Help for Young Adults

Joel 2:25 provides ongoing video-conference and in-person support groups for young adults who are recovering from Same-Sex Attraction (SSA) as well as referrals to Reparative Therapists, counselors, and local resources across the United States and in 104 countries.

We have found that are four main stages of recovery:

Joel 2:25 directly supports the tasks in Stage One and provides referrals and in many cases subsidizes therapy and other resources for healing in the other stages.

learn more:

Healing Homosexuality: Case Stories of Reparative Therapy

As a peer-led organization, we do not claim to have all of the answers ourselves, but we make use of and share every available resource which we have found helpful. Joel 2:25 MANS Groups meet in-person and online to support and challenge each other to continuous growth in four key areas:

SURRENDER

No human being has a perfect answer to make everything easy and simple. There are three very important questions though that we all choose to answer not just with Same-Sex Attraction, but with everything else in our lives:

Do I TRUST that God has a detailed plan and purpose for my life?
Am I OPEN to hearing what that is, even if it's not what I currently want it be?
Am I willing to SURRENDER my own will, identity, and plans to accept His will for me?

Conscious or not, we choose to answer these every single day. These are very tough questions. If you think these are easy, then read them again. If you might be willing to answer "Yes" to all three (even for just one day), please pray with us right now:

Jesus,
    I surrender to you today with all my heart and soul. Please come into my heart in a deeper way. I say, “Yes” to you today. I open all the secret places of my heart to you and say, “Come on in.” Jesus, you are the Lord of my whole life. I believe in you and receive you as my Lord and Savior. I hold nothing back.

    Holy Spirit, bring me to a deeper conversion to the person of Jesus Christ. I surrender all to you: my will, my plans for the future, my relationships, my work, successes and failures. I release it and let it go because I trust that YOU have plans for me - plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me hope and a future.

    I surrender my understanding of how things ‘ought’ to be, my choices and my will. I surrender to you the promises I have kept and the promises I have failed to keep. I surrender my weaknesses and strengths to you. I surrender my emotions, my fears, my insecurities, my sexuality. I especially surrender _________ (Here mention other areas of surrender as the Holy Spirit reveals them to you.) Lord, I surrender my whole life to you, the past, the present, and the future. In sickness and in health, in life and in death, I belong to you.

    Amen

For many of us, the following have coincided with our choice to Surrender:

Self-Acceptance, Self-esteem, Positive Identity – including the release of shame and a positive body image
Sexual Sobriety – Abstinence from homosexual “acting out” including porn and fantasy

Seeking out and cultivating a Support Network
Healthy beliefs – surrendering our attachments to harmful beliefs, self-defeating thoughts, resistance to reality.
Forgiveness – including self-forgiveness and surrendering our resentment

NEED FULFILLMENT

Nurturing support for processing Core Emotions in healthy and assertive ways that lead to growth and healing. This includes while Facing fear, Processing anger, Grieving and Releasing the past, and Experiencing and sharing Joy.

Feeling our feelings – Healthy grief, healthy anger, releasing buried pain – may first require processing and eliminating or at least identifying Shame and other counter emotions
Living our True self (vs. false self) – Being “real.” Showing our authentic self to others. Breaking through counter emotions and defense mechanisms.

Same-sex relational healing
Feeling our feelings – Healthy grief, healthy anger, releasing buried pain – may first require processing and eliminating or at least identifying Shame and other counter emotions.
Reprocessing Same-Sex Attractions – finding the real core needs that can and MUST be met in healthy, chaste, and platonic relationships with boundaries that respect ourselves and others as complete men.
Opposite-sex relational healing
Receiving and Giving Affirmation and Acceptance

AUTHENTICITY

Developing our own support networks outside of the group in our churches, workplaces, and communities.

Healthy attachment, boundaries, and authentic connection.

Relating to other men and to women from a strong masculine foundation

Healthy boundaries, healthy secure attachment. Experiencing and enjoying the difference

MASCULINITY

Developing one’s vocation and life mission. Leading and growing ourselves and others.

Internal sense of masculinity – Includes masculinizing actions, personal power, assertiveness, confidence, boundaries, physical exertion, being a “grown up”
Meaningful male connection – Includes groups, peer friendships, mentoring relationships. Healthy boundaries, healthy secure attachment.
Discovering, living a higher life purpose for Christ.

These four areas of growth form the acronym “M.A.N.S.”

This is indeed a MAN’S journey.

This "MANS framework " and acronym is an adaptation of a program developed by the Center for Gender Wholeness. The MANS principles are also integral to the Journey Into Manhood program for Brothers Road
Used by permission.