How I See the Rainbow

The past few weeks have seen one particular ‘issue’ take our culture by storm. The Rainbow Flag has been saturating our social media (though often in quite an anti-social manner), and everyone’s got something to say. 

We’re all entitled to an opinion, and so I’m offering mine. Please make note that I am sharing exactly that - my opinion. Imperfect and flawed as it may be, as of Saturday afternoon, on the 4th of July (while enjoying Macca’s free wifi), this is my headspace. 

Before I address the issue at hand, I first want to express my remorse and disappointment at how Christians at large have handled the idea of homosexual marriage. Billions of people in the past few weeks, have been driven away from the Church, from Christians, and even from God because of us. We, more than ever, are separating ourselves from humanity. The world sees Christians as often nothing more than a bunch of judgmental hypocrites, and I dare say the last few weeks hasn’t helped that out. Not in the slightest. 

And I’m not even talking about the gay people (for whom Jesus actually died) that our attacks are levelled at. The world has been watching. They are the millions of heterosexual spectators who have sat on the sidelines observing how we as Christians have been conducting ourselves. What kind of God are we showing them? Are our reactions drawing people to God or repulsing them from Him?

Paul put it like this:

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 

2 Corinthians 5v18-19 NIV

You could put it like this: There was a great big problem between us and God, and He fixed it. Meet Jesus. And now, after fixing it, God has given us the task of making that happen in peoples lives. Its called the Gospel, and contrary to popular opinion, its good news. 

How are we going at that? If thats our job description, are we doing it well? Before we move on to refereeing everyone else’s lives, lets check out our own first. Are our actions and words bringing people closer to God, or are we having the opposite effect? Is love characterising our lives? Does the world look at us Christians and think, “Man these followers of Jesus really love people!”? It’s worth thinking about. 

But what do I think about gay marriage? To put it simply, I think it’s wrong. But so is a straight sexual relationship outside of marriage. And for that matter, so is stealing, pornography, dishonouring our parents, cheating on our taxes, lying, hate and unkindness, just to name a few.

How do those rocks in our hands feel now? A bit heaver than we remember? Maybe we should just put them back on the ground where we found them. 

Don’t get me wrong, homosexuality was not Gods idea. It’s a rip-off version of something He created to be fulfilling, fruitful and really good. Anything less than God’s perfect design (which is sex between a man and a woman, inside of marriage) will leave people missing out. Its a counterfeit. And lets be honest, settling for anything less than God’s perfect design will leave us broken and empty, no matter what it is. 

So whats Gods response to all this? Does He, in a fit of holy rage want to destroy the homosexuals, utterly obliterating them from the face of the earth, or does He want them reconciled to Himself? Does He want the thing keeping them from Himself to be removed, so He can have relationship with them? Which mission are we serving? 

“But hold on a second!! Don’t you know that the Bible says homosexuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God?!?”  You’re right, it does say that. Let’s have a look:

“Don’t you realise that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

1 Corinthians 6v9-11 NLT

Notice where Paul said, ‘Some of you were once like that, but God fixed it! That thing that was between you and God, well it’s gone now.’ And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll remember that time long ago when we were actually in that boat - lost, broken sinners who needed a Saviour. 

And thank God we got one. 

Am I trying to justify homosexuality or gay marriage? Absolutely not. Nether would I justify the times when I’ve compromised on Gods best or settled for a counterfeit. I’m just so grateful for His mercy, and kindness, and grace, and forgiveness, absolutely none of which I deserve. 

Do homosexuals need Jesus? Do they need to turn from their sin and call out to God? Yes. And so do it. So do you for that matter, along with the new girl learning to cook the fries, and the guy enjoying his chocolate sundae. 

I’m simply asking that we check our perspective. As I know first hand, its easy to get caught up in the flow of things and end up somewhere, or doing something, or saying something that we never would have intended. 

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 

Amen. 

The Eyes of Love

We all have people we love. 

Whether it’s close friends, children, a wife, a boyfriend, or in my case a fiancé, we all have these special people in our lives. These are the people we would do anything for. We desire to see them happy, safe and fulfilled, simply because we love them. We want to do what’s best for them, because that’s what love is. We would happily cross oceans, willingly sacrifice our money and even lay down our lives for those we love. We find ourselves taking any and every opportunity to show these people just how much we love them. 

But let me tell you, there is one thing you can do, far above all other acts, that will enable you to love to the very best of your ability, and actually even beyond that. Its really quite simple to be honest, and if we do this one thing, we will see our lives and relationships filled with more love than we ever imagined possible.

Firstly we must understand that Papa God loves these people more than we ever could. He is so passionately, deeply in love with these people. He’s actually obsessed. And so, the more time we spend with Papa, the more we see these special people through His eyes, the eyes of love. Every moment we spend with Him allows us to more completely understand His love for us and for others. When you encounter that kind of crazy love, it’ll change you. All of a sudden you’ll be full to overflowing of the deepest, most powerful love you’ve ever known. 

The thing about love is, when you feel loved, you’re actually enabled to love others. When you’re full of something, it will actually start to overflow into the world around you. Therefore, spending time with Papa and learning to see through His eyes of love will radically change not only how we see ourselves but how we see others. All of a sudden we discover this passionate love for people we never knew we had, and so we can can love them with this crazy love that far surpasses our ability to understand or comprehend. Even if our love for someone has grown cold or hard to come by, encountering Papas love has this fascinating way of reigniting that love. It’s real and it will change you. It will totally revolutionise the way you love.

It’s actually that simple. Spending time with Papa is the best thing you could ever do for the people you love.

So get off my blog and do it. It’ll change things. 

So What's This All About??

I love my Papa and my Papa loves me. He is by nature good, and He delights in His children. He finds great pleasure in giving us beautiful gifts, not because we deserve them, but simply because He can. As a result He shows me things; He gives me glimpses from His perspective; He allows me to see things through His eyes, and thats what I want to share with you. 

There is no end to Papa God, and therefore I don’t believe we will ever fully understand Him or completely get our heads around who He is. However, He delights to reveal Himself, and He will show us as much as we are willing to see. I believe we will spend eternity continually discovering more of Him, and therefore forever being more captivated by His beauty, and falling ever deeper in love with Him. The wonderful thing is, we can start this journey now, in this life. If we are willing, we can start this journey today. 

The road to knowing more of God is paved with revelation, but what is revelation? Simply put, a revelation is seeing something as it really is. It is seeing from Papa’s perspective and through His eyes. In order fully grasp this concept, we must first realise that what see through our natural eyes is not the superior reality, and this physical world we live in is not the whole picture. There is a supernatural reality which is superior, yet directly linked to the natural reality we see every day. Papa sees in absolute clarity and perfection, but through our natural eyes, we only see in part. It’s as if a veil covers our eyes, hindering our true vision. A revelation therefore, is when God lifts that veil on a particular subject and allows us a glimpse of true reality. He allows us, at least in part, to understand as He understands and see as He sees. Revelation is to see through Papa’s eyes. 

I by no means claim to fully understand anything or have a complete revelation on any one subject. There is always more to discover and we can always go deeper. And so we’re on a journey, walking the road paved with revelation. Every step of the way we see a little clearer, understand a little more, and to an ever increasing degree, see through Papa’s eyes. 

I want to share my journey in the hope that it will encourage you, build you up and inspire you to pursue Him with an ever greater love and passion, because He is so dang worth it. 

I pray that He would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. Because that’s what it’s all about - relationship with Him. You obviously can’t have relationship with someone you don’t know. So the more you know Him, the better your relationship right? Bring it on then. Lets do this thing.