Q&A About Same-Sex Attraction and Gender

Leslie Basham: Today on Revive Our Hearts we tackle some tough questions about gender and same-sex attraction.

Woman 1: I have a friend who has a fourteen-year-old daughter, and her daughter came home from school and said, “I get giddy when I interact this girl,” or “She makes me blush when I talk to her; so, obviously, I’m a lesbian.”

Woman 2: In February, my son came to my husband and me and told us that he was involved in a homosexual relationship.

Woman 3: This is a question for Jackie: What do you say to somebody who’s a naysayer, that might say, “Isn’t this just a phase you’re going through now, to be married . . .?”

Woman 4: . . . differences between cultural constructs for gender and biblical prescriptions for gender? How do we encourage our children to hold on to what is biblical and to not? Like . . . hold on to like “pink is for girls” and “blue is for boys”?

Leslie: Hear the answers to those questions and more today on Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe. This is April 29, 2019.

Nancy: As you may know, we’ve had a month-long emphasis here on Revive Our Hearts called Tackling Tough Issues. We’ve heard from Dr. Juli Slattery and Dannah Gresh discussing ways that we need to rethink sexuality according to God’s Word.

We also looked at Psalms 42 and 43 and talked about dealing with depression and doubt. And then Pastor Mark Vroegop introduced us to the subject of biblical lament. And last week we studied what I think is one of the most difficult passages in the whole Bible—that’s Psalm 137, and how to sing the Lord’s song when we’re living as aliens in a foreign land.

If you’ve missed any of those series, you can hear them at ReviveOurHearts.com. Tomorrow we’ll start a new series on the biblical command: remember Lot’s wife. I hope you’ll gain as much from that as I did when I was preparing that series.

But today we’re going to listen in on a question and answer session with my friends Mary Kassian and Jackie Hill Perry back last fall at the True Woman ’18 conference. Mary is a wife, she’s a mom, an author, a speaker. She’s counseled hundreds of people through some really difficult situations over the past several decades.

Jackie is also a wife, a mom. She’s a Spoken Word artist and the author of the book Gay Girl: Good God. The Lord is using Jackie in some powerful ways to minister to women around the world. Together, Mary Kassian and Jackie Hill Perry led one of our pre-conference tracks at True Woman ’18.

That track was called “Firm Foundations in a Gender-Fluid World.” We’ll be hearing more from that session in the weeks to come, but today I wanted you to hear the Q & A session they did that day. We’ll start with a warning from Jackie. She told the attendees that it’s easy to slip into elevating our personal experiences over what God’s Word has to say.

Jackie Hill Perry: I want to challenge you, because we have a real Devil and we have a real spirit of the age at work. Some of us will hear what the Scripture has to say about sexuality and have heard what the Scripture has to say about gender. The temptation that wells up in you is to not believe it.

A lot of people are drifting from faith in what the Scripture has to say about sexuality and gender—not because of theology. The theology isn’t the problem; it’s our experience. And what’s happening is, our experiences are shaping how we interpret Scripture.

I just want to warn you against that! Because, really, what has to happen is we have to be so anchored and so rooted in what God has to say in His Word that it does not taint how we see the Word. Do you get what I’m saying?

We love God more than anything, including our siblings, including our children, including our churches. When we love God more than anything, you will not loosen your grip on His Word!

Nancy: That’s Jackie Hill Perry with a sober and important warning. She and Mary Kassian fielded questions about gender and same-sex attraction at a pre-conference session at True Woman ’18 in Indianapolis. Let’s continue hearing that conversation.

Woman 5: Hi, my question is: With the idea of wanting to share truth and perhaps be able to pierce the blindness that people are in . . . when you’re in a group and people are talking about some sort of sexual identity issue, sometimes I think the wise course is not to say anything (like the idea about “pearls before pigs”).

But I was hoping from you. Do you have any phrases or even like short sentences that you’re not going to be “going on your soapbox” and preaching judgment and brimstone on them, but just like a couple words or thoughts that you could share to get people thinking. Maybe questioning what they’re believing and wanting to find the truth?

