He walked into my office broken and damaged. There was no single sunshine in his eyes as he took his seat having called to ask for an appointment. I took a look at him and wondered what could have happened to this tall and well -built handsome guy? As I made to welcome him he jumped up from the seat and took a hard look at me with the sternest expression I had ever seen in so many years of practice as a professional counselor.
‘I have been to Pastor Jummy(not real name) and she had tried her best with no results; I have been to 5 psychiatrists and they couldn’t help me; I have patronized several psychologists; I have confided in several NGO owners who stabbed me in the back. No deliverance session seem to have worked for me. I reluctantly came to see you because someone mentioned your name and I hope I’d get the desired help but take a look at me I am a woman trapped in a man’s body’ As a matter of fact I am female and a versatile bottom’.
I tried to conceal my shock and I stood from my seat to assure him he was a man to which he responded in anger and continued ‘Look at my breast it is already growing and I am sure all my feminine features would soon be complete’.
That was how a 2-year journey with Jones started and trust me I learnt so much from him and he grew to trust and believe everything I taught him but none of my therapy worked as much as the love that was extended to him.
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I remember how he had become suicidal and would wake me up several nights to tell me of how he had just cut himself with a knife and was ready to end it all. Would I ever forget our several walks together to chat and how he would still come back to confide in me each time he slipped? I never forgot how he shared his pains on how the church had rejected him and thrown him out when they discovered his challenge and how deliverance sessions were recommended even when an associate pastor in the same church and the church organist had at different times slept with him.
We became quite close and he had made so much progress that when I see him we share a lot of jokes about the entire process but you might want to ask what was responsible for this challenge? Was he born that way or did something go wrong?
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His pain started when his father hired a house boy after the death of his mother. This house boy started sodomizing him from age 4 and threatened to kill him if he told anyone and that went on for 4years. This houseboy was fired and a new one hired who seem to have received a handing over note from the previous and continued from where the other stopped. By the time my friend was shipped to a boarding house by his ever busy father who never had a good relationship with him, the damage was already done and he became an object to test run rape by seniors in school and that was how his ordeal became worse till he found himself in church and University where some of his leaders took over. He was thrown out of church but the associate pastor kept ministering while the organist kept playing music every Sunday because their own status was not discovered.
My friend’s case is just one out of the over 150 cases I must have handled in the last 9years of working with folks with same sex tendencies. Trust me I don’t approve of LGBT but I also do not deny that what they feel is real and the pain they go through in their body is worse.
I was in Enugu having been invited to speak at the annual sex talk organized by one of my loveliest senior friends and mentor and an 11year old who had become hooked on same sex was narrating his ordeal in the hands of his uncle. Do I talk about Simisoluwa who was introduced into lesbianism by her father’s house help and who later introduced her younger sisters into the act? According to her she caught her father sleeping with the same house help and the house help pounced on her for the sins of her father.
I have had to deal with so many cases like these but the scariest of all is the concept of ‘Fuckarama’ which has taken over many of our boarding schools especially the Christian schools. Yes! You heard me right because that was the first place this concept was discovered where rookie students were sodomized and there dared not talk about it.
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The whole world woke up to the rude shock of the legitimacy of the LGBT movement across America and as usual I went online to begin to see the hashtags like #endtime #sodomandgomorra and several others and I really got upset because I felt it was a sheer display of arrogant ignorance. We seem to have perfected the art of mystifying what we don’t understand without asking ‘where did we go wrong or what could we have done differently’.
A friend of mine was a cell leader to a young boy who had a serious sexual challenge and none could professionally help him rather than cast out the same sex spirit in him. Several deliverance sessions held till everyone got tired of him and in frustration the boy also left church only to show up later as the first transgender in Nigeria. What could we have done differently in church?
