The Biblical Sexual Ethic Part 2

Like I said, two weeks ago, we started this conversation.

It called the the biblical sexual ethic.

And the the point of this conversation is really simple.

It's it's not to like have a hot take on just different things going on around us in culture or anything like that.

The reality is we live in an interesting moment in honestly, like in human history, if you study it, we're living in a time and in a culture where the sort of understood, healthy ways to express human sexuality are changing constantly.

It's like the rules are being rewritten all the time.

And we live in a time and in a culture where being a follower of Jesus and holding to a biblical view of what healthy human sexuality is, is becoming more and more difficult because to hold that view puts you more at odds with the culture that you're in than perhaps ever before.

And so we find ourselves in this really interesting place where we have to sort of figure out, those of us who have decided to follow Jesus have to figure out how do I live my life honoring what God has asked me to do in life, even though I struggle.

I'm not perfect, none of us are perfect in this area.

How do I live my life in this way, committed to what God has said, live by strong convictions, at the same time engaging with a world that views things very differently than I do, and doing it in a way that's loving and effective, but also holding ground when it's necessary, it's a difficult thing to do.

It's a really difficult thing to do.

One of the questions that came in was why don't pastors talk more about this today?

And I'll answer this one really quick.

It's super awkward.

And it's kind of high risk, low reward.

Because when you start talking about things like this, you you tend to make people mad, whole groups of people mad, and so it's easier just to avoid it.

It's easier to sort of kind of play like a slalom course with scripture and just kind of like, we're just gonna avoid these topics, you know, because whatever, but but when we have things going on around us, when we're living in a culture and in a time like we are, that just won't work.

And so clearly, by the uh amount and intensity of the questions that came in, I'm at the very least hopeful that you guys are interested enough in this to keep talking about it.

I'll be honest with you, my goal was to knock down like all the major questions this week.

And I kind of took them all, and obviously with 10 pages, we had just dozens and dozens and dozens of questions, very personal questions, some a little bit more conceptual, but a lot of these questions you could tell are deeply personal to everyone who asked.

I was able to sort of categorize them, and yesterday spent a lot of time practicing, kind of running through, answering all of these at once.

I sent an email out with like eight or nine questions that we're gonna tackle, and it was a two-hour long message, and I love you guys.

Too much.

Too much for that.

And so God made it really clear like, okay, Justin, come on, like honestly, like, you I don't even know if Jesus taught for two hours that often.

I know he did it at least once, but even Jesus was like, that's a little long.

Um so so what we're gonna do is tackle half the questions today, half the questions next week.

I'm not trying to draw this.

This will not be a seven-week-long series, I promise you.

But I want to give honor to the questions that came in.

And I want to answer these as lovingly and as thoroughly and as directly as possible.

And I think this is really important for us for a variety of reasons, for all of us.

A, you might be someone who personally struggles with some of the things that we're gonna talk about, or you might have been the person that asked the question, or maybe you're not.

Maybe you're like, you know what, I I don't feel like I even really need to work through this personally, but you are going to encounter people in your life, people very close to you that are going to be working through these things.

And I think it's important for us as believers to be able to engage with the world around us, to not just explain to people what we believe, but maybe explain why we believe it, what it's based on.

And to do so in a way that's intelligent enough for people to at the very least go, huh, okay, and think about it a little bit.

So next week we're gonna cover a lot of issues related to what does healthy human sexuality look like in marriage?

And what about marriage in general?

Like, if I'm committed to someone and we're monogamous, do we even really need to get married in the legal sense?

We had a lot of questions about that.

Once we're married, like what's on the table, what's off the table, what do we do when those dynamics get really, really difficult?

We're gonna talk a lot about parenting next week.

We had a lot of questions from parents saying, what do I do when my kids are being exposed to these things and they're asking these questions, and they have friends that are expressing themselves this way?

We got a lot of questions about transgenderism, we got a lot of questions about stuff like that, and so next week we're gonna focus on that.

Today we're gonna spend a lot of time focused on a lot of questions that we got related to same-sex attraction.

And and how do we how do we live out our lives in a culture where that is is becoming more and more prevalent, and where even questioning that in any way, shape, or form makes you out to be someone who hates people, who's a bigot, uh, who doesn't understand.

It's a difficult thing to do.

We get a lot of questions about that.

A lot.

So here we go.

Woo! You know what?

Actually, I think my throat.

No, I'm good.

So let's start here.

I want to recap where we got to uh last week or rather two weeks ago.

So I started with this big list.

I've even added a few things to it, and these are just sexual behaviors.

These are just these are this is the menu of sexual behaviors in America and the world, okay?

And it's probably not a complete list, but there's a lot of things on that.

And basically what we said was that Scripture, okay, the teachings of Jesus, the teachings of the prophets, the teachings in the law of the Old Testament, the letters in the New Testament, that Scripture sort of gives us like this road.

And this we could view as what we are calling the biblical sexual ethic, that God, who invented sex, by the way, God will at least give him credit for that, okay?

God created it and he has said, hey, I would like you to sort of stay in these lines.

This is what God in Scripture would describe as healthy human sexuality.

Now, a couple things that are important to note from two weeks ago so that we're all on the same same page.

Am I saying that if you have experienced or or done or taken part in anything outside of these lines that you are somehow lesser or God is angry with you?

Look, if God was angry, like if if every single time a person stepped outside of the sexual lines, God got mad, can we just acknowledge that God would be mad all the time?

Okay?

The truth of the matter is, as adults, we can say this.

This stuff is hard.

This stuff is difficult.

Sexual desires and urges are some of the strongest that we ever encounter.

And we live in a culture that pours gasoline on those urges all the time.

And so this stuff is really difficult, and virtually every single person has stepped out of these lines or failed to live up to some of those, every single one of us.

And so, look, there is grace that covers all of this.

Someone actually sent a question in hey, by you saying grace covers everything, are you saying that it doesn't really matter what we do and you know, just live how you want?

It's like a license to sin.

No, clearly not.

No.

Scripture talks about this, Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

So should we just keep on sinning since God forgives us so much?

Because you know, if we sin more, we get forgiven even more.

Like, God, I want you to forgive me so much that I'm just gonna sin as much as I can so I experience as much of your forgiveness as possible.

No.

No.

But the reason I think it's so important to start with grace always is let's be honest.

Messing up in this part of life tends to come with a lot more shame and guilt than messing up in other areas of life.

At least in my experience.

I'm gonna shared with you guys I have no leg to stand on.

I had an addiction to pornography that lasted from the time I was probably in upper elementary school when I was exposed to it, until my 20s.

Even divorce is on here with an asterisk, because there are biblical precedents for divorce.

I wouldn't even be alive if my dad hadn't gotten divorced from his first wife and married my mom.

So the truth of the matter is there's all kinds of ways that God works through all this stuff to show us his love.

And if for any moment you look at this and go, Oh, I'm on the outside.

No, no, no.

You are never on the outside of God's love.

And if you put your faith in Jesus, you are never on the outside of God's grace.

But we can very easily find ourselves on the outside of what God has recommended that we do, of what God prescribes.

You know, Scripture is full of things that God describes, he describes a lot of unhealthy human behavior.

Scripture even has things that God permits because he recognizes our weakness.

There's times in Scripture where God allows things to happen.

It's not what he wants to happen, it's not what he recommends to happen, but he says, you know what?

Fine.

It's permitted, but it's it's permitted in accordance with our inability.

But that's very different than what God prescribes, what God recommends.

What God would have us do.

And so this is not intended to cause shame or guilt.

Satan tends to use shame and guilt.

He hijacks that, kind of hijacks our conscience, and he causes us to do what Adam and Eve did when they sinned in the garden.

If you know that story, they hid from God.

Sexual sin has a massive tendency to cause us to hide from God.

And there are so many people who, because of shame and guilt related to sexual sin, have spent years and years and years being far more distant with God than God would ever desire.

