TPW #17 | Response to "Revoice" speaker Ray Low

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This is a response to Ray Low's talk at the "Revoice" Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHe2y2SVjIc

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Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived.
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The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.
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The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers.
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They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.
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Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture.
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What happened when
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Jesus was nailed to the cross, that was, that was the day of judgment.
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That is the day of final salvation, brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our unity to Christ.
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Protestant witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines, here in lovely, beautiful, sunny Kingsport, Tennessee at Birdwell Heights Presbyterian Church, back in my study.
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Today, I want to do a program on the Revoice Conference that was held at Memorial Presbyterian Church and it was recently, it was
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July 26th through 28th in St. Louis, and those talks are posted now.
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There's a YouTube link I was sent and that has all the talks. I guess some of them,
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I don't know if they recorded all of them, but from this conference. Now, people have been hearing about this for quite some time, and I was really curious how exactly are they going to go at this issue.
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There was an episode of a program called Cross Politic, where there's, I guess there's three pastors on there who talk about different things.
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I've never heard of it before, but someone sent me a link to that and I watched it and they interviewed Greg Johnson, who is the pastor of the church that hosted the conference, and it was a pretty, pretty intense conversation that there were a couple times
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I wondered if Greg Johnson was going to get offended and hang up, but he didn't.
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He held in there with them and went through the whole program, and these guys, you know,
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I'd never heard of that program. In fact, I don't even remember their names, but I agree with most of what they had to say as far as their critique of this whole concept.
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Now, I'm looking at the Revoice .us website here. Revoice 2018, supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same -sex attracted, and other
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LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.
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There's something I want to say before I get into the talks here about that. If you already have accepted as a legitimate label
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LGBT Christians, I want you to think about what each one of those letters means. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
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Christians. So they can flourish while observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.
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I did a video a while back called, There Is No LGBT Community. Now, I figured in these talks they're going to be throwing that phrase around constantly, just like Danny Cortez did, just like Matthew Vines does, just like Julie Rogers did, even while she was still professing to be a conservative.
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Now, of course, she's gone off into being a full -blown gay marriage proponent. In fact, I think she's engaged or is actually married to a woman now.
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Julie Rogers was someone that people were putting out a link, I kept seeing it all over the place on social media, where she had done this talk about 18 minutes long about this issue, and it was very disturbing to me.
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And she did say in that talk she didn't accept the revisionist arguments about sexuality, and she thinks the
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Bible does condemn this and everything, but she really had a problem with this. She has the same -sex attraction and just can't seem to get rid of it.
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After the talk, after listening to that, I thought, at no point did she say anything about sin or that this was sinful or that this was perverted or twisted.
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There was just no part of that conversation. I made a comment on social media, and of course,
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I've left all social media now. I'm not on Facebook or Instagram or anything anymore because it's just it's depressing, and I get,
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I'm on the email lists of good reform book publishers and things like that, which is one of the main reasons I was on Facebook, but watching the collapse of everything is profoundly depressing.
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The collapse of discernment in reform circles, the collapse of the gospel, the collapse of sanity when it comes to this issue.
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But anyway, I made a comment on a link that someone posted on Facebook. I said, I'll give her two years.
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In two years, she will be a full -blown proponent of gay marriage. And people, you know, came down on me.
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Oh, that's so unloving and everything. Well, it took seven months, I think, as I recall.
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Seven months later, she abandoned the church completely. She left
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Wheaton. I think she was fired, and then she's doing interviews on, you know, gay
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Christian stuff, and she's a full -blown proponent, and she's friends with Matthew Bynes and all the rest of them.
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So it didn't take two years, and you know, I didn't know that for sure, but I thought, this is well on its way to that.
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So I've wondered, how are these guys gonna do this at this conference? I've wanted to talk about this, but I wanted to wait until the talks were actually out there, because people would say, oh, you're jumping the gun.
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You're just jumping to conclusions before you even give these people a chance to talk. So I listened to really two talks in one video.
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One is Nate Collins. The other one is a fellow named Ray, who looks like an
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Asian fellow. Anyway, I was really disappointed by some of the things that were said, and rather shocked at some other things that were said.
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This, in some ways, reminded me of David Gushy.
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His keynote address at one of Matthew Bynes' Reformation Project conferences, where Gushy really portrays, you know, people who are like this, people who have these struggles,
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LGBT, whatever, as being victims. They are victims of people who don't,
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I guess, support or encourage or whatever. But anyway, before we start the talk here and start going through these talks, the guys at CrossPolitik published a website,
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Revoice .xyz, that was really spot -on in terms of taking the premises of the
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Revoice conference and pushing it into other areas. They said here, supporting, encouraging, and empowering racist, pedophile, and other minority
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Christians so they can flourish, while observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage, sexuality, and racism.
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And of course, Greg Johnson was offended by that, and let him know that on the
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CrossPolitik interview that he did. But anyway, so here you have the first speaker. His first name is
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Ray, but his story is interesting, and there are some very troubling things that are said here, so I hope that this comes through clearly.
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Can you guys hear me? Great, thank you.
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So Nate asked me to share a story about what it means to lament, and to share a story that should cause us to lament.
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This was an interesting way to start all this off. They talk about lamenting, and at first, when
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I first started listening to this, I thought maybe what they're gonna say is they lament this sinful desire that they struggle with, and have a problem with, and they lament sin.
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Lamenting over sin, that's a biblical thing. We mourn, we grieve over our own sinfulness, and we're ashamed of our own sinfulness, and we should be ashamed of our own sinfulness, and we should lament our own weaknesses and our own sinfulness, but that's not where he goes with this.
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Listen closely. I wonder if that's gonna be really hard. So to start off my story,
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I want to pose a question to you guys. What is a pastor? This was interesting.
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This was an interesting way to start. What is a pastor? What, what, what, how does he say it?
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What do you look for in a pastor? Well, we're told in Scripture what to look for. That's defined clearly in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and in the book of Titus.
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It's right there, the qualifications and what a pastor is supposed to, what you're looking for. What are your qualifications?
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They're in Scripture. Some might say that a pastor is someone who is supposed to preach on Sunday. Some might say that a pastor is somebody who is supposed to listen to your problems and to help you with them.
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For me, a pastor is someone who lays down their life for the sheep. I know that's what
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Jesus did for us. I know that's what Jesus talked about in John chapter 10 when he speaks about the good shepherd.
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And halfway through college, I myself received the calling to become a pastor as well. Now, I wish that he had developed this a little bit more because I think that there's a biblical way that a person is called to the ministry.
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Yes, there is a sense of inward calling, but I've been asked the question many times. How do you know?
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How do you know? How do you know if you're called to the ministry? And the first thing I always say to people is the church of which you are a member will let you know.
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The first thing you need to do is join a church and be a long -haul member of that church and participate in all of its activities.
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Be aware of what needs prayer. Be aware of what's going on. Be aware of who the shut -ins are and participate and be a lively member of a local church.
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Your local church will let you know if you're called to the ministry. There is a sense of inward calling, yes, but that has to be confirmed by your church.
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And so guys that kind of drift around and they're not really a member of any church, but they they feel called to the ministry because they love to read about theology and they study and they argue with people online.
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That doesn't necessarily mean that you're called to the ministry. A calling to the ministry is something that your local church will let you know.
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If you have those gifts, the people of God will recognize them and and ultimately they will let you know.
