Being Loving Not Religious

I came across this video the other day on Ed Young's site and I thought was interesting. I'm not the BIGGEST Ed Young fan but he has done a couple things here and there that have really caught my heart. This video, once get past the commercial at the beginning talks about his unusual meeting with a local porn star. I love that he didn't focus his attention on the sin but on the sinner instead. Too often we look at someone sin and we automatically write them off and want nothing to do with them but we must remember that Jesus welcomed all sinners into his company. If you think about it...the only people Jesus got angry at was the religious people. We had this situation a while back in our church and this video reminded me of that situation. Our church is located right down the road from a gay night club and so we have quite of few homosexual couples in our churches neighborhood. Well, one day a lesbian couple started attending the church and the attended on a regular basis. I loved that they were attending. Notice I didn't say I loved that they lived a gay lifestyle but I just loved that we had an opportunity to pour Jesus into their life and maybe after time it would change their lifestyle...who knows? My point is, you have to catch a fish before you can clean. The word says that He came to this world not to condemn the world but that the world MIGHT be saved. Well, to make a long story short...the lesbian couple began to make long time church members uncomfortable with how close they sat to each other and eventually they felt negativity and left the church. This was a real upset to me. When will the church stop looking at the sin and see the sinner that needs Jesus. I began to ask myself, "What made their sin any different from the sin of the struggling addict that sits two rows back?" or "What makes their sin worse than the husband that struggles with pornography?" or "What makes their sin more sinful than the wife that lies to her husband about how much she spends at the mall?" I think we ALL need to evaluate how we see sinners and ask ourselves, "Are we looking at the sin or do we see the sinner that needs the love of Christ?"