GYC Southwest 2016: One Soul Audience

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GYC Southwest

Who is Your One Soul Audience

Lisa Santos

Liberated to Love

Dear kind loving father Lord it's it's such a privilege to be here in nature with all my brothers and sisters Lord I just pray that you touch my lips that you will just put your words in my mouth.

I pray for their hearts to receive this message.

Hide me behind your cross, Lord, and I give you permission to just work mightily through me.

Are you all having a blessed time so far?

Well, this session is called Liberated to Love, And I'm going to start with my story.

So basically, I was in the closet for more than 30 years.

And I was pretty, back then I was pretty afraid of myself.

I was going to church, to a very conservative church.

I didn't know how to reach out to people for help, because I was a teenager.

And I just didn't know what to do you know I couldn't tell my mom I couldn't tell anyone I was just so afraid of myself.

So a long story short, I met someone online.

I dabbled into the cyber world and finally met someone.

I began to have feelings for this person.

And after a month of talking and talking on the phone and chatting online and all that stuff.

I decided that I, you know, I was falling in love with this person and I drove all the way from California with my sister, with me, all the way from California to Florida to be with her.

No 1 in San Diego, not my family, not my mom, my dad, they didn't know.

And things ended very badly between me and my partner.

And I decided, and during while I was there in Florida.

I felt that and I thought God Couldn't love me anymore.

I thought he wanted to have nothing to do with me because I I chose to live this lifestyle I I tried so hard to overcome it, to ignore it, to do whatever I thought I could do to cure myself.

I even dated men and thought, this guy is really good looking.

I went from 1 guy to the next, not long relationships, only to find out that I was really gay.

So I'm in Florida and thinking that God you know hates me and I'm doing all these things that no Christian does, you know, parties, clubs, alcohol, drugs, trying to quiet this conviction in my head that what I was doing was, was, wasn't, didn't fit, didn't make sense.

Because all along, you know, all along growing up having fantasies in my head, you know, if I saw a really attractive woman I would place her in my head and have fantasies about her.

And I would just keep rolling and rolling, like pressing the repeat button on your favorite movie.

And in junior high and high school, I lived this way.

I lived in such a fantasy world that people actually thought, at least are you okay?

I'd be walking down the halls, you know, just like totally zoned out And my friends would just make fun of me, laugh at me, and I'd be laughing too.

I was just, you know, zoning out, whatever.

In the counseling world, psychology world, that is called trance addiction.

You can actually put your mind in a trance state because you're always dabbling into your brain to make yourself feel good.

You're actually making yourself your own drug.

And it's proven that there are chemicals that actually produce the same way if you were going to take heroin.

I didn't like my home life, you know, my family situation, all, you know, my family members had struggles too.

And we had to live in our brokenness and so while I'm in Florida and and God's tugging in my heart and I'm saying no no no how can you love me you know I'm pushing him away, you don't love me, look what I'm doing." But God kept on and I felt him.

And to make a long story short, when things went badly I was struggling financially.

My mom would call me and say, Lisa, how's it going there?

And I would ask my mom, can you just stand a little bit?

I'm just struggling to pay my bills just a little bit.

She goes, yeah, OK, but are you going to church?

I'm like, I didn't go last Sabbath, but I started to work on Sabbath.

You know, oh, you know, how are you guys doing?

And my mom, she just went along with the conversation.

So anyway, I decided while I was in Florida, this is not working out.

I was gonna go to Las Vegas and work at a hotel and massage people and pay off all my bills.

I use up all these credit cards to survive, which shows like heavy debt.

But when I arrived in Las Vegas, things started to happen to me physically.

My ankle started to swell up, then my legs, and I'm sitting there on the plane and just thinking, What's going on?

It stopped me from crying because I started crying from the time I left Florida and just thinking, well, this was just, just blew up in my face and I, you know, I'm gonna lose all my friends, I'm gonna miss them, and I'm just crying.

And I just feel my pants is getting really tight.

And My mom is like, oh, Anak, my child in Tagalog, it's so good to see you.

And my brother's like, what's with the face?

I'm just like, wow, my legs are kind of swollen.

And I raised up my pants, and my ankles were this thick.

She kind of peels off my pants and she's trying not to react, my poor mom, but she's like, it's okay you just need rest.

The next morning I wake up, I have a fever.

The swelling went away, but suddenly there was a fever.

So we go to the clinic, and they find water in between my chest and my lungs or whatever, chest wall, and they said, we don't have the equipment for this.

And I was just like, can't you just give me an aspirin, and I'll be OK?

Virna Santos

Dear kind loving father, we just want to thank you once again for the privilege that you've given me and my sister to come to Pine Springs Ranch and to share again your love.

