"Christ’s Voice to the Sexually and Relationally Broken" Sunday, September 30 2018 PM

First Stone Ministries and the Gospel of John

A ministry here in Oklahoma City. First stone, we've been around for quite a while. We're gonna look at just a few things up here about us. And so about our ministry. And we've been around for a long time.

Since 1976, we were founded by a mom and dad, Frank and Peg Rogers, here in Oklahoma City. And we got our name from the Gospel of John, chapter eight verses, well, the whole passage, but verse seven specifically says, let him who is without sin cast the first stone, right?

So you saw that there. And this is the story about the woman who was caught in the very act of adultery. And why that's important in that particular passage of scripture is because of what Jesus did in that story.

And it's really pretty amazing what he did in that story in that he, if you remember five chapters before, he said that he did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that there would be salvation through him.

And so he's wanting to draw the center, the sexual center to himself. So in this story, the religious crowd are ready to stone this woman who was caught in the very act. So picture this. She was probably thrown down at the feet of Jesus, probably with hardly any clothes on, if any, maybe a sheet thrown over, and her accusers, they knew her to be the center of the city.

And they were testing him, which is ironic. They knew her to be the sexual center. And probably some of those people actually knew her. And so this is kind of the spirit in which Jesus was dealing with.

And he said, you who are without sin, cast the first stone. So when you think about that, you're thinking about really in the confines and context of the church at large and so much of the way that we treat people who are sexual centers, and yet we ourselves have sin.

But the interesting thing is a lot of people like to say, yeah, bro, don't judge me. You who are without sin, cast the first stone. But they take that meaning, lessening the actual grace and the holiness of God when actually in this place, Jesus says, go and sin no more.

And when we see that in a couple of other places, Jesus says, go and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you. So that's really the picture of First Stone in that this mom and dad in 1976 came to the church to get help, and they couldn't get help.

And so they formed this ministry. And at that time, there was a whole network of ministries. We have been full-time since 92. And then in 2012, we formed a new network because of the former network called Exodus really unfortunately segued from hyper-grace teaching into gay Christianity.

And so those of us that were more, the mature ministries formed a new network that was gonna stay sound on the biblical principles of the word of God that brings transformation and grace. So that's who we are.

And so we are a gospel ministry. And that is that really the main focus is that we wanna offer the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives grace to the humble that brings transformation. So that is really who we are as a ministry.

And so we have some services. We offer discipleship, pastoral care, group ministry, public teaching, and then we back here, we have some tables back in the back where there's free literature and information sign up.

And there's just like that table back there. And there's also a book table back there that has lots of books for sale. We have an awesome website with all of this and much more. So if you are in social media, some of you probably don't even wanna do social media, but some of you may.

What's really nice is on every article, you can send that to people very quickly and get information to people. And we have this new resource, it's a USB drive. We didn't bring them, but we do have them.

We'll have them here next week. For those of you who like computers or computer tech, and would rather have a nice little USB drive rather than a bunch of literature, we have that. So all of our articles up through May.

And what's nice about that USB drive is it's packed full of videos as well. I have a blog and then I have a webpage for the book that just came out called Freedom Realized, is the book I authored. And in this book, the reason for this book is in 19, actually, yeah, I'm thinking 2012, 19, it was 20, 2012.

In 2012, the Exodus leader started saying publicly that nobody changes and you can't change. Well, that was pretty infuriating for those of us who've actually experienced change and knew hundreds of people that had changed.

And one day I was sitting at my desk and I felt like a tap from the Holy Spirit. It's like, well, what about those 1200 client folders in storage? And we had actually, for the last 25 years, kept the intact files of people that we actually spent time with.

And that didn't include just people coming and going. So we had over 25 years of people. So I thought, well, we'll put together and contact as many as we can. And so that's why this book was written. This book also has 16 other leaders that contributed and it has my story in it and it talks about the Exodus implosion.

And if you get that book tonight, you also get this one free. And this is a testimonial story about a woman who was raised by gay parents and really the impact of homosexual parenting in her life. It's a pretty riveting story.

So from that report, what we ended up actually making it in its own book because it's all in color and this actually acts as a really powerful tool. All of these are in ebook and PDF as well. So you can get those on our website and that's, you can either go to First Stone or freedomrealize .org.

