Signs of a Struggle

The Counterfeit Compassion of Culture

2012-01-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

“Where is God? ...Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside.

After that, silence.”

– C.S. Lewis, after the death of his wife.

God is omni-present; but it seems every now and then He is omni-absent. The sign on the door says "Gone Fishing," the lights are out, the doorbell dings in an empty room, the No Vacancy sign is on . . . drive on down the road . . . alone. Yes, I know that is not true; He never leaves me; He never leaves you. He’s right there.

How can Someone as magnificent as God be there . . . and we be so unaware?

Wasn't He there, in the Garden of Eden, right after Adam and Eve's encounter with the serpent? His Word says God came walking up in the cool of the day. Surely He was also there in the heat of the moment. Yet He didn't clear his throat and wag his finger and say "Ummm . . . Eve . . no, no, no." So Eve did, did, did and we've been done for since.

God was oddly silent as the sin unfolded and then clearly loud as the consequences unraveled the beautiful original intentions of existence.

I'll admit that it bothers me a bit to know that God is with us before we slip into the comfort zone of our sinful nature and, with all the power of the universe at His disposal, watches us tumble, twist and turn on the way down, and hit the bottom with a gut-wrenching and bone-jarring thud. Then comes out in the cool of the day as if He had not seen it all happen. Is He really a "what's up?" God?

No.

“Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.”

-- Psalm 27:14

But we don't want to wait. We want to act. We want to meet a . . . need? We want!

How many of us, when we are dialing a number we shouldn't know; turning into an area we shouldn't go, logging on to a website we shouldn't see, acting like someone we shouldn't be . . . say to ourselves: "Wait . . . Let me ask God about this?"

It's easy to say He's not speaking when we're not pausing. It's pure spiritual finger-pointing to say He's not responding when we're not reflecting.

I think sometimes we think we might prefer a "No . . . No . . . No . . ." wagging-a-warning finger God. And we would of course gently lay down our pride, sweep aside our defiance, thank Him profusely for keeping us from falling, pledge our undying trust and obey without question. Or perhaps we would eat of the fruit; gain the knowledge we do not need; satisfy the glutton side of our spirit and waddle into our all-too-familiar rescue me mode.

Fact of the matter is, God does wag a "No . . . No. . . No. . . “ finger in our faces. We just ignore it and say we didn't hear Him. Are we actually expecting God to sit by our bedside and read His Word aloud to us at night?

My son, do not forget My teaching, but keep My commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.

-- Proverbs 3:1-7

OK . . . we’ll do that. But . . . remind us. Okay, God? We just might forget.

Oops . . . that was how the verse began: "do not forget." And it asks us to "keep." Keep what? Those commands we so easily tossed to lighten the load as we traveled down the me-want road. And . . . oh yeah . . . He wanted us to write "love and faithfulness" on the tablets of our hearts. But . . . that's my heart. There's not much writing room left; I've done a lot of scribbling and mark-outs through the years trying to satisfy the longings of my heart.

Of course then He wants us to trust. Trust the Creator or lust for the creation? Tough choices we face in this life. He says if we trust Him instead of ourselves . . . He will take all those crooked detours, jagged fault lines, dangerous drop-offs, and impossible mountains . . . those cliffs . . . out of our paths and make them "straight." We're not talking sexual semantics here . . . we're talking direction . . . which certainly can lead to some serious sexual semantics.

So what else does this "silent" God, who watches us once again slam a door in haste, have to say? He says for us not to be wise in our own eyes. Who knew that the pursuit of wisdom could be so dangerous? Well . . . Eve, I guess, in retrospect. Adam, too. And, oh yes, the serpent. They all learned it, but God knew it all along. Surely God doesn't want us to just be stupid? We’d get into so much trouble. Oh . . . yeah. That.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom,

and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

-- I Corinthians 1:25

Lacking the courage to call out to God, I repeated instead within my mind what all was not right with my world . . . my home . . . my heart . . . my soul . . . my peace. And those words echoed within the emptiness . . . and brought me heartache. I had come to the hill alone . . . and remained there alone . . . and departed alone. My choice.

We may come to the garden alone . . . but we shouldn't leave that way. He is so accessible, but He might want us to linger a little longer than we want. So, we dash and slam. "Oops . . . sorry."

What must really be difficult for God -- if anything could ever be so labeled -- is to hear the echoes of His own Word as it descends into our valleys and reverberates against the emptiness we feel as we seek to satisfy our selves with increasing self-absorption. We want to move that mountain, cross that valley, swim that ocean . . . and then . . . when totally satiated, cry out "Where were you, God?"

With you.

I know sometimes it seems we are all alone in whatever battle has worked to separate us from His love, whatever temptation has tattered our goodness, whatever sin has led to our shunning. But we are never alone. We would not, could not, will not be alone.

Having trouble finding your own way out of your mess? Tempted to blame God, declaring Him absorbed in some sort of Solitaire while you slowly slip away?

Maybe we would hear more . . . if we would open a few doors here and there instead of slamming them as we proceed to and fro on our own. Maybe if we played a little less hide-and-seek, put away a few must-see and must-have distractions -- the pursuit of happiness as defined by culture -- and paused at the table, talked to Him, listened to Him, pulled out the chair, sat down . . . and waited.

Like He asked us to do in the first place. Remember:

“Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.”

-- Psalm 27:14

You know, that's what I always wanted: to be strong, to have courage. And He said I could. If I would wait for Him.

Next time you find yourself feeling the pain of self-induced pity at your pitiful plight of weakness in the face of temptation, remember: Wait. Be strong. Take courage.

Wait.

We don't do that very well, do we? Waiting. Waiting on the Lord. In the face of a nagging want . . . we choose not to wait for Him to speak first. We don’t ask; we proceed, usually with little caution. We follow the lead of a swallow-up, smother-down culture which promises enlightenment and satisfaction, leaving us later to stumble, dazed and damaged, into the light to face the daunting question: “Who told you you were naked?”

Choosing to follow is a day-to-day decision which can lead us to victory or defeat, restoration or repetition, onto a straight path or into an endless cycle.

God is never silent. He spoke it all, in advance of every question.

God Bless,

Thom

(BLOG READER'S SPECIAL: Thank you for reading the introduction from my new book, "Who Told You You Were Naked?" The Counterfeit Compassion of Culture. The book is available now from Amazon.com and will soon be available for e-readers and in bookstores. Please help me launch the book. Use the following link and put the code in at checkout for a 20% discount off the retail price.)

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And Still We Try to Reason Why

2012-01-18T17:27:00.000-08:00

It’s okay to question why.

It’s okay to even cry.

Don’t ever hesitate to try.

God will answer; He won’t lie.

There’s no answer He won’t know.

There’s no place He will not go.

There’s no path He will not show.

God will answer; He loves you so.

No question lies within your mind.

That God cannot in love unwind.

That’s how we’ve all been so designed.

To seek from Him what we can’t find.

In His answers lies our peace.

In His words, we find release.

Our search can end, our troubles cease.

It all begins with show me . . . please.

It’s okay to question why.

It’s okay to even cry.

Don’t ever hesitate to try,

God will answer every sigh.

-- Thom Hunter

I remembered a "why" the other day that I wanted once to ask my Dad when I was just a little boy. It had to do with frogs, and it remains unanswered. Curious, like all children, I was filled with "why" questions. In this particular instance, it had to do with frogs because we had been out gigging frogs on a Texas pond in the dark mosquito-clouded night. The frogs were croaking like crazy and easy to trace down and stab to provide for tomorrow's fried frog leg breakfast.

I wanted to know why they were croaking so loud when they knew we were coming after them in the boat. And I wanted to know why there was no-where for them to go but this pond . . . or the frying pan. Why didn't they climb up the banks and go over the hill and hop along to a different pond, a safer place?

I think instead that I asked Daddy why there were more stars in the country sky than in the city . . . and I'm pretty sure he answered that one. But the frogs remained a mystery, drifting into the memory of a million "why’s" I never got to ask. I probably yawned and scratched a bite or two and we went to shore and left the why of the frog behind on a crowded lily pad.

If I had a million for my dad . . . can you imagine the gazillions that drift heavenward? How many times must God have heard "Why, God?"

Why me?
Why this?
Why not?
Why won't they?
Why confess?
Why change?
Why repent?
Why is it still here?
Why again?
Why haven't you?
Why haven't they?
Why haven't I?
Why try?
Why resist?
Why flee?
Why . . . why?
Why, God?

I had five children. They wanted to know why. Why can't we go there? Why do we have to go here? Why can't I have this? Why do I have to have that? Why doesn't it work? Why can't we afford it? Why do the leaves fall?

Why did you? Fall.

Sometimes when they were little, after an exhausting round of explaining why this and why that, the eventual bottom-line would be reached: "Because I said so."

God does the same thing sometimes. He says "Be still . . . and know that I am God." I think that's a lot like "Because I said so."

Sometimes we take really good care of our "why’s." We build fences and haul in feed and water and brush the coats and protect them like our favorite pets. "This one is not getting loose. I kinda' like 'why me?' My favorite."

And God says, "Be still."

But what about this why and that why?

"Be still."

Obviously God has always known of our propensity to find the nearest slippery slope and try it out like some new ride at Six Flags, ready to give it a rating at the end of the track. Man . . . that was fast, that was bumpy, that was quite a ride . . . awesome experience . . . freaky . . . deadly.

"Be still."

But God . . . when I am still, my mind is filled to overflowing with "why’s." I need to keep moving. At least when I'm on the slope I don't have to figure out all those answers to all those "why’s."

"And know that I am God."

When my children would not give up on asking all their "whys" to wear me down, I usually responded with a distracting promise: "Want a cookie?" I think today's parents probably pop in a video. Same thing. Distract. Deflect. Divide and conquer.

God says, "Know that I am God." He doesn't deflect or distract; He draws us right in to Him and reminds us He knows the answer to every why. And every "why me?" He knows me better than I know myself so when it comes to trusting and obeying, it really makes no sense to ask "why?" But, I do.

There's really only one answer. For God's glory. Why me? For God's glory. Why now? For God's glory. Why not? For God's glory. Why confess? For God's glory. Why repent? For God's Glory.

But there's a few nagging "why’s" that surely tempt God to want to just lean across the seat and say "Want a cookie?"

Not God.

What about the "why again?" Answer: because you haven't transformed your mind.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- His good, pleasing and perfect will. -- Romans 12:2

What about the "why won't they forgive?" Answer: "Forgive them. And wait."

Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. -- Matthew 18:21-22

What about "why is 'it' still here?" or "why haven't You?" Answer: "My grace is sufficient."

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. -- 2 Corinthians 12:8-9

I guess we could even ask "why so many why’s?" Why does God put up with all this?

I remember when I was in various industrial arts classes in my early years. I tried leather and bought a wallet kit. Every time I would strike the tool with the mallet that was supposed to impress a neat capital "T" and "H" on my western wallet, the mallet would bounce and the lettering would look like stuttering. Very unintentionally artistic. I just wanted to toss the wallet in the scrap heap. I tried to make a bowl once out of clay and I was inclined to curse all potters as instruments of the devil. I saw two choices with my bowl: toss it back into the mud while it was still wet or toss it onto the floor after it dried. There's clearly a reason I was not called to be the creator of the universe.

And here we look at a world wrapped in ungrateful "why’s" with the scary knowledge that He created everything that is by just speaking it into existence. "Be" and it was. "Be not" and it could be like a mis-shaped brittle bowl tossed onto a concrete floor, pieces flying to the four walls.

Why not?

Because He loves me. And He loves you. And he would rather answer the "why’s" by slowly unwrapping the chains and setting us free a heartbeat at a time through His unending love and amazing grace until we see ourselves unencumbered and standing free . . . and asking "why?"

Because He loves. In all the good things He gives me and for all the bad things through which He sees me, He loves me. And as much as I sometimes hate this world that seems determined to hunt me down and pierce my soul with "why’s," I have to remember . . .

"For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." -- John 3:16.

I ask why and instead of a cookie, He gives me His son. Why would I ever think it was not enough?

Why?

God Bless,

Thom

Please help launch my new book, "Who Told You You Were Naked?" The Counterfeit Compassion of Culture, just released and available for only $14.95 on Amazon.com. Please go to the link and read about the book. I think you will definitely want this one! Let's arm ourselves against the lies of culture.

What Should We Do About Doubt?

2012-01-11T16:49:00.000-08:00

I doubt if there is anyone who does not on occasion doubt. At least himself. I know the illustration: we don’t think about whether a chair is going to hold us up; we just sit. But I also know that sometimes we just miss the chair altogether and we’re on the floor in pain and it is just there: a chair. A mocking chair.

Rather than admit to doubt, some of us parade in false confidence. Others of us, long past admitting doubt and trending dangerously toward defeat, tread back and forth on a path that doesn’t quite go anywhere, like a see-saw in a lonely park.

Unfortunately, whatever our current shifting state may be – bravado or brokenness – some are ready to take advantage, projecting a self-assuredness that begs you to doubt anything but what they say. If they’re on the side of truth, your doubts are eased; if not, they’re doubled and your doubt will double-back on you.

The arguments are pretty loud these days, preying on the doubts of those who struggle with sexuality. The gay community says you are wrong to have any doubts at all as to whether God intended you to embrace homosexuality and dance freely in your self-definition. The church will have you doubting your very salvation if your dalliance with decadence does not diminish overnight as soon as they point out that you have tainted all of Christianity with your sin because it is so much worse than any of theirs. Lest you doubt that to be true, just tempt fate by yielding to temptation. Many churches adhere strongly to a catch and release philosophy.

Anyone with a significant struggle, such as same-sex attraction, deals with doubt. Self-doubt, sure. But, also the doubt others have in his or her ability to change . . . or even to doubt that the person – you -- really wants to change. Sometimes this doubt is not truly expressed, but is instead hidden behind the "we're with you" smiles, which can so quickly become "we knew it" frowns at the very first sign of a fall. How nice it would be for all involved if this battle were but a minor skirmish with a certain outcome, instead of one of those "well, I had my doubts all along" battlefields, littered with the wounded, some doubting they can get themselves back up again to move forward, some doubting if anyone even cares anymore if they do.

I had a friend in college who lived with no doubts. His was always sure his project would be the best. He would sing the song just fine. His parents would, of course, send the money. His car would run. His jokes would always be funny and people would laugh. He would always be understood. His friends would ever be loyal and everything would complete itself perfectly, right on time. He was never timid or understated because he never doubted. But, he was also pretty much tied up in secret knots of frustration. He'd exchanged doubt for denial. When he didn't win first place or his joke fell flat or the check didn't arrive or the tire went flat or a friend let him down, he would bottle up inside and close down. What most of us might have lived through as dashed hope he died to as devastation. His forced-open eyes would fill with tears of anguish. He definitely needed some doubt.

I haven't seen him in many years, but I "doubt" he is as certain of everything as he used to be.

Some might say my friend had faith. But the presence of faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is based on a belief in hope. It involves assurance . . . and trust. This friend lived on assumption, not assurance. A little too much "it'll be all right," and a little too little "what will be will be." He had no faith to test because he allowed no doubt.

But what if we have a lot of doubt? Does that mean we have little faith? I remember I used to sit on the curb in front of our house on Saturdays when I was a little boy. I doubted my dad would show, but I had faith that he would. Could the measure of each -- doubt or faith -- be determined by how long I sat with my chin on my knees looking to the left and right to see if he might come walking up the street?

I have no doubt God clearly knows the difference between doubt and faith. I'm not sure we always do. On our own, we usually reward our doubt with our deepest fears. Our faith, on the other hand, is usually God-tested and leads us to our greatest joy. "A little while" of testing can feel like a long time . . . and produce an awful lot of doubt.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. -- I Peter 1:6-7

It used to bother me that, of all the Biblical characters, I was named Thomas. The doubter. I know my mother did not really name me Thomas because she was debating which Biblical character I would be like. After all, my brother's name is Mike, and my sisters' names are Deb and Sue. Mother was merely reflecting the popular name choices of the decade in which we were born. We could have as easily been Bob and Gary and Judy and Peggy. But I was Thomas, the doubter.

I think God loves those who doubt. In dealing with our sincere doubt, He demonstrates the truth that He is patient and kind. It is a wonderful truth that the greatest doubters often become the greatest believers. Our honest doubts can become the bedrock of our faith. Truth that comes rampaging in to dispel doubt is sweet and strong.

Maybe we should think less about what doubt is . . . and less about who doubts us . . . and instead think about what doubt may do. How does it motivate us? Does our doubt send us searching or hiding? Revealing or masking?

Doubt is like looking out the window and seeing the sun go down for the gazillionth time, knowing once again that the darkness will follow, mimicking the darkness inside us. We might forget momentarily that the sun is only gone for a while. It does not yield its place to darkness in God's creative balance. Through grace, the light comes back around to overwhelm the darkness . . . lest anyone doubt. We strive hard to resist letting our sexual sin define us; let's not let our doubt do it either. You've read the Bible. Yes, people wander, but they are never beyond the gaze of God.

But what of those who doubt us or the sincerity of our quest for freedom? I say, let each doubter bear his own. Sometimes we expend so much energy trying to dispel the doubts of others that we have too little energy left to put on the armor for our own battles. Let them doubt. God can deal with that. And, if they want someday to put their hands in your scars, scarcely believing this new you is . . . you . . . then let them do so and forgive their doubt as you forgive your own. Maybe they tell us we've used up all our chances. They've moved beyond doubting to knowing. "You can't change." Well . . . life is not a game of chance; it is a reality of faith. Let them keep their assumption; you have your assurance.

I am thankful for doubt. Anyone who struggles with temptation knows that doubt is a glimpse of freedom. If we can doubt, we can seek.

Doubt leads us to the door. That door where you knock. Where you ask. That door that opens. Behind which no despair lingers. Where doubt no longer dwells.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. -- Matthew 7: 7-8

Above, I mentioned a couple of common reactions to the issue of sexual brokenness, particularly homosexuality: accept it as "you" and get on with your life . . . or get over it fast while we can still stand to be near you even if we can't stand with you. There is a third option. Find a ministry that believes in the truth of God's Word and also believes in the healing power of Christ's love. Look for a ministry in your area. For an example, visit Truth Ministry or First Stone Ministries. Then see what is available where you live.

Remember, everyone who asks receives. God leaves no room for doubt when it comes to loving His own. And if for some unfounded reason you doubt that the word "everyone" includes you, then let that doubt lead you to the door. It will open . . . no doubt.

God Bless,

Thom

Read more in Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, available at Amazon.com for only $11.16.

Why We Shouldn't Argue About Sex

2012-01-04T07:50:00.001-08:00

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” -- Matthew 22:36-40

Christians do few things worse than share the love of Christ and the reality of healing and forgiveness with the sexually-disses among us. That would be the disoriented, the disappointed, the disturbed and the roundly discussed and often dismissed. Or . . . dissed. Those people who -- like me -- did not travel the development highway primly and properly. People who took a little trip into the byway, either by being run off the road by the randomness of life that lets other people take the wheel or just in our own contemplation-guided search for a different route; curiosity controlling the car, edging in long before truth. For too many, the little trip becomes a full-fledged tumble and stumble, planting them into the dusty roadside rocks like a cactus in the desert, as the "normal" world zips by unimpeded, sucking down a cold Cola while the broken choke on the dust of the glory-bound-and-busy-at-it.

And if we stick out a dusty thumb? Bloom where you are planted . . . you misplaced cactus rose. Enjoy the desert moon and the cold dark night of your own choosing.

Does that sound too harsh? Well, actually, it's not, you see. It's fairly descriptive of people who have decided to distance themselves altogether from the sexually-broken as if proximity to the porn addict strips them of all personal decency, or sharing a conversation with a homosexual somehow tarnishes them to the point of having their number on a bathroom wall somewhere, or standing alongside one caught in adultery and crying out for help will . . . make them Christlike? Zip on down that road. Are you trying to figure out how to best live and let live . . . or are you trying to give life?

Some Christians, of course, do not distance themselves from the broken. Some confront them. Some just 'gotta stop 'em, which, on the surface, is a very good thing, though dependent on the motivation. Is it out of disgust or is it out of love? Is it out of a desire to see someone healed and whole or is it out of a desire to remove those distracting and insistent shards of brokenness from the pretty landscape? Is it because you feel threatened by the presence of a scary "other," or because you long for the closeness of another brother, rescued from the side of the dusty road and set back on the path to pursue peace?

In our haste to make our point about someone else's problem -- all backed up with scripture, of course -- we're often not able to be heard over the sound of the spiritual door slamming shut or the mighty whoosh of the "I'm-out-of-here" wind. That huge sucking sound you hear thereafter? Lost opportunity. You just argued yourself into a safe place and you won't likely have to worry about so-and-so-sexually-hung-up guy being in your face again. It's a truth-is-not-in-you stalemate. He doesn't believe you because, in his own brokenness, he assumes you are also broken somewhere, but way too peachy-keen about your professed purity to own up about it. You don't believe him either. When he says he just can't help himself, you can only think of those verses about reaping and shoo him away to plant.

Okay, well . . . we took care of that. The pervert is gone. Moving on down the list here. Let's tackle the gossips and the liars and the thieves and the envious and those pumped-up people over there. Pull up one weed at a time and we can definitely soon go to the garden alone.