Jackie: For me, I’ve paid a lot of attention to Jesus. A lot of times Jesus when He was in these kinds of conversations, He preached through a question. So I’ve found that I try to pay a lot of attention to what’s being said, and I’m praying at the same time. So I’ll just ask questions and hope that, sometimes, if they think through it enough, that really does all the preaching you need.

Especially when you start talking to Ivy League students. They love that stuff anyway!

Mary: Yes, they do! It depends on your audience, too. Sometimes you’re in a conversation and you’re in a small group, and it’s people who are committed to Christ already. I think that that’s a little bit of a different conversation, because then you’re pulling them back to the Word and to their love of Christ.

For instance, I had a text message interchange this week with a friend who’s a mid-twenties guy. He said, “So, can I ask you a hard question?”

I said, “Yes, go ahead.”

And he goes, “Why is homosexuality wrong?” And then he texted, before I could answer him, and he said, “Other than God tells us it is.”

Jackie: Well, where do you go from there?

Mary: Where do you go from there! I said, “That’s a pretty foundational . . .” I was able to share with him somewhat, but in the end it was, “You’re asking ‘Garden [of Eden]’ questions: “Did God really say?”’ And, as a Christian, you’re being swayed by your compassion and what you perceive to be your love for these people, but you cannot divorce love from truth! If the truth part isn’t in there, it’s not really love. It’s something else.”

And so, I think it depends on your audience. I think that you have to know who you’re talking to. When you’re talking to seekers, you’re just sharing the goodness of Christ and trying to give them a vision for who God is and the goodness of God.

Sometimes when you’re talking to people who ought to know better and who are just discussing it from a philosophical standpoint rather than a personal struggle standpoint, where same-sex attraction isn’t something that they struggle with but they have a friend who struggles with it . . . They’re saying, “Why can’t we just . . . ‘Everything’s okay?’”

There’s a lot of that right now in the Christian community, a lot. So it is important to speak truth, but to do so in a way with kindness and compassion. But, really, you’re not being kind if you’re not being truthful.

Woman 6: This is a question for Jackie, and it’s kind of personal. It’s not meant to be disrespectful in any way. What do you say to somebody who’s a naysayer, that might say, “Isn’t this just a phase you’re going through now, being married, having kids? Maybe it’s just another phase of your sexuality?” Does anybody ever ask that of you?

Jackie: They’ll usually word it that I am “suppressing” my sexuality or that I was never gay, or I was bisexual, or something like that. One is, I think it’s ironic that the culture lifts up and believes everyone’s narrative except the narratives that undermine their own.

Usually I’ll say, “That’s your opinion, but you really don’t have the right to say you believe my story is ‘X, Y and Z.’” My story is my story. And that’s not my personality! If it was a phase, I wouldn’t be in it! I’m one of those people, I literally do what I want. I’m not just going to be out here faking it ‘til I make it. Marriage is too hard to do that! I don’t know about you . . . it’s a lot of work!

And so, that would be my response. “I don’t think you have the right to change my narrative to fit your own personal convictions.”

Woman 7: First I wanted to say that I was raised in church my whole life, and this was a very cut-and-dried topic for me until it really hit home. In February, my son came to my husband and me and told us that he was involved in a homosexual relationship.

I guess my question is, he’s very secretive, very guarded about things. It took a lot of courage for him to even come and tell us about it, tell his dad particularly. He came to his dad first. And once he got the reaction from us that he was expecting . . .

We did respond with love. We let him know that we loved him, and we’d never turn our backs on him. But, obviously, from God’s perspective, this was wrong. I guess I’m trying to understand, from his perspective, where he is, but he’s not very communicative.

Number one, I wondered, Is he gay? I mean, he said he was gay. Now he says that problem is gone. Does that happen? Does that problem just come and go like that? Does he identify as a homosexual? Is this a phase? I don’t know. I don’t understand from the other side, from his perspective.

