Retrospective Encouragement.

I've just been reading a old notebook/ journal type thing that I was writing in this time last year, when I got baptised and went to Soul Survivor for the first time. It was a pretty intense period in my life; everything was moving very fast, being a Christian was scary and exciting and totally fresh and new, and although I had by no means forgotten that I was gay (on the contrary really, I'd come out to my church and at one point was terrified that God was going to take my sexuality away from me - but that's another story), I'd started to find a way to live as Christian without acknowledging who I was, not living as a gay Christian perhaps but as a Christian who occasionally had feelings and thoughts about the same sex.

I guess it's because back then I didn't have a girlfriend, whereas now I do. Back then, as I finished a very sexualised and negative relationship God came storming back into my life, so maybe I think I associated the fact that that relationship had ended with God's new intentions for me. 

Now, I have a girlfriend. A wonderful girlfriend, who seems very much a part of me now as anything else. She is the gay side to me; not that she isn't involved in the Christian side of me, but that is also a whole other story - it's her story, really. 

However, this is the challenge that I now face, which is completely different to the problems I started out with last year. I am now living as two halves, trying to make them fit together and find bridges to make them work as a team. So far, it's going okay. 

Reading back though, I did come across a few verses I'd made a note of that took me almost by surprise. It's funny, you tend to expect reading back across something you've written that you won't find anything new, just old, preserved memories, but these verses that must have impacted me last year have still struck a chord with me now, sitting in my room a year on from then. That's the beauty of the Bible, right there; the majority of it is always, always relevant, and God can use it so much to talk to you and bring you back to things that you'd discarded or forgotten about. With God's Word, we are in a continual process of learning and sharing, so I thought I'd just share these verses with you.

'We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future,nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And who can argue with that? It is clear here, that God does not expect to judge each other, or keep others from knowing the love of Christ because we believe they shouldn't - that is not our right. Indeed, there is nothing of this earth or of the spiritual realms that can keep us from knowing God's unconditional and merciful love.So, speaking as a lesbian with a Christian faith, there can be absolutely nothing that stops me from knowing and experiencing the love of God, and I should neither be afraid that I can ever be separated from me because of how I feel or act. That firm belief is easier said than actually believed, but there is the truth of it.