COM Newsletter - December 2020
A very personal newsletter by Michael Carducci.
By divine intervention I traveled to Germany in October. The embassy there stated that they would allow me entrance only if I stayed until January. No problem! Since I sold my home, I have no obligations and spend a lot of time visiting family and friends. Bouncing from Germany to Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, through mandatory quarantines, COVID testing and border closings, I continue traveling through more European countries and will end with an impromptu visit to New Zealand!
Today is the 20th anniversary of my being in relationship with Jesus Christ! Through many challenges, trials, and heartaches I am still convinced that intimacy with Jesus is more rewarding and fulfilling than anything the sex affirming life I had previously lived for twenty years ever afforded. Driving in the Alps yesterday, I left the quaint village of Dornbirn through thick fog covering the hamlet. Higher and higher we drove only to park and then ride mountain bikes higher still to the top of the Austrian mountain. As I drove through the fog covering the village below, it slowly gave way to blue skies and sun beaming on my face. I couldn’t help but feel for the people left in the darkness below.
The spiritual application of my 20 year journey is this:
When I finally made the decision to explore a path out of the LGBTQ+ identity into the unknown, there was a struggle against what seemed to be insurmountable odds. My path has lead me through mud (debates about being “born that way” and “Nature vs Nurture”), barely marked paths (the gay debate in the church and whether to condone or condemn), emotional challenges (friends that left the path and returned to the fog below), spiritual quests (learning that God loved me and that I could trust Him) and physical issues (my own personal challenges of attractions and behaviors). One day, my forest filled path gave way to an opening that took my breath away! Looking down from my new vantage point above the clouds, I forgot the challenges and pain that I had left behind on my upward journey. I was in complete and utter awe as I beheld a view that was nothing short of breathtaking. My heart was filled with amazement and I could only wonder if the people down below the pillows of clouds knew the glory that was above them. Did they know that above the clouds that blocked the sun there was blue sky? Did they know that the power of Jesus Christ was still able to take us, though fallen, broken, unbelieving and unloveable, beyond our personal limitations and give us a world that we never knew existed?
I was whispered to by the One who loves me as He sang gently in my ear…
”Happy Anniversary My beloved.”
SPECIAL MESSAGE
Q&A
Question: How do you answer the argument that homosexual marriage will not affect or threaten the traditional institution of marriage, having no designs on interfering with such unions between one man and one woman?
Reply: First of all, I would simply quote journalist Masha Gessen, a radical homosexual activist in an interview readily seen on YouTube. As the ultimate goal of the women's liberation movement seems to be the eradication of the difference between men and women, that of the Gay Agenda is the eradication of marriage altogether. Notice her words from the YouTube video, Gay Marriage is a Lie: Destruction of Marriage, Masha Gessen:
“Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we're going to do with marriage when we get there. The institution of marriage should not exist... We lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change. That is a lie. [What we want] is not compatible with the institution of marriage.”
Beyond this revelation, a legalization and acceptance by society of homosexual marriage is in essence a redefining of the marriage institution as God created it in the beginning in Eden. It is a further attempt to exalt the mind and will of man over the mind and will of man's Creator. It is a promotion of self-determination over moral accountability. This is a most certain violation of the first commandment as well as open defiance against and rejection of the seventh commandment.
The redefining of marriage will lead to a redefining of our culture and, if consistent, a redefining of any other (if not every other) point of God's moral law of Ten Commandments. The end result upon society in general will be a further deterioration of family values, defiance against authority, rebellion against God, and anarchy.
Will this have a negative effect on traditional marriage and family? Absolutely! It is an uprooting of God's protective hedge with the idea of relocating the parameters God has established for the protection of our families. And once uprooted, by what authority do we determine where to relocate that protective hedge? Where are the new boundaries, the new moral parameters, to be placed? Once homosexual marriage is established as an acceptable alternative lifestyle, how do we say "No" to polygamy, to incest, to pedophilia, or to bestiality? How much more difficult will it be to convincingly answer the inevitable questions of our children about the facts of life and to guide them in the ways of righteousness with this new "morality" foisted upon their tender and impressionable psyches?
A legalization and acceptance of a moral evil, homosexual marriage, will expand an already confused social environment for our children and youth, pitting society against Christian families, placing terrible temptation in the way of our youth, inciting more cause for rebellion among youth against their parents' moral values. They will tend to question why their Christian parents oppose something that is legal and accepted by society at large.
The conditioning of society, and the overt recruiting of youth to accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle, becomes much easier through all levels of society: government and politics, the education system, entertainment, the media, the sports world, social services, and, yes, even through the church, once gay marriage is legalized and condoned.
Q&A text taken from:
TESTIMONY
A Personal Testimony:
Background info: my father moved in with us (my mother and his three children aged 13, 14 and 18 y.o.) in Spring 1991 after he started falling sick from AIDS. He was hospitalized for a pneumonia at first.
