A Different Type of Love Story

After experiencing same sex attraction as a young adult living that out. Rachel Gilson found herself in a relationship with the young man who wanted to marry her. She had to think long and hard about God's design for marriage and what it would mean for her to be this man's wife. Marriage isn't like a little quick weekend project, like I need to stain the deck. You know it's a long term building project like I need to build a cathedral to worship the Lord. So I think it was really good for me to actually soberly consider to enter and I have what it takes to build this partnership in the gospel long term. This is family life today. Our hosts are Dave and Wilson on Bob Lapine can find us online@familylifetoday.com there's a lot all of us can learn about marriage, someone who has lived with same-sex attraction and had to think about marriage in some new ways will hear from Rachel Gilson about that today. Stay with us and welcome to family life to.

Thanks for joining us.

Dave your pastoral ministry, but in pastoral ministry for 30 years. Anyone who's in pastoral ministry in the year of our Lord 2020 is going to be confronted with questions about what were talking about this week issues related to gender and sexuality. Some of those questions coming from people who are struggling. Some of those coming from people are struggling who are saying no, I'm fine with how I'm living.

I want this. And Jesus to have you had to have some hard conversations yes definitely I think loving conversations you know I think there's a desire and I think it's a good desire for clarity like okay what's God's heart what Scripture say what is true what is untrue. What should be our response to a son or daughter who's asking us questions as well as a young person our church. I hate to say I start to get excited.

You know about talking about this kind of questions because it cited for honesty right here excited when people don't put up of the new year and they're willing to talk about real issues that they're facing. Don't hide yeah yeah please don't hide and let's talk again. You know, and I hope I can I can be a representative of the heart of Jesus, and you have to go back to Jesus and back to his word to say okay what does it say what does that mean for me. We would have an a good honest conversation this week with Rachel Gilson is joining us on family life today. Hello Rachel, welcome back in his bed honest and spend gospel centered how we wanted to vague Rachel is an author, she's a speaker. She provides theological guidance and oversight for all of us who are part of crew and has written a book that is part memoir and part is I support coaching manual for all of us in the culture to know how do we respond to the questions related to gender and sexuality in our friends lives in our kids lives in the lives of people we love in the church or outside the church.

Her book is called born again this way and tells about your own experience with same-sex attraction coming to Christ on the Yale campus. Recognizing that you are to have to put your sexual desires under the Lordship of Christ. If you were to follow Christ and ultimately as is. We've already talked about this week you making the decision to marry a man and to now be the mother of his one child or one child I want to be like an excellent college basketball player one and done one son and Rachel tell us a little bit about how somebody who in high school, found yourself attracted weight lately. I have to get into this because I underlined and highlighted this in your book, because it's not something you read every day. It says in 2007 I married a man that it wasn't because I had fallen in love. That's not something you read every day tell us about that well and it is a campus minister I work with a lot of young college women and they kinda get starry eyed like tell me your love story like we might be little disappointed because it is not typical. It's not what you read, and it's not what our culture tells us is normal or shipping normal. Now we are presented with the idea that romance is the on-ramp into marriage. I never felt romantic with men.

I enjoy the company of men, but that had been an avenue and I happens to meet a young man named Andrew who had a bad haircut and were closer a little too big, but he was really Jesus centered and really delightful and he started pursuing me in this thing that was crawling with Andrew freely was real. I could tell Mike our lives are centered in the same way I really like him.

I felt a lot of affection and there's even some attraction here, but felt like a little flame. The yet to cup your hands around to protect it. Oh my goodness, kind of the marriage on that and so it truly back to the Scriptures.

What does the word say I had to examine marriage again and what I saw as God's picture for marriage is that marriage does one thing, it is designed to explain in living breathing pictures around the world. Over the course of history. The gospel is a picture of God's relationship with his people and that part of that is faithfulness. Part of that is sexual pleasure. Part of that is procreation. Part of that is male-female and that you can't have romance be a part of that picture but actually you don't need romance to be a part of that picture. You know, marriage isn't like a little quick weekend project, like I need to stain the deck. You know it's a long term building project like I need to build a cathedral to worship the Lord. So I think it was really good for me to actually soberly consider to Andrew and I have what it takes to build this partnership in the gospel long term. Honestly, I kinda wish more of my students would have that kind of clarity as they sat down and consider what marriage is for.

Instead of just being letting infatuation is a gateway into marriage because it's it's a long-term thing.

