Kingdom Kindness: Remade for Each Other
We celebrate Pride Month by showcasing Jesus’ Kingdom kindness: how His love invites and enables sexually wounded people to become fruitful. May every testimony we feature this June persuade you that ‘the kindness of God leads us to repentance’ (Rom. 2:4).
‘The more we are aware of being robed in mercy, the more serenely we can live with ourselves, our desires and flaws, contradictions and hopes. Mercy gives us courage to remember and to look forward.’ Erik Varden
Surrendering sexual brokenness to Jesus makes us better than before. Infused with mercy, our wounded lives now glorify the Savior who also has power to restore original dignity.
Double threat to the devil: wholeness AND humble adoration of the One!
Merciful Jesus trumps Pride Month every year!
When I consider Annette, who after Jesus is my first thought and prayer, I give honor to the One who REMADE us as man and woman for each other. For our wedding vows, Annette recalled the gift of loving a man who Jesus plucked out of ‘gay’ everything and refashioned into a man attuned to her—the specific work of redemption that prepared one groom for one bride.
And I praise the One who employed our ‘yes’ to each other to free Annette to face and slowly forego the control mechanisms she employed to stabilize herself after being raped at 4 years old. Troublesome stuff—deep trauma and disordered desire—but no match for Jesus Who makes new (and better!) all things for those who surrender to Him, eyes and hearts wide open.
Together, we were unstoppable. From the start. After a glorious honeymoon night at the Beverly Hills Hotel, we couldn’t get out of LA due to the annual ‘gay’ parade. (Beverly Hills and West Hollywood were cordoned off.) We persisted at every turn of the exotic line dance till we could grab the nearest freeway. Jesus made the Way forward: He still makes the Way, remaking us as we go, better than before.
Last week we celebrated our 43rd anniversary; we did so by prepping for a bigger and better one, the 50th anniversary of our dear friends and best Kansas City colleagues, Mike and Diane Nobrega. Mike was a good old-fashioned idolater who threw in his hat with us exotic ones to restore himself and marriage. Diane entered her own healing process with us. 50 years later, their remade marriage heals many.
As we pulled off a surprise party for them, I had one driving thought about the Nobregas: all-surpassing Mercy. Yes, an icon of sexual clarity and commitment, yes, a glimpse of Bridegroom Jesus for Church Bride, but more than anything, two Christians broken by sin and infused with Mercy at every turn. We who gathered around them, including the Comiskey and Nobrega children, testified of the overflow we have received from their generous self-giving. What they endured could wreck a family; what they repented for and received made them better.
‘We possess, in potential, the glory from which our father Adam fell. The drama of our Christian life scintillates with glory. It requires us, at once, to recall our first origins and final ends as we lay claim to the truth of our being…which is the mercy of God spreading itself over all mankind.’
So writes Erik Varden once more (from his new book Chastity.) So lives Mike and Diane. As I considered their witness and the host of lives made better by their remade marriage, I look forward to approaching my 50th with Annette. We face with eyes wide open the new and more subtle snares for couples like us.
Gay parades are passe. In vogue now is the ‘queering’ of Christianity from well-intentioned groups like Revoice whose founder Nate Collins self-describes as ‘gay’ and a part of a ‘mixed’ marriage to a ‘straight’ woman, so defined because of the immovability of his homosexual ‘orientation.’
Note to Nate and Mark Yarhouse (therapist who coined the term) and all Revoice-ers: I am not in a ‘mixed’ marriage. Nor is Mike Nobrega: would his be considered ‘mixed’ because of past adultery and temptations toward that end? Jesus’ Blood—our wellspring of Mercy—cancels any corrosive labelling of the gifts Mike and Diane, and Annette and I are for each other.
Revoice (Side B) dilutes the free gift that cost Jesus everything. And places ‘gayness’ (or other adulteries) on an altar to be enshrined over and against the transforming power of Mercy. Jesus remakes us. Period.
For anyone seeking true sexual integration: groups like Revoice entrap the unwary by leading out with Christian orthodoxy then defending one’s place on the rainbow spectrum. A young female speaker at this weekend’s Revoice conference describes herself as ‘a lover of Jesus and hopelessly attracted’ to women.
Huh? Hopeless? Which Jesus are we talking about here? Not mine.
We worship the One who rose from the dead to shatter every stronghold of emotion, affection, identification or ideology that raises itself above Him. Jesus remakes those who surrender their brokenness to Him. He makes us better than we were before.
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