Another Special Life in Christ:
These testimony lives are not stories of "role
models". Jesus is the role model! These are lives wonderfully touched &
changed by Jesus!
McKrae Game:
His Life Before Jesus Came In:
A native of upstate South Carolina & born in 1969, he was raised in a Christian family he described as “balcony Baptists.” They attended church each Sunday but didn’t participate actively in church life.
In his teens and early 20s, he started acting on attractions he felt toward men, but still felt his life incomplete. McKrae Game readily tells strangers he was homosexual, but through a program of prayer and study he is straight, with a wife and two children.
“I spent two and a half years living as a gay man, but always knowing I didn’t want to live the rest of my life in that way,” said Game, who has been married seven years.
“I had never really had anyone sit down and tell me what God really said about homosexuality, that it wasn’t the way he wanted us to live our lives. He said it was the friendship of a heterosexual couple that made him decide to renounce homosexuality. “I was unsure of who I was as a man, how I wanted to live my life, and questions of mortality were really on my mind,” he said. “I saw in my friends’ lives something I didn’t have, a hope and a peace and a purpose.” Game said the Exodus International North America program helped to “bring him out of the homosexual lifestyle” in the early ‘90s.
“I remember wanting answers, but didn’t know how to get them,” he said. “I wanted somebody to sit down and tell me what God thought about what I was doing.”
His Life Since Jesus Came In:
McKrae first accepted Jesus Christ in 1991. He sought counseling through the Exodus movement to curb his same-sex attractions, and by 1996 had met and married a woman in the Baptist church he attended in Spartanburg. The two now have a son and a daughter.
Game founded Truth Ministry in 1999 (a Spartanburg-based, nondenominational Christian ministry that works with men and women who want to accept Jesus Christ and stop living as a gay man or a lesbian). Game estimates that his staff has counseled more than 400 men and women from around South Carolina since the program started in 1999. Truth Ministries offers support groups and one-on-one counseling, and members frequently travel around the state to speak to various churches.
Game’s beliefs mirror those of most established Christian churches. While a few churches and groups welcome openly gay and lesbian members, most don’t.
The Roman Catholic Church and the largest denomination in the state, the Southern Baptist Convention, say homosexuality is a sin across the board and will not accept same-sex unions or openly gay clergy. However, these two churches both stress that gays and lesbians are not barred from worshipping and are not condemned as human beings.
Many nondenominational Christian churches that take a fundamentalist approach to the Bible, as well as conservative mainline Protestant churches, also preach that gays and lesbians are welcome to worship but that same-sex unions are incompatible with Christian teaching.
Game’s program in Spartanburg, however, takes such beliefs a step further. He says gays and lesbians can begin to live effective lives as heterosexuals through Christian study; he and others in the Exodus program, however, maintain that change in orientation is possible through belief in God.
“There are many, many men and women who don’t want to be gay or lesbian,” he said. “We operate from the idea that sexuality is something you can control.”
Truth Ministries is part of a nationwide network of groups that follow the program of Exodus International, a Florida-based ministry that in the early ‘80s pioneered what some call the Christian “ex-gay” movement.
Exodus holds that through a strict program of Christian study and personal accountability, men and women can overcome homosexuality, said Randy White, 36, communications director.
“There’s an increasing number of people nationwide that want to know that there’s an option when it comes to dealing with same-sex attraction,” he said. As the Bible clearly teaches for all sinful inclinations, “We teach that people can be stewards of their sexuality."
****************************************
This website author would note that it is God, Himself, who declares homosexuality a sin...Jesus followers & denominations recap their positions against homosexuality because of what God says! The idea of a "gay gene" is a lie; "gay" is not inherited genetically. Focus on the Family is another organization with resources to help homosexuals escape the lifestyle and to help parents prevent a homosexual orientation in their children. DesertStream is a resource. Exodus International North America is a resource as is CrossOver Ministries, Inc. in Lexington, KY. Also see a Christian Church website, Transforming Congregations.
Reference:
[check testimonies master list]......and......[to web site home page]
What is the Gospel...the "good news" of Jesus?
(posted 13 June 2004; latest addition 27 July 2004)