How God Saved Me From Being Gay | Jackie Hill Perry

I did not fit the mold of what they said a girl was. And so because I did not fit the mold of what a girl was, naturally I'm going to think that I must be something other than that. And so there's this confusion that I have that was brought about by people teaching me womanhood that did not come from the creator of women, but from culture. Welcome to the Focus on the Family broadcast, helping families thrive. Jackie Hill Perry is our speaker today, and she was one of our most popular interview guests in 2020. So I know you're going to enjoy this presentation as well. We'll be dealing with some mature themes, so you might want to use your earbuds or watch later if you have small children nearby. Jackie has quite a story to share. Growing up, she identified as a lesbian and was involved in relationships with other girls. Now she's a believer, a wife and mother who spreads the gospel message to those who struggle with sexual brokenness. She's even written a book about her story. It's called Gay Girl, Good God, and we highly recommend it. Get a copy right from Focus on the Family. Here's Jackie Hill Perry speaking at a Brave Conference for Women hosted by Hope Fellowship Church in Frisco, Texas on today's Focus on the Tonight, I want to talk about my story. And in talking about my story, I kind of want to give you the encouragement to share your own. I think when it comes to courage, when it comes to bravery, when it comes to fear, I think there's a lot of fear in being honest about where God has brought us from. I think sometimes we could be comfortable with people seeing where we are now, not recognizing that there would be so much more fruitfulness if they understood how we got there. And so I want to tell my story for that reason. But in all of our stories, I think it's necessary to recognize that our stories start with a story. That is the story in Genesis 1 through 3. In Genesis 1, God creates the heavens and the earth. In Genesis 2, he creates Adam and Eve. In Genesis 3, we have this situation that has affected everything. You have Eve talking to the serpent, not realizing that it's the serpent. She should have already known something was odd when the snake wanted to have a conversation about the tree. Have you even noticed he didn't even say hello? He just started going to questions. You are already rude. You ain't righteous. That was a sign. Angels ain't rude, all right? Start to interact with her about this tree, this tree that God told them that the day they eat of it, they shall surely die. She chose to believe another voice, another person. And in believing the evil one, she ate from the tree, gave some to her husband who was with her, don't know what he was doing, maybe cutting the grass. I don't know how that worked in paradise. He ate, him being the patriarch of all of humankind, what happened was sin entered into the human condition where all that will follow after them will have the same story, where we are all born into this world prone to believing someone other than God. So when I come into this world, I come in with a problem. I come in it with a heart that isn't bent towards God naturally. When I was born, born to a single mother, my mother loved me well. My daddy loved me sometimes. He loved me when he felt like it. He loved me when he went down to the altar and got halfway saved and would be present and then would leave again. And so I grew up having this view of men that told me that men were very inconsistent beings, that they said things that they did not truly believe. The first man to ever actually show me affection was through abuse. So I already have this messed up framework that now affection from men is a dangerous thing, something that's not safe, something that isn't built on love. But I also have this framework that women are a loving thing, that women are the present ones, the loyal ones, the loving ones. So in maybe first grade, don't remember, I know it was before I knew how to spell my name, I recognized that I was same-sex attracted. Didn't have those words for it because again, I'm fine. But I knew, I noticed that the same way in which other girls like the little boys on the field was the same way that I liked the little girls on the field, didn't know what to do with it until I went to church. When I went to church is when I found out what the name for this passion was, which was homosexuality. And my problem wasn't with the condemnation pronounced on this behavior, my problem was with the way it was said. It was the tone, the inflection, the facial expressions, the mob mentality of the parishioners when it was talked about as if this wasn't something that anybody should be free with discussing openly. So what happened was naturally, I'm gonna keep this to myself because clearly Christians aren't fans of people like me. Growing up, it was a present desire, a desire that I wanted to go away, a desire that I wanted to flee, a desire that I wanted to somehow leave because I assumed that life would be easier if I had heterosexual lust instead of homosexual lust, but that's neither here nor there. But growing up, I figured that this would be more, it would be easier for me to do, but I was afraid of what the doing would bring me. I was afraid of how God might think of me and how my family might reckon with me until high school. Usually, you either act out in high school or college. I chose high school. I decided, you know, ain't no sense in waiting to be wicked out loud. So I felt, you know, that it was just becoming hard to act straight. It just was becoming a difficult thing, and so I said, you know what, I'm gonna just try it, see what it was like. This is the thing that I've been wanting to do for a long time, and