Transcript

Andrew

Why would Jesus ask you to surrender something as deep as your sexuality?

Christie

When I was thinking about Jesus inviting me to, you know, surrender my sexuality, I also think about, like I think about the story in the Bible where Jesus goes to the rich young ruler and says, you're got it all. Now give me the one thing that matters the most. And you're like, yeah, he wants the one thing that matters the most. The thing that's driving my inner direction. And so it makes a lot of sense to me that he wants to see that aligned with him.

Marco

But I kind of clicked for me that Jesus assumed a body so that I could actually be good and alive in mind. You know, so it made sense, like, oh, he he has a sexuality. He assumed it to redeem it. So why am I going to withhold that?

Andrew

Yeah, it's surrender with expectancy of something good. Exactly. Although I think we all would have to say we don't really know what the good is. Yeah, that's the way it is. It's sort of a this. Yeah. To the to the unknown. But he's he has proven himself faithful. Yeah. So we don't. Yeah. We can we can trust him with that.

Morgan

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't see that very often growing up. I didn't see people dying, you know? I mean, to that extent, I didn't have a vision for it. I did have a vision to suffer. Yeah. And to kind of, you know, kind of be downcast and woe is me. I did see that. I saw it was easy to do that. Yeah.

But the Lord was calling me to die to something not just suffer but like really die to it, to, all the conflict within me. I just didn't see it. Until the Lord revealed it. And I think I was in a place to say. You know what? I see life in that person.

And it might be a different struggle than mine, but I, I it always came through people sharing their weaknesses and their and their and their death that they're working through. That God is resurrecting. And that gave me hope because I needed, I needed to see.

Andrew

For I would also say, in my experience and the people that like you that I've worked with for so long is there's an advantage to experiencing your sexuality as disordered and owning that saying there's something off here like that seems very natural doesn't mean it's natural. It means it feels that way to me. But there's something wrong.

So to have to surrender that is so helpful rather than, you know, in a traditional sexual, you know, good old traditional brokenness, idolatry, men and women hating each other, but being full of deep passion for each other. You know, it's very difficult sometimes to give that up because it's like, well, this is normal. This is just normal life. This it's like, well no actually it's not.

That's actually not a good way to be with the woman in your life or the man in your life. So I counted it. It's almost, a blessing to have to realize and to be free by the grace of God, to realize there's something deeply disordered about me. But I actually have a place to go with that. Right. It doesn't. Damn me. It's an invitation to go like this. Yeah.

And honestly, I think that's Jesus call on every human being and their sexual person. Yeah. And maybe those who have more evident disorder have a kind of prophetic call in their surrender. Yeah. That's to not give anyone a pass. Right?

Christie

Well, and it's surrender to life, too. It's like you die, but we die to be resurrected. It's disorder under order. And I think that's the thing that we want to remember is, like, God has a beautiful plan for our bodies. I think he did all this on purpose to make boys and girls. And, you know, it was not an accident. I think one of the, one of the things that I think has been hard is to see the church lose faith that God can order through. Yeah. Yeah. And and that Jesus is big enough to order it. Like, we have to have faith across the board of matter, like you said.

Morgan

That. Yeah. Because when I did share it with this friend his name is Steve. You know what was going on in my life and how I was so conflicted and didn't have hope had he said, oh, that's just who you are. It's how you been made. You can love Jesus, but, you know, be gay because we really had he affirmed that way of thinking. It would have been, it would have been, I would have been derailed for a while because he would have been the only one that I had shared this with. Yeah. And if that was his offering, but it wasn't you know...

Andrew

And I'm really grateful for that. Amen. Well, I think a real challenge that I hope we can all own is that we live in a tension between going like this to the Lord and what can be even greater. Same sex attraction, temptation, struggle. Even though we're going like this, right? So how do we. How do you walk that out?

And I think that's the big question for many people that want to do the Orthodox thing, but find their struggle intensifying, and it doesn't make sense to them. So then they're looking for queer Christian space to say, well, then where do I fit? Because apparently there's no great shift going on in my feeling self. So how have you lived in that tension of going like this before?

All powerful, redemptive Jesus and saying, I feel more queer today than I did yesterday. Absolutely. And no one knows it. No one sees it. But you feel it. You know, you have your little feverish dreams and you know where.

