Linda wanted to be a man. She had planned it all out, to the monetary side and even going so far as to choose the name, ‘David’ for her post operation itentity. But a powerful experience when she was 21 with Christ changed her life forever. Listen as she shares her journey with gender identity, sexual attraction, faith struggles, and her 11-year transformation. She highlights pivotal moments, the role of confession, accountability, and divine intervention in her healing.
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Linda stresses forgiveness, responsibility, and the messy nature of discipleship in her path to self-acceptance and faith. She discusses her research on individuals transitioning from an LGBT identity, exploring commonalities and mindsets aiding transformation. Linda emphasizes intimacy with Jesus over sexual orientation change and outlines a transformation cycle involving pain and a relationship with Christ. She introduces five streams of Christian responses to LGBTQ issues, advocating for nuanced understanding. Linda and Dr. J Show discuss Christian perspectives on LGBTQ+ issues, including affirmation, accommodation, mortification, and holistic transformation. Linda highlights identity, parental roles, and language’s impact on perceptions, stressing compassion and truth in addressing same-sex attraction complexities.
Dr. Linda Seiler is a trailblazer in understanding gender identity and sexuality. Born and raised in a conservative environment, Linda faced internal conflicts regarding her gender identity from a young age. Despite these challenges, she pursued her education with determination, eventually earning a PhD from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. Her academic journey was marked by a deep exploration of gender and sexuality, culminating in a dissertation that examined the experiences of individuals who have undergone significant personal transformations. As an ordained minister, Linda has dedicated her life to ministry and education, leading initiatives like Chi Alpha at Purdue University and serving as a National XA Field Specialist. Her book, “Trans-Formation,” reflects her personal journey and academic insights, offering guidance to those navigating similar paths. Through her work, Linda continues to inspire and educate, contributing significantly to the discourse on identity and transformation.
Linda’s website:
Get the 5 streams document here: https://lindaseiler.com/resources/
Buy her book, “TRANSformation” https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625862601
Linda shares her story with Focus on the Family: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4WxPhWdU60
Follow her on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/RevLindaSeiler
https://www.instagram.com/revlindaseiler
https://twitter.com/revlindaseiler?lang=en
ReStory Ministries: https://restoryministries.org/
Transcript (Please note the transcript is auto-generated and contains errors)
Are people really born gay? Is it true that once gay, always gay? And that no one ever changes his or her sexual orientation? Hi everyone. I’m Doctor Jennifer Roback Moors, founder and president of the Earth Institute, an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love once again on the doctor J show, we have a guest who made the journey away from an LGBT identification.
Her story helps us understand that there are many pathways into and many pathways out of an LGBT identity. I’m delighted to have Doctor Linda Seiler as my guest today for decades, Linda felt like a male trapped in a female body and was exclusively attracted to women. Today, she is content in her female body and is wholly attracted to men.
She offers a unique, compassionate perspective as a person who has struggled with her own sexuality and gender identity. Linda earned a PhD in Intercultural Studies from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. Her dissertation consists of 30 case studies of men and women who were what same sex attracted, and who have experienced lasting transformation. She is an ordained Assemblies of God minister and the Executive Director of Restoring Ministries, which equips churches to address LGBT issues.
Her newly released book is Trans Formation A Former Transgender Response to LGBT. It’s available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. I know you’re going to be fascinated by this conversation.
This doctor, Linda Seiler. Welcome to the doctor J. Show.
Thank you. It’s great to be with you today.
Well, I became aware of you and your work. I think through, Andrew Rodriguez, our mutual friend, and probably some other things as well. And I’ve read your book, Transforming, and I have it on Kindle. I don’t have a physical copy to hold up. But it’s a very fascinating book. And I’m also interested in your dissertation that you’re doing.
Yeah. So from as long as I can remember as a kid, I wanted to be a boy instead of a girl. I felt like I was a little boy trapped in a female body. And it wasn’t because my parents said, you’re the son we never had or anything external. It felt internal, this compulsion to be a boy. My parents thought I was a tomboy.
Lots of girls like to play outside and climb trees instead of play with Barbies like my older sister Nancy. And as I grew, I was imitating dad. Instead of imitating mom. Just, I think my parents thought it was a phase I would grow out of, but for me, it was like, this is my destiny. And when I was nine years old, I heard about what we used to call sex change operations.
And I, in my juvenile mind, I thought I could go to the hospital one day as Linda and come out the next day as David and live happily ever after. So that was my plan as a nine year old. As soon as I have enough money and I’m old enough, I’ll get a sex change. Live as David happily ever after.
I got into junior high and discovered, while all the other girls were wanting to blossom into womanhood and experiment with makeup and date boys. That world was foreign to me. I wanted nothing to do with it. And I was intensely jealous of the boys around me whose voices were changing. They were becoming everything I wanted to be.
I so wanted my voice to change. And, And it was around that time that I discovered I was not only desiring to be a man, but I was exclusively attracted to women. And I didn’t want that. I but I couldn’t do anything to change it. It literally felt like I was born that way, that I discovered those attractions the same way, you know, people discover their attractions to the opposite sex.
And so I’m trying to reason through my existence at that time, like what is going on. And I thought, you know, if I really am a man trapped in a female body, then I should be attracted to women. That just makes me a straight man. So I just have to hold out till I can get the sex change and everything will make sense.
And in late junior high, I started thinking through the the ramifications of having this sex change. I hadn’t told my family, nobody knew. And I’m thinking through it in a way I didn’t have the capacity to think through. When I was nine years old, and I thought, how am I going to tell people? And I came to the conclusion, you know, I, I really only have two options option A run away, have the surgery, never see my family again.
