From today’s service “I Run to You” by Margie Aguilar
From Margie Aguilar’s Album project “Encountered By His Grace” – ” I run to you” – Free download here – https:// www.dropbox.com/s/5r068dm0litn2nw/I%20RUN%20TO%20YOU.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5r068dm0litn2nw/I%20RUN%20TO%20YOU.mp3?dl=0
It may very well be over for this nation. We should be shortly — if we are not already — under the judgment of Almighty God. I watched with horror yesterday the video showing Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, discussing the harvesting and use of fetal tissue (by the way, fetus means “baby”) from abortions. She actually talks about getting a “17 weeker” that day. (http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/health/planned-parenthood-undercover-video/) I have watched in equal horror as many have defended the process and said the whole thing needs to be seen in context and that the video was selectively edited to make Planned Parenthood look bad. They have argued that the process was completely legal and the political right was exploiting the issue. I watched with still equal horror as others promise to “get to the bottom of this”.
I don’t care if the process is legal. I don’t care if the video is selectively edited. I don’t care if the “parts” are donated and Planned Parenthood is simply being reimbursed. What bothers me and should bother everyone is that this is occurring, period. It is barbarism. It is modern-day cannibalism. It is savagery beneath a “civilized people.” It speaks to who we have become as a nation that we would allow it, that we would defend it and that we are not so outraged we don’t shut the country down until it stops.
Those of you who in one way or another are trying to defend Planned Parenthood, do you even hear yourself? Do you understand what you are defending? You are acting like these babies are just carcasses of meat hanging in the freezer and the abortion doctors are local butchers giving customers the cut of meat they asked for. What are these clinics, chop shops where we order parts? ISIS cuts off the heads of innocent individuals and we condemn them. Plan Parenthood’s Abortion Clinics dissect the most innocent in a similar manner and our President prays for God to bless them. There is something from hell wrong with this thinking. God help you! God help us!
A few years back Michael Vick was rightfully condemned by the media for the inhumane way he treated dogs. He was fined and jailed for that. What he did was condemned universally as immoral. Is that which goes on behind the closed doors of Planned Parent abortion clinics any less inhumane? It is being done to other human beings for God’s sake. This should be universally condemned. The outrage should be deafening. The most innocent are being sliced up and their parts distributed. If this doesn’t make us sick what will? If this doesn’t disgust us what will?
Just a few days ago on July 4th weekend I sang with others “God Bless America.” I cannot sing that song again and neither can any other God-fearing person until this barbarism, this horror is stopped. It would be hypocritical. It would be like the German State Church in the 1940’s praying for God’s blessings on Germany while knowing Hitler was exterminating over 6 million Jews . With this holocaust in our midst God will not bless America. We should not expect Him to. We should expect Him to do just the opposite. God’s condemnation and judgment cannot be far off.
Nahum 3:1 – Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey!
Join us live at our services at 9AM or 11:15AM at Calvary Chapel, 30 Maple Parkway, Staten Island NY or live on the web at calvarychapelsi.org/sermons or live beginning at 11:30 AM on 570 AM WMCA, http://www.wmca.com or on iheartradio.com
This week’s message – ““Turning from Idols to Serve the Living and True God”
Belgian doctors rule depressed 24-year-old woman has right to end her life. http://tiny.iavian.net/5stp
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
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