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Brother Rollin's
Personal Testimony
I pray that this Testimony will be of encouragement and help to build the Faith in any and all that read this.
I want to Start by thanking God! He as seen me thru at the darkest hours of my life, He has never failed me yet. Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Jesus.
I am 38 years old, raised in a home where my father was an ordained Pastor with the United Pentecostal Church. I was baptized in the Name of Jesusand received the gift of the Holy Ghost with evidence of tongues by age 12.
As a young teenager I knew I was homosexual. I didn't understand it and wished it wasn't so. I heard my own father preach that homosexuality was an abomination unto God. I believed the lie and damned myself to eternity in Hell. I was angry with God that he could allow this, I knew I had no "choice" in my sexual orientation, why then was I even born if there was no hope for me.
By age 17 I had made up my mind that the only choice I had was to have a good time while I was on this earth. So I began the life of the "Party." I stopped going to Church.
I never denied God, but decided I was going to live the life He gave me. I spent the next 10 years in a drunken haze thinking that was the answer for me.
The Alcohol abuse finally lead me to a point that Alcohol was affecting everything in my life. My ability to hold a job, ability to pay bills, physical health was deteriorating. Finally, I was forced to seek help. I truly believe that God's hand was still with me.
After getting sober I had an experience where the Spirit welled up inside me that I thought was dead in me I never thought I would feel that again.
Then the quest began to make peace with God. I still struggled with the Homosexual issue. I visited a MCC Church looking for answers and I left the services feeling void.
I continued to wander with no real direction one foot still in the world and the other foot still seeking the answer.
It was next that I found out there was an Apostolic GLBT Pentecostal movement. I visited a small work in the Detroit area where the gifts of the Spirit appeared to be in operation, but the Spirit did not bear witness with me.
After that I contacted Bro. Carey the leadership of NGPA and decided to take a trip out there to New York. While in New York I did feel encouraged and uplifted, but still I was not whole. Brother Carey is very knowledgeable concerning the Word of God and he has never wavered in his belief. The problem was I still needed to see for myself I needed my own revelation from God that He still loved me.
Finally, I asked God to reveal it to me thru His Word. It was then that I found the answers the word began to open up to me and I saw the truth for myself.
I felt the spirit leading me deeper into the word and felt a calling to do the work of an apostle. I left Michigan and traveled to Arkansas.
God had given me the work that I was to do, AIM (Apostolic Intercessory Ministry), but, I got out of the will of God and helped another Ministry to get established and I did not do what God had asked me to do.
I started falling away and with my hand to plow looking back, I fell into sin. Next, after almost 10 yrs of being Sober and working for God I was back in the Bars drinking. While intoxicated I was driving and had a terrible car accident not involving any other car or persons. The Doctors told my parents that I would not survive I was placed on breathing machines and had suffered numerous fractures and a head injury. It was reported to me that I died twice during transport to the hospital.
My parents, Brothers and Sisters in the Lord came to see me in the hospital and spent many days crying, praying, and fasting. There were Churches all over the country in prayer for me. God made provision for me. "When He was on the cross I was on His mind". I am here to testify God is still in control. The Doctors said," we will send him home in a bag". They had told my parents not to hurry down to the hospital I wouldn't survive.
Mercy said, "No"!
I am recovering fully. Praise be to God!
Now, I know that I must do what God has asked me to do, and keep my eyes on Him.
I hope thru this testimony any who read this will experience a renewing of their faith. Even though sometimes we have let go of God's hand, He has never left us or forsaken us. No matter how far you have been, no matter the circumstances as long as there is breath in your body there is hope.
I now know how Amazing God's grace truly is! Now I can Sing Amazing Grace!
Rev. Donald T. Rollins
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Brother Carey's
Personal Testimony
I was born in New York City in May of 1958. Our family was Catholic, and I was taught to attend Mass regularly. I can remember being aware of my orientation as early as 1962. Of course, I knew nothing of sex, and it would be another seven years before I would first hear the word homosexual. But if you had asked me at four years of age whether I wanted to marry a man or a woman when I grew up, I would not have hesitated to answer: I wanted to marry a man.
I was sitting in church one day when I was about seven years old, when God spoke to me. Although hearing the voice of God probably isn't a daily occurence for most Catholic kids, I was not at all frightened. He said simply, "You are not your own; you are bought with a price." It would be years before I would learn that those words were in the Bible. I had never seen a Bible, and our family didn't even own one. But I knew the voice was God, and I interpreted His words to mean I have work for you to do, and you belong to Me. I accepted this as my call to the ministry.
