I think our brother has encouraged us: whatever question gets asked, what he has already shared is the answer to anything. So, it is always that feeling of following him—that is the challenge.
My question deals very practically with us being transformed from glory to glory. At first it looked like it was not related, but the more I looked at it, it is very much related.
So, a young person among us came out as gay and severed ties with church and family. Any advice on what to do, and what not to do, to help bring the person back?
The first thing I would like to do is rephrase this question, because this limits it to someone who came out as gay. What if we simply had the question: “A young person among us severed ties with church and family. Any advice on what to do and what not to do to help bring the person back?”
You know, really, as we are looking at this Christian life, we love to segment things. But there is a broad answer to everything that we face, and that answer is in Christ.
I was speaking with a brother beforehand, and he is an evangelist. He was sharing how people say, “Well, how do I share the gospel with somebody who is gay?” Well, how do you share the gospel with anybody?
There is not a gospel for gay people. There is not a gospel for alcoholics. There is not a gospel for all the various categories. There is one gospel.
As we are facing and walking through this Christian life, there is one answer to everything, and it is found in the person of Christ.
Dealing specifically with this question in a little more practical way: this matter of people coming out as gay is something that many assemblies have already faced. Many friends have faced it, and every assembly is going to have to face this in real time. This is right in our face in this day and time, and we need to be equipped to handle issues like this.
We know that, as you look into Scripture, the matter of homosexuality is no question: it is a sin. There is a violation there. When you look at homosexuality and everything, it is a violation of divine order.
But sometimes, when we look at the gay issue, we have a way of elevating it and stigmatizing it above other sins. Now yes, it is called an abomination, but there are many other things that are abominations to the Lord also. The very nature of sin, in and of itself, is an abomination to God.
When you go back to the beginning of original sin in Genesis, with Adam and Eve, there was a great violation of divine order. God had His way that He wanted Adam and Eve to live, and they said no; they wanted to do it their way.
That was the original violation of God’s divine order and a challenge against God’s very nature and character of living. He had a way of life He wanted us to live, and man, at that point in time, said, “No, we want to do it our way.”
We see how, even before then, the pride of one angel magnified himself in such a way that he was thrown down. Pride is there, and pride is within each and every one of us. Pride is an abomination.
Before we are born again, each and every one of us is a reprobate sinner, and each and every one of us is capable of anything. If we ever sit back and say, “How could they turn out like that? How could they do that?” we do not know the nature of sin.
It is within each of us. But praise God, as our brother just shared, we now have a new life within us. We have been born again.
When we look at this matter of homosexuality, it is described in Scripture as an abomination. But what are some of the other things described as an abomination? Lying is an abomination to the Lord. Spreading strife among brethren is an abomination to the Lord.
We need to be careful that we do not pick out certain sins and focus upon them as worse than others.
Because I will say that, in the day and time we are living in, there is a great spiritual force that we need to be aware of behind the whole LGBT movement.
There is a force that is coming against us, and it is a very antichrist force. It is challenging the very nature of the creation of man.
But when we as believers are confronted with this, what is our call? What is our call when we are confronted with any sinner? Our call is to lead people to Christ.
Our call is not to change them to heterosexuality. Our call is to lead people to Christ, and then, as we have been hearing all weekend, the Holy Spirit can do the changing work.
Our call is to bring them to Christ. If they are unbelievers, our call is to bring them to Christ for salvation. If they are believers—and some might disagree with me, but believers can be gay—our call with anyone is to lead them to Christ, that Christ can do that sanctifying work within their heart and life.
The question asks, “How do we handle this?” The thing about it is, how do we handle it with anybody? How do you handle it with a drug addict? How do you handle it with somebody who is addicted to alcohol? How do you handle it with an adulterer?
We bring them to Christ, and we allow the Lord to work within them.
Particularly, as we are dealing specifically this morning with this question of coming out as gay, one little verse in Romans has been a great encouragement to me. After Romans 1, where it speaks of the abomination of homosexuality, what does it say in Romans 2?