But at least I get to be David. And Option B don’t have surgery in, which means I’ll get to keep my family, but it would consign me to a life of really despair and loneliness. I was suicidal, I hated being trapped in a female body, despairing of life, didn’t have friends, didn’t fit in. But I knew my family loved me.
And I remember the day I was walking down the hall in junior high and I consciously chose option B, and I thought, you know, this is just what you have to do to survive. And so from that point forward, I thought, I need to be a little bit less androgynous, start dressing a little bit more like a girl, and try to do something to fit in and survive.
And my junior year in high school, I, I thought, you know, maybe I’m not attracted to boys because I’ve never dated one. And I decided to try dating and experimenting sexually with boys that didn’t awaken anything in me. I thought there was something dormant that needed to, like, be awakened. That didn’t work. And, it just made me more intense.
Jealous of the boys. Around the same time, I had a friend that invited me to an outreach where I heard about Jesus and the gospel, and I gave my life to Jesus that night. And I thought all of this will go away, because if anyone’s in Christ, they’re a new creation. The old is gone, the new is here.
And I woke up the next morning equally attracted to women and desiring to be a man. And I thought, oh, and, from that point forward, I, I, I just lived a double life. I thought, I have to I have to fool everyone. They can’t know my deep, dark secret. But I really wanted to follow Jesus and I.
The more I read the Bible and and matured in Christ, I realized, wow, this is not in alignment with God’s design for me, but I can’t change it. By my senior year in college, I was miserable. I got involved in a campus ministry at my university, and I really did have an experience where I wanted to follow Jesus, live for him, read the Bible.
I was sharing the gospel with others, and yet I had this deep, dark secret behind closed doors and a double life. And I finally hit a point where I realized, unless I take what’s in the dark and bring it into the light with a trusted leader, I’ll never be free. And I heard freedom was even a possibility. I didn’t know if it was, but I heard a, speaker say the answer to habitual repetitive sin where you’re in bondage is James 516.
Confess your sins one to another. Pray for each other so that you may feel. And I didn’t hear anything. I just I just thought, unless I take a risk and tell my campus pastor if there is any hope for freedom, that’s the path. So I, you know, I risked it, I risked it all. I was 21 at that time.
Not a soul on planet Earth knew what I was struggling with, and I was terrified to tell anyone. In our culture this was the 90s. Our culture was 180 degrees different than it is today. It was not a gay affirming culture, so it was a real risk. I thought, you know, this could go really bad or it could go really well.
So when I told John my deepest, darkest secret and said, you know, here it is, he looked me in the eyes and he said, Linda, thank you for sharing that with me. I know that took a lot of courage, and I want you to know this doesn’t change our opinion of you. We love you. We see the hand of God on your life and we want to get you the help that you need.
And that was 1994. I mean, it was a phenomenal response for that time period. And that was the first step in what was to be an 11 year journey of transformation in my life. And I didn’t I didn’t know it would be 11 years, didn’t know what I’d signed up for. But suffice it to say that, discipleship and what the Bible calls progressive sanctification takes time as we are conformed to the image of Christ, as we walk further and further away from the past and renew our mind and put on the new self, it is a process that takes time.
No matter what you struggle with. And so over that 11 year period, God began to put his finger on areas of my life that were contributing to my self-hatred and the desires to be a man and the attractions to women, things I didn’t know at the time. It just kind of unraveled. And there’s still more. Each day I walk with Jesus, I’m learning more and more as to how things in the past and wrong mindsets have contributed to maybe present realities and things that I struggle with.
And, allowing the Lord into those areas to to bring continued healing and growth and making me more like Jesus. So today, I’m content in a female body and I’m wholly attracted to men instead of women. And that, again, that was a process. It wasn’t like saying you flip a switch and everything goes away overnight. But Jesus has done this amazing work in my life to absolutely transform me into something I never dreamed was possible.
Well, Linda, this is this is a fascinating story on a number of counts. Okay, so so you mentioned you were 21 when you made your first confession, basically.
How old.
Were you when you you also described a moment of decision from, I think it was junior high where you decided you wanted the love of your family.
More.
Than you wanted to become. David.
How old were you at that point?
I was I was probably about 30 going on 13.
Okay. So at age 13, so, so puberty, you know, like, you’re you’re maxed out on puberty, right? And this is what you were dealing with in that puberty age where young men and women are asking themselves, who am I? Who do I want to be? Am I in charge of who I am? Right, because you have this sense that you’re not completely in charge of it.
So. So there’s so many interesting elements of what you what you said. But I wanted to just kind of get those markers, you know, for how old you were and when it was. I’m glad you mentioned what year it was, because you’re right, things have changed very rapidly, and you could likely not get that kind of response today, or you might not get that response today, 20 years earlier.
You might not have gotten that response. So, you know, that’s an important that’s also an important marker. So let’s go back to some of the the questions of your self understanding when you look back on it. Now, you said that as a child you thought you were born this way. What does that phrase mean to you? And do you think it’s true?
What’s your adult perspective on that question of where those feelings came from?
Yes, my subjective experience was I was born that way, that that’s what it felt like growing up. So I understand why people come to that conclusion. It’s the we all know that during your first ten years or so of life, we all need meaningful connection with the same sex in order to develop a secure sense of who we are as a boy or as a girl.
And that’s why everywhere you go all over the world, you’ll find little eight nine year old boys who build a tree house, and they there is a sign over that tree house, and it’s a universal message no matter where you go in the world. And that sign says no girls allowed because. Right? Because, girl, I’m cooties and the boys just want to be alone in their boys house.