There are a lot of good reasons we should not argue about sex.

1. The Christian disconnect -- (See above.) Too often, we begin our arguments with a presumption that the person we are arguing with has taken "we all fall short" to new and unfathomable depths. Christian arrogance is a poor substitute for Christian love . . . and is not Biblical in any sense. Even worse, we often just go ahead and presume the person never has and maybe never will know Christ and therefore, other than permanent status on the prayer list . . . he hasn't got a prayer. I guess, since he isn't a Christian who's abandoned the faith, we can't label him as an apostate, so we're limited to "lost." Pass judgment and pass on. Think about that for a minute. Suppose someone who is a Christian struggles with something like homosexuality and is really looking for the truth, while dealing with his own shame and guilt, and you offer, not truth, but rhetoric? You not only lost the argument; you preempted it. What did Jesus say about the lost?

2. The ignorance disconnect -- I know we don't have to walk a mile in a man's shoes to understand where he has been. There's no benefit to exploring the gay community to develop some connection. But, there is benefit to exploring a person's life. Are you more interested in him or her . . . or in what they have done? If so, at least level the playing field and lay out all the things you've done. Or, perhaps before you brand someone a deviate, let them give a little uninterrupted testimony of how their life unraveled. More listening and less lecturing. Eye contact; arm around the shoulder; heart engaged. Perhaps there will come a time when they will be able to give a new testimony . . . and the love you shared with them might be one of the strings that ties it all together again. If you don't know anything about someone beyond their sin, it's probably because you don't care. Jesus knew about the people He healed. He wasn't just quote-that-zip-zap and all is well.

3. The conviction disconnect -- Most people think of "conviction" as something that happens after you commit a crime. The motivating and powerful reality of "feeling convicted" is something that comes from within a person who is searching and responding . . . to the Holy Spirit. You aren't the Holy Spirit. The chance that you are going to be able to stir the sinner's heart enough to bring about that conviction we so long far . . . is a long shot. Feel your own convictions. And hopefully, we will all feel convicted, first of all, to share the truth with compassion, cutting the guilt-induced coercion. If gay people had a dollar for every time someone has told them they are going to hell, they could buy their own country somewhere and live in peace 'till death we all part.

The truth is, people who sin sexually will come face-to-face at some point with the consequences of having done so, just like you do when you sin. So, don't get hung-up over "SEX," and cringe. Pray for them because like anything abused, pain results.

Does this sound hopeless? Does this mean we can't care enough to try to point out the dangers and the deception and the potential disaster for those who don't follow the clear and unchanging Word of God regarding the great gift of sexuality? Do we just sit silently by and let people head toward destruction because there is no way to argue them into restoration?

No.

Most brokenness is motivated either by a misguided search for love or a great sorrow at the absence of it.

Think about your life when you either did not know Christ or during a period of time when you had allowed some sin to separate you from Him? What brought you back? At some point, you became aware of His great love; His sacrifice; His forgiveness; His grace; His great desire to know you and to be known by you; His willingness to do anything to have you with Him.

Be like Christ. That's a pretty good argument for success.

Amazing, isn't it . . . the things we say about God? Awesome . . . unlimited . . . all-powerful . . . loving . . . incomparable . . . eternal . . . all-knowing . . . ever-present . . . mighty. Then when our efforts to describe Him finally fall in our inadequacy, we just say He's indescribable. He . . . is. Or, to quote Him directly He is "I Am."

And Jesus, who is God . . . gets His own special description: Savior, friend, lover of my soul, source of strength and hope, "everything to me." Everything.

And the Holy Spirit . . . who is God? My constant guide. Fills me up.

How can we know all these things about God . . . know Christ . . . have the Holy Spirit inside us . . . and then look so glaringly at the sins of others without seeing our own? And if we do see our own and accept the grace and forgiveness, why do we put less energy into sharing those things -- the grace and forgiveness -- than we do into spelling out the rules we require for repentance? Should we not share equally in all things that come to those who know the Lord? And . . . if someone does not know the Lord, shouldn't we start there and concern ourselves about their sexual practices once the Holy Spirit convicts them and they're looking for our help?

Jesus, in His explanation of the greatest commandment, did not say it was best for us to know what's best and judge the rest. He said we are to love God, love ourselves and love our neighbors like we love ourselves.

You really want to win the argument? Love conquers all.

God Bless,

Thom

Thom Hunter's book, Surviving Sexual Brokenness, is available at Amazon.com in paperback, hardback, for Kindle or for downloading onto your computer. Please buy a copy for yourself or anyone who struggles with sexual brokenness and needs to hear the truth with compassion.

Continuing the Odyssey of Grace

2011-12-28T10:13:00.001-08:00

I will always be one who looks back. Out of my past, with all its levels of conjured contentedness concealed between cushions of deceit, I draw my emotion. In the losses, I find my determination. In the pain, I uncover energy to search for the truth of healing. In the regret, I discover grace. Out of the stupidity of ill-conceived actions and words, I hunger for wisdom. In the layers of the past, I see the unfolding of the future.

On some days, it is as if I am still stuck back there; on others it is as if I never was. Such is an Odyssey of Grace, a clumsy reconciling of sin and shame with healing and forgiveness, a digging out from beneath the weight of hate and sorrow into the light of love and acceptance.

Grace.

We count our years as we go through life, but completing a year makes no difference, no matter what we say or wish. One year is replaced by another. Turning a page on a calendar has about as much impact as the breeze created by the action. If we are here today and gone tomorrow; if we cannot add a single breath, then what does one day mean? Nothing . . . and everything.

It depends who holds the day. In my hands, grasped tightly and held against my chest beneath my darting and suspicious eyes, a day is a like a wadded and blank sheet of paper. In God's hands, open and exposed to His penmanship, a day is a treasure unmatched. Its promise flows upon the page. It is good and it stands as His great invention of time. It counts. Just as He counted them in the beginning:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning -- the first day.
-- Genesis 1:3

And He just kept counting them.

Day Two: He separated the waters and made the sky.

Day Three: He made land and seas and plants and trees.

Day Four: He made the stars and the sun and the moon.

Day Five: He filled the oceans and the skies with just the right creatures.

Day Six: He created a man and a woman, and He said: "It was very good."

Nighty-night. You guys sleep tight beneath that brand new moon I just made and I'll wake you in the morning with the glory of a brand new sun.

And here we are, a debatable number of new days later, on an odyssey to make the best and get the most out of however many He has ordained us. Each breath is by the grace of God.

In retrospect, glancing over our shoulders, if we have embraced grace, a year is not quite the frightful thing it appeared when it was building furiously on the horizon and bearing down upon us with its thunderous claps of "what ifs" and its threat to deliver upon us everything we so richly deserve. In retrospect, we can see, in what we thought would just be wreckage, the underpinnings of our prayers and the glorious glue of . . . grace. Somehow, despite us, the year the Lord made is there, nicked and scratched and torn and bent by our handling, but surviving still for the times we stopped, perhaps sobbing, and handed it back, like a child who too roughly played with a favorite toy.

"I'm sorry," we say. "Can it be fixed?"

And, in His way and in His time, He mends and restores and replenishes, leaving here and there a tear, a scar, to remind us of the roughness with which we treat His gift of each new day.

Grace.

Don't leave home without it.

I seem to begin each new year with these words: "I'm fine."

Fine? Despite the harsh realities of reaping. I entered each recent year still separated from my children, some past church issues still unsettled, my not-quite-completely-resolved mind stubbornly challenging my clearly-resolved soul for clarity and purpose. But I'm okay, I declare. Or, to use that all-purpose Christian four-letter word: I'm fine.

I quickly follow that up with these words: "But I'm broken."

As the reality of my sexual brokenness and how it use to come to the forefront in my life becomes more and more clear outside the fog of internal servitude, I've come to see that anyone who struggles with any form of sexual brokenness -- and if you think that term is too lenient and soft, just try thinking of yourself as "broken" -- feels as much pain about their malady as I did mine.

Men who are attracted to men and women who are attracted to women are looking for something missing within themselves. They're broken.

Men and women who are addicted to pornography and lose touch with all reality, hide their shame and their addiction behind smiles and shrugs. They're broken.

Men and women who are seeking sex with other men and women outside of marriage, whether as curious and uncontrolled singles and teenagers, or as adulterous and wandering marrieds? They’re broken.

Men and women who give in to rampant self-satisfaction -- masturbation -- are losing touch with real relationships and can't explain why they find themselves more pleasurable than others. They're broken.

Men and women who abuse and control each other to show their power because they know they're weak. They're broken.

Men and women who hate and fear each other because they don't know how to love and need each other? They're broken.

From brokenness . . . to hopefulness.

And if you are, at this moment patting yourself on the back for not being sexually-broken, hold off on the applause. Your brokenness may lie elsewhere, but you are as much in need of God's grace as anyone else. We rarely choose our brokenness. Some may appear worse than others, but we are all made of material ripe for crumbling.

For the person who struggles with sexual brokenness, life is not always nice and it is certainly not packaged for ease of opening. Nor do all the pieces seem to easily go together, if they're even all there. So we decorate the packages and overlook the missing and broken pieces and do our best to assemble the best life we can with whatever went into our basket at checkout. Sometimes it shows; sometimes it doesn't. It depends on our marketing skills and how well we sell ourselves to others . . . and to ourselves. We know "the truth is out there," but we prefer to be in here. We curl up with a little of the truth like a too-small blanket and want for greater comfort and security.

Is it "quiet hope" or "bitter resignation?" Is it waiting or wilting? When rains come, do they wash us clean and set our feet to freedom or will they be the final flood that grows ever deeper to sweep us away?

Or does the Grace of God form a dam and hold us? When do we need this grace?

When we are "fine?"

When we are broken?

When we are bitter?

When we are resigned?

When we are lonely?

When we are guilty?

When we are longing?

When we are hopeful?

Yes.

There is Grace!

Grace is not one of those great rewards extended to others who seem grace-worthy, but withheld from you or me because of the depths to which we have stubbornly clawed . . . putting ourselves in places that seem unreachable to the limited and normal grace of men. God's grace is not manufactured and manipulated and measured out. Like God . . . is . . . grace . . . is.

Grace comes upon us when we are least deserving and perhaps too fearful and ashamed to even ask. "I'm sorry. Can it be fixed?"

Grace unfolds like the tapestry of the countryside when you drive around a corner or top a hill and see in the glow of a sunset the glory of God's great creation unfolding before you and you find you are in it.

Grace unfolds like a soft yellow blanket over a peaceful sleeping child as you pull the fabric back and see the calm and hear the quiet coo. . . and an unfolding tiny fist reminds you that you really can let it all go.

Let go of what? All those things tucked deep inside the folds of your life: the tortured temptations that have rampaged and ruled, the relationships that have unraveled and ravaged, the set-aside dreams, the held-back hopes, the vanquished visions. The darkness of every day is chased away in the light of grace.

When does the next leg of this Odyssey of Grace unfold?

When we recognize we are sinful and tend to take the wrong path.

When we realize that our sinfulness is a rebellion against the very God that has cleared our path.

When we admit we know all this and resign ourselves to helplessness, that we have been lost and stumbling, ignoring our guide.

When we trust in God's willingness to forgive and again shine the light for our feet to follow.

When we actually accept that forgiveness and take His hand to lead us out of the darkness.

When we stand in the clearing and look around us at the underbrush and tangled clutter from which we have been rescued.

When we stop and look up, surrounded by threatening but held-back darkness and observe the brightness of the night sky and the sweet comfort of the approaching dawn.

When we know we are not alone.

When?

When we realize that on the day -- the sixth day -- when God made the man and the woman, He knew He would also make you. And He said: "It was very good."

Let your when be now.

Happy New Year and God Bless,

Thom

(Want to face your brokenness issues head on in the new year? Find truth, encouragement and help in Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, available at Amazon.com)

Joy to the Broken

2011-12-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas. Granted, some Christmas Days turn out better than others and become more memorable, but all of them find their way into the memory bank. Somehow life takes us far too quickly from squirming in our beds in footy pajamas, one-eye-open, pledging to go sleepless and catch Santa in the act . . . to sitting cross-legged in sweatpants on the living room floor, both eyes bleary, yearning for sleep, fumbling in the act of being Santa . . . to rising for breakfast and a peaceful quiet morning with just our one true love again, Santa just a memory. The meaningful misery of Christmas mingles with the joy to become the memories which become treasures which last far beyond the gifts. In the meantime, our "little ones" become big ones and beget new little ones.

Woven through our most treasured memories though is the impact of our own brokenness, a filter through which we cannot help but see the past in hues of selfness. Like Scrooge’s blindness to love of others because of his love of money, the sexually-broken still short of freedom are haunted by the ghosts of the past which remind them of the years they put their own pursuits of pleasure above the love of others, trading away the treasure of trust for something of so little value that it becomes only a plaguing memory and a nagging temptation threatening to rob them of further joy. As a result of past recklessness, some are very lonely on Christmas Day. Many long for a repair kit under the tree with which they can somehow magically reconstruct the relationships left in shambles by their past actions, ripped and strewn about like the paper and boxes of Christmas morning.

Such a repair kit does exist and has since Jesus took His first breath among us. He came, you know, for the world, which was broken. He came, not because He wanted to rejoice with the got-it-all-togethers among us, but because He looked down and He saw the broken, which, as He knew, is all of us.

No doubt some are more aware of their brokenness than others. On those days when it seemed I had made so many missteps that the slightest movement might make me shatter from façade to core . . . the breath of heaven gave me hope to try . . . to step . . . to dare to go forward. In truth, the angels who so rejoiced at Jesus’ birth rejoice today in our healing because it comes through Him.

Joy to the broken.

I will spend more time this Christmas, like other recent ones, feasting on old memories than I will in making new ones. Like that one last gift we search for when the space beneath the tree is bare, reconciliation and restoration with my children still eludes me. So I will treasure the gift of hope and remember what is worth hoping for.

I remember one Christmas when our fourth son, Patrick -- he in the footed pajamas -- clearly confused about Christmas, ignored the gifts and toddled around the clutter clutching a banana he pulled from his stocking. Unable to open it and unable to get help from his wild-eyed older brothers or his blurry-eyed parents, Patrick sat down upon a package, chewed a hole through the peeling and sucked out the banana as best he could. Today, Patrick is a police officer with three children of his own.

I remember a "very tight" Christmas -- remember a lot of those, actually -- when it became obvious to me that the presents we had to put beneath the tree for our five children just didn't balance out. It was almost 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve and all I could find open was a 7-11, which had a special display of baseball trading cards with an album book. I bought those for Russell and the balance was better achieved. He loved baseball cards, and we still have them here, stored in a cabinet. Russell is married now, working on a PhD. No little ones yet.

I remember struggling to put together toys and bicycles with dawn fast approaching and hopelessness emerging, knowing that if my oldest son, Zach, would just stumble down the stairs with a nod and wink, he could put all those things together in the wink of an eye. But I couldn't wake him. I needed to be the best Dad I could be, almost all thumbs, but with a heart that wanted to give what I could give. Zach is all grown-up now, married with a son and two daughters . . . and he's a contractor. He really can build anything.

I remember Donovan, the middle son, the hard-to-buy-for son, who never seemed to really need or want much, but was always happy with what he got. I feel a bit of guilt that it wasn't harder to put his gifts beneath the tree and wonder if they were just right. He was a giver himself. Donovan, a former Army Ranger and now a police officer, has moved from protecting us all in

Iraq

and

Afghanistan

to protect his wife and two little ones, which is probably what he always wanted

I remember my only daughter -- Lauren -- being a blast to shop for at Christmas. I could wander the mall and find music boxes, plastic high heels, dolls and stuffed animals, and later perfumes and bracelets and trendy things . . . and even occasional pink. Most of all I remember how badly she wanted a set of Quints, tiny dolls all dressed alike and so girly. They were also so tiny they got lost in the Christmas wrapping on Christmas morning and never showed their tiny little plastic faces again. I hurt about that for a long time. No longer the little girl down the hall, Lauren traveled the world, lingered long in

China

and now works in a mental hospital where she is, no doubt, one of the cheeriest people any of the patients will see this Christmas.

I was myself a little one once. One of four in our family. I remember a lot of Christmases. One stands out because it contained all the emotions and angst of which we are capable . . . and proved love to be the greatest of them all. We were living in a very cheap apartment in Lewisville, Texas, falling just a mile or two short of making ends meet. My mother was supporting us as best she could, a stepfather out there somewhere but no longer of consequence, my real Dad only a short distance away in Fort Worth, but immeasurably distant from us as far as Christmas was concerned.

We needed a tree. Whether there would ever be presents placed beneath it was one of those bridges my Mother said she would cross later. We had no tree and that needed to be remedied above all. One evening, after working all day, my mother took the three of us -- my brother was living elsewhere at the time -- across the parking lot and down the alley to the grocery store, where she oohed and aahed over the scrawny trees leaning against the brick wall, ones rejected by all the other shoppers who had bought the best ones earlier. She found a $7 bargain, proclaiming that it fit within a budget we probably didn't have. We dragged it home, set it in the stand, pulled out the boxes of precious decorations, ate sugar cookies and decorated it to the hilt, drowning it in icicles. We stood back and surveyed our handiwork . . . and the tree took a quick bow . . . all the way to the floor.

We were shocked . . . but she was Mother, undaunted. She stood it up, readjusted the stand, salvaged the decorations and ran a string around the tree, thumbtacking it to the walls. We sat back on the couch, hot chocolate in hand, and -- smiles turning to shrieks -- observed the tree as it did a slow motion divebomb back to the floor.

Our heads in our hands, we watched as Mother stood it up, peeled back the cheap carpet to reveal a hardwood floor beneath, took out a hammer and nails and nailed the stand right to the floor. Wow . . . Mom! Only a bit later, our hands covered with the stickiness of ribbon candy, we could hear the skritch as the small nails slowly slid free from the old wood of the floor. Tipping at first, the tree gently, like a too-gaudy ballerina, took a half twist, broke free and resumed its reclining position.

This time Mother wept. But only for a moment. Within seconds, the lights were unplugged, her hands were around the trunk in a strangling motion, the front door was open and she was heading down the alley, dragging the evergreen ballerina behind her. We ran behind in horror, believing out lives to be as much in shambles as the shattered ornaments now tossed about in the parking lot. Someone is gonna' see. We followed the trail of icicles, yelling at our Mother to stop. "It doesn't matter. We don't need a tree!"

She answered without stopping.

"We need a tree . . . and we will have a tree."

And we did have a tree. She dragged it right through the front doors of the grocery store, where she was spared having to offer any explanation at all. Her tears were overwhelming. She couldn't talk, and the manager of the store really didn't want her to anyway. The presence of coatless and barefoot kids behind her, our heads dropping almost to our knees, didn't exactly diminish the drama.

The good people at the grocery store replaced our tree with one that had an actual straight trunk and that certainly cost more than $7. They gave us replacement decorations and plenty of icicles and even candy, which we ate around our new and truly beautiful tree, standing on its own.

I don't really remember what I got for Christmas that year. Well, at least, what I got under the tree. But I do remember realizing that love can sure overcome a lot, pretty much everything, in fact. And I knew that my mother loved me beyond any humiliation. I still count on that to be true.

Actually, I really don't remember many of the gifts I've received for Christmas through the years, though I loved them at the time. But I do remember the Christmases themselves and the people in my life that made them memorable. Sometimes memories suffice, girded by hope.

Some of us just fumble through life causing harm here and there, creating our own chaos and hurt. But we also give and get a lot of love and sometimes we bring calm and healing. We remember the chaos and the calm, the hurt and the healing and as they wrestle within us, we become something different, and perhaps much better, through the process. But, it is a process, and, as wonderful as Christmas is, the day of peace is often just a bridge over which we cross into the continued work of healing.

Even beneath the enveloping joy of the ever-present presence of the Savior, Christmas can be a tough time of year for some, a balancing act between cheer and fear as they reflect for just a moment on what life might have been if it had mapped itself a little differently, with fewer obstacles and errant turns. While we join with others in the “what-is-its?” of Christmas morning, shaking packages before we open, we also have our share of “what-ifs?” to deal with. It’s just a part of the package. The broken one.

I bring you tidings of great joy. For unto you (the broken) was born that day, a Savior.

May God’s true and abiding love for you make this Christmas truly joyful.

God Bless,

Thom

(Thom Hunter is the author of Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in print and e-reader versions for the Kindle, Nook or other reader.)

There's Too Much at Stake

2011-12-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

What if the lines in the sand just keep shifting?

What if the boundaries we set up keep slipping?

What if the truth we’ve been seeking keeps drifting?

What if we don’t make it through all of this sifting?

What if our reach leaves us grasping at air?

What if our longing finds no one there to share?

What if our damage seems too much to repair?

What if we outrun those still willing to care?

But, what if we make our way into the clearing?

And what if we reject all the lies we’ve been hearing?

What if we surrender the things we’ve been fearing?

And, what if we let someone else do the steering?

What if we truly believe what He told us?

What if we allow Him to mend us and mold us?

And what if we let His great grace so enfold us

That we could be free from the “what ifs” that hold us?

