April 22, 2025 • 44 mins
Betrayal. Shame. Heartbreak. These were the hallmarks of the life of Cari Gintz. Sexually abused as a young girl, caught in a legalistic cult, married to a man who came out as gay and left her for another man, she was stressed, hurt, disappointed. Her pain took her on a journey of dysfunction – but the story doesn’t end there. Don’t miss a minute of her powerful testimony.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friends, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
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and then gently but consistently push you out into the
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shine before men and go and tell them the good news.
Before you listen to this podcast, let me just tell
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(00:20):
written by pastor Jack Graham. I love it because he
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and that a lot of people think that the Bible
is too complicated, that it's written for pastors or for scholars.
And yet, in truth, Jesus is there from Genesis to Revelation.
And that book was written for every single one of us.
We just need a better way to know how to
study God's Word. And that's exactly what the Jesus Book
(00:42):
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take a moment of your time. And now please enjoy
the broadcast. Hi friends, this is Janet Parshall. Thanks so
(01:30):
much for choosing to spend the next hour with us.
Today's program is prerecorded so our phone lines are not open.
But thanks so much for being with us and enjoy
the broadcast.
S2 (01:39):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (01:41):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (01:43):
Americans worshiping government over God.
S5 (01:45):
Extremely rare safety move by a major in 17 years.
S6 (01:49):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S1 (02:08):
Hello, friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
Thank you so much for choosing to spend this hour
with us. I love more than any other topic of
conversation on this program, and we get to hear from
people who can say, this is what the Lord has
done for me, in me, and through me, because the
takeaway for that for every single one of us is
(02:28):
if he can do that for that person, then where
I am in the midst of my refiner's fire or
valley of the shadow of death or circumstances that create
a prison cell, he can do that for me as well.
There's all kinds of things that you and I need
to talk about when we go out into the marketplace
of ideas. But one of the reasons why I find
(02:49):
the conversation we're about to engage in right now is
so important, is because it creates, in you and me
a boldness, a boldness to understand that God is real,
that he changes hearts and minds and circumstances and eternities,
that we have nothing to be ashamed of. As a
gospel of Jesus Christ, that when everyone around us seems
to be against us, we know that God is for us.
(03:12):
And if God is for us, who can be against us?
So we're going to have one of those kinds of conversations.
So take a deep breath. Relax. We're going to hear
a journey this hour. And I want you to enjoy
your ride home. Even if it's yucky weather and yucky traffic.
I'm there with you, friend. Thanks for letting me ride
along and you're in that difficult. What we lovingly called
(03:32):
in my house the arsenic hour that time before dinner
where no, you can't have another fruit box before dinner.
I'm trying to get these pork chops ready. I get it,
and I hope we're going to make this time a
little more comfortable for you as well. So stay with
us as we examine this cycle of dysfunction. Kerry Jones
is with us, and I just want to say how
much I appreciate somebody like Kerry who is willing to
(03:55):
be transparent. You know, we're all broken. We're all flawed.
We're all fractured. We're all imperfect. That whole idea that
God in his holiness, his magnificent holiness, would allow you
and me earthen vessels. Last time I checked, were cracked,
were fractured. We're not fine. Porcelain were earthen vessels. And
(04:17):
yet he allows us, these vessels, to carry this imperishable message. Now,
just stop and think about that for a minute. And
I thank you for the grace of 30s here before
we get into our conversation. We are allowed to share
with the world a message that has eternal ramifications. It
is quite literally the difference between life and death, heaven
(04:38):
and hell. And God looks at us in all of
our flaws and says, go and tell. I don't get
that math at all, but I am certainly humbled by it.
And I want to thank somebody like Kari, who comes
along and says, I am willing to tell you all
that I've gone through, all of the shame that I carry,
the sense of betrayal, the hurt that I've experienced in
(05:00):
my life. But I want to do it because I
want you to know about God's amazing grace and what
he can do in and through my life. Carrie, by
the way, has a wonderful career, has had a wonderful
career as a global project manager and an operations leader,
which means she understands people, she understands people skills, and
she knows how to lead. And leadership is all in
the final analysis about people. And she has written a
(05:22):
wonderful book called Jericho Unmasked An Entrapped Lesbian's Journey to Freedom. Carrie,
I have so been waiting for this conversation and you
have to talk. This is radio and people will see
this when they go to my website and they'll see
the cover of your book. But I love the cover.
It was not self-evident to me what it meant until
(05:43):
I started reading the book. Explain the cover. This is radio,
so paint on the canvas of our listeners minds.
S7 (05:49):
Well, first of all, um, the cover was done by, um,
someone who had also been in a terrible place. So
I call this the book of the Little People. But Jericho,
the story of Jericho and Rahab, when I read Joshua
six the first time, and the very first verse that
(06:11):
said the walls were so high no one could get
in and no one could get out. But yet God
saw Rahab inside a woman who was trapped, who probably
cried on her pillow daily because she knew the God
of Israel and had no hope. But then the idea
that on the outside of that wall, God had gathered marchers.
(06:36):
God had gathered marchers, and he saw Rahab, and she
was in there, and nobody knew her story. In fact,
the chapters that had been written for her were probably
deplorable ones. If someone had penned them out and the
spies didn't know. But God saw her, and those marchers
were gathered and they didn't. They marched in silence. They
(06:57):
didn't kick the wall. They didn't scream at the wall.
And they didn't even know how long they were going
to have to march or pray. But one day, can
you just imagine the day when Rahab heard those walls fall?
Can you just imagine the suddenly that happened when those
walls came down and those those soldiers went in? And
(07:21):
here's the other thing that that I just saw in
that scripture, and it's mentioned twice when they went and
got her, they didn't just grab her and her family.
They grabbed all that she had. They had to pack
her things because God was not going to pull her
out of that situation and leave her empty and destitute.
(07:43):
He was going to make sure that what he did
going forward, Rahab, would be filled up with him before
anything was displaced in her. And to me, this instantaneous
collapse of the walls with a woman who feared and
knew the God of Israel. I knew the God of Israel.
(08:03):
I knew the Word of God. The word never return void.
But I was trapped. And that's why I used the imagery,
because Jericho was probably a bustling city and everything looked fine.
But there was a woman in there who was not fine.
S1 (08:20):
Oh, I told you this was going to be a
good conversation, Carrie. What a wonderful way to set this
conversation up. Let me take a break and let me
go back to your walls, in your Jericho. And that
feeling of being trapped. And how, like Rahab, you knew
the God of Israel, and yet you somehow went on
a wrong road, as so many of us do. Carrie
Jones is with us. Her book is called Jericho Unmasked.
(08:42):
I've got a link to her website, and I've got
a link to the book as well at In the
Market with Janet Parshall. You know how this works. On
that front page, you get to the words that say
program details and audio. Clicking on takes you to the
information page. We'll go back to Jericho right after this.
(09:15):
Bible literacy is declining even among Christians. It's time for
us to cultivate Bible reading habits that will transform our faith.
That's why I've chosen the Jesus Book as this month's
truth Tool. Discover how to apply Scripture to our everyday
lives and to know its power. Ask for your copy
of the Jesus Book. When you give a gift of
any amount to in the market, call 87758. That's 877
(09:37):
58 or go online to. In the market with Janet Parshall.
Terry Jones is with us. She's the author of Jericho
Unmasked and I'll tell you the subtitle, which gives you
a little sneak peek into her story. An entrapped Lesbian's
Journey to freedom. But there's also much more than that. Kerri.
(10:00):
There's so many chapters to your life. Let me start
with your childhood, if I can. Tell me about growing up,
how you came to faith in Christ and when sexual
abuse arrived.
