A fashion set designer who found his Hollywood life ultimately empty has told how Jesus Christ turned him around.
Becket Cook was living as a gay man in 2009 when he encountered some Christians reading their Bibles in a café. They invited him to church, where he heard the gospel and became a Christian.
Now Cook has lost some of his close friends, is living a celibate life, and rejects the “gay Christian” label. But he says that compared to Jesus, all these things are worth leaving behind.
‘Emptiness’
Speaking to The Gospel Coalition, Cook explained that he began questioning his life during a fashion party in Paris.
“I had done everything in Hollywood, met everyone, traveled everywhere. Yet I was overwhelmed with emptiness at this party.
“It was one of the most intense ‘is that all there is?’ moments in my life.”
Honest
Six months later he was in a coffee shop in Los Angeles when he noticed young people studying the word of God.
He asked what their church believed about homosexuality and they said it was a sin. “I appreciated their honesty and that they didn’t beat around the bush.”
It was one of the most intense ‘is that all there is?’ moments in my life.
Cook went to their church – called Reality LA – and heard a sermon that “basically turned what I knew about religion upside down”.
Bible
After receiving prayer and believing in Jesus as saviour, he was discipled by the pastor and other Christians.
Out of work for a brief period, “I had all this time to spend with God, to pray and read the Bible. I couldn’t stop reading the Bible.”
I couldn’t stop reading the Bible.
Now he has put his gay lifestyle behind him. He says he still wrestles with same-sex attraction, though “it has greatly diminished and no longer dominates my thought life like it did before God saved me”.
‘Gay Christian’?
Asked about the “gay Christian” label, he was clear: “It seems strange to identify yourself with sin. It’s a square circle.
“Defining yourself as a ‘gay Christian’, even if you are celibate and not active in a homosexual relationship, is wildly misleading.”
He said he tells enquirers: “I don’t identify by my sexuality. I’m a follower of Christ who has a lot of struggles, including same-sex attraction.”
Watch: Why I left my gay life to follow Jesus
Also see:
‘I was gay, but I found Christ and now I’m married to a woman’
‘I was living a gay lifestyle but Christ transformed me’
Revelation of the wages of sin led me to Christ, says ex-gay author