“She nodded in fear...but her eyes told me to continue.
“For all of my life I struggled with...” My strength had suddenly left me and I began to fall apart. “For all of my life I struggled with...with...I don’t know if I can say it.”
“It’s going to be alright. I can handle it,” she said.
“For all of my life I struggled with attraction to men. I struggled with...homosexuality.”
It felt so good to finally tell the one person I should have trusted the most...the one I shared true intimacy with...or so I had thought. Her response?
“Thank you. I’ve been waiting for you to open up to me. Is that all?”
Is that all?!?!?! After many shared tears of gratitude and relief, she began to tell me of the many hurts she had suffered and had wanted to tell me for years. We thought we had known intimacy before that night. Suddenly we both realized that, up until that moment, we had shared a measure of honesty—but that the things we had hidden were like a thin wall between us that had finally been breached. We both acknowledged that this is what it must feel like to know and to be known by somebody without fear of being rejected. What a monumental moment in our lives, our marriage, and in our spiritual journeys!
I used to ask the Lord for instantaneous healing...but most often, true healing requires time. Time invested in the healing process helps us build a firm foundation from which to live our lives...and is time well spent. God’s Word tells us in John 8:32 that we will ‘know the truth and the truth will set us free’. I believe we can know the truth and still not be free. Why would I say that? Because that was my personal experience. I had grown up hearing that truth and believing that truth and even quoting that truth...but I had forgotten one key aspect of that truth. The first step truth requires is my own honesty! When I finally got honest about several key things, God was able to work freedom into the equation! When I got honest that I did not want to live a homosexual life...and honest that I could not fix myself...and honest that I needed help...and honest that I had tried man’s ways and fallen far short of the mark...and honest that God was God and I was not...then God was able to bring the power to walk into the freedom He offered.
A few years ago, God gave me a wonderful physical example of what spiritual healing looked like in my life. One day, I inadvertently dropped a very heavy piece of farm equipment on my right leg. After two surgeries, the flesh over the gaping wound died due to the fact the implement had severed the blood supply to the flesh. I was left with a hole in my calf about two inches across! I assumed that the doctor would perform a skin graft. I assumed incorrectly. His words?
“For this kind of wound to heal properly, it must heal from the inside out.”
It was with these words that I knew the Lord was about to show me what the process of my spiritual healing looked like.
Excerpt From
Victim to Victor
Dennis Jernigan
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