By the way I’m still following Josh’s series – awesome stuff still going on over there… Visit the latest entry.
After endearing years of sexual confusion, and misidentification, God would use one of the few heterosexual attractions in my life to lead me to Him. This young lady that I had a crush on, had an encounter with God in 1998, and all throughout my Junior year in high school I would be invited to Church – never taking the invitation seriously. However, in spring of 1999 I decided to attend a service, only to find out that she had a boyfriend…
The message that day was about grace – and that we were free to receive it at anytime… it hit a spot inside me, I wasn’t sure why, but it did. I imagine that the years of confusion, the struggles with my sexuality, and the deepest parts of me wanted to be free of the things that I knew deep down were not right. Later that year, in the summer, I would be caught up in God’s full grace and have a heart knowledge awareness of it – during the song “Step by step” I could not stop myself from agreeing with the lyrics – I decided that day to let him lead my way – although I had no idea what that would mean.
Did I stop feeling homosexual desires? – No. Did I stop masturbating? – No. Did I understand His grace – No… do I understand it today? – Nope.
What I experienced that day though was the mystery of God – that his grace is unending, that even when I make the conscience decision to disobey, to walkout a fantasy, His grace takes me to a new level of love that only God himself provides. In these past ten years, I have received grace beyond any understanding. Each time I fall, I fall harder into His love, and deeper into Him.
My sexuality is deeply connected to who God is to me, it is the core of where he dwells for me, and it is out of this wound, this past, which much of who I am today comes from. He has redeemed it, to be the instrument in which He uses me to speak from, to live from, and yet it is still the thorn in my side. The marriage bed has been incredibly healing and incredibly frustrating – that’s my next installment.