Sex, Love, and Jesus, Part 3 // Jesus, Gender, & the Trans Community

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is in the boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at the lookout.church.

Hey, this morning, we're going to jump into the message this week.

If you have your Bibles, open up to Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

That's where we're going to start.

And uh yeah, I'm going to pray.

And if this continues to pop, I'll switch mics again.

Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

If you're a guest here today, welcome.

Welcome to the lookout.

Here's where we're going to start.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 26.

Genesis 1:26

And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God.

He created him, male and female.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you this morning that you've gathered us up in this place.

And as we've already sung this morning, God, we thank you that your goodness never runs out.

It never dries up.

We thank you, God, that we come to the end of ourselves.

But we never come to the end of you.

And that's what gathers us in this place.

We're not here because we're better than anybody else.

We're not here because we figured some things out.

We're here because we got a picture of you and you've shown yourself good.

And we've had a revelation of you, God.

And I thank you this morning as we turn our hearts and minds to the scriptures today, God, that you had awakened something from the inside out.

We thank you, Lord God, that your word speaks to us.

Your word is a double-edged sword and pierces us through.

And so we open ourselves this morning.

We say, Speak, God.

We need to hear your voice.

More than the voices of anybody else in this world.

We need your voice in our hearts.

So we say we love you today, God.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Cool.

So as it's already been said, uh, today is week three of a series that we're in that we've called Sex, Love, and Jesus.

Uh we've been exploring this theme for the last few weeks.

I really do encourage you to go back and listen to part one and two, just because there's some building blocks that that might feel like they're missing in our in our subject today.

Today, specifically, we're gonna be talking about Jesus, gender, and the trans community.

And so if you take the acronym LGBTQ, last week we discussed more of the LGBT LG and B.

Today it's a little bit more focused on the T.

And uh, if if this is your first time here, and I know we have some guests in this room, at this point, you are wondering, Jesus, out of all of the days I could have picked to come back to church or to try a new church.

Is this some kind of practical joke or something that we'd come and they're just getting after it on this topic?

And so, I mean, you might be wondering that, and honestly, if you're surprised that we're talking about this in the church, listen, I am with you.

I'm surprised that we're talking about this in the church.

Um, I'm surprised to be speaking uh about this.

I like we've already established.

I am from Indiana.

It took us a long time to figure out how the world really worked, right?

It wasn't until I moved away that I was like, oh, okay, that's what's happening in the world, right?

And so I'm not an expert in this area, and it's not like this is my the top of my list of like, I just like to talk about really controversial things all the time, all right.

You know, that's not me.

But um I also know that this is important for us to be able to create safe places to have communal conversations around such things.

I never expected to go to a bathroom and see this kind of sign outside of the door.

And uh, you have a photo here, right?

This is just down the street, and uh, you know, it's you we we see a lot of signs outside of a door.

This one actually had me uh chuckling a little bit because you know it was at a point where it's like it's it's hard to even uh you put you know what this bathroom is for anymore, and this was just down the street.

And so at this point, it's like, you know what, whatever, just make sure you wash your hands, right?

Now, I don't mean to make light of uh any anybody or anything in the trans community.

In fact, last week we we talked about this um as well that a theological conviction can never be a catalyst to devalue people.

And as a church, we reject and condemn all forms of hatred, verbal, physical, or abuse towards the LGBTQ people.

The truth is, one in ten of us in this room actually have a close personal relationship with somebody who is transgender or someone who uses uh gender uh gender-neutral pronouns.

That could be somebody here in the room, somebody watching online.

And uh, and so I just want to understand, I want you to understand, I know that, and I know how tender that is.

So, why are we talking about something in the church that actually really affects such a percentage-wise, a small percentage of the population?

It's because 100% of us experience the ideology uh behind the transgender movement, and it's all around us.

It would be irresponsible of us to be silent on this topic, uh topic and assume that we all know how to talk through these types of things, both with compassion and biblical clarity, okay?

And so that's why we're doing this because I think it's the responsible thing to do.

I think it's actually pastoral malpractice to ignore these things and to be silent and just assume everybody knows how to make their way through these things.

So this hits everybody close to home here.

And I know if you're squirming right now in your chair, I get it, okay?

And I want to try to neutralize this for a second.

Maybe you're here today and you know what this feels like in your own story.

Maybe growing up you never felt like the cultural cultural gender stereotype.

