Saturday, February 21, 2009

Seeing & Savoring Jesus Brings Freedom From Homosexuality: Testimony by Joshua Scott Christmas

The following is a testimony from one of our guys who has participated in The Sight Ministry. I want to make one statement of clarification: When I speak of "freedom from homosexuality" (I named the title) I am referring to the idea that homosexuality no longer is a controlling dominating factor in my life. This does not necessarily mean that I, or others who are fighting the fight for faith in this arena, have no same-sex attraction temptations or thoughts at all. This would be similar to any believer who walks in "freedom" but is not implying totall freedom of any temptation. Each person who is walking this journey of freedom from same-sex attraction issues is unique and we are each at different places on our journey. But it is truly a great adventure and an exciting journey! I invite you to join us. Call me at 615-509-0782 or email me at richard@thesightministry.org or, if you dare, comment on this blog.



Testimony
Joshua Scott Christmas

I grew up in a small town outside of Seattle, WA. I was raised an only child and my parents were evangelists and later became pastors. Like many families my parents divorced when I was 8 and my father ended up relocating to Nashville, TN. My mother remarried a wonderful man, but being a young child I totally rejected his influence in my life from the start. I thought that loving my stepfather would mean I didn’t love my father.

My family attended a small Pentecostal church where at 9 years of age I accepted Christ as my Savior and was baptized. I can remember from an early age that I had a profound love for my Jesus and a desire to know Him more.

I remember being a teenager, praying and begging for Jesus to take my homosexual desires away. As I look back I realize that if He had done that I would have had no way of helping others who struggle with unwanted homosexual desires. I would not be able to give my insight on how others can walk out their deliverance from homosexuality, rejection and the countless other things that accompany this struggle.

All through my high school years I had a horrible time relating to and connecting with other boys. Girls were so much more comfortable and familiar to me. I remember praying that God would give me just one guy best friend. I prayed this prayer for many years. I felt ashamed of this longing and my need to be accepted by other guys. I could not grasp why I craved this so much. I would see guys come up to each other and embrace or give a big bear hug to each other. I wished so badly that someone would hug me like that but there was no way I was going to initiate it because in my mind if I showed signs of joy at hugging men then surely everyone would think I was gay.

At the same time, I also was dealing with my perceptions and feelings of rejection from the men in my life. My intense longing for male acceptance and affirmation drove me to insecurity and extreme anxiety. As I began to develop into manhood, my sexual thought life was all over the place. It consumed me inside and out. My desire for acceptance had now turned sexual. I would pick guys out that had what I felt I was lacking, who looked like they had it all together. I would watch them with their friends playing football and laughing and wishing so much that I could be a part of their world. I never knew what to do with these impulses and feelings. I was too afraid to tell my struggle to anyone. I felt that disclosing this secret struggle would only make things worse for me. I was sure that I would be labeled a “faggot” and shunned. I resolved to just deal with it on my own. I felt alone, rejected and inferior.

After high school I moved to Nashville, TN, to live with my father and stepmother. I became part of a local church and was very active in it. Yet, all the while my struggle with homosexual temptations grew stronger and entangled me more. I finally confided in my pastor and father, but sadly, due to my lack of accountability and my unwillingness to be more open with my struggle I fell deeper. I continued to live in guilt, bondage and condemnation.

At age 21 I moved out on my own and that was the beginning of the end. I lived in sin and filth and felt more separated from God with each new day. My relationship with Christ was being compromised by my need for male affection and acceptance. Logically I understood that I was heading down a dark and evil path but the hope of just maybe finding a man to love me overpowered my mind and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It was a risk I was willing to take.

I remember the first time I stepped into a gay club in 1998. I had never felt such acceptance and “love” from the friends that I met. They understood me. For the first time in my life I didn’t have to hide my desires or pretend to be something else. I was the popular one. Men wanted to be around me. It was an intoxicating feeling that made me feel like I was on top of the world.

Yet in spite of my new found world, deep inside I hated what I was doing and becoming. I started lying to everyone that cared about me. I became heavily involved in drugs and was going out at least five nights a week. I knew my life was spiraling completely out of control. I continued in this lifestyle for the next eight years.

I remember one day in May of 2006, I was driving home and the song, “Jesus Take the Wheel,” began to play. I heard the lyrics “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been living my life. I know I’ve got to change so from now on tonight, Jesus take the wheel. Take it from my hand cause I can’t do this on my own. I’m letting go so give me one more chance. Save me from this road I’m on. Jesus take the wheel.” Every day for a month I played that song and I would cry like a baby. It was as close as I could get to praying. Then, on June 3, 2006, I was home resting before a night out when the power of God fell so heavy in my living room. I heard the Lord tell me that because of the prayers that had gone up for me and because I was truly miserable in my sin, Jesus was going to deliver me. And that was it. In an hour it was over.

I called my homosexual friends and the guy I was seeing and ended those relationships. I went to church for the first time in months and totally surrendered myself to Jesus. It was what I needed at that moment to give me strength to begin the amazing journey of walking in my deliverance.

God led me to a church called Family Worship Center in Jackson, TN. This church was not afraid of my struggle and did not reject me but totally accepted this lonely broken boy who was in desperate need of love. I was embraced by an awesome group of Christian guys who committed to walking this out with me. It was the hardest and yet most fulfilling season of my life. At the time, I was still living in Nashville so every week for a year I would make the two hour drive to meet with these men. God used my new brothers in Christ to minister the truth and love that I was searching for. These men helped me discover my identity in Christ.

