The only key!

The Cross had the Final Word

I remember from a very early age struggling with my identity and being uncomfortable with my sexuality. I found it challenging to relate to girls and felt deeply intimidated by boys. Although I was a girl, I desperately wanted to be a boy. It would be safer and easier, I concluded. Boys seem to have all the fun and none of the pressures. It wasn’t safe being a girl in my family. Our family had a history of drug use, alcohol, gambling, violence and sexual abuse. I even remember praying that I would fall asleep and wake up as a boy. When I reached my teenage years, this struggle with my identity and sexuality only intensified. My struggle to fit in turned into anxiety, fear, and deep feelings of rejection, and emotional abandonment as I desperately craved a female connection that was never nurtured in the mother-daughter bond.

The first time I heard the word gay I felt appalled by the notion of it. I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, and despite my mom having male friends who were gay, inside, I knew something about it was just wrong. Yet looking back, I can see that there was a sense of curiosity about it also. It was after graduating high school and with the rise of the internet in the 1990s and home computers that I found a place to explore my curiosity.

The first time I went into a Lesbian chat room, I was hooked. Before long, I was making friends with people who identified themselves as gay and lesbian and found myself for the first time fitting in and feeling accepted. I thought I had finally discovered who I was and where I belonged, and found myself engaging in one sinful relationship after another, all the while falling deeper and deeper into the grip of homosexuality as my mind became more darkened. What started as curiosity turned into a 30-year lifestyle of homosexuality.

Everything changed for me one morning as I was sitting in the den of the home I shared with my then lesbian partner of 10 years. It was after the usual long night of drugs, drinking, and debauchery. As I sat in the den that morning, staring aimlessly at the television, I had an overwhelming sense that everything about my life and about myself was all wrong. I felt a bottomless emptiness, as if something was dreadfully missing inside. Though I periodically read the Bible, sometimes prayed, and was active in the Gay Church we attended, reading the Bible now brought a sense of shame, guilt, and conviction that hadn’t been there before.

My twin sister had been a Christian for many years by then, so I began to talk to her about the things I was reading in the Bible. I now realize that she was the only real Christian I knew and that God had been preparing her for this time when I would need her help. As we talked about Jesus, she patiently answered my questions and shared her own personal experience of the love and forgiveness of Jesus in her own life. As I listened to my sister and read my bible, I became increasingly convicted and aware of my own sins, shame, and guilt. Eventually, the conviction and guilt became too much to live with. I realized that I could no longer continue in the life of sin that had defined me for so many decades. I left my partner, left the Gay church, and no longer identified myself as Lesbian.

I wish I could say things got better for me at that point, but I can’t. Though I was no longer living in sexual sin nor identifying myself as gay, I still wasn’t free. I carried an immense weight of guilt and shame, fear and anxiety, and a consuming sense that God was intensely angry with me and resentful towards me because of the shameful things I had done for so many years. I felt lost inside, as if I had no place in the world I belonged to. I knew I couldn’t return to a life of sin, but I was too ashamed to move forward with God. No matter how much I read my Bible, prayed, and threw myself into self-created acts of atonement, I could never get rid of the shame and guilt which only deepened as I continued to fall into one sin trap after another.

Desperate for relief, I began searching online for support for ex-homosexuals. That’s when I discovered a course designed to help people overcome various sin struggles through the power of the Gospel. The intense focus on the Gospel graciously led my hurting heart to the Cross of Jesus. I came to understand that salvation was the reason Jesus came into the world. He came to lift my burden of sin, my burden of guilt, and my load of shame. He came into the world to bear all of it in His own body and to nail His body to the cross; “Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.” Hebrews 12:5

As I was carefully guided down the road of Calvary to the hill of the Cross, layer after layer of guilt and shame were being lifted. I was gently being made to see that, though I had spent my entire life hating Jesus with my sins, rejecting Him, and encouraging others to do the same, He came into the world and spent His entire life loving me and suffering for me to the point of dying for me on the Cross.

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45

The layers of guilt and shame that were being taken off of me had been laid on Jesus as He died on the cross. As each new terrible but beautiful vision of the Cross was unfolding, my heart was being crushed by guilt and won over by His love at the same time. The agonizing stripes across His back demonstrated his love; His blood mingled with sweat and hair from the thorny crown violently thrust onto His head was the demonstration of His love. His gaping wounds, made by iron nails that pierced His hands, His feet, and His tears of compassion and pity that flowed from His eyes, demonstrated His love for me.

“Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.” Lamentations 1:12

In the devastation of Jesus' sufferings on the Cross, I found the place where I could finally cast off my burden of guilt and the weight of all my shame. The condemnation that should have been mine was given to Him. God’s wrath was emptied on Him. That meant there was none left for me.

“This is what your Sovereign LORD says, your God, who defends his people: “See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that made you stagger; from that cup, the goblet of my wrath, you will never drink again.” Isaiah 51:22

This was crucial for me to grasp and believe. Knowing that God was no longer angry with me, resentful, or disappointed in me was life-changing!

Jesus got my death, my condemnation, my guilt, and I get God!

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God”. . .1 Peter 3:18

This was astonishing love! Stunning love! love that completely knocked me off my feet. He transformed His identity into sin, and was put to death for me, so that I can now identify myself as His dear child. Such sacrificing and selfless love for this wretched sinner was the freedom that my captive heart needed. The Cross of Jesus, the power of His life forfeited, His victorious resurrection and triumphant victory He won over sin, Satan, the world, and death, was the key, the only key, that unlocked the prison doors of sin and set me free!

Romans 8:1-2 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” --