August 12, 2014

  • MY WORLD IT’S A CHANGING!

    Where I Am Now

     

     

    I hate that Xanga 2.0 is just a big fat zero!   I won’t be here any longer, but I’ll let you know where I am.  Don’t think I’ll give up blogging, but I’m not sure where exactly I’ll land.  I do have other blogging accounts, but I’m changing and want to do something new.

    Something Old Something New:

    I’m going back to blogging about sexual brokenness, and I may do that with a completely separate blog specific to that issue.   Let me say up front the ugly, mean, insulting days of trollish ex-gay guy are gone.   The “ex-gay troll” was meant to serve several purposes.  My target audience, difficult to believe as it may be, wasn’t actually people struggling with same-sex attraction, or gay people.   My intended audience was my fellow Christians who don’t struggle themselves with SSA (Same-Sex Attraction).   I was mean to both gay and struggling against same-sex attraction people.  The truth is, and the demise of Exodus International goes a long way to support this, there are little if any real differences between gay people and religious people who claim to struggle against SSA.   You can’t take a bunch of ex-gay people and put them somewhere to struggle.   It takes the Church, empowered by and led by the Holy Spirit.

    When I started outreach to the supposed strugglers, I knew few if any of them were ever going to successfully escape their SSA.  No matter how sincere and devoted SSA strugglers may be to Christ, putting them together and then dumping them somewhere away from the body life of the Church cannot work.   If you’re going to take a journey you’re going to need a guide to get you there.  If the guide doesn’t know where he/she is going then you’ll get no where near the goal.   Stick a bunch of religious gay, or ex-gay if you prefer, in a room together and you’ll get a religious gay dating service.   Exodus International was little more than a religious gay dating service.   “The wounded healer”, approach will not work for the most profoundly sexually broken people.   It takes God’s people from outside homosexuality to lead strugglers with SSA to freedom.   Today 25 years after leaving homosexuality, with no looking back I would never…NEVER…attempt to lead a profoundly sexually broken person to freedom by myself.   It takes people with a lesser brokenness to reach in an help.

    Being confronted with and daily dealing with sin leads to nothing but failure.  It is when we see Christ that we realize how terrible and hateful our sin is.  If all you ever learn to do is struggle with sin, you’ll never find your way to relationship with Jesus Christ.   It is the relationship with Christ which frees us.

    I started taking showers when I was a teenager.  The only time I’ve used a bathtub to take a bath was when I didn’t have a shower.   I take showers because when I took a bath I’d have to empty the tub, and then shower off.  When I first got into the tub the water was clean, but after I  soaped up then the water around me was full of my dirt.  Why should I bathe and then have to shower off?    The problem with “Ex-gay” ministry is it’s like dumping a bunch of dirty kids into a big bathtub.  All they ever really do is deal with their dirt, but the water never gets changed.   People can’t spend their lives washing the same  old dirt off themselves, and then sitting there in in old bath water.  How stupid we Christians are!   People who struggle with SSA need rivers of flowing water, that only Jesus can give.  The flow of living water washes us off, and then the powerful current carries to ever deeper and deeper relationship with God and one another.

    So while I’m going back to something old the way I do that thing is going to be completely different.  First the Church has to learn what to do, and then we have to be led to the place where we can do that.  First we deal with the sexually broken people within the Church’s own walls.   When we reach the strugglers among us then we deal with those who have a true desire to seek God and his kingdom.   No one can accuse us of trying to make gay people change against their own wills.   Frankly, we shouldn’t focus on gay people changing.  When we see the great love, mercy and grace of God we want to turn from our sins.   The problem we have to solve is that we need to offer the great relationship rather than offering either condemnation or acceptance of sin.

    New Career:

    Sometimes God needs to get our attention through pain.   For the last two years I have been in the worst work situation I’ve ever experienced.   I have been truly living in work Hell.   It is very difficult to get me to change.  God called me to vocational ministry 24 years ago, and I have absolutely refused to enter it.   Don’t get me wrong I’ve been ministering for years and years, but would never answer God’s specific call for my life.   There are so many factors and issues it would take a long series of blogs to explain it all, so I won’t begin here.   The old career is gone, and though I am not fully into the new vocational call, I am at least on the right road.  The book I’ve been writing for nearly 20 years is literally mere pages from completion.   I don’t know what God will do with the book.   It may never go anywhere, but that isn’t the point.  The point is I needed to obey and write the thing.   Honestly I think the book has been more informative and transformational for me than it will ever be to anyone else.   I needed the book for me more than anyone else needs to read it.

    I really started writing the book in earnest in January of this year, and the first draft will be done in less than a week.  I’ll have to work out a second draft, before I start looking for an editor to complete the editing for me, but the hardest part is all over but the screaming.

    Next Step:

    I don’t know where I’ll be moving my blog, but I’ll let you know, when I’ve found a place.   I don’t know when I’ll be publishing my book, but I’ll be self-publishing online in a downloadable PDF, for free.  I’ll let you know.  If you’d like to drop me a line and leave me your email address I’ll keep you updated

    My ministry email is:  thesaltworksministry@gmail.com

    I look forward to hearing from some of you

     

     

     

     

Comments (2)

  • I wish you well. I used to know about Exodus and similar places, but lost touch. My wife and I have no problem witnessing to Gays and understand that they face a huge challenge in overcoming if ever, that strong urge. I agree they belong in church, but the average church has difficulties with this and so Gays ever drop out of the Christian life or go to a Gay church–I think one was Metropolitan.

    It is years since I stayed informed.

    I am in Xanga, WordPress, and Blogster–because I can be private.

    Let me know where you go and if possible will try to follow.

    frank

  • Lonnie please stay in touch, shoot me an email :) always good to hear from you, friend! I moved to PA, not sure if I told you that. Always good to read your takes on the complicated topic of human sexuality and brokenness.

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