I am old enough, though I'm sure I don't look it, to remember a time when things like talking about homosexuality was done carefully among adults, sometimes tangentally, where people understood that there were things like that that happened out there but of course anybody who would believe in Scripture who've placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ would need no help no admonition except the general understanding that if you chose to go against God's word, you were going against God's church. We no longer live in those days. We live in a time period where more and more the church is caving to the pressures of our culture. And I just want to say this. If you attend a church that is not caving to the pressures of our culture, when you get back to your church, personally thank your pastor for what he has done holding the standard to this point.
Because it is going to get harder and pastors in America are going to need to know that Christ's flock has his back in these areas. How can Satan destroy the church in America? Well I'll give you one possibility. The church is told you have to marry homosexuals. And if you don't, we will destroy you.
And Here's how we will destroy you the people that come to you off the street or from the congregation or wherever will come to the pastor and ask them to, through their ordination, through their place as a minister of the gospel, join in holy matrimony this happy couple that would like to be married. And when you say, I can't do that because it goes against God's Word, they are now hurt. And they're hurt to the tune of millions of dollars. And they take from the pastor and from the church everything that they own. The church at that point will either cave or continue to proclaim the gospel.
How can Satan destroy or do a long ways towards really hurting a Christian home? Kids, or possibly parents, are out in the world and they're living in the culture and they're listening to the voices of our culture and they they think to themselves you know what that whole hard-nosed anti homosexual thing that used to be the way things were that was then and this is now and Homes are destroyed and churches are destroyed and Often what happens is is people when something like that comes up you have a child who comes to you, or a friend that comes to you, or perhaps you're a leader in the church, someone in the church that comes to you, and they say to you, I think I'm gay, and they know there is a culture that is going to not only embrace that but indeed celebrate that What are you going to do? When I started pastoring that wasn't the question The question was what you say when someone comes up to you and says, I am struggling with same sex attraction. Please help me. And indeed, I've had that conversation with people in my office.
But that is no longer where we are and certainly not where we are moving. If you haven't heard them before, if you haven't dealt with this before, I want to help prepare you for the future or perhaps the now. And so just so you can keep track of where we're at in this process, I have four major points or areas that I want to discuss and each of those have four items in them I tried to come up with seven points with seven areas but I thought even though that would be glorious, might get a little long, so we've got four and four. The first is the world's questions. What is the world asking now of the church, of the believer, of the spiritual leader, of the confused Christian, of the person that goes out into the culture and says, I believe what God's word says, what are they asking?
What should they be asking is part two. What should they be asking? Part three is what does the Bible ask? Or what should we be asking based on scripture? And then part four is simply four biblical admonitions that create the solution by which the church stands in a culture that is throwing the normative teaching of scripture for sexuality and marriage and relationships completely out the window.
So number one we're going to start with the world's questions and perhaps you've heard some of these perhaps you have not I'm guessing that at some point you will hear some of them at some point because these are questions that I've heard multiple times each one of them. Number one, why can't people just do whatever they want so long as they aren't hurting anyone? I have probably had that response from unbelievers more than any other response about the church, the Bible's teachings on homosexuality. Why don't you just let people be themselves, do what they want. They're not hurting anybody or we're not hurting anybody.
The second question that the world will say, and this I've heard more inside of the church than outside of the church, where the first one I hear more outside of the church than inside of the church, is everyone throws out parts of the Bible they don't want to follow? Why not this? And here's how they use it. There's a well-worn verse that conservative Christians have used as an anti homosexual Passage in Leviticus 18 22 perhaps you knew that perhaps because it's become such a big deal in our day you know that may be like the one verse in Leviticus you know what it says Because that verse says You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination Well, that's all good biblical true But then and here's where the world takes that and tries to make us eat our own words from scripture, they say, hold on a second.
That whole passage is talking about all sorts of weird things that you people are perfectly happy to do. Mixed materials, different things that you can eat, in fact in Leviticus 11, 12 it says whatever in the water does not have fins or scales that shall be an abomination to you. Okay and they say you eat shrimp, you might even eat squid. How is that different? I mean, maybe that was just things that God set up so that his Old Testament people would be weird and now we're the church age and we can just do things as long as it fits under God's mandate to love others and to love him.