S7 (10:11):
Well, I was born in Southern California, and my mother,
shortly after my I was born. Received the Lord in
a powerful way. And she knew from that point forward
that her mission with this child that she now held
was to point that child to Christ. And from that
(10:32):
day she held me with an open hand, knowing that
God loved me more than she ever could. And unfortunately,
in my growing up, I had a father who struggled
also with his sexual identity, which I didn't find out
until years later. And so the marriage in the home was, um,
(10:55):
not a real functioning one. And I had a grandmother
and I went to grandmother's house and I got considerable attention,
and I had a surrogate grandfather who unfortunately decided, um,
that he was going to steal from a young child
what is meant for marriage. And, um, I was sexually abused. However, um,
(11:17):
I also sat at grandmother's house and heard stories of
my own father's abuse and how she used to put
him in dresses. And I was under five years old,
and I was a great recorder of information and a
terrible interpreter. So all of this encased me in a very, very, um,
lonely world on top of it. My sister had come
along and I didn't really know to do what to
(11:39):
do with another person in the family sharing attention, and
my mother wasn't quite sure and psychology hadn't advanced. And so, um,
the doctor just said, well, she'll come back. And unfortunately
I never did. But I think I was also, um,
starting to be sealed up and and I actually started
to act out very miserably in kindergarten. I was I
(12:01):
was just a little devious tyrant, smart at it, but devious.
And one day I came home and I just said, um, mom,
I can't be good. It is impossible for me to
be good. And that's when she shared with me about
the power of Christ, and how she even shared me
at a young age. Without Christ, you're capable of anything
(12:22):
under the sun that is contrary to him. And I
and I just wanted to receive him. And I remember
it like it was yesterday. And I received him that night.
And I went to school the next day. And I
was different. Not because I tried to be different, but
because an incorruptible seed had landed inside of me. And
(12:44):
that incorruptible seed was not going to stop no matter what.
And I just want to say, through all the things,
God has never had to have a plan B in
my life. He had plan A from the start. You know,
I received the Lord and um, unfortunately, this, this abuse
and the encasement that I was experiencing kept me in
(13:08):
a very isolated world. And so as I got in,
you know, I was as I was in elementary school,
grades became, um, a huge marker of identity. And I
went through a lot of trying things with abusive teachers.
And I started biting my nails just like a feverish nut.
And my whole identity became grades. I didn't miss a
(13:30):
day of school other than childhood diseases. I had baby
liver every morning and vitamins, and I just marched in
time to get the best grades possible. But I just
felt awkward. I felt different because I thought about things.
I thought about meaning, and I just. I just felt awkward.
(13:51):
And when I got into junior high, it was even
more treacherous because now the opposite sex was coming on
the scene, and I really wasn't. Um, I can't say
that I wasn't interested because words like homosexuality and all
these things weren't even in the framework, so I didn't
know what was going on. I just knew that I was, um,
(14:14):
paralyzed and, um, in, you know, my day in junior high, the, the, the, uh,
contact with the opposite sex was a little more innocuous
than it is today. But then I landed in high school,
and I started to kind of get my groove on
and started to get the cute clothes and got rid
(14:36):
of the horn rimmed glasses and but still feeling very
paralyzed and also starting to be aware that, um, I
just craved, um, love from a female. And I don't
I don't blame anybody for that. In fact, I don't
blame anybody in my book, not my parents or anything,
(14:57):
because we don't come out with little handbooks that say,
here's how to raise a child. But because of the
isolation and because of the abuse and because of other
abuses that happened during high school. Um, you know, I
was just in a very silent and quiet world that
nobody knew. And, um, as a result, it really set
(15:22):
me up for the next, um, the next big thing.
And that's when, um, my, my mom had knew of
knew of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and she knew
that I was on a downward trajectory, even though we
were going to a number of churches. And I had
been going to church and, you know, hearing the word
(15:43):
in church, and I ended up in what was called
the local church. And I want to be careful because
a lot of people coin it as a cult, and
they're a cult like practices that that happened. But I
just want to be really cautious because there's people I
love that are still in it. And the word is preached.
It was just very, very extreme. But when I landed
(16:06):
in it, it was a very interesting process because I
showed up and all the brothers and they call them
brothers and sisters had the uniform of the local church.
And in walked me with my tan and my, um,
cute clothes. And I thought, wow, I can be something
in this place. And the people engaged me, and I
(16:29):
was invited to dinner and and all of a sudden
we were going there on a regular basis, and I
was going to my other youth group on Wednesdays and,
and then, um, going to this other place, and I
didn't realize what I was about to embark in.
S1 (16:47):
And what a place to stop. Kerry, let me pick
it up. By the way, just so you all don't
make this a confused idea in your mind, we're not
talking about attending your local church. Local church? Think LC.
This is the name of an organization of a group,
by the way. So I want to clarify that. So
you understand that Kerry's not talking about going to her
local church like you. And I would say we go
(17:07):
to our local church on Sunday. This is a group,
an organization with, as Kerry said, some cult like behaviors.
We've got so much more of her journey right after this.
(17:33):
We're visiting with Kerry Jones. She is the author of
Jericho Unmasked. She's traveled the globe, by the way, but
she's also traveled a road to redemption. So, Kerry, let
me go back to local church. Elsie, as you refer
to it in the book. And you said you didn't
realize what you were about to embark in, and it
was hyper legalistic. Can you just share a sentence or
(17:54):
two about environmentally, what it was like and why it
was so suffocating, for lack of a better word?
S7 (18:02):
Well, I liken it to this. Um, the requirements to
alter outward behavior were extreme. Uh, at one point, I
literally burned all of my possessions in a fire on
San Pedro beach. So the the requirement to outwardly conform
(18:25):
was extreme. And I have to say that there are
things that I gave up there that later on in
life the Lord asked me to give up. But when they.
But when that giving up comes from a place of
intimacy with God and comes from a place of being
constrained by the love of God because of experience with him.
(18:47):
The motivation is far different and there is no resentment
or tragedy. But this was so ahead of everything. It
was the it was the construct of a a remnant
walk and coming out and being separate from the world
that I didn't watch a TV, I didn't listen to radio,
I didn't read a paper, I didn't read a magazine.
(19:10):
I had no encounters with the opposite sex and worse.
You weren't allowed to have friends because that was foolish.
Even though I lived in a environment with a bunch
of girls and then a couple that were the elders
of the home, I was in church, um, five, five
nights a week, sometimes two and three hours at a time,
(19:33):
trainings three times a year. And I have to say, though,
there are far worse things than being force fed the
Word of God. I just want to clarify. I could
have been far worse off where I was headed because
I was seeking strong boundaries, because my identity struggle with
(19:53):
my sexuality had really come to the forefront of my mind.
And I knew how against God and His Word it was.
So in a way, I gravitated toward this encasement. But
I lost all sense of identity and deeply resented what
(20:14):
was happening. And I was in it for a good
eight years and also ended up getting married.
S1 (20:21):
In while you were in the LC. And by the way,
let me just pause for a minute so that our
friends can conceptualize why there was an attractiveness, and that is,
you're struggling to figure out where the boundaries are in
terms of how you define yourself. You have a sense
that God has already put some there, but you're not
quite sure where they fall. So these external boundaries through
this Elsie, are being placed around your life, and there
(20:43):
had to be a kind of false external security, while
at the same time an internal storm, because you still
didn't know who you were.
S7 (20:52):
Yeah, I was on a now. I was on an
island surrounded by water with no way back to the
life I had left. But it was all I had now.
And on top of it, they made me a star,
young person. Because I knew the ropes. I knew the rules.
(21:12):
I memorized the messages. So I was also preaching in
the services at 19, spitting back the word with all
the inflections and all the different mannerisms and everything. And
so I was I was somebody even in, in this group,
but I was nobody inside.
S8 (21:34):
Wow.
S1 (21:35):
Kind of emptiness said can hardly be imagined. So you
meet your husband and this is paradoxical because there's no
dating that's allowed. This 22 year old man walks in.
This is going to be your husband. Would you say,
looking back, that you really knew who he was in
a deep sense before you got married?
S7 (21:54):
Absolutely. The day he walked in, he was in a
French cut T-shirt, T-shirt and tight jeans and long hair
and just adorable and as gay as could be. I
knew exactly who he was.
S9 (22:09):
But but.
