The Devil can
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
William Shakespeare
One question I get asked from time to time as I teach an adult bible study is, “Can homosexuals get to heaven?”
Mark Hughes founding pastor of Church of the Rock in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada, writing in the Promise keepers magazine Seven, November-December 2014 tells of meeting an old friend who had been living in Winnipeg’s homosexual community for years the friend made the statement, “I guess your church would never welcome someone like me?” he replied “Of course we would, your homosexual sin is no worse than my heterosexual sin. The day you are not welcome, is the day no one is welcome.”
Sadly all to many people be they from the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trangendered, community) don’t feel comfortable going, especially to an Evangelical church. How sad.
Back in the nineties a high profile televangelist said God was going to kill all the homosexuals in North America within a few years. What garbage! And how wrong he was. The LGBT community has more rights today that ever before in North America.
Were that man to make such a prediction in old Testament times and found to be wrong he’d have been stoned. (Perhaps he was stoned? But we’ll never no.)
Now I am not a gay man, but I cringe when I hear the gay community coming under attack by preachers and individual Christians as if they have some special sin.
Those who call themselves Christians and are attacking the LGBT community or any community be it Islam, Hindu’s Buddhist or any other group are guilty of making them stumble and thus are sinning themselves.
The people who are being attacked see the attack especially if it’s on their faith or lifestyle as a personal attack. Thus it gets their guard up and shuts down all dialogue. Who wouldn’t someone doing it to me as a Christians would see me upset.
What those on the outside of the church need to understand are the words of Jesus who said,
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’
Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
Matthew 7:21-23.
Christians are called to Love God, their neighbour and even their enemy.
The Apostle Paul defines true Christian love as,
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails....
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a,13.
Fortunately there are many in the church today of whom I am one, that are calling out to all people whoever they are and offering the hand of friendship and fellowship.
Tony Campolo the American evangelist said,
“We ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus, and that's what I do.”
Tony Campolo
As a Christian I believe I have the most important message anyone can take to the world. That of the love of Christ.
Jesus made very important statements
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
John 3:16,17
The death of Jesus illustrates the choice we have. Luke records
"One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?
We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”
Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Luke 23:39-43
We can either believe Jesus is who he say’s he is the one and only son of God who died for our sins. Confess our sins to him and ask Him into our hearts and lives or we can reject him.
It is something all people must do. No matter who they are pauper, prince, pastor or you.
Please think about it.
Showing posts with label LGBT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LGBT. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
Sunday, 28 December 2014
What Kind of Christian
What Kind of Christian?
Someone asked me what kind of Christian I was. Was I with a so called main line church, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, etc. or was I an evangelical. A Baptist or Pentecostal type.
I said I was a Christian.
I do not like labels when it comes to my faith. Friends do call me a liberal evangelical but that’s largely because I’m hard to define.
I simply call myself a Christian and try and live up to the teachings of Christ. There are far to many “types of Christians” today. Not only that many who label themselves Christian and have pulpits in the media are not Christians at all.
I see my job as a Christian as one of reaching out to all people. I believe the God I worship is an all inclusive God.
I believe Jesus would have sat down and ate with gay’s and members of the LGBT community. That he would have reached out to them in love and not criticized them because of their lifestyle.
Jesus certainly sat down with tax collectors and sinners the bible tell us that in Matthew nine.
Sadly many pastors and evangelist in the media and in may local churches, cannot sit down with not just the gay community, but other groups, simply because they’ve poisoned the waters so to speak.
They’ve in some cases virtually shouted from the housetops Gay’s and Lesbians are going to hell and said the same about many others.
The bible doesn’t say that. A gay man can just as easily get to heaven as Billy Graham.
Paul writing to the Romans states,
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:23,24.
That all means you, me, Billy Graham and anyone else who has ever been born. Not only that we cannot be good enough to enter heaven. That is why Christ came.
Christ came to not only pay the price for OUR sin but to point us the way to God and eternal life.
Paul writing to the Ephesians states,
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Ephesians 2:8,9.
No man can look into the heart of another and know why they are the way they are. Only God knows what makes a person tick.