And secondly, how to interact with him? I don’t want it to be an ongoing topic of conversation. Since he came to us, he’s been spending a lot more time with us. Our relationship has actually grown stronger. He’s been spending a lot more time in our home, coming over for dinner a couple times a week, and that’s been great!

So I’m trying to find the balance. I don’t know. Do I ask him about this periodically? You know, “What’s going on? Is everything okay? Are you back in touch with this person?” I want him to know that it’s still something I carry in my heart and in my mind, but I don’t want to be constantly interrogating him, either.

Do I just accept what he tells me at face value, or do I continue to try to dig deeper?

Mary: Okay, I take two questions from that. The first one being: Can homosexual attraction come and go? Are you either gay and that’s it, or can that wax and wane? Come and go? The second is just wisdom for how to interact with him. I’d like us both to address both of those questions, okay?

I know that in the past few years with the cultural pressure and the cultural acceptance and almost exaltation, there has been a lot of experimentation brought into the lives of our young people. I know that even in teenagers like in the Christian school down the street, the word is from some of the students that being bisexual is the “in thing” for all the cool girls; that they’re experimenting sexually with girls and guys and some of them are claiming that they are lesbians and are coupling up with girls.

But some of that, in my mind, can be attention-seeking or experimentation or curiosity-driven rather than identity-driven. But I think that sin has a way of getting its hooks in you. Even if it’s curiosity that drives you, sexual sin impacts your identity at very deep levels—whether it’s heterosexual, homosexual. I’m talking about all sexual sin. It impacts your personhood at very, very deep levels that requires healing.

So to your first question: “Can he be homosexual and then not homosexual?” I don’t know, maybe Jackie can answer that more. But I know that I have seen a lot of experimentation and some changing of colors that happens just through curiosity. That tends to be more with the younger ones.

Jackie: I think sin mutates. I think sin is greedy. And so for me personally, there are sins . . . This year I’ve struggled with that I’ve never struggled with it before because of the season that I’m in, because of the stress that I’m in, because I’m growing as a person, as an individual.

So, do I think it’s possible? Sure. Because I think it’s indicative of what happens to our hearts when our hearts are not at ease with God or at rest with God. We’re restless, we’re always trying to find something that will satisfy. “Oh, this doesn’t satisfy; let me move on,” or “This doesn’t satisfy, let me move on.”

So, I think that speaks again to the primary issue not being one of sexuality but of unbelief. You are seeing the fruit of his wavering faith, probably. I’m not saying that the temptations are a fruit of his faith, but the temptations are a fruit of his nature. You get what I’m saying? So, yes.

Mary: The other thing that I would say, in terms of parenting him: I’m so glad that the relationship is flourishing and that he feels welcome in your home and that there’s good. But I think you make the issue his relationship with God, not his sexuality.

I think Jackie spoke so well to that. The central issue is his heart relationship with God. If that is right, then other things will be set in place in terms of his behavior. Again, temptation . . . you don’t know, but you’re not going to fix that. Your goal isn’t to fix him to make him heterosexual. You’re goal is to make him a worshiper and a follower of Jesus.

Jackie: Amen. I guess the small thing I would add is . . . I say this with nothing but love, “Don’t over complicate it.” If you feel like asking the question, ask it. If you find out that it was dumb, apologize. Honestly, don’t put so much pressure on yourself to be the perfect mother or the perfect evangelist. You’re not perfect, but the Holy Spirit is.

You need to just trust that the Holy Spirit would use you and guide you in how you love on your son. But also, be willing to admit when you’ve done it wrong.

Woman 8: Hello, ladies. My question is for Jackie. In the beginning you stated, “People drift, not because of theology but because of experience.” I was wondering if you can expand on that, and also, if you can share what that looked like for you personally.

Jackie: Well, I don’t think I’ve drifted—glory to God! So, there’s a guy who identifies as a gay Christian, and he felt as if the Scripture had to be wrong when it came to its treatment of sexuality and of homosexuality.

