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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
It feels like everywhere you go in the month of June, people are celebrating Pride Month. Well, here's why we won't. Welcome to The Overflow. Today, we're tackling a heavy topic for some, can be a very painful topic, can be a questionable topic, can be a highly contested topic.
Speaker 2:Fire starter topic.
Speaker 1:A fire starter topic, and it is Pride Month. And specifically, why we sit out Pride Month. No flags here.
Speaker 2:No. No flags here. And it this obviously is a much larger topic than a month long self declared celebration. But it's an important topic. I think as believers, as Christ followers, we need to be able to have this topic with eyes wide open and not being swayed by opinion, including our own.
Speaker 2:I wanna just say including our own, that we go to a source, the source that is bigger than us. What does God say? And I think there's just so many different angles on this conversation, but I I really do believe that the first angle for me is love. Because it's so interesting that word love. It's there's many words that this agenda has hijacked, whether it's the rainbow, whether it's love is love.
Speaker 2:There's words that have been hijacked really right out of the word of God. And yet God, he he remains unchanged and unmoved. And so when we think about this community of people and the agenda that goes along with it, I think we have to understand that we can love people and stand firm on truth at the same time.
Speaker 1:I would say, you know, the phrase is love is love. I would say God is love. Yes. You know? And you don't have real love in a lie.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. If you're in a marriage and that person is deceiving you
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That person does not love you.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:You are not in a loving marriage if it is a marriage of deception. If you are a parent and you're allowing a child to poison themselves, you're not loving that child. We know this.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:We understand this. And so love is not love. God is love. God brings truth to love. And so our posture has always been that we will have love and truth.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Grace and truth. And a lot of people talk about tolerance, okay? Like, hey, let's just have tolerance. Hey, you do what you want to do, kind of a libertarian Christianity.
Speaker 1:You do what you want to do, I'll do what I want to do. I'm not gonna give you a hard time, you don't give me a hard time. The problem is that God is intolerant. Yes. God is not a God of tolerance.
Speaker 1:God is a God of love. God is a God of grace. But God is not tolerant. There is heaven, and there is hell. That is the definition of intolerance.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And so you want to be on the right side of God's design. You want to be accepted. You want to receive the grace of God. Receiving the grace of God is receiving the truth of God. And the Bible says, when people get saved, it's not just, your love save me.
Speaker 1:The Bible says, repent from your sin and turn to God. Yeah. They repented of their sin and they were baptized. This is all over the Bible. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so, just out of the gate, I think the biggest thing that has been powerful in our ministry, because we have people we love
Speaker 2:Oh, so much.
Speaker 1:Who we disagree with on this topic. Mhmm. We have people we love who are fully enmeshed in this topic. But I think the thing that really has been powerful for us is the loving tone.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Is the loving heart. Yeah. That those people who would disagree with us on this know how we feel about them. And we're bringing the love of God to them, and they know we pray for them Yeah. To embrace God's design.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. People in my life that are so dear to me that this is their particular struggle or path that they've chosen or been on for a long time, they know that I love them. And, you know, if you're listening to us right now and maybe we haven't had the privilege of having that personal conversation with you, That's why it's so important to me to begin this conversation with prayerfully being understood that I love people. I love people who would call themselves gay. I love people who would be living a homosexual lifestyle, and I love them enough to speak the truth.
Speaker 2:And I can't imagine going to a doctor and a doctor lying to me about my diagnosis. I can't imagine a doctor. I'm having symptoms. I'm having issues. I don't know the root.
Speaker 2:I don't know where it's coming from. And if that doctor knew, was able to hear my symptoms and examine my physical condition and knew my diagnosis and did not tell me, that would not be loving me. That would be hating me. That would be a crime against me.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that's what you're talking about with God. He is intolerant with sin. He he hates sin, but he loves us so much that he chose to take the penalty of our sin.
Speaker 1:So just kind of a foundational thought too is this is in a broad category of sexual sin. Mhmm. And let's start there, that there is a broad category of sexual sin, and sexual sin needs to be met with self leadership, with holy spirit guided leadership of yourself, of your desires, yielding to God's way, yielding to God's power, yielding to God's design. And sexual sin includes people living together right now and not married. Sexual sin includes people that are dating, and they are committing what the Bible call fornication.
