From Sexual Brokenness to Freedom: Ken Williams’ Journey Away from Gay Bethel Church pastor on leaving LGBT By Sara Kulifai

From Sexual Brokenness to Freedom: Ken Williams’ JourneyAway from Gay

Bethel Church pastor on leaving LGBT

By Sara Kulifai

Ken Williams struggled with homosexuality, codependency, and porn for decades. After yearsof failed attempts at freedom, he encountered God, who completely transformed him. Now, he is happily married to a woman, father of four, and became a pastor at Bethel Church in California, where he helps the sexually broken to find true wholeness and freedom. We askedhim about his story as well a show he is trying to support poeple wanting out of the LGBT lifestyle in one of the most liberal, woke state of the United States.

Tell me a little bit about your background. Did you grow up in a Christian family? When and how did you find out, that you are attracted to your own sex?

Yes, I come from a Christian family. I was never out as a gay person, but I just struggledbehind the scenes. When I was around 13-14 years old, I was made fun of a lot, I was bullied. I was called gay or homo, and many other different slurs, because I was more feminine, I didnot want to play sports. The other boys were much more rough, playing sports, beingoutdoors, but I did not thrive there. I definitely had some feminine mannerisms. When I was14, I read my Bible, and I turned it to Corinthians, where it lists all the people, who don’tinherit the kingdom of God, drunkers, idolaters, homosexuals, and I was going down the listto see if I was ok. And I realized then that I actually was not attracted to girls, but the boys, soI guess that makes me a homosexual. So I guess, I am going to Hell. That was one of theearliest times when I though, oh my gosh, am I in trouble. So I started crying, and my momcame in, but I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I was concerned about that particularissue. I kind of put that on pause. It became a questionmark at that point. Do I have a problemhere? I’m not sure. Then, maybe a year later, when I turned 15, I was babysitting a kid, he was asleep, and I was watching tv, and a movie came on, that was about a boy who wasmaybe a year older than me, and it was the story of him discovering that he is not like theother boys, and I watched my life play out on tv. The things that I saw him feeling, believingand questioning, the way he was treated.

You identified with him.

Yes. the person in my entire life that I felt like I most identified with was him. I was scared, I was very upset. To me, it was convincing. I said: well, obviously I’m gay then, but I don’twant that. I never wanted that. I would do anything for that not to be the case. But who do I go to about this?

What were the things that have contributed to feeling like you were gay?

My father loved me. He reall liked spending time with me. He travelled much. He was an entrepreneur, he had his own business, so he was pretty busy with work. I was a sickly child. I was highly allergic to the outdoors, so I didn’t want to be outside playing. I would sneeze, and sneeze and sneeze. I kind of trying to be inside, use my brain more. He was interested in being outdoors. So we didn’t connect on that. Then, when I was around 8 years old, I wasplaying with a few other boys in a field, and they opened up a box, and there was hardcoregay pornography there. I was damaged. The guilt and shame I felt over what I saw was huge. I already didn’t have much respect for males, because I saw women were much kinder. I thought that was more godly. The men that I knew, weren’t very interested in following God, they were only interested in doing sports. I judged them. I didn’t think they were goodChristians. I thought it was much more spiritual to be a woman. What I saw then at thosepages, was not two men in love with each other. I saw men degrading each other, and doingdishonoring things. Violent things in some cases, horrible things. I lost even more respect formen, seeing that. If this is what happens behind the scenes, this is what men do, I don’t wantto be a part of that. Also, when I was playing with a similar group of kids, at my friendshouse, I saw a Playboy and a Playgirl magazine under the parent’s bed. They pulled themagazines out, and we were all looking at both magazines. I happened to be looking at thePlaygirl magazine for a minute, and a girl who was not very feminine, said to me: oh, so youlike looking at the men? I remember feeling like, oh my gosh, something is wrong with me. I think that was very wounding, because it told me that there was something wrong with mewhen really, all of the kinds were kind of looking at both magazines. But I think the enemyhit me with an arrow right there. So I had this masculinity wound. I was pushing males away. I didn’t agree that that was a good way to be. I was wired to be a man, but I had pushed mymasculinity awas, so I was craving it. And then it became sexualized. I was always lookingfor a better version of myself. Since kindergarten all the way until I was in college there wasone boy I was idolizing. Even though I was puching masculinity away in general, there wasone example that I was drawn to. It was always the self-confident, good-looking, kind, sensitive but strong. I was idolizing, and worshipping them. If I could get their undividedattention, I was ok for a minute. But when they left, I needed them again. So it was emotionaldependency and codependency. It went on all the way to college. That’s what the formation of my homosexuality looked like.