And the girls do the same thing. Boys have cooties, the whole thing. And yet something happens as we go into puberty, where we psychologists call it the exotic becomes erotic, where what used to be foreign to us then becomes attractive. And so the boys who used to think girls have cooties all of a sudden across this barrier into puberty and go, you know, I think I want to kind of get to know one of those girls that I used to think had cooties.
And for me, it’s like I stayed in that sense of arrested emotional development. I stayed in the Cudi phase in a sense where I never found security as a girl among girls, never felt like a girl. And therefore I entered puberty and my hormones kicked in and I was still searching to figure out who I was as a girl.
And without having that established, I couldn’t develop attractions to the opposite sex because I was still trying to, find completeness in who God had created me to be. I didn’t know that. I didn’t have words to articulate that, but I as an adult, I understand it now. And so it’s almost like those desires to find myself became sexualized and aimed at the same sex unintentionally.
I didn’t want that to happen. But I couldn’t help the fact that my body was moving into puberty. Hormones were kicking in, and I was still longing for these needs to be met. So as an adult, I can look back at this now and and through my own experience, through talking to colleagues and through research that’s out there, that what we know is that these, if I have an unmet need, for example, I rejected my mom at a very young age, wanted nothing to do with her world, judged her as emotional or, weak, and saw dad as strong and really over identified with dad and rejected the world woman.
But that left a vacuum in my heart for maternal love that I’m designed by God to have. But it didn’t get met the way God designed because I rejected it. And as a result, I’m growing up as this junior high kid longing for maternal law. I didn’t know that’s what it was, but I remember that my attractions initially were not sexual.
I remember going to a friend’s house. I was probably nine, ten years old, and I looked at her mom and I said, I want her mom to be my mom. I want she’s got something that I need. And I didn’t have words to articulate it, but I wanted her to pay attention to me. I wanted her to hug me, and I was not in a sexual way.
I just wanted maternal connection with her. I had this elaborate fantasy life of being whisked away in this, this river, and I’m drowning. And then my sixth grade reading teacher would come and rescue me out of that that river. That was almost. And I didn’t know it at the time, but it was almost like a figurative picture of how I felt.
I’m caught in this raging sea of hormones and desires and things that aren’t being met. And I wanted a woman to come and rescue me. And when my hormones kicked in and my sexual drives and desires, it felt subjectively like I wanted to have sex with women and was attracted to them. But really, all it was was a search for maternal love and a connecting with the the woman that God created me to be.
But I, I didn’t see it in myself. So I was trying to connect with the wholeness in someone else to try to complete me.
And how’s your relationship with your mom now, if I may ask?
Yeah. It’s good. She’s 84. In fact her birthday is this week. And there’s so much that God has done. My family initially didn’t know about my struggles. So when I told my counselor, or my campus pastor at 21, eventually I invited my parents into that journey. When I was about 23, I think, and that rocks the family boat.
I was going to counseling. And counseling had a taboo attached to it. Just all, you know, just in our family, like, nobody went to counseling. Who does counseling? You know, that’s kind of their generation.
So regardless of the topic, in other words, regardless of the topic, counseling was a sign of weakness or something like that.
I mean, their generation just kind of saw it that way. And so I’ve been able to be very open. Of course, they know there’s a book out and, you know, no, my story and all of that. And, so, yeah, I’ve been able to be very honest with them about the things I’ve struggled with and the ways that I rejected my, my mom did her best to mother me, to love me.
She had no ill will. I always tell parents, don’t take the bait of Satan and beat yourself up that your kid struggles with their sexuality. If having a perfect parent is required for your kids to turn out you know well, Adam and Eve had a perfect father and yet they still sinned. They had a free will, and Rose chose wrong.
So, yeah. Yeah, it was me, you know, rejecting my mother’s best efforts. And I had to actually repent for her best intentions, my wrong responses to her best intentions to mother me. I just rejected.
Do you know, I want to pause on this point? Because this is something that struck me when I first heard your testimony, and I’ve seen it in different forms with some of the other people that I’ve interviewed, because I know I now have a history, you know, of people like you, male and female alike, and some of them do have, pretty terrible abuse stories in their background, sometimes from parents, sometimes from older kids sexually abusing them, and so on and so forth.
But what I noticed, what I noticed and what you just said and what I notice from all of these people who have a significant amount of healing, they have released blame. You know, even when people do things that they shouldn’t have done, that they objectively were wrong and should not have done, things happened that shouldn’t have happened. The people that that arrive.
But however, I found these people, you know, I don’t want to prejudge how I to stumble if this is a special subset or if this is a characteristic, you know, of the, of the process. But but the fact that people there’s no there’s no self-pity, there’s no blame, that’s all gone. And you can tell from the story that, of course, there was a lot of that at one time or, you know, maybe different along with other problematic things, but just a way that you just now said that you repented of your part in the thing and that you you took ownership of what you did.
For.
To talk to people about that, because this is something, you know, you never hear anybody really talk about. Tell us more about that when it’s really fascinating.
Yeah. You know, in Ephesians four it says not to let the sun go down on our anger and not to give the devil a foothold. And what I discovered was, to the degree that I held on to bitterness and unforgiveness to that degree, I would remain in bondage to things. I was. I was giving a wide open door for the enemy to influence my thinking and my emotions in my relationships.
And as I went into this healing process, one thing the Lord spoke to me was, if you will confess whatever I tell you to confess, forgive whoever I tell you to forgive and repent for whatever I ask you to repent from, you’ll be free. The argued with the Lord. I was like, oh wait wait wait wait, I hey, I get the confessing.
There’s all sorts of sexual sin and addictions and things I’ve been in my life. I’ve been involved. I got to forget, confess and forgive. Absolutely. I’ve been wronged by people and there’s all sorts of factors that have played into this. But I’m the victim here. What? What do I need to repent for? Because I’m the one that was taken advantage of.