And there's a fact sheet back there. And later on, you'll see a few of the facts that I'll be talking about that are on that sheet. Pretty amazing stuff. So we wanna talk about understanding homosexuality tonight.

And I think, and hopefully you have a handout and this is where we're gonna start on the handout. And so we're gonna look at what it is. Can one be free? We do that through testimony, but also the word of God.

Personal Testimony and Conversion

And then as one born homosexual, we do this through teaching scripture, psychological perspectives, really just some common sense truth based upon what the Bible teaches. And we wanna underscore giving you guys hope through this entire presentation.

So starting off with my little story, which was started in 1983 for me as far as salvation. But before that, about a year and a half before that, the Lord intervened in my life in a way that made me think about heaven and hell, which was the death of my little brother.

In 1981, on Mother's Day, May 10th, we got word that Christopher had died suddenly in Germany. He was in the army and he was 18 months younger than me. And it turned my life upside down in that I was just, I was full of grief.

I was living as a gay man. I had lived gay identified for eight years from 14 to 22. At this time I was just turned 21. And I was just heartbroken. And what it did is it started causing me to cry out, God, I wanna know the truth.

I wanna know the truth. Well, speed up about a year and a half later, and I am in a little trailer house in Nekoma Park, Oklahoma. And these people are speaking about Jesus in ways I had never heard before.

I was raised in a Catholic home and parochial school, so I heard a lot about Jesus, heard a lot about the Bible, heard lots of things about God, but didn't. Anyhow, so I was there in this home and these people were talking in ways I'd never heard.

Jesus was coming and going out of their lives. Jesus was answering their prayers. And I thought, these people are nuts. And then I found out, oh, they're assembly of God. They really are strange. And so, but I was sitting there in their house and they were witnessing to their sister.

They weren't even talking to me. And I heard this voice, my heart started racing as I heard this voice and said, if you do not accept me tonight, you're going to die. And I thought, man, I need to know people.

I need to know Jesus like these people. And I thought, these people know Jesus in a way I'd never met. I'd never understood. I never had my prayers answered like these people are talking about. I need Jesus.

Well, I gave my life over to the Lord that night, that this man that was there. I said, I need to know Jesus like you did. And he said, brother, the Lord is calling you. It's like my heart was pounding and I'm hearing this voice inside of me.

If you do not accept me tonight, you're going to die. I'm thinking the Lord is calling me. And so he said, well, let me pray with you. I'm going to pray the sinner's prayer with you. And he prayed the sinner's prayer with me.

And I didn't even quite understand what all was taking place, except as a Catholic, I used to always see the crucifix every Sunday, right? This time I saw the living Christ on the cross suffering and dying and all my sin was coming out of me and into him.

And I believed for the first time. And so on the way home that night, this girl I was with, she said, well, does this mean you're not going to be gay anymore? And I said, you know, I guess it means whatever Jesus has for me.

And that really struck a chord in me. And then that night I went home and my parents had this big table Bible from the Catholic church, from the Pope. I mean, the Vatican literally blessed by the Pope sings this thick and big old thing.

And I lugged it down into my bedroom, blew the dust off of it and lugged it in there. And I prayed over this Bible and I was like, where do I go? It has all these extra pictures and all this extra stuff.

And it's like, you could barely find the Bible in the midst of the Bible because there was so much stuff. But I flipped open that thing and it literally landed on just like you just flip open your Bible like this.

And literally it landed on Leviticus. And I had prayed over it and I said, God, does the Bible anywhere say anything about this? And there it was in Leviticus 18. My eyes fell down and it said laws on sexual immorality.

And my eyes fell right down on this verse. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. I looked at that word abomination. I thought, oh, that doesn't sound very good. That sounds pretty bad.

And I was like, wow, it really does say that. And then I noticed that it also said it again in chapter 20 in verse 13. And it says, if a man lies with a male as he has lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.

They shall surely be put to death. And when I saw that, I was not very happy. I was actually kind of angry because see, I had bought into the lie that I was born this way. And I thought, wow, how can I be born this way?

And this say the exact opposite. And the priest over here in my parents' parish was coming on to me at my sister's wedding reception and telling me later that it was all the more reason after my brother's funeral that God loved me and all the more reason to come to mass.

