10/30/22 Romin Wright

So I began identifying as a lesbian

And I allowed myself to become completely defined by it especially I mean just like everybody in today's world you see teenagers doing this stuff where their entire identity is wrapped up in their sexuality or what they perceive to be their sexuality and it becomes who they are and that was 100 who I was and when I told my father of course he didn't handle it very well and he used Scripture to back up his reasoning and I'll say firsthand that cuts sharper than any two-edged sword and I used that pain that he caused to feed my bitterness towards him and towards God by age 18 I flung myself into the first of many lesbian relationships throughout College I was defined by my romantic relationships but the weird thing was as I started to take the male role in many of these relationships I already dressed like a boy so why not you know and this created an even growing and even more feeling of distance between myself and other women in general so this Chasm that had already begun way early in childhood between me and women and myself as a woman began to split even wider and I figured at some point along the way that I must not be a woman at all so at age 20 I decided I was transgender and I began to transition by the world I was praised for becoming my true self and it felt really good for the first year or so when I told my father he rejected the transgenderism pretty brutally and by that I felt he was rejecting me but I see now I have put him in an impossible situation if any of you had children and they came to you and told you that they were transgender it would be an impossible situation to work out but I held against him what he

Told me in those moments for pretty much the rest of my life up until you'll see [Music] but at that point in time I labeled my dad and my father or my dad and God the same way I thought that if I could only earn their affection by fitting into their box fearful of their anger that I didn't need either one of them and that realization honestly felt like freedom I was trying so hard my whole life if you see throughout this story I'm clawing for Freedom clawing for freedom and that led me to this lifetime of sin I was so happy that I had erased the girl that I have once been and with her all weakness and I had completed my own rebirth essentially you know you change your name you change everything about you how you walk how you talk how you act around others and you feel like a new person and so I was thrilled because I completely gotten rid of who I used to be and I was free for the first time to please myself or so I thought but I began working toward my future saving for a house and surrounded myself with other people who shared My Views who would only accept me and never question anything that I ever did but then God started calling me when I was 22 I got a new job and I met a few men who actually showed me the True Love Of Christ through several long conversations actually by several I mean months of long conversations they began to refute everything that I thought that I knew about God and somehow they acted like they knew him like he was one of their friends and my heart slowly began to open

Then when I bought my home a few about a year two years ago it was the craziest thing because my offer was lower than the competing offer and when I questioned it the gal that was selling it to me said that she didn't have any reason for it that she just thought I needed it and something struck my heart about that and all I could think of was well that's got to be God and that kind of started a chain of events that led me to question my atheistic faith I guess but I knew one thing that God is good and if God is good then I could view all of the good things in my life as coming from him and so I thought that was a pretty good truce I was good with that I could stick in that position for a while I didn't want to accept that his book had anything to do with him I thought it was written by people I didn't think it had any Authority in my life but I was cool with God being God as long as he stayed over there and he wasn't done with me one night I was sleeping on a friend's couch and I decided randomly to look up end times as according to the Bible just to get a kick out of it or whatever I don't really know but whatever it said convinced me wholeheartedly I had known Scripture from the time I could talk and so I knew what the Bible said but all of a sudden whatever this said convinced my heart that it was real that God was who he said he was that Scripture was authoritative and that not only that I was but I was a sinner and God was holy and that I had sinned grievously against him for my entire life and that I was completely destined for hell there was nothing I could do

So that whole night I couldn't sleep I just lay there trembling and that was probably one of the most profound moments of my entire life the next day I woke up like a zombie and I was completely hopeless I walked around for three days like that until my brother called me and my brother lives in Nebraska so he had no idea what I was going through but he would call me from time to time and he randomly called me up and started making some horrible small talk he's bad at it so I just finally told I was like get to the point and he sighed really deep he was like listen I know that you don't want to hear this and I know that you may hate me forever for saying this but I've been running from God for three days and it's horrible and he's like God needs you to know that he loves you and in that moment it all came crashing down on my head because all this stuff I had seen on paper was suddenly hitting me right in the heart you know and there was no way my brother could have known that I was going through what I was so the words that I just was aching to hear that God loved me were right there from somebody who had no reason to know in Ezekiel it says and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the Heart of Stone from your flesh and give you a heart of Flesh and I do believe that was the moment that I was given a new heart that I was born again I was trembling and confused and sure not on the on the right path yet but I was getting there but I did know that God loves me because he had told me so and because of my background I was of

Course terrified the next couple of days to sin and somehow undo everything that had just happened to me and I even remember walking around in this kind of anxious fervor that one of my atheist friends came up to me and was like wow I didn't know you were so religious and I was like well I didn't either but I started to see God's faithfulness despite my absolute hatred of him when I had expected God to bring down his wrath on me and force me to obey him he had actually given so many me so many of my heart's desires and showed me his faithfulness through everything I remember on one of those early prayer nights where I just sat and prayed and was trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do next I told him I can't promise you anything but that I'll continue to seek you and in Matthew it says seek and you'll find so I knew I didn't quite understand the Gospel I have this nagging feeling that the next sin was sure to just plummet me right into hell and so I was searching for answers I tried Scripture and I couldn't get past the condemnation and the dread and the pain that I had from my childhood there I did remember a few things about God though one he told me that he loved me two I remember somewhere in my childhood that he described himself as the Prince of Peace and three I remember that Jesus had said my yoke is easy and my burden is life none of these matched the vindictive God that I had in my mind so I had to keep going I was desperate for answers so I asked Colton and I said what do you do when

