Oct 7, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
Mike Allen could feel the increasing hostility in American culture getting to him. It was on the news, of course, but also out in the world, at work, everywhere. And his past was full of conflict and…
The place that I was going to, and I'm not gonna say where it was, um, but, um, they, for whatever reason, s- uh, tried to, um, take the, I guess the process of determining whether or not you have a spiritual gift and kind of make it, um, something like you could just kinda go down a checklist, and if you've had this thing happen to you, then you have this gift, and you had ...
For instance, if you touch someone and they were suddenly healed, then you have the gift of healing.
Or if you, if you hear voices that tell you things, then maybe you have the voice of, I don't know, prophecy or whatever, um, et cetera.
And so they asked you questions like, "Did you ever hear the sound of God talking to you in your ear?" And I'm like, "What? No." [laughs] You know? "Have you ever healed someone spontaneously?" "Nuh-uh." And everything on my list was no.
[laughs] So they went, "Well, you must not have any gifts." [laughs] Um, and as funny as that was, it broke my heart.
I had to pull the car over and just have a good cry, uh, 'cause I felt so abandoned and alone.
[gentle music] I had been trying so hard to, to have faith and hope that it would cure me of being gay.
Um, and, uh, because of that I just felt like a bad person in general, and, and I was wrestling with so many things at the time, and, and some of them I didn't even have the language for it just yet.
Um, so of course I, you, I desperately wanted this to work, and it, it just couldn't.
The place that I was going to, and I'm not gonna say where it was, um, but, um, they, for whatever reason, s- uh, tried to, um, take the, I guess the process of determining whether or not you have a spiritual gift and kind of make it, um, something like you could just kinda go down a checklist, and if you've had this thing happen to you, then you have this gift, and you had ...
For instance, if you touch someone and they were suddenly healed, then you have the gift of healing.
Or if you, if you hear voices that tell you things, then maybe you have the voice of, I don't know, prophecy or whatever, um, et cetera.
And so they asked you questions like, "Did you ever hear the sound of God talking to you in your ear?" And I'm like, "What? No." [laughs] You know? "Have you ever healed someone spontaneously?" "Nuh-uh." And everything on my list was no.
[laughs] So they went, "Well, you must not have any gifts." [laughs] Um, and as funny as that was, it broke my heart.
I had to pull the car over and just have a good cry, uh, 'cause I felt so abandoned and alone.
[gentle music] I had been trying so hard to, to have faith and hope that it would cure me of being gay.
Um, and, uh, because of that I just felt like a bad person in general, and, and I was wrestling with so many things at the time, and, and some of them I didn't even have the language for it just yet.
Um, so of course I, you, I desperately wanted this to work, and it, it just couldn't.
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