Rachel, I just finished writing a book that has been released called love like you mean it in its first Corinthians 13 applied to marriage and it's exactly what you're saying. It's saying if we approach this with romantic comedy mentality with the pop song mentality were majoring on a minor part of what the love relationship and Paul makes it clear under the inspiration of the spirit.

He puts hard words to what love is.

Words like patience and kindness and not self-seeking, and bearing all things and hoping all things, and enduring all things. This is what were signing up for when we stand and say I will love honor and cherish you for the rest of my life. I'm not sure how any husband decides to be a husband when they read Ephesians 5 is just not exactly like Christ did you know by dying to yourself but what about Andrew that little disconcerting to him. It's not fireworks. She attracted to me feeling as you remind me of a little flame that drawing like a little funny how excited they would've been had I said a little something may be there.

Andrew luckily is very secure.

As a human being. I member trying to put them off when he first met asked me out.

He knew everything about my story before he even got involved, which I think was really important. He just looked at me very realistically is like will Jesus has forgiven you, so how could I possibly hold that against you think about Andrew is that he loves Jesus just as much as I do, and he looks at everything through the gospel lens as well so I do think there have been times, especially early in marriage when you're still figuring out the sexual relationships. I think it's important that we talk about sex and marriage realistically because actually, sex takes work. How much if you could be honest to say how much should your past affect your sexual relationship in your marriage. You know, honestly. My sexual relationship and marriage has brought so much healing to my sexuality that actually has nothing to do with my attraction. All patterns but has to do with some other major places right experience sexual brokenness, so I have to realize over time or my sexuality is tied into some things that are really unhelpful and really un-biblical end and actually experiencing the safety and the joy in a committed sexual relationship with one person has been such a blessing to me.

I've actually experienced healing and kind of I'm picturing like a wall with deep cracks like healing to get support. Deep down into those places and so for me it's been a lot of joy in care as we think about our marriage talk about our marriage that day and I've been married 40 years Bob and Marianne just had 41 years for their anniversary and you now I'm to be honest, it's not a big bonfire on the time it seldom is actually and yet that little flame keeps going that has warned my soul and continues to that steadfast love that Jesus has in the bond of Christ that we have together.

It's a living for something bigger than yourself.

And isn't that what we all need because when I'm living for Dave. He will be so disappointed because there's not a whole lot there that were before living on mission together and that's what it sounds like you and Andrew have our lives were oriented in the same direction.

He was just reading Nancy Percy's book left my body and she was reporting a statistic. I've seen other places where it turns out the happiest people sexually are middle-aged married Christians something very realistic about saying sex doesn't have to be this like a movie scene all the time and yet it can still be a place of such intimacy and joy and promise and connection about to how do we as a church there so many blind spots that we carry on. How do we lovingly help our friends are same-sex attracted what what are the dues and typing for walking on eggshells and so nobody will say anything in fear of hurting or offending Letty think they tell what are what are some steps that we can take in the church as a body of Christ but also as friends and even his parents well and of course some of our churches are in really different places. You know you have some churches where love and acceptance is really high but knowledge of the Bible is really really low and then you have other churches where knowledge of the Bible is really strong but there is maybe insecurity about what having same-sex attracted people in the congregation would look like. So different churches are facing different realities as they come to the topic on the number one things we can do to love same-sex attracted people is just to listen. Let's taper moment were just talking about since attract people who are disciples who are Christians listen to their story because many people who experience same-sex attraction grew up in the church and were wounded in some way by the church.

It's really helpful for us to take the time to listen to the stories and sometimes to apologize were necessary and try to learn just listening is such an important act of love and then I think to another thing that we can do is we can talk very honestly about whether a life of long-term singleness looks like a prison or looks like a place of thriving in our church community because so many disciples who experience same-sex attraction will be called to long-term singleness, and if singleness looks like the Sahara desert and we are not living up to what Jesus has talked about. He said very clearly that you will leave fathers and mothers in children's and lands, for my sake, you will receive 100 times more not just in the life to come. But now the church designed to be a family now and marrieds in singles. We need each other. We need each other and sometimes the only view of singleness in the church has been in your early 20s. Let's just try to figure out how to pair you off because our only vision of the good life is the married life we say about Jesus Christ himself, who was an unmarried man where that was extremely abnormal, or to pull.

