Gay Marriage

I was talking with some of my christian friends the other day and this came up in conversation. Here is a brief look into the conversation that we had:

i agree with a lot of what has been said. Speaking about a specific issue should never take precedence to preaching the gospel unless that issue is a HUGE stumbling block to the person

on some:

yeah, i hear what you're saying about Jesus dying for my sins, but what about my boy over there who is gay? are you saying he can't be saved? Because if that is what you're saying, then i want no part of christianity

But i will say this:


I honestly believe that all of the legal protections afforded heterosexual couples should also be given to homosexual couples.

After a marriage ceremony, does a husband have to wait until the state sends back a copy of his marriage certificate before he can marital tango with his wife (without being in sin)? No.

I say that to show this: Marriage in the eyes of the Lord and marriage in the eyes of the state are two different things.

The state performs "civil unions" and calls them "marriages". We (as believers) sign marriage certificates ONLY because we want to be granted the rights that the state gives people that the state calls married. We want easy inheritances/estate planning, we want hassle-free health insurance for every member our families, etc etc.

I feel like we (christians) are fighting over semantics and i think too much money has been wasted on this fight.

We may ask: "What good is a state marriage license if the Lord views the union as thoroughly sinful?" And my response would be: What good do we do in saying "Well, you can't get married, but you can get this other thing that is just like marriage - but with a different name"? We are wasting millions of dollars and precious legislative time over semantics.

If we agree that there should be no civil/criminal penalty for people who fornicate, divorce or do any other such thing, why not allow the state to recognize the civil union that gays have in the same way that it recognizes the union that straights have?

Will forcing a regard for the Lord in a particular area bring practicing homosexuals any closer to the Lord? Do we gain some sort of "gotcha" pleasure by holding onto this last front in the culture war that we have fought and lost? (i hope not) Do we really think that the legalization of gay marriage will bring about a new wave of evil that is presently unseen in this country?

I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't legislate morality. We do it all the time and we should continue to do it. For example: Even though banning abortion will not change the heart of the mother it will prevent a life from being taken. The only thing that a gay marriage ban accomplishes is making stuff more difficult for gay couples than it has to be.

thoughts?

Quick Thought on Forgiveness

I was blessed with the opportunity to share this with a kid from my parents church that was in the middle of a fight with his cousin and i figured it couldn't hurt to share it over here.

nick, you've only got one family, so nothing good will come from keeping grudges over things that don't matter much (i'm only assuming that this is the case - if it is a big issue, then y'all should still try to work it out so that when you ask her to pass the stuffing on thanksgiving, she actually passes it LOL).

more importantly, as a believer, you should also aim for reconciliation. Simply put, God forgave us in spite of the sin that we've committed and his love will cover the sin that we will struggle with in the future - so then how can we *not* forgive someone else who may have wronged us?

One reason that we have been forgiven is so that we can forgive others. Our right response to Jesus' love for us is to try to love others in the same way (selflessly, sacrificially). Not because they deserve it, but because loving others in that way honors the Lord.

no matter how you feel, sometimes it is going to be on you to be the person that is going to take the first step towards reconciliation. And if the other person doesn't want it, you can always try again.

Prenups

Chelsea and her hubby did a huge prenup thing going into the wedding.

“Chelsea’s world was shattered when she learned that her father had been unfaithful to her mom,” said a source. “She’s never forgotten that pain and disappointment. Her father has always been the person she most admired, and the fact that he cheated on her mom not once, but many times, made her very gun-shy about trusting the guys she dated.”

That distrust has led to her making some interesting demands before entering into holy matrimony.

“Under the terms of of the prenup, if Marc is unfaithful, he stands to lose $10 million, including his share of the couple’s $3.8 million apartment in New York City.”

- quote taken from here

There's so much to be said about this whole situation, but i will approach it from this angle:

While i understand the world's perspective on prenuptial agreements, I will never sign one. I don't care how much money i have going into a wedding. My prenuptial agreement will be to love my wife as Christ loved the church. And by God's grace, I will love my wife as I ought to.

