“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immorality, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man” (Matt. 15:19–20).
The spirit of perversion rises out of the heart. Homosexuality, lesbianism, adultery and fornication are all heart issues. If you are a practicing homosexual, no matter how much you defend your lifestyle, you have a heart issue.
Somehow the enemy was able to plant the seed in your heart through trauma whether by direct means (such as molestation) or by indirect means (such as generational trauma). Because you did not guard your heart—or weren’t spiritually equipped to guard your heart—the seed grew and manifested as perversion.
Let me give you an example. If a man molests a young boy, the boy may grow up with homosexual tendencies because his heart was open. He didn’t know how to close his heart to that.
Now, you can close your heart to things. You can make a decision, “I’m not going to be a homosexual.” You can shut your heart to it and say, “No, I will not be gay. I hate it. I don’t want to be a homosexual.” You can make a decision at a young age not to be a homosexual. There are a lot of men who were molested at a young age and could have been homosexuals, but they said no to it. When you close your heart to the defilement of the enemy, there is nothing the devil can do to get it in your heart.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” What comes into your life flows out of your heart. How you end up in life is based on how you keep your heart. You end up in certain places because of what came out of your heart. Judas, a disciple of Jesus, is an example of what happens when you don’t guard your heart.
“Now supper being concluded, the devil had put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him” (John 13:2).
Not only do we see that Judas’s heart was open to the enemy, but we also learn something about Satan. He likes to put things in the heart. He’ll put the thoughts in your mind and inclinations into your heart: “You’re a homosexual. You’re a lesbian. Because you allowed this molestation to happen, you must like it. You must be homosexual. How else can you explain it?” If you receive these lies as truth, they will get in your heart and you will act them out.
All sexual sin begins with a thought. You just don’t fall in the bed with somebody. You think about it before it happens. You don’t wake up saying, “What? What happened? How did I get here?” It begins with a thought.
You will never get victory over sexual sin until you take authority over the way you think. I don’t care how much deliverance you receive; you have to control your thoughts. You can’t think about sexual sin, meditate on it and then expect not to get involved in it. The more you think about something, the greater the chances are that you’ll end up doing it.
We must take our thoughts captive as 2 Corinthians 10:5 says: “Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” A lot of us are just too lazy. We let the devil run around in our minds all day long, from the moment we get up to the time we go to bed. We never get those evil thoughts out of our hearts, yet we wonder how we get so deep into certain sins.
God Wants to Give You a New Heart
“Also, I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh” (Ez. 36:26).
God will give you a new heart. It doesn’t matter what was in your heart before you came to Christ; God will give you a new heart. If you’ve been struggling in any area we’ve discussed so far, know that God wants to give you a new heart that is free from the bondage of perversion.
The Bible says, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away. Look, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). God will give you a heart transplant. He will do a miracle in your heart. This is God’s promise through the new covenant. It started with the people of Israel. God told them, “I’m going to do something inside of you.” Even though it is being taught that once you are a homosexual, you will always be a homosexual, God can still completely transform you. The same is taught about alcoholism: if you were once an alcoholic, you will always be an alcoholic.
The devil is a liar. I don’t care how much of an alcoholic you were, you can be delivered. And when you are delivered, you are no longer an alcoholic. You are a new creature in Christ. When God delivers you from alcoholism, you can’t even stand the taste of it anymore. When God delivers you from smoking, you don’t even like the way cigarettes smell anymore. You wonder how you ever smoked.
When God changes your heart, you are no longer the same person you were before. There may be temptations that try to pull you back into your previous lifestyle, but you can shut those down. You don’t have to be a homosexual or a lesbian anymore. You don’t have to be a fornicator or adulterer. God is saying, “When I do this work in your heart, there is going to be such a miracle that people are going to say they can’t believe it. They will wonder how you left that lifestyle.” The kind of change I am speaking of has to be an inside job.
We have testimonies of transgendered people who have gotten saved. Some even had sex changes. We tend to think that if someone goes that far, they are reprobate. But nothing is too far for God’s reach. God can do a miracle in the person’s life and change his or her heart. There is nothing impossible with God. All things are possible to him who believes.
Do you believe that? {eoa}
Excerpted from John Eckhardt’s book, Destroying the Spirit of Rejection (Charisma House, 2016). To purchase the book, click here.
Apostle John Eckhardt is overseer of Crusaders Ministries, located in Chicago, Illinois. Gifted with a strong apostolic call, he has ministered throughout the United States and overseas in more than 80 nations. He is a sought-after international conference speaker and has authored more than 20 books, including Prophet, Arise!, Prayers That Rout Demons, Prayers That Break Curses, and God Still Speaks. Eckhardt resides in the Chicago area with his wife, Wanda, and their five children.
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