When you and church disagree

"I need your help".

"Oh no" was what shot through my mind. Who am I to offer help, to see what might need to be done, to come up with ideas that might aid my friend.

I am not a wealth of knowledge. I might have some ideas, might even have dealt with some hard things, but I am not always right, don't know everything and hopefully, don't pretend to either.

After a long discussion, and thoughts and questions and feelings stated and heard, we came up with an idea of what she might do.

How does one stay involved in your local church body when they won't address certain issues? Now days, the big issue is homosexuality, and wow, does it illicit all types of responses when brought up. But not bringing it up and trying how to navigate the muddy muddy waters of how to deal with this issue is just wrong.
It is also wrong to leave the church because they won't take a stand or you don't like their stand.
Change comes from within. Not from outside.
Change comes from LISTENING; to each others views, to the LORD and WAITING until the LORD makes it clear to you of how you are to respond and continue.
I am saddened by today's churches rejecting the Gay community.
Frustrated that we label one sin as more heinous than another because we don't agree with it.
I am definitely a heterosexual woman. I love my husband. I don't understand the connection, the attraction of the same sex in a sexual manner. But as time has gone on, I have come to be horrified by how some in the Body of Christ have seriously maligned and defamed the character of gay people.
I am a sinner. In need of a Savior.
We all are sinners; in need of a Savior.
When Adam and Eve decided to do what they wanted, when they were enticed in to caving into their temptation, life on earth was forever changed- for the worse.
God created the universe and created man for us to be in a relationship with Him. When we (or specifically Adam and Eve) chose to follow their own whims, we all suffered. The perfect world that God created and envisioned was gone. We have all suffered the consequences since. Life has not been the same.

I agree with God's vision that a marriage is to be between a man and a woman. But after "the fall", sin entered. Sin is basically doing what we want to do and not listening to what God says. We care about ourselves more than God. The natural relationships became unnatural. Some men desired men and some women desired women. This wasn't what God originally intended. But does it mean that being a homosexual person is a worse sin than any other? Maybe with the exception of murder?

I don't believe so. I believe that sex is to be sacred. That it is to be saved for marriage. In God's eyes, all sex outside of marriage is wrong, whether it be sex between people of the same sex, extramarital sex, which most of us all know to be wrong and hurtful, but also sex prior to marriage. Sexual intimacy is best shared in marriage.
For even if you don't understand the connection, attraction etc, gay people engaging in sexual activities is no different than teens engaging in sex, or one night stands in the 20 and 30's crowd, or a couple who love each other, but are not married, engaging in sex. All sex outside of marriage is wrong in the eyes of Our Creator.

I want to be an example of what it means to love others as Jesus loved me: without conditions, without criticism, without judging.
A gay person is no different in the eyes and heart of God as I am.
They are dearly dearly loved and valued by God. Their worth is meant to come from Him. He sent His Son to die for them, just as much as He sent His Son to die for me and for you. There is absolutely no difference in how God loves all of us. We all are His children, valued and precious.

As I have written before, I firmly believe if Jesus were alive on earth today, He would be hanging out with the LGBT community, with drug and alcohol addicts, with the abused, the elderly, with those suffering from mental illness. So many of the rest of us would probably considered the Pharisees of our day, we are the ones who think we know what to do, and act like we have it all together. I have to admit, I don't have it all together. Altho I am not gay, I have lied, I have gossiped, I have held hatred and bitterness in my heart. Being attracted to the same sex isn't my issue, but man, do I have plenty of others.

What we need to do is come together and see what we can do to make Gays feel welcome, feel unthreatened and un-judged if they walk in the doors of our churches. We need to love and not cast stones. We have our own failures, mistakes and sins to keep us from having piercing eyes on them.

PLEASE CHURCH of GOD, let us love one another as He loves us.

JESUS ...and the Gays

Heart stirrings.
Those things that touch, grab at your emotions.
The things that pull at your heart and make you want to figure it out.

My heart has been stirring for years now on the topic that is causing a huge buzz across our nation : how to deal with homosexuality.

My beliefs have changed drastically over the years.
I was a nurse on a telemetry floor in the 80's when the disease AIDS first roared its ugly head. In those days, doctors could not mark on the patient's chart that this was their diagnosis, but we in the medical field were told indirectly. I vividly remember having my first AIDS patient. His IV had come out and I needed to start a new one. Mind you, this was in the days where no nurses ever wore gloves-unless you were doing a sterile procedure.
I was a bit nervous and called home to ask my husband to pray for me-that I would get the new IV with one stick. And I did.