What if?

Thom Hunter

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. -- Romans 7:19

Why does evil so often win the want-to war?

When I look back on the many opportunities I've had to "do the good I want to do," and done it not, but instead, with a less-and-less-trembling hand chose the more harmful but seemingly more momentarily-satisfying evil, I am startled at the efficiency with which that evil, almost unimpeded, made its way through my life, hacking away the tender shoots of hope which dared to break the dry and packed down soil on which I trod in search of fleeting satisfaction.

That's if I look back. Evil would have me not do even that, but instead let bygones be bygones, memories resting in disrepair, miserable failings masquerading as best intentions. Oh, well. What could I have done differently, anyway? We are who we are. Right?

Wrong. Like evil.

I faced temptations common to man and gave in to them. I faced choices and, with measured but dismissed reluctance, made bad ones. I saw the risks and took the leaps and left loved ones behind on the outer bank. I knew good and wanted it . . . but did bad and hated it . . . and still wanted it.

I do indeed believe in forgiveness and repentance, healing and cleansing . . . a new beginning. But what to do about what was done before . . . or . . . even worse . . . since? The truth is, even in the best of us, evil lies in wait and trips us up and leaves us pining away or clamoring after the lesser things. We are not beyond being base again. Sometimes we still decide we want to be who we were instead of who we have become.

Thank God for conflict. It pulls us back; it pulls us forward. It should put us in permanent pursuit of peace.

And then, there's the "enlightened" culture. Addicted to conflict, culture slyly applies it, selectively, succumbing to the seductiveness of evil. And culture just keeps on keeping on, while the church, ever-trying to be relevant, resists taking a stand, protecting the payments on the pews over the people sitting in them. Heaven forbid. Please.

Even the conflicts between church and culture that do go on are elevated to a higher plane, almost like a no-fly zone, while the combat goes on down here on the ground, in the conflicted hearts of Christians closer to the exit than the pulpit. We counter-attack culture with committee reports and resolutions, as it marches on and over us, gaining more and more territory, redefining truth and seeking to make everyone feel good, every sense titillated and satisfied. If culture wins, we'll all love ourselves and love our neighbors, but not exactly in the way God intended when He said we should.

As the church sits, dependent on divine intervention, culture chomps on at the pillars of life. Reluctant to be the tools of the Divine, we look on in dismay. Somebody, we say, should do something. We need to be ready to put feet beneath our prayers.

Distancing ourselves from the dirty deeds around us is not enough. We may find ourselves with clean hands, but those among us who are melding with the mud need someone daring to pull them out and steady their feet as they slowly walk away from the slippery bank.

Why are we more willing to raise funds and lift prayers for trips to foreign lands than we are to lift those around us out of the darkness. If you're sitting in the light because of God's grace, use it to help vanquish the shadows that surround you.

Again . . . thank God for the conflicted heart. If it did not exist within us, imagine how many more Christians would yield to the siren call of culture, the promise of acceptance, a place to openly go, no more hiding. At various times in life, it appealed even to me. My conflicted heart would look upon those in the gay community who seem to be so secure in who they are. Always going out, laughing, meeting for breakfast, taking in a movie, off on a trip somewhere . . . ever-smiling, smug in a greater enlightenment and understanding of what it means "to be."

Whatever unhappiness invades their lives is not their fault, they say, but just a result of the oppressiveness of culture and the ignorance of Christians who adhere to a skewed version of scriptural truth. Culture and pro-gay advocacy are so intertwined now that they are truly inseparable. They espouse a life of "surely God meant," instead of "surely God said." Lives based solely on want can never be satisfied, for there is nothing greater than what I need, what I think and my freedom to do whatever I choose.

They not only want no conflict; they don't want you to have any either. Like a mermaid sitting on a rock, they call you into drowning with promises of the best swim of your life.

Only when we, as Christians, begin recognizing the afflictions of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, fellow reflections of the image of Christ, will we make any inroads against the unrelenting march of culture.

Are we brave enough?
Do we care enough?
Can we love enough?
Forgive enough?
Believe enough?

As we stand warily by, culture's vultures descend on the wounded among us and mock our truths with shades of such, offering their own brands of courage, caring, love, acceptance and believe-in-yourself messages that sound all-too-appealing to the downtrodden hiding behind the hope of praise songs, wishing someone would take their hand and keep them from sliding from the pew into the pit.

We can do this, you know?

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. -- Philippians 4:3.

That's not a verse for selective application. It says "all." Yes, it applies to the struggler who needs to resist temptation. You can't imagine how many times it has been repeated in prayer in the dead of night in the midst of great conflict. But it is also a verse that needs to be applied to the silent Christian who has by the grace of God escaped sexual brokenness, but who folds his hands in the very shadow of the struggler and fails to take a stand -- not just on the truth -- but on the love of Christ. Instead, too many just stand by, unwilling to walk with the broken one, side-by-side, aware of the cost of conflict, but ever-sure of the outcome when we trust and obey.

We could set an example there: "trust and obey."

The line in the sand is shifting. Where do you stand?

Isn’t it time to decide for sure?

There’s too much at stake.

God Bless,

Thom

(If you would like to better understand the issue of sexual brokenness among Christians and better-equip yourself, I hope you will order a copy of Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do from Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, or from this PayPal link.)

Wait for the Whisper

2011-12-07T07:50:00.001-08:00

Even youths grow tired and weary,

and young men stumble and fall;

but those who hope in the Lord

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint. -- Isaiah 40:30-31

The man slept. Finally. His body had pleaded; his mind had relented; his spirit was depleted and his heart had retreated, so he slept. It was restless, not restful, and the dreams were not sweet, but instead added to the eventual misery of awakening, leaving him already tired upon rising. The few things he did not constantly replay while awake whirled through his unprotected mind in sleeping, magnified by the mysterious melding of reality and fantasy, leaving him wondering if there was any need at all to emerge again beneath the deep of sleep. But, then again, sleep was never really deep anymore.

In the light of the unwelcome day he heard his mind's relentless voice of repetitive remorse remind him of his losses, his misses, his self-inflicted misery, his many moments off-the-mark. Sitting still seemed the safest way to face a future that seemed to promise only more loneliness, more unanswered questions. Frozen, he believed that any action now might cause him to veer further off course and become more and more hopeless. So he did nothing. He just waited, anticipating his next fall, some greater stumble.

"I am so tired," he sighed to the man inside.

But Someone else heard, and whispered "I am your strength."

The boy woke. Finally. He peeked through the blinds of his bedroom window to see the morning sun filtering through the branches of the trees that lined his street. His hair was soon combed; his book bag stuffed; his shoes tied. He could hear the rattle of cereal bowls down the hall; a dog barking in the yard and cars passing through the street. Soon he would hear a bell ring and take his seat and sigh and wonder why it was so wrong for boys to cry. The pain of loneliness made him more aware of and even more unsure of his heart.

In the light of the unwelcome morning, his little mind's relentless voice of repetitive remorse reminded him of his losses, the things he missed, the things he would miss out on, the calculated actions of the abuser who had taken advantage of his vulnerability, leaving him adrift in confusion, the slowly-creeping cracks threatening to ravage all the boyishness, crumbling him into a hellishness he could not comprehend.

"Where can I hide?" he sighed to the boy inside.

But Someone else heard, and whispered "In me."

The young woman rose. Finally. She turned away from the mirror and gazed down the hall towards the front door through which she could see the sun beginning to set behind the house across the street. Her hair was brushed; her face made up, her clothes finally on. She looked around her room at the piles of rejected garments, the too-little-girly, the not-quite-right. She could hear her mother on the phone, laughing; her father in his office, typing. In her room at the end of the hall it was so quiet she could almost hear her tears fall against the tight black blouse she had chosen because she thought it showed her . . . at her best.

In the fading light of the early dusk, her restless mind's relentless voice of repetitive remorse reminded her of her losses, the things she wished and now knew were beyond the hope of wanting, replaced instead by an endless desire to be loved or at least desired. She reached the door, paused to say goodbye, thought better of it and headed out into the night, lingering in the soft light of the porch to dab her eyes.

"Who wants me?" she sighed to the little girl inside.

But Someone else heard, and whispered "I do."

I wonder what life would be like if we never grew tired, never stopped, so weary we can scarcely catch our breath? What if we walked without stumbling and never kissed the hard road of life with a face-first fall? No prodigals or wandering sheep; no one who needed to be called down from a tree or helped into a boat from storm-tossed waves. No need to lift our eyes to meet another's. No trembling last-ditch reach for the hem of a passing garment. No pleas; no cries. Would we waltz through the world like graceful dancers on a polished floor, knowing there would be no concerns about stepping out of tune? Or would we crash like puppets cut loose from strings, lifeless to the floor?

We couldn't hope in anything beyond our well-honed abilities; our own limited but safe strength. We could not fly; we'd dare not run. We'd never push our limits. We'd see our reach and never stretch beyond it. Safe and secure within our self-styled boundaries, we might cherish our non-skinned knees and walk on, but we would never soar. Whether in the brightness of the morning, the light of mid-day or the descending darkness of dusk, we would tell ourselves "this is my life," and we would listen for others to join in and build a chorus of acceptance, an embrace of lessness.

Tired.
Lonely.
Unwanted.

Looking for a hiding place instead of grace; searching for a hole to climb into instead of hope to rise up in.

Just a whisper shy of soaring.

The man picked up the phone. Finally. As the soft rain pattered against the panes of his office windows, he searched through the contacts, paused, started to push the buttons and held his breath, half-hoping that if he did, there would be no answer at the other end as he called his old friend to offer his hand or his shoulder . . . or his love and support . . . whatever was needed to help him walk out of the endless circle of his sexual addiction. But . . . the visions of what his friend had done, who he'd hurt, what he had rejected, what he had chosen, what he had said . . . flooded his mind.

"I don't know how to do this," he sighed to the man inside.

But Someone else heard, and whispered "I do."

The father parked the car. Finally. Leaning forward, he rested his head against the steering wheel and placed his hands on the dash and rehearsed his speech, trying to hear it as an eight-year-old might, wondering what words he could use to re-build the trust, show his love, sow new seeds of security, carry for his beloved son the pain that threatened to suffocate the little boy's soul. His efforts to be real and good and strong and present began to weaken beneath his own guilt for his own great unraveling that had undone the safety of the life in which his son had once paraded.

"I don't know what to say to my own son," he sighed to the dad inside.

But Someone else heard, and whispered, "I do."

The mother heard the door softly shut and she told her friend on the phone to hold on as she peeked through the curtains and saw her daughter poised on the top step looking briefly back at the door she had closed behind her. She saw the pretty eyes from which a soft tear dropped and heard her friend on the phone saying "hey, are you there?" Her feet seemed a part of the carpet, unmovable, her hands frozen, her mind blocked, her heart restrained by memories of past moments of confrontation.

"I don't know how to love her anymore," she said to the mom inside.

But Someone else heard, and whispered "I do."

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.-- Matthew 28:20

Always?

When we are tired?
When we want to hide?
When we feel unwanted?
When we don't know what to do?
When we don't know what to say?
When we don't know how to love?

When . . . ever. "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength."

When we find ourselves overwhelmed by what we have done, or by what has been done to us, or by what we have done to others or by what we failed to do, we need to admit our weariness, our tiredness, our emptiness, our falseness, our callousnness, our sadness, our hatefulness, our lovelessness, our aimlessness . . . or whatever ness inflicts us and seek His wholeness and holiness.

Clear out the clutter, tune out the culture, pack away the pride . . . wait for Him to whisper.

He will.

God Bless,

Thom

Searching for the truth about sexual brokenness? Order your copy of Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, by Thom Hunter, from Amazon.

The New Math of Forgiveness

2011-11-30T18:32:00.000-08:00

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” -- Luke 23:34

Nothing hurts like hurting about hurts that make you hurt others. What a compound of pain that leads us to do unto others because something was done unto us and we've come all undone over it. So, we hurt and we cry and we ask ourselves why. And we hide and we run and we pray and we seek and we rise and we walk and we declare ourselves done. And then we see . . . we're not. For the carnage lies along the trail we yearn to leave behind and it calls out to us, to which we can only, in exhaustion from the battle, whisper in all sincerity, "please forgive me."

And we wait . . .

And the answer is . . .

Okay . . .

If . . .

And it is time to retrace our trail, trading the grace of redemption for the work of repairing, seeking to earn some measure of forgiveness as if it were a rare commodity to be extended only on completion of some arbitrary and man-ordained testing, a rite of passage for the one who truly shows he means it. Already finding ourselves barely breathing beneath the weight of the sorrow of sin's relentless pursuit and our weak attempts to escape, we dig our way out through the callused layers of repetitive sin, stand face-to-face with the reality of remorse and the challenge of repentance and ask . . . but do not receive. Spent, we engage in a new battle, so determined to prove ourselves worthy of that which seems to offer some hope of life: forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not fix sexual and relational brokenness. Forgiveness does, however, help remove the overwhelming obstacles of shame and guilt and lessen the likelihood of a u-turn. Powerful stuff forgiveness. Precious indeed. But it should be less rare and much more alive than the kajillion blades of grass in a dormant winter lawn. Imagine . . . 7 times 70 . . . times a billion or so people.

Forgiveness? God made plenty. It's a commodity that has flowed in un-stemmed abundance like a mighty timeless river straight from the gates of Eden, beneath the Cross of Christ and into the reservoirs behind the dams we've built to hold it back and make its power our own, to be administered when deserved according to our measured grace. "I'll forgive you when I know it won't come back to haunt me."

The new math of forgiveness. Seven times seventy has been replaced by a new equation. Once . . . maybe?

In a worst-case scenario, a sexually-broken person may have . . .

Engaged in clearly-sinful homosexual behavior, or . . .

Traded the reality of life for the mindless pursuit of pornography, or . . .

Committed adultery, bringing shame to his wife or her husband, or . . .

Disintegrated into self-absorption through constant masturbation, or . . .

Become mentally-entrenched in fantasizing over endless lustful pursuits . . .

Accepting sexual addiction as self.

And these are just the non-criminal aspects of sexual brokenness. Homosexuality, pornography, adultery, self-satisfaction, lust, addiction. Which of these is unforgivable?

In your book?

In God's book?

When I was in high school, I had a dog named Sampson. I'd had a trying 15 years -- divorced parents, father abandonment, sexual abuse, evil stepfather and ocean-deep instability -- and there was something indescribably comforting in the dog's soft brown eyes, lapping tongue, thick fur and bouncy eagerness. I was the most important thing to him. He couldn't wait for me to slip a leash onto his collar, unlock the gate, cross the street to the park and play. One day, while running with him in the park, he ran in front of me, distracted by some enticing sight. The leash wrapped around my legs and I fell . . . hard . . . on top of his soft brown body, snapping one of his legs beneath me.

He barked; he bit. I yelled; I nearly cried. I picked him up; he yelped. I said, "I'm sorry." He panted.

As Sampson healed, his surgically-reconstructed leg shaved and wrapped, he greeted me with the same wide tail wags that had always enticed me through the screen door and into the yard. There were no demands for proof I would never fall on him again. There was no penance. He didn't count the dog treats or analyze the sincerity of the petting.

Yes . . . I know. We're not dogs.

We're better. I can't help but believe that God expects a bit more from his greatest creation.

You see, Sampson was not attuned to the fine intricacies of forgiveness. He did not confuse it with repentance. He did not confuse it with consequences. He did not wonder if . . . if I was too-easily forgiven . . . I might take advantage of some future opportunity to snap his other legs. He didn't even know he was "forgiving" me. If there was any confusion on his part at all, it was between love and forgiveness, and that's not a bad mix-up to make.

Forgiveness is not a fool-me-once-shame-on-you, fool-me-twice-shame-on-me issue. We want to place it on the list of choices we have to make as persons rather than on the list of Christ-like attributes of surrendered person-hood. Christ never had to say "Do as I say, not as I do," when it came to forgiveness. He did and we must.

Forgiving someone does not mean they are free to cast aside the work of repentance.That work must still be done, but it is not dependent on you forgiving them. It may be, however, that the broken one sees a lack of forgiveness as an obstacle to the pursuit of repentance. Is that your problem? No . . . forgiveness is.

Forgiving someone does not mean they can cast aside the cost of the consequences. Burdens must be borne; penalties paid; costs calculated and debts repaid. Is that your problem? No . . . unless, in your forgiveness you discover a compassion that leads you to walk along the fallen from the crawling to the limping to the someday standing tall.

Forgiveness just means you forgive them, for Pete's sake. Or for their sake. Or for yours. Bearing the burden of unforgiveness can rival the impact of the original sin that brought down the reign of judgment. Even in the absence of repentance, even surrounded by the carnage of consequence, forgiveness reigns. It is the beginning of healing for both sides.

Better math.

Forgiveness doesn't always mean the complete restoration of your relationship with someone, but it helps clear a path, and is perhaps the only hope that your relationship will ever be rebuilt.

Maybe one of the more difficult circumstances under which we are called to forgive is when we look at someone who just seems to have been willingly and willfully sinning and hurting and pillaging life as if all of creation existed only for perverted pleasure. Forgive that? Take a cue from Christ. Forgiveness was dependent on some awareness or on a lack of.

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” -- Luke 23:34

And then, just a short time later:

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at Him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save Yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this Man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom."

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in paradise.”

-- Luke 23:39-43

He looked down from the cross as he was dying, rested his gaze on the ignorant assassins and forgave them. Shortly thereafter, he looked to his left and right at two men who were deserving of the gravest consequence for their sins . . . and he forgave.

Maybe we should pay better attention to what Jesus thought was important enough to be among his last few words, delivered through the suffocation of his final breath.

One last question. Is it possible to forgive someone and for them to not really know you have? I suppose it could be, in a selfish sort of way. We could convince ourselves that we have forgiven them, but not stoop so low as to actually tell them. Perhaps that would soothe our hearts somewhat and allow us to walk away. Like the repentance and the consequences, the suffocating sinner's awareness of such forgiveness is "not my problem." I know what it feels like to walk through life without the peace of having been forgiven by some.

But why? Why give a hoarded and protected and precious gift and not allow the forgiven the possible pleasure of healing from it? Why respond to someone's longing and never let them know? Why put their peace beneath your pillow so only you can sleep at night? Maybe we should be a bit like Sampson and confuse it more with love.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

-- 1 Cor. 13:4

What keeps you from forgiving? Are you too impatient, too anxious to see the repentance worked out to completion and the consequences borne first? Are you biting back out of personal pain, unable to find kindness for someone who is also hurting? Are you holding back because it just doesn't seem like they deserve it, and you're not really sure you want to see them restored? Or . . . are you just too proud? Maybe they haven't asked for forgiveness and you don't want to extend it until they humble themselves enough?

Do you lack the love it takes to forgive? Ask God. In the blink of any eye He can review the span of all human history and tell you quickly that whatever has been done can be forgiven. It will cost you nothing. He already paid beyond whatever measure you might be imagining.

I can think of no better Christmas gift than forgiveness.

God Bless,

Thom

(Want to know more about how to deal with effects of sexual brokenness in your life or in the life of someone you care about? Read Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do.)

Our Interim Nakedness

2011-11-14T09:14:00.001-08:00

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

may the name of the Lord be praised.” -- Job 1:21

I was reminded the other day that my role in the restoration process is to seek it; God's role to give it. My role to accept it; His to affect it. My choice is to choose it; His is to do it. My role is to desire it; His to design it. He imparts unmerited grace; I offer unending praise.

I know that sounds simple, but it can be confusing. Sometimes we put a great deal of effort into self-restoration, as if we can plow through our closets and drawers and then stand in front of a mirror for thirty minutes and apply all the right cover-ups to be convincing. We wink and strike a convincing pose and switch off the flattering light to turn and face . . . realistic life. Other times we turn the restoration over to someone else, an individual who seems to have it all together or a group that claims they can put it all together for you in 10 not-so-easy-almost-brutal-tough-love steps. Unfortunately, they may judge you more by your practiced poses of self-protection than by your plaintive woes of self-rejection. Depending on how they view you -- from behind masks of rigid self-righteousness or through hearts of tender brokenness -- they do a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, determining whether you are yet broken enough for their repair work to begin. As bad as you know you are, your acceptance of your badness may not look quite good enough for their goodness. Bless you later?

Bless their hearts. It's hard enough for people to deal with their own sins. Do we really have to do the hard work regarding the sins of others? Yes, and with long-suffering to boot. The problem is, most of us are not open about our sinful nature, so when it raises its ugly head, our gracious neighbors find themselves face-to-face with a threatening Cobra and do what comes natural: run for cover.

There's nothing much worse than for those who really know you to find out something really bad about you that they really did not know.

What we need is a bit of interim nakedness between the womb and the tomb. Post-discovery transparency is a great thing and certainly helps protect against continued falling, but coming clean beneath the bright lights of exposure can seem a bit late in the relationship-preservation game.

A few years ago ,when I was trying so hard to prove to everyone that I was "all better now," I focused so much energy on looking like things were all right that I had little energy left over to make sure they truly were. That's a surefire plan for relapse. Simply put, if being right for the sake of the ones around us was enough, we would never end up so wrong to begin with. Anyone who has a weakness for an addictive sin has an acquired immunity to those who rightly warn of impending self-destruction. Our yellow-brick road is just a little more yellow and becomes so bright it seems the only path available. Suddenly we're glowing road-kill.