I think we need to keep the dignity of marriage and recover the dignity of singleness and have honest conversations with our children with our young adults with our older adults about how both of those lifestages are part of God's vision for the way that he is glorified on earth, such as being able to say I experience same-sex attraction and have that be okay in the church were not looking for a place to be celebrated like yeah you're so fantastic because you experience same-sex attraction, but how in the world can I get support for an issue in my life if I if I feel like I can't talk about it right so if we practice speaking about all types of sexual temptation as things that people really face will create space for people to be open and honest regulars. You know this a little bit of a debate among whether the desire, the same-sex desire is something that will be perpetual. A lifetime phenomenon or whether it ought to be the expectation ought to be that it's lessening over time as you grow in grace and sanctification what you're thinking about sometimes God comes in and completely removes a set of temptations to prove that he has all power in the universe. I know people whose attractions have been entirely changed either immediately or slowly over time and I think that demonstrates God's power, but there are also plenty of people with earnestly sought change and have received it. A lot of those people have quoted back to me when Paul asked three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed and what God said is your weakness will show my strength, my grace is sufficient for you. I think at other times God allows same-sex attraction to remain. He allows temptations to remain because when I say I'm going to say no to this very strong desire so that I can say yes to Jesus.

What I'm saying is, Jesus is worth saying yes to so maybe it doesn't demonstrate power in the same way, but it demonstrates his worth and his beauty and I think he calls some Christians to be that kind of light in the world because our culture thinks you are literally insane.

If you say no to this. Now tell me you know your repressed your homophobic or these types of think something I'm not any of those things I've never been repressed. What I am is in love with the God who made me as a mother of a six-year-old in a part of the country where public schools are rapidly embracing a cultural view of sexuality by daughter's kindergarten teacher is a woman who is married to another woman so how are you thinking about this as you think about raising a six-year-old amount of a 16-year-old eventually. So what we do is we just don't talk about it and hope it all resolves itself when it wasn't a big challenge and I just want to be very clear that partially filling on flying blind because I was raised in a Christian household and I don't have a lot of great examples to look to some just trying to rely a lot on God's spirit in God's Word and God's people. So one of the things I want to do over and over again and I try to practice with my daughter is we make it clear that Christians are not better than non-Christians.

Actually, we are all all all sinners in need of the grace and truth of Jesus.

We don't expect people who do not identify with God as their king to live according to the king's rules and that the first thing we want to see happen in someone's life, is that they say yes to the gospel because if you don't say yes to the gospel, but what good is it to live up to the externals of religion. If you don't have the person who it's all about. I tried it. Talk about that with my daughter all the time and try to explain to her the positive vision for sexuality. I try to explain to her that husbands and wives are a picture of the gospel.

Now I've been talking to her about this innocent. She was two or three because I didn't know what to do and so I figured if I just talk to her about sex really early. Maybe I'll catch it before it becomes awkward, but I do think it's brought some fruit. She does understand there's a major link between our bodies and procreation now could she explain that as articulate Leah's knee. I don't think so, but I do think it's gotten a little bit into her bloodstream. So we have a pattern we do our family devotions in the morning over breakfast and we just read straight to the Bible, like the real grown-up Bible right so we are reading and I forget must be second Samuel reading second Samuel to be read the passage with our six-year-old about Amnon and Tim are Amnon loves his sister tame are supposedly but that love is just a deranged sexual passion and is soon as he takes her that he hates her immediately right so first of all, that might be a weird past history with a six-year-old, but again I don't know.

I sent for our passions that will lie to you and there are ways to use our bodies that are wrong and look how much pain it caused. Again, I really might be doing this in a wrong way, but I think there's there is power and safety in being honest because she's going to hear it on the playground.

The youngest age of boys being exposed to pornography right now is nine if I'm waiting until after nine years old to talk about what sexuality is, I've lost the game and how did you explain her teacher being married to a woman in the same-sex. She actually just found out pretty recently because her teachers wife gave birth to a child and my husband forgot that Anna didn't action know she was married to woman. So my darkish additional she's married to a woman is like oh I did know she was like a baby. How does that happen and so we talked about well that you know that they can't because she knew those two women can take their bodies and make a baby in cells like rights, they had to go outside their marriage that she was kinda quickly like this that wrong. Like right. We understand that there's only one place where sexual expression. I forget she likes to refer to as connecting bodies. That's the phrase she's locked onto this and get think about rights like this. Only one place where God sanctions that we have to remember, your teacher isn't a terrible person just because this is how she's living her life. She's not respond to the gospel does lots of people who have not responded to the gospel. So yes, this part of her life is not in order with what God has said, but her main issue is that she needs the gospel. I mean, I love the quote, Rosario Butterfield has said a non-Christian gay person's problem isn't that their gay it's their unbelief right so I think that's exactly the type of tack and try to take to my daughter is saying yes of course God has said yes to certain expressions and no to other expressions but let's remember that receiving eternal life through Jesus Christ is the main thing we can't expect order in our lives. If there is disorder right at that center.