so I got on MySpace. Don't know if y'all remember that. It's a social media network that it was before Twitter. I got on MySpace and connected with a woman who I was in a relationship with for about two and a half years, and that relationship is when I transitioned into a stud. So in the white lesbian community, in the black lesbian community, the language is different because culture is different, right? And so a stud in the black lesbian community is a woman who presents or projects a kind of hyper-masculinity about herself, and so I sagged my pants. I wore boxers. I wore sports bras that were small, like tighter to flatten on my chest. At that time, I didn't have locks. I had straight hair, so I would put my hair in a ponytail. I would walk as masculine as I thought myself to be. I would sit masculine. My voice is already a little heavy, but I made it heavier, and so that's what I did. I think this confusion, honestly, was brought into place through people telling me what a woman was that wasn't actually what a woman was. What I mean by that is when you are a girl growing up who doesn't like pink. Do I have on pink today? No, I don't. Who doesn't like pink. A girl who doesn't like purses. Even now, I don't like purses. Half of y'all got purses in here with only a charger and some chapstick. It's just extra baggage, you know? Pun intended. I did not fit the mold of what they said a girl was, and so because I did not fit the mold of what a girl was, naturally, I'm going to think that I must be something other than that. Naturally, if I don't fit this box that you said that my frame is supposed to fit inside of, then there must be another box that was meant to me to be in, which was maleness, which was masculinity. It's the same idea that we give to little boys when we tell them that they're acting like a girl because they're emotional, as if emotions aren't a human trait and not a gender-specific trait, right? And so there's this confusion that I have that was brought about by people teaching me womanhood that did not come from the creator of women but from culture. And so, naturally, I'm going to try to start embodying a sense of masculinity because that's what y'all told me I was this entire time. In that space, I enjoyed myself. All sinners love sin. If you don't, I don't know what kind of sin you doing. I enjoyed myself. You a born sinner if you don't like sin, outside of Christ. But y'all getting me off track now. I enjoyed my sin. I enjoyed the affection of women. I enjoyed the freedom of sin, or so I thought it was. I enjoyed the sense of rebellion that I had towards my mother and people. I enjoyed that. But even in my enjoyment of submitting to the flesh, I discovered that I could not find peace anywhere in it. It was a difference between joy and peace. And I think God was being kind to me and that he would not allow me to be able to shake the disruption that was between us. Is that he made it very clear in my conscience that we were not at peace with each other. That we were at odds. But I didn't know what to do with that because I figured that if he wanted me to be a Christian, then that meant he wanted me to be like my auntie. Let me explain my auntie. My auntie is one of those Christians, I have never seen her wear a pair of pants in my life. I haven't even seen her knees. That's how spiritual she is. So I felt if that's what you want me to be, I can't be that kind of saved. That's saved saved and that ain't me. Even this, she think it's wickedness. You hear me? I am immodest, all in my leg. Now, I say that because I think one thing that kept me in unbelief is that nobody explained conversion to me. They told me to get saved, repent, get right with God, go to church. And so what I thought Christianity was were people who did a lot of good stuff. That Christians were people who were really good at saying no to things that felt good. Didn't recognize that Christians were people who God had snatched up and given them a new heart and a new spirit where they were able to say no on the virtue of somebody else's power. I didn't recognize that what was happening inside of them was not owed to them at all but because they believed in a God who was risen from the dead so they were rising from the dead daily. I didn't know that. And so when I was 19, I was in my room. I didn't go to church because I didn't like Christians. Christians is extra. And so they are. Y'all are extra. You know those Christians? I had this one cousin. She was the one person that I could call that wouldn't talk to me about Leviticus every time we got on the phone. Some of y'all in here. You don't know how to ask nobody about their day. You want to go straight to Romans. You know you're gonna die, right? I ain't like y'all. My cousin, I felt that God was drawing me. I felt this sense of him wanting me, wanting my life. Didn't want him though. And so I called my cousin Keisha who was the only cousin or the only Christian I knew that would have an actual conversation with me as an image bearer and not just me as a gay person. That's the word. So got on the phone and I was like, Keisha, I feel like God is calling me, but I don't want him. I'm just cool. I'm enjoying my life. I'm enjoying myself. I don't want nothing to do with Jesus. And she told me, she said, God loves you so much that he's going to show you how much you need him. That was sounded real spiritual to me. I know what the heck she was talking about. So I said, amen, got off the phone. Cool. Whatever you say. And what started to happen was my life started to get harder. Life started to get difficult. And I think that's a kindness. Again, that's a providential mercy of God that he is not allowing my life to be so prosperous that I'm not, he's, he's allowing my life to