Posted on 06/09/2016 11:04:14 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Recently I came across the photo on the left and did a double take. The girl in that photo, with her hollow eyes and hopeless heart, no longer bears any resemblance to me. She was dead in her sin (Eph. 2:1). (To be clear, I am not saying everyone who looks like the girl on the left is dead in sin, or that everyone who looks like the girl on the right is not. Spiritual reality runs far deeper.)
I was always the type to push boundaries. Even as a child, I never really had a moderate pace. I tried everything once but most things at least twice for my own curiosity. Growing up in a small town, there wasn’t much to do, and I acted out often. In high school, I met my need for attention by constantly “going against the grain,” but in a way that maintained my popularity. I partied, slept around, and by 15 I came out as a lesbian to some friends.
By the time I was a young adult, I fully embraced the LGBT label. I cut my hair short, wore boy clothes, and used men’s bathrooms and dressing rooms. I enjoyed the thrill of doing and being what was outside the norm—trying harder drugs, exploring even more taboo sexual acts, and getting a couple of regrettable tattoos.
By 22, I had settled down a little. Shock value, though still something I enjoyed, was a lower priority. While still smoking weed and having sex with women, I maintained an outward appearance of morality. I considered myself a good person; I worked full-time, loved my friends, and usually balanced my budget. Family relationships were improving, and I was finally attempting to lead a relatively respectable life.
In March 2014, a group of coworkers started a Bible study and invited me to join. Because my aunt was part of the group, I agreed to participate. I actually considered myself a Christian at that point, though I had no desire to read God’s Word, let alone conform my life to his will. I told myself that at the first mention of my “lifestyle” I’d quit the study, and I felt pretty confident that moment would come.
The book we studied was on the attributes of God. For the first time I was confronted by the justice, holiness, and sovereignty of God. The more I read and understood, the bigger God became and the smaller I felt. I knew what the Bible said about homosexuality and other things, but I hadn't cared before. I had little understanding of the God I was sinning against.
This study was slowly shifting my perspective. I would catch myself, just before falling asleep, questioning who I was and why I made these choices. I asked myself, Am I sure that gay behavior is as much of my identity as my gender or my race? But I’d wake up and laugh and say, Of course you can embrace your homosexuality—that’s who you are! It felt like I was almost convincing myself it was okay to continue on that way.
Two weeks later, a friend (also a lesbian) waited for me at my apartment after work to smoke marijuana and hang out as usual. After we smoked, I asked her, “What if they’re right?” She knew I was doing the study and understood immediately what I meant and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” I pushed further. “We have to. If this is true, we need to talk now and not later.” She left soon after, so I picked up my book and read.
That evening, I read a chapter describing a “salad bar religion,” where you pick and choose parts of different religions, combine them into one, and call that your belief system. The book made clear that such an approach isn’t following Jesus at all; that’s following yourself and calling it some other name. I realized I was doing just that. I believed the parts of the Bible that suited me but rejected the parts that didn’t. His Word wasn’t my guide or a light to my path; I merely claimed Christianity because I had grown up in the South and prayed occasionally.
This realizatiion was like being struck by lightning. I searched for verses on homosexuality and found 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. I’d read these and other verses like them before. I’d argued against them to those who opposed me, but suddenly I could no longer argue. It was clear. I was in the “will not enter the kingdom of God” lineup. I was lost, wretched, and blatantly opposed to him. But the next verse said, “And such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:11). Clearly, the Lord could save me. He’d extended his hand to me, the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). I grasped his hand by faith, and I felt overwhelmingly awful and grateful. Although I’d ignored him and lived foolishly, he showed me mercy when I deserved nothing but justice.
My whole life changed that day. Homosexual practice and drug use were my most obvious sins, but there are many others he revealed and—continues to reveal—to me. I still battle same-sex attraction, pride, anger, and a slew of sins, but I trust he’ll complete the work he’s begun (Phil. 1:6). He’s also allowed me to be a wife, and one day, Lord willing, a mother. Two months ago—on the two-year anniversary of my conversion—I married the most Christlike man I’ve ever known.