And I'm like, this isn't fitting together. And I made a choice that night to believe this. And you know, for the last 35 years, I've made a choice to believe this over the traditions and doctrines of men.

And so I really did surrender my life to the Lord that night. I got down on my knees and I said, God, I don't know how to change, but if you'll change me, I'll change. And that started off my walk with the Lord.

And I've been walking this thing out. And one of the passages of scripture that's dear to all of us on First Stone is 2 Corinthians chapter one. You don't need to turn there. It just basically says from about verse three down, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the God of all comfort.

And he is the God who comforts those that are in affliction and in those places of affliction, it causes us to be able to comfort those as well. And so that's what we do in this ministry is our heart is to comfort people with the same comfort that we have received.

Creation, the Fall, and the Biblical Sexual Ethic

Now you'll see on here that it's so important for if we're gonna have an understanding about homosexuality, we have to know that the Bible actually does speak to this issue. And you can see on your handout that there are a few verses in the Old Testament, which a lot of times people just will point to Leviticus.

But what we need to do is we need to look at the beginning, right? And it's imperative that you as believers actually know the scriptures and believe the scripture, right? Because if you're not equipped with the word of God, then you're not gonna be able to help people, but you have to have this belief system core in you so that you can with authority tell people the truth.

So the word of God is very important. And I learned that in that very night, I saw that the law of God penetrated me and showed me that I was a sinner. And because I was a sinner, I needed Jesus Christ.

And in Galatians, Paul tells the Galatians that the law of God is a schoolmaster teaching us to come to Jesus. And so the Old Testament scriptures are going to reveal that we are all sinners in need of the Lord.

But specifically on this issue, you can see that there's a lot of verses on this. And we begin with the creation. The creation is foundation to this kind of ministry in giving identity and gender that God created us in his image, in the image of God, he created them male and female, and it will never ever be anything other than that.

And you'll see that that's so important in this day that we have so many lies that are coming against us with the message of orientation, that orientation is somehow legitimized, that somehow, if you have feelings and desires, then that's part of who you are.

And yet the creation says that we're male and female. And of course, psychology gave us those words in the 1870s to kind of define desires and appetite sexually, but it's really about sexual brokenness.

So this foundation is very important. And then you can see that the rainbow, which I think is interesting, the rainbow is a picture of a promise of God, right? And a lot of people will talk about the rainbow and that the homosexual community have the rainbow and they've taken the rainbow.

And it's just not true. It's actually a six banner, six banner bands on their banner that represents man. And it represents something that is not God's rainbow. God's rainbow has naturally, when you look at a rainbow in the sky, seven to 10 colors, and in heaven, it has millions.

Now, I think it's interesting that the gay community would have a six bannered flag that represents the rainbow in Genesis. But folks, do you know what the rainbow is also a promise of? When you study your Bible, you also see that up here that the next time that God judges the world, he's not going to judge it by water, but by fire.

Now, I hope that's a paradigm shift for you because it's heartbreaking for me. I didn't tell you this part of my story, but in 1983 in Oklahoma City, when he said, tonight you're going to die, do you know that by the summer of 1983, we heard a terrible disease going through the hospitals?

It was called GRID, gay related immune deficiency. Do you know that within three years, half the people, after my wife and I got married, we got married in 1986, that summer, half the people that I knew in the gay community were dead.

So when I see this, I see destruction. I don't see something happy. I certainly, it's not gay. My heart is broken when I see that six bannered flag and they actually call it the banner of pride. Let that sink in for a moment.

But God's word says that before destruction, pride comes. So we see that the word of God, and what's amazing about this is the word of God. I'm needing help. This thing is not wanting to move forward now.

My batteries or what? Okay. Hello? Can you move that forward? For me? Is it Earl? Edgar. The Old Testament scriptures, if you see on your handout, let's just go there until we can get that to move forward.

Leviticus 18, 22 and 23. Now in context, the slide would tell you that in context, this is also so grievous to the Lord because verse 22 doesn't stop the thought. Verse 23 is where the thought completes and it's about bestiality.

And so when people, and even what's happening in the church is they're dumbing down the idea of homosexuality as just being normative as another orientation. But God looks at it as egregious, as detestable as bestiality.

