CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT SHEPHERD

This post was originally posted on another blog site.  "Such_were_you", was the name of that blog.  It is now shut down and cannot be accessed.  I started a new blog on this other blogging site, but with a completely different name and approach.  Sorry for the confusion this post will create.  I'm too lazy to rewrite it to fit Blogger...

 

The Greatest Problem With American Christianity:

Christians Don't Truly Believe Jesus

What's wrong with this picture?

EVERYTHING!

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."

James 1:22

BIGGEST CONFESSION YET:

Would you like to know what frustrates and enrages me most about Christians?  Would you like to know why I was so harsh and downright mean toward Christians in so many of my "Such_were_you" blogs? 

Every time I got comments like, "Wow, Lonnie you sure have great insights,"  and/or "Wow, Lonnie your testimony of life in homosexuality and new life in Christ is powerful!"  Those comments and comments like them used to really piss me off!   BUT the kind of comment that sent me through the roof, and into a hot as hell rage was, "Could I send someone who is gay or struggling with same-sex attraction to your site, or may I email a copy of this post to a gay person I know."   Another common comment which sent me over the edge was: When I'd finally get fed up with Christian or so called "struggling" [with same-sex attraction] Christians, and shut down one of my sites, someone would say something like, "Would you leave your site up, so we can use it as a resource."   I used your names in vain, like you can't imagine!  I would not be surprised if some of your ears burned for a couple of days.

Why so angry???  I don't need anyone patting me on the back, or informing me how good my insights are.  I know the insights are good, they come right from God.  I obeyed the teachings of Christ, and every single spiritual insight I have comes directly from believing what God says, and obeying his teachings.  DUH?!?! 

Jesus said, "Do what I teach, obedience makes you my true follower, as you walk with me obediently you will get to know me better and better, and knowing me (the truth) sets you free." 

(The Bad Penny paraphrase of John 8:31-32).

I know exactly what I'm talking about because I did what God told me to do, and that is all there is to it.  If any of you had really believed I knew what I was talking about you'd have done the things I told you to do in my blogs.  I don't need anyone of you to know I know what I'm talking about.  I NEED ALL OF YOU TO KNOW WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ME!  The only way for you to know what Jesus taught me is DO WHAT I TOLD YOU TO DO.  See if you had obeyed what I told you to do you would have run right into Christ.  And there are a several things you would learn for yourself  1) If you'd done what I said you'd have learned it really came from the Holy Spirit and not me.  2) You'd have learned that Christ is the only source of wisdom you needed, and all I told you to do was merely a stepping stone.  3) You'd have been able to really and truly trust me, because you would know, beyond any doubt, what I said came from the Holy Spirit and NOT by applying my own intellect.  4) The Holy Spirit would teach you things he never taught me, and you could have come back and taught me what God showed you. 

The greatest truth God would have taught you is:  The greatest problem of the Church is that it has the same exact problem LGBT people, porn loving people, shacking up people, cheating on their spouses people, pedophile people, and the rest.  The greatest problem of the church in America especially is you are relationally broken people; The American church has the same "plank" in our eye.  This is why the Church cannot understand or reach sexually broken people like LGBT people or Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction...God's cure for the problem of sexual immorality is RELATIONSHIP!  Why is it that no one seems to know that?  Why is it the Church condemns, accepts, or does nothing with sexually broken people???  We cannot see because we are blinded to our own broken relationship with God.  If you've ever met someone with your own character flaws you will dislike, avoid, criticize mercilessly, and/or excuse them altogether.  This is the truth I was never able to tell any of you, but I so wanted to bring out into the open.  Why didn't I just come clean?   The truth is something you have to learn through obedience, in the same way God taught me.  I am not God, I don't make the rules.  I'll say it again...WHAT DOES JESUS SAY???   WHAT DOES JESUS TEACH???

"Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. "If you stick with this, 1) living out what I tell you, 2) you are my disciples for sure.  3) Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you."

John 8:31-32

[Numbers and bold print are my additions]

The church in America can't help herself, because we've taken away obedience to Jesus Christ.  Without obedience there is no relationship with God.  Don't take my word for it, it's only been in the Bible for thousands of years!! Until Christians get out of their pews, and Bible studies and DO what Jesus teaches we will never know Jesus, and we will never see clearly our own broken relationship with God.  AND STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE, "We haven't done anything, because we don't know what to do..."  God knows exactly what to do!  Remember what God said to Moses?"   "GO!"  Moses didn't know how to free the Hebrews from slavery to Egypt.  If Moses had known what to do he would have been God.  You don't know what to do with those who struggle with sexual immorality?!?!?   GOOD!  If you did you would be God.  The command is "GO!" cause God knows, and God will show you all you need to know!!  Ignorance isn't an excuse, in fact, like Moses, the true reason the Church won't go is because you don't want to go.  Do you really think, Christians, you will stand before God and he'll accept, "We didn't know, so we couldn't go?"  SERIOUSLY?   WON'T THE ANGER OF GOD BURN AGAINST US, JUST AS GOD BURNED WITH ANGER TOWARD MOSES!?!?!?!?!?!?   Church you better wake up and smell the coffee!!!

THE "SUCH_WERE_YOU" AGENDA:

To set up Christians to succeed and run smack into Jesus, (and you would have, if you'd applied what I taught in my blogs).  Still I knew full well, you would never EVER listen or do anything I taught.  Ministering to so called "same-sex strugglers" was never the point.  If you'd bothered following a half dozen so called "strugglers" blogs, for about 6 months, you'd have quickly learned nearly all of them come to accept a homosexual identity.  They never grow.  They can't grow because they don't know how God has relationship, and if they did they wouldn't be online hanging out with the so called "strugglers".  It didn't matter if I was nice or harsh with so called "strugglers".  They won't ever listen no matter how truth is delivered to them.  They don't want the truth of God which frees them.  All they want is to excuse their sinful feelings, and figure out a way to create god in the likeness and image of their feelings.  They want to fulfill their lusts, but want God to approve of them.  Their "orientation" is the god they continue to serve.  

It wasn't ever ministry to LGBT persons either.  In fact I was harsh to LGBT persons on my site, so that all of you could see, clearly, how easy it is to defeat gay arguments.  Oh, the house of homosexual junk science looks like a substantial house made of solid bricks and mortar.  I made confetti of "gay science" with a verbal 188mm., high velocity, Howitzer.  It all looks good, but gay excuses are a poorly stacked house of cards.  You didn't need much education to see that for yourselves, if you'd ever bothered.

DISCLAIMER:

I need to say at this point a few of you, wonderful Christians, did listen, to a couple things.  You are wise if you apply the truth of God to your lives.  You will be wise if you reach out for relationship with the sexually immoral in the midst of your own church bodies.  God will open your eyes to the needs of the Church.  Stay to the truth and sound doctrines found in the Scriptures, but stay open to God's leading.  The Church in America must repair her relationship with God, or there is no hope for the American branch.  Where are the Churches of Corinth, Ephesus, Laodicea, Philadelphia? They no longer exist, do they???