I'm shaking and crying as I type this. I love my church. It's a good, big Christian church that accepts pretty much everyone. It's one of those churches that has an auditorium and a stage and concert-level singing. They usually send really good messages. Until today, anyways. A guest speaker named Ricky Chellete spoke this morning instead of our pastor. He used to be a homosexual. He made it very clear that woman and man were made to be together and same-sex lusting would make you a sinner, in the same way prostitution does. He said we needed to "deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Jesus." I love God. I really do. Ever since I found God, I've tried my best not to be a sinner. I stopped cutting. I stopped thinking about suicide. I stopped reading porn. I lie less and give what I can to others. I really want to do what God wants me to, and I really want to heaven, and I really don't want to sin any more. But denying myself and cutting off my feelings for girl is the one thing I'm not sure I can do. Unlike everything else, I feel like this is a part of me. A part that I can't just tell to go away. I feel terrible. Ricky Chellete is having a follow-up sermon this evening, but I'm not going, because I know it will only make me feel worse. I don't know what to do. Will I really not go to heaven if I keep liking girls? I really want to follow God's word, but I just don't know how to do it in this case. PLEASE HELP!
I have a simple thing to tell you: God doesn't put people on this earth to send them to hell because of who they love. Love people and be a good person. That is what God asks for in His children.
You trust that Jesus will send you to heaven because of His sacrifice, right? You've got nothing to fear! Even if dating a woman is a sin (which I personally don't think it is), Jesus would forgive it. If He forgives porn, what can't He forgive? Also, this sounds weird I know, but if you think you can do it without breaking down, go tonight. Learning your church's arguments against homosexuality as much as possible will allow you to fight them better - think of it as learning Nazi intelligence to prepare yourself to fight against it.
From what I can gather... people who are truly gay, CANNOT change themselves no matter how hard they try. Thus, this speaker was either: 1) Never gay, just had some mild same-sex thoughts 2) Gay and simply claiming that he has "changed", but is actually still gay...
You are a sinner. Yes, and so am I, and so is everyone around you and me. But here's the thing: we are not sinners because we are gay. Being gay is not a sin; the Bible does not say anything about being gay! All those verses they talk about are not about homosexuality. Please watch this playlist. The guy who speaks in it is Justin Lee, and he's a gay Christian. He's positively amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvYdG5_vcB8&list=PL2DF857BC72868293 Also, go to the site lesbepure.com. It's not very active anymore, but there is still tons of great info. Make sure to read Kori Ashton's testimony, it's pretty powerful. I assure you that liking girls won't keep you out of heaven. God has far more important things to worry about than our sexual preferences. Plus John 3:16 is pretty clear, whoever believes receives eternal life. That's all there is to it. *hugs*
Gay Christian 101 - Affirming God's good news and Bible truth for all GLBTs. Information for gay, les, bi, and trans Christians. ...Besides, that line in Leviticus is from the Old Testament, right?
Leviticus is in the OT, so yes. None of this applies to Christians, and Jesus made that extremely clear. It's mind-boggling to me that people still pull out this old trick.
Thank you all so much! I got a little lost for a little while there, but then I remembered Job, and how he praised God after he lost everything. (A weak comparison, I know, but for some reason, it helped.) After that, things kind of clicked into place. God loves all his children, and he wouldn't have made me this way if he didn't love me, right? Plus, Jesus DID die on the cross for a reason. Again, thank you all so much. Sorry about the little freak out, but I just couldn't believe that God would punish someone even though they were good. I do have one question, though, and I'm not going back on what I said, but: God made Adam and Eve, right? So...how did we get here?
We're still Adam and Eve's children. Just because we aren't exactly like them doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with us. I mean really, there's so many ways that people differ from them and that's only one of them. For example, the Bible doesn't say anything about their appearance, but let's just say for now that they had brown eyes. There are plenty of people with green and blue eyes even though they descended from Adam and Eve. The reason God made Adam and Eve in the beginning and not Madam and Eve or Adam and Steve or something is simply because in the beginning the Earth needed to be populated. Now that humans have populated the Earth, not being with the opposite gender isn't a problem.
I felt like you not too long ago, excepting the fact that my sexuality was exclusively same-sex. You can do a few things: *Repress you same-sex feelings. I do not recommend this, as it is psychologically unhealthy. *Interpret the Bible differently. I did this for a while, but doing this opens for a long and tiring process of justification and reconciliation. *Reject the Belief of Sin. This is what I did, which preceded my deconversion to atheism. I became so tired with trying to uphold my convoluted worldview, I one day decided it was time to "let it go" and have truly never been happier. There are probably more options than these, or variations of these. Good luck either way. (*hug*)