INSTITUTE OF LOVE

Homosexuality
Text Box: While the Bible clearly states that homosexuality is a sin to run from, our society needs, perhaps more than ever, open arms to the group of people who practice it. There is much despise and lack of understanding among Christians for this movement of people, but everybody is looking for love, and if the Christians have the love of God visible in their lives, it will open doors to life changing relationships, and melt hearts on both sides. Unconditional love provides a safe and honest environment to be able to speak out about sexual struggles, which is something that should be more available, making it easy for everybody to come to God. Christians, who are meant to be the light of the world, should love the sinner, not the sin, and make a clear distinction between the two.   The gay community has become an inviting world, seemingly glamorous and kind from the outside, attracting many young people who struggle with their sexuality. The homosexual environment seems to promise friendship, openness, honesty, accept, comforting contact, and sexual freedom. Being gay has become a popular trend that is becoming an accepted option for children and teenagers in large numbers.   Television has played its part to push the gay agenda in America, and gay influenced TV shows are increasing rapidly, desensitizing people to the influence of gay relationships and gay sex. Homosexual men seem to have become the world’s teachers in areas of appearance, conduct, relationships, fashion, food, style, professionalism, and home decoration. Along with teaching these outward values, an image of homosexuality as a fun, dramatic, and rewarding lifestyle is portrayed.   As products of a society of broken families, there are many ‘broken’ people growing up, trying to find love and acceptance in a cold world. Homosexuality is like a religion that seems to tempt even children with a promise of finding gratification, love, and acceptance in its doctrine of so called freedom. What they don’t know is, that the things they were hoping to find, is only a façade, hiding a world of addiction, pride, arrogance, selfishness, diseases, spiritual emptiness, darkness, loneliness, perversion and abuse.   Homosexuality is among other things, about pleasure and gratification, involving lonely people longing for love and tenderness. Many have been abused in their childhood, either physically, emotionally or verbally, and long for fatherly love. Many times the hurt of rejection, abandonment, and not being accepted, is what drives them to think they belong in the society of homosexuals.   Sexual abuse also stimulates pre-mature interest in sexual activity, trapping the victim in a non self inflicted addiction to sex. They find themselves in a shameful, impure world of fantasy, addiction, haunting memories, and deep seated pain.   Some have found themselves “different” since childhood, and end up making the conclusion that they are attracted to the same sex. The gay agenda propagates that the “different” feeling they have, is in fact a “normal” feeling, they shouldn’t deny.   The Bible says homosexual sex is an abomination to God, since He created a man and a woman to “fit” together and be one with each other, and thus be able to reproduce life on earth and avoid extinction. The Apostle Paul also writes in Romans 1:18-32 that people desired to do vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies, burning with lust for each other, turning to homosexuality for shameful gratification. Paul says they deliberately chose to turn against what they knew was the truth.   Many who have become homosexuals, have grown up in homes with Christian values, and yet turn from the Gospel they have been taught. Sadly, because of lack of understanding of God’s mercy and grace, and His goodness that leads to repentance, Christians have pushed them away, rather than showing the way to intimacy with God, by living as examples of Godly lives themselves.   If the love of God, and personal relationship with a loving Savior, who saves us from ourselves, isn’t there, something else needs to try to fill the empty void inside. People become prey for the “first and best” thing that is presented to them that promise love, a sense of belonging, and fulfillment. As they fall deeper into the deception that this can give them inner peace, bondages of self-hatred, bitterness, self-rejection, cynicism, selfishness, recklessness, self-indulgence, and confusion start developing on the inside.   With a distorted image of God as an angry and demanding, hard-to-please God, it is no wonder, people turn away from Him. But God is certainly not like that! God loves us so passionately that He came with an unthinkable solution to restore mankind to Himself, after they broke the intimate relationship they once shared in the Garden of Eden, by letting His precious Son, Jesus Christ suffer a painful death, shedding His blood in place of ours, to restore mankind back into the same awesome intimacy they had with God when He created them.   We were always supposed to have all fulfillment in living close to God, and though it was lost, the good news is that because of Jesus Christ, we now have The Holy Spirit living on the inside of us, guiding and leading our lives, making us beautiful creatures on the inside by shaping us to be more and more like Jesus. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are one trinity, operating in different “fields”.   God is also our Great Healer, Jehovah Rapha, who can heal any hurt in our hearts. There is no condition too big or small or hard for Him to heal and restore. He is waiting for us to come back to Him, so He can restore us to the core of our being, set us free and deliver us from any evil.   The Word of God says clearly that homosexuality is a practice that turns a person away from God, and away from living righteously on earth, and ultimately, away from sharing eternal life with God in heaven. 1. Corinthians 6:9-10 says this: “Don't you know that those who do wrong will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, who are idol worshipers, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, abusers, and swindlers — none of these will have a share in the Kingdom of God.”   Although it may seem hard to break out of a gay lifestyle, it is not too late, and not impossible. Everybody who wants to, can change direction of their lives, and come back to God, and have inner peace that surpasses all understanding. All they have to do is repent from their sin, which means turning their backs on everything that has to do with the old life, and start a new life with Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.   The instructions for salvation are found in Romans 10:9 that says: “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”   1. Corinthians 6:11 says you are able to start all over with a fresh, new, unpolluted life: "There was a time when some of you were just like that, but now your sins have been washed away, and you have been set apart for God because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for you."   The Bible warns us from doing those things that deteriorate our bodies, because we can do all things, but not all things are good for us (See 1. Corinthians 6:12)."Run away from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Or don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body." 1. Corinthians 6:18-20.   As we see, many things contribute to leading people to a homosexual lifestyle, but whatever it might be, God embraces and loves EVERYONE. He doesn’t require people to be perfect to come to Him, only willing!   Copyright©2007 Sophia & Edwin Christiaan Text Box: By Edwin Christiaan