Gay Marriage – Page 2 – Michelle Lesley

If your theology pretty much matches up with mine (as outlined in the “Welcome” and “Statement of Faith” tabs) and you’d like to contribute a guest post, drop me an e-mail at MichelleLesley1@yahoo.com,
and let’s chat about it. lisa engel church

What I Want in a Church
by Lisa Engel

1. I need the FULL counsel of God preached. I don’t need a preacher who tip-toes around certain parts of the Bible because he’s afraid to offend or appear judgmental (to those who don’t understand Matthew 7 in its context)

2. I want a church whose preacher and (male) elders warn the flock about apostasy and wolves in sheep’s clothing. They need to instill the importance of discernment because the internet and broadcast television, especially, are rampant with heretical teachings.

3. I want a church that isn’t focused on appealing to my flesh and “feelings”. I don’t need a “seeker-friendly” church. Church is a meeting place for the believer, no? We are there to be equipped to go out and seek the seekers and THEN bring them into the fold. What people are fed is what they’ll return for. The main thing needs to be the main thing and it mustn’t be entertainment and amusement.

4. After sound preaching, I need fellowship, accountability, sharpening, edification, and hopefully rebuke when necessary.

5. I’d like women’s Bible studies to be overseen by the male leaders of the church. I believe they need to use biblical discernment regarding study materials the women use. (This goes for any material any other group within the church might use) Too often, women choose their own material and choose the latest fad study that can likely be from a false teacher. And what’s wrong with just studying the Bible on its own anyway???

6. I’d like a church library where books are reviewed and discerned BEFORE being made available to the flock. There are a LOT of heretical books on the market that fill church library shelves. This shouldn’t be! Books on meditation and extra-biblical revelation are rampant. Warnings regarding so-called “Christian films” would be wise too. People are feeding on all sorts of heresy outside of their local church. Why not ongoing classes on discernment and how to to be good Bereans?

7. I need a prayer-minded church, not one where it’s more about potlucks.

8. I need a church that knows doctrine matters and makes clear their views on theology.

9. My church needs to be clear on where it stands on social issues such as gay marriage and the sanctity of life. The flock needs to hear preaching on such subjects from time to time. Too often the pulpit never touches on these things. It’s very important these days for a pastor to speak out on the issues of the day. It would be nice if the church, on its webpage, would acknowledge that it believes in the sanctity of life and traditional, biblical marriage.

10. God is Sovereign. I need my church to understand this.

11. Easter eggs and bunnies. We are to be in the world and not of it. Isn’t there enough of the Pagan Easter celebration in the world? Why on Earth would a church host Easter egg hunts??? To get the unsaved kids and their families in the church door? A terrible marketing scheme, wooing people with something OTHER than Gospel message. Is not the Gospel message enough without having to incorporate the nonsense of eggs and bunnies? It makes zero biblical sense. But churches will find a way to incorporate the eggs and bunnies into the Gospel message because they obviously don’t think the Gospel message can stand on its own. Churches only add to the confusion in doing Pagan celebrations. Scrap the eggs and bunnies for the Cross.

12. Yoga. Christianized yoga. Whatever twisted name it is given, a church that supports this Eastern religion practice is ignorant. I wouldn’t attend a church where this was endorsed or offered, any way it’s labeled.

Lisa is a wife, mom and grandma who loves her Lord Jesus Christ and wants to contend as earnestly as she can for the faith.

ALTHOUGH I DO MY BEST TO THOROUGHLY VET THE THEOLOGY OF THE BLOGGERS WHO SUBMIT GUEST POSTS, IT IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE FOR THINGS TO SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS. PLEASE MAKE SURE ANY BLOGGER YOU FOLLOW, INCLUDING ME, RIGHTLY AND FAITHFULLY HANDLES GOD’S WORD AND HOLDS TO SOUND BIBLICAL DOCTRINE.

Gospel, Homosexuality, Salvation, Sin, Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday ~ Cancer: A Love Story

May 21, 2015May 20, 2015 Michelle Lesley

Originally published April 7, 2013

Cancer.

The dreadfulness of the word hung heavy in the air between Jana and her friend Denise.

“The doctor says it’s terminal,” Denise choked, “I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do.”

Jana’s heart broke as she envisioned the difficult emotional road ahead for Denise and watched the tears streaming down her face.

“I’d do anything to take that pain away,” thought Jana. “Anything.”

