LGBT Topics, Reflection Pieter Valk LGBT Topics, Reflection Pieter Valk

What’s the solution to loneliness (if not romance/sex)?

God made each of us for intimacy. But romance idolatry inside and outside of the Church often tricks us into believing that our loneliness is exclusively a cry for romance/sex. Yet when I meet with counseling clients who are lonely, I often ask, “If you had a spouse, what would that get you? How specifically would that person show up in your life and push back loneliness?”

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LGBT Topics, Reflection Pieter Valk LGBT Topics, Reflection Pieter Valk

Does God change gay people into straight people?

Well, it depends on what you mean by "healing."
For many gay/SSA people who directly or indirectly interacted with the pray-the-gay-away movement of the late 1900s, pastors and therapists promised that God would completely eliminate their same-sex attractions and replace them with robust general opposite-sex attractions if gay/SSA people prayed hard enough or went to enough counseling.

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Reflection Pieter Valk Reflection Pieter Valk

“You can call me in an emergency” isn’t family

There’s a big difference between “call me in an emergency” family and everyday family. Let’s face it, any day without committed lived-in family is an emergency. While “emergency” family have good intentions, they’re only offering reactive and temporary support that ceases after the emergency.

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Reflection Pieter Valk Reflection Pieter Valk

Where are the dead, in Christ, right now?

I had the privilege of offering one of the eulogies at my grandmother's funeral. I shared many of the fond memories from an earlier tribute. But over the past few days, I've found myself wondering where, exactly, Gaga is now. What's she thinking? Feeling? Who is she with? I know these same questions have burdened others journeying through grief. So I closed the eulogy with the comforting answers to those questions found in the Scriptures:

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Reflection Pieter Valk Reflection Pieter Valk

This C.S. Lewis quote gave me hope again

When I shared about my spiritual dryness with one of the mentors at L'Abri, he encouraged me to read a section of "The Screwtape Letters". It'd been 2010 since I read the book: "God relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks...God will set [believers] off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation…

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