How do you feel when you’ve used pornography? If you’re like me, there isn’t too much feeling when you’re using but then, right after you’ve finished, you sit there, questioning everything. What if this is who I really am? How could I do this again? Will I be like this forever? Why can’t God save me from this? Who am I that God could love me?

If you’re someone who struggles with same-sex attraction, you are well acquainted with the questions that accompany it. For me, how I was going to fight my same-sex attraction that day was always a more pertinent question than who I was in Christ. If I was to be asked who I really was and gave an honest answer, the first words out of my mouth might be something about my struggles and how hard they can be. Same-sex attraction, regardless of pornographic use or frequency, is typically robed in an extra layer of secrecy and therefore can be more of a threat. The questions of identity and worth that burden the Christian who battles with same-sex attraction only drive them deeper into isolation, fearing that the church cannot accept them in all of their brokenness and sin- never mind God. Somehow, the homosexual Christian is often sold to the lies that they are unfit for fellowship, unlikely to find support, and unworthy of grace. Further isolated through the private lives of pornography and masturbation, Christian brothers who struggle with same-sex attraction often feel even more out of control, trying to settle who they are before they enter into transparent fellowship with the church or the free, redeeming grace of Jesus.

Questions need answers but we were never meant to answer some of them for ourselves. In the midst of the confusing, often lonely pain of same-sex attraction, we need God to come and tell us exactly who we are. We are not worthless, useless or broken beyond repair. We are his beloved sons, redeemed by faith in Jesus in an instant and re-created daily in the image of the Creator. We are not bound to sin and keep sinning, predictably and hopelessly. We need the Spirit to reassure us of his strength to fight our temptations and we need his uncomfortable challenge when we’ve fallen into our sins again. Our past sins and our brokenness does not mean God is powerless or has forgotten you and I. We need Jesus to remind us that He took our place on the cross to display his power over death and his mindfulness of sinners just like you and I. This is not the way things will always be and God will make things right when He comes again. Till then, when you ask yourself “Who am I?” or “What does my sin say about me?”, allow God to answer your questions first. Where sin was meant to fling the sinner into the lie of self-condemnation and confusion, God graciously rescues the sinner and wraps them quickly in the truth.

My mentor once told me an important piece of advice that has made the difference in my struggle against pornography and lust: When you’ve given into the lusts of your heart, steeped against the mountain of dissatisfaction and sorrows your sins have caused- run to Jesus. Run to Jesus. Right then, right there, in all the audacity of having just sinned. Yes, right then as a sinner, broken and weak. Go immediately to prayer and do not allow time for lies to penetrate your heart. Inevitably, because of the peace of God has been upset by sin, questions will come. The only decision to make is whose answers you’ll seek. Go to God with your questions about porn and your same-sex attraction, what that says about you, and who you really are.

“Come now, let us reasontogether, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
    they shall become like wool.”

Isaiah 1:18