How many times do we as Christians have to say to ourselves and others that God sees all, hears all, knows all before we believe all . . . that? Why do we relegate Him to being a God of retrospection? He has no need of hindsight.

Truth is . . . we're still naked as far as God is concerned. All those earthly shopping binges to wrap ourselves in the latest robes of life -- whether they be righteousness or wretchedness -- are for naught, if we don't come before Him, in a non-literal sense, disrobed. We might fool each other with the latest cover-the-fall fashions, but we'll never fool God.

At some point, most people who struggle with sexual or relational brokenness, reach a point where they desperately want to be transformed. Maybe the person they were intended to be has faded so far into the past they don't know even where to start looking. Maybe they have been so derided by people who have long since decided this dog won't hunt when it comes to true change that they have no one to turn to. Maybe they have fooled themselves too many times and spent every penny on tickets on the repentance merry-go-round and they just can't drag themselves into that again without some assurance that the ride might have a different outcome. Maybe, just maybe, they reach a point where it's all "You, God."

Good.

Of course we want things to be right with those we hurt and those we love and those we respect. Of course we want those who turned away to turn around. Of course we want trust to replace disgust and our present sorrow to be gone tomorrow. Of course we want to count our losses, lick our wounds and come out healed. We want. Remember though, wanting is what got us into this mess to begin with, and, if we want restoration, but it does not come because we're expecting it from people who are not ready or able to give it, we can trigger new wants, born of rejection, a sworn enemy of transformation.

Before you start detailing the plans for all that restoration, remember, it's all "You, God." And He's ready, willing and able. Not only that, but God knows what transformation and restoration really look like. If it was up to me, everything I lost because of my years of bowing to sin would come back, just as shiny and new as it was before I tarnished it. As they say, however . . . perhaps "God has a better plan."

My struggle was a lengthy one and I received a lot of advice through the years, some from people who hadn't a clue what I was going through and some from people who had a clue because they'd been through it themselves. One piece of advice they often had in common: "You just need to get your life right with God."

And the smugness in me might roll my eyes and declare that advice to be the epitome of dismissive triteness. When all else fails . . . honey . . . "get right with God."

That's awesome.

Or at least it is if you decide that before all others you're going to get right with the Awesome God who created you . . . knows you . . . loves you . . . wants you . . . forgives you . . . and will welcome you now and forever if you will only "get right" with Him. What's trite about that?

In the sense of eternity, everything is interim to Him. No matter what you did today, you're still the naked child in your mother's womb and you are already the one who will depart naked. He sees dust-to-dust all at one time, and that's a breadth of knowledge that can certainly see you through the whole journey if you will just . . . "get right with God."

No matter what you fill your life with -- from sin-driven debauchery to servant-driven self-denial -- there will be lonely times and uncertain times and longing times and hurtin' times. We look for places to go and spaces to fill and things to do that will make life more real. For some, life seems just a home-bound journey and for others of us, it works out more like a tumble through a brier-patch. He sees the beginning and the end, the slip, tumble and the struggle to stand.

And He loves you.

God Bless,

Thom

(For more insight into sexual and relational brokenness, read Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, available at Amazon.com.)

Another Blind Eye to a Small Boy's Cry

2011-11-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

(Note: Once again, little ones have gone unprotected, with small boys victimized by both the twisted and broken and the blind and indifferent. I was sexually- abused decades ago, at the age of 8. No victim ever forgets. For the hope of the Penn State small boys and other children being abused, often despite the awareness of others who look the other way, I'm sharing my story here. If you are aware of a child predator, please speak up. Silence truly like a cancer grows.)

The little one who smiles and hides the pain
Lets tears fall when he plays out in the rain.
The innocence portrayed with winsome look
Was the part of him that someone selfish took.
The awakened now spends time just looking back
And moments focused only on his lack.
The autumn gray has claimed the barefoot son
Who sits and dreams of how he used to run.

-- Thom Hunter

The after-Daddy days in our white frame house on Texas Street were quiet and grey. The arguments were gone, but the moments of laughter had also slipped away. The uncertainty of our family had not been clarified by my father's departure. The house was familiar; the yard was the same; the trains just as loud and wall-rattling as they clipped the yard on their way to somewhere . . . somewhere else. Which is where I wanted to be, away from the bagworm-infested trees and the heat of the summer. The barefoot boy was ready to walk away from pain and confusion, but had no where to go.

I loved that old house, though it held its fears. I remember when our family would sit around the table in the dining room with bowls of pinto beans and cornbread and sour pickles and great glasses of sweet iced tea. I remembered the time Daddy brought home a pet skunk which had the run of the house, but usually just hid in the hall closet and dashed out only to taunt my mother and provoke an argument about the absurdity of a rodent rummaging among our Sunday clothes.

The fear? It was the attic opening above the hallway between the dining room and the kitchen, slightly askew as if it were frequently used by someone living up there who came out only in the dark, perhaps to itself rummage the closet in my bedroom or slide beneath my bed. When I would be sent to the kitchen to refill the tea pitcher or bring more bread, I would skirt along the wall and keep an eye on that opening.

When I look back now, I am comforted to know that as a seven-year-old, my fears were so benign and common: dark and empty attics, monsters under beds. That would end at the age of eight to be replaced by fears that moved inside of me to produce a different darkness.

“Rescue” came in 1962.

For the first few years after my parents’ divorce, the Continental Trailways bus between Denton and Fort Worth was the connection between my dad and his children. Sometimes Daddy would take the bus to Denton for a day in the park; sometimes all four of us children would board the bus for the trip to Fort Worth for a walk in the zoo and an evening of biscuits and pinto beans in Daddy’s little apartment. And sour pickles.

The bus was loud and smelly and the people, despite the fact they were on a bus headed to some specific designation, looked lost and wandering and self-absorbed, which is how I felt. Though we would laugh and share the inner jokes of siblings, pestering the passengers, exhausting the good will of the driver, the bus became a symbol for never being home, but just somewhere in between.

Within a year of the divorce, the bus trips became less frequent. Daddy was often broke and unable to afford the ticket to come see us, or the four children's fares for us to go see him. We began to find other ways to spend our Saturdays. Movie matinées and Milk Duds, swimming with cousins on my mother's side, cashing in coke bottles for comic books to curl up in a world of conquering heroes.

Home still echoed an aching emptiness I was sure would never go away. Everything was a reminder. The space in the driveway where Daddy used to park his car. The disappearance of the ash trays in the living room. No vienna sausages in the pantry. No snoring at night; no red flickering of his cigarettes in the darkened living room where he would wander to try to figure things out. No weekend fishing trips to Bridgeport. No skunk. No one to chase away the monsters or straighten the tilting attic door. We soon moved and Texas Street moved into memory.

Mother worked hard to fill the emptiness, loading us up to go to drive-in movies at night, putting together picnics on the weekend, bringing home a new puppy. Still, she knew my brother Mike and I needed the influence of men in the absence of our father. We were too cooped up with sisters, and my brother -- five years older than I -- was already beginning to find his own way out into a more adventuresome world.

When Mike came home with the news that a bunch of the boys in the neighborhood were being rounded up to start a new scout troop, Mother was all for it. A young, clean-cut outdoorsman and self-proclaimed scoutmaster, Mr. Hooten, had been showing off his collection of hatchets and knives, outdoor gadgets and camping gear. He had a way with words and weapons. Like all the boys, we were hooked. Mr. Hooten was going to build the sharpest Scout troop in Texas and every boy in the neighborhood was welcome to join and march in formation into manhood. I was, of course, way too young.

I took to Mr. Hooten right off. He reminded me of all the good things about Daddy. Mr. Hooten decided I could join the troop – unofficially – even though I was only eight, several years too young. He promised Mother he would watch out for me; he promised my brother he would not let me be too big a pest. And he promised me he’d “protect” me from the older boys, just in case any of them might be bullies. I was parading in the personal attention. I was finally someone’s favorite, and I was anxious to learn all the things Mr. Hooten could teach me.

Mr. Hooten was a pedophile. Sick and sly, he knew how to take a little boy’s grin of anticipation and turn it for his personal satisfaction. He “protected” me as anyone would valuable personal property. I was not a member of the troop; I was his.

The sexual abuse began innocently enough, creeping in like a welcome sunrise on a clear morning that gives no hint of the storms to come in the heating of the day. If sin would announce itself, like the first incoming missile of an air war, we could duck and run for cover. It doesn’t happen that way. Sin slides in.

Mr. Hooten’s favorite activity was movie night. He would order movies boys love – westerns and war movies and hokie horror flicks – and we’d all crowd into the community room he’d borrow from the city. Movie night was a reward for the hard work of memorizing oaths and carving soapbox cars. There, in the dark, perhaps 30 young teenage boys and a little brother or two would sprawl on the floor and become enthralled in the adventures on the screen. There, in the dark, Mr. Hooten became enthralled with me. I didn’t mind. I admired him; he cared about me. Sitting closely in front of him in the crowded room, I welcomed his arm around me as he would pull me back towards him and slide me down so I would be comfortable and he could see above my burr-cut head. I didn’t mind the backrub, the slow movements of his strong hands along my spine. It didn’t seem wrong when he reached around in front and rubbed my chest and stomach and pulled me closer. There, in the dark, with all my friends around, it didn’t even seem strange when he fondled me through my jeans, or even when he began to reach inside, never taking his eyes off the screen. He was, after all, Mr. Hooten. It couldn’t be wrong. He even called me Tom-Bo, the nickname my Dad had given me. I began to live for Friday nights.

My daddy had taken our family on a few campouts when I was a little boy. He’d even driven us all the way out to Yellowstone National Park where we slept in a tent and listened for bears and took hikes and identified berries and skipped rocks on streams. I missed those days, so I was very excited when Mr. Hooten said our troop was going to camp . . . and I could go along. He assured my mother I’d be safe. In fact, he said, I could sleep in his tent to make sure the older boys played no late night pranks on me.

When I was with Mr. Hooten, I felt loved and accepted and singled out. He knew that. I was so easily taken in by him. I anticipated the camping trip with more excitement than any Christmas. I packed my things weeks ahead, complaining incessantly to my mother that I needed a sleeping bag we couldn’t afford. Mr. Hooten told me not to worry about it; he had one for me. He would take care of everything.

Off in the wilderness, out in the woods, beneath the stars, only a few feet away from the remains of a smoldering campfire, behind the zipped doors of a musty tent and crowded into one sleeping bag together, Mr. Hooten’s cautious caring came unraveled. His “little buddy,” his Tom-Bo, became his toy. His protection became perversion. His acceptance of me became his using of me. I went into the tent puffed up, euphoric and longing for the next day’s outdoor adventure, my mind crowded with memories of Yellowstone adventures of the past. I came out broken, confused, and longing for home. The comfortable reassuring closeness of movie night, which he had used to reel me in, was replaced by the rough manipulation of a strong man accustomed to making people do things, and accept his doing things to them. He did as he wished and I did as he wanted. He was, after all, the master.

“Do exactly what I tell you to do or I’ll . . .” I had never heard words like that before, spoken in a tone that made it clear I had placed myself where I could no longer choose my actions. It would be the first time I had done so; the first moment of giving away control, an involuntary step onto the edge of an, at the time, invisible slippery slope, a re-defining of what was right, a challenge to all reason. I found myself, even at eight, rationalizing to prevent rejection.

Just as I would not weep years later when tossed in a holding cell as a result of my own actions, I would not weep that morning as I emerged into the clearing where the campfire’s ashes lay cold under the dawning sky. Not here; not with these boys.

Mr. Hooten was a sick man with a twisted mind and a way of making evil look and feel like love. I had a deep need for an adult man worthy of my trust and admiration. I was ignorant and innocent and eager to be accepted, wanting and wandering, ready to be molded, as he said repeatedly, into a little man. And he took it upon himself to reshape my life. With sadistic precision he filled in the gaps left by the loss of my father’s love with his predatory sickness. With a false smile and a corrupted touch, he slowly and skillfully and malevolently took my childhood simplicity and innocence and pleasured himself, turning it into premature guilt and confusion, which I buried deep inside so as not to disappoint him. He took the gentle psyche of an innocent boy in his perverted hands and twisted it so hard that he left a permanent imprint on the future shape of my life. And from this, he gained his wicked satisfaction.

Back in Denton, in my shame, I was silent. For a time, I curled up in the quiet with my comic books and plastic soldiers and the pain, both physical and mental, slipped away as I found justification for his intentions. I resented myself for the sullenness I had shown in the last day of the camp-out, for the hurt feelings he must have had as I shied away, which had made him mad and had lead to his ignoring me all that final day. I felt guilt -- not for his actions in the dark, but for my reactions in the daylight -- and I was ready to tell him I was sorry. In only a few days, I was longing for movie night. I needed Mr. Hooten to be nice again, to curl up on the floor of the big room full of boys and pull me – only me – up in front of him and hold me, touch me; make me feel special. To remind me that I had been chosen. I decided he had not really meant to hurt me in the tent, that I had just been stupid and not like other boys, who would have been glad to have been given such attention. I had been mean and ungrateful and I wanted to make it up to him so he would keep me in his troop.

Mike and I were only a few minutes late to movie night, but the lights were already down low. I scouted the room from far in the back and finally saw Mr. Hooten, there in the darkest spot in the middle behind the projector and I started picking my way around and between the sprawled bodies of the scouts. And then I stopped. Mr. Hooten and another burr-headed boy were curled up together in the dark. A smaller boy, maybe only six, someone else’s little brother, had taken my place. My week of fading remorse had resulted in a jarring rejection. I found myself a spot alone far out on the edge of the room. I don’t remember the movie.

After Mr. Hooten traded me in, I retreated into a shell, custom built a safer world around me, and became very selective about who would enter. It was only a brief "relationship," but like all children preyed upon by sick adults, I did not escape undamaged.

When I was cast aside by Mr. Hooten and able to think more clearly, it didn't take me long to know how wrong it had all been. Feeling real guilt for the first time in my life, I went to a couple of people I thought I could trust. I was embarrassed and frightened, but I took a risk and told. I sought real rescue.

"I've been doing something terrible. Can I tell you about it?" I remember asking. It did not occur to me that it was he -- Mr. Hooten -- who had done something terrible. To me . . . it was me.

"Yes," I was told by each. "You can tell me anything."

And I did. And I thought they were listening. And I thought they would help me.

"Don't you ever repeat a word of this to anyone," one said angrily. "People will call you a liar . . . and a lot of other things. There's no excuse for making things up just to get attention."

One even punctuated his shocked response with a hard punch to my shoulder, as if the pain would reinforce his warning to never speak of this again.

I tried to tell a few others, but it was too difficult for them to hear. Pretty soon I learned that there are things you just don't tell people. Things that people do to you; things you yourself do. Secrets that slowly become a part of you. Deeds that do indeed shape your manhood, but with contaminated clumps of clay. In Mr. Hooten's menacing shadow, my voice had been too small.

I don't know what eventually became of Mr. Hooten. I have lain awake at night wondering about the hurt and damage he inflicted on other little boys. Sexual abuse is slick and tricky and well-disguised. It slips into a child's world with a smile and a laugh, a chuckle and a touch, and doesn't leave until childhood purity has been stolen away and destroyed, and along with it, the ability to trust.

I don't know if Mr. Hooten was gay or straight, because it was not really about sex at all. It was sport and selfishness and an unending search to fill a perverted emptiness. It was the conquest of a child, power over innocent prey, the sad satisfaction of a selfish soul at the expense of another, and the crumpling and tossing aside of a person perceived as less significant. There was no love, no care, just power and presence preceding emptiness and rejection from both to each.

And shame. I know there was great shame on my part or I would have told my father. I wonder if he might have risen from his own self-absorption to rescue me?

I've not been one for excuses. I know what statistics show -- that a great majority of grownups with sexual identity problems were abused as children or abandoned by their fathers, or both -- but I believe that, despite all that, the responsibility for my actions lies with me. What I became later and what I did in the desperate acts of self-destruction rest on my shoulders, not on Daddy's or Mr. Hooten's, both really only transitory visitors to my life. But I do know that in the mix of the me I came to be are the shaping memories of trains along Texas Street, a small boat on a star-lit pond, a grimy Continental Trailways bus racing down the road to Fort Worth, dark movies, camping tents and a punch on the shoulder. Things that add up.

Some of us keep our secrets too long, thinking it is our burden to bear, unaware that we share it with others in our very actions, in the way we live as we hide and dodge and hurt the ones we love, even as we destroy the goodness of our selves.

In the span of a year I had lost my father, found Mr. Hooten and lost him also.

I would learn through the years that rejection is one of my significant “triggers” for acting out on my same-sex attractions. When the need to be wanted is not met in a child, he or she often does not develop the level of self-confidence that makes gender-identity more natural to move into. Does that mean that all the little boys Mr. Hooten bent with his seeking of self-satisfaction grew up to struggle with same-sex attraction? Did they become gay because of his wicked use? Not necessarily. I will never know.

The accepted “side effects” of childhood sexual abuse are many: guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, self-blame, a feeling of powerlessness, an inability to say no to others in relationships, difficulty nurturing self, a lack of trust in your own feelings, an emotional shut down or 'numbing', an inability to see your positive aspects, a desire for perfectionism, a need to control at all costs, a feeling of being invisible or of being a non-person, problems giving or receiving affection, difficulty relying on others. Each of these side effects can produce a new wave of guilt, an inner question that goes unanswered: “Why can’t I just get over it?”

The question is punctuated by the advice of others: "Get over it."

The anger the adult feels at himself for acting out on something that happened to him as a child is furious and frustrating. We are allowing that person to maintain control long after he has moved on. Depression is familiar.

Some of the children abused by Mr. Hooten and the other predators who prey upon the innocent may emerge, through the grace of God, to lead completely normal lives, unfazed by their brush with evil. Others may not survive at all, driven by self-doubts to self-destruction, seeking solace in things that lead them no-where and merely compound their lostness until they can no longer find themselves at all. Others may move into some form of sexual abuse themselves, seeking power over spouses or, heaven forbid, repeating the misdeeds done to them. Others may just retreat into themselves and live behind a wall.

That’s a lot of baggage to take home from movie night.

I appreciate the fact God made each of us “wondrously.” I just wish people would leave His work alone so it can manifest itself in the way He intended. That little boy who wandered into the community room dreamed of being like his dad, only better. Even 8-year-olds can look beyond rockets and rifles to being daddies. I was going to do it perfectly. And in my perfect world, I would be the best Daddy. There would be no end to the zoo trips, the campouts, the fishing, the storytelling, the listening. I would rescue. I would have had nothing to hide; my children would never have been confused.

If only we could see what lies ahead. If only there were not so many twists and turns and hills and valleys obscured. We could carve out a road to overcoming instead of laying down stones for a pathway to succumbing. We would know we were being swallowed up before we plummeted so far into the depths of the struggle that all our energy goes into flailing instead of climbing.

It would take many years and a great deal of pain before someone would lead me down the better path of forgiveness for both Daddy and Mr. Hooten . . . and myself. Forgiveness would be the only way to begin to unzip the dark tent and emerge into the clearing.

It would require rescues that are real and people who would hear. They would come.

(If you think this story is helpful to you or would be for someone you know, a more complete version, "Why Was My Voice So Small?" is available for download in the Amazon Kindle Store for only .99 cents. Click here: Amazon.)

Which Face Will Finish the Race?

2011-11-03T16:34:00.000-07:00

Through love and truth, restored to stand, renewed and clean within,

My past forgiven, my present new, my future freed from secret sin,

I am at peace with where I am; forgiveness lets me breath again,

The dark is gone, the ropes untied, the light of grace has entered in.

He set me free because He lives.

I am . . . I can . . . because . . . He is.

But where I am is not enough; to linger in this peaceful place

Of solitude and healing, of redemption, cleansed through grace.

He asks and prods that those who change quicken then the pace

Of moving forward, not alone, but with others in the race.

He set me free because He lives.

I am . . . I can . . . because . . . He is.

-- Thom Hunter

When I was a little boy in Texas, yearning for a summer snow cone . . . and broke, there was only one solution: Coke bottles. Well, not just Coke bottles, but Nehi grape bottles and 7-Up bottles and Big Red and Dr. Pepper. I'd start under the kitchen sink first and claim any I could find there. Then I would walk the neighborhood and the nearby park. Each bottle could be redeemed for a few cents at the U-Totem convenience store. Pick 'em up, haul 'em in, get your cash and spend it. A snow cone, some Sweet-Tarts, maybe even a Spiderman comic book on a good day.

Sometimes the discarded bottles would have spiders in them or be filled with dirt, or, even worse, might have been used by a tobacco-chewer for a spit receptacle. I never gave a lot of thought to the fact that, post-redemption, those same bottles would be filled again and back on the grocery shelves. Redeemed. Clean and clear and filled with purpose.

Some of the bottles I found, of course, were too chipped or cracked to be redeemed. They made good targets for a BB gun or, usually, just got tossed back down and left behind. Unredeemed. Beyond use now.

They were just bottles.

