Can We Talk? Perversion + Sex + LGBTQ

We're in a sermon series called Can we Talk, and this is week two of the portion where we're talking about sexuality, and last week we spent some time talking about how God ordained the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the many benefits that came from that, including children being born and enjoyment.

Also, god created sexuality for us to be able to enjoy each other within that holy relationship.

That it is holy when God sets it apart and when we are married according to His way.

It's not that he's wanting to keep something from us.

He's actually wanting us to enjoy what he's created in the order and way that he's created it to its fullest potential and extent, and that's the way God is.

God is a good Father.

He's a good Father, and so the way that he sets things up may seem restrictive or limited in some way, but he does that for our benefit, for our good, and so we're going to continue that conversation this morning.

I do want to give you a little bit of a forewarning we will be talking about some pretty delicate subject matter, and so just to be prepared for that as we move through this sermon, all right, let's look at Romans, chapter one, verses 18 through 32, and that's going to be our passage this morning, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.

But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore, god gave them up, in the lusts of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, amen.

For this reason, god gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural nature, I'm sorry.

Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise, gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committed shameless acts with men and, receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since the due penalty for their error, I'm sorry, receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, god gave them up to a debased mind and to do what ought not to be done, they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Therefore, they know God's righteous, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.

They not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.

Let's pray together this morning.

Father, I am so grateful that you've given us a manual for life.

You didn't just set things up and then move away.

Father, you are actively involved in humanity and so, lord, today we ask, in Jesus' name, that you would open our eyes to the truth concerning human sexuality and the perversion that this world is attempting to create as normal.

Father, we ask, in Jesus' name, that you would open our ears to hear clearly, that you would open our minds to think clearly, open our hearts to receive the truth that will be planted deep to grow in us and to produce fruit, not only for ourselves but for those around us to be able to enjoy, as we're able to share these truths with others.

We give you glory for it in Jesus' name, amen.

The other day, as I was contemplating this sermon, I was getting a little overwhelmed, to be honest, and so I took a drive to Norris and it was a beautiful day, it was like 70-something degrees and it was bright and sunny.

And so I arrived at Norris Dam and pulled into the parking lot right below the dam and I put on my waders because I was going to do some wage fishing, and so I made my way down to the water, and as I was looking around, I was taken in by the beautiful scene that was in front of me.

It was inescapable.

So as I looked, the sun was glimmering off of the water in what seemed like rhythmic syncopation.

A light fog displayed the market difference in temperature between the naturally chilled water of the Clinch River and the unseasonably warm sky above the water was still like glass, and the reflection of what was left of the fall colors was truly magnificent to behold.

The soundtrack of nature was far too interesting to disturb it with any kind of artificial noise through headphones or any other device.

Occasionally, a bird would tweet a slight breeze moving across the water ever so slightly, making a little bit of a sound of a ripple.

Even humans laughing in the background as they picnic and their dogs splashed near the banks of the river added to the ambiance.

All that I could do is I pushed my way further into the stream, holding my pole and hoping to cast the perfect cast.

That would put a smile broad across my face.

All I could think about was how could anybody see what I'm seeing this day and still not believe that there is a God, that there's a great designer who has planned and purposed everything that we see?

And even though we live in a world that is, that we're experiencing life in a fallen condition, it's not as pristine as what it was when God created it.

Still, if in your heart you look at creation and you look up and you ask who are you, god himself will manifest to you, and we've seen this happen, as missionaries have gone into different tribes and people groups that they assumed that had never heard the gospel, and somehow they had some version of it, based upon the fact that they had seen in nature something that seemed other than them.

And they cried out and God gave them dreams or visions, whatever the case might be, and they understood, to a certain degree at least, the fact that there was a God and there was a designer.

Thank you Our passage.

This morning the apostle Paul is writing to the Romans and he's excited about going to see them.

He's been desiring to go and see them.

