Each Saturday morning beginning at 7:30am (PST) on KERI 1410AM, and live streamed at www.wilkinsradio.com, His Way Out Ministries offers a 30-minute broadcast dedicated to equipping, educating, and encouraging the Body of Christ to reach out and minister to individuals, families, and churches impacted by the brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Season 5, Episode 17
On this very special podcast, Pastor Phillip Lee is the guest of Marylee Shrider, Executive Director of Right To Life Kern County on her Podcast tilled Voices For Life. Part Two of our discussion will take place on the His Way Out Ministries Radio Broadcast. You won’t want to miss it.
Join us as we discuss: Is the Church availing itself of resources in order to be equipped and ready to share the truth about same-sex attraction to a world that desperately needs it? What does Scripture say about the nature of humanity in particular and what has the lack of Biblical clarity on this issue in too many churches cost us as a Judeo-Christian culture? Is The Church the last bastion of hope for the wounded, hurting, and broken?
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who passed away on December 25, 2015, at the age of 83, was considered one of the most influential psychiatrists of his generation. Many years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Spitzer and ultimately became one of his case studies with regard to freedom from same-sex attraction. The article below, titled “Setting the Matter Straight,” capsulizes much of Dr. Spitzer’s study. My condolences to his wife and children.
In 1973, Dr. Robert Spitzer, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, opposed the prevailing beliefs in his profession by leading the effort to remove homosexuality from the list of psychiatric disorders. For this, liberals and the gay community respected him, even as it angered many of his psychiatric colleagues.
Ultimately, a controversy erupted when Dr. Spitzer reported the results of a study that asked an important scientific question: Is it really true that no one who was predominantly homosexual for many years could strongly diminish his homosexual feelings and substantially develop heterosexual potential?
What Dr. Spitzer found was that, in the unique sample he studied, many made substantial changes in sexual arousal and fantasy and not merely in behavior. Even subjects who made a less substantial change believed it to be extremely beneficial.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Spitzer at the American Psychiatric Association Convention in Chicago in May 2000 as well as at a conference in San Diego. Ultimately, Dr. Spitzer knows me much better than I know him. I was one of the 200 people Dr. Spitzer interviewed for his study.
After my second interview with Dr. Spitzer, with my pastor and secretary at the time sitting in on the interview over speakerphone, Dr. Spitzer volunteered, “It’s undeniably true you have experienced a major and significant change in your life.”
Thankfully and gratefully, I am far from the only individual that has experienced change. God has not been silent to the cries of men and women wanting freedom from homosexual feelings and behavior. Many have experienced the power of Christ to address the deep needs of both men and women trapped in same-gender struggles. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, God has, is, and will be delivering people from the snare of homosexuality.
However, today, we are still considering the question: Can a person experience a change of not just behavior, but desire related to homosexuality? The answer to the question is accurately wrapped up in an answer from 2004, which was prior to Dr. Spitzer’s change of heart on his study. Yet the data still bears up under scrutiny and has not been removed from the psychological journals.
For an important, if not vital, view from Dr. Spitzer, please watch the following:
How is it we have dismissed or forgotten that He is God; The One that spoke the universe into existence, The One that has enabled the lame to walk and the blind to see, and The One that has hung each star in its’ place. Is healing a person’s sexual orientation too big for Him?
The question, “Can homosexuals really change?” is a fair and monumentally important question. The men and women that have exited homosexuality span a wide variety of ages, personalities, occupations, nationalities, and church denominations. Some of these men and women have been free from homosexual involvement for ten or twenty years. They are not just suppressing their homosexual or lesbian longings. There has been a true resolution of this issue in their lives.
While it continues to be taught and preached that God can do the impossible, do we still believe it?
When an individual who was once controlled by his sin is now free from that sin and engaged in a new kind of life pattern, hasn’t change occurred?
Oswald Chambers states in My Utmost for His Highest, “A man is a slave for obeying unless behind his obedience there is recognition of a holy God.” I find it remarkable that God never insists on our obedience, but when we truly know Him, we want to instantly obey Him and live according to His perfect will from sunup to sundown.
There is no identical plan of action for healing from same-sex attraction. No quick fix or one-two-three formula. Ultimately, a person’s freedom from same-sex attraction comes from a Person, rather than a method or even a program. That Person is, has always been, and will always be, Jesus Christ.
Such Were Some of You is a documentary that takes you on a journey which begins with a contrast between the opinions of people on the street and experts in theology and psychology. Then over two dozen former homosexuals tell their stories.
