Gay Girl, Good God

My first read of 2019 was Gay Girl, Good God by Jackie Hill Perry. This book is about a Christian woman, wife, Mom, and poet. She used to be a lesbian and still has to deny SSA (same-sex attraction) with the help of Jesus Christ. Let me give you a few reasons why I think you might like this book…

1. It will give you a tiny glimpse into our Christian brothers and sisters who have to deny SSA (same-sex attraction) on a daily basis. To have a glimpse is important because God’s love doesn’t exclude anyone. His Gospel is for everyone. As believers of Christ desiring to live out the Gospel through our community we must seek to understand people around us. Jackie’s book is such a gift because she is so very vulnerable. She also writes from an incredibly grounded theological foundation. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wrote her forward and seems to have been instrumental in shaping Jackie’s spiritual growth through her books on biblical womanhood.
2. It will encourage you of the intense daily battle with temptation and spiritual battle we all face. In Jackie’s story, she shares what she went through as a child (with discretion and respect to those involved) and the rejection she felt from important people in her life. Many of these feelings compounded and she ended up finding love through a lesbian relationship. When Jesus came in full pursuit of Jackie she surrendered to him and became a Christian. She explains that her first baby step in denying SSA was to dress like a woman. It never occurred to me that it could be so very hard for a woman to dress like a woman. It was sheer obedience out of her trust in Jesus that became a little easier over time. Jackie is wise in pointing out that the issue was not her clothing. It was that Jesus wanted her heart. Her identity was changing from being a woman who served herself, her pleasures and her lusts to serving the One who rescued her and would make her transition from old life to new life; and eventually from a homosexual life to a heterosexual life possible. Jackie talks about her deep love for her girlfriend and how hard it was to end that relationship after she became a Christian. Soon after she told her girlfriend she was ending their relationship she would see beautiful women come into her place of business and she had to pray and ask God for a moment by moment strength to resist the temptation to go back into her relationship. She fought hard by relying on the Spirit of God to help her. She had mentors. She stayed in the word and she prayed a lot. She found that God was truly sufficient to help her with the things she thought could never be done. God showed me how I’ve become lazy in fighting temptations in my life. Jackie helped me get my fight back through reading her book. There are temptations I thought weren’t really that big of a deal – nothing like homosexuality. That’s terrible stinking thinking. Sin is sin. Period. We all are in need of rescuing.
3. Christians struggling with SSA can be encouraged by this book because it gives hope. It speaks to the impossible being possible. Jackie described (*spoiler alert* – she gets married to a Christian man and has two little girls) her wedding day by saying, “Everyone thought I was walking on the white carpet rolled out for the bride but I was walking on water.” Just because she got married didn’t mean all of her temptations went away. I love how real Jackie is in letting us know that just because Jesus is in your life doesn’t mean temptations just leave you. It’s still hard to deny the flesh. But He’s worth it.

The thing that really grabbed me in Jackie’s book was where she talks about Jesus right before he was crucified and how he asked His Father if the cup could pass from Him three different times. She says, “Someone might wonder if in God’s choosing not to speak, whether he might have at least decided to act. And He did. He sent an angel from heaven. But the angel was not sent for trivial reasons we’d all expect of other fathers who might be more committed to the comfort of their child than to the glory of God’s name. The angel God sent didn’t come to gather up the depressed Son of God and carry Him back to heaven before the cross. If needed, one angel could’ve come with tens of thousands of others to find and finish all of Jesus’ enemies. This, of course, would at least make the long walk to Calvary easier for the Christ, but this too was not the agenda of God. If only the angel had come to deliver Jesus from every fear, anxiety, pain, sorrow, difficulty, temptation, or whatever else His body had to carry; but His Father did something completely different than deliver His Son into ease. Not allowing Jesus to skip the adversity of obedience, He sent the angel to simply strengthen the Son so that He could endure it. If Jesus needed the strength to endure for the sake of obedience to His Father, how much more do we? …..The fact of the matter is, being a Christian and having to deny SSA is difficult (difficult is an understatement) but just as the Father sent an angel to strengthen the Son, He has sent us someone way better; the Holy Spirit. It is when we are led by the Spirit, as we look to Jesus and not discouragement (or lies or condemnation) that we are able to do what pleases the Father. Being strengthened to endure and being given the power to obey doesn’t make obedience easy, but it does make it possible.”

Be encouraged as you begin 2019 that as a follower of Christ you have a strength to do the impossible this year. I am speaking this truth over myself and trusting my God to keep revealing Himself to me in order to bring me closer and more in love with Him.