Belgian doctors rule depressed 24-year-old woman has right to end her life. http://tiny.iavian.net/5stp
A powerful testimony and an very different perspective on gay marriage
Something Greater Than Marriage
A Response to the SCOTUS Decision by Christopher Yuan and Rosaria Butterfield
The Supreme Court of the United States of America has made gay marriage legal in all 50 states and much of our country celebrates. The world with its rainbow flags waving proudly and plentifully was our world. We locked arms with our LGBT loved ones and friends and believed that they were truly and honestly our family of choice.
This is the world that we, Christopher and Rosaria, helped build—a world pursuing dignity and equality. The people you see celebrating the recent SCOTUS decision to redefine marriage (and with marriage, personhood) would have been us, not very long ago.
In 1999, when Jesus Christ revealed His saving grace and love to each of us, we learned that our unbelief, and the idolatrous sexual lusts that flowed from it, were no longer matters of personal choice. We accepted that following Jesus meant giving up everything. We understood that repentance meant fleeing from anything that embodied the temptations that we knew best and loved most. But even prior to our conversion to Christ, God provided the love and care of Christians, people who became for us a new family, new brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in Christ—who knew and loved us before we were safe to love. Christians loved, accepted, included, and surrounded us with biblical truth while we were still sinners, thus modeling the Lord Himself. Therefore, when the Holy Spirit changed our hearts, we came to know this: the gospel is costly and worth it.
The days after the Supreme Court’s ruling are like the days before it: God is seated on His throne in power and majesty—and one day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Him.
We affirm that God has ordained marriage to be the union of a husband and a wife which Jesus himself restated in Mark 10:6-8 and Matthew 19:4-5. But even though some in our culture believe as Justice Kennedy wrote that marriage “embodies the highest ideals of love,” we disagree. Earthly marriage does not have a monopoly on love. God is love (1 John 4:7-19). The pinnacle of love is God’s love for us in Christ. Nothing is greater than that.
In actuality, marriage is a mystery and a reflection of a greater reality. Truly, the highest ideal of love is Christ’s love for his bride, the church. In Ephesians 5 and Revelation 21, marriage is analogous to Christ’s redemption: the marriage consummation between the bride (redeemed sinners) and the Groom (Christ) shows that all redeemed people are married to Christ. Only in Christ can anyone experience the full definition of love and acceptance. As important as earthly marriage and family are, they are both fleetingly temporary, while Christ and the family of God (the church) are wondrously eternal.
We have failed to show the LGBT community another option to marriage—which is singleness—lived out in the fruitful and full context of God’s community, the family of God. This does not mean as Justice Kennedy wrote that singles are “condemned to live in loneliness,” but
that singles can have intimate and fulfilling relationships full of love. This is not a consolation prize. It can be just as rewarding and fulfilling as marriage.
Defining marriage as being between a husband and a wife appears unfair to the LGBT community, in part because a life of singleness is viewed to be crushingly lonely. Have we in the church inadvertently played into that lie with our idolatry of marriage while being pejorative and silent toward singleness? If singleness is unfair, then it is no wonder that marriage has become a right. Just as the LGBT community appealed to the rest of the world for dignity and respect, it is time for the church to fight for the dignity and respect of single women and single men.
Some are now comparing the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion. There is an important lesson for us to learn from the pro-life movement. Today, there are more pro-life millennials than others from previous generations who champion pro-life. When pro-life people, made up of more than just evangelical Christians, began fighting less and caring more for unborn babies and for women with unplanned pregnancies just as they were, a shift in focus brought about an important change. The question stands: will we begin caring for the LGBT community just as they are?
This is a defining moment in history. We have a faithful opportunity to shine for the gospel. Will we point people to marriage as the “highest ideal of love”? Or will we point people—whether married or single—to a life of costly discipleship pursuing the embodiment of love, Jesus Christ himself? The decision is ours to make.
