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‘For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, til her righteousness shines forth like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.’ (Is. 62:1, 2) It is too easy to dismiss the Church as inadequate to convey the whole Gospel to LGBT+ persons: she appears to slalom from rigorous truth—a fortress inaccessible–to grace that can only be described as flabby in failing to recognize what ails us, to faith-filled but gnostic in promising spir

I kid you not. After 40 years of leading Living Waters groups, I just finished the best one ever. These twenty weeks rolled out like a dream. OK, chalk it up to extraordinary co-leaders (Marco and Becky) and inspired worship (Abbey singing at piano as we bowed before the Tabernacle and Divine Mercy). Maybe it had something to do with diversity. I led one of many small groups alongside my coleader from IHOP; we accompanied a Reformed lay leader, a priest, a therapist, and two

‘And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness’ (Is. 35:8). Most efforts to pursue sexual wholeness are blocked by the media today. Gone are the days when some journalists honestly explored Christians who claimed to have found a way out of gender confusion through Jesus-centered community. Instead, the press obscures our pathway to chastity with laughable debris—fake charges that we abuse and manipulate, accrue millions, and prayerfully electroshock the ‘

The Crucified rallied the nations last week in Kansas City; under the flood of His Divine Mercy, we wept for joy. Ecstasy. No better way to describe the 80 Living Waters leaders who gathered around His self-giving in order to offer themselves better to others. Jesus gift to us at Calvary is accurately defined as ‘ecstatic’: its Greek root means ‘to come out of oneself.’ Jesus’ dying released a river of blood and water. His life source left Him and became the source of our liv

‘The poor and needy search for water but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst, but I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them…’ (IS 41:17) It was a good sign. As I greeted my Thai colleague Sue and team at the Kolkata Airport, I looked behind her in line and saw a dozen Missionaries of Charity (St. Teresa’s team) gleaming in white robes, their eyes bright with Jesus as they awaited baggage check and a fresh advance in another regi

‘You are no longer aliens but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone’ (Eph. 2:19, 20). Mexicans do it better. Living Waters anyway. Attribute it to truer body/spirit integration. Or greater openness to the Spirit. Or deeper awareness of poverty, submitted to God. All I can say is that I left Guadalajara full of hope (‘esperanza’ in Spanish) for a

In New York City, on the last day of ‘Gay Pride’ month, God had the last word.  In the same city where a noisy and highly funded LGBT+ parade glorified identity confusion a week earlier, Living Waters flowed without notice, quietly yet mightily to heal wounds at the core of the relational mess we are in. Together a thirsty group of Catholics and evangelicals gathered under the Cross to receive His self-giving and to seek to offer ourselves more wholly to others. We welcomed H

We are healed and we will be healed by faith in Jesus. So will our loved ones. To stop trusting Jesus for His full and perfect will for everyone we love (including ourselves) negates the power of what He won for us at Calvary. ‘By His wounds we are healed’ (IS. 53:5; 1P2:24). Period. Like every virtue, faith is both a gift of grace and an arduous goal. For persons coming out of disordered identities and desire, it is easy to trust Jesus when we experience ourselves as solid e

‘I witnessed God’s glory in every broken life.’ Living Waters participant We just finished our Living Waters group at St. Thomas More’s in Kansas City. It was a hard group–a handful dropped out and the deep needs that remained in the group seemed overwhelming. It helped that we met in the sanctuary where we were constantly drawn up into the huge Crucifix above the altar, a reminder that He was assuming the unbearable. Just below, we raised a 10-feet image of the Divine Mercy

Mercy: An urgent call for testimony Barbara Vittucci (a longstanding friend of DSM/LW, Barb resides in Vienna, Austria and has been a lifeline to hundreds in the church seeking wholeness) Have you received mercy? Through the healing love of Jesus Christ, are you growing in restoration of soul, identity, relationships, and sexuality? In our days of titanic confusion in these very areas, the world needs your testimony as never before. It is a time for the flood gates of mercy

