Episode 51

Parental guidance and discretion is advised for this episode.

Dialog about anything LGBTQ is always positive and uplifting…or else. Very few are willing to lovingly and truthfully discuss the immense spiritual darkness and oppressive weight on the souls of its adherents. In this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we talk to Matt, a missionary to Cambodia in whose life God destroyed barriers in order to save him from the homosexual lifestyle. Now he reaches out to others with the saving knowledge of Christ. He has written two books titled The Straight Series, available on Amazon.

Get Matt’s books here: https://amzn.to/3zQjiNJ
Learn more about Matt by visiting his website: https://exgaywitness.com and https://castawayministries.org
He can be contacted here: https://exgaywitness.com/contact

2 doors I wouldn’t open if I could go back and do it again. I think it’s acting on the pornography.
Starting to look at porn just became a snowball effect that I could control and then led to really acting on it with men.
And then number two, the alcohol. I can’t imagine that I would have stepped out that far if it weren’t for those two doors.
I don’t know that I would have had the gut. My persona was generally kind of timid and that sort of thing.
I don’t think that apart from alcohol abuse, that I would have been out in the bars for someone.

Thank you for tuning into the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m in CG and we’re attempting to remove barriers
so we can all have a clear view of the cross. This is episode 51 of the Removing Barriers podcast, and this
is the lemon in the series of How were your Barriers Remove? In this episode, we’ll find out how match barriers will
remove when he came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Matt, welcome to the Removing Barriers podcast.
Thank you for having me great. We’re glad that we were able to book you. Thank you for putting us in your busy schedule.
I just want to say this, due to the sensitive topics that may be discussed in this episode, parental guidance might be recommended,
but we want to get to know everything about Matt and his testimony.

So tell me, Matt, what state or country were you born in? Usa? In a town called Clearfield, Pennsylvania, central Pennsylvania,
about four hours from any major city. Three hours from Pittsburgh, four hours from Philly. It’s near Penn State,
about 45 minutes away from Penn State University. Tell me about a small town. Pretty conservative small town.
The coal industry was the biggest industry when I was growing up, and it kind of fizzled out with environmental regulations.
Now Walmart put a distribution Center there so that I think the biggest employer at the moment. So it’s kind of a Walmart town.
Pretty friendly people. I grew up on a motorcycle, dirt bike riding on the Hills, kind of behind the house, and that comes
in handy over here in Cambodia. That’s the primary mode of transportation. I went hunting a lot with my dad, so hunting is very important to the culture back home and really enjoyed that sound fun? I grew up in the Caribbean, but totally different, but that was fun.

So tell me about your family. What kind of family were you born in? Was this Christian family? Your mom dad were together? I was born in
a Christian home. Very solid Christian home. My mom’s side of the family was Christian, actually, before my dad met my mom, and when he
met her, my mom really kind of put the words through his life. Who told my dad that if you wanted to date his daughter, that he would need to start attending service. So he started going to Church because he was attracted to my mom and eventually came to Christ.
Praise the Lord. And that was around 19 75. And then he ultimately became an usher and treasure and later and elder. And now he’s a head
Deacon in the Church. And back at that time, they were the leaders of the youth group. For a period of time. When I was part of the
youth group, they put me in a Christian school next to the Church. I was just very well churched very much memorizing scripture, and
that really became useful later in life when the Lord would call me to repentance.

That’s great. So you describe how your family was a solid Christian family in Church, reading and memorizing the word, but it sounds
like that you weren’t saved until later on. Could you describe what your life and upbringing were like before your Salvation? That’s
kind of a doctoral debate that we could have about whether or not I was actually saved and then went out into sin after that. So I kind
of usually steer clear of that. But I gave my life to Christ in terms of, Yes, I pray the Sinner’s prayer. But did I really have a close
relationship with him where I was hearing from him and he was leading my life, and it was a real, genuine relationship? No, not really.
Not until I got out and experience some difficult things that I couldn’t get myself out of. And I needed a savior. And he really came to my rescue. Yeah. Episode of How Were Your Baby to Move? We were talking to Josh, and he, too, was raising a Christian home. And we were talking about, you know, I guess the term for it is easy believism where a lot of kids are taught, Hey, pretty prayer access in your heart, but they never really come to a full realization of the SIM and in need of a savior. So it seems like you have something like that. Quite honestly, I think it’s something that the Church is especially Bible believe in. Churches need to probably look a little bit deeper into. Are we really, truly reaching our kids? Are they truly being saved, or are they making a profession but no possession? I think I did not have a deep understanding, and I don’t know that that was anyone’s fault necessarily, but especially coming from a Christian home. And I was fairly neat, gentle relative to the other kids, maybe not so bad in the early years. And so my son wasn’t so real to me. I wasn’t so aware of it. And when I went so deep out into the world, it became undeniable like, Wow, I really made a wreck of things. And there’s no other way out except for repentance.

So when you talk about when you came to the realization of your son, were you already an adult at that point, or were you still maybe a teenager, or where were you in terms of the progression of your life when you came to the full realization of your sin? I felt an attraction to men about 12 years old around puberty, when the boys started to like the girls, and I had an attraction to the boys and felt that I couldn’t control that temptation. I know now that I didn’t have to follow that, and I knew that I didn’t have to follow that at the time. But I’m saying that the temptation was there. And I prayed the Lord would take the temptation away and it didn’t go away. And so, knowing that it was wrong, I knew the word. And I grew up in the Church, and I knew that it was wrong and hated myself for feeling that temptation. But when it didn’t go away, I made poor choices, and I followed those choices. I followed that temptation deeper and deeper. I remember the early steps, looking at pictures and magazines, underwear model sort of thing, and then a little bit more and a little bit more. And after a while, you need more to kind of satisfy that fix, like an addiction type of thing, where you’re kind of chasing that initial high that you never really get back to. And so it became kind of a landslide, like a domino effect. So pictures went to videos and heterosexual videos and then homosexual videos and deeper into that. And then after a while, like my dad would say, if you window shop long enough, eventually you buy something. And so I first had to get drunk. That was a gateway. I got drunk for the first time, about 21 years old, and it was not long after that till I felt like, okay, now my fear is gone. My inhibitions are gone. When I drink, I have a way to Act out on these fantasies, and that’s what I did. So when I think back, kind of lessons learned from my testimony, I think two doors I wouldn’t open if I could go back and do it again. I think it’s acting on the pornography. Starting to look at porn just became a snowball effect that I couldn’t control and then led to really acting on it with men. And then, number two, the alcohol. I can’t imagine that I would have stepped out that far if it weren’t for those two doors. I don’t know that I would have had the gut. My persona is generally kind of timid and that sort of thing. I don’t think that apart from alcohol abuse, that I would have been out in the bar for someone. Anyway. It was probably about 28 years old that I sent a letter to my family, told them about, quote, unquote, who I was and who I believed I was, because the world had programmed me that way. And I had bought into the lives of Satan that this is who I am. Homosexuality and identity, and they went to war in prayer and fasting. That was a director from the pastor that dedicated me into baby was still with our family, and they went to war on bended knee, shoulder to shoulder, and stayed together through the hard times and trade and fasted. I think it was roughly four and a half years total. My dad just recently corrected me on that period of time. I think he said four and a half years from the time they started to pray in fast until the Lord delivered me. So he did a lot of things, gradually reminding me of an times prophecy. I was in fear of judgment of the Lord. I knew I was ready to meet him. 9 11 happened during that kind of period that I was out in the gay life, and I was crying when I saw that on TV. The towers going down, knowing that the Lord is bringing judgment on my country for turning their back on Him. We were founded to serve Him, to worship the Lord and turned our back on him, and we received significant judgment for it. And I thought, I’m going to be next. I’m not ready to meet the Lord. And I was very much in self destruct mode in my addictions. And so I didn’t turn back then. I was too proudful. But the Sea Street evangelist across my path when I lived in Pittsburgh, and so behind me in the line at McDonald’s tapped me on the shoulder, singled me out of probably hundreds of people that day during the rush hour at lunch, and really felt a heart for me. I know now that the Lord led him to feel that way and to single me out. But at the time I was confused and I thought, Wow, this guy doesn’t know me from anybody, and he’s asking me what I would do if I died today, if I was ready to meet the Lord. I thought, What a strange question from somebody who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know my family or anything. So that started to kind of clue me in that the Lord might be doing something from the throne. And I couldn’t imagine because I felt that I was so such an excluded kind of a category that could never come home. It could never be like the gospel applies to you folks in the Church. But it doesn’t apply to me because I’m a freak. I have this weird feeling, this weird temptation thoughts coming through my head that nobody else seems to have. Everywhere I look, everybody seems to be cleaned up and relatively good person, and I weird guy with these weird temptations weird thoughts. So the Lord used all that, and it really ultimately came to a point where I needed to come to the end of myself. I really needed to hit rock bottom in my addictions before I would look up. So I had to get on my back per se. Before I would look up, I had to get to a point where I knew that there’s no other way out except the God that I knew as a child who was with us and comforted us. And my mom was in a terrible car accident and the other guy passed away and he was a believer. But my mom had a terrible time dealing with that and coping with that. And the Holy Spirit was there in the room when the pastor came to pray with us. I have memories of very vivid things that the Lord did, where it was undeniable, that he’s not some religion or some teaching that he’s the true God, the living God. And so I remember that if he can do those things that he could get me out. But I needed to repent and I wasn’t ready until I got so severely addicted that I felt it was kind of a matter of life and death, that if I continued in my sin, I continued in the alcohol, the cocaine, that I would end up being a quiet funeral. Like many of my acquaintances from the gay bars at that point, I was 32 years old.

