HEALING FROM GAY DESIRES IS POSSIBLE

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Taylor Simon Maxwell struggled with gay desires. In his book, The Desire Tree he relates how walking beside his Heavenly Father as a son, he found radical transformation and healing in the Lord. Healing is possible.

Maxwell says, that having God as our Father is like having the best therapist in the world. And the great news is that you don’t have to pay for it. It was purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. Humbly surrender before Him, recognizing that homosexual desires and behaviors are sinful. That homosexual desires are not a result of genetics but a result of sexualized wounds from our life stories. God wants to help you process and understand why you struggle with what you struggle with and bring healing. He is the loving Father who cares.

Christian men who are struggling with gay desires are not only sealed with the Spirit of God, forgiven of all their sins, and given eternal life, but are in a right relationship with the Father who loves them and longs to sanctify them. That means that we can bring our sinful desires, childhood wounds, hurts, and pains to the Father, and ask Him to bring healing. We can ask Him to change our desires in His Fatherly love. To help us see our sin the way He sees our sin. As God begins to mature us in the faith and change us from within, the things we once wanted lose their power.

Men who are struggling with gay desires must come to understand three truths in their healing journey. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is a good place to start.  

The first truth is that no one is born with hardwired homosexual desires. This argument is a creation of those who enjoy their sin and want to make an excuse to live the way they want to. Convincing oneself that you were born with homosexual desires is nothing more than a sinful coping mechanism. If you can convince yourself that you were born with homosexual desires, then you can convince yourself that the desires and the radical behaviors you indulge in are not sinful. “I was born this way baby. What do I have to repent for?”

The Bible says that we are born with a sin nature (Ps. 51:5), not that we are born with predetermined genetic sinful desires. Just like there is no such thing as an “I want to steal a pack of gum from the store gene,” or an “I want to cheat on my math exam gene,” there is no such thing as an “I want to commit homosexual acts gene.” The idea that people are born with a genetic proclivity towards homosexual behavior is not taught anywhere in the Bible. It is in direct opposition to what the Bible says about the location of our sinful desires. This brings us to point number two.

The Bible says that sinful desires, including sinful sexual desires, come from the heart (Matt. 15:19), not our genetics. And that through the power of Christ we can have our desires changed (Gal. 5:24). That we can have our minds renewed and find true and lasting freedom from the sin that is in our lives (Rom.12:2). Jesus said that a man who looks at a woman with lustful intent has committed adultery in his heart (Matt. 5:28), not his genetic code.

Nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to ask God to change the desires of our chromosomes. Rather, through repentance and the supernatural work of the Spirit in our lives, we can become more like Christ and have our hearts transformed (1 Thess. 4:3-8). This brings us to our third point, which is really two points in one.

Men who struggle with gay desires must understand that their sinful desires to connect with men in a relationally disordered way is a result of a complex assortment of wounds that have been sexualized. These men must also recognize, believing fully in their hearts, that homosexuality is contrary to God’s design for gender, marriage, and human sexuality.

Men were designed by God to relate platonically to one another as equal brothers. Fundamentally, homosexuality is predicated on men relating to one another not as equals, but within a sexualized hierarchy of dominance and submission. Truthfully, homosexuality is a desire/behavior to emasculate and/or be emasculated by another man. In the homosexual world, these are called “tops and bottoms.”

When it comes to gender expression according to God’s design, a husband will always express his masculinity by “giving,” and his wife will always express her femininity by “receiving.” A husband and his wife become one-flesh in marriage because a husband and his wife were created from the same flesh to begin with (Gen. 2:23). Homosexuality takes this beautiful design and distorts it. A man was never meant to “give” to another man, and/or “receive” from another man.

Homosexuality is thus, an attempt at recreating that relational dynamic, of which is proper for a husband and wife but is improper for two people who share the same gender. Men who struggle with homosexuality must recognize that the desire to engage in any behavior that is homosexual is a desire for something rebellious. Something rebellious against God’s design for gender, marriage, and human sexuality. The world says embrace these desires. God calls us to holiness (1 Thess. 4:3-8). A man for example, who desires a homosexual context, must humbly stand before God, recognizing it as a disordered desire. And that underneath the sinful desire for a sinful sexual context is a wound. The non-sexual desire, for example, to receive the love of an absent father figure is a very common wound amongst men who struggle with homosexual desires. And so, beyond repentance, there must also be a recognition in the individual that there are many wounds underneath the surface that need to be dealt with. This is not just “I desire sinful sexual contexts,” but also, “I have wounds that I have sexualized from childhood that I need to bring before the Father who loves me.”   

PLEASE SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY, PLAINLY AND WITH LOVE

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A MESSAGE FOR ALL CHRISTIAN LEADERS: Let us stop dancing around the greatest spiritual and moral challenge of this generation, and let us do the right thing, regardless of cost or consequence. We owe it to God. We owe it our kids and grand-kids. And we owe it to those who identify as LGBT, says Dr Michael Brown host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program

Let us stop dancing around the greatest spiritual and moral challenge of this generation, and let us do the right thing, regardless of cost or consequence. We owe it to God. We owe it our kids and grandkids. And we owe it to those who identify as LGBT.

