Maybe most of your life as a Christian man has been one of struggle, combat, warfare, battling yourself and your flesh. Maybe your homosexuality has been a constant stumbling block to your relationship to God. Perhaps you have only short-lived times of peace and fervent, faithful fellowship with the Lord. This is not the way it should be! Your expenditure of energy as a Christian man in striving, reaching, searching, should be towards growing in Christ. It should not be about surviving and keeping from drowning in sin or in constant battle with your sexuality. Perhaps you feel discouragement and hopelessness because you are so often defeated by your struggle with homosexuality. Do you feel that you’re just hanging on or just getting by in your Christian walk? Is there little peace and joy? Then something is wrong!

"Would you be made whole", Jesus asks? (John 5:6). Jesus never asked anyone if they "can" be made whole. He knows the answer to that. Of course, you can be made whole! He always asks would you be made whole? Do you want to be made whole? Do you really want wholeness, peace, wholesome life? Do YOU?

We find the way to wholeness in words of St. Paul. If you were truly able to make these words of Paul your own; if you were to make these words come true in your life; you would be a whole and healed Christian man who is able to live with homosexuality with maturity and in holiness in a biblically faithful way. Walk through these words slowly in the Spirit. Listen to your Father Speak to you as you do!

If you can say the above words of Paul and make them your own heartfelt desire, then I can say to you confidently that you can live with homosexuality as a biblically faithful Christian man. I say again, "if you were truly able to make the those words of Paul your own; if you were to make these words come true in your life; you would be a Christian man who is able to live with homosexuality with maturity and in holiness".

Adrian was in his third year of Bible School studying for the ministry when he got caught. He was found masturbating in front of his computer by his roommate while watching homosexual pornography. His roommate asked him to voluntarily tell his superiors, and he did. Later he confessed to his superiors that he was homosexual and had secretly been engaged in voyeuristic activity in the men’s locker rooms as well. He was asked to leave seminary and encouraged to seek help and would be evaluated at a later date for his return to school.

Adrian has always been attracted to younger men. It is not exclusively a sexual attraction as it is the need for affection. He finds younger men physically attractive but especially euphoric when they show interest, approval and acceptance of him. To be wanted and desired feels exciting and alive. When he is in such a relationship he feels his life is on a high. He feels elated, euphoric and buoyant. He finds it easy to fall emotionally in love with younger men!

Adrian is also a committed Christian but his need for affection draws him into one relationship after another. Away from seminary he would get into emotional and sexual relationships with others. The gay men with whom he formed relationship eventually hurt him in the long run, for they seldom were able to love him for himself. They were primarily interested in him for sex and were too immature for any real relationship. If he did not offer sex, they would eventually pull away. They were usually incapable of a loving, mature relationship. Furthermore, they are not saved Christians. Adrian was desperate for male friendship.

What Adrian has always wanted and really needs is a relationship with a mature peer who is a straight Christian and who appreciates him and wants an on-going non-sexual relationship with him because he values him as a child of God and a man of worth and dignity. He needs a loving friendship. But Adrian, in his spiritual and psychological immaturity, often "prostitutes" himself sexually for some semblance of this kind of relationship and affection.

Like many men who are homosexually inclined Adrian seems unable to get his affection and closeness needs met with male friendships alone. Instead he feels he can only be satisfied if he has a relationship that is charged with a love, an intimacy, an intensity, and an exclusiveness which is often obsessive and possessive. His needs are exaggerated and derive from primitive emotional losses. Gay men can’t meet those needs because they are broken in the same way, and straight men don’t offer this kind of intense relationship to other men. There are very few male friendships that offer such an intimate relationship. This is a big dilemma for the man who is seeking to resolve homosexuality.

At the same time Adrian is a born-again Christian who loves the Lord, wants to serve Him, and seeks after holiness in his life. He sincerely was seeking to serve the Lord in ministry. He knows what the Word of God says about homosexuality and believes it. So he is conflicted. He runs from the Lord to these relationships, gets hurt, and runs back to the Lord. This has been the story of his life for several years.

The spiritual rebirth that Adrian received when he came to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord was the entrance to a personal Father-son relationship with God. When we are born again, we are made children, though infants in God’s family. But God does not want us to remain spiritual infants. The church is too full of spiritual babies. Our Father calls us to grow out of infancy into deeper maturity and adulthood in our knowledge of Him; being more confident in our faith and trust in Him and more free and intimate in our love for Him.

When He touched us with His own magnificent life, we were so moved and enlivened that we became obsessed with the desire to know and love and serve Him. We intuitively understood that He was everything we could want. Deep in our hearts we fell in love with Him. Seeking and serving Him has become our compelling purpose and joy of living.

This is why we are so attracted to Jesus. Jesus is the Father’s perfect Son and Image made visible and we want so much to share in Christ’s likeness and character and sonship. Jesus is the Life of God in all its fullness. And even the small touch of that life which we have experienced has been so fulfilling that we are compelled to seek after Him more and more.

John could hardly find the words to speak this joy when he said,

Spiritual maturity is the transforming experience of having one’s character conformed to the nature of Christ (Augsberger). It is being in Christ and Christ being in us. We are always looking at Christ, listening to his words, studying his life, watching him heal and teach and speak, for in him we sense God’s image and touch which we hunger for at the core of our being. The inner man, the spiritual man in us longs for the constant touch of God’s presence. The fullness of a mature and holy life that we are seeking is found in Jesus.

