I hope your Easter celebrations were a blessing! Our church was packed, and I’ve heard anecdotal reports of higher-than-usual attendance around the nation. Do you sense God moving in our nation? 

Of course, holidays serve a critical function—they invite us to reflect on critical ideas. For example, what do the holidays of Easter, Passover, and Purim all have in common? They serve as annual reminders of a great Biblical truth: that the moment of potentially final defeat is often just the prelude to an enduring victory. While Easter is so much more than that, nonetheless, it’s a great reminder for us when things look dark. It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

Things look pretty dark right now for parents in Colorado, particularly if they have a child suffering from gender confusion and they expect to retain custody. Other states like California, Minnesota, Washington, and New York already have laws that create a right for minors to receive hormone treatments and even surgery (so-called “gender-affirming care”) to treat gender dysphoria. California’s AB 957 even instructs judges to consider a parent’s attitude toward a child’s gender identity as one factor among many in custody decisions.

However, Colorado’s “Kelly Loving Act” takes these wrong-headed bills one step further. If passed, it would be the first law in the nation to specifically declare as “coercive control” typical behaviors of rational parents of a child suffering from gender confusion, like using a child’s given name (so called “deadnaming”) or referring to them by their God-given sex (so called “misgendering”). The bill then requires this legislated indictment against parents to be considered in deciding custody disputes. 

In other words, if you don’t affirm your child’s delusion about their gender and potentially subject them to abusive psychological and medical practices, you lose custody. Furthermore, the bill would specifically nullify other states’ laws protecting their children from being “transed,” thereby making Colorado a “sanctuary state” for this particular brand of child abuse. Sound radical? Well, consider that at least two Colorado legislators who support the bill consider opponents, like Christian parents, as “hate groups” akin to the KKK. 

And we know that parents will lose custody, because it’s already happened in California and New York, even without the severity of the Colorado bill in those states’ laws. Unfortunately, the bill has already passed the Colorado House and is up for consideration in the state senate, which must vote on it (or let it die) by May 7. Thankfully, faithful believers are rallying against the bill. 

For public school educators, this may feel familiar. Many of us teach in states where saying the wrong pronoun could result in termination. If a teacher loses her job and a parent loses custody, who is left to stand in the gap for gender-confused kids? 

Yet, there is cause for hope. Maybe not quite yet in Colorado or California, but the tide seems to be turning on this issue.

Scientifically, the Cass Report and the publication of the leaked WPATH Files not only demonstrate that “gender affirming care” for minors yields non-existent mental health benefits at the cost of sterilizing kids, but that trans activist medical professionals knowingly violated medical ethics in an attempt to set worldwide standards of care for gender dysphoria. 

Politically, we are seeing many positive signs, such as the Trump Administration’s Dear Colleague letter to school districts stipulating that withholding information from parents about their children’s gender confusion is a FERPA violation and may result in the loss of federal funds. Additionally, the administration’s determination to enforce Title IX has led to investigations into states like California and Maine over allowing males into female sports. In fact, Maine may be on the verge of losing federal funding for K-12 schools. 

Legally, two recent cases are worth noting. First, the 9th Circuit Court recently reversed a lower court ruling in a parent’s lawsuit filed after her 11-year-old daughter was socially transitioned without her knowledge. The lawsuit against the Chico Unified School District in California, which had been dismissed, can now proceed. Second, University of Louisville professor Dr. Allan Josephson can finally claim victory after a long legal battle. He was fired for expressing his views about transgender medical treatments for minors on a Heritage Foundation panel in 2017. The school just agreed to pay him nearly $1.6 million. 

Finally, a high school teacher in Florida was fired over the preferred name and pronoun issue. But get this…not because she refused to go along with the student’s gender confusion, but because she did! Florida now requires parental permission for educators to use different names and pronouns from a student’s official records. In this case, the AP Literature teacher admitted she knowingly broke the law. 

So, though we are seeing victories on the gender issue at the federal level and in places like Florida and Kentucky, things still feel dark and maybe even a bit hopeless for faithful Christians serving in public schools in states like Colorado and California.

But the Easter story shows the way. The vindictive self-righteousness of the Pharisees, Pilate’s passive indifference to evil, the craven opportunism of Judas, and the demonic direction behind them all combined to form a seemingly overwhelming force for darkness. Yet, when Christ’s victory was won in the empty tomb, the stunning truth was revealed—all of them had simply been pawns in God’s redemption plan. 

When we feel under siege, it can seem like we are the minority—that as Christians, we are huddled in isolated caves playing defense and hoping that opposition will simply pass us by. And often, numerically, we are the minority. But with God, we are never outnumbered. Let me join the apostle Paul in urging you to stand. As sons and daughters of our King, we have power and authority unknown to the secular world! And unlike worldly power, what we carry also contains blessings for those advancing godless agendas, because God loves them too…passionately. There will be a time when we will look back and see that God was even using those who now oppose us to accomplish His purposes in us and around us.

So let’s be on our knees contending for gender-confused kids and the parents who love them. Let’s pray for states like Colorado, our nation, and our schools—praying with the authority of the victory we have in Christ. And as led by His Spirit, let’s act. 

And if I could ask for an additional indulgence…it is likely as you read this that I will be traveling with a team to the European Christian Educators (EurECA) conference in Albania. We have an amazing opportunity to launch the transformative AWAKE Experience across the European continent, impacting educators and students for eternity! Would you pray with us for educators to be set free from the lies of the enemy and released into their calling as ambassadors for Christ in our schools? Thank you.