CTM Newsletter - August 2024
WHAT DOES DEPENDING ON GOD LOOK LIKE?
My name is Kirsten Varela, wife of Daniel Varela, and I’ve recently joined Coming Together Ministries to serve as the Nurturing and Mentorship Program Coordinator. A little bit about me: I was born and raised in New Jersey in a single parent household with my older sister. My mother periodically had mental illness episodes, in which she would have to be hospitalized. I was filled with fear, anxiety, and confusion seeing my mother go through her mental health issues. My sister and I were taken care of by different family members while my mother was recovering. As a family, we depended on housing assistance and child support in order to pay bills and other necessities. Although we struggled financially, the Lord constantly blessed and protected us. He provided for all of our needs. We went through the Adventist education system from Kindergarten to 10th grade. Due to my mother’s disability she was unemployed but volunteered at the school so we could get a Christian education.
Growing up, I was known as the quiet, short, and shy girl. Since I was the youngest in my home, my mother and sister would do most things for me. My sister obtained job applications for me once I turned 17 because I was terrified to do it myself. As I entered my senior year in a public high school, I was anxious because I would have to take initiative and make my own decisions on a career, job, finances, and other adult responsibilities. In addition, I depended heavily on male romantic relationships and affirmations for my self-worth and identity.
Being a young Christian female, it was instilled in me that part of my worth was to save sex for marriage. I held that principle strongly until I compromised my sexual purity. I would tell myself “I didn’t go too far and have penetration, so I was still a virgin”. Unknowingly, I was finding pleasure in fornication but yet I was being entangled with emotional, mental enmeshment, guilt, shame, unhealthy attachments, and codependency. My gracious and loving Lord helped me to unlearn thoughts/lies, heal from childhood trauma, and teach me that my identity and self-value is in Him as a daughter of the King.
I am now in my late twenties. I can see how The Lord has been my Guide and Sustainer. The top two Bible verses I’ve claimed the most in my life are Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight”. And Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”. Currently, the Lord has been reminding me to depend completely on Him . He tells me in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in Me, and I in Him, He will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
My roots for depending on the Lord grew more and more. But one area of my life that I still was relying on my own was my love life. God would tell me, trust Him and in His timing. I finally let go and let God take control of selecting my future husband if that was His will or not. I became content, finding fulfillment with my walk with the Lord, platonic relationships and friendships. I made a goal that I would take at least 2 years being single and be open to courtship starting in 2024. God had other plans for my life!
God planted a seed in me in 2022 when a friend of mine asked me randomly, “Would you consider dating a man that is God-fearing, respectful, loving even if he had a past lifestyle of being gay?” I had never considered that before but did not reject the idea. The following year I reconnected with a classmate that had shared with me his testimony of how he had left the gay culture and dedicated his life to God. God revealed to him that I was to be his wife, and as he was obedient he began to pursue me. I was resistant at first not because of his past, but because I still had my goal of not entering courtship until 2024. Even though he had come from the homosexual lifestyle, I had my own experience of sexual immorality. Both are sin and equal in God’s eyes. After a series of God-orchestrated events we decided to prayerfully be intentional friends, and then begin a courtship. My parents accepted Daniel with open arms and his family was excited to embrace me as their future daughter-in-law.
We got married on May 26, 2024. After the ceremony in New Jersey, my husband and I moved out of state to Tennessee. Although I love my husband and know God ordained for us to be in a divine union, I felt I was being uprooted from my home, family, and friends. The journey driving felt like the story of Abraham leaving his home behind. I had mixed emotions. One moment I was elated to be finally joined with my husband, since we had a long distance relationship. Next, I felt sad because I am leaving behind everything I knew. It hasn’t been a long time but God has given me His assurance, peace, and a great calling to serve.
My husband and I joined Coming Together Ministries in July 2024. I strongly believe that God has allowed me to obtain the right knowledge and experience as a licensed social worker to be prepared to serve in my current role. Through continual dependence on God, I will be able to learn and to help build up others with support and resources. I am excited to serve families and those in need through prayer, creating programs, coaching and working with the team to build a supportive community for sexual integrity.
Dependence on God amidst life’s challenges means to me surrendering all fear, worries, thoughts, and feelings to Him. Proclaim His promises upon your life. At times you may not have the answers you would like to have but your Heavenly Father is working everything out for your personal salvation. You can rest and trust in God. With confidence you can pour out your heart to the Lord in prayer and supplication with gratitude (Philippians 4:6-7). Then, peace will rule in your heart and His plans will be your plans and His desires will be your desires too!
CTL4 INVITATION
Q&A
Question: Can “born-a-gay” be “born-again”? If so, what does God expect from me?
Reply: The concept of being born-again implies change, old things passing away, and resulting newness of life. The work of overcoming homosexuality must begin in the heart, and we must come into such a relation with God that Jesus can put His divine mold upon us. We must be emptied of self in order to give room to Jesus. But so often here's where the problem lies: we have our hearts so filled with idols that they have no room for the Redeemer of the world. The very thing we want to overcome quite often holds our hearts in captivity. While resisting overt behavior, we still center our thoughts and affections upon the desires of the flesh. In addition, we hold to our opinions and ways, and cherish them as idols in the soul. Self asserts itself, but we cannot afford to yield ourselves to the service of self, holding to our own ways and ideas, and excluding the truth of God.
We must be emptied of self, but this is not all that is required, for when we have renounced our idols, the vacuum must be filled. If the heart is left desolate, and the vacuum not filled, it will be in the condition of the one whose house was “empty, swept, and garnished” (Matthew 12:44), but without a guest to occupy it. The evil spirit then brought in “seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter[ed] in and [dwelt] there; and the last state of that man [was] worse than the first.”
You may feel that you cannot meet the approval of heaven. You may think and say, “I was born with a natural tendency toward homosexuality, and I cannot overcome,” but every provision has been made by our heavenly Father whereby you may be able to overcome every unholy tendency. God expects you to overcome even as Christ overcame on your behalf. He says, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Revelation 3:21).
It was sin that imperiled the human family, and before man was even created the provision was made that if man failed to bear the test, Jesus would become His sacrifice and surety, that through faith in Him, man might be reconciled to God, for Christ was the Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).
Christ died on Calvary that you might have power to overcome your natural tendencies to sin–that you might overcome even your “natural tendency” toward homosexuality!
But you might say, “Why can’t I have my own way and act myself? Can I not be a born-again homosexual, keep my gay relationship, and still serve the Lord?”
According to Scripture, no, you cannot have your way and enter the kingdom of heaven. No “my way” will be there. No human ways will find place in the kingdom of heaven. Our ways must be lost in God’s ways. “Except a man be born again [of water and of the Spirit], he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 5).
“Shall we continue in sin [transgressing God’s law], that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up ... even so we also should walk in newness of life ... Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.” (Romans 6:1-7)
He that is truly born-again will yield his homosexuality over to Christ, painful though it may be, for to continue therein is to continue in sin, placing one’s homosexuality above allegiance to Christ. Jesus says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 8:42).
Victor
Q&A text taken from:
JAWS 2024
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 can send a check or money order directly to
‘Coming Out’ Ministries at P.O. Box 285, 115 N. Main Street, Berrien Springs, Michigan, 49103.
May God bless you for your support!