Heavy Breather
When I first visited Colorado, it was after living in the lowlands of Oklahoma for 14 years. On top of Pike’s Peak, I found myself gasping for air every few breaths. It was a simple problem that eventually passed. Yet, in the beginning each gasp for air brought on panic and anxiety. Breathing was something I had taken for granted. Something I never had to think about. Then one day, I decided to climb a mountain. After God formed Adam from the dust of the earth, the bible says in Genesis 2:7, “the LORD God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Adam’s first breath was on loan from God. It says that God breathed into Adam’s nostrils. I think about the CPR and first aid training I’ve had. Sure glad the Red Cross doesn’t perform CPR according to scripture. Can you imagine waking up to someone’s mouth firmly clasped over your nose? It would sure make movie drowning rescues a tad less romantic.
Our weekly life group lesson dealt with another kind of “breath of life”. I felt a little like Neo in the Matrix, wandering down the rabbit hole as God began to draw parallels between His breath of life for Adam and our breath of life for people. God began to unpack multiple life lessons in my head, with more twists and turns than a Game of Thrones Finale. When the dust settled, my knees were bent, my heart ached and I knew I had to consider each word carefully from here on out.
What did God teach me about the heavy consequences of my breath? He says that the tongue holds the power of life and death. Our words can lift people up or break them down. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up…”. Matthew 15:11 says that the stuff that comes out of our mouths defiles us.
God knows our infinite need for reminders along our journey on earth. That is why he consistently lays a trail of bread crumbs back to Genesis throughout the bible. He wants us to remember that first Divine breath that brought life to Adam. He challenges us to in turn to breathe life into those around us.
1 Peter 1:16 “because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” Once again God uses scripture to say, if you wanna be like me you gotta act like me. He says I have good intentions, you should, too. I gave life with My breath. Give life with yours. Jesus tells us that if we believe in Him, we will do the works He was doing, and we will do even greater works than He did. We may not have God’s super powers, but we can be super powerful if we have God.
James 3:10 “Out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing…this should not be.” I am convicted by this scripture, every time I unleash a verbal barrage of anger and disdain on tourists inside my car in traffic. I reminded of my selfish nature when someone says something that hits the “I’m Offended Lobe” in my brain and I go off.
As I contemplated this week’s lesson: think before you speak and distribute grace, not judgment with your mouth, I caught a glimpse of creation in my mind. God’s hands were still dusty from forming Adam from the ground. He was bent low over Adam, perhaps admiring His work. Then I imagine God taking in a deep breath, knowing full well the great good and bad of which Adam was capable. Knowing full well that Adam could choose to love Him or not, He never paused, He never stopped to reconsider.
He just breathed.
God chose to give life regardless of what Adam might choose or deserve. God challenged me in that moment to make the same choice. To love freely. To give life with every breath. God may have breathed life into Adam’s nostrils, but He is calling us to breathe life into the ears of the rest of creation.
"My Chosen Family"
When I was in my twenties Banana Republic came out with an ad campaign that, even for back then, pushed the envelope of societal norms. The tagline of their three page photo spread was “My Chosen Family”. Those words highlighted pictures of chiseled, male models holding hands with perky, yet elegant female models. As one turned the page there were guys holding hands with guys and girls following in their same sex steps. Those pages were life to my dead, lonely, closeted soul. It was veritable buffet of emotional porn that the enemy used to entice and ensnare simultaneously. They led me to believe I belonged somewhere. I don’t know if you are tired of hearing me pine on and on about what life was like back then, but frankly, I don’t care. Today, in a world where modern technology prevents us from being alone on a toilet for more than two seconds, people are still love starved and desperate for meaningful connection. People are still dying of interminable loneliness. I was that kid. I was that teenager. And somedays I am still that adult. A statement came to me last week that reverberated through the last 45 years of my life.
"I've never had a moment where I was alone, yet I've spent most of my life lonely."
As I hit the send button on each one of these blogs I feel like a scientist sending messages into outer space, waiting and wondering if I will get a response. There are times I know that I am sending out a literary cure for loneliness. Other times I know that I am letting someone know that Jesus has not forgotten them. That God will never leave them, forget about them or leave them alone. Then there are times that I feel this blog goes up like the Bat Signal performing multiple purposes using just one source of light.
I have been experiencing an awakening my friends. Like the feeling generated when you feel the first gust of a fall breeze or see one tiny, unexpected snowflake delivered by the wind. It has nothing to do with the physical seasons and everything to do with the spiritual season of my heart, my calling, God’s timing.
You may or may not know this, but I was born with a super sensitive heart; a blessing from God; a perceived weakness by some. I have suffered great damage to my heart and that sensitivity at the hands of family and those close to me. I couldn't choose my real family. So when the idea that I could actually belong to a loving family, a family of my choosing came along, it tripped every sensor in the “YES, PLEASE” portion of my brain.