For days after they parted, Jana’s thoughts were consumed with how she could help Denise accept and feel better about her condition. By the weekend, when they met for coffee, Jana was ready.

“Denise,” she began, “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I think I know why you’re so uncomfortable with having cancer.”

“Oh? Why?” asked Denise.

“Well, first of all, you shouldn’t be fighting against the idea of having cancer. It’s a completely natural biological event. In fact, you were probably born genetically predisposed to cancer. It’s part of who you are. Accept it and embrace it as something that makes you unique and wonderful!”

Denise seemed skeptical, but Jana plunged ahead.

“You’re also worried about what other people will think of you. Maybe they’ll think you’re weak and try to help you with things that you’d rather do for yourself.”

“But maybe I’ll need some help,” Denise suggested quietly.

“Nonsense!” Jana retorted, “Having cancer doesn’t make you different from anybody else. It’s exactly the same as not having cancer. What we need to do is show that to the world. Maybe we should have a rally for cancer equality!”

“Jana, that’s great and all,” Denise whispered somberly, “but I’m going to die. That makes all the stuff you’re talking about seem a lot less important.”

Jana seems like a very loving and kind person, but does the “help” she was offering Denise seem…well…helpful?

What if I told you that during this entire scenario, Jana personally knew a doctor who had a proven cure for Denise’s type of cancer, and was giving it away, yet Jana never told Denise? How loving and kind does Jana seem now?

Now read back through this story and substitute “homosexuality” for “cancer”.

We live in a culture that tells Christians that we are to “love” our homosexual friends and loved ones by embracing homosexuality as good and natural. We even hear people who claim to be Christians saying this. But is this how the Bible defines love? Is this how Jesus loved people?

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:10-11

Think back over the encounters Jesus had with people, from the woman at the well, to Zaccheus, to Nicodemus, to the woman caught in adultery, to the rich young ruler, to anybody else Jesus ever interacted with.

Did Jesus ever “love” someone by telling him it was OK to stay in his sin?

No, He didn’t.

Jesus loved sinners by calling them to repentance, forgiveness, and a new life in Christ.

Why? Because it isn’t love to help the slave to embrace his chains. It’s love to set him free.

Christ loved us by going to the cross and becoming the propitiation –satisfying God’s wrath—for our sins. He laid down His life for our freedom.

And, Christian, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. We must lay down our opinions, our politics, our ideas of what we’d like the Bible to say, maybe even our actual lives, in order to help people know freedom in Christ. We have the cure for their spiritual cancer—the gospel—and it is not “love” to knowingly misdiagnose them or keep that cure from them.

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13

But as important as it is to rescue the perishing, there’s an even greater issue at stake here for those of us who claim the name of Christ.

For our sin, our Savior endured wrongful conviction, ridicule, mockery, and bullying.

For our sin, our Savior was slapped, punched, spit on, had His beard yanked out, and thorns and brambles mashed into His skull.

For our sin, our Savior had the skin flayed off His back, buttocks, and legs, whipped nearly to death until He was a bloody mess.

For our sin, our Savior, beaten, bloody, and broken of body, hoisted a heavy, splintery cross onto His shoulders and carried it through town and up the hill to His execution.

One nail.

Two nails.

Three nails.

For your sin. For my sin. For our neighbors’ sin.

How dare you, or I, or anyone spit in the face of our bleeding, dying Savior by saying that the sin that put Him on the cross is OK?

How dare we?

How can any of us claim to love Christ while celebrating the nails, the spear, the crown of thorns?

By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
1 John 2:5b-6

Jesus walked the way of leading people to repentance from sin and to the beauty, the freedom of a glorious new life through faith in Himself. Will we, who say we abide in Him, love Jesus and our homosexual neighbor enough to walk in the same way in which He walked?

Homosexuality, Salvation

God Loves Gays

May 8, 2015May 7, 2015 Michelle Lesley

Last week, as I was mindlessly flipping through Facebook, this picture caught my eye. It was attached to a news article about the Supreme Court’s hearing on same sex “marriage”. I was already at my saturation point with the reporting on the day’s events, but this picture just reached out and grabbed my heart.

“God loves gays,” the young man’s sign says. Rarely, perhaps never, has a statement been so beautifully true and so painfully false all at the same time.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:7-8

It’s true. God does love gays. He doesn’t love them because He sees what they might someday become after leaving the lifestyle behind. He doesn’t love them because they’re great “fixer upper” projects. He doesn’t love them because He feels sorry for them. He just loves them. Right where they are. Not after they get cleaned up. Now.