I wont divorce my wife and try to get half from her because Christ didn't and WILL NOT divorce the church. If the Lord does not treat me according to my sin, how can I not, by the Lord's grace, forgive my wife for however she may sin against me.

This may sound idealistic, but there is a high calling on the husband - If the Lord blesses me with a wife, I will seek to honor the Lord in how I treat her. And that treatment will, by the Lord's grace, never include divorce.

I don't want to presumptuously say what I wont do, because i don't know the depths of my own depravity, but by the Lord's grace, I can obey him - and in my obedience to him, I can love my wife as I should.

This doesn't mean that i'm not looking for certain things from a prospective lady - here is my list:

She will be:

1. A woman that will be seeking to honor the Lord in all that she does.

2. Under sound biblical teaching (mos def not gonna try to go fishing in random churches)

3. Seeking and submitting to the godly wisdom of older women in the faith.

4. ...and she will have accountability in her life.

These things in and of themselves don't mean that she will not ever seek a divorce, but i believe that a mind that has been renewed by the word of God coupled with the accountability and prayer that comes from being in regular fellowship with other believers (both means of God's grace), can keep a marriage.

Gigging at churches with bad doctrine?

I filled in for a friend on bass at a seventh day adventist church here in nyc today.

We played a bunch of music - a lot of contemporary gospel. The church appeared to be very solid doctrinally. The lesson during sabbath school (sunday school) was justification by faith. The songs were edifying.

It was your typical west indian mixed with african american worship service.

The things that stood out to me were the emphasis on doctrine and the fact that the doctrine wasn't focused on their distinctive (or at least what i thought to be their distinctive) as a denomination. There was only ONE reference made to the sabbath while i was there - and there weren't any antagonistic statements made toward non-SDA people.

Here's what stood out to me:

During the sermon, the preacher, a traveling evangelist, spoke about part of the changed life of the believer as one that is free from smoking, drinking alcohol and drinking soda. There isn't a biblical proscription against any of those things, but some people extrapolate that idea from the whole romans 12 "body is a temple" text. For the purposes of majoring in the majors (as opposed to majoring in the minors), i let those statements go.

But then towards the end of the sermon (which was actually a very nice sermon) during the altar call portion of the sermon the preacher said something to the effect of "repentance, faith and confessing the Adventist church as the TRUE church"

shocked

There was an OVERWHELMING response to his sermon so i didn't even think that it would be appropriate to find him and ask him about it (because they were planning to baptize people ON THE SPOT after the service - he had something like 30 people to baptize and i was STARVING!)

There is a VERY high chance that i will get called back to this church to play again since i have good friends that are musicians that play there faithfully.

I'd like to go back there with a clear conscience.



Here's an email that i just sent to the church's contact line:

Today during the altar call that took place after the sermon, the evangelist said something to the effect of "turning from sin, faith in Jesus Christ and confessing belief that the Adventist church is the true church".

Does your church (and/or the larger SDA umbrella organization) agree with his statement that the adventist church is the TRUE church? Confessing your church to be the true church means more than "we believe that our doctrine is correct", it also states that you believe all other churches to be false churches.

Today was my first time visiting your church. I enjoyed the worship service. I was encouraged to hear teaching on justification by faith prior to the 11am service. I was just curious to understand your stance on this issue.

I am not a reporter of any sort. I do not have any ulterior motives in sending this email and soliciting a response.

I am a christian. I am a member of Sovereign Grace City Church, a new church plant, in brooklyn. I am originally from brooklyn, ny and this is the second opportunity that i've had to attend an SDA worship service. I have many friends who are SDA.

I also took it upon myself to read up on SDA churches on CARM and it appears as though there are several problems with their doctrine in general. But it also appears to be the case that SDA church 1 does not equal SDA church 2 - so i'll get to the bottom of all this before i agree to play there again.

NYC Summer streets

I woke up early on saturday morning intent upon going for a quick bike ride across the brooklyn bridge before an evangelistic outreach at grand army plaza with my new church family in brooklyn (we passed out free water and cupcakes, we also passed out invites to church and fliers for "brew and the bible", our neighborhood open forum on christianity. We also engaged people in conversations about the faith) followed by rapfest 2009 (christian hip hop concert in the bronx).