In Christ we witness full and complete humanity. We see maturity and holiness. We witness a man who knows the Father intimately, trusts Him completely, speaks with Him in candor and honesty, relies on Him and lives to serve and glorify Him. We see in Jesus, a man who was filled with God’s own Spirit. And God is Spirit. No wonder we are so attracted to Jesus. He is the ideal of mankind. We want to be like him. We desire His image, His character and His Spirit. "And this is the way to have eternal life – to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth "(John 17:3).

His theme was the importance of not allowing the love of, and preoccupation with, the world to absorb one’s life at the loss of the singular affection for God. And his argument was that there are two ways by which one could reduce the attractiveness of the world. One was "by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, (the other way) by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment….not to resign an old affection which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one." In other words, if a person were to whole-heartedly embrace his relationship to God, he would be able to eliminate or diminish anything else that would compete with his love of God.

It was his belief that human nature is such that only when we substitute or replace one affection for a more attractive one, has it the "expulsive power" to eliminate the old attraction and change the direction and condition of a man’s life. It is also a fundamental biblical teaching and a common psychological principle that only something more engaging, powerful, attractive and absorbing can effectively replace a former attraction, preoccupation, obsession or compulsion. As applied to resolving homosexuality, I call it the "substitution" or "exchange" theory of resolving homosexuality. It is the basis of this writing.

Jesus also teaches this "exchange theory" in many ways when he describes the kingdom of heaven as a treasure discovered in a field and a pearl of great price for which a person will invest all his savings in exchange for the treasure. He speaks of having come to give us, not just tolerable life, but abundant life. He told the woman at the well that true worshippers would no longer worship on a mountain but in spirit and truth. He told Nicodemus that it was not enough to simply adhere to a law but that there was a need for a whole new birth. New wine should not be put in old wineskins, and a new patch should not be sown on an old garment. It is a life in which we are more than just conquerors. It is a life in which the love of God is the exchange we make for all other attractions and attachments. Paul says, "But all those things that I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ's sake." When men approached Christ to be his disciples he would say to them,

It was total, whole-hearted, singular commitment. It is loving God with your whole heart and soul and mind and strength.

This book’s focus is this: a mature and holy life for the Christian man who lives with homosexuality is a life of SONSHIP; that is, fully embracing your FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIP with God. This Father-son relationship is the exchange which allows a man’s homosexuality to be not only managed but completely redeemed. This is the way to change your living with homosexuality from a burden to a blessing; from adversary to an advocate; from victim to victor. The sufficient "expulsive power of a new affection" is the man who fully embraces his sonship with the Father, his friendship with Jesus, and his fellowship with the Holy Spirit. In this way he can live with his life-dominating issue of homosexuality with maturity and in holiness as a fulfilled and satisfied Christian man. That’s…….

I have written this book because I want to be a complete man in Christ myself. In writing this material I have had the time and concentration to examine my own life and my walk with God. It has allowed me space to better understand spiritual maturity in Christ. My personal, spiritual and professional lives are, or ought to be, integrated as one. Ideally, they ought to exist and operate as an integrated and smooth functioning system. And so it seemed important to want to speak about how my professional work with homosexual men, their spiritual growth, and my own personal experience of spiritual maturity have been integrated. These are all coming together in my life as a meaningful whole.

But the Father has another reason for this writing. I especially want to help those men who are trying to make spiritual and emotional sense of their lives. Men who are trying to make their lives work together well as a spiritual and psychological and sexual whole. These are men who are seeking after maturity and holiness as Christians who live with the very human vulnerability to homosexuality and same-gender needs. These are the Christian men with whom I have worked for many years in SORT therapy and ministry. These men are the children of God whom I have been called by the Lord to support and assist. I have been their advocate and mentor. They have blessed me richly. I have learned so much from them about myself and about life. I have come to love and value these men deeply as children of our Father whom He loves dearly. I have seen so many of them come to spiritual, emotional, and sexual maturity.

My life as a counselor, mentor, teacher, advocate, pastor and Christian man has been in many areas of ministry, but especially appointed by the Lord to serve Christian men who struggle with homosexuality. That has been a major focus of my life’s work for the past few decades. Why I was called to this work is still somewhat of a mystery to me, but in serving these men the Lord has aided me in my own spiritual and personal maturity for I am also a child of God and a broken man in my own ways. I share with homosexual men a personal understanding of many of the same underlying needs for gender security, same-gender bonding, acceptance, intimacy and relationship. And though homosexuality as a life-dominating issue has not been the personal burden of my life, I share the common human needs of all men to be loved and valued and cared about.

Maturity and Holiness are the overriding themes of this book. Fostering growth and holiness as an adult, Christian, sexually mature man with those who must live with homosexuality has been the goal and objective of my work. It’s also the goal of this writing. I want to help you become a more integrated Adult, Christian, Sexually Mature, Man. I would like to aid you in growing in your Father-son relationship and in the character and likeness of Christ.

It is also a basic belief of my counseling work and this writing that men who are inclined to homosexuality are going to live with their homosexual inclinations. Homosexuality is not going to completely disappear from their lives. For many men, homosexual interests, attractions, desires and behaviors will diminish and be reduced, but seldom completely eradicated or eliminated. In my experience, very few men can say that they are totally free from all homosexual thoughts, desires, or inclination. This is just the nature of this complex psychosocial issue. But one must be able to live with some degree of his homosexuality as a Christian in a way that contributes and does not interfere with his spiritual growth and personal maturity.

It is also a theme throughout this writing that living with homosexuality with maturity and holiness is possible by living fully the life of a son of God our Father. I believe that any man who fully embraces his sonship with the Father, his friendship with Jesus, and his fellowship with the Holy Spirit can live with any life-dominating issue with maturity and in holiness.