How do I explain that Homosexuality is Wrong While Reassuring Others Of God's Love?

Rawtheran said:

Hello everyone I am in need of seasoned advice. Today in Youth Group in which I help lead we went over the topic of Homosexuality and what the Bible had to say about it as well as what the official doctrine of the Universal church had to say. Needless to say I don't feel that the other Youth Leaders and myself did a very good job of explaining homosexuality and why is it considered wrong. Some like myself were after of offending others and kinda had this mentality that well it's 2020 and it's ok in the west to be in a homosexual relationship. I tried the best I could to explain how God is loving but that homosexuality was a demonic manifestation and lie. At the end of it they still believed that love was love. Do any of you have any experience witnessing to homosexuals or how do we stand firm on the truth but present it in love?

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The reason why is pretty clearly laid out in the OT and reiterated in the NT.

Rawtheran said:

Secondly, the majority of our group believes in the supernatural such as angels, demons, etc. and as a Charismatic Christians you and I are both well aware that homosexual tendencies and thoughts begin with the demonic attaching itself onto a person. I do agree with others posts though that maybe this was not the direction in which I should have gone and should have explained that it is confusion.

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It is demonic. Now, the Bible does not directly say this about homosexuals, but we do have Ephesians 2:2 which says there is >

"the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience." (in Ephesians 2:2)

So, it is scriptural to say that homosexuality is a demonic thing, since it is disobedient to God, and therefore what Satan's evil spirit is causing . . . by means of how he "works in the sons of disobedience." (in Ephesians 2:2)

So, it is fine to point out that it is demonic. But then we can bring attention to all the other items which are caused by the spirit of disobedience. And it might be good to start with arguing and complaining. God's word clearly says arguing and complaining are wrong >

"Do all things without complaining and disputing," (Philippians 2:14)

So, if anyone is disobeying this command of God, the person is being worked-in by Satan's evil spirit of disobedience causing the person to argue and/or complain. And we can see how arguing and complaining so ruin people from how they could relate in marriage. God's word and actual human experience can show how arguing and complaining deeply degrade and ruin people from how God wants us to relate in His love.

So, arguing and complaining, then, go against not only God's design for physical sex, but against God's design for love. I think love is more important then physical sex. So, if God is extremely against gay stuff, how much more might He be concerned about how people abuse each other with arguing and complaining? And He certainly can be so concerned about how the bad example of arguing and complaining parents can help to disillusion children about marriage, and help to keep them from knowing how to relate in marriage . . . so they might even become homosexuals, as by-products of their religious parents' bad example.

So, of course, then, we have people trying to cover this up, by keeping all the attention to gay people. Meanwhile, children are not getting real love in such households, and they can see how their religious parents are not satisfied while doing their sort of religious thing. So, the children of course will go elsewhere . . . usually to peer influence which also helps to ruin them . . . in drugs, immorality, smoking, drinking, in-crowding in conceit instead of love, food abuse, and even unforgiveness . . . even while they keep finding out that that stuff, also, is not satisfying them!!

Therefore, if you say gay is a demonic thing, then you can add to the list.

Satan's spirit won't let them free. They can see their stuff isn't working; yet, they can not get themselves out. Only Jesus can set us truly free, indeed.

"'Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.'" (Matthew 11:29)

Plenty of people are doing things wrong, and so they do not have Jesus Christ's rest. Gays can have this problem, but they are not alone. There even are ministers who do not function in God's love and rest. So, don't stop with gays having a problem.

Rawtheran said:

Hello everyone I am in need of seasoned advice. Today in Youth Group in which I help lead we went over the topic of Homosexuality and what the Bible had to say about it as well as what the official doctrine of the Universal church had to say. Needless to say I don't feel that the other Youth Leaders and myself did a very good job of explaining homosexuality and why is it considered wrong. Some like myself were after of offending others and kinda had this mentality that well it's 2020 and it's ok in the west to be in a homosexual relationship. I tried the best I could to explain how God is loving but that homosexuality was a demonic manifestation and lie. At the end of it they still believed that love was love. Do any of you have any experience witnessing to homosexuals or how do we stand firm on the truth but present it in love?

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First we have to ackowlege that we know what we know, and don't know what we don't know. From the Bible we see that marriage is between woman and man, and no sexual relationship is accepted outside marriage. Why there are homosexuals we don't know. I, you, anybody could have been an homosexual so we have to approach this with care. Homosexuals are not to feel they are less worthy for God. Each case has to be met individually.

summerville said:

I hate the idea that a homosexual should marry and have children to try and pass as a heterosexual.

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I think some have tried. But the one I mentioned is open, but preferred to have a family and has one. Both options were open.

GoldenKingGaze said:

I think some have tried. But the one I mentioned is open, but preferred to have a family and has one. Both options were open.