On February 4, 2007, I was visiting the church and after service I walked into the pastor’s office to find his niece sitting on the couch. Instantly I heard the Lord say, “This is your wife, the woman I have made for you.” We began dating and a year later, March 15, 2008, we were married. During the year of our dating I also began finding healthy male friendships that I had desperately wanted all my life. Other men who walked alongside me keeping me accountable, encouraging me and being my friend.

God is continuing to restore the years that Satan had taken from me. My life is one miracle after another and I thank God every day for the blessings He is pouring out on me and my family. Jesus has given me the wholeness and healing that I was desperate for. He not only saved me but He also liberated me and continues to liberate me. I finally understand what it means not just to be a Christian, but to have a personal relationship with an awesome, loving and gracious God. This journey has brought me closer to God and has shown me my complete dependence on Him.

As witness to His faithfulness in my life, I now serve in a ministry at my church called Liberty Outreach and I am using my life to help others walk in deliverance. God has taken what He is doing in me to give others hope.

My passion is to help the Church become a place of safety, refuge and support for those struggling with unwanted homosexuality. Our culture is telling youth, men and women, to accept and embrace their homosexual struggles as their identity, while the Church has remained silent. We are living in a time where sin is not only being tolerated, but it is being celebrated. We as Christians have an amazing chance to stand up for what is righteous and to love people no matter how tattered and broken they are and to open our hearts to them. “There has no temptation taken us but such as is common to man, and God who is faithful will not allow us to be tempted above that which we are able but with that temptation makes a way of escape that we will be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Friday, February 6, 2009

A Message to the Church Today: REPENT OR PERISH!

I thought this was a very important message so I wanted to share it on my blog. This is a message to the Church, to the people of God, to you and me. I realize it must begin with me! How about you? Most church attenders and churches today are pretty well summed up in this article.

A True Call for Revival
by Henry T. Blackaby

I've heard many "calls" for revival recently but with very little teaching and exposition on revival. It seems that in these urgent days there are too few leaders who actually are leading God's people corporately to repent, pray, seek holiness and return to God.

Do we not realize that scripturally it is impossible to have a call for revival without a call for repentance? This has always been God's requirement for His people. The passionate, unceasing corporate prayer that is always present in revival is desperately lacking as well. In short, I see little evidence of sincere brokenness among God's people for our present condition or the condition of our nation.

We call for revival without actually crying with tears and brokenness for revival. The "call for revival" seems almost like a spiritual fad, with no true passion and sincerity of heart. Many will say "amen" when they hear mention of the need for revival. But the "call" is fleeting and soon passes away. And then we quickly move on to other activity and return to our business as usual with no follow-through by the leaders of God's people.

We must understand that a true call for revival is first and foremost a recognition that we've departed from God. It demands a radical response from God's leaders and His people. Revival has always been, and remains to this day, God dealing with the sin of His own -– not the world.

Therefore, if we never recognize our need for repentance of sin, then our "call" for revival is in vain. Isaiah warned God's people: "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from God; and your sins have hidden His face from you; so that He will not hear"(Isaiah 59:1-2).

This lack of recognition among God's people to see their present spiritual condition frightens me. The continued neglect of dealing with the sin of God's people is both obvious and appalling. Have we moved so far from God that we remain content in our sin? Do we not fear the judgment of God? Week after week, wherever I go, I hear no mention of our desperate need of God. There's no spontaneous concern or cry to God. It's simply not on the minds and hearts of God's people -– at least where I am and where I travel.

Let me draw to your attention to several things that God's people must do immediately.

First, we must seek God to grant us broken and contrite hearts. "For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: 'I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones'" (Isaiah 57:15). And again, "[O]n him will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word" (Isaiah 66:2).

Next, spiritual leaders must "return to Lord" –- and stay there. (Zechariah 1:3; Malachi 3:1-7; Acts 6:1-4).

Third, the people of God must pray corporately with one heart and one mind. (Acts 1:14; Acts 2:1; Acts 4:31).

Fourth, God's people must be immediately obedient to all God reveals to them. (1 Samuel 15:22-23)

Then, continually bear witness to God's people of all that God is doing. (Acts 1:8; Acts 14:21-22, 26-27)

Finally, we should expect and experience Christ's fullness of joy. Jesus said: "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:9-11).

The immediate need for revival among God's people is "life and death" for our nation. Apparently, there are too many of us who simply don't believe that, and there are far too few who sense the awful judgment that is to come if we do not see revival. Believe Christ's warning: "[U]nless you repent you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3). Let us, therefore, repent and return quickly to the Lord.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Thoughts On Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Are You Willing To Die?

Dietrick Bonhoeffer's death has been a contemporary confirmation of Tertullian's dictum, "The Blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Bonhoeffer was executed by the Gestapo near the end of World War II because of his unwillingness to stand by and remain silent against Hitler's crimes.

Bonhoeffer obviously met Jesus Christ and accepted the ultimate consequences of that encounter in the world.

My thought is: With the coming persecution of the Church is my faith deep enough for me to be willing to lay down my life as a martyr? Religion or cognitive understanding of doctrine without experiencing a deeper intimacy with the Father will not motivate us to take that kind of stand for Jesus.

Henry Blackaby commented at a recent conference I attended that the church is full of individuals who understand right doctirne without any dept of experience or intimacy with God. It's what I call religion!

Jesus' call to be His followers is very radical and much different from what we are calling church members to these days: "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found hiks life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:34-39).

For Bonhoeffer Christianity could never be merely intellectual theory, doctrine divorced from life, or mystical emotion, but always it must be responsible, obedient action, the discipleship of Christ in every situation of concrete everyday life, personal and public.

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.