I've heard this very argument, this argument. Third, and this is the one that I hear most often in the media. So number one is conversations outside of the church, number two is conversations within, and I wouldn't say inside the church because that conversation is mostly happening inside the church but not inside of biblical churches. Perhaps you've heard this one, do you wanna be on the wrong side of history? Have you ever heard that?
Do you wanna be on the wrong side of history? And usually The illustration that is used is first we had slavery and the abolition of slavery and then we had women's rights and the changes in our culture that gave votes to women and things like that and now we have the new social justice being rights for those who are homosexual or the next step for our lovely country is whatever. All of the letters strung together. Well first of all, just to very quickly answer these, number one, why can't people do whatever they want so long as they aren't hurting anyone. How do we know what hurts people and what doesn't hurt people?
I mean, that's a pretty, everything that we do probably hurts someone and doesn't hurt someone simultaneously and that's really hard to parse. The person, the child that goes to their parent and says I've decided that I'm going to get a gender change. You can't, you know, I'm not hurting anyone, except like their parents, their pastor, their friends who care from a biblical perspective. But even that is a mistake, because the real question should be is not what the people around you think but what does God think. Second question, everyone throws out something in the Bible that they don't want to follow?
Why not this? The easy answer for that is it's not up to you to decide what you want to follow or what you don't want to follow. We all need to go to scripture and bow the knee before the Lord who is sovereign who wrote scripture and be willing to do what scripture says no matter what it's just a matter of determining what these passages actually mean And just to give you an example how this works, in Leviticus 18, 22, it says, "'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman.' "'It is an abomination.'" Leviticus 11, 12 says, "'Whatever in the water does not have fins or scales, that shall be an abomination to you. And those are two different things. One is a declaration of God about what is, and the other is a declaration to Israel as to what Israel is gonna do.
And Israel did lots of things that we don't do. They sacrificed all the time for all sorts of things, and we have Christ. Do you wanna be on the wrong side of history? Well, what's history? Is history, whoever writes the history books, usually extreme liberal university professors?
Is that history? Is it the newscasters that write history? Is it 51% of the population at some nebulous point in the future? Well, if you read your whole Bible all the way through the book of Revelation, you realize God's the one who ultimately writes history. And let me just suggest you don't want to get on the wrong side of history.
The fourth question, aren't you just afraid of change? I'm afraid to exchange what is biblical for what is not biblical. But here's the crazy thing, I embrace change when it goes from unbiblical to biblical. And when I get that, are you afraid of change, I look people in the eye, I say, I homeschool 10 children. That's not normal.
That's not what my parents did. That's not what any of my parents' generation that I knew did. I mean, that's, so if it's something that I think is going to be a better place, a place where I can serve the Lord better, I'll change like that. What are the foundational questions that the world should be asking? And these, as you go into the world and you discuss this among many other ways that the world is changing underneath, in our culture, underneath our feet, we should be asking these questions.
They should be asking these questions, and we should help bring them to these questions. Number one, who is the actual arbiter of right and wrong? Who gets to decide what's right? The shrillest voice? The most popular person?
51% of the population, you, me, the state, what's legal, what's not legal, Or is it God? Christians have always stood firmly on God being the ultimate arbiter of what's right and wrong. And it goes all the way back to the beginning of the church where the apostles stood in Jerusalem and were told to be quiet about this fella called Jesus and they said we have to do what God tells us to do. The second question the world should be asking is is God real? Is it true?
Or is God just a projection of what I think is best. If God is real, He has an opinion about homosexuality. And that opinion is not what you want it to be. I might be wrong, the person who is all for all kinds of new ways of people relating with people could be wrong, but that doesn't matter. It's what God says that matters.
What God says that matters. I'm not projecting creating a God in my own image. God made us in his own image. And that's really important for us to understand. Somewhat related to that is this question.
