Do I fast because I truly desire to hear from Him more clearly, walk with Him more closely, and feel less spiritually cloudy? Or do I fast because, well, it's comfortable to be uncomfortable? Because it almost feels good to deprive, if not punish my body – particularly after I sin?
Aaron shares about Posture Shift, a nonprofit ministry he's gotten more involved with this year as a member of their advisory council. The guys share some Posture Shift event stories, including the first time Tom publicly identified as asexual on a Posture Shift panel, while Aaron recently met one of our YOBBERS from Scotland at a Posture Shift event!
Going into this retreat, your boy was stressed. Stressed just from day-to-day existing. Looking back and evaluating my spiritual condition at the time, I could not slow down long enough to have one simple conversation with God. Long enough for my brain and my heart to catch up to each other.
We conclude our 7-values series by exploring our other "ship" of discipleship! How do we define this spiritual term? Is discipleship meant only for our own growth, or is our discipleship also for the people around us? How organized or structured must discipleship of believers look? And how have we felt disqualified from discipling others in their walks with Jesus because of our sexuality?
As shared on our most recent YOBcast, we are indeed exploring the possibility of birthing a literal sister site – Your Other Sisters. Like YOB, YOS would be a storytelling community of Jesus-followers committed to a traditional sexual ethic, just geared more toward women. A place to navigate matters of femininity along with faith and sexuality.
We get asked the why question so much because this life is hard. Being a Christian is hard; being LGBTQ+ is hard. Being both can be exhausting. And it may continue to be exhausting if we don't do the work to understand why it's hard and figure out how to keep going.
I was anxious our "vibe" would be too new, too foreign, too strange, and too uncomfortable for too many people. Would the ratio just be off? Would our vibe be off after 27 months apart? Beyond logistics and numbers, I felt anxious about the purpose of this retreat more than either of our previous ones. It all goes back to that nebulous definition of YOB: what are we here for?
Tom welcomes back Kevin into the proverbial podcast studio for the first time in YEARS! They discuss his recent departure from the Jewel of the Blue Ridge, and then they talk about camp the whole episode. Going to camp. Growing at camp. Working at camp. Even kids who used to go to our camps who now work at camp. They linger on this question: would we ever work (or go to?) camp again?!
Something came crashing into my mind when Peter asked me to be a team leader at church: a stream of familiar feelings, similar to the ones I felt the first time I had to come out. They were feelings of inadequacy; the line of thinking that I was in a somewhat state of sinfulness that compelled me to confess.
When we talk about masculinity, we usually talk like it is something we need to become, instead of something we already are. I think we need to introduce a new masculine narrative: a new narrative that is actually an old one, formed by Scripture.