You were a girl who looked like who who liked playing with trucks and wrestling with your friends, or maybe you were a boy who enjoyed playing house and dress up.

Maybe you've never quite felt at home in your own skin.

And it feels like your mind is at war with your body.

You love Jesus, but you don't know what to do with how you feel.

Okay, maybe you're here or in your listening, you're listening in later, and and you've undergone a transition, be it hormonal therapy or even surgical, and you're wondering, what does God really think about me?

Maybe you're a parent here whose child is walking through a gender transition.

And it's been difficult for you because you were the one who remembers naming them when they first entered the world.

You were there when the doctor said, It's a girl or it's a boy, and you've had to kind of reconfigure your language, you've had to adjust to a new name and new pronouns and how much to affirm the identity or to hold to your own convictions, and you feel like you're walking a tightrope because you don't want your child to feel unloved or wish, or worse, push them further towards despair.

Because we know that within the transgender community, it's one of the highest suicide rates out of all populations in the world.

Maybe you're the parent of young kids, and you're noticing something change in the movies that you're watching, new kinds of characters that your kids are asking questions about.

Maybe your child has brought home a book from the library, the school library that indicates a child can be whatever gender they want to be, so long as they are the ones who decided it.

Maybe the school counselor has had private meetings with your child to encourage them to rethink what they're uh what you, their parents, have taught them and to explore other options of living.

You know, I mentioned these last few examples because they're not actually hypothetical examples, they are real examples from this community.

And I realize that as I've had conversations with many of you, and I know that many of us, both in our families and our friendship circles, this this is a tender one because we hold our friends in the trans community close to our hearts and and we believe, we stand with them to believe that they're fearfully and wonderfully made, that God loves them, and God loves all of us, and and he knows how he wired us, he knows how he knit us together.

And so I I I enter this conversation again with a lot of humility and I ask that you would extend grace.

I don't intend to answer every question, I just can't possibly do that in about 35 to 40 minutes.

But what I want to do is just talk about a few angles of this conversation to hopefully, as we leave this place, be able to um to be with each other and to have some tools and some language to know how to go about some of these conversations.

Does that feel fair this morning?

Thank you.

So before we dive deep, it's important we work through some of the definitions of terms so we can walk through this together.

So I'm just gonna walk through a few definitions.

I want to send a shout out to Pastor Josh Howarton and Eric Geiger for much of the framework and context I'm about to walk through.

Their work on this was just helpful.

And so, first let's talk about this the word sex as it relates to our bodies.

So, one definition from Mark Yarhouse was a male or female, typically with reference to chromosomes, internal, reproductive, anatomy, and external genitals.

And so just just for sake of clarity, when we say sex, biological sex is it's not chosen, it's identified, okay?

Um, it's it's the it's the actual biology, biological makeup, the parts that we have as human beings.

And so that's the first kind of working definition, but in our lifetime, another important word has really come to the forefront, and it's this word gender identity, okay?

And this can be this is defined by the human rights campaign as one's innermost concept of self as male-female, a blend of both or neither.

So the idea here is that while your sex is fixed, your gender can be fluid, meaning it's however you self-identify, including what we call non-binary, which means you don't identify as either a male or a female, or these two polar opposites.

So you can be biologically male or female, but then there are an infinite, there are infinite possibilities as to what your gender expression can actually look like.

And so throughout history, it is true that there are biological men who have expressed stereotypically feminine features, and biological women who have expressed stereotypically masculine features.

But the term gender identity as we know it and has become mainstream was coined by psychiatrist Professor Robert J.

Stoller in 1964 and popularized by uh the psychologist Dr.

John Money during the same period of time as he was as he was making some propositions around gender theory.

And so my assumption here, though, in this room is this.

My assumption is for most of us, the idea that gender is distinct from sex wasn't even a thought that occurred to you until sometime in the last 15 years or so.

At least for me, it wasn't until I moved out from Indiana, right?

Um, but for a lot of us, I'm guessing that that even the idea that sex and gender were considered two different things, that probably is not an old idea for you.

It's probably recent into the last couple decades.

And so um it is that that is that shift though, is the foundational idea uh of the of the current transgender movement.

And when I say movement, I I really do mean that.

From NBC News, uh, an article just earlier this year uh came out about how the percentage of LD LGBTQ adults in the US has doubled in the past decade.