Speaker 1:Sexual sin would include pornography. Sexual sin would include self sex, masturbation. It would be all those things that
Speaker 2:Well, the Bible says, Jesus said, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, with lust, you have committed adultery in your heart. And so the the nature of sexual sin runs so deep. It it definitely hits our behaviors. I mean, when you're scrolling through pornography, when you're in your secret place on OnlyFans, know, whatever it is that we're doing in the secret place or you're reading that novel and you know your spirit's convicted, but you just keep you don't flip the pages or you don't, you know, put the book away. And we read those things that ignite that lust inside of us, God says that's I hate it all.
Speaker 2:I hate it all. And there's levels of impact depending on the choices that we make, but understanding the nature of sin is so important. Before we get into that more, maybe we take a moment and talk about God's design for sex.
Speaker 1:That's what Jesus did. There are many, many people out there right now that are throwing out, oh, no. The Bible, it doesn't really mean that, or the Bible doesn't really say that. We even have a candidate for the Senate, James Talarico, who is throwing one distortion after another from the word of God. I mean, every time you see him, he's in a pulpit at some some woke church that's saying, oh no, abortion's okay according to the bible.
Speaker 1:Oh no, Jesus. And one of the big ones is, Jesus didn't talk about homosexuality. Okay? Well, as if because he didn't talk about it, then it was okay. All right?
Speaker 1:And and the truth is Jesus didn't talk about he didn't talk about slavery. But does that mean that he thinks it's okay? Jesus didn't talk about rape. Does that mean Jesus thinks it's okay? No.
Speaker 1:You see, it's a distortion of the nature of Jesus that Jesus is the triune God. Not only Jesus affirms, he affirms the the law and the prophets. Okay? He said, I'm here to fulfill the law and the prophets. So he's not rejecting anything you see in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:He's fulfilling it. But he is taking it a step further. He was with God and one with God as triune God when God was saying in the book of Leviticus, this is an abomination. So it starts, people will throw out, oh no, it's not that, it's not that, but really the bigger picture here is this is sexual sin. But I wanna throw out another thing you said, that the impact, okay?
Speaker 1:Why would we lift this one? I believe there's something happening in our culture.
Speaker 2:Well, and I wanna talk about the impact. Can we talk about the design? Yeah. Like, what is Oh, That's what
Speaker 1:that's where I was. I was sorry. We just had one of those moments. I lost my train of thought. I went I went down that rabbit trail.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But
Speaker 2:God has a design.
Speaker 1:God has a design. And the number one this was my my first thought, and then I went into Leviticus and all that. But my first thought was Jesus, the greatest argument for what Jesus believed was what he said. And he said, this is what marriage, man, woman, this is it. This is what it's not this, it's this.
Speaker 2:Yes. And it dates back to the very beginning. We believe the bible. We believe it is true. We believe Genesis in one and and two is information that God chooses to privilege us to get to see as he creates the world and us who live in it.
Speaker 2:And we see in that in those first two chapters where God says for this reason, a man leaves his mother and father and the two are united into one. And that oneness, that that flesh uniting, and he talks later about it in, I believe, first Corinthians chapter six, and that there is a uniting of bodies that is body and soul. There's a a oneness that happens so much so that in first Corinthians six, I believe God says flee sexual sin because all other sins this is one that that affects us differently. Yes. This one hits our body in a very unique way according to first Corinthians chapter six.
Speaker 2:And so God's design from the beginning was one man, one woman in the context of marriage. And when you look at Malachi, I think chapter two, check me people, but we again see the brokenness of divorce, and we see the brokenness of of leaving. And and God says, why did I bring you together? It's so that you could could have children, godly offspring. So there's even a purpose down to our anatomy that a man and a woman can can be can be used by God and there be a child that comes out of their ear.
Speaker 1:The bible says in in Romans one, they exchanged their natural affections
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For one another. Yeah. Natural affections for one another. That is an important word there. What he's saying there is, this is the nature by which I created you.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Okay? This is how I created you with these natural affections. These affections over here, what's listed in Romans one, this is not my nature for you. This is not my blueprint for you. And you know, one of the warning signs of this is the declining birth rate.
Speaker 1:I'm on this drumbeat, I'm talking about this all the time. Yeah. We have a declining birth rate. We're right now 1.6, 1.7 babies per woman, okay? And to replace your generation, to replace the population, you have to have two, two point one per woman babies born, okay?
