Gay Girl Good God Quotes

Light has a way of welcoming in the truth and letting it put its feet up, which in turns means that everything not like it, though it may invite itself over, can’t get comfortable enough to stay.

I don’t believe it is wise or truthful to the power of the gospel to identify oneself by the sins of one’s past or the temptations of one’s present but rather to only be defined by the Christ who’s overcome both for those He calls His own.

..because a good God made the woman, then being a woman [is] a good thing

Our sexuality is not our soul, marriage is not heaven, and singleness is not hell.

To tell you about what God has done for my soul is to invite you into my worship.

Yet, unbelief doesn't see God as the ultimate good. So it can't see sin as the ultimate evil. It instead sees sin as a good thing and thus God's commands as a stumbling block to joy. In believing the devil, I didn't need a pentagram pendant to wear, neither did I need to memorize a hex or two. All I had to do was trust myself more than God's Word. I had to believe that my thoughts, my affections, my rights, my wishes, were worthy of absolute obedience and that in laying prostrate before the flimsy throne I'd made for myself, that I'd be doing a good thing.

Could it be that God would not have me going about the rest of my life believing that these lesser forms of “love" were the real thing? Perhaps this love He, filled to the brim with, was pouring over into His dealings with me. And perhaps this love was compelling Him, on the basis of grace—an undeserved love—to help me see that every person, place or thing that I loved more than Him could not keep its promise to love me eternally.

Every single thing He has ever or will ever say is true. The simplicity of faith is this: taking God’s Word for it. And I might not have felt like it, but I had no choice but to believe Him.

Unbelief, just like Satan, will always take the easy way out. It will tell us to eat the fruit in exchange for knowledge, instead of fearing God to gain real wisdom. Unbelief will unravel our perceptions of both suffering and the blessedness of life and beckon us to skip self-denial at all costs with the faux promises of comfort that can’t extend beyond the grave.

My hands, head, face, legs, hips, hormones, private parts, voice, feet, fingers, feelings, were all made by Him and for Him. Apparently, this body was never mine to begin with - it was given to me from Somebody, for Somebody. Somebody who'd made it for glory and not shame. Until I got to know Him though, my identity would be made up of whatever dust that flew up from the devil's feet as he ran through the earth.

He is so much greater than the greatest thing and much more glorious than the most glorious glory the eyes could see. Knowing this, He becomes the aim of all our doing. Because, if God is bigger than we can imagine, we are wasting our time to chase after something or someone lesser than Him. And because we know that He is our all in all, in our temptations, our trials, and our victories, we must place our ultimate identity not in who we are, but in who we know God to be.

When salvation has taken place in the life of someone under the sovereign hand of God, they are set free from the penalty of sin and its power. In a body without the Spirit, sin is an unshakable king under whose dominion no man can flee. The entire body, with its members, affections, and mind all willfully submit themselves to sin’s rule. But when the Spirit of God takes back the body that He created for Himself, He sets it free from the pathetic master that once held it captive and releases it into the marvelous light of its Savior. It is then able to not only want God, but it is actually able to obey God. And isn’t that what freedom is supposed to be? The ability to not do as I please, but the power to do what is pleasing.

Why hadn’t they ever mentioned the place happiness had within righteousness, or how the taking up of the cross would be a practice of obtaining delight? Delight in all that God is? Even their Savior had this kind of joy in mind as He endured His cross. So why hadn’t they set their focus on the same? In their defense, they were not to blame for my unbelief. I just wonder if they would’ve told me about the beauty of God just as much, if not more, than they told me about the horridness of hell, if I would’ve burned my idols at a faster pace.

Trying to contain the small giggle welling up in her chest from the sincerity of my question, Santoria, full of confidence, responded while looking toward my direction, "Yes, Jackie.The gospel didn't just save you, it also keeps you.

I don’t doubt that it’s easy to mistake the heterosexual gospel for the gospel of God because many have forgotten that the gospel is actually about God in the first place. When the Christian life has become a practice in doing everything else but making Jesus known, what would we expect of our gospel presentations? They will naturally result in the telling of something empty and void of power—more moral than anything and sufficient to make men and women believe that they can be saved by and for some other means than Jesus.

Our sexuality is not our soul, marriage is not heaven, and singleness is not hell. So may we all preach the news that is good for a reason. For it proclaims to the world that Jesus has come so that all sinners, same-sex-attracted and opposite-sex-attracted, can be forgiven of their sins to love God and enjoy Him forever.

