Do LGBT people need to change who they are and who they love? If they want to follow Jesus, then, yes, of course. God calls us to change our unbiblical identity (whatever it is) and align our will (whatever its desires) with the Father.

I’m told I’ve got this wrong. I’m told that when it comes to people who identity as LGBT, God doesn’t expect them to change who they are or change who they love. I’m also told this is too hard a pill for evangelicals to swallow.
I presume that what they mean is that people with same-sex attraction, a transgender identity, or who claim to be non-binary are free to embrace those impulses and satisfy those desires. God doesn’t expect them to change their identities or the the objects of their affection. They can be faithful followers of Jesus while fully embracing their LGBT identity.
The claim that becoming a follower of Jesus doesn’t entail change, however, is totally foreign to what it means to be a Christian. Every believer who is transformed by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit experiences a change of identity and lifestyle. It’s unreasonable to expect that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave—that resides in a regenerate person’s soul—is not going to change who you are and change your desires.
That’s because becoming a follower of Jesus isn’t an minor change. It’s not a slight shift. It’s a total transformation. You’re born again (John 3:3). You exit darkness and enter the light (1 Pet. 2:9). You were once a slave to sin and now are a slave to righteousness (Rom. 6:16–18). You were dead in your sins but now are alive in Christ (Rom. 6:11). You are adopted by God and have become his child (Rom. 8:15). The old things pass away and the new things come. You literally become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).
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Throughout church history each generation of believers expected the Lord to return in their generation. All the signs of the times looked just like the time when the Lord promised to return and so they watched and labored just as God called them to (Matthew 25:1-13). We too must look for the appearing of our Savior from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel. Either in our generation (we should pray that Christ would come today) or in a future generation, the Lord will return.

Then he set his countenance in a stare until he was ashamed; and the man of God wept. And Hazael said, “Why is my lord weeping?” He answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword; and you will dash their children, and rip open their women with child.”So Hazael said, “But what is your servant—a dog, that he should do this gross thing?” And Elisha answered, “The Lord has shown me that you will become king over Syria.”
II Kings 8:11-13 NKJV
Much happens over twenty years! A generation is generally considered about twenty years. Between the end of World War 1 and the beginning of World War 2 twenty years elapsed. I started my first regular job twenty years ago. Twenty years later, twenty years does not seem to be so long a time but how much happens in twenty years – terrorist attacks, wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemics, regime changes, marriages, births, and deaths.
Twenty years prior to Elisha’s journey to Damascus, Elijah was on Mt. Sinai communing with the Lord about Israel’s sin. When the Lord spoke with Elijah he told him to anoint three people: Hazael king of Syria; Jehu King of Israel; and Elisha to be a prophet in Elijah’s place. During Elijah’s lifetime, only one of those tasks took place – Elijah left Mt. Sinai and anointed Elisha as a prophet. The instructions concerning Hazael and Jehu did not take place until well into Elisha’s ministry about twenty years later.
Elisha’s journey to Damascus was not the random wandering of an unwanted prophet but rather the carrying out of the mission and instruction the Lord had given to Elisha’s predecessor in the ministry many years prior.
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Joni Eareckson Tada, herself no stranger to chronic pain, writes of Anne Steele, “Hers was a ministry of suffering.”5. She goes on to say, “Do you serve God in your suffering? We serve him when we imitate Jesus’s endurance in our suffering. Or his patience in the face of disappointment or his perseverance while shouldering our cross. . . . And when we choose contentment over complaining, we imitate his glad willingness to submit to the Father’s terrible yet wonderful will. All of it comprises a fragrant, sacrificial service to God.”6 

When John Rippon published his influential hymnal A Selection of Hymns in 1787, 101 of the texts were by the short-lived but prolific Philip Doddridge (1702–1751). The second-most-represented author, with 47 texts in the hymnal, was Baptist poet Anne Steele. For many years, Steele’s poems figured prominently in evangelical hymnals, but by the early 20th century, her works nearly disappeared. By 1950, hymnologist Albert Bailey could write that “all but one of her 144 hymns are now forgotten.”1
However, Steele wrote hymns worth remembering and learning, hymns born out of a life of disappointment, grief, and suffering. When she was three years old, her mother died. A hip injury at age nineteen led to chronic physical pain for Anne. She also dealt with symptoms of malaria throughout her life. Many accounts of her life state that she was engaged to one Robert Elscourt, who drowned the day before or the day of their wedding. This may be a romanticized addition to her life, though she did remain unmarried her whole life.2 Her father remarried, but his second wife died when Anne was forty-three. A sister-in-law died two years later. Anne’s father developed poor health late in his life, and Anne cared for him until he died in 1769.
Despite the suffering and difficulty, Anne’s faith and hope were in God. Her father, a well-to-do merchant, also served as a deacon and eventually pastor of a Baptist church in Broughton, England. Anne joined the church at age 14 and from an early age exhibited a faith that expressed itself through poetry. She began to write primarily for her own devotional use, but her father saw the value of his daughter’s poetry and introduced these hymns to his church. Anne was initially reluctant to show her work to a wider audience, but through the encouragement of her father and step-mother, as well as a small group of pastors who championed her work,3 she submitted poetry for publication when she was in her early forties. The resulting book, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional and published under the pen name Theodosia, introduced people to a significant new voice in hymnody. Baptist hymnologists Harry Eskew and Hugh McElrath state, “Miss Steele was the foremost of a group of Baptist hymnists . . . who, because their hymns possess a quality unsurpassed before or since, constitue a ‘Golden Age of Baptist Hymnody.’”4
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