 How do you practically and lovingly share the truth about LGBT issues without coming across as hateful and bigoted? That's what we're gonna be talking about in today's video. Hey what's up guys, it's Isaac David and this is The Daily Disciple where I hope you follow Jesus daily. If you're new to the channel, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single day that will help you find Jesus and follow him daily. A huge shout out to everyone at Patreon. It is only through your support that I can continue to do this and you help this ministry keep going and growing. So thank you so much. If you want to help support my ministry, link in bio to join Patreon. Now one of the most prevalent questions that I'm getting now at days and it's pretty interesting over the last couple months how many times this question has come up is how can I explain to my friends that LGBTQ plus is a sin and how do you even go about doing that in this world without being ostracized or hated or whatever else? And it's a challenging question. It's a tricky question and I'm going to kind of give you some examples of practical examples of what I have said and what I would say in that situation of a kind of a personal conversation where you're talking about your faith and LGBT issues. But first, I think it's important that we set our expectations properly. I don't think it should be an expectation of us that we will make it through this entire life or existence without ever being hated on or ever being called names or ever being rejected or ever being called the bigot or whatever else, right? I don't think that's a proper expectation just because in the Bible that hasn't been laid out as an expectation that we should have. By following Jesus, we will be persecuted in some way. And for some people that actually legitimately means and across the globe there is, man, there is some tremendous and terrible persecution that's going on. And for us in the West, in large part, the persecution that we have to experience is a lot less significant. And it might just be personal and social rejection or being called a bigot or hateful or homophobic or whatever else, transphobic, because we will experience those things even when we're doing our best to be loving and gracious and explain things. We can't determine how other people are going to respond. So I just want to lay that out for you. And so I don't want you to have all this weight on yourself that you need to get it exactly, right? So then nobody dislikes you. That shouldn't be the goal in this situation. Loving somebody is going to be speaking truth to them. And that is that that's what we need to focus on. Yes, tone is important. Yes, as we're how we're presenting it. Yes, we we're all going to focus on those things in this video, but we're focusing on not watering down the truth because we want to be liked by people. Okay, now after that long intro, I want to get into how I bring about this conversation or how I respond to the questions about LGBT issues in a one to one setting. You know, it's different when you're kind of online or in a debate scenario or in a bigger crowd or whatever. I'm just talking about, you know, your friends with the person, you kind of know the person. This is how I would respond. And I actually experienced this a couple of times. One example is a friend I had from basketball, an old teammate, he asked me, he knew I was a Christian. And he asked me, Isaac, what's the deal with, you know, Christians and hating gay people? Why? Why do they hate gay people? Why is that a thing? It doesn't seem to make sense. And for me, what that tells me is that often in this conversation, you need to unravel some things, right? You can't just begin from the beginning because there's some misconceptions there. So I like to be like, okay, look, the first thing is the Bible calls us to not hate anybody. That's not, that's not a part of it at all. So if that's what you've heard, if you have seen examples of Christians hating certain people, those were not good examples of what Christians should do. So can I explain to you a little bit more about Christians views on LGBT issues? And from there, okay, he says, yeah, okay, sure. And I want to give him an overview of my worldview. I want to start him from the beginning and, you know, depending on how quick you are, or, you know, how much you have this kind of down to a couple words here and there phrases or that kind of thing, it could take you a long time to explain. But let me give you a little bit of insight into what I like to do. I like to start people out in the garden and say God created Adam and Eve in his image. They were designed to follow him and obey him. They sinned against him. And that kind of created a rift between us and God. And through that generations after that have a sin nature. And that means that we have this propensity towards sin. We have this tendency towards sin. And that means that not all of our desires are good. It means that some of our desires are actually bad. A lot of them are bad. And we've all sinned against God. That's what it says in Romans 3.23. And we are all in need of saving because we are guilty before God because of our sins against him. And if God is a just judge, he has to punish sin. So the good news, you know, the good news is that we were created in the image of God. That's, that's awesome, right? The bad news that we've sinned against him. But now the good news of the gospel is that Jesus came to this earth fully God and fully man to live the sinless life that we could not live to die on the cross. The death we deserve to die for our sins against God. And he rose again, rose again on the third day defeating sin and death. And what we are called