By Precious Oli
This is for my God girl struggling with same sex attraction,
It was normal to us back in school to fight over a fellow girl and hang around in unusual positions and corners with same sex. Until that enlightenment, it was a normal relationship but gay.
2014, I met this friend in university who was gay but I lacked the technical ‘gospel-how’ to save him from what I termed eternal damnation, I cut off my relationship with him out of fear and ran for my dear life. Maturity in faith and still growing, I learnt that all I tried to do then was anything but preach Christ as a loving God who wanted him, I only followed the church and religious trend by trying to help him become straight.
Read this clearly, the last thing and the worst thing to tell a gay person is that God will turn him or her straight immediately. Be honest, you struggled with pornography and masturbation, lies and some fornication for a while even after giving your life to Christ, the temptation to explore that lifestyle still came and most times almost irresistible. Bring your criticism and upright cap down a little. Will you?
If this be the case, what gospel should we preach to them? This is why I am writing to you, if you are gay, read to the end and even if you are not, stay with me. Let’s talk about this ‘abominable’ subject which the church and society shuns.
My heart cry is that we don’t know that the very youths we preach the Pentecost gospel to are dying under sheets of lesbianism and homosexuality. Allow me be the harbinger of bad news; Babylon has stolen them away from us but for fear of stigmatization and rejection, they’d rather die than speak to you about it. They are your friends, pastors, reverends and brothers; in a mess and closet.
Read: Surviving Depression and suicide-Onto a new course of Life
The life and conversion of Jackie Perry
Ever since I came across her book, Gay girl, good God, my perception has been enhanced and my tentacles extended a little towards getting rid of the blindness that once clogged my visions and sense of reasoning. Before you go on screaming that I have been converted to ‘accommodating’ gay lifestyle, permit to shoot your legs a little by saying that I accept them as humans that can be loved by a good God but the lifestyle must be preached against.
Regardless, how much I love you dear God Girl, the moment you go out of line, we use the rod of discipline to bring you back to the fold and same goes to my all God girls struggling with sexual identity. The gospel must be preached even to the hardest and stony hearts.
Jackie experienced same-sex attraction for the first time when she was five years old. These feelings were a part of her life as long as she could remember. As she grew into a teenager the feelings only intensified. By age seventeen, she pursued her first female relationship and openly embraced her life as a lesbian.
Then, at age nineteen something radical happened in her life. She was introduced to a man named Jesus. Jackie had never known a love so powerful before. Neither has she ever experienced love so intimate and satisfying. Over the next few years, Jesus transformed her life from the inside out.
Nigerian law and cultural values doesn’t give room for lesbianism and gay practices but don’t get ahead of you, many persons actually practice this in secret. the percentage who lack nerves to or held down by ‘home training’ struggle to associate themselves with the opposite sex. As a result, they’d rather stay alone than be around people. I know this fact because I attended a boarding school and almost got inducted into it.
I know parents hardly listen to sensitive issues like this and it’s very shameful to even admit you feel attracted to girls than boys.
Jackie Hill Perry presents her story as a beacon of hope for anyone struggling with same-sex attraction (SSA).
If this is your struggle, you are not alone. Jackie Hill Perry wrote an article on the Desiring God Blog where she shares how her desires and longings for female relationships were intensely real. They felt so right. They seemed so normal.
But as she grew in her relationship with Jesus, studied the Bible, and learned about God’s design for manhood, womanhood, gender, and marriage, she came to a crucial fork in the road.
She says, “As I was praying and meditating on [God’s truth], God put this impression on my heart: ‘Jackie, you have to believe that my word is true even if it contradicts how you feel.’ Wow! This is right. Either I trust in his word or I trust my own feelings. It’s either I look to him for the pleasure my soul craves or I search for it in lesser things. Either I walk in obedience to what he says or I reject his truth as if it were a lie.”
Jackie is very open and honest about how hard it was to leave behind her female love interests. It was (and is) a process of trusting in God’s transforming grace each day. She said, “I cannot let these things or [women] go on my own. I love them too much. But I know [God is] good and strong enough to help me.”
Same sex attraction is a painful struggle
You might even feel ashamed to talk about it and afraid to let others know. But sister, please hear this. God sees you and knows your struggle. He doesn’t view you any differently than any other woman. Your struggle may look different than mine, but at the core, we are the same.
We are both broken women in need of the transforming power of Jesus in our lives. We are both women who face sinful temptations every day.
The struggle with your sexual identity is a battle of faith. Is God my joy? Is he good enough? Or am I still looking to broken cisterns to quench a thirst only he can satisfy? That is the battle. It is for me, and it is for you.
When talking about SSA, it’s extremely important to distinguish the difference between “sin” and “temptation.” Nick Roen, a man who struggled with SSA for many years wrote a helpful article about this. He says, “Experiencing a specific same-sex attraction is not necessarily a sin. Let’s say that I experience an attraction to another man.
I don’t go looking for it, but it rises up spontaneously within me. At this point, my attraction falls into the category of temptation, and I can do one of two things. I can fight the desire in the same manner that anyone who is tempted with pride, jealousy, or fear would, and kill it before I sin. Or I can follow the desire into the lust of the mind and eventually the flesh, which is a volitional sin.”