But what about people? Are we sifting through the discarded, searching for "The Most Likely to Be Redeemed," like we did "Most Likely to Succeed" in high school? Do we vote with our eyes and actions, tossing aside a few that are just a little too broken to be of further use? Are we sealing someone's future because of the revealing of his past?

I have a past. Cracks and chips and broken pieces. Dirt.

When I am still and focused, I try to see that past as God sees it in his way of flowing time where past and present and future meld into just being. Where was and is and still to be are . . . one. And I see a little boy, a struggling teen, a stumbling man and . . . I know them. Indeed, when I try really hard to see all three as God does . . . I even like them. I see them in snapshots, first with an old black-and-white Polaroid, then a Kodachrome Kodak Instamatic, then in digital brilliance. A little boy with a burr . . . a kid with a cowlick . . . a teen with shaggy hair on his shoulders . . . a man with graying thinness. Snap . . . snap . . . blink.

Still, as Clarence, the angel in "It's a Wonderful Life," said when focusing in on the face of good old George Bailey, said "I like that face." Or, those faces, all mine. I like them now.

Still, love them as I do, I find myself, when viewing through the continuum of time and memory, wanting to warn them . . . to say a lot of "don'ts." To freeze the frame. To reach down and turn them like a plastic piece on a game board. It hurts to see where they are heading, but I cannot intervene. I think I understand a little bit how God must grieve.

Don't go there.

Don't do that.

Don't open that door.

Don't close that door.

Don't tell that lie.

Don't believe that lie.

Don't say hello.

Don't say goodbye.

Don't think that.

Don't want that.

Don't refuse that.

Don't hide.

Don't run away.

Don't cry.

And the flash goes off and another moment passes, perhaps another self-inflicted crack or a chip here and there, the dents of desperate and deliberate decisions. Trending toward empty, bordering on discarded, left in hope of redemption. Wondering at my worth.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. -- Romans 5:6-8

I am so valuable, not because of myself, but only because God considers me so. I am so redeemed.

But what of this trail of sin, so easily traced? Regardless of the reasons we sin, we sin. Yes, I was abandoned by my father, sexually-abused as a boy, a wandering and needy easy target for fellow sexual sinners. But, the scarlet sins that grew from this fertile soil were tended by my own hand. The regret and the remorse are the fruits of my own weakness.

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." -- Mark 14:38.

Too little watching, too little praying, way too much falling. I'm responsible.

But, regret and remorse morph into redeemed and restored in the hands of a God who does more than trace that trail. He sweeps it clean. He establishes a new one. And He walks it with us.

No, He runs. If we run.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. -- Hebrews 12:1-3.

Believe me . . . witnesses surround me. And there are encumbrances and sins. And they have entangled. But . . . God says to lay those things aside. God says to run with endurance, which means it was never going to be easy. God says to fix our eyes on Jesus, which means we can ignore the tempting scenery that flashes by as we head for the finish line.

I am sorry that Jesus endured my shame and I am in awe that He did so with joy, despite the fact He despised it. He endured it . . . so I could also. So that I would not grow weary. So I would not lose heart.

So I can finish.

And He provides help, in the form of fellow runners who help set the pace and in the form of those who cheer the progress of those who run.

One of my favorite camera views of televised marathons are of the outstretched hands along the way that hold forth a paper cup of water. The runner grabs it almost without pause, gulps it down, drops the cup on the road and keeps running. Even saying thanks at that point consumes too much energy, so the appreciation is silence and a renewed stamina to finish the race. And the person on the sidelines cheers and knows he helped provide the endurance.

Sometimes we are the runner, wondering how much further we have to go before we can collapse on the ground and breathe deeply of the clarity of completion. Sometimes we are the one who stands and offers a taste of the living water that rushes through and replenishes the rebellious body. Either way, we are in this together . . . and we can finish well. If we don't lose heart. If we do not grow weary.

Sadly, some people in your life will choose to be a stumbling-block rather than a water-bearer. Fix your eyes on Jesus. They're hurdles and He will help you jump. We will all come to the end of the race at some point. Which face will you wear? One of regret or one of restoration?

We are all so valuable. We are so redeemed.

Don't stop.

Finish.

God Bless,

Thom

(Order your copy of Thom's book, Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, at Amazon.com.)

Who Told You You Were Naked?

2011-10-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

One of the most discouraging aspects of battling a deeply-internalized sexual issue is that, even after you face it, fight it, and deprive it, something in that deep-internal goes right back to work to revive it. You choke it, pound it, bury it, surrender it and then, before you know it, you're back under it. You toss it out the window on your journey to freedom and about the time you peek in the rear-view mirror, it's splatting on the windshield.

I've heard of . . . and would like to shake the hand of . . . some people who faced-down the addictive nature of sexual brokenness and, in that very moment, rose from that spot of confrontation, not momentarily cleansed and standing in the timidity of repentance, but forever unshackled and absent the pull of a perceived need and a nagging want. They stand tall and shout the call of freedom. They see trees like men walking and the light is so brilliant that the fog is now mere memory. I've heard their testimonies and I reflected on the sovereignty of God to do that . . . for them . . but it somehow made God seem so selective.

I've wondered in the past if it was just my lack of faith that left me sitting in the valley beside the mountain mouthing "move." Or was it an allergy to grace that left me itching on occasion to avoid the light of His forgiveness and restoration, opting instead for the darker recesses of the depths of deception? Did I misunderstand mercy? Did I -- while railing at others for doing so -- view my sin as greater than God's vision? Was I my own stingy keeper of the key to the door of hope?

Are you?

I think sometimes we content ourselves -- though there is no real contentedness to it at all -- with knowing that we know where the door is, with knowing that we can knock, with knowing we have a key, with knowing that we can run in that direction if we really need to, with knowing that we will find, on the other side, light and warmth and truth. And yet we go on moving in another direction, comforting ourselves a bit by proximity, staying close enough to the door, but keeping the key in our pocket like some insurance policy, just in case we truly find out that all the lies of the world really are just that. Lies.

In an odd twist of clever deception, the enemy makes the things outside the door seem so tangible and immediate. We look longingly at the door, but believe the lies of the enemy that we have already -- through our endless u-turns -- surrendered to, forfeiting the right to even carry the key, much less slide it into the lock upon which we are so fixated. We're not good enough anymore for His goodness. Too bad, so sad. Too late, your fate. And so we comfort ourselves by pulling the darkness in around us and turn away from the reality that He leaves the light on for us. Do we not realize it is the enemy's goal to make us miserable no matter what side of the fence we stand on?

So . . . we wonder. Why doesn't God just throw open the door and grab us as we slink away from the stoop? Pull us in, slam the door behind us and bolt it. Never let us out again.

Oh sure . . . that sounds just like us, doesn't it? Demanding God strip us of our freedom, take away our will, separate us forcefully from the sin that so enthralls us. Just blind our eyes and banish all temptation. Do we want Him to remove from us everything that should drive us to Him and then naively think we will be so gratified that we will praise Him forever even though we would no longer need Him, having no need to despair and seek, in the absence of all confusion? You go, God. If You really want us to be so pure and holy, then You do it, God. I know You can.

You do? You know He can?

Then why flee the door?

It's hard to know how sincere someone is about giving up if you don't know for sure how hard they fought against the giving in. I remember that beyond the original temptations was the great temptation to give up hope, accept fate, make the best of it, count my losses and look for some sort of justification that would allow me to escape the judgment of others and dismantle the complicated and conflicting self in a total embrace of sexuality, as if that self-satisfaction was the answer to all the exasperation of life. It was especially tempting when, whacked by the tidal wave of my revealed sinfulness, my children walked away, my friends departed, my church folded exasperated arms against me, while, at the same time, culture chimed in with all the reasons we should rise beyond the ignorance and embrace the obvious: "being gay is about as good as it gets in this world." It's the domain of the creative and witty and intelligent, the self-actualized and contented ones, the ones who had discovered finally the meaning of loving oneself.

And, in the midst of loving themselves, there are also the sad and the lonely and the searching and the longing and the self-haters, always in pursuit of . . . something. After all, why would gays be deprived of the emotional and relational deficits everyone else suffers?

If we make our decisions on anything less than a full-fledged pursuit of the truth, we should not be surprised to look up one day and see that the door from which we rarely strayed has become so distant that our eyes can barely see it and the key so deep within our pockets that our fingers barely reach it. But . . . the door and the key are both still there.

That's how truth is. It sails like an ever-free bird above the waves of culture, with the land always in sight. Truth doesn't bend beneath the beckoning call to change. Truth does not yield to counterfeited peacefulness. Truth does not cave into the ceaseless call to clarify truth itself. It is just truth. Unchanging, unwavering. Efforts to weaken it only serve to invite the inevitable emergence of the strength of truth.

When you find yourself signaling a left turn into another u-turn, heading back towards the places you wish you'd never been but for some reason long to re-visit . . . it's time to ponder truth. Here's a question you might want to ask yourself:

"Who told you you were naked?"

That's a follow-up question actually. God first asked Adam: "Where are you?" Then, when Adam explained that he had been hiding because he was naked, God said, "Who told you you were naked?"

It wasn't God.

If you have any doubt that the confusion and the sorrow and the anger and the fear and the frustration and the doubt that drive you to and away from the door are what God intended for you rather than what the world uses to ensnare you and enswhirl you in endless circles of questioning your very being, then you don't understand the reason for truth.

The truth is that God knows who we are even when we do not. He accepts us as we are because He see us as He created us to be, not as we have crafted ourselves. Isn't it odd that we think God should change Himself and approve of us rather than that we should change to be approved?

And that's the truth, which, by the way, sets us free.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.-- John 8:32

One more thing about real truth: it will not taunt you or tantalize you because it has no need to make itself attractive. It just is, after all, the truth. It doesn't have to dress up and make promises beyond the one that Jesus Himself made: it sets us free.

I would rather run wildly through the wilderness with my hands in the air and my voice crying out for rescue in pursuit of truth as the hounds of hell bark at my heels than sit in the camouflaged comfort of surrendering to world-inflicted wounds now soothed by the balm of something I know is not from God. How far you enter into the "age of enlightenment" depends on how ignorant you can convince yourself to be about the Word of God.

If God had not already cornered the market on truth, we might have some merit for embracing it from elsewhere or even creating it ourselves. Instead, we need to accept it.

I don't know why some of us find ourselves so at odds with God's clear direction. Yes, I believe He could have sorted a few sins out of the mix. I would have voted for the elimination of sexual brokenness of all kinds so we could all live happily ever after in perfect harmony, with no one conspicuously drifting off key. Let something else be the greatest sin . . . okay? Let someone else be the most naked.

No, I think we are so much better off battling to the very end if that is necessary than we will ever be just seeking an end, at all costs, to this battle. The truth is, only God knows when you will be free of it, but, if you turn your longings elsewhere, forsaking the paths of righteousness for the personal path of what seems right to you or others, you may find yourself in unwelcome wilderness. When you find yourself with a choice between the wilderness and the door, dig deep for the key.

Stand at the crossroads and look;

ask for the ancient paths,

ask where the good way is, and walk in it,

and you will find rest for your souls. -- Jeremiah 6:16

Stand.
Look.
Ask.
Walk.
Rest.

Now that's the naked truth.

God Bless,

Thom

The Lengthening Shadow of Pro-Gay Theology

2011-10-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. -- I Timothy 4:3-4

SPOILER ALERT:

Pro-gay theology is untrue.

I remember a time, way back in the '70s, when I had an ah-hah moment and it seemed obvious to me that the people around me -- especially my fellow Christians -- had somehow avoided the truth about homosexuality. Out of their in-bred squeamishness and hammered-in desire to look right and be right in the eyes of others, they were failing to see the obvious, the truth that was longingly clear to me. . . because of me. That truth? That God had made us all unique and that for me and many others, that uniqueness meant we were designed, even in His image, to be gay. In other words, if I feel this way, I am this way and if I am this way, I will be this way. It was a brief moment of unreal reality. In time, at a time that often seems too late to turn around, the ah-hah turns into oh-no, which can turn into oh-well as we sink into a realization of resignation.

In the simpler '70s -- the tell-it-like-it-is days -- there was little support for a that position. Christians, coarsely and clumsily perhaps, were clear on the issue. So was God,, through His Word. The evidence was overwhelming and the acceptance of homosexuality was pretty much limited to the non-Christian crowd. Gay and affirming were two words not worthy of a hyphen. As time passed, emboldened ones learned to disguise deep deceits as simple truths.

So lets build a life on feelings. Whoa . . . whoa . . . whoa . . . feelings.

Feelings over truth.
Desires over doctrine.
Collective deceit over self-denial.

Besides, don't you know, don'ts are so depressing. The search is on for the birds of a feather, as there's a flock for everything these days.

Years earlier, as a little boy, I took a stroll through a Halloween carnival. I remember a booth where we had to put on blindfolds and reach into buckets and pick up objects and identify them through feeling them. In the environment of the darkening night and the musings of a searching mind, innocent everyday objects became everything from animal guts to eyeballs to elements of torture. That's what they felt like. Guesses, right or wrong, were rewarded with candy.

A life built on feelings leads to a slow strangling, trying to swallow intangibles in efforts to convince ourselves that we are on some divine path . . . or, failing that, convince ourselves that there is no divinity. If that be the case, then indeed, why not let feelings rule? We can become rulers over our personally-designed kingdoms, dropping the drawbridge and throwing open the doors to words that match our mind's eye on the things that matter to us . . . and bolting the doors tight to keep out thoughts and ideas -- and truths -- that might hurt . . . our feelings.

I wish it were that innocent: just a little pouting over petty disagreements, rather than people determinedly self-drowning themselves in deep deceit while the keepers of the life-rafts check the equipment and position themselves on the deck to be ready if needed, not aware that misled souls are dropping overboard in silence. Why do we think we need to watch people wear themselves out dashing between the dance partners of the culture and the church until finally we hear some near-death scream of desperation and have to make a decision whether to cut the rope to which they cling or haul them in?

Granted, when I was first struggling with same-sex attraction -- back in the days when such a thing was referred to with slurs and obscene labels -- I never said a word. I dug in and I dug deeper. I soothed my guilt by seeking some kind of justification. I covered shame by projecting purity. I stood on a tightrope doing what was right because I loved God and doing what was wrong because I loved the world too. People pretty much took me at my carefully-crafted word and I moved on, breathing silent sighs of relief, stealthily maneuvering the double life until the inevitable crash and burn. Putting it in relevance to today's society, it now seems like such a tedious spiral, not so much necessary today since we, as Christians, have stood by and watched as pretty much all of the "stigma" of truth has been stripped of any power to persuade people to at least explore the possibility that the path on which they are tiptoeing is not God-ordained.

In the constant celebration of self that inhabits this era of enlightenment, the love of truth has been dismantled by those who have re-labeled it as hate. It's supposed to be that not showing love is the clanging of a cymbal, but somehow that has been reversed so that when we look into the eyes of a bewildered and searching man or woman and share the truth, the pro-gay theology bunch -- who have been busy spinning scriptural wishful-thinking -- come pouncing forth, pronouncing disagreement as homophobia and compassion as hate and everyone goes all deaf due to the roar of confusion. It's no wonder -- though the lack of resolve is depressing -- that Christians just look for other problems to solve.

Already we were woefully weak in our efforts to help the uncertain ones who were still trying to find out what the Bible really says and means. The record was dismal even before the pro-gay "theologians" realized they could usurp the position and play with the Word of God just enough to suddenly themselves look like the compassionate ones, curling their pointing finger to lure the exhausted with promises of finding out finally that they can live as they were intended and shake off all the weight of centuries of Biblical ignorance. It's an empty promise that allows one to live as he wants, restlessly ruling over a kingdom of his own design, sitting on a throne that depends on loyalty and faithfulness to self, always searching for a way to keep himself satisfied as both subject and emperor.

They're not told of the sorrow that eventually unfolds in the life of any Christian who puts anything above God. Yes, we all do it, but in the self-defined kingdom there is no route to repentance. Restoration only comes through the pursuit of pleasure, which, as it turns out, is an endless search to eventual emptiness. Why do we stand helplessly by while the captives we say we want to set free sit nervously around tying greater knots about themselves in a circle of others who nod approval?

I think one of the scariest things about today's pro-gay theology is not that it has all the clarity of a Midwestern corn maze and all the promise of a Mayan temple of sacrifice, but that few people seem to even care. Embracing gay theology for personal relief requires that believing Jesus rejected the teachings of His Father. Being as they are One, we might just as well embrace theological schizophrenia. Embracing gay theology requires we believe that our personal satisfaction is more valuable than God's truth and that what He really said is for us to do whatever makes us happy. That should put a new twist on "Love your neighbor as yourself." Embracing gay theology would basically mean that anything Jesus is not quoted as being against, He is for. That would open all kinds of doors, including pedophilia, wife-beating, incest and bestiality. After all, He was silent on those as well, not that every word Jesus ever said was written down. Young Christian men and women are being sucked into the mass of lies like they've tumbled into a pit full of vipers. At the same time, most pastors and church leaders rarely move beyond the promise to pray, sitting back down behind their desks in their offices with their books and their bigger issues.

What then should a Christian who struggles with homosexual temptation do?

Open your eyes. -- Examine the scriptures for yourself. Read them in context of the entire expressed Word of God. Probably more scriptural cherry-picking has taken place regarding homosexuality by both sides than anything else.

Open your mind. -- Pray for wisdom and then read about homosexuality in Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy. As hard as it is for those who are attracted to and even love someone of the same sex, homosexuality is mentioned only in the context of immoral behavior.

Open your heart. -- God dwells in the hearts of men who give their hearts to Him. He's listening; watching and responding. You think He can't change you if that is the desire of your heart and if you turn your temptation over to Him each time it works to enslave you? Let 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 work in your heart.

Open your door. -- Yes, it's scary to even consider letting people in to know what is troubling you. Find someone you can trust; someone who does not struggle but truly loves both you and the Lord. Pray that God will reveal someone who can walk with you and not run from you; who can love you and not condemn you; who can forgive you if you fail.

What then should a Christian who does not struggle with homosexual temptation do?

Open your eyes. -- We have become so accustomed to diverting our eyes for self-protection that we've not noticed that some of the people who used to walk beside us have been picked off one-by-one. By the time we wake up, they've embraced the empty promises of completeness presented to them as welcome answers to the questions we ignored.

Open your mind. -- I don't mean "have an open mind." I mean learn something. Learn the scriptures. Learn how to apply them accurately. Learn how to support them. Learn how to share them. Learn how to listen to the refutations and reply with the truthful compassion of a Savior who pointed out sin and then helped the sinner stand and walk free.

Open your heart. -- Is your neighbor's son really of no value to you? Is your friend's daughter of no consequence? Is your brother just a passing thought? Should the struggler be a distant memory? Is the sinner for whom repentance is a repeat performance someone we should just brush off? Is the gay man or woman who was once in your circle now to be conveniently redrawn outside the border?

Open your door -- We know the King and we are the kingdom, but we have made it so foreboding that it has become forbidding and those who need it the most are rebuilding it elsewhere, fashioning walls without a true cornerstone. Who can blame Christian men and women, exhausted from the balancing act and the ups-and-downs of the temptations inherent in sexual brokenness for seeking a more welcoming kingdom rather than persistently throwing themselves into our moat? What if we really loved people as much as we say we do? That would be a love that could never be matched by the consumptive love of the other kingdom.

Ears are itching and hearts are twitching. Tears are falling and we're afraid to wipe them away as if the proximity might make us unclean. Soon the crying become the smiling, finally free to be who they were born to be? And we turn away to more fish in the sea.

Pro-gay theology is the myth that keeps on growing, casting a lengthy shadow, yearning to squelch the light of truth.

If you really want to know how to move beyond your feelings and share the truth, let me know.

God Bless,

Thom
authorthomhunter@yahoo.com

(Want to know more? Order Thom's book: Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do at Amazon.com..)

Is it Time to Come Out of the Closet?

2011-10-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

(Note: October 11, 2011 was designated by the Human Rights Commission as National Coming Out Day. People who consider themselves gay or lesbian were encouraged to "come out" to their friends and family. Has there ever been a better time in our nation's history for Christians to learn how share the truth about homosexuality with compassion for those who struggle?)

I stumbled, fell and cried out but my brother shied away

And I found myself alone in silence, wishing he would stay.

He quickly turned the corner, as if he hadn't realized,

I'd turned and looked to him in pain, with pleading tear-filled eyes.

I saw my brother stumble so I quickly looked away.

I'll ask him how he's doing on perhaps a better day.

I heard my brother crying but I quickly realized

He'd not be wanting me to see the tears that filled his eyes.

So we're just keeping distance till again it all seems right

And saying a little prayer or two before turning in at night.

No reason now to get involved, there's nothing much to say

Both blind; both fine; both better off this way.

-- Thom Hunter

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. -- Galatians 6:2

"Imagine, if you will," comes the Rod Serling voice, "A church in the middle of a very ordinary town, with stained glass windows, cushioned pews and friendly faces at the door. We've arrived on a very ordinary Wednesday night, just in time for the pre-prayer-service meal. Elaine sits in her usual place in the middle of a long table, in the middle of the fellowship hall . . . in the middle of it all."