I pray for your Holy Spirit and your presence, Lord, to minister to our hearts.

I ask you too, Lord, to hide me behind your cross once again and to speak through me and I pray this in Jesus name.

Who do you know that or who have you seen or come across with who feel you feel you can't come near or you feel kind of squeamish.

A couple years ago, I was running an errand.

I was going to the grocery store to get something, and I saw a homeless person.

And he was just hanging out in front of the store.

So I bought a couple of them, and I was thinking maybe he's just really hungry.

And so I go up to him, I park my car, and I go up to him and I said, this is for you.

And he takes it from my hand, and he looks inside, and he just looks at me, and he has these tears in his eyes.

And I just see him almost gonna cry and he goes I Want to give you a hug?

But I'm dirty And I'm just like oh That's all I did That's all I did.

I walked away not feeling good about myself that I gave him food.

We're gonna dabble into Mark 1 verses 40 through 42.

Sometimes we can do good things and sometimes the motive doesn't match the service.

I think sometimes we would just want to feel good about ourselves, that we're doing something good, but when it comes down to it someone's asking you to hug them and they're covered in manure and they really need a hug are we willing to hug them you know And Mark 1 verses 40 to 42 says, and there came a leper unto him, beseeching him and kneeling down to him and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou can make me clean.

And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand and touched him, and saith unto him, I will be thou clean.

And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed.

So we see this exchange between Jesus and the leper.

Jesus touched him, and what do you think happened?

I don't like your shot go through him in the sense that he hadn't been touched in a very long time.

Jesus wasn't afraid to get contaminated, right?

Jesus touched him because he actually took upon himself the leprosy.

Me and my sister were at this Bible seminar with Bill Liversidge.

But we were in a group, and it was to give Bible studies.

And in my group, there is a woman sitting next to me, an older woman, and 4 other people.

And it was my turn to give the Bible study.

But while I was giving the Bible study I was talking and I had touched this lady's arm and she just looked at me and I went, oh, maybe that was not right.

But after the Bible study, she said, when you touched me, I just wanted to cry.

Because the way you looked at me and the way you touched me, I felt the words that you were saying.

And it's so powerful when there's intention and love behind the touch.

When the motive is pure and God is directing us.

This quote from Desire of Ages, page 266 says, The disciples sought to prevent their master from touching him.

For he who touched a leper became himself unclean.

But in laying his hand upon the leper, Jesus received no defilement.

Like Sister was saying, it was giving him life-giving power.

And the last session where we're talking about love, and I don't think I mentioned that God's love is a life force.

It's not anything whimsical, what we think love is.

Oh it's cloudy, I'm in love, I'm on cloud 9.

And so when Jesus touched the leper, And the leper was probably like, what's he gonna do?

Sometimes when I have like rashes, I have rashes sometimes, You know, I don't want people to touch it.

Just, you know, no, it's okay, don't, you know.

I'm sure this leper was feeling self-conscious.

Thus it is with the leprosy of sin, deep-rooted, deadly, and impossible to be cleansed by human power.

In Isaiah 1, 5 and 6 it says, the whole head is sick, the whole heart faint.

From the soul, the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

Sometimes in our church, we go into this black and white thinking about love.

Reaching those You Disagree With

So before we get into the scenarios and the questions that we want, how do we deal with, okay, what does a parent do when their child comes out to them, and what do you do if you have a co-worker who's gay, or What if your child comes out to you as transgender?

What do you do when you get invited to a gay wedding?

And if you guys have any other questions, These are the main questions that we get a lot.

But if there's other questions out there that you may have, please let us know and we could role play that out and see what happens.

Because 1 of my and my sister's desire for you guys here, especially today, is for you to search God's word for yourself in response to what's happening in society.

That though the world is changing around us, compassion and love does not mean compromise.

And so just like yesterday morning as I was sharing with everyone that God did not give us a spirit of fear, there's nothing to be afraid of.

Now, the 1 thing I do want to stress is when we're confronted with these issues, sometimes the enemy will cause us to feel anxious, pressured, to have to defend our faith.

When you feel anxiety, stress, pressure to answer or to defend your faith, that doesn't there's ways, there's interpersonal communication ways to answer somebody and not succumbing to those types of feelings.

I think that will become more clear as we go on.

Now remember how I was saying that when we go out to reach souls, we have to study, right?

We have to understand what's going on in their community.

Why are they so resistant to religion, overall religion, right?

And some of them gravitate to other religions like Buddhism, pantheism, what else would they, the popular religious beliefs, they do have Christian churches in Castro, Castro is the gay district in San Francisco.

You know, don't be too, this is what we're doing.

We're trying to also eliminate the stereotypes that we might have developed in our minds about the gay community.