Okay, and when we ask why such an increase, some would argue now more than ever, you know, it's safe for people to come and talk about these things because it's been normalized.

And so maybe some would some would argue this stuff has existed forever, but now that we're talking about it, it's making for safe for people to come out.

And we remove the stigmas and normalize the conversation.

However, others would call it uh a psychological and social contagion.

Um, I even heard a story from our within our community of a young woman who was on the cheer squad at her high school, and she came home and told her parents that out of the 25 uh uh 25 girls on this cheer squad, she was one of five that considered herself straight.

The rest considered themselves largely bisexual.

And it's just an interesting question.

Out of 20 out of 25 young girls on a high school cheer squad, is it is it real that they're is it is it truth that they're all actually bisexual, or is there something about a contagion that's happening and a normalization that has increased both the celebration or the acceptance of different kinds of sexual sexual orientations and trends, right?

And so some stats indicate that same-sex attraction is holding relatively steady over the years.

Bisexual, I mean, the B is definitely on an uptick, okay?

But many stats would indicate that transgenderism is kind of separated from the PAC out of the LGBTQ.

Transgenderism in itself, as an as an acronym, um, has experienced an exponential increase.

And we see that even in this graph that we see diagnosis of youth with gender dysphoria, it surges.

You see the numbers from 2017.

In 2017, 15,000 children from 6 to 17 experienced gender gender dysphoria.

By 2021, it was up to 42,000.

Okay, so it's increasing almost overnight, and specifically in young women, which is a really interesting fact.

And so to keep up with this trend, uh uh uh many uh many others have um uh come to accommodate you know the the transgender and the gender expression.

So in 2014, Facebook rolled out 50 new gender identities options from users.

The city of Portland has also published a glossary of sexual orientations, LGBTQ terms, and and I sent that to you, it's just straight from their website, and it's about 60 different classifications.

I even looked this morning from sexualdiversity.org, and they're uh they list 107 different classifications, and you can kind of see them right here.

So basically, the idea here is that when you separate sex from gender, you can be biologically male or female, or potentially if if you if you didn't develop with uh any kind of discernible parts, that would be called intersex, okay, and that's a different, it's a whole different population.

But the idea goes that you could be male or female, um, but the number of gender classification classifications really can be infinite.

Right now we have about 107 here, and some of them are just repeats, different ways of saying the same thing.

Um but it could be uh it could be triple this, it could be quadruple this over time.

The idea is gender is how you feel, it's what you feel, and your own uh source of um self-conception and how you would like to express your gender.

Okay.

Now it's no wonder, and you can take that down now.

With that being said, as you looked at that list, it's it's no wonder this is a hard topic to even address.

It's hard to talk through these things because we've essentially uh we've essentially told our young people, don't be anxious.

All you need to do though is choose which one of these ones you are.

And we wonder why anxiety is going up, we wonder why confusion is going through the roof because this this is hard.

It's it's for the first time we're having to deal with a lot of different terminologies and vocabulary and classifications and to say, yeah, this is what my body says, but it can be expressed in one of an infinite amount of possibilities.

So what do we do about that?

Now, what's interesting is this the primary movement pushing back on the transgender community, it's not, as you would guess, right-wing conservative Christians that are, you know, that are antiquated and outdated.

It's it's not just the Christian community that's saying, Hey, can we ask a few questions here?

Really, at the front of the line are women's rights activists.

This is really fascinating.

Because when you separate gender from sex, all you're actually left with is stereotypes.

You realize that?

All you're left with is stereotypes when you separate sex from gender.

Now, the most famous occurrence of this, and you guys will know exactly what I'm talking about.

We'll put a photo up here in a second.

The most famous occurrence of this changer uh of transgender entering the mainstream is when Bruce Jenner turned into Caitlin Jenner and appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2015.

Now, you probably remember this photo when it came out, 2015 Olympic Award winner, uh winning male, Bruce Jenner transitioned and this became a celebrated moment.

Yet, Kara Dansky, a left-wing non-Christian feminist, a very Sanche feminist, she basically said that this one magazine cover from Caitlin Jeder und what feminists had been working for for 150 years.

And why would that be?

Because the feminist movement was working to establish equal rights for women, but also help young women understand that they don't have to act or dress or be like stereotypical women.

So when a man transitions into a woman dressed like this, it actually sends a young uh message to young girls.

Watch me, follow with me.