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They will let you know. Now you would think that the idea of an
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LGBT pastor would be a wonderful thing. That was a very strange statement to me. That would be a wonderful thing, an
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LGBT pastor? So a person who's T, transgender, someone who's transgender would be a great pastor?
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Folks, someone who has gone through the lie of transitioning that there's you can't make yourself the other gender.
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I don't care how much you mutilate and do hormone therapy. God doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender assignment.
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Okay, a transsexual pastor would be a great thing. A lesbian, gay, or bisexual pastor would be a great thing.
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You would think that? I wouldn't think that. I thought that was just bizarre that he would make that comment, but listen to how he reasons here.
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After decades of you know, just LGBT people being kicked out of their churches, who better to bring about...
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After decades of LGBT people being kicked out of their churches, kicked out of their churches, what do you mean by this?
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Someone who has a struggle like this, but is a Christian and stands their ground and fights against it and fights the good fight?
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They're not gonna be thrown out of their church. Now if someone says, this is who I am. It can't be changed and I will not repent of it.
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Yeah, they would need to be thrown out of a church. No one is allowed to be unrepentant about such gross sin.
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And the only reason that people are thrown out of churches, that people are excluded from churches, is because the church, the people of God, are supposed to be holy.
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They're supposed to be set apart. They are set apart by God's Word and they have a hunger and thirst for righteousness and they are repentant for their sin.
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The only reason, in the final analysis, the reason that people are disciplined or thrown out of churches or excommunicated from churches is unrepentance.
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They will not repent of whatever their sin is. Everybody has sin. Everybody struggles with sin, but what marks a
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Christian, what sets them apart, is that they do struggle with it. They don't allow sin to be their identity.
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They're not willing to say, yeah, this is just what I am. I am a serial adulterer.
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Yeah, but you're married, aren't you? Yes, I'm married, but I'm a serial adulterer and I can't change it.
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And that's just who I am. That's my identity. Of course not. Or I'm a thief. I can't stop stealing.
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I'm just, I steal constantly. No, no. A Christian is someone who is repentant for those things.
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Decades of LGBT people being excluded from their churches. The only reason anyone who struggles with any sin would be excluded from a church is if they refuse to repent of that sin.
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...this change than someone who understands, in a position of leadership who knows.
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Someone who would never judge or condemn you for being attracted to the same gender or feeling like you don't fit the stereotypical gender norms.
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That's another thing that's weird. So now God's design, his creation order design for men and for women, is stereotypical.
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Instead of, according to God's good creation design. Now it's because you don't fit into stereotypical gender norms.
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They're not stereotypes. It's just the way things are, okay? God designed men and God designed women in such a way that romantic and sexual love can only righteously take place in a marriage union between one man and one woman.
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So I thought that was another just odd comment of someone who would never judge or condemn you for being attracted to the same gender.
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We judge and condemn constantly. When I see desires in my own life that are wrong,
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I judge and condemn them. When I have men that I'm accountable to and we talk and are transparent and there's sin that's confessed, we together judge and condemn that sin.
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Because sin is evil. It's contrary to the character of God. And as a Christian, I want to fight the good fight against sin.
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I want to be holy. So it's not a matter of, well, they would never judge or condemn you for being attracted to the same gender.
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We have to judge and condemn that and the person engaged in it, just as we judge and condemn ourselves when we sin.
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And so there's this this very postmodern you can't judge or condemn anybody.
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Folks, the day that we think we can't judge and condemn people and judge and condemn ourselves in the light of God's law is the day that we no longer think that we need a savior from sin.
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That's what my friends told me as I finished my seminary degree and prepared to apply for pastoral jobs.
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His friends were telling him, you'd be a great pastor because you're gay. Because you'd never judge or condemn people for being attracted to the same gender.
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I wonder if if this fellow would would preach a sermon denouncing homosexuality, as the way the
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Bible does, as a degrading passion, as a vile, perverted thing. I don't get the feeling that he would.
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They told me any any church would be lucky to have you, Ray. You're gonna be such a blessing to your church.
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The church needs you. But I soon found out that this was far from the case.
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You guys can probably imagine the first thing, the first question that they ask you whenever you apply for a ministry position.
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Tell us your testimony. How did you come to faith? See, now the first thing that I thought here was if I would love to know how he shared this with with search committees.
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I would love to know did he did he say I had been fighting this desire and still fight it.
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It's an ongoing struggle, you know, in my life. With the help of God, I've been able to overcome it to some degree.
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It's still very much there though. And it's something that I would I would ask for prayer and that and I still fight it.
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I stand my ground and fight it. It doesn't identify who I am as a person. But I hate this sin and I'm working to overcome it.
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And by the grace of God, I think more and more and more. I'm gonna overcome it. I'm gonna die more and more unto it and live more and more into righteousness.
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Is that how he described this? I don't get the feeling that it was. And you can probably imagine what a surprise it was to them whenever I shared my story and my sexuality.
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That's a strange thing. When I shared my story and my sexuality. See, this is this is one of the problems here.
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This is just taken as part of who they are. This young man said basically would say
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I am a gay Christian. That's just who I am. I am same -sex attracted. That's what he what he's saying.
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That is his identity. And I say no, you are a man designed by God for emotional and sexual fulfillment and love and happiness with a woman, not with other men.
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Now, if this is a struggle, then please do struggle. Keep fighting. Keep standing your ground.
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That's how I counsel anybody that comes to me and tells me they have a certain sin. Why do these people think that as a pastor, there's just this one set of sins,
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LGBT. So this is kind of sexual identity stuff that I'm supposed to just accept and be affirming and encouraging.
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If people express that they have a sin, they struggle with coveting. They struggle with with gluttony, with overspending, with anger, with being a serial adulterer, with pornography.
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Yes, those things I'm supposed to say, yes, those are sinful. Those are evil. We're gonna stand shoulder -to -shoulder and fight against those things and in Christ, you're gonna overcome them.
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But gayness, homosexuality, no, no, no, no, you don't condemn or judge this. You just accept it.
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I don't understand why these people think this gets some special status here. Now listen to the way he describes it.
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And to be fair, I would be as clear as I possibly could, you know. I would talk about how my sexuality actually brought me to church in the first place because I was questioning and seeking answers.
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And it's the reason why I'm a Christian today. It's the reason you're a Christian today.
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So you were asking questions about your sexuality, about this same sex attraction you had. And I would assume that if it's the reason you're a
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Christian, you could see that this is contrary to the will of God. This is a degrading passion that you have.
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This is wrong. It is perverted, twisted, and that there is grace and there is forgiveness for such perverted desires and perverted behavior.
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I would hope that that is, okay, well, maybe that was the main sin that you were dealing with before you became a Christian.
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But now you found forgiveness for that sin in your life now. That's not made clear.
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And that's one part that's troubling about this. That's encouraging to me, that he said that the way that he did.
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He has no agenda to change it. He agrees with the church's teaching on it. That's good. I commend him for making that statement.
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But listen to what follows. It is very troubling. See, but the thing is,
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I would really, really want to know, how did he share this? How did he share it?
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That's not made clear. And because of that, he's making these search committees, or the people that interviewed him, he's demonizing them as these judgmental, hypocritical, you know, bigoted people, when
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I wonder how he shared this. What exactly did he tell these people that made them kind of do a double -take and go,
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I don't know about this. A danger to their church. I had one interview with a church that lasted no longer than 15 minutes before I was told that I was not a good fit.
