Last year, I finally connected with Sihol Situmorang.
He gave a compelling testimony as part of the TrueLove.Is ministry. I was so impressed with what he shared, and it was very moving.
I found him to be very attractive, too, and so I really wanted to reach out to him.
I found his website, and I was able to contact him. He contacted me back! I was really surprised, and he was willing for me to connect with him, too!
We spoke a few times by phone. The second time that I called him, he reproached me, and out of nowhere:
"I need to remind you, that the most important thing is to preach the Gospel." I corrected him, poiniting out that God's greatest will and wish for us is "Beloved, I wish that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers." (3 John 2)
When all of that is taken care of, we cannot help but preach the Good News, and witness Christ Jesus work through us to save others! Sihol shot back, pointing out the Great Commission statement at the end of the Gospel of Matthew:
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:" (Matthew 28:19)
Sihol contended that this is the most important calling, since Jesus said it before He ascended.
I asked God for wisdom to respond to this, and He showed me:
"12I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. 13Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come." (John 16:12-13)
Jesus had many things to share with us, beyond what He had shared on the mountain before He ascended. Sihol was wrong. I found him to be very work-centered, and Christians who are work-centered, in their flesh, tend to reproach and judge others.
I was really offended by that. Why was he talking to me this way? Why was he talking down to me like this?
Then I told him that I support President Trump, and he shamed me: "Well, President Trump is not the Messiah."
I know that. I knew that. There is nothing wrong with supporting elected officials who are bringly godly, Christ-like restoration to our countries.
"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn." (Proverbs 29:2)
The more that I have learned and seen about Sihol, I see him as someone with a love of pre-eminence (3 John 9). He feels compelled to tell others how to live their lives. He feels the need to instruct others, but is he allowing the grace of God to instruct him? (Titus 2:11-12).
I was confused and very disappointed. I was hoping to connect with someone who would understand how I felt, what I was going through, and all the rest. I was really confused. I was not sure what was going on, and how to reconcile his beautiful testimony with his unjustly provocative behavior.
Of course, one of the things that I had to learn was not to have unfounded expectations of others. Furthemore, I had to recognize that everyone is on a different journey, learning different things, getting free of different troubles and hardships.
Since then, I have learned further that Sihol was still under law to some degree. He thinks that he has to work for God, rather than God working in and through Him. We serve others because God first served us. We make a difference in other people's lives because Christ Jesus made the ultimate difference in our own lives. In fact, we have life because of Jesus. He gave us Himself!
In his autobiography "Not the Same Love", what I discovered was someone who was still trying to do stuff for God. That's not God's best. God's best is that we rest in Him, and He works in us. The most glaring proof of this problem became apparent to me when I read Sihol's take on Luke 14, specifically verse 26:
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26)
Jesus placed this ultimatum on crowds of people who saw Jesus as a pattern to follow, or as a celebrity to enjoy from a distance. They did not see Jesus as He is: Savior.
In contrast to this revelation, Sihol actually suggested that we need to love God, love Jesus enough, that our love for our friends, family, and fellow man appears as hatred. This is wrong. This is all wrong. In fact, we cannot love God so completely, so fully. I am sorry, but I must admit for myself that I cannot love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.
So, Jesus loved God the Father with all of His heart, mind, soul, and strength. Jesus fulfilled the law for us:
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (Matthew 5:17)
Jesus fulfilled the law. Today, we are free from the law:
"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." (Romans 8:2)
and
"For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God." (Galatians 2:19)
Sihol had been provoking me in the past, and he still did when I spoke with him recently. He gets upset when I make a point about something: "Well, of course!" I started to have a bad sense about him when I would talk to him.
Then I realized: Hey, you don't have to talk to him anymore if you don't want to. Just because he is not pleasant to interact with now does not mean that his testimony is any less valuable. And that gave me peace.
But this long-standing interaction here and there revealed something deeper for me. Just because individuals break out of the gay lifestyle does not mean that they are walking in the Spirit, or that they have fully entered into His rest (Hebrews 4:3). In too many cases, people neck-deep in sin, the knowledge of evil, swing into the knowledge of good, but they do not have life.
Or rather, they do not alive the life of Christ Jesus to flow through them. It's very sad, very troubling. But at least it makes sense when some of these ex-gays become unpleasant to deal with. I am glad that I could take the time to write about this. For a long time, I was very unhappy that I was treated so rudely. I was really hoping that I had found a community of people who understood what I was going through, and therefore I could safely talk with them and share with them my struggles.
I now realize, by the grace of God, that it's all about the grace of God. What has made the greatest difference for me regarding the testimonies from TrueLove.Is is that I am no longer ashamed. Yes, indeed, people can talk about the internal struggles and temptations, and they do not have to be ashamed anymore. As Jason Yolt shares at the end of his testimony: "God has set me free from shame and self-condemnation." When we are set free, when we recognize that there is no condemnation for us in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) indeed the power of sin has ... no more power! AMEN!
Final Reflection
I am at peace now at this stage of my life. After listening to two sections of "Choices Ministries" from Singapore, I realize that I am pretty much bored, put out about all this fuss and focus on same-sex attraction, same-sex temptation, same-sex behaviors, etc.
On top of all this, I must add that I do not accept this notion of "micro-minority" to reference Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction. In fact, the Christian life is not about struggling, but about resting in Him. If there is a struggle, it is a struggle to rest more and more in the grace of God.
"Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." (Hebrews 4:11)
I find this to be a considerable problem in the Body of Christ, and it plagues some of the men and women who have abandoned the homosexual lifestyle. They still think that they have to serve God in some fashion. They still think that they have to do for God, when it is God who richly supplies us all things, and that He works within us both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).
I must extend my criticism to the identity issue. Again, I do not accept the argument that homosexuals, bisexuals, asexuals, pansexuals, etc. somehow compose a "sexual minority." These are destructive behaviors. but they are not static identities in any way, shape, or form. We should stop treating them as identities, but recognize that they are manifestations of sin, that man is dead in his trespasses, but that Christ Jesus has made us alive and that God the Father has seated us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Amen!
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