Between the ages of seven and fourteen, many changes took place in my life. Rather than outline these individually, let me just say that I was now a fourteen year old Pentecostal boy living in a very small town in upstate New York. The call I felt from God had been intensified. I couldn't wait till I finished high school so I could go to Bible School and train for the ministry. I was on fire for God, and excited about the things that lay ahead. Back in a corner of my mind, though, was one nagging thought: I was a homosexual, and the Bible said that was sin.
One of the greatest differences between Pentecostals and more liberal Christians is our interpretation of Scripture. Whereas less fundamentalist churches could accept arguments about portions of scripture being inapplicable to today's society, such arguments were inherently invalid to Pentecostals. All the writings I had seen regarding homosexuality and scripture either condemned me outright, or used "invalid" arguments to justify me. I responded the same way so many others have: I condemned myself. I chose to hide my sexuality until the magic day when God would make it disappear.
In the late 70's I confided in a close friend in the church. She was very sympathetic. She was also untrustworthy. She told the pastor. Unknown to me at the time, my pastor had been going through a similar struggle for years, but hadn't even admitted it to himself. His reaction to finding out about me was one of fear. He somehow thought I was a threat to his ministry. Under the guise of helping me, he began weekly counseling sessions. Once a week for the next year, he told me I was worthless to God, the church and society. He told me I was dirty and sinful. Then he told me that someday I would take my own life. I was totally blind to what he was trying to do. He was my pastor, and I loved and trusted him. I never thought he would do anything to hurt me.
It was in 1978 that my world caved in. My pastor's words had accomplished what he wanted them to: I wanted to die. I came very close to taking my own life. In fear, I called him for help, still not realizing that he was responsible. I told him I was scared and needed help. He scheduled an appointment with me. He didn't show up. I made another appointment with him. He didn't show up. A few days later, after an evening Bible school class, he asked me to come to his office. There, with his assistant present, he started asking me for information about others in the church. I told him I couldn't tell him anything. He told me that if I didn't, he would tell the whole church about me. Although I was terrified beyond anything I'd ever felt before, I still refused to give him any information, and told him he could take whatever action he chose. That week I left the church.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I'd experienced a breakdown. I lost my job, and for the next year, I couldn't hold a job for more than a week or two. I began to drink and stay out all night, frequently waking up with total strangers the next morning. Without a job, I couldn't keep an apartment, so friends let me stay with them until they could no longer tolerate my behavior, then they'd pass me along to someone else. I stopped living for God. I thought He hated me, and wanted nothing to do with me. I was angry, hurt, and totally out of control.
In the summer of 1979, everything changed. I was at work, one of my two week dishwashing jobs. I remember I was feeling particularly lonely and unloved. I had really believed my pastor when he told me that I was useless to everyone. I felt like I had no reason for living. The church had a new pastor, but I didn't see any reason to go back; I was convinced that God hated me. As I stood there in the restaurant kitchen, I suddenly felt the presence of God in the room. It was a feeling I hadn't felt since leaving the church. It was so strong, and felt so good, that it nearly brought tears to my eyes. What happened next changed my life.
The radio was playing in the kitchen. Up to that moment, I hadn't even noticed that it was on. I suddenly became aware of a song beginning, a song I'd never heard before. But even as it began, I knew that there was more than just a song at work here. Before the first word was sung, I knew God was speaking to me. He was using that song to tell me something He wanted me to know. I can't really explain how I knew that, but I felt it so strongly, that I had no doubt whatsoever. Billy Joel began to sing, but I knew the words came from God:
Don't go changing to try and please me;
you never let me down before. . .
I would not leave you in times of trouble. . .
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times,
I'll take you just the way you are.
I need to know that you will always be
the same old someone that I knew.
What will it take till you believe in Me,
the way that I believe in you?
I said I love you, and that's forever,
And this I promise from the heart:
I could not love you any better;
I love you just the way you are.
I didn't care that I was at work and others were around: I began to cry. When the song was over, the same voice that called me as a little boy told me that all the condemnation I had felt came not from Him, but from people. He told me His love for me was unconditional.
