How to love the LGBTQ community?

Interview with Kristi Stirling

Our current sermon series is entitled “Hot Topics” It is comprised of questions which were submitted by the congregation, mostly anonymously. This week’s question was “How do we love the LGBTQ community?” I am taking that to mean, “How do we best show love to the LGBTQ community? However, it is also possible that the person who asked this question is experiencing anger or resentment toward the activism which has at times targeted Christians.

I want to address this by interviewing a real person who has lived through this struggle. I want people to see that the struggle is real but that there is victory in Christ. I want our people to know that not everyone who struggles is an activist, but that many are genuinely seeking a solution. Most of all I want our people to know how they can approach someone that they may have in their life or whom they may encounter in a way that is truly helpful in restoring that person to who God made them to be.

Your story is featured on a website changedmovement.com. Can you share your story briefly so that we can be familiar with it? (10 min.)

Your life message is that change is possible. How did that happen for you?

Jude 24 ESV

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,

You also said, “my same-sex attraction had been closely connected to the pressure of spiritual perfectionism around me and that I had to live up to a legalistic, rules-driven standard of behavior.” Tell us what that means and how did you overcome that?

You mentioned in the article about going through a “second puberty” what is that? And what was that like?

What does wholeness look like?

For those of us who have someone in our life who struggles with sexual identity, how can we best help them? What kinds of responses were helpful for you?

How should we view the LGBTQ community? What should our response be as Biblical Christians to what we see in society and on TV?

1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV

11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

My (Kristi’s) goal: to testify to the real possibility that anyone can find healing and wholeness in Christ. Change IS possible. “Such WERE some of you…”

And: through my story, help those who have never struggled w/ gender confusion understand those who do, a bit better.