So tell me you said you start having these attraction for the same sex at about 12 been raising a Christian home. Did you feel comfortable to go to your dad? What was your relationship between you and your dad? Usually they say if someone I think this might be false belief. But if someone is leaning towards a gay lifestyle, either they don’t have a fat in their life or they’re looking for confirmation from a strong male figure that they don’t have. What was the relationship like between your dad and did you feel like you could have taken this to your parents? My relationship with my dad has been good my whole life, but in the early years I was very timid. I was very Meek and gentle. And I think in order to really answer the question, I would have to go back to what I feel from scripture. Is the truth kind of the scripture being the backdrop of my testimony is that we live in a spiritual war. And I remember the early years when I was a kid and laying in bed at night and feeling demonic kind of forces in the room and demonic presence. I remember being terrified of certain things. I would see something on the news and become terrified of it, that there was someone who is poisoning the Tylenol at some point, probably 19 85 or something. And they called him the Tylenol man. Or maybe I called him that and they said that I was waking up screaming with night terrors about the Tylenol man coming to get me. So there were just things that the enemy was there and keeping me in fear of certain things. And I felt inadequate that I was naturally kind of timid and Meek and gentle and not very masculine compared to the other boys. So the boys in the neighborhood were hypermasculine and want to play kickball and baseball and get out here and join us and all that. And I felt like if I go out and join them, they’re gonna see that I throw like a girl, that I run like a girl. I can’t do that. So I would become increasingly isolated. And my dad was also very masculine, just like the most men. He wanted to Hunt with me. He wanted to take me out in the Woods. He wanted to hike up mountains with me and do Manly stuff. He wanted to do that a lot. I mean, he wanted to be very close with me, and I kind of shied away a bit from that because I didn’t associate with it. I didn’t relate to it. Like I should have, like a regular boy would have. But Let’s say Thanksgiving, Christmas. They use these as an example. You would see the men on one side of the room talking about hunting and sports or whatever, and the women on the other side of the room group together. I would be with the women talking about the next style of genes. It’s coming out next year or something like that. So there was something about the inadequacy and comparing myself to others. I wasn’t confident in who the Lord made me to be until after He delivered me a new life. It showed me look, it doesn’t matter if this guy’s real masculine or this guy’s feminine or that one like this, or you, like this color or certain kind of music or something. You’re not gay. There’s no such thing as gay. I created you to be a man. I created man and woman. That’s it. Anything else is a perversion. The twisting of the truth. Don’t follow your temptation. It’s not who you are. I didn’t know any of that as a kid. I just knew I had a weird feeling. And the Church, really, like you said, at that point, I think you were alluding to the Church, especially a small town 19 85 era was not really equipped. They didn’t know what to do with it. They see this guy is kind of a feminine, but I don’t know what to say about that. So I just kind of pretend like it’s not here. And hopefully, with more testimonies like this and more kind of falling back on scripture, and the testimonies together will be better equipped as a Church to fight these Satanic attacks.

Yeah, I know you told us before we start recording that you and your wife do have any kids. But for me, as a father raising boys. And for our listeners who may be raising boys, as a matter of fact, even girls, how can we spot these things in our child’s hot or child’s mind at an early age? And how can a father or appearance kind of say, you know, what? My child might not be the macho man that you expect him to be or you want him to be, but you can still guide his heart to Christ. How can parents navigate this? Because you’re here, you are within a genuine Kristen, home loving parents. And then yet you still go that direction. How can parents not make the same mistake that maybe your parents have made? I guess, to put the quest in most succinctly for that, I would come back to the spiritual war. This is what’s brought up in the kind of psychological research that’s going on about homosexuality. They come back to things like, and maybe there’s some value in it. Everybody store is a little bit different. But now that I’m on the other side of it, the Xg Ministry part of it where I’m seeing guys who have come out of the gay lifestyle and trying to follow Christ and hearing their testimonies, reading their testimonies. And there’s a pretty big proportion, pretty big percentage of those folks grew up in a Christian home, son of a pastor, all that kind of stuff. So that, to me, points to, Hey, this is a demonic attack. He’s coming after the ones that are chosen to do something through the Lord one. I would have never guessed that statistic. So you’re saying that most of the gates that you are witnessing to in your Ministry a Ministry that most of them are coming from Christian homes, not the world. Many of the ones are coming from Christian homes. So my thinking my deduction from that is that Satan already has the ones in the world. Why attack them? Why not come after and confuse? And really, if you think about it, it’s the ultimate attack on the home, because he comes in after the child who the parents love more than anything on Earth. Right? And then it forces the parents to choose between the Lord and His word or their kid. How are they going to turn their back on their kid? That was my situation. So it was really in Abraham and Isaac kind of situation where ultimately my dad and mom, especially my dad. My mom had a harder time with it. But eventually my dad said, This is a spiritual war, and it’s way over our heads. I was calling three in the morning screaming demonic things that my mom, you know, cursing and swearing and carrying on. And he said, Let’s step back. And maybe we lost Matt. Maybe we’ll never see him again. But it came down to I was forcing them. You will. You will approve my sin. This is who I am. It’s like, well, in order to approve your sin, we have to turn our back on God’s word. And I didn’t realize that. I just thought it was about me. It was really a matter of the enemies talking through me. I hereby demand that you turn your back on the Lord in His word. Well, because you because you are on are involved in this. And I guess God says it’s okay now. Not true. So they chose the Lord over me, and ultimately, they chose me because the Lord delivered at the eleventh hour. And I believe part of that was due to their obedience. They really want to warn. They saw it as a spiritual war, went to war in parent. Fasting put the Lord’s word before me, which was really, ultimately choosing me. They spoke difficult truth that I didn’t want to hear. They could have told me, well, God loves everybody and everything’s going to work out. Just have fun with your boyfriend in the meantime or something. But they didn’t. They told me we love you, but we just can’t condone this. We can’t say that it’s anything other than saying that’s it praise the Lord. The Lord. Yes.

