Blog

Andrew Comiskey

May 14, 2020
2 min

Grounded 9

‘The dignity of every woman is the responsibility of every man.’ St. John Paul 11, Theology of the Body The test of my love lies in marriage; it is revealed in the eyes and heart of a person, a woman, my bride. I will not be judged on my ministry gifts; these I exercise freely and receive some reward from others who value a snapshot, a post card, an edited glimpse of me. Annette witnesses the whole broken image, or rather a series of images—the unrated miniseries without end

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Andrew Comiskey

Mar 15, 2020
2 min

Whose Witness are You?

Pete Buttigieg is an impressive guy. This former presidential candidate (and potential running mate) gave us the best sound bites of the Democrat debates—smart, savvy, memorable. Yet his life is a tragic reflection of a nation hell-bent on denying its Creator. How else can you make sense of the silence that surrounded his faux marriage to a dude? The fact that we no longer flinch when a man kisses his male ‘spouse’ on the global stage means we no longer take seriously the Cre

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Andrew Comiskey

Jan 12, 2020
3 min

First Love

‘Encourage one another daily…so that no-one may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We share in Christ if we hold firmly to the confidence we had at first.’ (Heb. 3:13, 14) My life and the life of Desert Stream Ministries is bound together in marriage: Annette and mine, 39-years-old, just one year short of our first Desert Stream gathering in 1980. Marital growth multiplied our offering to others. No doubt about it: as we learned to submit to each other out of fear and joy, G

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Andrew Comiskey

Nov 25, 2018
2 min

Saved by Beauty

‘This aspiration—born of love—is a search for integral beauty, for purity free from stain. It is a search for perfection that contains a synthesis of human beauty—body and soul.’ (Theology of the Body, St. John Paul ll) As she sat in the morning light, hair shining silver, I realized that she had never been lovelier. All the years together, just shy of 40—and she more dignified and womanly than ever. I thought of the Rogers and Hammerstein lyric: ‘Do I love you because you ar

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Andrew Comiskey

Aug 6, 2017
2 min

Courage for Chaste Sex

At the Courage conference last week in Chicago, Annette and I had the privilege to testify on the glorious challenge of forging a marriage in light of my same-sex attraction and her sexual abuse—two gifts that keep on giving! Actually, we are gifts to each other who through the grace of Jesus’ cross have delighted in our co-humanity for nearly 40 years now. We spoke candidly on our intimate life. We wanted to break the false yet common assumption that chastity always involves

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Andrew Comiskey

Jul 16, 2017
2 min

Cross Fit: Sorrow and Self-Giving

I am just winding up a month off in which I spent a lot of time with the one I love most—me! Ouch. Truth hurts. Gratefully my native selfishness was no match for the glorious time Annette and I shared. We stayed home, caught our breath, and renewed our vows. Time off and tuned to each other: nothing better. A long time ago Jesus called Annette and me to our primary vocation, which is marriage. Anything good that springs out of ministry flows from this most important union. No

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Andrew Comiskey

Sep 19, 2016
2 min

Bloody Marriage

Marriage is messy business. So much so that Jesus allowed Himself to get messed up for us. He shed blood to reveal our starting point as spouses: ‘O God, the love I desire to give, I do not!’ Or more accurately, I cannot. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Annette and I just finished leading a round of Beauty and the Breach, an 8-week course in which we invite frustrated couples to discover the Cross together through merciful exchanges of blessing, sin, and need. Each couple b

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Andrew Comiskey

Jun 27, 2016
3 min

Annette

Love has a name. I discovered its meaning only when I chose to offer myself 35-years-ago to this person named Annette. What I thought I knew about love meant little as I bumped up against my selfishness. (I prided myself on a kind of reflective, poetic awareness of love but actually knew next to nothing about it.) In joy and especially in her tears, Annette invited me to love her because she was worth it. I wanted to do so. Though desire spurs us onto discipline, they are not

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Prodigal Pope Embraces the Family (and this family man)

Andrew Comiskey

Apr 18, 2016
3 min

Prodigal Pope Embraces the Family (and this family man)

Francis’ long awaited report on marriage and family is good news, a hearty hug of a document that encompasses the best of what marital love can be. I consumed the 256 page exhortation—Love in the Family—as a hungry man. Pressures on my own marriage and family life had been mounting in the days leading up its release; I needed release from my clouded capacity to be a ‘good-enough’ gift for wife and kids. Like a father embracing his confused son who knew only to turn in the gen

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Andrew Comiskey

Nov 3, 2015
3 min

Wedding Prep

Last week I discovered some unexpected momentum for our prayer/fasting time. While wondering how I might keep a prayerful focus amid our intensive Living Waters Training week, which ended just in time for my youngest son Sam’s wedding, a team member (thanks Tom Wright!) prophesied: ‘Everything about this training and wedding weekend will remind you of God’s faithfulness to Sam.’ In reflection, prophesy fulfilled. God gave all for my son Sam and gained him. In the process, Ann