You know, Rachel. None of us in this room were ever having conversations with our six-year-olds about the things you're having to have conversations with your six-year-old about. I applaud you and the moms and dads who are in the middle of a cultural tsunami and trying to hang on for dear life and an grasp for error in the process I think is a lot of reason why parents of my age with kids who were young for feeling overwhelmed were feeling afraid because we haven't really had to do this in this culture, however, the gospel shines extremely bright in the darkness. The gospel did really well in the first century when things were just as if not more sexually messed up and philosophically messed up than they are now. I know God's not out there wringing his hands be like what are we gonna do the gospel is the power of salvation for everyone who believes, and it actually makes the best sense of the world and if I equip if we equip our children with a worldview that actually explains who we are, what our bodies are for and that there's someone who made us and loves us.

It is actually more compelling than everything else that's happening in the world outside something I'm taking away from this conversation Rachel which I did not expect is as a dad as a husband and as a disciple of Sam is for me and I'm hoping for the church. The way your shining your light, it's your posture it's your your grace filled and truth telling.

Balance that I longed to be as parent and a home, a disciple of the church in just a man in the community.

I want to shine like you, have you been a model for us and I hope for our listeners to say that's what the gospel should feel like to the community.

Even though were speaking truth that they don't want to hear it's still inviting and I think you modeled for us.

I think your book models that as well you're so honest and yet at the all throughout. There's this warm light. It's bright but it's warm. It isn't blinding I'm gonna run away from this. It's now I want am drawn to this and I think that's art a Christ why Niemi had this to Rachel.

This is not an easy book to write. You have been incredibly vulnerable and real and it takes incredible courage, knowing that there can be people that don't agree with you. And yet, as Dave said that you are a grace giver and a truth teller in a beautiful way. So thank you like. This helps us and we need this in a time where we are pointing people to Jesus while that if that's true, to him be the glory and we believe it is true. Again, thank you for being with us. We want to let our listeners know how they can get a copy of Rachel's book. It's called born again. This way, we've got copies in our family life to the resource center, I'd encourage you to get it under read it and to share with others go online to family life to the.com to get your copy or call one 800 FL today. Again, the title of Rachel's book born again this way coming out, coming to faith and what comes next order online@familylifeto.com or call 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, amend the word today. Now today is the last day of the week it's the last day I have to encourage you to join the family life to legacy partner team I've mentioned this earlier this week. We've had some friends of the ministry who came to us knowing that we need some new families to join with us to be monthly contributors to the ministry of family life to the aid to provide the financial footing that makes this program possible that they have agreed that they will match every donation that we received from a new legacy partner somebody was shines on this week.

They'll match your donations for the next 12 months, dollar for dollar so you become a legacy partner and say will give $50 a month to family life to the match that with an additional $50 a month every month for the next 12 months, that's a great opportunity for us a great opportunity for you, for your giving to go even farther and if you sign on today is a new legacy partner. We would like to say thank you by sending you first of all, a copy of my new book, love like you mean it. It's about what the Bible says real love in a marriage should look like that were to send you three episodes of the new TV show slugs and bugs featuring Randall good game.

Randall was a guest with us earlier this week. It's a great kids program for your children or your grandchildren. Finally, will send you a gift card that you can use to cover the registration cost for a weekend to remember marriage get away about card is good anytime.

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Once we get the all clear and can start hosting them again. You can use to get away for yourself or you can pass along to a friend so all three of those items come to you when you become a family life to the legacy partner and you can do that easily. You can sign up online@familylifeto.com or you can call one 800 FL today and let me encourage you to do it today so that your donations will be doubled for the next 12 months. Thanks in advance for joining the legacy partner team. We appreciate your and with that we have to wrap things up for today. Thanks for being with us. Hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able one way or another to worship together with your local church this weekend and I hope you can join us back on Monday when we talk about how important it is for you as parents not just be praying for your children as they had back to school this year. But to be praying with them as they had the school this year. Holly Melton will be here to talk about how she's been doing that with her kids and she's got some great ideas for all of us as moms and dads hope you can tune in for that think our engineer today. Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson and Bob Lapine see you back next time for another edition of family life today. Family life to the production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. Accrue ministry help for today hope tomorrow