So you probably have alluded to this already. But what were those barriers that you think that we’re preventing? You dive deeper into those barriers that you think were definitely saying, Hey, preventing you from turning coming back to Christ being saved? I think it began with fear. I think in the early years, you have that temptation, that strange feeling, that strange desire. You don’t know what to do with it. It becomes kind of the deep, dark secret starts to come out in the way you walk and the way you talk, and you feel like my voice hasn’t changed. The other voice voice is a change. I throw like a girl, and I walk like a girl. You start to be bullied in school. And the more people tell you that this is who you are, the more you tend to believe it. And I think it starts in fear, and that’s how the enemy works. It kind of molds and shapes, and we follow Him further and further down the path of destruction. Start to look more and more like him, just like we follow the Lord down the narrow, difficult path. We start to look more and more like him. So I think it started in fear. And then after I followed my temptation, my deceitful heart. Jeremiah 17, I followed my deceitful heart out into the world and tried to find fulfillment and satisfaction in that. And then it became a matter of prize. It was the barrier. So at first it’s fear, then it’s pride driving. Then it’s kind of like, well, I came out here, and now I have to prove to those guys I have to prove to my family, the Church that what I did is really okay. Maybe not for everyone, but at least for me. If it’s who I am, then I’m going to prove to them that it works, prove that it’s just the same as a heterosexual relationship. So I kind of pattern things after my parents relationship in a weird way. Two men together. I’m trying to still do what I saw with my parents because I felt like their marriage was the best example I had. And it really worked. So strange things, very much counterfeit, Satan, counterfeit. So I would say it’s pride to help me back. And once I send and send so much, the mental picture that I’ve had is that it’s like a stock pile behind me, like a stock pile of trash, that I feel like never going to get rid of it. If there’s no way I can get through this, and there’s no turning back now, I’ve already come this far. I can’t be forgiven and all that stuff. So it’s pride and guilt and those were the barriers. And it really took prayer and fasting. I really recommend that for families going through this, that they would go to war and prayer and fasting for their loved ones, because the Lord really did something at this point. And then maybe six months later, something else. And then remind me of scripture during this business meeting at work, when you would never expect something would come like that, maybe through an unbeliever said something to me or a homeless person, all kinds of stuff were happening that no human being could work a straight. And then when the Lord opened the door, they stood on difficult truth, and I had to come to the end of myself. And that’s really the answer to your question is that I don’t have an easy solution other than I really had to come to that breaking point. I really had to come to rock bottom before I would look up. And I think, sadly, that’s the reality for a lot of people in the PT, because it’s so rooted. It’s so indoctrinated what we’re taught now everywhere. And this is who you are, and this is who you are. So nobody can even say anything to you anymore, because now you’re coming at the very core of who I think I am. Nobody can correct many folks in the LGBT lifestyle. So I think a lot of times it needs to be rock bottom. I know you call yourself a protocol, and that sounds so much like the protocol story where their son had to come to himself. My pastor Act was preaching on this recently. A lot of times parents don’t want to let their kids come to a point where they come to themselves and realize, Hey, you know, my father has all these things. Why am I here in this mess? And it seemed like you had to really get to the pig pen, eat the food from this line before you actually come to yourself.

And, Matt, let me ask you this question. You’ve answered it already. I’m hoping that you could go a little more in depth about how those barriers removed. You attribute it to the prayers and the fasting of your family members realizing that they’re engaged in spiritual warfare. And this isn’t something that they can fight with their physical capabilities. This isn’t something that they could wield any kind of human reasoning or human any kind of diabetic means to try and reason you out of this lifestyle. It was purely warfare, you know, they got on their knees and they prayed and they fasted. Now, typically, Christians understand prayer. But I found that Christians don’t or at least maybe I should speak for myself. We don’t have a clear understanding of what fasting is. Maybe if we define it, we could say, Oh, it’s going without food for a while. But is there more to fasting that you think Christians should know about when it comes to dealing with spiritual warfare and subsequently having barriers like this removed? Obedience is better than sacrifice comes to mind. And when the Lord delivered me from the gay lifestyle, and then I was walking out of it, I really needed to get into the word. It was the biggest thing is to be in the word every day and the renewing of the mind through the reading of the word, kind of washing out all those lives, these and all the indoctrination that comes when you just walk out of the house or turn on the TV, just needs to be cleansed and washed out. And so I just started out. And there were times when I read the larger volume than this. My dad said, You know what? Read two pages of the word every day. Keep it simple. You try to read 30 chapters in a day that’s not sustainable. You have to come up with something you can do for the rest of your life. It’s not a sprint. It’s an endurance run, right? So sometimes I would read more. But I learned from that example. And so the same thing was parent fasting. My parents really advocated. Keep it simple. Skip a lunch, not 40 days of some big ordeal. But skip lunch today. And then a couple of days later, maybe skip a lunch and pray together during that time, you know? But they didn’t really make a ritual of it. It was just to show the Lord we really need your response from this. We really need action. Put some power behind the prayer.

I might tell us, how were those barriers eventually remove? When did you come to that point? I know you just tell us what the barriers were, that you had to come to the end of yourself. What happened when you came to end of yourself? How would those barriers eventually remove on God break loose from this train of sin? So I mentioned that the Lord would do something here, and then maybe six months later, something else and something else. So he had been working over the course of several years there to gradually bring me back to Him and to bring me to repentance. But your question kind of zeros me in on the final day, the final hours. Right. And I remember being in a business meeting. And this was when I worked for a Bank in Pittsburgh. And we were up in a tower and in a business meeting. And it was in the wake of the financial crisis in 2,008. And there were Bank consolidations. And I worked in the kind of the back office of the Bank that was handling the consolidation. Our Department was really down in the weeds on the consolidation of Bank mergers and acquisitions and that sort of thing. And I remembered from childhood some of the interpretations of end time prophecy that there will be one World Bank. So that, to me, was always at the forefront of my mind. It was hard to escape. And I remember earthquakes and diverse places. So around that time, there was a strange earthquake in Pittsburgh, which is really unusual, really out of the ordinary. And so the Lord is bringing end time prophecy back to mind. And we had a meeting in that tower in Pittsburgh, and they were going around and they had a chief diversity officer who just been hired. And she came in and talked to us as a group. And she was talking about, I think she said something about that. Ultimately, there may be just one Bank or she said something that alluded to that. And that coming out of her mouth brought a tear down my eye. The Lord brought fiction reminding me of prophecy. And that was when I walked out and walked down the Street during my lunch break. And there were many nights there, like many night missionaries on the Street that I’ll never forget. And they had CDs and things to hand out. And the one handed me a CD, and I reached out and grabbed the CD, like a DVD kind of thing. At the end of the work day that day, I went home and put it up on top of my, I guess, as a CD player at the time. And I didn’t listen to it. It was kind of like, like, I don’t want to come out of I was so reluctant to come out of that life that I have been so rude and grounded in. And so I guess it was that same weekend. I think that was Thursday. And then Friday was the next day, and it was a holiday weekend. It was Memorial Day in May. So I had met someone online. I was meeting a lot of men online I’d never seen before and trying to get together for sex, which was a normal thing in that lifestyle. For many, especially the men living in a gay lifestyle, it’s very, very common regardless of what people want to admit. And so he was coming in from New Jersey on the train and he was going to spend a weekend with me. And I was doing sit ups on the floor preparing for him to come to visit. And I was trying to present myself as well put together. And Meanwhile, I was very much addicted and coming out of my Junkin stupor from the night before and putting by sin in my eyes to make it through the work day and going into shakes, like in the early afternoon and that kind of thing. But I would try to present myself as well put together on the outside. So I’m doing sit ups on my filthy apart floor, and I feel this tightness in my chest, like the war over the souls of men really made real, really happening in real time. And the Lord is reminding me of 10 times prophecy and the earthquakes and diverse places and pestilences and all that. And the enemy is kind of like, this is who you are and the guilt and the things that I had already done that I could ever come out of this. There was just a real physical tightness in my chest and doing the set up. And it was as if Satan has kind of me by the throat, like in a desk grip. And then the Lord saying, There’s only one way out. It’s full surrender. You must repent. And so I said, Okay, either in my spirit or out loud. And that’s when I felt the demonic presence. It might sound quirky or strange to say it was a real presence that I felt lift for me, even to the left side. That sounds strange. But he could say the burden of sin was listed, that the demonic bondage that I was in, I was in slavery, and that was lifted. Praise the Lord. And that was later that evening I got down to my knees at the bed. I pray the Sinner’s prayer remembered as a kid. And that was the beginning of my new life.

Scott, I speak to the like the woman I was speaking for things that could not satisfy. And then I heard my finger thinking, Draw from my well that never so wrong dry till my Cup, Lord, I lift it up, Lord, come and quench the thirsting of my soul bread of heaven feed me till I want no more fill my Cup fill it up and make me home there are millions in this world who are seeking for pleasure or three good for but none can match the wondrous treasure that I find in Jesus Christ my Lord. Till my Cup, Lord, I live in up, Lord, come and quest lip trapping of my sword read us happen me feel I want no more fill my Cup fill it up and make me hold so my brother is the thing that this world gives you leave one that won’t pass away my blessing Lord will come and save you if you kneel to him and humbly pray, fill my Cup, Lord, I lift it up, Lord, come and wash the bursting of my soul read or even feed me till I want no more still my Cup feel it up and make me home feel my Cup, Lord, how left it up, Lord, come and quench this testing of my thought reader heaven feed me feel I want no more fill my Cup, filled it up and make me or

you’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with Matt and we are finding out how were his barriers remove? When we return, we’ll find out how we can as Christians reach the LGBT community. We’ll be right back.