For further information about Such Were Some of You, or for a preview of this documentary, please visit SuchWereSomeOfYou.org, also available through MasteringLife.org
Many years ago, I said goodbye to homosexuality and the gay identity. All Christians face the decision of accepting or rejecting Christ’s Lordship. Coming out of homosexuality required deep emotional healing and a restructuring of my whole identity. As our Creator, God is the only One who knows exactly how to restore our personality. I remember so vividly, when coming to know Christ at the age of 35, what it meant for the first time in my life to be a man. But more importantly, what it meant to be a godly man. I liked it then. I like it still. Or, as I have heard it sung in a wonderful old song, “I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.”
At the end of the day, science can never be used to trump God’s Word. Yes, change is possible. The interesting thing about the change process is that change is not our ultimate goal. Change is what results as a person pursues a more important and compelling goal: knowing, loving and “beholding” Jesus.
Pastor Phillip Lee
Executive Director His Way Out Ministries
Homosexual advocates have been very creative in their interpretation of Scripture in an attempt to validate the practice of homosexuality.
Many homosexual advocates frequently impart their own personal meanings into biblical texts in an attempt to make personal experience the ultimate test of truth rather than the Truth and Authority of Scripture. However, the Bible does not condone the practice of homosexuality in any of its forms, but in fact, condemns it as a damaging sin.
To those that state “The Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality,” or “The Bible doesn’t say anything about homosexuality,” they usually don’t mean that homosexuality is never mentioned in the Bible, what they normally mean is one of the following: Homosexuality as practiced or viewed today never appears in Scripture, or even though the Bible does speak against homosexuality, what the Bible says does not apply to present-day situations.
I remain amazed at how some people today make surprising claims about the biblical attitude toward homosexual behavior. As an example, there are those who would have us believe certain biblical characters were homosexual. Not one individual is named in the entire Word of God as a homosexual. While there are those that would have us believe that Cain and Abel, David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, even Jesus and the “beloved disciple, or Paul and Timothy,” were alleged homosexual pairs, is at best a flimsy, if not a quantum leap by some pro-gay apologists to claim biblical support for their cause and way of living.
When considered objectively, the Scriptures are not silent concerning homosexuality. Within the totality of Scripture, the practice of homosexuality is always mentioned as a violation of God’s divine intent for human sexuality. The major references to homosexuality in Scripture are: Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10; Genesis 19; 2 Peter 2:7 and Jude 7. Pro-gay apologists and theologians have interpreted each of these texts in such a way as to eliminate their applicability to the current ethical and moral debate on the issue.
The Holy Scriptures clearly and repeatedly condemn any violation of God’s divine order, whether through immoralities (1 Corinthians 6:16-20) or through a perversion of sexual roles (Romans 1:18-32; Leviticus 18:27; 20:13). Today, The Church is continually being challenged to adjust its beliefs and theology regarding sex, to bend, if not bow down to, opinion polls and the many that have embraced science, feelings, notions, and experience over The Truth and Authority of Scripture.
There is no way biblically to arrive at any other conclusion than the practice of homosexuality is a perversion of divine order. Period. Furthermore, to stand and condemn homosexuality in all its forms is not a symptom of homophobia or narrow-minded bigotry. It is to stand on the side of righteousness and truth and to be in obedience to the One who said, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16) For The Church, God the Father is the only One we should seek to please.
Today, far too many are dismissing and departing from the scriptural model of Christian sexuality. Almost on a weekly basis, I hear, “I know what the Scriptures have to say about living within God’s holy boundary lines regarding sexual expression; however, I am going to follow my feelings and emotions rather than The Truth I know.” What has happened to the fact and reality that God is Holy and calls all of His followers to holiness which points directly to the fact that He is a God to be feared as well.
Christians are the temple of the living God. God has said: “I will be their God and they will be my people. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Cor. 6:16-18) Considering God’s promises, every Christ-follower must pursue godliness and holiness and abstain from anything and everything that seeks to contaminate body and spirit.
The Church has always been, as it remains today, God’s vehicle to preserve His Truth and defend His Church against error (Matthew 5:13; 1 Timothy 3:15). Today, other immoralities are aggressively pounding away at the Church’s door, such as pornography, abortion, rampant divorce, and cohabitation. Are we, The Church, to give way before these because the general population approves them?
Yes, today, it really does seem that anything goes. There is no right or wrong. Not only this, but many would have us believe that personal morals are equated with legal rights. Today, sex is looked on more and more as a constitutionally guaranteed right – a right to fulfill one’s biological drives however one sees fit. When we commit sexual sin, which is war against our own body, as well as sin against God, we bring negative consequences upon our soul and spirit. The Apostle Peter made this point in 1 Peter 2:11, when he pleaded: “I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.”
