COM Newsletter - May 2023
IN HIS IMAGE
I am sitting here troubled about what to write as I beg the Lord to guide me this morning. Today is the 1st of May and the newsletter should be going out! Since it is morning, I thought I would dedicate this time to writing before I get back on the road in my RV. It’s time to travel north from Florida to Tennessee, where I have spent the night in a dear friend’s driveway. While making my bed today, it hit me to just share with our readers on the aspects of identity that I have been sharing with the kindergarten through sixth graders. I hope this opens your mind a little more to recognize the attacks on identity, marriage, our homes, schools and churches that the devil is promoting through both legislation and cultural conditioning.
In my presentations, I generally start out with images of animals and ask the children if I am a zebra, giraffe, or a dog. The children love to shout out that I am none of those things. I then ask them what I am and they say a “human!” Then we go to Genesis 1:27, ”So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” And through the Bible we discover the wonderful blessing that God made either a male or a female!
Next, I have the children do a little exercise where I say, “If you are a boy, stand up and jump up and down. Then all the boys jump up and down and of course any child under ten years old wants to move and wiggle and they are very compliant. Then I ask all the girls to stand up and do a spin. The boys immediately sit down so that they are not confused as to be standing with the girls who now get their turn to stand and spin. Once the room has settled down and all the students are seated, I ask them how many “kinds” did God make and they say… “Two!” We do that little exercise several times during the week to reinforce God’s design and we discuss how all of us were created in the “image of God.” I ask them what the image is that He placed in each one of us and they are oblivious until I tell them that males and females can have the ability to parent. Mothers for girls and fathers for boys! We talk about how God blessed Adam and Eve and told them that they were married and to have babies. I share with them how this is a gift from a loving Creator who gave us also the ability to create too!
We go on to talk about how the devil was a fallen angel and that God doesn’t make bad angels, but Lucifer became Satan because he wanted to be God. So, if angels are created higher than humans (Psalms 8:5), and Satan wants to be God (Isaiah 14:12-15), imagine how upset Satan was when God gave this “special gift” to man and not to him? The devil in his anger came to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10) and Satan is going to try to do this to every boy and girl, man and woman. The children are now getting a foundation of identity and sexuality without destroying their innocence.
What I don’t share with them is that all sexual sin (through pornography, homosexuality, abortion, pre-marital sex, divorce, and any sexuality outside of God’s design of a committed lifelong relationship between one woman and one man), destroys the precious gift that God has given to us. What they have received on this first day is the foundation of identity and sexuality. They have now learned how each one of us are special to Jesus Christ and that we were created either boys or girls and how that is a gift from God.
When we give our children a foundation of God’s design, then when they are assaulted by these contemporary identities/ideologies (that are being promoted by law, and sometimes in many churches), we can use reason and the Word of God to guide these young minds back to receive God’s gift of their own sexuality. We end with praises that our boys are boys and we celebrate the differences that make our girls, girls. They realize that God is not a God of confusion but peace (1 Corinthians 14:33). We have now given our children a foundation that can continue growing through meaningful conversations with their dedicated parents and the Word of God. This helps keep our children from being swept away into the culture that is knocking on the doors of our homes, schools and churches.
If you would like to inquire about our program for your church or school, please email us at: admin@comingoutministries.org.
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Q&A
Question: What would be the best way to share your information with a gay friend? Quite frankly, I don’t know if he wants to change. One thing I know for sure is that God does not create people as homosexuals or lesbians. Please give me your input.
Reply: rue, God does not create homosexuals or lesbians. If so, the Bible would be condemning the works of God Himself. If your friend is content with his lifestyle and does not want to change or to investigate available help, then God Himself has to wait. A person must recognize His need and acknowledge that need before God can be of assistance. “Only acknowledge thine iniquity... and I will heal your backsliding” He says in Jeremiah 3:13-22. In other words, “Acknowledge that your homosexuality is a sin issue, and then I can heal you.”
You, however, can pray that God will do whatever it takes to get your friend’s attention, to help him recognize and acknowledge his need. Continue also to maintain your friendship with him, loving him unconditionally that he may see Jesus in you and be drawn toward Him through you.
As you are able to read my book and other information for yourself, you are more credible in introducing your friend to it as well. If you can get your friend to read my book and/or visit my website, I think he will find much interesting material there to consider.
Q&A text taken from:
Author: “Victor J. Adamson”
(Ron Woolsey)
TESTIMONY
Since middle school, I can remember experiencing same sex attraction. I knew what I was feeling was what the other kids were feeling about people of the opposite gender.
I did not know how to express my feelings but I also knew it was something that I did not want to tell anyone about. I desperately wanted to fit in with my peers and have meaningful relationships but I always felt like I was different.
