I'd spent a long time laboriously looking for a community to belong, and I'd finally found one. With this new community, though, came a growing fear – the fear of eventually being rejected. If they knew me, like really knew me, would they still want to be friends with me or even associate with me at all? If these people were to reject me for my sexuality, I thought, it would be better to experience that rejection now by just ripping off the bandage rather than going deeper into relationships that would only be taken away later.
Many folks in our community bear wounds and baggage from churches, be it local bodies or broader denominations. What do we do with our church angst? How should we rightly frame our motivations or expectations for attending church as gay or SSA-identifying folks? Join Tom, Ryan, and Aaron as he makes his YOBcast debut, as we share our journeys of finding, connecting, and serving in the local church – with all the hope and angst in between.
You cannot get to an empty tomb without first getting to an occupied cross. It is finished.
We yearn for men. We yearn for specific men. We yearn for abstract, unspecified men. We yearn for men in general. We yearn for men to yearn for other men. Sometimes we yearn for men's bodies, sometimes for their hearts, sometimes for their souls. We yearn for brothers. We yearn for boyfriends or husbands. Some of us yearn for fathers, some of us yearn for sons. We yearn to encounter, to access, and to drink deeply of the raw, earthy-sweet, intoxicating, powerful substance of masculinity. To be welcomed into it, to be wanted into it.
Physical touch isn't even one of my love languages, but it doesn't have to be. Humans are meant to have regular physical interaction with others. When the pandemic started, I became acutely aware that physical touch would be more rare than it already was in my life. I've experienced physical touch a total of seven times in almost a year.
It's our last episode of 2020! AKA the most phenomenal year that ever was. Join Tom, Ryan, Jacob, and returning guest Nate for a fun, nonspecifically topical, yet holiday-themed episode with discussions like our favorite (and least favorite) Christmas carols and when is the proper time to start (and stop) playing Christmas music. We also dive a little deeper by determining the identities of our own personal ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future and what lessons we’d learn from them, along with our individual recaps of 2020 as we fill in the blank after the hashtag: #2020WasTheYear.
Whatever the reason, this is where I find myself: apathetic toward the Church, God, and disciplines like reading Scripture and prayer. I'm not angry at the Church -- just apathetic. And in that apathy I feel ordinarily strong convictions weaken.
Faithfulness is being beaten to a bloody, messy pulp and still saying, "God, I trust you." Faithfulness is f–ing hard s–. And it has hurt me deeply this year – deeper than I ever imagined possible.
Twice within the span of a year, my passion and my future was taken from me. The future I strove for changed without my permission. The ways I influenced and encouraged others – stolen.
I am fallen. Identity in Christ aside, I am still in a body of sin and death, as Paul said. I fight a fallen flesh every single day. How can I be good? How can goodness be a fruit of mine?