"Did you hear about . . . . ?" said Elaine, her voice trailing off a bit as she lowers it, looks side-to-side, and begins to share the news with those in hearing range. Her fork is poised in the air over a plate of ham, sweet-potatoes, peas and carrots and a buttered piece of bread. Elaine is one of the best of the best when it comes to church gossip and ears quickly bend her way.

"Elaine, you're just like a dog returning to its vomit, I see," says the pastor in a calm and steady voice as he approaches her table.

Elaine stops, puts down her fork, squirms in her seat a bit, gathers her plate and purse and moves on down to another table.

"Well . . . I never!" she says. "Did you hear what he said to me? You will never believe."

Again, the voice interrupts: "Elaine, you gossip because you think it is fun, but you're just like a dog returning to its vomit."

Elaine, now in shock, sits, ponders, sets her fork gently down beside her plate and says "You're right, Pastor. I confess to the sin of gossip and I ask for your forgiveness and help in repentance."

"Sorry, Elaine," he answers. "This has gone on too long. You've confessed before and here you are, at it again. I don't think it is possible for you to ever stop gossiping. And, while I say this completely out of love for you, I think it's best for all of us if you just leave and not come back. We'll vote on it Sunday night, but basically, I think the tribe has spoken."

So Elaine puts out her torch, which means in this case, stifles her tongue, and leaves immediately. Life goes on, post-Elaine.

Obviously, this is a greatly-exaggerated account. Sin is more subtle; response more nuanced. The Elaines among us are not that blatant in their sin; the pastors not that direct in dealing with it; the church members not that silent an audience. But, in real life, there is a great deal of confusion about how to deal with sin among the believers, particularly when the sin seems to have so firm a grip and especially when that sin is something that we can not easily dissect or dig down to the root cause. We see it flourish and, like a weed among the flowers, we want to pluck it out.

Of course the pastor does not intervene and Elaine is not removed. She finishes her pie and her story with a flourish, confident that her words will be repeated by others, giving her a sense of belonging she can't seem to find any other way. She keeps on top of all the latest because she needs to be needed and knows no other way. Her sin is gossip; her fear is loneliness. We should start with her fear.

Andy gets antsy about halfway through the prayer meeting, looks at his watch and yawns. The pastor noticed Andy was pretty bleary-eyed already when he came into the church, but Andy just explained that he'd been glued to his computer all afternoon, trying to get a big project done. Andy was anxious to get home and finish the project in his home office: feasting on XXX pornography over the Internet.

Like a dog returning to its vomit? Perhaps. Extending a season of fun? Maybe. More likely feeding a secret addiction that has wrapped itself so tightly around Andy that most of life has now been squeezed from him and he is bound to meaningless images and fantasies that strip him of any dignity and slowly drain from him all the sensitivity he once had toward his wife and children.

Lindsey is 17. As usual, she has worn her favorite long-sleeved turtle-neck pull-over to church and sits in a silent, pouty position at the far end of a back-of-the-room pew. She is listening in, but looking down as she rubs her arms and twists her hands, fighting back tears, but smiling weakly whenever she's approached.

"Are you okay, honey?" a sweet voice asks.

"I'm fine," she answers, mustering her familiar weak smile, her bangs hanging over her dark eyes.

"Well, of course you are, sweetheart," comes the reply. "And God loves you just the way you are."

Lindsey will cut herself in the bathroom when she gets back home, inflicting another physical scar for the pain she feels inside and can't reveal. And then she'll give her mom and dad a peck on the cheek and lay in bed wishing for sleep, longing for peace.

Terrance skipped church altogether on this Wednesday night and is walking along the trails of the city park a few blocks from his home as the sun slowly dips behind the trees. He collapses on a wooden bench and puts his head in his folded arm, looking every bit the part of a breathless runner who has pushed himself to the limit and needs to rest. He is at his limit. He hates himself because he is not like the other boys at his high school and he doesn't know why and he's afraid to ask himself or anyone else. The dark descends like a comfortable blanket, hiding him. He wants to cry.

"If I'm gay, I may as well just kill myself before my Dad does."

Prayers are wrapping up in the comfy sanctuary. All the pending surgeries have been covered. Missions have been blessed. Traveling mercies extended. All have confessed their weekly falling short, and everyone is ready for a little free time in front of the TV. The DVRs are getting full and need relief.

Elaine and Andy and Lindsey and Terrance are sinners, awash in their own shame, hardened by the indifference of the Christians around them, those who are to be known by their love. All four need surgery. They're all a mission. They're traveling . . . and they really need some mercy. Their lives are playing out like the scripted dramas everyone is rushing home to submerge themselves in . . . but they're real. And they're Christians . . . and God does indeed love them just as they are. But if He loves them too much to leave them there, why don't we? If he can acknowledge their sin and respond with His grace, why can't we? If He can look straight into their hearts, why are we looking over their heads?

Maybe they should come out of their closets? Elaine should just confess that she's a sad, lonely and empty woman who wants attention so badly she will spin tales for it. Andy should just come clean and tell everyone that instead of having real relationships, he slips himself into naked fantasies, in vulgar opposition to the life he models in his deacon role. Lindsey should explain that she is punishing herself at 17 because at 16 she gave her body away to a 19-year-old who said he loved all of her . . . and then left her to go love all of someone else. And Terrance? Terrance should share about his self-hatred, acknowledge the sense of rejection that triggers his misguided search for his masculine identity through improper same-sex interaction and his concerns about an eroding resistance to temptation.

Unsaved? Not Terrance. Not Lindsey . . . or Andy or Elaine. Precious ones, never alone in their sin, but accompanied by a Savior who knows Elaine could spread blessings instead of gossip, that Andy could live and love in reality, deleting the addictive fantasies that have claimed his mind, that Lindsey could forgive herself and wash away the mistakes of her past, that Terrance could see himself as God sees Him, instead of seeing himself as the broken one with no choice but to submit to the world's definitions.

Christians all, but guarding secrets in what should be the most loving and healing environment on earth, the church. These four represent so many Christians who struggle in secret with the things of this world, surrounded by people who should be safe and welcoming, known by their love, pouring out forgiveness, willing and able to hear the confessions, extending grace, offering a shoulder for comfort, a hand for support, a word of encouragement and a pledge of accountability through the walk of repentance. While he should be hearing "come on out," the sinner in the secret closet sees himself more like the spider who tiptoes through the space below the door only to find someone waiting with a broom and a dustpan on the other side.

For most sinners, the fear of what will happen if they emerge from the closet is greater than the fear of the sin locked inside there with them. In my decades-long struggle with homosexuality, habitual cover-up had a greater hold on me in some ways than did my habitual sin. The what-might-happen seemed more threatening than the what-was. I would do almost anything to keep from being discovered . . . and eventually I convinced myself that exposure of my sin would harm more people than the practice of it. Suffering through the struggle in silence was better than the risk of real-time retribution. In time, all of it -- the secrecy and the revelation resulted in an avalanche of epic proportions and seemingly uncountable victims. There was no longer enough room in my closet for all the junk I accumulated. It was spilling out the door, leaving a trail of sinful crumbs down the hall.

Maybe we should all come out of our closets? We who accepted the sacrifice of Jesus so we would not die in our sins. We who praise Him for His love and hoard our own, as if He could not provide it amply to extend to others. We who mutter "there but for the grace of God go I" and then stand by and watch others go there. We who crave mercy but are too distracted to share it. We who are so clean, washed as white as snow, startled into silence by the stains of others. Snug in our eternal life, we watch others die around us. We who walk in the light, but quench it in our closets of comfort.

Do we, for some reason, think our callousness about the ravaging toll sin takes on our brothers and sisters somehow shows us to be strong . . . because we are unwavering in our righteousness . . . and our determination to keep our hands clean?

God knows what the Elaines and the Lindseys and the Andys and the Terrances and the Thoms are going through, how they got there, and when and if they are going to get through it and beyond it. And He also already knows how He will use their struggle for His glory and to accomplish His will. Maybe they're not so happy about the journey on which He has allowed them to embark, but he knows how long the tunnel is and who can help them make it through. He also knows already whether you are going to respond or reject. He knows whether you will venture out of your safe closet to help them clean up theirs.

If "they," the observant non-believers -- whoever they are and we really should want to know -- are to know us by our love, then we may never be known. Not if we cannot bring ourselves to embrace the broken ones that Christ has placed within easy reach: the Elaines, Andys, Lindseys and Terrances that pull themselves together enough to come into this place in hope there will be more than peas and prayers.

We can only blame it on culture for so long . . . and then we need to unfold our shoulders and bear the load. We need to stop giving in, declaring hopelessness, wagging our heads with faces curved by condemning grimaces, removing the sins that might taint us by driving the bearer from our midst.

In truth, some Christians do reflect the love of God and display His grace . . . but they need some reinforcements. The ever-increasing wounded who can only be healed through the love of Christ, shared without restraint by the redeemed.

As imperfect as our church may be, these sinners will not find something better beyond our walls. They do not wash away sins "out there," they celebrate them and proclaim them as identity, taking pride. If we see our brothers sinning, but dismiss even the slightest hint of a true desire to repent and fold our arms in front of us in in defense instead of wrapping our arms around their shoulders, it is we who have surrendered, not they. Will it be warmer out there around the fire of distorted acceptance? Shall we just wish them "god speed," and give them no reason to even continue to believe there is a God . . . who lives inside us?

Come out of the closet. Andy's pornography addiction will not defile you when you make a plan to call him up and check on him and set up some time to get together for healthy distraction. Lindsey's past looseness will not topple you from your purity when you listen to her cry and tell her that not only does God love her, but you do too . . . and that you will stay by her side as she walks out of her past. You will not become gay by standing with Terrance as he searches for the person God created him to be and walk with him through the trials and struggles of seeking wholeness. You won't lose your reputation by loving Elaine and listening to the truthful needs of her heart as she shifts to sharing blessings. Your love might be one she shares.

Jesus was a gentle savior who reached out his hands to those in pain, who knew the secrets of the strugglers and did not turn away, who stooped down to lift up, who risked his own reputation to help others build a new one. He knew how to love . . . and He told us to be like Him.

We're so often not. Maybe that's why we're in the closet.

In His pain, he freed us all. In our pain, we bind others up in theirs. Unable to share our own failings, we hide them behind our holiness and increase the intensity others feel by comparison. In the light of our inflated righteousness, their wretched sinfulness retains a greater grip on them as they strive to keep it from being seen. In the discomfort of our own cover-ups, we overcompensate in pointing at others when their covers are pulled back. We didn't want to know . . . but well . . . now that we do . . . we've go to do . . . something.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. -- Galatians 5:22-23

In our closets, we store the fruit -- love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control -- that would nourish the broken souls that wander around the door.

God must surely wonder how we can be so blessed and so bereft of sharing it. The abundance is unimaginable, but we bury it instead of investing it. Do we for some reason believe He can't handle all of this?

Some of us are in closets of cloistered Christianity. Others of us are in closets of condemnation. Whichever closet you are in, there is no reason to be there. Not with overflowing grace, unlimited forgiveness, boundless mercy, unfathomable love, enduring healing, eternal peace.

Please come out. Someone stands at your door and knocks.

Give Elaine something to really talk about.

God Bless,

Thom

Is your church ready to address the issue of Sexual Brokenness among Christians? E-mail Thom Hunter at authorthomhunter@yahoo.com for more information. You can also order your copy of Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do through Amazon.com.

The Futility of an If-less Life

2011-10-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

-- Matthew 4:3.

I was reminded today how difficult it is for Christians to be Christian. Usually such reminders come by accident, or seeming happenstance, though, as a Christian, I have to accept the fact that today's unsought, unwanted, unappreciated but unavoidable meeting with one of the church leaders from a mystifying moment in my past might have been purposeful, as in God-ordained. Taco to taco.

That's so . . . God.

I have been "blessed?" to witness the worst and the best of Christian behavior, ranging from the wrap-around of real extended grace to the messy and misguided attempts by Christians to go all-out WWJD, most often with people who could care less what Jesus would do because their lives are crying out for us to do something. When we respond from behind our Christian masks instead of risking our Christian skins, our blessings are scorned by the rejecting responses of those we quickly label as rebellious and on ruinous routes to hell. We can easily find that our "you" is showing and our "me" is rising to the surface, as in WWID, major emphasis on the "I." We don't see the hurt in the other's eyes because of the great pain we ourselves are feeling when our efforts are disdained by those who don't trust or revere us. Believe me . . . I've seen this from both points of view.

We Christians are all, after all, only people, washed and clean but heading smack-dab back into the ever-alluring mud of life. We may forever hope to avoid that slippery slope, but it seems to be a fixed point on many a personal compass. Like moths brought to light or dogs to a fight, we flit about and find ourselves burned or bitten. Indeed, the ever-present inner flaw that leads us into repeated desperate situations is one of the best arguments against evolution. If we were evolving, surely we would do better by now. Common sense is not much of a savior. Good sense is not really that dependable and certainly not that common. So we find ourselves in and out of situations, depending on our skills at manipulation, even before we realize how God might have intended them to unfold.

That's so . . . human.

When I look back at some of my most drastic falls from grace -- as we humans might characterize them -- I realize that I was always falling into grace, not out of it. Still, no matter how healing the landing might eventually become . . . the fall gets the attention, as we ricochet against the treacherous walls of whatever abyss we have been dancing along the edge of. Looking up from the hard and cold and dark and enveloping bottom of our pit of choice, we ask "why?" In other words, God, if You really love me, why don't You stop me?

Better yet, we want to know why what we do has to be constituted as a fall in the first place. Could not God have created a constant plane and set us upon it to travel throughout a life that cannot trip us up? Why all these bumps, these curves, these hills and valleys, these disturbing and deceitful detours? If You really are God . . .

That's so . . . shall we say . . . Satan?

If we did not fall, would we ever call? If we did not slip, would we ever grip?

And there's the rub: that little word "if."

If we would just call, might we not fall? If we would just grip, might we not slip?

If only. Then perhaps those drastic "falls from grace," would never take place.

For instance, what if in those desperately-seeking-someone days of discovering adulthood I had thought of my Christian friend as a brother and not as a potential source for satisfaction? What if I had seen him as God sees him and not as I wanted to see him? What if I had been to him what God wanted me to be instead of being a me that just wanted? If the if had turned a different way would I have avoided decades of distancing acts that often made God seem but just a shadow? I think I see clearly how those bumps and valleys we call tests and trials emerge onto the paths on which He lays out His plans for us.

What if we open this door . . . instead of that one?

What if we listen to this person . . . instead of that one?

What if we close our eyes and ears and refuse to see or listen to God at all?

What if we choose to stray instead of pray?

What if we hide the Word somewhere far removed from our hearts?

What if we give up and give in instead of giving ourselves to Him?

What if we refuse truth because it confuses the world-skewed view we have learned to accept of ourselves?

What if we demand of God and then use His response to justify our rebellion because He does not turn our invited stones of life into pillows to give us rest?

What if we judge Him by the actions of His people?

What if we pile onto Him all the pain and all the rejection and all the confusion and all the delusion and all the wandering and all the wondering and all the sorrow and all the loneliness and all the fear and all the hate and all the emptiness and all the deceit and all the craving and all the lies and all the arrogance and all the judgment and all the shame and all the guilt and all the hopelessness?

Really . . . what if we did that? What if we just said to God: "Take that!"

He would.

He will. It's not a matter of if.

If I were 25 or 35 or maybe even 75 and had never struggled with sexual brokenness, this is the place in this story where I would tell you to just give it all to Him and you won't have to struggle anymore. And you could slap your palm against your forehead and say "duh" and get on with your life. But, as a Christian who struggled and fell so often that down seemed up, I won't do that to you. I know how it feels to be lectured by plank-bearers who cannot see you through the cloud of disdain that replaces grace with grey.

But I will tell you this. The Bible is not joking when it tells us to take up our cross daily and follow Him. That doesn't mean bear the burden; it means die to self and surrender to Him. Every day. It's not a miracle cure; it's a daily dose.

Actually, when Jesus said it, He began with . . . "if."

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

-- Mark 8:34-35

That's an if we can all live with . . . and an if we cannot live without.

Okay . . . back to the taco. We made a little small talk, asked a few tentative questions, perhaps made a little progress? Perhaps. Perhaps we turned a few stones into bread . . . or burritos.

God Bless,

Thom

If this post was helpful to you or to someone you know, I hope you will order a copy of my book, Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do. The book is also available on Kindle or Nook at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. Thank you.)

Building a Bridge Out of Brokenness

2011-09-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

“I cannot stress this enough to you, but I'll still say it: I'll never be Christian. I think your Bible is nothing more than a piece of literature. I don't believe in your God, and never will. But I will criticize you when you use your God to "fix" homosexuality, as if it were something to be fixed.”

-- An anonymous young friend

“Broken does not seem like something Jesus would want us to say.”

-- Comment in on-line Christian Group

When you raise five children, you hear the words “It’s broken” way too often. Favorite toys, bird’s wings, Christmas ornaments, bats, even cars, are presented in their brokenness, sometimes with a shriek or sometimes with a shrug. Sometimes with a plea for a fix; sometimes with acceptance that it is time to move beyond . . . in hopes of something new and better. Sometimes a little glue or a Phillips screwdriver is enough to put things right again. But sometimes the reality is that if the bird can’t fly, it will probably die. At some point, everything . . . everyone . . . will be broken.

I have broken only two bones in my lifetime. A wrist and a rib. The result of each was an increase in pain, a decrease in mobility and a denied sense of helplessness during a time of adjustment and healing. I still have the wrist and the rib and they both work just fine now.

I didn't decide to break my wrist. I didn't plan to break a rib. Absent of decisions or plans, they still broke. And the rest of me? It compensated, covered the effects of each break, rose to the occasion, took up the slack, pretended all was well.

I wasn't doing anything wrong, either time. The wrist, in fact, sacrificed itself in an effort to keep me from tumbling further on the hills and landscape rocks in our backyard as I was weed-eating in preparation for my daughter's birthday party. It backed up the efforts of the palm, which threw itself down in a sacrificial act of protection. Snap, crackle, pop . . . . swell up, stop bending and retreat on a wrist R&R.

In my stubbornness, it took me several hours to grasp that the hand extending from the wrist had no grasp. "I guess it's broken."

The rib? Talk about a bone with a mind of its own. It snapped in a concerted resistance effort against self-improvement. I was suspended between two weight benches, ankles on one, hands on the other, lifting myself up and down almost effortlessly (yeah . . . ) when all of a sudden it felt as if my workout partner had amused himself by slamming my rib cage with a sledgehammer.

"Who did that?" I exclaimed, lowering myself to the floor between the benches.

The rib was silent . . . and everyone else just paused and resumed working out. Standing up was torture; breathing was like ingesting needles. My usual self-medication -- denial -- ran in with a rush of adrenaline and I said, as I would do if run over by a road-grader: "I'm fine."

In about six weeks, I could say "I'm fine," with a straight face, not a grimace of pain.

I guess it really was broken.

Brokenness is usually pretty obvious. A wrist that won't bend; a rib that feels like a blade in your lungs. A bulb that shines no light and spreads itself in shards. A tree limb laying in the yard. A glass in pieces on a hard tile floor. The solutions are usually obvious too: screw in a new bulb; fetch the ax; sweep the floor. The light is back; the branch is firewood; your bare feet are safe. We respond and tidy up and move on.

But what about sexual brokenness?

Well . . . we tend to respond . . . tidy up . . . and move on. The response can be a muted "oh" or a shocked "Oh . . . my God!." Tidying up ranges from a-pat-on-the-back-and-a-passing-prayer to a dictatorial list of dos-and-don'ts delivered by a spiritual watchdog dutifully recording progress on a report card, marking pass or fail. Moving on can be as beautiful as a bless you and an arm around the shoulder as we go together . . . or a disdaining look of disturbed incredulity that becomes a never-knew-you-never-will insistence in denial, a multi-directional scattering to put as much distance between thee and me as possible.

We be movin' on . . . us . . . the unbroken. Or at least, the undiscovered, for brokenness is not limited to sexuality. Indeed, would not denial of brokenness be brokenness?

Adios . . . amigos?

There are those who hang close and respond with what they hope will be comforting words: "you'll be fine." Is that somehow expected to be more comforting than our own well-worn, oft-mis-proved "I'll be fine?" Trite answers are convenient, and can even sound reassuring, but they’re not compassionate. How about a more honest one: "Yes, you are broken. Like me. But you don't have to be. Me either."

Fortunately for us, we're not a cold, indifferent piece of glass that slips off the edge of a counter and smashes into a million pieces, lacking even the wherewithal to ask for "a little help here, please?" We're not a tree limb looking dumbly up at the tree with an "I've fallen and I can't get up" plea. And we're not a spent bulb. We're a dimmer light, perhaps, than we want to be . . . but we are not without the opportunity to shine again.

Ahh brokenness . . . let me count the ways. Wondrously made we are, with many parts, in need of constant maintenance.

Are you a liar?

Do you gossip?

Do you have a heart of stone when you see the needs of others?

Do you lust?

Speak profanity?

Feast your senses on pornography?

Neglect the homeless?

Commit adultery?

Withhold forgiveness?

