Praying for the Bruce Jenners of the World

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and had the strangest urge to pray for Bruce Jenner. I felt God’s heart weeping and breaking. Not just over Bruce Jenner, but the Bruce Jenners of the world. Those who are confused and broken. So lost in themselves that they can’t escape.

So I prayed. And then my heart ached. So heavy with compassion. Because no one is paying attention. No one is listening to his cries for help. Instead, in this fallen, dark, warped world, they are applauding his trauma. They are cheering him on in his heartache. They have pushed him to do something that he, himself, isn’t so sure about. (He said it himself.)

This morning I woke up and forgot nearly everything I had prayed about. I wanted desperately to share my thoughts on this with the blogging world. But every thought is now lost and gone. So I woke up this morning and proceeded to read my devotionals. From Jesus Calling, God speaks,

“Remember that you live in a fallen world: an abnormal world tainted by sin… Make Me the deepest desire of your heart. Let Me fulfill your yearning for perfection.”

Bruce indicated that he—and what he is doing to himself—is “the new normal.” I don’t disagree with that statement, because we now live in an “abnormal world” where all abnormalty is called normal.

“Woe to those saying to evil 'good,' And to good 'evil,' Putting darkness for light, and light for darkness, Putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20 (YLT)

God predicted all of this. He’s not surprised by this “new normal.” However, He’s incredibly grieved and sorrowful. Angry? Probably. But mostly raging with anger over how the devil has deceived us so greatly and taken so many precious lives.

No. I will not call you Caitlyn.

We often forget that God made man in His image. I don’t believe it’s merely the outside image that we mirror, but more importantly, the Heart of God that we reflect. Happiness, joy, sorrow, grief, anger, love… They all encompass Who God is…and who we are, too.

There are many blogs, articles, stories, etc. out there on Bruce Jenner, and I have read many from each angle. So I won’t reiterate those thought processes.

I have been a born again believer since 1998. I thought I knew what “interceding” prayer was until the other day when I read: “Moses interceded with the LORD his God…” from Exodus 32. For some reason the term “intercede” finally made real sense to me. Because the Israelites, at the time, didn’t even know they NEEDED intercession. They were down in the valley of the mountains dancing around a golden calf, singing, “This is our god who saved us.” And God was furious, to put it mildly! God was ready to strike them all down dead. Period. Be done with them. But Moses stepped in and stepped up. And I love what he says to the Creator of the Universe!

“Turn from Your great anger and change Your mind about this disaster planned for Your people.” Exodus 32:13

The Bruce Jenners of this world are heading for disaster. A disaster of their own making. God can’t stop us from ourselves. We have free will. And so he cannot stop the consequences of those decisions. We must face them head on.

Listen to transgenders. Really listen to them.

Many years ago, before I got saved, I hung around a seedy crowd. One person in our circle was a transgender who was going through the process of surgically becoming a woman. He was such a mess. Always depressed, Always suicidal. I can’t recall how many midnight phone calls I had to talk him down from killing himself. Oh, the anguish this poor man suffered. He turned to alcohol and drugs to try and soothe the emotional tangled web he was in, and it never worked. I often wonder if he is still alive today…

Not to change the subject, because this does pertain to the my topic, but many gay people like to ask heterosexuals, “When did you choose to be straight?” They think they are tricking us into saying that we never “chose” to be straight to prove their theory that they were born this way. But listen to a homosexual’s story. You can’t miss the story of abuse or molestation, unless you’re trying hard to avoid the truth.

But we can’t fall into this trap of not choosing, because we do choose to be straight. We choose to stay faithful to our spouse. We choose to accept who God created us to be. Let me explain.

In today’s world, many of us are tempted with the notion that gay sex is alluring, hot, steamy and incredibly better than heterosexual sex...and “normal.” Because it’s glamorized now. It’s sung about in songs like, “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry, and she liked it, OH, how she liked that cherry chapstick kiss. So even the straightest of straight are tempted by this notion of something better. And that’s the lie of the devil. That’s how he tempts us. With ideas of the next best thing. To fulfill our lust for pleasure.

