My friend Frank sent me a couple of messages that I have combined and edited below (quoted with permission):
Randy, how do you wake up every morning, and go to work knowing that as much as you fight for truth, you are hated beyond understanding? that every word you speak will be twisted and you will be made a laughing stock? This Rachel Maddow thing (among others) has me down… truth is not acceptable anymore. no one cares. … I feel like I’ve talked and talked till im blue in the face yet no one listens… how do you do it?
You have fought longer and harder than I and have been villified more… how do you get up every morning and do it again? … I know I will never cease to proclaim the riches there are in Christ (not just talking bout ex-gay stuff) but I just get so tired of trying to make my little corner of the world a better place when it seems like “the establishment” (read: Rachel Maddow, Keith oberman, Wayne Besen…) is screaming louder telling me to shut up and sit down…
I resisted posting this blog post because what I go through is nothing compared to some of my peers and especially other Christians around the world who are dying for their faith. I went ahead and posted this because I got this type of message from several people and thought the topic would be worth exploring in general (not just about me.)
Love Your Enemies
Jesus said to Love your enemies. He didn’t say to love your enemies until they become your friends and until they do become your friends you have to be a verbal doormat that enables them to mock God and you in such a way that distracts you from serving God and His people while destroying your own confidence in the message God has given you to share.
That run-on sentence is free, your welcome and on purpose 
.
He said simply, “Love your enemies.” He called them enemies for a reason. They want to be victorious over you, corrupt, undermine and destroy you if they can. They are your enemies, not friends in the making. Sure, they might become friends in the future given the Big Grand Scheme of God’s love, grace and good will. But today, they are your enemy and we don’t need to be stupid.
Enemy = Enemy
God knows I have a tendency to be stupid and took care of that by defining love for me (and the rest of humanity:
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
When it comes to my enemies, I messed the whole love thing up a lot. Hopefully I have gotten a lot better over the years. However, a significant turning point came to me quite a number of years ago when I was speaking at Southern Methodist University. A woman came up to me after I shared my testimony, my personal testimony, and called me a murderer. I could tell my “flesh” (my natural state of thinking) was appalled and wanted to go into a verbal smack down with her. I was good at those, I was raised on how to perpetuate liberal gay verbal smack downs. But my spirit over-rode that impulse because I believe God showed me that the hatred in her eyes was the same hatred in mine when I used to really disparage evangelical Christians.
When I look at my enemies, I see echoes of my past. I can’t hate them because I was them. There but for the grace of God I would still be with them. I don’t want to hate them and don’t. Hopefully, without sounding trite, I want to pray for them. Sometimes the best way to love is to not engage in futile public spats but to pray for our enemy.
My heart changed toward the lady and I said calmly, “I don’t know what your experience has been but I assure you that I haven’t and don’t personally know anyone who has committed suicide or homicide because of my beliefs and I love my life. I am glad to have made the choices I did. My faith in Christ has not lead to death but to Life, peace and contentment.” I then wished her a good evening and turned to go talk with another person standing there waiting to ask a question. She strongly stated a couple more opinions but the most loving thing I could do was to turn away, not escalate the situation and help people who actually lined up wanting help or to learn more.
In my office I have a picture of one of our groups from Living Hope Ministries working together on a rope’s course at our first retreat. In it we are working together, as a team to accomplish a very difficult task that none of us could do alone but we could all do together. When I look at that photo I see people who have strengthened and abide in very healthy marriages. I see a person who was single, depressed and not thinking this was going to work out for her and yet 9 years later she is married with two kids … and very content. I have been to joyous weddings and shared friendship with others who have been content and single for a long time. I have met *amazing* single people that blow me away with their intimacy with Christ and the wisdom/love/intimacy they have with Him.
I have seen the oppressed set free to stand upright and confident. I have seen the confused find answers, the angry find peace and many find contentment regardless of circumstance.
That and more. GREAT life giving testimonies all around keep me going.
Frank, I can get up in the morning because I know Joy Himself. I know who I am, what I am supposed to be doing and how to do it. If I stay focussed on who God is, who He has said I am, and what I am to do, I don’t get distracted or discouraged … everything is kept in proper perspective
The Lord has given me *many* wonderful memories and reasons to praise Him over the past 18 years. Don’t grow weary my friend, let the Lord show you the Joy set before Him in you and those around you. When the “noise” becomes too much, unplug and turn off the hellivision. Rest in the milestones and memories of an abundantly loving and gracious God. Look forward to the amazing things you know God is capable of and promised you. He is faithful and true.
MORE:
God’s Grace & The Homosexual Next Door (by Alan Chambers with contributions from The Exodus Team)
About Randy Thomas
I guess that’s why keeping you all in prayer, all of you in the office and in speaking engagements etc, is vital. I’ve been thinking and praying for you all last week, and I reckon I should keep it up. What you are doing IS important, people come to you – for whatever personal issue – because they recognise who you are as people, and what you are about, what your heart is. The Truth always reigns, even when it doesn’t look like it.
I can understand why people are so hurt and confused on both sides, especially when the Media are anti-Christian in many ways – here and in the US.
However, while some people are called to speak and to present their story, like people working in Exodus etc, the rest of us are called to pray and support. Randy, please, if you have a bad day with it, please remember you’ve got people all around the world behind you, as well as our Loving Father.
God bless you and your Exodus peeps, C -x-
Wow Catherine. Thank you so much for the strong encouragement and prayer. Very uplifting. I, and I am sure the Exodus staff, all appreciate it.
2 cor 4 is a short chapter and seems appropriate – enjoy!
[1] Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
[2] We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
[3] And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
[4] In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
[5] For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
[6] For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
[7] But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.
[8] We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
[9] persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
[10] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
[11] For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
[12] So death is at work in us, but life in you.
[13] Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we too believe, and so we speak,
[14] knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.
[15] For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
[16] So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.
[17] For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
[18] because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Thanks for this post. I definitly feel the way Frank does, like I’m in t 0.5% and the world is the 99.5% pushing down on me. Its so easy to forget to pray for love when it feels like I’m drowning in Hate.
Thanks again.
LJ, I will pray that His love would be so present and uplifting that you will see that in truth, you are swimming in His Grace and hatred has no power there.
I also often feel the way Frank does, although I often feel I’m in the 0.1% of the 0.5% with everyone else pushing down on me. It’s easier for me to love my enemies when they are non-believers. It’s much more difficult when they are fellow Christians, especially fellow Christians who also struggle with homosexuality but who have taken different approaches than I have. Hopefully we can all work towards reconciliation.
It’s interesting how we can come from such different worldviews but have similar issues, especially regarding the “other side” reacting in the ways that they do.
That is interesting isn’t it.
Thanks for the post, my brother Derrick is very vocal about his gay lifestyle and gets upset very easily. He like the lady in your story can be verbally abusive. It is tough not knowing how far to push. I pray daily that God grabs his heart and changes his life. Keep up the good work!
Thank you Brandon. I will pray that you will have the wisdom on knowing how to push healthy honest conversation without actually being “pushy.” Brothers tend to be pushy (I know from being the older pushy brother to my younger brother
) It’s part of how brothers tend to do things 
.
May God grab all of our hearts and change our lives for the better daily
.