S7 (22:11):
Um. But the next time he showed up, he was
in the outfit of the brothers and had cut his hair,
and I barely recognized him. I thought, wow, that was quick. And, um,
but I knew he was safe, and I knew he
was kind. And I'd had a lot of proposals that,
thank goodness, in God's mercy, those did not occur. But, um,
(22:36):
so one day I just decided that marriage was the
next thing, even though I really wasn't interested. But it
was a kind of a way out of the sister's house. And, um,
so I went to the brothers and said, I'm interested.
And they went to him and he said, he's interested.
And three months later, there we were married. I think
(23:00):
we kissed one time.
S9 (23:02):
Wow. Wow.
S1 (23:04):
And before you were married, Carrie, he told you that
he had some gay experiences, that he had been engaged
to a woman before, but that fell apart after she
was diagnosed with cancer. So here you are. So our
friends don't miss this point, because I think it's crucial
to your story that you're struggling with your identity, who
you are in Christ, your sexual identity. And you've got
(23:26):
this very organized, hyper legalistic arrangement of how you're going
to marry Peter. He comes from a background where he's
been involved in gay sex as well. And the two
of you are going to start your life together. Wow.
And we're not even at the halfway point of this journey.
Carrie Jenks is with us. Her book is called Jericho Unmasked.
(23:47):
She has had a wonderful career as a global project
manager and an operation leader. She's traveled the world, she's
hiked and trekked and canoed and you name it. She's
an outdoor girl par excellence, but she's a girl who's
been in a journey with the Lord. That's the most
important thing. We'll continue that journey after this. Our team
(24:27):
of partial partners is growing, and I love communicating behind
the scenes with this special group of friends who are
devoted to giving a monthly gift in the market. Our
partial partners receive private emails direct from me on issues
we don't address on radio, and I even send a
weekly audio message straight from my heart to yours. Ready
to become a partial partner? Call 877 Janet 5877 Janet
(24:47):
58 or go to. In the market with Janet Parshall.
If you're just joining us, you've missed a fabulous first
half of this conversation, but I have good news for you.
You can download the podcast. Just go to In the
Market with Janet Parshall on the right left hand side.
Rather you're going to see the words past programs. Just
(25:09):
look for today's date. Click on it and you'll be
able to hear the entire broadcast at your convenience. Carrie
Jones is with us. She has had a marvelous career
as a global project manager and an operations leader. She
has traveled the world. She is a native of Southern California,
but now lives in the Buckeye state of Ohio. She's
the author of Jericho Unmasked, and I want to dive
(25:32):
right back into the story. In the book, Carrie, you
write this, you say, although he never talked about it. We.
This is you and Peter, your husband. At the time,
we intuitively knew the same sex attraction existed in each
of us. Therefore, our marriage relationship had an element of safety.
Years go by. 1991 happens and you give birth to
a little girl named Elizabeth. You decide that you're going
(25:53):
to start going to church, and the next two years
sound like they would have been just as Ozzie and
Harriet as can be. And then at the end of
that two year period, your world fell apart because Peter says,
I've met someone. He's a man. I can no longer
live a lie. What happens? What goes through your mind?
S7 (26:14):
Oh my heavens. I. Well, first of all, I thought
I'd been shot and just hadn't died. And, um, I
think the thing that was just, um, also really difficult
was the fact that I. And in deference to all
the people out there who want children, please do not
take this as any kind of insult. But because so
(26:37):
much of my freedom has been had been lost in
my youth, the last thing I wanted was a child.
And the Lord really showed up even though I wasn't
walking with him. His tether is strong. He showed up
and said, no, I want you to have a child.
So now, two years later, I'm faced with the prospect
of my husband leaving and single parenting and God and
(27:02):
I had the biggest fight on the planet for about
four hours. I screamed, I yelled, I threw pillows, I swore,
and he just grabbed me after for hours and said,
I've got this. And he gave me a very speedy
gift of forgiveness to Peter. But the problem was, now
(27:23):
that I was no longer married, it plummeted me into
back into my own struggle and I was going to
have to face it head on. So I went to Therapy, which,
if you read my book, didn't work out so well,
and I was betrayed by a therapist, and I even
went to some of the programs that I think are
(27:45):
wonderful Living Waters. Um, but it just wasn't, I guess,
God's time or I was he knew that my heart
was not willing and ready, and I would just lay
in my bed and just think I was going to
die if I did not have the affection of a female.
And so one day, I'll never forget it. I shook
(28:06):
my fist at God. Audience. No one did this to me.
Circumstances or circumstances. But the choices we make in relation
to those circumstances are what matters. And I made a choice,
and I shook my fist at God, and I said,
you are not big enough. You did not take this
(28:28):
to the cross. You are powerless over this. I know
what is going to make me happy, joyous and free.
You don't. God, I know what's best for me. You don't.
And I walked into my first gay bar. What a disaster.
Talk about encasing yourself inside of Jericho. And I lived.
(28:55):
That was the moment where I lived. Ezekiel 16, where
the shepherd had taken the baby out of the field
and grown her up to be his very own, and
dressed her with jewels and everything. And I got to
tell you, the second part of Ezekiel 16 is no
pretty picture. Because she sold everything she whored herself ended
(29:18):
up paying her own lovers. It is a travesty. And
that's exactly what happened to me. It was anything but happy,
joyous and free. And the enemy invested a lot in
the first six months to get me hooked on the
drug of each lover. And then the the real, the
(29:39):
real picture of darkness came forth and the misery came forth.
And I would lay in my bed and I would say, God,
will you do for me what I cannot do for myself.
And I know, Janet, that this was the groaning of
the Holy Spirit in my heart, because I belonged to Christ.
(30:00):
I was not hanging on to the tether. I was
not hanging on to that scarlet cord. But boy, he
had it wrapped around me and he was only going
to let it go so far. And he, in his kindness,
which encompasses his when it says his kindness leads to repentance.
That is not a wooly blanket, soft pillow, kindness. That
(30:23):
is a kindness that encompasses the greatest discipline of love
to bring us to the end of ourselves. And through
these relationships. That's exactly what God was doing, bringing me
to the most broken place. And I was feeding on
(30:45):
the mantra of the world system. I was feeding on
the water of the world system that this was going
to bring joy. And it brought damnation on my soul.
I became a miserable, dark human being, swore like a
truck driver was angry. Um. And it was horrible. And
(31:06):
then one day, God lifted me right out of Southern
California in a for a job offer. And I had
no idea why. And he even put it in my
heart to that. Ohio was a great place, which now
I think it is. But at the.
S9 (31:21):
Time, I was like, who would move to Ohio? And.
S7 (31:27):
I mean, you know who does that now? I can
be the poster child for how much I love Ohio, but, um. But.
S1 (31:34):
Well, let me stop you before you go to Ohio.
Let me go back because you're you're so open in
the book, as you talk about your relationship with various
women and what the Lord is doing in your life
through these various experiences. Again, this is why I consider
you so brave to be this boldly transparent, so that
we can walk with you on this journey out of Jericho.
And that's what you invite us to do. But I
(31:57):
want our friends to remember that you do know the Lord.
You know who he is. You know he is the Messiah.
You know he is the unblemished Lamb of God that
takes away the sins of the world. You. This is
not something you've yet to discover. This is something you
knew full well. You talked about knowing scripture and preaching
at 19 at the LC. Carrie, I cannot begin to
imagine the Cat five spiritual hurricane that must have been
(32:20):
going on inside your heart. You're desperate to be affirmed
and valued and loved. You're searching for significance. You're hungry
for identity. And yet there's this truth that keeps wrapping
itself around you. Ultimately protective. Although at the time, at
the moment, there had to be times when you thought
it strangling. It's not protective, it's not warm. It's. It's
(32:41):
in fact suffocating. How did you put one foot in
front of the other during all of those chapters of
your life? Because you had to be anything but at
peace and at rest?
S7 (32:54):
Well, I, um, shut God out. I certainly didn't pick
up my Bible at all because that was convicting. But
I also prayed and begged that he would not return.
