Ex-Gay Activist: ‘I Will Reveal Myself to You,’ Says the Lord
Have you ever wanted God to reveal Himself to you? Have you ever wondered if He even exists or if maybe you are God? (I got over that one really quick while puking my guts out from an intestinal illness one day.)
But seriously, don’t you really want to know Him if He’s there? There are so many voices out there claiming to represent Him—all diametrically opposed to each other in their claims of who He is and what He is like. Wouldn’t it be great if He were to just reveal Himself to you and tell you what’s what?
I was wishing for that one day on the heels of having tried every worldly pleasure and after having searched the Scriptures on most every god out there. I was done. I was in despair of my own efforts to find Him or to even replace Him with worldly pleasures. It was all vanity. It was all dust.
At the time, I was living in an ashram, following Guru Maharaj Ji, who claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna and so on. He could do supernatural miracles, and I had naively assumed that someone who could do miracles was automatically from God. But eventually I saw behind the curtain a very flawed man, who couldn’t possibly be God.
So I cried out, “God, whoever you are! I give up! The One who created the heavens and the earth and who had a Son named Jesus—you’re the One I’m talking to! I don’t want to be deceived. I don’t want to be lost because of my many sins. I want to know You!”
One night soon after that prayer, I was paging through a Bible and came across this passage:
“Then you shall call upon Me, and you shall come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek Me and find Me, when you shall search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will turn away your captivity and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back into the place from where I caused you to be carried away captive.” (Jer. 29:12-14).
I thought, “OK, if this is really Your Word, then you’ve got to keep it. If you are really God, then you must reveal yourself to anyone who takes you up on this promise.” And I began to devour the Bible.
Shortly thereafter, I was sharing my sorrow over my sins with God and declaring that I wanted to follow the God and Father of Jesus Christ, who I had come to greatly admire, and suddenly an aperture opened up in my chest and an enormous flood of energy began surging into my heart that was so intense, I thought I was going to die. Yet at the same time, this unmistakably supernatural river of power felt like liquid love.
It was what I had been searching for my entire life—proof that He existed and that He loved me. (Until that moment, I didn’t think that I was loved or that I was even lovable).
In an instant, God revealed Himself as a river of living water—a river of loving water! As I collapsed onto the floor from the intensity of His love for me, the power of it all became too frightening. I screamed, “Stop!” and the river vanished.
Later, as I was trying to figure out what had happened to me, God showed me what Jesus had said to the woman at the well:
“Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water … Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water that I shall give him will become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life” (John 4:10, 13-14).
And to the crowds:
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-38).
Both of these Scriptures were in fulfillment of Ezekiel 47:1-12 and thus yet another sign that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel and the Savior of anyone who will pursue Him with all their heart.
Soon, I was on a plane to Israel to find more of Jesus. I knew He wasn’t physically present there, but I figured His Spirit might still be hanging around. As I was tagging along behind a tour group on the Mount of Olives, when they stopped to read the words Jesus had said at various places on the Mount, I heard not only the pastor reading the words, but Jesus Himself saying them. I suddenly realized that the Word of God on paper is merely a record of the supernatural Word of God. Because it has been spoken by an eternal God, it is eternally being spoken.
“Thrilling” does not come close to describing my joy that God’s Word was reliable and supernatural and that His love and the revelation of His very Being are available to anyone who seeks Him with all their heart.
Do you want to know God? Do you want Him to reveal Himself to you? Do you want His cleansing and forgiveness for all your sins? Seek Him according to His great and precious promises found throughout Scripture, and especially in Jeremiah 29:12-14; Deuteronomy 4:29; Psalm 105:4; 1 Chronicles 28:9; 2 Chronicles 15; Acts 27:26-28; Hebrews 11:6 and John 3:1-21. {eoa}
Dr. David Kyle Foster is the producer/director of Pure Passion TV and the documentaries, “Such Were Some of You” (www.SuchWereSomeOfYou.org), “How Do You Like Me Now? When a Child, Parent, Spouse or Sibling Says They’re Gay” (www.HowDoYouLikeMeNow.org) and “TranZformed: Finding Peace with Your God-Given Gender” (www.TranZformed.org). He is also the author of Love Hunger (Chosen), Sexual Healing (Regal) and Transformed Into His Image: Hidden Steps on the Journey to Christlikeness (Laurus Books).