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Which is the most diplomatic way that a church likes to put it. And I had somebody tell me in another church that on paper,
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I was the perfect candidate. But my sexuality made it difficult for them to hire me.
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See, here again, it's just taken as an identity. My sexuality. This young guy,
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I think, would just say, I'm a gay Christian. I'm a gay Christian. I think that's how he would just, that's just the way it is.
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And this is one thing, in listening to just his talk, and then the one after it, Nate Collins' talk, the thing that really burdens me, the thing that really breaks my heart, is the complete hopelessness that is being communicated here.
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There's no hope being communicated that you can overcome these things in Christ. And I'll tell you, as far as I can tell,
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I really think I was converted when I was about 18 years old. It might have been a little bit earlier than that, but things radically changed in my life when
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I was 18. The reason I think it was then, is there was the beginning of a massive war.
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Where before there had just been compromise, and playing around, and managing sin.
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When I turned 18, and really started getting into the scripture, and was really convicted that I was hell fodder, and saw
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Jesus Christ in his perfect saving glory, especially in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 5 -10, just read that like obsessively compulsively over the course of months, every day
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I'd come home and read Hebrews 5 -10, and just looked at the priestly work of Christ, and it just drew tears from my eyes.
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It was just so glorious. And seeing how he had saved me perfectly from all the terrible things that I had done and thought.
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And there was an all -out war declared on my sin. I hated my sin.
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I hated myself. I loathed myself over all the things I had done, all the things I had tolerated, all the things
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I had compromised on in my life. And it was just, no more. No more of this.
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And I am going to be at war with sin now, and I'm going to be fighting against sin right now. That's the thing that's missing from this, is where's the desire to fight against this sin?
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Because it's contrary to the character of our Lord. It's contrary to our God, and we want to be holy in this way.
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We want to be rid of these desires. We want to be rid of all of the sin in our lives. That's not what comes out of this at all.
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It's not what's coming out of here at all. And that really bothers me. This is pure hopelessness.
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This is what we are. Can't change. We'll never be delivered from it. And I just think, you know, by the grace of God, I am so different than what
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I was when I was 18. I'm 43 now, so God has been at work for a long time in my life. And I think how much of a distant memory so many sins are that I felt like,
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I mean, they just had me in the vice grip, like a death grip. I just couldn't break free from it.
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But over time, you stand your ground. You stand shoulder to shoulder with God's people. You get help from pastors and elders.
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You accept counseling, and you go, and you fight, and you fight, and you fight. And by the grace of God, you change.
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You do die more and more into sin, and you do live more and more unto righteousness. What's communicated here so far, what
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I've heard this talk and Nate Collins, hopelessness, pure hopelessness.
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I come from an Asian American background. Believe me when I say that I know what it means to work hard, to be really successful, and to do everything right.
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And I had. I went to church all of my teenage years. I joined a Christian fellowship in college and became one of the most prominent leaders.
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And I finished my Master of Divinity degree in seminary in only two years. I did everything formulaically right to become the perfect candidate.
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And it still wasn't enough. No matter how much I had sacrificed, no matter how much
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I had laid down my life to get to this point, it still wasn't enough. And the one thing
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I couldn't change about myself became the very thing that disqualified me in their eyes. I think that's the problem.
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That's the problem. If I was on a search committee and someone said, I am a gay Christian, I would definitely explore that.
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I would say, well, wait a minute. What are you saying like this? What are you saying by that? He says, the one thing
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I could not change about myself. Well, that's certainly true. We can't change ourselves, but we can roll up our sleeves and put up a good fight.
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When men come to me and tell me they've got problems with this kind of thing, people have told me they have this kind of a struggle in their life.
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I had a guy tell me once he was sexually attracted to little kids. Yeah. You know what I told him?
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I said, it is good that you recognize that is evil and you need to fight that sin.
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This guy sounds like he's not fighting anymore. He's, yeah,
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I'll go along with the church's teaching, but this is just who I am. I would not be okay with a pastor identifying himself like that.
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I would not have, I would not be okay with that. If he said this is an ongoing struggle that I have, but I fight it.
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It's a daily struggle. I know that it's perverted. I know that it is evil. I know it's sinful and it's wrong, but I stand my ground.
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And with the help of other men in my life that love me dearly and have counseled me and helped me and prayed for me,
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I've been able to overcome it to a very significant degree. And my hope and prayer is that eventually it'll be gone altogether.
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But you know what though? I still have struggles that I had when I was 18. They're still there, but I would never identify myself by those struggles.
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I would never say, yeah, those sins, that's who I am. And I just can't change it. No, no.
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Metanoia means a change of mind. God really changes us.
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He sanctifies us. He makes us better than we are. He makes us more holy. Think about that.
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If you've walked with Christ for a long time, think about all the sin you used to struggle with it. You don't struggle with anymore or not to the same degree anymore.
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That's the work of God. Overcoming sin, recognizing you are not slaves of sin.
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You're slaves of righteousness. Sin shall not have dominion over you. How shall we who died to sin live in it any longer?
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Be identified by it any longer? That's what's missing from all this. He says, no matter how much
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I laid down my life, no matter how many sacrifices I made, I blazed through an MDiv in two years and I did all these things right, but the one thing
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I couldn't change is the one thing that was the showstopper. The fact that you're saying you can't change it shows that there's a massive problem in your theology here.
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There's a massive problem in your understanding of sanctification, the new birth, the fact that we are not the slaves of our sin any longer.
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Do we still have sin? Do we still struggle with sin? Yeah. Does it identify our existence? No, not anymore.
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What identifies me now is Christ. And the pursuit of holiness and the changes that he has done and is doing and will do as he conforms us more and more to the image of his son.
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I know what it means to do everything right and still never be good enough.
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It's not a matter of being good enough. It's not a matter of being good enough. It's simply a matter of being willing to identify something as evil.
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That is evil. Identify something that is sinful in the sight of God as sinful in the sight of God.
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Not, this is my identity. I just have this issue. It can't change.
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I won't change it. That's not appropriate. You see, what my friends couldn't understand is that this is the way that things are.
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This is the reality of the church. Where my friends thought that I'd be a valuable asset to the church, instead the church just saw me as a liability.
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Somebody who, by being hired, would challenge the church in a new way. Someone who would hurt the church's reputation in the eyes of the other churches.
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Yeah, if you stand up in a pulpit and say, I'm gay, and that's just who
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I am, and I'm also bent to the church's teaching on this, but I'm not going to stand up and denounce this as a great sin.
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That's a problem. Because the apostles, the scriptures, do denounce homosexual desires and practices as sinful.
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Colossians 3, 5 says that evil desires are among the sins that exclude us from the kingdom of God.
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Excuse me. Evil desires. Evil desires have to be put to death. Along with fornication, covetousness, and everything else, evil desires are in the category of sin.
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And so if we desire something that is contrary to the law of God, contrary to God's created order design, that's sin that needs to be repented of.
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And if you were going to these search committee interviews and saying that this is not something that you can repent of, this is not something that you will repent of, or identify as being evil and sinful, yeah, they were right.
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They were right to say, you're dangerous and you can't be a pastor here. Greg Johnson, in that cross -politic discussion he had, made an amazing statement.
