Now you may think that you are alone in the world, but you are not. There are thousands of Christians all over the world who are gay and have or are facing the exact same thing you are facing. In fact God has a plan for those people.
Jeremiah 23:3-4 says:
I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the LORD.
I recently had a friend tell me that along the upper east coast of the United States people don’t even admit publicly that they are Christians. This is because of the ridicule and abuse. They will be hounded to the fullest extent of legal persecution if they confess their love for the one true God.
But on the other hand about sixty-nine percent of the people who live in this country profess to be Christian. So who is doing the persecuting? That means that thirty-one percent of the people is striking fear into the hearts of the other sixty nine percent. Unfortunately, that is not true. Christians are the only ones who shoot their wounded. Not only do you have to defend yourself from the non-Christians of the world, but you have to defend yourself from other Christians as well. There shouldn’t be an us and them mentality, but there is. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” Galatians 3:28. God is not going to differentiate between us and them. As far as God is concerned there is only saved and unsaved.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. In order to learn how to be a remnant, we must first learn who we are, what we are doing, where we are going, when to move, why we do the things we do, and how we are going to survive. It is the five basic questions we must always ask ourselves. As with anything in this life the answers can be found in the word of God and through prayer.
We are the remnants, the survivors. Many of us have been abused by the church and by the world in general. I think that is why gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people have some many mental problems. It’s because they are told throughout their whole entire lives they are an abomination, that they are sick, perverted and God only knows what else. As Christians we are a people who love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. While I was doing research for this series I came across literally hundreds of websites that went on and on about homosexuals and how they should be quarantined, killed or worse. Most of those websites were sponsored by groups who call themselves Christians. It made me physically ill just to look at them. Looking toward a future without God is looking at a vast empty wasteland without love, acceptance or peace. No wonder we get depressed we all the negative stuff out there pointed in our direction.
Since I came out, I’ve had many people tell me many times that other Christians are not the enemy. Satan making them believe we are the enemy is our downfall. You would think the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but unfortunately that is not the real way of the world. However, Satan is your primary concern. John 10:10 says “The thief (Satan referred to in earlier verses) comes to kill, steal and destroy…”
For the majority of us, we knew when we were children there was something different about us. But many of us were raised in Christian homes and we can’t let go of the loving parent God we were raised by. Others of us have found a love in God we never knew existed anywhere else. We knew were different when we were children but speaking from my own personal experience, I knew that I was a child of God long before I knew that I was gay. I was five years old and it was a warm summer night. My cousins and I were outside playing a game that was a cross between hide and seek and tag. I was alone in the front yard with my youngest aunt and I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Something was happening with the moon.
One of the things I loved most as a child was Warner Brothers cartoons. Sylvester the cat and Tweety Bird were not my favorites, but in almost every cartoon with those two characters, the bird would have his cage sitting on the floor of an upstairs room. The cat would stack a bunch of chairs or boxes or whatever it took to get to the ceiling of the floor below and take a regular saw and shove it through the boards. The view from the upstairs room would be just the saw blade going up and down and around a circle with the birdcage in the center. What I saw that night was a saw blade moving around the perimeter of the moon leaving a small edge along the outside and cutting out the middle.
Once the circle was complete the center of the moon fell away and dropped into the pasture across the street from my grandparents’ house. There inside the center of the moon was Jesus. Oddly enough he looked exactly like the picture of Jesus that hung in my grandmother’s house for my whole entire life.
Jesus did not smile or move, but I knew he was alive. The sense of peace, not to mention the awe and the wonder I felt at that exact moment is something I have searched to regain every second of every day since that night. And I knew. At that exact moment, something that I did not even begin to comprehend exploded in my young brain. I was special. Jesus loved me, just like the song said.
I just had an epiphany as I was writing this. My adult life has been plagued with frustration and insecurities. Day after day I have struggled constantly with a battle within myself and with the rest of the world to prove that I am special and that I am worthy. It just occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons I have had to struggle is because Jesus loved me so much that he revealed himself to me when I was a child, and ever since I have almost dared everyone who comes into contact with me to live up to that standard. And because Jesus revealed himself to me, I became an instant target of Satan and his minions. What I know must not be revealed. This is how bad your enemy is, how totally evil. Your enemy will declare war on a five year old child and destroy that child.
So if Satan will declare war on a five-year-old child don’t hesitate to think that he’s going to go after you. Keeping you depressed and suicidal and unhappy is the best way to destroy you. Getting up and getting out and participating in life will make Satan howl in rage and frustration, and what better way to get back at your enemy than to dance on his grave?
Journalist and one-time disc jockey and stand-up comedian Stacy Reynolds began writing at an early age and is the author of the thriller The Sound of Silence. She graduated from Southwest Texas State with a degree in English and journalism and settled in Austin, Texas.