I contemplated this blog for literally months before I began to write. I struggles so much that I actually wrote it on paper, and rewrote, and rewrote. I struggles for a way to give God the glory in a way that shows his love for all mankind. I wanted to be one small voice crying out to humanity to look at ourselves and remember it's about God not what we think God wants from we humans. This morning I caught the last 15 minutes of Andy Stanley's weekly program. The Lord spoke to me, yes to me, he does when we listen, and he spoke to me through Andy's words. The words I could not find through all my contemplation's and struggles. I paraphrase his thoughts but here is the jist of what spoke to me and helped me begin or end my struggles that are this blog. If your theology puts bookends or restrictions on God's mercy then you need a new theology because God has no limit to his mercy toward his creation, us, his crowning creation on earth, made in his image. So look out at your fellow human, man, and remember each and everyone is the image of God.....
I think in our current ebb and flow of society we forget that love, brotherly love or charity is considered the greatest. I Corinthians 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope and charity these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Imagine charity, love or more precisely brotherly love is the greatest. Greater than faith? not really but faith expressing itself through love. 1 John 2:10 He that loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.I think we get so caught up in our agendas for what we think the Lord wants of us that we forget what he actually asks of us or for that matter what his word really says or tells us. We see so many stickers in the eyes of our brothers when we could build a cabin out of the lumber we have in our own eyes. We don't see the idols we have come to worship in our pursuit of being more Christian or Godly than our fellow man. Have you said "I never miss a Sunday at Church or a week night service but so and so they are just not as good at attending as I am" Have you ever considered that that could be and probably is idolatry? If being there and being the best at being there and getting one over on a fellow church member is your motive for going and not the genuine glorifying and loving God, you are committing idolatry. Really, yes, you, you are. Have you ever worshiped every word that falls from the preachers or someone you respects mouth? Again idolatry, We forget we are human and our flesh testifies against us.
Today the hot button issues of our society are homosexuals, homosexual marriage, and abortions, to name just a few. I can say up front I think all are sins against God but then so is lying, having sex with your neighbors wife and remarriage if you are divorce but they are not even mentioned in our daily lives, they are the sins we don't hear about or talk about. Have you ever really read the 76 sins listed in Leviticus, no, not have you ever skimmed them to get through Leviticus because it is a dead book and it no longer applies to us. Really, Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled The law of God is the law today just as God wrote it and sent it down with Moses so many years ago. I read them all again to write this blog (yes, all 76 of them here is a link (I would list them but I am not sure you wouldn't just stop reading and go to the next blog)
http://leviticusbans.tumblr.com/post/23730370413/76-things-banned-in-leviticus
I am indeed a sinner and I deserve death but for the blood of Jesus I would be on my way to hell. That being said homosexual sex is listed, abortion is listed (thou shall not kill or burning you children to moleck or for your idol) and marriage is still one man, one woman and one God any other is sin, but then tattoos, lying, speaking slander, cross breeding animals and many many more, you should read the list.
I recently heard someone very well read on their Bible say a homosexual can not be a Christian. Really maybe they missed a few chapters and need to read some more. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are saved by the grace of God and only the sin of unbelief literally not believing in Jesus and the Gospel is unforgivable.
I heard someone else say that they had recently been in the company of Sodomites. That made me really wonder a what they meant. I know what he meant, and what we as Christians as a whole think it means. We as a whole think of it as an interchangeable word with homosexual but I am truly not sure whoever coined that ever really read what the Bible refers to as a sodomite. I am currently in the middle of my fifth time through the Bible this year and it has been and eye opening experience as to what I thought it said and what it says. For instance how many of you think homosexual was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? I always did, but not any longer. I think by the definition giving in the Bible I am a sodomite, and I assure you I have never had any homosexual thoughts or tendencys. Really, maybe you need to read up on it. Ezekiel 16:49 "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughter, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy. I did not read anything about homosexuality. So a Sodomite more precisely would be a person who is full of pride, a glutton, idle, or doesn't help the needy. Interesting. I am guilty of all of these as is our society as a whole.
