Clay Jones tweeted this story from the ultra-leftist National Public Radio, of all places.

Excerpt:

Allan Edwards is the pastor of Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in western Pennsylvania, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. He’s attracted to men, but considers acting on that attraction a sin. Accordingly, Edwards has chosen not to act on it.

“I think we all have part of our desires that we choose not to act on, right?” he says. “So for me, it’s not just that the religion was important to me, but communion with a God who loves me, who accepts me right where I am.”

Where he is now is married. He and his wife, Leanne Edwards, are joyfully expecting a baby in July.

This was the part I thought was interesting:

Allan first met Leeanne when they both worked as teenagers at a Christian summer camp. “I always joke with her that she was one of the cool kids and I was a raging fundamentalist nerd,” he says.

They didn’t click at the time, but in 2006 they both applied for the camp director job, and Leeanne got it. When she was ready to leave the position, he took her to lunch to scope out the job.

“We got off talking about the job and started talking about our experience of the last couple years,” Allan recalls. “I don’t want to be gushy or romantic, but I just melted inside, and thought, this is someone who understands graciousness. This is someone who understands acceptance, and this is someone I want to spend as much time with as possible.”

He was drawn to her heart and soul, he explains. “Out of that was birthed our intimate relationship.”

Leeanne says she knew Allan struggled against a sexual attraction to men. “I wondered if he was going to be able to put something like that behind him, or if it was going to be something that would affect our relationship,” she says.

But they way they see it, people in any marriage must work to resist attractions from outside the relationship, whether from the same or the opposite gender.

“There’s always going to be situations where a partner is sexually attracted to someone else and isn’t necessarily dealing with sexual attraction with their partner,” Leeanne says.

There are a couple of things that I wish I could change about me. I would like to be more involved in my church, I’d like to have a daily quiet time, I’d like to do Bible study more. But usually these things get short shrift because I am so busy trying to earn and save money and have an apologetics ministry. It’s nice, though, when a woman responds to a “fixer-upper” man with acceptance and understanding.

The things I want to work on don’t seem to have stopped me from making an impact as a Christian. I never had a “falling away” period where I went wild in college, got drunk and cohabitated with atheists. Whatever I’ve been doing for the 25 years I’ve been a Christian was obviously enough to keep my faith intact, be a good steward of my resources, and make a difference by mentoring others and blogging. In today’s culture, it’s probably better to be more practical, and focus less on things that are devotional, like A. W. Tozer and praise hymns.

Another thing occurred to me while I was reading this story. I thought – what good evangelists they will make, because they both have this ability to look past imperfections and listen to people and then work with them. If you really want to change a person and grow them, then you can’t just stand back and draw a line in the sand and explain why you get to be lazy and not do something with them that will work to grow them. All the people I have ever mentored had something about them that I didn’t think was perfect – but I didn’t take it as an excuse to not engage with them, and to do whatever would work to give them a shove in the right direction. And the results speak for themselves! Sometimes Christians who grow up thinking that “the Bible says you have to do it” is enough get lazy though, when confronted with real people who are not perfect. And they will say anything to avoid having to do work that helps others grow. They just want to make the judgment and be done with the person. Thank goodness the pastor in this story had friends who didn’t dismiss him out of hand because he was not perfect.