Recently, in the Toledo area, billboards carry the message, “Being gay is a gift from God.”
Being gay is not a gift from God. In more than 30 years of counseling with people who have chosen the gay lifestyle, not one of them has ever said – “I am delighted to be gay.” No one has ever said to me, “My gay lifestyle is a gift from God.” In every case, those engaged in this deviant lifestyle shared with me the pain of their choice, along with the shame and guilt they carry.
In Romans 1:18-32, God defines for us, what happens when we exchange His truth for a lie. Paul clearly outlines the unnatural affects of saying “No” to God and thus embracing a life without Him.
Romans 1:18-32:
18-23But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
24-25So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
26-27Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.
28-32Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!
Within every person there is a seed of God and the God-thirst is the most powerful drive in us, stronger than all the drives of sex, power, security and fame put together. When someone says “No” to God, they will then find something or someone else to worship. Man always worships something or someone. Who or what he chooses to worship dictates the essence of his life. We were born to worship and serve the Creator. No other life will bring fulfillment of purpose. Choose this day who you will serve- the God of the Bible or the god of this world. There is hope, help, forgiveness, love, healing, and restoration to all who will simply believe in His name.
And the greatest thing about sin… there is a cure.