be difficult in such a way where I'm constantly looking up. There's something about prosperity or being in the palace that makes you look inside of yourself. But there's something about suffering and difficulty, even outside of Christ, that shows you that all that you have ain't satisfying. That it's not enough that these people, these relationships, this pornography, all of this stuff that you're turning to as a comfort is nothing more than a mere idol and idols can't make nobody happy. So coming back to when I was 19, I'm in my room. I'm watching MTV, something real. I wouldn't watch a CBN, listen, no Beth Moore podcast, none of that. They didn't even have podcasts. That was just, they just listened to the radio. I'm in my room and I feel God speak to my heart. And I want to caveat on this is that our stories need to land on him always, always. I've heard a lot of testimonies that sound like you overcame your sin. You somehow chose him. You somehow did it. Instead of recognizing that we are saved by grace through faith, grace was first. And so God interrupted my room and all of a sudden I had this awareness that my sin deserved death. It's weird stuff. And I thought to myself, I don't think I would be convicted, man. Like I don't, I don't, I don't think I want to do that. I definitely don't think the devil want people to feel some type of way about their sin. So this must be the Lord, that God that I ain't never talked to in my life, except on Easter. And so in 1999, you know, before 2000 hit, I went in the bathroom just in case you on your way back. People was going to Sam's club, buying soup. Anyway, if you 17, you don't get that, but you didn't get it. I'm going over my time because I'm making y'all laugh. God spoke to my heart, showed me that the sin that I so loved and so enjoyed deserved death. But the interesting thing is that it wasn't just sexuality that was my problem. I started to reckon with the fact that every single thing that I loved and enjoy deserve death too. So I started to make like a survey in my mind of everything that I loved and its consequences. And all of this is being motivated by grace. So all of this is being motivated by the Holy Spirit who is second Corinthians four. He is lifting the veil off of my eyes for me to see light, for me to see glory in me seeing light. It's all that's really happening is that I'm seeing reality and I'm leaning towards believing it. That's what light does. And so I started to think, okay, I like to steal a lot because I used to steal because I figured if I steal my outfit for the club, then I got money for the drink. Y'all don't get that. I thought I was being a good story. You hear me? I steal, that's deserving of death. I'm a porn addict, been watching porn since I was five till 19. Lesbianism, that's obviously wrong according to these Christians I talked to. Even authority, disrespect to parents. I remember that the law had something to say about people who didn't like authority or authoritative systems that God set in place. So I recognized, Jackie, everything you love has nothing to do with God's glory. Everything you love and enjoy has nothing to do with him and you were created for him. Colossians 1.16, all things were created through him and for you. Nothing about your life proves that you're submitted to the reason you were made. But I also saw another thing. It wasn't just that the scriptures condemned my life. It was that the same scriptures that condemned my life had hope for me as a person. I remember the one scripture that everybody know, which is John 3.16, and that for God so loved the world, the world being me, that he gave his only son that whoever, whoever being me, believed in him would not perish, would not be condemned, would not be judged the way they should be judged, but they would have eternal life. So I figured that if God is trying to get me to turn from this stuff, then he must be the only alternative for me. He must be the satisfying one. He must be the good one. He must be the right one. He must be the true one. He must be the good one or he wouldn't want me to come to him. That was the Holy Spirit. I was able to see Jesus for who he was. So I told him, I said, God, I don't, I don't want to be straight though. Like I get what you're saying, but I don't like men, which is a common response because oftentimes people have preached heterosexuality and not the gospel. So naturally when they hear the call of God, they think they hear the call of marriage or the call of being with another person. What God is saying, come, come to me, come to me and I will figure out every single thing else. I'm not calling you. I'm not necessarily calling you to be heterosexual in the sense of having no temptation, but I'm calling you to be holy in the sense of whatever temptations you have, you know how to flee now. God was saying, come and love me and we'll figure the rest out. I told God, I don't know what this is going to look like. I know enough about me to know I can't do this on my own. I've tried to be righteous. I've tried to be holy. You say this stuff is as filthy rags and all I have to offer you is filthiness. My hands are not strong enough to walk like Jesus without Jesus. I didn't know that that was repentance in faith. I didn't even have categories for those words, but it was repentance because this is how you teach through your story, by the way. It was repentance because I saw my sin for what it was. I saw that it was worthless and I saw that it was not satisfying. I saw that even though it felt good didn't mean that it was good, but I also saw Jesus and so in my seeing my sin for what it was, I was able to turn towards somebody. I didn't turn in on myself and say, okay, I just got to go to church more and I just got