ILL>> Ignorance is bliss! Maybe I should say innocence is bliss. A world of rich possibilities and dreams carry many young people from high school graduation to attend college and eventually a career. These innocent minds leave home and if they aren’t already, they are seduced into allowing their raging hormones to begin to make their decisions.
I spent my last year of high school on the back side of the Chiwawan desert. My dad had been called as the principle of the little Christian school in Alpine, Texas. My mom and dad, my 3 brothers and I returned to live in Marfa, a little cowboy and border patrol town north - west of Big Bend National Park. Eventually we moved out to the ranch where we had lived years earlier to operate a cattle and land erosion business with an old cowboy that could remember when there were no fences in Texas.
Life on the ranch was like a dream set in the old west. The sunsets can take your breath away. The dusty valleys would produce an evening show that filled the whole sky from horizon to horizon. The sun would cast a bright orange and yellow shadow across the sky and as it sunk into the hills the flames of color would change to darker hues of red and purple, finally dragging its blanket of color to bed with it.
I loved Texas. Sometimes on Saturdays I would mount a horse and ride all day across the 40 section ranch (25 thousand acres) with a 22 rifle just seeing what I could see. Everything moved twice as slow as it should especially to a 17 year old that was about to go to college. I worked at a veterinary hospital to earn some extra money after school. But all this wasn’t enough to keep me from missing a girlfriend I left behind. I wrote her letters but I couldn’t wait to return to Tennessee to go to Bible College where my dad had attended and where we had just moved from.
Finally the day arrived. I graduated second in my class of three and received a $100.00. I promptly bought a new rifle. Now I was ready to go to college. It seems like just a few years ago that I arraigned to go to work for the large church the college was associated with working on the church buses. Originally I had planned to go to work in the youth ministry office but with this job I would have an apartment off campus.
The trip on the Greyhound bus took over 24 hours. It took me a day or so to get my bearings after that but once I got settled in I was ok. A man named Phil about 10 years older than me was the guy who set this up for me and I was grateful. I began to go to work about a week and a half before school. He taught me a lot about engines and at first I enjoyed being there. We roomed together in a small apartment near the bus barn and spent every evening together. I knew that this guy wasn’t my age and he was different but I didn’t know how different.
It wasn’t until he began to talk about sexual things that I began to become uncomfortable. He was trying to teach me some things about the world he said, because I was so young. We even had theological discussions about certain sexual practices. When he continuously wanted to talk about sexual things I finally had had enough. I went to the dean and requested to move into the dorm and I was able to go to work at the church in the youth department. I GOT OUT OF THERE. -- LIKE JOSEPH - I RAN!
Years later I found out that this guy had really messed up several guys. One that I know for sure became a public homosexual, and he was from a good Christian family. Many are in counseling today!
How did this happen?
I served a church one town where the pastors own son later turned his life over to the world to live a life of homosexuality.
How did this happen?-----------title >>>>>>>>>>>>>>A Reprobate Mind <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Homosexuality is the result of a twisted mind the Bible calls a Reprobate Mind.
Rom 1:18-32
Here is the process. It is sin and the habits of sexual sin follow this same path.
This is the downward spiral of sin.
I. Rebellious Mind
Rom 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Rom 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
Rom 1:23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
ILL>>I worked for a furniture store that had an assistant sales manager who was a music director for a church. When I found that out I asked him about it. He said he used to be a music director but when they found out he was gay they fired him, just for one little thing - can you believe that? he said. -- I can believe it I said. Later every time he talked to me he would touch me. Finally I had enough and told him I would break his arm if he toughed me again. He never touched me again. I don’t know how to break a man’s arm but I sure would have tried.
Trans...
ILL>> When I attended grad school at Criswell College I went to work selling furniture for a large store in Dallas. What I didn’t know was that I was hired by a gay man and a lesbian woman, they were the managers. The only reason they hired me was because I was a top producer everywhere I had worked. I also learned later that a vast majority of the men there were homosexual. So, I had some lessons to learn. God taught me not to get angry but to let God take care of them and my job was to try to win them to the Lord. Another seminary student and myself started a Bible study before work on Saturdays. One of the gay men who had left his wife and children to live the gay lifestyle came to our Bible study regularly. He had ruined his family and his life because he contracted AIDS but he would not repent. He wouldn’t even begin to think that he was wrong. His mind was completely turned away from the truth. Most homosexual men can never get back to right thinking.
II. Wrong Mind v24
Rom 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves:
Rom 1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
The withdrawal of God’s restraint sent men deeper down. Three times Paul uses paredōken here (Rom_1:24, Rom_1:26, Rom_1:28), not three stages in the giving over, but a repetition of the same withdrawal. The words sound to us like clods on the coffin as God leaves men to work their own wicked will. - AT Robertson
to dishonor their own bodies between themselves:
Christians had a new sense of dignity for the body (1Th_4:4; 1Co_6:13). Heathenism left its stamp on the bodies of men and women.
Joh 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
III. Rotten Mind
Rom 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
Rom 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
VI. Reprobate Mind
Strongs def.. unapproved, that is, rejected; by implication worthless (literally or morally): - castaway, rejected, reprobate.
AT Robertson - Greek Scholar...Like an old abandoned building, the home of bats and snakes, left “to do those things which are not fitting” (poiein ta mē kathēkonta), like the night clubs of modern cities, the dives and dens of the underworld, without God and in the darkness of unrestrained animal impulses.
Rom 1:28 And even as they did not like (refused) to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Rom 1:29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Rom 1:30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Rom 1:31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Rom 1:32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
The top salesman at a multi-million dollar retail furniture sales company said he would never wait on fags, niggers, Indians or Asians. “But”, I said “Rick, your gay, why wound you wait on gays?” His answer floored me. "They cant make up their minds and when they do they either change it or return the order". And that’s the truth. I have tried to sell hundreds of gays and a large percentage of the time the furniture is canceled or returned and it causes the sales person twice as much work for nothing.
The invitation tonight is for those of us who have rebellion in our hearts to God. we may never follow the other steps but we may stay in rebellion....
2Co 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
2Co 13:6 But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates.
2Co 13:7 Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates.
Tit 1:16 They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.
