Official Blog For Author Fred Stoeker

I have just finished reading your book Tactics, and I really feel a need to contact you and to express my thanks and gratitude to you. My name’s Jon, and I’m 26-years-old and living in Florida.

I happened upon the book at Christmas time when I was looking for something completely different, and I happened to lay my hands on a copy of Tactics. After reading the blurb about the book, I decided that I had to buy it and read further. I now believe that finding your book was the very reason that I was in the shop in the first place, and that it was God’s will that I be there.

I have had some issues with porn in the past, but my major problem was masturbation. Prior to finding your book, I believe that God had told me to cut it out of my life, and I have managed that for prolonged periods over the past two years, the longest being six months. However, there always seemed to be a reason to lapse and I found it easy to do so, since I didn’t have any real accountability.

Tactics has really helped me to understand the battlefield surrounding purity much better, and I now feel much more equipped to win this battle.

My largest issue in the purity battlefield, however, has always been my sexual orientation, and it was this aspect of my personal battle that encouraged me to read your book the most. During my teenage years, I came to the conclusion that I was gay, and this obviously was difficult to reconcile with my faith and eventually led to me to fall away from church. A few years later I was invited to church by a friend and jumped at the chance to rediscover some aspects of my faith.

From this point, a long journey with God followed, and it was on this journey that I finally stopped being stubborn and started to listen to Him about His feelings on homosexuality. Only a couple of months before finding Tactics, I made the decision to follow God fully and ask him to heal my broken sexuality. Although I realize that your writing is mainly aimed at heterosexual men, the revelations within your book about intimacy, the acceptance of men and our identity in God all rang very true with me, and I really believe that God spoke very clearly to me about some of the wounds in my past that caused me to become gay. (In fact I believe that my broken sexuality has the same root cause as heterosexual men, but it has simply been manifested in a different way.)

I am obviously still very much in the battle to resolve this and your book is only the beginning, but it has really given me a solid foundation for my healing and journey with God in this area. I found your writing packed with the wisdom of God, revelation and common sense. It has been the most enlightening read in relation to my sexuality and my sexual behavior and has really allowed me to have an insight into God’s will at an even greater level. So much literature relating to faith and sexuality (especially homosexuality) is unsecure and I am so pleased to have found some words of knowledge which ring so true with the voice of God.

I guess I just wanted to say thanks, not only for your writing, but also for taking a stand in the battle in the first place. Without your work and testimony it would be so much more difficult for me and a lot of other guys. Your writing is truly inspirational.

I continue to work with God on my healing and pray continually for a wife in the future. Thanks to Tactics, I’m a lot more confident that this is possible.

What is godliness? Put simply, its thinking like God thinks and acting like it. Some call “godliness” confining and much too hard to live by, but godliness is normal behavior for the child of God. Virtues like sexual purity, kindness and self-discipline may not be common around us, even in church, but they are still our standard of normal. You see, God doesn’t measure “normal” in relation to the world. He measures it in relation to the Word, using words like sin, which means “missing the mark.” When we sin, what mark are we missing? The mark set by Jesus. He’s the Word in the flesh, so He’s our mark, and God speaks along these lines when defining normal behavior: Jesus is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He is the most normal person ever to walk the planet. Are you walking normally like My Son, Jesus?” You should be, as His grace “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” (Titus 2:12) So train yourself to be godly. It holds great promise for your present life. (1 Timothy 4:7-8)