The Lie
For years I had believed that while I was a Christian, while I was saved, and while I was a man that I was somehow weak or lessened in my faith because of my temptations. I struggled for years with lust, pornography, addictions to videogames, and not making any real attempts at relationships. I had one bad relationship that affected all others. I was scared to commit and terrified of commitment. In other words I was needy, clingy, and scared. I refused to believe that I had strength or that I had anything worth loving to another person when it came to my heart.
What Changed?
A book by Jon Eldridge called “Wild At Heart” really started to speak to me the first month and a half of being in Swaziland. The book spoke on the true identity of what it meant to be a man. It talked on how Christ lived out of a whole and fulfilled heart and that mean a close and intimate relationship with our heavenly father. It mean recognizing and realizing that what I had in my heart was valuable that it is ok to show my strength and that I do not have to live in a place of fear and that I don’t have to emasculate myself to fit in with other people or to enter into a relationship. One phrase that really stuck out to me was, “Don’t try to change your personality to the world around you. Let people see the full weight of who you are and let them deal with it.”
The Effect
God has now shown me how to live my life fully confident in myself as a man and as a part of U Squad. I have realized that I cannot ignore my heart or live out of fear but that I can only live from a true place of strength if I accept my passions and live out of a deep and intimate knowledge of my true heart. Most importantly I learned that being intimate with God means I have to be vulnerable. Rather than callously shoving my vulnerability aside or rejecting me God sees who I am and fully accepts me as his son. He knows my true name. God is the only one who will ever know me better than I know me and he doesn’t fill me with shame. Instead he sees that as his child I am good I am a new creation in him, that the flaws and failures of my past don’t define me.
I Am Nathan James Tyson.
