multiple sexual encounters. My door to my condo was a revolving one. I was gay, it’s who I was, I was happy, wasn’t I? I mean I was out and proud. Advancing the cause hoping that the future generations would have it easier. One day they wouldn’t have to endure what we and those before us had to endure. Ten plus years have passed since “I Came Out”, having to have multiple hard conversations with family, friends and co-workers. Knowing they didn’t understand me and knowing I wasn’t accepted in society, but it didn’t matter I was living out my identity.

I had a good career and good friends. Though I was addicted to everything and anything. I had come to a place of burn out. In this season I met a guy that I thought I would marry. He asked, I said yes, though it wasn’t legal it still would have been a ceremony and advancing the cause. But I woke up one morning and looked at him and told him to get out. I didn’t want to be with him. I felt like I was losing my mind going from one emotional swing to another.  A lot of drama and chaos. But I was OUT!

Sometime later I took some time off work and I decided I had enough of this life. I went to end my life and a voice from behind said, “Today you’ll live!” The pills fell to the ground and my hands went over my head and what came out of my mouth shocked me.  I said, “Jesus, You’re real!” I knew it was Him, no one had to tell me. I knew! Now remember I hated Him, I hated the church and Christians were weak people with no power. In that moment I knew I was in His presence. I didn’t know what to expect because “didn’t He hate me”? Yet here He was telling me today I will LIVE!  I wasn’t looking for Him, but He stepped into my darkest hour and revealed Himself to me. 

What do I do? How am I to respond to this? In that moment I said, “Jesus, show me the way I am to go and I will follow.” Little by little my life began to be transformed. During this transformation process my identity as a gay man was not going to be an issue. Surely God wouldn’t have a problem, I mean He is the One who stepped in to my darkest hour, and I didn’t call on Him. I was out and proud and now maybe I could serve others as He served and helped the gay youth so that they wouldn’t have to endure what we had to. I felt that was going to be my calling. Also, the same older guy from years before…the one I left my wife for, he was single and we got back together. He couldn’t believe the change that was taking place in me. He kept telling me that this God who I was seeking after will eventually take me away. I would laugh and say, “Why would He? I am who I am!” 

I went to hear a preacher preach with my lover and when the alter call was given, I stood up and my lover grabbed my arm and asked me where was I going and I said, “to the alter.” I ran to it. I knew I was a sinner (not just because I was gay but my very nature, everything about me - the lies, the gossip, the murderous thoughts, the adultery, filthy language, the occult, the backstabbing, the drunkenness, the drug abuse and on and on and on, me all of me and I needed Jesus. I confessed Him to be Lord and Savior and believed in my heart that He rose from the dead. I left that night with a Bible and a stack of teaching tapes. I had no church or Christians around me. I didn’t want what I considered the “straight church”. God must have been up to something new I thought, I would become a gay pastor and bring hope to the community. 

Soon my lifestyle became an issue in my prayer time and Bible reading. The prompting of the Holy Spirit was intense and though I tried to resist and blame the promptings on the devil, I finally knew better. You can’t deny Truth, especially His Truth. 

I fought to maintain my life, my identity. I wanted Christ on my terms. But He kept reminding me of the call of a disciple. You see we aren’t meant to remain enslaved to sin, to remain in the dark or to worship the created. All life apart from Christ is sin. No sin is greater than the other. Sin leads to death and the created things will never satisfy us. It doesn’t matter how the culture adapts to sin; sin is sin and it will always lead to death and separation from Him. He came that we may have life and to set us free from the old nature, which is corrupted, and hell bound. It’s in total rebellion towards Him and His Kingdom. 

As I was learning these truths, I came to realize that I can’t deny Him nor could I remain a slave to “self”, to sin. My life was no longer my own. I ended up leaving my lover and placing my trust in my Savior. I came out again this time as a follower of Christ. Now I know what people say and I take the insults from those still in the lifestyle and in the church. It’s weird being OUT as a Christ follower because this time I’m living in a culture that accepts my old life but not my new life in Christ. The gay community attacks me, and the church community doesn’t know where I belong among them. The church community doesn’t want me to share that there is freedom because it’ll offend those still in the lifestyle, or they have accepted that there are gay Christians and my testimony is invalid, or the men in the church feel uncomfortable with a man delivered from homosexuality being among them. Not all churches but unfortunately more than I expected.  I’m grateful that I have matured in Christ to know my identity is in Christ not what anyone thinks of me or the acceptance of others. 

There was a time earlier in my walk with Christ that I thought maybe I went too far, I mean is this real? Because there were preachers and worship leaders that I had followed that left the ministry and came out as gay and one worship leader joined the Gay Church movement. So, I began to read all of their beliefs and just when I gave thought to their beliefs the Lord spoke to my heart and asked, “What are they giving you the right to?” I knew the answer…their doctrine was giving me the right to “self”, and the genuine doctrine of Jesus is to deny self, pick up the cross and to follow Him.  I rejoiced that He is faithful to complete the work that He has begun in me and kept me from being led astray and following the doctrine of demons. 

You see on July 7th, 1997 I made the choice to come out of the darkness and into His marvelous light. I no longer crave the created nor seek to have it try to complete me. I’m free finally, free indeed. It’s just not being free from the gay lifestyle; no it’s freed from the old rebellious nature that I was born into. I was bent towards self and the created things. But I have been born again of the Spirit and now I long to serve the Creator and to worship Him and Him alone. He completes me. I’m not perfect but His grace, the power to transform me is sufficient and He reminds me daily that my life is not my own. I didn’t pray the gay away, I didn’t go to therapy and I don’t suppress the desires. I am a new creation and I’m growing daily in this new man renewing my mind and taking thoughts captives. Knowing that He makes away out of every temptation. 

Purity and wanting to know His way became my heart’s desires above all that I was bound to. I know all the push back that one could give when I have shared this before with others in the gay lifestyle. I’ve heard…” this is your story Robb not mine, we all have our own path to God”. There are countless  comments and insults I have heard. Even so, I will continue to share and plant seeds of truth in hopes for a harvest. 

My hope is that you would not remain bound in sin…whatever the sin may be, but that you would come out of the darkness and be free in Christ. I have counseled and I have wept for those and with those who are bound to the LGBTQ+ community. I have heard a lot of coming out stories and I’ve had many people come to me and come out. I get it. I don’t hate the community and the LGBTQ+ community isn’t my enemy. You have the right to live as you chose as I have the right to live for Christ. I share all of this to let you know that though you’ve come out and you feel a sense of pride and have jumped headfirst into this lifestyle that it’s not what it’s made out to be. You have a long road ahead of you and I pray that you will not perish apart from Christ, your Creator. He loves you more than the created ever will. I love you too and I will always be here for you. I will never reject you or hate you. I may not see eye to eye with you and I may not agree with the choices you are making, but I love you and that will never stop. Take care of yourself and remember don’t twist His teachings to satisfy your hunger. He’s either Lord of your life or He’s not.

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I pray that this was an encouragement, or you need prayer, don’t hesitate to reach out.

 

In His Service,

Robb Ferrell

hes4ever2bpraised@yahoo.com