And that's usually not taught when this subject is taught. And I think it is important to address that, to see, let me tell you folks, I didn't really come into full repentance and find change until I saw that I was really worthy of hell and death.

And until I dealt with my sin deeply, did I really find transformation. And then in Deuteronomy 23, all those verses through the end there, except for the Deuteronomy 22 passage, deals with the idea of a male prostitute or many of your versions of your Bible would say, cult, cult like prostitution.

And so the scripture really does deal with this thoroughly. Every single place, the idea of two men in any way and people would say, oh, but you don't understand the reason why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is because they weren't hospitable and they weren't loving.

And they'll go to the Ezekiel passage and say that. But even in the Ezekiel passage, it specifically says they were haughty, full of pride. And because of that, they committed abominations before me. They were full of themselves, self-centered.

So when you see the passage in Romans one, which I have all the verses up there, if we had them. In Romans one, you gotta love technology when it works. It's really great. So, but if you would go to Romans chapter one of your word, Lord.

So Paul is speaking to the Romans, right? And the Romans were pretty, we would consider them a pretty decadent society. Would we not? When you consider, when you think about those of you who actually know history, we know that Rome was full of decadence.

And so here's this epistle to the Romans and it starts in verse 18. It says, for the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifested in them for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen and understood that they are made even his eternal power head and Godhead. So they are without excuse. In other words, nature itself, biology innately, we are male and female, the way we are physically made to procreate as male and female, nature has already revealed this.

And we could get into a lot of the science and biology and I'm gonna end with a little bit of hope with that in that regard tonight and next week. But this is specifically saying that nature even reveals this.

So we are without excuse. I was without excuse. Verse 21, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. And one of the things that I think is really important to understand, I have never met anyone who is sexually broken or sexually perverse that had a grateful heart.

They were full of ungratefulness and became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they become fools. Now, I wanna tell you something about the wrath of God.

If you study the wrath of God in scripture, actually, it's being turned over to yourself and to the powers of darkness. The wrath of God will allow you to believe in a lie. First Thessalonians, or Second Thessalonians chapter two specifically says that.

So whenever I see the wrath of God, we're not talking about fire and brimstone falling down, we're talking about being turned over to a mind that believes what is false. And he goes on to even say this, that they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools.

And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. Therefore, look at that, verse 24, God gives them over to the uncleanness of their lusts. God is the one who allows this to happen into the souls.

And why? Verse 25, you can see this right here. It says, they exchanged the truth of God for, you know what your Bible say there, for the lie. Do you know where the lie started? In Genesis. That's why Genesis, the Genesis of the scripture is our beginnings and our foundation.

The Genesis is this, hath God really said? The lie is questioning, hath God really said? And that's exactly what Satan is doing today with all of us. And today we have people that are saying, oh, this really isn't that big of a deal.

We should embrace gay Christianity and we should become welcoming churches. As long as they don't act out, it's really okay. Everybody needs to have this. It's okay to have an identity. And I'm telling you, that is an erosion that's taking place in the church.

And they worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who's blessed forever. For this reason, God gave them over to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature.

Likewise, the men also leaving the natural use of woman burned in their lusts, one for another, men with men, and committing that which is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due.

This is specifically talking about male, female, procreation, sexual activity between a man and a woman. And gay people or gay theologians would try to explain this away and say, well, that was Paul's mentality because he's a single guy and he just really didn't understand about gay love.

I'm telling you, that's a heresy. And we can see it so many other places in the scripture. And there we are, all right, awesome. Let's try this again. So God gives them over to a debased mind. God is the one.

When I saw that, that put the fear of God in me. Do you know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? It is the very thing that I know, and in my book, it's the shortest chapter in my book called Coram Deo.

Coram being in the presence of Deo God, living in this way is what was the foundation for me to finally break free from my sexual addiction. And every person I've ever ministered to, the only way they've ever gotten free is to have that.

So you can see that there's a lot of sin that goes on in Romans 1, but the New Testament is so clear on this, folks, and the Old Testament. Everywhere we see anything with sexual sin and idolatry that is practiced over and over, the scripture is very clear.