In Christ’s love,
Christopher Yuan and Rosaria Butterfield
Lovingly endorsed by our families: Kent Butterfield, and Leon and Angela Yuan
rosariabutterfield.com
christopheryuan.com
twitter.com/christopheryuan
facebook.com/christopheryuan
Our own Kamimi and Rudy call in to the KMC Show
Listen to 20150701- Is America Morally Right To Erase 50 Years Of Isolation From Cuba by Kevin McCullough Radio #np on #SoundCloud
Appearance on today’s Kevin McCullough Show
Listen to 20150630- Pastor Dave Watson Tells Kevin, “The Supreme Court Rules, Yet Jesus Reigns” by Kevin McCullough Radio #np on #SoundCloud
Free 50 Day Devotional plus some resources in light of the Supreme Courts ruling on Gay Marriage for “The Believers in Babylon”
For a free downloadable copy of the devotional Believers in Babylon click below
Believers_in_Babylon_-_NYISB Devotionalnewedited
Free downloadable essay regarding gay marriage and the state of New York laws passed in 2011 – Somewhat prophetic – no_changing_the_channel[3]
Link to order “How Shall We Then Live” – by Francis Schaeffer – http://www.amazon.com/Should-Then-LAbri-Anniversary-Edition/dp/1581345364
Link to order “Love into Light” by Peter Hubbard – http://loveintolight.com/
Link to order “God and the Gay Christian” – Dr. Albert Mohler – http://www.amazon.com/God-Gay-Christian-Response-Conversant-ebook/dp/B00KBA8L9Q
Link to order “What Does the Bible Teach About Homosexuality” by Kevin Young – http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Really-Teach-about-Homosexuality/dp/1433549379
http://erlc.com/erlc/herewestand
http://nypost.com/2015/06/29/churches-are-the-lefts-next-target-in-the-gay-m
http://www.tms.edu/preachersandpreaching/an-open-letter-to-tms-alumni/
What Your Church Needs to Know—and Do—About the Court’s Marriage Ruling
How to protect your church against sexual orientation and gender identity lawsuits
Judicial Activism From Supreme Court on Marriage. Here’s How to Respond.
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/so-called-same-sex-marriage
Today’s Question – The Teachings of Jesus – Can I be faithful to #5 if I don’t share #1-4
1. The Golden Rule – Matthew 7:12 – 12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
2. The Great Commandment – Matthew 22:37-39 – 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
3. The Definition of Marriage – Matthew 19:4-6 – He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
4. The Least of These – Matthew 25:37-40 – Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
5. The Great Commission – Matthew 28:18-20 – 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Yesterday’s service and sermon at Calvary Chapel – Graduation Sunday 2015, June 28, 2015 – Includes statement on same sex marriage
For those who say we must accept the Supreme Court’s rulings as settled law without dissent I invoke a wise voice from the past:
“The highest authority has spoken. The voice of the Supreme Court has gone out over the troubled waves of the National Conscience … [But] my hopes were never brighter than now. I have no fear that the National Conscience will be put to sleep by such an open, glaring, and scandalous tissue of lies…” – Fredrick Douglas after the 1857 Dred Scott Decision by the Supreme Court declaring blacks property
When the Supreme Court gets it wrong
Legality doesn’t equal morality
Human judgment doesn’t equal Divine Justice
The SCOTUS’s redefinition of something doesn’t make it right
Examples – 1857 – Dred Scott Decision – African Americans were refined as property
1973 – Roe v. Wade – Babies were redefined as tissue
2015 – Marriage was redefined to include same sex couples
African Americans have been and always will be human beings created in the image of God. Babies from conception have always been human beings. Marriage from the beginning and forever will be between a man and a woman period. Human institutions may seek to declare. God ultimately defines.
Note the warning in the rhetorical question found in Psalm 94:20 -Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute?
#SCOTUSwrong
A Call to Santity
Let’s break up the club. The Republicans have promised the white evangelical church integrity and supreme courts justices who would protect the constitution and culture. How is that going folks? The Democrats have promised the black church equality that eliminates poverty and insures dignity. How is that going folks? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Here is what I propose. No more white church and no more black church just His Church. No more support of party platforms only a commitment to a kingdom agenda. No more alignment with political candidates or parties only allegiance to our King, the Lord Jesus Christ. No more acting like politicans. From know on we are His prophets and priests. There is no redeeming this system. It’s time to create something that honors Him. Get out of the Devil’s bed Bride of Christ. We’ve been deceived long enough. It’s time for His Church united to charge the gates of hell again.
nycshepherd.com 