Josh's Story

so i grew up in a small town in washington state my parents were pastors when i was a young child when i was seven years old they divorced i think that is probably one of the most traumatic things that happened that contributed to my same-sex attraction my homosexual struggle but i think where it all began is when i was five years old and i was sexually molested by a neighbor child i remember when he was finished i was so confused about what had happened and why had happened and he says if you ever tell anybody that this happened i'll tell your mom you pulled your pants down in the woods nobody ever knew about that until i was an adult when i was an adult and i told my mom about that situation when she finally found out she said to me she goes i never knew what happened she goes one day your light just went out you were just vacant you were so happy and joyful and then one day all that was just taken away and that's the truth i felt very disposable after that event and i carried that with me honestly until just a couple years ago i do know that being abused made me emotionally vulnerable to struggling with same-sex addictions but i do not think it made me gay it made me open for the enemy to come in and destroy my view of who i was as a man and who i was supposed to be i vowed never to tell anybody about this i remember being nine ten years old and never relating to boys at all i i felt so guarded with them i was very comfortable around women very comfortable around girls i felt that showing my need to be affirmed by men and to want to be close to guys would make people think i was gay and so i vowed my entire life never to show my need or want for male affection because i thought it was a weakness in me i didn't realize it was normal that all all men have it when i was about 11 years old i had really realized that my struggles were turning sexual very quickly this natural desire that god puts in men see boys should connect with men first before women and that didn't happen to me so when i was 11 years old and puberty was hitting men became very um they were the opposite to me they were something unusual and different and i craved them even more i remember seeing kids i know in school guys very comfortable with each other hugging each other being appropriately affectionate with each other and i told the lord i said i wish so badly that somebody would hug me but i was never going to initiate it because that in my eyes would mean that i was gay it's so sad how the enemy just completely destroys natural affections in people and if you've never dealt in your life with an absence of masculinity if you're one of those people who's always grown up with boys around and men and dads a dad and uncles and healthy male relationships you just don't understand how detrimental it is to live a life without male affirmation and affection i remember one time my stepdad was showing me how to hang pants on a hanger and i would not do it that way i told myself i said i'm never going to hang pants this way because i don't want to be who he is because i felt that loving and accepting my stepdad would mean i didn't love my father so even though i was longing for men i was longing for healthy relationships i close them all off either a to protect what relationship i have with my dad or to protect myself from being seen as gay i graduated from high school when i was 17 years old i moved to nashville tennessee to live with my dad and my stepmom and my struggles had become so strong and and so heavy it consumed my thoughts i got very active in my church i stayed very busy with the youth group i joined the praise team i did everything i could to do the works to get me closer to god but inside i was very empty and very lonely i had nobody to talk to i did finally confide in my dad and my pastor one day about my struggle about what i was going through and they were very helpful they really responded to me but i never after that moment pursued it any longer i never after that moment made a point to continue to tell them where i was at i thought i would be a burden on people i thought if i continued to tell people where i was at spiritually emotionally and so i just walled up again and i just pretended to be fine when i was about 21 years old i moved out on my own i i went to a gay bar for the first time and i felt so accepted i felt so normal i didn't feel like everybody was looking at me thinking i was less than i felt that i was as good as everybody else who was there and it was a really great feeling for me to feel like i was one of the guys that i was loved and accepted and included i never felt like that it was intoxicating it was a feeling that i carried with me for a very long time after that one thing that i really want to point out is that by saying and by saying i wasn't gay and hiding my struggle it's not because i was lying or i was trying to do things undercover being sin it's that because i wasn't ready to accept that for myself i know a lot of people currently who contact me parents and children who are struggling with this parents get mad because they thought their kid was lying to them they say i've asked them for years if they were gay and they said no it's not that they were lying it's that they weren't ready to accept that label for themselves they didn't want to be gay they didn't want that for themselves and it took me a long time to come to terms with where i was at sexually and i never did label myself that way when i started going out to the bars and meeting people for a little bit it was great but then the enemy got me so entangled i built up so many walls and relationships and had this life that was so broken and messed up that when he got me in so deep that i couldn't get out then he lifted the shroud off of my face and i could see myself just entangled in this mess of chains that's when i started a drug habit lots and lots of pills anything to numb me anything to not let me feel the conviction of the holy ghost anything to make me feel okay to make me feel like i could function every day because even though i've lived this life for a