He's a Roman citizen, but he's never had the chance to go there and preach the gospel, and so he's anticipating that.

And this book is probably the greatest book that describes the theology of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's so clear and so spelled out.

It's very scholarly but it's also understandable.

And Paul writes it almost like you're in a courtroom or you have a prosecuting attorney and you have the defense attorney and all of these different aspects that you would find in a courtroom and, of course, god being the righteous judge that he is.

And so, romans, one begins with that kind of thought.

There's a prosecuting attorney that is talking about the condition of mankind and the way that we got to that condition, and he's passing judgment.

He's talking about the fact that God passes judgment on people because of the sin and unrighteousness that they have been involved with, and so that's where we pick up this passage this morning.

So I want to give you a few points from this.

First of all, a holy God cannot remain holy if he winks at sin.

It is our desire at times to live outside of God's best, out of his design, out of his order, and to think somehow within ourselves that God will be okay with it, that he'll just look the other way, that he won't pay attention, that it won't bother him.

But I'm here to tell you that we want a God that's holy and that's set apart and that's other and that's perfect and that doesn't change his mind about things when it comes to righteousness and holiness.

We want him to be pure and perfect, amen.

And so because of that, because of the understanding that God cannot wink at sin and we see the condition of the world today we also understand that because of that, that God's wrath is poured out upon mankind and it has been poured out in many times in history.

We can think of things like the flood where the earth, the inhabitants of the earth, except for one family, was wiped out.

We also think about Sodom and Gomorrah, where two whole cities, where fire and brimstone rained down from heaven and destroyed that place.

And we also know that there will be a day when Jesus Christ will return to this earth, and it's called the day of the Lord.

And in that day God will separate out the righteous from the wicked, those who have followed after Christ and have pursued him and are followers of him, and those who have not.

To those who are followers of Christ, he will say enter in to my Father's rest.

To those, unfortunately, those who have not chosen to follow after Christ, they will hear depart from me, for I never knew you.

Wrath is not rage, like we think of it, like something that happens as we're driving our automobiles down the car or when our kids do something that just absolutely drives us crazy.

It's not that.

Wrath is not a rising emotion, it's not something that takes over and acts out of character, out of nature With God.

It is the settled bent of his nature and his character towards sin, towards sin.

God hates sin.

Sin is what Disobedience to God.

And so God hates that.

Why does he hate it?

He doesn't just hate it because of what it is.

He hates it because it's a rip off, it's a counterfeit, it's the exact opposite of what he actually intended for us to partake in and what he created for us.

What he planned for us, is better than any of us could ever imagine here in this life and in the life to come.

It's magnificent, it's amazing.

And so sin rips us off.

And not only does it rip us off, it separates us from our, from a holy God who desires to have a relationship with us Amen.

So it's important for us to understand.

The wrath of God is something very real.

There aren't a lot of churches, unfortunately, that talk about the wrath of God anymore.

What you hear mostly is God loves you and he has a plan for your life, and thank God, god loves us.

God is love, and we celebrate the love of God on a weekly basis here at Trinity Community Church.

But how many of us understand that we cannot know the depth of the love that God has for us unless we understand our own depth of sin and shame and guilt?

We must be saved from something in order to be saved to something Right.

So let's not forget that part, that we are sinners in need of the grace of God.

People don't like hearing the truth of God, especially when it comes to the way that he wants things to be done.

And so what do they do?

They suppress it, they push it down.

They attempt to hear anything else except for the truth that comes from God.

Also, not only do those people, but all of us, since Adam and Eve, except for Jesus Christ, who have been born into this world, do the very same thing.

We were born in trespasses and sins, separated from God, deserving of God's wrath.

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We find ourselves in the same place as the rest of the world as far as that is concerned.

Now, we know there's more to the gospel story that we'll finish up with this morning, but we want to linger here for just a few minutes.

We deserve the wrath of God to be poured out on us.