I mean, it was Adam and Eve that hid from God, not the other way around.

God went and found them.

And so if you feel shame and guilt related to this stuff, I just want you to know that is not what God intends for you.

He wants you to drop the shame and guilt.

He wants you to close the gap because he is right here, he loves you, and you don't have to walk in that at all.

Now, it's also not intended for us to experience pride if we are inside of it.

Well, I am doing it the right way.

And maybe there are things on this list that you look at and you go, I would never, even for a moment, think about that.

Well, maybe you've never experienced the same level of temptation that other people have.

And thank God for that, but don't be proud about it.

Some of us have no idea the degree of intensity of temptation that others have faced.

And if we were in their shoes, we might find that not only would we have done the same thing, we may have done worse.

And so, pride, shame, this is not what this is about at all.

This is simply recognizing that God has created something beautiful, something amazing, but also something volatile in human sexuality.

And he recognized that from the get-go, and so he gave us some directions.

I said last week, kind of, or two weeks ago, think of think about this like a road.

It's kind of like a two-lane road.

On one hand is singleness and celibacy, which is an awesome way to live, and I know many that do, and it's rewarding in so many amazing ways.

Our culture doesn't really, you might be scratching your head, like, how could that be rewarding?

Because sex is not the end-all be all of human existence.

Even though we've been convinced that it is.

It's amazing what our culture does.

Sex is everything.

Sex is amazing.

And then you get married and you're like, why, why am I having sex and you're not completely fulfilled?

Well, if sex is everything and you're having sex, why aren't you completely fulfilled?

Because it isn't everything.

Okay, so singleness and celibacy, that's one lane to go on.

The other lane would be a monogamous heterosexual relationship where there's abstinence before marriage, and then you're sexually available to your spouse afterwards.

We're gonna talk more about that next week.

Clearly, this is difficult to lay out, but this is what God is doing.

He's saying, please, please go this way.

You know, it's like when someone builds a road.

They build the road for it to be driven on.

But then they say, hey, go this speed and go in this direction, and by the way, stop when you get here.

Because it's for your benefit.

It's for your benefit.

God did not create sex and then just give us a bunch of rules just so he could watch us squirm.

He recognizes how deeply impactful this is.

In fact, 1 Corinthians chapter 6 says that we should run from sexual sin because no other sin so greatly affects us.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

And so he loves us enough that he's given us this prescribed way of going about things.

Now, someone asked a question how do we really know what is and isn't inside the lines?

How do we really know?

Okay, well, look at a word real quick and we'll come back to this.

This is a Greek word, pornea, and it is the Greek word for sexual immorality.

Okay?

And so the basis for this is really simple.

For me, it's scripture.

When I when I go back to this, to this list of healthy human sexuality, okay, um, this is all rooted in scripture.

Understand that anytime we make an argument for something, we're appealing to some authority.

Right?

We might be appealing to the authority of sort of the culture of our time.

This is the kind of cultural consensus of the time that we're living in, and I'm appealing to that.

I agree with most people, therefore I feel like I'm I'm good.

Or we may just appeal to our own emotions.

That's kind of the main one today with our culture and the worldview that most people have.

It's like, well, what justifies this?

Well, I want to.

I really, really, really desire it.

Therefore, it's justified for me.

As Jesus followers, we have to have a different authority that we appeal to.

And we appeal to the authority of Scripture.

And this is something that I'll repeat from time to time when I teach that I believe that God's word, scripture, the Bible, whatever you want to call it, responsibly interpreted, and sometimes that's hard, and lovingly applied, and sometimes that's rare.

But responsibly interpreted, lovingly applied, scripture always guides us in the way we should go.

Because it's it's God's word.

Okay, we can clap for that.

Now, some people will say things like, yeah, like, but Jesus, there are certain things on this list Jesus never mentioned, and that's true.

But here's what we do know of Jesus: he affirmed scripture constantly.

In fact, if if you want to look at the red letters of Jesus and then cross-reference those red letters with all the time Jesus is quoting scripture, you'd be blown away.

How often he's repeating scripture, how often he's he's teaching scripture, reteaching scripture, sometimes even reframing scripture, but Jesus affirmed it.

And in the instances where he felt like it needed to be seriously reframed, he did.

And that's not really something he did with human sexuality.

He affirmed what the scriptures had already taught.

And so this is something that that even in the teachings of Jesus we see.

Now, if if you're not a Jesus follower, I wouldn't expect this to mean much to you.

Like the authority of Scripture.

If you haven't surrendered your life to Jesus, then why should you surrender yourself to the teachings of his word?

And and I wouldn't expect you to at all.

In fact, I think a lot of damage has been done in terms of the church's ability in our country to have kind of a voice in cultural issues, because essentially what the church has done historically has basically been to forget that most of Scripture was written to people who believed, right?

Like Paul in his letters was writing to people who had already given their lives to Jesus.

And he's urging them to follow that through.

He's urging them to live that out.

But he was never writing those same things to the culture at large, expecting those people to, regardless of their knowledge of Jesus or relationship with Jesus, just live it anyway.

And so sometimes what's happened in American culture, especially with issues of sexuality, is that the church has just kind of looked at the world at large and said, hey, you should do it this way.

Just because it's the right way.

But if you don't have the Holy Spirit inside of you through a relationship with Jesus, I mean, good luck.

And so, as Jesus followers, the authority that I'm appealing to is scripture.

Now, I don't have time to go through all of the scriptures that speak to these things.

I did put a lot of it in the mobile app.

And so if you open up the mobile app, you go to today's message, you will see most of Leviticus 18 would be one, some from Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

There are all kinds of scriptures about this, but let me just say this.

When it comes to issues of sexuality and sexual behavior, scripture's really clear.

There are certain subjects that scripture is not as clear on, and you have to sort of do your best to interpret it the best way, but recognize that, hey, look, this could go multiple directions and that's okay.

The Bible's just not like that when it comes to sexual behavior.

God is like very matter-of-fact.

There are people who try to like take what the Bible says and do some really interesting mental gymnastics to make it less direct, and it's just, it's disingenuous, it's not intellectually honest.

Just know that scripture, scripture speaks very clearly about what is and what isn't sexual immorality, pornea.

I've actually had someone say, well, the Bible never talks about pornography, actually, every single time you see the word sexual immorality, that's pornography.

Aography means to display, right?

To represent, and porn is sexual immorality, and so all pornography is, is sexual immorality on display.

And these things are all rooted in Scripture.

Now, before we move on to the main questions of today, I do want to remind where we kind of ended two weeks ago.

What happens when we find ourselves outside of these lines?

Well, number one, remember that they're little dotted lines, they're not mountains, they're not walls.

Just because you come out of it doesn't mean you can't come back in.

We talked about GPS a couple weeks ago, kind of an odd analogy, but you know, I said I'm a bad enough driver that even when I'm using GPS, I find myself off the path.

And every time that happens, my GPS never gives up on me.

That's never happened to me before.

That's what I said.

Like, it'll say what?

It'll say, make a U-turn, rerouting.

And even if I ignore it, I'm like, nah, I'm just gonna go this way.

I just want to see what's this direction.

It never stops, it never goes, you know what?

You're clearly not listening to me, so we're just gonna go ahead and be done.

Okay.

2 Samuel 14, 14, this unnamed woman, we don't know her name, says this unbelievable thing about God.

She says, All of us must die eventually.

Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.

That's how it feels sometimes to be a person.

Things can happen, and we're like, it's it's basically like my life has been spilled out, there's no way to even put this back together.

But God does not just sweep life away.

Instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.

When you give your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you.

And the Holy Spirit will never give up on you.

So if you ever find yourself on the outside of this, not of God's love, you're not on the outside of his love, you're not on the outside of his grace, you're on the outside of his prescribed way of living sexually.

The Holy Spirit does not reject you, does not leave you.