Speaker 1:Now the impact of this is stunning because if you're at 1.6, 1.7, you're looking at apocalyptic future. You have an aging population that eventually cannot provide for itself, and you have a shrinking provider generation that will not be able to afford to take care of the aging population. You're gonna see everything that the aging population has built is gonna be emptied out because there's no room for it.
Speaker 2:It's not sustainable.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So all the systems that we've built, everything that's gone up and to the right is gonna start come crashing down. We need babies, okay? At the very least, that's the nature that God God wanted happy families. He wanted husbands and wives producing babies in marriages that stay together.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a holy institution. The family is a holy institution. Children, the bible says, are a gift from the lord. So, again, if we can take for a moment the personal aspect of this discussion out of it and just look at what god says, that there is a strategy the bible tells us of the enemy to steal, kill, destroy, to counterfeit everything that God creates.
Speaker 2:When we understand that and that God deemed family, the very first institution that he created Before the church, before the government, there was family. That God created family. And doesn't it make sense that the enemy would counterfeit love and counterfeit relationships and create pretend marriages in an attempt to destroy what God loves.
Speaker 1:Because whatever God creates, Satan counterfeits.
Speaker 2:He always does it. And so we wanna walk in these conversations humbly. We don't we're not better than. I mean, if if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, we hate Pride Month. We hate, you know, we hate that LGBTQ stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the wrong posture. The posture is to see the people who've been deceived. And at the same time, we can have a holy righteous anger at the agenda and at the lies that are hurting God's people and dishonoring holy God. Both things can exist at the same time, and we have to have the right heart as we enter those conversations. But seeing God in his heart is really important.
Speaker 2:I remember years and years ago meeting with a wonderful woman who had found herself divorcing her husband and then in a homosexual relationship for a number of years. And she was so conflicted. She was a person of faith. However, she would have told you and told me then, you know, I really put my faith on the back burner as I lived this lifestyle, but she was coming out of it. And as to be expected, there was a lot of pain and a lot of cleanup that had to happen from those years of of running from God and his design.
Speaker 2:But as she and I began to walk through her pain and she began to seek God for healing, it was very powerful for her to hear Romans chapter one, to really hear it clearly. Because our world is so confusing. It's so confusing. And before I read it, I I I think it's interesting. There's certain sins in our culture that we have lifted up as attributes.
Speaker 2:It's no longer a sin. It's actually something to be honored. Yeah. It's something to even be aspired to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thus the flag. Thus the Pride Month.
Speaker 2:Yes. Pride Month. And we've lifted these things up, not understanding or simply rejecting that there's a god who wrote his word for all time, and it's immovable, and it's very clear. And so I wanna read that for us. Well, and then I'll have another thought before I can even read it.
Speaker 2:Just the words Pride Month. Yeah. Can we talk about that for
Speaker 1:a second?
Speaker 2:We're gonna get to Romans chapter one. Pride Month. The the fact that this agenda and I keep saying this agenda because I believe it's a spirit far bigger. The Bible says we have a battle not just with flesh and blood, that but it's Satan's strategies. It's this dark world and the demonic spirits that are very, very real.
Speaker 2:That's Ephesians chapter six fourteen on. That there's a bigger agenda. And so when an entire agenda, Pride Month labels itself pride, it either is completely ignorant to the fact or rejecting the fact that God says pride comes before a
Speaker 1:fall. And the and the sin of Satan was pride. The sin of Satan was pride. The sin of Satan said, I will lift myself up. And so Pride Month is not Christian.
Speaker 1:No. It is anti Christian. Yeah. There's nothing in it that can be redeemed. There's nothing in it that can be celebrated.
Speaker 1:There's nothing in it that can be embraced. It is, by definition, in the word anti Christian. It celebrates the very thing that took all of creation down. Pride.
Speaker 2:Pride. As Satan tried to be God. And that that word, Pride Month, it's actually a curse within its own name. It's unreal. But Romans chapter one, God gives us just some insight as we're wrestling, as you're wrestling with, why do we believe that this is wrong?