very long time and even though i made these decisions on my own to be this way i always knew it was wrong the lord never let me be deceived and think that i was okay and it's a very miserable place to be to know that you're wrong but to be too weak to overcome it one of my employees one day asked me she said why are you living this way because she knew my heart and i said christy because i'm doing the best i can with the hand that i've been dealt i am too weak to overcome this and this is all i can do right now and it was the truth i didn't have the fight in me i didn't believe that it was going to change i felt completely defeated one time a friend of mine i had got back from mexico and i had bought a ton of pain pills over there and i went to his house on a friday night and within a six or seven hour period i think i took about 35 pain pills we went out that evening came back i fell asleep on the couch and i slept for about 36 hours that was probably the scariest time for me when i realized that i could have died that my life was completely out of control but it still was not enough to bring me to myself because i was in bondage the enemy had me so entangled in his web that i couldn't break free on my own but my heart always loved the lord and i always knew it was wrong then remember i've never said this before publicly october 5th 2005. i uh myself along with a bunch of other people over a several week period were arrested in a sting operation i didn't go to jail but i was given a court date it was two weeks later i'm crying because i'm thinking of what god did for me i went to that court i was so nervous so i got there at seven o'clock in the morning i was the first person there was downtown nashville i go in i presented my id i gave him my fingerprints and i sat there and all these other people started to come in over the course of the next several hours and they began to call people's names so 10 o'clock they're calling all these people i've still not been called 11 30 i've still not been called at this point it's about four o'clock in the afternoon there's me and two other people there who had coming way after me and so they called me to the back and they say we need to talk to you i go to the clerk's desk and they say your license and fingerprints will not register in our system we can't put you before the judge today because we can't get you in the system can't create a case number for you so they said you're going to have to come back at a later time and i was like well i just got another job and i'm going to be leaving for three weeks to go train so my date was moved a few months out what i didn't know at that time was that judge really had it out for everybody who was there today because almost all of us were there for the same reason he was being very very harsh i talked to somebody a week or so later who had been there that day and i said what happened and he goes we got a very hefty court fine 12 months of supervised probation several weeks of community service and i'm freaking out i'm thinking i don't want all that i and so i was so stressed out i worry by nature anyway i'm very i tend to be very anxious and overthink everything and i was so i was so worried so i go back a few months later and i go in but it's just a regular court day i just go into the front entrance it's like traffic violators and things like that nothing like what i had been there before was represented and i go to the desk in the front there's a district a public defender there and if you're going to plead guilty you can just put your name in so i put my name on this list so when i was to go in there it would go a lot faster and i go in sit down i sit down kind of at the front towards the left where the court reporter is at and i see her talking hear her talking to somebody else about me and they bring up my name and they're like joshua christmas is that that's that's it that's that's all these wants to do and she goes yes that's all the judge wants to do so they call my name stand up and it's a different judge than who was originally there and uh and he goes six months unsupervised probation no core costs and i left that day i just got my car i was just overwhelmed for the first time in a really long time i heard the lord say i do care about you you do have a purpose you know things didn't get better after that moment they they actually got quite a bit worse for the next several months then in may of 2006 i was driving and i hadn't prayed i couldn't cry out to god it just wasn't possible i was so i was so bound up and i heard the song jesus take the wheel on the radio and the core says i'm sorry for the way i've been living my life i know i've got to change so from now on tonight jesus take the wheel take it from my hand because i can't do this on my own i'm letting go so give me one more chance please save me from this road i'm on and i would get in the car for weeks and i would cry and i would sing that when in june 3rd 2006 i had been in the gay pride festival that day and i came home i lived alone i was in my apartment by myself and i started listening to hymns on youtube because you can take the boy out of church but you can't take the church out of the boy and i heard tits so sweet to trust in jesus at that moment i felt the power of god like i've never felt before or ever felt since and he settled down in my home and within one hour he completely delivered me and set me free i heard him say son i'm doing this for you this way so people will no it's me they'll never doubt that it was anything else i remember telling the lord when i was 12 years old i said god if you ever deliver me from this i promise to prove you in people's lives i promise i will and he reminded me of that he said i'm doing it this way so it's proved that it's me so you can prove to people that it's me so i called all my friends everybody i knew who i was close to and the lord gave me the words to say to them see before i didn't feel like i could be free because i didn't know the words to say to destroy this life that i had built to break it down and he gave me the words to say the