Isn’t it time we come to terms with the following:
– The cure to sex addiction may not be prayers alone there could be some professional intervention available that we must learn to embrace
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– That the days of might man institution could have been over and what we need to focus on is a might media and content generation
– The days of mighty cathedrals may be over because the entire world can be discipled from inside a room with the right technology
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– The days of one man show may have been over and must give way to intentional collaboration where we embrace other people’s expertise to help everyone
– The days of one denomination show is over and we must embrace a sole kingdom agenda that can help all.
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– The days of ‘I can control the entire world with spiritual authority’ may be over and we must match that authority with superior invention and intellectual prowess
– The days of travelling around in jets for missions may have been over and must give way to building the best professionals and sending them into spheres as missionaries may be here
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– The days of cursing and threatening the LGBT movement may be over and may have ushered in a new age where we must engage in discussions and extend genuine love and hands of fellowship even when we don’t agree with the acts.
We can no longer pretend and wish this away neither can we attribute it to end times because LGBT is not a new concept. It was very visible and openly practiced in ancient Greece and Rome and was alive in the days of Paul of Tarsus and the end never came that time.
Can we leave end time to God because He alone determines that and take responsibility for a dying world instead of just behaving as if we are clueless and should you think it is end time please feel free to donate your cars and bank accounts and buildings to me because I know just what to do with them.
On a more serious note there are so many hurting kids around us who need our love and if we don’t identify them and help them they will grow to become the future LGBT. The good thing about the LGBT movement is that they can’t reproduce biologically so if we take responsibility now and show enough love while we take responsibility for the kids around us then it is a matter of time before we pick on another issue.
I think it should be a season of thinking and not a season of blaming and cursing. I am not sure LGBT is our problem the bigger problem is what we have or could have done with God’s investment.
What would God have us do? And this is the prerequisite for every invention and not ejaculate judgment on a nation for passing a law we don’t approve of. And by the way why do we keep travelling to the US and Canada that has passed the same law in over 10years? If you think God would destroy those nations would you want to be caught in the destruction?
I think God is showing us what is wrong with us and what we need to do. And I think love is a leveler of every situation and true love alone can break the most hardened human being.
16 comments
Praise Fowowe, I am an ardent follower of your write-ups and I ‘ve been richly blessed in the past. However, on this topic , you are way off the mark. I vehemently disagree with you and your attempt to give a shoulder to rest on for this group of people who are hell bent on turning God’s law upside down. Most disturbing is your plea for understanding on the basis of some “childhood bad experience”. Pray, if we look deeply, I believe some of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were also victims of those experiences. Yet , God destroyed them all. Make no mistake about it: God is not moved by sentimental appeals to human emotions designed to water down God’s law. His word is settled in heaven forever. More annoying is your allusion to US and your attempt to also pray on our emotions. No two ways about it- the law is bad. So regrettable that a nation founded on Christian principle has now degenerated to a nation where the devil has taken charge. As much as they want to live in self-denial, the consequences of this degeneration stares them in the face daily. What, with the almost daily bloodletting, specifically shootings going on in the US? As for your attempt to trivialize the end-time issues, please be careful. The Scripture tell us that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. We are enjoined to be watchful and not get carried away. Read Matt. 24 for all the sign of the end time which are already with us here. If your concern is to continue to acquire material wealth as reflected in your words: ” should you think it is end time please feel free to donate your cars and bank accounts and buildings to me..” rather than staying true to your ministerial calling, then you have missed it.
If these are the signs of the end times then shouldn’t you be glad as all good Christians pray for God’s kingdom to come quickly?
On the other hand – what would Jesus Christ do? I’m sure he would heal the LGBT person. Since you have no power to heal perhaps you should instead pray for your fellow afflicted human beings and let God be the judge.
As Jesus Christ said – let ye that has no sin cast the first stone. Please first remove the speck from your own eyes before you start condemning a sin that does not affect you directly. If you have committed adultery or lied you are no better than the gay person. We’re all sinners at the end of the day and God is the final judge.
