Compass for Life

I have something brewing in me to share but am currently just wanting to sit on it for a while.  Some of what I've been thinking about is in the area of faith and spiritual freedom.  What does it mean to have faith?  What does it mean to have spiritual freedom?  And what does that have to do with my particular journey?  And for the person struggling with unwanted same sex attraction and who are deciding to walk away from the gay life and identity, what does spiritual freedom and faith look like? Part of the reason why I ask this is because this is where I'm at.  I feel the need to get my barrings figured out.  The picture that comes to mind is that of a compass.  Often times people start on a journey out of homosexuality without a compass and half way through they end up getting lost and unable to find their way back home.  So, it's incredibly important to have a compass that will guide us along the way.  I believe part of that compass is God's word, the bible and the other part is the development of discernment and ability to translate what has been written and to discern the voice of God speaking.

I can recall my father coming home after a long summer of fishing.  He's a commercial fisherman.  This one particular time he decided to fly back home from Vancouver Island.  The plane he flew in was this small 2 engine plane.  The maps that fisherman use are incredibly advanced and detailed special sea maps that mark the waters not the land and so as you look at this map it's kinda like your mind placing tricks on you because what looks to be land on the map is actually the water and plastered all over the map are all these numbers at various locations and instead of a grid like map it's more realistic then that.  I took one look at the map and gave up trying to learn how to read maps... ever since I tried tackling the sea maps for whatever reason I feared the inability to read any map, not even the nicely formatted grid maps that the general public is used to reading.  Anyways, as this pilot proceeded to land the plane he told  my dad that's what he began to do.  My father began to challenge the pilot as he said to the pilot, "uh, no.... if you try to land there you're gonna run into problems since according to this map here you're headed for water, the landing site is in the opposite direction"  The pilot argued with my dad, he was certain my dad was wrong and continued towards landing the boat. and well, just as the clouds parted the pilot saw the water and was able to make the necessary adjustment.  It's not enough just to have the compass we need to be able to know how to use it and use it well and to our advantage.  The compass is what directs our path and guides us through, perhaps, terrain we've never passed through before.

Stay tuned to my blog because I think I have a developing story line here ...   perhaps the story line is...

faith challenged and the faithfulness of God who remains close to us in our time of need.