Eve knew not to eat from that tree, but the serpent, through its deception, gave her a new perspective (illusion) on the tree. And all of a sudden, that tree was SO tempting, so alluring, so glorious. It offered so much! She just HAD to have it. 

“The woman approached the tree, eyed its fruit and coveted its mouth-watering, wisdom-granting beauty. She plucked a fruit from the tree and ate. She then offered the fruit to her husband… Suddenly their eyes were opened to a reality previously unknown.” Genesis 3:6, 7

I won’t lie, before I got saved I flirted with the idea of homosexuality. As someone who jumped from one man to the next, the idea of kissing a beautiful woman got my blood going. Because that’s what lust does. Fortunately, I never acted on those impulses, but I got close. I chose instead not to fall for the deception and the lie. I chose to be straight.

I also currently choose to stay loyal and faithful to my husband. It’s no different than choosing to be gay. This is my choice. And again, throughout the past several years I have been tempted periodically by other men to cheat on my husband. But I refuse not only the offer, but the very thought of doing so! I resist the THOUGHT.

My point is that the world tempts us to do things that seem appealing and better than simply being “normal.” It lures us in with lustful implications that could make us feel better. We eat the fruit and pass it along to someone else claiming it’s perfectly fine. And just a mere few years ago, homosexuality and cross-dressing (transgenderism) was considered abnormal in the clinical world of psychology. Some psychologists today refuse to acknowledge that this has now somehow changed just because the homosexual community is so adamant in removing it from the books, so to speak.

This is real. Forget scriptures that say it’s an abomination. Forget that. Forget all of it. These people are HURTING! These people are STILL God’s children. Never does He take His eyes off of them. Never. He knows the pain they endure. He knows they are suffering, and no one is willing to deal with that. Instead, we accept their pain and applaud it.

We aren’t helping them by “accepting” their decisions. We are killing them emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. In our love FOR them, we need to speak truth. Not words of hell and damnation, but truth like I spoke about my own life. That we are all tempted. That we all face life-altering decisions. That we all face our own demons from our past that has led us down a road of self destruction in one form or another. Mine were promiscuity, lust, drugs, alcohol.

My truth is that I was molested by my first step-father at the age of eleven. But worse yet, and something I have never declared out loud in public, is that I was molested much earlier, at the ripe age by seven my cousin, who was an older girl. I was very young and thought that what she was doing to me was “normal.”

I don’t write this to make anyone feel sorry for me. I write this because we all have a story to tell, and all of us with stories like these are fighting for our lives, to resist the sexual lies that will only take us deeper into our own hell. And the ONLY WAY I ever escaped mine was by surrendering to Jesus. It wasn’t the world who berated my behaviors that made me want to change. No, they only dug my hole deeper. But it was those who spoke the love of God into my life—His absolute understanding and forgiveness of my choices—that transformed me forever. And it was through being born again by the power of His precious blood that altered my choices to begin resisting sin successfully.

Some people don’t want to change. They are believing the lie that “this is the new normal,” and they like the attention, they like making a loud clanging noise in the world, and they love making other people pay the price for disagreeing with it. They thrive on it. They were “born that way.”

But there are others who are desperately hurting. They truly feel that they didn’t “choose” this life, even—yes, even—if they believe they were born this way!  I had a friend a few years ago who felt this way and took his life over it. Hung himself from the deck of his apartment. Many of us—and he had many, many friends!—were shocked by his suicide because he was one of the happiest, funniest people we knew. But he was gay, and apparently his heart had not accepted it as “normal.” And while we all laughed at his jokes, and applauded his braveness in being openly gay (before it was the cool thing to do), he was hurting, but we weren’t hearing.

As a young Christian, many labeled me with the anti-gay stigma until I retorted back, “Love is love…” I wasn’t outspoken about the homosexual lifestyle because it didn’t “affect” my life one way or the other. I had no real opinion on it. I knew gay people and loved them. I didn’t want to be perceived as being judgmental; well, because I wasn’t thinking much about it. Meaning, I didn’t care. Really. I didn’t “care.” Wow. I’m very saddened to admit that. As a Christian, as a representative of Christ, I SHOULD care. But I didn’t.