After crossing the bridge, I saw a bunch of people in matching shirts, so i pulled over to ask them what they were about. One lady with an eastern-block accent informed me that park avenue was blocked off (for summer streets) from the brooklyn bridge (it isn't called park avenue by the brooklyn bridge, but the street evetually becomes park avenue) to 72nd street. I decided to go for a ride along the route. Good times. There were a few people out there to race with at spots along the route, but the lights at major intersections and families with small children out for the day made racing unsafe and impractical at times.

OH! in other news, i've decided to press on with my helmet wearing. When riding around my neighborhood in brooklyn, i noticed that i was the ONLY person wearing a helmet. Recently, two friends of mine that spotted me on my bike actually made fun of my helmet!! However, people without helmets at nyc summer streets were the EXCEPTION. AND yesterday, a bike store owner let me know that the more fashionable looking helmets have less vents and are REALLY hot.

Here are some pictures:

Farmer's market at Grand Army Plaza (THEY WERE ACCEPTING FOOD STAMPS!!! Hooray for low income people!!! :o)



NYC Summer Streets sign @ 72nd and Park:



Water station sign:
:o)




Traffic Control Volunteer:




Father and son. My dad and i used to go out for bike rides when i was a kid. :')



Grand Central:

realizations

The first thing that i've realized about myself is that i am a people pleaser. I like for people to like me. And this can sometimes result in me compromising my integrity. At times, it is very easy for me to justify sin that isn't "REALLY" bad - because i desire the approval of man more than i desire the approval of God.

That approval could be in the form of a joke, looking the other way...whatever.

The other thing that i've recently realized is that obedience to God is going to cost me more than I want it to. Big sins in check and partial obedience does not equate to obedience.


What's good about this is that i'm not self-deceived into thinking that some of the sin that surfaces in my life is pleasing to the Lord. I'm thankful to the Lord for that, for the Holy Spirit who will continue to work in me and for accountability partners that can help me see other areas of sin in my life.

Tminus 30 days

I've got less than one month left in the state of maryland. I'm going to be moving up to nyc on 7/23. Definitely a bittersweet transition. Happy to go back to nyc, sad to leave a lot of the relationships that i've built over the past 3 years.

I've had the opportunity to develop great friendships at work, friendships with lots of different groups of christians:

- Church (wednesday home fellowship, worship team, singles ministry, men's fellowship),
- Various Sovereign Grace People,
- My band and all the other christians that I've made lasting contact with on the music front,
- Baltimore believers (monday bible study, saturday evangelism, fourth friday fundamentals, trinity reformed baptist church, believer's chapel) and

Friendships with my fraternal brothers that live in the dc area (one of whom recently moved away)...and i'm certainly going to miss them. But on the flip side, I get to go back to the greatest city ever to go to business school and to also co-labor with other believers. I'll also be living with family.

In other news, my church recently moved friday bible study to thursdays.

This is both good and bad. Good because I'm now free to do things with everyone else that does things on friday. I've missed countless band rehearsals, dinners, first and fourth friday fundamentals (first in philly, fourth in baltimore) shows, concerts, special events etc etc etc because of friday night bible study The worship team is on duty on fridays, so taking off every other friday would have without a doubt been an abdication of responsibility. But now (for these last 30 days) i can do stuff.

The bad is that Friday bible study was probably a huge help to a lot of people that would find themselves tempted to go out and sin on friday nights. The best way to remedy this would be for members of all ages to plan fun things to do on friday night with other believers, or at the very least, to make themselves available to hold their siblings in the faith accountable. Either way, this is an opportunity for relationship building outside of church. Who knows, maybe folk will actively go out and do friday night evangelism in the community around the church...

NEXT conference

I went to the NEXT conference this past weekend. The "theme" (if you can call it that) for the weekend was Jesus Christ. The speakers covered his preeminence, life, death, resurrection and return.