@ TA, much as you tried to hide your sympathy(or is it admiration?) for the LGBT with your puerile arguments, it is so glaring! Otherwise, how can you ask what Jesus would do when it is quite obvious? Yes, he’ll heal repentant LGBT- those who truly desire healing and not those lying to themselves and hiding under some concocted excuses- “I was born that way” (lie , nobody is born LGBT because God cannot make mistakes, everything He created was good). Yes, I admit- I have no power to heal anybody (nobody has) and I agree with you that I have the duty to also pray for my “fellow afflicted human beings”. But that duty also comes with the responsibility to speak the truth in love to them. Believe me, I am not motivated by judgmental spirit but by a genuine desire to see these people delivered from their bondage. The truth is everyone treating this issue with kids glove is not helping matter. I hope you know what it means for “God to be the Judge” because nobody can stand His indignation and whether you like it or not, He’ll harshly judge sinners. His word is clear on that. I admit, I am a sinner and I’m trusting God to see me through even as I strive to please Him. But that does not mean that I should keep quiet in the face of a glaring evil which is spreading like wildfire. I won’t. On a last note, you contradict yourself by suggesting that I have no right to comment on “a sin that does not affect you directly”. The question is, why must you respond to my comment since it does not affect you directly too?
Spot-on on all counts. God bless you.
Christ should always be our model for dealing with one another. He came not for the self acclaimed righteous as u but for sinners including the LGBT. Thank God the appearing again of Christ is not yet here, this simply tells us the challenges we must face to bring sinners to Christ. Take it or leave our religiousness will take us no where if we refuse to embrace the Christlike love demonstrated by Christ himself. He never condemned any but through compassion and love he was able to draw them to himself. What have you done as a Christian to help these people in your own way than sentencing them to hell before the judgment day. Let those who think they stand……. Instead of castigating the writer why not use this to think deeply on how we all can help the LGBT discover Christ love so that they can get the healing they need from within and not the superficial healing we preach in the name of deliverance and all. All of us must pray for direction and act in accordance with the model of our Lord. While we are yet sinner, Christ loved us and gave himself to us and on His ascension He said, love one another if as I have loved u.
I have no apologies for my comments and I refused to be swayed by Western propaganda. Love is not condoning godlessness. Love is not accepting the unacceptable just to be seen to be socially correct. No. The problem is, contemporary Christians have so abused the notion of the ‘love of Christ’ so much that evil is now to be condoned not condemned just to be seen to be exhibiting the love of Christ. Hell is a topic to be avoided like a plague. Infallible and immutable word of God must be watered down to show love. Not surprising though. Apostle Paul had already warned us in 2 Tim. 4:3 – 4:”For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables”. The truth we must face, whether we like it or not is Christ is not coming to die a second time. He is coming to judge the world. If you love the so-called LGBT, then point out the folly of their ways to them. Let them know that if they fail to mend their ways, there is only one destination for them: Hell. Enough of this pampering which is only breeding more hell-bound people. Your downplaying the place of deliverance is also baffling. I make bold to say that everyone caught in this web of unnatural affection is under satanic bondage and can only be delivered through the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, not through any man-made show of love. The spiritual controls the physical. Until they are delivered by the Son, let them swim in the “ocean of love”, they will remain in bondage. The word of God is clear: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” John 8:36.
Again, spot-on on all counts. God bless you richly.
Wow! What a write up! I am not confused. I stand where my bible stands but I agree with you praise! Love can conquer not threats! Why do people still take drugs to Indonesia inspite of the death sentence? It’s time we began to do what Jesus would have done. I dare say, the rate of this movement, you are likely to find minimum of one lgbt in a family with countless in hiding and living in pretense! It’s a sin, no doubt, but it must be handled with love because as you said ‘pain emotionally and bodilly’.
