Ten years ago I decided to let go of self and invite Jesus to be in control.
How is your life different because of Jesus? Is He King? Have you contemplated your destiny? How does it end?
This morning I prepared a warm bath, put on some Christian music and began to soak and pray. It’s a routine I often enjoy indulging.
As I enjoyed the warmth, relaxation, and time reflecting with Jesus, something important streamed into my thoughts. Exactly ten years ago, this very Sabbath in June 2019, I gave my life back to Jesus.
My life hasn’t been perfect since that day, but I praise Jesus, He has paid my ransom.
For forty years, I lived in the depths of LGBT+ culture. So how come I’m not campaigning for Jesus according to how I “feel?” Well, I would be, except for God’s Word. His love letter doesn’t make a case for my “feelings.” His Word is sovereign. I’m pretty well aware of the revisionists, hermeneutics, how translations of the Bible are in question about homosexuality, etc.
Why would I leave a life that complimented my natural attractions? Because I lived it, and for me, it didn’t provide the joy and peace I had desperately searched for for the better part of my life.
Satan is very capable of making people happy. But he cannot give the perfect, life-sustaining peace and promise that Jesus offers.
I don’t have many fond memories of my childhood. I was different. I was unwanted by my birth mother for having been a boy. She only wanted girls. I was two and a half years old when, as a result of prayer, my Aunt Virginia and Uncle Fred adopted me.
My birth mother’s mental and physical abuse had life-altering, negative, and damaging effects. Satan begins very early in life, imprinting his methods on us in hopes of making us life long subjects. I praise Jesus that He never gives up in seeking to reach us with His “love in truth.” “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4.
Until I was eighteen years old, I was certain that God had made a mistake in assigning me the male gender. It wasn’t until in recent years I recognized that due to the mental and physical damage my birth mother had done to me, my life was shaped by the girl she had wanted me to be. If only I had been that “girl,” she would have loved me, right?
I remember hearing how a pastor whose son is gay, said that his boy grew up in a perfect home and that my life and those of my colleagues had been broken, and that’s why we were gay. His son was just somehow meant to be the way he is. He and his wife had spent thousands trying to make their boy “straight.” A pastor… A pastor who should know that Jesus wants our heart and that we are not redeemed through a performance of sex in the way He intended. Truth be known, we are all broken, regardless of the cause. The damage of “conversion” and “reparative” therapy has distanced many potential heart conversions.
Sadly, and perhaps to some degree of ignorance, LGBT+ activism has lumped any method resulting in living sexually pure, as “conversion therapy.” Today, they seek to make it a criminal offense to speak of redemption for LGBT+ people from the pulpit. In their advancements of celebrating “freedom of speech,” in which this country prides itself, they seek to silence anyone with a different opinion.
I recall routinely attending church and upholding God’s truth and living by the rules our schools and churches taught. There was no personalization of the gospel. There was much talk about sin, but not any talk about temptations and what to do with them. And absolutely no talk about “same-sex attraction.” That was just plain sick!!!!
Yup… it’s sick. So are a host of other sinful temptations that somehow gathered layers of whitewash over the years.
I sometimes wonder about the many many lives that left the church in shame, many to end up dying from AIDS just a few years later. What if we had been teaching how sin exacerbates itself in various ways that are in contrast to God’s perfect, original plan? What if we had learned how to deal with temptation and to identify Satan’s lies early on? Why did the church stick its head in the sand?
Why is the church still sticking its head in the sand?
At eighteen, I was working for Loma Linda University, once considered to be a beacon of light stemming from our Biblical beliefs. I was a Unit Secretary on 5100. A unit largely populated by the patients of a popular Internal Medicine doctor.
A very flamboyant orderly frequented our unit and always saying something that would have me in stitches. He had me call his roommate, who would become a dear friend and who introduced me to the gay culture. He was an Adventist who attended LaSierra College. He convinced me that “Adventists breed homosexuality.” I know! A BOLD statement! His logic was this. The church condemned homosexuality but failed to provide any solutions to those challenged. Thousands suffering with same-sex attraction were lured by a community that welcomed them and gave them a false sense of purpose and meaning.
In contrast, it would appear today that many in the church condone homosexuality, sometimes adding… “We’re all sinners.” As though there is no way out. Sadly, the silence on redemption is still deafening. We should be uplifting ANYONE in the struggle and confirming God’s great value, purpose, and healing.
