Jackie Hill Perry - Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been

Copyright 2018 by Jackie Hill Perry

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4627-5122-8

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.843

Subject Heading: CHRISTIAN LIFE

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version (ESV). ESV Text Edition: 2016. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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Dedicated to...

God

Preston

Eden

Mother

Santoria

Brian

Melody

Acknowledgments

Thank you, Preston, for supporting me. Thank you, Nancy, for encouraging me. Thank you, Robert, Austin, Devin, and B&H, for guiding me. Thank you, friends (you know who you are), for praying for me.

Foreword

Jackie Hill Perry and I could hardly have more disparate backgrounds.

She is a millennial; I am a Boomer. She is black, and I am white. She was raised by a single mom and disregarded by an absentee dad who had no idea how to love her. I was parented by a happily married, attentive mom and dad who adored each other and their children. Jackie is sixteen years younger than her brother and only sibling, while I have six younger brothers and sisters.

Jackie is a hip-hop artist. I have a degree in piano performance, zero sense of rhythm, and gravitate toward music written before 1910. She is a poet who uses wordswith amazing deftnessto paint pictures on the canvas of the heart that are at once provocative and evocative. My speaking and writing style tends toward sequential points, neatly organized and outlined.

Jackie had her first homosexual experience when she was in high school. I dont recall ever hearing the word homosexual or knowing anyone who identified as one, until sometime after I was out of high school. She didnt meet Jesus till she was in her late teens; my first conscious memory is trusting Christ to save me at the age of four.

My association with Jackie has introduced me to, among other things, an expanded vocabulary. I remember, for example, the day she and I were direct messaging about a ministry she was serving with at the time. She informed me it was a pretty dope ministry. To which I replied: Dope?? Somehow, I was unaware (as she graciously explained) that dope is a slang word for awesome or great. (Had me confused, I responded. Glad theyre not doing dope!) We both had a good laugh.

Yes, ours has been an unlikely friendship. Yet, different as we are in many respects, our lives and hearts have been knit together through our common need for a Savior and the lavish grace we have both received from Christ. Beyond that, we share a love for Gods Word, and we both cherish and cling to sound doctrine as being not only true and necessary, but also beautiful and good. All of this, combined with observing her depth of discernment and wisdom and the ways God is using her bold, clear voice, has made me a cheerleader for Jackie (and her husband Preston).

In Gods providence, two of my books, Lies Women Believe and the Truth that Sets Them Free and Seeking Him (coauthored with Tim Grissom), played a significant role in Jackies discipleship as a young believer. In more recent years, her writing, speaking, and social media activity have been a part of my own discipleship and have deepened my love for Christ and my appreciation for the difference the gospel makes in every part and particle of our lives. So I was honored when Jackie asked if I would write a foreword for her first book.

As I read her manuscript, I found myself repeatedly interrupting my sweet husband, who was seated at my side, working on his laptop, to share with him sentences and paragraphs that had me spellbound. She sees things others dont, Robert said. Hes right. And she describes those things in ways most of us cant.

Ill admit I flinched a bit when I first heard the proposed title for this book. Gay girl I pushed back mentally but thats not who she is today! Which, as I was drawn into the manuscript, I came to understand is precisely the point. Jackie is honest and raw in her depiction of who she was, which provides the perfect backdrop to spotlight and celebrate who God has always been. Her understanding and expression of bothher fallenness and brokenness and His redeeming love and graceare solidly grounded in truth, as He has revealed it in His Word.

This is not a book to be skimmed or speed read, but one to be savored and pondered, as Jackie looks through the lens of Scripture and her own journey to unpack such realities as fatherlessness, abuse, same-sex attraction, identity, temptation, fighting lust with the gospel, and misconceptions of womanhood. Throughout, she points to a Savior who loves sinners and a gospel that saves, transforms, and keeps those who come to Him in repentance and faithhowever similar or dissimilar their story may be from hers.

As Jackie concludes:

What God has done to my soul is worth telling because He is worth knowing. Worth seeing. Worth hearing. Worth loving, and trusting, and exalting.... To tell you about what God has done for my soul is to invite you into my worship.

So come and see, hear, love, trust, and exalt. Come and worship.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

September 2018

Introduction

I wrote this book out of lovea common word used so out of context on most days. This work is not a miscommunication of my intentions; it is a direct product of it.

Before writing it, I lived out the words. A gay girl once? Yes. Now? I am what Gods goodness will do to a soul once grace gets to it.

In saying that, I know Ive already offended someone. I dont assume that every hand that holds this book will agree with every black letter on the pages. There are many who, while reading, wont understand gayness as something possible of being in the past tense. It is either who you are, or what you have never been. To this, I disagree. The only constant in this world is God. Gayness, on the other hand, can be an immovable identity only when the heart is unwilling to bow. There is more complexity to this than my modest introduction will allow. I will only encourage those hesitant to turn the page because of my particular perspective on truth to keep reading. Ill admit that I have much more to say about gayness and God that will be a bit countercultural, but I hope will also be intriguing to the point of consideration in the grand scheme of things.

There are others who only know of the hetero love that makes a book such as this one for studying the unknown. These are the Christians (the Ive always been straight Christians, that is) for whom this book was also intended. I have not always loved how theyve loved the gay community. Between the banner-painted hate and the interpersonal silence, my love for the church moved me to attempt to write something of balancesomething that can make the love for which they are called to walk in, the tangible proof of what God is like.

This book, however, is not to be confused with the Scriptures themselves. It, God willing, will be of benefit to the church, but these words are not to be esteemed as being what is most important for the church. That is what the Word of God is for. This is not an appendix to the Scriptures; it is simply the telling of a story impacted by the Scriptures, with practical instruction gained by living out the Scriptures. My love for the LGBT community makes me desperate for them to know God. My love for the church makes me desperate for them to show the world God, as He is, and not as we would prefer for Him to bethis book being my efforts toward such an end. Coming out of the gay lifestyle and into a brand-new world of loving God His way is a wild lifea wildness so sufficient that it will either turn a new saint back or make them into someone better. If I were to call the experience by another adjective, I would call it hard. A hardness much like a mountain too beat-up by the sky to climb. But even they can be moved.