Are you greedy?

Have you turned your back on your mother and father . . . as in not honoring them?

Do you fill your mind with impure thoughts and reject Scripture?

Neglect to worship?

Feed your pride?

Boast a bit?

Yep . . . you're broken. Of course, recounting your sins and ignoring mine would certainly be a sign of . . . brokenness.

I’ve learned, since writing Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do that some of the sexually-broken take offense at the term. Actually, I understand that. Some do not even see themselves as broken, but instead see their sexual expression – homosexuality, pornography, etc. – as a reflection of how God created them. This distinction is primarily one of faith. It’s a choice: the Word or the world. If you have faith and you believe God, you know what His Word says about sexuality. If you go beyond that, you’re broken and you probably know it. However, if you reject faith and believe what the world says about sexuality, then you probably believe you’re not broken and are fairly sure of it. Well, actually, you really are broken, but if you have no faith, you think we're not, which can seem oddly comforting and permanently condemning. For people in that position, perhaps it is better that they not consider themselves broken, for the world will not repair them. Why?

It's broken.

The world's embrace will not chase away the chill of emptiness for the soul who seeks through faith to be what God intended: whole.

God gave us "The Word," but we have come up with so many more. We live in interpretive-Babel, never sure in the first place that people mean what they say or even know what they are saying means. So, brokenness -- an acknowledgement that we need God's healing -- becomes instead synonymous with no-goodness, and when we hear it spoken of us by others, we see the broom sweeping up the shattered glass for the trash. How dare you? I'm not that broken.

I am broken. Thank God. The result of which has been an increase in pain, a decrease in mobility and a denied sense of helplessness during a time of adjustment and healing. Not so different than the twisted wrist and the fractured rib. No one could really see those either. On the day I broke the wrist, I made it all the way through my daughter's party without saying a word. On the day I cracked the rib, I finished the workout. We compensate for our brokenness until we cannot bear the pain or we cannot walk the walk of wholeness.

But God restores, repairs, redeems and returns me to the shelf. He uses me. Out of my brokenness, He builds something new.

But . . . SEXUAL brokenness? That sounds more like something just doesn't work, for which there are countless remedies and prescriptions. Or have you not watched television or opened your spam e-mail?

What is sexual brokenness? It is any expression of sexuality that is not what God intended. After all, remember, He looked at everything He had made and said "it was good." The path from the garden was clearly a steady decline, swiftly descending from uncomfortable nakedness to homosexuality, pornography, heterosexual sexual addiction, lust, adultery, idolatry . . . and more. That's brokenness. That's sin. And it is not good.

Maybe we don't like the brokenness terminology because we're so accustomed to discarding broken things. In the spring time, if you drive through the neighborhoods, you see cabinets and bookshelves and chairs and lamps and TVs, perched along the curb with signs: "take me," or "free." Why? Usually because they're broken. Someone picks them up and fixes them and they live on in their inanimate way.

But that's the world. The world eventually discards everything.

In God's view, brokenness is hopefulness. A broken heart, for instance, is the centerpiece for healing. Hearts are made brand new. A broken spirit soars to greater strength when healed. It is in our brokenness that we turn to Him and He responds.

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart You, God, will not despise. -- Psalm 51:17

So, make a sacrifice. Certainly give God your best . . . and certainly give God your brokenness. He knows what it is; He knows what it means; He knows what it's costing you; He knows what to do. He knows you.

So . . . would He – Jesus – or would He not tell someone they were broken?

I believe He would, but only because He knew they were on the verge of wholeness, the objective of everyone who knows Christ. He didn’t go around pointing out brokenness and leaving people bewildered in peace-less pieces. He made them whole.

God, in His kindness, reveals to us our brokenness, which brings to us our tears of repentance, which drop to soften the hardened soil of our life in which He plants his new seeds and healing grows.

And therein is a bridge . . . out of brokenness.

Brokenness, blessedness, bridges. They all begin with "B."

God Bless,

Thom

(Want further encouragement for yourself or someone you know who struggles with brokenness of any type? You can download a copy of Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do to your PC, Kindle, iPad, Mac or other electronic device for only $7.99 from Amazon.com. Just download the Kindle Cloud Reader at this link: Kindle Cloud, and then download the book at this link: Amazon.com. I hope, after you read it, that you will follow-up with a review on Amazon to encourage others. Thanks!)

The Heartache of an Echo

2011-09-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

“Where is God? ...Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” – C.S. Lewis, after the death of his wife.

My grandfather was a man of few words. At least he was to me. I was often just an intrusive little boy who always forgot to not slam the screen door when running in and out. I'd yell out an "I'm sorry" as I bounded down the porch steps or down the hall. Paw-Paw, sitting at a card table playing Solitaire, would usually just make a grunting noise in return, not looking up from the cards, though once I paused and saw him smile. That told me a lot more than the grunt.

I regret now that I was always dashing in and out and passing his table with little thought. He was so accessible, but for some reason I felt he would have little to say, not a lot in common, and might want me to linger longer than I wanted to. So, I dashed and slammed. What was so much more important? Hide-and-seek with the now-forgotten neighborhood kids in our connecting yards? A comic book down the hall that needed reading?

I wonder if the slamming door echoed in the emptiness of the room in which he often sat alone playing his cards or eating syrup on bread? How long did the smile stay on his face?

I do know that my grandfather was not a man of few words with everyone. He helped my older brother assemble a motorcycle. That takes more than a grunt. And I do remember him putting some pretty stern and loud polish on a few words here and there . . . again usually spoken to my brother, often from the front porch as the motorcycle disappeared down the street. Probably sent the neighbor kids into a deeper form of hide-and seek.

I wouldn't necessarily say Paw-Paw had a way with words, seeing as how he somehow gave my grandmother the nickname "Bump," a term of endearment she endured until his death and probably repeated in her peaceful thoughts until her own.

What words would he have had for me had I listened? Would I have had a nickname? What might Paw-Paw have wanted to hear had I slowed and sat a moment at the table? Maybe he was much more interested in me than I thought. I believe he was. Maybe he would have said more if I had sought more. I believe he would have.

I' never picture God as a grandfather, puttering around in the garage for spare parts to make this or that work again. He doesn't tinker. He ticked the first tick and knows all and sees all and hears all . . . but sometimes I think He plays a little Solitaire.

How about Hearts instead, God? Deal me in.

I know that God is omni-present; but it seems every now and then He is omni-absent. The sign on the door says "Gone Fishing," the lights are out, the doorbell dings in an empty room, the No Vacancy sign is on . . . drive on down the road . . . alone. Yes, I know that is not true; He never leaves me; He never leaves you. Even as I sit here and write questions about His absence, He knows each keystroke in advance. But . . . will He keep me from misspelling? Bad grammar? No.

God was oddly silent and then clearly loud.

I'll admit that it bothers me a bit to know that God was with me before I slipped and, with all the power of the universe, watched me tumble, twist and turn on the way down, hit the bottom with a gut-wrenching and bone-jarring thud . . . and then comes out in the cool of the day as if He had not seen it all happen. Is He really a "what's up?" God?

No.

“Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.” -- Psalm 27:14

But I don't want to wait. I want to act. I want to meet a . . . need? I want!

How many of us, when we are dialing a number we shouldn't know; turning into an area we shouldn't go, logging on to a website we shouldn't see, acting like someone we shouldn't be . . . say to ourselves: "Wait . . . Let me ask God about this?"

It's easy to say He's not speaking when we're not pausing. It's pure spiritual finger-pointing to say He's not responding when we're not reflecting.

I think sometimes we think we might prefer a "No . . . No . . . No . . ." wagging-a-warning finger God. And we would, of course, gently lay down our pride, sweep aside our defiance, thank Him profusely for keeping us from falling, pledge our undying trust and obey without question. Or perhaps we would eat of the fruit; gain the knowledge we do not need; satisfy the glutton side of our spirit and waddle into our all-too-familiar rescue me mode.

Fact of the matter is, God does wag a "No . . . No. . . No. . . " finger in our faces. We just ignore it and say we didn't hear Him. Are we actually expecting God to come sit by our bedside and read His Word aloud to us at night?

My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. -- Proverbs 3:1-7

OK . . . I'll do that. But . . . remind me. Okay, God? I just might forget.

Oops . . . that was how the verse began: "do not forget." And it asks me to "keep." Keep what? Those commands I so easily tossed to lighten the load as I traveled down the me-want road. And . . . oh yeah . . . He wanted me to write "love and faithfulness" on the tablet of my heart. But . . . that's my heart. There's not much writing room left; I've done a lot of scribbling and mark-outs through the years trying to satisfy the longings of my heart.

Of course then He wants me to trust. Trust? Lust? Tough choices we face in this life. He says if I trust Him instead of myself . . . he will take all those crooked detours, jagged fault lines, dangerous drop-offs, impossible mountains . . . those cliffs . . . out of my path and make it "straight." We're not talking sexual semantics here . . . we're talking direction . . . which can certainly lead to some serious sexual semantics.

So what else does this "silent" God, who has looked up at me as I once again slammed a door in haste, have to say? He says for me to not "be wise in my own eyes." Who knew that the pursuit of wisdom could be so dangerous? Well . . . Eve, I guess, in retrospect. Adam, too. And, oh yes, the serpent. But he knew it all along. Surely God doesn't want me to just be stupid? I'd get into so much trouble. Oh . . . yeah. That.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. -- I Corinthians 1:25

I remember driving out onto a lonely hill at the edge of the town I grew up in, seeing the lights in the distance and thinking of each of them as a porch light in a home where everything was right and good, every body tucked in for the night, every heart satisfied, every mind at rest, every soul at peace.

Lacking the courage to call out to God, I repeated instead within my mind what all was not right with my world . . . my home . . . my heart . . . my soul . . . my peace. And those words echoed within the emptiness . . . and brought me heartache. I had come to the hill alone . . . and remained there alone . . . and departed alone. My choice.

We may come to the garden alone . . . but we shouldn't leave that way. He is so accessible, but He might want us to linger a little longer than we want to. So, we dash and slam. "Oops . . . sorry."

What must really be difficult for God -- if anything could ever so be labeled -- is to hear the echoes of His own Word as it descends into our valleys and reverberates against the emptiness we feel as we seek to satisfy our selves with increasing self-absorption. We want to move that mountain, cross that valley, swim that ocean . . . and then . . . when totally satiated, cry out "Where were you, God?"

With you.

The heartache of His echo.

I know sometimes it seems that we are all alone in whatever battle has worked to separate us from His love, whatever temptation has tattered our goodness, whatever sin has led to our shunning. But we are never alone. We would not, could not, will not be alone.

Having trouble finding your own way out of your mess? Tempted to blame God, declaring Him absorbed in some sort of Solitaire while you slowly slip away?

Maybe, in some small way, God really is like Paw-Paw. Maybe I would hear more than a grunt; see more than a passing smile . . . if I would open a few doors here and there instead of slamming them as I proceed to and fro on my own. Maybe if I played a little less hide-and-seek, put away the comics -- the pursuit of happiness as defined by culture -- and paused at the table, talked to Him, listened to Him, pulled out the chair, sat down . . . and waited.

Like He asked me to do in the first place. Remember: “Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.” -- Psalm 27:14

You know, that's what I always wanted: to be strong, to have courage. And He said I could. If I would wait for Him. I bet that was a resounding echo.

I do love God. And, with God, Solitaire is a team sport. One heart.

Next time you find yourself feeling the pain of self-induced pity at your pitiful plight of weakness in the face of temptation, remember: Wait. Be strong. Take courage. Wait.

We don't do that very well, do we? Waiting. Waiting on the Lord. Want . . . wait. A choice that can lead us into a celebration of conversation or a heartache of echoes, purpose or pain, oneness or aloneness. Victory or defeat. Restoration or repetition. A straight path or an endless cycle.

God is never silent. He spoke it all in advance of every question.

God Bless,

Thom

(NOTE: Today, September 14, is the day we finally move into our home, replacing the house that burned nine months ago, Dec. 18, 2010. God has been so faithful during this trying year. Distracted by the big move, I chose the excerpt above from my book, Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do. I hope you will order a copy for yourself or for anyone in your life who struggles.)

Permission Not to Listen

2011-09-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

All I ever need to know in life I can learn on the treadmill with my earphones on.

Not really.

But . . . I have learned some things in the afternoons, switching between talk shows like Dr. Phil and, a while back, Glenn Beck and Oprah Winfrey . . . with a little That ‘70s Show and Jeopardy spliced in during commercial breaks. The collective, subjective, highly-suspect and often conflicting wisdom delivered by those in search of ratings and reactions could tie a brain in knots and split a heart into a million pieces and send the soul on an endless search for satisfaction. Or, we can make sexual confusion a clever punch line and laugh it off entirely. So many opinions to weigh and people to please. We may not always be a captive audience, but we’re a certainly thirsty one, taking full advantage of the the technology and the glitz . . . and the messages of the hosts and guests, all carefully edited and sharpened to a point.

To make their point. They don’t know you; they don’t know what you are going through; they won’t be around if you do or don’t make it; they just want to shine a little junk-life light . . . and move on to the next titillating or sorrowful subject. Tears all around; hankies in abundance.

Cut! It’s a wrap..

Generally what you learn from the talkies is that glitz and guts count more than truth and glory when it comes to deciding what is right and wrong for us. For most who have been on the white-knuckle express a few times, this get-after-it-and-get-it-done message is meaningless and only a slow way of meandering back to square one. So is the other prevailing identity-discovery message: “know who you are and be true to yourself.” What about knowing who He -- that would be God -- says you are and then being true to Him. In other words, in the midst of cultural chaos, why not pattern yourself after something that never changes. Like a rock instead of a rock star.

I remember an Oprah show-and-tell with Ricky Martin, the suave, talented Puerto Rican singer who makes girls swoon, but is happier and happier as each day passes because he has proclaimed his gayness and made it safe for all gay Hispanics to come out of the closet and be “who they are meant to be.” Ricky wants to sing a new song and make the world a better place, which, I guess, works if the world is your primary interest in life. If he had ever known, Ricky gushed -- right after watching an old clip of himself dancing along as a cheery 12-year-old in the group Menudo -- how wonderful it would be to be openly gay, he would have come out long ago. It's just so beautiful "out" here. Buy my new CD and smile.

The Oprah audience Ooohed and aahed over Ricky like he had suddenly pried open a door of wisdom, not released a new CD, called, appropriately enough, "Me,” which works well in the world, where we are told it is all about “me.” As if he is sharing a treasured belief reflecting the Creator's grand design, he read a poignant passage from his book, applauding himself for coming out and making the path clear for his children to grow up in a world of acceptance and be good to all their lovers. From a practiced choir, the chorus of "Awwws" swept over him, his perfect smile beaming equally to the Oprah-proud studio audience hoping to win a surprise gift from the zillionaire host, and out to all the broken people sitting behind televisions in their afternoon easy chairs of solitude or pounding out calories on their treadmills of hope: "Just be like me. Free to be."

And then Ricky sings his new song. Buy the CD. Get the book. There ain't nothing wrong with you that a little idol worship can't fix. The men and women in the culture-gilded mansions -- the Elton Johns, the Doogie Howsers, the Ellen Degeneres and the Ricky Martins -- say so; the God who builds your mansion says . . . "no."

If the do-what-makes-you-feel-good-and-you’ll-finally-really-like-yourself bunch thinks there is no need to change – just swing with what life brung you -- then what else matters? Who needs a bible when you can turn to an autobiography for the truth? Who needs to dig in and get a Word from God when you can get it intra-cranially from the boob tube? Go with the flow. Love ya . . . peck, peck., hug, hug. Just . . . feel the love.

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”

says the Lord.

“Though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red as crimson,

they shall be like wool. -- Isaiah 1:18

There's the love.

Come . . .

Now . . .

Scarlet sins . . . white snow

Crimson sins . . . like wool

Most important? "Let's settle the matter."

Why are we so unsettled about settling the matter?

Why do we dig deep for justification when truth lies in plain sight?

Why do we build mansions to hide in when true joy comes when the walls fall down?

Why do we follow pied pipers who peddle the doctrine of self-acceptance instead of following the words of the One who paid the price for our self?

Why do we look for others' words to lift us out of darkness when He said "I am the light?"

Why do we look for others to lead us out of that darkness when He said "I am the Way?"

Why do we hasten to hidden places instead of hiding His word in our hearts?

Why do we cry out to be known when He tells us He has always known us?

Why do we seek other voices when He said "listen?"

Why do we rush from door-to-door when He said His would open if we would but knock?

Why do we run toward cliffs of uncertainty when He said "come" . . . "now" to the calmness of certainty, the satisfaction of settling?

We're filling the void with the wrong voices pushing the wrong choices. We can read . . . we can hear . . . we can speak . . . we can share. We could care . . . if we'd dare.

And we need to exercise the discipline of discernment and give ourselves permission not to listen. Don’t become a disciple of mis-direction.

Dare to love and look for those who do. For real. Not like Ricky on a sound stage, or Elton behind diamond-studded glasses, or Ellen dancing around in tennis shoes laughing, or Neal Patrick Harris in a sitcom, or Oprah in adoration-fueled self-celebration. True love is not rated by a Nielsen meter. True love is measured by the heart-wrenching moments that lay the stones for a safe crossing from where we find ourselves to where we long to be . . . and where we long to not arrive alone.

Love like Christ, giving, longing, seeking, teaching, healing, helping, seeing, hearing, saying, changing. LOVING. Truth, not glitz. Giving, not taking. He forgives us for what we became and He changes us to what we should be. He comes alongside so we don't have to wonder where we're headed. He guides us forward, over and around the obstacles, not hiding them, but conquering them. He doesn’t erect new roadblocks along a route of rejection.

Their talents and riches aside, these actors and singers are just people like the rest of us, tempted in a fallen world. I would never wish them harm -- indeed I wish them wholeness -- but I do wish them truth, so they could use their voices to lead other strugglers to freedom instead of to ticket lines and concert halls. Blind guides.

In a world frightfully flinging itself along to no-where, Jesus proves the patience of love and says "Come." "Now." He is always ready, always waiting.

And the Help of the helpless says . . . help others.

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love Me?” He said, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed My sheep." -- John 21:17

Did I hear that right? If I love Jesus, I will feed his sheep? But, hey . . . what about me? I’m hungry too . . . but it’s when I forget to turn to You.

When we turn to anything other than Christ, we find ourselves surrounded by the plentifulness of it all, but starving from the emptiness. Unfortunately, we often disguise that emptiness with the wagging of our tongues and the proclamation that all is well and getting weller by the day. That’s another time people need permission not to listen and the ability to see that the truth is not in you.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. -- I Corinthians 13:1

As Christians we're out of tune on the sexual brokenness issue, gonging and clanging, offering headaches for heartaches . . . and the mute button is getting a workout. We often don't know religious from righteous, Christianity from churchianity; hope from a hole-in-the-ground, mercy from meanness, forgiveness from forget it, love from leave. We teach restoration, redemption and rescue. And then we run from the reaching.

"But do not have love?" There's the rub. All those polished words we preach are but the cymbals from which the clanging erupts. We're not real in voice or deed. We memorize the verses and know the applications, but not enough of us really love. Yes, some do . . . but the church is a collective, a body. We believers are not requiring much of each other, even as we demand a great deal from the broken who would love . . .love? . . . to join us and share in what we say we have. Peace. Mercy. Grace. Wholeness. More often, we have a detailed list, directed repentance and an eagle eye.

I'm not lamenting the lack of love demonstrated towards me when I was hiding in the church like a broken boat towed into harbor, weighted with guilt from an out-of-control obsession with a love-me temptation that had twisted itself into a use-me fixation. I know now the need for them to see true confession and real repentance, to know for sure this was actually a sheep . . . and not in wolf's clothing. Actually, the lack of love I experienced makes the need to share it so clear now. A calling from the falling. In its own way, that vacuum was a blessing.

Do we love Christ? Then why are the sheep so hungry? Will they find what we are withholding somewhere out there in the welcoming wilderness among the wolves who . . . want them . . . in ways Jesus never intended for His sheep to be devoured in their weaknesses?

If someone comes to the pantry door, weak and thin, hand outstretched, not feigning faintness, but near to falling, we fill their cup. The sexually-broken are no different. They are weak, fading, fearing, losing feeling, so-often falling they might not know which way is up . . . fill the cup. Don't sound the gong. Don't send them to drink from the stagnant creek of a cackling culture instead of the living water of an endless river of grace.

Jesus bore the debt and bore the burden, yet too many Christians can barely bear the sight. If the sexual sin of others repulses you in a way that your sins don't, pray for forgiveness for your lack of forbearance and God will give you strength.

If you yourself are among the homosexual, the pornography-addicted, the adulterer, the lust-bound, then keep your courage and keep coming. In the body of the church are the hands and feet of the faithful who will love you and walk with you and speak truth into your lives, catching you with compassion when you fall until you finally stand and live beyond the chains. They may be too few, but they are better than the "it gets better" bunch.

There really is a way out, but it takes a double-dare. One dares to seek. Another dares to care. Both dare to love. In the absence of cymbals they hear each other; truth wins a battle and sin slithers away in darkness.

Listen.

Jesus said "Come." The world is watching to see if we agree with Him . . . and not with them.

