Holding Onto Jesus: Overcoming Homosexuality - James

James has been a friend of Reconciliation Ministries since he first attended Living Waters in 2018. He now serves as a member of our Living Waters leadership team. You can find more testimonies and recovery articles on the Reconciliation Ministries website at https://recmin.org/newsletter-archives.

When I was very young, I believed that there was something different about me. I remember back then that I knew that I didn’t match all the other boys in elementary. They liked to be rough and competitive and that created fear and anxiety in me. Even now, I don’t play sports because I can’t handle the rhetoric that occurs during the play battle. I quite clearly remember multiple times in my life thinking that somehow, I was born in the wrong gender. I was supposed to be a little girl and not a little boy.

While growing up, there was a moment with a childhood friend where we would play house. However, our playing turned into a scenario between the two of us where the things that happened turned the tide and solidified a deep longing and hunger for sexual intimacy with other boys. These interactions formed deep attachments in me for same sex longings. The deep longing often blinded me to reality and was a huge obsession. Overtime, I tried to satisfy my own needs by thinking that if I could just get the attention of, or be like the boys I idolized, that somehow I would become whole.

I remember in third grade setting on the front pew of my church and suddenly understanding that Jesus was reaching out his hand and asking me to trust Him. At that time, I was shy and didn’t go to the alter, but that night when we got home my mom and I talked about it and then I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart. The days and weeks that followed were freeing. As I look back, those days were also pivotal in that they created a deep anchor in me that would define which side of the same sex attraction battle that I would remain on.

Fast forward… It was during my twenties that I had the resolve that I would never act on my same sex attraction. Most of the times though I felt like I barely had the resolve. Admittedly, everything in my mind and body during those years yearned and hungered for that kind of encounter but the deep grounding I experienced formed a mysterious barrier between my desires and how I have acted on them. By the grace of God, I’ve not had sexual encounters with other men. But by no means was my life free of same sex desires and obsessions.

As I was getting older, there was a woman that I dated, fell in love with, and ended up marrying. She knew that I experienced same sex attraction. Early on we had a deeply satisfying and meaningful relationship. However, my same sex attraction was still a huge part of my life. For a while I was able to pretend and fake my way through life and present myself as what I thought was a full-fledged man, husband and believer in God. As the years went on however, our relationship disintegrated. In the end, we were going to adopt a child who experienced gender fluidity. In my mind I was totally okay with that because I felt like if God was able to bring me to where I was, then I would be able to love a child through his navigation of gender fluidity. Our church at the time would have also been a supportive environment; however, my wife didn’t think so. She leaned into the idea that her and our soon to be son would go to a church that was LGBTQ+ affirming. Due to the instability that I was experiencing in marriage and life, I ultimately had to give my vote to the adoption caseworkers that we couldn’t move forward adopting this child. That was the beginning of the end of the marriage, but was also a defining moment in my life between God and me.

As things were unraveling for me, I found myself in one of the largest battles of my life. How could someone I had been in a loving relationship with, and who I trusted, start thinking differently about God and church? I was caught between the battle of fighting same sex attraction and now being encouraged by the women I fell in love with to embrace it and even shift my beliefs and be gay. While we were separated, she encouraged divorce. In my wife’s view, she was freeing me to explore being gay. There were three days in our initial separation while my wife was encouraging me to be gay that I contemplated forgetting it all and just do it. However, I just couldn’t rationalize and forget about the anchor Jesus planted in me.

While I was in the middle of the storm of divorce and being tempted to dive into embracing being gay, my heart kept crying out to God for help. I knew that if there was a way to navigate this right, that God would have to do it. While crying out, God through His providence and grace placed it in my heart to search for some group or counselor that would help me navigate these storms and be faithful to God. That’s when I came across Living Waters program through Reconciliation Ministries. I signed up to go through the Living Waters program during the 2018-2019 season. Jesus met with me through Living Waters and the Living Water folks who know how to love hurting people like me. I learned about my sexuality with truth and grace and received the bolstering and support my heart desperately needed.

Building on the foundation that Living Waters provided, the Lord began to draw me out of faulty thinking that I learned and embraced during my formative years. Little by little, I’ve been challenged to turn away from harmful thinking that skewed my sexuality while also learning to understand the man I am in the context of my active relationship with Jesus. My heart was led again to go through Living Waters a second time which provided another transformative leap forward. The second season reinforced the truth of learning to live a sexually truthful and pure life for God. Out of this I’m learning to experience the reality of how the Truth will set you free and have true Peace and true Joy!!!

Photos used courtesy of Unsplash.com. © 2026 Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. This article may be reproduced and distributed as long as no fee is charged and credit is given.

The Power of the Mother Wound

Dan has been the Executive Director of Reconciliation Ministries since 2003, and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Michigan. He grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother, and has written articles about the mother wound in the past. Although this article talks about the mother wound, it is equally applicable for the father wound. For more information, you can read Overcoming the Mother Wound and When My Mother and Father Forsake Me in the archives section of the Reconciliation Ministries website at http://www.recmin.org/newsletter-archives/.

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
God in Isaiah 49:15 NIV

I remember hearing a song based on Isaiah 49 many years ago. I could feel some anger rising up in my heart as I heard the first sentence, “Can a woman forget her child, and have not compassion on the son of her womb?” I found myself thinking, “Of course a mother can have no compassion on her baby! My mother was able to have no compassion on me when she abused me!” I was actually relieved to hear the next sentence. God, Himself, was acknowledging that sometimes earthly mothers really do forget their kids, or treat them harshly. It brought peace to my heart as I heard Him promise that He will not forget us, and that He will have compassion on us. Verse 16 goes on to say, “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” It’s hard to forget someone that you have permanently engraved on the palms of your hands.

