I Was Delivered From Lesbianism

For 17 years I struggled daily with a bondage that tormented my mind and oppressed my spirit. Then I discovered Scripture-based truths which set me free. A true story by Darlene Bogle

When does homosexuality become sin? Which is worse merely thinking about a homosexual relationship, or engaging in it? Is the celibate homosexual any less degenerate than the person who lives as a full participant in that life? Can one ever truly be free from this sin?

I wrestled with these questions for 17 years. Although I had attended two different Christian colleges and was a member of an evangelical church, I struggled daily with a bondage that tormented my mind and oppressed my spirit. From time to time there were varying degrees of freedom, but I was always drawn back into the lifestyle that I both detested and loved. There seemed no alternative.

Psychologists told me to establish a stable gay relationship by committing myself to just one individual. Ministers told me to leave the gay lifestyle and become celibate. God, they said, would supply me with the strength to stay clean, but I would have to pay for the years during which I had indulged. The struggle would always be there to plague me.

Inside, I threw up my hands and cried out to the God of the Scriptures. He had promised me abundant life if I would believe on His name, and I had committed my life to Jesus Christ as a 16-year-old high school student. But the words I read in the Bible seemed to mock me. They resounded against the tin brass of reality.

Desperate, I was ready to take my own life, but I decided to try God one more time. A friend suggested that I visit a prayer group in a little San Francisco church. It was there that I discovered the key to deliverance.

The people at the meeting encouraged me to take a closer look at what had happened to me at salvation: my spirit had been born again. When I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, I had been delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light (Colossians 1:13). Therefore, the God of peace yearned to sanctify me wholly spirit, soul and body (I Thessalonians 5:23). He wanted to keep me blameless until the coming of Jesus Christ.

I learned that because God created me in His image, I, too, am triune. I am a spirit, a body, and a soul which is made up of mind, emotions and intellect. This is part of me that Romans 12:2 tells me to renew.

This premise, although new to me, was not as startling as another idea the prayer group leader presented: the concept of demonic oppression. I had never considered that. I did not believe (nor do I now believe) that Christians can be demon possessed. But these Christians were telling me that one can be oppressed from the inside, or demonically indwelt.

When I did not know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my life had been opened up in various ways to demonic spirits. These spirits set up their strongholds in my soul nature. Because I yielded my body to serve the lusts of the flesh, Satan took a foothold. Nothing in Scripture established the idea that Satan would leave just because I became born again.

I had left the gay life at various times, but the gay life never had been cast out of me! Now I believe that any person who has practiced a homosexual lifestyle has a spirit from which they need deliverance.

Scripture says to submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee (James 4:7), and to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (II Corinthians 10:5). We are also told to cast out demons (Matthew 10:7, Mark 16:17) and we are given the authority in the name of Jesus to do so (Luke 10:18).

My chains of bondage were broken when I took authority over the spirits of homosexuality in the name of Jesus and served them their vacate-these-premises-immediately papers. They had to leave.

Then the leaders of the prayer group explained that Satan is the master of deception. If I left any doors to the soul open, I might be deceived into thinking Gods deliverance had failed. Rebellion, unforgiveness or anger could allow Satans re-entry.

I now had the choice to walk in obedience and discipline, and to make myself accountable to a church body and leaders who would encourage me to grow. The initial surgery of deliverance gave me that choice. (I do not advocate attempting to do this surgery alone, but with godly leaders to whom this ministry has been given).

During the four years that followed my deliverance, I fed my spirit with the Scriptures in order to renew my mind and be transformed. Did all the struggles leave overnight? No. But the battleground shifted, and the shield of faith kept me free.

I am not half a person, nor in bondage any longer to the spirit of homosexuality. A continual cleansing takes place as I choose to walk with God. Moreover, I have seen the same power of God break Satans hold on other lives. I have seen many walk into the new life of the risen Christ, and grow spiritually as they become His disciples. It is a walk of liberty.