‘We remove the organ and deny the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.’ C.S. Lewis ‘And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.’ LK 1:17 John took a deep breath when he read Tim’s (his teen son) virtual correspondence with a ‘boyfriend’ on the west coast. Any concern about his son’s sexuality was starkly realized in that moment. Rather than shrink back, John knew he had to act. But how? Never close with his dad, Tim at

Although America seems more inclined to celebrate the ‘Bruce Jenners’ who relent to perversion, I want to honor a man named Rocky who repented from his transgender self to the healing love of God. Disconnection from reality sums up Rocky’s early life. Raised in a rough Mexican-American home by a mentally-ill mother and a father who abused her, Rocky found little encouragement for his masculine soul. Dad was replaced early on by a violent stepfather who treated Rocky with cont

‘To speak of the healing of the homosexual is to speak of the healing of all persons everywhere.’ Leanne Payne Leanne Payne passed into glorious Life on Ash Wednesday. She left a glorious legacy of Life for DSM/LW. To describe her influence as foundational is an understatement. As our staff memorialized her, I was amazed how each of us had experienced at least one profound, enduring healing encounter with her. In books and conferences, in Word and Spirit, she prayerfully bro

Bruce Jenner a woman? America’s fractured take on gender and sexuality took a turn for the worse as this US Olympic Gold Decathlon winner becomes the new and pathetic face of artificial womanhood. Father of 6 and 65-years-old, he has ignited a media blitzkrieg, including a new reality series, in which we are to sympathize with his need to butcher and drug himself into another gender. The truth: Jenner will always be a man, and his delusional efforts to change that will not re

‘I could strengthen you with talk, or shake my head with silent lips.’ (Jb 16:5) I spoke to him plainly of the dangers of ‘gay marriage,’ and the power of Jesus and His church to raise the ‘homosexual’ to wholeness. The earnest bishop implored me: ‘But we don’t want to be on the wrong side of history!’ I understand his dilemma. Last night while channel surfing for 15 minutes, I witnessed two same-gendered couples smooching to celebrate ‘gay marriage’ victories in PA and OR, a

‘Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…’ (Heb. 12: 1a) How much more do I draw mercy from the saints still on earth who stand with DSM/LW? True friends emerge from the fight. The world and worldly church do everything in their power to discredit our efforts; blinded to their need for mercy, they make miserable those who see sin’s misery in sexual and relational brokenness. In the fire, God is forging alliances. Out of the bitterness of Christians for whom

I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ amid the afflicting power of homosexual attraction and conduct. In those years, shame veiled such struggles. I was fortunate to find Christian guides who helped me to discover Jesus as the basis for a new and true humanity. Today, we arise out of shame and into the evolving community known as LGBTQ. Such a community may appear to afford some a kind of corporate identity and defense against a heterosexist world. What it actually doe

‘See! The winter is passed; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth, the season of singing has come.’ (S of S 2: 11, 12) Jesus stormed the gates of hell to get us out of there. Let us encounter the blessed power of this new life in our fellows. Let us declare the triumph of Easter. Last week I had the privilege of eating lunch at the home of Melissa and Garry Ingraham in upstate New York. Both come out of histories of same-sex attraction; together, united in

“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and don’t need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.” (Rev. 3:17) St. Peter reveals our prideful detachment. When Jesus knelt down to wash the apostle’s dirty feet, his response is ours: “Get up! Get away from my stench! Remember the fragrant things I do!’ Jesus responds to Peter and to us: ‘Unless you let Me wash you there [feet—the lowest, dirtiest parts of us], you can have no p

‘Since we have confidence to enter the Most holy place through the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us by His body, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith…’ (Heb. 10: 19-22) My friend Dean Greer returned broken to the church of his youth. He had left years earlier to explore the homosexual life; fed up with his folly and under the death sentence of HIV, he needed a place to rebuild his life. He discovered a hard truth: ‘The