Knowing the Holy Spirit is present and active when you share your stories, compassion, and the truth, can reduce any stress or fear you have.  This no longer is about what you can do.  Realizing the Holy Spirit is active allows you to step back and allow Him to move.  Sharing on the Day of Truth then becomes what the Holy Spirit can do in and through you.  You don’t have to change people.  You can trust the Lord to use the message of truth you share to impact your peers in His way and in His time.

There’s a familiar saying that I think is important to remember:  You must catch the fish first before you can clean it.  So many people think that homosexuals have to change before they step foot into church – Jesus never demonstrated that.  He never demanded the broken to change before coming to Him.  He knew their need – it was Christ, himself.  He invited them to come to Him and through that interaction He propelled change in their lives. That’s the way it is with our gay friends!  We bring them to Jesus, and then He sets the work of transformation in their lives in His own timing.

Our duty is to meet them right where they are, walk with them, and encourage them.  We can’t be the Holy Spirit in their lives.  But we can be friends who speak truth in love and trust Christ to do the healing work.  He’s the only one who can.  Believing the power of the Holy Spirit will greatly impact how you relate.  Knowing you don’t have to do it all on your own provides a huge relief.  You can allow the Holy Spirit to work and you will begin to see that He isn’t only changing your friend’s life, but you too are being changed in the process.

You’ll find that you aren’t the only one to be an impact in your friend’s life.  When I was in the early stages of walking free from a homosexual identity I didn’t think I could offer anything.  People could pour into me, but there wasn’t anything in me to pour out into others.  But as relationships grew and strengthened I found that my friend was being poured into as well.  We were both being blessed and changed through our friendship.  One friend even began to share his struggles more openly with another friend and me because I had been so vulnerable with my struggle with homosexuality.  So be open and willing to receive whatever the Lord has for you through any relationships that may come about.

We are all on a journey.  Some of us are just a few steps ahead of others.  Some actually have a heading, while others are still lost and wandering with no direction.  We, as Christians, have direction and we are to find the wanderers and point them to our heading – Christ. No matter if we are maturing Christians, new Christians, or ones that have not yet found Christ, God has some growing to do in all of us.  He’ll begin to transform your struggling, gay-identified friend, but don’t miss out on the change He wants to do in your life too!

I’ve heard countless stories from students who have participated in previous Day of Truth events that paint a rather harsh picture.  Students have been criticized and humiliated in front of their classmates by teachers – teachers who have fallen prey to pro-gay rhetoric and have lost understanding of what tolerance truly means.  Depending on your school atmosphere, you may very well experience the same kind of condemnation, anger, and judgment.  How will you handle the guards that may be thrown up to counteract your message, or the offensive attacks that may pop up when you participate? 

Experiencing pressure and personal attack because you want to dialogue and share your own beliefs on homosexuality can be discouraging and even scary.  It can be difficult to stand up for a belief that is constantly pounded by waves of skepticism, anger, and ideology that what you believe is a load of crock. (Read more)

Place yourself in the shoes of a gay-identified, or homosexually struggling peer.  Imagine you grew up feeling different and alienated from your same-sex peers.  You’ve struggled with feelings and attractions towards the same-sex for as long as you can remember.  Out of shame or guilt, you’ve hidden it from your family, friends, church leaders, and the world around you.  The last thing you want is for anyone to know your “secret” as you pray night after night for God to free you of this struggle.  You wonder how this even happened and why, out of all the things you could struggle with, homosexuality has to be your struggle.  You didn’t choose to have these attractions; they just developed and you feel like there is no way to make it all go away.  These are the kinds of things that characterize a person’s life who is dealing with same sex feelings and attractions.  Once you can get an idea of what they are going through, hopefully you are able to view them in a different light.  They are no longer “sick” people who choose to have these feelings.  They are dealing with temptations and sin.  As Paul writes in Romans 7: 15, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”  We certainly can find commonality in that!

Homosexuality is no greater sin than any other sinful behaviors or “trivial” sins such as lying or gossiping.  As the old saying goes, the ground is level at the foot of the Cross.  Everyone is given the same opportunity at the foot of the Cross to receive forgiveness of our sinful behavior along with a new identity and strength to live a life free of the bondage of sin.  Knowing this can help Christians, who may not struggle in this particular area of temptation or sin, relate to those who do.