God Bless,

Thom

(Need encouragement and support in your struggles? Want to help others overcome? Order a copy of Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do today from Amazon.com for less than $12 or from Barnes&Noble.com. . Also . . . feel free to e-mail me directly at th2950@yahoo.com)

This is No Place for Cowards

2011-09-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

I carry the past that each day I chose

One step to another . . . now everyone knows.

It isn't the past I would have wanted to claim

But it is my past . . . it is mine just the same.

I wonder sometimes about all of this

Can there be no exchanging what was for what is?

Will there be no will be because of what's done?

Will yesterday's darkness eclipse today's sun?

Is forgiveness a mystery, a want too far-flung?

Is healing a melody not to be sung?

Is change just a hold-out, dangled just past the grasp?

Is grace to be rationed . . . with some of us passed?

No mystery, no silence, withholding or ration

But clearly and justly and full of compassion

Forgiveness and grace for changing and healing

Are given to us through our Savior's revealing.

Through faith in His love, through trust in His grace,

Our past just becomes our starting-out place.

He is there when we stumble, He is there when we stand

If we rise through the strength of His out-stretched hand.

-- Thom Hunter

It stands to reason to me that if we, as Christians, can embrace the idea that bad things happen to good people . . . then we would be able to wrap our arms around the idea that good people -- even Christians -- do a fair amount of those bad things. And then we could wrap our good Christian arms around those that did it and those that hid it at the same time we comfort those that got pummeled by it. "It" being sin. Surely our arms are bigger than we let on. Surely, there is mercy and forgiveness and grace abounding. Surely we can restore the sinner with the same hope we rescue the sinned-against. Surely God's love -- which is to be in us -- is enough to cover all.

Surely.

We're so concerned with preserving goodness that we blind ourselves to the ever-threatening badness, fooling ourselves into thinking we can purge it, despite God's clear warning it will always be with us. We need to deal with it, not delude ourselves into thinking that our purity affords us some protection He didn't even offer His own Son. We think if we deal harshly with those who have succumbed to temptation that we might find ourselves somehow supernaturally separated from it and unable to fall. Look out below.

We're so determined to flee that we opt for banishment instead of reconstruction. Go weep and wail and gnash your teeth; we're praising in here. We build walls where we should build alliances against the evil that is stripping others bare right before our eyes. Sometimes we bow down in solitude when we should stand in solidarity. We nurse our own little nicks from contact with sin rather than addressing the gaping wounds of those who are being slashed to pieces from within.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. -- Isaiah 53:6

Did you get that? All. Each. If you know someone who thinks somehow he is not one of the sheep; has not gone astray; has not turned to his own way . . . pray for him. His sins weigh as heavily as yours, but his blinders are a deeper tint.

We pray "give me Your eyes . . . give me Your heart . . . give me Your hands." Why? So we can see . . . and feel . . . and do, like He would do. We don't pray "blind me and bind me and callous my heart." Yet we sometimes pray "hide me in the cleft of the rock," but for all the wrong reasons. Not for security and salvation . . . but for refuge from the challenging restlessness of the world in which He placed us.

This is no place for cowards.

This is a place for courage.

Courage to carry out courageous commandments.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, that you love one another. -- John 13:34-35.

That you . . . judge . . . one another? That you . . . condemn . . . one another? That you . . . shame . . . one another? That you . . . blame . . . one another? That you . . . reject . . . one another? That you . . . remove . . . one another? That you . . . ignore . . . one another?

No. Love.

We're not here forever: we're there forever. Glory. But, while we temporarily reside in gory, with glory in our future, can we not be a bit less cautious? A little less cringing before the mess? Our knees are meant to help us surrender, but it is to Him we surrender so we can rise in His righteousness, not so we can hide beneath His robes.

This is the world, chock-full with God's creation, from yellow butterflies floating in glorious freeness to hardened murderers pacing concrete cells, from babies cooing to drunkards cursing, from couples pledging forever fidelity to adulterers pursuing destructive infidelity, from children sitting on a sunset beach with a snow cone to children crowded into a dark room longing for a cracker, from a grandmother knitting booties while rocking next to a table filled with pictures of her legacy, to a grandfather striving to picture all the ones who come behind him but choose not to know him.

This is the world, bright and dingy, clear and cloudy, green and gray, life-giving and death-dealing, abundant and barren, pure and stained, refreshing and repelling, blissful and blighted, rejoicing and recoiling, accepting and rejecting. It turns toward us with outstretched hands; it turns against us with a slap. It heals; it hurts. There is so much give and take that we often know not what we have or for how long.

This is no place for cowards.

We are much too often the brute beast instead of the bleating sheep. And yet . . . He is with us always.

I remember taking a walk along a railroad trestle with my sexual abuser when I was about eight. It was on one of the most beautiful days I remember. We stood on the trestle overlooking a perfectly clear and babbling stream that danced upon smooth rocks far below. And I found myself trusting the one who was trying to destroy me for his personal and temporary satisfaction. The sadness of the damage done was overwhelmed by the beauty of the scene in which it had all taken place and the comfort of camouflaged caring.

There were times in the future that I would wish he had tossed me from the trestle to the rocks below like an empty soft drink bottle. Would it have been better to have forever left the brokenness on the rocks below than to have carried it along on the tracks of life?

God has plans. This is no place for cowards.

I am so blessed by those who struggle in determination, realizing there is no guarantee they will overcome the temptation attached to this side of eternity. Still, they hope and pray and trust and obey . . . and if they fall, they rise again to hope and pray and trust and obey. I am encouraged by those who climb free from the suffocating mess and turn and cheer the ones behind them. I am energized by the relative few who reach into a mess they do not understand and offer a hand to those whose hands are dripping from the muck and mire . . . and pull and grasp and refuse to let go, even when the slime makes the grip almost impossible. They do not give up; they do not flee; they love . . . and pull.

There is such a thing as glory. We can see hints of it and they are given to us not to make us content here, but to make us intent to enter that glory someday beside those who might never have glimpsed it but through us. Hand-in-hand with the ones who would have given up and given in and gone down into the gore were it not for the sacrifice of our selves on the banks of their destruction.

This is no place for cowards.

I have exchanged the anger I once had for the spiritually-blind and churchianity-bound self-proclaimed saints for pity. What an unattractive flock. Yet, I am aware that if one of them strays -- even into that pure-white blindness of their own self-sustaining spirituality -- Christ will go out of His way to bring them in and keep them safe. Some of them need to be saved from themselves.

Yes . . . I hurt others because of my decades of enslavement to same-sex attraction. I was selfish . . . or at the least the self I thought I was was selfish. Sometimes we feed a person inside who was never invited but has become like home-folk. That sinful guy becomes very loyal, even in his unlimited demanding. He has his own view of the world, and it's based on desire. He is determined to get what he wants.

To quote the Borg from Star Trek:

"Resistance is futile."

Or, to quote God:

This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. – I John 5:3-5

Feed the bleating beast's insatiable demands? Futility. Obey God's commands which "are not burdensome?" Victory. Love. Overcoming.

Christ came and died and rose again not to insulate us from the sins of others, but to free us from the burden of our own, that being death, which He conquered in our place. And, in His great love for us, He gives us the desire to work as we can to defeat the sins we still bear. That great love should cause us to willingly bear with others the weight of the sins they have yet to conquer.

But what of judgment? Does it not stand to reason we should suffer and be punished and die a thousand deaths for the darkness we have dabbled in and dealt to others? Don't we need to add a little spice to the consequences? Drive it all home? JUDGE?

Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son. -- John 5:22

Judgment has already taken place. Jesus bore it; my sins and yours adding to the weight. Yes, I will account for all my sins when I stand . . . finally and forever . . . before the King. The King who entrusted all judgment to the Son.

This is the world. The world that Satan wants to rule; the world that Jesus wants to love. The world that Satan came to kill; the world that Jesus came to save.

Jesus was no coward.

God Bless,

Thom

(Note: Thank you for your continued prayers since last December when our home burned. We are moving into our new home this week. This post is actually an excerpt from my book, Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do, which I hope you will buy on Amazon.com to encourage you and anyone you know who battles any kind of brokenness, sexual or otherwise.)

To Me or Not to Me?

2011-08-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Yes . . . that's me. Front and center on the merry-go-round, a fitting metaphor for much of my life, round and round he goes; where he'll end up, nobody knows. For too long, it depended on who was pushing and how hard. Just keep smiling and whirling . . . until you fall off. In the early days, someone picks you up and stretches a band-aid across your knee and offers you a Popsicle and tells you to hang-on better and go a little slower. In later days, they point and whisper and you are but a silly fool who should have known better than to go on the ride in the first place. The pain of the fall does not diminish with the passage of time, but as the dirt becomes more familiar you lay there longer until you realize that at some point you are expected to get up on your own.

I'm not a potter and I don't have a way with clay, but if I was and if I did, I would certainly have gone a little lighter on the ears . . . and maybe shaved a bit off the high level of uncertainty and doubt, added a bit of reinforcement to the walls for resistance to sin, and certainly upped the awareness to yield and the desire to seek. A little reshaping within and without: a better vessel. Instead, the ears are there, the doubt is clearly visible in the color of the clay and the edges have become brittle and vulnerable to the effects of sin, the pouring spout itself a bit eroded from the corrosion of bitterness.

It's me. Slowly-changing, yet ever-resembling the me I have always been. The old me cast aside to become new, but always tip-tapping at the window panes, begging to come back inside, the old eyes peering into the new, questioning and accusing and sowing confusion. The where I've been challenging the where I'm headed. The I'm free of me mocking the me who's free.

Who would have thought that a little "me" could be so enveloping, so demanding, so revealing, so undoing, so pursuing, so unforgiving, so deceiving, so unworthy, so treacherous and sly, so bound?

Me.

Who would have thought that a little "me" could be so beautiful, so valuable, so intricate, so unique, so sought, so true, so worthy, so accepting and open, so free?

Me.

Sometimes I think the principalities of darkness have nothing on the internal struggle between me and me. And then I realize it is not me, but the proximity of those principalities and the propensity I have had to welcome or to at least justify their presence, proclaiming myself too weak to push back against them. After all, I am just . . . me.

I think when we are unhappy with "me," two things happen. We try harder to be like others and we try harder to hide the me we don't really want to be. In doing so, we sometimes pick up characteristics and traits that were never ours in the first place and we hide others that we might have just been misusing or neglecting somehow, which become rusty and misplaced, but were a big part of the "we," that's you and me. We self-diagnose and we react with reinvention to the diagnoses offered by others and hop on the "Maybe-this-will-work" merry-go-round and spin the days away until we hit the dirt in an out-of-balance daze that reveals to everyone we are just "me" trying to be what others wish we were. You can travel a long ways down the right road in this life and them stumble on an errant stone and be declared a treacherous transient by the righteous who move to the other side and continue on their way, leaving an unfolded map at your feet, just in case you wake up and want to join them on a perfect journey.

It seems like we think preservation comes through complication. The more difficult we can make this path to change, the more we will prove we deserve to have arrived. The more of "me" we can leave behind, the more different we can become, the more we deserve for others to embrace "the new me." The more others can spell it out in as big a word as possible, the more they can measure your success against their own.

It doesn't really work that way. The me I am today is so different than the me I was just a few short years back, but yet I am the me I have always been. Confounding as they may be to others, that's how God works. He creates a "me," loves a "me," frees a "me," forgives a "me," hears a "me," wants a "me." He changes me, but he still knows me as the me He created me to be.

Unfortunately, that't not how we work, so caught up are we in "change me," that we cringe at the idea that we are, despite our dings, still created in His image, still worthy of His love, still forgiven, still able to be softened and shaped and molded to conform to His likeness instead of to the world's, which, in truth doesn't so much care about you or me . . . but only about what they can do about us to make us more what they want us to be, depending on the perspective of the "me" they themselves happen to be.

And since we want them to be happy with who we are, we bend and twist and project our recovery and rejoice in our victory and smother our misery at the encumbrances of change. If we can provide enough positive evidence, they'll be pleased. You've probably already tried to please men, becoming what you thought would make you more wanted so you could have more of what you thought you wanted. How has that worked out for you? It didn't do a lot for me.

On the rebound-merry-go-round, such a pattern produces a warped repentance, a check-list once again designed to please men, a facade rather than a changed heart. Just wait and see . . . I'm a brand new me. And then, if the repentance is not real, under the pressure of time and temptation, the facade crumbles and the burdens win and we retreat into the same old me-ness.

“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. -- Matthew 11:28

While we are caught up in "woe is me," he says "come to me."

Then He said to them all: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me. -- Luke 9:23

While we are caught up in finding ourselves He says "follow Me."

You know what really stands out to me in those verses? The word "me." Jesus was clearly comfortable with "being me."

And so should we be.

The me is not the problem. It's the "my." It's the things we bring in and make ours. It's what we do and allow to be done to the "me." From the moment we as little ones point and shout and cry out "me want!" to the moment we begin to point inwardly and cry silently "want me?" we are confusing 'my" and "me." My body -- ears and all -- is not me. My possessions are not me. My cravings are not me. My sins are not me.

I am me. Heart and soul. Created in the image. All that is within me is me . . . and He is in me. All those other things that swirl around me and label me? They may be what people see, but they're not me. But, as long as I believe they are, they will define me. As long as I let others say that what they think of me is me, then my reactions will determine where I go and what I do and how I live and who I serve and who I please and who I seek and who I need and what I want.

We lay out a plan out to help us find freedom, yet we know He set us free.

We strive mightily to find peace though he clearly says He will just give it to us.

We look for love though He says He has always loved us.

We bargain for acceptance though He says He will never leave us.

We pine for our place in life though He has already prepared a place for us beyond it.

We walk stooped over in shame and stumbling under guilt, though he says He forgives us.

If we believe what He says, we can certainly reduce the stress of striving, looking, bargaining, pining, stopping, stumbling. It would definitely leave true energy for real repentance.

Which begs the question. What in the world is wrong with me? Just that. The world. It's nothing that Christ can't handle when the me of you becomes we in Him.

Sound too easy? That's what the world -- caught up in the do it my way way -- wants you to think. Which brings us back to "my."

Me . . . or Christ in me? That is the question.

God bless,

Thom

(Please visit my Amazon Author Page and consider purchasing one of my books to encourage you in your own personal struggle or to help you encourage people you know. If your church does not have Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do among its resources, I hope you will purchase it for your church.)

What Would You Do if I Sang Out of Tune?

2011-08-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

-- The Beatles

Memory is a curious thing. We all -- making an assumption here -- have things we would like to forget, to prescribe back to the unreachable nether-lands of the gray matter. Poor choices, regrettable actions, misspoken words, pain --self-inflicted or otherwise -- times of loneliness and rejection, missed opportunities, experiments gone awry, painful partings, dumb days and blind nights.

At the same time, most of us fear the loss of memory. It's unnerving to pry open a box of "precious" mementos too long in the attic and sift through, wondering where something came from and why it was elevated to keepsake level. It's baffling to look at photos of people and wonder who they were and why you posed, clicked, developed and kept.

We don't have a very effective sifter, do we? Wouldn't it be nice if memory were like panning for gold? All the gritty sand would slide through and all that remains would be the gold and the good, the valued and treasured times. Of course . . . not only is it true that not all that glitters is gold, it's also true that not all that is gritty is bad. It's the mix of our memories that gives us both hope and wariness to keep us climbing and to remind us of the pain of falling.

When we're little, and as we grow, great attention is paid to pinning deeds to reminders:

Don't forget to brush.
Don't forget to put the seat down.
Don't forget your lunch.
Don't forget to call.
Don't forget to write.
Don't forget me.

Some of us who go through periods of separation from others in retribution for our sins -- perhaps forgiven but not forgotten or maybe neither -- may spend a bit more time sorting through the memories, finding that the gold and the grit are inseparable and oddly-balanced to bring us through to where we are and to make us who we are, as well as building a foundation on which we now build what we will be. It's a mixed-up matter of then and when.

Probe your emotions and you'll find your most valuable memories. I think my earliest memory of all may be a violent thunderstorm on a summer night during a family vacation in Yellowstone National Park. The lightning turned the night sky white and the thunder shook the ground beneath the small khaki tent where I lay paralyzed ready to meet the Maker I didn't even really know about yet. I was a tiny boy in pajamas and a sleeping bag and couldn't find enough voice to scream. This then is my first real memory of fear. Suddenly, my father's frame is silhouetted against the flaps of the tent as he reaches in and then climbs in. My first memory of security.

When I was in elementary school, the teacher told us all to bring a towel to class which we would spread out on the floor to take midday naps. A ways into the school year I awoke at home one morning to find my towel had never made it from the washing machine to the clothesline to dry. I draped it over a furnace and the heat burned it brown down the middle. I begged for another towel, but instead had to take the damaged one. I spread it out on the floor and the kids laughed at me. That's my earliest memory of shame.

Love is a little harder to pin down in the memory banks because, if life is as it should be, love begins amid squeals and grunts with teary kisses on tiny feet. But who remembers all that? Oddly enough, though, it seems to me that one of my earliest memories of knowing I was loved was again on a vacation. This time in Galveston. All I remember really is that it was 1960 and my mother decided to cut our vacation short because Carla was coming. I didn't know who Carla was, much less that Carla was a hurricane. I just remember sitting on an outside patio at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, drumstick in hand, watching the clouds coming in and thinking, for some reason, that I was the most important thing in my mother's life. She must have said something -- now sifted away -- that made me feel that way. The details are gone, but the memory remains.

My first real memory of loneliness? A mixture of the day my father drove away and the day he broke his promise to return.

My first real memory of acceptance? The day a molester put his arm around my shoulder and told me I was a special boy.

My first real memory of rejection? The day a molester put his arm around another little boy's shoulder and looked me coldly in the eyes.

My first real memory of accomplishment? The day a teacher told me God had given me a gift and that I would always be a writer. (Teachers were allowed to talk like that back then.) I don't remember being told I was good at anything before that day.

My first real memory of guilt? That's a tough one. I think we work pretty hard to bury those memories, though they form a path like broken glass beneath bare feet, piercing into us whenever we try to move forward on heel and toe. I think maybe the earlier memories of guilt have been so buried beneath more recent ones that they're like splinters over which hard callouses grow. I can't always feel them, but I can see the bump.

My first real memory of helplessness? I think perhaps the ups and downs of my upbringing gave me a false sense that I would always be able to find a way out of every situation, that there would always be an answer, a solution, a repair. I would find a way and make it work. So . . . the memories of helplessness are fresher for me. The day my sexual sin of acting out on unwanted same-sex attraction was undeniably revealed . . . and then again . . . and I realized only God had the answer to that. And, even more fresh? The day my children walked away . . . and stayed away . . . and I realize only God has the answer to that.

Some memories are recalled for chuckles. Like the time I took the stage with a group of guys who suffered an epidemic of stage fright, and in a collective spell of voice-tightening and lyric-forgetting, left me to solo on, an unforgettable moment everyone who was present can share in forever. The audience reaction answered the age-old question, "What would you do if I sang out of tune?"

Fear.
Security.
Shame.
Loneliness.
Love.
Acceptance.
Rejection.
Accomplishment.
Guilt.

Ahh . . . memories, not all so precious.

I think my largest cache of memories comes from searching, a jumble of being lost in total darkness on occasion and of emerging into the light on others, of falling deeper into and of struggling further out of, of trying to find out who I am . . . and of trying to forget who I am, the latter of which we cannot ever really do.

Fortunately, even though some people will pin us forever to the memories they have of us, we don't have to do that to ourselves. Even if we can't get rid of the memory of the been-theres and done-thats, the regrets and the head-scratching, we don't have to lay them out as markers to keep us on predictable paths, as if Memory Lane were a permanent address. Not all memories beckon us back. I may think some memories just should not be kept at all and I may try to bury them -- or, in more politically-correct terms -- suppress them, but instead, I just need to trust that, if they're there and can't be prayed away then they are likely there to stay, for my good. Maybe it's a good thing I have been gifted with a good memory.

One thing I will always remember are those who remembered all the good about me and did not let the revelation of the bad eclipse it. One thing I may have trouble forgetting is that so many embraced my faults so mightily that they reinvented me in their minds, measured me by my darkest deeds and walked away. According to my memory . . . none have returned. Maybe in those cases it is better to rebuild with those who have no memories of you at all.

Memories can haunt you, or they can help you. But, whatever you remember about yourself and what you have done, don't forget that God also has memories.

Remember, Lord, Your great mercy and love,

for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth

and my rebellious ways; according to Your love remember me,

for You, Lord, are good. -- Psalm 25:6-7.

Mercy . . . love . . . the goodness of God. When you are entrenched in remembering who you were, remember who He is.

For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. -- Hebrews 8:12

Remember the time that you sang out of tune? He did not stand up and walk out on you. Maybe we can't choose what we remember and every sin at some point comes back to wander around in our minds and hearts . . . but God can choose and does choose to remember them no more.

Don't forget . . . He is God after all.

God Bless,

Thom

(Do you own a Kindle or a Nook? Surviving Sexual Brokenness: What Grace Can Do is available for either one for only $7.99. Here are the links to Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com. Thank you. I hope you find the book encouraging and helpful.)