Beautiful Responses...

Hello again,

I hope you don't mind me showing up in your email box again this morning.  After sending our update yesterday, a friend who receives these messages responded to Devon's prayer request.  I wanted to share this response with you.  Please keep in mind that Devon is the one who asked, "Shouldn't we also forgive Satan?"  And he is the one who asked Tori if she was the daughter who likes the star or the angel on top of the Christmas tree.  He has never missed one of our visits.  He hears and processes everything we say.  He asks a lot of serious questions and gets irritated if someone is out of order while we're there.  He is searching...

You can email your response back to us and we will be sure that he sees all of them.  Or...if you feel led, and would like to share your thoughts directly with Devon, I encourage you to send him a letter and let him know you are a friend of ours and you pray for him.  To receive mail from people he doesn't even know, who he knows are praying for him, and who want to share their wisdom is delivering the pure love of our Lord directly into his hands inside that jail cell.

Please use your church address as your return address in case he would choose to respond.  If you write to him directly, please email a copy to us so that we know what all has been said and can follow up with him in person.

Here is the response we received this morning... such a beautiful description of the perfect love of Jesus.

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Devon's prayer need really touched me because he has been hurt by those who call themselves Christians.  

I am having a problem/question how is God's take on homosexuality because I don't feel I can believe in someone who doesn't except one of my family members because my family comes before anything even religion.  That's really been rattaling my brain. Because I went to a gay pride parade to support my sister and the were holding signs saying "Jesus loves everyone except gays" and one of them was my old gym coach.  It's just been buggin me.
- Devon

I would love to tell Devon how wrong the sign holders are.   There is no one Jesus does not love.   Even as Jesus died on the cross, naked and scourged by the brutality He had endured, still He loved.  He loved all of mankind from Adam to the last person who will ever be born on this earth.  The Bible tells us that and the Bible tells us that it was because Jesus loves all of mankind, He was willing to die.  He loved those who mocked Him at the cross.  He loved those who spit on Him.  He loved those who pounded the nails into His hands.  He died, loving the murderer.  He died, loving the adulterer.  He died, loving the homosexual.  He died, loving the prideful and the arrogant and those who fail to love others as He loves others.  Those who hold signs and say God doesn't love homosexuals are wrong.  He died because He loved them.  Those who hold signs and say God doesn't love homosexuals are prideful and arrogant and are failing to love as God loves.  Or, at the least, they are very ignorant of God's love.  Yes, homosexuality is sin, and it is sin because God knows it isn't good for us.  But adultery and murder and pride and arrogance and failing to love as God loves are all sins too.  And Jesus died for all sins.  He died for all sins because He loves all of mankind.  He died for the homosexual because He loves the homosexual.

I would also like to tell Devon how sorry I am that some who call themselves Christians so wrongly represent the God they say they love and serve, because when we misrepresent God, we hurt others, and hurting others, deliberately and spitefully, is more wrong than homosexuality.