And then I did care. In the worst way. I began speaking out against it. And honestly, I don’t want to be known as someone who is “against” anything. I want to be FOR things and FOR people and FOR love. But it didn’t come off that way.

And God is renewing my heart. I’ve traveled the course on this topic from wholly acceptance to downright rejection. But now God is showing me mercy. God is giving me a heart to hear. And like Moses, I want to intercede for God’s people who are hurting like Bruce Jenner, who don’t even realize their own suffering.

My prayer is generic and most general, I know, but God knows my heart, because He placed this in me now. I hope that the Christian world will begin to take a stand on this issue. Not against it. Not for it. But for the Bruce Jenners of the world. Stand in the gap for them in prayer and in love.

And if you know a Bruce Jenner…listen. Trust me. You’ll hear it. And when you hear it, speak Truth in love. God will do the rest.

Why There are More and More Killing Sprees

Look around you, the world is falling apart, and it’s happening rapidly, too quickly to keep up. So much so, that many of us are even becoming desensitized to the numerous killing sprees that seem to be continually plaguing us.

Before I delve into my theory of why there are more and more killing sprees happening, seemingly one after another, let me first answer one of the most common questions asked by fuming atheists (or non-believers truly seeking clarity): Why does God let these awful things happen?

The world hates God and hates those who serve Him. The media criticizes and lies about Christians, Hollywood mocks us and always represents us as the “evil” hate monger and/or villain, and the government is now concocting brilliant ideas on how to accuse and arrest us—we are the “new and improved” terrorists. God has been taken out of our schools, out of our justice system, out of the Pledge of Allegiance, out of this nation’s history, out of Bible colleges and studies, and more and more churches are even denouncing God’s holy Word and claiming it’s “ancient,” or “archaic.” Christians are turning their backs on God, too. They are conforming to the ways of the world and allowing non-believers to dictate to them  on how to live, behave, and worship.

Romans 1:21-24 says this:

What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. So God said, in effect, "If that's what you want, that's what you get." (The Message)

When we trade God’s glory for the world’s glory, in essence, we get what we ask for.

And now look around you with your eyes WIDE open: Columbine, Batman movie shooting, Sandy Hook elementary, 9/11, the Boston bombing, the massacre at the Amish schoolhouse, Fort Hood, numerous college campus shootings. This isn’t a gun issue, it’s a HUMAN VALUE issue!

Why is it a human value issue? Consider Kermit Gosnell, the mass murderer of innocent live-birth “abortions”. He brutally butchered living babies who could cry, squeal, wiggle, and FEEL a knife in their spinal cords. But who cares, right? Planned Parenthood knew about it, the government knew about it, State officials and local police knew about it, government health officials knew about it. Women were killed, overdosed, and brutally mutilated. And no. one. cared! No one came to their rescue: the women OR the innocent babies.

To top it off, Girl Scout cookie money funds Planned Parenthood, Susan G. Koman Foundation funds Planned Parenthood, YOUR hard earned money funds Planned Parenthood, and the leader of our country extended a blessing over Planned Parenthood. “God bless you, Planned Parenthood, and your ability to murder innocent children. Many praises for all that you do!” (My paraphrase.) The President won’t comment on Gosnell, but he’ll bless Planned Parenthood.

See, the problem is that we, as a society, no longer value human life. If we can’t find compassion for the thousands of innocent babies that are being aborted each day, how can we find compassion for our fellow man? If we don’t value them at conception, or even at birth, how can we value them as they walk amongst us? If the government says it’s okay to murder these children, why then, would it not be okay to kill them at 5, 10, or 20? And when we have Planned Parenthood higher-ups arguing for post-birth abortions (full term babies born and THEN “aborted” or killed), how can we expect our younger generation to value other children or even adults?

