I don't have to tell you that sexuality is a powerful force in a person.

It is interwoven and interrelated with all the other aspects of the human personality and cannot be separated from everything else a person is.

As a powerful force, sexuality demands inclusion, attention, integration; yes, even expression. It will not be denied. It demands inclusion in the person's life in one way or another. It can’t be simply denied, suppressed or ignored. "Inclusion" and "expression"? Those sound like radical and dangerous words to use for a Christian man who seeks to resolve this issue in a biblically faithful way. Bear with me as I explain!

Because God is a loving Creator who desired to share Himself; He gave us sexuality as a powerful force so that man and woman would seek to bond, meet each other’s affection and pleasure needs and produce offspring. He declared sexuality (all of sexuality; erotic, affection, bonding, intimacy) to be good. Sexuality is God's invention; not ours. Therefore it has to be essentially good.

When homosexuality develops in a person's life it also is very powerful; it also demands inclusion; it also wants some form of expression. God didn’t invent homosexuality; man did! But it is there and it is real and it is powerful!

It will exert such a powerful force upon the person's whole psycho-social life adjustment, that it will eventually channel you into one of three LIFE-CHOICES or STATES. It will force you to deal with your homosexuality as a major life accommodation in one of three ways. Either, you will eventually be directed into:

l. The Gay/Lesbian LIFESTYLE STATE (what I call "living FOR homosexuality") or,

2. The CONFLICT STATE (living AGAINST homosexuality) in which you are continually unresolved, unsettled, at warfare with yourself, sexually acting out, troubled, conflicted and without peace; or,

But be certain, the tendency to homosexuality will force one of these states upon you. Eventually, the force of homosexuality in you will lead you to one of those final states or conditions. Presumably, you are seeking the RESOLVED STATE. You want to live a mature and holy Christian life though you must deal with homosexuality in your life to one degree or another.

I believe, and the better part of you believes that this is the God's heart-desire for you. His love-desire for you is that you seek the Resolved State. I said, "the Resolved State"; I didn’t say He insists on you living as a heterosexual or recovered man. It's our traditional and biblical belief that a good God who created sexuality as a powerful heterosexual, purposeful force desires you to at least seek this Resolved State. He doesn't want you either in the Lifestyle State or; OR, the Conflicted State. He wants you to Resolve this.

Now one thing I have learned after many years of working with Christian homosexually inclined men, is that if you are not working on RESOLUTION you are indirectly or directly working on remaining in the Conflict State or even moving to the Lifestyle State. People can misuse and waste a lot of time and energy vacillating from one state to another. Often it is because they are very confused about what is important in the Resolution process. So the one goal I have right now is to point you to the things that I believe are most productive of facilitating this Resolution State. What are the Essentials in resolving homosexuality and moving to a place of holy and mature Christian living?

Again, point one is that there are three states you can be in or moving among. You need to see that clearly. Point two is: if you want to get to and be in, and make progress in the resolution of homosexuality, you need to take hold of the essentials. You need to stop wasting time and energy on doing unproductive things. I repeat, there are things you are doing which are probably not helpful to Resolution; and there are things you are doing which may even be setting you up for the Lifestyle State more. There are, in other words, more important and less important things; there are some helpful and unhelpful things; there are more direct and less direct things you can be doing or on which to focus your concentration. Given the complexity of the human personality and the power of the sexual force in a person, what should you concentrate on as you seek resolution and desire to live with homosexuality in a mature and holy manner? What areas are most important for your focus in coming to this desirable state?

So first, where are you at present? What state are you in, or mostly in, or partially in? I’ll illustrate with this "Y" diagram, in which "L" stands for Lifestyle, "C" stands for Conflict, and "R" stands for Resolution.

(l) If you are in the Lifestyle State, you will need to move from whatever comfort and contentment and attachments you experience there to the state of Conflict. You may try to do that and find yourself still pulled back or falling back or dragging a trail of Lifestyle elements with you. But there is a point and a time at which you must close the door to the Lifestyle state altogether. This can be difficult and painful and very troublesome. Some do it gradually and others do it decisively and quickly and forcefully.

Sometimes events and circumstances –emotional, social or spiritual- compel this movement and door-closing. Sometimes the preservation of your mental and emotional health will dictate how you move to the door and begin closing it. Some of you may even want it to be a revolving door.

(2) So you make the move to the Conflict State. Many people who seek to resolve homosexuality have spent a great deal of their lives in the Conflict State. They have been up and down, in and out, FOR and AGAINST themselves. It is a state of warfare, compromise, regression, re-commitment, resolve, indecision, failure, backsliding, confusion and stress. Or, it can also be a state of progress and positive movement.

Here are a few important points about this state. One is that you cannot jump from Lifestyle to Resolution. You must pass through Conflict. If you try to jump from L to R, you are probably going to relapse very soon. Secondly, is that conflict is inevitable and necessary. You absolutely cannot move toward Resolution unless you spend time in Conflict. And thirdly, there is unproductive conflict and productive conflict. Productive conflict is what I try to get my clients to engage. Unproductive conflict is what I want my clients to avoid as much as possible, though it can not be totally avoided. I’ll talk about productive and unproductive conflict shortly.

Eventually, if a person has engaged the conflict productively he will move toward resolution. If he has been unproductive, he will likely move to the Lifestyle State or remain in the Conflict State. Most people cannot stay in the Conflict State very long without serious emotional, social or spiritual consequences. They will eventually tend to move toward one or the other state.

