The Bible gives the true diagnosis and solution for any gender-related sin and/or suffering: heart transformation through Christ’s forgiveness and resurrection power in His Spirit, which enables our minds and beliefs to be renewed by truth, our broken hearts and distress to be healed, our gender struggles to be brought under God’s care, and ultimately completely eradicated in the life to come. Christ alone bore our shame and sin in His body on the cross.

One of the ways we disciple kids so that in everything, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 4:10-12) is by speaking God’s truth about gender issues with clarity. Discipling your kids to have biblical words and concepts planted in their hearts and minds is a foundational way to equip them to think and discern wisely as they face personal struggles and false teaching.[1]
Two Types of Conversations to Have
As you seek to make deposits in your kids’ hearts and minds slowly yet steadily, there are two conversational pathways to keep in mind.
First, pray about being ready to engage in “As You Go” talks about gender. Just like it sounds, these conversations can spring up in the normal flow of daily life. Basically, take notice of what you (and they) see and hear online, what is happening with their friends, gender-neutral clothes, words and phrases they hear like genderqueer, non-binary, etc.
These brief, in-the-moment interactions are a way to follow the exhortation of God’s Word, “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 11:18-19).
The other category is “Intentional Topical Conversations.” These age-appropriate conversations are planned, brief, and focused on specific gender-related issues—not a deep dive into the entirety of what it means to be male and female image bearers, the differences between men and women, or all the nuances of transgenderism.
The following five ideas provide an outline for you to study personally and then work through steadily over time with your child. Remember, there is a battle raging, and you are girding them with God’s truth so that they can, “in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which [they] can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16).
Five Key Biblical Topics about Gender
1. God created the world and us; we are either male or female by His design.
In Genesis 1:26-27, we learn that He created us, and we are born either of two possible genders: male or female. God’s creation of us gives us an unchangeable identity, value, and purpose.
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What does Jesus and his good news say about queerness and the experiences leading some to identify as such? He, the one and only unique Son of God? Jesus, God come to us in the flesh, the one beside whom there is no other? Jesus, our Lord, who alone has been exalted to a unique place and shares his glory with no one? This loving king, gentle friend—the truth incarnate—is the ultimate Other. It’s only in him that our otherness is redeemed and beautifully serves his unique purpose: to make us more like himself. I can assure you that Jesus does not say, “Get over it. I’m done with you till you drop  the ‘Q.’” He’s the truth, the light, and the healer of broken hearts. 

Early in my ministry with Harvest USA, a friend put words to angst I’d felt earlier in life. I wasn’t a “boy crazy” girl or young adult and the desire for marriage and kids wasn’t strong, as it was for many of my peers. Things I perceived as girly held no attraction for me. I had a happy, fun-filled childhood. Yet, as I grew up, I felt separated from others . . . different. My new friend’s words seemed autobiographical—for me! She said, “I felt ‘other.’”
At age thirteen, this friend’s experience of same-sex attraction triggered thoughts and emotions that led to her self-diagnosis: I’m different and weird and don’t fit in.
SSA hasn’t been my story. My sense of feeling negatively different from peers stemmed from desires and preferences regarding my experiences as a girl. I felt queer: odd, obviously different from what I perceived to be the societal norms around me.
What Does Queer Mean Today?
The word “queer” has an interesting history, though its origin isn’t precisely known. Initially used to describe something as strange, odd, or peculiar (how I felt), in the 1800s “queer” morphed into a slur used to describe men who had sex with men. Fast forward to the 2000s and it’d become an umbrella term in LGBTQ+ vocabulary to refer to someone who does not experience sexual or romantic attraction to the opposite sex (what society labels heteronormative) and/or does not identify with or accept the gender binary of male or female (I’ll call this gender binary “creation normativity”).
“Queer”[1] is now a mainstream term attached to experiences that are outside of God’s creation intent. Creation normativity, in contrast, is when male and female image-bearers flourish as relational, engendered, and sexual beings entrusted with the gift and capacity of loving and serving through satisfying community—friendship, family, brother-sister relationships, and marriage.
To be sure, sin’s corrupting power has devastated our ability to enjoy gender and sexuality in the ways God lovingly intended. And the body of Christ has a long way to go in bringing the balm and transformation of the gospel to those who identify with the Q of LGBTQ+. Remember: at the heart of Q is a sense of not fitting in with what is accepted as normal—and that can be painful.
Many who identify with LGBTQ+ have felt their otherness weaponized against them by Christians rather than having the gospel of Jesus offered and explained. Weaponizing sin and suffering against someone is also sin.
The truth is, most of us have felt at some point that we didn’t fit in due to the types of suffering we endure, the sins we pursue, or the preferences we have. And, in response to the pain of feeling on the outside and the confusion of why we perceived we were different from others, we gave way to the common-to-all temptation to interpret our experiences, and our very selves, from a personal grid of truth. We are meaning-makers. When unmoored from God’s Word and the life-giving, freedom-infusing promises of the gospel, we develop and live out false identities based on those false diagnoses. “Live your truth” is not a helpful mantra because our truth is not reliable!
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Jesus, please give me the fresh start you gave to Peter on the beach. O Lord, help me to love you and to learn from his journey of change into a man you used so powerfully. O God, I pray his words back to you now, and cry out for courage to take the next step—one step back towards faithfulness. 

