Posted on 02/03/2015 5:29:16 PM PST by Maelstorm
I knew I was attracted to the same sex when I was seven — in some capacity, anyway. I don't think it's physiologically possible to truly feel sexual attraction at such a young age. But I knew there was a drawing in me toward the same gender – and drawing that was more than what some would say is "natural" or "normal."
As I grew up in a rural Louisiana town and teenage hormones began to surge throughout my body, my drawing toward the same gender intensified — sexually and emotionally. While I was definitely not engulfed in the life of a church during my adolescence, I was raised in close enough proximity to religious things – and religious people – that I knew the Bible referenced to homosexuality as an abominable thing.
The Bible referenced to me as an abominable thing. That was my understanding anyway. And not only did the Bible paint people like me in the light of all that is grotesque, but so did the people around me. Family, friends, football coaches. Everyone. To be gay was to be gross. To be gay was to be wicked. To be gay was to be scum.
So I prayed. Oh. How. I. Prayed.
"God, make me normal." "God, make me straight." "God, make me like everyone else."
But God didn't answer those prayers. Why?
I hear my experience repeated by others all the time. Just yesterday, actually. A Christian friend of mine was conversing with a guy who is living a homosexual lifestyle. He pleaded with her to believe that he had prayed for years for God to make him straight…. to no avail. She was speechless. She didn't know how to respond.
"Matt, why didn't God answer his prayer? I mean, he prayed God's will? Why was there no answer?"
I'm not God, so I can't know all the reasons why He wouldn't have answered this guy's prayers to be made attracted to women. But, I do know what He's revealed in the Bible and I do know what I now, as a believer in Jesus, believe to be true of my own "unanswered prayers" experience.
Firstly, when I grew up pleading with God to make me straight, I had no real interest in God Himself. I wasn't praying for God to do this because I loved Him or wanted to live my life for Him. I was actually pretty unconcerned about Him, to be honest. I wanted God to take away my same sex desires for my own benefit – so that I could fit in, be normal, be one of the guys, and even so that I could just have sex with girls like all of my friends were. < — So I obviously wasn't worried about being sexually moral. I just wanted to be sexually normal.
My desire to be made straight was all about me. I had no interest in being reconciled to God or having a relationship with Christ.
Which brings me to by second point. From what I see in the Bible, God is far more concerned with first fixing our hearts than he is with fixing other things in our lives. Same sex attraction included. Yes, it's true that God hates homosexuality. But more than that, He hates that our hearts are opposed to Him and that we long to live our lives separated from Him. God's foremost desire is that we would come to Him through Christ to receive new hearts that love and adore Him.
In fact, nothing can even begin to be done as far as the untangling of our sexualities until we receive new hearts that love and adore God. How do I know that? Because Romans 1 says that the whole reason homosexual desire even exists is due to our rejection of God's loving rule and authority over our lives.
Don't skip over this passage of Scripture I'm about to paste under here. It's vital that you read it.
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error."- Romans 1:18-26.
Homosexual desire – and all other sinful desire — exists in the hearts of people because worship of God doesn't. In Adam, we corporately rejected the good rule of God over our lives. And in each of our hearts, we have all individually rejected the good rule of God over our lives. And what has been the result? God has given us over to ourselves. He gave us up to our sinful desire, and has allowed us to revel and further deteriorate in it.
So why didn't God answer my prayer to rid me of my homosexual desires? Because homosexual desires were not my main problem. They were a problem, for sure. But the root of my problem was that I didn't love God or worship Him, and my homosexual desires were just fruit of that, so to speak. God's desire was to fix the root of my issues.
And in 2010, He did just that. He opened my eyes to see all that Jesus Christ is for those who will believe. I finally really saw Jesus as the Son of God who took on flesh and who in humility and incredible graciousness laid His life down for mine. He offered up His life to pay for my guilt in order that I could draw near to God and be given me a new heart; a new heart that loves, adores and worships the one true and incredibly good God.
Am I now straight? Am I now normal? Am I now free from same sex desires and attracted solely to women?
No, no and no.
My heart was changed instantaneously when I trusted in Christ and began to follow Him, but my mind was not. I now have a heart that genuinely loves God and desires to worship Him, but at the same time, I'm still utterly messed up and damaged by sin. The Lord is working in me and renewing my mind day by day, shaping me more and more into the reflection of Him that I was created to be. But it's been a process. And it will continue to be a process until I receive a new, perfect and sinless body in the age to come. When that day comes, the fullness of what Jesus purchased for me will be given to me: full freedom from every sinful thing that restrains my enjoyment and worship of God.
But even now, in this messed up damaged flesh, I have experienced some change in my sexuality over the past four years. I can't deny that. And the shifting in my sexual desires is a direct result of my grace-given love for God. I've grown in my disgust of homosexual relations because I see what a twisting and perversion it is of the image of God. And I've grown in my desire for women (specifically, one woman.… I wrote about it here), and maybe even in my desire for marriage, because I see how a one man + one woman marital covenant so beautifully reflects the image of God.