What about the Scriptures? I had to know. But when I asked Him, He said only, "Study." My favorite hobby, ever since I was little, has been studying foreign languages. By the time I was fifteen, I was teaching French. In my late teens, I was teaching Hebrew. I have a gift for languages, as does my mother, and can pick up a new language and be fluent in a matter of months. I always thought it was just a hobby, and nothing more. But now, as the Lord told me to study, a new purpose for this gift became clear. What God wanted me to study was the Scriptures. Not English translations of the Scriptures, but Hebrew and Greek. It was in those ancient languages that I would find the answer to my question What about the Scriptures?
In reading the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, I find no condemnation whatsoever of homosexuality. In fact, in Romans chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, those verses so often used against us, I find a condemnation, not of homosexuality, but of tampering with one's sexual orientation. I learned that my sexuality was a gift from God and was not to be despised or tampered with. He was not going to magically transform me into a heterosexual. If He'd wanted me to be that way, He would have created me that way. It is not man's place to tamper with God's creation.
With a newly found faith in God, and a knowledge that He loved me, I returned to the church. I knew their opinions had not changed, yet I refused to pretend to be something I wasn't. I came back without so many things I had left there with: I came back without my fears and doubts, without my self-hatred, and most of all, I came back without my closet. But my faith in God made me unafraid to face the potential wrath of the church.
The church's new pastor was an old friend of mine. But he was an old friend who had not known that I was Gay. He put me in a position where I had no choice but to leave again. But it didn't matter this time. God had renewed my call, and had given me the charge that I must share with other men and women the love He had given me. In July of 1980 was born the National Gay Pentecostal Alliance, the very first Gay-oriented Pentecostal church in the world, and only the second Gay-oriented denomination in history.
Today, I continue to do the work of God. I have not forgotten the miracle God worked in my life in that restaurant kitchen in 1979. Nor have I lost sight of the despair so many of my Gay Brothers and Sisters feel when they believe the lies they've been told. I've made it my life's work to reach out to them and share the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. In doing so, I have set aside many other goals I used to have. But nothing in the world matters now as much as doing the work He sent me to do. I finally understand now that I am not my own. He paid the highest price imaginable, and He did it because He loves me. And nobody can take that away from me. Romans 8:38-39
Rev. William H. Carey
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Brother Larry's
Personal Testimony
I would like to share the details of my healing with all of you. For the last 15 years I have struggled with Lung Cancer, going through chemotherapy, radiation and many other treatments. Many times I would go into remission, but it would never last very long. My family, friends and church family throughout the United States would constantly pray for me. One Sunday Bro. Hunt and I went to visit a local church that I had been to only once before. As I prayed a young man asked Bro. Hunt if he could lay his hands on me and pray for me. The young man prayed for the Lord to heal my body. The next week was my monthly check-up with my oncologist. The Doctor was so excited as all of the tests would be negative. He said that he was never really much of a church going man, but he knew of my faith and the belief that one day our God would heal me or take me home. To this day my oncologist attends church at least twice a week. If you or anyone you know is struggling with illness, pray for them daily and keep praying. It may take a while but our God does take care of his faithful. I am a living testimonial to that fact.
Praise the Lord,
Bro. Larry
Sister Lynne's
Personal Testimony
I was born in Riverside, California in March of 1961, and grew up in a crazy household of rage and depression. My father was absent from my life, and my mother was antagonistic towards religion and church, but my grandparents were very strict fundamentalist Christians who took my brother and I to church 3 times a week, for many years. I loved God even at a very early age, and took very seriously the call I felt to serve Him, but I was also taught to fear Him deeply and to worry over every transgression and sin I committed – even in my mind. By the time I was 8 years old, I already felt condemned to hell since I knew I was not and could not be good enough for God. Even so, for a time I continued to worship Him, just because I loved Him so much. And I continued to pray to Him to spare my mother and others that I knew were bound for hell as well, even though I had been taught God gave no slack to sinners. But by the time I was 11 years old, I finally stopped going to church. I was so full of grief and hurt, feeling so unwanted by God, that I just couldn't go anymore. I still continued to talk to God, and still desperately longed to follow the call I still felt from Him. But as I went through my teens, my anguish only got deeper. I used to rail at God, call Him names, anything to furiously dare Him to strike me down to hell now since He hated me so much. And then I would sob with mourning, asking Him why He was still calling to me, since He didn't want me. Why He kept me alive, if I could not serve His purpose – for without God, I could sense no purpose in my life at all. If God ever gave me an answer, I didn't hear it.