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Have you ever really thought about the implications of that statement?

God loves the homosexual man while he is sodomizing his partner.

God loves the gang banger while he is pulling the trigger of his gun.

God loves the prostitute while she is servicing her client.

God loves the child molester while he is violating that precious little one.

God loves the atheist soldier in a godless country while he is torturing Christians.

In the deepest, blackest night of our sin, God loves each and every one of us. Only a profoundly, unfathomably good and kind God could, or would, do such a thing.

But the story doesn’t end there.

You see, as unbelievable as it is that God could love someone so drenched in evil, He takes things a step further. God’s love motivated Him to act.

while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Rescue. Redemption. Salvation. However you want to put it, God personally came down and sacrificed Himself so that even the most wretched sinner would have a way out. No more enslavement to evil. No more being pawns of the devil in his never-ending quest for revenge against the King. No more separation from God, now, or in eternity.

God drove a cross-shaped stake into the ground at Calvary and said, “No more.”

God does love gays. And murderers. And child rapists. And hookers. And even prideful, rebellious, good little Sunday School girls like me. But not like this young man’s sign implies. He thinks God shows love by approving of his homosexuality. But an all-powerful God who would say He loves sinners and yet leave them to rot in their sin without lifting a finger to help them isn’t loving. Isn’t all-powerful. Isn’t God.

God does love you, my young friend. You simply have no idea how much.

Gospel, Homosexuality, Politics, Salvation, Sin, Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday ~ SoteriObamaGigliology and You

March 19, 2015March 25, 2015 Michelle Lesley

Originally published January 12, 2013

Disclaimer: This article should not be viewed as an endorsement of Louie Giglio or any unbiblical theology he currently holds to.

Is Louie Giglio a living martyr or a coward? What do you think of our shiny new state church here in the U.S.? If you haven’t heard about The Giglio Imbroglio, allow me to bring you up to speed.

Pastor Louie Giglio was invited to say a prayer at President Obama’s inauguration ceremony later this month. Being a Christian pastor, it should have been expected that he would have preached at some point on what the Bible says about the sin of homosexuality. Someone with a pro-homosexuality group dug up a sermon from decades ago in which he had done just that, and, yada yada yada, Pastor Giglio – pressured, or not, by the Inaugural Committee (that’s a little murky at the moment)— decided not to do the prayer. Ok, are ya with me? Good.

I’ve read a bit about this debacle over the past few days (though I have a few disagreements with some points, all of the articles hyperlinked above are excellent) and most of what I’ve read seems to be focused on Louie Giglio. But Louie Giglio isn’t alone on the stage of this little drama.

There’s another player. Our President.

Although all the details and communiqués were being handled by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, as President Truman used to say, “The buck stops here.” Right at the feet of President Obama. Ultimately, he is responsible for the “unvitation.” If he felt that the Committee was out of line in their statements or actions, he could have intervened. Instead, he has been silent, which implies consent.

Our President consented to the press release from the Inaugural Committee which said in part:

“As we now work to select someone to deliver the benediction, we will ensure their beliefs reflect this administration’s vision of inclusion and acceptance for all Americans.”

Translation: Louie Giglio’s Christian beliefs about homosexuality, which come straight from the Bible, do not “reflect this administration’s vision.”

Let me say that again. Christian beliefs about homosexuality, which line up with what the Bible clearly says, are opposed by our President.

Why is that important?

Because our President believes he is a Christian.

And so do a lot of other people who share his beliefs on things like homosexuality and abortion.

If that describes you, before you get mad and stop reading, in fairness, hear me say something:

Sanctification (progressively becoming more and more Christlike) is a process. People who get saved, especially as an adult, bring a lot of entrenched opinions and thought processes with them to the cross.

Am I saying you have to become pro-life and anti-homosexuality (notice, I did not say anti-homosexual) before, or in order to, get saved?

No.

Am I saying that five minutes or a week after you get saved, you’ll be pasting “Choose Life” and “One Man, One Woman” bumper stickers on your car?

No.

What I am saying is that a person who has genuinely been born again has a God-created desire to know, trust, and obey God’s word.

Even if it’s hard.

Even if you don’t like it, initially.

Even if you don’t completely understand it.