Did you believe it then, that it is something you are born with? Or you weren’t sure?

I had had no information about that. All I had ever heard about homosexuality was that it wasthe worst thing. „These are the worst people”, „ungodly people”, „they are going to hell”, „God hates them”. Even from Scripture I wasn’t sure, but that was maybe the case. When I heard my church saying anything about it, it was the worst. Even culture, because I’ve justturned 50, this was the 1980’s, it was not ok to be gay. So I just felt damned. I felt hopeless. I felt that even God hated me. I didn’t know what to do.

So what did you do? How did you try to cope with this situation?

I became suicidal a short time later. I started making plans. I never actually harmed myself, but I was making plans. I was trying to figure out how I could end my life, without myparents discovering, that I was ending my life. I don’t think I had heard any teaching onsuicide, about what God would think about that. I wasn’t thinking about that.  But I loved myfamily, I didn’t want to destroy them, but I was so miserable on a moment to moment basis. It’s not that I wanted to kill myself, I just didn’t want to live anymore. I remember a couple of times I was just driving, I would go kind of fast, and then stop at the last minute, and hopedthat my car maybe slit into the intersection, so someone would hit me. But then I thought, I don’t want to hurt anybody else. At that point I didn’t know how to end my life successfully, and I didn’t know how to go on successfully. So one night I went into my basement, and I wrote out nine pages of pain, anger, my story of feeling like I was gay, but not having anyhope, profanity, and handed it to my youth pastor the next day at my church. I was a verygood student before, but I started skipping school, and I was just miserable. So I said: here you go.

He was a 25 year old youth pastor, who had never been trained on how to deal with that. Veryfew people would know how to deal with that. In addition to that, I was one of the leaders of the youth group at that time. I was living a double life. Not on purpose, but I didn’t knowwhat else to do. I wanted to follow God and serve Him. So my pastor was learning that hisstar student is very broken. So he said: Ken, you are not gay. I thought: did you hear anything, that I said on these 9 pages? On the one hand, was the right thing for him to say, but on theother hand, I needed more. He said, well, we’re going to tell your parents. I said, no we’renot, but he insisted. He knew my parents and he knew that they would love me. I knew thattoo, but this was the „worst sin of all”.

What happened when they found out?

That night we came over to my house, we made my sister go into a bedroom, and we jus sat atthe kitchen table. I shared how I was feeling, and we all cried. The way I remember, we criedfor a couple of hours together. My parents were devastated that I was so traumatized, and I hadn’t been able to tell them about my pain. They got me to see a Christian psychologist. I saw him for 5 years every week. He helped me, I was never suicidal after that. It was huge. I had a safe space, so I could say all the embarassing things, but nothing addressed my sexualdesires. I had an encounter with God maybe a year after I stopped seeing the psychologist. That is what opened my eyes to the fact that God is real.

I got saved when I was 8 years old, God was very real to me then. I knew I was giving myheart to Jesus, I knew he had paid the price for all of my sins, and I was in love with Him. I wanted to please Him. But then a few years later, when I discovered that I am „detestable”, I didn’t feel the love from Him, because, He was „rejecting me”.

How did you encounter God and what changed in your life afterwards?

It actually came through healing. My psychologist was telling me: you need to have grace foryourself. It's not good to sin, but God loves you even if you sin. I was attending a Christian college at that time. Most of the kids there were Christians, not always living Christian. Therewas a lot of drinking alcohol, and so I started as well. I remember thinking, well, see God loves me even if I I was practicing grace in a very inappropriate way. I remember this onenight I drank five beers in 20 minutes and passed out. When I woke up, my stomach was juston fire. I was in a lot of pain, and that didn't go away for five years. I tried everything, doctors, nutrition, traditional and non-traditional medicine. Nothing worked. I had gone tosome clinic, where they did some tests on me that made me worse. I weighed 114 pounds. Skin and bones. You could see the veins in my face because I was so skinny, no color in myface, and I was so weak. I had a friend, who had been my roommate, who knew God as a present God, who could heal today. I got reconnected with him after college. He called meone day asking how I was doing. I told him I was very sick. He said, well, Ken, God doesn'twant you to be sick, he's the Healer. I said, well, I thought everything that happened wasGod's will. He said no, I can look at pornography today, and that's not God's will.

