I was sitting in a daycare room with a church member who has become a friend and my youth president's wife. In a split second, I decided to take a step of honesty for the first time in twenty-four years. I sat there and spoke the words " I am struggling with sexual desires." At that moment, I was feeling ashamed, I was feeling embarrassed and all of a sudden I wanted to get up, walk out of the room, walk out of the church, walk out of the city and never look back. There was no way I can face the people in that church ever again let alone the people in that room. Forget them, I will not be able to live with myself. I willingly decided to be vulnerable with people I cannot fully trust but I knew they were the people I had to talk with.
I thought that was the last of it. I thought after I spoke those words the Lord will take my Spirit and kick me down to the pits of hell because I was filled with ungodly thoughts and desires. I mean if He did not take my spirit well I for sure I lost my "Christian' title and will always be stared at whenever I spoke or went to church. In all honesty, my youth president's wife had more questions and I remember feeling like yelling at her because at that moment I did not practice giving more information about my issue but here I was expected to give details to the skeletons in my closet. To be honest, if it were my closest friends in that room I would still feel some type of embarrassment and shame because I was making myself vulnerable to someone else other than the mini-copies of me in my mind.
In my previous post, I shared four building blocks that I found necessary to my growth in Christianity. Today I will be focusing on the 3 ways of honesty I find essential to help us grow our faith and relationship with God. Each one of them was present in the real-life scenario I just shared. The first one is, be honest with yourself.
Be Honest With Yourself
Growing up, I always loved physical human connection ( I am that friend that will randomly play with your ear or hair or give a random hug) and I guess somewhere along the journey my experiences mixed with my personality and it became lust. All of a sudden, the love of physical human connection was no longer an innocent trait but it became an action to fill in the lonely nights, a conversation to bring intimacy or a feeling to help me feel important. I never took a minute to think about the problems I just knew, it felt wrong and so I kept it from others and eventually I kept it from myself. I believe repression is the biggest issue that inhibited growth for me and might be the same for you. There might be something you went through or you are going through right now that you are avoiding and therefore you tuck it away in the red closet of your mind.
Hiding away from my needs and desires did not help me in any way. Yes, I call it needs and desires because I also had to learn that wanting to be loved is not a sin, wanting to have a physical and emotional connection with another person is not wrong at all but doing it out of a marriage and not having self-control is what made it wrong. Changing our mindset on our secrets is very important because we see our secrets as destructive weapons to shame us and destroy us. Society makes us feel like if we were to admit we struggle with pornography, we are alcoholics and have violent tendencies then something is definitely wrong with us and we are on the outside. The thing is, everyone has their own problem that they are struggling with. The difference between us is some people choose to face and acknowledge their problems while others decide to run away from them.
Being honest with yourself helps you know what you are working with. If we do not name our sins we can never bring them before God for him to forgive us or heal us from it. We cannot expect to grow if we do not admit where we are currently standing. Growing is a relative thing, you have to know where you were to appreciate and acknowledge that you are getting better. I had to have that awkward moment where I told myself "I struggle with lust and pornography." You cannot gain victory in a battle if you do not know you are in a battle. So, face yourself and call out that giant, give it a name and do not run from it but stand your ground.
A while back I read Hebrews 4:14-16 I loved it, especially in The MSG version. It says God came on earth went through weakness and testing so he can help us when help is needed. We need to know when we need help so God can come in and help us stand our ground and be victorious in our moments of weakness.
Be Honest With Your Community
It took me a year to go from whispering to myself " I struggle with lust and pornography" to sitting in that room and telling two people my struggles. Oh, boy was that year a struggle! God placed a burden on my heart that now that I have acknowledged this problem, I had to speak it to someone. Though it was not a question my response for the whole year was "Hell naw!". I did not see why I had to go and make myself vulnerable to someone who can take that information and shame me. Telling myself was different and safe but telling someone else was just stupid.
Let us be honest, saying this to a church member is like you killing someone and going to the cops and telling them "I killed someone". No one does that, except the person filled with guilt. That is the thing, we have a hard time facing our struggles because it comes with shame and guilt but telling ourselves does not help us overcome the shame it just helps us learn to sit in the shame. When you speak your truth, you get a grip on it rather than it having a grip on you, it brings freedom. That is why speaking to someone is important.
There are many aspects of speaking your sins that I love. The first one is we get to apply the concept of grace to ourselves and others and we allow others to apply grace to us. Grace is receiving something you did not deserve and the biggest example of that in our life is God dying for us. The second biggest grace we can have in our life is forgiving ourselves when we do not deserve to be forgiven. Learning to wake up every day, talk positively to yourself and not shame yourself are you giving grace to yourself. Once you can see yourself through the lens of God's eyes and accept grace for yourself you can then apply grace to someone else. Telling someone I have lustful struggles was a humbling moment for me before God and before them but it made it so much easier to hear someone else's struggle and embrace them.
Second, it allows for the body of Christ to do what the body of Christ is meant to do, support each other. When we are hiding ourselves and not being honest with each other how in the world are we helping each other grow when we do not know where we are at. We cannot pull someone aside and tell them to stop what they are doing because we have not built an environment for that. Even if we did the person being spoken to will not have a receiving heart because the best way to lead and advise someone is by example. Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness but a sign of growth, it is a sign of someone's maturity level. Breaking those ice is allowing God to come into the broken places and mend it. We are not meant to be perfect because then we would not need God, we are meant to be flawed.
Be Honest With God
What I love and hate is, once you see your flaws you realize how much more you need God to live the life He desires for you. All of a sudden the gap became bigger and that draws you closer to God. As I said, we are not meant to be perfect. God has no business creating perfect people because then they would not need Him and that contradicts the fact that God wants to have a relationship with us. He wants us to see that we need Him and want Him so He created within us an empty space that only He can fill. If we were being honest again, most of our struggles derive from us trying to fill in that space.
Throughout the Bible, God has said multiple times that we should come to Him if we need something, if we need wisdom, if we are weary and if we are thirsty. To go to God we need to present to Him our brokenness and allow Him to touch us and transform us. The key here is touch. If I told you I have a broken cup and want you to fix it but never brought you the cup, would you be able to fix it? No, because you do not have the cup. The same thing with God, He knows we are broken but He needs us (more like wants us) to bring that brokeness in His hands, at his feet, on His lap just give it to Him and leave it there.
I would be lying if I continued talking and did not mention I struggle with the "leave it there". How many times have you prayed for something and felt relieved for a minute but then as soon as you were done praying you were still stressing about it? A whole lot more than I want to admit. This where I learnt that praying about it does not mean you would not stress about it, it just means when you do fight it with faith. Remind yourself that you prayed about this issue, your father heard you and is working on it.
Have an honest talk with God. Tell Him about the guy that turned you on, tell him about the moment you accidentally hurt someone out of anger or when you got too drunk the last time you went out with your friends. He already knows, he is just waiting for us to trust him with our hurt. I got to say, the moments where I did trust God, it felt great! I hope this helped you because I know it helped me this morning. Feel free to go talk to a friend of God or have an honest moment with yourself. What are you struggling with? Where are you hurting and can need support? We are all in this run together.
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