I was the one that was abused or hurt or, you know, whatever. And, it’s like the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said, Linda, that may well be true, but even when you were hurt, you did not respond with the love of Christ, and you need to respond for your wrong responses. And I then take responsibility for that.
I spent a period of that 11 years in a victim mindset thinking, oh, woe is me and self-pity. I’m I’m the queen of self-pity parties. You can ask those. I didn’t walk you through the process. I did have pity party man. It’s off the charts. But I had to get out of that and take responsibility. And that’s really when some of the breakthrough began to happen in my life, where I was able to recognize, I needed to, to take those wrong responses and run those through the cross and die to that and say, Jesus, you know, we didn’t you didn’t just die for the things I’ve done wrong.
You you died even for the wrong that was done to me. And there’s a place for the pain to go up and out of me and into the cross, and not to hold on to that any longer.
Colossians. Yeah. We make up in our sufferings what’s lacking in the sufferings of Christ. So so your your faith background you’re in Assemblies of God were you always Assemblies of God? There’s a journey there.
No, I was raised a Presbyterian, PC, USA. We, called ourselves the frozen chosen. I put everything. Yeah.
Yeah, but the reason I asked is that, I’m a Roman Catholic. You probably know that. And one of the things that we have going for us that I think is one of the most beautiful things about being like is we have sacramental confession. Yeah. And when I had my whole process of realizing that I had done all sorts, I left the church at age 20 over sexual sins.
And 12 years later, I came back over sexual issues, you know, because I realized that, you know, at some point, you realize I was stupid. Okay? I mean, my 14 year old sister could figure out that I was, you know, that I was going down the wrong path, right? But I was a genius, and, you know, so.
Well.
Whatever. But but those experiences, the experience in the confessional or face to face confessional. When I came back after 12 years, it was the campus minister, George Mason, who heard my first confession, you know, and it was a doozy, right. And I felt so relieved after that, you know, and, and I can remember one other time, a few years later, you know, I had confessed all sorts of things that I had done wrong, and you know that.
But the last for me, the last shoe to drop was to say, you know what? Contraception is wrong. And I did it. And I thought it was a justified. And I can no longer say that I’m justified. And I remember going into the confessional and this is a a different priest who had, you know, helped make him more let’s less departed this journey.
I think he knew who I was. This was this was a screening so he could we couldn’t see each other, but he probably knew who I was. But anyway, I went in and I. And I said something, I confessed it and he basically said, good, good, good, you know, and he gave me the my penitence and all that.
And Linda, I skipped across the parking lot. I felt so relieved of that, you know, and I never thought I would confess that I was so sure I was right about it, you know, so that that experience, I want to say that say this part out loud because many churches have something like this. If you’re Catholic, get your butt to confession.
I mean, come on, don’t don’t let that grace go to waste. You know, that’s waiting for you. But the the non-Catholics, you have other things that are doing the same sort of thing where Jesus is coming into your life because you got the courage to open your mouth, you had the humility to open your mouth, and then the person that you’re engaged with responds to that.
And you know, that is a very it’s a it’s a moment of grace. Absolutely. And a moment of grace. Yeah.
Some scripture says God gives grace to the humble, but he opposes the proud. And when we’re for me the first time, I confess to my struggles to my campus pastor and said it out loud, it was terrifying. And it was one of the most humbling experiences of my life to take the mask off, because I was great at wearing a mask and fooling everybody.
And to say, this is who I really am, what I’m really struggling with. And, it was a risk as to how he was going to respond, but it came with great grace in my life. From that point forward, I found that each time I confessed to someone else and brought them in to my journey, greater Grace was released in my life.
Right? Right. And it gets easier. It gets. It gets easier every time. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. There’s so much here. And this particular thing, well, one of the things I do want you to, to, to spell out was, as you said during those 11 years, you didn’t know that there’s going to be a 11 year journey. Your idea was that it was going to go away like that.
You know, and I think a lot of people have a some kind of misunderstanding about that. I don’t know, maybe it’s just wishful thinking on our part. But but what sustained you over those 11 years?
That’s a great question. Honestly, one of the things that happened was rather supernatural. I, I, woke up in the middle of the night, and this was 1995, and it was about 230 in the morning. And I hear this voice going, I’m preparing a husband for you. I’m preparing a husband for you. And it’s in my head.
But it was as loud as somebody was talking, and it’s like 230 in the morning. I’m like, who is talking? And what if I’m not even attracted to man, I don’t even understand what’s going on here. And I rolled over. I went back to sleep. I thought I must have had too much pizza. So I am, you know, I don’t know what that was.
So I wrote it in my journal. I never told another human being and I thought, yeah, I’m not even attracted to man. I don’t, I don’t understand how I ever could marry. And I it just wasn’t something that made sense to me. So fast forward nine months later, I’m in the the first year of the year and a half of this journey of transformation.
I had begun meeting with a counselor, talking through some things and investigating what might be affecting these attractions and my friends. I started attending this little Pentecostal church, just outside the university where I attended. And again, frozen chosen. I not I did not believe in the gifts of the spirit or that, speaking in tongues or anything that Pentecostals believe.
And. Yeah, and my friends invited me to this church and they said, oh, you need to come Tuesday night. Mama Carol is is there. She’s this six year old woman that loves college age students. And, she moves, said the spirit and all the stuff you need to come. And I said, they said she’s a she’s a prophet and she’ll read your mail.
I said, what’s a prophet on reading mail? Like I don’t just trust me. Come and come, come, come. So I come to this meeting and I. I don’t know what to expect. And, you have to understand, that night I was wearing, I had long hair. I’d grown my hair out. I was wearing a little light makeup. I was nobody would look at me and wonder if somebody.
