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:
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 but was shut down. He tried a new one, Reduce Fear (not there in 2015). Wikipedia Exodus International review, HERE.
“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.”
McKrae first accepted Jesus Christ in 1991. He
sought counseling through the Exodus movement to curb his same-sex attractions, and by 1996
he 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. It is now called Hope for Wholeness Network.
Game’s beliefs mirror those of most established
Christian churches. While increasing numbers of churches and groups welcome openly gay and lesbian members,
most are either skeptical or timid about it or simply 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. McKrae and others in the Exodus program had more broadly
maintained 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."
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This website author would note (1) that Jesus is all about unity rather than divisiveness. And (2) it is God,
Himself, who appears to declare homosexuality a "sin". Jesus
followers & denominations recap their positions as to homosexuality in good faith because of what is interpreted as what God
says! Yet, Jesus wants us to love and relate well to all, HERE (this link gives a 2015 update as to the idea of a "gay gene", etc.). Focus on the
Family is another organization with resources to help non-traditionals who are dis-illusioned with their involvement in any LGBT lifestyle and also to help parents understand factors. Hope for Wholeness Network is a resource. DesertStream is a resource. Also see a Christian Church
website, Transforming Congregations.
Reference:
"Ex-gay Groups Comfort Some", Christina Lee Knauss,
The State newspaper, 13 June 2004, D6.
***give me your comments about this
page***
(posted 13 June 2004; latest addition 12 September
2015)
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You have just read a very brief example of the
powerful, supernatural transformation of a person's life which is possible through the
acceptance of Jesus as your savior. Are you tired of life as it now is for you? He will
accept you just as you are right this second! Consider accepting Jesus now
[check it
out]!
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