The fact that God chooses not to pour his wrath out on some is the miracle.

That is an absolute miracle, because if we got what we deserved, we would all receive the penalty of the wrath of God for the sin that we have committed.

Satan's attempt and man's agreement in the Garden of Eden with him, from the fall of man until now, has been to get rid of God by any means necessary.

Please understand this.

Satan is not somebody to be messed with.

He is not your friend.

He's not somebody cool to hang out with on the weekends.

He's not anybody to be looked up to.

Satan's number one job is to steal, kill and destroy.

He attempted to eliminate God from the equation and God didn't allow that to happen.

And so, because of that, what does he try to do?

He does everything within his power to attempt to destroy humanity.

Do you understand that if Satan could wipe out the population of the earth in one generation, he would do it, and we can see his action, his work in action right now.

If you look at the number of people who are aborted on an annual basis, and now, if people follow, from a sexuality standpoint, what his plan is for the earth, within one generation there would be no procreation, there would be no children that would be born on this planet, and he could once and for all, satan could once and for all say I have eliminated God's family.

His children are gone.

When we talk about the things we're going to talk about this morning, we have to understand that it's more than just a difficult conversation.

It is, there's an evil force that is behind the agenda that we see in this world.

This agenda is not manmade Men propagate it, but it is made in the from the.

It comes from the pit of hell, and Satan himself is the one who speaks it into the ears of many, many people, and he starts as young as he possibly can.

This passage goes on to say that mankind is without excuse because God has revealed himself to all.

Human history began with people knowing God.

It is not the story of a beast that worshiped idols and then, all of a sudden, one day evolved into a person worshiping one God.

It didn't happen that way, and I'll have you know that one of Satan's tricks is to convince us that we are evolving.

Even the word evolution is something that he introduced into the vocabulary back in the 1800s and 1900s, because he's wanting us to believe that somehow mankind is improving, that we're getting better with age, that things are, that we're moving closer to being you know, nirvana or whatever word, utopia, whatever words you want to use as man's best self.

You've probably heard that saying before right Man's best self.

I want to be my best self.

Whatever that case is, it's all about humanism.

It's all about me.

It's all about how I can achieve something.

That's great.

But the truth is we have been devolving.

There's devolution that is happening, not evolution.

We continue to fall further and further and further away from God's original intent for mankind and we see this most prominently in today's world in the area of sexuality.

It's clear for all of us to see.

But God says that there's no excuse.

Creation leaves us without an excuse for denying the truth about God.

As I told my story earlier, general revelation is the theological term that means God revealed himself to humanity through creation, through creation.

Isn't it interesting that the very symbol that God gave, that he was not going to judge the world with water again and destroy the entire earth with a flood, is the symbol that's being used by Satan to push an agenda?

He has no right to that symbol.

God created it and it's his creation.

From the world around them, humans knew that there was a God who had the wisdom to plan and the power to create.

It was obvious to all.

This is general revelation.

They may not have known what to call God or who God was, or didn't have the information that they needed in order to follow after God or become later, as Christ would come to this earth to become followers of Jesus Christ.

But they understood one thing, and we all understand.

We have this knowing on the inside of us.

It's called conscience.

Conscience is the second gift that God's given us to show us that he is real and there is truth that he promotes that we should be following.

Conscience is not in this passage by word.

It doesn't use the word conscience, but it speaks about it.

Conscience leaves us without an excuse for denying the truth about God.

Every person is born with a conscience, and what is it?

It's that something on the inside of us that tells us something's right or something's wrong, something's good or something's evil.

And how do we know that this is right and appropriate?

How do we know the difference between right and wrong, even though people are born in their sins and trespasses?

Because God has given us this gift, he's written it in some ways upon our heart.

The law has been written on our hearts in some ways, and so even within cultures that have no mention of God or any form of religion that is a part of the government of that nation.

There are rules that are in place, Even if they're unwritten or unspoken.