By the time my teens were done, I was a complete mess – psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. Growing up in my family had made me full of rage and half-crazy; growing up in my neighborhood among gangs that terrorized the weak had made me tough and heartless. Feeling rejected by God had filled me so full of agonized grief that I couldn't breathe – and I certainly found no meaning or reason for my life. Since I knew either murder or suicide would take my life before I was 30 years old, I could never finish college, never do anything for my future. Why should I? I thought. I'm a loser, a reject, a crazy full of rage, another worthless wounded animal on the streets that ought to be put out of its misery (if anyone had the mercy to do so). I wandered dangerous streets late at night, hoping to be murdered. I barely kept hold of my rage and violence when someone crossed my path. And finally I gave up on God, and decided to hate and reject Him as deeply as He had me.
What I didn't realize at the time was that God had never rejected me. That God was still with me, still protecting me. I know now that when I stood on a tall bridge one day, ready to step off and plummet toward the water so far below, it was God who so delighted me with the wind and the birds that in the end I didn't jump. I know now that when a relative shoved me out of a moving car, and my heart set itself on murder in order to make the violence toward me stop, it was God who sent me a friend to drive me 100 miles away to refuge instead. I know now that when I was bitten on top of my head by a black widow spider – and when my mother wouldn't take me to a doctor because she had other more important things to do – that it was God who kept my body alive the three days I lay more sick and in pain than I knew a human being could be.
But I didn't recognize God's hand in my life. My early training in what God expected of me and what God would do for me hadn't taught me to see any of this. And so as I moved into my 20s, I began to study atheism, and science, and everything I could get my hands on that would prove that God did not exist. I committed my entire being to fighting against God, and any belief in God, so that I became an army of one against Him. No believer was safe around me, and in debates I even made others cry because I was such a bulldog of fire against even the possibility of belief. And I was proud of my ability to dismantle faith, having concluded that belief in God was a neurosis, something primitive that we as a species needed to outgrow in order to survive. I began to see religion as dangerous – probably the most dangerous idea on the planet – for how many people had died for religion? How many people had been tortured for religion? How many people were made 2nd class citizens because of religion? I became a fundamentalist atheist, and red-hot in my missionary work against God.
I also became a political radical during this time – a socialist, a utopian with a hand toward making the ideal world real. I plowed my energies into remaking the world into a better place, becoming a missionary for vegetarianism and living out the Hindu lifestyle called "Ahimsa" ("non-harming", or non-violence) – ironically feeling the need to fix the world from the mess God had abandoned it to, though I claimed I did not believe in God!
Yet even here God was in my life, saving me despite myself. Growing me despite my weaknesses and pain. Because it was during this time that I learned to cast away the legalistic religion I'd been raised into. It was during this time that my rage began to calm and heal, because I saw for the first time the possibility of a better world, a world of meaning, where people weren't born just to suffer and die into oblivion. By exploring and making non-violence my "religion", I undid the chains of rage and hatred that had bound me so long. I still struggled with depression, sometimes overwhelmingly so. And I still had a horrible temper at times. But the desperation of grief and rage eased, and I felt the closest thing I'd ever felt to peace in my whole life.
Then I turned 30. And I was astounded! I woke up the morning of my 30th birthday and wandered the house, thinking "Now what do I do?" I had never thought I'd live this long. Yet here I was – still alive, and not in prison, not in a mental hospital. After a few days, my mind and heart opened to the fact that perhaps I had time to find a way to make my life worth something. I felt my life take on a new direction. One that felt good, and whole, and sane – even if still confusing!
At that time I also finally admitted to myself that my attempt to "burn" God from my heart with atheism and radical politics had failed. Now I felt myself at opposite ends of myself, spiritually: I still longed for God – and yet still felt hate and pain in my heart because He didn't want me; I would not bow to the God who I felt had made my life hell. And I still felt His call – yet I had bought my own atheist propaganda and didn't really believe He existed. I believed any wanting of God or call from Him was neurosis.
I wasn't sure how to heal this in myself. But it was too overwhelming not to try. Since fighting against religion hadn't worked, I decided to try to find peace through it instead. Since Christianity was still so overwhelmingly painful I couldn't even think about it without anger and depression, I explored other religions – paganism, Hinduism, Bahaii, even Judaism and Islam, and more. When I learned that Buddhism was about getting rid of pain by learning to let go of wanting things, and that Buddhism had no god, I began to study Zen Buddhism.
