My Coming Out
Ok. This may upset some. I may be called a heretic, wrong, crazy liberal, socialist. I have been called all of those and worse, but I need to say it. I have hinted at this in some of my blogs, not out right and said it. Today I will say it.
The best way to say it is just to say it.
Just come out, say it, don’t beat around the bush.
I believe and support the full rights of gay people.
As a Jesus follower, I will stand up and support any and every measure to give you every right that everyone else has. To limit any one person or group’s rights in a free society is to compromise the rights and dignity of all people. The sooner we realize this, the sooner our world will be healed.
This past weekend in Maryland the presiding priest of a funeral walked out as the deceased woman’s daughter delivered the eulogy. The priest refused to give the graveside blessing just because the daughter is gay. I can say in all honesty that the priest was wrong to do this.
I believe that Jesus shakes his head in utter disgust at that priest and anyone else who does such reprehensible things. Jesus didn’t give a list of the people who we are to love Jesus said love, love others, love everyone as he has loved us we are to love others.
I believe our religious values and beliefs support equality for all. That intimate relationship is a blessing and gift from God. That a loving God would not want anyone in the closet, God would want us to be authentic to who we are at the deepest level of our being. I believe that love demands compassion for others, for everyone. Honesty and integrity are sacred; coming out as who we really are and living as who God made us to be is to worship and praise the God of the universe with our lives, to be a living sacrifice. Inequality and conforming to someone else’s ideal of normal is an offense to God.
I believe that God is saying to gay men and women the same thing he is saying to everyone. In Brennan Manning’s words: God loves you as you are and not as you should be! Do you believe this? That God loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity, and infidelity, that He loves you in the morning sun and the evening rain, that He loves you without caution, regret, boundary, limit, or breaking point?
God loves everyone! No matter who we are or the person we chose to spend our lives with. God cares more about our character than if we conform to society’s preconceived notions of who we should be. The Gospel makes people uncomfortable. The Gospel is this: the Creator and King of the universe became human and died on a Roman cross to reconcile all of creation to Him. Jesus died for everyone so that everyone can live as he did for the glory of God.
This is what Jay Bakker, the son of Son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, said, “The more I follow grace, the more I’m drawn to God, the more I’m willing to stand up for people being persecuted … This sounds so churchy, but I felt like God spoke to my heart and said ‘homosexuality is not a sin’. I’m pro-gay marriage. I don’t believe that that’s a sin.”
As someone who believes that Jesus died for our sins, that God really loves me and wants a relationship with me, as someone who really wants to follow Jesus I will stand up for love in whatever form it manifests. I will stand up for everyone’s right to be who they are and to live as their authentic self.
This is my coming out as someone who will stand up and with you!
If others are bullying you, if others are making you feel inferior know that I stand up and with you, know that I am with you. That Jesus is with us and Jesus showed us on the cross, love always has the last word.
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Godwrestler 
The woman caught in adultery
“Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman,
“Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
– John 8:11
The empowerment to “go and sin no more” is in “Neither do I condemn you”
People got it in reverse they say “Go and sin no more” then we “will not condemn you”
Let us draw near to Jesus. We cannot change ourselves. Jesus can!
Let the true grace of God manifest in us! in Jesus name.
Religion, Principle, Good works, becoming a disciple, does not saved us.
Jesus is the only one who can save us.
Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshua (ישוע) , or in Greek Soteria (σωτηρία)
there is so much to tell… I really recommend this site to you
grace and peace
I’m right there with you, godwrestler – thank you!
“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27 NASB). There are many things that are part of human nature. When we allow those things to divide us on whether or not a person should be loved and treated with respect we are letting the foolish things shame us. On the other hand, Paul talks about the struggle between our fleshly desires and God’s desires for us at great length in Romans 7. I believe many things are in our human nature, but we are not supposed to be living to our human natures, which have been affected by sin, we are supposed to be living for God’s nature.