Letter to My Past (Gay) Self
Dear Raphael, I am you in 10 years’ time. Before I say anything else, I want you to know that you’re deeply loved by God and you’re very precious to Him. You are the apple of His eye (Psalm 17:8).
Raphael enjoys reading and writing, and experiences them as means of connecting with the Word too beautiful for words. He believes there's no such thing as having too many books. Having been led by Jehovah-Rapha to journey out of brokenness toward wholeness, he is passionate about bringing God’s healing to others, so that the brokenhearted can become wholehearted in loving God and people with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. He's also crazy about cheeses, but his greatest love is still Jesus.
Dear Raphael, I am you in 10 years’ time. Before I say anything else, I want you to know that you’re deeply loved by God and you’re very precious to Him. You are the apple of His eye (Psalm 17:8).
When I was a much younger Christian, I was taught that feelings were unreliable.
It was past midnight. I was with the guy I had liked for more than a year. We had just left a gay bar and, for some reason, started to talk about Christianity and homosexuality. We were both Christians, but he and I held different views on this matter.
For some seven years of my life, I longed to be in a romantic relationship almost every single day. I imagined that a relationship would bring me someone who truly knew and loved me, and vice versa.
Despite being Christian for almost 22 years, I never liked nor knew how to pray for the better part of those two decades. I’d always think, “Why do I need to pray when God already knows everything?”
The more I came to understand what repentance really is, the more I realised that it is, in fact, a wonderful gift by God to us. Here are some reasons why.
Many of us wish we could hear God speak to us the way He spoke to Samuel. But while most—if not all—of us won’t get to hear God’s voice in such a clear way, there are a few things we can glean from this account on how to recognize God’s voice.
We know this saying well: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) But why? Isn’t that counter-intuitive? After all, when you give, you deplete your own resources—be it physical, monetary, or emotional.
“Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have,” writes the American poet Mary Oliver. This was a line that resonated with me for several years.
YMI (which stands for Why Am I?), is a platform for Christian young people all over the world to ask questions about life and discover their true purpose. We are a community with different talents but the same desire to make sense of God’s life-changing word in our everyday lives.
YMI is a part of Our Daily Bread Ministries.
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible,
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