It’s time.

When I was a young whipper snapper, still at school, the Labor Party launched what has been immortalized as possibly the most successful ad campaign in Australian history. It launched Gough Whitlam into power and formed a platform for change (some good some not so good). Yes. It was time.

Whenever it’s time for us, we know it. I mean, when it really is time. Time to begin. Time to move. Time to move on. We know it intrinsically. Sometimes we follow the instinct. Sometimes we don’t. But whether we do or do not, we still know it’s time.

In 1979 it was time for me. It was time to move on from the Assemblies of God in Flinders Park – we were the black sheep of the AOG in Adelaide. Needless to say that Klemzig AOG (later called Paradise, though for reason only that it lay in a suburb of the same name) were the white sheep. They had it all.

I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have it all. You see, I was gay. I knew it. I knew it since still too young to walk the street without my mother’s holding hand. I was gay and I loved the Lord. I loved Jesus more than life itself. But I couldn’t have both. I couldn’t be His person and be my own person in the same walk. Well, not according to the church.

I was devastated. Like so many others, my life, now divorced from its formerly steadfast direction, was empty. I stumbled into the gay scene, hooked by the disco lights of the seventies and eighties.

So began a walk alone. I moved from Adelaide to Melbourne and, as you do, fell in love. I fell in love and yet I was still alone. Inside I knew – I always knew – that I belonged to God and His anointing.

I thought I had a new direction. But my life was interrupted by God on the first day of January, 2006. I discovered Freedom To Be and a number of other websites including The Potters House International in Florida, USA (not to be confused with TD Jakes’ Potters House in Texas).

Well you can imagine the joy and emotion when I finally saw – in the original tongues of Biblical Hebrew and Greek – God is not anti gay. God is not anti me!

So the trek began and it was back to the calling.

I enrolled in an AOG Bible college. Now that that’s over, I’m seeking credentials with an American affirming Apostolic Pentecostal organization.

It’s time to move to the next stage in God’s calling and the responsibility I feel to be true to His word. It’s time to reach all the people with all the gospel.

If anyone else that has a calling on their life wants to get together as a family of Pentecostals with a conviction and mission to reach everyone – including the GLBTIQQ community – under the banner of Affirming Pentecostals, please pm me. (I’m not proposing a “denomination”, just a fellowship of those of us called to the gospel.)

It’s time.

Robert Oster.

Melbourne.

I was out of fellowship for over 25yrs! For that whole time I loved the Lord – in fact the only thing I kept from my childhood was my old Bible (the first thing I ever bought with my first pay packet).

I stopped going to church because I was devastated. Told, face to face, that being gay was a sin against God; I was just devastated.

After finding f2be site and finding affirming Christian websites that opened my eyes to the inclusive love of God, I found my spiritual legs again.

I spent some time in country S.A. where I started Bible college and then moved to Melbourne a few months ago.

Yes, Freedom To Be is a great place and its distinctive of being a non-judgmental and “non-religious” space is what makes it special.

What I feel it’s time for is a group of those who are called and not ashamed of our selves nor of the gospel of God, to find a place of spiritual support and encouragement. Perhaps a fellowship that could encourage one another to take up our calling and enter our personal ministries for God in Australia. A launching pad so to speak.

Yo Rob. It is time mate! Great post, great story, well great ending that is! Your enthusiasm for Jesus is totally infectious, and it is a pleasure to know you my friend. Michelle and Linda

how are you guys going about planning a network group in Melbourne

Rob,

It IS time. My support and prayers are with you that God will open doors and help you connect with others who feel the same pull and tug at your heart and spirit. I think God is beginning to call forth a lot of us to do a work we have never done before. Let’s pray we go forth with more love and compassion then we’ve ever known and a great deal of wisdom. It’s going to take all of that as well as a lot of support from one another.

Go man and let God use you. I’m excited to hear about it.

Robert