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He said, we're not going to ask these people to repent of something that they can't repent of or that cannot be repented of.
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That is nonsense. No matter what the sin, it doesn't have some special status as being unrepentable or something like that.
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Or it's something that you cannot overcome in Christ. That's nonsense. That's not God as he is presented to us in scripture.
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God liberates people from these kinds of things. Sometimes it takes a long time and it takes a great deal of effort.
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And you know, one thing that Nate Collins says over and over and over, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired. Yeah, I'm tired too of fighting against sin.
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But I'm not going to stop because Jesus is worth it. His gospel is worth it.
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His holiness, his glory is worth it. It's worth me paying the price to hate my sin and to crucify it and to put it to death all the days of my life, no matter how tired
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I get of doing it. Someone who would force the church to stop avoiding this issue and actually deal with it.
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No one's avoiding anything. If this is not a difficult issue, it's a sin, it's wrong, repent.
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Okay, that's it. That's all there is to it. It's just like any other sin. You repent of it. You identify it as sin.
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You preach about it as sin, especially today where you have so much going on that's trying to say it's not a sin.
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You need to denounce this as a sin, not fixate upon it, but you denounce it as sin and call people to repentance of it, just like every other sin.
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It happened in every single interview. But after months of searching, I was finally hired by a church in New York City.
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It was a blessing from God. It was a full -time youth pastoring position, and they even set me up with a place to live.
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The pastors there knew about my sexuality, but they didn't think too much about it. For the first time in a long while,
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I felt like I was wanted by the church. Again, though, it's just identified as my sexuality.
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It's an identity. It really functions as an identity. This is as absurd as someone saying they knew about my stealing and that I just was completely overrun with the desire to steal, but they didn't think much about it.
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I mean, folks, just insert whatever sin you want to identify yourself with here. I mean, it could be a form of sexual sin or any other kind of sin.
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I served joyfully there for a couple of weeks, loving the youth that I worked with and loving the leadership team that I had there.
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And then one day, my supervising pastor hesitantly asked to meet with me.
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A couple of weeks? Two weeks? That's it? We sat down. I saw that he was holding a folder in his trembling hands, and inside the folder was an anonymous letter.
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The subject line read this, Ray is gay. The funny thing is that this anonymous letter actually had a return address on it, so if they were trying to remain secret, somebody would really drop the ball.
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I know, right? You can't even blackmail somebody, right? So it was actually very easy to trace the letter back to this.
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If it only took two weeks for someone to write a letter that says Ray is gay,
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I'm thinking that this is a topic this fellow talks about a lot. It's gotta be something that he brings up and puts out there for discussion a lot.
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I think that's not healthy. I preached three sermons on this topic. I read Matthew Vines' book, God and the
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Gay Christian, and that's it. In the 10 years I've been preaching, three sermons on this topic because, frankly,
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I don't like thinking about it or talking about it. I really don't. So I did those three sermons, but it took two weeks, and people are writing a letter.
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This must be something this guy talks about a lot. I don't know. Sender, and guess what?
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It didn't come from an individual. The address actually belonged to a local church in the area.
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So an entire organization that I had little to no connection with somehow found me and felt that it was their obligation to bring me down.
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The damage was already done. The letter had been read, and the information had been passed around my church. The parents began texting each other and gossiping.
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See, I'm wondering what exactly was known or not known at this church about this guy and his particular take on this.
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It's one thing if someone has a struggle with this. It's another thing if it's his identity. He puts it out there and is telling youth, yeah, it's not a sin to be gay.
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You just accept the church's teaching, and you obey, and you just recognize God's called you to a life of celibacy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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And that's cool. It's okay to have those kinds of twisted, perverted desires. If someone was telling my kids that,
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I would not be okay with it. Not okay at all. Found me, and instantly,
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I became a pedophile, a sex offender, a rapist. I did everything that I could to change their minds.
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I wrote out my testimony and shared it with the parents. See, I would love to see that. What did you say in that testimony?
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Did it contain a very clear denunciation of the sin? And did it contain a commitment on your part to fight the good fight?
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To stand your ground against this sin and to stare it down and to fight it down with the help of the spirit of God and the word of God and the family of God?
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Is that what that testimony had in it? I'm thinking it probably didn't. I laid out my statement of beliefs and I passed it around as well.
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And I pleaded with the parents to sit down with me, to get to know me, to hear my story.
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Nobody took me up on that offer. Not a single person. That's a shame. I would have.
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I would have. I would love to hear. Are you identifying this as a sin? And was it made very clear?
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If this ever came up in the youth, this is... It's sin. It's a vile affection.
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It is a degrading passion. It's something that needs to be repented of and fought against. And with the help of Christ, you can overcome it.
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Is that what was being communicated? And pretty soon the parents were threatening to leave the church, taking their kids and their money and their tithes with them.
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And the other pastors and ministers, they had no idea what to do. What is a pastor?
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Some people say that pastors are supposed to lead the way, lead the church and be the pioneers of conversation.
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But the pastors at my church, they couldn't do anything. They're supposed to be the pioneers and the leaders of conversations.
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See, I think that's one of the problems here. This is not an issue that really requires a whole lot of discussion.
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Okay. One of the problems that I have here is that we need to, as uncomfortable as it might be, we need to restore meaning to the word homosexual.
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You know, when I, years ago, did a very detailed study of abortion and preached six sermons on that topic, and it was profoundly depressing.
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You know, I have a whole shelf of books on abortion, the history of infanticide, and just the... It's just a nightmare.
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It's just an absolute, horrific, awful, terrible nightmare. One of the things I discovered though, in talking about this issue, especially with people who are pro -choice, is you need to talk about abortion.
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And you might think, well, what do you mean? You need to restore meaning to that word. What is abortion?
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And what does it do to babies? You see, one side wants to talk about women's rights and all that sort of thing.
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And we need to talk about what abortion does to babies. What is a saline abortion? What does that mean? Where high concentrated salt solution is injected into the womb, where the baby is then burned to death by it.
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We need to talk about what digoxin is, that's injected by a needle into the heart of an unborn child to stop the heart.
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We need to talk about dilation and curatage. We need to talk about partial birth abortion and what it does to babies in detail.
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We need to talk about it. When we talk about male homosexuality, you are talking about practices that are not only disgusting and vile and perverted, but are also dangerous, physically dangerous.
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And the studies have been done, men who are actively engaged in that kind of behavior live significantly shorter lives than regular people do because it's not natural and it's vile and it is dangerous to do.
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And so let's talk about what exactly this young guy is putting forward here, that it's okay to have desires for that sort of thing.
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And it's also okay to have desires for romantic attachment to a man on the part of a man.
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That's perverted and ought to make us uncomfortable because it is a sin against God.
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It's a sin against the created order. It's a sin against our own bodies. And so that needs to be remembered here, what exactly it is that we're talking about.
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These pastors who are supposed to be the most powerful people in the church are suddenly powerless in the church, just like I've been my entire life.
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See, but it depends on how you were putting it. How are you putting it? How did you explain this in your testimony?
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I mean, that part's not shared in this little mini talk that's given here. I would be interested to know, how did this lead to you coming to know
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Christ as your savior? And how does your walk with Christ today, how does it affect this particular struggle, this particular form of evil, wicked, vile, degrading passion that you still struggle with?
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My friends told me that as a pastor, I would be able to lead the way in talking about LGBT issues.
