The Pain of Sin

I love a lesbian.
I’ve loved her since we were girls. The feeling is mutual, I’m sure. We are as close as sisters. We grew up together. We worked together. We lived together. We fought and we dated guys together. She is one of my oldest, dearest and most precious friends.

Through the years our paths separated, almost under our noses. We weren’t concerned about God. We lived like we chose and it showed. Without a plumb line to guide us, we continued our downward spiral of what was acceptable and normal for us and those who were our friends.

Somehow, through the muddle of my mind, Jesus broke through. He reached down and began to clear the cobwebs of my mind. He began to massage my brain back to life. He began to probe my thoughts and penetrate my concepts of right and wrong, just and unjust, and to stir up something long ago lost. I became a new creation. My life changed- for the better, and that change continues to this day.

But my wonderful friend hasn’t had that renewal.
She hasn’t chosen to be renewed, but all these many years she has continued to love herself and her wants. There has been no visible work toward holy living and dying to selfish desires.

Her partners have changed. Her opinions have become more vocal and her heart has fashioned God to be someone she calls on when she has disappointments and most times, she thinks He does not care for her or take a personal interest in what she does. He doesn’t hear her. Why?

Recently we got to catch up and I was introduced to her latest partner.

I had no reaction other than, “Oh, well.”

In reflecting on my lack of shock over her choice of sin, I had to ask God why I would feel no grief about her continued lifestyle. My answer was all too evident: I have become numb to the things that break God’s heart. I have forgotten how to hate sin while continuing to love the sinner. In other ones, I continue to love her but I have grown numb to her sin.

I cannot, as a Christian, make the two one. I must separate my friend whom I love, from her sin of choice. All sin breaks God’s heart. Some sins ensnare with strangling cords because they have a Trinitarian grip on the person. They ensnare the body, soul and spirit and these sins choke the life from the individual.

I’ve had to repent.

I’ve had to ask Jesus to forgive me for not seeing my friend’s hurts and ministering to them again and again, with the love of Christ. I am not called by God to judge her but to love her. I want to look like and strive to emulate a savior worth living for because she is someone He was worth dying for.