I have long since forgiven those closest to me for the atrocities, real and perceived, that were perpetrated on me. Moving beyond the hurt feelings and the need for revenge prevented those who hurt me, from damaging me further. On the other side of forgiveness though, I emerged a different man with responses and reactions that had nothing to do with who God created me to be and more to do with the broken man shaped by the world. I spent the biggest part of my life wanting people to see me as smart, attractive, fun and accomplished. And an even bigger part investing so much time in trying to look like I had finally ARRIVED that I quickly lost sight of the journey and the ever changing destinations.
This past week as hurricane Irma devastated island after island and eventually my home state, I was safely tucked away in Oklahoma visiting my father. I was also blessed to connect with one of my oldest college friends. We hadn’t seen each other in 13 years. Our only knowledge of one another were the snippets of info and blurry pictures scattered across social media and the occasional search engine. Sitting down with my oldest friend, I was confronted with just how much life has passed me by. The passage of time revealed to me that neither one of us are the boisterous, boy crazy fools we were at Oklahoma State. I realized that out of every other person in my life, Scotty knows me better than any human on the face of the planet. That is partially because he has known me so long, but mostly because I decided long ago, he could be trusted and I let him in.
There are Sundays that I am feel like I am being more truthful than every other person in church. I can spot BS from a mile away and smell it from 5. I don’t make friends easily. I don't trust easily either. I feel like someone always has ulterior motives. I imagine that most people as characters in a bad English spy movie. I look for inconsistencies in their stories. Every once in a while the Lord leads me to good people. The Holy Spirit gives me the go ahead and I start a long and meaningful relationship. satan is always stirring up the microscopic seeds of my past to spawn a fresh batch of sh...shtuff. New people who remind us of people in our past, can often trigger old thought patterns, habits and responses. I fight daily to maintain these new relationships with the newly elected members of “my chosen family”.
Different than the people in those Banana Republic ads, the chosen family of my life nowadays are 3 dimensional. They have encountered sickness, heartache, divorce, rape and other atrocities. Some of them have been crushed under the weight of it. Their hearts may never love the same again. But the God we serve is the same yesterday, today and forever. The God we serve will always be by our side, and hold our hand even as He sees fit to allow us to walk through the fires of our everyday Hell.
I do my best to honor my father and mother as the scripture commands, but I will be damned if I will stay silent, keeping a lid on my pain and anguish, because those who have hurt me are now embarrassed by the truths that I share in the open. It is often the victims who suffers fresh, daily death, even after the perpetrators have long since forgotten their crimes.
I wrote a piece of poetry once that dripped with crimson rivers of vengeance. I would never physically harm anyone in real life, but I could murder my foes a thousand times over in my literary ramblings. When I laid down my right to vengeance and asked God for forgiveness and to cleanse my heart from the harm I had wished on my enemies, my chains fell away. For the first time, I could look long and hard into the lives of my tormentors and feel a compassion and an understanding for a life of familiar despair.
God is not my co-pilot as an 80’s bumpersticker once decreed. God is my life support system. Jesus tells me this, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." I sit here in the 2am dark of my Florida living room, praising God not that I found Him or He found me, but instead praising Him because I was never misplaced. Each and every step, each disappointment, each oopsy poopsy was known by my Father in heaven. He saw fit to allow each member of my family and my chosen family to shape, mold, chisel and sculpt the man you see before you today.
I am reminded of a song I used to sing when I was a little boy. “He’s still working on me. To make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient He must be. He’s still working on ME.” I most definitely have not arrived my friends. Some days, I hand out more apologies than accolades. Yet, as I sit here, in the wonderful space of Big Fish Ministry that my Father God provided to me as a refuge, I hear him whisper nightly to “You are My son. You are loved more than you know. You are cared for. You are my precious child. You have not been forgotten. And you will always be MY CHOSEN FAMILY. Love, Dad"
Enough Already!
I haven't posted anything in months. My apologies. I still love Jesus. I haven't decided to leave Christianity for the latest self honoring religious trend. In all honesty, I was just kind of mentally exhausted. I walked away from my gay life more than 17 years ago and instead of it getting easier to talk and share what God has done for me, the attacks and rhetoric of the "tolerant" left made it difficult to share. There are so many opinions when it comes to my story of leaving homosexuality behind to follow God's true design for my life, and then there is the simple truth. I wasn't born gay. I thank God for that. I was reminded tonight of a scripture in Psalm 139 that says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And that all God's works are wonderful. That goes head to head with what I personally know and have experienced in gay culture and gay circles. My gay life might have been pleasurable and fun for a time, but in the end it was anything, but wonderful. I had the distinct pleasure of praying with a father tonight whose son has been trying to slowly and steadily acclimate them to his gay life. The most amazing thing about this father's journey with his son, was the fact that his love for his son was so evident. The son can't see that homosexuality is not God's design for him, but with the leading of the Holy Spirit, the father sees it clearly. It was my own father's prayers that awakened my soul to the calling of the Holy Spirit. It was my father's constant battle in prayer that led me out of homosexuality and into the arms of Jesus.