My growing desire for women is the overflow of a growing desire to see God's glory manifested in my life. Plain and simple. I'm not saying that I'm definitely going to get married one day. I might not. I may be single and celibate for the remainder of my sojourning in this world. But either way I will be fine and I will be joyful because my main problem has been fixed. I might not be "straight" or "normal", but I have a new heart, I have Jesus, and I have the Father. And that's all I really need.
Salvation is (1) Justification, (2) Sanctification, and (3) Glorification.
You’ve been justified (once and for all), you “are in the process” of being sanctified (and that is life-long) and you “will be” glorified (at a particular “point in time”).
Until you are glorified, in which you get your perfected body, you will still be plagued with your old sin nature.
There is a process you must go through ... the “1, 2, and 3” up above.
A nun at my school used to say “Sometimes God wants you to meet him half-way.”
Pray, contemplate the temptation, and change the conditions which give rise to the temptation. A change will eventually work on your heart.
Yes, he did. You just followed the sin in your heart.
I think you and I have much the same physiology when it comes to ethanol, and I will also confess to going far beyond drinking in my effort to feel differently (better) going through life. God did me a solid - he took away the desire when I asked Him out of sincere desperation and brokenness. Few people that had a life like mine get to have a life like mine.
I think of Christ fasting for 40 days in the wilderness (”and he was hungry” — no, really?) and the adversary appearing, challenging him to turn the rocks into bread. Jesus did not tell satan “no thanks, not hungry”, but told the enemy “Man does not live by bread alone.”
If my Savior did not deny his hunger, but instead stated the truth of God’s Word and faithfulness to His word and His truth being as important as the wants and needs of the flesh, that is good enough for me. I applaud our brother and hope his marriage is long and blessed.
did to listen for His reply. God doesn’t wave a magic wand to make things happen. He requires you to repent, which means change from whatever you are doing and follow Him. By quitting the immoral lifestyle, focusing and following where God leads you, a new life will open for you. Keep praying for the strength to follow Him and not them!!! And he will be there with you every step of the way. You can do it!
No, but I should have. Thanks!
Ahh yes. If only we could make the sovereign Lord of the heavens and earth our own personal scapegoat for all our failings...
Matt, Matt, Matt. There have got to be unresolved issues in your past. There is no mention in this post about your childhood living situation – family life, friends, acceptance at school. It sounds like you felt like an outcast. My understanding is that those are symptoms of becoming separated from your masculinity.
I don’t believe that you were born gay and I doubt you do either. I’ll bet you were sexualized at a young age and are burying the memory of it. Are there dark areas in your recollection of your childhood? I know a couple of people that this happened to. Sometimes when sex is forced upon a child, they aren’t able to process it so they cope by “forgetting”.
You don’t mention therapy anywhere in your story. God helps those who help themselves. You are asking God to do all the work. You must use the resources available to let God work through someone whom He has blessed with the talent and compassion to assist you in your healing. You need a reparative (not gay affirmative) therapist and don’t let the gay community convince you of the possible dangers of that. They are wrong and their scare tactics are designed to keep you in their clutches.
Get some professional help.
The church is there to support you spiritually, but you need a therapist to have lasting success. Just the same as with a drug or alcohol addiction, you have got a sexual addition that you need to address and it will be an ongoing process. There are many sites on the web that contain people’s personal accounts of their journey out of unwanted same sex attraction.
You need a good therapist and a support group to guide you out of this mess.
Really, martin luther? Hey, now there’s a good, good man. Just ask him...
Well, like most human indignations- the frail nature of just being human is suffered by us all. Quit whining. Now.
The devil can charm some people that way.
One of the biggest mysteries (not as to its existence but to its individual character in individual persons) is the fall of mankind.
This fellow was right: his heart had been empty of God. In his case the result was more horrific than usual.
I have nothing but sympathy for anyone in the spot that he was in. He knew it was wrong and wanted to make it right. But it is only God in his soul that can bestow the power that makes such things right.
And it is also full of people who make snap judgments from the hip. Until you have met more ultimately victorious sinners than just yourself, you might refrain from sticking labels on people.
Why do you deem this testimony to be whining?
It sounds like you are still enamored of self effort. But God is not.
We cannot, but He volunteered to take the burden.
There is a difference.
You can’t even bother reading through the whole testimony can you?
“God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible. God helps those who seek to do His will and to glorify Him.
Good.
Romans 1:17
For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Matt, my prayer for you is that you will "live by faith" my faithful brother.
Psalm 118:4
Let them now that fear the Lord say, that his mercy endureth for ever.
He answered my prayers alright -- it just wasn't the answer I wanted.
I had a very similar experience with Him and concerning the same matter - alcohol.
I was looking for a, "Saul on the road to Damascus experience", God had His own way and in His own time. I praise Him for me being sober for going on 34 years now.
Truly, truly, "let go and let God", is the answer, no matter what the question is.
Victorious sinners ?
What is a "victorious sinner"?
A muslim terrorist?
A guy like Barney Frank?
A rip off artist like Al Sharpton?
Barack Obama?
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