The desire, inextricably interwoven with your love and affection for Christ, born in your heart when you were born again, exists.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. II Corinthians 5:17

Do you have that desire?

Do you wrestle with the things in God’s word that are difficult for you –perhaps things like homosexuality- in order to understand, embrace, and obey them?

Or, do you war against the things you find in the Bible that you don’t like- rebelling against their inherent truth, rejecting them, twisting their meanings to suit your own opinions, and refusing to accept them?

If it’s the latter, you need to be afraid.

Be VERY afraid.

Because the Bible makes it clear that you aren’t saved.

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. I John 2:3-6

But a natural man 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 appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. I Corinthians 2:14-16

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4

Christians desire to keep God’s word, just like Jesus did. Christians lovingly call sinners to repentance from their sin and to faith in Christ, just like Jesus did. Christians think like Jesus did. Christians reject the world’s values rather than promoting them, just like Jesus did.

My dear friend, if you find yourself constantly battling against God’s word, I urge you, please examine your affections and the fruit of your life, thoughts, and behavior in the mirror of God’s word. It doesn’t matter if you’ve repeated a prayer, filled out a card, been baptized, taken communion, faithfully attended church, served as a teacher, deacon, elder, or pastor, had someone assure you of your salvation, or even if you just “feel saved”. If your life and heart don’t match up with what Scripture says is true of a Christian, you are not genuinely born again.

Please, turn away from your sin- all of your sin -and put your faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and in His bodily resurrection, as payment for that sin. If Cain taught us anything, it’s this: you can’t come to God on your own terms. You have to approach Him on His terms.

Or, to borrow from a mantra oft repeated by some in the homosexual community:

If you’re going to accept Him, you have to accept everything about Him.

Evangelism, Homosexuality, Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday ~ There’s Mor Than Just Chikin at Steak* Here

February 26, 2015February 26, 2015 Michelle Lesley

Originally Published July 26, 2012

*Yes, I know I spelled it wrong in the title. That was on purpose. See the cows? :0)

If, this far into the game, you don’t know about “Chick-fil-A-gate” –as I’m calling it– you must have been living in a cave over the past few weeks. Without internet access, newspapers, cable TV, or, especially, social media.

In a counter response to the homosexual community’s response to Dan Cathy’s response (you’re following this, right?) to an interviewer’s questions, former governor/presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee created a Facebook event called “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day”. Basically, he’s encouraging all who agree with Mr. Cathy’s position on traditional marriage to support him and the restaurant chain (and make up for any business he has lost from the pro-homosexual community) by showing up at their local Chick-fil-A next Wednesday (Aug. 1) and buying some chicken.

In the broad scope of things, this day of appreciation is a nice idea, but one that will quickly be over when Chick-fil-A employees mop up and lock up at close of business. For better or worse, the whole brouhaha will soon blow over and people will go back to their lives.

Or will they?

You see, I’m betting that in a counter-counter response to the Chick-fil-A supporters, there will be some pro-homosexual groups of protesters who also show up. (Don’t hate on that. As long as they aren’t breaking any trespassing, traffic, etc., laws, they are well within their Constitutional rights to do so.)

That’s why I say there’s more at stake here than just chicken.

What if you had a chance to impact one of those people for eternity? What if you could play a part in making next Wednesday the turning point in someone’s life? What if you could be the first person ever to show someone what real Christianity looks like?

As nice of an idea as it is to throw Chick-fil-A some love, Jesus didn’t command us to support businesses we agree with. He commanded us to carry the gospel.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;” Matthew 28:19-20a

If we walk into a Chick-fil-A next week, past a group of people who are dying in their sins, and ignore them, are we any better than the priest and the Levite who left a beaten and bloody man to die in the road rather than rescuing him? Even if they aren’t conscious of it themselves, these people have been battered, bloodied, and enslaved by Satan.

And we’re going to “pass by on the other side” to buy a chicken sandwich?

“Go and do the same” as the one who showed mercy, said Jesus.

Take them a cooler of iced down cokes. Tell them you love them. Ask them if there’s anything they need. Show them you love them by taking the time to take an interest in them, personally. (Nobody feels loved if they think they’re just a notch on your spiritual belt.)

And share the gospel.

You might get laughed at or cursed at or mocked, but there’s no greater way to show mercy than to show someone the Savior.

Your chicken sandwich could change somebody’s life.

Forever.