Because I knew I wasn't ready and I would cry
and ask him. I said, Will you please? Will you
(33:16):
please not return? I don't want to spend a thousand
years apart from you, because that was a mantra in
the church, because this is hell on earth. But yet
I kept thinking and I kept buying the lie that
the next partner might improve things and even pick someone
with daughters. I thought, well, that'll do it. Another mother and, um,
(33:40):
I just, um. And then the the other strange part
was I really wanted all these people to find Jesus,
which is very ironic. And so we started going to, um, a, um,
quote unquote gay Christian church, which I think is just
(34:01):
to put those two words in the same sentence, I
have to tell you is diabolical, because if we truly
are believers and in Christ, we cannot have a dual identity,
and certainly certainly not an identity where the cross is
the most the height, highest example of humility next to
(34:26):
a pride flag that in its own name is contrary
to the cross of Christ. This is a deception. It's
a repackaging that is false. And we are to know
no man after the flesh or after self when we
come to Christ. So this term never set well with
(34:46):
me and I, I, I, I rarely even use the phraseology.
And I was uncomfortable and my mother never told people
I was gay. She said my daughter is struggling. That
is far different because she knew my identity in Christ
from that five and a half years old. So I
(35:08):
walked in these places and I couldn't reconcile it. We
sang the songs. I heard people talking, and, you know,
these were not people that were even leading celibate lives.
But even there, we lifted up celibacy to be something,
you know, heterosexual people are called to the celibacy. Celibacy
is not the be all and end all. It's what
(35:30):
sits in our heart as identity.
S8 (35:34):
Wow.
S1 (35:35):
When we come back, I want to talk about how
you found freedom. How God lifted you out, moved you,
physically moved you from Southern California to Ohio. But far
more importantly, after spiritual shock, you discover real freedom in Christ.
Jericho unmasks. That's the book by Cory Giants. You can
learn more at In the Market with Janet parshall.org. Scroll
(35:59):
down to the red box with the white letters. It
says Program Details and Audio clicking on. And you're going
to be able to see the book we're discussing. And
also you can go to her website as well. So
much more in the book. Even that one hour affords
us back after this. When Kerry Jones wasn't working for
(36:28):
Goodrich or Pacific Scientific Energetic Materials or Safran, you could
find her cycling in Europe, trekking in the Andes or
kayaking in Alaska. But it is her journey toward healing
and recognizing who's she is and seeing herself through her
father's eyes. That's the most interesting. She writes about it
(36:49):
in her book called Jericho Unmasked. So God picks you
up in this last segment. I really want to bore
down into this idea of how you found healing and
identity and real redemption, how that scarlet cord saved you,
and now it becomes a lifeline. So you're physically picked
up and you're moved to Ohio. How do you finally
get out of this situation, which is cyclical, which you've
(37:12):
tried all these things to fill this hole in your
heart and nothing's worked. How does this breakthrough take place?
S7 (37:20):
Well, first of all, I landed in a very Bible believing,
non-denominational church and you'll have to read the book to
find out how. But the pastor looked exactly like my father.
Spittin image. And in September of oh nine, he got
up and he shared a word naming homosexuality as sexual deviance.
And one would have thought that I would have just
(37:42):
gotten madder than a wet hen. But I sat there
and I saw the father I had always wanted, telling
me the truth, because I had never had conversations with
my father. And I went and I met him and
he said, I want to be your friend. This is
not God's best, but keep coming back. And I checked
(38:04):
all the stones around my walls of Jericho and everything
felt intact. And I went home. And the next two months,
God stopped talking. And my world went darker than it
ever had. You see, God knew that rejection would get
me because I had always sort of heard him and
I knew he was there. But now his presence, his voice,
(38:26):
everything went completely quiet. And I looked in the mirror
and I said, I hate you. Meaning myself. I hate
what you've become. And it felt like death was taking over.
And finally, on November 23rd. This is so exciting. I
just get delirious when I talk about this. Finally, on
November 23rd, 2009, I went in my office at home
(38:52):
and I sat down on the couch and I said, God,
if you have something to say, I'm listening. And I
picked the dusty Bible up off the shelf. And I
do what you're never supposed to do. And that's point
and hope. But I landed on Luke three and it said,
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
and I've come to make the crooked paths straight. Now, listener,
(39:15):
do not take that word literally. I'll loop back. But
I sat there and it was like a bomb went off.
It was. It was as if this DNA thread that
had woven itself through my entire being. Because whether we're
born this way or not is mute. God calls us
(39:37):
to be in Christ and a new creation and to
be transformed by him. So this thing that had just
woven itself through my being, he had been sowing alongside
from the time I was five and a half. And
he says, you don't need this anymore. And he displaced
it with himself. And I cannot even describe to you
(40:00):
from one minute to the next that I was utterly
and constitutionally altered. I was not the same. And I
sat there and I went to bed, and he watered
with grace that those seeds that had just happened. And
I woke up the next day. Nothing looked familiar. And
(40:21):
I was just like, what is this? And people have
been praying for me. I had dear, a dear mentor
who'd been praying for me, and they'd just been marching
around the walls and adjoined my mother. After 25 years
to march. And the walls had come down. And I went.
I left my partner that night and said, God told
(40:43):
me I can't do this anymore. And I ran to
the church and met the mentor and another choir person,
and I said, I don't know what's happened to me,
but I'm changed. And from that moment forward, I never
looked back. And then it was a situation of where
I was surrounded by wonderful, God fearing, believing friends who
(41:05):
knew the word. And I could just say, thus saith
my friends, and pick up the Bible and have my
pill for the day. But, Janet, there was a problem,
and my book would not be complete if it had
stopped with just being healed from homosexuality, because identity is
what God is after. And I was still in a
(41:25):
horizontal place, tagging on to my friends, and I was
still horizontally drawing my identity from them, although a much
better one. And then one day, God took away some
of those people and I was crushed. I was to
the floor, I was devastated. How could you do this?
(41:47):
And he started to show me that he wanted all
of me. He wanted identity alignment in him that was vertical,
not horizontal. He wanted me to get in the word daily.
So I started. I started reading my Bible. Not for
a pill for the day, but reading my Bible. I
(42:08):
started developing intimacy with him. I cried before him. I
got so close to his word I could feel his breath.
And as a result of that, he started changing my thinking.
He started transforming all the other aspects that were liberal.
(42:29):
He also made me extremely clear on this subject that
it is sin, bar none. It is against God's will.
It's a direct affront to Christ in the church and
any minister, any minister who compromises on this subject and
tells you otherwise is healing the wound of the people,
(42:51):
superficially saying, peace, peace, but there will be no peace.
You are sending people straight to hell if you lie.
If you lie about this and thank God my minister
didn't lie to me. He told me the truth. And
as a result, I was redeemed and restored. And I'm
(43:11):
still finding identity in Christ every day. But let me
tell you, Janet, I go to the word now myself
because it's a word of God that is living and operative.
It's the Word of God that divides what doesn't belong.
It's the Word of God that discerns rightly the truth.
It's in the stillness that wisdom comes.
S5 (43:33):
Wow.
S1 (43:34):
Oh, Kerry, what an amazing testimony. And again, there's so
much more in the book, but I thank you for
allowing us the gift of one hour of your time
to walk along you, along with you for a little while,
as we understand what it's like to have the walls
come down around Jericho as they did in your life,
and if they can, in yours. Anyone listening who feels
(43:54):
themselves trapped in their own circumstances, has no sense of
their own identity, has let the world offer some comfort
rather than the word fill the hole in the heart.
You've encouraged them this hour. So from the bottom of
my heart, I thank you. You can learn more about
Jericho Unmasked at our website. Thank you Carrie. Thank you friends.
(44:14):
We'll see you next time.
Hi friends, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
and it is my sincere hope that you'll hear something
that will equip you, edify you, encourage you, enlighten you,
and then gently but consistently push you out into the
marketplace of ideas where you can let your light so
shine before men and go and tell them the good news.
