Jackie Hill Perry was deeply entrenched in a homosexual lifestyle when she encountered Jesus.
“I loved my girlfriend, but God loved me more,” she confesses.
She didn’t know how God’s love would transform her life, and she was reluctant to answer His call, but she eventually turned to Him, giving over her homosexual desires.
Now, she’s sharing her testimony through a powerful book.
“I think as early as four or five, I felt like I was attracted to the same sex,” Jackie remembers.
“I didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t feel the freedom to talk to anybody about it.”
Before long, she submitted to her homosexual desires, declaring herself a lesbian at the age of seventeen. She loved pornography and had a long-term commitment to her girlfriend.
It was impossible for her to imagine putting aside her lifestyle and the person she loved. That is until one night when she realized her sin could only ever pull her down.
In her book Gay Girl, Good God, Jackie shares her testimony of transformation, including the moment she turned to Christ and repented of her sins.
“I sat up in my bed and thought deeply about all that was happening in me,” Jackie shares, remembering that night. “I’d known about God for so long, but now it seemed as if God was inviting me to know him. To love him. To walk with him. To be in relationship with him.”
Her relationship with God, she realized, was about much more than the sinfulness of her sexuality (which many Christians had warned her about already). It was about a God Who loved her deeply and wanted her to love Him back.
“That moment — that epiphany that my sin, left untreated, would be ‘the death of me’ — wasn’t a matter of trying to be straight or even trying to escape hell,” Jackie says. “No, it was about God positioning himself before my eyes, so that I could finally see that he is everything he says he is — and worthy to be trusted.”
However, even though she trusted Christ for her salvation, she still struggled with homosexual desires and feelings. She grew to realize that she had to walk closely with God and lean on Him instead of giving into her desires.
“The thing about feelings is that God made them. God created us with the capacity to feel,” Jackie admits. “And the main reason He did it is so we can glorify Him with our feelings. But sin distorted that.”
It’s a battle for Christians everywhere to master our feelings and preach the truth to ourselves on a daily basis.
But as Jackie reminds fellow believers, “If I put my feelings above Scripture, I’m going to be led to death every single time.”
Jackie wrote her book, Gay Girl, Good God, to encourage other believers and those struggling with their sinful feelings and desires. She says the book is written for three main groups of people.
First, the book speaks to the Church, which should love those who are trapped in the LGBT lifestyle. It’s important for Christians “to have some sense of empathy” for those who struggle with same-sex attraction in order to approach them with the Gospel, Jackie says.
Second, the book is written for Christians who struggle with homosexual thoughts and desires themselves. Jackie acknowledges that stepping away from those desires is always a process of sanctification, as with any other sin in a believer’s life.
Third, Jackie wants unbelievers to take something away from the book, too. “Are you living for the reason you were made?” she asks, asserting that the debate about sexuality is only part of a larger conversation about living for God and glorifying Him with every part of oneself.
“I think we need to reframe how we present the Gospel. You’re not coming to God to be straight, but you’re coming to God for Jesus. He has to be the reason why people come.”
She adds, “I wanted the book to point to God…it really isn’t about me. It’s me leveraging my story so that you can see the Gospel.”
It’s a powerful and timely message to a culture obsessed with glorifying and supporting the homosexual lifestyle, and a reminder to Christians to look to Jesus as the Conqueror of sin.
Pray for the impact of Jackie’s book, and read it here!