Relating…It Can Happen
I’ve often heard from gay-identified students that Christians have no understanding of what it’s like to have these attractions and feelings.   That certainly isn’t true!  While you may not be able to relate to their specific struggle or attraction, you can definitely relate to their struggle with humanity and sinful nature.  We can all relate to being tempted, falling short, and even giving up when the battle simply becomes too difficult.  A majority of Christians have found themselves in bondage to one sin or another at some point in their lives.  So relating to those with same-sex attractions isn’t impossible.

I remember joining a men’s sexual integrity group at my church a few years ago, thinking I wouldn’t find any help or healing through this group.  Only one other guy and I were dealing with homosexuality.  I thought “Surely, I couldn’t relate with the other guys in the group and they couldn’t relate to me.”  But the longer I stayed in the group, the more I realized that I had made a false assumption about these guys.  I never felt ostracized or judged when I talked about my struggle, because the other guys knew and understood that we were in this thing together.  No matter what the particular attraction was, we were all dealing with sexual brokenness – lust, temptation, and habitual sins.

I learned through that great group of men that it is possible to relate to someone dealing with homosexuality even if you have never had a homosexual thought in your life.  You see, those men realized we were dealing with the same struggles with temptation and sin, just in our own unique ways. Together we realized that this was merely Satan’s attempt at keeping us from experiencing true intimacy with Christ, embracing our true identity in Christ, and recognizing the righteous authority we’ve been give to live a life of freedom.   A lot of my personal healing took place in this group, because I was able to see that not only could they relate to me, but I could also relate to them.

In reaching out, don’t allow a wall of unfamiliarity to divide you from peers who either struggle with or embrace homosexuality.  You’re not that different!  It’s important to realize and share your own shortcomings and struggles.  This can help you meet them in and through your own brokenness.  Be vulnerable about your own struggles, about difficulties you face or have faced, and how we all need a Savior to forgive us and help us daily fight temptations that aim to keep us from experiencing God’s best for our lives.  Vulnerability breeds vulnerability and the more you open up and show authenticity, the more your gay-identified friend will open up.  This will allow you the opportunity to speak into his or her life, understand how to pray for them, and hopefully witness God’s transforming power at work in all of our lives.

If you’ve decided to participate in the Day of Truth, you know the importance of addressing homosexuality.  What a great way to bring a biblical response to this controversial and potentially divisive topic. Participating in this event is simply a time of intentional action: bringing awareness and offering a different viewpoint from the Day of Silence.  However, we must remember that observing one day of intentionality isn’t going to bring all the gay-identified students to desire change.  This one-day event merely provides the groundwork and opens opportunities to share the life-changing power and love of Jesus Christ.

Building Bridges and Crossing Them
Participation in the Day of Truth (DoT) can be the open door to building relationships with those on the “other side” of this conversation.  As you talk to other students, DoT can be a gateway for connecting with gay-identified peers or those who are secretly struggling in your school.  As you begin “an honest discussion about homosexuality”, you are showing them that you care about them as individuals and their relationship with Christ.

As the Day of Truth comes and goes, what will you do to remain a positive and effective light in your school?  Now that bridges have been built, meet them where they are and not where you want them to be.  Your goal, or strategy, should not be to win an argument – people are involved.  Their emotions are involved and their souls are involved.  Don’t begin relationships and make the focus exclusively about homosexuality.

You can’t force people to change
If they don’t have a personal relationship with Christ, their identity, beliefs and values are found in their sexuality.  This is where your real challenge lies.  If their eyes haven’t been open to the truth, they will have little to no conviction about their behavior or sin.  That certainly was the case for me.  For a while, I was quite content in my identity as a homosexual and saw no need to change.  If someone made our friendship solely based on my same-sex attractions, I know I would have rejected them and anything they they might have tried to share with me.

Most gay-identified people are so wrapped up in their homosexual identity, that it’s important for you to not allow that to be the central focus of your conversation or relationship.  Let them know through your friendship that you see beyond their gay identity; just as there is more to you than your struggles, attractions, and feelings.  We’ll explore more about this in future articles.

Need Some Encouragement?
As the Day of Truth approaches, look at it as just the beginning.  Allow this day to be an open door into establishing and building relationships.   Don’t make this about one day of sharing biblical truth with other students, but about a long-term investment into the lives of other sons and daughters God loves very much.  This is only the beginning! If you dive in with faith,  trust and see what the Lord can do in and through you!

In the coming weeks, we will be providing some practical steps and insight on how to effectively reach your friends and peers with the truth and love of Christ.

The disruption came from a group that calls itself Bash Back, and involved demonstrations outside the church and inside the sanctuary while services were under way, said Mt. Hope Church communications director David Williams.

