Compassion makes a difference.

*Warning: Kinda long post but a very important one.*




This week's speaker was Ray Highfield. I can honestly say he is on my top five people who have inspired me in my life. I've known him for four days, but his life and testimony is an absolute image of what I would like to be.

I'm pretty sure Ray started the first AIDS help program in the states. Not like medically, but actually helping them and having a home for them. Because of this he reached out to many many homosexual people. He opened his home; Infact, his backdoor was always open and in the morning he would count heads to see how many people to make breakfast for. He started to reach out to the aids victims by visiting the aids hospital floor. He would touch them, which was quite scarce in the 80s. He prayed with them and led many to the Lord. He had one kid named Kevin come and live with him. He found out he had aids, and was planning to kill himself. His neighbor however heard from God to call him and go to his house. She stopped him from killing himself. She took him to her church but the pastor disowned him completely. She took him to another church and asked the pastor to anoint Kevin with oil. He wouldnt touch him, but threw oil at him from behind the pulpit and told him he couldnt come back. The only person who would take him in was Ray. He lived with Ray for 4 years before he died, and Kevin made a huge impact on many people through his radical salvation.
Lee, had aids and was in prison. He died while he was there. They pronounced him dead, and took him to the morgue. Before the funeral director went in there, Lee got resurrected out of nowhere. It scared the funeral director almost to death, haha. Since Lee was already "Dead", they couldnt put him back to life in records. So Ray took him in. Lee got saved, got married, and lived for 10 more years after this happened. He owned his own woodshop and was a very happy man(I saw him in a video.)
So many stories of what Ray has done.He's ministered in gay clubs where men would line up and sit at the bar, cry, give their lives to Christ, hop off the bar, and the next would do the same. Ray would go to gay couples homes, not say anything really about Christ until they asked, and they would get convicted with that alone and come to Christ and seperate. He has I cant even remember the countless and countless stories Ray told. He cried with each and every one of them. He has more compassion then anyone I've ever seen/heard about. You can just tell by looking at this eyes they way he loves people.
I got the privelege of talking to him one on one. I asked him how it was possible to love everyone no matter what they have done. He told me something along the lines of: I vision them as a child, not the adult they are now. The child who is so hurt, angry, and scared. That's who we need to minister to.
Ray's life has been very hard, especially with the loss of his son this year. These people have stolen from him, lied to him, burned walls in his house, you name it. But each time he still loves them and lets them come back. He doesn't give up on anyone no matter their past or how they act.

He brought up a point that many churches aren't ready for or to accept Homosexual/ AIDS patients. We don't know what to do with them and we reject them even if it's not blatantly. The church has done more to hurt these people then anyone else on Earth, and we're the ones called to love and preach the good news to everyone! How convicting! God said to feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, etc etc etc. That means these people too. Their "sin" isn't any bigger then ours. So many times Christians put homosexuality on this scale of the biggest sin. I've done this. But really, it's not. It's just as bad as adulterers, liars, and other addictive behaviors that are in the church. We must reach out to these hurting people.
Something i loved that Ray said a bout this is: "Don't try to clean a fish before catching them." A misconception in my head was that we had to make them be straight before they could come to know God. Ofcourse they won't do that! We have to catch them, even more importantly God has to catch them before He cleans us out. We should love and talk to them like any other sinner.

Ray challenged me to love like I've never loved before. A quote he said was," We must remove ourselves from behind stained glass to save stained lives."
We as Christians must step away from our little bubble, our little wants, our comfortable lives and fufill the calling God has placed on our lives. Because honestly if we dont... Who will?