“Open Your Eyes”
The other day I was watching a couple of children playing in the lawn in front of our apartment. One of them yelled, “Help! I can’t see! I can’t see”! The other child, with a look of deep concern, answered, “Why…what’s wrong?!” “I have my eyes closed”, shouted the first child and they both laughed and went on about their silliness. Yes, it’s an age-old childish gag, but so many times it holds true in our not-so-childish lives.
As many of you know, besides playing the keyboards for our Sunday morning worship celebration, I work with Community of Hope, one of the many outreach ministries that our church supports. C.O.H. was established to support men and women who find themselves struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction or S.S.A. Like so many of us, these individuals want to please God, but they struggle with intrusive and impure thoughts. In most cases, very few people are aware of their struggles, because they are too ashamed to confess them to anyone. And unfortunately, most churches have nothing in place to help these people.
So, much like the children playing in my front lawn, most of the Christian world has it’s eyes closed to the problem of homosexuality. We tend to tell ourselves, “that sort of thing just doesn’t happen in our church”. However, our church chooses to face the problem “eyes opened”.
When COH was first established as a ministry of DCC, we sent out flyers to area churches and even put an article in the Lawton Constitution, in an attempt to get the word out. We got a few calls as a result of those efforts, but we got a larger response from our own congregation! Thank God that we didn’t assume that we didn’t have that sort of problem here!
But opening our eyes alone is not enough. To be effective in ministering as a congregation, we have to understand what we see. If you received a call today from a friend or a loved one who is struggling with same sex attraction, would you know what to do? Of course, you would get them in contact with COH, but chances are that they will need support and encouragement from you as well. How will you handle that? Even if you are not personally faced with this issue, you cannot avoid being bombarded with information about homosexuality. If you watch television for just one evening, you are almost sure to be force-fed information about homosexuality. Many TV shows lately don’t just refer to homosexuality, the whole theme of the show revolves around it. Do you understand enough about homosexuality to separate the truth from the lies? If someone asks you about your views, as a Christian, on the subject, do you know enough to give an intelligent response?
In the next few issues of the Dayspring Community Church E-zine, I’ll be helping you move from “opening your eyes” to understanding what you see. We will explore together some of the common threads running through the fabric of S.S.A. We’ll chat about Christian-based theories regarding the homosexual struggle and we’ll talk about how you can sort out the truth from the lies in the information that reaches you through the media. So, if you’re ready to take on the challenge…. Fasten your seat belt…and I’ll see you next issue….
David Gabriel is a member of Dayspring Community Church and seen most Sundays on keyboard with the Praise Team.