If I was questioning my sexuality, in the church, knew what I was struggling with, aside from the pastor. But this woman who was from Texas, I was in Illinois at the time, never met the woman. She gets up to preach that night, and she she comes down off the platform and walks up to me and grabs my hand and says, what’s your name?
And my eyes got real big and I’m looking. Linda. And oh, like, you don’t have to be afraid of me. The Lord wants you to know that when you were born, he wanted another little girl and not a boy. And you don’t have to try to be there like a boy. And I mean in the I am struck in that moment.
Like, how does she know? Like there’s no way this woman would know it apart from the Spirit of God. And so she starts talking, speaking into me things that I’ve never told another human being. She said, you read the Old Testament and you think it’s just terrible to be a woman. You think women are second class citizens. And and yet the Lord says, I love women.
A first person was a woman who announced the good news of the resurrection. I love women and just goes on and on about that and then says, and, and the Lord says, oh, and I’m, I’m preparing a husband for you and repeating the exact same things I had just heard nine months privately in my own what I thought was a dream or something I didn’t know I had never told another human being.
And when as soon as she said that, I busted, I started crying. I’d never cried in public. I was very hardened and masculine. I just can’t to weep because I knew God was interrupting my existence and I didn’t know what this meant. But there’s no way this woman would know these things apart from the Spirit of God. And, then at the very end, she said, the Lord says you’re going to look in the mirror and say, I like me instead of I hate me.
And my brain is just like, tilt, tilt, tilt doesn’t compute. There’s no way in this body. What if my brain was not registering it? But my spirit was like, yes, this is the Lord. Like I just was witnessing the the deepest part of me, that somehow I knew God was speaking. And I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but there will come a day I look in the mirror and say, I like me instead of I hate me now.
That was April 16th, 1996, when that was spoken over my life. It was so supernatural and I had no other explanation for it. And when I was eight years into this journey, mind you, I had met with a lot of counselors, a lot of prayer ministers, a lot of people trying to help me over the years. And one well-meaning Christian counselor said, Linda, we’ve worked with gays.
We’ve worked with lesbians, we’ve never worked with anybody transgender. I don’t want to give you a false hope. And so just know we will do what we can to help you cope this side of heaven. Just know that when you die, you’ll be free. And because of what mama Carol spoke over my life, what the Lord spoke through her, I could sit across from that man.
And I didn’t say this out loud, but I in my heart, I was like, yeah, that’s not what God said. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but there’s going to come a day when I look in the mirror and I say I like me instead of I hate me. And, he’s probably not going to use you, but somehow this is going to happen.
And,
And so the answer answer to my question, what sustained you. Yes. These moments, this is like a glimmer of grace that you had, in the dream and then in this woman speaking over you. That’s what sustained you was looking back on that and knowing that that was not explicable apart from something divine that was therefore bigger than you and bigger, bigger than your capacity to explain.
Yes, I had a friend ask me that very question you’re asking me now, eight years into this 11 year journey. And she said, well, I don’t mean to discourage you, but why don’t you give up? It’s been eight years and you haven’t seen what you believe in for. And I just turned to her and I said, Laurie, God spoke.
I don’t have any other answer except that I know God interrupted my existence. I have no other explanation for that. And I just truly believe God’s going to do this. I just don’t know how. I don’t know when, I don’t know what it’s going to look like. But I believe him. And that sustained me for another nine and a half years after God spoke them.
That’s very impressive. That’s very impressive. Did you have moments where you were to could you could you call it, backsliding? People would say backsliding, that you did things you.
You.
Used to do and shouldn’t be doing and that kind of stuff.
Yeah. Ironically, I hadn’t acted on those desires, fully acted out on those desires with another woman, had sexual addictions and pornography and, you know, some experiences that would have been considered, you know, not aboveboard, but as far as, like fully acting out with another woman didn’t actually happen until I was in the middle of this 11 year journey and, had confessed to somebody in church and another woman she was didn’t identify as gay or anything.
She was, you know, what you would call straight as an arrow, but just had a lot of emotional brokenness. We became emotionally dependent. She was joining with me in some of the prayer ministry sessions and so forth, but my heart just got distracted and really focused on her, and we ended up acting out immorally. And that was just devastating because I already knew, you know, God had spoken and he was going to move in my life, and he was doing things.
And I was seeing, somewhat of a diminishing of the attractions. But they hadn’t gone away. And, there was just a lot of broken a still in my heart that, yeah, I it’s I tell people, discipleship is messy and it’s not just an upward straight upward trajectory. It’s it’s, you know, it’s it’s a lot of ups and downs and two steps forward and ten steps backwards, and you need to persevere.
That’s one of the things I found in my research was those who walk in freedom are ones who were willing to persevere. Like Hebrews talks about, we and we inherit things through faith and patience, and we persevere and choose to believe God’s Word over our subjective feelings and experiences it.
During this journey, you you mentioned a couple of people who were like or maybe incredulous would be a good word. You know, that you were still hanging in there. And you had counseling, different kinds of spiritual counseling and whatnot. Did you ever encounter a counselor who said, what you really need to do is to lean into being gay?
Is your true self. Transgender is your true self. You need to lean into it. That’s the that’s the proper counseling therapy for you. Because you you and I know that if you went to a non-religious person, the odds are that would be what they would say. I’m sure you have that kind of experience.
Sadly, even some religious people say that today. But, no, I, I only went with Christian counselors being a believer at that time, and it was only reinforced. And of course, the the celibate gay Christian movement and things we’re seeing today was not around, 25 years ago when I was going through that kind of counseling. So I only encountered ones who said, we just want to help you align with who God created you to be.
