STILL ANGRY?

Nope, It Doesn't Serve God's Purposes...

Since returning to Columbia, SC, and the church I attended then, I'm reminded of some loose ends left when I moved from here to there.  One of loose ends, upper most in my thinking, has been something my pastor said to me, not long before I left, "Lonnie, when are you going to let yourself off the hook for your past (in homosexuality)?"  I stayed silent, because I was impressed to remain silent.  I knew God had an answer for the question, and I knew it was a good one...a VERY good answer.  What I didn't understand then I have come to understand now.  I needed the answer more than my pastor needed the answer then.   God's answer was simple but among the most profound things I've ever learned from God. 

I'll tell you what that answer was:

"Lonnie, you'll get off the hook, for your past, when the Church removes you from it, by taking your place on that hook."

It took almost another five years before I was able to understand why God wanted to give me his answer long before he wanted my pastor to have it.  It took a long time for God's answer to grow on me and into me.   I, of course, became more angry when God answered that very important question my pastor asked.  I remember my response to God when he filled me in.  "Well, God," I said sarcastically, "I won't be holding my breath waiting for the Church to step up and take me off the hook.  I'm certain if you came back in a 100 years my sun bleached bones will still be dangling from that, proverbial, hook."    I was still seeing things from a decidedly negative perspective.  I must confess here I do not believe the Church, for the most part, will ever step up to get on the hook where I hang, but that is God's problem and not mine.   Mine is to join my life to Christ in his yoke, and pull the burden he pulls.  Not that I'm the one really doing the pulling, mind you.  That I think is the heart of the matter... for me at least... Christ's burden and Christ's yoke.

Jesus says it like this:

 

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with Christians who continually refuse to obey what Christ says, but today I have a greater sense of disappointment that my fellow Christians are missing out on the great work Jesus would do in and through them to a lost and dying world.  I've also come to realize too many of my fellow Christians are no different from the homosexual state, from which God freed me.  How could I remain angry with a Church as lost as I was??

   

Perhaps you will accuse me of being full of myself... How dare I pass such judgment??!!  I must think far too highly of myself, or I'd never dare say such things about my fellow Christians.  But how is it that Christians who are called, cleansed, justified, and freed, by Jesus Christ cannot understand how to reach sexually broken people?  The cure for sexually broken people is relationship with God, and relationship with his people THE CHURCH!    The Church cannot see, because they are blind; Christians are just as relationally broken as any gay person walking around today.   If Christians understood their relationship to God, they'd see clearly how to help the sexually broken.  The answer was always so simple I thought Christians were just being mean.  I thought Christians fully understood what they were doing, and were actively refusing to offer what they had in Christ to gay people.  The biggest shock of my life wasn't that God could free me, and anyone else from their sinful thinking and ways, but that most of my fellow Christians don't understand or have the kind of relationship to God they think they do. 

How could I go on being angry with Christians when they are just as relationally broken as I was in my own gay lifestyle??  I'm certainly not angry with LGBT people.   They are, after all, just being what they are, and what they are is ignorant of what true relationship is meant to be.   If I can't be mad at the gay people then I can't be mad at the religious people, and for the same reason. 

I don't know what God wants to do with this new found understanding he's given, but I'm not angry any longer.  I'm still passionate, but not angry.  God has a way, and he'll show me what he wants in his own good time.