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It's not loving to coddle sin. Jesus didn't. In fact, it's why He died for us.That just proves my point about the weaponization of the Scriptures, and the lack of a Christ-like hermeneutic in many churches.
It's not loving to coddle sin.
Jesus didn't. In fact, it's why He died for us.
That's right. When Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, He didn't "affirm" her "lifestyle". He told her to "go and sin no more."Acting on homosexual desires is a sin and can't be debated on the site.
Christian behavior notwithstanding, we need to be honest with ourselves. Many people believe in God or want to relate with Him in some way but they want it on their terms.
Choosing to live in a homosexual relationship is an example of that. As is fornication and other things where permissiveness is acceptable. If you aren't trying to follow His precepts you aren't following Elohim. You're following a god you've constructed and saying otherwise.
Like it or not we have parameters. Just call yourself spiritual or eclectic or something along those lines. Don't lie to yourself.
~bella
Acting on homosexual desires is a sin and can't be debated on the site.
Christian behavior notwithstanding, we need to be honest with ourselves. Many people believe in God or want to relate with Him in some way but they want it on their terms.
Choosing to live in a homosexual relationship is an example of that. As is fornication and other things where permissiveness is acceptable. If you aren't trying to follow His precepts you aren't following Elohim. You're following a god you've constructed and saying otherwise.
Like it or not we have parameters. Just call yourself spiritual or eclectic or something along those lines. Don't lie to yourself.
~bella
It's not loving to coddle sin. Jesus didn't. In fact, it's why He died for us.
Your Church is Going to Die
BY CLINT CLIFTON
People rarely consider how churches begin and almost never consider how they end. Churches, just like people, have lifecycles. They are born and they die. Where is your church in its lifecycle?
Have you ever considered how close your church is to death?
In his book, “The Unstuck Church: Equipping Churches to Experience Sustained Health” Tony Morgan describes seven stages of a church’s life.
Where is your church in this lifecycle?
- Launch
- Momentum Growth
- Strategic Growth
- Sustained health
- Maintenance
- Preservation
- Life Support
People rarely consider how churches begin and almost never consider how they end. Churches, just like people, have lifecycles. They are born and they die.
They close their doors, they sell their buildings, they liquidate their assets, and they stop gathering.
If you don’t believe me, get on a plane to Jerusalem and look for the church first pastored by James.
Then skip over to Turkey and see if you can find the church at Antioch still meeting.
The Cathedral at Aghtamar has in recent years been the site of historic baptisms after being shuttered for about a century following the genocides committed against the Armenians and others by the Ottomans in the early 20th century, which resulted in the deliberate destruction many sacred sites (in the case of the Aghtamar Cathedral in particular, it had stood for 1,000 years by the time it was destroyed and then forcibly closed by the Ottoman government in 1916).Those churches are closed, disbanded and scattered.
American churches are closing too, and not just one or two at a time – they are closing by the thousands. This Sunday morning when you go to church, about 135 fewer American churches will be gathering than gathered the same time last week. That’s 600 churches disbanding every month – and 7,000 churches vanishing every year.
Western Europe experienced drastic changes over the course of the 20th century. During the 1960s, it experienced terminal decline of virtually all its large, organized churches and the pervasive Christian culture, which influenced Western Europe for centuries, virtually disappeared. Today the streets of major cities throughout Western Europe are peppered with church buildings that lasted longer than the congregations that erected them. Hundreds of church buildings are now being used as restaurants, nightclubs, concert venues, cafés, modern condominiums, museums and mosques. They stand as stark proof that western culture is spitting Christianity out of its mouth.
The change is not really that shocking if you think about it. Churches are made up of sinners, and sin kills everything it touches. If sinners are going to church, churches will be dying. If churches are dying, new churches are necessary.
Every year in America about 4,000 evangelical churches begin. Of those started, 35% close before their 5th anniversary, leaving about 2,600 new churches planted annually.
How is the American church responding to the crisis?
Please keep in mind that the mission of the church was to scatter, not to gather.
Churches have a life cycle and eventually die, and one day yours will too.
My prayer is that you would plant a church vigorously committed to planting other new churches. I pray you will stretch the faith of your people, not so they can have a larger building to worship in, but that Christ may have a larger kingdom of worshipers.
I know it's just a building,
but it's sad. I've seen my former church torn down, or sold and become something else. It makes you wonder what became of the real church that congregated in that building: the body of Christ, as something that old probably did have memebres of the body of Christ in attendance. Today, there are lot's of churches where it's another body and another Spirit, but I'm not talking about that.
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Sure, but Jesus also didn't put up with the legalese of the Pharisees......................whom, He said, didn't really lift a finger to truly help others.
Nobody chooses to be gay. It is an intrinsic part of a person. Trying to pretend this isn't the case is just intellectually dishonest.
I belong to one of those churches. We don't think we are twisting the Scriptures. We believe we are being faithful by rejecting harmful, discriminatory or prejudicial attitudes about gay people, and we reject weaponizing certain passages in the Bible against minorities, even though this was done in the past against other groups of people.
