Not everyone who experiences same-sex attraction is able to see their sexual orientation change. But for some, like Brady Cone, this does happen. Unfortunately, many in the LGBTQ community despise people like him more than anyone else.
What does matter is that I once was, and no longer am gay. Not only I, but thousands like me! It does not mean that a switch is flipped, and all the same-sex attraction goes away. It does not even mean that you can “pray away the gay.” It means that over the course of our lifetime, God sanctifies us, shows us the idols we are serving, and through ongoing sanctification, He untwists what our sinful hearts have twisted.
One day Brady Cone was scheduled to speak at North Carolina State University. Prior to the day of his talk, the environment on campus became increasingly hostile with death threats and misleading newspaper articles. When he tried to talk on campus, protesters showed up and spewed their hatred toward him.
Throughout sharing my story of wrestling with sexuality—and how God’s love and grace is sufficient for every one of us—the back of the room was filled with hundreds of protestors holding up signs. Throughout the question and answer session, LGBT members of the audience and the protestors tried to cause disturbances and ridicule me. One person went as far as saying they wished I had pulled the trigger on the gun back when I had almost committed suicide as a hurting 13 year old boy.
Despite all this hostility, Cone said he found hope in the reaction of one student who was there that night.
But there was one student that night, whose heart was open to the message of God’s love and grace. His name was Levi, and he was one of the protestors in the back of the room. As he stood there holding his sign with his fellow LGBT comrades, something was stirring in his heart. He stood there, watching his community respond to me with such vicious hatred—all while I responded to them with tenderness and grace.
As he stood there, a thought was racing through his head. He kept thinking, “I’m standing on the wrong side of hate.
After the event was over, Levi quietly exited the room and went back to his dorm. He decided to call his old youth pastor from high school and re-establish his relationship with God. Despite all the bitterness that was expressed that night, God used it all to change a young man's life. Cone writes, "God had shined the light of His truth in Levi’s heart, as He had done in mine over a decade ago."
Learn More
Reference
Brady Cone, “The Gay Agenda & the Wrong Side of Hate,” Free Thinking Ministries (blog), July 16, 2018, https://freethinkingministries.com/the-gay-agenda-the-wrong-side-of-hate/.
Comments