It says, “The kindness of God leads to repentance” (Romans 2:4). Not the severity, in that case. It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.
Actually, if you look around Christianity today, so often we have not been very kind to the LGBT community.
We can accept the person, but we are not accepting their actions. I am thankful that the Lord loved the whole world, and He accepted us. He did not accept or appreciate our actions, but He came forth and died for each and every one of us.
Now, it is a broad question to answer in a few minutes here, but we will touch on it. The question was asked about how to handle it in a family. Well, let us recognize the situation within the family.
When someone is coming out in the family, you need, by the grace of God, to be as gracious as you can. That person is coming to you with a full expectation in their heart that you are going to reject them.
They have finally built up the courage to share with the ones they have been with their whole life that they are gay, and they are expecting to be rejected. We do not want to fall into that trap.
We want to be gracious to them. By God’s grace, we do not get mad. We do not get upset. We do not tell them how disappointed we are. We do not say, “Oh, you brought shame to the family. What are the brethren going to think?” That is focusing upon us.
What we need to convey to them is that we still love them, and they are still part of our family.
This is not the time to start throwing Bible verses at them. They already know the Bible. That is why they have been hesitant in coming out. If they did not know the Bible or believe in it, they would have outed themselves many years ago. But there was something they were wrestling with inside.
It is also not the time to say, “Okay, we can get some counselors and we can fix you.” There might be a time for counseling at some other point, but at this point in time, when someone comes out, what we need to convey is love, kindness, and acceptance of them as an individual. Love them to the uttermost through this.
It is obviously probably going to catch us off guard, but we need to convey to them that we would like to hear from them. We want, at this time, to be—as it says in James—quick to hear and slow to speak (James 1:19).
Really hear. Tell them, “I would love to hear your story. Tell me how this came about in you.” Show interest in their life.
It is not a matter of agreeing. You can understand what goes on in someone’s life without agreeing with their endpoint. So often people do not feel like they have even had a chance to explain themselves.
Listen to what they are saying. Listen to their hurts. What point was it that drove them to this?
You might even say, “Look, all this is a shock to me. Give me a couple of days to work my way through this, and then let us sit down and have a talk.” Listen to them in such a way.
The key thing is offering our love and concern, and also praying—praying for them.
Again, as we have said, the issue is not that they have come out as gay. What if they come out as a drug addict? What if they come out as an alcoholic? On and on and on. The issue is that we need to be able to bring them to Christ in such a living way and let them know that we are available to them.
We do not want to be the ones shutting the doors. Now, they might shut the door on their own. They might say, “No, I do not want to talk. I do not want to do it.” But as far as us, we want to keep an open door to be able to talk with them and have fellowship with them.
Then, maybe at some future point in time, if they open a door for questions about this, we can walk in that door gently—not with a sledgehammer to beat them up with the Word of God, but gently. We can bring more and more of the Word of God, the truth, to them to help them in this day and time.
Praise God, it is like our brother said: we cannot live the Christian life in situations like this. We are utterly cast upon the Lord. It is beyond us. Do not try to handle it in yourself.
The Holy Spirit within us can help us and can lead us through this. This is where we need the wisdom of God. But we keep understanding that it is the kindness of God.
We need to know that so often people have ended up within this community because, as studies have shown, they are not attracted to the community first because of sexual activity. First, it is because of acceptance. They find someone who listens to them and accepts them as they are.
The question also spoke about leaving the church. Lance used to say, “The church is a hospital for sick people.” Each and every one of us was sick when we were saved. We have each got our own little nuances, our own little special sickness that the Lord needs to work with.
Are we creating an environment within our assemblies where those who are sick and those who are hurting can truly come and find the Lord in a very dear way?
If someone within the assembly comes out as gay, again, we need to listen to them. We need to talk and have fellowship with them, in a similar way as within the family, trying to gain an understanding of where they are coming from and what it is so that we can be of help to them.
