In these lines, the author declares that doubt in God ensures that sin remains attractive to a sinner. An unbeliever cannot make decisions that please God because those decisions do not bring satisfaction to their sinful appetite. To me, what I knew to be God calling me to himself sounded an awful lot like God calling me to be straight, as if his only intention were to transform me partially. But that was far from the truth. Though God was very concerned with how I lived out my sexuality, he was just as concerned with what I did with my hands and if my fingerprints would be found on anything righteous. He was just as concerned with my mind and how it held hell in it at all times. He cared deeply that I use my mouth in a manner that showed some awareness that he was always listening. Apparently, this body was never mine to begin with—it was given to me from Somebody, for Somebody. (51)

Put it altogether, and this is a powerful book. Perry is a sound theologian who uses the Bible faithfully. She is also a skilled wordsmith with a rare ability to articulate herself well. At a time when there’s too much bland writing, she brings a fresh voice. I don’t want this to get missed—this book is a joy to read simply because of how good a writer she is. She tells her story, but her story is not the main point. She wants to point far beyond herself, and she succeeds admirably. “This book is a lifted hand, a glad praise, a necessary hymn, a hallelujah overheard and not kept quiet. This work is my worship unto God that, with prayer, I hope will leave you saying, ‘God is so good!’” It will, because even though it’s about her, it’s actually about Him.This scene is common nowadays. Christians can’t ignore the subject of homosexuality, as it’s so interwoven with our culture. We need to know how to engage with it, following the example of our Lord Jesus who was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). And this requires us to pull up a chair and listen well to those who’ve walked its road. Full of Worship On her Christian journey, she finds solace in writing. Poetry becomes a way to express herself to others. Years later, she meets Preston Perry at a poetry event. They share their testimonies and friendship. Soon, they develop affection for each other and eventually get married. Just as Eve let her body tell her what she should do with it, instead of God’s Word, which would’ve reminded her of what it was made for, I was inevitably prone to the same kind of unbelief. There’s also something unique and attractive about Perry’s poetic language. There were a few places I found it hard to follow, but this was the exception. Her writing is warm, inviting, and striking all at once:

The same Bible that condemned me held in it the promises that could save me. I just had to believe it. “It” being what it said about Him: God. Jesus had the guilty in mind when He was hung high and stretched out wide. On it, He died in my place, for my sin. He, bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as a slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God. You would think His Father would have a better memory than that. Didn’t He know that that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew. His justice wouldn’t allow Him to forget. His love is what He wanted me to know and remember, and I did.” My hands, head, face, legs, hips, hormones, private parts, voice, feet, fingers, feelings, were all made by Him and for Him. Apparently, this body was never mine to begin with - it was given to me from Somebody, for Somebody. Somebody who'd made it for glory and not shame. Until I got to know Him though, my identity would be made up of whatever dust that flew up from the devil's feet as he ran through the earth.” Having struggled with same-sex attraction (SSA) for as long as she can remember, Perry recounts her story with humility, pointing us ultimately to her good God. From the beginning, she tells us that’s her agenda: Just as Eve let her body tell her what she should do with it, instead of God’s Word, which would’ve reminded her of what it was made for, I was inevitably prone to the same kind of unbelief. The one in which sin seemed better than submission. Or where women, who are beautifully and wonderfully made, just as the tree had been, would be more beautiful and more wonderful than I considered God to be. (21) I don’t believe it is wise or truthful to the power of the gospel to identify oneself by the sins of one’s past or the temptations of one’s present but rather to only be defined by the Christ who’s overcome both for those He calls His own.”I was able to want God because the Holy Spirit was after my affections just as much as he was after my obedience. (84) She had some close-knit friendships with students. The parents are great,” Alford said. “I just hate that this happened. Whitefield was not all bad. I really liked it. I wanted her to graduate from there.” The author warns Christians against preaching the “heterosexual gospel” to people attracted to the same sex. She says our sexuality is not the only thing God wants to have control over. Marriage is a glorious design, but it is not the final destination of every believer. I saw them as I drove up our street. Both girls had beautiful, long hair and were about 16 years old. Then I noticed they were holding hands and sharing intimate embraces. Just friends? Maybe. But probably not.

Homosexuality might have been my loudest sin, but it was not my only sin. God was not about setting me free from one form of slavery only to leave me enslaved to other idols. By calling me to himself, he was after my whole heart. His intention was to turn it toward him and transform it as only he could, enabling me to be holy in how I expressed my sexuality and everything else. When God saves, he saves holistically. So my repentance would not be singular. That night, I knew that it wasn’t just my lesbianism that had me at odds with God—it was my entire heart. Letting the Light in C. S. Lewis wrote: A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness—they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.” I WAS ATTRACTED TO women before I knew how to spell my name. My mama had given it to me. She thought it sounded dignified. Like a spine unwilling to bend. She'd heard it often in her younger days every time John F. Kennedy's wife was mentioned in the news. As for me, in second grade, I didn't know who the 35th president had been or what wife he'd let stand beside him as he waved to the world. All I knew was that our name had too many letters in it, and that my teeth had a small gap in it, reasons for which my ancestors were to blame, and that — according to my teacher — I asked too many questions.Yet she was haunted. She was haunted by the knowledge that God is. Haunted by the knowledge that he had a claim on her. Haunted by the knowledge that her life was not pleasing to him. Haunted by the knowledge that God was trying to get her attention. “[S]omeone had obviously been talking to God about me and it was the reason why God wouldn’t leave me alone. Obviously, whatever was being asked of Him, regarding me, was making my little sinful world spin. It was dizzying to live on now-a-days. Trying to stand up straight (or should I say, queer), made everything I loved, mainly myself and my girlfriend, blurry. Nothing was clear except God’s loud voice saying, ‘Come.’” Leaving this word-filled place with a developed understanding of me and a shallow revelation of God would make all of my efforts worthless. . . . This work is my worship unto God that, with prayer, I hope will leave you saying, “God is so good!” (3 –4) She is the author of Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been and the bible study “Jude: Contending for the Faith in Today’s Culture”. I imagine the tree looked different then. The fruit hung beneath their own branch, loose enough for the wind to move through each one. She noticed them and thought of her next meal. How they'd taste good on her plate, even if it meant she might not live to see the next chew. One blink later, her eyes saw how gorgeous the tree was. How it looked like God, only better, she thought. She remembered what the serpent had said about God, and how the tree would make her like Him. She figured fruit and not faith, sin and not obedience, would give her the wisdom she needed to be more perfect than she already was. Interestingly enough, some of what she saw was true. The tree was indeed good for food and pleasant to the sight; God had made it that way (Genesis 2:9). The deception was in believing that the tree was more satisfying to the body and more pleasurable to the sight than God. All of the wisdom she thought the tree could provide left her body the moment she did something foolish: Believe the devil. Sin, when in the body, cannot not stay put. It’s not a guest that stays in one room, making sure not to disturb the others. It is a tenant that lives in everything and goes everywhere. It can bleed into every part, choking out anything holy” (20).