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GOD'S
AMAZING GRACE:
THE TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN
BENNETT
Watch Stephen Bennett Share His Testimony
On-Line Now
(Windows Media Player or Any Media Player) Click
Here…
In the fall of 1981, as an 18 year old
aspiring artist with a dream, and a freshman at one of New York’s art schools,
I reached one of the darkest periods in my life. On a cold rainy night,
far away from home I acted out on feelings I had throughout my entire childhood
and teen years - I had my first homosexual encounter with another
student. After drinking alcohol at a school party and getting drunk for
the first time ever, something I swore I never would do because of my family’s
past, my life literally changed in one night. I was plummeted into my
deep dark world of homosexuality. After only a few short months in art
school, I suffered from a very severe depression, and dropped out of school and
returned home to my family in Connecticut.
I found many of my old high schools
friends had also “come out” as homosexuals and I became very active in the
homosexual bar scene. I lived for the night - my drinking became worse, I
started using cocaine to help alleviate my mental turmoil, and found much love
and acceptance by other men. I had many numerous one night stands.
I felt I was finally “me”. However, my drug addiction got worse to the
point where I became a cocaine dealer just to support my habit - I lost my art
business to drugs, as well as my dignity to a life based upon my perverse,
sensual and decrepit lifestyle I couldn’t break free from. It was at this point
many of my friends and one night encounters were getting “sick” and starting to
die, and no one knew why. This sickness was the beginning of the AIDS
epidemic.
Things only grew worse and for a period of
six years I declined morally, mentally and physically. It was in the winter
of 1987 after a 3 day cocaine and alcohol binge I cried out for help.
After being up all night and running out of cocaine, I looked in the mirror and
was shocked at the reflection. Due to my cocaine abuse, as well as years
of bulimia, at almost six feet tall, I saw a 135 lb. living skeleton staring
back at me and I just cried. I ran down to a pay phone on the street
corner and called for help. I admitted myself into a drug rehabilitation
program, and began my recovery as an impatient for three months at a nearby
facility. It was at this point I began to see God working in my life.
Within a few short months I was alcohol
and drug free, as well as free from my bulimia. I had gained about 25
lbs. and was feeling great. However, I still had a deep dark secret past
hidden inside of me. What was I to do with my homosexuality? Deep
down inside I knew it was wrong, yet I was just suppressing it. After
dating a few girls, I found myself one night back again at a local gay
bar. I didn’t drink or do drugs - but that night I met a man that I fell
in love with, and began a three year live in relationship with him. I
seemed I had it all - my homosexual lifestyle and love, without the drugs,
alcohol and bulimia, a great job, beautiful home, and great homosexual
friends. I attended an unsaved church faithfully every week - and felt I
had it all. But God wasn’t done with me yet - in fact, He had just
started.
My doorbell rang, and it was my friend
Kathy, a friend for years who had seen me through the good and bad times of my
life - and she had a Bible in her hand, and asked if she could come in.
She had told me she left her religious background and became a Christian.
She told me how Jesus changed her life, and how according to the Bible
homosexuality was wrong - it was a sin and an abomination in God’s eyes - how
according to the Bible I was not “born that way”, how it was circumstances,
events and broken relationships from as early on as childhood, that led me down
the homosexual path, and that Jesus Christ was offering me deliverance,
restoration and most importantly, salvation - today. I listened intently,
and something inside of me told me she was right. I told her I would take
the Bible and she left. That day, the Word of God cut right through me -
I saw my homosexuality for the first time as God saw it - as sin. Over
the next year and a half, anytime something would happen between my partner and
I sexually, I found myself praying for forgiveness to God I didn’t know, on my
bathroom floor. God was tugging at my heart strings and I knew it.
The tugging was so hard and clear, I left
my partner, my job, my family - everyone and everything I loved, and headed off
to Provincetown, Massachusetts - a homosexual subculture - to live for a
summer, to see if I could reconcile this pull between being a homosexual and a
Christian. Did I have to choose one or the other, or could I be both at
the same time in God’s eyes?
Well, in that summer of 1991 God opened my
eyes to the truth and reality of the homosexual lifestyle - I saw it all in
full swing, in all its glory - transsexuals, transvestites, sado
masochists, men and women doing things one would never even imagine.
After five months in Provincetown, I returned home to my partner asking for
forgiveness for leaving him - I was sorry and I was going to put this “Jesus”
business aside. Yet after only three short months in his home, by myself
while wrapping Christmas presents, I happened to flip through radio stations
and came across a Christian one. A man was singing a song (Scott Wesley Brown’s “This Little Child”)
and I heard the lyrics about “men marching for their right to sin”. I
knew exactly what the song was talking about - it was talking about me. I may have put God on the
back burner - but He was still chasing after me.
And on New Year’s Eve of 1991 I attended a
homosexual party with my partner, and for the first time ever in my life - I
felt “dirty”. I hated myself. I hated my homosexual lifestyle. But I just
couldn’t break free...