Here’s an outline, for those who like visual order and direction:

1. Lifestyle State-FOR homosexuality/AGAINST God’s Design-Desire
2. Conflict State-FOR and AGAINST H and God

1. Productive Conflict
2. Unproductive Conflict

(3) The Resolved State is one in which a person has worked through the underlying history and development of homosexuality. A Resolution of homosexuality means a functional, manageable, workable, livable, and 'coping capability' in you which frees you and brings spiritual, psychological peace and growth. Does this mean that everyone can or should become heterosexual in their functioning? Not at all! But they can and should become "RESOLVED"!

This is not just semantics! The truth is, most psychological and emotional problems, if not all, have no final 'solutions', cures or final forevers to them. Most personal people-problems have only Resolutions, i.e. ways of improved functioning, adapting, managing, and coping adaptively, and functionally.

Something wonderful and very unique! It's that God allows the Christian man's struggle with homosexuality to be the means of creating a spiritual and transforming wholeness in which "all things work together for good". If there is "solution" in this area of homosexuality, then it is the solution which only God can effect through the power of His transforming grace. Only God, not therapy or ministries, should get the credit for this kind of deep, transformative healing.

God knows exactly what He is doing and what he wants to accomplish in the life of a faithful, committed follower. You can only place yourself in the position where His grace can work best and most effectively. And so there are those who speak about the complete transformation which God has effected in their lives.

When you, the Christian man who wants to resolve homosexuality, allows the spiritual, psychological and practical factors in you to come together within the framework of your biblical and Christian values and convictions, and the merciful love and grace of God, transformation and deep resolution is possible. The world may not understand this, but the disciple of Christ does.

1. Repression is the tendency to be in denial, hiding, avoidance, being divided about one’s homosexuality. Example: For most of his adult life, Tim was in a state of denial. He pretended he was not having homosexual thoughts and interests and avoided the issue as much as he could. He got married and had his first child before it all came to a troublesome explosion in his life. Repression is hiding homosexuality from oneself. It is lying to oneself. This takes a lot of psychic and emotional energy and is very unproductive.
2. Suppression is the tendency to submerge, control or attempt to eliminate homosexuality from one’s life, "in an unhealthy manner". When Tim was not in the numb state of repression and had to face his homosexuality – as when he would quickly thumb through a Playgirl magazine at a news stand – he would suppress it. He would say, "I will not think about it, I will not do that again!"
3. Expression is the inevitable realization that you cannot repress or suppress homosexuality; that you are a sexual person. Tim would have a period of total relapse and indulgence, going to a porno store, buying videos, watching them, masturbating, and throwing them away.

But what, if any, form of sexual expression can be allowed or tolerated? Can Tim be totally abstinent? Or must he only experience the other extreme, when Tim becomes complacent, addictive, compulsive or obsessive? Is there some way to be a sexual person that is more functional, morally acceptable, "healthy"? Is there any realistic and allowable expression of homosexuality for Tim?

The notion of "expression" and the following notion of "acceptance" will be controversial and confusing until they are more completely elaborated later.

4. Acceptance- It took years for Tim to come to some healing degree of self-acceptance. In fact, Tim’s greater problem was his inability to resolve the first three unproductive stages. He desperately needed to come to a realization that homosexuality is a real part of himself which cannot be hated, repressed, suppressed, or simply eliminated. To accomplish this, Tim had to work with his homosexuality anew and "befriend and embrace" it in a more functional manner within the larger context of his relationship to Christ and his sonship to the Father and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And in this process, self-acceptance can only come about through some level of disclosure and functional management of one’s homosexuality. Tim had to accept himself as a man who lives with homosexuality realistically; he had to allow some others to accept him this way; and he had to allow God his Father to show him acceptance and love. This leads to:
5. Integration- Finding a way to manage, cope with, adapt to homosexuality in the least dysfunctional, least sinful, least destructive way and in compatibility with one’s faith, biblical values and life goals. Only in this way can the big "H" becomes an increasingly smaller "h". This leads to a firmer and workable state of:
6. Resolution is the stage in which Tim came to a time and state in which he is functioning as more of an Adult, Christian, Sexually Mature, Man. Those four words are the goals of Resolution.

IDENTITY is that need within myself and in relation to others that demands that I form a secure match between my biological gender as a male, and viewing myself, seeing myself, accepting myself as a masculine man. Or, as a woman, that I think, look like, act like, aspire to, and am interested in the things that are considered feminine, womanly in association with the female gender.

Identity is the powerful objective component of sexuality which forms the basis of ATTRACTION. If I did not form an adequate same-gender Identity in those pre-adolescent formative years, I will have an intense Gender Attraction (GA) toward someone of the same gender. If I did not make a "match" between myself as a male and other males or the "image" of a male;

I will be attracted to and somewhat obsessed with images and people and portrayals of same-gender people who convey the attractive elements of my gender that I'm missing or feel I am lacking.

INTIMACY is the other (even more primitive) powerful, subjective need of sexuality. Intimacy is the subjective force that demands that I have closeness to, am appreciated by, accepted by, belong to, am loved by, included in, bond with, and am valued by same-gender others. If I did not experience sufficient intimacy with same-gender parent and peers in those important pre-adolescent years; I will have a deep Gender Emptiness (GE) and hunger for emotional and physical bonding with someone of my gender. I could be obsessed with closeness, wanting to touch and be touched both physically and emotionally, which easily escalates into sexual touch and intimacy.