'I was living a double life': Breaking free from LGBTQ sin

Richard Matthews is a formerly gay influencer and speaker who was fired from his job after posting about his faith. Now, he’s sharing his testimony and how the Lord saved him from his sin — including his battle with a pornography addiction.

“When you were 10 or 11, you were getting bullied and called feminine and gay because of how you talk. You decided to look it up on the internet to be like, ‘Why are people calling me this, what does this mean,’ and then sadly, that led you to being exposed to gay pornography,” Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” comments.

Matthews admits that he then became addicted to pornography and “kept it hidden.”

“I wouldn’t say I had the desire to be in pornography, I didn’t necessarily have a desire to be in homosexual, same-sex relationships, but as I continued to become in agreement with the enemy, with that sin, the Bible said sin becomes iniquity,” Matthews tells Stuckey, adding, “Iniquity is repeated sin that becomes your identity.”

After identifying as a homosexual for years, Matthews went into a recovery group at his church.

“There I learned that the Lord loved me, because all this time, I thought the Lord hated me, and I thought I couldn’t amount to what he was asking me to do,” he tells Stuckey, noting that he was still battling with the “idea of maybe potentially being a gay Christian.”

“Nothing was working, where my porn was wasn’t resolved, and I still had these desires and attractions,” he explains. “So I said a prayer in January of 2023, where I said, ‘Lord, I feel like I can’t change, and I feel like I can’t fully come to you and devote myself to you.’ I said, ‘If being gay and being Christian is not true, let me know and I’ll accept it.’”

“When I said that to the Lord, I heard him tell me to come to him, and that’s what it says in Matthew, ‘Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,’” he continues. “And I’m so thankful that I heard him, and he was able to really give me a new heart and transform me and all of those desires and everything started to go away around March.”

“I woke up one day like, I haven’t watched porn in two weeks, and so it was an act and a mercy and a grace and a miracle of God that he literally transformed my life and started to really transform my desires,” he adds.

And it’s not just himself who Matthews is worried about.

“People don’t really know that there is a spirit behind homosexuality, the agenda that is happening in our country and against our kids,” he explains, adding, “It’s not a new thing, it’s an old thing that has been talked about in the Bible, and so we have to overcome these principalities with the power of the Lord.”

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