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So why did it feel like this was anything but the case? Why was my voice being silenced? Why were people in my church sending around articles about conversion therapy and electric shock treatment without asking me what real change meant in my own life?
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Why was I being told that I needed to change my language about this issue to deny my feelings and to stop spending time with the
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LGBT community? Okay, right there. That comment right there is extremely problematic.
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Listen to that again. Let's back up a little bit. Own life. Why was I being told that I needed to change my language about this issue?
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I would love to know, how was he talking about it? I would love to know, how did he write about it?
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How did he explain this issue? He needed to change his language about it. I think there's a lot that needs to change about the way it's being talked about today.
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To deny my feelings? Deny my feelings. I needed to deny my feelings. Yes, very often we have to deny our feelings because our feelings are evil.
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Our desires are wrong. They're perverted. They're evil. They're wicked. And we have to deny them.
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Jesus said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself. Take up his cross and follow me.
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So he was told he needed to deny his feelings and he didn't like that. Listen to the last thing he said.
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And to stop spending time with the LGBT community. There's no such thing as the LGBT community. It is not a community of people.
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You can't define a community as being a collection of sexual sins. That's what
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I don't understand about this. No one talks about the murderers community or the pedophile community or the bestiality community or the adulterers community.
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I shouldn't be spending time with the adulterers community. Don't you have any compassion for adulterers? Well, yeah, but they need to repent of that sin just as anyone engaged in any of this other stuff needs to repent and fight it.
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Why was it that the very person who should know the most about this issue was the only person who wasn't being included in the conversation?
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They applaud for this. Honestly, I have no idea what they're applauding.
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The one person who knows the most about it was not being included in the conversation. See, there's so much being left out of this.
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I would love to know exactly what it is that he was saying to these people that made them uncomfortable because this whole thing makes me uncomfortable.
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You know, it's funny how people outside of the LGBT community just look... There is no
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LGBT community. There is no LGBT community. Folks, you've got to rid yourself of such labels.
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There is no murderers community, theft community, adulterers community, porn community.
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We do not identify ourselves as a sin. We identify ourselves as children of the living God through Jesus Christ who are now at war with sin and by the help of Christ are overcoming it and putting it to death per what scripture says in Romans 8, 12, and 13.
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Some people have told me that maybe I should just not share this part of my life to the church, you know? That I should keep it secret, get the care that I need outside, you know?
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But not bring it into my ministry. Well, it certainly is not something that needs to be talked about constantly. Okay, this stuff's being talked about, you know, ad nauseum.
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It's just non -stop and what's being said about it is not helpful for the most part. This particular church asked me if I could stop using certain words if I would delete some of my posts.
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Like what? In what posts? Stop using certain words. Delete some of your posts.
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See, I would not be comfortable with someone saying, yeah, I'm a gay Christian. There's no such thing as a gay Christian. In fact, there's no such thing as a gay person.
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There are men and there are women. People have disordered desires. People have certain sin that they are drawn to because of their sinfulness that they need to stand their ground against and fight.
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They even went as far as to ask if I would consider going to counseling for my attractions.
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Can you believe that? They actually, I mean, he's offended by that. That people would ask him that if he would consider, if he would consider going to counseling for his attractions.
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Yeah, that would be a loving thing to recommend to someone like this. To say, yeah, there's intensive forms of counseling.
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Many people who used to have these kinds of desires or maybe still do that can help you fight the good fight.
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But he's offended that people would even ask him to do that. And I just couldn't do it.
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I couldn't agree to it. I couldn't compromise myself. Wow, I just couldn't do it.
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I couldn't go get counseling to deal with a certain sin because that would be to compromise myself.
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You hear, hear how much this sin is his identity. It's who he is.
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And folks, that's not biblical. That is, that is not biblical. And that is wrong. We are not sin.
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And if someone recommends that you go to counseling to deal with something that is perverted, that is wicked, that is a degrading passion that is unnatural like this.
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You, if you're wise, would say, well, tell me about, tell me about this counselor. You know, I definitely need to get help.
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And, you know, I need all the help I can get. Just like I do. I need all the help I can get overcoming certain sin in my life.
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And I have men that I speak to that I'm accountable to for certain sins in my life. It would never occur to me that they're telling me
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I should get counseling to deal with this, that or the other sin. Oh, that's, that's compromising myself. Oh, how dare they ask me if I would consider, consider getting counseling to deal with these desires.
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But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't commit to it. I couldn't compromise myself. Listen to that again.
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Listen to how hopeless that is. If I would consider, if I would consider going to counseling for my attractions and I just couldn't do it.
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I couldn't agree to it. I couldn't compromise myself. In other words,
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I will not repent. I will not repent of these perverted desires that I have.
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Romantic desires and sexual desires. I will not, not repent of them. And how dare you ask me to get counseling to help me overcome these things.
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Those people were trying to love you. Those people were trying to help you. And you just said, no, I won't.
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I will not accept any help in overcoming this sin. That is incredible to me. Why? Because the solution to decades of silence on this issue is to promote conversation, not to cover it up.
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That is a complete red herring. Someone encouraging you to get counseling to deal with same -sex attractions with that perverted behavior is not trying to silence the issue.
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It's not trying to cut off conversation. They're inviting you to have conversations so that you can overcome these things so that you can fight against them, which is what all of us have to do against all of our sins.
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Talk more and not less. And that's exactly what I tried to do. That's a red herring.
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That has nothing to do with what you just said. Nothing. No one's trying to shut down conversation. They're simply saying, if you have these disordered desires, you should go get help for them.
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And I know some people that can help you. You should have thanked them and said, thank you so much for loving me, for caring about me, and wanting me to be free of this.
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One week later, I was told that I was no longer the youth pastor. It was over. If you ask that church what happened in the summer of 2017 to the young pastor who served there only three weeks before he disappeared.
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Three weeks. So within two weeks, a neighboring church is writing a letter to the congregation.
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Ray is gay. Now he said that the pastors there knew about this. They knew about his struggle with this issue or his identifying himself as this.
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It only took three weeks for them to get rid of him. That's really bizarre. I don't know.
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That just sounds like there's more to that story than meets the eye here. They'll still tell you that. I mean, he's portraying himself as a victim here, but you know, it's hard to tell.
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Resigned because they would never admit that I was fired for being gay. Ray, there's no such thing as being gay.
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You are a man. You're a man. And you have disordered desires, just like everyone else has disordered desires.
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And you have to fight against them. If this is the thing that you're desiring, it is sinful and wrong for you to desire it.
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And it is sinful and wrong for you to identify yourself as this sin and that you can't change it and that God can't change it.
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Just because maybe he hasn't changed it as much as you want him to does not mean that he can't deliver you from it. But then again,
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I still struggle with things I struggled with when I was 16 years old. I'm 43 now. I'm 43.
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And I still have the same things. Should I just say, well, I'll just identify myself as this sin and if you have a problem with it or if you tell me
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I need counseling for it, you're asking me to compromise myself. No, I want to compromise myself when it comes to sin because I hate sin.
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So getting counseling to help overcome something that's evil and wicked, that's a good thing. During the months that followed,
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I was more depressed than I had ever been before. They say that the greatest sorrow of an LGBT Christian committed...
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There's no such thing as an LGBT Christian. Again, if you buy this language, if you buy that there is an
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LGBT community of people that this is just what they are and it can't change, you've already given in on this issue.