Dear friends, let us understand that the love of God is not to condole sins nor the lovers of sins. The Bible says that our Creator is love(I John 4:16, KJV). The same Bible also teaches us that our God is holy, and He commanded us to be holy like him(I Peter 1:15). So, why do some of us only teach people about the love of God without telling them about His holiness or hatred for sins or inequities(Hebrew 1:9)? Truly, He came to save sinners that hate sin but are captives of sin from the power of sin. And not the sinners that are captives of sin but loves sins! Just like the two thieves that were crucified with Jesus Christ. One went to paradise with Christ on that day, and the other was lost forever! This is because of the difference in their attitudes to Jesus and to sins.Thus, any LGBT that truly regret for doing those abominations, and ask for God’s mercy and deliverance will be forgiven and delivered by God. But those that loves it and continue in LGBT will be damned by God our Creator(Jude:7).
Dear frnd, I wi like us to read dis article once again….. Dis write up z nt supporting LGBT in anyway rather, it z suggesting a possible way or a easier way of eliminating it. As u cn c d writer talked abt aw d suffering guy has went to so many Churches for delivrance nd he could nt findt delivrance in any of dem. The writer did nt condem spiritual exercise 4 dis set of pple, it only talks abt steps dt cn b taken in order to overcome LGBT. We need to realize dt d writer z talking frm experience dt z working 4 him . He ws able to capture dis man’s heart 2ru extending d hand of love 2 him of which most churrches did nt do instead de threw dis man away frm Church. The summary of dis article can b put forward in dis manner ” if u wnt to catch a fish in d river put a bait in d hook , without d bait der’s no fish ” dis means to bring pple frm der sinful ways to Christ u av to use wisdom as d holy spirit leads. U dnt jst jump into delivrance bt u need to understnd d detailed knwldge of wat u ar praying 4, u dnt jst throw sinners away bcos of der sins, dt z very wrong nd z nt biblical. Jesus loves sinner dt z y he came 2 save dem…. it z nt d sin dt z in dem dt we love bt de themselves, we only av interest in der souls 4 Christ. so we wi do watever we cn do to win der heart 4christ using d wisdom of d HOLYSPIRIT wic z our spiritual bait….Thksv
I strongly support what john & krisol said .d write writer shld also sympathesed with boko aram, bcos dt is how they are created to drink blood like their superior officers witch & wizard?he shld also love armed robbers who kill ,marmed ,destroy lives& steal pple livelihood?, d writer shld pamper prostitute & producer of adult movie who corrupt our world?,he shld pamper ,love &praise all d heartless politician dt steal our billions &make us poor nation of d world with abject notorious destitution?.no sympathy for wickedness LGBT is wicked act of Sodom & gomora,as God destroyed them in Bible days, no matter d sympathy they garner for their beastiality from society or even d church,d soul dt sinneth shall dead and all nation dt forget God shall be turn into hell.if d wholeworld could raise up against terrorist,drug pendlers & other ill vices .these demonic liars & gender terrorist (LGBT) shld be destroyed from our society.
Reading these comments, I wonder how people interprete things. Someone who has had dealings with these LGBT people, interacted with them, councelled them, is proffering a solution and you guys are here criticising. It’s amazing how much hypocrisy is in the church these days, a pastor secretly engaging in sexual relations is celebrated but LGBT people are thrown out. God will have mercy on us all, only God knows who serves him and all d last day, we all shall know where we went wrong.
Dear friends,don’t be unmindful of d fact that the scriptures must be fulfilled. The issue of LGBT is just one of d plenty predictions Jesus made in d Bible. Have u considered how many air, sea and road disasters we experience every month round d world recently. What of natural disasters? The heat wave in India, flooding in China and volcanic eruption in Indonesia have been taking their human toll since d past one month.Yes, their had been wars since creation. But can u check d number of wars being fought now or since after d end of 2nd world war? Such number had never bn recorded for such a period of time. Check these predictions in Luke 21: 10-11 and Matt 24: 6-7.
