Did God save me so I could enslave me?

Psalm 16 descriptively talks about how our boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places and that God make known to us the path of life.

This chapter is rich in it's imagery and depth of our call to faithfully walk dependent on God.  No where in this chapter does it say that all paths lead to God, nor does it read that we can have our cake and eat it too.

God didn't save me so that I could enslave me.  In 2005, when I wasn't necessarily looking for God, He found me and called me out of a Gay identity, called me out of Egypt.  I recently re-read my journal at that time and it is amazing that one week I was adamant that I was Gay and why couldn't people just get over it already and acknowledge that fact and the next week I was overcome with God's presence after hearing him tell me "You don't have to go back to Egypt!"  I knew this call out wasn't going to be easy, nor was it going to miraculously turn all my attractions toward women only.

I began to faithfully steward my sexuality and sought out healing ministries to help heal some distorted thinking and views.  Mainly, I needed Jesus and I encountered him, over and over again in my neediness.  It wasn't necessarily only the ministry programs that helped, though I highly recommend them, but what I found was they constantly redirected me to look and find my healing in the person of Jesus, the Faithful Father God and the good work of the Holy Spirit who gives wisdom and revelation.

My sinfulness was taken by the sacrifice on the cross.  I was free...or was I?

For quite some time I have been reading multiple articles and blogs and thoughts on the issue of homosexuality.  A complex issue that is front and central in the Church today.

Who's on the right side and who's on the wrong side?  Have we interpreted the Bible correctly, or incorrectly?  Exegetical and hermeneutic words are being questioned, people's lives are being dissected, there are ideas of 'third ways', 'shades of grey', 'generous spaces', stories upon stories and I wonder to myself, WHY ME?

How did I get caught up in the whole wave of homosexuality?...YET GOD!...For years I have been writing, posting, sharing, living out my faith in a way that I believe God has called me to live.  I am still brought back to the wilderness when God spoke clearly to my feeble cry.  In that place I built an altar of remembrance.  Who am I to question the almighty God, creator of all things.  Who's ways are so much greater than ours...mine!
When people within the church read articles and they forward them to me, because they are intrigued with the messages, I quietly stop and exclaim...and "YET GOD!"

A God who is able to do exceedingly more for me than I can ever imagine.  I cannot question that or dispel it.

No magic formula, no miraculous program...but God!  Who in the midst of my continued struggle, defines me and gives me purpose, who shows me faithfulness, who pours out mercy and grace through the work of Jesus and propels me to persevere and continue on the race set before me.

So I'm bold enough to say, "God didn't save me so I could enslave myself to the sin of homosexuality!"  and in my leaving the gay identity, God didn't then say to me "Kenny, I know you and formed you and called you out of being gay, but I've changed my mind and you really are gay, because I've noticed your attractions haven't changed enough!"

It's a thankfulness, that I am no longer enslaved to any sin, though I am sinful!  That the course and trajectory of my life is a narrow path, where few make it, not a great big field where everything is acceptable.

It's this amazing love the grounds me in faithfulness, so I can love well enough, so I can be faithful because God is faithful, and where my life is defined not by my sexuality, or my ideas of gender, but rather by the one true God, creator of Kenneth Peter Warkentin, who formed and imagined me long before my parents ever did.