Vomit will always be vomit even if drizzled with chocolate, sliced almonds, and a cherry on top (2 Peter 2:21-22). When the temptation to see sin as what it is not arrives, the Scriptures are our light, our final truth, our escape out of the shadow moving toward our feet. The Word of God and not the word of the enemy is where we see the true identity of sin.

I couldn’t let fear hold my hand. Even though it was a familiar palm, a consistent one even, I knew it would only work to separate what God was going to join together.

Do you know why we have a hard time believing that a gay girl can become a completely different creature? Because, we have a hard time believing in God. ...

Joy has never been the problem. It was our hearts that bent us away from finding our ultimate enjoyment in Who’d made us, which crippled how, what, and who we got joy from.

...to have a quiet and gentle spirit--a call given to women--would not mean I had to abandon all that I am, limp along in life, silence my personality in the name of obedience, but instead it meant that I could authentically be the woman God made me as, while anchored in the truth and controlled by the Spirit. When led by Him, when wanting to place my rights above His honor, humility would place its hand over my heart, keeping it still and settled with peace until what was worth being said or done happened in love. Out of a deep wanting for what belonged to God to be recognized and respected.

Jesus said there will be no marriage in the new creation. In that respect, we will be like the angels, neither marrying nor being given in marriage. We will have the reality, we will no longer need the signpost. By foregoing marriage now, singleness is a way of both anticipating this reality and testifying to its goodness. It's a way of saying this future reality is so certain, that we can live according to it now. If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its sufficiency. It's a way of declaring to a world obsessed with sexual and romantic intimacy these things are not ultimate, and that in Christ we possess what is.

It is the identity that we ascribe to God out of doubt or faith in His Scriptures that will determine the identity we will give ourselves and ultimately the life that we inevitably live. If He is the Creator, then we are created. If He is Master, then we are servants. If He is love, then we are loved. If He is omnipotent, then we are not as powerful as we think. If He is omniscient, then there is nowhere to hide. If He cannot lie, then His promises are all true.

Sin, when in the body, cannot not stay put. It’s not a guest that stays in one room, making sure not to disturb the others. It is a tenant that lives in everything and goes everywhere. It can bleed into every part, choking out anything holy.

C. S. Lewis wrote: A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness—they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

When Jesus died and rose, He gave you the power to defeat sin. Literally. Like you don't have to give in. Every single time you are tempted to sin, just remember the reality that Jesus defeated it already. You're not a slave. You are free. You just have to believe that and walk in it.

The same Bible that condemned me held in it the promises that could save me. I just had to believe it. “It” being what it said about Him: God. Jesus had the guilty in mind when He was hung high and stretched out wide. On it, He died in my place, for my sin. He, bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as a slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God. You would think His Father would have a better memory than that. Didn’t He know that that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew. His justice wouldn’t allow Him to forget. His love is what He wanted me to know and remember, and I did.

Christ did not die to redeem us in part. Neither did He rise so that we might have life in portions. But with us having a body made for Him, as well as the mind, will, personality, and emotions that it contains, we must understand that God is after us becoming victorious over any and all sin that would hinder the whole person from serving God fully and freely.

When, as a new Christian, I was introduced to the typical nature in which some Christians speak of their lives in the loveliest terms, I refused to give in to the convenient misery of being ambiguous about the truth. If the truth is what sets us free, then why not walk in it at all times? With wisdom and love, of course, but also with the reality that truth is where freedom begins.

Evangelism is a word that means to share the good news—more specifically, in this case, the good news of the gospel. And this evangelism is all about God because the gospel is all about God. It is God who created us. God who we all sinned against. It is God who loved us. God who sent His Son Christ to Earth. It is Christ who lived the life that we couldn’t. It is Christ who died that death that we deserve. It is Christ who appeased God’s wrath. It is Christ that rose from the dead. It is Christ who sent His promised Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that unveils our eyes to see the glory of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who softens our hardened hearts so that we will repent. It is Christ who we are commanded to place our faith in. It is Christ who saves us and it is Christ that gives us eternal life.

...her life was full of power in ways that I never knew possible. How when unbelief came near, she faithfully turned Scripture loose to capture and strangle it into submission to a higher will than her own. A gifted woman she was but ungodly she was not. I had known many a person with glorious gifts and satanic lives, but this woman showed me that knowing God was more than knowing about Him and doing things for Him but knowing Him.