Same week that USA legalised same sex marriage, South Africa & Japan legalised adultery & d National Ethics Council in Germany advised against criminalisation of incest after examining case of a man who had 4 children wt his sister. I read d story of a grandmother who thru IVF became pregnant 4 d grandson. I saw their picture expressing happiness 4 their situation. I also watched d video of about 5 ISIS men placing their machine guns on top of d head of a 3yr old boy. He was just laughing bcos he didn’t understand b4 they shattered his brain next to d beheaded body of his 5yr old sister & parents. All in d name of Allah. But Jesus had alerted us in John 16:2 that “the time cometh that whosoever killeth u will think that he doeth God service.” Yet Jesus warned in Matt 24:8 that these signs are just d beginning of sorrows meaning that d worst is yet to come. But we may be experiencing d worst about now bcos in d USA State of Idaho, Rev & Mrs. Daniel Knapp have bn sentenced to 6months in jail or fine of $1000 per day 4 refusing to wed a gay couple that asked him to wed them. A confectionery shop had bn ordered by d court to make an LGBT praise inscription on a cake ordered by a gay after they refused. Oklahoma has just instructed d removal of the 12-commandments statue from d state capitol. So u can see that it is no longer “let us allow them do whatever they want to do so long as it doesn’t affect us”. This time we are being FORCED to join or assist them. But Jesus advised again that thought this is d beginning of sorrows, yet only those that endure to d end will be saved (Matt 24:13). It is only d fool that will join d people in 2nd Peter 3:4 asking “where is d promise of Jesus’ coming seeing that things have remained d way they are since creation.” (Also see Eccl 8:11). If Jesus had predicted that he will come like a thief in d night & d thief has revealed all signs & manner of his coming, we should be prepared & not be caught unawares. So let’s not rend our cloths in anger over LGBTs but also prepare 4 d time when we may be FORCED to marry gays or die for not allowing them etc. I can hear u say “God forbid.”
I am not a Pastor nor an expert in end-time theology. However, the very humanly incomprehensible events in recent times forced me to go & search for d truth. Thereafter, I’ve come to agree that these things must come to follow d fulfilment of such Bible predictions as re-creation of state of Israel, formation of European Union,d abundance of gay apologists like Praise Fowowe here, so that scripture must be fulfilled and d Bible will really complete it’s truthfulness.
I also want to assure d very elect of God that just as God intervened in Isaiah 59: 12-16 when “judgment is turned away, justice standeth afar off, truth is failing in d street, equity can no longer enter & he who tries to depart from evil maketh himself a prey” this displeased our God & His arm brought salvation to His people & righteousness was not abolished but endured to d end.
All d beauty & wonders we see in d world couldn’t have been by accident as claimed by evolutionists. If evolution could make me stand up, move my legs, talk with my tongue, see with my eyes be born from ordinary fluid pumped into my mum’s body, then evolution has sense. If it has sense, it has a mind and if it has a mind, it has soul. If it has a soul & can do things that humans can’t do then it is superhuman. If evolution is superhuman, then evolution is God. So if God could have d sense, skills & power to create all that I’ve witnessed in this world, I wonder why He would not have d power to keep Himself alive forever till He is ready to come again. Just like John in Rev 22:20, my reply to Jesus announcement of coming again is “EVEN SO, COME LORD JESUS.”
@John. I feel and understand your coming hard on Praise. You will and can never understanding where Praise is coming from until you have had an opportunity to counsel with and lead LGBT. Personally, the whole of my being is against this act however I strongly believe that love will do what hate can not do. I think we also need to know that there are two categories to this group, one is niche category (wanting to belong to a new and developing trend in town) and the other are the ones trapped and looking for a way of escape. Grace and mercy.
Uncle Praise is doing a good work there. We can start dealing eith this problem from the root. The super book says that “ny people perish for lack of knowledge” We must put our faith in the strength of the lord, His mighty hand will be our shield and sword over every foe we will prevail. We will not fail. We will not falter and we will not faint.
Personally, I think Praise is just saying that cutting off the branch is not the solution, but dealing with the root cause through God’s grace will be a start. Yes, the signs of the end times are here but as good Christians, our charge is to “rescue the perishing and take hope to the hopeless” not to drown them further.