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Religion Title: For Years I Pleaded With God ... To Make Me Straight --- So Why Did My Prayers Go Unanswered? For Years I Pleaded With God To Make Me Straight, So Why Did My Prayers Go Unanswered? By Matt Moore CP Guest Columnist January 26, 2015 matt moore I knew I was attracted to the same sex when I was seven — in some capacity, anyway. I don't think it's physiologically possible to truly feel sexual attraction at such a young age. But I knew there was a drawing in me toward the same gender – and drawing that was more than what some would say is "natural" or "normal." As I grew up in a rural Louisiana town and teenage hormones began to surge throughout my body, my drawing toward the same gender intensified — sexually and emotionally. While I was definitely not engulfed in the life of a church during my adolescence, I was raised in close enough proximity to religious things – and religious people – that I knew the Bible referenced to homosexuality as an abominable thing. The Bible referenced to me as an abominable thing. That was my understanding anyway. And not only did the Bible paint people like me in the light of all that is grotesque, but so did the people around me. Family, friends, football coaches. Everyone. To be gay was to be gross. To be gay was to be wicked. To be gay was to be scum. So I prayed. Oh. How. I. Prayed. "God, make me normal." "God, make me straight." "God, make me like everyone else." But God didn't answer those prayers. Why? I hear my experience repeated by others all the time. Just yesterday, actually. A Christian friend of mine was conversing with a guy who is living a homosexual lifestyle. He pleaded with her to believe that he had prayed for years for God to make him straight…. to no avail. She was speechless. She didn't know how to respond. "Matt, why didn't God answer his prayer? I mean, he prayed God's will? Why was there no answer?" I'm not God, so I can't know all the reasons why He wouldn't have answered this guy's prayers to be made attracted to women. But, I do know what He's revealed in the Bible and I do know what I now, as a believer in Jesus, believe to be true of my own "unanswered prayers" experience. Firstly, when I grew up pleading with God to make me straight, I had no real interest in God Himself. I wasn't praying for God to do this because I loved Him or wanted to live my life for Him. I was actually pretty unconcerned about Him, to be honest. I wanted God to take away my same sex desires for my own benefit – so that I could fit in, be normal, be one of the guys, and even so that I could just have sex with girls like all of my friends were. < — So I obviously wasn't worried about being sexually moral. I just wanted to be sexually normal. My desire to be made straight was all about me. I had no interest in being reconciled to God or having a relationship with Christ. Which brings me to by second point. From what I see in the Bible, God is far more concerned with first fixing our hearts than he is with fixing other things in our lives. Same sex attraction included. Yes, it's true that God hates homosexuality. But more than that, He hates that our hearts are opposed to Him and that we long to live our lives separated from Him. God's foremost desire is that we would come to Him through Christ to receive new hearts that love and adore Him. In fact, nothing can even begin to be done as far as the untangling of our sexualities until we receive new hearts that love and adore God. How do I know that? Because Romans 1 says that the whole reason homosexual desire even exists is due to our rejection of God's loving rule and authority over our lives. Don't skip over this passage of Scripture I'm about to paste under here. It's vital that you read it. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error."- Romans 1:18-26. Homosexual desire – and all other sinful desire — exists in the hearts of people because worship of God doesn't. In Adam, we corporately rejected the good rule of God over our lives. And in each of our hearts, we have all individually rejected the good rule of God over our lives. And what has been the result? God has given us over to ourselves. He gave us up to our sinful desire, and has allowed us to revel and further deteriorate in it. So why didn't God answer my prayer to rid me of my homosexual desires? Because homosexual desires were not my main problem. They were a problem, for sure. But the root of my problem was that I didn't love God or worship Him, and my homosexual desires were just fruit of that, so to speak. God's desire was to fix the root of my issues. And in 2010, He did just that. He opened my eyes to see all that Jesus Christ is for those who will believe. I finally really saw Jesus as the Son of God who took on flesh and who in humility and incredible graciousness laid His life down for mine. He offered up His life to pay for my guilt in order that I could draw near to God and be given me a new heart; a new heart that loves, adores and worships the one true and incredibly good God. Am I now straight? Am I now normal? Am I now free from same sex desires and attracted solely to women? No, no and no. My heart was changed instantaneously when I trusted in Christ and began to follow Him, but my mind was not. I now have a heart that genuinely loves God and desires to worship Him, but at the same time, I'm still utterly messed up and damaged by sin. The Lord is working in me and renewing my mind day by day, shaping me more and more into the reflection of Him that I was created to be. But it's been a process. And it will continue to be a process until I receive a new, perfect and sinless body in the age to come. When that day comes, the fullness of what Jesus purchased for me will be given to me: full freedom from every sinful thing that restrains my enjoyment and worship of God. But even now, in this messed up damaged flesh, I have experienced some change in my sexuality over the past four years. I can't deny that. And the shifting in my sexual desires is a direct result of my grace-given love for God. I've grown in my disgust of homosexual relations because I see what a twisting and perversion it is of the image of God. And I've grown in my desire for women (specifically, one woman.… I wrote about it here), and maybe even in my desire for marriage, because I see how a one man + one woman marital covenant so beautifully reflects the image of God. My growing desire for women is the overflow of a growing desire to see God's glory manifested in my life. Plain and simple. I'm not saying that I'm definitely going to get married one day. I might not. I may be single and celibate for the remainder of my sojourning in this world. But either way I will be fine and I will be joyful because my main problem has been fixed. I might not be "straight" or "normal", but I have a new heart, I have Jesus, and I have the Father. And that's all I really need. Matt Moore is a Christian blogger who was formerly engaged in a gay lifestyle. You can read more about him at www.moorematt.org.
