The past two Sundays God has blessed our church family with valuable messages from Enriko concerning homosexuality from a Biblical perspective. Basically most, if not all, of what he has taught applies equally to all sin that we face. Two particular quotes he shared this past Sunday present challenging thoughts for all of us.
“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more extractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.“
From Life Together by Diettrich Bonhoeffer, as quoted in The Gospel Comes With A House Key by Rosaria Butterfield
“Every Christian is called to costly sacrifice. Denying yourself does not mean tweaking your behavior here and there. It is saying “no” to your deepest sense of who you are, for the sake of Christ. To take up a cross is to declare your life (as you have known it) forfeit. It is laying down your life for the very reason that your life, it turns out, is not yours at all. It belongs to Jesus. He made it. And through his death he has bought it.
Ever since I have been open about my own experiences of homosexuality, a number of Christians have said something like this: “The gospel must be harder for you than it is for me,” as though I have more to give up than they do. But the fact is that the gospel demands everything of all of us. If someone thinks the gospel has somehow slotted into their life quite easily, without causing any major adjustments to their lifestyle or aspirations, it is likely that they have not really started following Jesus at all.”
Sam Allberry in Is God Anti-Gay?
Consider the words of these godly men as you once again study through 1 Peter 3:1-12 in preparation for this Thursday morning’s discussion of honorable living as a wife—beginning with question 4 on page 25. We are meeting in room 3 now and it is heated. :)