But one of the things that I’m interested that I’m particularly interested in you, is it you have a doctorate in cultural studies from Assemblies of God University. My doctorates in economics. And and so I know my way around research. My colleague, Father Paul Sullins, is a sociologist. He’s a data guy. You know, we’re we’re kind of number crunching people.
But you did a dissertation on this topic. That was what we might call qualitative research. Tell people, what did you want to know? Okay. You assembled a group of people who made the journey away from an LGBT identity and into something else. What were you trying to find out, first of all. And then who did you pick?
How did you include people to study? Let’s start with that.
Yes, I built my research. My degree is in intercultural studies, which is essentially a combination of sociology. What is going on in culture with theology? What does the Bible say and miss theology? How do we take what we learned from the Bible and culture and reach the lost? And pastor people in our congregations? So I was building my research on Mark your house and Stanton Jones research.
They came out with a study that said, and it was published, I believe, in oh seven, saying in in response to the American Psychological Association is change what they call sexual orientation change? I’m not a fan of that terminology. I don’t believe sexual orientation actually exists. It’s just something we’ve a construct, we’ve designed to describe these feelings, but they the premise of their research was to investigate our efforts to change these desires.
Harmful. Are they even possible? Can you change? And is the process of change harmful? And their research in a nutshell said change is possible and it’s the process isn’t harmful. Even if you don’t experience the degree of change you were hoping you would. But at the end of their research, they said, we don’t know why. Only 23% of the people that went through their IT was a 6 to 7 longitudinal study over a course of 6 to 7 years, tracking people and the degree to which they experience change.
And out of their, participants, 14 of them experienced what they called successful conversion. I don’t like that terminology, but they talked about being essentially converting from, same sex attractions to opposite sex attractions. And so 23% of their people experience that. But that’s a very small minority. And so why was it only 23%? And at the end of their study, they conjecture, well, there were a lot of variables.
And we don’t know why there are all these things that could have been different among those who experienced change. So there needs to be further study as to why those 23 changed and the others didn’t. Since that study, Mark, your house has gone away from saying change is possible to now supporting the what we call the celibate gay Christian move, or what they call the celibate gay Christian movement.
And he essentially is saying change is not likely. And so let’s support those who are experiencing these, these desires rather than contending for change or what the Bible calls transformation. And I ask the opposite question I should wait, whoa, whoa, time out. Why? Why would we go that direction? Why is nobody saying what’s true of this 23%? That’s not true of the others.
Let’s discover on and eliminate as many variables as possible, and try to distill down to what are the commonalities among those who do experience this kind of transformation. So my research dissertation is built upon that. And so I began to ask, I used the same, requirements out of their research of what does successful change or what they call conversion mean.
And so they use these parameters of, in their research, they the person has to have a resolution. I’m going to use their language. Again, I don’t like these terms, but I had to use it to do my research. Number one, it’s a resolution of homosexual attraction and a substantial conversion to heterosexual attraction to homosexual attraction is either missing or present only incidentally, in a way that does not seem to bring about distress or undue temptation.
Third, they experience an enduring pattern of freedom for at least five years. And then last, the description might be I’m healed. I rarely experience homosexual desires to a significant proportion, and if married, I enjoy a good sex life with my spouse. If single, I experience heterosexual attraction. So I took those parameters which are out of their research, and I began to do what’s called snowball sampling.
And I went to find people who might satisfy these parameters. And so I began with a handful of people through colleagues and people that I know, and I said, hey, do you know anybody that might qualify for this study? And as I interviewed people, a number of people said, no, I don’t qualify. So they were not able to participate in the study.
But I eventually threw snowball sampling, starting with just a few that I thought might qualify and then referrals. So I didn’t know what I was going to end up with. And I wasn’t interviewing Assemblies of God. People are looking for a particular denomination. I was looking for people that fit the parameters of the Jones and your house study.
And so I ended up with 30 participants, 15 men and 15 women. And I intentionally went with that because in the Jones in your house research, they had 14 people, men and women that, qualified for the successful conversion. So I thought, let’s double that. Let’s let’s do 30 and let’s do 15 men and 15 women. And, you know, see what is common among these people.
And so it was qualitative research. They didn’t know, I wasn’t like searching for something specific. I was interviewing these people and just asking them, tell me your story. I had a set of questions that I would go through with people, and it was a 60 to 90 minute zoom interview, although one participant was very loquacious and it was a two hour interview and, qualitative software to help me identify commonalities that were coming up in each of their narratives.
And I’m telling you, I did the research. It was over a three week period where I did these interviews, and I’m telling you, it was like swimming in an ocean of revelation. As I’m listening to these people’s stories and the way God brought about transformation in their lives, I mean, I had my own story. I knew it was possible.
I’ve experienced it myself. But when I’m hearing story after story after story and starting to see some of the similarities among these participants, it it really it changed my life. And really emboldened me regarding the message of transformation. Like, this isn’t I’m not just a one off that God does this in other people’s lives.
And I just want to say right now that I’m having a similar experience by just doing these journalistic interviews with you and various people in a snowball manner, or do you know so-and-so? Oh, let’s get them on the show. You know, kind of a thing. I’m having the same kind of experience of going, wow, this is impressive, you know?
And the Lord is at work here, and I’m coming to the conclusion that our Lord is going to use you all in a very special way, you know, because just for a lot of reasons, these are among the holiest people I’ve encountered in my life, you know, and at a lot of cases. So, so, okay, so now the real money question here, what did you find?
What did these people have in common with each other? What what patterns did you and your software come up with?