Probably the main question we need to ask them within an assembly is: are they abstaining? Are they celibate, or are they active? Are they practicing this?
But that is actually what is asked of everybody. Excuse the bluntness, but the only place for sexual activity is in marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Anything outside of that is sin.
It does not matter whether it is heterosexual people having sex outside of marriage. It does not matter if you are homosexual and having sex outside of marriage. Sexual sin outside of marriage is sin, regardless of who does it.
We have a way of treating these matters differently. Some young guy goes off to college and sleeps with a girl, and we say, “Oh, he is just sowing his oats.” We have a way of laughing it off. But if some girl goes off and falls in love with a girl at college, we are horrified. Both of them are sin.
We need to be facing this. These are the days we are living in.
If someone is abstaining from sin and recognizes that they have homosexual tendencies, but also knows that this is not right and wants to work through it, are we providing an environment in our assemblies to help them work through that?
Are we providing an environment where they can wrestle with this, and where we are with them and available to them as they wrestle through it?
If they are celibate and have a heart for the Lord, let us not treat them as a special category. We need to be consistent within our assembly as far as those who can serve.
If we have a young man who says, “Look, I have these homosexual tendencies, but I am not acting on them. I am being celibate. I know it is wrong, and I am trying to work through it,” do we let him serve, or do we say, “No, you sit over there”?
Yet we let the sister who is the biggest gossip in the whole church, who backbites everybody, play the piano. There has to be some consistency here. Or there are people sleeping around with one another, whatever it may be, but we say, “No, you sit over here.”
That sends a message to people like this one that there is hypocrisy. There are things going on, and that is what drives them away.
It is not so much the teaching. Most of them know what is right and wrong. But, within this situation, we have to provide an environment in our assemblies where people—whether they are homosexual, drug addicts, alcoholics, or whatever—can find a place to find the Lord in a living way and work through their situation.
Allow the Holy Spirit to do that work of transforming from glory to glory. At times, it is not a pretty scene.
I cannot remember if it was Hudson Taylor or somebody we were reading about, but he said that when you are working with people who live in a pigpen, who live in the gutters of the street, you are going to get dirty too.
Are we willing to get dirty? Not to participate in the sin, but when you are around people who are living in sin, you are going to feel that. But praise God for the blood that cleanses us. Are we willing to get our hands dirty to help people make it through these challenges they face in life?
This is the call of God upon us. Praise God, as we are available to them and continue to direct them to Christ, as the love of Christ captures their heart, the Lord can lead them on into a full measure of Himself.
There are many times when people meet the Lord while having homosexual tendencies, and the Lord does a great work and it is completely changed.
There are cases, too, where people meet the Lord, love the Lord, and are given to the Lord, but they still have this tendency within them. Yet they are abstaining and being faithful to the Lord.
We do not need to look down on them. We need to have the understanding that there are things within each and every one of us that, no matter how long we have been Christians, are still temptations in our life. We know we cannot go there.
I know in my own life gambling is a big issue. I used to love to play cards. I could count cards—I could, anyway.
Even if I am channel surfing and I see the World Series of Poker on, there is still something there that says, “Look at that.” I have to say, “No, I have got to keep going.” I cannot pause for a second.
We each have things like that in our life. Those who have homosexual tendencies can still have that, even though they are loving the Lord, serving the Lord, and going on. Maybe they are married and have children, but there can still be something there at times.
But the more we encourage them on in Christ, they will find Christ as their all in all. He is the One who has overcome.
There is an education and an awakening that we, as the body of Christ, need in this hour. This is a very real challenge that we are all facing, and we need to know how to rightly represent the King of glory in the midst of this.
God so loved the whole world—every one of them—that He sent His only begotten Son, that none would perish. He is for them.
We want to be for them, that we can be those walking with them, that they can be transformed from glory to glory.