The gay community is called that for a reason. It is a community. A collective of people with different names, social statuses, eating habits, upbringings and more but with one commonality shared among them that make them all more alike than not: their sexuality…… The difference between the gay community and the Christian community. Was not skill, intellect, comfort, humour, or beauty; it was that in one and not the other, God dwelled.

But I- unbeknownst to me- had been swayed by this same leaven. If only I could just be straight, and lay aside my homosexuality, God would accept me and call me His own, I used to think. This delusion was the belief that only one aspect of my life was worthy of judgment, while the rest deserved heaven. That my other voices were “not as bad.” They were just struggles that I had to work on instead of repenting. There is a possibility that this kind of self-righteous thinking is why salvation has eluded many same-sex-attracted men and women… Because God did not take hold of their gay desires and replace them with straight desires, they have no other choice but to follow where their affections may lead. The error is this: they have come to God believing that only a fraction of themselves needs saving. They have therefore neglected to acknowledge the rest of them also needs to be made right.

It's funny how, sometimes, the mind won't let the body remember what's been done to it. It chooses, at will, to take the abusive memory and bury it. As if to nurture away the pain by making us forget it's there. Not remembering trauma doesn't mean we're left without its effect. It still comes up and out, at a certain smell, sound, sight, touch, question, tone, location, person, people, personality. Waiting to be noticed and brought to the light. Letting it, and peeking into where it's from, is the path to making sense of ourselves and finding the particular healing we've been kept from having.

Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.

Jesus had the guilty in mind when He hung high and stretched out wide.... He, bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as a slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God... Didn't He know that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew... Without asking my permission, a good God had come to my rescue.

From the outside looking in, it could be assumed that Preston's and my relationship was God's proof of turning a "gay girl good." But really, He'd already done that the moment He'd set me free from sin.

If when the time was coming for Him to experience the full vengeance of God instead of the sweet love in which He’d always abided, He approached it with indifference, we could only conclude that He didn’t care that much about having His intimacy with the Father disrupted.

Yet, unbelief doesn’t see God as the ultimate good. So it can’t see sin as the ultimate evil. It instead sees sin as a good thing and thus God’s commands as a stumbling block to joy. In believing the devil, I didn’t need a pentagram pendant to wear, neither did I need to memorize a hex or two. All I had to do was trust myself more than God’s Word. I had to believe that my thoughts, my affections, my rights, my wishes, were worthy of absolute obedience and that in laying prostrate before the flimsy throne I’d made for myself, that I’d be doing a good thing.

It can be a habit of some to not only have a compartmentalized view of themselves in light of the gospel but to also have a compartmentalized concept of discipleship. Where the entire goal of discipleship in our church communities starts to only be about teaching men and women how to walk free from the loud shouts of their broken sexuality but forgets to teach them how to quiet all of the other noise that the flesh makes. Christ did not die to redeem us in part. Neither did He rise so that we might have life in portions. But with us having a body made for Him, as well as the mind, will, personality, and emotions that it contains, we must understand that God is after us becoming victorious over any and all sin that would hinder the whole person from serving God fully and freely.

Before writing [the book], I lived out the words. A gay girl once? Yes. Now? I am what God's goodness will do to a soul once grace gets to it. In saying that, I know I've already offended someone... There are many who, while reading, won't understand gayness as something possible of being in the past tense... Gayness.. can be an immovable identity only when the heart is unwilling to bow [to God].

Being smarter than that, he stuck to asking only questions first.

And isn’t that what freedom is supposed to be? The ability to not do as I please, but the power to do what is pleasing.

If we are as complex as He’s made us to be, then surely we are much more sinful than we can imagine. And for that reason, when God comes to restore, He must do it entirely.

Surely, no man who has made God small in his own life will have the Godward focus to make Him big in their ministry to others.

Not only that, there is so much joy to be had on Earth because there is more glory in God than we can imagine. He is so much greater than the greatest thing and much more glorious than the most glorious glory the eyes could see. Knowing this, He becomes the aim of all of our doing. Because, if God is bigger than we can imagine, we are wasting our time to chase after something or someone lesser than Him. And because we know that He is our all in all, in our temptations, our trials, and our victories, we must place our ultimate identity not in who we are, but in who we know God to be.