Speaker 2:Or why do we believe same sex attraction or romance or relationship is wrong? And by the way, same sex attraction, that could be a temptation that someone is living with, and we can be tempted and not sin. Yes. That can be something we surrender to the Lord. But for those who are, you know, promoting this lifestyle or some of us, you don't even have that same sex desire, but there are people people we love Yeah.
Speaker 2:Protecting it.
Speaker 1:I think right now who we're talking to Mhmm. Okay. Let's let's clarify.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If we're sitting here talking with someone that's struggling with these desires Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There's a certain way that we're gonna talk to them, and help them, and lead them. And just to, and it would be our honor to be invited into the room and walk them into surrendering to the Lord.
Speaker 1:That's one conversation. That's not this conversation. This conversation, we'll end up there. We'll talk, we'll do that. But really, this conversation is a cultural conversation, a salt and light conversation.
Speaker 1:This is a conversation for a student who is bombarded with these messages and needs an answer from the word of God.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:good. This is a conversation for a mother or a father whose child is wrestling with these desires and needs the truth of God before they fall into error. I see so many moms on social media celebrating their children who they have just allowed them to go. Yeah, just go. They didn't even fight for it, just go.
Speaker 1:And those children in eternity, either lost, or maybe they're saved and confused, but in eternity they will not look kindly on the celebration or the allowance of that mother or that father for their kid pursuing down the, oh, I'm for you. Oh, I'm gonna post the flag for you. I'm for you. I celebrate you. I love you.
Speaker 1:I want you to be safe. I wanna have a relationship with you. And in doing so, one day when they face God and experience judgment, or when they face God and they experience the deep regret as a Christ follower who fell away for a season, whatever it is, they will look back on you as wrong. One day, they will line up with truth.
Speaker 2:Your child, yeah.
Speaker 1:Whether from the perspective of heaven or hell, they will know you were wrong. And we need to talk to parents. We need to talk to students.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you just said that, and I'm gonna summarize it because it's so powerful that this conversation is for different chairs, different people right now. And that person who you this has been your story. You've walked this road, or you're in the middle of it now, or you're wrestling with same sex attraction. The love that we feel to towards that person is profound. And as you said, it is our honor to walk with you.
Speaker 2:It is our honor to pray for you. It's our honor. I've had friends who've been in the middle of that struggle, and they just keep coming to church. And I just keep cheering them on, and I just keep speaking truth to them and hugging them and loving them in the middle of their battle. And I've been so blessed to see victory.
Speaker 2:God bring victory to the person.
Speaker 1:Have seen victory.
Speaker 2:Seen it more than one time, many times, and all kinds of different sexual sins and sin in general. But there is also a chair, as you said, that is a cultural conversation where we have to open our eyes and understand why do I believe what I believe?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:What is it that we believe? Yeah. And where are we going for our
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 2:And so Romans chapter one, let's look at it. And it hits on so many things, but I wanna just go to Romans chapter one. I'm
Speaker 1:gonna start could spend a month here.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's just so good. Let's see here. I'm gonna start in let's just start in chapter 20 in verse 21. I'm gonna read for a minute, and we'll kinda comment on it. And by the way, Romans chapter one, to give context, it is the diagnosis of the human soul.
Speaker 2:So we're about to get into, because God chose to, a very specific example. However, the diagnosis of our soul, which is sin, expresses itself in a maybe unending amount of ways. The amount of ways and the different packaging that our sin comes in is so disturbing and profound. But we're gonna read it, and I'm gonna just start in Romans chapter one verse 21. It says, yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.
Speaker 2:This meaning everyone. Like, we you can't live in this world and not see that someone created it. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise.
Speaker 2:So in our darkened state apart from Christ, we get confused, and rather than go to the one who can clear up the confusion, we claim that we are wise. Well, actually, I have arrived. I have I have special wisdom. But instead, they became utter fools. And listen to this.
Speaker 2:Instead of worshiping the glorious ever living god, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. So anything we could come up with, that became our new little g god. So what did God do? He abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their heart desired. And and listen to that.
Speaker 2:So what did God do? He said, I'm gonna give you free will. I'm gonna give you choice, and I'm gonna abandon you to yourself. I'm gonna abandon you. God forbid the day God abandons us.
Speaker 2:God forbid the day that God would say, I'll let you go. Go. But he does. When we when we reject and refuse him, he abandoned them to do whatever shameful thing their heart desired. And as a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies.
