Hi Jeri,
I'm just like you. I was in a Baptist church while attending a Pentecostal Bible college.
However my faith has helped me to stay grounded, especially since for me, besides coming out as transgender, and experiencing things that the prophets wrote about, I have had many experiences where the only way I can describe it is how Paul described it in 2 Corinthians 12 where he wrote that he didn't know whether he was still here on earth or up in heaven in the presence of the Trinity, but because of those experiences Satan had given him a thorn in his side, and only Yahweh was able to remove it. And I've had the same, even though I've had a number of people tell me that being transgender is a sin and that Yahweh no longer transports people to the heavenly court like He did with Paul, and Yahweh has stopped bestowing the powers that He once bestowed on the prophets on to people in today's world. Really I've found them to be acting much like the Pharisees of Jesus's time, where they turned man's rules, that had been put into place to somehow honor God's laws (I.e. God's command to keep the sabbath Holy) into divine rules to be worshipped (I.e. don't do any work on the sabbath).
However my new Lutheran pastor pointed me to Luke 13: 10-17 this summer where Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath, and He healed a woman that was bent over for 18 years and she could finally walk straight and upright for the first time in nearly two decades. And what did the leader of that synagogue do? He accused Jesus of sinning and doing work on the Sabbath when there were six other days in the week when Jesus could have healed without sinning, but Jesus (according to the Pharisee) decided to sin by healing on the Sabbath.
Then Jesus's response is funny, but practical, since He asked the Pharisee if he, the Pharisee, had taken his donkey and other animals to get water on the Sabbath, and if that was not work? So then was the Pharisee sinning by leading his animals to water and feed on the Sabbath?
But another thing I'm reminded of is, what is the ONE unpardonable sin that the Bible says can never be forgiven? And it's not one of the "seven deadly sins" that the Roman Catholic Church says sends you straight to Hell.
Jesus said that the ONE unpardonable sin is:
Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12:31-32 NKJV)
So the ONE unpardonable sin is rejecting the Holy Ghost and not accepting Jesus as your Savior. That is far from transitioning from male to female or female to male because God created you that way. So people can even be forgiven for Deuteronomy 22. However Yahweh also told us through Paul:
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness," "You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:10-13 NKJV)
"...and if there is any other commandment...", obviously that is for anything outside the Ten Commandments, which would include Deuteronomy 22, so Love fulfills the law, and because of Love, we as transgendered individuals are forgiven by the love that came down at Christmas.
I am also reminded of what the author of the apocryphal'Wisdom of Solomon' wrote concerning Eunuchs:
'Blessed also is the eunuch whose hands have done no lawless deed
and who has not devised wicked things against the Lord,
for special favor will be shown him for his faithfulness
and a place of great delight in the temple of the Lord.' (Wisdom of Solomon 3:14)
Being transgendered is not something that we have devised as a wicked thing against God, for it is how we were created. And like me, trying to suppress and hide it, was putting great stress on my life—-so much stress that with my autism it finally caused me to enter an autistic breakdown and burnout and start experiencing what was at first thought to be lupus. However, earlier this year, just before I went fulltime, I had another 2 Corinthians 12 moment where I was pulled to heaven to stand before Yahweh, Jesus and I couldn't say I stood, for the Holy Ghost felt, to me, like I had just dived into a pool, and the Holy Ghost was hugging every part of me like water in a pool does, and the three of them as one were confirming that this was how He had created me and He had created me differently. A few people that I have told this too have written it off as Satan "appearing as an angel of light" (but they are also the ones who also say God doesn't do any supernatural thing anymore) and I was being deceived, however, I know that for me, it was the Trinity confirming that quote from the Wisdom of Solomon.
Keep trusting and leaning on God. And remember this carol this Christmas:
🔗
