?But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God?s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light? 2 Peter 2:9

MINISTRY UPDATE

2020 has been a challenging year for the U.S. and the entire world, to say the least. Covid-19 has touched nearly every part of the globe with sickness, death, economic and social shutdown, resulting in a spike of mental health issues, exacerbating serious medical concerns, and the list goes on? I?m so thankful we have Jesus and our true hope is in Him.

From a practical perspective, like so many other organizations, it has been a tough year for Love & Truth Network. While we?re very excited for the direction and focused-time to produce online curriculum and virtual equipping tools for pastors, leaders and Christ-followers, we rely on our individual donors and church partners to help us provide a compelling biblical message and solid ministry training within churches, to restore relational and sexual wholeness in the lives of men, women and youth caught up in the destructive consequences of using sex outside of God?s design and good parameters.

As we approach the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, your year-end gift or new monthly financial partnership will enable us to maintain and grow our influence and message within churches across several denominations. Will you step up and help? Whether you can give $10 or $1,000 it all helps to keep our voice and ministry on the frontlines of some of the most important and difficult issues facing the Church today.

Honestly, we are thrilled to bear witness to the fact that God is still changing and transforming lives, but we can?t do this without you, and we know we?re better together than we are alone. We believe God?s message about relationships, identity, sex, and the way He designed us to best thrive and live with a deep sense of wholeness and joy is a powerful and compelling message. It is not a ?don?t do it? or ?stop having fun? message.

Rather, as His Church, we get to share openly and honestly about how following God?s clearly revealed path for identity, relationships, and sexual expression produces wholeness and life. Even for those of us (like me) who have made a train-wreck of our lives and blown past all the boundaries that God, as a loving father and creator, has sternly warned not to violate, even then, when we turn back to Him in repentance and embrace His design and boundaries we experience restoration and the mending of our fractured, aching soul.

Many live with scars: wounded hearts, physical infections, emotional pain and confusion, mistrust of others, difficulty forming healthy attachments, sexual addictions, chemical addictions, the regret of end the unborn life of an unwanted child, regret for countless experiences of looking for love and belonging in people and situations that God has said will only bring death, rather than life and thriving.

Still, even with all our rebellion, confusion, and misguided intentions, the good news about our God is He redeems! He doesn?t cast us away. He comes near, and if we will choose Him and His ways, turning away from sin and bondage, He provides a path of new life and the company of others on the same journey of pursuing Him.

In fact, our God not only stands ready to forgive, but He took our sins on Himself and paid our debt in full! If that isn?t good news, if that isn?t the gospel, I don?t know what is. Jesus is rousing His Church to stop hiding behind a veneer of wholeness, while living in compromise and hypocrisy. He?s calling us out of our double-living (one foot in the Kingdom and another trapped in sin and addiction) and into His glorious light (2 Peter 2:9).

As Peter writes about us being called out of darkness into His glorious light; last week, I had the joy and privilege of joining with men and women seeking God and His healing for their broken lives in a Living Waters Training week in Pennsylvania. Of course, a primary healing is released within us as we confess our personal sins, and not only confess those to Jesus, but also to our brothers or sisters (James 5:17).

In addition, we give space for participants to acknowledge the sins done against them, the resulting wounds they?ve experienced, as well as speaking out the lies they have believed about themselves for years and even decades; false labels, abuse (sexual, physical, verbal), rejection, abandonment, neglect, etc.? This is where I?ve seen ?the lights come on? for so many brothers and sisters, and deeply lodged lies exchanged for God?s truth.

The confession of wounds is never about an embrace of victimhood. Quite to the contrary, many have consciously and unconsciously seen themselves as victims for years because of what was once done to them. Rather, through teaching, quiet time with God, and prayer in a safe and confidential group, there comes an honest accounting of the wounds participants have experienced (some intended, many inflicted carelessly, without intention), acknowledging and feeling the losses and pain from those wounds. It is then, that true forgiveness and deep healing can be released.  

I love the leadership involvement I get to have with the Living Waters Program because over the years I?ve personally seen hundreds of people find freedom from debilitating but familiar burdens; binding them to the cross and finished work of Jesus, entrusting themselves to Him in new and powerful ways.  He alone has the right to define who we are.

You know that we have been working on our first online curriculum project,?8 Reasons Pastors Are Using Porn? and why you might be too?,  and I?m happy to let you know it has been uploaded to our online teaching platform. We?re also very close to finishing our new website and new landing page for this curriculum and we are excited to publish these altogether, in the next week or so.

