In The Beginning: Time travel through my life!

 

 

I was born in Stratford Ontario in 1954. The society I grew up in was hostile towards homosexuality.

 

 

The only thing I heard about it was negative, the brunt of a
joke or something insinuating it was perverted, sick or evil. When I reached puberty I felt attraction to men and I was devastated. I was horrified that someone would find out and spent most of my adult life trying to hide it.

I was raised in the United Church which taught me well who Jesus is and I believed in Him. But it was when I visited the Pentecostal Church with my cousins that I asked Jesus into my heart and got saved as a young boy. In my late teens I stopped going to church and did not feel that God was real. When I was 20, while walking in downtown Stratford, another young man came across the street to give me a tract. He said he was part of the “Children of God”, a group of people "who are... um... " He could not finish his sentence and the words came out of my mouth- “ living for God!” He said, "um- sort of- we're trying." I wondered where those words came from. I never thought of living for God, I just lived for myself. 

 

I went to Europe on a trip I had planned earlier that year and did spend a little time with the cult there but would not join. When I returned home I got talking with my cousin and went to the Pentecostal Church and everything I heard of the bible I understood right away! I was already saved and I prayed for the Holy Spirit and started speaking in tongues. Over time I realized I felt the presence of God and that has never left me. It was a wonderful time of joy and hearing God's voice and direction and feeling His love in my heart! But then the church had to preach about homosexuality. This terrified me more. I was prayed for inner healing which did not change my orientation. So my life was broken and most of my time spent in fear of judgement. I would not listen to God on such a fearful subject so He devised a plan to show me in a way that I would listen and could not be talked out of.