Yeah. So I found they were they came from a variety of denominational backgrounds. So it wasn’t like there’s any one denomination. I did find among them very significant levels, all of them committed as far as being in the word on a regular basis. And I was even comparing the outcomes there with Mark, your house did a study on celibate gay Christians and so forth, and I found a higher incidence among my participants that these are people who believe the word of God is true, and they’re in it on a regular basis.
It’s a it’s a natural part of their lives. Strong prayer lives. And as a Pentecostal, I was asking questions. Do you believe in the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so forth? 28 out of the 30 were actually baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak in other tongues. I was not expecting that because they were coming from different denominational backgrounds, and they were open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There was not a one of them that was resistant to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and would be what some call a secessionist, as if the gifts have ceased today versus that we believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we see in the Bible are still in operation today, including things I see God’s power to heal.
Well, if you don’t believe God can heal, then you’re probably not going to experience healing in your life, whether that be physically or emotionally.
So that way, hold it right here. Hold it right here. Because this is a lot. This is a lot. This is so interesting because we have we have a lot of people across the denominational spectrum ourselves here. Right. And so if these are people who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, and even if they were born Roman Catholic or still were Roman Catholic, they’ll know what you were talking about when you use that phraseology.
And I think most of my audience would understand what you mean by gifts of the Holy Spirit. When you describe to you, what do you mean by baptism in the Holy Spirit? Explain that share for our people. Is it separate from Trinitarian baptism? Yes. Just lay it out for us because I know I’m not the only person. All of that question here.
I just to, I this was foreign to me being raised Presbyterian. We called ourselves frozen. Chosen. We did not believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Still operating today. I also, as a result of the campus ministry I was involved in, in college, I didn’t believe in women in ministry or speaking in tongues or anything.
I was just told those things are of the devil. And if you ever hear somebody speak in tongues or believe in any of the gifts of the spirit that I mentioned in first Corinthians chapter 1213 and 14, it goes over the the gifts of the spirit, specifically chapter 12, those those are not in operation today. So if somebody tells you they are run away, they are not of God.
And when I visited this little Pentecostal church back in 1995, and these people, I mean, they didn’t have chandeliers, but if they did, they would have been hanging from them. I mean, they these were college students who were just hands in the air praising God and dancing and speaking in tongues and seeing healings and miracles and all sorts of things.
And I, I was freaked out and I wanted to leave, but there was something inside of me that was like, I don’t know what it is. These people have that, but they are having some kind of a real experience with God. I’ve never experienced and I don’t know what it is, but I want what they’ve got. And later on they began to explain to me, Linda, we’ve experienced what the Bible calls the baptism in the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter two, chapter one, rather, Jesus said, you know, in in a few days from now John baptized with water.
But in a few days from now you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And what we see in the book of acts is this explosion of the gospel going to the nations, where once, like Peter, who denied Jesus, now becomes so bold, he stands up on the day of Pentecost and preaches to thousands this fiery sermon about you killed the Lord of glory.
You need to repent the same guy that tonight Jesus is all of a sudden just full of the power of God and preaching an undeniable gospel and laying his life on the line. And 3000 gets saved that day. So we know that probably even more than 3000 present. What accounts for this dramatic change? In Peter? What we see is they were in acts 242 that are acts chapter two.
In the beginning, one through four, I think it is. It talks about them being in the upper room, and they’re waiting on God and Jesus in that the end of Luke as you. But wait in Jerusalem until you receive the power, the gift from my father. And so there in that upper room and they’re waiting. And it says that the Holy Spirit began to manifest.
And they saw as, as if tongues of fire a rushing wind. And they began to speak in other languages as the Holy Spirit enabled them. Acts two verse four. And from that moment forward you see that this, this burst of the gospel and people living boldly for him, an explosion of miracles and signs and wonders and so forth, is the power is released.
So as a Pentecostal, we look at the baptism in the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter two as, wow, this is an experience that is available to every believer that just as we are baptized in water and that is symbolic of the death, burial and resurrection where identifying with the completed work of the cross, the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a release of the spirit who already lives inside of us at the point of salvation when I confess Christ as my Savior.
But it’s a release of that power in and through my life, and the speaking in other tongues is like I’m laying my tongue on the altar and saying, God, this tongue is your tool to use to proclaim your gospel however you see fit. And that’s why Jesus said, and you’ll you’ll be empowered. You’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, at the point of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is not to speak in tongues.
It is to be a witness for Jesus and for him to use this tongue however he sees fit. So when Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and said, you may think we’re drunk now, what you’re seeing is a fulfillment of Joel. And in the last days my spirit will be poured out on all flesh, young and old, men and women, and they will prophesy.
That’s that word. It can mean like I’m predicting the future, but it also means a fourth telling of the Word of God with anointing and power to see God’s kingdom come as people are speaking forth his word. So it was a Pentecostal. We believe in this. It’s a secondary experience to water baptism. I can receive this release.
It’s not that I don’t have the Holy Spirit. Prior to that, I everybody has the Holy Spirit. The moment they place their trust in Jesus and the spirit comes to live inside of them, their body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. It’s a release of the person and the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in and through our lives.
And so are you guys. Trinitarian Smith, if I may ask. Yes, father, Holy Spirit. Yeah. So so in the Catholic tradition, we go with the Matthew formula there in the Great Commission that you baptized, in the name of the father and of the son and the Holy Spirit, we do the baptism and the whole thing and that that wipes original sin from the soul.