But it will feel more true than it is, for sin can never deliver on its promise to make us happy. Vomit will always be vomit even if drizzled with chocolate, sliced almonds, and a cherry on top (2 Peter 2:21–22). When the temptation to see sin as what it is not arrives, the Scriptures are our light, our final truth, our escape out of the shadow moving toward our feet. The Word of God and not the word of the enemy is where we see the true identity of sin.

The root of all sin is unbelief in God.

I’d met so many disciples who preached more of sin than joy, whose eyes were stuck in a constant state of solemnity, clenched teeth and an endless fascination with holiness. Why hadn’t they ever mentioned the place happiness had within righteousness, or how the taking up of the cross would be a practice of obtaining delight? Delight in all that God is? Even their Savior had this kind of joy in mind as He endured His cross. So why hadn’t they set their focus on the same? In their defense, they were not to blame for my unbelief. I just wonder if they would’ve told me about the beauty of God just as much, if not more, than they told me about the horridness of hell, if I would’ve burned my idols at a faster pace.

God was not calling me to be straight; He was calling me to Himself. The choice to lay aside sin and take hold of holiness was not synonymous with heterosexuality.

So I took another look at Genesis …” “You know Genesis?” “And Nehemiah, Ezra, Proverbs, Lamentations—one of my favorites, hilarious subtext, but I can’t read it on airplanes, where people get upset with laughing fits. The whole book’s a classic.” “You read the whole Bible?” “Couple times. And you know how in Genesis, Lot’s the only good guy in the twin cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. These two male angels come to stay with him. Apparently they’re lookers. Think Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Dogma. And these people from his street bang on Lot’s door, wanting him to let the houseguests out so they can have gay sex. Now Lot’s always been an accommodating neighbor, but this ain’t no potluck dinner. They argue back and forth, going nowhere. So, finally, in an attempt to show that sex with girls is much more fun and convert them to heterosexuality, Lot offers to turn over his two underage, virgin daughters for gang rape.” “It doesn’t say that!” “Let me see your Bible.” Serge executed a perfect sword drill, finding chapter nineteen in seconds. He turned the book around, slid it back across the table and tapped verse eight. Three youths crowded over the page. “It does say that. But how can it be?” “Because God blessed us with curiosity. Read it with an open mind and you realize it’s actually a brilliant satire on homophobia. Think as an individual: The Lord doesn’t want a train pulled on little kids. It’s like reading Swift’s Modest Proposal and thinking he really wants to eat babies. What the Bible’s trying to say is we’re all his children. But if you take Lot’s story literally, well, nice family values, eh? But that’s just my interpretation, which I’m now questioning. I could be way off.” The youths got up and went over to their pastor. “I think we’ve been wrong about gay people …” “… They’re fellow children of God.

If I could teach my daughter anything about herself, it would be that because a god God made the woman, then being a woman was a good thing.

The only constant in this world is God.

Nothing was clear except God's loud voice saying, "Come.

He loved me because he loved God more.

God was not calling me to be straight: He was calling me to himself. The choice to lay aside sin and take hold of holiness as not synonymous with heterosexuality.

The difference between the gay community and the Christian community was not skill, intellect, comfort, humor, or beauty: it was that in one nd not the other, God dwelled.

truth is where freedom begins.

To me, the devil made more sense than God sometimes.

Without asking my permission, a good God had come to my rescue.

Even in the final hours before Hs death, when He might've chosen another will, or another cup to drink, He, as He'd done always, placed Himself and the wishes of His body under the beautiful will of the Father, showing us all that the boy doesn't have to have the final say in our lives.

If I could leave the love of my life for the Lover of my soul, then changing my clothes, though difficult, would not be as horrific as it seemed.

S. Lewis wrote: A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness—they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

But God was not a Las Vegas chaplain or an impatient mother, intent on sending a man my way to “cure” me of my homosexuality. He was God. A God after my whole heart, desperate to make it new.

It’s funny how, sometimes, the mind won’t let the body remember what’s been done to it. It chooses, at will, to take the abusive memory and bury it. As if to nurture away the pain by making us forget it’s there. Not remembering trauma doesn’t mean we’re left without its effect. It still comes up and out, at a certain smell, sound, sight, touch, question, tone, location, person, people, personality. Waiting to be noticed and brought to the light. Letting it, and peeking into where it’s from, is the path to making sense of ourselves and finding the particular healing we’ve been kept from having.