The fellowship was rich. We spent time in breakout sessions discussing the messages and in prayer (there was also 5mins of dodgeball early one morning).

The testimonies that were shared were sooooo encouraging. Each speaker shared their personal testimony and there were also 5 conference attendees that shared as well. I LOVED the fact that the testimonies didn't end after some of the people said things like "And from that day forward, I stopped using drugs", as though the message of the gospel is "God will get you sober". My favorite quote from the testimonies was:

"A boring testimony isn't boring to the one who got saved"

The conference was amazingly Christ-centered, gospel-centered and doctrinally sensitive, so it is with Sovereign Grace ministries as a whole. It is for this reason that i'm really excited about the church that i'm going to attend when I move up to new york city for my mba. I got to spend a lot of time with the church ppl (who i already know quite well) throughout the conference (pastor included).

There was an awesome breakout session on discerning the will of God. As someone who was manipulated by people who were really big on "discerning the will of God" this presentation was a breath of fresh air. I wrote a short paragraph on a biblical view of the will of God here. The speaker (Kevin Deyoung) wrote a book called; "Just Do Something: How to make a decision without dreams, visions, fleeces, open doors, random bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, writing in the sky, etc".

I was also blessed with several opportunities to share the gospel over the weekend. My sister actually pulled me out of a conversation to encourage me to share with some of the hotel workers who were just standing around in a hallway. Though I strive to make my conversations with people about the faith actual CONVERSATIONS, this one felt a lot more like I was preaching a sermon on the wrath and grace of God (prob b/c there were 4 guys).

My prayer for myself after this weekend is for Christ's preeminence, life, substitutionary death, resurrection and return to radically shape every area of my life.

I'm going to another conference this weekend. This conference is an orientation for all recipients of the graduate fellowship that i received.

John&Kate+8

I recently watched a news story that clearly showed that they are going through a tough time in their marriage. As a believer, I know that my role is not to gossip, but rather to pray.

They are professing believers, but i've never seen an episode delve into their spiritual side. I don't know who their pastor is and what role he is playing in their marital counseling.

I hope that the more troubling things that news outlets are reporting are untrue. Ultimately, my prayer is for healing in their marriage and for unwavering devotion on the part of Jon to love his wife as Christ loved the church and for his wife to unwaveringly submit to her husband.

saturday

Typical saturday...

After the men's shelter in DC, i went up to a farmer's market in baltimore to share the faith with some friends from my monday night bible study.

Most people that I attempted to engage in conversation didn't want to have anything to do with conversations about spiritual beliefs...especially with a christian. The typical person at this farmer's market usually falls into more than one of the following categories:

Politically Liberal
Environmentalist
Eastern Religion
Homosexual
African Nationalist
Atheist
Agnostic
Johns Hopkins Grad Student


To say the least, interesting people, interesting conversations.

I ran into a non-african nationalist black person who actually turned out to be an apostolic (oneness pentecostal, unbiblical emphasis on spiritual gifts). I initiated the conversation, but after she started talking, i regretted it. She pretty much told me to appeal to people's emotions and a whole bunch of other nonsense - and then she kept saying "In Jesus Name".

I didn't feel like talking about why oneness pentecostalism is an aberration of the trinity, the folly of emotionalism nor any of the other nonsense that she came at me with. The last thing that I needed to do was spend 30 minutes speaking with someone that is heavily indoctrinated in nonsense (not the time, not the place - especially with someone that was as aggressive as she was). All i did was affirm what I was out at the market to do and try passively try to end the conversation by not saying much in addition to that.

We went to an indian buffet after we left the market. The food was ok. The indian that I had at Yale last weekend (i went up for their preview weekend - i officially decided on NYU) was better. I had a lot of food to eat, so i decided that driving home to go to sleep (played a show last night, didn't get to bed until about 2am, got up at 6 - mad tired) would've been a bad look(too full to sleep), so I decided to drive downtown and walk around lexington market and the inner harbor by myself. I had a newspaper that had an aritcle on the drug kingpins that "The Wire" was based on, so all was good.