What is authentic manhood? I can only answer that question by recalling the journey I embarked on from being a raging faggot to being a man of God.

I am now 60 years old; but for the four decades of my checkered life, I was proudly, rabidly, flambouyantly gay. For me then, that was the only way to live. So clueless I was at that time about the evils that my actively gay lifestyle actually wrought on the world in which I lived. I thought that being gay was just that – being gay, which meant being happy.

The pursuit of happiness was the chief purpose of my life then. And I thought I was a success. In my career, I was the creative director of several top-rating TV shows and I even became a showbiz talk-show host. In my love life, I enjoyed the juiciest flesh around and conditioned my mind to believe I loved them and they loved me back.

Back then, sex was a commodity that didn’t run out. Every weekend, I’d hie off to some nearby province to taste the native delicacies. At one point, I participated in an orgy with 16 young teens I called boylets. I remember also having had sexual relations one at a time with the six brothers of my boyfriend then. At another time I went to bed with two brothers pimped to me by their own father.

Each time I look back on those days, I cringe – both at the enormity of my transgressions and at how totally unaware I was then of how much I was offending God.

All I thought was that I was just having a good time. Besides, I rationalized, the boys whose innocence I purloined badly needed the money I gave them – I was simply sharing with them the blessings of my material prosperity!

Everything changed when that prosperity I believed was there forever began to dissipate. There was no earthquake but my world tumbled down. It just happened that, one day, I found myself without a job, without money, without my boy toys, without friends. And what did I have lots of? Debts. A humongous mountain of debts. I was a hapless victim of the check-rediscounting monster that rapaciously ravaged many showbiz personalities then.

A telephone ringing sent shivers of fear up and down my spine because creditors harangued and harassed me even at the unholiest hours. There was one time I hid inside my bedroom closet, shedding quiet tears, as a loan collector abused my doorbell.

I began to turn to God – not even because I believed He could save me but simply because there was really nowhere and no one to turn to anymore.

I had lost the appetite for going home even when the work of the day had long been done. For one, my home was a living hell. For another, I was deathly afraid of debt collectors waiting in ambush somewhere. And I discovered that the adoration chapel was the only place open during those murky, dark nights. I went there – at first, not really to pray but to rest my weary bones and even wearier heart.

Then, the adoration chapel became a place of solace. I learned to cry – no longer to myself and at the world that, I felt, had betrayed me; but to God!

This went on for several agonizing months. My phone was cut off. My electricity was disconnected. At that point, I knew with a clarity beyond any doubt why some people contemplated killing themselves. As for me, I don’t know if it was my Catholic childhood which prevented me from thinking about killing myself or I was just too much of a coward to say goodbye, cruel world.

Then, Couples for Christ (now Missionary Families of Christ) happened in my life. They wanted somebody to help put up a TV ministry. It was the start of a romance with the Lord that has continued to this day and for the rest of my days.
“In His Steps” was the title of the 30-minute TV show I did for the community. It was about the amazing stories of individual transformation of people from worldliness to a life with God. They weren’t the “I used to smoke three packs but now no more” type of stories but truly extraordinary tales of how the Almighty proves His might in the lives of those who allow Him to move in them.

A self-confessed gun-for-hire who first took a human life at 14 found Jesus behind prison bars. A top-ranking official of the Alex Boncayao Brigade who mouthed the communist ideology like Bro. Mike Velarde spewed bible verses. A junkie who could neither start nor end the day without shabu. A chronic philanderer who made life Calvary for his wife and children. They were just a few of the people we featured on the show, and how they forsook their past ways to follow the path of Christ and gain the fullness of God’s promise of prosperity and joy truly boggled my mind.

They all had several things in common that I also wanted to have – a ready smile that does not disappear as soon as you smile back; a humility that uses active silence as a potent weapon against the vexations of the world; an inner conviction to respond to a higher calling instead of to a baser instinct.
Slowly, I learned what it meant to have a personal relationship with God, what the gift of sexuality and authentic manhood really meant, and how repentance and faith go together as the twin towers standing outside the portals to a life of genuine freedom and happiness.

I began to desire God. As I hungered and thirsted for Him, I ate and drank of Him. And purely by grace, I saw the Lord!
Today, I have totally slain my homosexual demons. At the start of the journey with the Lord, the past would still revisit me once in a while but not anymore. I have since learned how to be liberated from them so they cannot enslave me anymore. I have a great God who empowers me with His strength to vanquish the temptations of the world and the Evil One.

I now have a wife and three children (Noel by adoption; Gian and JBen borne from the love I share with Joyce). Today, my heart throbs with the peace and joy that have been forged in the bosom of God’s love. Words are so puny and inadequate to even just approximate the profundity of the joyful bliss that now dwells in my heart.

And I now dedicate every breath I take, every waking moment, every toil of my life to glorifying my Lord!

So what is authentic manhood? It is knowing God, loving Him and proclaiming His glory to the ends of the earth.

#LiveLife #TrueGoodBeautiful #HumilityOverPride #FullnessofLife