Adam and Eve, God's first image-bearers, made to love and reflect God in creation, had now become the world's first sinners. Everyone born after Adam inherited it. And, just like Eve, I from birth, would experience the remnants of her dealings with the serpent. Being born human meant that I had the capacity for affection and logic. Being born sinful meant both were inherently broken... Desires exist because God gave them to us. But homosexual desires exist because sin does. Loving Him, as were were created to do, involves both the will and the affections, but sin steals this love God placed in us for Himself and tells it to go elsewhere.

I knew because our relationship brought out the war in her. Her heart became a battlefield. Her tongue turned into a shield and her eyes were swords that cut deep with every stare. Her warrior-like behavior shook the marrow out of my bones, confused about how I became the enemy in the matter of months. Started to question her love for me. And then one day the Lord spoke and said, 'Preston. If you had been wounded in battle too many times to count, you would have adopted some guerilla war-type tactics too. I'm calling you to love her not like you but like Me.' [Journey to Covenant by Preston Perry]

To leave her, us, our love, made no sense apart from the divine doing of God. She was both my woman and my idol. An unqualified god without an ounce of deity. She was the eye Jesus said to gouge out and the right hand He commanded me to cut off (Matthew 5:29-30). Though it was as painful as the extreme act of removing a part of the body, it was better for me to lose her than to lose my soul.

What You are calling me to do, I can't do it on my own, but I know enough about You to know that You will help me," I said to God, my new friend. I didn't know that the confession of my inability to please Him and the shifting of my back away from the sins I'd previously embraced was repentance. Nor did I recognize that my resolve to believe that He could be to me what no one else could, was faith. But it was. Without asking me my permission, a good God had come to my rescue.

But, at the same time that I was teaching myself how to avoid pain, I was also training myself to live without love. "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. . . . To love is to be vulnerable" [C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves]

Love, as I'd understood it- through my mama- wasn't like the wind. Indifference was like that. Wind and indifference went wherever it pleased. Settling down when it benefited them, moving on without warning, even if it ripped a home or two apart on the way out. Love was like the sun- always there. It might've looked like it was moving- but it was forever still.

God made them male and female- two words not crafted by a person, or group, or society, or culture, or America for that matter, but used by God to describe what He'd make and exactly what He'd designed them to be. Out of the same God came two different bodies. And after creating them, lastly, after all that had been made before, God looked at them and everything else and called it and them good. The plants? Good. The stars? Good The fish's fins? Good. What about Adam and Even? What about their eyes, and how their mind made them see the same thing through a different lens? Or their hands, and how Adam's were wide enough to hold a hoof or two and Eve's small enough to fit a bird in it. Or Eve's voice and how it sounded like the morning and his, sounding like he'd just spit out a mountain. Or his brow bone, strong as a fist. Her face, soft as an amen. All of this, God said was a 'very' good thing. Why? Because a good God made it.

So, to leave that community for another one was terrifying, especially when the transition was being made into a community that seemed to be everything but safe. But the group of Christians I began to know and enjoy were ones that did more for me than the gay community could’ve ever done. They showed me God. The community I called home for a season of my life were all full of laughter and what I’d labeled “life.” But the reality was that my gay community was indeed lifeless. They were what I had been, dead. They were still image-bearers, still friends, they still mattered. I still loved them, but I loved God more. They could not help me love who they did not know themselves. The difference between the gay community and the Christian community was not skill, intellect, comfort, humor, or beauty; it was that in one and not the other, God dwelled.

We were brought together [in marriage] for the primary reason of pointing to the mystery of God’s gospel (Ephesians 5:32). Marriage was the way God wanted me to glorify Him. Becoming one flesh would not complete me. Marriage is not what would make me whole, but it would be God’s work in and through my marriage, along with whatever else the Potter chose to use to shape me as His clay that would. God was my first love. I’d married Him way before I did Preston, and I’d be married to Him even after death parted me from the man I vowed to love until then.

I knew the days after that [wedding] day wouldn’t all be a sugary thing. Some would be bitter. Others would bring new mercy. Either way, taking for myself a selah of this forever season called marriage, I approached it knowing it would be ,,, of God to continue His work of sanctifying me and glorifying Himself.