It sends a message to young girls that women are the ones who like long hair, lipstick, eyelashes, and pretty dresses.

Okay?

So that same year, not only did uh Caitlin Jenner win Women of the Year, but Glamour uh Glamour magazine said the same thing, uh called her women of the year.

And and and so it really communicates a couple things to young women.

This is this is so important.

A couple two things that are communicated to young women when this happens.

Number one, men are being men are better at being women than you are.

Number two, tying it back into the women's right movements, the women's right movement, that if there's a class of people that needed to be advocated for, like women's rights, how do you protect a class that you can no longer define?

And if you can't answer the question, what is a woman, how can you advocate for the rights of a woman?

And so a lot of even secular voices are arguing that transgender movement is actually harmful for women and girls.

It's not everybody, but when you kind of get into it, you can see how these different angles of communication actually start to uh start to buckle in on each other, okay?

Because when you separate gender from sex, all we're left with is stereotypes.

And and we have to understand there's a difference between gender and gender stereotypes.

And we have to talk about this in the church as well.

There's a difference between gender and gender stereotypes.

For instance, when you read through the Bible, you're gonna find a large list of men who are weeping and singing and greeting each other with a holy kiss.

Please don't do that to me after the service.

We'll also find women in the scriptures who are leading, they're building businesses, they're killing enemies in battle and hiding spies.

Okay?

They're strong leaders.

And so we see even in the Bible, it's not a consistent picture of what it looks like to be a man and a woman.

Cultural gender stereotypes actually can and do change over the time, and they should change over time.

For example, if you are buying clothes for a newborn, what color do you buy for boys and girls?

Girls pink, boys blue, right?

I mean, we kind of we kind of figure like that's just accepted norm, but it's actually not that hasn't always been true.

So in a 1918 article of the Ladies' Home Journal, here's what they advise in 1918.

The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls.

The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boys, while blue, which is the more delicate and dainty, is pretty prettier for the girl.

So you're sitting next to a man wearing blue, just tell him he's delicate and dainty right now.

This was in 1918, okay?

It changed, it flipped because it can, all right?

And and here's here's really the main point of this little movement here that we need to get.

We need broader definitions of what it means to be a man and a woman, okay?

Even in the church, the church has not got this right, and we have to raise our hand front of the line of we've we've messed this up of what we've expected women to be like, what we've expected pastors' wives to be like, what we've expected men to be like, right?

You shouldn't show up to men's group hoping everyone's beating their chest and grunting, right?

You shouldn't show up to women's group expecting just watercolors, right?

And we're gonna do crafts the entire time.

We're not doing that.

That has to change.

We need broader definitions because with the way God is trying to express masculinity and feminity, it can change and it should change.

Okay?

Now, some men don't like trucks and guns and sports, they're more into cooking in the arts.

Some women uh they're they're more into action movies and football and eating steaks.

That does not mean you're non-binary, it means you're awesome, all right?

That means you're awesome.

Okay, we we we've we've got to expand here.

So that's where this movement is pushing on some some of the right things.

Because all of us actually can learn what it looks like to express our gender in in different ways.

But here's the thing what's happened is it's created a dysphoria in our culture, and so there's another definition I just want to introduce you to gender dysphoria.

Dr.

Nancy Pearcy, who wrote, who authored Love Thy Body, said gender dysphoria is a sense of mismatch between physical body sex and psychological gender identity.

And really what gender dysphoria is, is there's people who feel like there is, they just live and it feels like there's a constant war between their mind and their body.

And some of you know what that feels like.

There is a war between your mind and your body.

Your mind is saying one thing about who you are, your body is saying something different about who you are.

And the world is trying to give language to this.

And so a word like gender dysphoria comes to the forefront to kind of name this condition.

You know what's interesting though?

You know who all also believes there is a war between the mind and the body?

Christians.

We also believe that there is a war between the mind and the body.

Let me read you what Paul wrote in Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

He said it like this.

He said, So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

And he continues, he says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

And what Paul is kind of naming here in chapter 7 is this discrepancy that he's feeling in his very self.

And when you read other translations, he talks about how I want to do the right thing and I can't do the right thing, the things that I believe I don't do, and the things that I want I shouldn't want, and the things I do with my body, and it feels like a war between his body and his mind.

And so all of that means that as Christians, when we encounter somebody that's experiencing dysphoria, gender dysphoria or any kind of dysphoria, and the word dysphoria just means a disconnect or an unease that happens in our bodies.