And so, when he went to study the topic, he studied it with the presuppositions that everything that the text had to say could not be what the text was actually saying. So, it’s so subtle, but it’s when people allow their experience and how they feel to be the way that they go into the Bible. When they say, “The Bible has to fit what I feel, has to fit what I’m experiencing.”

They do this rather than going into it with an objective kind of perspective, where you say, “God, You tell me what You have to say.” And it’s happening with people that have been in the Christian faith for decades!

Mary: Yes.

Jackie: It’s not happening to the newbies, because the newbies are coming into it not knowing the Bible from . . .

Mary: They read it and they go, “It says this? That’s what it says!”

Jackie: Yeah, “I don’t care!” But it’s people saying, “Oh [sigh], well, I love her, and so Romans 1 can’t be saying this; it has to be saying something else.” So, that’s my experience. I think the way we combat it is prayer, because it’s, quite frankly, a spiritual thing.

But also, hermeneutics . . . Proper hermeneutics will teach us how to read the Scriptures rightly. People are loosening up their grip, probably, because they never really knew how to read the Scriptures easily, anyway.

Woman continues: It seems like so often, especially more often I hear it with lesbians than necessarily gay men, about woundedness that seemed to contribute to having more of a same-sex relationship. And maybe that’s not true, but it seems like that’s been my observation.

Jackie: Do you want to speak to that?

Mary: I’ve been in ministry for a long time—forty-plus years.

Jackie: Praise God! That’s a blessing!

Mary: Especially when I’m thirty-nine, right!? (laughter)

Jackie: That is a blessing!

Mary: So, what I have seen is a shift. Back in the '80s and '90s women who became adamant lesbians (in my experience), 95 percent of the time there was an episode of sexual abuse in their past.

So it was a militant reaction and sometimes an ideological reaction. Feminism really pushed it. The height of feminism in the '80s began pushing lesbian as a way to reject patriarchy, so it became more ideological. But over the years, that’s shifted now.

I used to see it more closely linked to sexual abuse. I think it’s still highly linked to sexual abuse, but I think that—given our culture . . . Again, a lot of it sometimes is curiosity-driven, experiential-driven. Then sin gets its hooks in you and pulls you. Sometimes it’s ideologically-driven, but the percentage of correlation in terms of sexual abuse and lesbianism is not as high as it used to be.

Jackie: Yes, I agree. For me, I experienced same-sex attractions before I was abused, but I think what the abuse did was that it made it easier to assume that this attraction was something to be pursued.

I say that because I’m in kindergarten, and I’m feeling like I like little girls. Then, first/second grade I’m abused. Then you continue that, and I have fatherlessness.

Nancy: Now, let me cut in here for just a moment. Jackie says all of those ingredients: the attraction to her own sex, the abuse, the abandonment of her father, all led her think, So I like girls, and men are no good! Eventually, the combination of those factors culminated in Jackie adopting a lesbian lifestyle.

She’s told her story here on Revive Our Hearts in the past. It’s a powerful testimony and a beautiful illustration of the redeeming love and grace of Christ! You’ll find a link to that series in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Now, let’s continue. Here’s Jackie Hill Perry responding to questions, along with Mary Kassian.

Jackie: A lot of the friends that I had and a lot of the relationships I had were people with both parents, not traumatized at all—which is to say that, even when you look through the Scriptures, sin is never blamed on trauma. I think trauma just exaggerates what’s already there.

Woman 9: Hi, Jackie. I just want to make a comment and just say, “Thank you.” My daughter is twenty-two years old, and she is experienced with other girls (she’s told me), and my mom keeps pounding at me to tell her how sinful and wrong she is and to pound that in her head.

But I think what you said today about how you can’t keep pounding all the sin to somebody because it just drives them way farther from God. I’ve realized that, and in my relationship with my daughter, now, it’s close, where she can talk to me. My friend and I were just talking: I just have to keep praying for her!

She is in a relationship with a guy, but I know she says things like she goes to strip bars and stuff like that. And she enjoys looking at women. It makes me feel . . . I keep praying for her and that one day—and it’s not my timing, it’s God’s timing—she’s going to change.