Marco

I think for me it's whenever I bump up against same sex attraction I ask myself like a question what is this indicating.

Christie

Yeah amen.

Marco

Know, that it's not like oh I need to cast it out or I need to bury it or I need to hide it. I used to be that way. But in Jesus Now and with empowered Community, it's more like, well, what? What is it indicating to me? I have a real need for male friendship. I may have other things that I need to tend to in my heart.

I think it's there's a there's a wound under that that I need to extend mercy to. So instead of spinning out or going into bad shame when I bump into it, you know, it's more. Okay, Lord, take me deeper here. What is it I need? I need to be meeting. I need to be more proactive to make sure that good needs are being met in healthy ways.

Amanda

Yeah. That's a good I think about it. Is that the check engine light is on and what's under the hood like what's going on under here. And it was really helpful for me to learn about there are contributing factors. And when I learned that I was like oh.

Andrew

It gives grace.

Amanda

It really does. And so exploring those and learning what they are for me, what really keys to me, because I was able to understand myself a little bit, I was able to have compassion for myself and to know, like the things that I can do, to allow God and people into those places and to see it subside and see to see it kind of dissipate and seasons and then even being able to down the road, this is years down the road, anticipate is like, I could see this, I'm going to be vulnerable in this time and understand, to know, to put up boundaries and safeguard things in those times. It really just it really helped me, to make sense of it and understand it.

Christie

Well, I was just going to say I feel like for me saying no, for me, it's so much harder. Like, as soon as I was like, I'm not going to do that anymore. Oh my gosh, I wanted to do it so much more. And that in some ways it's just the nature of temptation. I couldn't say no to that.

But it was also true that for me, these same sex relationships, whether they were physical or just deeply emotionally entwined, they covered so much pain. For me, that was so much further back. And so as soon as I said, no, I'm not going to cover, I didn't know they were. I would say, no, I'm not going to get into that relationship. Well, all that pain that it was covering, it wasn't covered anymore.

Oh, and so that became a whole different problem. And I'm like, I'm going to just cover it. And so having, you know, helpful counseling, having helpful friends who can sort of I can grieve through some of the ancient wounds that I brought into my adult, my young adulthood that was really essential for me.

Andrew

It's like sometimes we have to bear conflict, did feelings longer than we would like. And I think there's something in that where we can sort of gird ourselves, just say, this is an adventure. Sure. That is profound. And Jesus love for me is deeper still. And he he he always redeems it. And in light of what is suffering longer, I think a kind of suffering longer than we want.

Morgan

Repentance is, in my opinion, kind of a starting point. In other words, is the Lord convicted my heart? He he called out to me many, many times as I was in the throes of really bad years of addictive behavior. But there came a point where he said, Will you trust me now? And I almost remember or I remember almost audibly hearing him say that, Will you trust me now?

And my heart responded in repentance that I said yes, which led me down a path of asking for forgiveness for to lots of people that didn't know what was going on and started with my wife. So repenting unto God by walking through the choice to be known in my sin in front of the most important people in my life. It was costly, it was frightening, and it was, liberating beyond imagine, beyond what I could have imagined.

So for me, the beginning of the healing process just started, and repenting and being known in my sin and being willing to turn and go this other direction. God met me that way. I remember after I told Karen what was going on in our marriage and the unfaithfulness and so forth that had gone on for years.

Carl

For me, I would say repentance looked like actually taking action or taking responsibility for the sins of my past. Really? I came from a story of acting out of my same sex attraction, and, for a while I blamed the other person. And repentance really was a big part for me to actually take ownership of my participation in the sin and, actually tell the Lord, I accept that I've done this and I'm sorry.

Christie

I was less good at walking away from temptation. That was a real struggle for me. When I met a woman that I started to bend towards, my first reaction wasn't like, oh, I'm going to follow Jesus. Instead, it was often wonder how much I can get away with here, which is embarrassing to me. I'm not going to lie. But it's it was a it was a place.

It was perhaps, maybe the last sort of vestige of my self-will. It's like I just want this Band-Aid over my pain. It's really hard for me to let go of that. And I honestly think that it wasn't until I realized that, honestly, my healing wasn't all about me. My healing was also about the gift I was called to be, and the destruction I was called not to be.