But the Holy Spirit, while it will not leave you, it also will not leave you alone.

Because he loves you.

And it's funny, in our culture, we don't really use the phrase repent.

Repent has become like a bad word because it's, you know, people with signs on street, you know, corners and yelling, repent.

Um the word repent just really means return, rethink, reroute.

So like when you're driving in your car with a GPS on and you make a wrong turn and it says rerouting, it's saying, hey, repent.

Let's let's turn around and start going in the right direction.

And we would never say to our GPS, how dare you?

How dare you tell me to reroute?

I feel judged, I'm turning you off.

Right?

Like we recognize that this device is trying to help us.

We're grateful for it most of the time.

Like, y'all remember driving before GPS?

And having to go like long distances?

I remember Megan and I, we would print, this is like, we even had map quests.

We were even, we were even the generation that didn't have to pull out the map.

We had map quests, we would print directions off from the internet, but then Megan would be sitting next to me, and I'm like, what's my next turn?

She's like, okay, in 2.1 miles.

And I'm like looking at the little thing, okay, 2.1 miles.

And we'd have fights because I would feel like she wasn't giving me the directions the right way or fast enough.

So when GPS came out, I'm like, this is a gift from the Lord.

This is like God loves humanity so much.

It's like he said, I'm tired of you all just wandering around.

I'm giving you something to give you direction.

God loves us so much that he gives us the Holy Spirit so that we don't just have to stumble around in the dark.

So that when we find ourselves in places we ought not to be, because it's not what's best for our soul, he can bring us back and it's gentle and it's loving, it's not shameful.

So we got to keep that in mind that whatever we talk about the next couple of weeks, if it challenges you, know that I I love you, God loves you even more.

I don't want you to be upset or offended, but I'm also very much okay with you having some things to wrestle with, with God.

In fact, I would encourage all of us to wrestle with God constantly.

If God had a favorite sport, as much as I wish it was basketball, it would be wrestling.

Because God named his people Israel, which means to wrestle with God.

Didn't mean to obey God, to follow God, to love God, to honor God.

He named his people in the Old Testament, those who wrestle with me.

If you wrestle with God, refusing to let go of him, even when in your heart it's it's hard because it's challenging you, there's tension.

Hold on to him, keep wrestling with him, and watch what he does with you.

Never let go.

So there will be some wrestling these next few weeks.

Now, a lot of the questions we had that came in were related to same-sex attraction, to homosexuality, bisexuality.

We could put transgenderism questions that we got in the same category.

I'm gonna push that off to next week because, in part because it's such a phenomenon with young people right now, we're gonna talk a lot about sort of the younger generation and how do we engage with that.

A lot of us as parents had those questions, or maybe we're just observing that in young generations.

There's been a skyrocketing, skyrocketing percentage increase in some of these things with the current young generation, mainly because of what they're exposed to.

But we got a lot of questions related to things like, hey, what if I have a friend or even a relative and they identify as gay?

And I don't agree with that because of my views on scripture, right?

Which scripture does, it does forbid these things.

It clearly, expressly does.

So what do I do if I get invited to a wedding?

Because I love these people, and I don't want them to feel rejected and hurt or offended, and I but I don't, is that okay?

Like, am I celebrating that?

What do I do?

We had a lot of people that ask questions.

Like, it just doesn't seem fair that if a person is gay or or bisexual, that they're not able to just enjoy their sexual desires the same way a heterosexual person could.

That seems like it's really unfair.

Because it's not like you're just asking that person to let go of something small, you're asking that person to let go of sexual intimacy with who they desire to be sexually intimate with.

That does not seem fair.

Probably the baseline question that we had related to this was what if you're a Christian and you're also gay?

Is that possible?

So I want to start there.

And I want to back up for a second on that question.

Because I think all of these questions are opportunities for us to examine some of the assumptions that we have and explore where they've come from.

I said two weeks ago that the the interesting development that has never happened before in human history that we're living in right now is the linking of your sexual desires to your identity.

There have been a variety of ways to live and express yourself sexually for all of human history, but we are living in the first time in history where people have linked together sexual desire with who they are at their core.

And there are a lot of reasons why you can go back and listen to the message a couple of weeks ago and we explored that.

That's never happened before.

That's unique.

And so when someone says something like, I was born this way, I want to honor that, but I want us to explore something, and this is something I've actually taught on a while ago, but not specifically in this context, okay?

And so back when we were going through Romans chapter 8 in our Roman series, I don't know, a year ago or something like this, you may recognize this.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Um, all of us were born.

Can we have agreement with that?

Okay, it's good to have agreement, right?

And when you're born, you have a nature.

There are things that come naturally to you.

And the Bible often calls this flesh.

And so, some scripture, for example, uh let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14.

1 Corinthians 2:14

It says, a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Okay, what this is telling us is that when we're born, our normal human nature, apart from a relationship with Jesus, does not desire naturally the things that God would have us desire.

And some people, um, amen at that, and some people shake their head and be like, that that sounds crazy.

Like, what are you saying?

We're born and we're kind of like off, and it's like just raise a child and find out.

Just raise a kid and find out if naturally we come out properly calibrated.

Okay?

Right?

I feel like it's obvious.

I'm actually always blown away.

It's kind of like an easy thing to go to as an example.

I've done it many times, but I'm always blown away when people are like, You're telling me that children can be wrong.

I'm like, have you ever been around a child?

Have you ever spoken to a child?

Children are amazing, but man, they need a lot of work.

Like, they need a lot of work.

Like, raise your hand if you've if you've raised a child, just just or tried to.

Okay, I didn't say successfully.

Raise your hand if you have had one of your children lie to you.

Raise your hand if you taught them how to do that.

Oh, okay.

Some honesty.

Now, when you taught them how to do it, are you saying that they maybe observed you doing it and just sort of copied you?

Or did you sit them down and say, let me explain something to you.

Look.

Sometimes in life, you find yourself in a tough situation.

You've done something and you know you're gonna get in trouble.

So when when caught, just make up a story.

Just lie, it's called a lie.

You say something that is the opposite of what happened.

How many of you had that conversation with your kids?

And oh, a couple of you, okay.

Well, I'm just glad you're in church.

That's all I have to say about that.

That's good.

No, honestly.

Like, this stuff comes pretty naturally for kids.

You know?

I can remember the first time my kids lied to me.

And it's like, oh no.

That's natural for us.

Okay, so when it says that our our original birth, okay, of course the screens would blink today.

Of course.

Right?

You have no idea how many things have gone wrong this week.

Trying to, my car broke down, been sick all week long.

It's like, I don't think Satan wants us to have this conversation, so we are.

So we're born and we have a nature, and that nature naturally does not desire the things that God would desire for us without some intervention, without some work.

And the Bible typically calls this flesh.

And it's not talking about biology.

When the Bible talks about flesh, it is not talking about how we are created biologically.

It's not talking about the cells in our body, it's talking about our desires, our nature apart from God.

And so, you know, we have Galatians chapter 5, verse 17, says the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit.

Galatians 5:17

And the spirit what is contrary to the flesh.

They are in conflict with one another, so that you're not able to do whatever you want.

So now we have this next dynamic.

When we're born again, squared, when we're born again, something changes.

Jesus says, John chapter 3, verse 3, he says that I tell you the truth, unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

John 3:3

You have to be born again.

And born again is this experience, it's a phrase that basically says, something happens, we encounter Jesus, something changes, something is different.

Something new has started in us.

It's a new birth.

And that new birth comes with a new nature.

2 Corinthians 5.17 says this means anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone, a new life has begun.

There's a new nature.

And this is often called spirit.

John 3.6, Jesus says humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.

Okay?

So we have flesh, we have spirit.

We get both as Jesus followers, and uh it may look nice and neat right here, but in reality, lived out, it's just a big giant mess.

Like that's how we feel on the inside, because our flesh and our spirit are at war with each other.