He suggested we should pray together, so we met at my parents' house. He shared with me allthese testimonies of people that have been healed by present day. I was amazed. So afterhearing a couple of days' worth of testimonies, he had with him these scriptures on healingfrom the Bible. I was reading through those and then I saw how Isaiah 53 talked about whatJesus was going to do on the cross for all of humanity. It said he carried away our sicknesses, and healed our diseases. I also read where Jesus had just got through healing all of the sickpeople, and thus it was fulfilled, what was spoken by Isaiah, saying he healed his infirmitiesand healed their diseases. And I thought, this is proof that even physical healing is in theatonement of Jesus.

So you did not believe that God heals before?

I didn't grow up in a church that believed that God still healed people today. I thought, healing will come when w eget to heaven. So after reading the Bible, all of a sudden, faithcame over me, and I realized, Jesus wants me healed. I started smiling. I said, well, I think I believe Jesus wants to heal me. My friend laid hands on my stomach. After a minute longprayer I felt things moving around in my abdomen. My stomach started churning and growling. For like 30 seconds it was this noise. My sister and mother didn’t understand, whatis going on. It was all gone after five hours.

We stayed awake until five o'clock in the morning, just worshipping the Lord and witnessingthis miracle. I was also allergic to almost every food, every weed, tree, grass, mold that youcan name.  I had lost so much weight because it couldn't eat anything. My friend said, go getsomething to eat, and I said, I'm allergic. He goes, the Lord just healed somebody here, and itwasn't me. It was the first time I ate food in five years that I didn't feel the food slide down my esophagus because of the inflammation.

So this made you feel God’s love again, and helped you address your broken sexuality?

My takeaway from that, right after was that God is good. So if he says that homosexuality is sin, he must have a solution for it. He's not going to command us to do something that isimpossible to do. I said, ok if following you gave me physical healing, what else does it giveme? Does it address my sexuality? My journey was much more successful from that pointforward. It had been 13 years since I was watching the movie and realized, I'm gay. I realizedGod is going to be with me in this and I can actually follow Him and trust Him even with thispart of my life. He led me to different prayer ministries and deliverance ministries and different counselors and all that, and then finally, He led me to Bethel Church.

I was always asking God to just make it go away. I know a few people for whom it happenedin one moment, and they don't struggle with it anymore. But for me, it was through a lot of different encounters with God. Being transformed by the renewing of my mind over and over. I ended up going tot he ministry school of Bethel Church. My mind was being washed in thisatmosphere of the supernatural. I was learning about what God was like and his heart towardme. That He was a kind and a good father. I learned who I was by looking at Him so much.

So basically, you had to rediscover your identity. What help did you get on yourjourney?

Yes. God put me in the company of healthy men, that were a little older than me. They had grace for me, even though I wasn't exactly like all the other men. One pastor sat with meevery Saturday morning for about a year, just for a couple of hours, asking me how was myheart, how was I doing. I would say, I looked at pornography all week and I'm so ashamed. He would just grieve it with me. Instead of blaming or shaming me, he would say, I’m sosorry, Ken, let's pray. I would confess my sins and we would nail it to the cross. He said, it'snot who you are. It doesn't represent you. It's dead in your life. But Jesus is alive in your life. And let me tell you who I see that you are. You are noble. You are kind. You're a good man.You care well for other people. You cover the women that are around you and you show themlove and grace. And you're His man, and you are your Father's son. I had never seen myselfthat way before. But what he was telling me was biblical truth. So I received it, and it justwashed me and it changed to my mind.

When did your sexual attractions changed? How did you meet your wife?

After a few years, I started noticing this girl that was seven years younger than me. I juststarted noticing how wonderful she was. I admired her so much. I saw the way she treatedother people and I saw her femininity as a beautiful thing. I had always seen femininity as a familiar thing. It's what was more comfortable with me. At this point, I saw it as somethingdifferent from me now, but beautiful. It started off as her demeanor in the way she treatedother people. But then I started to notice her physical beauty. And I thought, wow, this howshe fixes her hair and the femininity of her is a beautiful thing. I had never noticed that beforewith any female. I thought, it's hard to not look at her. She's just captivating.

I ended up asking her out on a date and I felt so healthy doing that. It felt right. Before, it wastoo intimidating, too stressful. But it was just wonderful. It felt so special and important forme to be the man that asked the girl on the date. And for me to sit across from her at thedinner table and to see all of the other men that were in the restaurant, and for them to see thatI was the one with this beautiful girl. All of those things I had never experienced before, and it felt good.

