I just finished watching the movie "Temple Grandin", a true life story about an autistic woman who through her autism and challenges wrought from it, was able to change the world around her and in so doing make this world a better place to live in. I love movies that speak in such a way and cause me to well up with tearful emotion. The last scene of this movie did just that and impacted me in such a way as to want to share with you the following personal truth. We are not put here to change but to be changed. This may sound simplistic but if you really think about it you will understand the deep revelation it brings.
Granted we must do our part in order to allow change to be effected in us but when I strive to change something on my own for no other purpose than to manipulate and control the outcome of things in my life, well, time and time again I will run into frustration and failure. Yes, I know of many who have the will power to change by mere determination and dogged persistence but I honestly believe this change does not produce the freedom and power which we were created for. Striving may produce change and some good ones at that but it cannot be the kind of change that sets you free to make a difference in the lives of those around you.
Case in point: I lived most of my life with the daily struggle of becoming the man I thought God wanted me to become. While I had a picture and sense of what this "man" was I continually found myself meeting up with never being able to meet up to the standards I believed I was being called to. Holiness, righteousness, integrity, truthfulness, etc. were all worthy character traits I desperately wanted to embody. I just didn't want to be called a follower and child of God but I wanted desperately to live the kind of life that would attest to this reality. My problem all along was I was trying desperately to change myself. I was going about things in my own strength and limited ability. Is it any wonder how I'd end up utterly miserable and frustrated? The man God was calling me to be, had destined me to be, and had made provision for me to become could only be brought about by simple and sincere submission to His ways and timing for my life. How many times do we fall into the mistake of thinking God really needs our help in bringing about His purposes? As if the God who made the heavens and the earth and everything in it needed me to come along and make things happen. How foolish of me even if it was well intentioned at times. I honestly thought I needed to help God along in the process. Legalism ("Do's" and "Dont's') have always looked attractive at first to mere mortals. We actually think that if we just follow a set of rules or many rules (however the case ay be) we will reach our desired goal...to be Like God. I guess it is this last point that has always turned me off about man-made rules or caused me to disagree with my New Age brothers and sisters. While I may be god-like and made in God's image, I can never be god...ever. When we say we are masters of our own destinies, well, to me, this is just legalism reversed; futile human attempts to be free and evolved. But I digress from my main point.
I desperately wanted to be the straight man God had created me to be. Or so I thought. Every time I fell into my gay tendencies this would set me off in a tailspin of utter despair and throw me into bouts of wanting and trying to change. Each and every time I would fall hard, never able to become the person God had created me to be. Whether you agree with me or not concerning my outspoken sexuality, I personally had to come to terms with my personal truth: whether or not created Gay I definitely was created to be in eternal fellowship with Jesus. While others struggled and grappled with the idea of whether God existed and if he had ever sent His Son to Earth to be offered up in mankind's place as the ultimate acceptable sacrifice and atonement, I on the other hand fell right into it and was able to embrace this mindset with very little effort. I mean, yes, I did go through my doubts and personal crisises of faith but in the end I bought into the whole redemption story and presently live my life from that other-worldly perspective. What I struggled with was that God could ever love me as a Gay man, especially a practicing Gay man, which until recently I was very much.
And this is where it gets convoluted and murky. While identifying as Gay I truly do believe, always have believed, God has called me to refrain from living out and proud as a Homosexual but to embrace my singleness and devote myself to celibacy. Please understand me, this is my personal truth. What applies to me may or may not apply to another Gay person. I refuse to allow myself to become anyone's poster child for what they consider should be the lifestyle of all gay people. In the end, we will all stand before God and He alone will then reveal what each and everyone of us... gay, straight, bi-, trans. questioning, asexual, metrosexual, hypersexual, and so on, were called to live out our lives as. This is the reason why I choose to embrace everyone regardless of their sexual preference and lifestyle because in the end God will have the final say. But again, I digress.
Very much like Abraham I too have believed God would bring me somehow to where I needed to be in life in order to be able to live my life as He intended for me to live it. And just like he was asked to offer up his son Isaac as a test, I believe God also asked me to offer up my sexuality and whatever rights I felt or thought I had a right to. In order to understand what I am saying you will have to temporarily turn off your mind and allow your heart to read on.
My bout with Anal Cancer was the very thing God used to show me that He alone was able to change me and not the other way around. By afflicting my flesh He was able to demonstrate to me that yes I was truly able to say no to my sexual urges, Up till then, before Cancer reared its ugly head, I believed wholeheartedly I did not have it in me to abstain from sexual pleasure. Well, here I am writing to you today, Cancer free and still abstinent fourteen months later from when my journey began. God used this method to prove to me that with His strength and power I could say no and mean it. I cannot tell you what will happen tomorrow but as of today, this moment, I am free from the need to give in to my sexual urges. Of course, every single day I wake up and feel only attraction to other men but I no longer have to act upon it. I see now I can truly live as a celibate man and be content in it.
I have not been put here to change but to be changed.
Whatever it requires and however long it takes, He is faithful to bring about the desired change necessary in my life. In this lifetime I will continue to struggle and be tempted, and even fall, but I have a God who loves me and accepts just as I am and is using everything in my life; my past, present, and future, to change me and mold me into who he alone has predestined me to become. With that said, I do not need to define myself by what others think or say concerning me so let the arguments and debates about whether I am gay or not rage around me. If God is for me, who can be against me? It is high time the Church and those in the Body of Christ begin to honestly deal with the issue of sexuality because it is not going to go away anytime soon. The longer we keep ourselves in the dark about it the longer the enemy will continue to abuse and taunt us; the ones endowed with His wisdom and love to bring freedom to countless others. May the Church finally take the lead and be the head in such matters.
Thank you God for HBO and movies like the one I just watched. Thank you for speaking to us through the most unconventional of ways. Thank you for letting me see you even when I think you will not be found. Thank you for being in the business of changing me and for granting greater freedom in the process. Thank you.
Crooked Notes by Idilio Rivera is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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