People understand this is right, this is wrong, this I can do, this I can't do, and maybe they're not using their conscience to avoid doing the things that they shouldn't do.

Maybe they're afraid of the consequence of the action that they're performing.

But still, every tribe, every people, every nation, every culture has this in place Another proof, another sign that there is a God in heaven and he's the one who is the God of order.

And so, unfortunately, there are some drastic results to denying the truth.

The result of denying the truth about God is this leaving us to our own devices.

Can you imagine for one moment what it would be like if God evacuated America, if he chose for just one second to leave us alone completely?

Can you imagine and we're not going to get into that much, because our next sermon series for Christmas, we're going to be delving into this a little bit what would it look like if Jesus had never come?

He leaves us to our own devices.

He pulls back and says you think you figured it out, enjoy.

Therefore, god gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, amen.

The technical term for this is depravity Depravity it is the fallen nature of every human being.

Every part of man has been affected by the fall and by sin.

Our mind, our will, our emotions and our flesh have been corrupted by sin.

It affects every area of our lives what we do, what we think, how we act, and man's heart, in women's heart, is deceitful and desperately wicked.

The Bible says we are born dead in transgression and sin.

We are held captive by a love for sin so that we don't seek God, because we love the darkness and don't understand the things of God.

This is the world, this is the way that we're born into this world and this is the way that we choose to live without Christ.

Because of this reality, people suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness and continue to willfully live in sin.

I'm going to make a radical statement right now.

Are you ready for this?

It shouldn't be like this in the church of Jesus Christ.

We who are born again should live our lives differently than those who are part of the culture of this world, and it should be glaringly obvious the difference.

And if we resist God long enough and if he pulls his hand back and we become a godless people, it leads to sexual perversion.

The passage says for this reason, god gave them up to dishonorable passions For their women, exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

And the men likewise, gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

My friends, sexual sin is an abomination to God.

It is not my plan, this is not my idea, this is not my truth, it's not something that I'm preaching in order to try to control something in this congregation.

This is the word of God and we, as human beings, are required to conform, not to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that is, by the word of God.

I'm going to list again, like I did last week, the biblical terms for sexual sin and I'm going to ask us to consider are there areas in our own lives before we point our finger at anybody else out in the culture and out in the world.

We need to ask ourselves within the church are we living our lives as an example for the world, for our children, for our grandchildren and generations to come?

Are we living our lives sexually in such a way that we are shining the light of Jesus Christ even in that area and especially through that area of our lives, if we're not repent and turn from your sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?

Fornication is any form of sex outside of marriage.

This is the biblical term.

It is a sin to be involved in sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

If you are involved in this, stop it.

In Jesus name, repent and be saved.

Adultery is sex with others while married.

If you're involved in adultery or you're having adulterous thoughts and you're pursuing forms of adultery, in the name of Jesus, be free and walk free from it.

Get in the light, be accountable to somebody.

Prostitution is sex for money.

If you have been a part in any way of partaking in this, any of the different aspects of it repent, turn and follow Jesus.

Sexual abuse, which includes rape and anything that is unwanted and harmful.

My goodness, please, please, I compel you, I beg of you, I beseech you Turn away from this sin.

Self gratification, which includes such things as pornography and virtual sex masturbation.

It's sex with oneself.

The name of Jesus, be free from any form of addiction that has held you in captivity.

Be free today.

There is freedom available for you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Walk in that freedom.

Sodomy is sex with one's own gender.

I know it's not popular and I know that it could cause a lot of persecution to come against me and against our church.

These are not my words.

These are the words of our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ, written down by men and women who, throughout the ages, wrote the books of the Bible.

If you're involved in this type of sin, repent, turn your heart to Jesus and be healed.

Pedophilia and there will be many that will cringe when we hear this, but I'm telling you, sex with children is becoming something that is high on the list of Satan's attempt to destroy God's decree and divine order.

There are nations already where it is legal to have sexual relations with children.