Is the Bible God's true word? Or is it just man's flawed opinion? If you're talking to someone out in the world and you say, well this is what scripture says, and they're like, so what? I mean, that's something that's changed in our society. People used to be able to point to the Bible to help back up what they were trying to teach people.
We are very much losing that in our culture. But if God's word is true, then obviously what God says is important. And that brings us to the fourth foundational question that the world needs to ask itself and we need to try to help them ask is, if God is the arbiter of right and wrong and He is real, therefore He is knowable and God's Word is His Word. How are we going to choose to relate to Him and to His Word? And for most people that is the main issue.
What it really comes down to is am I going to follow what God says or am I going to do what I want despite what God says? Lot of questions out there. And you may say, well pastor except for that little bit in Leviticus you haven't really talked about scripture. That's next. If you have your Bible with you I'd encourage you to turn to Romans chapter 1.
Leviticus 18.22 is a fine verse. It was inspired by God in every word, in every Scripture is given by God and is profitable. But if you want to talk about what God's word says about homosexuality, this is the passage you need to go to. And if you don't know that, maybe that will be the most important thing you learn from today's session. This is the place to go, not somewhere else.
Not Sodom and Gomorrah, not Leviticus, here. This is the place to go. Romans chapter one, verses 16 through 32. It starts out familiarly, familiarly, yeah, like that, in a familiar way. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
And by the way, this is what we are bringing to the world in these types of discussions for it is the power of god to salvation for everyone who believes to the jew first and also to the greek for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written the righteous shall live by faith for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them For his invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse. For although they knew God, They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And that's what we're up against. Let me continue.
They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, they're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, they're gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval of those who practice them. Well, that's quite a passage right there. And God just lays it all out on the line. And so people who say, you know, that was then and this is now, back in those days, and I've heard these arguments, back in those days it was the homosexuality that the Greeks were more involved in was like a man with a boy or a young man and those are things that are still wrong but this thing that we have now is different, it's just different.
No, this is exactly what we see today. And it is part of a larger picture of man's rebellion against God. And I think that's what we really need to get a hold of when we deal with this because it does two things. Number one it gets to the root of what is wrong. What is wrong is not the action it is never the action it is the heart.
The action is what we legislate against, the action is what we have consequences of, but it is the heart that is the beginning and the substance of the matter. And also, it is a reminder to us that we are all rebels at heart. That's why Christ died. So that He could call to himself a people who are sanctified out of that rebellion. Four biblical questions and I'm looking specifically at the passage in Romans 1, 26-27 which has the content of the biblical answer to whether what God thinks about the problem of homosexuality The first question is, that is a textual question that we need to answer is, what does it mean when it says, God gave them up?
1.26, for this reason, God gave them up. He gave them up to dishonorable passions. He gave them up to women exchanging Natural relationships for those that are contrary to nature. He gave them up to men, giving up natural relations with women, consumed with passion for one another, committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error. What does this God gave them up mean?
Well to understand this God gave them up, we have to understand what God is, what Paul is doing here, God speaking through Paul is doing here, is he's giving a string of what went wrong with humanity. This isn't the first time God gave these people up. Did you notice that as we came through this passage? God gave them up, and then God gave them up, and then God gave them up again. Did you hear that as we went through?
The first time God gave them up, in verse 24, he gave them up to impurity. And by the way, this is how homosexuality works, is it begins with impure thinking. It begins with making the body a god instead of god, god. Well, every form of sexual perversion begins with that, actually, of taking God off the throne and putting something else on it. But it's not only impurity, it goes on here in verse 26 to dishonorable passion.
And then in verse 28, the third God gave them up before Paul moves on to say, therefore you have no excuse, oh man. The third one is God gives them up to a debased mind. And for those who follow this path, this is what it looks like. It looks like a loosening of God's boundaries of sexual standards in some form or another. That's how it begins.
It begins with licentiousness, with fornication, with pornography, with often, and I have actually seen this in people, with a whole string of partners that are of the opposite sex or dabbling in areas and then from there it turns to women exchanging natural for unnatural, men exchanging natural for passion for one another. But that's not the end. That's not, and this is something that's important for us to say, This is not the worst sin. Paul's got lots more to say and he says stuff at the verse 28 point that a lot of us struggle with. It goes from impurity to dishonorable passion, but it goes from dishonorable passion to a debased mind.