conversations to have with all these people and every one of those people let me go they didn't contact me again i didn't change my phone number i didn't change my job i didn't move see god didn't remove me from my situation he removed my situation from me and i was so grateful i called my mom and my dad that night i said please pray for me god's doing something in me and the next morning i woke up and i felt like myself i felt like somebody i had not been in so many years and i got up this morning and i went to church i went to cornerstone church in nashville and reinhard bonke the missionary was there speaking that day about healing and miracles and boy that rest needed my spirit so strong it just rose up in me and that day i sat in that service by myself in the balcony and i just cried and cried i let the love of jesus wash over me and i gave myself wholeheartedly to christ the next day i was at work and i don't have visions i don't see things i've never seen jesus i don't see angels but i was by myself and this little man walked in white hair with a cane and we i don't remember how but we got to talking about church and i said i was at cornerstone nashville yesterday and he goes i was in that service and he said he goes son the lord sent me to tell you that everything's gonna be all right that he's got you and you can do this that was exactly what i needed at that moment it's confirmation from the lord to know that i was going to be all right when i lifted i bent down my head to wipe a tear when i lifted it up that man was gone i looked out the front couldn't find him he just literally disappeared into thin air it was one of the most incredible god moments i've ever had in my life i'd say probably three or four days after god set me free i got a phone call from a pastor named jeremy smith from new life church in jackson tennessee so my dad had gone to this church and evangelized for years and the senior pastor valtries told my dad whenever josh is ready we want to help him i got this phone call from this man i didn't know and he goes hey man i'm jeremy i want to we want to help you i had and i was so empty i was so empty and i was so confused i had such a distorted view of men and love i didn't know what it was like to accept healthy love for men because i've never had it you know bad love is better than no love at all when it's all you can get and that's all i've had so when he began to tell me that they wanted to walk this out with me see god delivered me and he set me free but were so many aspects of my character that was still a broken little five-year-old boy who'd been abused and i needed to learn to grow up into a healthy godly man so every week for the next year i would go back and forth from nashville to jackson and i would meet with these men and i would learn to have vulnerable relationships and conversations with them and not to be guarded and god did so much for me in that year just by showing me how his people are the hands and feet of jesus and i didn't have to pretend to be something i'm not i'm not athletic i'm not a jock i can barely catch somebody's drift let alone a ball and but they loved me where i was at and i was allowed to be myself and it was the most healing thing up until that point in my life that that ever happened to me and i remember one day we were sitting in a session that was me and pastor jeremy a few other men and i said i said i don't know why any man would ever want to be friends with me i don't feel like i have anything to offer and i didn't i had no identity and he said he goes josh i just want you to come for a week to stay at my house just hang out with me you can go where i go you can do what i do and that encounter that conversation healed years and years of brokenness in me because for the first time in my life somebody wanted to take time out of their schedule their busy life to spend time with me for good reasons not because they wanted something from me after pastor jeremy invited me to his home i i felt like i had worth value over the course of this year and even to just recently it'll be 15 years pretty soon that i've been set free but i've had 15 years of lord telling me that i'm not disposable that i do matter that i do have value that i do have worth and he's always done that through his people his people have shown me that i matter and that i have worth and that i have something to offer um on super bowl sunday of 2007 i drove with my dad to jackson because he was going to preach at that church that sunday and after the service i went in the office pastor's office and i saw his niece sitting on the couch and clear as day the lord spoke to me he goes there's your wife there's the woman the woman i have kept for you that i have prepared for you and uh i i started calling her we started texting was trying to build a friendship i was stalking her on social media really my space back then and it took her a little longer to come around but in april of 2007 we began to date i moved to jackson in august of 2007 and march of 2008 we were married it is amazing how when you commit yourself and submit your will to the will of the lord how quickly he will restore and turn things around for you that the enemy had destroyed and he did such an amazing miracle by putting us together and keeping us together he is so good then on august 10th 2011 our oldest son charlie kent christmas was born four years later we had our youngest son cash liam christmas and i wanna i wanna just give a little advice here so mothers can unconditionally love their children but only children's only the affirmation of a child comes from their father fathers are the only one who can affirm their children and it's very difficult as men sometimes to be vulnerable and open up and show our true feelings to our spouse or to our kids sometimes it's easier with our daughters than our sons but if i can tell you anything right now fathers affirm your sons affirm your daughters be uncomfortably emotionally with them in a good way because if you don't affirm your kids the enemy will bring somebody into their life who will affirm them they need to