Members of the group inside the church shouted pro-gay slogans, threw leaflets, unfurled a banner and pulled a fire alarm, then hastily departed, Williams said. There were no injuries, he said.

Other reports note that the demonstrators threw condoms at the congregation, shouted “Jesus was gay!” and made out at the pulpit.

Stories like this can evoke a lot of responses; fear, anger, frustration, doubt–just to name a few. While this particular ‘protest’ definitely falls into a more extreme category than most, there’s no doubt that tensions are rising in the Culture War.

Many within the LGBT community were hurt and angered by the passage of marriage protection measures in California, Arizona and Florida in the 2008 election. This is no surprise, since most people with same-sex attraction have bought into the idea that “gay” is who you are–it’s your unchangeable identity. With that sort of mindset, Biblical standards concerning homosexuality can seem like hatred, and the choice of voters to uphold the Biblical definition of marriage can come across as a personal rejection (even though it’s not). Media fixation on the explosive nature of these topics as well as rhetoric from extremist groups definitely add to the tension and anger on both sides.

The election, however, only underscores a cultural tension that was already pretty strong. On the one hand, you have some in the Christian community who see homosexuals as a “threat” to the nation. Likewise, there are gays who consider Bible-believing Christians to be the source of all the hardship in their lives.

So as the culture war gets more and more heated, how are we as the Body of Christ going to respond? What is our goal, and what resolve do we have?

Standing Strong

We’ve got to realize that we can’t reject, omit or ignore Scripture’s teaching on sin of any kind.

Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves…
1st Corinthians 6:9 (NLT)

Don’t fool yourselves. It doesn’t make any sense to compromise the Gospel to make it more attractive to people–because then it’s not really the Gospel at all! But in the face of ever-intensifying opposition, many Christians think that’s the way to go. It certainly seems easier, when Biblical teachings on hot topics like homosexuality stir up the kind of anger expressed by this “Bash Back” group.

The truth is, Christ-followers have been getting into hot water for calling sin what it is and promoting an uncompromised Gospel since the very beginning:

Herod had sent soldiers to arrest and imprison John . . . John had been telling Herod, “It is against God’s law for you to marry your brother’s wife.” So Herodias [the wife] bore a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. Mark 6:17-19 (NLT)

Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property… Hebrews 10:33-34 (NIV)

We haven’t really seen this kind of treatment of Christians in the USA yet. Many could probably claim the “exposed to insult” part; we are stigmatized with labels like “bigot” and “homophobe” and sometimes mocked by popular culture for believing what the Bible says about a variety of issues. Is that reason enough to shy away from Biblical truth?

The early Church, though, faced so much more persecution. Just in these short verses we see people doing jail time and having their personal property seized by the authorities. Oh, and Herodias was eventually successful in her attempts to get John killed. But look how they responded–sympathizing with others who suffered the same persecution, and even accepting it joyfully! Imagine that! Where did they get the strength to have that attitude?

You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.  So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. Hebrews 10:34-35 (NIV, emphasis added)

A truly eternal perspective will give us all the hope and confidence we need to live faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Not only is the persecution we suffer minimal to what our Christian forefathers experienced, but even their trials were no match for the hope that they had in Jesus.

Don’t Forget About the Love

In a culture that seems addicted to polarized debate and rivalry, we can’t forget that a big part of following Jesus is learning to love when it’s the hardest thing to do. We have to really care about and seek to serve those who might be considered our enemies (Matthew 5:44).

Some people won’t acknowledge or receive our love if we refuse to compromise our faith in Scripture. They will probably even accuse us of hate. We have to be okay with that, and keep on loving them anyway.

Love is about telling the hard truths sometimes, but even more than that it’s about caring for the needs of others. Do you have gay neighbors, classmates or friends? Be thinking about practical, kind things you could do for them. As much as we tend to think about preserving and promoting Biblical truth about sexuality, let’s try to think twice as much about how to show Christ’s love in simple, everyday ways. Jesus, after all, made a priority of healing the sick, helping the needy and defending the abused. He didn’t grill them about how they got sick, needy or abused; he just helped.

There are lots of ways we can help those who identify as LGBTQ without compromising Scripture. Stick up for them when they’re being picked on; speak up when people talk demeaningly or abusively and ask them to stop. Reach out to those who are hurting–for whatever reason. Do these things regardless of whether they are acknowledged or appreciated.

Above all, pray for the gay-identified people in your life–all the more for those who really push your buttons!

