COM Newsletter - August 2021
LORD, LEAVE ME ALONE!
At the end of May 2018, the devastating news came. Another one of our colleagues was walking away. “What is happening God?”, was my cry. “Are you watching over us?” “Are you aware that another one is slipping away?” I reasoned with Karol, I inquired, but nothing was going to make a difference. Karol walked away and through a storm of emotions, confusion and pain at the loss of another great testimony, we had no choice but to honor her decision to return back to the life Karol was so valiantly saved from. Her indifference was cold and stifling. Now we had to look within our ministry and strategize about how we were going to move forward. We had traveled to South America and Europe with Karol and her story was riveting and compelling. She touched many hearts including our own.
We were left with no options but to pray. And as we prayed, we realized that we had no protection from within. We banded more tightly together in the loss of our companion, ally and friend. We needed a stronger bond from within and we started on Wednesdays to fast and pray for our ministry. We needed a unity that was unbreakable. We needed to lift up and pray for the core of the ministry and not just those that we were trying to minister to.
We began a heartbreaking weekly prayer and fasting for the ministry and leadership of ‘Coming Out’ Ministries. We profess to be a ministry that deals with the attacks of the enemy. Do we leave someone when they’re down and out in order to save face? Do we act as if they never existed? That would be like leaving a soldier wounded on the battlefield as we headed for safety against the enemies attack. Jesus inspired us to do the right thing and that was to go after and reclaim what was taken from Him and we began to earnestly pray for Karol and her return to Jesus Christ.
It was three years later that we started to see new growth as Karol was “dealing with the root rather than the fruit” of her history of sexual abuse and abandonment. With the help of a life coach (Ivonne Restrepo), Karol started to grow little by little as they focused on the trauma rather than the behavior and attractions. Last month on June 26, a miracle happened! While the United States was celebrating PRIDE month, Karol was baptized once again into a new relationship with Jesus Christ. This time it was different. Her relationship stronger and more realistic in the struggle to return, has deepened Karol’s appreciation of her Savior and has deepened ‘Coming Out’ Ministries’ depth and understanding of the power of prayer and fasting, for the one’s that God has placed in our squad and hearts, to reveal the power of Revelation 12:11. Here are Karol’s own words of her “journey interrupted” again.
“I vividly remember the conversation that took place when I decided it was time to come out to my mother at the age of 14. I remember the cries that left her body and the look of desperation on her face. “It’s just a phase” she exclaimed, “we all go through it”. “No it isn’t, Mom! No one understands what I’m going through,” were my thoughts. I wasn’t aware that I have a High Priest who is able to empathize with me, having been tempted in ALL points just as I am, yet He did not sin; a Priest giving me, a sinner, the ability to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence so that I may receive mercy and find grace to help me in my time of need. (Hebrews 4:14,15).
Being unaware of God’s love for me and His understanding of my sufferings, I felt that my needs would be better met outside of God’s presence. So I left. I left my mother’s house and God’s church when I turned 18 and never wanted to look back. Satan had won. Or so it seemed that way. His plan to make me doubt God’s love for me succeeded, but only for a time.
God’s providences are far more wonderful than I could ever comprehend. His promise to finish the work which He had begun in me from the time I was conceived began to be fulfilled. God isn’t willing that any of His children should perish. (Philippians 1:6, 2 Peter 3:9). I gave my heart to the Lord after some years of searching for the love and acceptance I’d been so desperate for. God led me to meet wonderful people who had a desire to work with me in ministry. I began to share my testimony and became more involved with ‘Coming Out’ Ministries.
The friendships and support I received were God sent; but my unwillingness to surrender parts of my past left a window open for Satan to sneak in and lay down a trap which was pleasing to my eyes and also desirable to gain wisdom. So I took the fruit and I ate it. God had provided a way of escape, but in my own attempts to live a life worthy of His love, I decided that I could never live up to God’s expectations of me. And I rejected Him once again, begging Him to leave me alone.
Why is it that so many of God’s children reject His grace? Is it because God is terrible at showing His love? Is it because He hasn’t given us enough evidence that through Him we have the power to live holy just as He is holy? To overcome and be new creatures? Or is it because in our own refusal to let God take control of our lives, we kick Him out of the driver’s seat and go full speed down a road which leads to despondency..?
My Heavenly Father began to call me back, or rather, I had finally begun to listen to His calling after three years of rejecting it. I found myself in a dark hole filled with depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and grief. Little by little God began to shine His light down the hole. He brought to remembrance Psalms 139, and brought into my life someone who would show me that while I had placed my focus on my sexual identity, that wasn’t what God was focused on. Man looks at the outward appearance, while God looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7) Which means that He understood that what my heart really needs is healing from the trauma I had experienced and held on to. My life lacked purpose, and I would never understand God’s love for me until I learned that He had a purpose in creating me.