Speaker 2:And then this is a powerful diagnosis. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So, again, and this is my counselor brain, I'm sure, but just diagnostic verses in the Bible are so powerful to me because this is saying, here's what they did. They traded truth about God for a lie, so they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the creator himself who is worthy of eternal praise. Before I keep reading, do you wanna just summarize that?
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, they exchanged truth for a lie and began to worship and serve things God created. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1:I think it says it. I think it's there. Yeah. Yeah. Think it's on its face right there.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's plain as can be. Plain as
Speaker 1:can be.
Speaker 2:So they just trade the truth and bought a lie and began to worship things God made and forgot the one who made it. And this is verse 26. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. And now we step into example. The Lord chose this example.
Speaker 2:Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having a normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty that they deserved. That's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And what you see there is clarity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The apostle Paul is being very clear. He's speaking to a Roman culture, not just a Roman culture, Rome. Okay, the church in Rome, and he's cleaning things up. And he's cleaning it up with clarity. Sometimes people will say, in order to reach people who are far from God, this is not a hill I want to die on.
Speaker 1:I'm just focused on people getting saved. I'm just focused on people coming to Christ, and if you'll just love Jesus, this area is gonna fix itself. Well, that was not the Apostle Paul's approach. The Apostle Paul here is saying, for you to be Christian in a pagan culture, like we have today, flags everywhere. Go into a coffee shop, pride flags.
Speaker 1:Drive in Boston, or Downtown Dallas, and on the churches
Speaker 2:In an old church, or yeah.
Speaker 1:These churches are gonna have pride flags.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:He says, in order to be a faithful Christian, show the world we're different, we do sex differently. Yeah. This is our truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he was speaking it to a culture that didn't buy this. I mean, Caesar paraded down the street cross dressing. Caesar paraded down the street with a little boy that he had been abused, that he had been abusing. I mean, that was normative. And in a culture like that, he shined a bright light, and it changed the world.
Speaker 1:Grace affection alone will not change the world. Affection alone will not change the world. I have an affection for you. I love you. That's not enough to change the world.
Speaker 1:God brings that grace with truth. It is the truth of God that changes the world with the love of God.
Speaker 2:It's it's beautiful. It's who God is. It's his presence, and he is not void of one over the other. He is truth. He is love.
Speaker 2:He is the way, the truth, the life. Yeah. And God is love. He's all he that is who he is, and so you can't take part of God. I think it's interesting when you say that sometimes, if not careful in our Christian circles and possibly even in our in our churches, that we're we we don't wanna talk about these things.
Speaker 2:And it is true. If you have a true relationship with Jesus as your lord and savior, thank you, God, that you promise you will you will finish the good work that you started in me. It's going to happen. Now how painful am I gonna make that journey?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's my decision. Do I wanna live hell on earth, or do I wanna start experiencing God's abundant life for me right here and now? That's gonna really be impacted by my choices that I make. But what risk are we running If we call ourselves and claim to be a Christ follower, but continually reject God's design for living, do I know him in the first place? The book of James would say faith without works is dead.
Speaker 1:The bible says there are many who will say, I knew you. I knew you. And he would say, depart from me. I don't know you. Ugh.
Speaker 2:Ugh. That verse makes It's
Speaker 1:not that you know about God. God knows about you. It's do you know him Yes. Through the sacrifice of Christ. And one of the signs Yes.
Speaker 1:That you know him is surrender. Yes. Repenting of sin and being willing to repent to that sin.
Speaker 2:And obedience. Yeah. John chapter 15 says, if you love me, obey my commandments. If you love me, if you love me. That's the thing.
Speaker 2:We don't we really enjoy love when it's a feeling as a culture and as people. I mean, just in relationships. We love the idea of falling in love. I wanna feel the butterfly feelings. I want to feel the ecstasy and the excitement of of love.
Speaker 2:But what about the at the verb of love? What about the fact that love is patient? Love is kind. Love does not boast. Love is believes the best, hopes all things.
Speaker 2:What about, you know, all these elements of love and where Jesus again says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Obey what I've said. That is far more than a feeling.