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And I just, you know, I made that prediction about Julie Rogers. I'll give it two years.
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I wonder, I'll bet you, in a couple of years, this church will be full on gay marriage, everything else.
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Celibacy is not being able to experience the joy of a marriage. But I think for me, the greatest sorrow of an
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LGBT Christian is seeing the continued mistreatment of the LGBT community at the hands of the church.
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That's my greatest sorrow. People are applauding. That's my greatest anguish. LGBT Christians have been mistreated by the church.
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So if we encourage them to get counseling to overcome this sin, that is asking them to compromise themselves.
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I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't go get counseling because I just couldn't compromise who I am.
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See, it literally is an identity. It's them coming to the church and coming to God and saying, this is who
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I am. I am this particular form of sexual sin and sexual perversion.
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Now deal with it. Um, the way we're going to deal with it is the way we deal with any other sin. You need to repent and you need to fight.
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You stand your ground like a man and fight against that sin. You fight the good fight and you get help and you get counseling and you study
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God's word and you memorize it and you pray and fast just like all the rest of us have to. Just like all the rest of us have to in dealing with our own sins.
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You know, it's one thing that really bothers me about the way this stuff is talked about. You know, Scott Sauls kept saying this about Stephen Moss.
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It costs this guy something to follow Christ. And I immediately thought it doesn't cost him anything more than it costs me or you or any other
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Christian in this world. It doesn't cost them anything more than what it costs every Christian on earth to follow
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Jesus Christ. Namely everything. You die to yourself. You deny yourself.
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This young guy was told you need to deny these feelings and the people that told him that blessed their hearts for trying and telling him, yes, you need to deny yourself to deny these feelings.
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You know, I have sinful feelings a lot. A lot. What do I do with them?
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Deny them. Fight them. Stand your ground against them because that's what all of us have to do.
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And I'm sorry that you apparently don't want to do that with this one sin. It's my greatest lament.
53:27
There's a song out there that's actually literally called Lament. It was written by a band called Timby Tolt. Y 'all should check them out because we need more
53:35
Asian -American representation in our music. Anyways, this song called
53:42
Lament is a very powerful one. And it's one of the most honest songs that you'll ever hear about wrestling with God.
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And I wanted to share with you some of the lyrics here and maybe get us to think about how much they reflect my journey or how much they even reflect our journeys.
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It goes like this. If you're so mighty, why do you break the weak and the weary and steal what they make?
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If hopeless delusion is a righteous man's fate, I don't know how much more I can take. Because the wicked and wayward continue to thrive and the martyrs continue giving their lives and the faithful never survive.
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You want to know the real kicker? The person who wrote this song, Tim, came out as gay a few years later.
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And soon afterwards, he also was removed from his position as worship leader of his church. Now, so if you are an unrepentant, unrepentant homosexual, and you are removed from your church because you are unrepentant about this sin, now we're being told by this young man, you're a martyr.
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What utter disrespect to true martyrs. What disrespect to the brave and godly men and women and children who have given their lives for the cause of God and truth, who, unlike this fella, deny themselves, deny their desires, identify their sin as sin, and repent of it daily and take up their cross daily against that sin.
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Now, if you come out as gay, you're supposed to be accepted by the church, unrepentant about it.
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And if you are removed because you're not willing to repent, you're not willing to get rid of certain words and certain ways of saying,
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I'm a gay Christian, I'm a gay Christian, I'm a gay... If you're not willing to stop doing that, and you're removed, you're a martyr.
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That is nonsense. That is, that really breaks my heart to hear something like that.
55:53
I've always known that marriage isn't for everyone. Not everyone is called to marriage, even straight people.
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But everyone, yes, everyone is called by God to a beautiful and wonderful purpose.
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And that was enough to keep me going in life. Because even if I never found a romantic partner, at the very least,
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I was always, always called to do something with my life, to make a difference in this world, to make my life matter.
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So what happens when that purpose is taken away from people like me and people like Tim? Nothing was taken away from you.
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You threw it away because you weren't willing to repent. You are not willing. You're not willing to get counseling to help overcome these desires.
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I mean, you said to do that would be to compromise myself. No, it's not. It's to hate sin.
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It's to say, I'm tired of having these desires. I want to be rid of them. I want to crucify them.
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I want them to be put to death. And so I will go to counseling. Thank you so much for loving me enough to recommend a counselor.
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Maybe they've been through similar struggles. Maybe they could really stand shoulder to shoulder with me and help me overcome these perverted desires that are contrary to the character of my
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God and my Lord and Savior. No, you said, I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't compromise myself.
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You're not gay. There's no such thing as a gay Christian. I'm not an adulterer either.
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I am a Christian, okay? Now, have I struggled with lusting after women
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I'm not married to? Yeah. Yes, I have. Is it wrong for me to do that? Yes. Should I fight that sin?
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You bet. You fight it and you stand your ground and you crucify it and put it to death.
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You identify it for the evil, sinful behavior that it is and you get rid of it. You cut off and pluck out.
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What happens when the world keeps telling you that you're not allowed to serve God's people? That you're not good enough? That you will never -
57:48
It's not about being good enough. It's being repentant for what is a very clear and obvious violation of God's created order and of his holy and infallible word, the
57:58
Bible. To have a desire for romantic attachment to or sexual contact of some perverted kind with a man is sinful.
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It's wrong to have that desire. It's not that, well, you're not good enough. It's if you're not repentant of it, you're not fit to serve.
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You'll never be good enough and you can't do anything about it. That's not true. You can fight the sin.
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I always tell people, you can overcome these things in Christ. I know that because I've overcome a lot in my own life.
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A lot of sin that does not define my existence any longer, praise God. But the first step is identifying it as sin, hating it for the sin that it is and wanting to take up your cross and die to it and to deny that desire.
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What happens when the people that you're called to lay down your life for are the very people who continue to crucify you over and over again.
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Oh, please. So calling you to repentance of it is crucifying you?
59:05
Oh, please. My goodness. Interesting to think about how a church is supposed to be a place for everyone.
59:11
A church is not a place for everyone. A church is a place for repentant sinners who hate their sin, who are fighting against it, who desire holiness, who are taking their place among the people of God as warriors against sin in themselves and in the world around them, who are doing everything in their power to overcome sin, to repent of sin, to change, not come into church as a sinner and stay and be accepted as a sinner, unrepentant for such sin.
59:45
Of course not. The church is not a place for everyone. It is a place for sinners who are repentant of their sins.
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How no matter who you are, there's always supposed to be somewhere in a church that you'll be able to fit in. In a sense, that is true.
01:00:00
The repentant person, no matter what they struggle with, can find a home in a local church. Praise God for that.
01:00:06
Praise God for that. But people who refuse to own their sin and repent of it, they can't be
01:00:12
Christ's disciples. Jesus said they can't. You have to deny your desires. You have to deny yourself and take up your cross.
01:00:19
No one's crucifying you. So if we don't let a serial adulterer who has three girlfriends on the side of his marriage, if we don't let him join our church, we're making a martyr out of him.
01:00:32
We're crucifying him. If we recommend that he gets counseling to help him overcome his serial adulterer issue, we're crucifying him.
01:00:40
We're making a martyr out of him. Come on. God knows how hard it's been for us.
01:00:46
How hard it's been for us to find a place in our churches where we aren't judged, where we aren't given a litmus test of our beliefs before we're allowed to belong to their community.