Before you listen to this podcast, let me just tell
you about this month's truth tool. It's called The Jesus Book,
(00:20):
written by pastor Jack Graham. I love it because he
really does recognize the fact that biblical literacy is declining,
and that a lot of people think that the Bible
is too complicated, that it's written for pastors or for scholars.
And yet, in truth, Jesus is there from Genesis to Revelation.
And that book was written for every single one of us.
We just need a better way to know how to
study God's Word. And that's exactly what the Jesus Book
(00:42):
is all about. So when you give a gift of
any amount this month, I'm going to give you a
copy of the Jesus Book by doctor Jack Graham. Just
call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or give
online to in the market with Janet Parshall. Also consider
becoming a partial partner. Partial partners always get the monthly
truth tool. But in addition, they get a weekly newsletter
(01:04):
that includes some of my writing and an audio piece
only from my partial partners. So whether you want to
give one time or you want to support the program
every single month, just call 877 Janet 58 or online
at In the Market with Janet Parshall. Scroll to the
bottom of the page. Thanks so much for letting me
take a moment of your time. And now please enjoy
the broadcast. Hi friends, this is Janet Parshall. Thanks so
(01:30):
much for choosing to spend the next hour with us.
Today's program is prerecorded so our phone lines are not open.
But thanks so much for being with us and enjoy
the broadcast.
S2 (01:39):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (01:41):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (01:43):
Americans worshiping government over God.
S5 (01:45):
Extremely rare safety move by a major in 17 years.
S6 (01:49):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S1 (02:08):
Hello, friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
Thank you so much for choosing to spend this hour
with us. I love more than any other topic of
conversation on this program, and we get to hear from
people who can say, this is what the Lord has
done for me, in me, and through me, because the
takeaway for that for every single one of us is
(02:28):
if he can do that for that person, then where
I am in the midst of my refiner's fire or
valley of the shadow of death or circumstances that create
a prison cell, he can do that for me as well.
There's all kinds of things that you and I need
to talk about when we go out into the marketplace
of ideas. But one of the reasons why I find
(02:49):
the conversation we're about to engage in right now is
so important, is because it creates, in you and me
a boldness, a boldness to understand that God is real,
that he changes hearts and minds and circumstances and eternities,
that we have nothing to be ashamed of. As a
gospel of Jesus Christ, that when everyone around us seems
to be against us, we know that God is for us.
(03:12):
And if God is for us, who can be against us?
So we're going to have one of those kinds of conversations.
So take a deep breath. Relax. We're going to hear
a journey this hour. And I want you to enjoy
your ride home. Even if it's yucky weather and yucky traffic.
I'm there with you, friend. Thanks for letting me ride
along and you're in that difficult. What we lovingly called
(03:32):
in my house the arsenic hour that time before dinner
where no, you can't have another fruit box before dinner.
I'm trying to get these pork chops ready. I get it,
and I hope we're going to make this time a
little more comfortable for you as well. So stay with
us as we examine this cycle of dysfunction. Kerry Jones
is with us, and I just want to say how
much I appreciate somebody like Kerry who is willing to
(03:55):
be transparent. You know, we're all broken. We're all flawed.
We're all fractured. We're all imperfect. That whole idea that
God in his holiness, his magnificent holiness, would allow you
and me earthen vessels. Last time I checked, were cracked,
were fractured. We're not fine. Porcelain were earthen vessels. And
(04:17):
yet he allows us, these vessels, to carry this imperishable message. Now,
just stop and think about that for a minute. And
I thank you for the grace of 30s here before
we get into our conversation. We are allowed to share
with the world a message that has eternal ramifications. It
is quite literally the difference between life and death, heaven
(04:38):
and hell. And God looks at us in all of
our flaws and says, go and tell. I don't get
that math at all, but I am certainly humbled by it.
And I want to thank somebody like Kari, who comes
along and says, I am willing to tell you all
that I've gone through, all of the shame that I carry,
the sense of betrayal, the hurt that I've experienced in
(05:00):
my life. But I want to do it because I
want you to know about God's amazing grace and what
he can do in and through my life. Carrie, by
the way, has a wonderful career, has had a wonderful
career as a global project manager and an operations leader,
which means she understands people, she understands people skills, and
she knows how to lead. And leadership is all in
the final analysis about people. And she has written a
(05:22):
wonderful book called Jericho Unmasked An Entrapped Lesbian's Journey to Freedom. Carrie,
I have so been waiting for this conversation and you
have to talk. This is radio and people will see
this when they go to my website and they'll see
the cover of your book. But I love the cover.
It was not self-evident to me what it meant until
(05:43):
I started reading the book. Explain the cover. This is radio,
so paint on the canvas of our listeners minds.
S7 (05:49):
Well, first of all, um, the cover was done by, um,
someone who had also been in a terrible place. So
I call this the book of the Little People. But Jericho,
the story of Jericho and Rahab, when I read Joshua
six the first time, and the very first verse that
(06:11):
said the walls were so high no one could get
in and no one could get out. But yet God
saw Rahab inside a woman who was trapped, who probably
cried on her pillow daily because she knew the God
of Israel and had no hope. But then the idea
that on the outside of that wall, God had gathered marchers.
(06:36):
God had gathered marchers, and he saw Rahab, and she
was in there, and nobody knew her story. In fact,
the chapters that had been written for her were probably
deplorable ones. If someone had penned them out and the
spies didn't know. But God saw her, and those marchers
were gathered and they didn't. They marched in silence. They
(06:57):
didn't kick the wall. They didn't scream at the wall.
And they didn't even know how long they were going
to have to march or pray. But one day, can
you just imagine the day when Rahab heard those walls fall?
Can you just imagine the suddenly that happened when those
walls came down and those those soldiers went in? And
(07:21):
here's the other thing that that I just saw in
that scripture, and it's mentioned twice when they went and
got her, they didn't just grab her and her family.
They grabbed all that she had. They had to pack
her things because God was not going to pull her
out of that situation and leave her empty and destitute.
(07:43):
He was going to make sure that what he did
going forward, Rahab, would be filled up with him before
anything was displaced in her. And to me, this instantaneous
collapse of the walls with a woman who feared and
knew the God of Israel. I knew the God of Israel.
(08:03):
I knew the Word of God. The word never return void.
But I was trapped. And that's why I used the imagery,
because Jericho was probably a bustling city and everything looked fine.
But there was a woman in there who was not fine.
S1 (08:20):
Oh, I told you this was going to be a
good conversation, Carrie. What a wonderful way to set this
conversation up. Let me take a break and let me
go back to your walls, in your Jericho. And that
feeling of being trapped. And how, like Rahab, you knew
the God of Israel, and yet you somehow went on
a wrong road, as so many of us do. Carrie
Jones is with us. Her book is called Jericho Unmasked.
(08:42):
I've got a link to her website, and I've got
a link to the book as well at In the
Market with Janet Parshall. You know how this works. On
that front page, you get to the words that say
program details and audio. Clicking on takes you to the
information page. We'll go back to Jericho right after this.
(09:15):
Bible literacy is declining even among Christians. It's time for
us to cultivate Bible reading habits that will transform our faith.
That's why I've chosen the Jesus Book as this month's
truth Tool. Discover how to apply Scripture to our everyday
lives and to know its power. Ask for your copy
of the Jesus Book. When you give a gift of
any amount to in the market, call 87758. That's 877
(09:37):
58 or go online to. In the market with Janet Parshall.
Terry Jones is with us. She's the author of Jericho
Unmasked and I'll tell you the subtitle, which gives you
a little sneak peek into her story. An entrapped Lesbian's
Journey to freedom. But there's also much more than that. Kerri.
(10:00):
There's so many chapters to your life. Let me start
with your childhood, if I can. Tell me about growing up,
how you came to faith in Christ and when sexual
abuse arrived.