Speaker 1:Just just a couple of lies that are out there. Just a couple of lies that are out there that that people are peddling. Again, I've already mentioned Talarico and what he's doing because he's he's popularizing Yeah. At a level we have not seen before.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The lies that are out there in liberal Christianity, woke liberal Christianity. Yeah. And I wanna I wanna just hit a couple of them quickly. This isn't a teaching session where I go deep dive, but just skipping on the surface. One of them is that in Romans one and elsewhere, when it talks about porneia, it's talking about forcible sex.
Speaker 1:It's talking about rape. It's talking about that kind of thing. It's not talking about a loving relationship between two people of the same sex.
Speaker 2:That's not what it says.
Speaker 1:It's not talking about yeah. I know. It's so hard. It just it doesn't say that.
Speaker 2:It says that he abandoned them to their desires. They they all are having desires.
Speaker 1:Exactly. You're ignoring the phrase contrary to nature. It's clearly talking about how you were made, man for woman, woman for man, and it's ignoring the rest of scripture. There's a Romans one kinda chapter a little bit in the book of Ezekiel that a lot of people will also lift and try to use. And they'll say, okay, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Speaker 1:Okay, everybody, we would say, okay, why was Sodom And Gomorrah destroyed? Everybody says it's because of homosexuality, but, uh-oh, I gotcha.
Speaker 2:They tried to rape his daughters.
Speaker 1:If you go to Ezekiel chapter 16, here's the guilt. Here it says, behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy, okay? And they stop right there in verse 49. And say, see, this is the sin of Sodom.
Speaker 1:This is the sin of Sodom. What did we read? It is, they had pride. By the way, that's funny.
Speaker 2:Pride, They
Speaker 1:had pride. Uh-oh. They had excess of food, prosperous ease, did not aid the poor and needy. So this is the social gospel crew that's saying they didn't talk about homosexuality. It wasn't because of homosexuality, was because of pride, it was because of excess food, prosperous ease, it didn't help the needy.
Speaker 1:But they stop right there. Verse four verse 50. You ready?
Speaker 2:There's more.
Speaker 1:They were haughty and did an abomination before me, so I removed them when I saw it. K? That word abomination is in the Hebrew, and it's used all over the place. I did this, I I got this ready, here it is, Leviticus chapter 18. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it is toebah.
Speaker 1:It is an abomination.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:You shall not lie with any animal and make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with, it is perversion.
Speaker 2:Okay?
Speaker 1:And so that word in Ezekiel that says this is it, okay? It was all those things for sure. But when I saw the abomination, I judged you. Wow. Then in Lukas
Speaker 2:Wait, before you go away from that. Yeah. When you said Sodom and Gomorrah, I thought you were gonna talk about didn't didn't they try to rape Lot's daughters? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and they they no. They were coming after the angels who had visited Lot. Okay.
Speaker 2:And they were
Speaker 1:trying to rape Yeah. And and Lot was like, take my daughters. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which again, to your earlier point that some some would try to argue, oh, no. This is referring to rape, or this is referring to, you know, both parties are not agreeing to this interaction. But it's bigger than that. I mean, the word that you just described in the Hebrew, it's bigger than that.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Well, Leviticus makes it clear. It is abomination is the actual word is repulsed. Like, sick to your stomach when you see it. It's like, chase me out of the room.
Speaker 1:And it's attached to sexual sin, particularly same sex sexual sin. And you know, even talking like this, it brings me no pleasure.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:You know, when, because I have my own sin. You know, we have our own sin that we have to go to battle for and put to death. And sin is sin, and sin separates. My sin is grievous to God.
Speaker 2:My sin sent him to the cross.
Speaker 1:My sin sent him to the cross. But there is such a culture of acceptance and celebration. We need to speak so clearly Yes. That Leviticus identifies it as clear abomination. Then Ezekiel, the very passage where they try to get off the hook, it identifies abomination as the thing that that prompted God's hand.
Speaker 1:There's just no way out of this argument. And so what what you see here, I I summarize it all with this. That people that when you hear a politician, or you hear a podcaster, or you hear someone that is trying to reinterpret a new reading of the bible, okay? People have gotten it wrong for two thousand years, but I have the clue for you. I've got the new reading, it's not a new reading, they're trying to give you a new bible.
Speaker 1:It's not a new reading. It's not a new interpretation. It's a new Bible. It is not Christianity. It is something else.