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Matt. How can Christians better reach and better reason with the LGBTQIA Plus community when we’re trying to talk to them about their Salvation? Talk to them about their need for a savior, talk to them about impending judgment. How come Christians better reach and reason with them? The quick answer is be honest about our own struggles. I really think that for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that even after we come to know Christ, that every Christian still has some sort of temptation towards sin still have a sinful nature that we wrestle against. And the difference between the unbeliever and the believer is the believer fights against that temptation right? In fights daily to follow Christ. But I think sometimes we’re afraid to admit to those temptations and those struggles, and so we kind of forget that we have them or we’re kind of in denial about them. And somebody walks through the door who is honest about that. It makes us feel uncomfortable and strange, like now because he’s being honest. Am I going to have to be honest? And I think it works a lot better if we’re just honest about our own struggles and who we are. The Bible says that for all have sin. The Bible says that he works in progress. That will finish the work he began until the day of Christ. So no reason to pretend that’s not the case.

Yeah. And such were some of you, but he was men. It seems like your pyramids got this right in terms of hitting the sin, but loving the sinner. How can we do that as Christians the sin but love the sinner, especially when it comes to the gay community. Back to the last question. That’s really the silver bullet. If we’re looking to reach out to the LGBT, I think especially if I’m a person who never has had a homosexual temptation or struggle myself and I’m going to try to reach out to the LGBT. I think the solar bullet, the best thing I can do is be honest. To first build that relationship, share the love of Christ, and build that trust. And from there, I think when there’s an opportunity to be very prayerful because prayers, the power behind evangelism. And when the Lord brings that open door to not be afraid to speak difficult truth. But I think often before the difficult truth comes, there has to be some kind of humble sharing of our own weaknesses. That kind of paves the way the example I like to use is, Let’s say that a Church wants to reach out to the LGBT and someone who struggles with homosexuality comes to the door. Then maybe we first build the relationship with that guy. And then maybe there’s a small group Bible study breakout session or something like that. Maybe that’s the opportunity. If I feel a heart to witness to him, maybe I try to build that relationship there. And then as the Lord brings an opportunity as we pray over the next few weeks or months, maybe I say, Hey, I never struggled with homosexuality. But now what I have struggled with in the past is pornography, something like that most men, I think at some point or struggle with pornography. And so it would be something that I think would earn the right to be heard from that guy. So it’s not like, Hey, you we’re a private club here, and we have everything all together. You’re the bad one. We want to call out your sins. I think it would work better from that.

And you mentioned earlier, Matt, how sometimes a person within the LGBTQIA community could feel like when someone is talking to them about Salvation or Jesus or any attempt to talk to them about their lifestyle, they feel like it’s a direct and personal attack because their identity is so wrapped up in their sexuality, it’s foundational in terms of how they perceive themselves. Do you think that Bible believing Christians understand that? Or I guess I should ask the question this way, what do you think Bible believing Christians do not understand about the LGBTQ community, about the people in that community as well? This is a question that I think needs to be thoroughly answered. I think number one is that the temptation, the false identity, can feel so real. And I mentioned before the scripture in Jeremiah, the hardest deceitful, above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know it? Yeah. And so that is such a key scripture. Proverbs 14 12 there’s the way that seems right to a man, but in the end, that leads to death. It can feel for all the world, especially I can only imagine if I didn’t have a Christian background at all. But even for me, I’m rooted in the word and growing up in the Church. And still, even though I know it’s wrong, I really, really know it’s wrong. But the hormones are raging in the teen years, and you don’t have a viable attraction to a woman. And it can feel so overpowering. So I guess that’s where there should be some compassion. Like, Wow, I can only imagine what it must be like for this guy. You know, number two, that for many, it’s not a choice like you. And I think of a choice not to get too graphic. But I mentioned before, kind of physiologically speaking, from a man’s perspective, if you’re in the flesh and you’re 13, 14, 15 years old, and the other guys are talking about the girls and what happens when they look at a girl, if you know what I mean, that’s not happening to you. And then on the flip side of that, the parents and the people in the Church are asking, What about your girlfriend? Where’s your girlfriend when you get to get married? And that becomes more and more as you get older. And then it’s like, how could I be expected to do that when I don’t have a viable I don’t function that way, if you know what I mean. Like, I would ruin her life in my life. And then you can imagine where something like that can be to suicide, where especially for a man, where you have that male pride, not in the bad way, but just how the Lord made us. You have that sense of who you’re supposed to be. And I think that’s where a lot of the suicide comes from. A lot of it also starts with sexual abuse and childhood. And that wasn’t my story. But many, many, many that I’ve talked to. That’s the case for them. I think in this struggle, it’s really the devil is in the details. You know, it’s one of those things that because it’s sexual in nature, nobody really wants to ask the questions that have to be asked to really drill into what exactly is going on here. And so trying to do that without being too graphic. But another one, a young man, for example, coming out of the LGBT lifestyle, will likely continue to wrestle with homosexual temptation. He may not the Lord might deliver it from him. He may be completely clean and free. But in my case, in the case of many, many other ones that I know, it’s been the thorn in our side. It’s been something that I pleaded with the Lord and he didn’t take it away. Said, My Grace is sufficient for you, whether that’s for the purpose of keeping us dependent on Him to keep us humble. Sometimes I think for Ministry purpose, if I didn’t have the temptation anymore at all, if I didn’t have that daily struggle and wrestle with that, that I wouldn’t have the capacity to have compassion, shed a tier with another guy who’s still struggling. I would forget where I came from. I think there could be a number of reasons, but that’s kind of the reality. And I think that just because somebody comes Christ and they’re honest about that. I think sometimes the Church can penalize that, like, well, he’s not a mature believer then, because if you were a mature believer, he must have done something wrong or hasn’t done something right. Let’s put him in another program or something, or marginalize him. And because he’s not quite where it needs to be. And that might not be the case. It might just be where the Lord has him. We don’t know why the Lord does what he does. And maybe in some cases it was the person called our mistake or something they did or didn’t do. But I’m just saying to try not to pass judgment. There another point that every born again Christian fights against sin, doesn’t continue to live in it. Like I said before, the difference between unbeliever and believers, the believer wrestles against him was the power of the Lord Jesus Christ from within and walks a newness of life. So a gay Christian is an oxymoron. Somebody can’t walk the path of homosexuality, a narrow, difficult path that leads to eternal life. They can’t walk them at the same time. They’re two divergent paths. Another that an ex gay man, for example, would not likely be prepared for the day after repentance for dating women. And I think that’s so common over here in Cambodian culture. That’s very common because it’s a collectivist culture. It’s very family oriented, kind of like the Us several generations ago, and there’s a lot of pressure to get married and have kids. And one man said to me about his son, I just wish he would marry a woman. And I said, Wow, for someone who’s in that lifestyle and not yet delivered, who doesn’t really know how to trust the Lord, yet in walking away from it, to keep saying something like that to them can be kind of detrimental because they’re just in the flesh. And they feel like there is literally nothing I can do to get rid of this temptation. I feel it’s just who I am. And then you keep saying, I want you to get a wife. I want you to get married. It’s like, Yeah, can I take them feel frantic? In my case, it was repentance. Put my faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ got into the word daily prayer daily in Church, every week, serving, finding my new identity in Christ. There was a lot of work that needed to be done, and I’m still not a finished work. But I’m saying this first weeks, months, years, the Lord’s doing major, major work kind of reprogramming all that was messed up right from the beginning. So at that time, I’m getting closer with the Lord. He’s the one that pulled me out of the pit. He’s the one that I can trust. He’s the one that will never leave me or forsake me. He’s there for me no matter what. Wow. This is what I was looking for out in the gay bars. And now I found it in the Lord Jesus Christ that my parents worship. It doesn’t even seem like the same God, you know, but he was so different for me in my scenario to lift me out. And he was everything that I needed to be and still is. And I found fulfillment and enduring satisfaction in him and just fell in love with him in a really genuine way. And so that had to happen. And then that’s kind of like a process and the process. And then six years later, I met my wife. But you said to me, like, day one, okay, now I hereby, you know, on behalf of the Church, maybe I’m an elder in the Church, or he can. I think you should start dating women now and get your life straight. Like a day after I repented, it would be like, I don’t even know how to do that. I don’t feel any genuine attraction. The Lord promised me a wife, and I thought, okay, you delivered me by that point, from alcohol and cocaine and cigarettes and pornography addiction and everything else. I know you can do it. I’m sure sure you can do it. But I can’t see it because I have zero attraction to a woman. And that’s how it was really for six years, it was really, truly walked by faith and not by side. And when I saw her standing at the entrance of the Church and she was the greeter in Thailand in the Church, Sadika. And I looked at her and I thought, Wow, I’m physically attracted to her to the degree that I know that I’m the man. She’s the woman. I know my role. It’s not like two girls met, but Here’s my new girlfriend. And look at better shoes. Totally different. Polar, polar opposite from anything that I had experienced before. And it wasn’t unnatural. The romance was natural. From day one, it wasn’t like, Oh, I need to Act like this kind of fake it till you make it. It wasn’t that just the Lord gave training wheels or whatever he did, but he really perform miracles. Trace Scott, The last point I have here is in reaching out to the LGBT, build a relationship of trust as a first step. We share the gospel over here with the LGBT and Cambodia. People are very, very kind and sweet. And people are so kind and sweet and humble. And we have a lot to learn, I think, as Americans from Cambodian types of cultures. Then we went back to the Us. My wife and I were there during Coba during the beginning of Koba. We couldn’t get back because of the travel restriction. And so I’m thinking, okay, well, when we go to Walmart, then I’ll just do the same thing that I do in Cambodia as a share. So I really got smacked in the face, pretty much met someone in Walmart, and I shared with him. And it was basic, basic testimony. It was nothing abrasive or anything. The only thing that was potentially abrasive was like, why did I choose him to share it with? Obviously, I thought that maybe he had to struggle, too, but it was really just my story. Here’s what I learned from it. And Here’s what the Lord did for me. And it was full on attack after that found us on Facebook and we got attacks through a family member of his. And so he had said that I was hitting on him. My wife standing five feet away, she said I was there. I saw that there’s no way that you could perceive that to be hitting on him. And another situation similar to that where everything was fine and shared just my testimony and got a haircut from a guy there. I shared with them and so on, and everything was fine. At the end, we even embraced. I hugged him and left, and everything seemed fine. And then we got home and got full on assault through Facebook from somebody in his family. And then another one in a drive through situation, just getting food with my wife, shared with somebody else and got attacked by probably five or 6 different people, family members and friends, everything from will see you in hell to whatever happened to judge, not less to be judged. It’s really rough back home. Closest thing that I’ve come to a silver bullet when American folks are asking me, how can we reach out to the LGBT is to build that relationship first and to be humble about our struggles so that the person has no way to say he pointed at me and judge me. No, I didn’t do that. I told you what the Bible says and that I have struggles of my own, and the Word of God judges us. We don’t judge. The Word of God judges us. Right.