Poster Comment: keep laughing ... the libertarian age --- is over - ending !
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#18. To: BorisY (#0)
(Edited)
Your God, even if he is not a mythical creation, is much too concerned with other aspects of the entire vast universe to intercede in the inconsequential affairs of mankind. Learn to accept your own insignificance.
You're thinking in the finite terms of a human. The Infinite has no such limitations. Have you ever attempted to meet God halfway? Or just erected The Wall so that He could not penetrate your heart? Did you ever consider the tangiable cases of intercession in which the Creator/God has indeed affected in the affairs of individual and collective mankind? We have at least one such poster here who can attest to the power of prayer of an otherwise inexplicable medical miracle. You will see him at long last. Suspecting that he might not be a "mythical creature" is a psotive step in the right direction. What would it take to ask Him to reveal Himself to you? What have you to lose? (nothing) To gain? (everything)
------------------------ What have I to lose? Answer: My disciplined mind. People such as you have already lost theirs. Everything pleasant that happens that you don't understand you arbitrarly label a God's miracle. Catastrophic things of much more importance such as the killing of millions at Auschwitz or 1,400 years of islamic barbarism, you overlook. There is no consistency to your arguments. You holy rollers are controlled by what psychiatrists term an encapsulated psychosis that has a self referencing element of circular reasoning based in perpetuated mythology which you attempt to sell to other people. Your reasoning is as warped and crazy as that of the God damned muslims. Lay down your silly mythology. Get off it. Grow up!
Why do you equate "discipline" with rigid closemindedness? Why do you fear letting go? You are readily dismissing what is the obvious (to others) -- that an entity much greater than us (God) exists...and compels us to account to him after this life. Have you considered the possibility that some external spiritual force is actually "God-Blocking" you? Or In a strange twist, that this self "discipline" you refer to is actually the loss of control of your own free will? More self-examination: Do you consider your "mind" your physical brain, or a transcendendant mode of metaphysical consciousness detached from the physical? If it's the latter, you've conceded that "you" and your essense are not connected to your physical shell. And if your mind is not connected to your physical shell, then where does your consciousness or essense or energy go upon death? "Discipline" (in your case, "pride,") is not a virtue if you reject your Maker. It's a curse. Everything pleasant that happens that you don't understand you arbitrarly label a God's miracle. Uh, no, that's you generalizing. Catastrophic things of much more importance such as the killing of millions at Auschwitz or 1,400 years of islamic barbarism, you overlook. Here you are, again circling the wagon of your rigid "consciousness" with a false sense of rationale and reason. Christians do NOT overlook tragedy, barbarism, and catastrophy. We not only acknowledge it in this world, we acknowledge the source of it: Free Will and the Father of Evil. There is no consistency to your arguments. From your perspective I suppose that's true -- especially if you are unable to understand the premise beyond your physical world and laws. There exists a world AND laws beyond this material world. Your "discipline" handicaps and prevents you from escaping beyond your false material world paradigm. You holy rollers are controlled by what psychiatrists term an encapsulated psychosis that has a self referencing element of circular reasoning based in perpetuated mythology which you attempt to sell to other people. Like those psychiatrists who are hiding their own psychoses behind their university degrees and certificates, you're projecting. It is YOU who are controlled by the circular reasoning that enslaves you to the myth that "What cannot be seen, cannot exist"; That the entire physical universe -- matter, life, conscious thought, essense -- have NO Creator, NO Designer, NO Purpose, and NO Final Justice, NO Final Reward. That my friend is illogical and nonsensical. Stop sulking because The Almighty won't kiss your azz and be summoned before you as though you were some King or Prince. Unshackle yourself from your ego and prideful self. Open your heart and tear down your wall. Demonstrate some real disciplne and humble yourself before your Creator. Before it's too late.
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