In those days we didn't know that much about AIDS but it was considered purely a homesexual disease. This was in the days of the gay bath houses in San Francisco where frequent one night stands were participated in by hundreds of gay men.


I remember being so grateful to C Everett Coop, MD, the surgeon general of the United States at the time, who courageously informed every household in the US of how AIDS was transmitted. Up until that time, people were so fearful that it was an airborne disease.

It was during the 80's that I, being a young eveangelical follower of Jesus considered homosexuality a gross sin. A sin that was repulsive to me- most likely due to the fact that I could never imagine being attracted to another woman as I was to men, and particularly to my husband.
In the late 80's and early 90's, the gay community came up with the theory that they were born gay. At the time, I found that almost ridiculous to believe and thought that they were just making "excuses" for their lifestyle. Today, I think that could very well be a possibility.

All along though, I was bothered by how the far right portrayed any homosexual as perverse and almost abhorrent to God .  I  could never reckon that with the God I knew, who says that He loves all of us the same.
I was repeatedly embarrassed by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the comments they made in the media. And because I had a career that caused me to care for patients of many backgrounds, religions and sexual preference, I knew I had to treat everyone with respect.

I often struggled with how to have my Christianity line up with how I believe Christ would be. How Christ would want me to be. I still struggle with this.
Having been involved in Young Life for what is now my 5th decade, I have always told my student friends and my adult friends that I truly believe if Jesus were alive today, He would be hanging out with the gay population, with the drug addicts, with those suffering from mental illness and the homeless. Those of us who think we have it all together, would probably respond to Jesus much like the Pharisees of His day; professing to know God and His ways, and yet acting just the opposite.

I have a few very good friends whose children are gay. 
Has that changed my perception of them?
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
I love these friends the same as I always have. I love them for who they are, for who Christ made them to be.
Throughout my lifetime, I have had a number of friends who are gay who are very dear to me and who I love without question. Do I treat them any different than i do my other "straight" friends? NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST.

I  have tried to reconcile my faith with these issues.
I know it says in the Bible-which I believe 100% is the Word of God and that it is all true- that homosexuality is a sin. It also says that lying, cheating, being judgmental, getting drunk, having illicit sex (which is defined as any sex outside the bounds of marriage), gossiping, coveting, murder, rape, anger, bitterness and malice are all sins .
Which one of us has never sinned?
None of us except Jesus Christ.

In light of the Supreme Court's ruling last week stating it is unconstitutional for states to say that Gays could not marry, we are going to hear an outcry from what will be called "Christians".
And my response to that will be we need to be like Jesus.
Jesus treated everyone with respect, love and compassion. It didn't matter what one had done. He let them know that He loved them, cared for them and wanted the best for them. That is how the church in America needs to respond to the Gay community.

I don't have "the answers". 
All I do know is that God is a God of love and that He loves Gay people every bit as much as He loves you and me. Knowing Jesus, wanting to obey Him, wanting to look like Him doesn't make Him love me more than He loves the gay man or woman, the addict on skid row, the teen mom, the gang member, the murderer, the tyrant and all the other people.
The difference is that I know what He did for me.
                                                     I know that He suffered and died for my sins.
                                   I know that He defeated death and sin once and for                                         all.
But that doesn't mean Jesus loves me any more- or you any more.
What it does mean is that we are to be looking more like Jesus than people that don't know Him. Often times we look the exact opposite by our outspoken criticism and rejection of those who are 'different" than us.
In Luke chapter 3 (from the New Living Translation of the Bible) we read:  

"Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God"

Prove by the way you live.
OUCH.
WE as the followers of Christ are not acting like we belong to Him very much when it comes to our response and attitudes towards the Gay community. I am not a theologian. I never have pretended to be.
But what I believe with all my heart is that we need to be tender hearted and forgiving-just as Jesus has been to us. Each one of us needs to ask Our Lord how to respond-not take it from someone else's beliefs.

We need to look like Jesus to a very hurting world.

Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.  

This past week I read an article and saw a video that I recommend:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-robertson/just-because-he-breathes-learning-to-truly-love-our-gay-son_

And I also would heartily recommend a book that I read this past year called:
The Cross in the Closet by Timothy Kurek. This book will challenge you and make you think about how you treat the Gays you encounter in your own life.

May we learn to love like Jesus does: unconditionally- to all people regardless of how different they appear to us.