Anyone who practices these kinds of things shall not go to heaven. I don't care if they prayed 10 prayers. I don't care if they have a membership in the local church. The Bible says they will not go to heaven.

Now let's look at it. In 1 Corinthians 6, I think it's very interesting in this passage of scripture, there's a whole list of sins here, right? But it says, do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, that's sex outside of marriage, nor what?

Adult, idolaters, that's loving anything outside of loving God, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites. Those two words there, now I know a lot of people that they don't like New King James, or even King James says abusers of themselves.

I like this. You know why? Because those two Greek words specifically mean a man receiving and a man giving, sodomy. That's all it means. Now gay theologians would try to twist that and say, well that's not what it really means.

It means like a prostitute or somebody who wants to have a relationship with a child. That's not what it means, folks. It just literally means, those two words, when you look at the Greek, and the scholars will tell you over and over, it just means what it says.

A homosexual or a sodomite. One time I was in a big prison in Texas. I was testifying. And if any of you know about prison world, there are the people that think themselves not as homosexuals, but they practice the behavior, and they call the men that they use, they're little punks, and they have other words that they use, and they don't consider themselves.

So one time I was preaching, and there was like 7 ,000 men. It's the biggest prison in Texas. I said, and by the way, this is what it means, and the warden just, and it was like a pen, a pen, you could hear a pen drop in that place.

And the warden said, I was so glad you didn't start a riot. It was like, because it felt pretty intense in that room. But the reality is, is the word of God is forever settled in heaven. And we have to agree with it.

But see, it says here, those who practice such things, I didn't write it, folks, they will not inherit the kingdom of God. But it's not, that's not the only place. And so, oh, and such were some of you, such were some of you, and some of you in here, such were some of you, but you have been washed.

You believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit comes to put you on a trajectory of holiness. I'm so grateful for that, aren't you? For every one of us need the salvation of our Lord.

So you can see that sexual impurity is forbidden. Throughout the entire scripture, all sexual uncleanness. And anyone that practices those things, it's saying they don't go to heaven. Now, you can see that in these verses.

And so that's why I wanted you to print them, wanted you to have them. You go home and you study them in your Bible. And you look at this, it literally says that. And one of my favorites has been the Colossian passage and the Ephesians passage.

You can know with certainty in Ephesians five, look at this. In Ephesians five, for this you know with certainty, that no one who practices these things, fornication, sexual immorality, sexual uncleanness, are greedy idolater.

It goes on to say, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. It's very clear. What did we say was the beginning of a firm foundation of the beginning of wisdom? What? The fear of the Lord.

It's the love of Christ that compels us. But without the firm foundation of the fear of the Lord, you don't have much wisdom. So it's important that you see this in the Bible. And isn't it very interesting at verse six, it would say these words, do not be deceived.

You know why? Because every single place in the Bible where it says do not be deceived, is where we're being deceived right now. Every place. It's amazing. First Timothy is revealing that the law of God is good, that the law of God does this work.

And it actually says that in the last times in first and second Timothy, Paul was addressing Timothy as a young preacher and telling them that men would be lovers of self, lovers of pleasure, and warning them that this would be happening in the last days.

And then we have the Jude passage and the revelation passages which specifically cries out that these are reminders. First Corinthians chapter 10, it also says is a reminder. A reminder of these things.

And I'm gonna go ahead and just skip through this because we're running out of time. But these people are creeping into the church and some unnoticed, and they are perverting the grace of God by saying grace is just kind of this magical covering and you just believe and you've got your ticket punched.

And they're turning the grace of God into lewdness or the ability to practice sexual sin. And I'm telling you folks, this is the warning right here. Look what it says they do. They deny, they deny Jesus when they do this.

That should be a sober warning because that's what happened with Exodus. That's what happened with the leadership of these people that are promoting gay Christianity. And so we're gonna go ahead and it reminds you that even in this very Jude passage, that specifically it was in context of even the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah of sexual uncleanness.

Pastoral Care, Childhood Trauma, and Relational Brokenness

So now let's look at, and you can see the overall causes from a pastoral care, which a lot of times people when they are in the church and they've heard the scripture, they know the scripture, they're actually even more interested in this next part.

And that is that through the study of looking at some of the soulish part, the mind, the will and emotion, that you have perceptions, that people have a perception of the way that they think. And because of that in their early childhood development, they will defensively detach.