Speaker 1:Because we're lifting verses out of context, and partial verses. We're lifting them and trying to make a case for what we want and ignoring the great weight of the rest of scripture.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's a it's a very this is a very important conversation. And the reason I think that this Pride Month, as some would call it, we don't call it that because it's the month of June created by God. But as some would call it that, we have to live in this world and understand the world that we're living in. It it enables us, and it it equips us on how to respond to the person who's walking that lifestyle that we love that person, and we wanna reach that person.
Speaker 2:But also, how do we engage in a in a larger platform?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm gonna tell you. Read Romans two one. Start reading.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Start reading it.
Speaker 2:Says, you may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse. When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you're condemning yourself. For you who judge others do these very same things.
Speaker 1:Another translation says, as you once were. Okay? As you once were. What transition is that?
Speaker 2:This is the NLT. Yeah. You like ESV.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So as you once were. And the point there is, now to turn the conversation, okay, so how do I engage a coworker? How do I engage a daughter?
Speaker 1:How do I engage a son? How do I engage? Well, first, log out of my own eye. That's what he said. Log chapter out of my own eye.
Speaker 1:Okay? I think the church has so missed it by coming in hot and bothered and angry Yeah. And no personal reflection, no humility. Yeah. When you understand your own sin, it tenderizes you.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:It makes you tender. Oh. It changes your tone.
Speaker 2:It changes everything. When and when you really when we understand that this is our condition as human beings, sin is our condition. And apart from the grace of God at work in us and the holy spirit of God invading us, we are destined to death and to destruction. When we understand that's every single person's situation, we're overcome. A, I'm overcome with gratitude that God would save any of us, that God would save me, and also a fervency to see my neighbor saved, a love for them, and and honestly, a compassion at how that sin is destroying them.
Speaker 2:I'll give just an example of an article I I was reading this week about it was about a a girl, an OnlyFans, you know, model, very, very one of the high, high profile girls in that in that demographic. And she had just broken the record of having sex with over a thousand men in one day. And in her case, there's been others who've done that, and it and it broke them. It hurt them. In her case, she's she doesn't know she's hurt.
Speaker 2:There's a there's a staunch pride. There's this pride. There's a staunch hardness of her heart. And she just sees sex as a way for her to be a millionaire and to have success and to have platform, not knowing that the god who knit her together in her mother's womb knows the number of hairs on her head, loves her, dyed for her, but also gives a diagnosis for where she's headed apart from repenting and turning to god. And I think when you just understand this this conversation about the LGBTQ community on a in a Pride Month conversation, it's so much bigger than that.
Speaker 2:And our posture is one that praise God you would save me. Thank you, Lord, from for for forgiving my sins and for making me clean through the blood of Jesus. God, use me to tell others the good news. They don't have to stay there any more than I have to. And that's the first posture in this conversation.
Speaker 1:The humility, God use me, God give me the words, and I would say just deep reflection of yourself. Yeah. Are you coming in clean? Are you coming in full of the holy spirit? The second thing is see them as a daughter or as a son of the most high God, that God created them fearfully and wonderfully.
Speaker 1:Like God designed them to be cherished.
Speaker 2:Yeah. See their dignity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see their dignity. Don't allow this issue to cause you to run out of the room. See their dignity, love them, and advocate for their walking with Jesus. Advocate for their surrender to Christ. We have people that we love, we've watched families engage us, you've counseled many many people, and the most successful examples I see of people turning back to God, of people surrendering this area, people we deeply love, is a community around them that just will not stop loving you.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. But also a community around them, the most, this is key, that has that has a deep biblical understanding
Speaker 2:of Which their is real love.
Speaker 1:That is real love. And so they it actually causes them to love them sometimes even more. You know, like, hey, I'm gonna show up for this because I wanna be in their life. I wanna I wanna have a voice, you know. I wanna I wanna I wanna be there for this, say it's a birthday or milestone or something.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna show up, or I'm gonna send them a note. Or I'm gonna, you know, and maybe even through season where where there there's real venom on the other side because you will not celebrate their life. Yeah. Just keep coming with love. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They feel deeply rejected, but you just keep coming with love. And I think that love and truth, like never yield the truth. Yeah. But love and truth.
