Do you have family members and friends who identify themselves as homosexual or who struggle with same-sex attraction? As a Christian who loves them, do you find it difficult to know how to respond?
Perhaps you are gay-identified or you struggle with same-sex attraction? Do you find it difficult being a Christian and trusting your sexuality to God in this area? Do you wonder if you are living according to God’s will for your life and if the Bible really says homosexual behavior is a sin?
Ten years ago, I asked these questions about my own struggle with same-sex attraction. At the time, I debated whether I was going to “come out” and live with a woman, and I was in turmoil over this decision because I was a Christian. I loved Jesus Christ, and I studied the Bible. I grew up the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers.
However, even though I knew that the Scriptures forbade homosexuality in the Old and New Testaments without exception, I still thought that if God loved me he would let me have love even if it was unconventional. Perhaps God had evolved? If two people love each other, what is the problem, I thought?
But I was not content to just wonder. I needed to know. So one day I got on my knees and I prayed this prayer: “Lord, you know I love you, but I don’t know what to do about this area of my life and this relationship with this woman. More than anything, though, Lord, I want your will to be done in my life. No matter what, let your will be done in my life.”
I stood up and went about my business, not making any decision to end or continue the relationship. A week later, I received a phone call from the woman who professed to love me and planned to move in with me, saying that she wasn’t coming. I never saw her again.
I knew God had answered my prayer and had ended this relationship, but instead of being grateful to him, I was angry. I rationalized that following Christ meant that I would be alone and unloved. I mistakenly believed that serving God meant living a joyless existence of deprivation and suffering. How wrong I was.
It was during this time of anger and confusion that God revealed an amazing truth to me about what it means to follow Jesus.
One day I was driving my car, oblivious to the fact that the stoplight had turned red. I ran the light and a truck ploughed into my car, totaling it. I was fine physically, but, emotionally, I was in critical condition. In God’s mercy, he had me crash in front of an apartment where I had opened up and prayed with Christians about my same-sex attraction. The girls with whom I had prayed came out of the house and into the street. One girl put her arms around me and held me as a cried. I had remembered that the first time I felt sexual feelings for another woman was when I was comforting her as she cried in my arms. In light of this memory, I pulled my arm away from hers so as not to give her the wrong impression; after all, she knew about my “issue.”
However, as I pulled my arm away, she took my arm and pulled it back around her. In that gesture, God spoke to my heart and said to me, My dear Kristin, I did not come to deprive you of love but to give it to you — in my way. Trust me to provide for you and follow me. Initially, my anger turned to fear, and then gradually my fear turned to trust, and then finally trust turned into joy because God came through. His word is true; God provided for me. Was it easy? No. Was it quick? No. Did God allow Satan to provide opportunities for me to turn back and lose hope? Yes. But God never gave up on me. He always protected, always trusted, always hoped and persevered. His love never failed.
The Psalmist’s prayer is true of my life: I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods. Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare (Psalm 40:105).
Following Jesus meant that I trusted him to provide for me at all costs — no matter how long it took and no matter how confusing and difficult my circumstances. During this time, God revealed himself to me deeply and personally as I trusted him. He became my Father and friend. He loved me as a good husband loves his wife, as a good father loves his daughter. He began to change my mindset and to heal my heart. He taught me why he set boundaries, not to keep us from joy but to give it to us.
I came to realize that my same-sex attraction stemmed from a deep need to have emotional intimacy with the same sex, a healthy intimacy that had been short-circuited as a child and adolescent. I learned that only God, our perfect parent, can fully meet our emotional needs. When I went to others to meet all my emotional needs – to a woman in a sexual relationship or to a man in a sexual relationship outside of marriage, I was making people my idol. I worshiped them above God and trusted them to give me what I thought God had deprived me from having. These relationships always ended in disappointment because only God can fully provide; people fall short.
Today I’m married to a loving and devoted Christian man, and though I have only been married a very short time, I am learning that even in marriage, I still need to go to God first to meet my core needs for love, security, and identity before I go to my husband for these things. Only God is worthy of our worship because only God can fully meet the deepest needs of our hearts.
C.S. Lewis was right when he said that we are like children content to play with mud pies in a slum because we have never seen or experienced a day at the ocean. Had I believed the world, well-meaning but misguided Christians, and a Church that is increasingly advocating gay marriage and celebrating homosexuality, I would never have experienced the joy of living in obedience to God’s commands and the blessings that have come from it.
So what do you tell your gay friends and family members? Tell them my story. Tell them about Jesus. Love them enough to tell them the truth about their sin, as Jesus did to the woman caught in adultery, not to condemn them but so that they may be freed to live the abundant life that God has intended for them to live.
If we don’t tell them, who will?
Kristin J. Tremba is a member of First Church of Orlando and the executive director for OneByOne, a national Presbyterian Renewal Ministry.
