My name is Daniel.
I'm 18 years old.
And almost a year ago, God saved me.
I stand here.
I want to proclaim the Gospel
in my own testimony
and just how God did that work in me
that you too may come to faith in Him.
Most of all I want to tell you
that there's no level of sin
and there's no amount of wickedness
that keeps a man from God,
but it's his own pride not to come.
And for a long time,
I was prideful enough to keep my sin in the dark.
My dark deeds were not exposed to the light
because they would expose them for what they are.
And if that was true,
God would have judged me.
They were true
and He would have judged me.
But you need to know that now
I serve a living Savior.
He's alive in me.
And He's done a work.
Please hear this testimony I have to tell you
that you may come to saving faith.
God shows His love for us
in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
On April 23rd, 1991,
I began my war with God.
That's the day I was born.
At age 5 or 6,
though God created me to mature
and to be holy and pure before Him,
at age 5 or 6, Satan said
your sexuality begins.
And I said, yeah, you're right.
And through elementary
and throughout middle school,
Satan said this perversion continues,
and I agreed with him.
And high school came and I stopped.
I stopped living my secret sexual lusts -
these actions that no one knew about
except God.
And the only reason it ended
was the fear of man
because I didn't want to stop doing it.
I loved it.
I loved what killed my conscience.
And if it could have been seen,
it would have been a scarred,
brutally beaten body - almost to death.
That's what my conscience was like then.
And the only reason I stopped
was because I was growing up
and I knew what people would think
if I continued this way and they found out
how I felt about people of my own gender
and even my own flesh and blood
and the things I did in the dark.
The things that God's law says are perverse.
He absolutely hates.
No, I truly didn't stop doing it
because it was an abomination to God.
I truly stopped because...
I cared more about what people thought
than anything in the world -
even more than my lusts.
That's how much I cared
what people thought about me.
Not because I hated sin.
I loved sin.
But in the midst of this -
me growing up this way -
I began to isolate myself.
Fear and shame became my outer shell.
And I began to collect in the midst of all of it
all types of materialistic idolatries,
but never truly worshiping
or considering the God who created me.
And for that I am ashamed.
I am so ashamed.
With everyone applauding my good grades,
I began the greatest abomination of all.
In the midst of what I knew I was
and had done and was still doing in my mind,
though I physically stopped it,
I actually thought I was better
than most everyone else.
And I looked to people's approval
of my behavior externally
and my own conduct in school.
I began to think of myself as good.
But if I had faced God in those days,
He would have ended my life.
And if He would have brought me right before Him,
the angels would have been the ones applauding.
They would have been applauding
my damnation.
Then my teenage "churchianity"
only multiplied what I can imagine
God felt toward me - fierce wrath
and wanting to pour out vengeance.
Because I treated myself then
at that point in my life as redeemed.
And it was under a false Gospel.
But God being the merciful Savior that He was
and He still is
just showed me
the consuming fire that He is,
and in that blinding light
He brought me face-to-face with Christ
almost a year ago from today.
And I felt like I could not escape then.
And I felt outside of Him
enough to proclaim to those
giving me the Gospel
that I had been hearing a false Gospel.
I was able to admit it.
Only in God's mercy was He allowing me
to see that and believe that.
The living Christ in these pages of His Word -
they came alive to me that night.
And realizing God, I fled to the living Christ.
I fled to Him - that Savior.
That Mighty One.
He gave up His life
and bled on that tree.
I was able to live and see
the way Christ lived
and the way He saw God.
I was able to live like Him.
I was able to live like Christ.
I was able to see the Father
the way God the Son saw God the Father.
And now, to some of you,
I will see in that final day
doing the very things,
having done those very same things that I did,
hearing this truth -
even doing worse things than I did,
being poured into the lake of fire.
That was what I deserve.
But God responded to my hate
with His own love and His Son
in that while I was a sinner,
He died for me.
And many of you it is my prayer
will stand with me as brethren on that day
having done what I did,
having lived what I lived,
and rejoicing as He pours out His love -
His undeserved love -
and it is of light.
And it is a consuming fire.
A burning love and bright love
that fills those heavens
so that there is no sun,
there is no moon.
There's just Him.
And all that thirst will come to Him
because He has given them life.
And all my false relationships
and all my lusts
and all my perverted sexuality
and all of my pride and self-righteousness
in the midst of those lies -
He abundantly pardons
and gives me a true relationship
and a true love
and a true romance
that is Christ with His bride
for all eternity.
And amen.
You alone are my heart's desire
and I long to worship You.
You alone are the true joy giver
and Lord, I want to yearn for You.
You alone are my strength, my shield.
To You alone does my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart's desire
and I long to worship You.
Amen.
Everything that I would have owed God
and never would have finished paying for,
God justified me.
God is love.
But for some,
they will be as metals cast into a furnace
melting under the pressing heat of His anger.
Come to Him.
He will justify you.
Believe in Him
that you may be saved.
Romans 1:21-32
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God
or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking,
and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images
resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,
to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie
and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator
who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
For their women exchanged natural relations
for those that are contrary to nature;
and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women
and were consumed with passion for one another,
men committing shameless acts with men
and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God,
God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful,
inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Though they know God's righteous decree
that those who practice such things deserve to die,
they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
1 Corinthians 6:9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous
will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality...
2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."