Exodus International - Finding Vibrant Color

ronrapp This really hit home when I saw the movie “Pleasantville.” In this movie, two modern day teenagers are transported into a 1950’s sitcom. Life is perfect, but there is no free will, self-expression, or new thought. When they break their mold and shed off the life scripts that they have learned, that is when they begin to transform into color.

Unfortunately the movie depicts this new found freedom as primarily through expressing oneself sexually. But the redeeming factor of this film, looking deeper, is that it really is our free-will and expression of thought that is the freeing factor in our lives.

Normal for me was growing up in a single parent home. By the time I turned three, my parents had divorced. Mom was awarded custody and dad had visitation rights. From a young age my sense of family was shattered. I grew up very quickly as a result of the divorce since Mom always related and treated me as an adult. When I began school, I never got to see the kids outside of the school setting and no real strong bonds developed with my friends. This began a theme in my life of striving to feel connected.

The first time I remember spending time with my dad was when my mom flew home for her father’s funeral, and Dad took care of me for a few days. I spent more time with him later, but he did not take advantage of the opportunity to build a relationship with me. We rarely spent time with just the two of us. I tried to gain his approval by spending summers working along side him, but felt I never measured up.

Growing up, my church experience was attending Christmas and Easter services. When I would spend time with Dad on weekends, he would get me up on Sunday morning and send me off to church. When I asked why he wasn’t going, he replied that God had seen enough of him.

I grew up in fear of God thinking that I would be banished to hell if I did anything wrong. Dad and his mother reinforced this by making it clear that I would be disowned. I went day after day never really sharing anything that mattered. I became more adept at isolation and loneliness than at intimacy with friends. I hardly realized how disconnected I had become.

The first major shift in my life occurred the summer of my senior year in high school. I was listening to a step family member who I had watched go through a dramatic change in his own life. He shared the gospel story with me and patiently answered my questions. I came to hear for the first time of a God who loves me and wanted a relationship with me. I felt the tug and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I believed God loved me and I was being encouraged in my faith, but I was still not sure I was acceptable before God. I struggled with same sex attractions since Junior High. Most of what I had heard and seen about those living a homosexual lifestyle was negative. My coping mechanism was to go deeper into isolation and loneliness, masking my feelings. All I wanted was to get by and not be noticed, to keep everything pleasant.

I got involved in church to learn about God and became grounded in my faith. I began to discover the number of people that were once lost to drugs and alcohol and how God found them and set them upon the correct path. I longed for this to happen to me; that God would touch my life so that I would not have to struggle with same sex attractions. But I was afraid of never really being redeemed because of my struggle. I began to deny the fact that I ever had a problem, and hoped that God would flip the switch to set me right.

In 1993, I was sucked into homosexual pornography available so easily on the internet. I longed to be a part of what I was seeing, and these longings were not going away. I came close to shelving my Christian beliefs, but in a last effort, I got on my face before God. I admitted to him that I was not growing out of this phase and I could not reconcile Christianity with a gay lifestyle. I cried out to Him for help.

I got up the courage to ask the pastor of the church I attended and served in if he knew of any ministries that would provide hope and help for one who did not want to live a gay lifestyle; this of course, under the guise of “it’s for a friend.” He helped me to find a local counselor. I had been influenced negatively about Christian counseling, and was hesitant to try.

Later, I was having lunch with a Christian co-worker. In conversation about ministry at an AIDS hospice, I commented that there were not any ministries that helped people get out of the lifestyle before they reached this stage. She later gave me an ad in a newsletter about Exodus International.

I made that nervous call to the Exodus office and requested an information packet. Among the list of ministries was the counselor my pastor had given me. That same counselor had a book in the resource catalog, called “Desires in Conflict.” Glimmers of hope began to shine as I saw God answering my prayers.

I ordered books and began reading. I came to a turning point while reading “Coming out of Homosexuality” by Bob Davies. I read the part that covered the 1 Cor. 6:9-11 verses, and remember vividly closing the book, and grabbing my Bible to read those verses for myself in disbelief. I had always passed by the “homosexual offenders” phrase and the “as some of you once were” phrase. I did not recall hearing any hope for change ever being offered before. The scales began to fall from my eyes and a sense of hope truly entered my life.

Later, I received a brochure for the Exodus Conference. I had reservations about it, but something hooked me. As I wrote the check, I began to admit I had a problem.

There were over 600 delegates at this conference and I began to realize that I was not alone in my struggle and that others were going through this as well.

I was like a sponge soaking it all in. I had been to Christian conferences before but experienced nothing like this. Worship was one of the most phenomenal times I will always remember. The worship leader was no one I had ever heard of, and I did not know any of his music, style, or story. Yet during the entire week, I found such a familiarity with his music. He helped me to be able to openly worship God. As he sung, I realized that this is what I wanted and longed to express to my Lord, as well as the ability to receive truth about God through these songs. Grace permeated the atmosphere.

An opportunity to fall presented itself while I was away on a lengthy business trip a few months after my first Exodus conference. When temptation struck, an amazing thing happened! Everything I had read, listened to at Exodus, or talked about in counseling came rushing to my mind. God opened a wide door for me to walk through. The choice was difficult, but I chose to walk away.

If life is static and non-changing, then all you get is black and white. It’s only when people allow themselves to grow and mature as people and human beings that they see the world through colored eyes. The people of Pleasantville change when they do something freely and of their own will. Only then do the roads open up and the life beyond the town exists.

I am a work in progress and will be the rest of my life. I choose to freely give over my own will daily (admittedly not perfectly) as I work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I am growing day by day in the boundless love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am pressing on towards God’s will for my life (for all of ours really) – sanctification and holiness (1 Thess. 4:3).

Ron Rapp is the Exodus Representative for the Southern California Region. He is a Senior Litigation Paralegal in the Los Angeles area for a global energy company. Ron is also a part time student at Fuller Theological Seminary, pursing a Masters degree in Theology.

He is currently serving as a discipleship group leader and prayer minister at his church in California. Ron has been around Exodus since 1995 and for the past few years has served on the prayer team at the Annual Exodus Freedom Conferences.

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