You open the Bible and all it does is condemn you and he's a pretty straight laced guy he's right here actually but he actually gave me the goofiest grin I said so I'm sitting here like freaking out and he's he just Grins and he goes well that's called conviction and it kind of blew me away because I was like in what world is conviction a good thing but he ended up sharing the true Gospel with me and explaining all of my little frantic answers and we spent an entire day just talking about God and his word and how God has saved us and so even though I was terrified of that conviction in Proverbs it says do not despise the Lord's discipline for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father the son in whom he Delights I knew I was a sinner for all have sinned and fallen short of the God of the glory of God I knew that and I knew that Jesus died on the cross but what I didn't understand quite that Colton explained to me that day was that when Jesus died on the cross he bore the Wrath that I deserved so all that stuff that I had just got done doing he took a punishment for that in Isaiah it says it was the will of the Lord to crush him and Jesus himself said I lay it down talking about his life no one takes it from me God the father killed his own son when he should have killed me not only that but Jesus then traded his righteous life his perfect life that he lived without sin and he gave it to me in exchange for my sinful one for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God and I realized I didn't have to clean

Myself up to come to him and I didn't have to follow every rule before he could love me because he already did but not only that he also made me a new creation he gave me a new heart therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature the old things have passed away and finally I was not an enemy anymore I was reconciled I was forgiven and you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil Deeds he is now reconciled in his body of Flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him so now knowing the true Gospel how was I supposed to live so I began to wrestle with the question was being trans really a sin because I really wanted to believe that I could just be a man of God right I had done all this work I worked for three years to be myself be a man all of those things and people were buying it so I wanted to know if it really was a sin the Bible doesn't have anything in it that says trans is a sin it doesn't talk about transgenders at all right so you could say well it doesn't address it we can just go free and many people will tell you that many people will and I actually wrestled with a lot of those teachers that would say that it's okay so I wanted to know does the Bible really address this and God began Faithfully leading me in his word and these are objections that I had I would say this is who I am and God would remind me of it of my identity in Christ I would say I need to follow my heart and I read the chapter or I've read the verse that said the heart is deceitful who can know it I must follow God's heart instead of my own he led me to his heart with more of his

Word things like for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul and like a battering ram he hit me with him for if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing he deceives himself for the one who sows to his own flesh from Will from The Flesh reap corruption but the one who sows the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life and finally you are not your own for you were bought with a price so glorify God in your body thank God for conviction I began to see over and over again that I had fallen for the oldest lie in the book when the serpent said to Eve you will be like God I thought that I could be like God I was trying to recreate myself because God's creation in my body wasn't enough I was trying to be born again in all the wrong ways multiple times and the first time it didn't work so I moved on to something worse everything I had done was to glorify myself when I was created to glorify God Jesus said render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God's and just like a Daenerys or this four Caesar's image I bear the very image of God so who am I to deny God what's his whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me the Gospel doesn't leave you in your mess but it does call you to come and die I started to hate the things that I once loved slowly but surely each shot of hormones was harder and harder to take this was after I'd been saved this was God's grace towards me I struggled harder and harder each week to actually be able to carry out my

Sin and after three years of weekly shots Christ showed me how to put it down and then on top of that not only did he keep me from doing horrible things but he actually started to pour into me and create in me a love for things that I had once hated I started to love praying every day and started to feel a deeper intimacy with Christ which actually led me to reconcile my relationship with my dad and we actually are very close now I started to love reading his word and searching out truth that I had missed as a kid I saw it with new eyes I saw it as the bread of life as a living and active word and I started to love hymns and worship they all suddenly had new meaning it was Grace that taught My Heart To Fear and Grace that fear relieved I also started to love Fellowship Bible study Church and starting a book club that was probably the best place on the planet to me for a long time and still is and finally I started to love my own Womanhood which was crazy to me because that had never been a possibility in my whole life I wanted to know why does God want me to live as a woman and why did he make me one was it just clothing or body parts what makes you a woman but in reality I am in the image of God as is every woman and I reflect his glory in a way that only a woman is able I started to see the beauty in my femininity I started to delight in God in my God-given purpose and my God-given design I can sing with the psalmist I praise him for I am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful ours Works my soul knows

It very well but the world told me that I couldn't change that I had to embrace my true self that I had to transition that I had to do this that and the other thing and that sin was my identity my primary identity is not my body or in my relationships or in my sin but in Christ and what he did for me he has restored everything that I tried to sacrifice on the idol or on the altar of my true self I am dead to sin and alive in Christ it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and if God can rescue me for those of you that have friends or family members or loved ones or hear things on the news if God can rescue me then God can rescue anybody so don't lose hope [Applause] praise the Lord amen thank you for you sharing it's just wonderful to hear about God's Saving Grace His abundant grace towards us and so that's a that's a wonderful way for us to end tonight is with that encouragement that you know we've got all of us friends family members co-workers neighbors people that we know that you know are opposed to the Gospel you said a human hated it at one point and but God's will be done so if you go with confidence let's pray again God he loves you thank you so much for Roman and the work that you're doing in her life thank you for thank you for the hope and the peace and the joy of reaching down to us who we were all in that pit of the grave of being joined encrypt but no Morgan you call this is put to death those things that are Earthly in US to place our minds on Heavenly things so

God help us to do so with joy and the peace we love you and we thank you for his name in Jesus name amen foreign