Let’s go a little deeper into that. Matt, you talked about how in Cambodia, there’s a humility. There a sweetness when you talk to people where it doesn’t exist in America. Do you think that’s because the activism for LGBT is so strong in the Us and people just feel emboldened to just be very aggressive about this particular issue? And should Christians be walking on eggshells when it comes to political correctness, or how should we approach that in the Us compared to, say, for example, Cambodia? Yeah. We kind of hit on spiritual warfare before quite a bit. And I would come back to the spiritual warfare on this. That the Us. I mean, as many mistakes as we’ve made as a nation, right. The nation was founded on biblical principles to worship the Lord. Granted, nobody’s done everything perfectly and seen a lot of stuff that’s been bad. But the point is that we were founded to serve the Lord, and then we very obviously turn our backs on Him. And it’s been a landslide since then. We’ve just been downhill since the Bible has been taken out of schools. And now we have school shooting, send the kids to schools where we took the Bibles out and the kids are being gunned down in the schoolyard, and nobody sees the connection. Right. I really feel that it’s a spiritual warfare kind of thing where the enemy has his best agents in there trying to take out people and to kind of weaponize the LGBT and make it a political thing, which I really shouldn’t be. It’s not a matter of an equality kind of thing. Biblically. And that’s the challenge. I think that you’re dealing with the Bible says Satan blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that they would believe a lie, that they can’t see the light of the gospel. And that’s what you’re dealing with. You’re trying to speak across that divide to somebody who doesn’t have the mind of Christ or the Holy Spirit. It could never possibly understand what you’re saying. But in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth and male and female, and he created woman out of man’s rib to be his help mate. And that’s the Grand design. There’s no room for third sex. And I think the enemies just really come after that and try to reverse rules. Not only do we have the reversal of roles and homosexuality, now that we also have reversal rules in the home that I mentioned earlier where the wife wants to take over the husband’s role and that sort of thing. So I think these are challenges that the enemy is bringing the initial role reversal. The biggest role reversal, most destructive role reverse that we’ve ever seen is Adam and Eve in the garden. Right. She was to be the wife, to be the help make, and she took it upon herself and made a decision that she was not authorized to make. And it’s caused the downfall, the damnation of many. And we’re still reversing the rules. We’re still allowing Satan to come in and convince us the grass is greener on the other side, that we should have a role that was not designed for us, that a man should be a woman. A woman should be a man. That a husband should be a wife or wife should be a husband. We should know by now that from the lessons we’ve learned, the true satisfaction, true fulfillment is found in the role that we were built. Create design to do to carry out males, not less than female or female, less than male. Right. Right. We each have equal value. It’s just a matter of positional, authority, positional power. Who did the Lord give authority in the home and the Church? Definitely.

So before we go into this next section, I want to give you opportunity to tell the folks so they can reach you. Tell them about your book and you have the Straight series. You have two books on Amazon. I’ll put those on my website and put them in the feature section in the book. So folks can either go to Amazon or go to Amazon through my website and get them. So take the opportunity to do it. Okay. The books are called Straight. That’s the name of the series. And the first book is straight. And then it’s an ex gay prodical story. And that really the timeline for that book is early childhood into Repentance 2,010. So that’s 19 78 I was born than 2,010 repentance and that’s really the story of a protocol. It’s really an XC protocol story, a lot of scripture tying in. So it really falls back on scripture and roots everything in scripture as best I could. And Straight two is the second book and that picks up the timeline is where the other one left off. And it really focuses on that until almost now to almost current time. But it focuses on missional face building. Fear breaking missional adventures is how I word it in the book. And it’s really the concept being that in my past life I was in bondage to fear. I was afraid of a lot of things and the Lord had a lot of work to do to relieve me of those fears so that I could be a witness for him. So it’s a lot of evangelism stories in different countries from Cambodia to Thailand. And when I first came over here, I went to neighboring countries to kind of get a feel for the lay of the land. And the Lord gave opportunities to do interesting, exciting things like skydiving, things like that and Witness along the way. I think it can be encouraging to just about anybody. It’s not just for someone coming out of a gay lifestyle, but it can be for any Christian is kind of lackluster or kind of lukewarm in their walk might be a little kick started kind of help to ensue. I think hopefully encourage folks in their walk and trust in Christ. And your website is witness dot com xg witness dot com Great.

Alright. So the Bible in second current 5 17 Matt Therefore, if any man Ben Christ, he’s a new creature. All things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. Tell us after that point in 2,010 when you truly repent and come to a saving dollars that Jesus Christ, what changes were evident in your life? Yes, we mentioned earlier we already hit on the fact that when I repented and gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ in 2,010 that I wasn’t completely finished work. But your question is about what were those immediate effects? And that’s very, very important because when you say one thing, then it sounds like you’re downplaying the other. The biggest immediate impact was the piece that passes understanding. I’ll never forget that. Getting up from the floor from doing those sit ups and looking at myself in the mirror, I saw a genuine smile on my face without alcohol or drugs. Crazy Lord I just remember resting that night, being able to rest. I knew that I was forgiven. I knew that Satan had no power over me, the addiction that had kept me in chains and bondage, just walking that sin cycle, that sin circle didn’t have control over me anymore. Now, was there a walk off period? Yes, there was about two months there that I still drank to a degree and still acted out to a degree. So there was a walk off period of breaking those human habits. But it came to a point where, like you’re sitting there with a drink, looking at it, thinking, this is ridiculous because there’s no reason for me to be doing this anymore. I’m a new creature in Christ. And so praise God. It’s been July 27 th 2,010 was my final drink. Cigarette drug. Praise the Lord and God. June, my last interaction with men. Praise Cotta the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Do you think that the way your barriers removed would be effective in reaching people in the culture today? Now, your context right now is Cambodia, but it doesn’t matter if they’re in Cambodia, in the Us. Do you think that the way your Barries removed can be used in the lives of others to remove their barriers today, or have things changed? This question calls me back to something that we touched on a bit already. Is that the strength of American culture now and the way things have become so extreme toward the LGBT cause? And I think there’s such a feeling, a sense of identity, false identity. This is who I am, kind of. I am attracted to men. Therefore, this is who I am. I am gay. And I think that’s really what makes it so challenging in the Us. I think that in my situation, like I said, I had to really get on my back. I had to really hit rock bottom before I was willing to look up. And I think, sadly, that might be the same case for many and the one achieve.