S7 (10:11):
Well, I was born in Southern California, and my mother,
shortly after my I was born. Received the Lord in
a powerful way. And she knew from that point forward
that her mission with this child that she now held
was to point that child to Christ. And from that
(10:32):
day she held me with an open hand, knowing that
God loved me more than she ever could. And unfortunately,
in my growing up, I had a father who struggled
also with his sexual identity, which I didn't find out
until years later. And so the marriage in the home was, um,
(10:55):
not a real functioning one. And I had a grandmother
and I went to grandmother's house and I got considerable attention,
and I had a surrogate grandfather who unfortunately decided, um,
that he was going to steal from a young child
what is meant for marriage. And, um, I was sexually abused. However, um,
(11:17):
I also sat at grandmother's house and heard stories of
my own father's abuse and how she used to put
him in dresses. And I was under five years old,
and I was a great recorder of information and a
terrible interpreter. So all of this encased me in a very, very, um,
lonely world on top of it. My sister had come
along and I didn't really know to do what to
(11:39):
do with another person in the family sharing attention, and
my mother wasn't quite sure and psychology hadn't advanced. And so, um,
the doctor just said, well, she'll come back. And unfortunately
I never did. But I think I was also, um,
starting to be sealed up and and I actually started
to act out very miserably in kindergarten. I was I
(12:01):
was just a little devious tyrant, smart at it, but devious.
And one day I came home and I just said, um, mom,
I can't be good. It is impossible for me to
be good. And that's when she shared with me about
the power of Christ, and how she even shared me
at a young age. Without Christ, you're capable of anything
(12:22):
under the sun that is contrary to him. And I
and I just wanted to receive him. And I remember
it like it was yesterday. And I received him that night.
And I went to school the next day. And I
was different. Not because I tried to be different, but
because an incorruptible seed had landed inside of me. And
(12:44):
that incorruptible seed was not going to stop no matter what.
And I just want to say, through all the things,
God has never had to have a plan B in
my life. He had plan A from the start. You know,
I received the Lord and um, unfortunately, this, this abuse
and the encasement that I was experiencing kept me in
(13:08):
a very isolated world. And so as I got in,
you know, I was as I was in elementary school,
grades became, um, a huge marker of identity. And I
went through a lot of trying things with abusive teachers.
And I started biting my nails just like a feverish nut.
And my whole identity became grades. I didn't miss a
(13:30):
day of school other than childhood diseases. I had baby
liver every morning and vitamins, and I just marched in
time to get the best grades possible. But I just
felt awkward. I felt different because I thought about things.
I thought about meaning, and I just. I just felt awkward.
(13:51):
And when I got into junior high, it was even
more treacherous because now the opposite sex was coming on
the scene, and I really wasn't. Um, I can't say
that I wasn't interested because words like homosexuality and all
these things weren't even in the framework, so I didn't
know what was going on. I just knew that I was, um,
(14:14):
paralyzed and, um, in, you know, my day in junior high, the, the, the, uh,
contact with the opposite sex was a little more innocuous
than it is today. But then I landed in high school,
and I started to kind of get my groove on
and started to get the cute clothes and got rid
(14:36):
of the horn rimmed glasses and but still feeling very
paralyzed and also starting to be aware that, um, I
just craved, um, love from a female. And I don't
I don't blame anybody for that. In fact, I don't
blame anybody in my book, not my parents or anything,
(14:57):
because we don't come out with little handbooks that say,
here's how to raise a child. But because of the
isolation and because of the abuse and because of other
abuses that happened during high school. Um, you know, I
was just in a very silent and quiet world that
nobody knew. And, um, as a result, it really set
(15:22):
me up for the next, um, the next big thing.
And that's when, um, my, my mom had knew of
knew of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and she knew
that I was on a downward trajectory, even though we
were going to a number of churches. And I had
been going to church and, you know, hearing the word
(15:43):
in church, and I ended up in what was called
the local church. And I want to be careful because
a lot of people coin it as a cult, and
they're a cult like practices that that happened. But I
just want to be really cautious because there's people I
love that are still in it. And the word is preached.
It was just very, very extreme. But when I landed
(16:06):
in it, it was a very interesting process because I
showed up and all the brothers and they call them
brothers and sisters had the uniform of the local church.
And in walked me with my tan and my, um,
cute clothes. And I thought, wow, I can be something
in this place. And the people engaged me, and I
(16:29):
was invited to dinner and and all of a sudden
we were going there on a regular basis, and I
was going to my other youth group on Wednesdays and,
and then, um, going to this other place, and I
didn't realize what I was about to embark in.
S1 (16:47):
And what a place to stop. Kerry, let me pick
it up. By the way, just so you all don't
make this a confused idea in your mind, we're not
talking about attending your local church. Local church? Think LC.
This is the name of an organization of a group,
by the way. So I want to clarify that. So
you understand that Kerry's not talking about going to her
local church like you. And I would say we go
(17:07):
to our local church on Sunday. This is a group,
an organization with, as Kerry said, some cult like behaviors.
We've got so much more of her journey right after this.
(17:33):
We're visiting with Kerry Jones. She is the author of
Jericho Unmasked. She's traveled the globe, by the way, but
she's also traveled a road to redemption. So, Kerry, let
me go back to local church. Elsie, as you refer
to it in the book. And you said you didn't
realize what you were about to embark in, and it
was hyper legalistic. Can you just share a sentence or
(17:54):
two about environmentally, what it was like and why it
was so suffocating, for lack of a better word?
S7 (18:02):
Well, I liken it to this. Um, the requirements to
alter outward behavior were extreme. Uh, at one point, I
literally burned all of my possessions in a fire on
San Pedro beach. So the the requirement to outwardly conform
(18:25):
was extreme. And I have to say that there are
things that I gave up there that later on in
life the Lord asked me to give up. But when they.
But when that giving up comes from a place of
intimacy with God and comes from a place of being
constrained by the love of God because of experience with him.
(18:47):
The motivation is far different and there is no resentment
or tragedy. But this was so ahead of everything. It
was the it was the construct of a a remnant
walk and coming out and being separate from the world
that I didn't watch a TV, I didn't listen to radio,
I didn't read a paper, I didn't read a magazine.
(19:10):
I had no encounters with the opposite sex and worse.
You weren't allowed to have friends because that was foolish.
Even though I lived in a environment with a bunch
of girls and then a couple that were the elders
of the home, I was in church, um, five, five
nights a week, sometimes two and three hours at a time,
(19:33):
trainings three times a year. And I have to say, though,
there are far worse things than being force fed the
Word of God. I just want to clarify. I could
have been far worse off where I was headed because
I was seeking strong boundaries, because my identity struggle with
(19:53):
my sexuality had really come to the forefront of my mind.
And I knew how against God and His Word it was.
So in a way, I gravitated toward this encasement. But
I lost all sense of identity and deeply resented what
(20:14):
was happening. And I was in it for a good
eight years and also ended up getting married.
S1 (20:21):
In while you were in the LC. And by the way,
let me just pause for a minute so that our
friends can conceptualize why there was an attractiveness, and that is,
you're struggling to figure out where the boundaries are in
terms of how you define yourself. You have a sense
that God has already put some there, but you're not
quite sure where they fall. So these external boundaries through
this Elsie, are being placed around your life, and there
(20:43):
had to be a kind of false external security, while
at the same time an internal storm, because you still
didn't know who you were.
S7 (20:52):
Yeah, I was on a now. I was on an
island surrounded by water with no way back to the
life I had left. But it was all I had now.
And on top of it, they made me a star,
young person. Because I knew the ropes. I knew the rules.
(21:12):
I memorized the messages. So I was also preaching in
the services at 19, spitting back the word with all
the inflections and all the different mannerisms and everything. And
so I was I was somebody even in, in this group,
but I was nobody inside.
S8 (21:34):
Wow.
S1 (21:35):
Kind of emptiness said can hardly be imagined. So you
meet your husband and this is paradoxical because there's no
dating that's allowed. This 22 year old man walks in.
This is going to be your husband. Would you say,
looking back, that you really knew who he was in
a deep sense before you got married?
