The realities of the trip Kathy and I are taking later next week are hitting me one by one.  They are realities, yes, but what I face with them is fear/anxiety.  I am glad God is having me face them with Him ahead of time.  It hit me last Thursday that when I go to this training I will be sitting with people who are mostly there for their overcoming  of homosexuality.  It will be the first time in my life I’ve consciously been in a group of this nature.  I simply wouldn’t do something like this not so long ago.  As I’ve wrestled with the idea of it the past couple days God has been showing me His Purpose for it.

This morning’s reading in Isaiah, chapters 35-41, I’ve seen how God honors man when man is honoring Him.  This is shown in His driving the Assyrians away having killed 185,000 of them in the process as they had besieged Jerusalem.  Also, it is shown to King Hezekiah as God granted him 14 additional years of life.  These were done because Hezekiah had been faithful to God in following His commands for living and leading Judah.

In all of this God has been showing me several things I’ve needed to process.  First and foremost, obey God’s commands.  Secondly and more tenderly, God loves everyone of His children no matter how lost they may be in their selfish living.  I have been a victim of homosexuality in my younger life and have had a very skewed view of it from this.  In my younger years I literally thought of it as a crime, similar to rape,  rather than simply a choice of sexual activity.  God’s word defines this choice as a sin and His Holy Spirit convicts us of our sinfulness.  Now I will be meeting and mingling with people just like me who have struggled with their sinfulness and have found victory over it.  They are gathering to find skills in assisting others who seek their freedom from the bondage of sin.  God has taken away the picture of crime and replaced it with one of man yearning freedom.  I know this yearning and can easily join in.

God prepares each of us to do what He asks us to do with and for Him.  This time I want to do it without my past fear.  Christ’s work on the Cross of Calvary paid this price, paved the way to eternity with Him and is now commissioning to join Him.  His Gift of God’s Holy Spirit is within.  I want to be fully open to His Leadership within.  Praise be to God my Father.