One of the things I’ve learned this week is that people don’t simply need your love. They don’t simply need to not feel judged by you. They don’t want to be told that everything is going to be okay. They don’t merely want to be told that God loves them just as they are. They aren’t near as concerned with you hurting their feelings as you are, as long as they know you are hurting their feelings because it would hurt them if you didn’t, and that it hurts you to see them hurting.

People want a way out. Some of them–and I quote–“only dream that my life could be different, but we don’t do well with change in my home.” They want you to identify the sin that is destroying them and they want you to tell them that it is sin and that it is destroying them. They want you to tell them that Jesus and Jesus alone offers forgiveness, and that forgiveness and acceptance are not the same thing. They want you to stop loving them with a blanket of acceptance, because they are intuitive enough to know that love is dirtier than that, that love gets in your face and under your fingernails. They know that love without a backbone, love that costs you nothing, is merely a pathetic way of ensuring that you feel accepted, even if it means they have to stay in bondage. They want someone to stand in the middle of their world and declare that ‘This is not God’s world!’, that ‘Jesus is the Way!’, and ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom!’

‪#‎tellthetruth‬