Read John 13:38. Father, I thought I meant it. I really did want to resist this time. . . to turn away from the desire that has bullied and hounded me. I’m sorry, Lord. I didn’t see temptation coming. Like Peter, I denied you last night—running away from you, refusing to pray, ignoring the Spirit’s warnings—even as I stepped toward sexual sin.
Read Psalm 40:1–2; 32:1–11; Mark 9:23–25. Oh Lord, I’m so discouraged. . . sad. . . beaten down. Help! Help me to not slide into despair. Hear my cry, Lord. Help me believe that you can reach my heart and lift me up out of this sinful mess I jumped into. Again. Cause me to hear your words of forgiveness, mercy, and hope. I want to believe but, God, it seems impossible that the change you promise actually works. 
Read James 5:16, 1 John 1:5–7. God, I know that if I make friends with this sin, like I’ve done so many times, it will crush me. I’ll be honest: I don’t feel bad about how this grieves you, Father. I hate the guilty way I feel afterwards. I hate the shame and self-hatred that pounds me down into the ground. And I’m so angry that now I must tell my accountability helper that I lied about how I was really doing. 
“You’re with me, God, and that will never change.”
Read Psalm 32:3; 143:7–8. I want to want godly sorrow. O God, give me the gift of tears (2 Cor. 7:9) over my fantasy life/pornography addiction/secret affair/cravings toward sex with my same-sex bestie/hooking up with my girlfriend every weekend/wearing my wife’s clothing/sex with myself. I can’t stay silent for another day about this pattern that controls me. Groaning, sighing, crying—please hear me and let me hear a fresh word of your love today, Lord. 
Read John 21:15–17; Luke 22:31–32. Lord Jesus…thank you. I just remembered your walk on the beach with Peter after he had messed up so badly in denying you. You had just fed him, and I wonder if he feared what you’d say to him after breakfast? Would you mock, shame, or call him out in front of his friends? And me—will you finally crush me down, Lord, after confessing the same thing to you for the hundredth time?! 
But your conversation with Peter warms me. You invited him to express his love for you on that beach. 
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In Christ Jesus, God takes us from death to life, from following the adversary to being seated with Christ in heaven, from being children of wrath to eternally loved children with access to heavenly riches. THIS is the truth we must cling to, believe in, and live out. Why would we choose something or someone else? Surely our Savior is worthy of being savored—not pushed away or suppressed.

