 Welcome to Hard Questions, where we gather pastors together to take on your tough questions and answer them right from the Bible. I'm Tom Hollis, the moderator, and today our panelists include Ray Hypole Providence Presbyterian Church in Robinson Township. Mark Motor Pastor of Berean Church in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. Pete Giacalone, South Hills Assembly guy church in Bethel Park, PA. J. Anthony Gilbert, pastor of another level in the North Hills area. Thank you again, pastors. You've been with us. We always have a good time. We love taking your questions from our hotline, so let's start right away with this one. What do you do? I'm a Christian. My son was raised in the church, but he went stray. He's been battling, he's had a demon for 20 years. He drank alcohol, but he now is dressing like a woman. He wants to be a woman. He quit drinking alcohol and vaping, but I cannot accept him dressed like a woman. He's a man. He was in the Army, he was a soldier, and he's a man, but he wants to dress like a woman. How can I handle that? Well, thank you for your question, and it's very, again, our hearts go out to you and believe for your son's return to the Lord. But this is very pertinent for our society right now, Pete. You know, right here, Tom, if you see in my notes, I have my son, my son. And when I read this, I thought, I can't even imagine, ma'am, what you're going through in your heart. In a case like this, I believe, now listen to what I'm saying. I believe open rebuke is better than secret love. It's been your son, your entire life, his entire life. And I believe that you're in love. I believe in love. You're able to go to him, and the approach is the most important thing. That you can continue to love your son, you can continue to accept your son, but not condone your son's lifestyle. And I know that that might be difficult. But I think, again, going with the scriptures, having some scriptures, not to beat them up, no, the scriptures aren't there, but to be a sav, and sometimes you have to cut the scripture, you know, the Bible says there's a scripture's cut. It's a double-edged sword. So I believe if you approach him in love without condemnation, you'll get more headway than just taking all this pain on yourself. And open rebuke is better than secret love. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're not think having two sons of my own. I think it's so easy to share what the Bible says we need to do when it's not your son, you have no emotion invested into it. I'm not saying we should compromise. I'm just saying, if my son walked in as an adult and came in as a woman, I know how much I love my sons. And as much as I know they're wrong, how do you handle that? And do you cut them out of your life for good? Do you bring them in but still talk to them? I mean, what exactly, how do you handle that? I mean, we're battling with this stuff now more than we ever have. And my prayer is that all of our children know their identity from the time that they're young. But I believe at the end of the day, you never compromise. But my approach and how I deal with that person, there's no point of reference for that scripture. There isn't cross-dressing and transgenderism in the Bible. Now, there was homosexuality is a feminism. I mean, I get all that. But I mean, I'm talking about we're verbally like you have a written where there's a person that does that and what we're supposed to do. We know it's sin. We know it's an abomination. I get all that. But how do you evangelize to your family in that matter? Do you cut them completely off? And I think that's something you really got to ask for wisdom on. How you're going to address that? Do you tell them you can come to our house, but you can't come only as a man? How exactly do you deal with that? And I think that's going to take some wisdom and some prayer to get through to determine how you're dealing with that. Prayer is the key, certainly, to have that wisdom. And speaking of prayer, Paul and Ephesians one had a prayer that he declared in its inscription and he prayed that the eyes of the Ephesians believers understanding her heart would be enlightened. And we know this. The Bible says the God of this world, Satan blinds the minds of those that don't believe. So if there's a blinding there, our prayer needs to be God open his eyes to see Jesus for who he really is, to see his sin for what it really is. And that can be done privately. So that's Ephesians one versus 16 through 18. You can put his name in there. His name is John. I pray for John. May the eyes of his understanding be enlightened and I bind the enemy that would endeavor to blind his mind and deceive him. Yeah, God's got to work here. I'm glad that we're all in agreement that this is a sin. This is bad behavior. And there is a verse that actually speaks to it. Deuteronomy twenty two five says, a woman must not wear men's clothing nor a man wear women's clothing for all who do so are an abomination to your God. Now, I know some will try to say, well, that's the Old Testament ceremony. Oh, you know, you're not supposed to do other things that we have passed away. This isn't something that's fulfilled in Christ. This is about who we are as God's creatures, male and female. And the principle continues, I believe, in the New Testament. So I would, ma'am, I would if your son was raised in the church, if he claims to be a Christian, I would give him Deuteronomy twenty two five and say, the Bible says you can't do this. And the key is, as she said, he wants to be a woman. It's not like, OK, the house was on fire. I need to run out and all I can do is grab some woman's clothes. It's not the external again. It's I want to pretend like I am a woman. That's what's going on in our culture. That's the sin. And that's what Paul addresses in first Corinthians eleven, when he talks about, you know, the long hair on the man or the head coverings on the woman. Again, it's are you trying to be a woman if you're a man? Are you trying to be a man if you're