My Testimony
by Deborah Kirkpatrick
Ever feel like a black sheep sitting in a pew on Sunday morning? I have and is doesn't feel good. I always felt more guilty and down on myself after having attended church. My solution - I stopped going. I was fed up with the hypocrisy and of having those authoritarian fingers forever pointing at me and feeling like I could never be good enough to please those people round about me, much less, please God and get into heaven.
I didn't know God, I only knew
of
God. Truthfully, I did not want to know someone who sat up in heaven on his mighty throne, wielding a huge ballbat, just waiting for me to get out of line, so he could hit me with it! I was so oppressed and frustrated with trying to conform to the church and be what I thought God and people wanted me to be, that I turned my back and walked away. By age 15, I was
burnt out
on church, religion, and all those goody-two-shoes. I didn't want anything to do with any of it.
Twenty years later I had a mega crisis in my life and I needed some answers to my questions. Where was God? How could he allow such terrible things to happen to people he supposedly loved? Did he even exist or was he some myth made up to keep society in control? I started searching for answers. There was a lady I worked with, whom I had often seen reading a small pocket Bible during her breaks. One day I approached her and asked her some of the questions that had plagued my soul. Although, I was very angry and hostile toward God and religion, she was always accepting of me and my feelings and didn't get all shook up about the way I expressed it! She didn't try to force feed me scripture or preach me down. She just made herself available whenever I approached her and answered my questions with sincerity. She extended an open invitation to me to go to church with her if I was so inclined.
Eventually God answered all my questions, began healing my heart, and lead me to a little church, which happened to be the same church that the lady at work had invited me to. I found out I wasn't supposed to conform to the church. I had been working to hard to change myself from the outside in, in order to fit in, instead of letting God change me from the inside out. This took a load off of my shoulders - all I had to do was invite Jesus into my heart to be my Lord and personal savior, which I did! I then prayed, "Lord, clean me up and mold me into the person you want me to be." "P.S. I apologize in advance 'cause Lord, quite frankly, you sure got your work cut out for you. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen."
Once I quit trying to conform and allowed Jesus to transform me, my life became a lot more pleasant and blessed. Now I have the wonderful experience of being transformed from glory to glory on a daily basis. Jesus is patient with us. He will complete the work he has begun in us, so why should we be impatient with ourselves and one another? I have learned to let go and let God be God!!
For those of us who left church because we didn't fit in or we felt persecuted, there are ministries out there that will welcome us! If you know of a web site that encourages the active participation of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people, please
let me know
, so I can add a page link to the site.
Visit my personal homepage