It’s in our stories, movies, and legends. In Shakespeare’s MacBeth, Edgar Allan Poe’s Telltale Heart, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. We feel it in our bones. It’s in our DNA. When we’re guilty, we desperately want to come clean. Can you relate? Maybe you have a loved one who is struggling against being honest with her sin. Maybe you’re carrying something from your past that you’ve never told...
A Simple Practice for Those in Need of Mercy
Sometimes those of us who need God’s mercy most impede its flow. So instead of an outpour, we receive just a few drops. This is sad, but sadder still is when we then believe a trickle of mercy is all God wants to give us. Years ago, after telling a spiritual mentor about how I’d viewed pornography again, he recommended we go to God together so I could confess my sin directly to Him...
Knowing Him
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ~ Ephesians 6:12 If you are anything like me, you may have read a particular passage of Scripture several times in the course of your life; then one day you read it again, and it’s as if you see it...
Peter’s Testimony
What follows is a part of my life’s story. Its importance lies in it’s primal aspect and God’s will to redeem it. Although there are other parts of my 43 year (and counting) story, none has yet been so instrumental in showing the significance of the whole or in imparting integrity to the man that I am becoming. I came into the world to two delighted parents. My mother and father had beautiful...
The Journey through Lesbianism
Where are we headed on the journey through lesbianism? You might be surprised (or relieved) that it is not automatically to marriage, a family, and a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence! Rather, we are headed in the same direction as every other Christian – towards Jesus Christ! Our journey is to become more like Him in our thoughts, words, actions, and relationships. This process is...
The Blessings of Temptation
Temptation, testing, trials—three T’s—are all quite closely related. Each involves going through a difficult experience that may have a good or a bad outcome. We all face them—perhaps Christians more than others—and it is probably safe to say we wish they weren’t a part of our lives. In fact, we ask God to “lead us not into temptation” whenever we say the Lord’s Prayer. In a recent article I...