A man has spoken out about how he found Jesus and put his homosexual lifestyle behind him to follow Christ instead.
Speaking to a crowd of former homosexual and transgender people at the Freedom March in Washington D.C., Brian Wheelock explained how he had believed his identity was tied up with his sexuality.
But after surrendering to God, he committed to putting Christ first in his life.
Unfulfilled
Speaking of his former lifestyle, Brian told the crowd: “I lived that life for at least ten years, and it was a crazy time in my life. Those feelings were real. I spent a lot of time in relationships and you know what, that’s who I was, it was my identity.”
“I thought I was free, living that life.”
He added: “And the more immersed, and the more I lived that life, to me it was empty, and just began to be a place of depression for me – where I just wasn’t fulfilled.”
The word of God
Change came to his life when he moved to the UK and Ireland for a year.
He said he had gone “off the deep end”, but gradually felt this was not what God wanted for him. “I felt God was telling me ‘Brian, this is not my best for you. Brian, I have better for you’.”
Returning to the US, he found a church. “I just literally went to a church and just started hearing the word of God, and something about the word of God began to change me from the inside out.”
‘God is faithful’
But Brian was still struggling with his feelings and his same-sex attraction, and he asked God for guidance.
He felt led to write out a covenant between himself and God, promising not to entertain sinful thoughts. He would read and sign the covenant twice a day.
“I didn’t pray in the name of Jesus that he would make me straight, I prayed I would die to myself and I would become a follower of Jesus Christ. And God is faithful to that.”
Wife and children
Eventually, Brian met Pam, and they began a relationship together. Before asking her to marry him, he told her the truth about his past.
She responded that they both had a past they were not proud of, but that she could see the man of God he’d become and the way God was working in his life.
They married and now have three children together, Jillian, Katelyn and Molly.