Recently I taught Romans 1:18–32 for the women’s Bible study at my church. This passage shows God’s response to those who persist in rejecting him as Creator, Savior, and loving Lord. There’s no way to faithfully deal with this passage without explaining that all forms of sexual immorality are displeasing to our Creator. When we refuse to live under his design and instead invent our own “truth” about how we want to live sexually, we shake a defiant fist in his face.
Paul goes on in this passage to soberly proclaim that God’s holy hostility towards evil, what the Bible describes as his wrath, “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). God takes it seriously when the image-bearers he created push down his truth and choose lies. Our determination to pursue man-made rules for life—including all we do with our bodies—is dangerous.
God’s Holy Hostility and Lavish Love
Romans 1 is surely a passage our secular society would like to “cancel.” Why? Paul refuses to spin God’s truth to make it tickle his audience’s ears. He boldly names several expressions of ungodliness which provoke God’s holy hostility against evil: sexual immorality (any behavior outside the covenantal marriage of one man and one woman) and thinking that is unmoored from biblical truth. In fact, I wonder if the “giving up” to a “debased mind” (v. 28) is the most severe example of God giving people over to sinful desires. Courtney Doctor points out that Paul lists twenty-two fruits of God’s wrath (ESV) because “in response to continued rebellion and open idolatry, [God] will release people to the misery of who we are apart from him.” (38)
I don’t promote the shaming, angry, call-down-God’s-fire kind of preaching that is sometimes the caricature of Christian Bible teaching. Yet the Scriptures do present our God as holy and righteously angry toward sin, even as they reveal him as the loving Father and Rescuer of brokenhearted, hopeless sinners. Ephesians 2 is a clarifying and comforting complement to Romans 1:
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
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Sin in any relationship is serious, but since marriage is a unique covenant that represents Christ and the church, betrayal from a spouse is particularly devastating. Sexual unfaithfulness can shatter a wife’s sense of identity and worth. Her husband has not only gone outside the marriage but has actually brought pollution and idolatry into their union. Wives feel this intensely, even when they’re not the ones who pursued sexual unfaithfulness.

If your husband has sinned sexually, you might be surprised at how deeply you feel ashamed. Shame can be a vague, haunting, smothering feeling in our hearts. It may hover the way a low-grade physical ache emerges with the flu. Or it can suddenly fall over us, collapsing our hearts inward as if a heavy, water-soaked blanket was dropped on us.
The Bible connects shame and guilt, yet also distinguishes between them. Guilt communicates, “I’ve done something wrong.” Shame communicates, “Something is wrong with me.” Ed Welch, a biblical counselor, makes the distinction in his book Shame Interrupted:
Shame lives in the community, though the community can feel like a courtroom. It says, “You don’t belong—you are unacceptable, unclean and disgraced” because “You are wrong, you have sinned” (guilt), or “Wrong has been done to you” or “You are associated with those who are disgraced or outcast.” The shamed person feels worthless, expects rejection, and needs cleansing, fellowship [community], love, and acceptance. (11)
Note what Welch says about shame coming not only from our own sin but also from association with those who are disgraced. Just as you’ve perhaps been troubled by your troubles or anxious about your anxiety, maybe you’ve been carrying the shame of your husband’s sin as your own.
But your husband is guilty of sexual sin, not you. Regardless of how either of you (as sinners and sufferers) may have contributed to brokenness in your marriage, your husband chose to act on desires and pursue his own sexually sinful behaviors. Yet the intimacy of the marriage covenant does closely associate you with his guilt and the shame that comes with rebellion against our holy God. Why is this, and how does it happen?
Marriage, Sexual Sin, and Shame
Marriage creates a powerful opportunity for a husband and wife, in covenant before God and witnesses, to enter into a oneness-of-life relationship. Traditional Christian wedding vows usually include the following components.
Will you have this woman/man to be your wife/husband, to live together in holy marriage?
Will you love, comfort, honor, and keep her/him in sickness and in health?
Will you forsake all others, being faithful (relationally, mentally, sexually, emotionally, physically) to her/him as long as you both shall live?
 In response to all of these questions, the man and woman both promise, “I will.”
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Jesus is holy and demands our full allegiance while graciously giving us his full protection and provision. No matter what form of suffering, temptation, or failure we have personally experienced, we increasingly experience life rightly ordered when we surrender our desires to him—even desires concerning sexuality and relationships: “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23).

