COM Newsletter - April 2021
WHY ME…?
“Why me!?” I vividly remember my younger boy child question me when once I asked him to do a small chore. “Why not my sister?”
Some parents are tempted to react like my military drill sergeant in army basic training, who daily and loudly drilled into our minds, “Yours is not to reason why! Yours is but to do or die!” Many people today turn away from God viewing Him as just such a tyrannical Father. They resist submitting to a god who demands arbitrary, unreasonable obedience. However, our God is not so pictured. He is a loving heavenly Father Who invites us to “Come now, and let us reason together…” (Isa. 1:18)
On the other hand, there are those today viewing God as totally indulgent, asking the question, “Why? Why do I need to change or be changed? God loves me the way I am.” Especially is this the defense of the LGBT identity. This, too, is a misconception of the love of God. The truth is that God loves me, not the way I am, but in spite of the way I am. He loves me where I am but wants me to be transformed into a better me, into His own likeness, into what He created me to be in the first place. The apostle Paul advises, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Romans 12:2)
In response to my boy child’s “Why me?”, I said “Because you are still asking, ‘Why me?’ When you can learn to give cheerful and prompt obedience, then perhaps I will ask your sister.”
My answer to his question came from the heart of a loving father only wanting to train his child for his own good. Can you imagine the consequence of such a question from a child playing in a busy street when called back by his father?
I told my son that I’d be happy to answer his “why questions” after his obedience, but what I needed first was loving, trusting, cheerful and prompt compliance. Otherwise, I would be enabling defiance and rebellion.
1 John 4:8 tell us that “God is love.” Therefore, it is only reasonable to believe that all His reproofs, corrections, instructions, His warnings, and yes, even His punishments come from the heart of perfect love. He loves to answer our “why questions” as long as we are willing to trustingly and lovingly submit ourselves to His wisdom. He knows the destination to which the LGBT path leads, to which the path of all sin issues leads. It is the broad way that leads ultimately to destruction.
The next time you are tempted to question “Why?” or “Why me?”, remember it is because God loves you! You are called; you are chosen; you are special to Him. He is not willing that any should perish, especially you! He “cares for [you] as though there were not another individual on the face of the earth.” (5T 345) And your heavenly Father always knows best.
SPECIAL MESSAGE
Q&A
Another question: What is wrong with a gay couple living together though not practicing the gay behavior, or lifestyle?
Reply: To answer a question with a question, a method often practiced by our Savior: Would the church accept into membership an unmarried heterosexual couple continuing to live together after “conversion”? Or, would the church expect them to separate until marriage...? What is the difference...?
Besides, the gay lifestyle involves much more than sexual intimacy. Gay couples do not usually have sexual intimacy openly, but privately like heterosexual couples. It is not the cessation of sexual intimacy that demonstrates conversion from the gay lifestyle. It is all that goes along with identifying as a couple openly: shared housing, close companionship, shared banking, a shared life, etc.
Obviously, there is much more to a marriage than sexual intimacy. In marriage, two become one in the eyes of the Lord, in the eyes of the community, and of the church. They are bonded. They share life with all its ups and downs, ins and outs, finances, and possessions. They commit to loving and cherishing each other through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, till death do them part. In Bible terms, they “cleave one to another.” Sexual intimacy is only a very small factor in the bonding together of two souls. Many married couples, due to a multitude of factors, end up forgoing sexual intimacy within their marriage. That does not necessarily break their bond, their oneness, their commitment to one another for life.
If two want to identify as “still gay,” this means that they want to continue identifying with their bondage, with their sin, rather than to take on the identity afforded them through Jesus Christ as “free indeed” (John 8:36), a new creature, with old things passing away and all things new. Again, “The new birth consists of new motives, new tastes, and new tendencies” And “A genuine conversion changes both hereditary and cultivated tendencies to wrong.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, and Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 6, 1101)
Having come out of the gay lifestyle myself 20 years ago, these are issues that I, too, had to wrestle with. I wanted my Christian experience to be genuine and not an exercise in futility. I wanted salvation from my life and lifestyle of sin, for I was sin-sick with a hatred for my life of sin. (See Genesis 3:15.) I had to acknowledge that homosexuality is a sin issue, and therefore turn away from it, never more to identify with it. God says in Jeremiah 3, “Only acknowledge thine iniquity... and I will heal your backsliding” (Jeremiah 3:13, 22). Identifying as a “gay Christian” reminds me of Lot's wife looking back upon all that she had to leave behind. She was still attached.
I hope and pray that these thoughts are helpful to you as you are faced with this challenge in your churches. Remember, we are, in a loving and caring way, to call sin by its right name, and also to “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up [our] voice[s] like a trumpet, and show my people [says God] their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1).
This is all a part of the redemption process.
Victor
Q&A text taken from:
TESTIMONY
POWER OVER SATAN
By Lee Forbes
The subtlety of Satan's ways
Is oft hard to perceive
As everything he does is aimed
To hurt destroy deceive
And every step we take to him
Is opportunity
To make us stumble from God's Way
Into iniquity
But God has promised if in Him
We choose to place our trust
He'll place His power to resist
The devil's ways in us
And every time we're tempted
To pursue the devil's plan
We'll then become a witness
To the grace of God in man
By not allowing Satan
Any opportunity
As we continue walking
In our Lord's integrity
Revealing that the world might see
What God can do in those
Who choose not self but trusting faith
Just like our Saviour chose
So friend when you are tempted
Don't give in the slightest bit
But grasp the hand of Jesus
Knowing everything you get
Is His ordained appointment
To make firmer everyday
Your great resolve to serve Him
Driving Satan far away
SPECIAL MESSAGE
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