I put myself into Zen just as much as I had the other religious and anti-religious things I'd lived in my life. I meditated in Zen temples, chanted and memorized Buddhist scriptures, I even bowed to Buddha – not missing the irony that I would bow to Buddha, who never claimed to be more than a man, but I would not bow to God. I spent several years as a Zen Buddhist, and it was a very healing experience for me. I learned to ground myself. I learned to admit and then let go of a lot of my emotional and psychological nonsense. I learned to relax and calm down, even in a storm. For two years, I even contemplated becoming a Buddhist priest. "Here", I thought, "I can answer my call to spiritual and religious work." However, though I took vows to become a Buddhist, in the end I never took vows as a priest – somehow, it just didn't feel like the right "fit" for me, though I couldn't understand why, since I felt very happy and fulfilled as a Buddhist.
Then in my late 30s, the bottom of my Buddhist world dropped out. A very famous Vietnamese Zen Buddhist priest that I admired and followed began to call on those Buddhists who used to be Christians to return to Christianity. He said that until we made peace with where we came from, we would never find or be peace in the world. Like many who had fled to Buddhism from painful Christianity, I was outraged and hurt. It was only because I so revered this Vietnamese Buddhist priest that I forced myself to listen to his continued teachings on this over the next year. Finally, I had to admit to myself that he was right – until I made peace with Christianity, I would never have peace in my heart. Christianity was my home, and still was, and I needed to go back and find my place there. Having accomplished the spiritual healing I needed in this leg of my journey, God had apparently decided that it was time for me to move on. That I had become too comfortable as a Buddhist. Now it was time to begin the final leg of my journey home: back into Christianity, back into God's people.
It was hard! I had so much anger at Christianity, and so much hate for God, that at first all I could do was bring a cross into the house. That's it. I made myself look at it every day, and made myself keep it. Slowly, over the next 2 years, like a trauma victim I worked my way back into accepting things Christian around me until they didn't provoke me anymore.
Then one day I felt strong enough to go into a church, for the first time since I was 11 years old. It was a catholic church downtown that I knew would be empty in the middle of the afternoon. It was very painful to be there, yet it was still different enough from the fundamentalist protestant church I'd grown up in that I could do it. I sat about a third of the way back, and looked for a long time at the huge wooden crucifix hanging over the alter, wondering what in the world I was doing here. It was quiet, and dark, and comforting, and finally I began to speak to God – for the first time in years. I asked God why He continued, all these years, to call me, when He didn't want me. I asked Him why He never let go, even though I could never be good enough for him. I accused Him, just like when I was a teenager, of being a sadist for calling me only to reject me. I cried then as I cried when I was a teen – and after I'd spent my anger and accusations, the answer came to me: God had never rejected me. God had always loved me. God had always wanted me, and His call had been true, all these years was true. God opened my mind to understanding that it had been people who had messed up the message, had taught me the wrong things, and put their own insecurities and rules out as if they were God's.
I cried with great relief and hope. And I walked out of the church – still not fully reconciled with God, but at a truce. I knew I could go further. And in the years to come, the lessons came to me over and over again to not let people and their failures get between me and God – and though better, I'm still learning it!
When I had grown all I could in the catholic church, God put a restlessness in me that led me at last to a small Spirit-led church, and it is here that all the gifts and purposes God planted in me have really begun to sprout. Some of these are hardy stalks by now; some are still vulnerable seedlings. And yet this is the first time in my life I see the vision – I know the purpose, and I know what God has called me to do. After all these years, I have truly uncovered the purpose of my life, and it is in reworking all the pain I have lived through and grown stronger than, and using it to build ladders for others still trapped in the hells of this life, so that they might see the Glory of the God who loves them beyond measure, and who wants beyond imagining for them to be with Him throughout eternity.
And now I know: God is good, and God does not abandon us. Even in our weaknesses and errors He will teach and grow us. Even when we don't believe He's there, God is with us. Even if we do evil to Him and work against His purpose, God is for us. He knows the truth of our hearts, and loves even those who strike out, even as we love the dog run over in the street that bites at us when we try to help. God has blessed and protected me, every day of my life. Lord God, may not one of us be lost! May not one of us miss Your call! And Lord, may I be your untiring servant to that end! Amen!
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Ephesians 5:13
"Wherefore take the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."
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