When we encounter somebody that's experiencing dysphoria, and it even could just be, you know, anxiety is a form of dysphoria, right?

When we encounter somebody experiencing dysphoria, we should be the first at the line to have a lot of compassion because every person in this room knows what it means to be to be stuck in a war between your mind and your body.

Okay?

So we should have compassion, but we also get to ask some follow-up questions.

So if a biological male feels or thinks or believes that they are a woman, are they a woman or are they a man?

If they have an internal sense that they are a female and their body is biologically male, which one are they and why?

If the body or mind more uh is the body or the mind more definitive for determining who we are?

If someone experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their internal sense of self, which one determines who they are and why?

So when there's the incongruence between your mind and your body, which one wins?

This is this is the question at the core of this conversation.

Now, when Paul continues and he he talks about this, here's what he says in Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

He says, Therefore, offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to the Lord, for this is a spiritual act of worship.

Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by what?

The renewing of your mind.

Okay?

So hang with me, hang with me here.

Because the the answer to these questions above, which one wins, our mind or our body, this depends on the framework that we're that we're coming from here, okay?

Now, the word transgender, going back to definitions, it's an umbrella term for many experiences of gender identity do not align normatively with a person's biological sex.

And to be fair, trans has more than one meaning.

So quoting Dr.

Mark Yarhouse, if you've met one trans person, you've met one trans person, all right?

So we have to be, you know, we have to be gracious.

We can't talk blanket statements.

But as a movement, transgenderism separates your personhood from your body, okay?

So the person within this way of thinking is self-consciousness, and your self-consciousness has moral and legal standing, whereas your body is an expendable biological organism.

And what this world is believing is that the body, especially in a secular world that does not believe in the sanctity of life or any moral implications about our bodies or any kind of matter.

In this kind of world, while the body can be respective, it's it's not, it's neither sacred nor moral.

It's just matter, a building block to be rearranged depending on your true self.

What's really interesting is this is what uh there was a very early form in the first century, an early form of heresy called Gnosticism.

This is exactly what they believe too.

They believe that the body is bad and that spirituality is good.

They believe that earthly material substance is bad and should be discarded with, but that spirituality, let's just live in our spiritual worlds towards God.

No, a lot of Christians get this wrong too, all right?

We get this wrong too.

We elevate a spiritual life over a physical life, but that's not what the scriptures do.

That's not what the scriptures do.

Now, we read at the beginning back to Genesis 1.27 in the scriptures, it says, so God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created the male and female, he created them.

So we have to start with this reality that we were created in the image of God, body, soul, and spirit, all created in the image of God.

And so that's why Christians actually have a very high view of the body.

We actually have a high view of our earthly bodies.

We're not just trying to leave our bodies to be to be vacuumed up into a disembodied world.

How many of you know that Jesus actually rose from the dead in a body?

And he will be coming back in not just as a spirit, but in a body.

He came the first time as an incarnated person.

He didn't just come spiritually or over a zoom call.

Alright?

He didn't just come and send us a message through his angels.

He came in a physical body.

He wrapped himself in skin and bone and tissue.

He will come again in a body.

This is why most of much of Jesus' ministry was marked by the healing of what?

Of bodies.

Jesus healed bodies.

He didn't just heal their minds and their spirits.

He didn't just save them and say, it's going to get better later.

He actually laid his hands on them and he told them to be healed.

And their wellness actually came to their physical bodies, which means what?

God honors the body.

He actually, Jesus actually sent his Holy Spirit to come into your body.

So now that you're now your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

So it is a very, very Christian idea for us to take care of what we put into our bodies, how we treat our bodies, what we do with our bodies.

And when we look at the scripture, it says that male and female he create them.

So there's something about maleness that images the glory of God, and there's something about femaleness that images the glory of God.

It's just, it's not just a technicality, it's about the image and likeness of God.

Preston Sprinkle said it like this: He said, Our sexed bodies are essential to personhood, even if for whatever reason our minds don't resonate with our bodies.

Part of Christian discipleship then should be patiently striving to accept our sexed bodies as part of our human identity.

For instance, if a disciple of Jesus of Christ is unambiguously biologically female, then part of their Christian discipleship should be learning to accept and embrace their biological sex as part of their identity that they have been given by God.

Okay?

Now, how do we resolve though?