And that is the shift that we have seen in society. It has gone from a loosening of what in our circles, and maybe you're not, I don't know where you all come from, but in our circles we might call a courtship mentality, where we try to raise our kids up to think there's someone out there that the Lord has for them and kind of keep your heart pure and be prepared and you figure out who that person is and you marry him and it's for life. Okay, so that's, you know, to a loosening of that. And once that becomes loose all sorts of things can happen from from from there pretty soon It is not about how I can find what God wants for my life, it's how I can bring momentary pleasure into my world. And once you make that switch, and that's a very different switch, Once you've made that switch, all sorts of bad things happen.
The husband that beats his wife, beats her because the momentary pleasures of just letting his anger loose is greater than the stable relationship of a husband and wife that love one another The mother that shouts down her children because she's just so angry at them is willing to give up long-term relational gain for short-term fleshly desires. Is that normative? Sometimes it becomes normative and that's dangerous ground to be in. Because the next step is senselessness. Is going from exchanging God's norms to our own norms to becoming violently combative that our norms are right and that everybody else needs to be doing what we want to do.
It's interesting that beyond this exchange in Romans 1 26 we have these things. Unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Does that seem to you like a weirdly mixed list? I mean, how in the world does disobedience to parents and murder end up on the same list? I'll tell you how it ends up on the same list.
The same way when Saul sacrificed to God himself rather than waiting for Samuel. He was on the same spectrum that ended with witchcraft. This is the human struggle. The problem is is when we become filled with all manner of these things. And when that happens, right gets called wrong and wrong gets called right.
And as a Christian, and maybe you've dealt with people like this, you can no longer talk sense into their lives. Except from a pure act of God's grace changing their heart, speaking to them about the righteousness of God is like hitting your head against the wall. And I don't know if you've experienced that, but I certainly have. Where you simply have no ground to work off of. The worst judgment that God can give the rebel is their own way.
Indeed, hell is people saying I don't want to have anything to do with God and God says fine. It's part of a progression, important part of the progression, but don't lose track of this isn't the big thing, the big thing is the rebel heart. This is just part of it. Second, what does Paul mean when he says natural versus unnatural? And it's interesting, these things, I mean what's natural and what's unnatural?
Here's the crazy thing, is I have talked to those who back up alternative lifestyles. Let's use, I guess, Monty later will be talking about social babble. That is social babble, right there, alternative lifestyle. You know, what that's saying is there's lots of different alternatives and I'm picking one of them. If that's true, everyone's living an alternative lifestyle and there are no real alternative lifestyles.
And choosing an anti-biblical lifestyle, whatever that thing is. And people do it in many ways this is just one of them what is natural and what is unnatural and here's the crazy thing People say homosexuality is natural. Fact. They say it. Please, don't Believe that.
People will say, I was born that way. Well, some people are born with a propensity towards anger. That doesn't mean it's okay to murder people. Some people have a propensity towards bigamy. Well, that's not okay.
You might say I have a propensity towards lying or stealing. Doesn't matter. Here's what you have a propensity towards, rebellion from God. What does it look like? It may look different for you, it may look different for the other people, but God is the one that mandates the norm and he gives us His word so we can know what that norm is.
Remember with a different question when people came to Jesus and they said, you know, how is this supposed to work, this whole, you know, marriage? And I mean, and interestingly, that was like the big hot question back when I was young was was marriage and divorce and remarriage and what can you do about this? I mean it's just it's just moving the the the the uh the ground is is is moving beneath us but the answer is still the same you know Jesus says well what does scripture say? What did God do in the beginning? God made Adam and God made Eve.
And then sin messed it all up. But you want to know the mind of God, the mind of God is one man and one woman for life. And to, we're able to say that's natural because God is the God of nature. God is the architect of the universe and he tells us how things should be. And so natural and unnatural are important terms, important ideas and there's an interesting study that just came out that says as it turns out, homosexuality is not genetic.
