A panel of people who have left the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer community will address the Pursue Conference in August to help the church better understand how to help people wrestling with same-sex attraction.
Jessica Newsome, founder of Love at the Cross, is hosting the event. She says it’s near to her heart because it’s part of her testimony.
“God delivered me from homosexuality,” Newsome tells Charisma News. “Some people grow up in the church, and they know about God, but they don’t live a life pleasing to God, or surrender to God. And I really got wrapped up in the homosexual lifestyle, because I felt I was born that way, like many other people do. And from there, I just got wrapped up in sin. I was a closet cutter. I abused alcohol from middle school to high school to college. And I was just very sexually active with women. And I thought … that was freedom.”
Newsome says she went deeper down the rabbit hole of sin. She even prayed for the Lord to send her a God-fearing woman she could go to church with. And He did.
“Sometimes God will allow you to have what you think you need just to show you that it’s not what you need at all,” Newsome says.
Now, Newsome is using her passion for Christ to help the church understand how to better able reach the LGBT community.
“My heart is to bridge the gap between the LGBT community and the church,” Newsome says. “[I want to show] the church how to love the LGBT community, how to reach this community and to do life with them. And for the LGBT community, [I want to] show them that God loves them exactly where they are, but He loves them too much to let them stay the same. I think that that’s really important for us to be able to learn and understand I think that we really need to grow in this area.”
That’s why she’s hosting the Pursue Conference.
“I’m actually going to be speaking about what gay theology is and helping Christians and the church be able to stand against a theology that doesn’t line up with the Word of God.”
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