Here's the question: how do we actually resolve that war that we were just talking about, the war that's going on inside of me?

How can I be happy?

And the thing is, when I've talked to those who have been have walked through gender dysphoria, and it was just recently I spoke with a friend I have, actually a part of this community, who walked through a season of gender dysphoria.

And at one point in his life, or he walked through gender dysphoria at one point in his life, and I asked him, uh, what do you think the church should know about what you experience?

And he said, That it's completely miserable.

It's miserable.

And at that moment, my heart just sank, my heart drop because I could feel it, I could feel it with him.

And I feel it.

And and and so compassion, we have to start with compassion here because most in the transgender community, they're not lining up with the sense of total confidence.

They're trying, all they really want is to be at home in their bodies.

They want to be at home in their own skin.

And you know what, some of you know what that feels like.

So if our body feels out of alignment, how do we resolve that tension?

I just read to you the passage where Paul talks in Romans 12 about being renewed, being transformed by the renewing of our mind.

So the world says this the world says, listen to your mind.

Who you really are is in your mind, and listen to your mind and change your body.

But according to Paul in the scriptures, the word says, offer your body and renew your mind.

The world says, listen to your mind and change your body.

The word says, offer your body, surrender your body to the Lord and renew your mind.

No, I just want to get into a couple examples of this and just think logically here for a second.

Now, if an anorexic girl came to the doctor and told the doctor they felt like they were overweight, the doctor would never, a good doctor would not tell them, well, you know, hey, since you feel that way, if you think you're overweight, then let's go ahead and get you on diet pills, let's get your stomach stapled, and let's do some liposuction.

They would never say that.

A good loving doctor would help them reconcile their reality with their way of thinking.

And he would say, This is what's going on in your body.

Let's let's help you in your mind, let's help you change the way that you think.

Okay?

And so the idea that a doctor would start with how somebody feels about something and then help them make incredible life decisions based on a feeling, it's just not really precedent when you start looking at other different application points.

In fact, 61 to 88 percent of people will age out of gender dysphoria over time.

61 to 88 percent, which means that we ought to be patient.

Gender dysphoria is a real thing, and if you experience gender dysphoria, it's not a sin to feel incongruent with your body.

But what I'm saying is, as a community, we need to be patient with anybody experiencing a dysphoria of any kind because oftentimes it self-regulates over time.

And not rush to hormonal or surgical change that can cause permanent damage.

In fact, in the UK, they're light, they're years ahead of us in this whole thing, um, in the whole uh transgender health care.

The TAFASOC Center in the UK, though, uh, we discovered in the news, it's in the process of shutting down.

It will be shut down by this year.

It was the world's uh preeminent um transgender health care provider and center.

Uh but the shutting down, because uh they they realize they have to offer more holistic care to the people coming in.

But but under be behind the scenes, young people and families have started to sue the doctors, basically saying, listen, you treated me based on my emotional state during one face-to-face visit, and then you recommended I make irreversible changes to my body.

It's it's completely destructive.

And so the whole center is shutting down because they're lost funding, they can't keep up with the amount of lawsuits that are coming back against them.

They're realizing that what they're doing is actually not caring for people.

Okay now, some of you parents have faced the pressure of this as well.

I know some parents in this community very specifically, and there's been this line of rhetoric that you'll hear within communities where people are transitioning, and people will tell parents, listen, you can either have a living son or a dead daughter.

You need to choose.

You either had a living son or a dead daughter.

This is what parents are hearing.

Like if you don't affirm, if you're not going around, they could take this to the worst case scenario.

And you can feel the weight of that.

First of all, I I have to say that is that is too much of a burden for a parent to be able to face on their own.

And every parent certainly they want to support their child, every parent loves their child.

No parent would want the worst for their child.

But this whole line of thinking says if you don't go along, if if you don't just go full sale in this with them, then their blood is on your hands.

It's basically emotional terrorism, is what that is.

And it's a lie.

And it's a lie.

Because again, if when you when you take that logically, it doesn't quite hold up.

And let me give you another example.

If my wife, if my wife came to me, or if I came to my wife, and I said, listen, Megan, I have all these inner urges and impulses to be with other women.

I just have way too much love to give.

If I don't act on these urges, I don't know where this is gonna go, but I don't think I could live with myself.

So would you rather have a living adulterous husband or a dead monogamous one?

You know what she'd say to me?

She'd say, B.