I remember instinctively thinking at a young age that there must be a cause for these attractions. However, I could not think of a reason because, as far as I can remember, I was never sexually abused. I had a stable family structure with two loving parents and a Christian upbringing.
Since I had no outlet for my feelings in real life, I turned to the internet to try to satisfy this desire for intimacy. I began to read material about homosexual relationships and became gradually exposed to more sexually explicit material. I did not trust anyone to guide me and I was just following my desires. At first, I did not see any negative repercussion to what I was doing. However, I would later experience firsthand that,
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
College was the first time I experimented with another person. All those years of secretly lusting led me to experiment sexually with no commitment. With pornography and experimentation, I knew I was hurting others but I felt powerless to stop. I kept all of this secret from my friends and family. I was living a double life. In a sense, it felt right but the emptiness that resulted was painful. I could relate to the verse in the Bible that says that sexual activity makes you “one flesh” with another person because the lack of commitment felt like an emotional amputation. I did not find any meaningful purpose in what I was doing and did not consider future implications of my actions. I knew I didn’t want a committed relationship and what I was doing was influenced by my addictions.
Introduction to the Gospel
Before college, I didn’t really think too much about how my faith related to my experiences. I didn’t think about whether objectifying people was wrong. I thought that same sex attraction would eventually go away. When I realized it wasn’t, I started to become desperate to find a solution. Around the same time, I met another student who invited me to a Bible study with his dad who was a pastor. This was the first time someone sat down with me and showed me why I should believe in the Bible and the story of Jesus. This awakened my spiritual interest and made me think maybe this Christianity thing was not just something I “believe” but maybe it’s actually true. I also started to realize in addition to lust, I had issues with pride, idolatry, covetousness, and impatience. As I studied, I became more and more convicted of what he was teaching me. I also started to look more into the gospel and saw God’s plan of salvation in a new light.
I saw God’s original plan for creation and marriage and I was convicted as Romans 7:12 says that,
“the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.”
This presented a dilemma for me as someone who could not find a way to keep the law.
I was on a path to self destruction. I was convinced that the pattern of my life was deserving of death in order to protect those who I could hurt. When I realized following my desires hurt myself and others hurt I cried out to God and said something like a writer in the Bible when he cried out,
“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 1:24)
I wanted to be delivered from this body that valued pleasure over people and even myself.
I found myself “foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.” living “in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3) When I compare my selfishness to the love of God who “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32), I can only think to myself “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:5)
I didn’t claim to understand everything but I knew that even though God didn’t take away all the pain of my same sex attraction, He understood my pain.
I read in the Bible that God left Heaven as the person of Jesus to enter this broken world to experience pain and rejection in order to show us His character. I didn’t understand completely why He died but I know He died for me and that convicted me that He loves me more than I could ever imagine. I learned that He shares His self-sacrificial love with others through us by the Holy Spirit and even a fraction of that love is powerful enough to break any selfish act or addiction. I repented of my sin against the other men I was hurting and for hindering their God-given purpose. I stopped the sexual encounters and trust in Christ’s love for victory over temptation. The desires did not go away but I found a new purpose in Christ.
It was impossible for me to accept the reality of the cross and not be changed. I could choose to stop thinking about it but the thought of it imbues me with the love of God. I found the solution to my cry that the same Bible writer found when he said,
“I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 1:25)
God has shown me that although He loves me, I do not live in a world that does. The fact that Jesus died, is proof that sin is not something He wants and that it hurts Him too. There are people out there who want to hurt me. I don’t know how life would be different if I wasn’t exposed to the works of “inventors of evil things” (Romans 1:30), things that are not designed for my good. I tried to live my own way and that did not lead to happiness. God has shown me the beauty of commitment in marriage and the beauty of living a purpose filled life of service in singleness.
I am an identical twin. It is a fact that I have experienced same sex attraction and I share the same DNA as someone who does not. I am compelled to believe that my environment has influenced these unnatural desires in me.
I live in a world where kids are exposed to sexual content that can drastically effect their future family life and the future of society. I live in a world where millions of people are consumers of internet pornography.
Although I do not know the cause of homosexuality, I know the effects of it in my life were confusion and brokenness. Jesus has proved Himself to me to be trustworthy because I agree that “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)
I can’t deny the evidence that I’ve found in the Bible and in my experience that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
Now, by God’s grace, I am striving to take a fraction of the love God has for me to love myself and others. I find myself in a conflict with the harmful entities of this world and God’s love. For that reason, I find peace in trusting in God’s Word that changed my life in order to fulfill my responsibilities and enjoy the good gifts God has given me. For me, it involves sacrifice and denying certain things that do not reflect God’s will for my life. But I don’t find the things that I give up as valuable as the new life that Christ has given me and the hope of eternal life. It doesn’t compare.
John Doe
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