Dear Stevo,

I appreciate the difficulties involved in stopping an old habit especially when it comes with benefits, which seem immeasurable. The struggle is usually very fierce.

This is the stage you are going through. Deep in your mind, you loath with passion, what you are doing to your psychology and spiritual well being. You know it isn't right but your passion for success in life is pointing you at all the reasons you must not give up this habit. This passion of yours is advertising failures, lack of unfilled dreams and general frustrations later in life as the consequences of your quitting this lifestyle.

If it's any assurance, what you are going through isn't a novel experience. From the beginning of mankind, this struggle has existed. From the time Man fell from grace in the Garden of Eden, due to this inherent struggle in man to do what is right or wrong, we have all become slaves to the desires of our flesh.

Yes, gay has paid off. It is giving you resources with which to achieve your passion in life. Now you can live and dream big. No doubt these are strong reasons enough for you not to want to quit but are they really good enough reasons?

What about the attendant shame that goes with it? Despite being so together as a society, there are still certain codes of behaviours, which can never be on top of table deals even if its custodians are the movers and shakers of the society. The gay club is one of such. It is something nobody in Nigeria of today would want to be publicly associated with. Our society is one that still prides itself as very traditional.

How would you feel despite the pecks it has given you if your involvement with the act is public knowledge? Can you advertise the source of your income as coming from selling your body and soul to fellow men? These men who pay you to have sex with them, can they make public their relationship with you? The answers are no! Because of the attendant shame that goes with it, so you see, it isn't only God that is against this act, the society, publicly is against it. It considers anybody caught in it as immoral, one to be scorned and abnormal. Permissive as our society has become, this is one source of money it is still not to comfortable identifying with.

If you think, the trade is the one sustaining you, you are very wrong. If it were, how come you haven't been able to make so much money to pay your way through the university without having to worry about where the money for your next semester would come from? Being in it, I am sure you know some people among you who are still struggling to make something positive with their lives.

God is the greatest provider and the only one who can do and undo. From stones, He has the might and authority to make water flow as well as make the desert fertile for those who trust in Him.

Allow Him a space in your life to show you how wonderful He is. Your voyage into the world of homosexuals isn't going to just go away no matter how repulsive you feel.

If you don't change your attitude to life, change your focus from easy life to hard work, you will find yourself going back on your stand when you consider life too difficult to handle.

Your friends didn't lure you into it, rather the desires of your heart did. You are not the only one with a family that has limited financial strength. More than half of the world's population comes from very humble families, the type that cannot even afford a meal for days. Yet, their children are today's world leaders, some of the richest in the world, due to hard work and bravery to embrace the sting of hard labour.

To defeat this attitude, you must first of all prepare your mind and body to accept difficult situations and pains. You must grill your body to endure deprivation and subject your dreams of a bright tomorrow to want. If you don't, even your hope of success tomorrow may never really grow in the sense that worldly attractions will always distract you to do a shortcut. As you grow the stakes become higher and if you don't make any drastic attempt to curb the desires of your flesh, you may be driven to the directions of crime, the inevitable end of such desires.

There is no way you can ever have everything in life. God didn't design us to have it all. Life is all about sacrifices. You must be willing to endure something for life to be better.

Nothing is stopping you from making it in life the honest way provided you are ready to toil. Look around you for examples of people who are succeeding through hard work. Short cuts lead to ruins but the long and straight way always ends in tremendous success. In place of selling your body, what trade are you good at? What kind of small business can you start on your own to get some money to pay your way through school? If you are serious, there are a lot of small-scale businesses you can do. What you need is the contentment to hard work and life without it, even if you are making a lot of money from what you are currently doing, it will never be enough.

You could go into telephone and card-selling business or car wash. I am sure your schoolmates could do with such services if you are not too proud and lazy to combine them with your studies. There are several students who are into second hand clothing business who make more than enough to finance their studies. If men with families are depending on these types of businesses to feed, accommodate and provide for their families, then they must be lucrative. And if you are really enterprising, selling of foodstuff is also something you can do.

If you are using the availability of a job as the peg for quitting, you may never be able to quit. You must face reality and take the steps towards freeing yourself first, only after this that help can come. Help can never come from the abstract. It has to be solicited for it to be appreciated.

Learn to be proud of who you are, have faith in life and the God you serve. Refuse to be put down by today and be honest about your future.

Your reasons for going into the gay club are wrong. If your motive is to succeed in life, there are other honest means. Once you are able to honestly deal with the motive, align it to what God wants for you. Let these be accompanied by determination to endure the inconveniences that come from your choice, you will defeat the habit.

Spiritually, you have to go through deliverance to resist the demands of your flesh. If you don't, no matter how many times you attempt to stand, the flesh like the thorn it is; would prick you to leak your resolve away. It has too much power over our minds to be given control over our lives.

Genuinely, you have to seek the face of God and ask him for directions in all you do.

Good luck.