The Hebrew word for sodomite as translated by the King James Bible is gadesh, it appears 6 times as sodomite and once as unclean, and never once used in connection with Sodom or Gomorrah, but always in conjunction with worship. or as libidinous worship of Venus amongest the Babylonians consecrated to Venus as a harlot or given to Astarte or Venus and prostituting himself in her honor. Det 23:18, 1Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:47, Job 36:14. Gen 38:21-22. Hos 4:14. gadesh a sacred person IE. technically a male devoted by prostitution to licentious idolatry- sodomite , unclean. By definition I don't think that homosexuals are sodomites. They are men who have sex with other men a sin listed in the 76 sins of Leviticus, but not a sodomite.
Well you say Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of homosexuality. The men tried to have sex with the angels and Lot offered up his daughters and they did not want them just the men. Yes that is true but then when why when the same thing happened in Gibeah in Judges 19:16-30 was not the whole town destroyed as Sodom and Gomorrah? And why were the Angels sent to kill and destroy the town before the men attacked the Angels? Abraham plead for Sodom and Gomorrah before the Angels even went to the town. Weren't the men in both Sodom/Gomorrah and Gibeah guilty of not being hospitable to strangers and not being just? Gibeah was destroyed by the tribes of Israel for inhospitable and injustice, which was a sin deserving of death, and they received death but God did not destroy the town and destroy the whole area like Sodom and Gomorrah. Ezekiel gives us the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah as pride, gluttony, idleness, not taking care of the needy and poor. When Abraham and Lot needed to split up because there were to many of them for the land to support, Abraham offered Lot the choice of where he would settle. What did he choose? Genesis 13:10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld the all the plain of Jordan that it was well watered every where , before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the Garden of the Lord like the land of Egypt, as there comest to Zoir. Could Lot have been greedy, full of pride and gluttony as all the people who lived there were? Lot was considered a carnal believer, but for the grace of God Lot would have perished with the rest of his chosen town. Do any of these fall a little to close to home? They do for me? I am a sinner that deserves death by my own actions. As did Lot. Our country is Sodom, in our pride, fullness of bread (gluttony), abundance of idleness, and lack of strengthening the poor and needy.
I do know that our generation lives in a time and a land likened to Sodom and Gomorrah, or a land likened unto the world Noah lived in full of sin and evil. I think we over think what that sin is. We try to make it some one else's sin not a sin we might be guilty of or one we cling to, surely, it has to be one of those horrible sins others commit. Not me, oh, yes, it's me oh Lord stand in the need of prayer.
We see our brothers sin and condemn him as the reason our country is becoming worse and worse. We see homosexuals, abortionists, drug addicts, and the list goes on and on. Do we ever see that Sodomites (us) are guilty of pride, greed, gluttony, and abandonment of the needy and poor as our own sin, and it just might be the horrible sin? Do we ever look out and see the same sea of people not as what we condemn to be their sin but as someone the Lord loves, his image? The Lord loves me, we say but surely not the homosexuals, the addicts, the abortionists. I am not like them, no I am not, I am a liar, a slanderer, I am a person who doesn't always love my neighbor. I am better than them surely? No! I am a sinner, I like the homosexual have sinned, I like the person who killed a baby to abortion have sinned, I am worthy of death like any other sinner, not better, not worse but like anyone other sinner can asked Jesus for Forgiveness and be saved through Faith. Yes, I can be saved from the punishment of my sins through Jesus, just as any other sinner can be. Yes, the homosexual, yes, the abortionists, yes, the divorcee who remarried, and yes, even we the Sodomites that call America home, with all our pride, greed, glutton, idleness and total disregard for the poor and the needy. Any and all are welcome in Jesus arms, his grace is sufficient for all. Jesus already paid the price of your sins and offers forgiveness and salvation to all who will respond to his grace, and accept his forgiveness and salvation.
