I Want to be a Christian, but There’s One Thing
March 10th, 2022 • by K. Price
I can clearly remember the morning—probably a Friday because I wasn’t in class—that I typed into my Google searchbar, “Gay-Affirming Christian Churches.” My girlfriend at the time wasn’t at our apartment, so I had the protection and privacy of the four walls of our bedroom to search this question that had been nagging my heart for weeks.
I wanted to be a Christian, but I wasn’t going to let my girlfriend go. That was my one non-negotiable. Surely, there was a way around that. Surely, God really didn’t care about who I was attracted to, who I married, who I loved. Right?
A Tentative Search
I hit ‘go’ and up came a short list of videos, blogs, and articles. They all shared how yes, you CAN have your gay and your God too. You can marry the girl. You can find a queer-affirming body of believers. The Bible has got it wrong, and you—lucky, misled you—have come to the right corner of the internet. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Had I known better, I would have realized the thick cloud of deceit over my blind eyes.
But instead I clicked on the first link. Up popped a page I now know is straight blasphemy. This man, who had been a pastor of some sort, was made to leave his church after coming out. He then began a blog that was meant to validate and promote homosexual lifestyle in Christianhood. I ate up every sentence, not realizing that he twisted Scripture to make his points fit. A part of me wanted to lean on his words, but there was something in me that urged me to keep searching and to maybe not trust what I was reading.
Next, I opened up a long list of churches that promoted the gay lifestyle. On it were progressive churches of different denominations across my metroplex who all were said to be a safe, affirming place for people like me.
I scrolled and researched for hours before finally closing my laptop. That was enough for today.
I laid down my search for many months following. My girlfriend wasn’t interested in church. She felt that since she was baptized as a pre-teen, she was saved and a Christian. She assumed the church would just tell her she was living in sin. So I didn’t go either. I’d stopped going to mass at my Catholic church at least six months before, and my old roommate invited us to church a lot, but we didn’t take up her invitation often. We went to a college church group one Wednesday night at the local Baptist church, but the looks and stares were too much. We knew we didn’t belong. We were different. So we went home and never went back.
“I wanted to be a Christian, but I wasn’t going to let my girlfriend go. ”
A Slight Shift
It was a stormy Sunday night in late fall when I finally stepped into another local church. My girlfriend and I were going through one of our break-ups again, and I was distraught. I didn’t want to take her back, but I couldn’t help it. I was lost to my sin—a slave to it. I listened through the entire service, waiting for it to end so I could talk to the pastor.
“I need help,” I said. I broke down in unstoppable tears as I skirted around the edges of my heavy life story, explaining that I wanted to get out of the lifestyle I found myself stuck in. He introduced me to a woman who was walking down the aisle towards us. I swear her timely entry was divine providence.
He asked her to listen to my story, and let me know I could trust her. She invited me to coffee the following week, and I hungrily obliged.
At the coffee shop, she broke down the Christian faith to me. I brought my girlfriend along; I think she was jealous that someone was taking time to pour into me and wanted to keep tabs on me. I didn’t care though, I was chasing the truth and I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me. The woman asked if we truly believed in Jesus, if we would accept him as our Savior. We both said yes, and in my heart, I meant it. However, there was this one thing…
…my girlfriend.
How could I leave her after all the time we’d put into our relationship? I sat silent and stuck to my seat. I couldn’t let my girlfriend go to take the free gift being offered to me.
As if she could read my mind, the woman followed up by asking if we realized what it would take. You know God will ask you two to break up, right? I knew it. I knew she would say that. Yes, I figured so, I responded, but I don’t know if I can do that. She didn’t keep pushing, but she told us the truth. We told the her we’d think about all she’d said. As we left the shop, I couldn’t help but look back. Why was that lady still smiling, like she knew something we didn’t?
A Continued Pull
I continued seeking. I joined a campus ministry of young women, and I kept going to church on Sunday mornings, with or without my girlfriend.
As the weeks passed and I continued seeking Christ, my eyes started opening to the truth of the living gospel—that we are all sinners in need of a Savior, and that this Savior came to earth two thousand years ago, was born to a virgin, and died to bear the sins of the entire world and be the door for me to have access to God the Father, the creator of the whole universe, for all eternity.
Sunday after Sunday I walked past my girlfriend's slumbering body as I went to worship and learn about God. She was becoming a ghost to me. God was becoming more and more real. What I was learning at church was making so much sense to me, finally. I could understand the weight of my burdens holding me from receiving everlasting life.
“She was becoming a ghost to me. God was becoming more and more real. ”
A Call to Salvation
One day, I read Acts 2:37-39 and felt like I was being summoned, called out of my sin. The God I had rejected so fiercely was at the cross with his hand out, calling me to himself. It took nine months from that storming night at the church service for me to accept his calling, and there was a lot of hurt and heartbreak in between, but I was answering the call. I was finding life in his Word (Luke 4:4).
I finally broke up with my girlfriend. She moved out of our apartment, and I moved to a new one. I was on my way to a new life. I was still making so many mistakes, still struggling to understand that it was my faith, not my works, that would bring me to salvation. But I was striving, reading the Bible, praying.
It was a hot summer afternoon the day I fully accepted Christ into my life. There was no altar call, no lightning, no drama. Actually, as life would have it, I was at my mother’s house, sitting in a silent living room. Boredom had stirred me to open my Bible and I read Mark 4:4-9. The seeds that had been sown took root in my heart, and I believed.
That night, after my long-awaited spiritual encounter with Yahweh, I started researching again. This time I searched: “I just became a Christian. How can I be baptized?”
Soli deo Gloria.
To God be the Glory,
K. Price
K. Price is a follower of Jesus, a wife, a mother of three, and a Texas transplant from New England. She balances her days between being a small business owner and a stay-at-home mom, along with volunteering by serving teen moms through YoungLives, drinking coffee or homemade kombucha with friends, and tending to her garden.
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