01:00:54
Where there's this automatic assumption that there's something wrong with us that needs to be fixed before we can be a part of their family.
01:01:02
There's something wrong with... Again, this is being couched in terms that are just completely unbiblical. Everybody comes to Christ with a whole stack of sin, a whole list of evil desires and practices and everything else.
01:01:15
And the day that you come to know Christ and join his family is the day that you declare war on them all.
01:01:22
You declare war on your sin. And it's an irreconcilable war. The Westminster Confession describes it that way.
01:01:27
It's an irreconcilable war between the flesh and the spirit. We fight the good fight and it is wearisome.
01:01:33
We get tired. And that's why the scripture says, don't grow weary in doing good, for in due time, you will reap a great harvest.
01:01:40
But you don't surrender to sin or to a certain sin and just say, this is my identity.
01:01:46
No one has the right to do that who wants to follow Christ. And when the church says, no, we're going to hold you to the standard of God's word, you need to repent of all your sin, not most of it, not 99 % of it.
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You can't hold on to this one thing and say, this is my identity. You need to let go of it, deny it, repent of it.
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Do you realize what I realized? Do you see what my story showed me about LGBT exclusion?
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Because I knew that it happened in the family. I knew it happened at the congregational level.
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But if a person like me can climb the ranks of a church and become the pastor of a church and still be driven out, and maybe we've been right all along, maybe there really isn't a place for us in the church.
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There is a place for repentant people who identify such perverted, vile, degrading passions and desires for the simple, wicked evil that they are, just like the rest of us.
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It's not a matter of being driven from the church. The only reason you'd be driven from the church is if you refused to repent and it sounded like you did refuse to repent.
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There really isn't a place for us in this world. No, for the unrepentant who are the slaves of sin and the willing servants of sin, that's right, there is no place for them in the church.
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There is no place for the unrepentant among the congregations of the faithful. That's very true.
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I didn't have anything left, and I figured that if I couldn't get married and if I couldn't live out God's calling for me to serve his people, then what's the point?
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Why keep trying? Why keep trying to lay down a life that's already been ripped away from me and beaten and abused?
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No, nothing was ripped away from you. You were not beaten and abused. You refused to let go of the sin and to repent of it and to identify it as evil, to identify it as wrong, and to accept the good advice and the good counsel that you were given, and it sounds like attempts were made to try to help you.
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You refused to do it. I couldn't commit to it, you said, because I couldn't compromise myself. This is a sin that you obviously dearly, dearly love, and what you need to do is you need to learn to hate that sin, to turn from it to Christ and to crucify it, to put it to death.
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You weren't abused. You weren't mistreated. You weren't excluded. Anyone who's unrepentant for any sin is excluded from the body of Christ.
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That's why you have church discipline. That's why it's a very important thing. The church is to be set apart from the world by its standard of living and by the way that we look at sin and fight against sin and are not willing to tolerate it in an unrepentant fashion.
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It was late one night when I opened my phone and I began searching the internet for the most affordable, most painless, and most accessible way to end my life, and I came so, so close.
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So close to becoming a number, so close to becoming a statistic, so close to becoming a part of the fact that LGBT people are four times as likely.
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These are the statistics that are quoted constantly. Nate Collins quotes a bunch of statistics as well, and this is absolutely endemic to our culture.
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One of the biggest problems that we have today is that everybody today sees themselves as a victim.
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Everyone sees themselves as a victim. You know, one of the reasons I really believe that I was converted when I was 18 years old is by the time
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I was 18, I felt like a lot of people had wronged me. I really did.
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I felt like I had been abused. I felt like I had been wronged. I had been betrayed by friends.
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I had been mistreated by people. I had been excluded for various reasons, but when
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I came to Christ, that all changed. That all changed. I didn't think about the people that wronged me anymore.
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That just kind of left my mind. And you know what entered my mind? All the people I had wronged.
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All the people I had sinned against in my younger years. And I ended up writing letters to a number of people and calling a number of people that I had sinned against.
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I didn't really care that much about the people I felt had wronged me. It just didn't matter, you know. It is the glory of a man to overlook a transgression.
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It's no big deal. People wronged me a lot, yeah. But I was more concerned with the people
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I had sinned against. And I started thinking, man, there are so many people I need to go to. I need to confess the things
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I know I did wrong. And I need to ask forgiveness of a lot of people. But I think one of the marks of conversion is you don't see yourself as a victim any longer.
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You know why I did a lot of evil things? You know why I do evil things now? You know why I do? Because I am a bad person.
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I am an evil person. I can be downright selfish. I can do things that are very wrong.
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Sometimes I have a very bad temper. Sometimes I think things that has no place in the mind or heart of a
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Christian. But the thing is, I recognize those things are evil and wrong, and I hate them.
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And part of my daily prayers are, God, help me to hate sin with a more perfect and pure hatred than I do.
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Because I want to overcome those things. I want to be pleasing in your sight. I want to be holy. I want to be godly.
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I'm not a victim. I don't sin because people mistreated me. I don't sin because of being a victim.
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I sin because I'm a bad person and because there's still so much to be repented of in my life. And you know what?
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That's what all Christians do. You live a lifestyle of repentance. You're not a victim. This young guy, because he will not repent and own this as a disordered, perverted, evil desire, he sees himself as a martyr, as a victim.
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So much so that he contemplated suicide. Listen. Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe that group is a lot more likely to commit suicide as an expression of self -hatred?
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And it's not because they're bullied or mistreated, but because they refuse to turn their back on this sin?
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That, I mean, suicide is a problem. And it really is an expression of self -hatred.
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You see, you can't have these kinds of perverted sexual desires without it doing great damage to your self -image.
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And when people call you to repent a bit, they are doing a loving thing for you. But that's when
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I heard the voice of God calling out to me in the night and telling me these words. Lay down your life.
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That's actually, that's actually great. Lay down your life. Yeah. Yeah. Die to these desires.
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Deny these desires. Take up your cross. And don't think about Ray as being gay.
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Think about Ray as a child of God. It's not about going from being gay to becoming straight. It's about being saved and walking in holiness with God.
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God will help you overcome these things in Christ. You just got to roll your sleeves up and fight the good fight, my friend.
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Not in the way that I was about to do. A pastor lays down their life for the sheep. Not for him or herself.
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And thinking about that and thinking about how many other lonely and hurting people out there needed love.
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See, it's all this victim. We're victims, victims, victims, victims, victims. Instead of, no, we are sinful.
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We need to change. We need to repent. It's all, everyone's lonely and they're a victim and they can't help it.
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And folks, we are not victims. We're criminals in God's world. We're not victims. We're sinners.
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That saved me. That saved me from the urge to end my own life. Lay down your life.
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Because there's a difference between dying for the world and living for it. There's a difference between taking your life and giving it freely away.
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And sometimes you have to save your own life by thinking about the lives of others. Sometimes we have to stay alive.
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See, that's a disturbing. You have to save your life for the purpose of saving others. Jesus said, whoever saves his life will lose it.
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You need to die to this desire. You need to let it go. Die to it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
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Don't hold onto yourself as being this identity. Let it go. Let it go.
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Turn from it. Take up your cross. Deny that desire. Fight the good fight. And you'll find refreshing in Christ.
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Not because of anything that we might gain from this world, but because of what we will give to it. Maybe that's what
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Jesus means when he says, whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. No, that is not what he means.