I don't know if you've read that recently. I mean, that was in the last month. They did a big study and it turns out it's not genetic. Surprise! Well, I could have told you it's not genetic, even on their own terms.
You know, the survival of the fittest, the selfish gene, Darwin's, you know, the bird keeps looking for things deeper in the little crack and their beak gets longer. People who are guys that like guys or gals that like gals don't have big families as a general rule. Well that's the world's perspective. Our perspective is, yeah, people are twisted in all sorts of ways and people keep coming up with new ways to do the same old sins and of course That's exactly what we see, as we would expect. So yes, natural versus unnatural.
Third, what does this ball mean here when he says that homosexuality is dishonorable and it is shamelessness? We don't use honor and shame very much in our society. We're wonderfully, probably, problematically individualistic in America. We're all about the individual. And I believe really often that this whole homosexuality and transgenderism and all those things, I think they're part of the specific curse on America for its individualness.
Where what matters is what you want, not what those around you want. The Bible lived in an honor-shame society. Both Rome and Palestine, the Israelite people, were based on honor and shame. Honor, interestingly, and again, this is, I don't know if we're gonna get to complementarian versus egalitarianism, but honor and shame is a male-female dichotomy in honor and shame societies. I won't spend a lot of time because I don't have a lot of time but but basically this is the way most of the world works is men go out to get honor for the tribe or the family and Women stay home to try not to shame their family or their tribe.
If you ever wondered why things work kind of weirdly in so many circles, including a guy can get a girl pregnant and he is patted on the back and guys must be guys and girls are like that's wrong and bad and not okay. That comes from the honor shame society. That idea. The bible says there's right and wrong. Okay?
But that idea. In this passage, God gives them up to dishonorable passions. When people go against God's ways, there is no way to gain honor in that. And the weird thing, and this is part of the craziness of our society, is we are turning anti-biblical lifestyles into a badge of honor. We're being, it's crazy, We're like being binary, being just plain old normal heterosexual almost makes you, when you're out in the world, almost makes you feel like there's something wrong with you.
And I'm I am a card carrying heterosexual. And that's, you know, I have 10 children, I already told you that. I mean, I got my card punched several times. I was waiting for the free one but anyhow, but that's it is dishonorable. There's no way, when you go out of God's ways, there is no way to gain honor.
And, not only is it dishonorable but it is also shameless. You can't gain honor and you would think but it would be shameful but the word isn't shameful it is shameless And here's what happens with this particular type of lifestyle, and there are several rebellions against God that work this way, but it says, you can't shame me for what I'm doing. Does that sound about right for this movement in America today? How dare you shame me for what I'm doing? Shamelessness is its own judgment because people no longer have the ability to be brought into check.
And just as one example, Washington State was one of the first states to legalize homosexual marriage. And then we had the odd thing of within a month we were then having to deal with homosexual divorce. Well, it's, you know, It's a problem. It is dishonorable and it is shameless. You can't get honor and the cry is for no shame.
It becomes that the shame, the way society feels about it no longer has impact and then the fourth that as we deal with this passage is very important to understand is what does it mean here when it says God gave them up to the they received in themselves the due penalty for their error what does this do penalty for their error Well there's two things that I think we need to understand about this from a biblical perspective. One is the due penalty of this error as with every error is death. The wages of sin is death. That is the due penalty and by the way we all are under that due penalty until Christ takes that penalty for us. But it is not just that and I think in this context it is not just that I think Paul's not just talking about an eternal penalty he's talking about a right now penalty because the very next thing that Paul says is then God gave them up again Part of the due penalty of their error is the inability to think logically about sexuality.
The inability to be checked by concerned people around them that care desperately of what they're doing to themselves and to their lives. It may not be politically correct, in fact, There is some danger that someday I will be thrown in jail for saying something like this. But there is a penalty that happens. And it's not just this sin, it's every sin. There are things that go wrong in our lives when we say I don't care what God says I'm doing what I want and the person I mean we're just dealing with so much these days, the person who says you know what, I hate being a girl, I just want to be a guy instead, or the person who says I hate being a guy, I just I feel really a lot more feminine than masculine, so I'm going to just have everything changed Physically so I can be socially what I kind of think I am I mean, that's that's one of our letters that we get the T and I'll be GTQ whatever Is that right a happily ever after story?