I can’t control that any longer. It’s hard to deal with a generation, like my parents who are Roman Catholic, who don’t get it, who don’t understand that I can’t change her; only God can. You’re the first person I have ever heard that said that, so I appreciate that.

I kept thinking in my heart I was this bad mother for not, you know, “Well, this is what the Bible says . . .” I do talk to her about it, but it drove our relationship apart, where we didn’t talk for a long time.

God wants us to love, and I’m trying to show my love on her to pray for her and care for her and have a prayer board for her life. I can’t have a “war room” [a prayer closet for intense times of prayer and intercession] but I have a prayer board.

And like I said, today’s the first time like I ever heard somebody say that. That’s like confirmation that what I’m doing is right. So I just want to say, “Thank you!” Thank you so much because everyone just kept making me feel like I was doing my parenting wrong.

Jackie: Yes, everybody’s got so many opinions on how to parent! I’ve recognized that as a parent. “She needs to be on a sleep schedule!” It’s like, “You don’t know my life!” But I just want to add a small note I didn’t mention earlier. When I wasn’t a Christian, that’s not to say that sin should not be articulated. . .

Even when I went to Harvard, I said the word, “sin,” and then the people that brought me out said, “You should have explained it, because there are some places where they don’t even know what that means.”

And so, there is needed some type of conversation about it. But I will say that, for me, I heard more about sin than I did about God, and I think that’s problematic that evangelism centers around my brokenness instead of centering around the glory and the sufficiency of Christ.

I really wonder if I would have heard more about Christ than I did about hell, if I would have turned a bit quicker. Because now I would have had some glorious motivation for my turning rather than for me to just escape it.

Woman continues: I uplift her by telling her, “God loves you,” and that’s what I try to show to her.

Jackie: Thank you.

Woman 10: So coming from more of a college-age level, with classmates and friends who are not Christians, who maybe are not homosexual but say, “Hey, it’s fine, because society believes it’s okay.” How can I show them that it’s wrong without saying, “Hey! The Bible says it’s wrong, so it’s wrong!”

Is there a way to come to that conclusion without saying it at the very beginning? Because it would turn them off completely. They don’t want to hear that. They want to maybe hear something else. How can I get to that point without just saying, “Hey, God says it’s wrong, so it’s wrong!”

Jackie: A couple of people I study when it comes to engaging with secular thought is Tim Keller. I think he is an excellent communicator in spaces where people are not Christian or even coming from a Christian perspective. Ravi Zacharias, I feel like he engages with this conversation really well.

There’s also this book called Christ: the Controversialist, where it dialogs about the different things where people had a beef with Jesus, and how He would navigate those conversations. But, also, equipping yourself to understand the conversation through-and-through. I think the more you know, the better questions you’re able to ask.

Woman 11: I have a question: I have a friend who has a fourteen-year-old daughter, and her daughter came home from school and said, “I get giddy when I interact with this girl,” or “She makes me blush when I talk to her; so, obviously, I’m a lesbian.”

This is the first she’s ever heard of this. So, how does she interact with her? Her first response was to just shut it down and say, “No, you’re not!” But I’m just wondering the healthy way to talk through that situation.

Mary: If it were my daughter, I would do what my parents did with me, to a certain extent, with I think a little bit more of an understanding and an acknowledgement of, “You’re going to be hearing that message.” I think we need to prepare our daughters a lot earlier. They’re going to be hearing that message. (Our sons also.)

If fourteen/fifteen years old is the first time that they’re encountering this and they’re not prepared, then we really haven’t done our jobs parenting in this culture at this time. I would basically walk through the Word with her and say, “I know you’re feeling this way, and I know that culture really would say that’s good and you should pursue that. But let’s have a look at the way that God created man and woman.”

There’s lots of resources for that, too. There’s Becoming God’s True Woman While I Still Have a Curfew. Desiring God has some good resources, also, on parenting kids in terms of gender and sexuality at an earlier age.