As a Christian, meaning I embrace the totality and Authority of Scripture, I could never as a faithful follower of Christ Jesus, encourage, endorse, promote, or validate the practice of homosexuality in any form. To do so would be a blatant misuse and contradiction of Scripture.
History dictates that what we, The Church, tolerate today will be practiced tomorrow. With holiness and truth as our motivation we, The Church, must be very careful not to adopt the customs of the world.
Ultimately, when a notion, theory, feeling, or personal opinion contradicts the Holy Scriptures, it should be rejected.
Pastor Phillip Lee
Executive Director His Way Out Ministries
His Way Out has been faithfully ministering to men and women seeking a way out of sexually broken lifestyles since 1994. We could not do it without the support of Christians like you. Every dollar that you give to His Way Out Ministries helps to further this vital ministry. Won’t you take a minute to prayerfully consider a monthly donation to His Way Out? Please consider making a one-time donation or set up a secure monthly PayPal contribution on our donation page at https://www.hiswayout.com/donate/. Thank you, Pastor Phillip Lee
His Way Out Ministries Podcasts are dedicated to equipping, educating, and encouraging the Body of Christ to reach out and minister to individuals, families, and churches impacted by the brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Anne shares testimony of her personal journey out of the brokenness of same-sex attraction and we discuss in detail proposed bills in California that, if passed into law, will greatly limit, if not prohibit, men and women receiving the guidance, encouragement, and support needed to walk away from the unwanted brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Today, it truly seems, the real menace of society is not those who oppose immorality but those who promote it. While we cannot, we must not, take the law into our own hands, we can, we will, we must, refuse to allow immorality to become commonplace and acceptable. This is not gay bashing. No one should be labeled hateful, a bigot, or homophobic for standing upon the Authority of Scripture and challenging or opposing the legitimacy of homosexual practice. Scripturally-speaking, it is impossible to validate, promote, or affirm homosexual practice from Scripture.
His Way Out Ministries Podcasts are dedicated to equipping, educating, and encouraging the Body of Christ to reach out and minister to individuals, families, and churches impacted by the brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Pastor Phillip and Dr. Ford continue their discussion, observing that no matter how strongly we may be opposed to the homosexual agenda (and all of its aspects), we are first of all called to be Christians who have the privilege of representing Christ Jesus to all communities of the world, regardless of color, class, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation. Yet why are so many choosing to remain silent?
Listen online or download the podcast.
Representing the Culture or Representing Christ with Clayton Ford pt2 – Download MP3 –
His Way Out Ministries Podcasts are dedicated to equipping, educating, and encouraging the Body of Christ to reach out and minister to individuals, families, and churches impacted by the brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Pastor Phillip and Dr. Ford question how we arrived at a point where same-sex marriage is legal throughout America? Did we, the Church, contribute to a cultural vacuum by offering very little resistance? How did we arrive at a point where a popular error in the Church is the attempt to blur the lines of Christian ethics, making the term “Love” an omnipotent spiritual quality which has the power to validate anything done in its name.
Listen online or download the podcast.
Representing the Culture or Representing Christ with Clayton Ford pt1 – Download MP3 –
Frankly, sometimes we over-spiritualize things when what really needs to be done is “take some practical steps.” With any obsessive or addictive behavior, a person must want to change before permanent healing or restoration can take place. God, indeed, will give you the strength you need, when you need it. But it all revolves around the intimacy that you develop with Him and the diligence and hunger with which you pursue Him.
When you begin to develop an intimate relationship with God, He will begin to speak to you through inner impressions and sometimes through a small still voice that seems to go directly into your heart and mind without the benefit of your ears. Sometimes God will cause you to hear the same message over and over, or even have a number of people come up to you and share the same thing about something that is appropriate to what has recently been on your heart and in your prayers.
If you are seeking freedom from any heterosexual sexual addiction or same-gender attraction, God will no doubt point out certain places, people, and activities that He wants you to eliminate and avoid. When you find yourself being sexually stimulated, stop and ask God what it was that caused it and how you can avoid it next time.
If pornography has been part of your problem, God will undoubtedly require you to destroy it and not buy any more. But He may also tell you to avoid magazine racks and even driving down streets where they are located. At least until you have become strong enough to resist such temptations and enticements.
Don’t be surprised if God tells you not to buy certain magazines, even “socially acceptable” ones, like store catalogs, knowing that most of your time is spent gazing at the good looking men and women rather than the clothes. God may tell you not to rent or view certain videos or even watch television shows (you know…the ones that emphasize your former heartthrobs.)
The Lord may tell you to no longer drive in neighborhoods or frequent places where you used to go to stare at the “beautiful people.” He may tell you to forget about the gym or the health spa.