The Psalmist wrote,
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:13-16.
It is precisely because only God knows what goes on inside us that Christ admonishes us not to judge (Matthew 7:1,2).
Rather Jesus said,
“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20.
This for me is what a Christian should be doing. Pointing the way to Christ and teaching new converts the ways of Christ.
God will one day Judge all humanity but then he is God and has that right.
The important thing for me is making sure those I know and those I have a chance to speak to verbally or by the written word are given the opportunity to come to know Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
Do you. Do you have assurance that were you to die today that you would go to heaven?
Think about it.
Someone asked me what kind of Christian I was. Was I with a so called main line church, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, etc. or was I an evangelical. A Baptist or Pentecostal type.
I said I was a Christian.
I do not like labels when it comes to my faith. Friends do call me a liberal evangelical but that’s largely because I’m hard to define.
I simply call myself a Christian and try and live up to the teachings of Christ. There are far to many “types of Christians” today. Not only that many who label themselves Christian and have pulpits in the media are not Christians at all.
I see my job as a Christian as one of reaching out to all people. I believe the God I worship is an all inclusive God.
I believe Jesus would have sat down and ate with gay’s and members of the LGBT community. That he would have reached out to them in love and not criticized them because of their lifestyle.
Jesus certainly sat down with tax collectors and sinners the bible tell us that in Matthew nine.
Sadly many pastors and evangelist in the media and in may local churches, cannot sit down with not just the gay community, but other groups, simply because they’ve poisoned the waters so to speak.
They’ve in some cases virtually shouted from the housetops Gay’s and Lesbians are going to hell and said the same about many others.
The bible doesn’t say that. A gay man can just as easily get to heaven as Billy Graham.
Paul writing to the Romans states,
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:23,24.
That all means you, me, Billy Graham and anyone else who has ever been born. Not only that we cannot be good enough to enter heaven. That is why Christ came.
Christ came to not only pay the price for OUR sin but to point us the way to God and eternal life.
Paul writing to the Ephesians states,
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Ephesians 2:8,9.
No man can look into the heart of another and know why they are the way they are. Only God knows what makes a person tick.
The Psalmist wrote,
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:13-16.
It is precisely because only God knows what goes on inside us that Christ admonishes us not to judge (Matthew 7:1,2).
Rather Jesus said,
“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20.
This for me is what a Christian should be doing. Pointing the way to Christ and teaching new converts the ways of Christ.
God will one day Judge all humanity but then he is God and has that right.
The important thing for me is making sure those I know and those I have a chance to speak to verbally or by the written word are given the opportunity to come to know Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
Do you. Do you have assurance that were you to die today that you would go to heaven?
Think about it.
Saturday, 4 October 2014
By way of an Apology
By way of an apology
I feel the Christian community needs to apologize to the secular community in general and particularly the LBGT community for judging them.
Individual ministers, and evangelist both in the media and out of the media need to in all humility go to the secular community and say “I’m sorry for judging you.”
Tony Campolo an evangelist said,
“We (Christians) ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus, and that's what I do.”
Tony Campolo
It is the Christians duty to tell people what they believed.
The Apostle Paul did just that. In his travels he went to Athens. The book of Acts describes what happened. What he said is what I as a Christian truly believe.
“So he (Paul) reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”
At that, Paul left the Council.
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Acts 17:17-34
I leave the above for those reading this blog to decide for themselves what Christ is to them.
I only ask that you think about it.
I feel the Christian community needs to apologize to the secular community in general and particularly the LBGT community for judging them.
Individual ministers, and evangelist both in the media and out of the media need to in all humility go to the secular community and say “I’m sorry for judging you.”
Tony Campolo an evangelist said,
“We (Christians) ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus, and that's what I do.”
Tony Campolo
It is the Christians duty to tell people what they believed.
The Apostle Paul did just that. In his travels he went to Athens. The book of Acts describes what happened. What he said is what I as a Christian truly believe.
“So he (Paul) reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”
At that, Paul left the Council.
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Acts 17:17-34
I leave the above for those reading this blog to decide for themselves what Christ is to them.
I only ask that you think about it.
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