Can you see my salvation, no, not any more than I can see yours. My new light from God, no one but God can actually see it just because you think you can doesn't make it so, How can you tell if a homosexual is saved, about as much as tell if someone who lies to his wife, you can't only God knows and sees his saved people. You can not see any ones salvation but you can see their joy and suppose, but it is just that supposition that you see the light of their salvation. Salvation is really something only God can see in us, You have no right to say otherwise, salvation is a precious gift from God, he gives it to his chosen people and we have no say in anyone salvation but our own. I pray God sees your salvation and has given you salvation. I hope if not you seek your salvation today. God gives his mercy to all he gives mercy to, and our opinion and pride should not get in the way of your salvation and relationship with God, it is his mercy to give... tomorrow
I think in our current ebb and flow of society we forget that love, brotherly love or charity is considered the greatest. I Corinthians 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope and charity these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Imagine charity, love or more precisely brotherly love is the greatest. Greater than faith? not really but faith expressing itself through love. 1 John 2:10 He that loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.I think we get so caught up in our agendas for what we think the Lord wants of us that we forget what he actually asks of us or for that matter what his word really says or tells us. We see so many stickers in the eyes of our brothers when we could build a cabin out of the lumber we have in our own eyes. We don't see the idols we have come to worship in our pursuit of being more Christian or Godly than our fellow man. Have you said "I never miss a Sunday at Church or a week night service but so and so they are just not as good at attending as I am" Have you ever considered that that could be and probably is idolatry? If being there and being the best at being there and getting one over on a fellow church member is your motive for going and not the genuine glorifying and loving God, you are committing idolatry. Really, yes, you, you are. Have you ever worshiped every word that falls from the preachers or someone you respects mouth? Again idolatry, We forget we are human and our flesh testifies against us.
Today the hot button issues of our society are homosexuals, homosexual marriage, and abortions, to name just a few. I can say up front I think all are sins against God but then so is lying, having sex with your neighbors wife and remarriage if you are divorce but they are not even mentioned in our daily lives, they are the sins we don't hear about or talk about. Have you ever really read the 76 sins listed in Leviticus, no, not have you ever skimmed them to get through Leviticus because it is a dead book and it no longer applies to us. Really, Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled The law of God is the law today just as God wrote it and sent it down with Moses so many years ago. I read them all again to write this blog (yes, all 76 of them here is a link (I would list them but I am not sure you wouldn't just stop reading and go to the next blog)
http://leviticusbans.tumblr.com/post/23730370413/76-things-banned-in-leviticus
I am indeed a sinner and I deserve death but for the blood of Jesus I would be on my way to hell. That being said homosexual sex is listed, abortion is listed (thou shall not kill or burning you children to moleck or for your idol) and marriage is still one man, one woman and one God any other is sin, but then tattoos, lying, speaking slander, cross breeding animals and many many more, you should read the list.
I recently heard someone very well read on their Bible say a homosexual can not be a Christian. Really maybe they missed a few chapters and need to read some more. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are saved by the grace of God and only the sin of unbelief literally not believing in Jesus and the Gospel is unforgivable.
I heard someone else say that they had recently been in the company of Sodomites. That made me really wonder a what they meant. I know what he meant, and what we as Christians as a whole think it means. We as a whole think of it as an interchangeable word with homosexual but I am truly not sure whoever coined that ever really read what the Bible refers to as a sodomite. I am currently in the middle of my fifth time through the Bible this year and it has been and eye opening experience as to what I thought it said and what it says. For instance how many of you think homosexual was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? I always did, but not any longer. I think by the definition giving in the Bible I am a sodomite, and I assure you I have never had any homosexual thoughts or tendencys. Really, maybe you need to read up on it. Ezekiel 16:49 "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughter, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy. I did not read anything about homosexuality. So a Sodomite more precisely would be a person who is full of pride, a glutton, idle, or doesn't help the needy. Interesting. I am guilty of all of these as is our society as a whole.
The Hebrew word for sodomite as translated by the King James Bible is gadesh, it appears 6 times as sodomite and once as unclean, and never once used in connection with Sodom or Gomorrah, but always in conjunction with worship. or as libidinous worship of Venus amongest the Babylonians consecrated to Venus as a harlot or given to Astarte or Venus and prostituting himself in her honor. Det 23:18, 1Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:47, Job 36:14. Gen 38:21-22. Hos 4:14. gadesh a sacred person IE. technically a male devoted by prostitution to licentious idolatry- sodomite , unclean. By definition I don't think that homosexuals are sodomites. They are men who have sex with other men a sin listed in the 76 sins of Leviticus, but not a sodomite.