to pray more and I just got to do right and I just got to do better and I just got fast a little bit. All those spiritual disciplines are great, but they don't get me to glory without the Holy Spirit. I had to turn to somebody to do the work that I could not do on my own. I went to work and I work cash register and there was this girl. She was in line trying to take an order and usually a day before that, two days before that, I would have tried to flirt with her in such a way to see if she, you know, would go and all of a sudden I felt this awareness of God that I never had and it wasn't as if two days before I didn't know that God could see everything. I knew he could see everything because I grew up in church. The difference was this time I cared. The proof of my repentance and my salvation was not the absence of temptation, but now it was the awareness of God and the power to obey. That was the fruit of repentance. So did that encourage you? Tell your story too then. Tell your story too then. Some of you in here might not have what you call a miraculous story and so maybe that's led you to be afraid. I've heard it a lot, especially people that grow up in church. It's like, you know, I came to faith when I was six. Like, I didn't have a crazy story like yours. I'm sleepy so I'm trying to control myself. But that's the devil because it don't matter how you came to faith, you came to faith. And every single person in this room, don't matter how you were raised or your particular economic, political, social, whatever context, everybody in this room was a Lazarus. So there is no, it don't matter how you came to faith, you were raised from the dead and that in and of itself is crazy. So don't underestimate how God can use the power of a five-year-old testimony because some of us who have children need to believe and recognize that God is saving even the little ones too. Secondly, if you're afraid of how people might think about you if you tell your story, really you got to just not care about that. Honestly, because nobody's opinion is authoritative except God. So if they reject you, it's cool. The gospel says that you're accepted. If they shame you, it's cool. God put that on himself on the cross, you freak. If they treat you like you are what you used to be, it's cool. The gospel says you're a new creation. The scriptures and what God has done for you allows you to discern the lies of Satan inside of your fear and to walk free from it. Thirdly, stop making your story about you. Remember the lady at the well who had, Jesus had, I'm paraphrasing this in hood language. Remember the lady that was getting some water by herself and God was tired and he said give me some drink because I'm thirsty and how he told her about her life and so she went back to the Samaritans and told them about Jesus and she said he told me all that I ever did. Crazy thing is that it said that the Samaritans went back to Jesus to hear from him after hearing what she said about him. She, in her telling her story, her story was her telling them about him. I think she probably said more about Jesus than she said about herself and in her exalting him through her story is the reason that many believe. You have that same ability and that same privilege to be able to preach through your life. God is sovereign, right? We agree. God wants glory, right? We agree. If that is the case, don't you think that he had his hands on your story for the sole purpose of his glory? Your story don't belong to you. You don't own it. It is yours to store it and give away so that he could be seen and perhaps that might be why we hold it in so much because we don't see how useful it actually is. So I'm not saying get on the stage in front of 1500 people and tell all your business. I've been doing this for a minute but there are ways that God can use your day-to-day interactions to encourage, to lift up, to build up, to warn, to challenge in your relationships, in your friendships, on your social media. There are ways that God wants to use the things that he is taking you through or taking you through to encourage the people that he's placed around you. So don't be so self-centered or so nearsighted that you think God just wants to use the things you do and not the things you did. That sounded so good. I ain't never said that before. I really appreciate Jackie's insights and her devotion to doing God's will above all else. She and her husband Preston just celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary and God has blessed them with three daughters and a baby son. Jackie's written a book about her experiences and in it she offers practical biblical tools for finding wholeness in Christ. The book is called Gay Girl, Good God, the story of who I was and who God has always been. And I'd encourage you to get a copy from us right here at Focus on the Family where the proceeds go right back into ministry. Help us save marriages, save the lives of pre-born babies, and impact the culture with God's truth like Jackie shared today. The best way to support us is by making a monthly pledge. It doesn't have to be a large amount. It's the consistency that really helps us month to month. And when you make a pledge of any amount we'll send you a copy of Gay Girl, Good God as our way of saying thank you. And if a monthly commitment isn't possible for you right now we understand. We'll send the book to you for a one-time gift of any amount. The bottom line is get your copy today. Yeah request Gay Girl, Good God when you call 800 the letter A in the word family or just click the link right there on your screen. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team I'm John Fuller thanking you for joining us and inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.