Mike O3/4

Read the testimony of my friend, Kyle Hacker, as he describes his journey from homosexuality and transgenderism to freedom in Jesus Christ, and most recently to the joys of marriage! ---------------------------------------- "I started craving darkness in middle school. Staying up late alone, hiding in my closet, and harming myself were all ways to exercise my self-hatred. I was an unmoored adolescent growing up in Los Angeles. One of the reasons we moved there from Arkansas was so I could be a child actor. I was taught both to be whomever I wanted to be and to pretend to be whomever the casting director wanted me to be. My identity was forged by the mold of other people's approvals and my own selfish desires, not by the cross. Once I got a phone and got on social media, I was enticed to see myself as gay and came to believe that conforming to the gay lifestyle would be the solution to my miseries. With porn carving ditches in my brain and having a community of other depressed and lost teenagers, I was set in my ways. If I was feeling down about myself, not feeling in place in society, and thinking dark thoughts, the internet said it was probably because I wasn't living as my true self. Since I marginalized myself by adopting this identity, I became a martyr and a victim in my own eyes. Anyone who told me I couldn't do what I wanted didn't love me, they hated me. This colored the way I saw the world. Even though 'discovering' I was gay was supposed to help, I remained unfulfilled, and wondered if the next step in my identity would be becoming a girl. I already didn't get along with guys because we had nothing in common. I had so much in common with girls that I might as well be one, I thought. I also hitched my identity to astrology, therapy and psychiatry, and marijuana. These were also supposed to help save me, but each of these sins took over aspects of my life, starting in my junior year of high school. Once in college, I took advantage of the full 'freedom' I finally had. That freedom quickly led to me almost breaking my shin while drunk, almost trying hard drugs, almost getting fired, and almost trying hormone therapy. I could not manage my life. The Lord was working to keep me safe from several of these things, but he did let me continue in the slavery of drug abuse, poor relationships, and my deviant identity. At one point, I was thinking about very old memories, and uncovered this one: when I was in kindergarten, I was assigned two fifth-grade buddies to read to me, both of whom were girls. I remember telling them one day that I wanted to be a girl, and they told me a boy could never become a girl. The idea disgusted them, but on a natural, not biblical standpoint. But their disgust meant something to me. I reacted in rebellion. I remember getting in trouble, while noticing the girls in my class had pretty names and never got in trouble. They were desirable, but my natural desire was twisted away from wanting to be with a girl in my class to wishing I could be her. When I remembered this in college, it was a bittersweet way to give myself permission to pursue what I had clearly always wanted: to transition. I did grow my hair out, wear earrings, and identify as nonbinary until I was saved. This side of the cross, it's clear that Satan had been seeking footholds in my life and in others' lives in my generation, having already accomplished so much to normalize this degeneracy. As with every temptation, including in Genesis 3, the opportunity to rebel against God was offered to me. I saw that it was good, a delight to my eyes, so I took it and ate of it, and I am responsible. When I was coming to Christ in April 2023, I began to realize the horrors of homosexuality, particularly how child predation is the next step to degeneracy, just like transgenderism was the logical next step for me from homosexuality. I also began to realize that everything I had used to make myself feel good, valid, wanted, proud, and secure would all go up in smoke, and myself with it, if I did not repent. My lust, depression, and addictions did not have to define me. Christ could define me, and he wanted to, but I had to change. My whole life, my problem was not liking who I was, but changing the design of my life was something I was supremely unqualified for, as evidenced by my paths of self-destruction. God called me and gave me faith on May 28, 2023, caused me to yield, and I was saved. My life verse is Ephesians . The thief who no longer steals is no longer a thief! Only if he actually completes his conversion and starts laboring can this happen, as it did with me. As I was coming to Christ, though I never thought I could love a woman or live as a man, I knew that the redemption story for every sinner was about changing our affections away from sin and toward God and holiness. I knew that being saved meant having changed affections and no longer being a homosexual, but I had built my life around that aspect of myself. Christ smashed that idol and gave me the faith to know that I would not persist in that sin forever. Last year, he sent me the most wonderful girl, and we were married on April 26, 2025. We have no regrets, and I know for certain that what happened to me is available to anyone stuck in the same lust I was in. Christ be glorified." ---------------------------------------- If you are living a homosexual or transgender lifestyle, know that the same forgiveness, joy, and peace are available to you in Jesus Christ, who died and rose to save sinners like you and me. Turn from your sins. Trust in him for salvation.