And to make matters worse, our media goes out of their way to hide the Gosnell story, if they’re telling it at all. (Today I asked my local newspaper why they weren't covering the trial and the editor indicated that “a short story” was reported in today’s paper in the Dateline section, meaning, it wasn’t important enough to be front page or even anywhere noticeable…it was buried, but “reported.”) The reason they don’t want to tell the story is because with the Gosnell trial, abortion itself is on trial, the horrifying truth is being revealed and they don’t WANT you to know. They don’t want to end the murdering. They don’t want women to know what abortion really is and the effects it will have on them. THIS IS THE REAL WAR ON WOMEN! The Gosnell trial just isn’t “sexy” enough as the Jodi Arias trial, therefore the media won’t report it. These murderers then become millionaire celebrities after the media glamorizes their trials and lives. Whose life have we valued then? Surely not the victim, but the criminal who TOOK the life. If you want fame and fortune, just go on a killing spree, or kill your 2 year old daughter and go out partying afterwards…and make sure to post it all on Facebook.

Then we glorify celebrities coming out and making “brave” declarations of their sexual preferences, when all the while the gay community admits that their real hope is to dismantle marriage all together. Their real hope is to kill families by forcing a backwards agenda in our schools, forcing young girls to ask other girls for a “lesbian kiss.” We took out God and put in “alternatives”. We took out God and put in Islam. We took out God and brought in anti-Christian bullies. The bullied became the bullies, but from my experience, they were always the bullies to begin with, based on their own muck and mire. No human value there, especially if you disagree with their demands of “tolerance.” This type of mentality is asking for trouble! You are less of a human to them if you are a Christian or believe in the Word of God. YOU are the monster! The world doesn’t value families anymore either, consider the two gay men who were allowed to adopt NINE children and then molested two of the young boys. We are putting children into the enemy’s camp, and we are demoralizing traditional family. Even some predominant pastors, such as Rob Bell, claims:

“Whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man — and I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs to just — this is the world we’re living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

He also claims that those who uphold biblical values and morals is a “subculture” that is dying and decaying. So welcome to your new religion, folks! This is the new Jesus the world is DYING for.

This is what we’ve allowed. This is what we wanted. God said, “If that’s what you want, then that’s what you’ll get.” Is this what we want? Is this what YOU want or wanted? How many rights need to be taken away from you before you start making a stand? How many babies need to be murdered before we start shouting from the rooftop that THIS is the reason for killing sprees, that THIS is the reason no one values life! That THIS is the reason no one has a conscience anymore, or a heart, or a care in the world. How many children will be forced or bullied into homosexuality by the school system before you demand this nonsense be stopped?

And while a defensive lawyer in an abortion trial can convince the world that a screaming, wailing baby, fighting for its life ISN’T really “living”, then I’d say the problem goes much deeper than a heart issue, it’s a cause for real grief because we WANT to be ignorant. We demand it, and the media and Hollywood spoon feed us the garbage we ache for. We no longer demand truth, we demand whatever feels good or whatever seems more convenient than the truth.

This is how we lose, and they win. We close our eyes and plug our ears as they come after our children from every angle. When a MSNBC commentator declares our children don’t belong to the parents and should have no right to teach OUR values, beliefs, or morals to our children, but rather it is the government’s responsibility, we know we’re in trouble.

Harris-Perry said that “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

They will win if you don’t step up to the plate. They will take your kids and brainwash them into believing homosexuality is just another “easy” form of sexuality, that abortion is humane “reproductive choice”, and that believing in God is treason but the Muslim faith is to be respected and honored—even learned extensively by forcing them to read the Koran and practice jihad. (Yes, believe it! It’s happening!!) Who hates abortion, homosexuals, women or African Americans like the Muslims? Yet the media wants us to believe they are a religion of peace and Christians should now be classified as terrorists.

The voice of morals is the voice that is not your own, but that of God’s who makes us step out of our comfort zone and makes life a bit uncomfortable. It’s those things that we don’t WANT to do that matter. The things that go against the grain. And valuing human life, marriage and families IS the will of God, and if you don’t believe that anymore, then you are on the vine that will be snipped from the tree.