Exclusive Content:

We Broke Up With Netflix

We love TV and Netflix. My husband loved TV. So, how could I explain to him that I felt like God wanted us to let that part of our life go? I had a check in my spirit though, and through obedience, we broke up with Netflix.

Mom Notices 3 Strange Men Following Her Kids in Ross, Then Sends Cashier Urgent Message

While shopping at her local Ross over the weekend, a woman named Nicolette experienced an “unbelievable encounter” with three men who she believes were exhibiting “sex trafficking behavior.”

50 Inspiring Aging Gracefully Quotes to Celebrate Life’s Seasons

Aging gracefully is an art form, a subtle dance...

I Thought Christians Were Stupid Bigots

Are Christians really bigots? Rachel Gilson used to think so… 

Rachel Gilson asks to meet in a fried chicken restaurant. “It’s basically my favorite food ever.” She has long brown hair, thick glasses, and a slightly offbeat sense of humor that makes her fun to be around; as she looks at the menu she makes a joke about ordering chicken breasts, which she later decides is too trashy to include in this write-up.

The joke works, it turns out, because it was Rachel’s sexuality that was one of the reasons she became totally opposed to Christianity as a teenager. “I didn’t grow up in a Christian home at all,” she explains. “So I guess I started life neutral toward Christianity, and then, as I moved into my high school years, I became more opposed to it. The main reason was that I saw it as being for stupid people. Then, as I was about 16, I started to understand my sexuality more. I’d already had some sexual relationships with men — well, high-school boys, really. But as I started to be attracted to women and then act on those attractions, I was like, ‘Oh, this is where my heart is. The reason stuff with boys felt out of place was because it’s not my place.’ I gradually started to own that identity more and more. I knew from the culture that Christianity was against homosexuality. So by the time I was 18, I had concluded that Christians were both stupid and bigots.”

Rachel continues, “At college, I became curious about the existence of God…but at the same time I was ashamed about that curiosity. So I would secretly look up things about faith and Christianity on my computer. What I read about Jesus online was much more compelling than what I’d expected. So I was drawn in by this different Jesus — but at the same time, my sexuality was a big barrier. I knew that I wanted to marry a woman someday, and I knew that Christianity wasn’t OK with that.”

But somehow, Rachel couldn’t shake off her interest in Jesus. One day, she was in the room of a college friend and noticed a book on her shelf with an intriguing title: “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis, the university-professor-cum-children’s-author who wrote the “Chronicles of Narnia” stories. “The title grabbed me, but there was no way I was going to admit that I was interested in Christianity by asking to borrow it. So I stole it.” As she read it, she had a dawning realization which she describes as: “Oh my goodness — God is real, and I am in a lot of trouble. Because not only is he real; he is perfect, and I am incredibly imperfect.” But there was an element of hope there too, she says: “I understood for the first time that Jesus had come to place himself as a kind of wall between God’s wrath — his right and fair anger at my sin — and me. I knew that if I trusted in Jesus, I was going to be saved. Now, did I understand the full implications of that? Certainly not. But I knew that I could be somehow be connected to Jesus and saved from God’s anger.

“I remember thinking, ‘Well, I like to drink a lot, I like the excessive parts of my lifestyle, I like to sleep with women—and all those things will have to go out the window. But it is stupid to pretend like what the Bible is saying isn’t true just because it’s inconvenient. I need to take this deal because I’m never going to get a deal like this again.’ I had a sense that I needed to pray, and so I just talked to God right then.”

We Broke Up With Netflix

We love TV and Netflix. My husband loved TV. So, how could I explain to him that I felt like God wanted us to let that part of our life go? I had a check in my spirit though, and through obedience, we broke up with Netflix.

Mom Notices 3 Strange Men Following Her Kids in Ross, Then Sends Cashier Urgent Message

While shopping at her local Ross over the weekend, a woman named Nicolette experienced an “unbelievable encounter” with three men who she believes were exhibiting “sex trafficking behavior.”

50 Inspiring Aging Gracefully Quotes to Celebrate Life’s Seasons

Aging gracefully is an art form, a subtle dance between accepting the passage of time and celebrating the wealth of experiences it brings. In...