So, Matt, your missionary income bolted, as we have alluded to throughout this podcast. Firstly, we in the world is Cambodia for those that geologically challenge, maybe like I am. So tell us where exactly is Cambodia and tell us some mobile compote. The capital, the population, the people group. You know, Cambodia is between Vietnam and Thailand. Population is about 17,000,000 people. Capital city is open, which is a little over 2,000,000 people. People group is Kami. You might remember the Camaro from the Pol Pot era 19 Seventies. There was a Hitler style dictator that rose to power. He promised the people he would take them back to the ancient glory of the Anchor Empire, which Cambodia was a part of. If they followed him into kind of Communist ideologies. They broke all ties with the West and technology and went back to the farmland and through all that, when people follow, he slaughtered. Estimates vary, but roughly a third of his own people. So it was a horror story, very demonic time. And today, very much in the kind of rebuild. 19 nineties the UN came in and things kind of open, back up humanitarian aid, kind of like a Haiti type of thing where NGOs, a lot of organizations, the Red Cross, for example, came in and offered relief. And so today it’s estimated that over identifies Buddhist. And that’s very much apparent when you speak to people. It’s very much like, strangely, to relate it to homosexuality. But people will really have that same feeling of identity, like, I am Kami or I’m Cambodian. Therefore, I am Buddhist. Almost like that Christianity is not an option for me. That’s for you. And sometimes they’ll say in response to the gospel, people say, Oh, Jesus. Okay. And maybe they agree that he’s good, like pre law. But then they’ll say that he’s the God of the West. He’s the God of your country. And you think kind of about the reason and logic behind that. So they’re saying that one God is responsible for this country. Does that mean that he created this country and then another one created this one? Or what are they saying? Buddhism, in my understanding, doesn’t really have a concept of God, the creator. I think they’re just saying in general that their traditions and their rituals and so on their idolatry means that they’re inclined to be Buddhist.

Tell us about the burden that the Lord plays on your heart for Cambodia. How did you end up in Cambodia among all AutoNation that you could have gone to? Yeah. 2,010 or delivered me from gay lifestyle, got into a local Church. It was a big Church, and there were many opportunities for serving and getting plugged in. They were very mission minded and had missions partnership with Kenya, for example, another mission partnership with several other countries, Russia Cambodia was one that was just getting started. They made an announcement on a Sunday morning and said, you know, 10 o’clock or 10 30 whenever it was, anyone who’s interested might want to go downstairs to room to six because they’re going to have a information session about the Cambodia partnership is starting. I went downstairs and I sat in the back row and the video started to play the tuk tuk and the motorbike going through Cambodia. And the guy that was running the partnership started to talk, and I just tear started the flow and flow and I couldn’t stop crying. And it was just undoubtedly something that the word want to do. So I joined the partnership and they started to meet, I think we met about once a month and started to plan a yearly trip. So I went there three times on short term mission. My first mission was to India, actually, before Cambodia really got up and running. And then so I got some exposure to kind of short term mission, the lay of the land and everything and just really loved it. And really had been working in a Bank for 15 years and the facts and figures and it stuff. The stuff we were doing in the Bank just to me was useless compared to sharing the life changing gospel of Jesus Christ that any of us could drop over dead in five minutes. The Lord could come back in judgment any moment, and all these people around us are not ready. And here I am in a Bank. It after all He had done for me, it just didn’t make sense. I trusted the Lord. He trained me through the banking and they say nothing goes to waste with him. And so he really used all the stuff to prepare me. I got into public speaking class to break the fear of public speaking. He read in a lot of interesting ways. And then eventually the Bank tried to get me to support the LGBT agenda when diversity and inclusion became a big thing. Diversity and inclusion sounded great at the onset. I thought, what’s this sounds like, something really, you know, fairness and equality and that kind of stuff. And but then underneath that umbrella is this LGBT agenda where it would require me to support the path that I followed almost to my own destruction. So there I am telling other people to follow this. It’s a good thing in endorsing their lifestyle. And so, long story short, the Lord led out on that note, and I was a taxi, like an Uber driver for a couple of months and praying that the Lord would lead and what to do. And I really felt impressed. And he was saying, Cambodia, Cambodia, Cambodia. So I reached out to context over here, connected with one guy. He said I had met him during the short term mission. He said, I have a school now. I just opened the school a while ago. You can work for me and our pastor here Baptist Church down the road. We can teach in the Church. So he connected me with those two opportunities. And that’s how it started. Very much independent. The Lord called me, and I knew it led me over here. And in some ways, I kind of put the cart before the horse. But I learned a lot through the challenges.

What are some of the things that you think someone should keep in mind? If the Lord perhaps, is calling them to serve in Cambodia, what should we keep in mind? The easiest way to build a relationship, to share the gospel is by teaching English. Because of the genocide here in the 19 Seventies, the majority, the vast majority of the population, very high percentage. I can’t remember the percentage right now, but I like the 20 range, the best range of folks that are trying to move on to the next stage in life, thinking about University and that sort of thing really want to learn English in order to have a better shot at getting a job in the service industry where the pay is higher and all that. And so it’s a wide open door when it comes to teaching English many opportunities for that, especially if you’re willing to just volunteer to do that. And the other thing that really sticks out and bring up this question is, strangely, what I imagined before coming over here would be the big, big challenges carries over to other things in life, I think. But the biggest challenges in my mind that I worried about, we’re the smallest challenges and the smallest ones are the biggest ones. What are some examples of that? Yeah. Like individualism versus collectivism. People even write. Christian scholars will write books about this sort of thing nowadays. And from the American perspective, what you see people writing and talking about is that individualism has been the downfall of America. That’s kind of their diagnosis. I don’t really know that. I don’t really believe that for sure, but individualism has its downside. Obviously, it maybe promote some selfishness and that sort of thing and lack of unity. But I think there are some perks to it. I think there are some good things about it. Collectivism over here promotes conformity. And the downside of that when it comes to sharing the gospel, is that when somebody really wants to step out and give their life to Christ, they are met with kind of coercion, kind of like you’ll be excluded from society when the Buddhist holiday comes. You’ll be ashamed to the family when you don’t join us in the temple and that sort of thing. So individualism versus collectivism, that’s been a challenge for me. I think the biggest challenge, really, and it’s kind of how to blend in enough to share the gospel. How to be part of just enough to get the gospel through has been a challenge in the beginning. I said to the same friend that I mentioned that he was my boss in the beginning. I worked in his school and everything and actually lived near their place and so on at dinner with them a lot. And I said, I want to be just like all the Cambodians, I want to do everything they do. And I eventually learned that that wasn’t possible. So I got food poisoning. We came here on a short term mission and a missionary that had been here for many, many years from Canada. He said to the short term mission group, he said, You’ll see, like a food truck, a food cart pull off, and you’ll see all the Cambodian kids run over and they’ll get ice cream from the food cart and everyone will be fine. I said, Don’t go to the food cart. Said your stomach, your system is not programmed. It’s not prepared to handle that level of bacteria. And whatever is different about the way things are handled here. He said, You’ll be in the hospital for three days and they’ll be fine. So that’s what happened with me. I got food poisoning, severely dehydrated. We’re here not far from the equator. I had no idea how to handle that, because I’m from Pennsylvania. The worse it gets is just three months of kind of a little bit of heat, sometimes pretty intense, but nothing like here. So I was severely hydrated to the point where I was like, in bed, like, I don’t want to move. I don’t know why I have zero energy. And I didn’t even know that it was dehydration. It just hit me so hard. And it was like I couldn’t get out of it. So after I figured that out, I’ve been carrying this massive bottle of water with feed, pretty much ever. I go, there are a lot of growing pains with that. And the collectivism from a Western perspective, it feels like invasion of Privacy sometimes that it’s so much group think, and we all do the same thing. We’re all homogenous and we all conform. And even when I would go to the grocery store, go to the market and bring something back, he would say in the beginning, what is that? Where did you get it? How much did you pay for it? They would ask itemize, everything. So those are challenges. But I’ve learned to cope with those. And, you know, at the core of this thinking, this question, one thing comes to mind. My aunt came over here and she was here to visit for a little bit. And she said, Why Cambodia? Of all the places. And I guess I had been here. I haven’t been here too long since 2,016 in Southeast Asia. But I’ve been here, I guess, long enough that I kind of forgot the beginning of it all. And it’s like I had to sit down and kind of think through. How did it happen? Because I’m thrilled with Cambodia. I absolutely love it. I think the people are so kind and sweet and nice and gentle. And the tropical fruit is excellent and the weather is great. And I love to ride motorbikes. I love the lifestyle and face of it and the Greetings. And I just love everything about it that I had to sit down and think that through. Because from a secular standpoint, if you were just looking for somewhere abroad to live, you could find more exciting places than Cambodia, I’m sure. So when I sat down and thought about it, I thought the Lord chose me to come to Cambodia. He gave me a heart for Cambodia, and I’m making the most of it. That’s not to downplay it because it’s an amazing place, but I’m making the most of it. And to me, it feels so natural to be here because He’s programmed me that way. He’s prepared me for it. He’s given me a heart. So the Lord gives the heart the passion for the people. He gives a tear in your eye about somebody coming to Christ or the prospect of it, it’s all from him. And that’s the value of coming from the deep sin that I was in is that when the Lord brought me to repentance and then sent me out to the dog Park in Pittsburgh, you know, those first weeks and months when I was learning to share my testimony, what the Lord did for me walking the dog, and then we would encounter a prostitute or somebody in the Park. I lived in kind of a sketchy area in Pittsburgh, and that was the thing that was so real to me that when I shed a tear because somebody came to Christ, or when I had goose bumps walking away from sharing the gospel with somebody, it was him through me, because just a month or two before I could have cared less. You know what I mean? I didn’t even care about myself, let alone anybody else or, you know,