I think that it’s good to have those discussions—asking questions and the openness. Then, hopefully, if she is in the habit of taking her child to the Word of God for answers, hopefully parents can cultivate that habit early on saying, “That’s how we navigate questions." As Jackie said, the feelings are secondary to what God’s Word tells us.

Woman continues: I also had a question about parenting young children in terms of encouraging them in their gender. I was particularly thinking about the differences between cultural constructs of gender and biblical prescriptions for gender. How do we encourage our children to hold on to what is biblical and to not, like, hold on to “pink is for girls” and “blue is for boys”? Should we encourage cultural constructs of gender? I would just really be interested in hearing both of your thoughts to that.

Mary: Okay, this is a tough question. I do think on one hand that the cultural expressions are neither here nor there. Does it matter if your little boy wants to wear black nail polish? Some of that might have to do with age, some of it might have to do with siblings—maybe he’s got older sisters. So is it appropriate?

Then you’re going, “Okay, if it’s a two-year-old versus a ten-year-old versus a sixteen-year-old . . . and does it really matter?” Like, “Is he artsy? You know, those artsy people really do weird things!” (laughter) 

I think that this is where you just really need to rely on God for discernment. I know that it was good for me to hear from my parents: “You’re not doing that because you’re a girl.” And you have to have discernment. I mean, they had me out in the garage working. My dad had me cutting wood; the boys were vacuuming. There wasn’t a stereotype.

But there was a sense in which the way you presented yourself to the world, you were presenting yourself as a woman or you were presenting yourself as a man. That does have some cultural ties to it. And you can normally sense that and discern that.

Oftentimes, it’s a dad that will step in with the daughters on both sides of the fence going, “You’re not going out looking like that!” Or even to their sons, “You’re not going out looking like that!” So there are two sides to that.

On the one hand, the cultural things are debatable because they’re not in Scripture. On the other hand, there is a way that we present ourselves to the world in terms that we’re declaring who we are and in terms of our identity. So I think that it’s not irrelevant, but it’s not the most important thing either. It can be a marker of something, and so there is some importance to it.

I know there was a commercial . . . I don’t know if it was for jeans or whatever. It was way back when (“way back when,” three years ago) it started to be controversial about guys wearing nail polish, because it was really pushing that. The little boy in the commercial was wearing nail polish; that was really a controversial thing.

There’s a sense in which there are cultural markers, and I don’t think they’re totally unimportant. I mean, you [Jackie] went through that when you came to Christ.

Jackie: Yes. I think now that we’ve processed it, one small thing I’ve done with my daughter is that when she watches cartoons, a lot of the princesses have on dresses. I feel a particular burden to encourage her to know that she is a princess even without a dress.

Because often she’ll put on a dress and be like, “Mommy, I’m a princess now!”

And it’s like, “No, you’ve been one. You were a princess when you had on pajamas; you were a princess when you you had on those eight-dollar Target jeans.” So I take that personally, just because I think growing up, a lot of people were calling me masculine just because I wasn’t hyper-feminine.

And by “hyper-feminine,” I mean, “Oh, you don’t wear pink, and you don’t wear nails, and you don’t wear dresses.” They were calling me masculine, so I started to believe that I was masculine. But who’s to say that that’s a lack of femininity that I don’t want to wear a purse? Who defines femininity that way?

Or who’s to say that a man is being effeminate because he’s emotional, as if that’s not a human thing. So I think if I have a son, one of the ways I would do that is, I won’t shame him for being emotional. I won’t shame him for crying. I won’t shame him for feeling.

I think that’s why we have so many men now that are starving for affection in objectifying ways, or harmful ways. They were afraid to show it in healthy ways or shamed by showing it in healthy ways. I didn’t answer the question, but . . .

Mary: It’s not an easy question to answer.

Jackie: Yes, it’s not! I think it’s a case-by-case thing.

Mary: Yes, because you’ve got your five-year-old boy who has been reading these books or who is being influenced by who-knows-what or just on a whim wants to wear a Cinderella dress to school. Are you going to let your five-year-old boy wear a Cinderella dress to school?

