I know I disappeared for two months and I am kind of glad I did. My life since the last post has been busy, trying, and yet still amazingly good. I’m not sure I can thoroughly explain everything to myself, never mind in words on a webpage.
A quick timeline of my life since mid January:
~ Finish winter break with skiing and trying family issues
~ Start spring semester with a semi-unbalanced mind due to said family issues
~ Rearrange class schedule to remove 2 classes and add a lifeguard training class
~Classes, Ultimate Frisbee practice, swimming, Club responsibilities (I am treasurer for the Christian club on campus) socializing, spending time in the Bible, and spending time talking to God (when I say talking I mean prayer and attempting to listen to His will, though it has been tough.)
Life is not without hardships like tough classes and aging relatives with declining health. But what are my worries really worth? I may go through trials and tough times, but there is so much more than my worries to focus on. I may have been busy, but with the strength of the Holy Spirit, I have managed to succeed in keeping my busy schedule in order without burning myself out or leaving things undone. It’s now spring break, and once again I am typing from the motel in Vermont because I finally have the time to sit and think. (The skiing is awesome of course.)
I feel like I have grown so much in faith and knowledge and I could not possibly describe everything I have learned lately. I stumbled across what had started out as a poem last fall (sometime in September or October) that turned into a prayer I now have in writing in the form of poetry (or prose; however you want to classify it). It is unedited except for grammar and I probably will not edit just because it came from a time in my life where I was not as knowledgeable and so full of questions.
A decade I have denied Him,
yet He keeps coming back.
Maybe He loves me,
maybe He doesn’t,
maybe I am not worthy.
I have denied and blamed him,
I deserve His wrath.
I cannot change my nature.
He casts away those like me.
I represent all that is not Christian
and yet I call myself so,
but I do not deserve such right.
The scriptures damn my type
and my type turn away from God,
yet I am on the fence,
torn between two ways of living.
If God and Jesus love me and want my worship,
then why have They made me so?
Do I deserve Their love
or am I damned no matter what?
He has provided and He has taken away.
At the worst time He chose wrath rather than mercy
and yet I turned to Him.
I might convince myself otherwise,
that it is my own choosing to turn to Him,
but perhaps He was there all along
in the back of my mind.
Perhaps He was that voice in that said stop,
and that voice that knows there is a purpose in my life.
Though that purpose I cannot see, it must be there…
somewhere.
Can I blindly follow you, O God,
when I do not know if You have already damned me outright?
Can I redeem myself so easily?
I know I need to read Your word
and there is much I must do before I will be worthy,
if at all,
but can I truly be found worthy of Your mercy when judgment comes?
I refuse to hide behind a false façade and hide my nature
if that is what I must do to deserve your love.
If that be the case, then go ahead
and damn me now to an eternal hell.
Maybe Lucifer and I will become good friends.
But if you truly love me
and my absolute worship and understanding of Your word is all you ask for,
then I shall do so and your word I shall follow unwaveringly.
Perhaps Your word will shed light on my dilemma.
Hear this, O God,
what Your word says
will determine my future.
I knew when I wrote this that I was committing myself to changing my life. For a year, as I started attending church regularly and was confirmed last summer, I always had the question in the back of my mind of whether or not God could love people like me who are attracted to the same sex. During that year I would Google and Youtube anything relating to Christianity and Homosexuality and unfortunately much of what I found was very unloving. At the time I wrote this poem/prayer, I was seriously thinking that God would not accept me because I had these desires.
Longish story short, I read the scriptures that referenced Homosexuality, was convicted by the Holy Spirit in me, broke up with my girl friend at the time, repented (partially) and continued to work out whether I was truly saved or not. Mid December I fully repented of this sin and vowed never to go back to dating women. I still have those desires and I must continually repent every time those thoughts come back, but I know living for God is better than any earthly relationship could ever be.
At the point I wrote this poem, I was afraid to fully trust in God. As I look back on it, it may have been that over the course of the day I took to write it, I decided to accept Jesus and perhaps that day was when I received the Holy Spirit to guide me through all that has happened since then, specifically with overcoming this sin. I wrote more on this process back in December or January if you would like to look it up in this blog.
I know God had a reason for all of the hardships in my life and I am such a strong and faithful person now because I have been there and I know how much better it is to have God in my life instead. I have lost contact with many of my old friends partly because I have moved to college just before this point, but I believe also partly because those of them who gave in to homosexuality and bisexuality saw that I had turned away from that life and they thought I was being brainwashed into thinking that was the only way I could be Christian, where that is hardly the case.
I changed my ways not out of obligation, but because I wanted to and I felt called to. Nobody and no book told me had to give up that life in order to be saved. The only reason I read the bible is because it is inspired by God and through reading it, I can understand His will a little better when I feel Him guiding me. The Holy Spirit is something I do not fully understand and cannot explain well, but the best I can describe it that the Holy Spirit is God, part of the trinity (three Gods in one) that guides His followers to His will.
I had not had access to the Holy Spirit back in my childhood, but somehow during that childhood I always pondered whether there truly was a God out there watching over Earth. As I think back on it, even in the darkest of times, I felt this call from within me (at the time I called it my subconscious, though now I believe it was the Holy Spirit) that told me the dark thoughts in my head were stupid. I know God won’t solve my problems for me, but He can give me the will to do so.
Leave a comment and my God bless you as He has blessed me these past few months as I have grown closer to Him.
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