It's coming to our nation.

If you don't believe me, go to the school library.

Listen in on some of the health classes that are being taught in elementary schools across our country.

This should be alarming to us.

This should not be something that the church just hides and says I hope it goes away.

It's not going away, it's only going to get worse.

And finally, bestiality, which is sex with animals.

It's hard to imagine that that could even be something that would be thought of and I'm telling you, you would be shocked.

You would be shocked.

Back to pornography for just a minute.

There was a study that was done in the top five sites that people use for pornography are not just people being naked or having sex with each other.

They are violence related, violence related, and we have a whole generation of young people growing up having watched this on their devices on their phones, on their iPads, on their computers, without any restriction or restraint, a lot of times because the parents or grandparents that are raising them have no clue the types of things that they're tapping into on their devices.

And now we have young men, especially, who are not even able to perform normally when it comes to marital relations because they have become so distorted and deceived by that which they have seen on screens.

Friends, this is the world that we're living in.

Man didn't create or make the rules.

The creator holds the patent on his creation.

Even the animal kingdom understands this and doesn't fall to the same prey, to the same things that we find amongst the human race.

The animal kingdom still understands that there's a God that's in charge for the most part.

There are some who are controlled.

I have not to make a joke, but I have visited people and there was a demon that manifest in their dog while I was there.

Satan could use animals, but for the most part the animal kingdom still cooperates with God's created order and design.

It's interesting that they do that and let get human beings find themselves in such forms of the.

I don't even know the right word to use.

Perversion, that's the word.

Perversion is the alteration of something from its original course, meaning or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.

Perversion taking something that was good that God called good and very good, and twisting it and turning it so that it becomes something evil and wicked and destructive.

And if you are free from sexual sin, praise God, thank God for those who are walking free from sexual sin.

I am so grateful that the Lord has worked in my life to bring me to the point to where I am in a good place as far as that is concerned, but in Romans one, it doesn't stop at sexual sin.

There's a whole laundry list and I'm sure that if you think deep enough and hard enough, you can find some area that you have some struggle in in this list.

I'll just run through it again.

All manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

That sounds like watching the nightly news, the cue cards being held up.

They replaced all of the words that they used with the sin words.

These are the sin words that they would use.

Improper thinking about God leads to living life only for oneself.

It's all about me, it's all about what I want, it's what I desire, it's what I say is true.

Whatever is true to me is my truth, and you have no right to stand against my truth.

In fact, you must bow to my truth because it is my idol and I hold it up as God, and so if you're around me, you have to acknowledge my God and bow before him.

Improper thinking about God causes us to think about ourselves to the point that the 10 commandments are absolutely shredded and thrown away the moral law of God that has been placed in men's heart concerning conscience and using the word conscience has been completely seared in some cases to where people don't know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and they actually call evil good and good evil.

The Bible says that that will happen, and in the last days it says in Matthew that people will cast off all restraint.

Anything that feels like a burden, anything that tries to tell me what I should do, how I should live, how I should be, how I should behave.

I will cast it off.

Nobody can tell me who I am and what I'm going to do with my life.

It's my life.

Leave me alone.

Where does this end?

That ends by another form of improper thinking about God.

It leads us to encourage others to practice their own form of godlessness.

The only way we can feel okay about our own sin is if we see other people who have an equal amount of sin or maybe even a little worse than us, and so we encourage them, we implore them to be involved in whatever kinds of activities they want to do.

You can do whatever you want to do.

You can be whatever you want to be, whatever you imagine is fine for you.

Don't let anybody limit you, especially not God.

How many of us feel the pressure even today, many within their own families, to submit to the agenda of the world and the agenda of Satan, to the point to where we don't even know what to say to our children and grandchildren, or struggling with temptation in these very areas?

My friends, don't give in to the pressure to conform to this world.

We can speak the truth in love to those that are closest to us and if they know us for who we truly are, they will know that we're being honest and real and coming from a place that is a loving approach.