I recommitted my life to Him. With questions still unanswered, but a willingness to walk by faith and allow God to take hold of the steering wheel once again and lead me down the road which leads to redemption. Since then, I have experienced victory over porn addiction, victory over TV addiction, and a reconnection to a love for sharing God’s message of hope with those who need it most. While we may experience trials of every kind, life isn’t all sorrow and gloom. There is joy in the promises of God. There is hope in the redeeming power that Christ desires to exercise in our life if we would persistently seek Him just as we have been so persistent to run from Him.
In removing my focus off of a sexual identity I claimed as mine. I have since understood that even if I was born that way, God invites me to experience a re-birth in Jesus Christ. He simply asks me to lay down my burdens at the cross, and to exchange my worries, my shame, my guilt and fear for His goodness, His righteousness and His forgiveness. I am a new creature in Christ, and I claim the power to be renewed each morning. For God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, and love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
I am grateful for the prayers which have been persistently lifted up on my behalf from all of you, for the support and the love I have experienced from my friends and family, for the team who makes up ‘Coming Out’ Ministries, my life coach, Ivonne Restrepo, who did not look at the outward appearance but helped me to see my need of something much deeper than an over-the-counter remedy for sin. And most of all, I am grateful for God’s unwillingness to let one of His sheep perish. I ask that you continue to pray, not just for me, but for those who have walked away from God’s promises in search of happiness at the hands of the enemy. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)”
Karol Prado
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Q&A
Question: Are same gender sexual attractions sinful? If so, then what do I do about my same gender sexual attractions?
Reply: It is a fine line between thoughts of temptation and sinful thoughts. Satan knows where he has in the past been successful with his tailor-made temptations for each one of us. We should expect that he will be relentless in his attempts at continual success in the area of homosexual attractions.
But, let us not forget, temptation does not define who we are. Temptation defines who Satan is! Our choices, thoughts, feelings, and emotions define our characters, or who we are. It is not our temptations, but what we choose to dwell upon, what we choose to think about, how we choose to feel and act that determines whether we are guilty of sin or not.
So to answer the question of same gender sexual attractions being sinful, we should follow the counsel of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
Here Paul is telling us how to deal with temptation thoughts without falling into sinful thinking. In other words, we should not allow these sexual attractions to find root in our minds
Well, how do we not allow ourselves to have these homosexual attractions? What do we do about them? Here is a key: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Allow it to be so in you. Stop resisting the working of the Lord by insisting, “I was born this way. There's nothing I can do about my attractions.” The text tells you to let God work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure (See Philippians 2:13).
What's the point?
The point is that we should look at other people as Jesus did, not through “sex-tinted glasses.” We should see in them a people for whom Jesus gave His life on the cross that they, too, might have everlasting life. Love, godly love, self-less love is the agency which God uses to expel sinful thoughts from the human soul. By this selfless love for another person with his or her eternal well-being in mind, God changes our pride into humility and what would be selfish lust into a genuine interest in that person's relationship with his Creator.
Acknowledging that there is an appropriate attraction process that draws people together for the purpose of union in marriage that meets with God's approval and blessing, we are dealing here with those attractions that do not meet with such approval and blessing. Let's face it, inappropriate sexual attractions of any kind find root in a heart that is selfish, self-centered, seeking self-gratification and self-fulfillment. And we all have to deal with the issue of “self.”
However, Paul tells us to: Mortify (subdue, put to death) therefore your unrestrained and improper affection, evil concupiscence (sexual desires), and covetousness (desiring the “forbidden fruit”); to put off the old man with his deeds; and put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him. (See Colossians 3:5-10).
When a person truly gives his heart to Jesus and is baptized, he professes to be dead and declares that his life has changed–hid with Christ in God. He claims to be dead to sin and cleansed from his hereditary and cultivated traits of evil. In going forward in the rite of baptism, he pledges himself before God to remain dead to sin.
The truth must sanctify the whole man–his mind, his thoughts, his heart, and his strength. His vital powers will not be consumed upon his own lustful practices. These must be overcome, or they will overcome him. (See 2 Peter 2:19-22).
“How many understand the full meaning of sanctification?
The mind is befogged by sensual malaria. The thoughts need purifying…
The true Christian obtains an experience which brings holiness. He is without a spot of guilt upon the conscience, or a taint of corruption upon the soul. The spirituality of the law of God, with its limiting principles, is brought into his life. The light of truth irradiates his understanding. A glow of perfect love for the Redeemer clears away the miasma which has interposed between his soul and God. The will of God has become his will, pure, elevated, refined, and sanctified. His countenance reveals the light of heaven. His body is a fit temple for the Holy Spirit. Holiness adorns his character. God can commune with him; for soul and body are in harmony with God.” (SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 909)
It seems to me that if we are truly attracted to Jesus and focus upon Him that all inappropriate attractions should be eclipsed by our attraction to Christ. Let us keep our focus, for by beholding Him we become changed; we become like Him who “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).
Q&A text taken from:
Author: “Victor J. Adamson”
(Ron Woolsey)
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or you can send a check or money order directly to
‘Coming Out’ Ministries at PO Box 107, Tilly, AR 72679.
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