What the bible says about your present temptation
Your struggle is not new to humankind. The Bible also offers the powerful truth that “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
Sister, regardless of your daily temptation and struggle with same-sex attraction, your temptations are not beyond the reach of God’s power. In Him, there is true hope, freedom, and new life.
Sadly though, the society that we live in will not point you to this awesome Redeemer.
We live in a day and age where human autonomy reigns supreme. We’re told to “follow our hearts” and “be true to ourselves.” Although this sounds good, it leaves no room for God. Our feelings, desires, and longings become the gods in our life.
We’re encouraged to place our feelings on the highest pedestal and to submit to them.
The Bible reveals a very different narrative.
As we open our Bibles, we see that God created humans in the very beginning of time to walk in a beautiful relationship with Him (Genesis 2). Adam and Eve were created in God’s image as male and female and were made for His glory. Their desires and longings were unpolluted by sin. It wasn’t until they chose to rebel against God that sin entered the world (Genesis 3). From that moment on, sin permeated the hearts of every human that walked on the earth — including you and me today.
Sin pollutes our desires, longings, and feelings. The Bible describes these warped desires as being contrary and opposed to what is right and true. Galatians 5:17a says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh…”
Christopher Asmus says, “As a result of the fall, our hearts are out of order and dark (Romans 1:21). Instead of loving light and hating darkness, we love darkness and hate the light (John 3:19). And as we fall more in love with darkness, we sin and choose the way of death (James 1:14–15; Proverbs 14:12).”
As we look to God’s Word to inform our worldview about sin and our desires, we are each faced with the same question that Jackie Hill Perry faced: Will I submit to my feelings or will I submit to God? Will I find my identity in my sexual desires, or will I find my identity in who Jesus Christ says I am?
Does it mean that God will make me straight?
When the gospel is presented as “Come to Jesus to be straight,” instead of “Come to Jesus to be made right with God,” we shouldn’t be surprised when people won’t come to Jesus at all. If he is not the aim of their repentance, then he will not be believed as the ultimate aim of their faith. They will only exchange one idol for another and believe themselves to be Christian because of it.
What the gay community needs to hear is not that God will make them straight, but that Christ can make them his. In this age, they may never be “straight” (for lack of better words), but they can be holy (1 Corinthians 1:30).
We must remind others (and ourselves) that Christ is ultimately calling them to himself — to know Christ, love Christ, serve Christ, honor Christ, and exalt Christ forever. When he is the aim of their repentance, and the object of their faith, they are made right with God the Father, and given the power by the Holy Spirit to deny all sin — sexual and otherwise.
The heterosexual gospel
The heterosexual gospel is one that encourages SSA men and women to come to Jesus so that they can be straight, or it says that coming to Jesus ensures that they will be sexually attracted to the opposite sex. The ways in which this “gospel” is preached are much subtler than I’ve made it out to be. It usually sounds like, “I know you’re struggling with being gay. I can promise you, if you give your life to Jesus, he will completely deliver you from those desires because he loves you.” Or, “I know a guy that used to be gay and now he’s married. Jesus will do the same for you if you trust him.”
We don’t want people to merely exchange idols under the pretense of walking in faith. Someone trying to pursue heterosexuality and not Christ is just as far from a right standing with God as someone actively pursuing homosexuality. They have put their faith in a new “orientation” rather than in knowing the living God.
This is what Christ offers you.
Jesus loved us so much that He came to this earth and died on a cross to free us from the power of sin in our lives. What we messed up, He came to restore. He died to break the chains of bondage and distortion in our lives. He came to offer a new life and hope in Himself.
“The most foundational lie same sex attraction tells us is that a homosexual experience will be more pleasurable and more satisfying than what you are experiencing here and now. But God promises that Christ himself is infinitely more pleasurable and satisfying than anything this world has to offer (Psalm 16:11; Psalm 107:9), especially the sad counterfeit savior of a same-sex experience.
If you’re a Christian struggling with same-sex attractions, know that you are not defined by your sin. Your identity is not determined by your temptations. ‘Embrace who you really are’ by embracing Jesus Christ and your new life found in him (2 Corinthians 5:17). ‘Be true to yourself’ by clinging to Truth himself (John 14:6) and enjoying the freedoms Christ purchased for you with his blood.” —Christopher Asmus
Same-sex attraction does not have to define you.
Your battle is ultimately a battle of sin and the flesh just like mine. It’s a battle of faith. A battle of surrender. It’s a battle of trusting in Christ so deeply and fully that His transforming grace becomes sufficient for your struggle. It’s relying on Jesus each day and looking to Him for strength to say no to the flesh, and yes to righteousness.
Jackie Hill Perry, Christopher Asmus, and many others are examples of the sufficiency of God’s grace for same-sex attraction. He is strong enough and powerful enough to change the desires of your heart. And even if the temptations never fully go away (for some they don’t), you must trust in Jesus to give you the strength to resist the daily temptation as you look to Him.
As Jackie Hill Perry so beautifully reminds us, “If lasting love is what you’re looking for anywhere else, you are chasing the wind, seeking what you will never find, slowly being destroyed by your pursuit. But in Jesus, there is fullness of joy.
In Jesus, there is a relationship worth everything, because he is everything. Run to him.”
Hmmm….. I can relate well to this struggle; Thank God for Strategic Friends that helped me walk through this.
Uhmnn
I think I can gather my words and thoughts together now ma, thank you for being useful for God. Your light shine on.