If ‘believer’ or ‘Christian’ or ‘follower of Jesus’ is your genuine identity, then what’s that negative adjective supposed to do? The one that says ‘giving in?’ It says, ‘I’m in the Lord’s battle, fighting on his side always, but way too often I lose.’ That revealing adjective should be a humble confession of that something in my life that sabotages who I really want to be, like ‘loving myself so much that I can’t even begin to love my neighbor.’

If you were a recovering alcoholic and went to an AA meeting, you were supposed to say: ‘I’m Joe, I’m an alcoholic.’ That meant you took your problem seriously but was that really your identity? Wouldn’t it have been better to make the ‘alcoholic’ word into an adjective, ‘I’m Joe, I’m an alcoholic executive?’ Isn’t that a more encouraging identity?

How do you become an alcoholic anyway, isn’t it by crossing that line between ‘moderate’ and ‘excessive,’ between really wanting more though you know that would be dumb, and going after it anyway?’ So then it’s your addiction coming from your giving in? In Bible language you crossed the line between temptation and sin. Everyone is tempted but not everyone gives in, but all of us easily identify with someone being tempted.

For a bad example: I’ve always struggled with desiring to preach entirely and exclusively for God’s glory, but then it’s hard for me to do that right when all those people lean forward. Would ‘tempted to see myself as most important’ be the right label? You wouldn’t have to be a preacher to grasp that, would you?

The Lord calls us to care for the poor, but if Social Security is going to be cut, where’s the money going to come from? That’s what produces ‘greedy believers,’ or at least tempted to be that way. We should talk that one over with each other shouldn’t we?

If ‘believer’ or ‘Christian’ or ‘follower of Jesus’ is your genuine identity, then what’s that negative adjective supposed to do? The one that says ‘giving in?’ It says, ‘I’m in the Lord’s battle, fighting on his side always, but way too often I lose.’ That revealing adjective should be a humble confession of that something in my life that sabotages who I really want to be, like ‘loving myself so much that I can’t even begin to love my neighbor.’

Right now many of us struggle especially to grasp ‘gay Christian.’ That’s clearer than ‘Christian gay;’ we have to keep that identity thing straight. We all need adjectives in our lives; that’s how we confess our sins thoroughly and how we ask for prayers from our sisters and brothers, that’s how we can be honest about the downright evil sides of our lives. That should keep us from being ‘judgmental,’ finding our identity in ‘at least I don’t.’ That isn’t honest, we all think and do things we don’t deep-down really want to do.

That’s still fuzzy right now. It can feel like ‘gay Christian’ isn’t about a battle, but instead saying ‘that’s who I am, accept me that way.’ Shouldn’t it be ‘this is too big in my life, pray for me, it’s getting in the way of my real identity that Jesus gave me?’ You need to go beyond just words and make clear what you mean. Are you asking: ‘please pray for me, this is so hard;’ or are you proclaiming: ‘this is a lot more than an adjective, this is who I am!’ That’s really the same as the difference between ‘with you I want to be honest, my life is so hard, where did the love go, please pray for me’ and ‘I’m all I’ll ever want to be so admire me.’

It’s not easy to tell which it is, especially if you’re not a believer and you’re trying hard to learn just what a believer is like. If you don’t know Jesus and that he calls you to follow him and be like him, it’s easy to think real life is like what you see on TV, so small and boring. It’s what they call ‘the knowledge of sin through the gospel,’ when the beauty of the Good News shows you the shabbiness of where you really are, barely surviving in your personal bad news.

Brothers and sisters in Jesus, we need to keep on confessing all of our own sins to our Father and to each other, so when we ask for prayer, it’s targeted for me and my sin, maybe that ‘self-idolatry.’ That’s who real prayer is for, not for that mythical person who has it all together. Gay believers, since we don’t always do that, we’re ready to take blame for the confusion out there about you. So let’s all of us get in the groove for humble confessing of sin; you gay believers included.

So when I say I’m a ‘gay believer,’ it really has to mean, this is what I struggle with and fight against, please understand just how hard that is for me, maybe not for you but it surely is for me.’ Then we’ll all know how to pray for you and we’ll remember to keep it up, too. We are all so glad when others pray for us, aren’t we? Well, only when they know what to pray for! It’s up to us to help them know what that is, isn’t it?

Our prayer and all our godly thinking are full of hope! Living in a hostile world can be discouraging and threatening but still with our God’s presence! All our tedious and tiring ‘not yet’ is still surrounded by that Glorious Already. But be aware! Don’t just hang and mumble that you know Jesus, be very aware of where you’re coming from and where you are right now, and then what’s still coming ahead. That’s both already/not yet in your own life, and already/not yet in God’s amazing salvation history.

If you’re just drifting along without Aware, then there’s not much you can share with other believers, and even less with those who are not yet with you in Jesus. Work through the way Paul said it and identify, then pray for all that’s ahead: As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master (Romans 6:20-23 ).

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through.

If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him! That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting.

We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter: He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good (Romans 8:15-28, The Message).

Thank you again, Paul! You always give us gospel truth, but now you’re modeling how we can live, with groans and joy stirred together, sunny-side up. You’re jogging our memories to be aware what life without Jesus is like, and how we want and receive more and more now. There’s our genuine story there, nothing cut-and-dried boring, but always with joyful expectancy! Yes, may we all pray that way and remember that way and want more that way. It’s never, now I know it all, too bad that no one else does—it has to be real conversation, where are you in that story? Oh I’m not there yet, tell me about it. Oh, that does remind us of Jesus again, doesn’t it? Oh, there’s more than that wonderful reality, there’s another new chapter today with more ahead.

When we learn to think and groan and expect that way, then it fits to where we are right now. The Gospel can never be what some of us have totally nailed and what others don’t have a clue abou; it’s always joy for better than ever before and groaning yearning of ‘more of Jesus would I know.’ Yes, when we do it Paul’s way, the Spirit’s way, then there’s a lot more to talk about with each other, even with the not-yets. They may deny it but they yearn too, for love and the power to love others in a world containing more than their insulated selves.

As believers get to know each other God’s way, overflowing with love and humility and eagerness to care, then we come to know the grace and kindness and joy of our God. Then we’re ready for God’s great calling to us, to call others to Jesus and to share the joy of the Lord with them.

Keep on reading and meditating on those words of God that stir your heart, ask yourself why they work in this chapter of your own story, and then learn to listen, listen, listen. What does outreach for Jesus look like? Some canned words to memorize? Not really, but instead hearing well where people are, reminding yourself how that piece of yearning is so joyfully satisfied, and then be ready to tell God’s own story, of kindness and blessing and patience, and wake-ups and satisfying yearning you thought was imaginary, but is so real.

Dr. D. Clair Davis is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and retired Professor of Church History at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Penn.