Jackie: No.

Mary: I mean, your husband is going to say “no.” Culture will say, “Oh, well, what’s wrong with that? Let’s celebrate that!” That’s where I say I think the fathers are often a part of that—and the mums, too. But I think the mums are the more nurturing and, “Let’s bring out their personalities,” and “Let’s flourish and grow.”

But there are markers that you have to be sensitive to, though, as I say, it’s not the most important thing. I think it’s the Word of God. There’s just so much diversity in terms of our expression and who we are as a man or as a woman. But we definitely, if we are image-bearers and God has created us to be a woman, we definitely want to present ourselves to the world as a woman.

Jackie: Correct, yes.

Woman 12: And this may be a case-by-case kind of thing, too, but I guess my question is: As we befriend people in the gay community, how do we walk that balance of: If I’m dating somebody, I’m going to tell my friends about who I like and who I’m dating and what I’m feeling. That’s the way we’re going to connect, by sharing with our lives.

Sometimes with my close friends, I worry about how much do I listen and talk and somebody said “celebrate” and not accept? Do you know what I’m saying?

Jackie: Yes. Don’t take mine as the method of methods, because I’ve continued to have relationships with people that are gay. But there is a restraint on their part in what all they communicate with me. Because I’m particular. They’re like, “Jackie just wrote a book about gay-ness. Like, I don’t know if this is the person I should be telling about my girlfriend.” You know what I’m saying? They usually will say it in a general sense, but it’s not conversational.

I think for me, the times that it has happened or does happen, it’s kind of like, “I’m engaged!” They already know where I stand, and so I don’t feel this pressure to have to affirm, because, “You know where I’m at.” 

You know, my hair stylist (it’s always my hair stylist!) in Chicago, she and her girlfriend kept breaking up. She was like, “Yeah, I moved out of the house,” and all this type of stuff. I was like, “Oh, where are you about to live?” I just took it to another conversation, low-key. I’m still conversing with her, but I’m not going . . .

If she was a friend of mine who was with a man, it’s like, “What happened!? How do you think you can fix it? How can I pray for you all? What do I need to help you all to reconcile?” I have no affirmation for that [in the former scenario]. So we could just talk about the whole process of you moving out and if you need help.

Mary: Part of it also is, I think we compartmentalize sin sometimes. Like, “Oh, the gay community . . .” or “. . . the homosexual community . . .” To me, it would be the same as talking to any of my friends that aren’t saved. It would be like a friend of mine who’s living with her boyfriend, or if she’s on her fourth boyfriend and about to move and they’re living together. That’s sin, too. That’s not right. Or the one who’s talking about having an affair. If I’ve got a girlfriend who’s being attracted to a guy at work, it’s the same sort of thing. I will not affirm the sin, but I will listen, and I will be a friend.

Jackie: Yes, yes, that’s good!

Nancy: Loving people well without affirming their sin takes the wisdom and grace of the Holy Spirit. We’ve been listening to my good friends, Mary Kassian and Jackie Hill Perry, answering questions posed by the audience at a breakout session at a recent True Woman conference.

This issue of same-sex attraction and questions about gender identity have become front-and-center topics because of the messages we’re constantly being bombarded with! I want to encourage you to continue exploring this topic with a book that I highly recommend called Rethinking Sexuality. It’s by Dr. Juli Slattery, and it will help you think through what God’s Word says about our sexuality.

We’d love to send you a copy of Rethinking Sexuality when you give a gift of any size to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. You can make your gift online at ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call us at 1–800–569–5959. Be sure to ask for the book Rethinking Sexuality when you call to make your gift.

Now, one of the shortest verses in the Bible says, “Remember Lot’s wife”—just three words! So what exactly are we supposed to remember? I’m going to help you get to know this somewhat mysterious biblical character, Lot’s wife, so you can remember her and the important truths that we learn from her life.

Please be back with us tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants you to know the truth that sets you free. It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

 

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