Is that, do you then have everything the way you want it? No, you don't. There are penalties and I think one of the greatest, hopefully, one of the greatest things that we have as believers is because God created the world and God gave us the Bible if we do what the Bible says we actually fit better in the world than doing something else. So very quickly because I'm out of time the biblical solution. Number one I'm not going to spend a lot of time on these, but they are important for us in this room today.
Number one, be saved. Outside of salvation, it's one rebellion or another. And ultimately, although you may hurt more people with different kinds of rebellion, ultimately your soul will perish if you don't get right with God. This whole passage, what Paul is aiming at in this passage is Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Doesn't matter what kind of person you are, what you brought to the table.
This is one of the things that some of the people bring to the table, but everybody brings something to the table and all of us are falling short of God's glory. And God, and Paul brings us through these passages to Romans 3.23 so that he can in Romans 6.23 say the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. That's where Paul's going with all of this. First Corinthians 6, nine through 11, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do you not be deceived?
Neither sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, these are all people who have given their lives to a specific kind of sin will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. First be saved. Outside of that, I mean when I talk to someone about this sin or any other sin, that's job one.
Make sure your heart is right before the Lord in salvation. Number two, and this is so important, love Jesus more than anything. It all begins with idolatry. That's why I started where I started to get us where this was going. It all starts with idolatry.
When you let go of Jesus as primary, crazy happens. And Someone else's crazy may look very different than your crazy, but it's all crazy because that thing you put ahead of Jesus is not God. And Jesus is. Third, honor marriage. Honor marriage.
We need to not be a people of no, no, shame, shame, wrong, wrong. Everything that you do is wrong. We need to be a people that says this is what is right. And I believe one of the greatest things that the Christian church can show the world is good marriages. I hope that's working here in this room.
I hope you bring that home with you. We need that. And by the way, I'm going to just plug Scott's book back there now. He's written a fabulous book on how to help marriages or just strengthen what you have. I'm not joking.
You should all have a copy of that book. I have a little blurb in there but I'm just going to give you a little plug there since you didn't do it in your own talk. I will buy you a copy if you can't afford it and you think you need it. It's that, I just appreciate that. We need to honor marriage.
And we need to realize as believers, the goal of Satan is not more marriage. It is no marriage. That's the goal. To spread the concept of marriage so paper thin that it no longer matters anymore and that people are just doing what they want, when they want, with who they want. And then fourth if you're married love your wife love your wife Many that struggle with their sexuality or their gender it's because they don't have a strong father in their home that's been shown time and time again.
If you're a guy here and you're married, love your wife. Love her like Christ loves the church. Show your kids what a proper marriage looks like. A biblical marriage looks like. So when the world shows them other things, they think to themselves, well that's not right.
You have a great opportunity in your home. Don't blow it. Don't blow it. Well, I hope that these words were helpful. I hope that the teaching from scripture can benefit you.
I just want God's people to be biblical and we're entering an era where it's going to be harder and harder to just do things the way God's Word says. It's clear in scripture. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. But if you see it clearly in scripture, live it clearly. And that's really a big part of what this conference is about.
Is helping us to live clearly scripture so that as the world goes all different directions, our kids will grow up and say, I know what it's supposed to look like. I know what it's supposed to be like. Either I saw my parents or I was in a church where there was a couple or there were several couples there were several families they were doing it right and I want some of that I want to be like that not like the crazy that the world puts on the pedestal let's pray Heavenly Father we thank you for your word We pray that you would just bless your church in this nation as we stand for your truth. Lord, I pray for these homes. I pray that you would help there to be strong marriages, kids that grow up with their heads on their shoulders the right way, that we would be prepared to have a church that stands for what's true and what's right, and what's pleasing in your sight so that we would be able to serve you well.
We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.