But here's what we've got to ask ourselves: which of these is the strongest?

Which of these is the most enduring?

Which of these is the real us?

Because whenever we say something like this, and I'm I know I'm kind of building up to this, whenever someone just says something, I am a Jesus follower and I'm gay, or I'm bisexual, or I'm transgender, whatever word you have, what they're saying is that is a core part of my identity.

And the rationale for that will be because I was I was born this way.

Well, which birth are you talking about?

Are you talking about this birth?

Well, of course, we're all born with desires out of our human nature that are contrary to the spirit.

That's what we clearly read through scripture.

And we clearly see this lived out in all kinds of ways with people.

Or do you consider the moment you were born again to be your true birth?

And this new nature that God has put inside of you that is developing and is growing and is at war with the old nature, and it's a tough fight sometimes.

Do you consider that your spirit, the real you?

We have to be so careful and understand that our enemy almost always attacks us at the place of identity.

The very first temptation that happened in the Bible was when Satan tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit that God said not to eat.

And he came at them with a core lie.

God had said, if you eat this fruit, you will die.

He says, You won't die.

You won't die.

You'll be like God, which is implying to them that they aren't.

That they're not how they ought to be.

And yet, if you look at Genesis chapter 1, when God creates people, he says, I will create them in my image to be like me.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

He actually says to be like us.

Let us create man in our image, like Father, Son, Holy Spirit, to be like us.

We already were like God, but Satan attacked their identity.

Our culture has linked sexual desire to identity to the point where the average person in our culture actually believes that this is kind of the real us.

Even the average Christian, I would say, believes that this is the real us and it cannot be denied.

Anything that we were born desiring in this birth, that's like the core of who we are.

We've got to follow it, we've got to live it.

We can't deny it.

And scripture would not say that at all.

So here's the reality, just to reframe that question, what I would say to the person who asked that is that you are not, I would, and this is challenging, and it again wrestle with this.

I would say you're not a gay Christian.

You're a Christian who has sexual desires that are outside of what God has prescribed or are gay or bisexual, whatever word you want to use.

It's not who you are.

When you equate those two things, I am a gay Christian.

No, no, you're a Christian.

If you've given your life to Jesus, you're a follower of God, and you happen to have gay desires.

But your desires are not who you are.

Your desires are not the core of your identity.

Your desires, and even so, what does where do the desires come from?

If you can identify that the desires you have come from here, then do not surrender to those desires.

Give your life over to the desires that come from here.

So at the very core, we have to start by understanding that we've linked sexuality to identity, and that's a fallacy.

Our sexual desires are not who we are.

Because one day we won't have those sexual desires.

Like we won't.

In fact, Jesus said, yo, yeah, in heaven, we're not married in heaven.

Like it's different.

And so I just would start by saying, do not believe the lie that you are what you desire.

Our culture has told us that our sexual desires are insatiable, that we're slaves against them.

And scripture actually says that, yes, apart from God, we are slaves to our sinful nature.

But with Jesus, we're not slaves anymore.

We don't have to follow these desires.

Is that easy to live out?

No.

But we don't have to.

Now, I will say at the core of this, and after this, we're gonna, this by the way, is a little bit longer of a message, if you haven't gotten that impression.

It is, and I'm sorry, but I guess I'm okay with it because I think this is really important.

The second half of the message, which is about to start, is actually a really cool conversation that I want to show you guys that I got to have with a few people.

I think it's gonna really help us understand this in a different way.

But I have one more thing I want to say before we get to that, because I recognize that this is coming from me, someone who, I'll be honest, I I've never dealt with temptations related to same-sex attraction.

So it can be easy for me to sit here and be so matter-of-fact about it.

It can be easy for me to sit here and think about it from a logical point of view and kind of map it out.

It's different when it's what you wrestle with.

You know, it'd be like telling me, Justin, you don't have to yell at a referee during a basketball game.

It's like you don't understand how I feel at that moment and the level of injustice that is happening before my eyes and the desire inside of me to let that person know that they clearly are wrong.

It's hard, okay?

And I'm not trying to, obviously, in some ways I'm making light of something far more deeper.

But I'm point my point is there's all kinds of things that are far less intense than these desires that I've wrestled with personally and I have a hard time with.

So I recognize that it's easy for me to look at this kind of outside looking in, and in a moment we're gonna get to see some perspective that's that's different than that.

Okay, it's really cool.

But I have one more thing I want to say before we go to that.

I think at the core of a lot of the questions we got about same-sex attraction is a different question.

Can I have salvation without submission or surrender?

When I was in the uh senior year high school, I went to New York City for the first time ever.

Actually, the last time I've been in New York City, so the one time.

And I had a really unique experience.

I went to this really like legendary pizza shop.

It was like everyone's like, this is like new, you want New York pizza, this is the place.

And uh I went in, and the vibe was kind of like if you've ever seen Seinfeld, like the soup Nazi, like it was this very like, and there was this slice of pizza that looked awesome, like it looked amazing, except that it had olives on it.

I don't like olives.

And so I look at the dude who's running the pizza shop, I was like, hey man, I I would I'd like that, but no olives.

And he just went, no.

I was like, ah, no, I'm I'm I just want you to make that, but just no olives.

He's like, no.

He's like, order what you want, move on.

Okay?

And he was not loving, I'm not saying he's like God in this scenario, but I'm saying that we as people have this desire sometimes to like custom order.

And we do that with God too.

We're like, hey, I really want to have this amazing life, but I'd like it a little different than the way that you've made it.

You know, Lord, I I love so much about what you want for me, and I want that, but I'd just like you to kind of tweak it to my preferences.

So I'd like, like I'd like to have sex, but I'd like it this way.

I'd like to be in an intimate relationship, but I kind of prefer, so can you, and we kind of expect God to just be like, coming right up.

I have another friend who got to go to Japan and this amazing trip, and part of the trip was that he had the opportunity to go and eat at the table of one of the most renowned sushi chefs in the entire world.

And I love sushi.

I don't know if you love sushi too.

But here's the catch: you didn't get to order your sushi.

You don't know what he's gonna make.

He's just gonna make it and bring it to the table, and you eat what he prepares.

There's no ordering of any kind.

How many of us would would go to that table?

How many of us would be like, no, thank you?

Yeah.

Because what if he makes something that's gross, right?

Now, sushi's maybe a bad analogy, because some of us are like, I don't do sushi.

Let's imagine that it's like Italian food, okay?

The best Italian chef in the world, but you don't get to choose what they create.

They just put it in front of you and you have to eat it.

How many of us would go to that?

Okay, how many of us would say, still no?

Okay, that's good.

It's good to know that we're picky.

But see, what those chefs would say to you is like, I just know food much more than you do.

I know what flavors go together, I know how it's going to taste.

And at some level, if you're gonna eat at my table, you're just gonna have to trust that I know what I'm doing.

There's an element of surrender to that.

And we don't like to surrender.

Salvation is more than just being a believer.

It starts there.

And it's more than even just being a fan of Jesus.

That's part of it, 100%.

But there's this experience of letting go.

We just sang about it.

I didn't even know that that was gonna be the song this morning.

I really didn't.

It's a surrendering to God.

It's a submission to God.

And so here's what I would just say simply.

Can you be a gay Christian?

Well, yeah, of course.

You can be a Christian who has desires for homosexual intimacy.

100%.

We all have desires.

I again I would challenge you not to think in those terms.

You're not a gay Christian, you're a Christian who has desires for that.

But of course you can be a Christian and have those desires.

Christians have desires for all kinds of things that are unhealthy.

Right?

I would even say you can be a Christian and consistently struggle with those desires.

Where you would say, man, I've I've tried and I'm trying to deny it, but it's really hard and I've messed up.

And I keep messing up.

Does this mean I'm not a Christian?

No, struggle does not negate you from following Jesus.

I mean, in fact, there's a word sanctification, which is the word that basically describes us sort of maturing in our faith, working out our faith once we know Jesus.