a woman? I don't look at those verses literally. I don't think women have to wear head coverings. It's was he trying to like be a prostitute or be a man? Was the man with the long hair trying to be a woman? Again, the Nazarites weren't allowed to cut their hair. Samuel Nazarite from birth, Samson Nazarite from birth. Paul has it. It takes a vow. He cuts his hair at Centrae in Acts 18. So he grew long hair for a time because that was part of the vile system. So again, technically the outward long hair and a man. Is he trying to be a woman? That's the issue. Is he trying to and you said that's what your son is doing. And so therefore this is a great sin against God. It denies who God is. He made us male and female. We are in his image male and female and that doesn't change. And so this is a real spiritual thing. I would pray for your son. I would never compromise and say he is a woman. And but I would point out to him from the scripture. As you said, Pete, you've got to tell him this is a sin. I think, you know, if we could expand this for a little bit is our society, our culture is is promoting this. I hear I was watching a it was a TV show on the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. OK, and it had a drag queen on as one of the the host is hosting a segment. Deep voice, but made up like a like a beautiful woman, really. And it just was so I didn't even I was like, I'm not watching this. You know, and so what do we do? How do we do the thing that you said of showing love of but standing against the culture? How is that done? Well, I think, like Ray said, you can't argue with the scripture. We can take a scripture and and you can very lovingly present it and and then, you know, open rebuke. I keep coming back to that is better than secret love. And and I thought of your testimony, how that, you know, sin is sin. We can't, you know, say one sin is greater than the other person about your father, your father. You know he loved you, but you know you knew he wasn't condoning everything. I heard your testimony this morning. But so you can still love them, but not condone what they're doing. When I think that's the difficulty of this. And that's why I said I rest. I know what the right thing to do is I know I would call the sin. I'm not going to compromise on it. I'm not going to say it's OK. But like because he's actively a woman, do you let him in your home? Do you say I'm not going to let you in my house anymore? Do you have to cut him off completely? I mean, that's a heavy thing to do to your child. I'm not saying it's not the right thing to do, but I'm saying that's why I think that's a fear and trembling scripture there. You know, you got to say, all right, Lord, you know, I want to follow you, even if it means killing my son, I'm still going to serve you. But the gravity of that, of knowing that you may never have an interaction with your child anymore, that's a heavy thing. So I'll be honest, that's something that I pray for wisdom and ask God and seek counsel on how to go about that, because that's such a major thing. Because you know, like if somebody's you have someone that maybe they're sleeping together, you know, you say, that's not going to happen in my roof. But if he comes in as a woman, do you say that doesn't come into my house anymore? Or do I have to go outside? I mean, there's a lot of things you could look at when you say killing your son. You're talking about not like Abraham. We're talking about the breaking off that relationship. So I just want to, Mark, just to just have a little bit left in this segment here and how do we battle this in our culture? I mean, what do we do? Do we just accept and say the culture's going to hell in a handbasket or what do we do? What I found as a pastor, I taught on transgenderism a couple of months ago, I spent about a month researching it a lot because it was a newer subject to me. And to my amazement, my congregation gave me a standing ovation. Now, I wasn't looking for that. That wasn't the goal. But they were saying no one teaches about this. No one talks about this. And if the church doesn't rise up and speak the truth in love, then they're going to believe culture. And so I do believe we need to be a clarion voice. We're not against anyone, but we do need to stand on the word of God. People are starving to hear what the Bible really says in a loving, balanced way. We're going to go to break it just a second. Anything else that we need to say here? As a father, I had to do that one time, Jay, with one of mine. They really overstepped the bounds. And I said, you got to go. Wow, yeah. And I was weeping. But boy, did God do a turn. God brought the restoration. Amen, amen. Well, thank you so much. A very important discussion. We took a little extra time on that one because of how important it is. Stay tuned. We'll be back in 60 seconds and ask if God forgave our sins on the cross why do we continually have to ask for forgiveness? Welcome back to the show. We're taking your calls from the hard question hotline. If you would like to leave us your question and I really would encourage you to do that. Call 412-349-4326. We'd love to answer your question here on the program. So let's go to the next one. My question is if God is in control and sees all and knows everything we do before we do it, why would God put a tree in the garden of Eden that has apples that are forbidden to eat? Why even put that temptation there? This is a very good question. I'm gonna turn it over to my man, Jay, to answer. Well, the first thing I'd say is just, I'm sure everybody always feels that way but there wasn't really apples. It doesn't bother us to say what type of fruit it was. And we've all heard that it was supposed to be apples. Reminds me of a movie I was watching and the girl was talking to this guy and he owned this restaurant. He said, why did you call this restaurant such as a thing? He said, because when you own it, you can call it what you want. And to some degree, God is sovereign. Why did he do that? Because he's