get their worth and their value from their father just as we get our worth and our value from our heavenly father i tell my boys every day i tell him with hugs and kisses that nobody will ever love you like your daddy loves you you are good men you are great you have value you are loved my sons know that they are good men my sons know where they stand with us they know if anything happens to them that they can come to me they can come to their mother and we are a safe place that will not hurt them or harm them and always has their best interests at heart i have a counselor that i see and uh he said something really brilliant to me well i would see a counselor because i heard robert morris minister one time and he said he sees a therapist every week and i'm like if robert morris can do it then i can do it too so i have this brilliant counselor that i go to occasionally and he said something so profound to me the first time i went he said there is a big difference between same-sex attraction and unwanted same-sex lust he said same-sex attraction is not sexual attraction is not inherently a sexual word it just has a sexual meaning behind it so men are attracted to other men that have qualifications that they think they want you know everybody knows the mma fighter that they like or they buy the men's health magazine because they like the way the guy looks on the front or they have their favorite football player baseball player they are drawn to these men because they have qualities in them that they want that is not the same as unwanted same-sex lust wanting to sleep with men for years i didn't realize that my same-sex attraction wasn't sexual i didn't want to sleep with somebody i wanted them to hang out with me i wanted to be around them because i thought they were cool i thought they were a great guy but i didn't know the difference i felt that any attraction or drawing that i had to another man meant i was gay and that is absolutely not the truth it couldn't be farther from the truth it is natural for men to be drawn to other men that they want to have a friendship with or a brotherly bond with he looked me in the eye and told me all this and it just hit me like a ton of bricks and then he said he goes and josh there are men who are drawn to you that are attracted to you that you have things that they want i've had to learn that i've had to learn to accept that really over the past 18 months i've had to learn that i have something to offer we all have something to offer there are people who want to be my friend because they like what they see in me you know i'm not here to evangelize the gay community that's that's not what i'm called to you know straight people don't go to heaven redeem people go to heaven and gay people don't go to hell people whose hearts are reconciled to christ go to hell don't make it about being straight make it about coming to christ i i can sit with these people that i talk to who are struggling with brokenness and sexual identity and i can hug them and i can cry with them and i can relate and i can tell these boys that even though your dad wasn't there or you were abused or nobody loved you that the lord loves you i love you i can make a difference in their lives because what i've been through one thing that i think the church really messes up and is that we say the term love the sinner hate the sin and that is really a terrible thing to say because any type of heavy sin that you're in it consumes your entire life so when people would tell me that they loved me but they hated my sin i just said well you hate me because i am my sin everything i do in my life is because of my sin is a terrible thing to tell people that you love them but you hate their sin just tell them that you love them just tell them that you want more for them and if you are broken and hurting and struggling with who you are in christ there is a hope out there i am living proof that god can take the messiest mess and turn it into something so clean and so great the world wants to tell us that you're born this way just overlook it there's no reason to change as the church it is our job to validate people's struggle we need to look at these people and say we validate your feelings you feel this way because you were abused you feel this way because you were neglected there is a real reason that you feel this way you didn't choose this you didn't pick this for yourself but it's on you anyway but you're dealing with it you're struggling with it when there is a place there is a place in christ through his people and through his word where there is complete and total freedom i i told the lord i said i will never ever hide my light again because when light meets darkness darkness goes away i try to be as audaciously bold about my story as i can because it's not just for me but it's for so many other people parents and children there's hope there's hope in jesus you know it's the goodness of god that draws man into repentance and so when we reflect the goodness of christ in our life and on our behavior it draws these people to him through us so i have lots of people i have a a current gay pastor drag queens people who are homosexuals who have no desire to change their no plans to change their life they've all messaged me and told me how much they respect and honor my word and my story the enemy would make you think the media the liberal america would make you think that we are hated by our stand for christ but it's just not true people want a story of hope they want to see people redeemed they want to look at somebody's life and say i can aspire to that through jesus i don't have to stay this way it is my goal and my purpose as a believer and as a man of god to let you know that there is hope in jesus anything that you're struggling with you can overcome it through christ

Channel: Joshua Christmas

Views: 554

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: Joshua Christmas, deliverance, Mending broken masculinity, Homosexuality, Redeemed, Kent Christmas

Id: shL66ec1s7k

Length: 29min 39sec (1779 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021