the Bible in obstructed to the deal of Pen to cough, talk about their Jews and how they were receptive to the gospel. And if you ever look to extractor two, you know that the day Pentecost, the you call once put it in modern time, they were Church. They know creation. They know the God of creation. They know that the Messiah was going to come. The barrier was that they didn’t realize the Messiah has come. So the apostles, then we’re preaching to them about, Hey, the same Jesus that you crucify is the Messiah. If you skip over to extract the 17. Now, Paul is preaching to the attends, and they’re not Church. So Paul start preaching to them at creation, saying, Hey, this unknown God that you’re alluding to is actually the creator of the universe. And then you went from creation and then get into the gospel. When you look at the culture of Cambodia, you just alluded to what the culture was like. When you look into the culture of Cambodia, would you say is more like Act after two, where majority of the people are Church, majority people know to create a guard or is a situation like accepted 17, where they actually don’t know God? And you have to really start at the point. We have to teach them who God is, who the Creator is, and stuff like that. Chapter 17. And in chapter 17, Pauls and Athens, and he references the unknown God. So they’re worshipping all these gods. And he points to the unknown God. And he said, this God I’d like to proclaim to you, and that’s so perfectly Cambodia. So interesting. You had asked this question because my dad when I first came over, he suggested he said, Acts chapter 17, Paul and Athens is perfect for that because I was explaining what they like. And so I actually got up in front of the Church and read the scripture and preached about it. And one of my first opportunities here, it’s the biggest challenge here. Missionaries will kind of caution us. And they’ll say, kind of be careful when you’re counting hands. Let’s say that we share the gospel with a group of kids, and everybody says, Yep, I’m ready to pray to receive Christ. And then they pray along and they recite out loud for prayer. And they would say, be careful when you’re counting hands, because people have a tendency in a culture like Cambodia to kind of never say no, to appease the teacher. The teacher is kind of the second parent type of thing. And so there would be very much more likely to just go along with whatever you say rather than to go against it. It would be very rare that somebody wouldn’t pray. And so counting hands really isn’t an accurate estimate of who really is going to follow the Lord and faithfully like the Sower. And the seed talks about kind of one in 4, right? In that scenario, actually follow the Lord. And so here the biggest challenge is the exclusivity of Christ, just like pollen. Athens. People will say, okay, well, Christians came to the community and they brought big bags of rice and did nice things and had a presentation and shared about Jesus. I think Jesus is good. But then when it comes down to what that means, that can have no other gods before him have to turn away from Buddhism to follow Christ. The exclusivity of Christ is what’s offensive. And that’s where you run into the problem. If you think about it, it’s not much different from back home. Somebody comes out of their old life out of the bar or something like that. And it’s like if they can still go to the bar and go to Church, they’re okay. But the moment you say, Nope, you got to leave that for a lot of people, that’s a problem, right? They want to walk both paths. One of the arguments I always make is that the culture in the Us I actually believe it’s now a extracted 17 culture. So majority of the folks are not extracted two. I believe if you probably go back 30, 40, 50 years ago, the Us culture was definitely extracted two cultures. But today I think is definitely a solid majority in up to 17. I don’t think the Church have caught up just yet with that fact.

What are some of the needs that is filled would make your task of sharing the gospel easier in Cambodia? I think a lot of times we look at missionaries and we don’t realize that the Church in the Us or the people in Us that are supporting that missionary could actually make the attack a little bit easier. So what are someone who needs that it filled would make your task in Cambodia a lot easier in an XC Ministry. The thing that is the biggest challenge for me really is credibility building the credibility, because sadly, many who have come out of a gay lifestyle have eventually returned to it. Even leaders in ex gay ministries and folks in the Church know that. So it’s kind of like coming out of alcohol addiction or something. You come into the Church and everybody’s like, Okay, will you say that? But Let’s see. You walk it out for 20 or 30 years, so we really believe it. And so that’s the biggest challenge. I think what would be helpful is to get these testimonies like mine, many others out there that the Lords delivered from a gay lifestyle, so that it’s clear to everyone that it’s possible. I think even in the Church, sometimes we start to feel so discouraged that so many has gone back. Is it really even possible? Is there any hope for the LGBT? And so I think it would be encouraging to get these testimonies out when we’re home back in Pennsylvania, back in the Us, like last time, we were there for COVID for quite a while and got into a number of churches and Christian school and shared the testimony. I’d like to have more churches to partner with, pastors who are willing to preach the difficult truth, to stand with us on that. That would be very helpful. Solid doctrine on homosexuality, on roles in the home and family. Those things are kind of tied together. So I think those would be helpful.

Is there anything that the Church is doing in the Us that is making your mission more difficult? Yes. False teachings are the biggest challenge, I think, to what we’re doing over here is false teachings. And the saddest part is that they’re coming from my country. So the gospel came to so many countries from the Us. So the tendency is to continue listening to that same pipeline. Everything that comes through that pipeline must still be true, because that’s where the original message came from. And Wow, it seems like that’s an ongoing battle to get people to understand that we can’t be just following people blindly. It’s not the people we have to really know the word of God and be like the Barians. Right? Start your scriptures and see if what they’re telling us. It’s true. So many, I think, with the homosexual thing and with who’s? The head of the home and the sticky stuff that nobody wants to really talk about. If we kind of go middle of the road or the Liberal side and water down the truth that puts a smile on people’s faces and keeps them coming back and giving money to the Church. But in the long run, it doesn’t a disservice not helping anybody, sending many to everlasting damnation destroying homes. It’s really not helping anything to tell someone something that we’re thinking that we’re doing a good thing, as American culture tells us. Don’t judge anybody and everybody get along. We have to be multicultural and somehow make this work. But we have to stand on difficult truth. The Lord’s the boss. It’s not up to us to decide to revise the truth. Yeah, definitely.

You listening to the removing various podcast we fitted out with Matt. We’re finding out how were his Bros removed and also learning about his mission field in Cambodia. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.

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All right, Matt, we’re going to jump into a section of this podcast where we want to get to know more about some of your favorites. And it’s not necessarily rapid fire, but you can approach it like that if you’d like. So the first one is, what is your favorite scripture verse or scripture passage? And the world passes away and the lesser of the key that do us a little of God about forever. First. John to 17

What about your favorite Bible history? Other folks call them story, but we believe the Bible is true and historic. So what is your favorite Bible history? Samson and Delilah? Because choosing a good Christian life is so vitally important, especially in this struggle. Somebody coming out of gay lifestyle kind of a little bit more vulnerable in terms of masculinity than maybe some other men. And I think it’s really important to take your time, make sure it’s the Lord’s choice and that she’s a proven true believer. We find it, or I find it a good thing. I’ll obtain a favor from the law. I’ve obtained that favor.