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What he means is letting go of all of the sin and everything else that you serve and serving
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Christ instead. Not saying, I'll repent of this and this and this and this and this and this and this, but not this.
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I will not repent of this. This is my identity. Jesus is saying, lose it.
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Lose it. Die to it. Take up your cross and follow me. He'll show you the way.
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I'm fully confident. No matter what sin people are embroiled in, no matter how deeply embedded it is in their heart,
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Jesus is able to deliver them from it. He is able to break even the strongest strongholds of sin in people's lives.
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You know why I know that? Because he's done it in my own life and I praise him for it. It's one thing to die for this world.
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So much harder to live for it. Thank God that we have a savior who showed us how to do both.
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Amen. And I knew right then that I had to lay down my life over and over again, every single day for this world.
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But he's not thinking in terms of, I needed to let go of this as part of my identity. I needed to get rid of this gay identity and give it to the
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Lord and lay it down and fight the good fight. That's not what he's thinking, which is very sad.
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I don't know how much it killed me to do so. I walked away from that night alive and I kept going.
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I never stopped looking for a church to serve. And by the grace of God, I'm happy to tell you today that I was hired by another church in New York City to be their pastor.
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And I've been serving there since January. Thanks. I never stopped.
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I never stopped. Is this what I had been called to? Because I knew that there are so many other churches out there that need change.
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Like the Pharisees whom Jesus never gave up on in his own ministry. This part really bothered me.
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So if you don't buy into this gay identity stuff, you're a
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Pharisee. And Jesus isn't going to give up on you. Knew that I could not give up on the most closed -minded, the most oppressive, perhaps even the most lost and wayward of the church.
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So we're lost and wayward if we don't accept gay identity and just, you know, affirm it, accept it, all is well.
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We're lost and wayward? Wow. They're the very people who crucified
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Jesus in the end. And even though they're the very people... We're the ones that crucified Jesus in the end. If we don't buy this, we're being paralleled to the
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Pharisees. Crucify us. And we crucify them. They're martyrs too. This is unbelievable to me.
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This is a PCA church that's hosting this. It took a long time for me to find a church.
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It's going to take an even longer time before we see the churches of America changing their attitudes and postures towards the
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LGBT community. There is no LGBT community. There is no community that is defined by unrepentant sexual sin.
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That's where I want to encourage you guys all. To be a part of the change. To never stop.
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Because the church doesn't just need my voice. It needs yours as well. It needs our voices and it needs our stories.
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I know, I know it's hard to find a church that you feel like you belong to. Believe me, it was even harder for me to find a church that I could work at.
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And it's going to be even harder to change the way that the church treats the LGBT community. But just like I was reminded in that still small voice at night,
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I'm called to lay down my life. Whether I believe it or not, whether a position or a job title says, whether a church allows me to or not,
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I'm called to lay down my life. And so are all of you. Even if you're not.
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The irony of the fact that he keeps saying that is rather striking to me.
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Because that's true. The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep and a pastor is called to do that. You bet indeed.
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And we don't do that by refusing to call sin what it is. And we're not doing a good job of loving people if we don't call them to repentance and if we don't give them hope that they can change.
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That's the biggest problem I have with all of this. So far, what I've heard is completely hopeless.
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This is just what you are. It can't change. Greg Johnson himself said it.
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You're asking them to repent of something that cannot be repented of. That is a lie. It can be repented of and you can change.
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Our God is able to deliver and to change and to break the strongholds of sin.
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You do not have to be identified by perverted sexual desires or by perverted romantic desires either.
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Not a pastor. See, that's the beautiful thing about it. Because where Jesus says in John 10 that a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, he also says five chapters later in John chapter 15 that greater love has no one than this to lay down your life for your friends.
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And that's where maybe you and I aren't that different at all. Maybe a gay pastor isn't all that different from a gay Christian.
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No such thing as a gay pastor or a gay Christian any more than there's a pedophile pastor and a pedophile Christian or a porn addict pastor or a porn addict
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Christian or an adulterous Christian or a thieving Christian or an angry Christian or a murdering
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Christian or a murdering pastor. We are bought and redeemed by the blood of Christ and are given new life and a new heart that desires righteousness.
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Anyone who would identify themselves as a specific form of sexual perversion, I would question whether they're a
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Christian at all. Anyone that doesn't understand this is something to be fought against and repented of, not embraced.
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I wonder what they really do understand Christianity to be at all. If they even understand what
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Jesus means when he says that greater love has no one than this than to lay down one's life for one's friends. Maybe you and I are called to show the world that the greatest love isn't always found in a marriage but in the laying down of your life for your friends.
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See, I didn't like that comment either. It's kind of a disparaging shot at marriage. It's a category error.
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Jesus isn't talking about comparing love and marriage. In fact, marriage is one of the grand biblical illustrations for Christ's love for his church.
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You know, you have the marriage supper of the lamb in the book of Revelation, Ephesians chapter five. You know, the marriage is parallel to Christ's love for his church and the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, et cetera.
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What is a pastor? To be honest, I'm still trying to figure that out each and every day. But I'm standing here before you as a living testimony that in many ways,
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I'm just like you. I get hurt by the church and I get hurt by the world just like you. But that also means that I'm just like you.
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I'm called to lay down my life for the church just like you. Don't ever forget that.
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Don't ever forget that call. Don't ever forget how much the church needs our voices and our stories.
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Lay down your lives for the church. Lay down your lives for each other and lay down your lives for the
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LGBT community. Thank you. See, what I would love to hear is stories about someone who has this kind of disordered desire.
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Talking about how it's been a weary road, but God has blessed me with some great
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Christian friends and ministers who have come alongside of me who encouraged me to get counseling and that counseling was really helpful.
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We walked through key passages of scripture and they helped me to strengthen my resolve to fight against it and God has really transformed me and I've been able to turn more and more away from this disordered desire and to live my life in a way that's pleasing to God and to have natural and God -glorifying desires in that way.
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And I would love to hear stories like that. Not stories about, these people wanted me to get counseling to deal with the sin.
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I couldn't do that though because that would be to compromise myself because I'm identified by the sin. Folks, that's not the way, that is not
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Christian discourse. Christians look at their sin and hate it and turn from it and repent of it.
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This is very, very, very disturbing and very troubling. Eventually, I'm going to listen to and do a program on Nate Collins' talk.
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His is right after this. It's actually part of the same video. But I hope that's been helpful to you. I was disturbed by what this young fellow said.
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There's so much of his story that's left out that I'm curious about. How did he talk about being gay before at these churches or on a blog or something?
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I don't know. I don't know. He certainly doesn't seem repentant for it. He doesn't seem like he's willing to speak about it as being a sin against God or anything like something he's fighting against daily and trying to be holy.
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That's just not part of the conversation here. And that is what is troubling to me the most about it. Hopeless, total hopelessness.
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This desire, man, it just is what it is. You can't get away from it. You can't repent of it. It won't go away. That's not the
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God that we serve and worship. God is a God who breaks strongholds of sin and who brings about real and lasting change.
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And we live in strange times. And the time for being firm on this issue and yet loving is now.
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But this kind of conference is not helping anything. This is simply introducing more compromise.
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And I really do think that that church and the speakers there are well on their way. Are well on their way to being full -blown proponents of gay marriage and all the rest of it.