At this critical time in history, we’ve got no business dancing around these life-and-death issues, issues which affect people we love. We’ve got no business playing games with words, trying to be so subtle that no one understand us, working so hard not to offend that we fail to warn and save. We’ve got no business being unclear when God’s Word is so clear, and we’ve got no business calling ourselves representatives of Jesus when our hearts don’t flow with His love.

Just consider what’s happening in our society today.

Drag queens are reading stories to our two-year-old children in libraries.

Kindergarteners are learning about being trans.

Middle-schoolers are encouraged to come out as gay without their parents knowing. College students have to share their PGPs (Preferred Gender Pronouns) at the start of each semester (as in, “I’m Shannon, and my preferred gender pronouns are ze and zir.”).

Business colleagues have lost their livelihoods because they could not in good conscience participate in a same-sex “wedding.”

And we’re afraid to be direct and clear because we don’t want to offend someone? How is that strategy working?

In Ontario, if your child identifies as transgender and you don’t affirm and support them, they can report you to their school, which can report you to the government, and your child can be taken from you to be raised by others. This is now the law in Ontario!

Yet we’re afraid that if we speak up we’ll lose some tithing members? What kind of compromise is this? Are we mercenaries or are we men and women of God?

Things have gotten to the point where boys and men are competing against girls and women, smashing records and winning competitions because they identify as females. But we don’t want to rock the boat just in case one of our friends or family members is transgender.

How about speaking the truth in love – with tears, with compassion, and with care, but without compromise? True compassion is not silent. True compassion warns.

There’s a reason some of us have been sounding the alarm for years, despite the vilification that comes our way and despite the doors of ministry that shut in our face. We’ve seen where this was going and we’ve known that the price to pay for silence is much greater than the price to pay for obedience. Do we still not see the handwriting on the wall?

Our society is now celebrating menstruating “men” and glorifying pregnant “dads”who plan to breastfeed their kids, yet we don’t want to rock the boat. My friend, the boat is ready to capsize!

One California college is dealing with a credible threat of violence from a 46-year-old male student who identifies as a woman and is upset because there are no urinals in the women’s restrooms. As a local website reports, “She also noted how walking around on Southwestern’s campus in a bra or panties for three days has opened her eyes to having the brain of a woman…but having male anatomy.”

This is sickness and madness, yet rather than raise our voices like a trumpet and teach clearly about gender and sexuality and marriage, we retreat behind our safe sermons and soft words. In the process, we hurt people far more than we help them.

I was speaking at a conference last year when the conference organizer stated that a famous American pastor now supported same-sex “marriage.” Because I had this pastor’s contact information, I texted him, asking him how he would respond. He replied, “I don’t support this. Please ask him to correct it.”

I was glad he responded like this, but that only begged the question. Why was there any confusion to start? Why did the conference organizer, himself a careful theologian, get this pastor’s position so wrong?

Some of you are loud and clear when speaking about these issues in private but warm and fuzzy when speaking about them in public. To what purpose? To help whom?

I fully understand that most of us these days have loved ones who identify as LGBT, and we care for them deeply. As expressed very powerfully in a blog post by Rebecca K. Reynolds, “There’s a huge difference between speaking of gay people categorically and speaking of your gay friend, Christine, who was brutally abused by her uncle for two decades and now feels nauseated every time she smells a man. It might be possible for me to walk with an evangelical swagger and act like an expert when postulating about the first category, but the second is a real person whose story brings me to my knees.”

That is a perspective we must carry in our hearts, and when people ask me about me about reaching out to the LGBT community, the first thing I tell them is to ask God for a supernatural baptism of love for them. Love reflects the heart of God. Love reflects the life and death of our Savior. Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7).

But love doesn’t compromise. If it did, it would no longer be love. That’s why Reynolds could also write, “Do I think sex outside of marriage is wrong? Absolutely. Do I believe in the sanctity of male-female marriage? Yes.

“Do I also sometimes kneel beside my bed and weep for my abused friends by name–friends who seek relief in ways that don’t align with God’s word? Yes. I do.”

Oh, that all of us would have such hearts!

And that brings me to the last reason why we must speak the truth in love to our congregations and followers.

If we don’t lovingly warn that gay couple in our church about the wrongness of their relationship, we have their blood on our hands.

If we don’t tell that lesbian-identified teenager that God did not make her gay, offering her real hope in Jesus, we are contributing to her demise.

If we don’t urge that husband not to leave his wife and have sex-change surgery, telling him we’ll get in the trenches and stand with him for his marriage, he can point to us on judgment day: “They never told me it was wrong!”

So, I’m pleading with you as a fellow-leader and fellow-elder and fellow-servant. Let us stop dancing around the greatest spiritual and moral challenge of this generation, and let us do the right thing, regardless of cost or consequence. We owe it to God. We owe it our kids and grandkids. And we owe it to those who identify as LGBT.

Just this week I received an email from a woman named Nadia who used to be “married” to another woman. She wrote, “Hi Dr. Brown! First I want to thank you for having the courage to speak the truth in love on various unpopular topics, especially marriage and sexuality. Your teaching helped me find freedom in my own life.”

Let us help others find freedom as well, the freedom that comes by knowing the truth (see John 8:31-32).

So from the depth of my heart, in the strongest way I know, I urge you once more: Please join me in speaking the truth in love. The Father will be glad as you do.

Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. His latest book is Saving a Sick America: A Prescription for Moral and Cultural Transformation. Connect with him on Facebook or Twitter.