I'll take option two.

In a heartbeat.

She wouldn't have to go pray about it.

She'd say it on the spot.

But parents, I want to release you from that.

Listen, I know it's a it's a hard place to be to have to hold those kinds of thoughts, to have to hold family members in that.

But don't believe for a second, don't believe for a second that you have not given, you're not, you don't have agency or power in the life of your own child to be able to see them through the lens of how God made them and walk patiently with them as as the Holy Spirit is showing up to them.

And we have to believe as we walk with people in different processes, we don't have to expect a fix, we don't have to expect a change, we don't have to make somebody make a decision right away, we don't have to oppose anything on them because guess what?

The Holy Spirit is a better pastor than we are.

The Holy Spirit is a better parent than you are.

The Holy Spirit knows exactly the heart, how to get to the heart of each one of us.

And I'm just telling you, we can trust God with all the ones that we're holding close to us that He is going to show up to them and reveal His love in the right time.

Are you guys with me?

So, lastly, just lastly, I want to speak to those here or maybe listening online, and you've already gone down this road, and you're like, that's great, but like I've already, you know, like I've already made these decisions.

Can God still redeem me?

I've maybe you've done things that are unalterable to your body.

And you're wondering what does that mean for me?

And listen, the good news is there is a huge community of trans people who are learning to follow Jesus and and and and and the the amount of support and and gracious uh resources, it's it's overwhelming right now, it's so moving.

But I just want to walk through one passage, one last passage of scripture at our time here together.

See, in Acts 8, you don't have to turn there, I'm just gonna paraphrase this passage.

In Acts chapter 8, as the gospel was moving across, as was moving out of Jerusalem, as the early church was being founded, all kinds of things were opening up.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

And in Acts chapter 8, the Lord speaks to one of the disciples, his name was Philip, and he says, Philip, I want you to go out to the desert and between Jerusalem and Gaza.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

So Philip says, Okay, sends him 50 miles out of his way.

And he went out to the desert, and out in the desert there was a eunuch who had come from Ethiopia, from Queen Candace in Ethiopia, Ethiopia, and there was a eunuch that had come to Jerusalem to worship and was on his return, leaving Jerusalem.

And and a eunuch, just so you guys know for clarity of definitions, a eunuch was a person whose generals had been caught or crushed or pierced in order to sterilize or feminize them.

It was something either done to them through the power structures of whatever nation they were coming from.

Some people it was a life, uh a chosen life of like a castration.

Um, but it was an ancient form of sexual alteration surgery.

And so this eunuch came to worship in Jerusalem, but if you know the scriptures in the Old Testament, eunuchs weren't actually allowed to come worship at the temple.

In Deuteronomy, that's one of the things that said eunuchs aren't allowed.

So when he showed up to Jerusalem, it's likely that he got to the court of Gentiles, and there was a sign that prevented him from going further that said, at this point, no lame, no blind, and no eunuchs can go beyond here.

And so he's traveling back a 1,500-mile journey, and he's traveling back, and he's while he's traveling back in his chariot, he's reading from the prophet Isaiah.

And Philip happens to be there and catches this eunuch as he's as he's leaving, and and they get into a conversation, and Philip asks him, Hey, hey there, what are you reading?

And he says, I'm reading from the pot prophet Isaiah, and he reads this passage from Isaiah 53.

He says, Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shear is silent, so he opens not his mouth.

And his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life was taken away from the earth, and so the eunuch doesn't understand what he's reading.

And he asks Philip, Who is this referring to?

Is this about Isaiah or is it about somebody else?

And so Philip gets in the chariot with them, gets in the cart with them, and says, Let me just walk you through this.

And so Philip, just one by one in the scriptures, starts to reveal the person of Jesus and starts to say, Who you're reading in the scroll is Jesus.

And I and this is a little bit of conjecture.

We don't know what the eunuch experienced, but it's possible that the eunuch came all the way to Jerusalem to worship, only to see that his kind wasn't welcomed there because he had been altered.

He had been surgically altered in his biological makeup, which prevented him from going to the deepest places in the Holy of Holies to worship.

But I imagine that Philip just kept reading the prophet Isaiah with this eunuch until they got to Isaiah 56, where there's a promise of a new day that's coming, where the Old Testament or where some of these laws would be satisfied, and a new day where the temple of God would be with his people.

In Isaiah 56 it says this, listen to this.