S7 (21:54):
Absolutely. The day he walked in, he was in a
French cut T-shirt, T-shirt and tight jeans and long hair
and just adorable and as gay as could be. I
knew exactly who he was.
S9 (22:09):
But but.
S7 (22:11):
Um. But the next time he showed up, he was
in the outfit of the brothers and had cut his hair,
and I barely recognized him. I thought, wow, that was quick. And, um,
but I knew he was safe, and I knew he
was kind. And I'd had a lot of proposals that,
thank goodness, in God's mercy, those did not occur. But, um,
(22:36):
so one day I just decided that marriage was the
next thing, even though I really wasn't interested. But it
was a kind of a way out of the sister's house. And, um,
so I went to the brothers and said, I'm interested.
And they went to him and he said, he's interested.
And three months later, there we were married. I think
(23:00):
we kissed one time.
S9 (23:02):
Wow. Wow.
S1 (23:04):
And before you were married, Carrie, he told you that
he had some gay experiences, that he had been engaged
to a woman before, but that fell apart after she
was diagnosed with cancer. So here you are. So our
friends don't miss this point, because I think it's crucial
to your story that you're struggling with your identity, who
you are in Christ, your sexual identity. And you've got
(23:26):
this very organized, hyper legalistic arrangement of how you're going
to marry Peter. He comes from a background where he's
been involved in gay sex as well. And the two
of you are going to start your life together. Wow.
And we're not even at the halfway point of this journey.
Carrie Jenks is with us. Her book is called Jericho Unmasked.
(23:47):
She has had a wonderful career as a global project
manager and an operation leader. She's traveled the world, she's
hiked and trekked and canoed and you name it. She's
an outdoor girl par excellence, but she's a girl who's
been in a journey with the Lord. That's the most
important thing. We'll continue that journey after this. Our team
(24:27):
of partial partners is growing, and I love communicating behind
the scenes with this special group of friends who are
devoted to giving a monthly gift in the market. Our
partial partners receive private emails direct from me on issues
we don't address on radio, and I even send a
weekly audio message straight from my heart to yours. Ready
to become a partial partner? Call 877 Janet 5877 Janet
(24:47):
58 or go to. In the market with Janet Parshall.
If you're just joining us, you've missed a fabulous first
half of this conversation, but I have good news for you.
You can download the podcast. Just go to In the
Market with Janet Parshall on the right left hand side.
Rather you're going to see the words past programs. Just
(25:09):
look for today's date. Click on it and you'll be
able to hear the entire broadcast at your convenience. Carrie
Jones is with us. She has had a marvelous career
as a global project manager and an operations leader. She
has traveled the world. She is a native of Southern California,
but now lives in the Buckeye state of Ohio. She's
the author of Jericho Unmasked, and I want to dive
(25:32):
right back into the story. In the book, Carrie, you
write this, you say, although he never talked about it. We.
This is you and Peter, your husband. At the time,
we intuitively knew the same sex attraction existed in each
of us. Therefore, our marriage relationship had an element of safety.
Years go by. 1991 happens and you give birth to
a little girl named Elizabeth. You decide that you're going
(25:53):
to start going to church, and the next two years
sound like they would have been just as Ozzie and
Harriet as can be. And then at the end of
that two year period, your world fell apart because Peter says,
I've met someone. He's a man. I can no longer
live a lie. What happens? What goes through your mind?
S7 (26:14):
Oh my heavens. I. Well, first of all, I thought
I'd been shot and just hadn't died. And, um, I
think the thing that was just, um, also really difficult
was the fact that I. And in deference to all
the people out there who want children, please do not
take this as any kind of insult. But because so
(26:37):
much of my freedom has been had been lost in
my youth, the last thing I wanted was a child.
And the Lord really showed up even though I wasn't
walking with him. His tether is strong. He showed up
and said, no, I want you to have a child.
So now, two years later, I'm faced with the prospect
of my husband leaving and single parenting and God and
(27:02):
I had the biggest fight on the planet for about
four hours. I screamed, I yelled, I threw pillows, I swore,
and he just grabbed me after for hours and said,
I've got this. And he gave me a very speedy
gift of forgiveness to Peter. But the problem was, now
(27:23):
that I was no longer married, it plummeted me into
back into my own struggle and I was going to
have to face it head on. So I went to Therapy, which,
if you read my book, didn't work out so well,
and I was betrayed by a therapist, and I even
went to some of the programs that I think are
(27:45):
wonderful Living Waters. Um, but it just wasn't, I guess,
God's time or I was he knew that my heart
was not willing and ready, and I would just lay
in my bed and just think I was going to
die if I did not have the affection of a female.
And so one day, I'll never forget it. I shook
(28:06):
my fist at God. Audience. No one did this to me.
Circumstances or circumstances. But the choices we make in relation
to those circumstances are what matters. And I made a choice,
and I shook my fist at God, and I said,
you are not big enough. You did not take this
(28:28):
to the cross. You are powerless over this. I know
what is going to make me happy, joyous and free.
You don't. God, I know what's best for me. You don't.
And I walked into my first gay bar. What a disaster.
Talk about encasing yourself inside of Jericho. And I lived.
(28:55):
That was the moment where I lived. Ezekiel 16, where
the shepherd had taken the baby out of the field
and grown her up to be his very own, and
dressed her with jewels and everything. And I got to
tell you, the second part of Ezekiel 16 is no
pretty picture. Because she sold everything she whored herself ended
(29:18):
up paying her own lovers. It is a travesty. And
that's exactly what happened to me. It was anything but happy,
joyous and free. And the enemy invested a lot in
the first six months to get me hooked on the
drug of each lover. And then the the real, the
(29:39):
real picture of darkness came forth and the misery came forth.
And I would lay in my bed and I would say, God,
will you do for me what I cannot do for myself.
And I know, Janet, that this was the groaning of
the Holy Spirit in my heart, because I belonged to Christ.
(30:00):
I was not hanging on to the tether. I was
not hanging on to that scarlet cord. But boy, he
had it wrapped around me and he was only going
to let it go so far. And he, in his kindness,
which encompasses his when it says his kindness leads to repentance.
That is not a wooly blanket, soft pillow, kindness. That
(30:23):
is a kindness that encompasses the greatest discipline of love
to bring us to the end of ourselves. And through
these relationships. That's exactly what God was doing, bringing me
to the most broken place. And I was feeding on
(30:45):
the mantra of the world system. I was feeding on
the water of the world system that this was going
to bring joy. And it brought damnation on my soul.
I became a miserable, dark human being, swore like a
truck driver was angry. Um. And it was horrible. And
(31:06):
then one day, God lifted me right out of Southern
California in a for a job offer. And I had
no idea why. And he even put it in my
heart to that. Ohio was a great place, which now
I think it is. But at the.
S9 (31:21):
Time, I was like, who would move to Ohio? And.
S7 (31:27):
I mean, you know who does that now? I can
be the poster child for how much I love Ohio, but, um. But.
S1 (31:34):
Well, let me stop you before you go to Ohio.
Let me go back because you're you're so open in
the book, as you talk about your relationship with various
women and what the Lord is doing in your life
through these various experiences. Again, this is why I consider
you so brave to be this boldly transparent, so that
we can walk with you on this journey out of Jericho.
And that's what you invite us to do. But I
(31:57):
want our friends to remember that you do know the Lord.
You know who he is. You know he is the Messiah.
You know he is the unblemished Lamb of God that
takes away the sins of the world. You. This is
not something you've yet to discover. This is something you
knew full well. You talked about knowing scripture and preaching
at 19 at the LC. Carrie, I cannot begin to
imagine the Cat five spiritual hurricane that must have been
(32:20):
going on inside your heart. You're desperate to be affirmed
and valued and loved. You're searching for significance. You're hungry
for identity. And yet there's this truth that keeps wrapping
itself around you. Ultimately protective. Although at the time, at
the moment, there had to be times when you thought
it strangling. It's not protective, it's not warm. It's. It's
(32:41):
in fact suffocating. How did you put one foot in
front of the other during all of those chapters of
your life? Because you had to be anything but at
peace and at rest?
