Ex-gay getuienis: EJ Lombard

In April 2019 het André Bekker nege getuienisse van voorheen homoseksuele mense van Suid-Afrika op Facebook geplaas. Hier is die derde een.

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I’m sharing what Christ has done for me in my life in order to bring hope to those that read this. Know that change is possible and no matter what challenge we face in this life, we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. Everywhere I seem to set my gaze these days people are forgetting the wonders and might of God and abandoning or compromising the faith. It is for that reason that I share and testify that we serve the same God who parted the Red Sea and who provided water in a dessert for the Israelites from a rock. The God who never changes, but the hearts of man is quick to forget what it has learned and changes his heart with the times instead of holding to what is true.

I first noticed my attraction to other women when I was still very young and as a teenager growing into a young adult, I got extensively involved in the gay community and in different relationships. My lesbian lifestyle was a promiscuous one filled with drugs, clubs and girls. When I first “came-out” to my mother and father, I was thirteen years old. My mother began to pray for me ever since and my father had shared with me what the bible said about homosexuality. I debated it and had many reasons to justify the cravings of the flesh. As I grew older I got into a relationship with a very attractive girl well known among my friends – the desire of their sexual fantasy because of her beauty – but she was a prostitute. Soon, I got into prostitution as well, not because of her and I don’t blame her either – we all have choices, but because I had done so many things already and trying this was seen as an adventure.

All my life in and among my LGBT friends and circles I have seen many of them do drugs, in and out of different relationships, cheating on their partners, getting into prostitution and some even die in this lifestyle. This is not the kind of life I wanted anymore… I wanted something else. When I was caught up in drug addiction I cried out to God for help and deliverance and He was faithful to help me without any counselor or institution or rehab. Same thing when I wanted to exit prostitution and the abusive relationship with this prostitute partner, I cried out to God for help (a few times) because I was powerless to leave her and to leave prostitution, again God delivered me and took me out in the most mysterious way. I started searching for a deeper meaning to life and explored the different religions out there and I prayed and asked God to take me to the truth because some believed in Allah, Buddha and Hinduism, I even considered paganism at one time. God in his mercy brought me to a mission station in KZN where revival broke out and where lives continue to change. I was introduced to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not watered down or compromising in anyway, the real truth that makes the one who loves darkness scoff at it. These people take the word of God as it is and live in a way that brings glory to God!

As I began to study scriptures and getting to know God and His will, I read Romans chapter one and was astonished at how accurately it described my life before Jesus changed me! I will mention a few examples using the Amplified Bible:

(28)God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, (29)until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], (30)slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, (31)without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity].

This was my life… a gossip, I had a mean spirit, I was disobedient to my parents having no respect for them, I was filled with envy and strife even at work I would always blame others, I truly was without understanding and had no pity on those that I constantly criticised and mocked. I felt no remorse for the hurtful things I use to say to and about my parents and others, or how I hurt my siblings, bullying them and just being so mean and without godly love. I was full of bitterness, but the day my eyes opened to my sin and the pain it has caused I broke down and wept like someone who lost a relative to a horrible death.

This struggle of sin is real, but there is hope when we cry out to God for salvation and deliverance. Christ did such a work in my life that even my family desires a closer walk with God seeing what he continues to do in me; I cling to Him and pray to always cling to Him as long as I live. There is Hope and others should know, this is what the Gospel does, it convicts us of sin and judgement but it sets us free because it provides hope, salvation, and deliverance to the repenting sinner.

I testify to this: that when we call out to the Father through his son Jesus Christ for help, it is only a matter of time before salvation and deliverance comes. His love and mercy keeps us until then, wait on God.