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I had a cousin who was married to an evangelical man who failed to recognize that he was gay, or trans, or something.

hedrick said:

I had a cousin who was married to an evangelical man who failed to recognize that he was gay, or trans, or something.

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He failed to recognize or she failed?

summerville said:

He failed to recognize or she failed?

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I'm going to avoid speculating where I don't have data. My cousin is dead, and I didn't hear about issues until after her death. There's obviously no way to verify what she knew.

hedrick said:

I'm going to avoid speculating where I don't have data. My cousin is dead, and I didn't hear about issues until after her death. There's obviously no way to verify what she knew.

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I see.

Years and years ago I developed a crush on a nice boy who was a junior studying architecture. It was all very platonic and he was a bright guy 4 years my senior.

He took me aside that summer and said, I am truly fond of you but I'm not like other boys. I didn't know what that meant exactly but one has an instinct about friendships ending. 40 years later I learned he died of AIDS.

OldWiseGuy said:

You might explain that although gays won't be in the first resurrection they will come up in the second, and likely free of the disorder.

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Seriously?
I totally don't get why you would say that.

There are two types of people... the saved... and the lost.. There is not 1/2 saved anymore than there is "slightly pregnant".

Rawtheran said:

Hello everyone I am in need of seasoned advice. Today in Youth Group in which I help lead we went over the topic of Homosexuality and what the Bible had to say about it as well as what the official doctrine of the Universal church had to say. Needless to say I don't feel that the other Youth Leaders and myself did a very good job of explaining homosexuality and why is it considered wrong. Some like myself were after of offending others and kinda had this mentality that well it's 2020 and it's ok in the west to be in a homosexual relationship. I tried the best I could to explain how God is loving but that homosexuality was a demonic manifestation and lie. At the end of it they still believed that love was love. Do any of you have any experience witnessing to homosexuals or how do we stand firm on the truth but present it in love?

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It's hard to convince homosexuals that homosexuality is a sin because some of them strongly believe that they were created by God. And our Governments are not making it easy by legalising same-sex marriages.
1 Corinthians 6:9 says "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
God loves sinners but he hates sins. God loves homosexuals but he hates homosexuality. Homosexuality is a sin just like other sins
Romans 1: 24-27 says"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 say it is wrong.
But in Matthew 10:14 Jesus Christ says" If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.

Titus 3:10-11 says"Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.
You do your best to explain to them and then you leave them alone
AMEN

JacksBratt said:

Seriously?
I totally don't get why you would say that.

There are two types of people... the saved... and the lost.. There is not 1/2 saved anymore than there is "slightly pregnant".

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The church is being judged now. The rest of the dead will be judged later.

How do I explain that Homosexuality is Wrong
While Reassuring Others Of God's Love?

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God gave His laws out of
[ Love ] for all mankinds good.

Take the aids epidemic in man.

Study suggests that it came from the killing
of chimpanzees for food in central Africa.

Approximately 1.1 million people in the U.S.
are living with HIV today, that was started
here by just only a few gay men.

Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men bear the greatest burden by risk group, representing an estimated 26,000 of new HIV infections per year.

People by the millions are suffering and dying.
The quarantine laws of the Bible, properly coupled
with God’s perspective on sex and marriage,
would have brought a quick end to the aids epidemic.

People who do not participate in premarital sex and who have a monogamous marriage do not get aids (except for very rare situations such as medical or drug-use transmissions).
-

The wet farm market in China had a zoo of
animals to choice to eat from, now Wuhan.

Like the deadly SARS and MERS viruses that
came before it, the Wuhan outbreak is believed
to have evolved from coronavirus strains that
previously only affected animals.

Laws about eating only clean meats (Deut. 14)
God’s rules for food would have prevented
the problems completely.


God gave laws to mankind out of love,
when man breaks those laws they suffer.

We concentrate on the one behavior of “homosexuality”, when all nonbelieving sinners (all of us) start out with a compulsion to sin. There really is no difference, except I like to think “your sins are worse than my sins”.

If homosexuality is a sin, then God (and all of us) has a solution, but if it is not a sin there may not be a solution to being homosexual.

When I study with people, I want them to realize I have struggles with sin, but if I allow God to help me to do good instead of my doing bad, I run out of time to sin. They help me to do good by working together.

I do not say to the homosexual: “You are sinning”, but studied all the scripture with them bring up the idea this might be in the context of the day, it might not be talking about Godly type Love for another of the same sex and so on. They eventually come to the conclusion homosexual activities are sin or they just quit studying with me. But their realizing homosexual activity is a sin allows us to concentrate on the solution to any and all sin.