LGBT culture has done an excellent job of renewing or should I say, destroying, the mind of many, mainly by consistently using words as their greatest tool in their efforts to draw people into finding greater joy in identifying with their sin rather than their Creator.

Someone trying to pursue heterosexuality and not holiness is just as far from right standing with God as someone actively pursuing homosexuality. And in fact, when a same-sex attracted Christian pursues heterosexuality as the goal instead of Christ, they will ultimately find themselves merely replacing one idol for the other. Through abiding in Him and walking in the holiness that no one can see without the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), same-sex attracted Christians, even when alive to same-sex temptations, are able to choose God over their previous sexual identity… If sexuality was their (and our) primary identity, then that would make sexuality our primary call. But we were not ultimately made for sex; we were made for God and His glory alone (Col. 1:16).

In their defense, they were not to blame for my unbelief. I just wonder if they would’ve told me about the beauty of God just as much, if not more, than they told me about the horridness of hell, if I would’ve burned my idols at a faster pace.

If He was love, the essence of it without the slightest wrinkle in His robe, what love is when devils cannot interfere, then all other loves must be a lesser love at best. Could it be that God would not have me going about the rest of my life, believing that these lesser forms of love were the real thing? perhaps this love He, filled to the brim with, was pouring over into His dealing swith me and perhaps this love was compelling Him on the basis of grace and undeserved love to help me see that every person, place or thing that I loved more than Him could not keep its promise to love me eternally.

Shoot, I thought Jesus was the only man who practiced what He preached, but Preston was a sermon without words. His character started slowly disintegrating the bricks pain had set up that worked to keep the fear in and the beauty out. As it did, my heart breathed deep and let out an affection with his name on it. And, I had no idea what to do with it.

Sin, when in the body, cannot not stay put. It's not a guest that stays in one room, making sure not to disturb the others. It is a tenant that lives in everything and goes everywhere. It can bleed into every part, choking out anything holy. The glass shattered and broke when it moved in. Adam and Eve, God's first image-bearers, made to love and reflect God in creation, had now become the world's first sinners.

It starts before you can remember: you learn, as surely as you learn to walk and talk, the rules for being a girl. You are Princess. You are Daddy’s Little Girl. Are you ticklish? Give him a hug. You’re sweet, aren’t you? You’re a good little girl. You don’t remember those early days, but here’s what you do remember: You remember ballet class, the way your tummy stretched your pink leotard and your parents fretted over some future eating disorder, and then you were trying tap, or soccer, or what about a musical instrument? You remember “We just want you to be happy!” and you remember you said you were happy because you knew that’s what they wanted to hear. How long have you been saying what everyone else wants to hear? Time went on, and GIRLS CAN DO ANYTHING! So speak up, I can’t hear you! But also: Manners, young lady. A boy is bothering you at school? Stand up for yourself! A boy is bothering you at school? He’s just trying to get your attention. Do you like sparkles and unicorns and everything pink? Oh, that’s stupid now. Can you play in this game? Sorry, no girls allowed. Put a little color on your face. Shave your legs. Don’t wear too much makeup. Don’t wear short skirts. Don’t distract the boys by wearing bodysuits or spaghetti straps or kneesocks. Don’t distract the boys by having a body. Don’t distract the boys. Don’t be one of those girls who can’t eat pizza. You’re getting the milkshake too? Whoa. Have you gained weight? Don’t get so skinny your curves disappear. Don’t get so curvy you aren’t skinny. Don’t take up too much space. It’s just about your health. Be funny, but don’t hog the spotlight. Be smart, but you have a lot to learn. Don’t be a doormat, but God, don’t be bossy. Be chill. Be easygoing. Act like one of the guys. Don’t actually act like one of the guys. Be a feminist. Support the sisterhood. Wait, are you, like, gay? Maybe kiss a girl if he’s watching though—that’s hot. Put on a show. Don’t even think about putting on a show, that’s nasty. Don’t be easy. Don’t give it up. Don’t be a prude. Don’t be cold. Don’t put him in the friend zone. Don’t act desperate. Don’t let things go too far. Don’t give him the wrong idea. Don’t blame him for trying. Don’t walk alone at night. But calm down! Don’t worry so much. Smile! Remember, girl: It’s the best time in the history of the world to be you. You can do anything! You can do everything! You can be whatever you want to be! Just as long as you follow the rules. - Rules for Being a Girl

Being disconnected from the historical understanding of crucifixion as it relates to time and not just pain may be the reason for our partial grasp of Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” We know this verse means dying to self, but how often have we seen in it the kind of patient, daily, drawn-out dying that will come of wearing our own cross.