Okay, it's a struggle to be sanctified.

It takes time, and God is very gentle.

Struggle is does not mean you're not.

But if you were to say to me, I want to be a Christian, I want to be a Jesus follower, but I I do not want to, I'm not willing to surrender this part of my life.

I'm not the judge.

I would never look at anyone and say, Well, then you're not really a Christian.

But what I will tell you is that is not how biblical salvation is ever described.

You know, when Peter and the disciples that first started following Jesus, who were fishermen, when Jesus came to them and said, Follow me, they had to drop their nets to follow Jesus.

And there were others that Jesus said, Hey, come follow me, but you gotta let this thing go, and they couldn't do it.

We cannot truly follow Jesus and be unwilling to let go of things that He may ask us to let go of, no matter how precious to us they are.

Salvation does include submission or surrender.

Now, does that mean that it has to be the very first thing?

That you can't come to him unless you let it go first?

No.

Oh my gosh, no.

It's a process, it's a journey, but I will tell you, honestly, for those of you who sent those questions in, God loves you.

He cares deeply about you, he wants to know you, and and your sexual struggles are not in any way, shape, or form, or your sexual desires are not in any way, shape, or form keeping you from knowing Jesus.

But if you know him and you give your life to him, he will absolutely, through the Holy Spirit, call you into what he prescribes as healthy human sexuality, and that means he will call you out of that.

And you may say, I've never felt him call me out of it.

Fine.

I I'm not in your head, I don't know what God has spoken to you, but I will tell you with confidence that he will.

Because he loves you.

And he wants to call you into what he's called you into.

And I'll wrap up with this.

We'll go back here before we we shift to something else.

I appreciate you guys being patient.

As hard as this might be to present to a world that would look at some of the things on the outside of these lines and say, no, those are fine, can we acknowledge something about God?

This works.

If if for one generation all of humanity lived this way, what would happen?

Now, a lot of people would say that, well, I have to deny my desires.

And Jesus was very okay with telling people to deny their desires.

He was fine having that conversation.

Anyone who wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.

He didn't mince words, he just said that.

But if for one generation this was lived out, here's what you would see in the world.

You would see the absolute, complete, and total elimination of rape.

You would see the elimination of sexually transmitted diseases within a generation, more than likely, wouldn't even exist.

Nothing.

Think about crisis pregnancies.

By and large, it's very rare for there to be crisis pregnancies within marriage.

That sure can happen in certain situations, but but usually what we're talking about are pregnancies that happen on the outside of that, that they'd be gone.

And again, I'm not saying this to offend anyone who's experienced any of these things.

I'm just saying that even those of us who've experienced those things would never say, like, I wish everyone experienced that.

And can we acknowledge that this ancient sexual ethic given to us in Scripture, if lived out, would simplify and solve so many of the world's problems.

So much regret, so much pain, even death eliminated.

It's almost like God is so good and He knows what's good that He, in His goodness, and His Desire for good things for us has asked us to live this way.

And so no matter what your sexual desires are, can you be a Jesus a follower?

Yes.

But if you're going to be a Jesus a follower, you've got to follow Jesus.

Now I can say this all day long until I'm blue in the face.

And like I said, it's one thing coming from me, but I want to share a conversation that I had with some friends.

It's really powerful.

And this is the second half of the message, and I'm looking at the clock and I'm just telling you guys we start at 10 o'clock.

Good news is it's not really lunch until noon.

Usually I'm usually the message is 43 minutes.

Sometimes it will give me a hard time for going long.

I look look at the records.

I am almost always within 40 to 43 minutes.

That is industry standard.

Okay?

But today is not.

Today is not.

So here's what I'd like to do right now.

If you're kind of like, okay, you're you're nearing that like attention span, is get it, got it.

Thank you.

Um just like stretch for a second, re-engage, look at your phone, uh, check headlines, we're just getting your whatever you gotta do.

Okay?

Because I want to show you a 29-minute conversation.

And go ahead and look at the clock now.

I'm looking at it's 1109.

I can do the math.

Okay.

We're gonna get out of here at like 1141.

And I'm kind of sorry, but not really.

Okay, so here we go.

By the way, our kids' areas, those of you who have kids, our kids areas were informed of that.

They are gonna your kids are gonna be great.

They're just giving them uh just uh what are those those candies?

Um sour patch kids.

Just filling them with sour patch kids.

Just sugar, so much no, I'm joking.

We're not doing that.

But they are they're prepared for this.

This conversation I'm about to show you is is so incredible.

And so with no further ado, I just want to cut to uh three really awesome people MJ, Angel, and Kim.

So, guys, let's go ahead and play this.

Re-engage a little bit.

Let's go.

Would you guys mind just telling us who you are, um, your name, uh just if you could describe a little bit about who you are kind of collectively, and then we'll move on to individual stories, if that makes sense.

So yeah.

Well, my name's MJ, and this is my friend Kim and Angel.

And uh, we're so much more than just our sexuality, but I know we're talking about that.

So uh Kim, myself, and Angel all were in the LGBTQ identity and have come out of it because of Jesus.

And so we met through sharing our testimonies, and the Lord has brought us together uh for this time now to connect and uh to help others who are really struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction and who want to find community and authentic authenticity and vulnerability.

And uh, so that's how the Lord has uh collectively kind of brought us together.

We each run our own nonprofits, and then overall we've come together and formed what we call Freedom March, is just as a community of former LGBTQ identity or individuals that um are looking for hope and freedom in Christ and want to bring that to others.

Would you guys be okay just talking for a few minutes about your individual story?

Give us a little bit of the synopsis of of your life and what brought you here.

And uh does anyone want to volunteer to start?

I don't want to be like a mean person who takes like I got looked at, so I'm gonna start first too.

So, yeah, Kim, tell us your story.

Yeah, um, just quick overview.

Um grew up in church, grew up knowing God, um, knowing his love for me, super blessed.

Like looking back, I can't think of anything that really stood out to myself or even to my family that would bring on the challenges that I faced the majority of my life, which for me, of course, growing up Christian, I saw the challenge, it being a challenge, me being attracted to women.

It was my senior year when I actually decided to act on the desire that I had.

Um, that one moment, that one decision for sure changed everything for me.

So when I when I think about things, I I always remember having desires for women.

Um, you know, and for me, it wasn't necessarily sexual desires, it was a desire for intimacy, closeness.

And it wasn't until I turned that intimacy and that desire for intimacy um in a sexual way that that really the challenges started to unpack even more because now I had experienced something that I desired to a whole new level.

And that led to just years, years of hiddenness, of lying, of um, yeah, sneaking around, dating guys on the forefront, while having girlfriends or or women I was much more interested in behind the scenes.

Physically I looked the same.

I had a smile on my face, but I was I was a wreck inside because I knew in my heart what I was doing was not something that God had had for me, but they were real desires, and I didn't know how to reconcile between what I felt inside and the desires I had as well.

I lived open and out, eventually dating women, and still wasn't happy.

I stopped lying, I stopped hiding, but I still didn't have the peace that I knew God wanted me, wanted me to have and that Jesus died for.

And um, yeah, I had a radical encounter with Jesus October 17th, 2014.

Um, and the Lord, yeah, that was the day that I basically just said, Lord, I'm done.

I'm really not good at being God.

Like I'm horrible at pretending to be God of my own life.

So I'm gonna give you a chance to be God and just please show me that you're good at it because if not, I'll probably go back.

And literally every day since then, he has proved himself faithful and good, even in the days that I do not.

Um, I'm just growing, especially in these last two years, um, of really God's love for me and that it's truly what I've been desiring my entire life and trying to find it in other people, men, women.

Um, it's challenging.

Not gonna lie, I'm not gonna sit here and say, yeah, it's just been rainbows and the lollipops, you know, since I encountered the Lord.