Well you say Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of homosexuality. The men tried to have sex with the angels and Lot offered up his daughters and they did not want them just the men. Yes that is true but then when why when the same thing happened in Gibeah in Judges 19:16-30 was not the whole town destroyed as Sodom and Gomorrah? And why were the Angels sent to kill and destroy the town before the men attacked the Angels? Abraham plead for Sodom and Gomorrah before the Angels even went to the town. Weren't the men in both Sodom/Gomorrah and Gibeah guilty of not being hospitable to strangers and not being just? Gibeah was destroyed by the tribes of Israel for inhospitable and injustice, which was a sin deserving of death, and they received death but God did not destroy the town and destroy the whole area like Sodom and Gomorrah. Ezekiel gives us the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah as pride, gluttony, idleness, not taking care of the needy and poor. When Abraham and Lot needed to split up because there were to many of them for the land to support, Abraham offered Lot the choice of where he would settle. What did he choose? Genesis 13:10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld the all the plain of Jordan that it was well watered every where , before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the Garden of the Lord like the land of Egypt, as there comest to Zoir. Could Lot have been greedy, full of pride and gluttony as all the people who lived there were? Lot was considered a carnal believer, but for the grace of God Lot would have perished with the rest of his chosen town. Do any of these fall a little to close to home? They do for me? I am a sinner that deserves death by my own actions. As did Lot. Our country is Sodom, in our pride, fullness of bread (gluttony), abundance of idleness, and lack of strengthening the poor and needy.
I do know that our generation lives in a time and a land likened to Sodom and Gomorrah, or a land likened unto the world Noah lived in full of sin and evil. I think we over think what that sin is. We try to make it some one else's sin not a sin we might be guilty of or one we cling to, surely, it has to be one of those horrible sins others commit. Not me, oh, yes, it's me oh Lord stand in the need of prayer.
We see our brothers sin and condemn him as the reason our country is becoming worse and worse. We see homosexuals, abortionists, drug addicts, and the list goes on and on. Do we ever see that Sodomites (us) are guilty of pride, greed, gluttony, and abandonment of the needy and poor as our own sin, and it just might be the horrible sin? Do we ever look out and see the same sea of people not as what we condemn to be their sin but as someone the Lord loves, his image? The Lord loves me, we say but surely not the homosexuals, the addicts, the abortionists. I am not like them, no I am not, I am a liar, a slanderer, I am a person who doesn't always love my neighbor. I am better than them surely? No! I am a sinner, I like the homosexual have sinned, I like the person who killed a baby to abortion have sinned, I am worthy of death like any other sinner, not better, not worse but like anyone other sinner can asked Jesus for Forgiveness and be saved through Faith. Yes, I can be saved from the punishment of my sins through Jesus, just as any other sinner can be. Yes, the homosexual, yes, the abortionists, yes, the divorcee who remarried, and yes, even we the Sodomites that call America home, with all our pride, greed, glutton, idleness and total disregard for the poor and the needy. Any and all are welcome in Jesus arms, his grace is sufficient for all. Jesus already paid the price of your sins and offers forgiveness and salvation to all who will respond to his grace, and accept his forgiveness and salvation.
Can you see my salvation, no, not any more than I can see yours. My new light from God, no one but God can actually see it just because you think you can doesn't make it so, How can you tell if a homosexual is saved, about as much as tell if someone who lies to his wife, you can't only God knows and sees his saved people. You can not see any ones salvation but you can see their joy and suppose, but it is just that supposition that you see the light of their salvation. Salvation is really something only God can see in us, You have no right to say otherwise, salvation is a precious gift from God, he gives it to his chosen people and we have no say in anyone salvation but our own. I pray God sees your salvation and has given you salvation. I hope if not you seek your salvation today. God gives his mercy to all he gives mercy to, and our opinion and pride should not get in the way of your salvation and relationship with God, it is his mercy to give... tomorrow
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