God. For one, that's one answer. There's a myriad, I'm sure there's a myriad of different ways everybody's gonna go with that. I'm gonna give you my take on it and why I feel it's so important that God did this. For one, when Lucifer became Satan, he was the worshiping angel. There's now a void in heaven, there are no worshipers. You have Gabriel who's a messenger. You have Michael who's a warfaring angel but there was no worshipers. And that's why Jesus comes on the scene after all these years and says, he's looking for one that worships and spirited in truth. You can't be a worshipper without a sacrifice. You can't determine love unless you have to give something up. So he has to put something in place. Otherwise, if he didn't put anything in there for us to make a choice, there's no, there's no, there's no be able to determine who's a worshipper and who's not. So in order to be a worshipper, I have to choose this and make this a priority and I have to shun this. So we had to leave one thing in there for man to say, I could have that, but I want you more. And so all of us have that, whether we realize it or not, it doesn't matter whether it'd been apples on a tree, fruit on a tree or whatever it might have been, there had to been something where you have to choose between God and this. And as a result, we will become the replacement worshipers, the bride of Christ in heaven. The key thing is your choice, right? It's gotta be your choice. I agree and I know that God could have made robots that automatically worshiped him or served him, but he wanted people that would choose him, choose you this day. And so I don't understand all of the reasons why God did that, but he is sovereign and he's looking for those that will fellowship with him, even as Adam walked and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day. I believe he still longs for that in the lives of those who choose him. Amen. Let me throw a scripture to dress it up a little bit. In James chapter one, 12 through 15, and this is gonna help you out, ma'am. It says, blesses a man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, what the Lord has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God. Now here's the fact, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone, but each one is tempted when they're drawn away by their own lust and intent of course we know the rest of the scripture there that gives birth to sin and sin when it's full grown brings forth death. So the bottom line here is, God did not do that to tempt man to evil. I don't believe God will tempt a man to do evil. I just don't believe this. His character is the nature. Right. I do believe, Jay, what you said about the test and the tree clearly was a test and it was intentionally put there by God and God had not only intentionally put the tree there but everything that happened in the garden was a part of God's plan. I mean, we have to say that. It wasn't like God was unaware or, you know, if God didn't want that to happen in some sense then he wouldn't have done it. And therefore I think that the most ultimate answer is, as you said, God is sovereign. So the tree is there, the reason why everything else is here for the glory of God. Nothing exists except for the glory of God and even the people in hell will give God glory by their destruction. They will glorify God forever. In fact, the saints will sing, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. It's the glorification of God's wrath which is part of his being, part of his character. And that was part of his will. And it's also for the good of his people. You know, Romans 8-28, all things work for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. So that has to be sin. And in some sense, the sin of man works for the good of God's people. And I personally believe that we have a much higher and greater inheritance redeemed in Christ than we would have had standing in Adam. That in Christ God has something greater and therefore sin was a necessary part of it but sin was entirely on the part of man. It was entirely by his choice. God never makes anybody sin. But he did put it there and he shows forth his glory and his grace comes to those of us who do make that choice in all kinds of ways and that were saved in Christ. Right, good answer. Good question. Thank you so much for that. Let's go to our next hotline question. Yeah, so I have a good question here. If God was forgiving us our sins on the cross, why then do we have to ask forgiveness every time we sin? Okay, this is an interesting one. I'm really looking forward to the answers. Go ahead. Well, salvation comes, we know, by grace through faith. But really so does forgiveness. There's a verse in Titus 2.11 that says, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. But it doesn't mean all men have received it. It appears, it comes, but they need to choose it. And so even Ephesians 2, our salvation, by grace you are saved through faith. And so yes, God has made available all of the forgiveness we need, but there's something about through faith. Lord, I'm reaching out and asking you, forgive me. And I think there's a power in forgiveness. We're living in a culture that really hasn't been taught to say, Lord, I'm wrong, I blew it. I think my favorite hero in the Old Testament relative to this is King David. We know that he, as Pete said earlier, sin greatly, but I believe six different times in the Old Testament, he said, I have sinned against the Lord. He was quick to repent. And that's, I believe, one of the reasons he was a man after God's own heart. So God wants us to come to him, not with a sin consciousness, but at least with a sin awareness. I have broken your heart. Please forgive me. And then we receive that forgiveness by faith and say from now on, no more condemnations. That's really good. Ray, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think that this question comes up sometime. People will say, well, if Jesus died on the cross and forgives all my sins past, present, and future, and I get that