This is a hard one: God may tell you to give up certain friends…people who He knows will only pull you back into bondage or in some way impede your healing. You must trust God knows exactly what He is doing. As you know, the list is endless of ways and places that serve to bring subtle and overt temptation. Who knows? God knows. Listen to Him.
The greatest danger you face is your tendency to forge ahead of God to conquer these things by yourself. That is a big mistake and you will probably fall flat on your face if you try it. Save yourself a lot of time, effort, and grief. Wait on the Lord to tell you when and how to deal with the various components of your situation. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” (Psalm 127:1) Jesus Christ is the only One in this world or any other who will ever be worthy of glory or praise, and for anyone of us to act outside of His direction is a subtle but arrogant challenge to that fact.
Practical Steps to Restoration and Recovery
Set your heart and mind against the old sin-bred patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing, and toward a love of purity. “Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.” (Psalm 29:2)
Starve the old nature to death! Avoid the people, places, and things that God reveals as feeding troughs for your sin nature. “By the leading of the Spirit, put to death the misdeeds of the body.” (Romans 8:13)
Frequent men’s/women’s fellowship groups in addition to regular church services so that you can receive the kind of healthy support, modeling, and acceptance that has been missing in your life. “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25)
Find someone with whom you can be accountable. “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)
Increase the amount of time you spend seeking God in prayer and crying out to Him for help. “God rewards those who diligently seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
Let God build a new man/woman in you and let Him receive all the glory!
Pastor Phillip Lee
Executive Director His Way Out Ministries
His Way Out has been faithfully ministering to men and women seeking a way out of sexually broken lifestyles since 1994. We could not do it without the support of Christians like you. Every dollar that you give to His Way Out Ministries helps to further this vital ministry. Won’t you take a minute to prayerfully consider a monthly donation to His Way Out? Please consider making a one-time donation or set up a secure monthly PayPal contribution on our donation page at https://www.hiswayout.com/donate/. Thank you, Pastor Phillip Lee
His Way Out Ministries Podcasts are dedicated to equipping, educating, and encouraging the Body of Christ to reach out and minister to individuals, families, and churches impacted by the brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Phillip Lee & Tem Mattox
Season 2, Episode 16
Once again, Pastor Tem Mattox, Senior Pastor of Northside Community Church here in Bakersfield joins Pastor Phillip Lee to continue their discussion on the topic, “When the culture moves, should the church move with it?”
Today, in America, very little is being offered which promotes the truth about homosexuality and the general public is slowly but certainly beginning to believe the many untruths and inaccuracies being offered. This did not happen by accident.
An article titled, “Finding ways to love in a time of hatred”, was offered in our local newspaper. Admittedly, as one that left homosexuality over 30 years ago, I have personally experienced many positive terms that have been corrupted and negative terminology about those disagreeing with the normality and practice of homosexuality as well. However, to equate “disagreeing” with homosexuality as “hating” is a huge inaccuracy and at the least flawed reporting.
Today, many terms are being played up by those promoting homosexual practice to cast a negative light on anyone questioning homosexuality and gay rights. How is it that no words are used to explain that those opposed to homosexuality actually care about the people involved, and ‘hate’ is the furthest thing from being a motivating factor?
As one that spent 17 years as a gay-identified man, I simply want the false glamor and lies to be stripped away from homosexuality, one of which is that objecting to homosexuality means that one is intolerant, bigoted, homophobic, and hateful. These words utilized by the pro-gay agenda have become far too convenient and are clearly being relentlessly offered to promote a one-sided agenda which is being seductively pushed upon American society.
If words such as ‘love’ and ‘hate’ are going to be used, the burden of proof is on the individual or community to produce evidence. That said, to use the word ‘hate’ to define those objecting to homosexuality is a huge, sweeping generalization and far from being all-inclusive.
Pastor Phillip Lee
Executive Director His Way Out Ministries
His Way Out has been faithfully ministering to men and women seeking a way out of sexually broken lifestyles since 1994. We could not do it without the support of Christians like you. Every dollar that you give to His Way Out Ministries helps to further this vital ministry. Won’t you take a minute to prayerfully consider a monthly donation to His Way Out? Please consider making a one-time donation or set up a secure monthly PayPal contribution on our donation page at https://www.hiswayout.com/donate/. Thank you, Pastor Phillip Lee
His Way Out Ministries Podcasts are dedicated to equipping, educating, and encouraging the Body of Christ to reach out and minister to individuals, families, and churches impacted by the brokenness of same-sex attraction.
Tem Mattox & Phillip Lee
Season 2, Episode 15
Pastor Tem Mattox, Senior Pastor of Northside Community Church here in Bakersfield joins Pastor Phillip Lee in a discussion on the topic, “When the culture moves, should the church move with it?”
