Love in the Making 2019

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Proverbs 365 Ministries

Michael Carducci

LGBTQ Issues and the Church

Father, I thank you Lord for this opportunity to share about LGBT in the church.

And Lord, there's a lot going on that we are not prepared for.

And Lord, I believe that education is 1 of those ways that we can not only brace ourselves for what's coming, but also Lord, to be redemptive.

It's not just enough to protect ourselves, Lord.

We wanna be reaching out to others that we either don't understand or maybe even some of us might be disgusted with.

And so Lord work on our hearts, send your Holy Spirit, I pray in Jesus name, amen.

All right, I have a great opportunity to be in the presence of a very dear colleague of mine.

Helped start coming out ministries 8 and a half years ago almost 9 years ago And then also we have Miguel Harris who we've had the opportunity to work with in Peru and other places It's an honor to to be with these men as well.

So anyway, if you have any questions for them, feel free to ask them.

We want to talk about LGBT in the church and take a look at this photograph.

I was in Belgium and I was coming up out of the subway area and we hit the streets.

And I look up and I'm with people from Belgium and for them it was nothing.

But I'm looking at this church and I'm going, what?

And they go, oh yeah, every year they put the gay flag on the Presbyterian Church or the Protestant churches.

And so right in the middle of the city, the biggest steeple that you could see, and they're waving the gay flag on that.

And for them, they're very comfortable with it.

The couple that I was with were Seventh-day Adventists, and to them, It was nothing.

We're becoming anesthetized by the movement that's going on in the world.

As a matter of fact, Kezia, who's now working with Coming Out Ministries, when I met her 2 years ago in Cuba, we were talking and I basically was hearing her testimony about how she was addicted to pornography, masturbation, and even premarital sex.

She was actually having sexual relations with some of the young men that were in her youth group at church.

And I said, wait a minute, you do know what the Bible says about sex, don't you?

And she says, well, not really because the church isn't talking about it.

And so YouTube is talking about it, all the world is talking about it, but the church in its silence, I realize now, is giving permission for our young people to explore and to experience these things that God had never intended for us to do.

I can see now how the world is breaking down the borders, but the church is doing just as much by refusing to talk about this situation.

And so I use this as a illustration about LGBT and the church.

And we know that because that's what the world is screaming now is you are your identity.

And a lot of people don't realize what's been slowly seeping into society for probably the last 4 generations.

When it comes to equality, LGBT activists and their judicial allies have made sure that sexual behavior trumps religious liberty every time.

And you can see that in your own lives and how it's affected even in your own churches.

What I've found now is that we have groups in every Protestant denomination that are driving and pushing this agenda and I believe that that's been specific.

We have the, what is it, the Westmoreland Baptist Church that said, God hates fags, fags die, God laughs.

And then we have the other side, Jesus had 2 dads and he turned out okay.

So what we found as we came into this ministry, came back into religious culture, I coming back at 40 years old after I've been out for 20 years, is I thought that there was nothing more than rejection going on in the church and then I come back and I find that that is still alive and well they're either people rejected and think that we're gonna burn in a hotter hell than everybody else but now the other side is is that oh it's no problem God's fine with it and that God loves homosexuals that are in monogamous relationships And so now we have these 2 opposing positions in the church, but what really is the truth?

We also have kinship now that's been around for 30 plus years and they are international.

And kinship is a group, as a matter of fact, when I was talking about in the commercial for the movie, I said, tell me lies, lie to me.

I remember 1 day I had walked into the church culture and I had given my heart to the Lord but I had also been in a relationship with a man and the Lord led me into realizing that I had to give up this relationship so now I'm without a relationship I'm still not straight I'm struggling with this I have another friend who's in the same position that I am and I said, hey look I found kinship on the internet and we looked at it and I said fantastic now I can have a boyfriend and Jesus.

And so as I started looking at this website, I really didn't care much about what the Bible said about homosexuality anyway, but I did have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

So my friend was looking at it, and he said, well, look at the way that they've translated these verses.

And he goes, no, really, Mike, take a look.

Just tell me I can have a boyfriend and Jesus.

And I believe that many innocent people, just like myself, have been trying to find a way, how can I have Jesus in my life and still have the things of the flesh?