It says, Let not the foreigner who is who has joined himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate, the Lord will surely separate me from his people, and let not the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.

For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, listen, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than the sons and daughters.

I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be cut off.

And I just want you to enter with me this scene for a moment where God loved this man so much.

It's possible that God loved this eunuch so much that he sends Philip way out of his way to go meet him and say, Listen, I know that there's parts of your body that are crushed and pierced and bruised, but there is the one who is crushed on your behalf.

And he loves you.

He's given his spirit to you, and you are not outside of his plan.

You are part of the plan of God.

And if there's anybody in this room that you've done anything unalterable to your body, I just want to say you are not outside of the plan of God.

That God loves you, He loves you, He loves you, He died for you, He was crushed on your behalf because He wants you to know there's a place in His Father's house for you.

Thank you, Jesus Christ.

And guys, this is a message that we have to hold in our hearts.

And I'm sorry, I didn't know that that was gonna come so deep.

But we're living in a time where people need to know that our Jesus went to the cross, he made the ultimate sacrifice for all of our wrongdoing, for all of the things that we've done, for all the things that we think we are, for the war between our mind and our body, and where the world and where the enemy wants to disintegrate us, literally, to disintegrate us, to separate us, to pull us apart from our mind and our body and our soul.

And spirit, when we come into the healing presence of Jesus, he pulls us back together so we can live together our mind, our body, our soul, and our spirit, all living together in his presence in the shalom of God.

And I just want to proclaim to you this morning, for everybody listening online and everybody in this room, I just want to proclaim to your heart, you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

God knows you, He knit you in His mother's womb.

And yes, there's questions that we have to hold sometimes our entire lives about God, why did you do this in my body?

Why did you do this in my mind?

Why do I have to face these kinds of things?

And I'm telling you, it's not a sin to ask those questions, it's not a sin to feel those types of ways, but just know that the Father can be trusted.

He loves you, he embraces you, and there is room in the Father's house for every single one of you.

So I just want to take a moment here this morning.

We covered a lot of ground and we're feeling all kinds of different ways.

Some of you have some questions, maybe you're just like, yeah, what about this or what about that?

And certainly we can we'd love to talk about those types of things.

We'd love to, we should be asking questions, but others in the room, maybe you're here today and you just need a touch from the love of the Father.

Or maybe you're here today and you have somebody that is very dear to you and close to you.

Children or friends or neighbors that are that are walking through a dysphoria that you hope that they they would just see the love that God has for them.

And so this morning we just let's just wait in a moment of silence together and just listen for the voice of God, the voice of the Holy Spirit in each of us.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, God.

God, we thank you that you know how to meet us each where we're at.

We thank you, God, that we none of us would be anything without your love.

And so this morning we submit to your lordship, God.

We thank you that you change us from the inside out, all of us.

We thank you there's hope in your name, God.

And this morning, if if you're here in person or if you're watching online and you've been asked that question, is there hope for me?

And this is whether you're part of the trans community or not, this is any kind of brokenness, and we're all broken.

And you're wondering, is there hope for me?

I just want to say there's hope in Jesus' name, and there's hope when you call on the name of Jesus, you can be saved.

And I just want to make that invitation for you this morning.

If you have not taken a step of faith, if you've never taken a step into the salvation plan of God and to recognize that he did for us what we could not do for ourselves, that he was the perfect man.

He's perfectly human, perfectly God, and he came to us to take in himself death and sin and sickness and all of the things that have wrecked humanity for thousands of years.

And he took that upon himself, and he took it to the grave, and he rose from the grave and he offered us salvation in his name for all who would believe in his name and and receive his love.

And if that's you here today, I just invite you, just begin to welcome Jesus into your heart.

You don't have to be fancy, you don't have to say a magic formula or it's not a secret trick.

You just, wherever you're at, just with your own words, say, Jesus, I need you.

Jesus, I want you, and I need a new way forward.

Save me, God, and your love.

And you can use whatever words you have, but that's all it takes to turn your eyes to the Lord.

His salvation is near.

And listen, as a community, as a community moving forward.

For all of our friends in the LGBTQ community, and specifically transgender, I just want to say this we will not mock you, we will not ridicule, we will not look down on you, but we will also counsel you to bring your mind in alignment with your body and receive the identity of the Father.

We believe that's what He's doing for all of us.

And that's the kind of community that we're gonna be moving forward.