So true.Not only that, but he said they were white-washed tombs. Clean on the outside, but filthy on the inside.
Yep. I have a similar understanding about myself, FD. But apparently some folks think it's their job to renovate America.I came to my own understanding through the better part of half of a decade of seeing my own sins before me, and realizing I was not in the place to decide who enters the house of the Lord. God desires mercy, not sacrifice.
Well, it's been scientifically shown now there is no "gay gene" so people are not born that way. That's simply an excuse, and a bad one.
The practice is an environmental one mostly, and a learned behavior.
So true.
Yep. I have a similar understanding about myself, FD. But apparently some folks think it's their job to renovate America.
Well, it's been scientifically shown now there is no "gay gene" so people are not born that way. That's simply an excuse, and a bad one.
The practice is an environmental one mostly, and a learned behavior. And let's face it: the flesh loves to experiment with sin, especially sexual sin. Sexuality was designed by the Creator to be between male and female.
I know the arguments, that certain scriptures only refer to male prostitutes, Sodom's sin was pride, not sodomy, and sodomites means prostitutes, etc. Well, male with male homosexuality is expressly forbidden by Lev. 18:22, and reiterated in Romans 1:26-27 where woman with woman homosexuality is also mentioned. Romans is very clear and leaves no wiggle room for excuse.
In 1 Corinthians 6 it says to the Christians, "And such WERE some of you, but YE ARE washed, sanctified & justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God." Where it says "abusers of themselves with mankind (arsenokoites) means men going to bed with men - it does not mean only a male prostitute, though that would be included. Scripture is clear a truly born again believer WAS those things in the past, but is no longer, and has been delivered by Christ and God's power.
I pray the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ lead you into all truth.
Here is a testimony:
"My name is David, I am 44 years old, and this is the testimony of how Jesus Christ saved me from twenty-seven years of homosexuality. I speak these things in love, not out of hatred. I speak these things out of somebody who has been there, who knows what it is like, who knows what it’s like to live in that (homosexuality), who knows how hopeless it is. Sure you may enjoy your life, you may enjoy aspects of your life, you may enjoy the sexual aspects of it, the alcohol, what have you, but there’s really no permanent joy in it. Eventually it goes away and you have to do more, seek more.
So, I ask you to look for the real love, the real joy, the real contentment that can only be found in being made right with God through Christ, through Christ’s work on the Cross. So, I speak these things from love, not from hate. I speak these things not in judgment. I am not judging somebody, I am just telling you what the Word of God says. The Word of God is what’s going to judge us. In fact, the Word of God is what says all these things are wrong, I am only telling people what the Word of God says. Like somebody should have told me.
My friend who did try to tell me, he tried to tell me in the nicest way, in a Christian way, that I was living a lifestyle that was contrary to what God wanted, not just in my sexual orientation but in every other aspect. He (my friend) knew I was not really a Christian. So I speak these things in love and I pray for your soul, and I pray that you will receive these things, and that you will cry out to the Lord to save you, and to make you a new creature because He is mighty to save and He will save you. "
Jesus Christ Saved Me from 27 Years of Homosexuality
Here's another
https://decisionmagazine.com/delivered-from-homosexuality/
Personally, I'd concentrate on helping straight folks who make up the majority of the population clean up their corporately influenced sexual corruptions way before attempting to address anything else we think may reside on the Deviance List.
In other words, let's primarily address the gargantuan social and psychological spillage of general hedonism left behind from what we might call the "Hefnerian Legacy," and then worry about other things ... and in the process actually love other human beings as human beings and see their significance regardless of their common sins.
I think it comes from a fear-based worldview that misunderstands, or perhaps misrepresents, God's character for the purposes of manipulating people to obtain power and control. Not unlike the Pharisees.
There’s differences between attraction and action. Attraction isn’t a choice, but sexual behavior is always a choice.2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Romans 1:26-27 NIV
"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."
Isaiah 5:20 NIV
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
Matthew 24:35 NIV
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."
Simple. All sins must be repented of. No one is special or different.Being autistic is not sin. If by "gay" you mean the original meaning of the word, no, but if meaning homosexual, then that is sin. The Scriptures are very clear on it, despite the twisting of scripture done by some churches that accept it, endorse it, and practice it. It is something people should repent of if practicing, just as one would repent of their adultery or fornication - and I learned the lesson the hard way with those two!
I do agree many don't practice the "love thy neighbor as thyself" as should be, and as far as politics - worldly politics has become an idol in some churches.
That's what I try to tell people in the past. Gay people didn't invent the sexual revolution or push for no-fault divorce. In fact no-fault divorce was enthusiastically passed into law by a Republican governor in California (who would later go on to be president, Ronald Reagan), and went on to sweep the nation without much ado at the time.
If you want to see how deeply the sexual revolution has affected the wider culture, even among conservatives, you can go to a place like the Villages, not too far from where I live. It's a town dedicated to retirees, and is deeply red politically, and almost exclusively white. But it has some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the whole state.
I think it comes from a fear-based worldview that misunderstands, or perhaps misrepresents, God's character for the purposes of manipulating people to obtain power and control. Not unlike the Pharisees.
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