Instead, there are many uneducated voices on the topic, bellowing loudly, just to be heard, without securing a teaching foundation from God’s Word and divine guide to us. This must pain Jesus immensely.
Instead of groups forming on campuses with compassionate shouts of victory and overcoming through Jesus, we have straight/gay alliances with administrative support preserving “sexual identity” and “sexual orientation.” True hope exists in our identity and orientation in Jesus. How in the name of Christianity is this possible?” How can God’s leaders lead compromised souls down a road that leads to destruction… IN THE NAME OF JESUS? Mind-boggling.
The prescribed, endorsed solution today is to be silent about Jesus and learn the language of the culture. Celebrate the one struggling and their “feelings” instead prescribing God’s solution of transformation through Him and learning to live in agreement with Him. If we are ministering to those “seeking” Jesus, why would we hide Him? If a person is already identifying as “Christian,” wouldn’t we celebrate Jesus and all that HE offers?
The goal is not to become “heterosexual,” but to fall in love with Jesus. Let Jesus administer the outcome that is always in agreement with His Word. Shower struggling lives with love, kindness, and compassion, but don’t hide Jesus. Don’t compromise HIS truth. I humbly pray each day that God redirects His erring.
In contrast to my childhood pain and the absence of any demonstrated help from the church, I dove into the gay community with all fours. I longed to fit in. The gay culture of the seventies and eighties involved mass amounts of drugs, drinking, and promiscuous sex. Today, LGBT+ activism plays down these elements, and perhaps Satan has drawn back his obvious hate of Christianity with blurred morality. He’s been HUGELY successful in campaigning for what comes natural, infecting and influencing leaders and pastors with empathy and sympathy that seeks to undue scripture. Exchanging truth with lies that have now become “truth.”
The church didn’t come and get me. It didn’t come and get my fellow “Redeemed.” God came and got us.
All the sex, drugs, alcohol, and relationships in the world cannot give me what Jesus promises. Praise Jesus for this!
If you’re a loved one or parent of someone identifying as LGBT+, exercise the privilege and power of prayer. God hears you. God hears every plea, every heart who longs for Him. Pray for the merits of the blood of Jesus over the one you long to experience Him. Believe in His promises.
“All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” John 6:37.
Every person alive today is an incredible, amazing masterpiece. However, we are subject to that which we allow to control us — that amazing and powerful gift of choice. Humility, surrender, and dying to self is crucial to every one of us in our walk with Jesus.
In March of 2009, I began to invite Jesus to bring me clarity and understanding. I asked Him to teach me. All of my gay friends had died. I asked Him to forgive me for being self-centered and for living in ways that were destroying whom He wanted me to be. He gave me a revelation. He brought conviction upon my heart. The antidote for homosexuality is in developing intimacy with Jesus. Trusting Him.
The forty years of prayers of my Christ-loving parents were about to pay off. Only a couple weeks before my baptism and rededication of my life to Jesus, my parents had approached their Sabbath School teacher asking if he knew any way for someone to come out of homosexuality. He tells me today that he didn’t have much hope, but knelt and prayed a faithless prayer with my parents.
The following week, I called my sweet mom and dad and told them I would be rebaptized on their sixty-seventh wedding anniversary.
My dear brothers and sisters, I read a testimony today that says; “Healing is always possible through Jesus Christ, but scars shape us and mold us into different people.”
We need not dive into the perils of darkness with which the enemy seduces.
Today, there is no perfection in me except as I accept Jesus moment by moment. Just as he tempted Jesus, Satan tempts me… having great knowledge of my past. He lives to reclaim me. But Jesus died for me, offering His blood to set me free.
The hope I share today is that as a body of believers claiming the blood and promises of Jesus, we will not let go of one another along this narrow path. Let us lift one another in prayer according to the gospel of Jesus. James 5:16. Put your arm around someone who is struggling on the path and give them that “Blessed Assurance.” Aid in redirecting their path from one of self-destruction, to one of eternity with the Giver of life.
Through Jesus, all things are possible. Philippians 4:13
Why Jesus? Because we overcome the enemy with the word of my testimony and the blood of my precious Savior. Revelation 12:11.