SPREAD THE WORD 

In addition to online curriculum development, we are offering leadership team development, as well as individual coaching/spiritual mentoring for individuals via Zoom. We?re also offering Webinars equipping opportunities. God has been so good to shine light on ways we can pivot from primarily in-person events and weekend ministry opportunities to virtual training and teaching. We are so thankful for the increase and expansion that He goes before and provides. We are also thankful for you. Without supporters in prayer-covering and financial gifts we would not be able to offer these various equipping opportunities to a Church so much in need of the specific ministry God has uniquely prepared us for.

GARRY'S STORY

(part #4 ? continuing this theme from past ministry updates)

I was in my early 30?s and living near Chicago, working in outside sales for a plastics manufacturing company. I was doing incredibly well professionally. My territory was growing, bonuses were good, but my life was spiraling out of control again, despite the fact I actually had a true, powerful come-to-Jesus experience around age 23, followed by intense and insatiable desire to know God and surrender my life entirely to Him? something I never experienced growing up in the church and my Christian family.

Through a major loss in my life, around age 27 (another story) I became bitter and angry toward God, eventually returning to the familiar comfort and behavior of homosexuality.

I covered both the Midwest and Northeast territories for our company and I often visited my family when I traveled back to New York on business. I also attended a church in the area that longtime Christian friends raved about. Indeed, I could tell from the messages and the way the church openly and unapologetically walked with hurting, broken people this church was different than any other I had ever been part of. What most struck me most is they were real; they weren?t hiding all their struggles with sin, nor were they reveling in sin or giving themselves over to sin. Rather, they talked and taught about those issues from a clear biblical perspective.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, my social life had devolved into adult bookstores and gay bars. In my addiction I was getting desperate. I emailed the pastor of this church in New York, vomiting up everything I was doing and trapped in. I told him I grew up in that area and I want to find a church like his that would walk with me. Truthfully, I was scared and not very hopeful. As you?ve read in my past ministry updates, my experience with pastors and the church had often not been redemptive or helpful. I had grown to feel like pastors and Christians were on the alert to keep people like me away from their church, not invite me in to experience true restoration and transformation.

When pastor John emailed me back his words essentially boiled down to this, ?Garry, if you move back here, we will walk with you.? I could hardly believe what my eyes were seeing. ?After everything I told him in my email he?s still willing to help me?? I had been so vulnerable and raw in my email because I didn?t want there to be any confusion or minimization of how messed up I had become. I couldn?t risk the chance that I might relocate, only to find out I was too broken and too much for any church to deal with. Of course, this is exactly what the church should be; willing to walk in messy places with messy people.

Though I was in my early 30s when I arrived at this church, over the course of the next 15 years I became a man at this church; I became a man through the company of other men who wanted a deeper life with Christ and one another. I will never forget joining the men?s group only a few months after moving back to NY from IL; the last group on earth I ever wanted to be associated with ? a Christian men?s group, but this was the one place and gathering God knew I needed most. I needed these rough, imperfect, ill-equipped, loving and loyal men in my life. By walking with me and loving me through so much brokenness they modeled and taught me what it was to be a man.

In addition to the men?s group, my first real commitment was to their counseling ministry and a small group ? mostly made up of couples. That was a good and much needed beginning that opened up the possibility of having enough courage and obedience to join the men?s group in the first place.

What?s most surprising is after walking with me, being known by leadership and even sharing my story to the 1,000+ adults one Sunday morning along with the lead pastor?s message, that crazy church actually hired me to work for them. 

I was so deeply blessed to work for this church for 12 years, my final role was as the pastor of Soul-Care Ministries; overseeing all support and recovery groups and counseling. God indeed delights in empowering weak and foolish people to confound the strength and wisdom of man and move His Kingdom purposes forward. All these years later, I?m still amazed at the astounding, empowering and scandalous grace of God that He?s poured out (and continues to pour out) on me. And my story is just one of countless others.

Our stories (all of our stories ? yours too) need to be told and heard. I?m convinced this is one of the great weaknesses within the modern Church, and a core reason for our lack of power and expectation that God is still transforming lives. We rarely hear about God powering intersecting with and changing broken lives, especially when it comes to sexual sin and addiction. This must change. God deserves to be glorified and lifted up for what He has and is doing, and our brothers and sisters desperately need the hope and strength that flows from courageous ones who refuse to hide in fear, shame and pride.