Just to get to spend time with her and have her attention and share life with her was the richestthing I had experienced. I remember that night, when I was driving her home, I rememberwhere I was on the highway, I thought, well, if she will have me, I'll marry her. We dated forabout six months before I asked her and married me, and then we were engaged for tenmonths, and then married. And that was 16 years ago. Now we have four children together.

You are the founder of the Changed movement, helping people like you to heal and reach wholeness and freedom. What led you to start it?

I met with hundreds of people who struggled with the same things I did. It's much more common than people probably know. Well, it's obvious today, but five years ago wasn't. I started the ministry seven or eight years ago to help people with their sexuality.

We put together a series of videos to help individuals that are wanting a way out of homosexuality. We talk about what are common things that lead to feeling LGBT, and whatare problems associated with that and how can people help. We are focused on ministering toindividuals, equipping the church, but also activism as far as trying to address laws and policies that are taking away rights from people to leave an LGBT life if that's what theirconviction.

In the most liberal state in the US that must be quite challenging. What does yourpolitical activism look like?

Yes, it is a huge problem in California. We were at the center of pushing back againstlegislation several years ago that thankfully the Lord canceled the bill at the last second.
We used the power of our testimonies, showing up to government hearings. We partnered with different activist organizations that were fighting for conservative laws. They wouldusually have us come and be someone that would testify. Then we realized we needed to domore. So we phoned our friends and they phoned their friends, and we put together a book of testimonies. There's like 50-55 testimonies there. We took those books and we got all of thepeople in the book to come to the capital. We stood on the Capitol steps, the news mediashowed up and then it got like a million views on social media how we shared testimonies.

Then we took the books, went to all the different senators’ offices and said, hey, there's thisbill being presented in Congress right now. This bill takes away my rights. I have convictionsabout my sexuality. Please don't control my sexuality. I would like to decide for myself. Wehanded them the books.

So we did things like that. Then it became a movement, the Changed movement. We'reencouraging each other and we are active. We take groups to Washington D.C. We equip themwith knowledge on topics like: What do you need to know about the law? What do you needto know about being honoring and humble when you share your story so that you don't getcanceled. The gospel gets presented as we share our testimonies a lot.

What do you recommend to those therapists, pastors who are trying to effectively helppeople who want out of the LGBT life?

Give eye contact as much as you can. Help the person feel that they're seen and valued. The three A's that I learned from Joseph Nicolosi, attention, affirmation and affection, those areimportant things. It's an intimacy wound. It's a relational wound. We should try to create an atmosphere where people can find who they are. They need to have attention, appropriateaffection and affirmation, because they haven't had enough affirmation. They've had rejection, usually.

We encourage people to not just focus on sexuality, but on knowing the person and seeking toknow their interests, what matters to them, and to give unconditional love as much as we can, helping them see themselves. That's what the pastor did with me every week. He was helpingme see through a lens that I didn't see through before. I believe it was God's lens. It's howFather God saw me. I just saw my flaws, my weaknesses, but God saw everything. He sawhow He designed me. The more he reflected to me what He saw, the more I started to believeit for myself. He wasn't saying Ken, you shouldn't see yourself this way or don't do thesethings. He was showing what was true. And I was able to borrow that eventually.

What are the common mistakes people make when they try to help these people?

For example when they say: you just need to get yourself a girlfriend. You shouldn't rushthem into relationships, because that won't solve the problem. A man should be covering thegirl and helping her to be in a safe place, where she can discover all God created her to be. He shouldn’t try to use her to figure out who he is. If he does, he is wounding her. It is out of order, and it just creates more brokenness, and pressure. He is not ready for that. He’s got tolearn how to be one of the men before he can try to cover a woman.

It is also important to know, that it is not a problem you can solve by a simple deliveranceministry. Deliverance is important, but if that's the only card that you have to play, it's justgoing to do more harm. They'll end up with seven spirits worse than when they started.

You have to have the emotional care, the soul care, internal healing ministry. The people that I see that have the most successful transformation stories have mentors, spiritual moms, spiritual dads. There is actually someone is walking with them, like my pastor did with me. Those are the most successful stories.

Many times people are afraid of the things they don't know enough about. It is the samewith the LGBT-world. How do you overcome that?

Testimonies help people get inside the mind of someone that struggles. Then they start tounderstand, what to say and not to say. But I have to tell you, I got a lot more healing frompeople that had no experience with homosexuality, then I did from the ministries that wereabout homosexuality. Because they weren't treating me like I had a problem. People are muchmore equipped to help than they think they are. They just need to have that confidence.