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Andrew Comiskey

May 27, 2013
2 min

Power to Change

‘I believe, help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9: 24) A malaise broods over the earth today, scrambling moral reality to the degree that even good Christians cede ethnic status to ‘gays’ and laugh like the world at anyone’s effort to change his/her homosexuality. The salt has lost its savor, the Gospel its power, as the church limply lays hands on seriously confused people and confirms them as ‘gay.’ I want to change minds and hearts with the truth that Jesus Christ came to set captive

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Andrew Comiskey

May 13, 2013
2 min

Truth Ascending

‘When He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you into all truth.’ (John 16: 13) Yet Jesus trusts us with His truth; His ascent to the Father declares: ‘Listen to Me, My Spirit is speaking and you can hear Him; submit to His lead and I will guide you; as My Spirit advocates for your dignity, advocate for the dignity of others.’ What a God! What trust He places in our responsiveness to Him and His truth! Like you, I look upon many indignities in our world today, especiall

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Andrew Comiskey

Apr 8, 2013
3 min

Courage of Our Convictions

‘Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteousness shone like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.’ (PS 37: 5, 6) Last week’s Time Magazine featured photos of sexy lip-locked gay couples under the heading: ‘How Gay Marriage Won.’ The popular media prophesies an utterly gay-friendly America; in the words of Time, we are ‘eyewitnesses of history’, the successful homosexualization of our culture with ‘gay marriage

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Six of 7 Prayers for Marriage: Just Love

Andrew Comiskey

Mar 24, 2013
3 min

Six of 7 Prayers for Marriage: Just Love

True marriage bears witness to all people, including to persons with same-sex attraction, of something deeper and more beautiful than two people sharing lives. It reveals a quality of sacrifice and mutual submission not unlike Jesus’ love for us. Early on in my journey out of homosexuality, still confused as to my sexual future, I caught glimpses of my parents’ love for each other. However imperfect, they always conveyed respect to each other; I noticed the very specific ways

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Fourth of 7 Prayers for Marriage: The Gift of Gender Difference

Andrew Comiskey

Mar 11, 2013
2 min

Fourth of 7 Prayers for Marriage: The Gift of Gender Difference

Gender difference is at the center of such wholeness. Becoming a whole sexual gift to another depends on that difference. Theologian John Mark Miravelli says it best: a gift ceases to be a whole gift if in fact I already possess what the other is offering me. In other words, a same gender friend can only mirror back to me what I already have; (s)he offers me only a variation of what I possess. However blessed, same-gender gifts cannot approximate the offering of gender compl

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Third of Seven Prayers for Marriage: Honoring a Champion

Andrew Comiskey

Mar 4, 2013
3 min

Third of Seven Prayers for Marriage: Honoring a Champion

‘In order for God’s image to shine radiantly in him, man must first receive the purification whereby the divine Sculptor frees him from that dross that conceals the authentic figure of his being.’ Pope Emeritus Benedict Obama is the CEO of this delusion. The President now insists that the US Supreme Court strike down Prop. 8—the decision of CA citizens to uphold the proper definition of marriage. He asserts that the whole nation should be subject to ‘what he and his administr

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Andrew Comiskey

Feb 28, 2013
3 min

Lent Devotion 3: True Worship

‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ (Matt. 6: 21) A few years ago, my teenage son told me that the largest evangelical church in our city was winning over many of his friends. His concern? Those new converts continued in sexual immorality as the church ‘did not make a big deal about premarital sex.’ Later I read one of the pastor’s books in which he conveyed quietly that Christians had to become ‘gay–affirming’ if they wanted to be relevant to a new e

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Second of 7 Prayers for Marriage: We Fight for the Common Good

Andrew Comiskey

Feb 25, 2013
2 min

Second of 7 Prayers for Marriage: We Fight for the Common Good

‘You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.’ – (IS 58: 11b) One sees this clearly in a good marriage. A man and woman, united in body and spirit, regenerate life in the form of children. Yet procreation is only the beginning. The wholeness of two complementary beings, committed for life, provides a stabilizing influence for all who intersect with them. I recall the generous love that both Annette’s parents and my own released to the neighb

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First of 7 Prayers for Marriage: Why We Fight

Andrew Comiskey

Feb 18, 2013
2 min

First of 7 Prayers for Marriage: Why We Fight

Maybe I fought because I believe that marriage belongs to God. He ordained it as the relationship that civilizes our sexuality, makes it truly creative and reminds us to be responsible for the kids we create from it. Marriage matters to God because every one of His human creations is impacted by it. And maybe I fought for marriage because I was sick and tired of the will of the people being overturned by the courts in my home-state of CA. Prop. 8 arose in response to one such

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Fighting for Our Best 2 – Battle for the Bride

Andrew Comiskey

Feb 11, 2013
3 min

Fighting for Our Best 2 – Battle for the Bride

‘For Zion’s sake, I shall not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not remain quiet, until her righteousness shines forth like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.’ (IS. 62: 1) Such intimacy prepares us for the Cross. As Lent becomes Holy Week 2013, might we wait longer with Him on Good Friday, and so rejoice more fully with Him on Easter Sunday? Lent is a time of reduction. We pare down the extras in our life; we turn down the noise of a thousand voices in order

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