S7 (32:54):
Well, I, um, shut God out. I certainly didn't pick
up my Bible at all because that was convicting. But
I also prayed and begged that he would not return.
Because I knew I wasn't ready and I would cry
and ask him. I said, Will you please? Will you
(33:16):
please not return? I don't want to spend a thousand
years apart from you, because that was a mantra in
the church, because this is hell on earth. But yet
I kept thinking and I kept buying the lie that
the next partner might improve things and even pick someone
with daughters. I thought, well, that'll do it. Another mother and, um,
(33:40):
I just, um. And then the the other strange part
was I really wanted all these people to find Jesus,
which is very ironic. And so we started going to, um, a, um,
quote unquote gay Christian church, which I think is just
(34:01):
to put those two words in the same sentence, I
have to tell you is diabolical, because if we truly
are believers and in Christ, we cannot have a dual identity,
and certainly certainly not an identity where the cross is
the most the height, highest example of humility next to
(34:26):
a pride flag that in its own name is contrary
to the cross of Christ. This is a deception. It's
a repackaging that is false. And we are to know
no man after the flesh or after self when we
come to Christ. So this term never set well with
(34:46):
me and I, I, I, I rarely even use the phraseology.
And I was uncomfortable and my mother never told people
I was gay. She said my daughter is struggling. That
is far different because she knew my identity in Christ
from that five and a half years old. So I
(35:08):
walked in these places and I couldn't reconcile it. We
sang the songs. I heard people talking, and, you know,
these were not people that were even leading celibate lives.
But even there, we lifted up celibacy to be something,
you know, heterosexual people are called to the celibacy. Celibacy
is not the be all and end all. It's what
(35:30):
sits in our heart as identity.
S8 (35:34):
Wow.
S1 (35:35):
When we come back, I want to talk about how
you found freedom. How God lifted you out, moved you,
physically moved you from Southern California to Ohio. But far
more importantly, after spiritual shock, you discover real freedom in Christ.
Jericho unmasks. That's the book by Cory Giants. You can
learn more at In the Market with Janet parshall.org. Scroll
(35:59):
down to the red box with the white letters. It
says Program Details and Audio clicking on. And you're going
to be able to see the book we're discussing. And
also you can go to her website as well. So
much more in the book. Even that one hour affords
us back after this. When Kerry Jones wasn't working for
(36:28):
Goodrich or Pacific Scientific Energetic Materials or Safran, you could
find her cycling in Europe, trekking in the Andes or
kayaking in Alaska. But it is her journey toward healing
and recognizing who's she is and seeing herself through her
father's eyes. That's the most interesting. She writes about it
(36:49):
in her book called Jericho Unmasked. So God picks you
up in this last segment. I really want to bore
down into this idea of how you found healing and
identity and real redemption, how that scarlet cord saved you,
and now it becomes a lifeline. So you're physically picked
up and you're moved to Ohio. How do you finally
get out of this situation, which is cyclical, which you've
(37:12):
tried all these things to fill this hole in your
heart and nothing's worked. How does this breakthrough take place?
S7 (37:20):
Well, first of all, I landed in a very Bible believing,
non-denominational church and you'll have to read the book to
find out how. But the pastor looked exactly like my father.
Spittin image. And in September of oh nine, he got
up and he shared a word naming homosexuality as sexual deviance.
And one would have thought that I would have just
(37:42):
gotten madder than a wet hen. But I sat there
and I saw the father I had always wanted, telling
me the truth, because I had never had conversations with
my father. And I went and I met him and
he said, I want to be your friend. This is
not God's best, but keep coming back. And I checked
(38:04):
all the stones around my walls of Jericho and everything
felt intact. And I went home. And the next two months,
God stopped talking. And my world went darker than it
ever had. You see, God knew that rejection would get
me because I had always sort of heard him and
I knew he was there. But now his presence, his voice,
(38:26):
everything went completely quiet. And I looked in the mirror
and I said, I hate you. Meaning myself. I hate
what you've become. And it felt like death was taking over.
And finally, on November 23rd. This is so exciting. I
just get delirious when I talk about this. Finally, on
November 23rd, 2009, I went in my office at home
(38:52):
and I sat down on the couch and I said, God,
if you have something to say, I'm listening. And I
picked the dusty Bible up off the shelf. And I
do what you're never supposed to do. And that's point
and hope. But I landed on Luke three and it said,
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
and I've come to make the crooked paths straight. Now, listener,
(39:15):
do not take that word literally. I'll loop back. But
I sat there and it was like a bomb went off.
It was. It was as if this DNA thread that
had woven itself through my entire being. Because whether we're
born this way or not is mute. God calls us
(39:37):
to be in Christ and a new creation and to
be transformed by him. So this thing that had just
woven itself through my being, he had been sowing alongside
from the time I was five and a half. And
he says, you don't need this anymore. And he displaced
it with himself. And I cannot even describe to you
(40:00):
from one minute to the next that I was utterly
and constitutionally altered. I was not the same. And I
sat there and I went to bed, and he watered
with grace that those seeds that had just happened. And
I woke up the next day. Nothing looked familiar. And
(40:21):
I was just like, what is this? And people have
been praying for me. I had dear, a dear mentor
who'd been praying for me, and they'd just been marching
around the walls and adjoined my mother. After 25 years
to march. And the walls had come down. And I went.
I left my partner that night and said, God told
(40:43):
me I can't do this anymore. And I ran to
the church and met the mentor and another choir person,
and I said, I don't know what's happened to me,
but I'm changed. And from that moment forward, I never
looked back. And then it was a situation of where
I was surrounded by wonderful, God fearing, believing friends who
(41:05):
knew the word. And I could just say, thus saith
my friends, and pick up the Bible and have my
pill for the day. But, Janet, there was a problem,
and my book would not be complete if it had
stopped with just being healed from homosexuality, because identity is
what God is after. And I was still in a
(41:25):
horizontal place, tagging on to my friends, and I was
still horizontally drawing my identity from them, although a much
better one. And then one day, God took away some
of those people and I was crushed. I was to
the floor, I was devastated. How could you do this?
(41:47):
And he started to show me that he wanted all
of me. He wanted identity alignment in him that was vertical,
not horizontal. He wanted me to get in the word daily.
So I started. I started reading my Bible. Not for
a pill for the day, but reading my Bible. I
(42:08):
started developing intimacy with him. I cried before him. I
got so close to his word I could feel his breath.
And as a result of that, he started changing my thinking.
He started transforming all the other aspects that were liberal.
(42:29):
He also made me extremely clear on this subject that
it is sin, bar none. It is against God's will.
It's a direct affront to Christ in the church and
any minister, any minister who compromises on this subject and
tells you otherwise is healing the wound of the people,
(42:51):
superficially saying, peace, peace, but there will be no peace.
You are sending people straight to hell if you lie.
If you lie about this and thank God my minister
didn't lie to me. He told me the truth. And
as a result, I was redeemed and restored. And I'm
(43:11):
still finding identity in Christ every day. But let me
tell you, Janet, I go to the word now myself
because it's a word of God that is living and operative.
It's the Word of God that divides what doesn't belong.
It's the Word of God that discerns rightly the truth.
It's in the stillness that wisdom comes.
S5 (43:33):
Wow.
S1 (43:34):
Oh, Kerry, what an amazing testimony. And again, there's so
much more in the book, but I thank you for
allowing us the gift of one hour of your time
to walk along you, along with you for a little while,
as we understand what it's like to have the walls
come down around Jericho as they did in your life,
and if they can, in yours. Anyone listening who feels
(43:54):
themselves trapped in their own circumstances, has no sense of
their own identity, has let the world offer some comfort
rather than the word fill the hole in the heart.
You've encouraged them this hour. So from the bottom of
my heart, I thank you. You can learn more about
Jericho Unmasked at our website. Thank you Carrie. Thank you friends.
(44:14):
We'll see you next time.
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