I will never believe that myself or anyone was born gay. I will forever believe that God's design for men who have been led down the path to homosexuality were indeed born Artistic, Sensitive and Creative, not gay. So that brings me to the place of mental exhaustion. There are times I forget that the fight is against powers and forces in the spirit realm and not against the people being manipulated by those forces here on earth. No one likes to be called names or bullied or picked on. And the gay community has gone to great lengths to end bullying in many venues, yet they employ those same skills to stifle beliefs that conflict with theirs. A few weeks ago I was verbally berated on our neighborhood Facebook page by a woman I had never met.
We posted our ministry name and our fundraising event on the page. The lady took the time to look up our page and then post lie after lie after lie about Big Fish Ministry. I sheltered the brunt of her rage silently for most of the day and then I shared it with some close friends. The anger my friends felt for me felt good, because they know my story, my heart and they know the attack all too well. We turned our anger into prayers for the woman. Satan is the real enemy we are facing. Not some internet bully.
In high school I faced down a bully that was twice my size and used words as lethal weapons that altered the course of my life for a time. Now the only words that I choose to let alter the course of my life is the Word of God. I have been verbally assaulted and had my character maligned more by men and women of the gay community, because of my testimony than I was ever assaulted when I was gay by straight people. It's always interesting to me that the full initials of the gay community include a Q for "Questioning", but when you question the presence of homosexuality in your life like I did, and decide for God and against gay, the claws and insults come out.
This latest issue about transgender bathroom rights is less about transgender rights and more about altering the course of God's design and will for our gender. Isn't it interesting that the very principles that God laid down in the book of Genesis regarding gender and marriage are the very things under attack today by satan. The gay community is composed of men and women just like the "straight" community. Satan works through people, places and things. The gay community isn't the enemy, but they are being used by the enemy to alter God's design for man.
I find it interesting that the transgender community is more interested in having an entire nation honor their "rights", but show almost no concern for the implications that open restrooms are going to have on children. At the end of the day, it isn't about gay, transgender or individual rights. It's about the selfish nature of the human heart steeped in sin and in need of Jesus. There is the mentality that "I want what I want when I want it and you had better not tell me No. No one tells me No, because I have a right." If you tell me NO, you are a bigot, a hater. You aren't a Christian, because God is love and if you aren't loving me by letting me have everything I want in life then you are wrong.
From having lived as a gay man for most of my life, I know the rampant immaturity of the gay community. It is a vast network of men and women who have been hurt and rejected by the world and in some ways are working daily to make sure that those who have hurt them will never hurt them again. The only problem with that is that "Hurt people, hurt people." As the vast majority of gay men do, I grew up without a meaningful connection with my father. I was blessed in that my father, though distant, was a Christian. He loved me and reached out even when I was full of piss and vinegar toward him. He prayed even when the life I was living gave him no hope.
So as it stands now, I am done being exhausted by the bullies in the gay community. I am a voice for truth and hope for those men and women trapped in their gay lives by the one way, intolerant rhetoric of the gay agenda. God has challenged me to set the captives free and proclaim freedom for those stuck in the prison walls. Alan Chambers may have shuttered Exodus International, but the truth of God will not be silenced by any man regardless of how influential. Change is still possible. Freedom from homosexuality is still possible. God is in the business of changing the hearts and lives of men.
The last time I posted a blog on this topic, I tried to boost it on Facebook. The Facebook powers that be refused to allow me to boost it due to it's graphic nature. I shouldn't be surprised. Facebook is not a Christian based group. Even talking to my friend in North Carolina who shared the truth of the Bathroom Legislation, I found out a truth that the liberal media blocked all of us from hearing. I'm done with the censorship. I'm done with the lies, slander and victimization myself and other "ex-gays" like me receive from groups that cry out "OFFENSE OFFENSE" whenever someone speaks that truth of God's word. If those of us who know the truth refuse to stand up for it, regardless of the backlash, then we can't complain when everything goes to crap.
My name is Matthew Aaron Walker and in December of 1998, I walked away from a gay life with help of Jesus Christ. He has the same legacy for you my friend. Homosexuality is not God's design for your life. There is a way out and His name is Jesus.