It's been hard, but there's nobody forcing me, not even God Himself.

And so I know that He's worth it, or I would just go back to an old way of life.

Um, not every desire we have lines up with God's desires for us.

And so I think it's just a journey for me of growing in trust in that God is good and that he is for me and not against me.

And yeah, so it's a daily surrender and a daily growth and trust in who he is.

So that's awesome.

So you're coming up on 10 years with this new encounter with Jesus.

Yeah.

It's come along with it.

That's really that's really cool.

Yeah.

Um, Angel?

At the age of five, I started to notice I had attractions towards other boys.

Um, but even even at that age, I knew that something wasn't right and it wasn't the right way to live.

And um that's one of the reasons why I love to talk to parents, is because I knew that because my parents instructed me in the Word of God, and I would remember everything that they would tell me.

Even through those years of my childhood, I would push those feelings aside.

Um, and and I just start to have experiences with other boys, but still, like it was just something hidden me that I knew it wasn't right.

So I grew up being this youth on fire for the Lord, being the president of the youth, doing all these events with the youth on fire for the Lord, speaking in tongues, doing all that.

And I loved it.

But these attractions just grew stronger and stronger.

There was just no openness in the church.

I couldn't speak to nobody.

I couldn't rely on anyone, I couldn't trust anyone.

You know, I couldn't talk to my dad.

I was the only boy in a Spanish family.

You know, so that's very shameful to talk about.

I was scared to bring that up.

So these feelings just kept on bottling up inside until I was about 18 years old.

My parents had gotten divorced, and I just took that as an opportunity to tell the Lord, you let this happen.

So I'm gonna go live the lifestyle that I've been wanting to live.

And I went head on into the homosexual lifestyle.

And in that first year of living that lifestyle, I missed to worship Jesus.

I missed having just that connection reconciled, and I said, Lord, I'm gonna give you a try again.

I because I I I just missed you, I missed that connection.

And I went again hardcore in, I was praying all that I could pray.

But these just temptations just kept on growing stronger, and yet again there was no openness.

I still couldn't relate to anyone in the church.

And after about a year, I said, Lord, I I tried, I gave it a try.

I did everything that I could do, but these temptations, these feelings, these attractions are not going away.

Left church again, I went head on into the lifestyle, and this time it was just stronger.

Everything came double than what it was before.

Lived a lifestyle of just parting.

But the thing was, the Holy Spirit was there at all times, always tugging in my heart.

And in 2016, I was just fed up with the lifestyle.

There was just an emptiness inside me.

There was no peace, there was no happiness, no joy.

And I remember that year in April 2016, I just prayed to the Lord and I said, Lord, I'm tired, but I can't do it in my own strength.

I can't come back to you in my own will.

You have to do something.

And I said, Lord, allow me to go through whatever I need to go through for me to come back to you.

And I don't care what it is.

And I totally forgot about that prayer, kept on living my life.

And um, two months after that, I actually was a survivor of the second biggest mass shooting in the US.

Uh, the shooting at Poulson in that nightclub Orderland of Florida, where I was shot multiple times, broken legs, and that was just a turning point in my life.

Where after that I came back to Jesus and I said, Lord, I'm I'm gonna serve you, I'm gonna worship you.

That's the first thing that I did.

I was like, I went through this big tragedy and I survived.

I'm like, Lord, you you rescued me.

Thank you for doing that.

But I didn't know that the true process was gonna start after that.

I started to take all the phone calls, all the interviews.

Um, I started to walk again, so they started to slide me to New York, to California.

I was in church again.

I started I started in the worship team.

But I'm doing all these events, and I started to notice just something wasn't right.

I started to notice that this was the way that the enemy was trying to alert me back into the lifestyle.

And now I was known as a gay Christian, as a gay activist.

And it just there was a huge confusion in my head in that year and a half after the shooting, where there was a day where I just broke down and I said, Lord, I'm I'm tired of fighting.

I have these temptations, these battles.

Even going through this tragedy and surviving this, I'm still going through this, but I'm not gonna fight anymore, Lord.

You you you promised me that there was a purpose in my life.

There was something in my life.

I said, I'm I'm I'm not gonna fight anymore.

I surrender to you, Lord, but not only that, I give you my heart, I give you everything of me, not just bits and pieces of me.

And at the moment, the Lord said, Angel, that's that's all I wanted.

I didn't want just your sexuality, I wanted everything of you.

I was making my sexuality higher than everything else I was going on in my life.

And he said, Angel, I want to restore your whole life.

I want everything of you.

And that was a moment where my life changed completely, where I knew what true freedom was.

And it wasn't that I wasn't gonna feel temptations or struggles anymore, but I was able to confront them and tell them, I don't want you, I want Jesus.

That's true freedom in my life.

That's amazing.

That's beautiful.

Um, MJ.

Yes.

Well, I was as I was listening to them to share some amazing threads that are kind of intertwined between all of our stories.

And just like them, I grew up in the church.

I had a knowledge of God.

I had amazing parents that were Christians and went to church every week, uh, but I didn't know the Lord's heart for me.

I knew rules and I felt like I had to strive and earn to know God.

And so I had these hidden attractions from as young as I can remember.

And it was so hard to reconcile this God that I knew, but never had experienced in the attractions that I had inside.

Uh, just like them, any message about homosexuality was always paired with, this is a sin and you're going to hell.

And so I hid.

I hid most of my life.

I thought my parents would be ashamed of me.

I had shame.

I didn't have any outlet in the church that I was going to.

I didn't, there was no one that was safe.

So I thought if I just hide it, so all my adolescence, I just hid it until I got into my teenage years.

I started going all the wrong avenues to try to numb the attractions inside of me, just with party.

And so those outlets were not working for me.

Um, and it was right before I went to college, for the first time in my life, I spoke that I was gay.

And we know now, and I know now that life or death is in the power of the tongue.

And it was as soon as I really identified, as I said, this is who I am, the trajectory of my life changed.

I met a female very shortly after we got in a long-term relationship.

And so for the first time in my life, everything that was inside um was expressed outwardly.

But I still had this, I always had this inner tug of war of this is what I desire, but God has something different for me.

But um, in this time, I was really living out what I wanted.

I always wanted to be with one woman.

I wasn't um out being with all these partners or anything like that.

I wanted, you know, the American dream to have a house, um, you know, dog, kids, and um be with one woman for the rest of my life uh to feel safe, protected, do that, you know, for her as well.

But like I said, there was still this battle and for her as well.

So um it ended up multiple, multiple years later, the Lord really started to work on both of our hearts and he um gave us away kind of out of the relationship.

And just like Angels said, this was really a defining moment for me.

It's like um in my life, it was like Jesus incorporated, like, I'll incorporate him into like when I need to pray for a financial blessing, or when I need to get this job, or you know, it's like I would, I would open up and pray.

But when it came to my sexuality and it came to my heart and women, like it was too costly.

I'm like, Lord, this is too costly to let go of.

Like, this is all I've ever desired or wanted.

This is the most natural thing to me is to be with a woman.

Yeah, in the moment, I really believe like Jesus encountered me.

And when you encounter him, it really changes everything.

And that's what I share with people anytime I share about just telling people about Jesus is he has to be the one to encounter.

You know, even parents, like we want to be the ones to fix it, we want to be the ones to make everything right for others, but it's really that encounter.

And when I had that encounter with Jesus, I realized what Jesus did for me was the most costly thing, laying down his life, and that all I needed to do was give God my life and my heart.

Not that I was gonna be perfect from that moment on, not that I was still not gonna have temptation, and I had to learn that because I was uh naive and thinking, oh, I'd never be tempted again.

Like this is gone, like God's you know, cleared my record, and I'm not gonna struggle with this anymore.

And uh that would be a complete lie.

And I had to uh learn that.

And as we say, true freedom is being able to choose Jesus in the midst of the temptation, uh, not to be temptationless.