What would be of all the scripture passages? What would be the most convicting scripture to you, in your opinion? The Great Commission? Matthew 28, 18 to 20

What about the most comforting scripture to use something that when you want to hug from the Lord, you can run into this first and get it. One that often brings a tear to my eyes. These things I have spoken unto you that you might have peace in the world. You may have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. John 16 33 For those challenging days. That’s awesome. Because boy doesn’t it. It looks and feels like sometimes that evil has the upper hand or that it’s running rampant now. But what a comfort that that scripture is. Praise God for that.

Alright, what about your favorite hem of the faith? Victory in Jesus? All of us need it. Absolutely. In this one of the favorites, give us another one. Another. 1 that kind of dovetails with that one about difficult days farther along. We’ll know all about it further along. Will understand why that’s really been a comfort. I think in the initial days, the Lord first delivered me. They call that the honeymoon period. It feels like the Lord is right beside you. He’s speaking to you so clearly. And then you go through kind of wilderness times and times when you don’t hear from them so clearly. And and that sort of thing, and during those times that I really became real to me. Right.

What about your favorite giant of the fate? Someone in the Bible use man. When I grow up, I want to be like that person. Moses. So Moses white Moses. I relate to him because he was reluctant at first experience quite a bit of backlash from people he was supposed to be meeting who thought he wasn’t really authorized. I called one pastor. I was trying to make connections with churches back in Pennsylvania, and usually we got pretty good responses, but I talked to one on the phone, and he seemed a little bit skeptical of me, and he said I never heard anyone say the Lord called him to reach the LGB two. I think the idea is I’m not real sure that I’m buying what you’re saying. Witnessing the LGBT can be kind of a thankless job sometimes. And many Church leaders look down on an ex gay guy, somebody who’s come out of the lifestyle, maybe slow to trust, looking at the high rates of recidivism stuff that’s happened in the past. And standing with us puts people in the cross hairs in this political battle. You folks, for example, a lot of mainstream Christian outlets are very reluctant to kind of join hands with us because that puts some kind of in the line of fire. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much. In part, I think for purposes of self preservation, today’s Church is kind of configured to shoot the wounded. So it’s been really an uphill battle. Moses wasn’t perfect, but he was a warrior for the Lord and fought for the people he was called to lead out of bondage. I relate to that, too, no matter how rebellious or combative or ungrateful they were. And he wasn’t perfect. He took credit for something that was really the Lord should have gotten the glory for. And he was under pretty intense pressure. So a lot of us have spoken out of turn and in situations like that. So I just relate to him. And he’s a real guy. Yeah, definitely. And talk about witnessing to gay. I must admit that it’s one of the toughest group to witness to. I’m the sole winning Cordinator at my Church, and it seems like you have to navigate such a fine line when you witness into someone who is openly gay. Firstly, most of them don’t want to hear it. Most of them turn you right away along as they realize there’s something religious or something Christian or whatever. They turn you right away. And those that do listen, they almost don’t want to say something that come across on loving, or you want to sometimes make sure you’re not being politically correct. You also don’t want to offend the person. Sometimes it’s like if they ask me direct questions, I’ll give them direct answer. But other than that, I try to just present the gospel in a way that, Hey, this is gospel. That’s why talking to you was so refreshing, because you kind of give me some some ideas and some ways to go in terms of presenting the gospel. And of course, I’ve been on your website that I’m listening to you, and I was like, You know what? I can tweak the way I witnessed to someone a gay person next time I see them, because, Yeah, I think being real with demon straight up with them would be more effective than trying to tow the politic online in the trace. The Lord, definitely. I think the problem of credibility also kind of goes both ways, right? The Church is coming to witness to the LGBT because of all the hurt of the past from the Church. The LGBT also is slow to believe in slow to trucks, so you have the same kind of dynamic there. So that’s why I think the humility is like you said, sharing kind of being more real with them. And I think that would be like, okay, well, this guy wouldn’t say this if you weren’t genuine. Nobody’s going to admit this stuff

I heard an old old story how a Savior came from glory, How he gave his life on Calvary to save a wretch like me. I heard about his groaning of his precious blood atoning then I repented of my sins and won the victory Oh, victory in Jesus my Savior forever He sought me and brought me with his redeeming blood he loved me I I knew him and all my love is due is he punched me to victory beneath the cleansing flood I heard about his healing of his cleansing flow revealing how he made the lame to walk again and caused the blind to see. And then I cried, Dear Jesus, come and hear my broken spirit. And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory of victory in Jesus my Savior forever He saw me and brought me with his redeeming blood he loved me and I knew him and all the love is to him he plunged me to victory Bene the cleansing club. I heard about a mansion he has built for me glory and I heard about the streets of gold beyond the Crystal see about the Angel singing and the old redemption story and some sweet day else sing up there the song of victory to my Savior forever He sought me and bought me with his redeeming love he loved me air I knew him anomalous do him he plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

Alright, so, Matt, we have been going for some time now. How can those barriers be removed in the life about it? You talk about your barrier barrier of fear, the barrier of pride. And you talk about your sinful path. Imagine you’re witnessing to someone with similar barriers like you. How can those barriers be removed in their life? Jesus is the door. He’s the way out of a gay lifestyle to peace, to a better, more rewarding, more fulfilling life. I would say that for the LGBT, your temptation is not who you are. Sin is not who you are. The Lord has a better plan. The Bible says he who saves his life will lose it. Who loses his life, for my sake, will find it. And then it goes on to say, What will it profit a man to gain the whole world of whose soul? So we’re trying to grip on to this world. And we mentioned this world will pass away and the lust thereof. He who does, the little God will abide forever. So we’re trying to grip onto something that’s decaying quickly passing away. And this life is just a vapor. Any one of us could die in the next five minutes. So it’s not about, quote, unquote being happy here. It’s about being prepared for the next life that could come in the next several minutes. The Bible says sin is pleasure for a season. So might be happy for an hour or two hours or a short period of time. But I know from experience that especially the mail gay relationships, at least the ones that remain faithful are usually very short lived. So the Lord has something much better than that, much more enduring satisfaction and peace that passes. Understanding, praise the Lord. But God created the Earth and everything in it. We sinned against Him. The Bible says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So we’re born with a deceitful heart, a sinful nature, various temptations towards sin. But God sent His one and only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come down from heaven and die on the cross for our sins. He’s the Lamb of God without blemish. She has no sin and died on the cross for our sins. To pay the sacrifice in full for our sins. He rose again and went back up to heaven. And the only way to be saved is to repent and put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. To turn away from following our deceitful hearts from our evil desires, to follow the Lord Jesus Christ according to His Word, as revealed in His Word. And the Bible says that He will come into our hearts and give us the peace that passes. Understanding, conform, us as we follow Him as we read His Word, to the image of His Son, to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that if we pass away, if we die five minutes later, after we’ve given our lives to Christ, genuinely, that we would go to Heaven. So our sins are forgiven by the blood of Christ, not by our good works. But if we truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we will follow Him will be faithful and good works that He’s laid out for us to walk into. So praise the Lord for a second chance. Another opportunity, the Bible says. And such were some of you. The Bible says homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom. But such were some of you. So even in the Corinthian Church, there were ex gay, believe it or not, even back then that the Lord had delivered from a gay lifestyle, it’s proven my testimonies. Another prove, an example that the Lord can do it. So trust Him repent. Give your life to Him. Today. He has a better plan. Praise God.

Man, We’ve been talking with Matt from XCa Ministries. He has two books, the straight series that you can find on either Removing Barriers dot net follows books. It will be at the top featured section, or you can go to his website or even on Amazon. You can find him. And how can forth get a hold of you? Man, Witness com is the easiest way. There are links there to our Cast Away Ministry site, which is our missionary site and link to buy the book on Amazon. Com. There’s a contact button there, so can reach me there.

Matt, thank you for joining us on the Removing Barth podcast. Thank you for having me, Sir. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to Get a hold of us to support this podcast or to learn more about removing barriers. Go to Removing Barriers dot net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast. We attempted to remove barriers so that we all can have a clay view of the cross.