But let me tell you this side of it as well.

When you stand in this way, there's a great risk that you take, because there are going to be people who will walk away from you, even those that are closest to you.

In some cases and I think of the words of the song, though none go with me.

Still, I will follow Our universities have failed us in this nation For the last 50 years, and maybe even before that.

They have preached an agenda and a pathway and a pattern that has created the chaos that we live in today.

It started with them preaching that people have the right to tell others, that they must tolerate them.

You must tolerate me.

What does it mean to tolerate?

It means don't ask, don't tell.

It means to each his own.

It means see something, say nothing.

You must be tolerant of me.

The second thing that they've taught and, by the way, the church is to blame in some degree, because we haven't been speaking about this very much at all, and God forbid that we remain among those numbers that not only don't speak about it, but wave flags in support of something that is an evil agenda meant to destroy God's design and his plan for his creation.

Next, that you must accept me.

Not only must you tolerate me, but you must accept me, and when I say me, I mean my sin.

You must accept my sin.

You must appreciate my life choices.

You must be happy for me.

You must be my friend and my ally.

How many of us have felt the pressure in the world that we live in to conform in this way?

The next one is you must support me, you must affirm me, you must celebrate me and my choices.

You must march with me.

You must celebrate special days with me.

You must do everything that you possibly can to let the world around you know that what I'm doing is completely fine in your eyes and that you have no issues with it at all, and if you say anything against it, the final step is that you are a violent person and you must be stopped A secular article that we read.

By the way, all of these messages have been collaborative and all of the elders have been speaking to this, and we've also had some researchers within the church that have helped us, and we appreciate everybody's input so much.

It's hard enough just trying to talk about this stuff, but there was an article that we saw that said that many people that identify as LGBTQ are actually heterosexual.

Maybe they at times have experimented in the past, they've gone back to heterosexual relationships, but they feel the need to be so in tune with those who are expressing themselves in this way that they actually identify themselves as being a part of this community.

I just recently watched a documentary about Taylor Swift, and part of it is just curiosity, because I don't mean to hurt anybody's feelings, but I don't think she's that great of a performer or a singer.

I mean I'd put Whitney Houston or several CC Winans who have heard Elvis Presley.

I know we're giving our age here a little bit, but I put a lot of people in front of her, but she's the most popular.

According to money, she's the most popular singer on the planet.

It's interesting to watch the documentary.

She started out with some kind of fortitude as far as who she was and then over time she began to be wooed by this culture and by this agenda, and to the point to where now she says that she is a part of the LGBTQ community, she's in solidarity with them.

It's really strange, because it's the other thing that's become so obvious and apparent and clear to everybody else is that she's dating a very manly football player named Travis Kelsey.

So it's kind of strange that she's identifying as this, but she's living out her life as this right, but that's the way that it is.

We see it in Hollywood, we see it in every form of popular culture, every TV show it used to be.

10, 15 years ago you could watch a TV show without seeing the agenda raised, and yet now you can't even watch what would have been considered a good family show without something being forced into it that is not shouldn't, that has no need to really be a part of the storyline at all that's so strong.

The agenda is that Satan is pushing.

Satan is pushing, satan is pushing to attack God's purpose.

So what do we do with all of this?

Well, we go back, two verses before all of this chapter, in the same chapter, and it says for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

My friends, the hope of the world is, and always will be, jesus Christ, amen, amen.

Instead of trying to change someone's behavior in the world that's living within these cultural norms, we need to be asking ourselves do they know Jesus?

And if they don't know Jesus, how am I representing Jesus to them?

Am I living my life in my marriage in a way that represents Jesus to them and represents God's divine order?

Am I caring for my kids the way that God takes care of his children?

Not perfectly, obviously, but desiring to follow after him and do things his way?

Am I walking in love?

Am I a good employee at work?

Am I somebody that at school that others know that they can trust.

