This Earthen Vessel

Galatians 5:7-9

“You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

In my journey as a man, once gay identified, now set free, I have had my battles with sin, and in the process I learned how to walk/run/stand/fight/endure. It’s not been an easy journey, NOT because I was somehow predestined to be gay, but that I had spent YEARS building a gay identity since my most formative years and yes, I clearly remember making “the choice”. The challenges of abuse, molestation, exposure to pornography at a very young age, broken family dynamics, solid foundation of self-hatred, it all helped create a foundation that my identity was built upon, and it desperately needed dismantling. This is what Jesus does! We bring our broken hearts, lives, minds to Him! For me, the freedom I now know came through Bible study, through communion with God, through corporate prayer, worship, fellowship, Biblical discipleship and Pastoral care, facing the trauma, the pain of my life and releasing them all to Jesus for healing. Then, one by one, the stones used to create who I thought I was slowly was dismantled and obliterated at the cross of Jesus Christ.

As I look across the landscape of my life over the past 21 yrs I have witnessed the Lord do a remarkable work of healing in so many areas I had felt hopeless about at different times in my life. From the beginning, in 1999 , when I surrendered for the first time to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over my sexuality and my life, determinedly committed to following Him even if it killed me, I repeatedly experienced His hand in restoring my masculinity to me, my true sexuality, and my identity as a man of God. From late 1999-2003 God repeatedly spoke into my life, sometimes audibly, in uncovering the lies, revealing the truth, and moving in ways I had never dreamt possible. In a very short period of time, He revealed the truth that I was and am a heterosexual man who struggled with same sex attraction. (Mind blown) He began to reveal the intricate lies upon which my gay identity had not only been forged upon, some of which were so subtle that it had to be His revealing in order for me to see it. The enemy has been hard at work and it took a lot of wisdom and revelation from the Lord to help me deal with an adversary who hates us so much that he’s invested in destroying us in every way possible, no matter how small the detail. He is referred to by Jesus –

John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Have I struggled with sin? Yes! Is it ongoing? NO! In fact, as the Lord in His mercy unraveled the complexities of my brokenness, the abuse, the emotional turmoil behind the abuse, I began to find even more freedom. It took real accountability, real transparency, obedience to the word of God, and pressing through adversity, and through that I discovered that the past had no power of me, except what I gave it. It took gut wrenching honesty, dropping the façade around people I trusted, and truly coming clean while completely embracing repentance to see that sin was not master over me. Coming clean does wonders for the soul, especially when it’s because we love Jesus so much that nothing is worth coming between us and Him.

So, years ago when I began to see a Plethora of people I once knew, walking away from our common bond in Christ, to once again entering into homosexuality, I was in a lot of conflict. Not because I questioned or considered if they might be right, but because I knew that what I was seeing was nothing short of deception with Jesus name attached to it. I literally was saying in the deepest recesses of my heart ” Shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it.” Romans 6:1. It was then I realized that these people never, truly died to sin. I can’t speak for all of them, but you can see the fruit of peoples lives, and when it comes to sin, if we are harboring a secret love of sin, and making room for it, to practice it, such as pornography, masturbation, lust, or fantasy, even an identity attached to all those things, then we haven’t truly died.

Death to self is a perpetual thing; A constant choosing to say no to the flesh and yes to the working of the Spirit of the Living God. Romans 6:3 puts it quite well ” Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” I believe 100% that a persons difficulty in the things of the flesh ( lust, covetousness, idolatry, sexual immorality, etc.) is directly connected to the commitment of putting to death the deeds of the flesh. The word tells us this in Romans 8:13 “For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. THEN you have Galatians 5:19-21 ” Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Repeatedly I watch these ones who appear to love the attention and admiration of mankind, go to great lengths to show how genuine, how authentic, how transparent and real they are in contrast to how they formerly lived ( thereby saying they were never genuine, authentic, transparent or real) completely dismissing the truth that this SHOULD have been how they lived in the first place. when they were trying to figure out what true repentance is. Today, they uphold themselves as the epitome of love and truth, and yet their fruit is rotten to the core, full of death. They applaud themselves as being “woke”, and what I’m witnessing is this.

“Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Rom 1:28-32

And they love to talk about how enlightened they are and go to great lengths to show you. As I was pondering on this, the Lord spoke to me about what I was seeing. ” BUT HE WHO BOASTS IS TO BOAST IN THE LORD. For it is NOT he who commends himself that is approved, but he whom the LORD commends” ( some emphasis is mine). They commend themselves, it’s the trademark of every single one of them. And while they chant ” Love is Love” they completely miss what Jesus spoke to us about what true Love is. John 14:15 He said ” If you love Me, you will keep my commandments.” their behavior does not exemplify love. It exemplifies contempt. They mock those who speak the truth from a biblical foundation. Declaring themselves to be the true spokesperson of God, and how like Jesus they truly are, they have relegated God to the sidelines to promote and glorify themselves. Jesus did not glorify nor promote Himself. He promoted the Father, repeatedly deflecting attention, if He could, away from Himself. And Jesus also did something that these ” woke” ones don’t do, He repeatedly used scriptures to point to the truth.

All of them use opinions and feelings as their truth. All you have to do is look at the fruit of their lives to determine who’s really sitting on the throne of their lives. I’ve been very grieved at what I’m seeing and hearing from these folks. I have no animosity towards any of them, in fact I have a lot of compassion, I know what it’s like to be dominated by secret besetting sin and addictions, and attractions, and it took a lot of patience and pressing through to get to the root issues. That being said, I am quite upset how those with weak foundational faith are being side-swiped by these prodigals into believing a damning lie. You want to know how to tell if a person really does know Jesus as Lord? The ones who truly know Jesus and obey Him, are the ones who recognize the word of God as the ultimate and FINAL authority on human sexuality , and steer clear of anyone and anything that’s promoting a false Gospel. They measure truth BY and through the word of God, and by the leading of the Holy Spirit, in the Fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. Prov 1:7.

The New Testament repeatedly warns us to beware of doctrines of demons, of false Gospels, of teachings that run contrary to the sound word of God. Folks we are living in the last days where men call good evil and evil good. Those of us in ministry are seeing this. And I’m heartbroken to watch these who were former friends in Christ, now denigrate the truth I stand on. It reminds me of the early 90’s when I had walked away back into homosexuality, the only thing that sets my experience apart from these former comrades in Christ is that I always knew it was wrong, I just didn’t know what to do with all my brokenness. And the moment, the second I considered the idea of gay Christianity, my heart and soul were quite offended the instant I considered it and KNEW deep within that it was blasphemy.

There’s something else that came to me in my spirit concerning what I have been seeing. They have become their own mediators. 1 Timothy 2:5 ” For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. I’m very concerned about these people who have taken on a false doctrine of homosexual Christianity, and insist that God blesses it. He has laid out before ALL mankind, the blueprint for His design. The Imago Dei, man for woman, woman for man. It’s THAT clear. And they have listened to the adversary, ” hath God really said?” ” You surely shall not die.” This reminds me of when Moses was on the mountain of God, and the Israelites demanded a god of their own making, creating the golden calf, which brought destruction upon many of them. Do we think we can mock God now in our arrogance and pride?( make note of that word pride because it’s THE word they pronounce loudly over themselves.)

So I’ll leave you, the reader, with this. There is judgement coming. Not my judgement, but God’s judgement. And it will be fierce, it will be fiery, and it will be thorough. 2 Thessalonians 1:6-12 says this:

⁶ For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, ⁷ and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, ⁸ dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, ¹⁰ when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—for our testimony to you was believed. ¹¹ To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, ¹² so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let the evidence present itself, it’s not something I made up, but it’s found in His word. And as far as I am concerned this is solid truth. There’s no mistaken what this says. But do not take my word for it. Examine the word for yourselves. I lay my life down at the cross, and I relinquish all rights to my body, my life, and choose to submit it to His word, to live according to it. and THAT brings freedom. Maranatha.