I think that’s really where we need to be more consistent as believers. Exodus will do that for people who come to us for help. But we will encourage the church to do that in general for anyone and everyone who’s seeking to be a mature believer in Christ.
Now on to reparative therapy, I think counseling is a wonderful tool for anybody regardless of what struggle they bring to the table. I think we can all use a little bit of counseling on planet earth today. But when it comes to reparative therapy, the reason we have distanced ourselves from it is because some of the things that they employ and some of the messages that I’ve heard from reparative therapists with regards to what someone can expect once they get through that type of therapy.
But as a property owner of Orlando, I wouldn’t rent to someone who is gay any more than I would rent to a person who is a practicing witch.
My beliefs and my desires have changed. They have come into alignment with who he is and who he created you to be. And that’s a wonderful thing and that’s what we will always offer at Exodus.
So to pick and choose that once you come to Christ you’re never going to struggle in those areas again or never fall prey to stumbling in those ways again, I just, I don’t think we can assure that.
This is the church’s job. This is who we are as the body of Christ to reach out to people who are in need, who are struggling, who need to be discipled and to pursue Christ in their life. That’s good news and the church should offer it wholeheartedly to anyone.
Well, I find it interesting first that this all centers around the issue of homosexuality and we don’t bring in any other sin issue into the picture – the ones that are running rampant within our churches largely go unaddressed. Issues of pride and judgment and gossip and slander and other types of sexual immorality, gluttony, you name it.
There wasn’t reparative therapy in Corinth. So in this passage I think people came to Christ and experienced a new life in him apart from the therapeutic process. But when it comes to someone pointing to this passage and saying homosexuals changed, well, I’m not sure that’s what that passage is referring to.
I think we’ve made it a golden idol. I think we in the church have treated it differently than we’ve treated anything else. We’ve made it bigger; the resolution for this needs to be bigger than for other people. I think we have to do a better job than we’ve done. So I do think there is, people rush to judgment and rush to clarify their point on this issue in ways that they don’t’ rush to judgment and to clarity on other issues.
t’s really an encouragement of discipleship, it looks like anything else that we’re offering to anyone else, any other person struggling with any other issue in their life. It’s about pursuing a relationship with Christ.
I know Christ. And that is secure. And I think that is something that actually helps believers pursue his holiness, when they don’t have to live in that fear or that life of condemnation wondering whether God’s going to yank His relationship from them
For someone to promise a percentage type cure for this issue, for instance I had someone who said they had experienced a 90 percent permanent – in all caps PERMANENT – reduction of their same-sex attraction. How can we quantify that? How can you even know that that’s what you have experienced? And what if at some point you fall to 85 percent or 70 percent? That, I think, sets people up for unrealistic expectations and is something that I’m not willing to offer when we’re sharing these types of messages or presenting what was presented to me.
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