I’ve had my share of run-ins with radical gay activists. To be honest, they can make me pretty angry. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way, but you can’t let that anger pollute the way you think and how you treat people. And you can’t let it steal your own personal peace!

Prayer is a great way to overcome offended feelings. Hope in God’s power to change hearts keeps negativity at bay. Just think how great it would be for the most hard-core, Christian-hating person to experience the kind of transformation that the Apostle Paul did. Did you know he was a vicious persecutor of Christians before he himself became one? (Galatians 1:13) It’s amazing to think that this man who killed Christians in his religious zeal went on to write a big chunk of the New Testament!

I pray for that day that we can say of the most extreme gay activist, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” (Galatians 1:23)

First, those of us here at Exodus youth are passionate to get the truth out there for all the young people who are struggling with their sexuality but don’t want to be gay. We get emails, phone calls and letters all the time from these desperate teens and young adults–and I’m convinced that for every one of them that contacts us, there are ten who don’t.

Many of them are people of faith, but they haven’t heard what the Bible really says on these issues. Whether they’ve grown up in church all their lives, or only have a peripheral knowledge of Christianity, far too many have imposed upon them a perception of a cold and distant God who holds their unchosen sexual struggle against them, and won’t love them until they find a way to change it.

They are also constantly bombarded with our culture’s message that change isn’t possible, that homosexuality is safe and natural and good–and unavoidable. Homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism are marketed to youth more intensely every year via popular culture and even the educational system. The message is clear: intelligent, trendy and truly “progressive” people embrace homosexuality.

Both of these false and pervasive viewpoints push struggling teens into homosexuality, keeping them blind to what God really has for them. I know exactly what that’s like because it happened to me, and many others of us who are in this ministry. So when we’re developing our resources and programs, we ask ourselves, “What do I wish had been available to me back then?”

As the word gets out that freedom and change are possible through Jesus Christ, we’ll start to see just how many people are hungry for that truth.

Secondly, we’re reaching out to a group in our world who really hasn’t heard the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’ve already seen how the staunchly traditional church has come up short in offering grace and healing to those who either struggle with these issues or identify as LGBT. But, those who fall in to each of these categories are being targeted by another religious viewpoint, one that is a false gospel.

Pro-gay Christian theology delivers a deceptively pleasing message to those with same-sex attractions, but it’s one that goes against the very nature of Christianity.

You’re probably aware the Bible says that humanity is “fallen” because of our rebellion against God. “Fallen” means we are not in community with Him; we have desires that naturally conflict with His will. As Believers we know that Jesus had to die to remove the punishment we earned by following this sinful nature. Each of us, through believing in Him, is saved and called to a life of change; we are to become more and more like Him and deny the fallen desires we still wrestle with; it’s what the Scriptures call repentance.

Gay-affirming theology teaches the complete reverse. Rather than acknowledging our sinfulness and submitting our lives to God, we’re taught that our natural desires are all good, and that the only way to live an honest life is to follow them wherever they may lead us. Truth be told, it’s a faith devoid of repentance.

I once spoke with a young lady who was protesting outside a Love Won Out event. I tried to explain to her that God’s issue wasn’t so much that she somehow change her attractions, but rather that she change the attitude expressed on her picket sign, which read: “God Made Me Perfect.”

That’s what we constantly hear from those who advocate pro-gay theology: “We’re fine just the way we are.” If you think about it, it’s really an arrogant and anti-Christian theme. Really, if God made you perfect, what do you need Jesus for? He even said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor-sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (Mark 2:17, NLT) He wasn’t saying that there actually are people who don’t need Him, but rather that He had no interest in people who thought they were good enough to impress God by themselves.

But you can see why someone struggling would be drawn to this ideology. Just think if there was a church that actually encouraged you to indulge in your temptations! If you had to choose between that and a church that shamed you and made a Christian life seem impossible, which one would you pick?

We’re called to share a Gospel that is 100% Truth and 100% Grace–they actually go better together!

I’m dreaming of a new generation who won’t ever waste their time or their hearts chasing an illusory lifestyle because the truth will be readily available. I’m envisioning multitudes from the GLBT community being powerfully impacted by the truth of who Jesus Christ is, and becoming part of His Body. And I’m praying for a Church that makes it all happen.

Great Ways to Impact Your World

Allies, Too The Allies, Too campaign was created to mobilize Christian students to stand up against bullying, name-calling and harassment in their schools without having to compromise their faith in God’s Word. Challenge the lie that Christians hate gay-identified people, and stand up for true tolerance–which means we treat each other with kindness and respect even when we disagree. Show them you’re an ally, too.