So what I mean by that is when I would get into these slightly bendy relationships, I was helping someone else bend back towards me, and I had to take responsibility for my role in that. I had to go, oh, wait a minute, it's not just me getting my needs met, it's me causing someone else to get their needs met in an unhealthy way.

That was super convicting for me, but it took a little while for that reality to sink in. And I think in that place, going before the Lord and saying, oh my word, I am hurting your children, I am, I am in the way of someone else's healing every time. I just kind of go my own way. That was super, super convicting for me.

Marco

Yeah, the Lord was certainly calling me to a repentance in my wrong view of celibacy. So from my understanding, jump on the second speaks of celibacy as something amazing that Jesus can call me into, but it necessitates a renunciation of the good of marriage. And I couldn't renounce the good of marriage because I didn't even want it. So I was using celibacy as more of a hiding place, than a launching pad, so to speak.

You know, I was allergic to the idea of being a good gift to a woman, so I was trying to bypass all of that with the priesthood so that in an in and of itself was, a deep reckoning, a deep kind of awakening to I need I need to think deeper about this.

A couple of things that I had to really face in terms of repenting of was, I, I didn't see woman as a worthy, as worthy of my pursuit. So there was something about my my queer self, my, my cultivation of a queer narrative in inside that it's sort of stayed very far from the idea that I could dignify her, that I could be a gift to her. In a way, I think it was a subtle misogyny.

There was an analogy to woman that I had to repent of, that I didn't really notice until later on in my healing because it's like, no, I can. I do just fine with women, you know, I, I can be friends with women, I can honor women. But there was something deeper like beneath that SSA thing, that queer thing that I had to actually see woman and and be fascinated by her.

Amanda

Jesus asked me to lay down and surrender areas of my life to him in regards to what? What I saw as my queer identity. And the first thing that I was asked to lay down was really the way that I dressed. So I was baptized in men's clothing. God changed my heart before my clothes, but he did ask me to change my clothes, and that was the first thing. And then also asking me to to not have these, of course, illicit, affairs with women. But the sexual piece was a little easier. But also the emotional piece, just being emotionally, intertwined with him was something that he was asking me to surrender to him.

Dean

For me, it's always a battle between the flesh and the spirit, and the cross for me, has been a place where I could crucify the realities of my flesh, the failures of my flesh. Those parts of my flesh that kept the spirit from being able to be a force of life and a force of of truth and being willing to lay those things down at the cross, put those things to death, really unleashed the truth of the authority of Christ that.

Brings to life, you know? Whoo, whoo! He's purposed me to be. Yeah. Specifically, it was it was, Looking at porn, masturbation, sexual relationships with with other men. All part of a false search for significance. Search for love. Putting those things to death at the cross.

Bonnie

The process of dying to myself was incredibly painful. I felt like I was cutting off a piece of myself because when I went to break up with her, I had no good reason. Except for Jesus. I mean, that was it. It's not like we were having any issues or troubles or, you know, I idolized her. She was like the world. And so to go and say, you know, I need to break up.

And the only reason is because the Lord told me to and I have nothing else but that was extremely painful. And then to have the distance, in there, was was incredibly painful. And so I went through like, what I call a year of hell because I had I was being obedient to the Lord.

Carl

I had to learn to die to myself in accepting and telling myself that SSA was just who I was, was just part of my story, and that it was going to inform just the way that I lived. To overcome that, I really had to just lay that before the Lord and ask him, Lord, who do you say that I am? I know what I say about myself, but I want to know who you tell me that I am.

Yvonne

But for me, repentance meant a minute turning away from inward, and kind of codependent or emotionally dependent friendships. It meant stopping making one person my whole life and actually opening my life up to more than just, you know, this very inward, very, Yeah, very emotionally dependent, inter meshed kind of relating to people. Repentance definitely happened. It had to happen quite a few times for me.

There were seasons if, well, for a long time it felt like a repeating cycle I could not break. I would be in friendships that were, just so broken because they were, again, so, so codependent. And I would get to a point where I knew it wasn't working. And this isn't healthy for either of us. And so we would break that friendship. And then I would swear it's never going to happen again.