And so that's been the journey that I've been on, and choosing Jesus and knowing his worth is um something that we walk out daily of saying, okay, I have this desire that is not rightly aligned with you, God, so I'm choosing this each day to lay this down so that you can be glorified in my life.

People making this decision, it's just not something that you hear talked about.

It's really inspiring to hear about it.

So, some questions, if you guys don't mind, because this is something I've heard a lot as a pastor, these questions that come in.

Well, God made me this way.

And God wouldn't, you know, why if he didn't want me to live this way, why would he have made me this way?

Yeah, no, that's definitely something that I even grappled with within myself.

It's interesting, you know, we can go all the way back to the very beginning in Genesis and see how God created male and female, right?

And his likeness to be in a covenant relationship, a marriage.

So even looking at the biology, looking at science, understanding, you know, why God created male and female to procreate.

You know, we can even look to all those things.

Just like we said, that inner knowing.

I believe that that is there, whether the person outwardly is really saying that they're experiencing that inner knowing or not.

I believe that it's there because God puts that in us.

And all men have fallen short of the glory of God.

No one is outside of sin, you know, original sin.

And so we're all born into something.

And we always say, you know, it's um, they say, you know, you're born this way, and we say, no, you need to be born again.

100%.

And that's all of us, whatever the sin is.

It's not just homosexuality.

But with that, um, like we were talking about the LGBTQ, it's all about this is who you are and this is your identity.

But there's a difference between somebody who struggles with same-sex attraction, because that's okay.

The sin is in the behavior of it, it's not in the struggle of it.

So it's okay to say, yeah, I struggle with same-sex attraction, but I'm choosing, like we've been talking about, to um love Jesus and lay this down versus, no, this is who I am, and I'm taking on this identity because ultimately we are sons and we are daughters.

That is our identity.

And what you've seen in our lives and so many of people's lives that we know, we come head to head with that false identity and have to humble ourselves, right?

Because pride is what the LGBT community really stands on.

But we are saying in great humility, we are surrendering our lives unto the Lord in what he says is right, and what he says is best, and what he says is good.

And that's really the question: is God good despite the struggle with same-sex attractions?

Like, is he still good?

Is his heart good for you?

And that's the place we all came to, that his waves and what he says is good, and humility is the exact opposite of pride, which says, I create my own kingdom, I can do whatever to my body.

If I'm a guy living in a girl's body, a girl living in a guy's body, however I feel, whatever I love goes.

That's the kingdom of self, and that's the kingdom of pride.

You know, confused with your core identity and all that, I think there's a lot of people who would say, Well, that's just that's not fair.

That's a lot to ask someone to lay down, like anything but that.

You know what I mean?

So, what what's your perspective on that?

Just the idea that some would say this is like, this is the one thing maybe you could never truly lay down.

You know?

Yeah, well, Jesus himself did.

So the one we follow laid it down, says that he was tempted in every way and never sinned.

He took on human flesh.

And so, yeah, in my own strength and your strength and your strength, we can't.

And and it is, I trust me, that same question that people ask, I've asked myself the same thing, like, why me, God?

Why is mine so big?

Why, why do I, why is the thing that that I get to offer up so heavy?

You know, while everybody else can get married and and have family and all this, and and mine looks like this.

That's been a wrestle since I encountered the Lord and and and even before.

But what I'm realizing, and someone once said this, is like, this is a gift that I can actually give back to him, and it's big.

It is big.

But I would be super arrogant and prideful, in my opinion, to say my suffering is greater than even yours.

He's just showing me we're we're never gonna live this life without challenges.

But I was reading this morning, actually, even he says, take my yoke upon, come to me, first and foremost, come to me, right?

You who are anxious, we're like, we're weighed down.

Come to me.

My yoke is easy and my burden light.

And so, in that, that's to all of us.

That's not just those of us who have same sex attraction sacrifice.

Yeah, I think even like we're so used to saying, This is so hard, like, why do I have to do this?

I think we just have to we have to start seeing the other side of it of how beautiful the sacrifice is that we're giving to the Lord.

For me, I think it's it's actually a type of worship that we're doing.

We're denying our flesh every day because we love him and we love to be obedient to him.

When you really have him and really encounter him and even in his word, like those that love him follow his commands.

And there's a tension in that, and there was in my own life.

And so sometimes the truth of the Lord, Jesus, people, I mean, wanted to hurt him, throw him off clip, you know, and he would speak truth to them.

But truth is the most loving thing.

But we have to have God's heart.

We can give the truth, but if we don't have the Lord's heart, it is you don't want to.

You don't want to give it up because you don't know the true love of God is the only love that can truly fill.

So, like Kim was saying earlier, we're looking to other people to fill that.

But really, God wants to encounter each one of us, whether married or single, that He is ultimately number one.

Even in marriage, we see it all the time.

Like husband and wife can become idols to one another.

So we're not sitting here because, oh gosh, God's gonna be so mad at me if I don't, right?

He's gonna go into hell.

Yeah, that won't keep you.

Fear of punishment.

I mean, in that, if if my only motivation is to not go to hell, then I'm missing God's heart.

I'm missing his heart.

It's really this question.

So when I lay down my sexuality daily, weekly, monthly, you know, do you trust me, Kim?

Like me laying down whatever nets I have is really a response to love and trust.

What uh what would you guys say to let's maybe start here and we can kind of expand on it.

Let's start with the uh illustration of like you you're a parent, you have a child that's living a homosexual lifestyle, and they're having a wedding and they want you to come to the wedding.

Like a lot, I've actually had several questions about that specific scenario.

Maybe we can start there and then see what that opens up into just conceptually.

Personal conviction sometimes looks different.

Now that never goes against, it should always probably be in line with the commands of God, right?

Think, you know, I'll I'll just personally share where I'm currently at with that.

And I I just never want to celebrate what God Himself doesn't celebrate in someone else or in myself.

But my with my desires, I wish the scriptures lined up with my desires that so long as you're committed to a person, right?

Not a man or just a person, but it doesn't say that.

Um and that's where I have to either choose to trust God or choose my to trust my desire.

And so when it comes to someone that I love and care about that is choosing to make this decision into a union with the same sex, um, first and foremost, I'm gonna seek the Lord and say, Am I missing something here?

Can do you want me to go to this and and celebrate the person?

And how do I separate that from celebrate the celebrating the decision they're making?

The different things I'll run into, even if I have a long conversation with them, they know where I stand, but they say, Kim, I still want you to come.

Well, now, Lord, what do I do when I'm at the wedding, I'm at this celebration, and people now are thinking I'm celebrating.

Or they say, Are you so happy for them?

Am I supposed to now be honest or just be quiet?

You know, and so there's a lot that can be opened up because sometimes I've thought, well, just so long as I'm real with them, I sit down, I share how much I love them, and but I don't agree with the decision they're making.

But now I'm also sending a message, just even being there to even those that are there.

So for me personally, where I'm at, um, it's something that I just would not celebrate.

But this is important.

I also wouldn't celebrate if my friend, who's a guy, is dating a girl and they bought a house together, invited me to a house morning party.

He is always four people, but that doesn't mean he's for everything we do.

And I think that's what we have to look at.

When we talk about this with parents, you know, a lot of times they just don't know what to do and they want to fix, and no person wants to be fixed or be a project.

So I think being able to take a moment when they're when a kid is sharing and to know, like, it's very vulnerable, like even the fact that they're sharing.

Like, I wish I would have had a safe place to be able to share.

Maybe my life would have gone a different way, you know, in that.

So I think we have to see too, where is the person?

Some people are like, we've talked about this is me.

If you don't accept, if you don't come to my wedding, like then our relationship is done.

And I've seen that so many times, and it's a really hard place.

And I understand why people would want to go to the wedding, why parents would want to go to the wedding, because they want to keep that connection with their child.

I think as Christians, we're called into places that don't just look Christian, right?

So 100%.

