Jackie Hill Perry responds to ‘pride month’ debate: ‘Satan is always doing something, but God is doing more’

Jackie Hlil Perry issued the reminder that “Satan is always doing something, but God is always doing more” and encouraged Christians to share the Gospel despite criticism or mockery after social media users wished her a "Happy Pride Month" and reignited debate about her story.

Perry, a Bible teacher, poet, hip hop artist and bestselling author of Gay Girl, Good God, who has frequently shared her testimony of embracing a biblical sexual ethic after previously identifying as gay, addressed the issue in a recent Instagram video.

“There's this stuff happening on threads [during] pride month, where a young lady … was like, ‘Happy Pride Month, Jackie Hill Perry,’” she said.

“There's all this discourse about my testimony, my story, if I'm gay, how I dress, stuff like that,” the 36-year-old mother of four continued. “Satan is always doing something, but God is always doing more. When stuff like that happens, because it's so random to me that it makes me say, ‘OK, God, what are you up to? What are you trying to do?’ because God is always, always, always able to turn what was meant for evil into good.”

"When I saw the post, I immediately started praying," she said, explaining that she prayed God would use the conversation to draw people to Himself and transform lives.

Perry, who hosts the “With the Perrys” podcast with her husband, Preston, emphasized that Christians facing opposition for their faith should resist the urge to defend themselves and instead proclaim the Gospel.

"I am not going to defend myself, I'm going to communicate the Gospel," she said. "Even when you read Paul, when you read Peter, when you read what Jesus was doing, they always responded to stuff with the truth about who God is."

Addressing criticism of her testimony, Perry said the central message of Christianity is that God saves sinners and transforms lives and pointed out that humanity's sinful nature affects both actions and desires. God, she said, calls believers to surrender all idols, including sexual identity and other attachments.

"The fact that we are all born after Adam means we're born to sin," Perry said. "Being born in sin doesn't just affect what we do, it affects how we feel."

Perry emphasized that while becoming a Christian does not eliminate temptation or struggle, she believes God changes a person's heart and affections.

"When God saves, he changes the heart, he changes the desires," she said. "That doesn't necessarily mean that he removes temptations, but what it means is when you are saved, you are given a greater love and affection and a desire for God that then trumps all the other things that you used to love."

She also criticized what she described as the church's failure to clearly communicate the Gospel. Some Christians, she said, have focused too heavily on condemning behavior without adequately explaining the transformative power of faith in Christ.

"The Church has not communicated the good news accurately," Perry said, adding that the Gospel teaches that God makes people new while acknowledging they will continue to face struggles and temptations.

"Don't defend yourselves, preach the Gospel," she said. "Always be curious about what God is up to, and intercede for the people that may not understand."

In her 2018 book, Perry shared how she once believed that if she "could just be straight," "God would accept me and call me His own."

Referring to it as a "delusion," she speculated that such thinking explained why "salvation has eluded many same-sex attracted men and women."

"You will hear them say how they've sought God's help in this manner. They have asked Him to make them straight, and He has, according to them, denied them access to the miraculous," she wrote in her book.

"The error is this: they have come to God believing that only a fraction of themselves need saving. They have therefore neglected to acknowledge the rest of them also needs to be made right."

Perry says she was attracted to women "before I knew how to spell my name." She grew up in a fatherless household and was molested by a male teenage relative as a child, consequently viewing men as "incapable of loving" and "unsafe."

After years of living a promiscuous lifestyle as a lesbian, she was led by the Holy Spirit to repentance and gave her life to Christ at age 19.

Though she ended up marrying a man, she makes it clear in her book that marriage didn't "prove" that she changed. Rather, "the fruit of the Spirit did." 

"Preston and I were brought together not so that we could become the standard of what is to become of all gay girls and boys turned believers," she wrote. "We were brought together for the primary reason of pointing to the mystery of God's gospel."

In a 2025 interview with The Christian Post, Perry shared how the song “Pride & Prejudice” on her latest album Blameless was written after enduring what she called “public slander” that tested her resolve.

“I was taking my cues from Peter, when Jesus was reviled, He didn’t revile in return,” she said. “The Lord told me to be quiet, to trust Him. But that makes the pain harder. 'Pride & Prejudice' was my way of not being quiet, to process what happened honestly.”

“It’s pride, because there’s some ego in there. But it’s also prejudice, the assumptions people make and then sanctify as truth. Writing it reminded me that I’m complex, and so is everyone else.”