Even though they may not agree from what they believe in, they still know that they can trust this person because they care.

What is our heart for the lost?

And if you are a believer and you're dealing with these things, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Romans 12, the same book, same author.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that, by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect Husbands, preach the gospel to your family and, for those who don't have husbands or fathers in your life, preach the gospel to each other.

Preach the gospel to yourself.

It is the power of God and it's what we need.

It's the antidote to the vitriol and venom that we see within the system of this world.

And if you're a believer that's struggling with temptation in these areas, I want you to know that we are not here to judge or cast stones.

We are here to pray with you and for you.

All of us are sinners saved by grace.

Book Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 13,.

No temptation has overtaken you.

That is not common to man.

God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

But with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

We can follow after Jesus, we can obey his commandments, we can walk in truth because he gives us the grace to do it.

Jesus lived his life perfectly and took our sins and our failings upon himself as he laid himself down on the tree that he created and died the death that we deserve.

And he proved to us that he overcame sin, satan, death, grave and hell by being raised from the dead on the third day.

And the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, as believers, lives in us, and he will give us the power, our mortal bodies.

He will give us the ability to follow after him and to obey his commandments.

We have what we need to be holy as God is holy.

Let's pray together.

Father God, you know there's just no way to say all of the words that I would like to say this morning.

But, lord, I pray that those things that needed to be heard by the individuals that you have listening to this message, father, I pray that they would not be words of condemnation that would cause them to run away from you, but, lord, I pray that they would be words of conviction for all of us that we would run to you.

We run to you and acknowledge to you our desperate need for a Savior, not just to save us from hell, but to save us so that we can live this life according to the order that you have described and defined for us.

Lord, I just pray, in the mighty name of Jesus, that you would give us your grace, not only for our own lives but, lord, that we would have the ability to be able to speak to those that we care so much about, that are struggling in these areas and have been tossed around by this world and the culture of this world, and have had experiences, even as young children, that have caused them to believe that this is what's normal, especially in the area of sexuality.

Lord, I just pray in Jesus' name for freedom.

I pray for the gift of freedom, grant the gift of repentance and freedom for those who are trapped by Satan's evil devices and schemes.

And help us, lord, to be of those who stand for truth and righteousness, understanding that that will cause persecution to come, and we're not.

That's not our goal.

But, lord, we know that you've promised us that as we stand for truth and righteousness, that we will be persecuted.

Help us to be strong in the face of persecution.

Give us boldness and courage and stability and strength.

Help us from the attack of the enemy to try to weaken our faith or our trust.

And, lord, we do pray for this nation.

God and Lord, we know that without a great awakening that there's no hope for our nation.

And, father, we pray that you would rend the heavens and come down and reveal yourself in all of your glory through creation, through conscience and also through the power of your spirit, actively engaging those who are sick, depressed and defeated, entrapped in sin and shame.

Would you save those who?

We have no ability to save ourselves, and they have no ability either.

But you can do it.

And so we cry out to you, god of mercy, move in our hearts, change our hearts, change our lives and change this nation, change the culture of this world.

Let me ask these things in Jesus' mighty name, amen.

The prayer team is going to be here now for anybody who needs prayer specifically, and this is just the beginning of the conversation.

We're going to have a couple more weeks where we'll be discussing how we can talk about this in our culture.

I did not have enough time today to really get into all of the specifics, but we have a couple more weeks left in this series and this will be a 2.0, I'm sure, and a 3.0 in a weeks and months to come, because things are not as much as we'd like to say it.

Things are not lessening or getting easier in the culture.

They're actually getting much harder, and so we want to equip you to be able to stand in the day of adversity.

And, trust me, when we see Jesus and we and he says to us well done, it won't be because we've made ourselves righteous or perfect, but it will be because he's washed us clean and he's also changed our desires, our thoughts, our actions and, for the most part, in our lives.

Our pursuit is to follow after Him.