And then it would happen again. And and so it did it. It took a long time. And God is so gracious throughout. But it did. Yeah. The Lord did eventually bring me to a point where there was more of a freedom to to choose.

Marco

There was a real need for me to do some heavy renunciation when I realized that past sexual experiences with real people had such a hold on my mind and had such, a way of catching me in fantasy. And they were powerful. They were high octane, vivid memories. And I had to exercise my authority as this, as a son of the father, to really shut the door on that.

But I needed the help of fellow brothers to do that effectively. And it it took multiple times to do that. There was also, very interestingly in those memories, a real worship of the creature that I had to renounce. There was something phallic about those memories, something so creature oriented that I was being I was being stuck in it was it was fostering, not my. My soul was not well, because of these past experiences.

And what I realized was after renunciation, after a real rousing of the power within, of just being a son of the father, confessing my sin, but also rousing myself in the power of the Holy Spirit in a kingdom community. Those memories honestly don't have a hold on me anymore, or what was so vivid and what was such a source of temptation actually loosened in the power of the Holy Spirit. So exercising that so important.

Christie

One of the things I think is important and helpful to remember is when we say, okay, I'm going to die to this. We're not dying unto death, right? We're a dying unto life. There's a resurrection that comes and it's not it's not okay. It's all dead now. It's all alive. There's a continuum, like there's this dies, something else grows. And I love that. I've been able to experience that journey. I feel like that journey for me.

Like being able to let go of being covered by a woman, or covered by a relationship and letting Jesus into those places, into my heart that were really, really hungry for him. They didn't know that they were willing to go on a cheap diet instead of the true diet of his love and his presence. But I was really hungering for him.

And even to this day, I have this great big cross on my wall next to my bed. And there are times when I just I just bask in it.

Amanda

Jesus was asking me to pick things back up. And what I picked up was this relationship with him. Was this vibrant, intimacy that I had with him. I remember, when I first came to know Jesus, I would fall asleep praying to him with a Bible on my chest, and I would wake up just speaking to him. And the intimacy was beautiful, and it was fulfilling and satisfying and gave me joy and peace.

Carl

I remember there's a particular prayer time where the Lord spoke directly to me. My name, Carl, means masculine and strong.

And just in my life I experienced doubts about that. But he told me in this prayer time. You are Carl. You are masculine. You are strong. And that just echoed for me after that prayer time of reaffirming who I am in the Lord, that he tells me I am his son, he tells me I am strong in him, that I am a man.

Bonnie

I just said, Lord, get off my back or get me some healing. And, I just kind of drew a spiritual line in the sand. And three days later, I met a woman who offered me hope and said, hey, you can come out of this lifestyle. And, and I was I was so stunned by that because, because I just was like, I'm going to die, get me some help or get off my back.

So after death comes life. And so, as I was, what I did was when I came back home after student teaching, I called the same woman I, who had who had offered me hope and said, you can come out of this. I called her up and said, hey, I'm back in the area. And she said, oh, there's this class starting into two weeks and you need to be there.

And I said, okay, I'll, I'll show up because I didn't know how to say no. And so, so I sat in a room full of people and they shared their testimonies. And as they shared where the Lord had brought them out of all kinds of not just same sex attraction, but all kinds of things, I was just like, oh, okay, there's hope.

Dean

The cross made a way for me to one to acknowledge the more that he had purposed, and to go after the more, and to stop settling for less than to believe the more to believe that I was worthy of, the more, which birthed a greater desire for that more.

Morgan

The Lord has revealed a whole new way for me to live, and I never saw that choice before. And, that was really a gift from God, and it allowed me to overcome, frankly, I didn't. I was able to overcome what I couldn't overcome before. I feel like the Lord gave me New moon, a new vision for my life, and it was founded upon his love for me.

Because as I repented, as I made different choices, I was infused by the love of God, the love of the father's, the father's love. The father's fighting for me. In other words, I felt like I had an advocate quickly that allowed me to love Karen differently. That allowed me to be a father differently.

We had two small kids at the time that allowed me, to be open to new relationships and new ways of thinking and learning and discovering him.

Marco

So I left the seminary and I thought, you know, I, I want to start dating women, you know, I want to I, I want to learn how it is to be a gift. I mean, I kind of have it in my mind, but to actually do it in person is another thing. So I thought, you know, dating is going to be actually kind of easy. It's just going to be so easy.

