[continued..]
God had put a guy in my life, Eric Floberg, who had easily become my best friend, and had been praying for me for a long time. And after I told him everything I had gone through and everything I had done, Eric saved my life. I’m convinced I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him and his obedience to share what God gave him to share. He had the courage to give me the tough words of the Gospel one last time, and invited me to a Christian Conference with his ministry at Illinois State, Campus Crusade. And having nothing better to do, I gave in.
The conference was great! Overwhelming, even. The community, the power of the Lord… I had never known anything like it. But it wasn’t until the second night, after a talk on getting to finally meet the maker of the Universe and realizing that you hadn’t lived your life in full appreciation of the gift He gave, that I finally bowed my head to pray, and the voice of the Lord radically changed every single facet of the paradigms to which I held Him. He spoke to me. No, He thundered at me. I heard the Holy Spirit boom around me, with sirens blaring and lights flashing and a voice shouting over and over and over, “CHANGE YOUR HEART, CHANGE YOUR HEART, CHANGE YOUR HEART, CHANGE YOUR HEART, CHANGE YOUR HEART…” and my whole body seized up and something in my face felt like it had exploded, and I started bawling, tears streaming down my face and me, powerless to stop it, as I finally felt my heart give out under a weight of love so heavy I couldn’t bear it.
Let me tell you something about freedom. I thought I found freedom when I went to school half way across the country. I thought I found freedom when I drank myself stupid every single night. I thought I found freedom when I was hooking up with other guys in secret. But I have never felt more hopeless, more burdened, and more enslaved, than when I exercised that ‘freedom’. The Lord gives us free choice, to choose the love He extends. But every action we make in the name of ‘freedom’ apart from Him drives us further and further into bondage with the world.
That night I felt for the first time the overwhelming love of a Father who knew everything I had ever done, every hair on my head. That night for the first time I felt the love of a Father that received me in spite of and because of the things I had done to drive myself further away from Him. That night for the first time I felt loved by a Father, outrageously loved, when I hated every last thing about myself. I found freedom from every perverted and self-indulgent thought. And while I still struggle, to this day, with same sex attraction, I take hold of the hope I have found in the freedom of submitting to a God who offers something so much more fulfilling. I worship the Lord with every fiber of my being because He has redeemed me from self-loathing and hopelessness with a love so vast and so strong, I learn more about its size every day of my life. He has opened my eyes to the truth of accepting His love, of accepting the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice, and of accepting the freedom that comes from dying to myself, and fighting for the relationship that gives me every hope and liberty and satisfaction I’ve been made for all this time.
It is for freedom Christ has set us free. And I stumble and I struggle, maybe even more than most, but I fight for that freedom because it’s real and it saved my life. And since then, I’ve seen it save my sister’s life, and I’ve seen it redeem relationship to my family, and I’ve seen it work in friends all over the world, with other brothers and sisters. I’ve seen it free slaves, change hearts, stop addictions, heal diseases. I have no other choice. My life is the Lord’s, and I know the price He bought it with because I was this close to paying it myself. There is purpose in the Gospel. There is hope. There is identity in Holy sonship. And there is freedom – such inexplicable freedom – to love and to serve and to praise and to worship.
I know it doesn’t make sense. In a culture of tolerance and self-expression, I went from vowing to never tell a single soul, to coming out as a ‘straight guy’, pursuing celibacy or heterosexual marriage over the desires I still fight day in and day out. Die to live. Give it all to gain it all. Submit to be free. I can’t pretend to be able to explain the way the Lord works. But I know there is power in His name to break every chain. There is eternal joy in becoming slaves to righteousness out of gratitude for the cross, in light of finally experiencing the relationship with the Father we were created to endure: set free to finally experience, for the first time, true freedom.
This is the story of freedom I was provoked to share last night, before I left. It has scared me for a long time, to share my full story with the world. But there is no fear in love, and tonight I experienced an entirely new dimension of God’s love that drove out any last strongholds of fear that have kept me from sharing my testimony with you. I leave it with you as I leave you; to pursue with all the strength of Heaven the freedom God has given me.
Much love, and I’ll see you in a year,
Danny