I called my friend Kathy on the telephone
and told her I was going to move back to Provincetown, Massachusetts for good
and completely give myself over to my homosexual lifestyle. I felt as if
I lost my life and my soul. Deep inside, I was crying out for help - and that’s
when Jesus Christ stepped in.
She read to me from the Bible, from the
book of Romans chapter one, how God will “call” you - and if He keeps calling
you, and you hear, yet harden your heart, it may come to a point where He will
make you a “reprobate” in His sight and give you completely over to your sin,
and allow you to believe “the lie”. At that point, according to the
Bible, you have basically sealed your destiny away from Him forever.
It scared me so much, I asked her what did
I need to do, and she told me right now to pray to Jesus - ask Him to deliver
me from my unwanted homosexuality - and ask Him to forgive me for my sins, and
to come into my heart and life, be my Lord and Savior, and to take control.
At that moment, I did pray and nothing whacky or crazy, but I physically
felt the peace of God upon me. That day in January of 1992, on the telephone, I
asked Jesus to come into my heart – and I
was born again. Something truly
happened to me on the inside. That day God changed my life and I will
be eternally grateful for what He did. Within two weeks, I moved out of
my partner’s home and was on my way and new walk with Jesus Christ.
Within three months after accepting Jesus
Christ as my Savior, the homosexual behavior stopped, but not the same-sex
attractions. Why? I prayed the prayer, I did everything, I
left the man that I loved. What more could I do? Why wasn’t I “set free?”
I knew deep down I had to deal with a very
painful issue I didn’t even want to go near – yet one I knew I had to confront
in order to move on with my new life in Christ. For me, it was a very damaged, broken relationship with my father.
For years, I only desired one thing: my
father's love. I knew as Jesus had
forgiven me for all of my sins - past, present and future – I now needed to
extend that unconditional forgiveness to a man I deeply hated, yet one I truly
loved. After confronting him one day,
pouring out my heart and really talking for the very first time in 28 years --
our broken relationship was incredibly reconciled. Forgiveness was extended that day and the
chains that bound me for so many years were unshackled. When my father and I
hugged in his kitchen, and he told me that he loved me, I was finally set free.
Today, my father and I have a wonderful
relationship. I love my dad and I know
he loves me. Those memories and years of
hurt and inner pain have been replaced by a real father and son love. We see
each other often, call each other on the phone and God has restored alI of the lost years.
I realized for my entire life, I was
vainly looking for the love, attention and affection of my father in the arms
of other men. Today, the search is
over: I now have the real
thing: my dad.
I must say, it is incredible how my
journey has been. Within that first
year, never having been with a woman before, I was engaged to a beautiful
Christian woman, Irene, who knew me as a homosexual, and was praying for me for
years. We were married on June 13, 1993.
Never having been with a woman before, all I can say is our wedding night was
one of the most beautiful, pure experiences I ever had.
Today, almost twelve years later -- and very happily married -- God has
blessed us with two other miracles - my beautiful daughter Chloe Catherine who
is six years old, and my son Blake Stephen, four years old, born on Chloe's
birthday. Chloe's middle name is in
dedication to my friend Kathy who never gave up on me - a vessel of God, who He
used to change my destiny forever.
Today life is wonderful - I am free, and
it is all because of Jesus Christ and His love for me. Jesus is the answer for all of our needs, no
matter what they are. You may be, know
or live with a homosexual, a drug addict, or an alcoholic. Understand - God loves the sinner - He just
hates the sin. Christ is there to truly heal, to forgive, to restore and to
make whole.
Remember, with God, nothing is impossible
- believe me, I know. I do believe in
miracles - I believe in miracles, for I've seen a soul set free... for that
lost soul was me.
A special 1 hour SBM Audio Magazine “God’s Amazing
Grace - The Testimony of Stephen Bennett” – produced by American Family Radio –
is available from SBM for your gift of $15 or more. Includes
some of Stephen’s music and a special interview with Stephen and his wife
Irene. Ask for offer #AC-007-CD. If ordering my mail, please include
$3.50 S & H to: SBM, Inc. – P.O. Box 2095, Huntington, CT 06484-1095 or
call 1-800-832-3623.
To
obtain your copy, click
here. Also Available - SBM's New
Soul Winning Tract featuring the Testimony of Stephen Bennett entitled, "I
Was Gay." Available
in quantities of 15 or more. For
further information on this new tract, click here.
© 2000-2005 SBM, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This testimony may be
reproduced in part or full only with the written expressed permission of
Stephen Bennett Ministries,
Inc. To request permission for use or publication, please contact Stephen Bennett Ministries.
OTHER
FEATURED TESTIMONIES:
If you would like to share your testimony here with
others at SBM, kindly e-mail your testimony to testimonies@SBministries.org.
SBM will gladly review it and contact you if it will
be used for publication.