lgbtq

Every Time

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“In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents” (Luke 15:10, NLT).

The Message says that there’s a party in heaven every time even one sinner gets saved. I get that.

I know lately I find myself overjoyed when I read about any celebrity who comes to faith or someone who is coming out of a Muslim or LGBTQ or pagan background. I love that the gospel is for anyone and everyone, and there is no one who is beyond the reach of God’s grace.

I love hearing testimonies of being delivered by the power of Jesus. That never gets old for me (and I hope it never will). It always brings me ecstatic joy and reminds me of my own early days when I first experience the joy of my own salvation. It reminds me that God is still able to seek and to save the lost.

I do a lot more praying for people’s salvation than I used to. I think maybe it’s because I appreciate the gift of salvation way more than I did when I was younger. I also realize more and more that there are no political answers to what are ultimately spiritual problems.

At the root of every war and of every act of violence and every racial epithet is sin. We are all born into sin and we all need a Savior. We are not good people who need to be better or even bad people who need to be made good but dead people who need to be made alive.

That’s why I do what I do. If even one single person is in heave because of me posting these blogs every day for almost 16 years, then I can say it was worth it.

I hope you will join me in praying for lost people. If you want, you can comment on the people you are praying for or you can always text me at 615-556-5850. I’d love to pray for your loved ones as well. God is still good all the time, and all the time God is still good.

To Love Is to Tell the Truth in Love

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“Anyone who sets himself up as ‘religious’ by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world” (James 1:26-27, The Message).

I’ve been watching videos on Youtube from a guy named Becket Cook. He’s a former homosexual who is now a kind of apologist for orthodox biblical Christianity. One of his tenets is that it is not truly loving to affirm anyone in their sin, whether it be in the LGBTQ camp or pre-marital cohabitation or any other sinful lifestyle. He say that the most loving thing you can do is to tell someone the truth in love.

If I believe that the Bible is true, then I must live by it and I must also be willing to abide by what it teaches when it comes to alternate lifestyles and behaviors. I must come from the place where I view my sin just as seriously as I do anybody else’s. Homosexuality or adultery is no more sinful than my pride or my judgmentalism. It’s all sin to God and we are all called to repent.

To love is to be compassionate as Jesus was. He reached out to those who were marginalized and excluded from society. He never turned away anyone who sought Him out in faith. But He also always told them the truth. He never compromised for the sake of acceptance and peace. In fact, many people quite following Him because He spoke the truths that made them uncomfortable and convicted.

We need both. Compassion and conviction aren’t mutually exclusive. We need to hold to our convictions in the midst of compassion toward those in need but we also need to be compassionate when we’re sharing our convictions about what we believe and why.

The point is not to change an aspect of the person. It’s not to get a liberal to vote conservative or to get a gay person into a straight marriage. It’s about redeeming the whole person with the whole gospel. That means that every part of the person needs to be transformed and renewed. The gospel isn’t about making bad people good or making good people better but about making dead people alive.

We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard. We all need to repent and to be forgiven. We all need a Savior who will pay the debt for those sins that we could never hope to pay. We all need a righteousness that we can’t produce on our own but has to come from somewhere else. We need Jesus.

That June Post

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Our culture has accepted two lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is to love someone’s means you believe with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense” (Rick Warren).

Yes, it’s June. These days they have created something called Pride Month where we are supposed to celebrate all things LGBTQ, etc. The thinking goes that if you love someone, you will love and endorse just about everything about them, and if you disagree with someone on any point, you must hate them.

That’s not true. I know and love people who are in the rainbow lifestyle, but I don’t endorse or agree with their lifestyle. I don’t hate them. I don’t wish them harm. I do pray for them and wish them true happiness.

I also don’t happen to see sexual sin as any worse than living together outside of marriage or adultery within the context of marriage. I don’t think someone else’s struggle with homosexuality is worse than my struggle with the sins of pride and envy.

Jesus loved people in the middle of their messes but didn’t leave them in their messes. He called prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners to follow Him. The best part is that when He was finished with His work, they weren’t prostitutes, tax collectors, or sinners any more. They were disciples. That was their new identity.

Did they still sin? Absolutely. But Jesus still loved them.

One of my favorite quotes that sums up the kind of love Jesus had for them (and for us) goes like this:

“Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire” (George MacDonald).

For those of you in the LGBTQ lifestyle, my prayer is first and foremost that you fall in love with Jesus and surrender to Him fully. I don’t want you in heterosexual marriages as much as I want you to be fully devoted disciples of Jesus who confess and repent daily of their sins and let Jesus’ love transform them to be more like Jesus.

Ultimately, your identity is not your sexuality or your skin color or your ethnicity or your nationality or your tax bracket or your ancestry. Your primary identity is one made by God who bears the image of God, called into relationship with God to be a son or daughter of God.