Part of the problem is what I hear from lots of Christians: “Christians will still go on sinning since they are still in the flesh”, which is not help to the homosexual who wants to change his/her behavior. But if the Christian says: “The indwelling Holy Spirit provides the Christian with the power not to sin again”, just brings up the question: “Do you sin”? We do not like to talk about our sinning like we could stop sinning, but want to show them how “they can stop sinning”. It might be easier for me to stop sinning completely then for them to stop their homosexual activities, so who needs the help?

Getting involved with anyone to the point of working to reach perfection is scary and more then we want to do, yet that might be what we should be doing as Christians, but can we?

About the same time I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and became (if you will) a religious fanatic, my best friend in high school looked at his Catholic upbringing and decided it was all hooey. We've been merrily debating this and other topics ever since.

One of his arguments is that for something to be sinful, it has to be harmful; that if there's no harm, there can be nothing wrong with it. For a long time I told him I couldn't be sure of any mistake in that argument but that I was unwilling to accede to it; there may be other reasons something is immoral beside that it hurts people. Eventually, though, I ran across scriptures that tell me pretty directly that he's right. This one, for example, that I ran across yesterday in Romans 13:


Ok, so the Bible teaches pretty clearly that homosexual behavior is wrong, so it must cause harm. What harm? I wish I could say, because it might convince my friend. The fact is, I just don't know. I'm confident that it is harmful, I just don't know how.

By the way, maybe someone out there is saying "Yes, but even if there's any harm done, it's only to himself. I must cause no harm to a neighbor, but as long as I harm only myself I haven't sinned". But that's wrong in two ways: 1) I don't own myself; if I disobey God and harm only myself, I've still done harm to God's creation. And even if you don't like the idea that you're not your own, 2) it's not possible to harm yourself without harming others. You may think that being a drunkard harms only yourself, but any wife or son or close friend of an alcoholic knows better. If I'm harming myself, I'm making myself unable to bless my wife, children, friends and chance passers-by with "a life of good works, which God has foreordained" for me to do.

What harm?

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Have you heard of aids? or other
sexually transmitted diseases.

The “experts” feel God’s rules are too harsh and cause too much suffering, but that does not make sense.

Explain to a child whose parents are dead that it would have been too harsh to quarantine the person who passed hiv to his or her mother.

Explain to the infant born hiv-positive that rules preventing his mother from getting aids would have been too severe.

OldWiseGuy said:

The church is being judged now. The rest of the dead will be judged later.

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Are you saying that a homosexual cannot be saved?

Semper-Fi said:

Have you heard of aids? or other
sexually transmitted diseases.

The “experts” feel God’s rules are too harsh and cause too much suffering, but that does not make sense.

Explain to a child whose parents are dead that it would have been too harsh to quarantine the person who passed hiv to his or her mother.

Explain to the infant born hiv-positive that rules preventing his mother from getting aids would have been too severe.

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A homosexual in a committed, monogamous relationship is no more at risk of STD's than heterosexuals in committed, monogamous relationship.

Semper-Fi said:

Have you heard of aids? or other
sexually transmitted diseases.

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bekkilyn said:

A homosexual in a committed, monogamous relationship is no more at risk of STDs than heterosexuals in committed, monogamous relationship

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Yeah, I gotta go with bekkilyn on this one. Homosexual behavior doesn't cause AIDS, it just passes it on. The harm (IMO) has to be something else.

Put it this way: If homosexuality were not sinful after all, we would consider AIDS to be a risk of promiscuous behavior but not of homosex itself.

I have a gay brother and once had a long conversation with him about it which completely changed is opinion on the Christian view on homosexuality and he became far more accepting of me being a Christian as a result. Here's a very brief summary kept as short as I can.

Everyone is born a sinner. Sin should be seen as what comes between us and God (for me this is crucial when dealing with any non-Christian, not just homosexuals. Do not explain it as being wrong or bad as it just gets their back up). God loves us all perfectly, even as sinners. When we come into a relationship with God He reveals Himself to us and we get to know Him. Trying to live a righteous sin free life is s choice we make to please God out of our love for Him. He strengthens us to resist sin through he Holy Spirit. He will reveal to us if what we are doing is wrong and we are convicted in our spirit about it, but it is our choice to choose to live righteously before God and choose Him over our sinful ways.

What it all comes down to is not condemning people for being gay or any other sin, but explaining our choice that we want to do whats right before God and that out of our loving relationship with God we want to be completely honest and share what we believe to be right before God. The key is that it is more important for someone to accept that God loves them than to be condemned for being a sinner.

What usually drives people away from God is the perception that you have to follow strict rules of a harsh, judgemental God. You need to get the message across that being a Christian is about having a loving relationship with God and we choose to do what is right before God out of our free will rather than because we have to. I usually ask the question that if they found something that was so amazing that they would choose it over everything else in their life would they give everything they have for that amazing thing. Everyone says yes at which point I tell them that God said that in the Bible in the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price and that is what Christians are doing when they say sin is wrong. I then say they can choose to have that as well.