Like that is that needs to be said and and walked out, right?

And so by what I was even sharing before, that is not saying, oh, I just won't go anywhere that's sinful.

I'm talking about celebrity.

I said, no, there's this total, you know, and I think that's what we need to look at.

And I and and it's very rare, like MJ, what you shared, and I was in the same boat.

I asked my mom, I said, Mom, if I when I was out living, you know, in the lifestyle and dating women, I'm like, mom, if I marry a woman, are you gonna come?

And she's like, I love you too much, no.

And that seems so like, and it hurt.

I'm like, but mom, but I knew that was the frustrating thing.

It was like, I knew her answer because it was almost my own, you know, because I even knew, and I didn't like to hear that.

But I'm so thankful that she didn't try to change what love looks like.

My mom used to say this um, she said she cared more about my soul than my smile.

And like when you really care for someone's soul, um, John Paul II, whether Catholic or not, is a great man with a lot of love for the Lord and wisdom, said that loving someone's desiring heaven for them.

Like to love someone is to really desire heaven for them.

And so if we're really caring for one another's souls, our ours as well as others, um, I think we will have a smile on our face.

But if we're just focused on, hey, they're happy right now, keep them happy, keep them happy, right?

This world is changing left and right.

Like there's gonna be no stability at all.

And so I think it's about that soul care.

And so, yes, we are called into dark places, but we don't celebrate darkness.

Jesus ate with sinners, but he wasn't like, yeah, bro, keep going, keep, you know, scraping some off some off the top there, tax collectors.

Like he encountered and wanted to encounter them and met them in that place, right?

To to invite them in.

I don't condemn you, now go and sin no more.

You know, those two things went hand in hand with that.

But is but is that right for me when I'm invited to a union to go now and try to pull them out of something that they're asking me to come and celebrate?

Right.

I think that's actually rude.

Uh would be rude of me.

I think also it's for parents, it's a great opportunity to even introduce Jesus to the other person.

You know, like every time I would bring my friends over, my mom loved to cook for them, have them over, and just have a relationship for them, and it came, it was so good to them that they would tell me, Your mom is the best Christian I've ever met.

You know, and they knew her stance, and she she would always tell me, I will never compromise the word of God.

But I'm gonna love you guys even harder now.

You know, so her being that reflection of Jesus, introduce Jesus to them.

You know, so I think it's it's very important to yes, love your child and want them to be saved, but look at that other life that you can win for Jesus too.

And I just wanted to add, never underestimate the power of prayer.

Outwardly support, but get in that prayer closet and speak identity, speak the word.

You know, I think with prayer it can become, well, this is what the reality looks like.

But there, you are doing so much in the spirit in all of our testimonies.

We have parents that saw one thing and proclaimed another thing, and now here we are walking on the path of their prayers in God's righteousness on the path of life.

And so I just want to encourage any parent who is watching this, do not stop praying because the Lord has you as an intercessor for your children.

Well, guys, um, before we wrap this up, again, just a couple more details about the Freedom March that you guys can share.

Yeah, we will be here in Atlanta.

We're so excited.

Tiemont Park, October 29th, 1 p.m.

We're gonna have worship, testimonies.

We're gonna do a small march around there.

It's really a full circle moment for me because right next to the park is the whole gay district and all the bars and areas, and that's where I used to party and just to imagine God outside of time, right?

Looking at my life and taking me from that place to literally full circle to us proclaiming the gospel.

We come in love.

There is no hate in anything that we do.

Uh, we ask the body of Christ to come.

You don't have to be a former LGBTQ individual to come.

Uh, we're just standing on the truth of God's word and we're bringing his love, and our whole motto is hear the sound of freedom.

So we really want Atlanta to know that Jesus is real, that his love is real, and that he's come into our city.

Guys, thank you for this time.

That's been a cue.

I don't know how long it's been, but it's uh been an amazing conversation.

And I've learned a lot, and I'm really grateful for the perspective.

I really, really am.

So thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Wasn't that good?

So we actually had an hour and ten minute long interview, and we were able to cut that down.

But man, I uh part of me just wishes you could have been a flying on the wall for the whole thing.

Actually, we might be able to put the extended version of it up online if that's something you guys would be interested in, because it was uh it was phenomenal.

And so I'm not gonna keep going.

I don't I really would love for us just to wrestle with and think about some of the things they share, but I will say this this was something that was so powerful for me sitting there.

Our culture refuses to ever share that story.

There's only one way things can go in our culture, and it rem here's what it reminded me of when I was in college you know, at that time and 20 years ago, the the big challenge to my faith at the time was, you know, you're you're stupid if you believe in in all this stuff.

You're not intelligent, it's not scientific, right?

And so there was this thing where I had these professors and and like they just made it seem like you'd have to be a moron.

Anyone who has any intelligence or education doesn't believe this.

And I remember the first time I met someone who had like multiple PhDs and were super academic and intelligent and had written books, and they were even like more uh decorated in their academics than my own professors, and they had deep faith in Jesus, and it was like, oh yeah.

There's this whole side of this that I've never even been able to see, and and there's been a lot of work to make me almost never see it because it's like a story no one wants to tell.

Well, the same is true in our culture sexually.

That their story is not a story that our culture would ever celebrate.

It's someone coming out of that lifestyle.

But here's what's really hard.

It's also a story that a lot of churches don't want to celebrate for a lot of reasons.

It's kind of awkward and people don't know what to talk about, how to what to do with it.

And so it's so hard for them because they have they don't have a place in culture for that story to be lifted up.

They also don't have a place a lot of times in church.

So this Saturday, they're having this event in Piedmont Park called Freedom March at one o'clock.

And uh I told them that I would just invite any of us to attend that.

And if you thought their testimonies were powerful here on video, um they are gonna be there as well as as many other people, and they just said, man, it would be so amazing if as many Christians as possible could just come and support us, because what they're actually doing in a public setting is really hard.

And as you can imagine, they're like putting themselves out there.

And so I just want to invite you guys to that this Saturday at one o'clock.

But I hope that everything we talked about today, I know it was a lot, but I hope it was informative.

I hope it was something that gets you thinking and something that maybe you can wrestle with and and think through and perhaps share with others, or use that for yourselves.

What I want all of us to know is I I finish and we'll finish with this, we'll pray.

I asked them at the very end, hey, what can the church do differently, you know, in in general.

And they said that all of them grew up in a place where if they had those struggles, there was no place in church to talk about it.

So I just want it to be known for those of you in this room and your children, this will be a church, always, where there is no shame, there is no guilt in ever talking about a struggle, a temptation of any kind.

We are all, all of us, on equal footing when it comes to who we are and who God is.

Okay?

So this is always gonna play a place like that, and that's important to know.

All right, that said, I'm gonna pray.

We have one baptism, so let's do this.

Jesus, thank you so much for this morning.

Thank you so much for this day.

Thank you, God, for giving us the ability to talk about really difficult topics and uh kind of explosive topics, Lord, but to do so in a way I really believe that's loving and kind and thoughtful and gracious.

And I just thank you so much for MJ and for Kim and for angels sharing their stories, God, and giving that to us as a gift.

Um so, Lord, we just want to pray for them as they prepare for this really big event on Saturday where they're gonna share their stories publicly and and inspire other people to know that there is freedom in Jesus.

And so, Lord, I just pray that you would uh God honor them.

God, honor all of us as we as we sort of struggle to work this stuff out.

These are hard topics, and even what we're gonna talk about next week is really, really relevant for so many of us.

And in some ways, what we're talking about next week is um more general in terms of how many of us deal with it issues of marriage and relationships and things like that.

And I just pray, Lord, that you would uh remind us that even though you call us to surrender everything to you, you don't call us to do anything you haven't already done yourself.

You surrendered everything to come be one of us.

And you surrendered your whole life up for us on the cross.

Help us follow in kind.

We pray this in your name of Jesus.

Amen.