As you probably know at that time people's health worsened with each new opportunistic illness. In the first two years or so he was still able to go to work in between weeks during which he had to be hospitalized, sometimes a couple of days only, sometimes for over a month. As the illness became more serious he would spend more time at home with us. My brothers, my mother and I would go to church several times a week. (My mother has always been very dedicated to the church despite all she went through with my dad.)
Right from the start in 1991, my dad told my mother that he refused to be prayed for, that he didn't believe and didn't want anybody to pray for him as he thought it was a waste of time. Of course, when his health deteriorated and he was in hospital we would come together and pray or even ask our church to pray for him despite his will!
My brothers and I came to Christ through this trying time. We got baptized on the same day in March 1993. I remember when we came home that night my dad said to us: come and eat, I guess you're hungry after this, lol.
He was never sarcastic or mean towards our faith, he respected it as a former believer, and didn't prevent us from accepting Jesus in our lives, he never argued with us but we knew what his stand on the Gospel was. We didn't talk about spiritual issues.
After the summer of 1994, he became really depressed and attempted suicide by trying to cut his wrist. He had been sick for 3 years and was tired of it all. By that time he could no longer work or drive his car. He was very weak.
He was hospitalized and when I heard him say he was gay for the first time. It was something I hadn't expected at all. (My dad always had a lot of friends come and visit at his apartment when my parents were separated, I was too young to think of anything other than friendships.)
We knew that he had only a couple of weeks maybe months left to live.
Around October that year, my dad suffered from edema on his face and had an induced coma.
As we all thought it was the end, One of his step-brothers (a pastor) came to visit him from another region, he prayed and laid hands on him. He did this against my father’s will while he was unconscious. Of course, we had been praying for my dad's surrender for years, the first of whom was my mom (who never failed to pray for him).
(My uncle was and still is a pastor. The two of them had cut ties for ten years long before my dad became ill after my dad came out in the 1980s and his brother had replied to him in a letter that the gay life was a sin. I never got to read that letter but I guess it was a harsh one. My father then cut ties with him (or maybe it was him, I don't know). However during his illness he reached out to him, came to visit him and they reconciled.)
After he left his room, my father's psychiatrist came and sat next to him, trying to speak to him. She happens to be jewish and what she heard from my dad that day stunned her. While he was still unconscious he said the Jewish traditional prayer SHEMA in HEBREW. It is a liturgical prayer, prominent in Jewish history and tradition, that is recited daily at the morning and evening services and expresses the Jewish people's ardent faith and love of God :
“Listen, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and all your might.” -Deut. 6:4-5
https://bibleproject.com/blog/what-is-the-shema/
Well.... my father's biological father was Jewish, he had met his mother after WWII in the south of Germany where he started life from afresh after having survived 5 years in the camps and lost all his family except one brother. He then moved to Israel then NYC and later Canada (we found this out later). They weren't married, their relationship didn't work out, but my dad was born and they stayed friends despite the scandal and he was around the first two years of my dad's life.
One of my father's heaviest burdens was to live without his father. He knew everything about him, there was no taboo around who he was but he didn't/couldn't stay in touch, went to live far away and later we learned that he had a family of his own. He had not a single picture of his father his entire life. But his mother always said he was a good man, that he was much better than the man she married and divorced later.
So my father studied Hebrew and Judaism all his adult life. He also searched for his dad. There was no Internet at that time. So he was obsessed by his Jewish background and very proud of it. His step-dad happened to be an Arab man who had a fierce hatred for jews. He would often insult my dad.
The same day or next he awoke from the coma and his psychiatrist told him what she witnessed. He burst into tears. For him, it was a new beginning. It was as if God had spoken to him in the most intimate and powerful way. He gave in, repented and committed his life to Jesus once and for all.
In the following days, he asked to speak to us his children, and I remember he asked to see me and my eldest brother, just the two of us, and for the first time he opened up to me about his homosexuality, that "he couldn't help it". (my brother knew from a long time as he was older, but voluntarily had kept it a secret to protect me). He also said, "I must tell you a secret. I was sexually abused at the age of 12.” something he never told ANYBODY about for 36 years... He said he needed to say it now. He wanted us to know everything. He also said, "you have a new dad". Imagine, it was both the best day of my life and the worst.
He then asked for a visit from our pastor who he had never seen before. They met just before he died. I was told they had a very good conversation and prayed together.
He died "peacefully" in February 1995 at the age of 48. As peacefully as you can when you leave a family behind... but still he no longer tried to commit suicide after he gave his life to Jesus. He said I am going to try and speak about Jesus to one new person every day. He also would spend his entire days writing the first chapter of Genesis in calligraphy and in Hebrew on a roll of paper as in the ancient times. We still have it as a precious memory.
This is my father's full story.
Hope this story can help others overcome their struggle and bring families together as one and also strengthen their faith no matter what.
God is good!
Isabelle
SPECIAL MESSAGE
Please consider making a donation to our ministry to help spread the message of God’s love and redemption! Kindly visit our website www.comingoutministries.org and select the Donate button, or you may send a check or money order directly to
‘Coming Out’ Ministries at PO Box 107, Tilly, AR 72679.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!