My Daughter is Gay

Aug 1 2023 - Grace's Middle East Missionary Partner

Why I don’t pray for her to be straight. 

Four years ago, our 20-year-old daughter sat my wife and I down and told us that she didn’t believe in God and that she was gay. We were heartbroken. After years of raising her in the ways of the Lord, she was choosing to reject the way of Christ. Since then, it’s been a constant journey of prayer, discernment, grace, and love as we figure out how to relate to our daughter. One of the things God has done in us is, direct our prayers.   

Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus, “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” Acts 26:17c-18 

What is our aim in relationship with family who are not following Christ? Is it to get them to follow all the rules and regulations of Scripture? Is it to get them to look good to the outside world? Is it to protect our own reputation? If we look at all the ways they walk in disobedience and give them a list of corrections, we make the way of Christ a list of do’s and don’ts for people to earn their way into heaven. This misses the point of Christ. Jesus “came to seek and to save the lost” (Lk 19:10). Jesus’ words to Paul on the road to Damascus are His words to us. He wants to see our daughter turn “from darkness to light.”   

You see, her core problem is not that she is attracted to women. Her core problem is that she doesn’t know the light. She is in darkness. “The god of this age has blinded (her) mind…, so that (she) cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).   

If she were to reject homosexuality out of an attempt at being “good,” she would be just as lost as she were before. Our daughter’s main problem isn’t her homosexuality. Her primary need is to know Christ, and the satisfying, joy-filled life He brings. If obedient living doesn’t flow from a love of God and joy in Christ, we are just like the Pharisees who were “whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside but full of dead men’s bones” (Mtt 23:27-28).   

Our aim in our relationship with her is to see her find the joy that she is truly looking for. That joy can only be found in relationship with Jesus and that kind of joy is a full joy (Jn 15:11). We pray that she would know the joy of following Christ and see Him as her all-satisfying source of life. Everything good and pleasing to God will flow out of that. God-honoring obedience flows from the joy of walking in the light of the gospel. We don’t want her to just be another spiritually dead heterosexual. We want her to have life to the fullest. The life that comes with being born again.   

Let us all pray together for all of our precious children who are still wandering in darkness that they may see the beautiful light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, and walk in His Way on the path of Life.