That moment actually came a few years into my healing journey. I couldn’t have experienced God’s heart in those verses in my early days. Of course, I had “head knowledge” that God loves us and is always there for us no matter what our earthly parents were like, but it didn’t translate into every day, experiential “heart knowledge”. I couldn’t live in the reality that God was safe and that He loved me deeply. I didn’t really want to let Him get close to the fortified, self-protective areas of my heart. Mother wounds can cause us to lock up parts of our hearts deep. So deep we think that even God can’t get to them. We even try to stay far away from those parts of our own hearts. Mother wounds are powerful!

We can see just how powerful the mother wound can be in the account of a vengeful mother named Herodias, her daughter, and the daughter’s step-father, Herod. By the way, Herodias was first married to Herod’s brother, Philip. Herod and Herodias were living in adultery. You get the picture – it’s a pretty messed up, blended family. You can read the account in Mark, Chapter Six. John the Baptist rebuked Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. She got angry and wanted to kill John, but Herod had an interesting relationship with John. He felt bad when John rebuked him for living in sin, but he realized that John was a holy man and protected him. It says that he liked listening to John. Interesting… Herod didn’t like being called out for his sin, but couldn’t shake his interest in hearing what John had to say. Seems he was torn between embracing the truth and holding onto his sin.

Herodias remained bitter and finally seized her opportunity to “get even” with John. Herod threw himself a big birthday party and invited a bunch of government big shots. His step-daughter did a beautiful dance. So beautiful, that Herod offered to give her anything she requested, up to half his kingdom. This is where we see the unbelievable power of the mother wound come into effect. I don’t know about you, but if someone were to offer me half his kingdom, I think I’d be going after the expensive stuff. Instead, the girl went to her mother and asked Mom what she should ask for. The mother – who could have made sure her daughter was set for life – tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist. The girl follows Mom’s instructions. Really?!! She could have had riches beyond belief, and the girl chose to get some guy’s head on a platter? That’s the power of the mother wound. The void is so deep, that it can motivate us to do things that defy logic and common sense to try to get a place in our mother’s heart. Mother wounds hurt and we’re desperate to make the pain go away.

Andrew Comiskey, author of Living Waters: Pursuing Sexual and Relational Wholeness in Christ, likens the mother wound to having a heart like a strainer, no matter how much love is poured in, there’s no capacity to retain in. No level of compromise will ever fulfill the deep pit in our hearts. I can’t imagine what the girl must have been thinking a few days down the road after her vengeful mother’s delight wore off. Was she full of regret as she was thinking about all the riches she sacrificed for a few moments of grasping for her mother’s approval? Compromise doesn’t fill the void. Compromise deepens the void. Always. Yes, always.

I doubt that any of us will ever be stuck in the position of choosing between compromising in a vain attempt to gain our broken parent’s approval and gaining half a kingdom. Sometimes compromise with a parent brings worldly riches our way. Sometimes compromise merely brings us temporary approval. In the end, we find the riches are hollow and our parent’s haven’t really changed. A broken parent’s attention can be pretty fleeting. It is never worth compromising our Biblical convictions to gain our broken parent’s approval. We are living for eternity. Only deepening our relationship with our eternal Father can fill up any voids in our hearts.

Mother wounds have other consequences. Shame is a big one. Codependency is another. They seem to feed off of each other – compromise, codependency, and shame. Sometimes the condemnation is so great that it keeps us from embracing our Heavenly Father’s precious promises in Isaiah 49 and Psalm 27:10, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.” We might even tell others that the Lord loves them and will embrace them, but deep in our hearts we fully expect Him to reject us. After all… Mom did…

Don’t let anything keep you from your Heavenly Father. The truth is that Jesus Christ allowed wicked, evil men to torture and murder Him to pay for our sins. He sacrificed His life for sin stained, messy people like us; so that through His resurrection, we can experience redemption and transformation. We can see Jesus’ heart towards pretty nasty people in Luke, Chapter Seven. Here Jesus was having dinner at Simon the Pharisee’s house. Today, many of us might figure that Bible school students or pastors must be pretty holy and special since they’re Bible school students or pastors. In our hearts it’s easy to feel like Jesus would rather hang out with them than us since we’ve done some pretty awful things. In the middle of dinner at the Pharisee’s house, a sinful woman with a bad reputation came in and started anointing Jesus’ feet with some expensive perfume. Something about Jesus broke her. She wept and wiped his feet with her hair. Jesus loved her, honored her, and accepted her. This bothered the religious guy who made some wisecrack about Jesus’ supposed inability to recognize what a scuzzy woman she was. Jesus heard the comment and corrected the religious guy. Then He turned to the woman, acknowledged her love in a holy way, and told her that her sins were forgiven. He even acknowledged that she had sinned much, but that she was forgiven anyway. No matter how much we have sinned – the amount of our sin is really irrelevant because we’re all pretty disgusting in our fallen state – Jesus will always receive us as we turn to Him for help. By the way, Jesus also received the religious guy and seemed to acknowledge that his sins weren’t as bad as hers on a human scale. This just reemphasizes that horrific sin doesn’t disqualify a repentant person from receiving God’s love. Jesus said whoever is forgiven much will love much.

As we turn to the Lord and receive His forgiveness, He gives us the ability to love. As we love Him, He transforms the deep recesses of our hearts and becomes the mother – and father – we have always longed for. He truly does take us up when our mother and father have forsaken us.

Photos courtesy of Jordan Whitt and Ben White via www.unsplash.com.

© 2018 Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. This article may be reproduced and distributed as long as no fee is charged and credit is given.