On the practical level, the National and International United Methodist Conferences have been disrupted time after time for the past twenty years by homosexualist activists demanding that the UMC change its Biblical standard and accept secular homosexual supremacy. They have done back room deals with gay-leaning bishops to squelch discussion and votes by traditional believers. One year the police had to be called to quell disorderly conduct at the National Conference.
I hear what you are sayng about having a heart to convert people to the truth; but I wonder if you are aware that the homosexual lobby has a war plan and have been waging war on the UMC for decades. Trying to be “nice” and taking a sentimental approach to Christian love is not working. Jesus took a whip to the moneylenders. He was no pushover for sin.
As I pointed out: if they claim to be a brother but are unrepentant do not even associate with them. Even put them out with vim and vigor.
It’s only those honest enough to say that they are unbelievers that you have dealings with. You still don’t compromise the truth to make them happy of course.
And, yes, the homosexuals have a very clear agenda.
I don’t know if you’ve run across me before but from time to time I write about how important “identity” is, or rather how one defines oneself.
A Christian has at the core of their being the Holy Spirit, the ultimate reality of a Christian is to be just that. It is, or rather should be, the cornerstone of our sense of self identification.
But homosexuals also define themselves by this thing that they do, it is often seen as pretty much the underlying fact of who they are. This, you may recognize, lay behind the insistence that they are that way by nature and being that way by nature they have nothing to repent of: they basically, if not literally, blame God for them being homosexual.
As such their very sense of self, their identity, is made out to be “Homosexual” (capital “H”). To say that they need to repent is offensive to them, to say that they can repent doubly so.
A person CANNOT define themselves, their Identity, as “Homosexual” and as “Christian”.
That seems to me to be akin to trying to serve two masters. Anyone claiming to have repented who still makes being Homosexual (capital “H”) the focus of their sense of Identity is only fooling themselves. At best they are a cultural christian (little “c”).
But a repentant person has by the power of the Holy Spirit pushed the old identity aside for the new.
This, I’m persuaded, is that faith of a mustard seed thing. What is this faith? Well, think about it: what can a mustard even know except that it is a mustard already, the only difference between the seed and the tree it will grow into is time. Nothing else. It’s like that bit from Kung Fu Panda about the peach, only from the peach’s POV.
So all a mustard can do is believe it is what it really is. Just accept the truth.
A cucumber plant may be planted beside a mustard but it will never be a mustard and the mustard will never be a cucumber even though they grew up together. Same with wheat and tares. So to have the faith of the mustard seed must then be simply believing, without doubting, that you really are what The Lord says you are already.
Don’t think I’m saying I’m there (even saints are dumber than plants, we struggle to accept what we are), just that’s what I think it must be.
But if you fundamentally believe that you are something entirely incompatible with being a “mustard” ... well, then you probably are not a “mustard” at all.
And if you are willing to abandon the knowledge of God, that He is Holy (Holy, Holy) and His Word, to please those any honest observer knows is not among the “mustard” variety ... well, Romans 1:18-32 would seem to indicate that there is a point in time that it should be clear you’re no “mustard” yourself.
Here I suppose I need to bring up the odd infamous example of individuals who seemed long in the faith but for the cause of some sin, such as homosexuality, makes a wreck of their walk (and likely their relationships as well) for a time, if not a lifetime.
In the past I’ve supposed that there are two possibilities: first is that the person was never really repentant at all and that, God not being mocked, He turns them over to their sins AND second that such a person is a believer BUT has been dealing with the sin in their own strength rather than in the strength that God supplies by the Holy Spirit. Essentially, telling God “I got this one” and it is unconfessed sin. Telling God “I got this one” just seems a totally bonkers idea but lots of people have done it.
In a different context than sexual sin we might see Peter’s pride that he would not fall away even though everyone else did as him saying he’d “got this one”. As with Peter, I believe those times when Satan is permitted to sift saints as wheat precisely so that God can deal with this “I got this one” attitude. When people return IN FAITH (and not just leaving or, worse, as false brethren trying to sneak back into the congregation entice others to follow after them as many have done) is what demonstrates that they were and were Christians all along.