And then when you’re a little in the Roman tradition, when you’re when you’re well past the age of reason, you are confirmed, which is the expression of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes within you, the Eastern Orthodox. It’s my understanding they do all of that in infancy. They do the baptism and the confirmation. They call it charisma, and they do it, in infancy, you know, so I just wanted to clarify the, the point about Trinitarian because anybody that has a Trinitarian baptism in the, in the Catholic tradition, if you just matter who did it, if they use the correct formula for baptizing in the in the name of the father and
the son, the Holy Spirit and water, that baptism is presumed to be valid, you know, so yeah. So you don’t have to be baptized twice, but what you’re talking about is something we would recognize under a different name. And since you didn’t have Catholic participants, they were part of a Pentecostal horseshit. There is such a thing as charismatic Catholics.
As a matter of fact, when I. When I learned about you, I went and did a little research on it. And the document that I found talked about Charismatics and Pentecostals as if they were separate groups. Is that is that correct? Can you just explain that? Because the numbers, the numbers added up is, you know, like as if they were separate and I don’t know why.
Do you know what that difference is about.
You know charismatics coming from the Greek word charismatic the gifts of the spirit. So right now to leave that the gifts of the spirit are still in operation today. So a Pentecostal also believes that. But Pentecostals believe in the baptism in the Holy Spirit, according to acts chapter two, with the initial physical evidence of speaking in other tongues as evidence that this baptism has occurred, whereas a charismatic doesn’t necessarily believe you, speaking in tongues is necessarily a part of that, that you can move in the gifts of the spirit, and you might have tongues, you might have prophecy, faith, healing, miracles, discerning of spirits, and so forth.
Whereas the hostile views, the that initial like you see in acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost and they’re speaking in other tongues as the sign that the baptism has occurred.
I see, I think I see I’m not sure I see, but I think I see that that helps me understand, because we have and the Catholic Church permits charismatic worship. I mean, there is a subgroup of charismatic Catholics. I looked it up. I think it’s like 150 million charismatic, Catholics, worldwide. You know, there’s a lot, but but there’s a lot of us.
So but but the church permits it and so. Okay. But there it is, you know. Yeah. So, so, but but let’s get back to your sample. Now that you’ve explained some of the theology for us, you’ve got 30 people, 15 men, 15 women. Did the jokes in your house have men and women.
I believe. Did I believe they did?
Did they? Okay, I don’t remember, but my impression is always that these things are all men. But that could be that could be just an impression. Because it’s discussed as if, I don’t know, the male tends to terminate a lot of these conversations. And yeah, but in any case, what did you find out about these people?
They were all. They were all baptized in the Holy Spirit in, in when you asked that question, whatever that meant to them, they said yes to it, right. So they had some comments.
Out speaking in tongues, 28 out of the 30 had that experience. And the other two said, you know, I’m open to that one. One said, I’ve heard tongues in my head. I’ve never articulated it. And the other said, I’m not against it. I’m not a secessionist. I’m open to the gifts of the spirit. So all of them were of a continuous mindset that the gifts are still in operation today.
I see, and they were they were the word was part of their life. Prayer life was part of their life. What are the things? What do they have in common?
The other thing I was seeing there was on average, when you were to average out, you had to participate in the study, be free for a minimum of 5 to 10 years from these attractions dominating your life. The average was about 18.7 years. So these are not a one and done. These are people that have walked in and during transformation, as I listen to their stories, I started to see some commonalities.
And what I saw was 87% of them. So a strong majority were gender non-conforming, meaning they didn’t fit the traditional stereotypes of what a little girl liking pink and playing with Barbies, and a little boy being athletic and rough and tumble. They were gender non-conforming. The second thing I discovered was 80% of them had what we would call adverse family dynamics, whether it be the parents were divorced or absent or there was abuse in the home or but a variety of reasons, or even in some cases, they just didn’t connect in an emotionally meaningful way with either one or both of the parents.
And it left a deficit in their hearts. And then third there, about 60% of them experienced childhood sexual abuse. And we know, you know, from your previous interviews, there’s there’s a very strong presence of that among those who struggle with their sexuality. Nobody would argue that childhood sexual abuse isn’t harmful in some way. And so as I asked them about their, there were really some dynamic changes I saw in their lives when I asked them to plot.
Where would you put yourself on a graph as far as your attractions prior to experiencing transformation to where you are now and your gender nonconformity to where you are now, adverse family dynamics to where you are now, and there are some, dynamic changes that you can see in their lives, which in my dissertation, I put the charts in there and I can give you a link to my dissertation so you can see those charts.
It’s really fascinating. But to summarize, what I was looking for is what are the commonalities? What do we see among those who experience this kind of transformation? And there are a number of mindsets that contribute to this change. And the first one is this this was the strongest
eventually to experience the fruit. Even in in nature when you cut down weeds, but you don’t pull the root out, the weed will grow back. Same thing is true in this area, but if you focus on not just turning the light off, but say why?
Why is the check engine light on? Maybe I need to look under the hood and figure out what’s going on in the engine. And that’s what the mortification approach does not consider. If it’s if there aren’t developmental issues, if there isn’t gender nonconformity, childhood sexual abuse, adverse family dynamics, a variety of if there’s a reason, then there’s a resolution.
That’s the good news. But they don’t consider there could be any other reason except it’s the fall and you need to repent. And so it’s almost a kind of a one dimensional look at it.
And so is this more do these people tend to be Calvinist?
Yes. I have friends that approach. Rosaria Butterfield, good friend of mine. She’s a huge proponent of concupiscence and that the very experience of same sex attraction, you have to repent for even feeling that desire. And she and I.
Okay, I got to say some I got to say something about the word concupiscence, because we use that in Catholic theology, too, and it doesn’t mean that it means something different. So just for everybody to be clear, what you know, when when you hear a Catholic talk about concupiscence, what that means is it’s the result. It’s the long term result of the fall, is that we have a tendency toward sin.
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