Pulse Nightclub Shooting Survivor Has an Amazing Story of Transformation

This is a sensitive subject, and there are those who will hear this story and be full of skepticism.

Some will greet the testimony of Luis Javier Ruiz with scorn and anger. He’s setting a sacred cow on a funeral pyre and the scent of his new found freedom is not acceptable to a large segment of society.

He made a choice to save his life.

On June 12, 2016 the city of Orlando, Florida was the scene of what would become the deadliest incident of violence against the LGBT community in our nation’s history.

On that evening, Pulse, a gay nightclub, was hosting Latin Night, in celebration of the Latino LGBT community. At around 2 a.m., last call for drinks, Omar Mateen entered the club and began shooting.

Mateen made several calls to 9-1-1 and a local news station, claiming he was acting on behalf of ISIS, and several survivors say he claimed his actions were in retaliation for American bombings of Syria and Iraq.

When it was over, 50 people were dead, including Mateen, who died in a shoot-out with law enforcement. The injured numbered 53.

Luis Javier Ruiz was one of the survivors of that horrific night. For him, it was a transformative experience. It shook him awake, and it set him on a path to change.

Ruiz spoke in an interview with “GPS: God. People. Stories,” a broadcast from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association last week about the trauma, and how he has been drawn out of the homosexual life into someone renewed and revived by the Holy Spirit.

This is where the angry, rankled wailings begin from the fringe of the leftwing. The idea that one “got away” is unbearable. That’s mainly because they don’t want people to know that change is possible. They speak tolerance, but have a real problem with tolerating those who don’t choose to follow their path.

Bring it on.

Ruiz explains that he has struggled with his sexuality since he was a child. He grew up in the church, so he had that foundation, but at the time, the church was not handling the issue of homosexuality with a lot of grace.

To be fair, it’s an uncomfortable issue that they still fail to engage, in great part.

Near the end of high school, Ruiz, now in his 30s, finally broke down and “came out” to his parents.

On his mom’s birthday, they were listening to a radio program where someone was railing against homosexuals in an abusive manner complete with charges of “they’re going to hell” and ‘they’re an abomination.”

“It was bad,” Ruiz recalled the experience, “and we got into an argument about it … and I just ended it with ‘Mom, you know what? Your son is gay. How about that?”

It’s news that shook the family and the relationship suffered because of it.

He entered the military after high school and served 15 years as a closeted gay man.

“Basically they saw this one guy in the army, and at night I would go out to the gay clubs and go hang out and party and live my life the best way I knew how without God,” Ruiz said.

After leaving the military, he continued to try and live a double life. He even joined a church and did an internship, but his life was far from Biblically correct. At night, he was an active member of the Orlando gay scene.

He accompanied friends to Pulse on the night of June 11, 2016, and in the early morning hours, in the thick of the crowd and darkness of the club, he heard what he thought was firecrackers.

“I hear this guy, yelling ‘Run for your life! Run for your life, get out of the club!'” he said.

“While this is all going on, I’m thinking ‘I’m about to die, I’m about to go to Hell. Like, why did I even come [to Pulse],'” Ruiz said of that night.

He managed to get out of the club and kicked a gate open, but the crowd rushing out trampled him underfoot and he sustained injuries that required a trip to the hospital. From there, he watched the horror of the night unfold in news coverage. He heard the names of his dead friends.

“I was sick, depressed and hurting for a long time,” he recounted.

He had good reason. The shooting, at the time the largest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, was just part of the story.

Days later, he received an email telling him that many of those who were killed that night were HIV-positive, and that he was advised to be tested, himself.

He got the test, and indeed, found that he was also HIV-positive.

How much can one person be expected to carry?

“It’s either you submit and surrender yourself to Me or it’s just going to get worse after this,” Ruiz recalled the Holy Spirit speaking to him.

“We have a real enemy,” he said, “who doesn’t want us to get free from anything.”

Preach.

God was working on Ruiz in his pain. While in bed one day, he cried out and asked that his burdens be taken. He asked that if the God of the Bible was truly there, that he take it all.

For so many, that is the first step in the journey of faith. You go with nothing. You give it to God and go.

“I even said: ‘I’m gay, God. This is how you’re taking me. Take me as I am. I don’t know if you’re supposed to take this away from me or not. I’ve tried this many times.’ And in the midst of all that, automatically, things started falling off of my life.”

“I gave Him my gayness. I gave him my pornography addictions, everything,” he said.

He sensed the Holy Spirit prompt him: “How about you give me you.”

“It’s not a gay to straight thing. Just give [Him] your heart,” Ruiz said.

For Ruiz, it’s not about changing your sexuality. He stresses that that’s the wrong focus. There’s something more, and it’s rooted in self-control and holiness.

“God calls us to purity because homosexuality is a sin,” he stressed, emphasizing the importance of knowing Christ intimately and following His heart; such is the key to real transformation, he explained.

Does that mean the homosexual community is out of reach of God’s love?

No. No one is. The act is sinful, but God is a heart reader, and if someone loves their God more than they love their sexuality, redemption is possible.

We’re all called to deny our flesh and cling to the cross, whether we’re homosexual or heterosexual.

Homosexuality is another stumbling block of sin, no different than any other, but God loved us before we committed that first sin and made a way for us.

Ruiz is now living his life in ministry, working to build bridges between the church community and the LGBT community. He’s working to show the church out to reach out in love, and to the LGBT community, he ministers, telling them they can let go. Transformation is possible.

“We’re no longer silent,” he said of the community he has found of young men and women who have left lesbianism, homosexuality, and transgenderism behind and who are at present putting on Freedom Marches and doing ministry around the country.

“We are free. We are free in Jesus. Yes, you can come out of homosexuality. You can be free from porn addiction. From anything.”

And nobody is claiming it is easy. Only that it is possible.

Ruiz is now looking at his escape from Pulse as God’s intervention and plan for his life.

“God had something else for me. And I’m thankful because now I’m able to share my story of hope, my story to the world, to let them know that there is God who changes [people] and who transforms.”

“I tell people: I was ‘born that way’ too. I was born a jerk, I was born a liar. You know what? We must be born again. The Bible says we must be born again. If there is sin, God is going to walk you through it, in His timing and His process.”

Amen.