Not long after salvation I started work at the soup kitchen my church had opened in one the poorest and dangerous parts in my home town. God had saved me and pulled me out of homosexuality. But simply saving me didn't fix the brokenness in me. Saved or not I didn't know how God take out of me all the "abomination" I had chosen to give myself. You know the "abomination" of which I speak don't you? Leviticus 18: 22,
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."
I was filled with fear, hopelessness, bitterness, and the rejection of my fellow Christians. When I told my first pastor about my past I thought I was telling him about the most amazing freedom God had already worked into my life. The night Jesus Christ saved me he showed me what he was offering through eternal relationship with him. I had a little vision of this small silver wrapped box, with a beautiful silver bow holding closed. So real was this vision that I simply asked, out loud to, an empty room, "What's in the box?" Immediately words seemed to well out of a place within me. I didn't sense the thought originated in my mind. It was a simple thought, but it destroyed my life in homosexuality as sure as nuclear bombs obliterate all life. The thought said, "This is My gift to you: Unconditional love, unconditional understanding and unconditional acceptance. (What Jesus meant by unconditional acceptance didn't mean Jesus affirmed that he created me to be gay. Jesus accepted just as I was, and he would take the sin out of me.) BUT HOW?! How can even God change an abomination into a child of God?!!
A couple of years later God sent me to work in the soup kitchen my church ran in one of the worst and most dangerous neighborhoods in my home town. Ministering at that soup kitchen was incredibly difficult to do. I didn't look down on the patrons of the little soup kitchen because I'd made my life an abomination, so I certainly could condemn anyone else. There actually was one group of frequent visitors: the hookers.
The worst hooker was a woman I always call "Lilly". Lilly had AIDS, but she kept selling sex. At first I hoped God might have sent me to be in the right place to catch Lilly in the act of selling sex to someone, so I could turn her in and then act as witness against her in a court of law. Lilly just needed to be thrown in jail to save lives.
Instead Lilly became the key to unlocking how God can free a man who'd made himself an abomination. Lilly was the hardest human I'd ever met. There was nothing of human spark in her. When she looked at me there was never any recognition in them. She show me she hated me, and she didn't try to sell me her wares. There was nothing in the eyes looking at me. She was seeing through me. She deserved whatever punish came her way, including Hell. The evidence of her life condemned her. Lilly never spoke to me once in the 4.5 years I ministered the gospel at that little soup kitchen. I did have the chance to hear parts of the stories other hookers talked about among themselves. Some of those hookers were very bold saying right to you face. "I do this (prostitution) cause I love sex and I love money." Funny thing was I'd over hear them talking about how they hated men and that all men are pigs and dogs. For people who loved money and sex they hated the men who supplied them with both.
One of the greatest things God taught me through hookers is: Hooker might love sex and money but they hate men using their bodies. Money changes nothing, no one wants to be made into an object for other people to use, abuse, and throw away. Actor Charlie Sheen said it the best: "I don't pay prostitutes for sex I pay them to leave."
as I overheard pieces and parts of the hooker's life stories I was able to piece together their early lives. The men and women who should have loved and cherished them raped, beat, prostituted them for money or drugs. To survive these women took control of their own lives and did the only thing they knew how to do. The most important people in their lives treated them like so much garbage. For some of these women if they'd stayed where they came from they'd have ended up dead and literally thrown their dead bodies into dumpsters or shallow graves. I started seeing the hooker's lives in a very different light. One day when Lilly came in God powered more light on situation. This thought welled up from inside me, "I want Lilly to be my daughter. I never intended men to use, abuse, disease, and then throw her life in a dumpster, like so much trash." God loved Lilly! God wanted Lilly to become his beloved child. The people who should have loved and treasured Lilly treated her body like it was a trash can. All Lilly did was embrace the message her abusers given her, "You are a trashcan." Lilly went out and continued the use and abuse of herself living up to the identity her abusers had given her; TRASHCAN. Not only did Lilly trash herself, but she trashed every man she could get her hands on. They used Lilly as a trash can, she trashed the men who used her, and the men who used her, likewise, trashed themselves with her.
Another great lesson God taught me through hookers: The person who objectifies, uses, and abuses other people makes himself into an object. It is impossible to make a fellow human being into an object, for lust and use without being made a similar object by lusting and using.
This understanding was the key to God teaching me about Leviticus 18:22
This thought welled up from inside me, "Lonnie you are not an abomination.
"I have saved you and you are no longer a "thing to be used." I have created in you a new human life. You are the object of my love and fatherly pride. You are not a "thing" you are my child in and through Jesus, my Son. I have taken away all that you were, and that includes the abomination. I have taken all you are and placed it upon my Son hanging on a cross. I have taken all the worth, beauty, holiness, righteousness, and perfection of my Son; my very heart and all of my wealth, and placed it on you. You are no longer a thing for I have made you alive, free, and clean."
THAT IS LEVITICUS 18:22, not as it was given through Moses, but rather through the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. I love Leviticus 18:22, for in Christ the law which killed me has become the life giving law of the Spirit of Life. I'm not a thing to be killed by the law, I am a child of God made brand new so that instead of being an object of destruction I am made new for eternal life and eternal relationship with God and his other former
abominations. "God gives beauty for ashes..."
Keep giving this man God. Your friend is called to relationship with the beauty of God (grace). Your friend has lots of ashes, but the beauty of God you give through acceptance, understanding, and God's world overcoming love will utter consume all his ashes.
This is an excerpt from the book I am writing: EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT GOD'S LOVE HE TAUGHT ME THROUGH HOOKERS
