Hello friends! Welcome back to “Walking with Same-Sex Attracted Friends”. In the next 3 episodes, including today’s one, we will be embarking on a new journey of personal stories and reflections of mentors and friends who have walked alongside same sex attracted friends. Today, we will listen to the journey of Eunice Lim and her experience of walking alongside a brother-in-Christ with same-sex attraction.

It had been 5 years since Joe told us he was gay. We were on a road trip with our friends and this was the first time he brought his partner, Ben, along. This trip was a first for many things – Joe’s partner meeting us, us travelling with Joe and a partner, and Joe asking me point blank what I thought of his partner. I had met his previous partners before, but those were usually just over a meal and quite once off. This time, though, we both sensed that Ben was different. He was warm, loved God and people, actively served in church and had a similar circle of friends and passions as I. We got along instantly, and Joe knew this would happen. He saw a future with Ben early in their relationship and wanted to know if I saw the same thing for them, but Joe also knew my stand on homosexuality.

Joe and I have had chats about what we both knew the Bible says about homosexuality, but our conversations also included why and how he had decided to leave church, to leave positions of leadership he had held there, and to love as he felt most intuitively. I would listen, aching inside, but mostly keeping quiet because I knew that he knew what was right and wrong. He had earnestly tried to “rid himself” of his same-sex attraction in all the ways he was told would help, but nothing worked. He finally decided after some years that he was done being made to feel guilty and judged. He felt he had to choose between staying in church and hiding his same-sex attraction or leaving church to freely follow his desires. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I tended to say or do little for fear of pushing him away like others in the church had. So, when Joe asked me a few days into our road trip what I thought of Ben, I felt like a deer caught in headlights. I felt the need to speak the truth but was there a way of saying it lovingly? Finally, I said, “You know where I stand on this. And I wish I could say I’ve never been happier for you because I really like Ben and I know you do too, but you know I can’t.”

In the years that followed, our group of friends, now including Ben, continued to travel, hang out together, and celebrate milestones in each other’s lives. Yet, while most of us are Christians, we hardly, if ever, spoke about Joe and Ben with Joe or Ben. Not talking about the elephant in the room seemed like the safer option, to me at least. Yet, ever so often, I would feel guilty for not speaking up about their relationship and wondered if, by my silence, I was condoning it. Was I compromising what I believed by not talking them out of their relationship or even by keeping them as close friends? What was I supposed to pray for? That they would break up? Should I pray God would use me as an instrument in that process? To assuage these feelings of guilt, I would try to sneak in a line or two about God and what He was doing in my life or ask about how Ben was doing in church in my effort to “keep God in the picture”. Needless to say, much of my effort was driven by guilt and curtailed by fear. Little did I realise that I was living under the law, which tells me what is right and wrong, but offers no power to choose rightly. I was relating to Joe and Ben out of my own efforts to please God and keep them close but was achieving neither.

Fast forward to a few months ago when I received a text from Jane, another of Joe’s close friends, which wrote, “Is it hard for Joe to relate to you now that you’re in full-time ministry?” As I crafted my reply to her, it hit me that we had actually become much closer despite me being in full-time ministry. This amazed me because I had started off with the same worry as Jane that our relationship would go south, but God was about to show me another way forward. It would involve stepping back from trying to “force fit Jesus” into our conversations in my attempts to change my friend and have them know Him. Even more significantly, God was going to bring me to a place where I could no longer rely on my efforts to live for Him.  

This shift happened as God “turned the tables on me” and began to show me my own sin and brokenness that I had been blind to. And it happened when I least expected it to, which is right as I entered full-time ministry. Instead of gearing up to be able to do more for the Lord, God began to show me little by little, yet more and more each time, how sinful I was and how little I understood of my need for His grace. As He unveiled areas of my life that were previously untouched or had gone unquestioned, I felt exposed and ashamed. I saw how my well-established coping mechanisms and strengths had hardened my heart and become hindrances to me turning to God. I found myself grasping to know this God anew and wondering how I could have missed out on all this in my past years. I knew so little of His mercy, grace and patience. I knew so little of what it meant to struggle honestly without falling back on religiously platitudes to ease my discomfort or conscience. I finally felt free to wrestle with questions like: Why didn’t God fix all this before I entered full-time ministry? Why did He even call me into full-time ministry knowing how perfectly messed up I am? And as the Lord unravelled me and showed me how He saw me, I found myself processing and marvelling about many of these things with Joe and Ben. They were the ones who somehow knew when and how to be there for me, even when I didn’t know how to ask. They made me feel safe and held no expectations I felt others in church had of me to have it all together. They listened, stuck close as I processed these raw and messy emotions, loved me well and gave me all the time and space I needed to struggle and start afresh in many ways. Through this very long season, Joe and Ben became some of my closest friends as I relearned who I was, who Jesus was to me, and who He is to them too. With all this being figured out as we talked and spent hours together, Jesus ended up being in every conversation we had without me having to intentionally try. Through them, imperfect as they were, I experienced so much of Jesus’ deep love for me, though they were the ones I once felt responsible to show His love to. They were the very instruments and means of the Lord’s goodness and grace to me in my times of need. Only after repeated instances of them loving and caring for me did it click that God was using them to change my view of Him – He doesn’t require us to be sinless or “good enough” before He can use us in life or ministry. Quite the opposite, despite our sin and brokenness, He is for us. He will accomplish what we cannot do on our own as we surrender to Him. And He will help us surrender because He knows how hard it is and that we cannot do it on our own. As I learned these truths for myself, I begin to believe they are true for Joe and Ben too. I finally began to feel free to enjoy them as friends without the nagging feeling that it was my role somehow change them or try to convict them that their relationship is wrong. God, who sees them for more than their gay relationship, is committed to turning their affections to Him, satisfying their desires perfectly as only He can, in His own ways and time. I can rest in His promise that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” and make it my prayer that their “love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that [they] may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1: 6, 9-11)

After years of fearing that I would jeopardise our friendship if I spoke about the truth and light I claim to believe and live by, the Spirit of God revealed to me that I was the one “who loved the darkness rather than the light” and that my “works were evil” since “evil” refers to anything that flows from unbelief and is done apart from faith in Christ. I finally saw my fear for what it was and that it stemmed from unbelief that Jesus’ love is an infinitely better love than what they share and can satisfy completely. It stemmed from the unbelief that the life Jesus promises all who call on His name is infinitely better than one we try to create and maintain for ourselves. This revelation was not one of condemnation but an invitation to trust Him more – that He knows how important this friendship is to me, that He knows and loves and cares for Joe and Ben more than I even can or will, and that His grace and mercy are far more abundant than I believe. No matter how imperfect we are, the God I know will sustain us, for God doesn’t choose the qualified, He qualifies the ones He chooses.

Next Thursday, we will be listening to another sister-in-Christ, Carrie Ty, who journeyed alongside a few brothers-in-Christ who experience same-sex attraction as well. Until next time, this has been Global Reachout and it has been a blessing to journey with you. Stay tuned, stay kind and have a great week!