It’s easy for people to misunderstand why I got out of a life of romantic and sexual relationships with women. Do you stretch the derogation list together like a necklace? Say no to this old love, no to old sexual patterns, no to gratifying attractions. that we do not ask, not to a way of life. And for some, it looks like a kind of ornament. For many others, a necklace that irritates the skin.
My life, however, is based on a resounding yes, a yes that is only found in Jesus Christ, like a great diamond in his hand, which makes him look the other way through his rainbow glow, approaching the encounter of Jesus continually reveals how dirty, superficial and artificial things I considered a treasure.
But God saved me and showed me that saying yes to Jesus is much better.
Perhaps nothing has more cultural coverage today than the desire for authenticity, especially in itself, but how can we say what our true self is?The answer of the culture around us is that we must look inward, extract our desires, because they were born of us, they must be the key to who we are, we have only one life. The biggest tragedy is wasting it by forcing us to follow someone else’s molds.
This finds its strength especially in the field of sexuality, where boundaries are projected as repressing that strangles our true self. Because I still feel but I’m not looking for same-sex attractions, the world calls me stupid, like anyone trying to block the Mississippi River with ice cream sticks. They see a no to these attractions as something too weak to contain their desires.
And they’re right. This is not too weak to withstand what flows naturally from me, but the best authenticity jesus Christ has revealed to me is strong enough to last and conquer, because it takes me away.
If unleashing my desires was the key to life, why has happiness brought me only a few times?As is often the case, I have reaped mediocrity or pain. Contrary to what I believed, the pursuit of my natural desires did. not to create satisfaction, and my desires were not entirely reliable simply because they were, and are, “real. “An itch can be very real, screaming to be scratched. But for some diseases, scratching only deepens the wound. A different remedy must be found
Jesus taught me the truth about myself: that I was born as a bearer of the corrupt image; created in the image of God, I still managed to reflect on certain things about him; only my desires often expressed the true needs that God built on him. me; Sex was his first idea, but I couldn’t understand them correctly.
I was born in rebellion, a spiritual stillbirth. My ability to carry the image of God was distorted, the frame of a decaying house that would collapse under any seam of life. My desires needed interpretation, not blind obedience. Even in innocence, they were still important to be signs, not teachers. Now fallen, they demand a more detained examination, because they arise in my flesh, which is naturally hostile to God (Rom. 8: 7).
Jesus taught me that my authentic self was not this fallen creation; my authentic self is the one who is covered by his justice, forgiven by his expiatory death, washed by his Spirit, welcomed into his family, wielding the sword of his Word. He gave me the slavery of my desires and gave me his power to understand and redirect them. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and self-control is the fruit of the Spirit.
In fact, I’m more than a winner in Christ. He has equipped me not only to say no, but to grow in understanding the goodness of his plan in the first place. I am not afraid to name my temptations, for there is no condemnation for me in Christ, and I have the power of the Spirit to escape it (1C 10. 13). Denying them, suppressing them, does not give me power; simply tends to deceive and delay. Calling them by name and subduing them to Christ deprives them only of the power of darkness and secrecy. In the light, they are exposed in their rags.
In the light, I can begin to see that, at their best, sexuality and marriage are electrifying because they reveal God’s powerful desire to be with his wife and our expectation of unity with him. When my temptations are strong, I can remember that we were each born sexually corrupt, but not so corrupt that we are beyond recreation in Jesus. His gift of sexuality can be recovered and lived as originally conceived, whether in celibacy or heterosexual marriage, as we grow in knowledge of him in self-knowledge.
It’s not just about sexuality. Our flesh tests many tactics to deceive us, promising that if we use God’s gifts our way, we will create a better life. It’s as old as the garden. But money, power, family, health, rest, all the good things that God has imagined for us, collapse and rot when we take them out of hand. A yes to temptation is a yes to disappointment, pain and ephemeral. without Christ he just postpones the problem or plunges us into a different death trap.
But a yes to Jesus dresses us with his righteousness, renders us with dignity, and blesses us with determination; a yes to Jesus frees us to discover the gifts he has given us, and even more shockingly, to discover that where we are weak He is strong One yes to Jesus makes us vibrate with a life so vibrant that we truly perceive it as the authenticity to which we have always aspired, because we are connected with life itself and all of God’s promises to us are yes in Christ.
My friends, that’s a beautiful yes, a yes that excludes all the little things. It is not a yes to regret, but to desire.