Preface

I wrote this in response to a decision by the leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa to allow pastors to be openly Gay and then not just openly Homosexual but also no need to be celibate therefore practicing homosexual.

Don't plan for sin

_{Rom 13:13} So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. ESV puts it like this : But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. You can't make provision for the flesh. As soon as there is some future opportunity and we make provision for it in our mind or in our deeds even to prove to ourselves that we will overcome temptation... but make provision for it - then _{Gen 4:7}sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it..

Steer clear of any sexual immorality

_{Ef 5}1 Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person such a person is an idolaterhas any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7 Therefore do not be partners with them. 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Am I right to assume the way of love should not have any hint of sexual immorality and Idolatry. Did you notice the word HINT. Not even a HINT of sexual immorality and 12 It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. A firm warning here in vs 6.....don't let yourself be deceived. Read it again... empty words? And it states immoral, impure or greedy person = idolater but more later on this.

_{Col 3:5}Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. It states very strongly put to death..The words USED TO in vs7 implies repentance.

_{Heb 13}4 Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. Here the marriage should be honoured by all. Married people and unwed people. I should honour your marriage as you should mine. Here there is a promise of judgment from God again. (Wrath)

The gospel

_{Rom 1}16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. ₁₇ For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith. The gospel is the righteousness of God that is what the people outside of the church can clearly see. A person in a terrible state struck down with sin; next moment, confronted with the gospel, believes!!! Looks up to the cross as it was lifted by Moses in the desert and whola!!! Righteous! and the people outside the church looks in astonishment and say WOW what happened? Because Gods power has been revealed.

Gospel is the Righteousness of God

How does God make sinners righteous. Two fold. Both are the working of the cross.

• Free us of past sins by His blood and move us over from the old way of living to a new way (Redeems)
_{Ef 1:7} In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace
_{Col 1:13}For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
There are so many other forgiveness scriptures read them all.
_{Heb 10:17,18} "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." And where these (our sins) have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary. why is a Blood sacrifice for our sins is no longer necessary?
• Re-creates us new!!
_{2 Cor 5:17}17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation
Noticed the past tense of reconciled. This is what happened when you are forgiven AND REDEEMED.
and _{Gal 6:14} 14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. 16 Peace and mercy to all who follow this ruleto[b] the Israel of God. 17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
Why is he bearing the marks of Jesus.
_{Gal 2:20} I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Why is he No longer living since he is DEAD to SIN... _{Rom 6:6}For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin Now we must consider ourselves dead to our fleshy desires in order that we can LIVE for Christ.
_{Gal 5:24} 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Wrath of God

_{Rom 1:17}For in the gospel the righteousness of God -> And now the next verse the wrath is then opposed to righteousness and the gospel :
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, .... but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. (Idolatry again).....26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error........Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Deception) The wrath of God is the very opposite of the gospel, not the opposite of God, but the result of not accepting the Gospel. You see the wrath lies on any sin since sin deserves the wrath. Unless we accept that the wrath that was on me was poured out on Jesus on the cross and He has carried my sin that wrath remains and I will never enter into the Kingdom of God. But ...the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed. Revealed? Where? In Me.... in that person that repents.. and although He was once darkness, but now he is light in the Lord. And we then Live as a child of light.

_{2 Tim 3} 3 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power Have nothing to do with such people.

Power of the gospel

What is the power of the gospel???? _{Rom 1:16} For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: _{Rom 7 24} What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Jesus saves! From what?

_{Rom 6:1} What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? If we say Jesus saves!! What is it that he saves us from. In Rom 7 he used the word deliver. You see he saves us from the desire to sin. That is the true meaning of the gospel. If you have died to it can you continue in it. Make no provision for it. You see the gospel frees us from any generic predisposition in our flesh, or any evil desires that I think I can't change. (And you rightfully can't but Jesus can) The gospel frees us ultimately from ourselves. Otherwise we can just go back to the law and try not to do this or that. _{Gal 2:19} “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Fight desires of the flesh since its temptations

There is no inclusion for sin. We have to fight the good fight making no provision for sin _{1 Cor 9:26} Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. I don't accept evil desires in my flesh as how God has made me. NO!!! I fight it!!! Reject it!!! Say I am a Child of God. Righteous by the Blood of Christ!! and I will not do sin. (If I do sin there is grace, but I still fight and make no provision for it!!) I pray Free me Lord by your Blood. Etc. etc etc.. MAKE NO PROVISION FOR THE FLESH!!!! You see while fighting the fight and living by faith I live in the grace of Christ. Because of _{Gal 5:6} So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality.

Don't pervert the gospel. Don't please people but only God.

So again I don't accept fleshly desires as how God has made me or how I was born, No!!! My fleshly desires are in conflict with Him. _{Gal 1:6} I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse! 10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. its worth stating again : If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. If you are not a servant of Christ whose servant are you?