“I just don’t understand why God won’t allow me to have the two things I desire most: to serve him and to be in a romantic relationship.” The college student’s pained, confused question gave me pause as I grappled with how to respond. Though attending a conservative Christian university, romance, for this young woman, could only be found in the arms of another woman.
How would you have answered her sincere question that arose from her heartache within? I don’t remember what I said, but, years later, I discovered that she had in fact embraced a gay identity. Her faith had faded into the gray background of her life while she fully engaged in what felt like vivid-color freedom, following her desires to her “true” self.
Sexual Attractions and Following Jesus: No Private Real Estate
Recently, I’ve had many conversations about a freeing, gracious aspect of the gospel that isn’t popular these days: the lordship of Christ. Jesus explained that life in him means death to self in exchange for a glorious, new life lived under his loving care and ownership. Luke 9:23–24 says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
To be sure, Christianity isn’t only about denying ourselves! However, what my young friend didn’t want to face is that life in Christ requires humbly surrendering to God as Lord, Creator, and Savior over all areas of our lives. There is no part of our being on which we can plant a flag that says “Mine!”—including our relational desires and sexuality.[1] There is no private real estate for followers of Jesus.
Christians are caving to the worldly pressure to latch onto a false gospel of self-fulfillment, which includes the destructive heresy that sexual and romantic desires do not need the radical redemption of Christ. This is seductive and enticing because it promotes the idea that I can take up my cross and follow Jesus, denying myself here and there, but not in my sexuality and identity. It whispers that I can love and follow him on my own terms, having whatever kinds of romantic and sexual relationships I desire.
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For every married man who battles sexual sin, there is a wife and perhaps kids who are impacted. It’s beautiful when churches uphold God’s good, biblical design for marriage, discipling their people that husbands and wives are to love each other as unto the Lord, to serve one another selflessly as a way to show devotion to Jesus through faithfulness in all areas. However, we must also uphold God’s compassion for wives when marriage vows are broken. This is what Paul is speaking about, in part, when he exhorts husbands to “…love his wife as himself” (Ephesians 5:33). When husbands need help loving their wives, the Body of Christ steps in to counsel, correct, and provide compassionate care. 

Johnny and Hannah (names changed) had twelve years of marriage behind them when his secrets came out. He’d humbly told Hannah when they were dating that porn had been a struggle since his teens. She took the news in and faithfully tried to learn how to help him, and their relationship moved forward to marriage. What Johnny hadn’t disclosed was that in high school, he’d fathered a baby and had caught an STD from his girlfriend. He brought that STD into his marriage. And there was more. Johnny then committed adultery with two women early in their marriage.
Fast forward twelve years. Johnny and Hannah had two kids and a busy life of parenting, jobs, and financial stress due to the pandemic. Hannah’s mysterious health problems and a trip to the doctor forced Johnny’s hand to come clean about his past, including how it had brought sickness into Hannah’s body.
Yet Hannah’s heart was sick, too. She was devastated to learn that her husband had kept so much history a secret from her. Even worse, it crushed her spirit to come to grips that her husband had endangered not only their marriage but her very life by giving himself sexually to others. To top it all off, he had another child out there somewhere!
An Initial, Helpful Pastoral Response is not Enough
Hannah insisted that Johnny call their pastor when she learned all this heavy news, and, thankfully, the pastor responded quickly and compassionately. Within two days, the three of them met in his office, and out tumbled a sad, painful story of sin, suffering, and secrets. He wept with them and acknowledged the severity of their situation.
This is good news, right? Wouldn’t we want a pastor, church leader, counselor, or friend to respond this way? Yes! I celebrate when hurting wives share with me that their pastors respond with empathy, loving engagement, and personal availability. There are so many hurting couples in our churches who are alone and silent in their pain, so when I hear of a pastor’s office providing a warm and safe landing place for a couple, I truly am encouraged.
However, it’s what happened next that is sadly common for wives in particular when a husband’s infidelity comes out into the light. Don’t get me wrong: Wives can be sexually unfaithful, too, but, in my fifteen years of ministry at Harvest USA, I’d say the calls from wives who have been hurt compared to husbands responding to their wives’ sexual sin is roughly 90 to 1.
An Unfortunate Yet Typical Scenario
Hannah and Johnny left the pastor’s office exhausted, brokenhearted (her), and ashamed and angry (him). But they did have a plan. Johnny would meet with the pastor weekly for the next month for some initial accountability, prayer, and encouragement. The pastor offered to try to find a mature woman in the church to connect with Hannah. Hannah was hopeful about having at least one person to open her heart to, even if she was deeply embarrassed and overcome with sadness. Counseling wasn’t an option, as there just weren’t finances for it, and, anyway, they lived in a community “where everybody knows your name,” so Hannah was terrified of others finding out.
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