And especially when the only thing you ever grew up with was same sex attraction, and even I struggled with transgenderism, I wasn't necessarily thinking that there was a solution for my problem.

Acceptance was the only solution for me, especially after 20 years of praying that God would change me.

So again, thinking this, it made it very easy to start understanding and accepting and believing that I could have a boyfriend and that God would still accept that.

I remember that my boyfriend was so shocked that I'd become an Adventist.

He went out of town on a business trip And when he came back, here his lover is, a Seventh-day Adventist baptized Christian.

And he said, you know, your church doesn't accept homosexuality.

So he said, look it, this is what they say.

And he showed me all this stuff and I said it doesn't matter I didn't get baptized to be a straight person.

I was baptized because I was following Jesus Christ I didn't care what the Adventist message was in my heart Sincerely in my heart.

I was hoping that God would convert my boyfriend who was Jewish who already understood the Sabbath but I was hoping that God would convert him and that we would be this mighty team for Jesus right?

Okay and so you know that didn't wear so well with him and so because I was keeping the Sabbath and now I'm a vegan you know it interfered with a lot of our fun and so eventually I was frustrated I said to God if you want me out of that relationship, you're going to have to do it yourself.

I didn't even have the nerve to do it myself.

And I said, if you want me out, you have to do it.

And he said, all right, Mike, I'll get right on that.

And about 3 weeks later, My lover and I were opening up a salon and we were in the space that we were going to decorate and we were sitting There and he had his arms around me and he said, you know Mike He said the relationship is really taking a direction that I really wasn't ready for He said I need a break and this peace came over me and I knew that God was speaking and that He was intervening in my life and this peace came over me and we broke up.

But then all of a sudden I went home and I'm still not straight.

I'm still heterosexual or homosexual and I started to think to myself, well I never know what it's like to love again.

Am I just going to have to be single for the rest of my life?" And then the tears started to flow and I would sob and this lasted for months.

And as I was crying out thinking, why would you ask me to leave something that was so good?

And the Lord started to reveal to me not only the reasons why but he started to comfort my heart.

And as he started to comfort my heart, it was Jesus that was holding me.

And for the first time, experiencing his love started to transform my life.

Had I not gotten to that point, had I not realized that this was not God's intention that I would be comfortable in a same-sex relationship that was monogamous, I would never have invited Jesus to come into my heart so fully.

And I believe that yes, the physical pull is so strong that it pulls us in 1 direction.

As a matter of fact, many recovered homosexuals that become heterosexual and live that life can also relapse and fall back into that life.

Not because the power of God is still not restraining, it's the fact that God has given us free will.

And if free will, he will never interrupt and go past that.

And so the pull of sexuality, the pull of sexual experience is so strong that it can even pull us away and God still respects that but that doesn't mean that he stops working, right?

Jackson was talking about an everlasting love that no matter what our behavior is, his love doesn't change.

And I praise him for that because there were many times in my experience as I found out about kinship and was still struggling with this sexual addiction that I still had to keep coming back to God as I was broken, defiled, and filthy.

And I asked him again, I go, Lord, do you still want me?

And again, his answer was always the same to me yes Mike I still want you and so that's what won my heart that's what really convicted me that you know what he's in it for the long haul and if he can do it I'm willing to work out my salvation with him in that process.

And so we were speaking at a Mennonite church and they have the same agenda and so now we're seeing that in across multiple denominations that they're having this conflict in their churches as well.

2 institutions that were established at creation that was even discussed this morning in the sermon Genesis 1 27 and 28 so God created man and women and then in Genesis 2 verse 3 He blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it.

Now we know that marriage is definitely under attack with with the movement of the LGBT issue.

And then how about the fact that heterosexual people haven't done such a great job with the blessing either.

You know we have polyamory, we have premarital sex, we have divorce that's the same rates inside the church as they are outside the church.

And so we know that definitely marriage is under attack.

And so what if God were watching the Christian church to find out how they deal with the 1 issue to know how we're going to deal in prophecy when we know that the Sabbath is under attack as well.

Biology, it's interesting Wayne and I were in Germany and we were about to to speak at this conference and it was pretty much a pro-gay conference in northern Germany they were very very LGBT supportive and we knew that.

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