I decided that if I could teach my daughter anything about herself, it would be that because a good God made the woman, then being a woman was a good thing.

Loving Him, as we were created to do, involves both the will and the affections, but sin steals this love God placed in us for Himself and tells it to go elsewhere. Sin

If the truth is what sets us free, then why not walk in it at all times? With wisdom and love, of course, but also with the reality that truth is where freedom begins.

The deception was in believing that the tree was more satisfying to the body and more pleasurable to the sight than God.

Between fatherlessness and sexual abuse, my entire frame of reference for people God made male was built on the experience of their doing. One man’s absence taught me men were incapable of loving. Only in short, sporadic flashes of affection would they be able to do what they’d said they’d do. Made up of an inconsistent spine straightened out by everything else but their own flesh and blood, I refused to believe men could stand for truth, ever. The other man was not a real one at all, but while becoming a man, he decided to act out his urges on a child. A girl child whose first introduction to male affection wouldn’t be her daddy’s hug but another male’s lusts. The consequence being that a man’s touch sounded like everything unsafe. Sexual abuse, for me, turned male intimacy into an undignified practice of the male ego, to which I would only be a body to conquer and not a person to love.2 I didn’t know it with the same amount of assurance yet but all the while, another man was loving me, always.

It is the mind, when conformed to the image of sin, that moves us to call evil good simply because it feels good to us.

God told me to give you to Him, to not worry about it. But I told God how much I loved you, cuz, I didn’t know how to just let this go,

I started smoking more than usual because it kept God away. The thick dancing smoke would fill up my body and silence the war, the truth, the Scriptures, the hands of Christ, especially when they bled, stretched and still welcoming sinners, including the one dying next to Him. Unless His hands could take my own, lifting them toward heaven, signaling a surrender of the will, I would not give Him anything except resistance.

Even when we skipped a few years at a time, there would still be the rare phone call, the resumed conversation, even if I couldn’t see it, the knowledge that he was breathing somewhere muted the intensity of my daily grief. Most likely because of how infrequent it was to see him, once gone forever, I didn’t miss my father. It would probably take much more effort to miss someone that was never around. But yet, I still continued to grieve the death of hope. Any chance of me calling him “Daddy” was now dead.

Nature as it was shown in my body called me “Woman.” But society called me manly. They’d made women out to be people who wear their legs out and men to be those that spoke as if everyone should listen. Neither versions were a sufficient mirror. I’d need someone smarter and not created to tell me who I was, for He would be the one who’d know best.

A couple of years later, at seven, while watching pornography at a friend’s house, it told me to keep looking, to never tell, to remember all that I saw and to let it inside of my own house whenever my mother was asleep. Now, it just wanted me to be free. As free as the firefly once let go and released into the dark. There, surrounded by so much night, the blackness of it all made its body into a flame.

I know now what I didn’t know then. God was not calling me to be straight; He was calling me to Himself. The choice to lay aside sin and take hold of holiness was not synonymous with heterosexuality. From my prior understanding of God as told by the few Christians I’d met, to choose God would be to inevitably choose men too.

The error is this: they have come to God believing that only a fraction of themselves needs saving. They have therefore neglected to acknowledge the rest of them also needs to be made right. It is like coming to God offering only a portion of their heart for Him to have, as if He does not have the right to take hold of it all or as if what has been withheld from Him can be satisfied without Him.

Humility: Coming to God on His Terms.” Soooo, what does this have to do with me? I thought loudly to myself. Irked and unable to gather the boldness to tell Santoria that doing this exercise would just be a game of “Stupid things to do in the morning.” I sat down on the couch behind me and started to read. What I read had knives in it. Sharp, stainless steel ones, stopping only when a period or paragraph break made them sit still. Some words were shards of a mirror. Each cut showed me what my heart had tried to keep from God. Each sentence told me that pride was not exclusive to the outwardly arrogant people I’d come across, but it also sat inside of all of us. Manifesting in several ways only to be discovered when the Sword of the Spirit pierced through the bone and marrow that housed it.

Singleness is not a curse.

But just because we are tempted does not mean that we are our temptations.

God isn’t calling gay people to be straight.