to do is put our faith in Jesus and God will give us a new identity. He will make us into a new creation. Go on to explain that we all need saving, right? It's not just people that identify as LGBTQ or whatever else. Those aren't just kind of like singled out as the broken people, as the people that need saving. No, God calls out a lot of people, especially sexual behavior that is wrong, a sexual immorality. You know, we can apply this directly to porn, right? A lot of people watch porn nowadays and it's not good. It's against God. It's against God's ways and we need to repent of that. And because we partake in that, we need saving. We have this desire to, you know, watch porn or sleep with our girlfriend or whatever else, but that doesn't make it right. That doesn't mean that we should be perfectly justified into following that lifestyle. No, God is calling us to set that aside, to cast that aside to put that sin to death and receive him and the transformation that he offers. You see, it's an identity issue. While many in the LGBTQ community will try to take that on as their identity, God is offering us a separate identity, disconnected from our sexuality to step into who he created us to be. And that doesn't mean that all your desires are going to change, that you will now have heterosexual desires or your kind of gender confusion will totally be fixed. But it does mean that through Christ, he's given us his power and his presence to overcome temptation in our daily life to follow him, to step into his best for us. Generally, in these conversations, I will need to reinforce the idea that it's not about singling out people in the LGBTQ community. I will say that quite a few times because it takes them a while to understand. Even the question that he came up with, you know, when he asked me, he's like, why do Christians hate gay people? He is the one kind of singling out gay people in his approach, in his understanding of what Christians believe. And my goal is to say this, look, it's not to water down the truth, but it's to give him proper context. It's not like the Bible just teaches against those things. The Bible preaches against a lot of things that even heterosexual people and especially heterosexual people that have that orientation are tempted by, right? And so it's not about, oh, you feel this, therefore you're worse than everybody else. It's like, no, we are all broken and sinful people in need of God's grace. And just because we feel a certain way or we have certain desires doesn't make those things good. Those kind of couple points are so essential in trying to bring about understanding here. At the end of the day, they're not, a lot of people won't understand this, right? Like, even though you try to explain it to them, they'll still be like, oh, you know, I don't get that. That's kind of still messed up. But at least you're trying to be faithful and gracious in explaining why you believe what you believe, right? And so from there, I want to ask them. I would ask them, okay, you know, if you were in my position, if you kind of believed all this stuff, what would real love do? Would real love compromise what they believe and say, oh, that's totally cool. Keep doing what you're doing. Or would real love speak up? Because ultimately, if we believe the Bible, if you truly believe the Bible and you truly believe that people are guilty before God and going to hell for their sins against God, is it loving to stay silent? The answer is no. And they will affirm that, you know, most likely everybody I've talked to will affirm that because logically it's like, well, you know, if you do believe that, then it is loving to speak up about that. And so now at least they can understand your heart. They can disagree with you. They can say, okay, look, yeah, but I don't agree with any of that. I don't think you're right in believing that. But at least they can say, okay, well, since you do believe that it makes sense that the reason that you're so passionate about this and that you want to share this, it's not out of hate, it's out of love. Some people will say, okay, well, look, I'm beginning to understand. And that can hopefully begin a conversation about these things. I'm not saying that this is the only information that you want to share with them. The only things you need to say, you know, I think this is a good starting point, at least in my experience and conversations that I've had about kind of explaining the Christian perspective of LGBTQ plus all that, right? And I may have left some things out, you can share with me in the comments and things that I should kind of add to this kind of initial conversation. But ultimately, you know, the heartbreaking thing is a lot of people will reject it regardless. They'll reject the gospel, they'll reject the Bible, they'll reject the authority of what God has laid before us, because their eyes have yet to be open to believe. We need to give the rest to God in prayer. I would love to hear some of your guys' stories or maybe your responses to some of these difficult, challenging situations. Hopefully there's some encouraging stories that will help encourage other people as well. Thank you so much for watching, guys. Once again, to everyone on Patreon. It is an amazing blessing in my life that you are here, that you are supporting. And it's my goal ultimately to be able to do this full time and then continue on with the ministry and keep it going and growing and helping people find Jesus and follow him daily. That's my mission. That's my goal. Thank you for enabling me to do that. And if you want to help support, link in bio to do that. Anyway, thank you so much for watching, guys. And I will see you next time. God bless.