And so when you have God-given personalities and temperaments like a boy who is kind of sensitive and artistic and emotional, he's labeled. And now we're wanting to do this with all kinds of bizarreness and even pump our children with hormones and tell them that they can even transition their gender.

It's tragic what's happening in our culture. But a lot of times, and this is true in my story and you'll hear it in these people's story, that there's gender confusion and trauma that takes place in early childhood development.

I was sexually abused at six, at 10, at 13 and had terrible things that happened to me. And my dad was all over the place and he wasn't there in my most formative years between zero and five and so I was over-feminized with having an older sister that actually kind of took care of me.

And so this was very true in my story so that when dad came into the picture, I was defensively detached, I had a wall. I detached from my dad and this is what happens with so many people that deal with brokenness in their relationship with their parents.

And then this next part, well on your sheet, if you'll turn here, in this next part, you see family history, sins of the forefathers, family background, the arrested emotional development. In this part here, you're arrested in your emotional development when traumas and things happen, it's like a guy trying to develop in his psyche as male and be good with male but he's arrested so then when puberty comes along and he is looking at other males, he doesn't feel like them and so he is arrested in his development emotionally and now he starts comparing himself and now he finds himself attracted.

And that's because there wasn't the mentoring of the soul and the resolving of the conflict and the brokenness. And of course now we have these new social norms, the lowering, if you look on your sheet, you can see the causality and I'm gonna have Laura Lee who is our Director of Women's Ministries come up here and explain point four, the second part and she is our Director of Women's Ministries but before we go there, you can see it that all of these areas, the absent father, the hostile or angry or being scarred by this relationship, the rejection, the ambivalence, the physical abuse, no affirmation of healthy masculinity.

In divorced homes, this is going on rampantly. This place where bottom line, because of your arrested emotional development, you don't add up. You're broken inside your soul and you don't add up and you feel so powerless against being able to confront this thing where I'm supposed to feel normal and I have all these unresolved things inside my soul that actually need to be addressed.

Lack of mentorship, strong feminizing influences in the male's lives, we see this very consistently and they detach from other healthy male relationships. Same thing with females, strong masculine influences and they detach.

Mother wound, broken view of femininity. This is both in male and female on point four, the first section. So you feel that femininity is unsafe. There's manipulation, control, gender bashing. You see all these root problems here that causes the soul to say I can't connect that way so I'm gonna connect this a way which is actually familiar with so many of us with over 55 in this survey but in other surveys, 60 to 80 of men and women who were sexually abused as children.

Do you think that might have some causality? And now that we're giving this idea to like the California schools from K to 12, we're going to teach them that homosexuality is normal. This is what's happening in our public school systems.

So I'm gonna let Laura pick up from here and in dealing with female homosexuality.

Female Homosexuality, Shame, and Emotional Dependency

This one? Okay, so I'm saving my testimony for next week but along with all those other scriptures that Stephen spoke about specifically naming homosexuality as a sin, I did not identify my various issues through that lens.

I didn't ever call it anything but I was living exclusively in homosexuality. I think part of the reason that I never labeled it anything is I was never forced to label it anything. The culture now will not tolerate that.

They're trying to help kids identify as something early, maybe even early as preschool or kindergarten but the Lord did use the scriptures also to minister to me. Well, where I didn't identify with that word homosexual throughout scriptures, the scriptures clearly condemned the behavior of my life and it was convicting.

In Ephesians 5, 11, it says, do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness but instead even expose them for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which is disobedient, due and secret and my heart just burned with that truth.

I was like, this is me. Early in my Christian discipleship, I memorized 2 Thessalonians 1, 8 and 9, dealing out retribution to those that do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus and these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of God and from the glory of his power and I was frightened out of my mind by that truth.

If I didn't know him, that would be one thing but to not obey him also got me. It was a double whammy to my heart and I was convicted. And in 2 Thessalonians 2, it talks about people who did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved and because of that, deluding influences come into their minds and I recognize myself in those things but ultimately, it was the word of God in Hebrews chapter four that got me which says the word of God is alive and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joint and marrow and it's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart and everything is open and laid bare before his eyes with whom we have to do.