No Excuse for sin

You see People come with all kinds of valid excuses and arguments. Which is directly in contradiction to the Gospel. You can't come with any argument / excuse / reasoning for sin. _{Rom 6:23} For the wages of sin is death. _{Joh 15:22} If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. _{Rom 1} For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. No Excuses because the Gospel is the POWER OF GOD and HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS REVEALED TO THE BELIEVER. Otherwise there is no Gospel. (PS Believer is someone that believes the Word of God as in the Bible)

God give's stern warning for false teachings..

It seems to me we can't be neutral in this regard we have to proclaim good doctrine. _{Ef 4:25} Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ......₂₇and do not give the devil a foothold. Rom 1 states : not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Gal 1 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse! See this part directly regarding the churches _{Rev 2}20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. Remember it said : Ef 5 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. And here : those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely And EF 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7 Therefore do not be partners with them. God gave this warning Rev 2 23 I will strike her children dead.

Walk in the way of love, hate the sin, don't embrace it.

I want to go back to this verse: _{Ef 5:1} and walk in the way of love, you see _{1 Cor 13:6} Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. There is no acceptance for evil in Love. The rich young man visiting Jesus _{Mark 10:20}Teacher,he declared, all these I have kept since I was a boy. 21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. One thing you lack, he said. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. 22 At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus Loved him and but let him go!!!! Even the woman that was caught in adultery: 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? 11 No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin.
AW Tozer Wrote: I do not believe that any man is able to love until he is able to hate. I do not think any man can love God unless he hates the devil. I do not think he can love righteousness unless he hates sin. The Scriptures leave us with the opinion, with the belief, that in order to accept, there are some things we need to reject. In order to own, you must repudiate some things. In order to affirm, there are some things you must deny. In order to say yes, you have to be able to say no. The man who does not have the courage or the intestinal fortitude to roar a thundering no to some things can never say yes and make it mean anything. I, for my part, have come to the conclusion that I cannot get along with everybody. The idea of soft-handed pastors with a saintly flush on their faces, trying to get along with everybody, will not do. In an effort to please everybody, we succeed in pleasing nobody. We are tempted to try to keep from offending anybody. I do not want to water down Christianity. I want to be able to say no and mean it. I want to be able to say no to the wrong things and yes to the right things.

Love the creator and not created things

What about the great Commandment: _{Mat 22} 37 Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. We should love God with

• all your heart. That is all out desires, hopes ect.
• and all your soul, that is all our emotions, feelings, ect.
• and with all your mind, that is our intellect, reasoning and thoughts,

but for our neighbor only as yourself. Now here is a trap we can step into, we exchange the love towards what is not seen for a love towards what is seen. I think this is what is meant with _{Rom 1} 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator

Willing to let EVERYTHING go to GAIN Christ.

_{Mat 16} 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. I want to go back for a moment to the heart. You see _{Jer 17:9} The heart is deceitful above all things but how do you check that your heart has not been deceived: You have to let go!!! The only thing that is really important is Jesus, and my relationship with Him. _{John 14:6}Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life." The truth is a Person and that person is Jesus. _{Pil 3 (esv)} 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. You see any argument any excuse anything that you think is VERY important in your heart count it NOW as rubbish, yes rubbish let it go as rubbish so that you may GAIN Christ. Jesus stated it like this _{Mat 5:29} If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. _{(PS I know Paul was talking about the things that he can be proud of that he counted as rubbish but should we not count as rubbish the things that we should not be proud of?)}

Watch out for Idolatry

Throughout this I have highlighted the wrath of God and the Idolatry. You see if we really submit our lives to Jesus it is our whole life including my desires, my relations to my family (as many Christian former Muslims had to sacrifice and even lay down their very lives) and my relations to other people etc. No relationship should ever take presence over my relationship with God. So if there is a Hint of sexual immorality you should be willing to sacrifice that for the relationship with Jesus. If you are not willing then a question has to be asked-> maybe this has become an Idol?. I have found that deception has two or more fronts that can be played off against each other. It is always good to ask the question of possible deception? On the one side is the feelings and fleshly desires, erotic love and lusts and on the other side an idolatry because this relationship has been your life and is now become your representation of God. You should always check your heart _{Mat 15:19}For out of the heart come evil thoughts murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. and _{mark 7 : 21} For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come sexual immorality, theft, murder.. _{Jer 17:9} The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10 I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.

Truth vs A Lie

The TRUTH is a Person and that person is Jesus. Homosexuality is obviously wrong, the sexual part of it. Quite obvious.
If you think otherwise pray the Lord makes it clear to you. Now don't buy the lie that the some is proclaiming. They do know that its wrong since its blatantly obvious, but for some obscure reason unknown to me they have decided not to proclaim the truth. Once you get to _{Joh 8:32}know the truth,then : the truth will set you free. and then you will ask: Why did you lie to me? When you realize someone that you thought to be sincere was lying to you it causes great pain.
That is because all lies comes from the devil since he is _{Joh 8:44b}not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ...Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God. Read the Whole Joh 8. This is not out of contexts he does talk about it in Rom 1: 28 _{Rom 1:25}They exchanged the truth about God for a lie _{2 Tes 2 : 10-16} They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.13 But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. 14 He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.15 So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. 16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
_{Most scriptures quoted from the NIV some from the ESV.}

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Struggling with same sex attraction. Part 1