And it really it wasn't, you know, I was 30 going on 13 in the world of women. And I needed to learn how to be a good gift in those contexts. And some women knew parts of my story of coming out of queer stuff, and they were, oh, I don't know if I can do that.

So that that challenged me in the whole give and take of being in relationship to a woman romantically that doesn't mean that if I just offer myself that I'm going to be received. So I had to learn how to become a gift of fortitude, someone who's able to give my gift.

Bonnie

I had this picture of a girl sitting in a jail cell, and it was cold and it was dark and she was visibly had been beaten. There's bruises and scars and, and, and she's alone and it's and it's dark and she's weeping and I see Jesus walk through the open cell, pick her up and clothes her and start to comfort her and start to heal the bruises.

And then he hands her to me. ask him now I'm like, good idea, Lord, what does that mean? And as soon as I even before the question was out of my mouth, I was like, oh, the little girls, me and the Lord is is is healing and clothing me in him and he's restoring. And I have a, I have a part to play because he put her in his arms and I was like, well, dumbfounded.

David

The resurrection light for me has been where and it sounds kind of Christian and easy a little bit, but literally putting myself at the foot of the cross. And that resurrection has been Jesus knows me and I can bring who I am to him. I was so afraid that if the father really knew me, he would reject me. And I believe that the number one tactic that the enemy is isolation. He wants to isolate us.

And when I began that resurrection of letting other people into my life, knowing who I was and exposing my dark side and allowing them to see truly who I was, then the resurrection began, became even more powerful to say, yes, the father loves me. Yes, I can bring everything to him, and I can continue to press into him.

And, you know, giving up, like you were saying, giving up, giving up the the fallacy or the giving up the fantasy life or new life and my sexual wholeness has really lived out. We're coming to the terms that I'm that I'm not ashamed of what God took me through, and the fact that he created me as a good gift as a male.

Christie

And it came, you know, from having dinner with my friends in their homes and playing with their children. You know, the church has such an important role here to be able to say, come and have dinner with us and live it live amongst the the ones who are living and and experience what that is and discover who you are in that context. I'm so grateful I had such a healing environment, such a a warm and expectant community, a community that could see where I was going and call me to it. And that was really, really neat.

Daniel

I was so thankful that the Lord was pursuing me during this time. At every turn, it seemed like he was trying to get my attention. I would dream about eternity without the Lord and being in deep darkness all by myself, not able to breathe, not able to gasp for air.

And when I would wake up, I would sense the presence of the Lord, which I didn't realize at that time was actually the presence of the Holy Spirit. I remember this night, one evening, this young man that I knew who was a backslidden Christian, and he invited me to church and said, just come with me. And I said, okay, I'll go with you.

And at the end of the church service, there was a call to prayer, and anyone who wanted to come up for prayer could come and receive this mercy of Jesus. I remember that night was different. And I said yes. And I went up and this father, this, man that had been connected and was preaching that night, his father prayed for me, and I'll never forget it. It was so loving and so kind.

And he said, you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are going to be an ambassador for the Lord, and you will defend the kingdom of God. And then he just kept saying, he loves you. The father loves you. And he repeated it over and over again. He loves you. And it was in that moment that I experienced Jesus in such a profound way.

It was as if the Lord was standing right in front of me, and in that moment I could breathe. It was like the Holy Spirit was released upon my entire being, and I could breathe for the first time like I had never breathed before. And I was in the room and I was present, and it was as if heaven had come to earth. And I knew that this was the day of salvation.

This was the day of my encounter with Jesus. And I said yes to him. And I remember just weeping tears of repentance. And I tell you, it wasn't just like, oh, I'm crying. No, this was a deep cry within that God was touching, that he was answering deep within me even before I cried out. And I was so thankful.

And I remember being in that moment and falling to the floor in repentance and saying, God, I submit to you. I submit I am yours, and I'll never forget it.

The one thing He asks for.

People who've walked this road, in candid discussion and individual stories.

If God made your sexuality, why would He ask you to hand it back? An honest conversation about the cost of surrender, and why these ones came to see letting go not as loss, but as trust in someone who'd already proven faithful.