I read an article today. It was written by a grieving mother. A grieving mother who professes to be a Christian. This grieving mother shared the story of her son… her son who struggled with homosexuality.
A son who has now passed from this life into eternity.
I struggle with her response to his death. She shares her story and says “so we pray that God can somehow use our story to help other parents learn to truly love their children. Just because they breathe.”
Although I understand her grief… and her guilt… I struggle with her response and her cry to the Christian community because I believe her perspective is wrong. All wrong.
I read her heart wrenching words here that read “Basically, we told our son that he had to choose between Jesus and his sexuality. We forced him to make a choice between God and being a sexual person. Choosing God, practically, meant living a lifetime condemned to being alone.”
And what I want to say to her is… If your son indeed had Christ, and it appeared that he did, then He was never alone. Choosing God never leaves a person condemned to be alone. It leaves a person forever not alone, never forsaken, never forgotten, never left, never abandoned.
Struggling with homosexuality is indeed a struggle and it is made worse today by the immorality of our nation and culture. We have empowered the spiritual forces of darkness by our choosing the pleasures of sin and choosing to believe the lies of hell as opposed to the truth of the Word.
I would cry out to this woman to not demean or dismiss the fight that her son fought to try and choose to honor God and His Word over the desires of his flesh. He struggled, but he was fighting the good fight of faith. He faltered, but he appeared that he was still crawling toward grace. Don’t destroy that in his death. I don’t know what demons he fought, but from what she shared about him, he did indeed appear to fight.
She then writes, Now, when I think back on the fear that governed all my reactions during those first six years after Ryan told us he was gay, I cringe as I realize how foolish I was. I was afraid of all the wrong things. And I grieve, not only for my oldest son, whom I will miss every day for the rest of my life, but for the mistakes I made. I grieve for what could have been, had we been walking by faith instead of by fear. Now, whenever Rob and I join our gay friends for an evening, I think about how much I would love to be visiting with Ryan and his partner over dinner. But instead, we visit Ryan’s gravestone.
I would make my plea here again… to live is Christ, to die is gain. Why would we choose to have our child with us for a few earthly years and yet be separated from them for all eternity? Is it not selfish of us to desire their earthly bodies present even though it would mean their soul would burn in hell?
Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NLT)
Did you notice that the Scripture says, those who practice homosexuality. It doesn’t say those who struggle with homosexual desires, it says those who practice it.
Yes, I agree that she needed not fear and instead walk by faith. She herself needed to trust that God held her son and loved him even more than she did. After all He gave His Son’s life for him.
Would we not better now rejoice that he has shed this wretched flesh and no longer has to suffer under the struggles of the sin it craved? Could it possibly be that he fought the good fight… and his Father said he had finished the race. Could it possibly be that in the mercy and grace of his God, he chose to bring him home, to give him rest for his weary soul.
Could it be that he is free. Completely free of his chains.
I would cry out to this mother and say… Please trust God. Trust His Word.
Perspective matters… oh how it matters.
Even in grief, let us trust the Word and stand on the Word. I too believe that God can remove desires if He so wills, but He does not always will. If He does not it is indeed for greater glory. His greater glory.
Yes, let us love our children, let us love them just because they breathe. Let us love them even before they take a breath and after they have breathed their last. Let us love them through their struggles and uphold them, but let us not forget that we are to put their relationship with Christ before their relationship with us.
I have said this before and I will say it again. I do not know what the future holds for my children, but I would rather spend an eternity with them in heaven than a breath with them here on earth.
To live is Christ, to die is gain. I believe this with all that is within me.
Sin is what leads to death… always.
Christ is life and death for those in Him is life. Sin might attempt to take its wage, but its grave will not be able to hold us for our debt has already been paid. Therefore, we are redeemed. We will be receiving our life refund in full!
Every believer will struggle with sin. Every single one of us. Yet we fight the good fight. We may be crawling on our face through the muck and mire… but we keep crawling to Christ. Then when we can finally cast off this shell of flesh we will never crawl again.