ot many people like confrontation. I like to think that I am one of the few, but in reality I only like the confrontations that I feel like I have some ground on my opponent. I like the confrontations that I enter knowing that I will come away satisfied, puffed up. The truth is that when a real, life-sized, dangerous confrontation comes along, I shrink.
Our walks of faith as men who struggle with same-sex attraction are in need of a very threatening confrontation daily. Lest we fall prey to the lusts of our flesh, gawking at every attractive man who passes by or secretively fantasizing alone, we are in need of confrontation. We need God to confront us in our sinful nature- before, during and after we sin. Without inviting God to confront us in our sin, we lack the reason for our thirst for sobriety. Without the honest confrontation of God as all who He is, we become inward and caught up in our own efforts and failures. Without a true confrontation daily between we as sinners and a holy God, we will never be sober.
What does honest, often confrontation with God look like?
- Pray for conviction often. Even if you don’t feel like you need conviction. Maybe you are doing really well lately in regards to lust, masturbation and pornography. Maybe you are really struggling every day and are trying your best to hold onto an hour of sobriety, an hour of freedom. Whatever your situation, pray that your conviction would not weaken. Pray that God, in his holiness would share with you his heart which is grieved by our waywardness. Every act of repentance calls for celebration. Conviction is necessary for sobriety and if you feel like you aren’t convicted by your sins anymore, ask for conviction often.
- Invite God to be everything He claims to be. Read Scripture often enough to never stop finding reasons to be amazed with the Lord and who He is in the midst of your struggle with same-sex attraction. Feeling alone in your struggle? Accept his faithfulness. Feeling hopelessly addicted? Accept that He is powerful and mighty to save you from your sin. Feel like homosexual desire is outside of God’s compassion? He came for you, loves you, and will see his work in you through to the end.
- Confront God honestly. A difficult thing to overcome with same-sex attraction, even more so same-sex pornography, is the need to keep our struggle private and hidden. Even if we are desperate for community and thirst for brotherhood, we are bound by our embarrassment often and shackled by our fears of rejection. In bringing our sins before God, in all of their specificity and frequency, we honor God by entrusting Him with our daily salvation. The confrontation will not be pleasant but will leave you with the peace of being forgiven, reborn, saved.
I pray that you will confront God now and often. He isn’t comfortable to confront and He is definitely an imposing God, but our confrontation with Him leads to our recognition of Him as always inviting, always forgiving, always re-creating. Be free, brothers. Confront Him now.