More and more gay couples and lesbian couples are having children.

Some of them do have values in their lives.

And these are the things that we could tap on.

You know, sister white tells us that we need to look for the commonalities to whomever we're witnessing to.

Look for the commonalities where you can find agreement and sister white also says avoid points of contention.

That, you know, we are not to treat the evil doer with evil.

So, let's study a little bit about the gay community.

Okay, and the colors were to represent I have a lot of history stuff.

And another thing also, as you can see here, our email address is here, info at BBHL.org.

We are willing to share PDF versions of our presentations with you.

Red was for life, orange was for healing, yellow was for sunlight, green was for nature, blue was for harmony, and purple and violet was for the spirit.

These were the initial intentions of the colors.

Later on, As the political movement, the equal rights movement for the gay community progressed, it became more of a symbolism of diversity.

A diverse race, sex, and identity in people.

But these, the color symbolization that I just gave you, that was the initial color definitions that they had intended.

Okay, this is an important detail of the gay community.

It occurred June 28, 1969, and apparently police had a mission to go to certain establishments.

So the Stonewall, it was a night of police raids and the police justified it as they were targeting certain establishments that didn't have the right licenses to operate.

However, it later came on that it was a police raid to target establishments catering to the LGBTQ community.

And a riot broke out, and it occurred at a place called the Stonewall Inn.

And this was the event that propelled the gay rights organizations to develop.

So every year at the end of June, either the second or the last weekend, second to the last or the last weekend of June, every year, what is celebrated?

This is the reason why gay pride happens all over the world in major cities across the world.

San Francisco is usually around the last weekend of June, and it's 1 of the biggest ones.

They have a parade, they have boots, they sell food, and there's a lot of partying going on and all of that.

And I've been to many of them myself before.

And that's just giving you a little idea of how out there I was.

I was a political activist for the gay community.

And actually, Central California Conference just funded several ministries and developed several ministries for San Francisco.

1 of which I'm leading and it's called Open Arms and it's providing free HIV testing to the gay community.

So the goal is to be at Gay Pride next year and offer free HIV testing to whomever wants it.

They could take it with them and go away or we can conduct it with them because it takes a matter of 20 minutes to get the results.

So it's a means of making a connection, but it's also a means saying that we care.

There are so many issues in the gay community that we can really find some common ground in service towards them.

They made a movie several years ago about him.

Harvey Milk became 1 of the first openly gay officials in the United States in 1978, when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Dan White was a San Francisco supervisor also, but often argued with Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone on the overt homosexuality tolerance that was going on in San Francisco.

So Dan White shot Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone and killed them on November 27, 1978.

Now, this is not funny, of course, but the defense lawyers, The defense lawyers for Dan White argued that he was not having an adequate diet because his main staple in his diet was Twinkies.

The little yellow hostess things that can last a nuclear blast.

And so this came to known as the Twinkie defense.

Soon after the shooting, he turned himself in at the police station where he used to work.

There are reports that his old colleagues cheered and applauded what he did.

Practical Methods of Jesus Reaching out to the Homosexual Community

How dear Father in heaven, Lord, we just wanna thank you for this time and Lord for this raw and real moment here that we can have together and to just share some realness with each other and how we can respond.

Father, that I just pray through these scenarios and through these role plays, dear Father, that you will be glorified and our hearts and our minds open, dear Father, to your methods.

I thank you, Lord, for what you're about to do and I pray this in Jesus' name.

Well, I've been meaning to tell you something, but I don't know how to say it.

Have you been able to talk to anyone else?

You're like the only person that I think I can trust.

But I think your parents, they're scared.

You think they'll have a bad reaction or something.

I just feel like these feelings will go away.

I just feel, I feel like I'm attracted to the same sex.

I could see why you're scared about talking about that.

Well, I'm just so glad I can tell you, tell someone about it.

Yeah, how long has it been going on for you?

I do, but I just feel like God doesn't like what I'm feeling, and I feel so ashamed to even come to Him to pray.

Have you spent time in the Word, in The Bible?

It's really hard to read the Bible, because it just feels like I'm...

It just feels like, I don't know, it's not right, you know?

That sounds like a conviction, not feeling right.

Do you know the story about the woman that was caught in adultery?

So you could really know how God loves us.

And if you need time on a weekly basis to talk, then...

If it's not me, it could be someone else.

It doesn't change the way I feel about you at all.

It would be good for your family to know eventually, but if you don't feel safe right now.

Well, you know what, before we make any major decisions, I think understanding how God loves you and doing some Bible study around just God's love, I think might be helpful for you.

There were some challenging times there for me even.

Series

Who is Your One Soul Audience

Reaching those You Disagree With

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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