GAY TRUTH

I’m told I’ve got this wrong. I’m told that when it comes to people who identify as LGBT, God doesn’t expect them to change who they are or change who they love. I’m also told this is too hard a pill for evangelicals to swallow. I presume that what they mean is that people with same-sex attraction, a transgender identity, or who claim to be non-binary are free to embrace those impulses and satisfy those desires. God doesn’t expect them to change their identities or the objects of their affection. They can be faithful followers of Jesus while fully embracing their LGBT identity. Every person who follows Jesus experiences a change in who they are and what desires they will satisfy. The claim that becoming a follower of Jesus doesn’t entail change, however, is totally foreign to what it means to be a Christian.  Every believer who is transformed by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit experiences a change of identity and lifestyle.  It’s unreasonable to expect that the same power that

I was 35 years old, called myself a lesbian, and worked as an activist and English professor in New York when I first encountered these words from Romans 1: God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting. (Romans 1:24–28) Huh, I muttered. It seems like a dangerous hate speech or some other devastation designed to ruin my life. God’s word brought me to a line in the sand and a hole in my heart.

  From elementary school on, I never fit in with the boys. I lived every day in a fantasy world of codependent fixation on other males. Hopelessness and self-hatred were my normal. I had no sexual desires for females; only for males. And by age 17, I was suicidal from the inner turmoil.  Bouts of porn and compulsive masturbation were my medication of choice, and I was powerless to resist them. And, after years of desperate prayer & Christian psychotherapy, I had experienced zero change in my sexual desires…until I discovered some kingdom realities and my life in Christ became deeply experiential. Jesus died for our sexual wholeness and freedom. This is the story of how I got free. I BEGAN A PURSUIT OF MY TRUE SEXUAL IDENTITY IN 1987 WHEN MY BATTLE AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY GREW INTO INTENTIONS OF SUICIDE. Ten years of desperate prayer, counseling, and research yielded no change in my sexual desires. But after some encounters with God, the following years healed childhood trauma

Obedience to the Word of God is required of all persons and is the delighted, privileged employment of those who bear the name of the Lord. Though obedience offers great benefit to those who know it, it is not merely an option.  Since we are chiefly dealing with the same-sex controversy as it pertains to the church, the only issue before us now is one of obedience: will God’s Word be obeyed, or will it be twisted to defend a cherished “sexual preference”? Though many good reasons exist for you to forsake homosexual practices, we urge you to forsake them for the main reason: they are displeasing to God.  Repentance is the only option before you .  Despite the arguments that exist to the contrary, homosexuality is not natural, is not approved by the Word of God, and is a practice that leads to death. The Bible clearly teaches that homosexuality, whether in interest or practice, is sin. We deny that recognizing something as sinful when God has declared it sinful is ther