We Christians are facing a cultural tsunami: its name is transgenderism. Men are told they can become women, and women can become men. This tidal wave advances through lies, and one of the most powerful lies we hear today is that people cannot change. If you have a given identity, our culture tells us, you will never be able to embrace a new one. But Christians know this simply is not true; in biblical terms, God saves sinners like us, making us nothing less than a "new creation" by his grace (2 Corinthians 5:17).
The following is a true anonymous testimony of total transformation: from transgender to born-again believer. Read it and be encouraged. Remember this: God can save anyone, even the person who seems miles away from Christ.
(With permission, this material is taken and edited from What Does the Bible Teach about Transgenderism?, and is part of a sexuality trilogy by Dr. Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock that includes a book on lust and another on homosexuality.)
My struggle with my besetting sin began when I was very young. As a boy of around nine or ten I began to dress in my mother's clothes. This was a very unique experience that I found I really enjoyed. I actually remember praying that God would do a miracle and turn me into a girl. When I was about twelve, an older male teenager sexually abused me one time. It wasn't something that I really wanted to repeat. Over the years, I realized this and the cross-dressing was not something that God would be pleased about. Through most of my life whenever something would come on TV regarding transvestitism, knowing my weakness in this area, I would change the channels.
Throughout my growing up years, I continually practiced self-stimulation, which I had discovered on my own, when I was eleven or twelve. I also entered into the use of pornography at this time. My dad owned a drug store, and I would steal magazines off the rack. I liked girls, and through my teen years, like my buddies, I desired to have a girlfriend. Being a young man of over 200 pounds, I didn't believe any girl would go out with me. I began to loathe and hate myself because I was fat. As a result, I developed a very low self-esteem.
My wicked desires were hidden from everyone around me. After all, I was a Christian who would fall once in a while and, in my conviction, promptly repent and ask God for forgiveness. I would destroy my pornography and carry on with my God. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, I moved to Calgary, Alberta and became involved in the Jesus People movement and went to a local in-church Bible College. I really didn't have any hope that anybody would ever want to marry me. That all changed when my Pastor told me that a certain girl in the church wanted to marry me. I had no previous interest in her, but, under the circumstances, my interest peaked. After all, I wanted to be married, and here was a woman that I knew ahead of time would say yes if I popped the question. And she did. On July 7th of 1977, I got married for the wrong reasons.
We were married for twenty years and adopted two children, a boy and a girl. Throughout the whole twenty years, we were faithful in church— two services every Sunday—and also taught Sunday school classes. I guess I was looked up to as a well-respected member of our church, but underneath the entire facade was a totally different person. I had become a real hypocrite, an actor. I was careful not to reveal my true nature. I was living a lie. Underneath it all, I was a very unhappy, unfulfilled, and hurting individual who was only concerned with his own agenda.
As long as I got what I wanted, all was well. It is no wonder that our marriage finally ended. We separated in 1997 after twenty years of marriage. The main reason we separated was because, even after twenty years of marriage, I was still thoroughly selfish in my sexuality and, by this time, had immersed myself in transgendered desires. I had become totally bound to my wicked and selfish motivations. My mind was consistently given over only to the desires of the flesh. I could think of nothing else. I now not only wanted to dress as a woman, I wanted to become a woman.
Every waking moment became devoted to that end. I had turned from the Lord that I had always confessed as my Savior, which I believe was due to the lack of Bible reading and personal Bible study (also a lack of prayer), and now my sinful desire had brought me to the place that I went into even deeper darkness and joined a transgender club called Illusions.
Illusions was a club for men who were transvestites or trans-sexuals who could live out their perversions in the privacy and secrecy of a closed club. I attended this club against the will of my wife, ignoring her needs and the needs of my children. During the years I spent in this club, I received a popularity that I never had while living as male, even being crowned "Empress Vl of Illusions." The spirit that drove me well knew how one with no self-esteem could be puffed up with himself. I had a sense that in all of my days on this earth I had not experienced any kind of true fulfillment in life. The transgendered spirit gave me a false sense of self-value and wellness that twisted my deceived heart and mind in its wicked tentacles, making me a true child of Hell. And I didn't even realize the danger of my choices.
My life went from believing in Jesus as a child to believing only in myself as an adult. On July 7, 2003, I underwent gender reassignment surgery in Montreal, Quebec under the name of Leslie Diane Montgomery. My life was ruined. I didn't realize it at the time, but I know now that I was lost. I lived totally as a woman for ten years — from 1997 to 2007. As time passed, I began to feel very guilty and convicted about everything I had done to my family, my God, and myself. I knew in my heart all the time that what I had done was wrong, but just like the Scriptures say, I suppressed the truth.
In the summer of 2007, the Spirit of God began to move in my heart, and I turned to the book of Romans. I knew that my life was in a helpless state, and it was the book of Romans that always seemed to give me hope. As I read and studied the Scriptures, I came to know that I could no longer continue the charade that had cost me everything that I truly loved in life — my family and, mostly, my God. I finally cried out to God for mercy and asked Him to save me from myself. With the help of my dear friends Richard and his wonderful wife, Marie, I went shopping for male clothes to begin my life over. Before the end of the year, I cut my hair and began to live my life as the man that God had made me to be.
It hasn't been easy. I continue to deal with debilitating depression which had developed during those years. But one of the best things that has happened since was that I started reading my Bible most days for at least an hour. Through that practice, God has done a new work in me, which is far more than any medication could do. It has lifted me high above my depression and truly given me a new life. Jesus the Good Shepherd truly left the ninety-nine and graciously brought me back into the love and safety of His fold. I was lost and found, to the Glory of my God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give God all the glory and honor for lifting me out of the muck and the mire of the world and setting me on the path that leads to His eternal Kingdom of Heaven.