Speaker 2:I think a hard place of application for that, you know, that comes up, and that's real, is well, okay, what about showing up for Yeah. You know, the gay wedding? Yeah. And I think that's a tough that's a tough thing to have to to figure out. I think that that there's clarity.
Speaker 2:There's great truth on what the right step is to make, but that doesn't mean it's easy. When it comes to
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what I would do there. I I what I what I've advised for others is this is a choice that you have to make prayerfully, biblically. You've gotta search it out in scripture. As I emerge from scripture on this topic and I've helped others, I don't know how you can stand there Right. And affirm and because you are affirming and celebrating.
Speaker 1:You're at a wedding. Yeah. I mean, let's keep it real. Right. You're at a wedding.
Speaker 1:Everybody's smiling. Everybody's clapping. Everybody's cheering. And I just I I don't I don't believe that you can you can affirm it.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's more than a wedding. God says, what I have brought together, let no man separate, and God does not bring together same sex
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Couples. That's not a wedding. That's actually not not a marriage. And that goes back to we as people think we can rewrite God's rules. We think we can recreate what God has already created.
Speaker 2:It's already copyrighted. You can't you can't adjust and tweak it. It's done. Mhmm. And so marriage is already done.
Speaker 2:One man, one woman in a covenant of a lifetime with God. That's the blueprint. And so when that that, quote, gay wedding, you know, comes about, we have to, as Christ followers, understand that our presence and the nature of going to wedding is is approval and is celebration. And if I love you, I can't approve and celebrate what is not true. I can't approve and celebrate what will hurt you.
Speaker 2:Now there's a way to do that in a loving
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Kind, humble way.
Speaker 1:And I think as we wrap up this conversation, one of the powerful truths that we have seen be transformative is a couple things. First of all, if you have a child, you keep them in the local church. If you're in a church that's not strong on this issue, then you're selling your child to the wolves.
Speaker 2:Oh, man.
Speaker 1:Like, you have got to get your kid in a church that will partner with you in communicating this truth. They cannot be in a church that's silent on this issue.
Speaker 2:Because the world is preaching.
Speaker 1:The world is preaching. They've got to hear it from someone in addition to you, not other than in addition to you. So a great church that speaks on this issue, that is clear. And then what we've seen so powerful, was also just, one of the truths that literally changed someone you and I both love on this issue was when this person heard us say, you are not gay.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:They're like, I think I am. No, no, you're not gay. You are a daughter of most high God. God didn't make you gay. You have same sex attraction.
Speaker 1:That's something that you are drawn to, that's your desire, but that is not who you are.
Speaker 2:That's really good.
Speaker 1:And for her, she had been
Speaker 2:This was a person of faith.
Speaker 1:Yes, In she
Speaker 2:was Christ struggling.
Speaker 1:She was struggling, confused, but a Christ follower. She now openly tells this testimony. It's beautiful to the glory of God. And that identity moment absolutely gave her a doorway that began to open to exploring who she is in Christ. Yeah.
Speaker 1:When she began to understand who I am in Christ, this doesn't define me.
Speaker 2:She wasn't anchored to her sexuality. She was anchored to Christ who can change her sexuality.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She was anchored to a God who can help her rise above her attractions. And it doesn't mean that person or anyone else doesn't stumble or fall. We all stumble. We all fall. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But God is the God who transforms. And as I, you know, kinda close out my thoughts on this conversation, and it could go on and on. There's a lot to say. I think, again, just summarizing that as we have conversations about LGBTQ and transgenderism, which has been on the rise really since 2020 in a way that I'd never seen it before in my lifetime, or just all these ways that sexuality is just distorted from what God intended, that we walk humbly. Don't fight pride with pride.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so good.
Speaker 2:Don't fight Pride Month with a prideful heart. Don't look at someone else's sin in disgust and have pride not to see your own sin. Have love for the person, and love for God, and and care enough about others to speak the truth in that love.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, wow. What a heavy. We could keep going. I'm I have thought blocks right now of how we handle this in the local church Yes.
Speaker 1:And, you know, all that. But
Speaker 2:To be continued.
Speaker 1:To be continued. And it is with a true, a gentle heart that we pray that you could receive these truths, apply them to your life, and equip you to avoid deception and avoid traps that the culture is setting for you, you can hold to grace, love, and truth that's actually God's way, and especially on this topic. Alright? So we'll see you next time on The Overflow.