Coming out… Moving On

The Sermon*

• Actor – The ‘hypocrite’ is the mask-wearing actor.
• Audience – He is concerned for what others think, not who he is.
• Applause – He plays for approval, popularity, and recognition.
• Authenticity – What is really important is not the part he plays, but who he is

Moving on**

Before ‘coming out’ the gay teenager, the secret Christian, the cocaine addict, is an actor. After ‘coming out’ to live an authentic life I must move on:

• I embrace failure not as unforgivable sins, indelible black marks or huge weights that hold me back or pull me underwater so that I drown. I accept my failures and learn vital lessons.

• I take responsibility for past mistakes and failures, present contradictions and muddles and future decisions and behaviour. I take responsibility for learning from my past, making good choices and building a better future.

• I accept myself: I don’t beat myself up for failing to live up to my own standards. I don’t compare myself to others. I accept myself – a unique blend of gifts, failures, flaws, experiences and hopes.

• I forgive myself: I don’t live in a prison of shame, anger or embarrassment; I don’t hold on to pain and self-pity. I look in my mirror and say ‘I forgive you for past and present failures.’

• I love myself: Imove through acceptance and forgiveness to love. I learn with ‘kind-sight’ as well as hind-sight. As I love and appreciate myself I see quite how magnificent aspects of me really are.

• I appreciate God:  As I come out as ‘me’, without my actor’s masks, I see more fully my loving Father God. He accepts, forgives and loves me. He shows me how to accept, forgive and love myself. He sees me with kind-sight and gives me the strength, as me, to move on.
  
  

* This morning I read Matthew 6; ideas helped by a sermon from Angus Lyon 11^th April 2010

**Ideas from Tania Bright ‘Be Kind to Ourselves’ Premier Christianity 10^th Aug 2015