The Lord has been so gracious to me. I’m grateful that he opened my eyes and saved me from the temporal and eternal consequences of my sins. He takes the worst of the worst and redeems them for his glory.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
I'll bet she now realizes she wasn't the one saying that.
Beautiful testimony! As someone who wasn’t raised in a Christian home and later found Christ, I can connect with her story where your salvation experience is a night/day shift. It is like a veil that has been lifted from your eyes. It is not simply a philosophical change in your thinking, it is literally that everything looks different. You feel like you are seeing things with a new set of eyes for the first time. Every time I have ended up reconnecting with people who knew me before can see the change in me. I’ve had atheists in shock at how much I have changed for the better (their words). Of course, I am by no means perfect and have a long way to go on my journey, but this testimony is true, Christ’s love is life changing.
I am happy for this beautiful young woman
What a great testimony! Thank you for posting this!
It was the same for me. Night and day. One day I was dead and the next I was alive. I still remember how the world sparkled like crystals in sunlight. The light was bouncing off of everything and it remained that way for several months. I think I cried every day for almost a year as I repented of my sins which were enormous and many (yet I confess that I am still a sinner but the nature of my sins are different). Previous to that I had attended a church off and on and considered myself a Christian and prayed at various times. When I came to know God after my conversion, I was humbled that He would choose someone like me to be an adopted daughter. I certainly did not deserve His grace.
Just what does the bible say about homosexuality? Would anyone care to elaborate?
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life].
I like the literal understanding of "...a totally new species of being, never seen before..."
Thanks for sharing this woman's testimony!
Thank you for sharing that, I never grow tired of these testmionies.
“We have to. If this is true, we need to talk now and not later.” She left soon after
Everyone talks about wanting “true friends”. True friends will talk to you about anything. True friends are tolerant of you but not your bad behavior.
Are you a true friend to your friends? Do you really want true friends?
That observation always puzzles me when I see it although I feel I understand what you mean.
The way I read scripture repent doesn’t mean that you are asking for forgiveness for your sins, that forgiveness came over 2,000 years ago before you were even born. Repent is when you changed from not accepting Jesus to that instant you did accept Jesus.
The offer of salvation was always there, repent is that moment you received it. You were born again in the spirit and are now an entirely new person.
I’ve always thought that repentance is an act of contrition and sorrow for one’s sins. I may have been chosen before the beginning of time, but I committed sins that were unconscionable. When God called to me (an irresistible call when it’s heard) I responded (or my soul did). It was that moment in time when I was saved - prior to that I was dead in my trespasses. I guess our doctrinal beliefs are slightly different but no matter.
I commented because of my concern that you were burdened by past sins there is no record of. God doesn’t keep a record. Why should you?
When you received God, you were born again and your past disappeared.
Leviticus 18:22
You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. 23’Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion.…
Deuteronomy 22:5
“A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
Matthew 19:3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Are you saying that when you sin it causes you no remorse because Jesus bears all sin for you? Your conscience doesn’t sting a little when you sin against God and man?
All that I was saying was that when I realized the enormity of his sacrifice for someone as unworthy as I was, it caused me to cry. My sins were many (I only came to know Him when I was 46) and many of them included the murder of my unborn children. So yes, my sorrow was great. Some believe that I should not be convicted of my past sins and I say, live the way I did and find out you are forgiven everything regardless of the nature of the sin, and see if your conscience doesn’t convict you from time to time. God says he’s forgotten my sins but I am a mere human being and it’s hard to forget what I’ve done.
I know that I’m forgiven and I trust in Jesus’ willingness to be the complete sacrifice for my sins. There is no argument in that issue between us. I will one day have total peace about my past. Of that I have assurance from God.
God gave you a beautifully wrapped gift; why not open it?
Break Every Chain.
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