(soft music)
- When I was, you know,
in elementary school,
I started to realize that I was
becoming attracted to the same sex.
I was like wait, this is odd
and no one else is feeling this way
and no one else can know about this.
When I was a junior in high school,
my best friend, we came out to each other.
So then I suddenly had this
confidante in high school
whom I could tell everything to
and tell him what I was feeling
and what it was like and he understood
and we could talk and
we started going out.
You know, we started going
to gay bars in high school.
We started going to clubs
and then, even in high school,
I still felt that being gay was not
something that I was gonna
be for the rest of my life.
I just thought, oh, well, eventually,
I'll get married and have kids
and this would just kinda go
away, but it didn't go away.
When I went to college, I was
feeling more and more like
homosexuality was
becoming my core identity.
I just knew that Christianity was
never an option for me, ever.
I just thought, I'm a gay man.
I can't ever be a Christian.
Never the twain shall meet,
and so I just put God even
further on the back burner
and didn't even think of God at all.
And then after college, I moved to LA
and I got in with a group of
friends who were like-minded.
We lived our lives always
kinda just wanting two things,
and it was success in career
and to find true love.
I think I had a total of
five serious relationships
and they were all very
intense and very real
and every time I was in
one of these relationships,
it was like, okay, this is the one.
Like this is the guy who's gonna
give me meaning in my life.
This is the person that's gonna save me.
Like I seriously saw them
as almost like a messiah.
Like this person will
give my life meaning.
I'll have a reason to live,
and I put so much pressure
on these relationships.
And so during all this time in
Hollywood, I did everything.
I went to all the premiers.
I went to Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys
and I went to the Governors
Ball after the Oscars.
That life I was living, it was satisfying.
It was fun and I kind of
felt, like, high from it.
I was at one of the
after parties one night,
and like, everyone was dancing
and all the people in the
fashion world were there
and it was, like, very glamorous
and I just remember just looking out
over the sea of people, all
having the times of their lives
and I just felt so empty and dead inside.
I felt so alone and just empty.
And about, I think, six months later,
I was at a coffee shop in Silver Lake.
We noticed something very shocking.
A table next to us had
just Bibles all over it,
and we were kinda fascinated by it
even though, to us, it was like the enemy.
Like, those are the people
who hate who we are,
but we were fascinated by them still.
So my friend urged me to
talk to them and I said,
well, what does your church
believe about homosexuality?
And he said, well, you know,
it's a sin and I just stayed
and I was like, huh,
okay, that's interesting,
and then we talked some more
and then he invited me to his church.
Somehow, I got up to Sunday
morning and the pastor comes out
and he started preaching
from Romans, chapter seven
and then all of a sudden, the
Holy Spirit just flooded me.
That's when I saw the holiness of God
and my sinfulness at the same time,
and I just started bawling.
It was like this mix of joy and sorrow.
Like, sorrow over my sin
and joy over the fact
that I just me the king of
the universe, God, Jesus.
In that moment, I knew that God was real,
Jesus was real, Heaven
was real, Hell was real,
eternal life was real, the Bible was real.
Just God was like this is who I am.
This is who you are.
You're now in my kingdom;
you're now my child,
and we now are reconciled
and we have a relationship
and I was like, God,
you have my whole life.
Like, this is it; it's all yours.
When I was living that gay life
and for many, many years,
I was 100% sure that was my identity.
Like, I felt like I was born that way.
It was my orientation; it was my identity,
and I felt like it was immutable.
And one of the things that also happened
during that moment of conversion was
I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt
that homosexuality was not who I was,
that my identity was in
Christ, that was not who I was.
This is the issue, the deal breaker.
Homosexuality is the deal
breaker for the LGBT community
when it comes to Christianity,
and I felt the same way.
People always say, well,
isn't it unloving to say
that homosexuality is a
sin, and I'm like, no,
it's unloving to let people spend eternity
apart from God, and that's unloving.
This life is a vapor.
This life is a mist.
It's like two seconds long.
Eternity is a long time, and
whether you believe it or not,
we're all gonna face
Christ on the last day,
and we're either gonna be under his mercy
or under his wrath;
that's the bottom line.
And whether you believe that
or not, that's going to happen.
That's what's at stake, is eternity.
That's what's at stake.
Do you want just this kind of
temporary pleasure right now
or do you want eternity with God?
Do not let this one issue, and I know
it's a very powerful,
strong issue, but do not let
this one issue prevent you
from eternity with God.
