Why did my victory take 40 years? (As a popular saying goes, hindsight is always 20/20.) Nevertheless, in my case, the struggle was perpetuated by fear. And since age six, I began to see its paralyzing effects: I was conservative in my beliefs; and due to my struggle with homosexual thoughts and feelings, I became too self-loathing to trust other people because I was fearful of receiving a negative response if they even suspected what I was going through, much less disclose it to anyone. And if they were unable to resolve my concerns, I believed they might have thought less of me. Also, in that regard, unfortunately, I had a similar apprehension about trusting the Holy God. If I had turned to Him (sooner), I now know He would have understood; but, in fact, I had felt more ashamed to ask a sinless God for help. What would He have thought of me? And this thought pattern did not significantly improve over many years.
And even though I had suspected that homosexual thoughts and feelings were invalid and unacceptable, I didn’t know how to stop them from occurring. At times, I felt the answer was a mystery but that my silence could protect me, by hopefully buying enough time to resolve the matter on my own. Nevertheless, in that situation, my ongoing distrust only further perpetuated my silence in a continual cycle of fear and shame. Fortunately, I now know that God’s grace is sufficient for me; and despite His unlimited power, He is also Love personified: because God will not despise a broken and contrite heart. (See Psalm 51:17, KJV.) Ultimately, my 40-year struggle was based in needless fear, as this scripture notates: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7, New King James Version (NKJV).
I can see the benefits of my not turning to another person regarding my struggle (and potentially doing more harm than good by burdening another mere human with such a complex spiritual dilemma, as neither neighbors nor anyone else I knew of were famous for resolving such problems); but as I later discovered, turning to God was exactly what I needed to do. Nevertheless, I recall the account in the first chapter of the Bible Book of Genesis, where Adam routinely had fellowship with God and communed with Him; and I also read that Adam and Eve later hid from God as a result of their sin, (as I now realize that I had effectively done for 40 years).
However, I cried out to God when it became impractical to maintain my distance from Him: There came a point in my life when I required real relationships: I needed to be taken seriously and didn’t want to feel crippled in my efforts to have a genuine connection with others. Also, I now believe God has always worked behind the scenes to produce that breaking point for me: that moment in my spiritual maturity when I had to break free from what perplexed me to obtain what I needed to know from Him in order to achieve my breakthrough to an improved relationship with Him. In short, my victory took 40 years because I was fearful and hid from everyone, including God, the only one who could tell me how to triumph over homosexual anxiety. And it was only when I turned to Him with unwavering determination to see my problem resolved, that I received His grace, wisdom, and mercy, which lead to my astounding breakthrough.
The saying holds true that, “Hindsight is always 20/20,” because I realize, now, that I was wrong to question whether God would understand if I confessed to Him my struggles with homosexual thoughts and feelings, (which I then believed were equivalent to “being” a homosexual). But God knew exactly how to comfort me and instantly dispelled my fears about this issue, (even before I could utter a word to Him in Person about it). I believed up to seconds before He arrived to help me that this was a mammoth issue, but I deduced from what God said that I had misunderstood the entire matter.
Additionally, in that process of receiving His wisdom, God completely protected my heart by dealing gently with me and assuring me of ultimate rewards for compliance and ultimate punishment for non-compliance with His will concerning the matter. In His honest and kind way, after revealing the solution, God clearly communicated that the choice was mine. He gave me something of value to reclaim and defend i.e. my gender, which He stated was a loving gift from Him right from the start. Therefore, I felt informed and enlightened as someone would when given all of the sober facts. And I left that experience knowing that God truly cares; and He does all things well.
Therefore, I have proven to myself over a period of decades that sinfulness is not solvable solely by individual human efforts. Further, God was faultless in that between Satan, Adam, and Eve, sin entered the world. But sin had profoundly significant effects on all involved, including Adam, Eve, all of their children, God’s entire Earthly creation, and God, Himself, in the Person of Christ Jesus, who came to Earth to die for all sins and to restore His creation back to its original sinless state for those who trust and believe in Him. Therefore, my prayer is that regardless of the nature of human individuals’ sins, let all those who trust and believe in Jesus, (who is God), be redeemed from sin by His sacrificial blood and receive all of God’s grace and blessings today and forevermore.