the moment I believe I'm justified, I can't lose my salvation. So why should I continue to confess my sins? Well, number one, God commands it. Jesus said, when you pray, say, forgive us our debts. Luke's translation is ha-martias, sin. It's the word for sin, forgive us our sins. And so we are commanded to do it. So that should be enough for us right there. We are commanded to do it. But I think part of it is that we live in time and we work out our salvation that way so that when we sin, I mean, the believer should be sorry for his sin. We have a new nature. I'm not sorry for something I haven't done, but when I do it and I realize it, I want to go to God and confess it and know that I'm, it's not like I think, oh no, I've sinned. I've lost my salvation. I have to go get forgiven again. I want to be restored. I want to glorify Christ by seeing his blood wash this away. So it's something that we should want to do because we love God because we hate sin and we need to do that as we sin. Just as we thank God as he gives us this, just as we praise him as, you know, we do it in time. And so, you know, we have to ask forgiveness when we sin because we live that way. We live moment to moment. So we respond to what comes into our lives. That's interesting because no matter really where we stand in the theological spectrum about this, we all know we walk and live in time and we have failed and we need to go to God. Well, we're going to go to a break. So coming up in 60 seconds, when we ask, how do we distinguish God's voices from our own will? Oh my goodness. My goodness, an argument on theological argument almost broke out here during the commercial. Well, let's listen to our last hotline question of the show. My question for you today is, I really want to hear from God. I really want to see his face and hear his voice in a still small way inside of me. Sometimes I think I'm hearing from God. And sooner or later it turns out that I was not hearing from him at all. How can I be sure that I'm experiencing God's voice when I pray? Okay, this is a question I think a lot of believers have had and I think we'll have some, probably some differences of opinion on this, but Ray, what are your thoughts on this? I think the man is, and sir, I just think that you're looking for something that you shouldn't be looking for. I don't think we should expect to hear the voice of God, even those who believe in ongoing revelation. I don't know too many people who say they actually hear the audible voice, their eardrums go and God's a baritone or whatever. I don't think that's what we're supposed to do when we pray and I don't think we're supposed to desire that God's gonna show his face to us or to hear his voice. We pray because number one, he tells us to pray. Number two, we adore him. We confess our sins to him. We give thanks to him and we supplicate. We pray for others, but when the Bible talks about prayer, it tells us that we do so in order that we can know God more and we know him by faith. I think part of it is knowing him by faith. I had some scripture here for some reason I'm not able to find it, but where it talks about, oh, here it is. Now this is the confidence that we have in him, 1 John 5.14, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us and we know that if he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked for him. John's saying, look, if you come by faith and you come in the name of Jesus and you pray according to the will of God, you know that he hears. He doesn't say, and then you'll hear him. I think we need to rest in the fact that we've come in Jesus' name and we trust God has heard us. He's gonna do what's right. And I think to want more than that, on this side of eternity, I just don't see where God says, pray and you'll get to hear my voice or get to see my face. Well, I think what you need to be careful is Ray said is when you go in your prayer closet, when you do seek him, then what I would encourage you, take your Bible in with you. And then after you're done praying, just go through the scriptures and you'll be amazed how the Holy Spirit will take the scriptures and God will speak to you through the scriptures. And everything else that you do here, it still has to line up with the scriptures. Absolutely, this certainly, we're gonna hear God's voice through those scriptures. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think there are three voices, I believe we have to learn to discern. There's our voice, there's Satan and there's God's. And you have to be able to discern all three. And the Bible says, you know, I think other people think they're only gonna talk negative. Matter of fact, if Jesus would have been discerning, he would have listened to Peter when he said, you don't have to go to the cross. So there's a lot of things that you may be thinking you're hearing from God, but aren't. I think one of the things you wanna do is you wanna have a pastor, somebody that can walk you through that. If you constantly see yourself tripping over that, some things, it's just us. And I think a lot of times we don't give ourselves enough credit that it's amazing. The Bible says that God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. And I think a lot of times we think, that's the Lord, that's the Lord. Maybe that's just you. And it doesn't make it right or wrong. Maybe that's just you. And so you have to learn to discern those and how you find God, I believe, is by missing him. You learn what isn't him. At the same time, you'll also learn what is him. And you find that also with the scripture and by having somebody that walks with you to help you to decipher if that's the Lord or not. And we know in the Old Testament, the Bible speaks about the fact that he ministers to us in a still small voice or another translation, a gentle whisper. When you come into the New Testament, the scripture says, as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. And I love the Kenneth Weist translation, as many as are being constantly led. So I do believe we have a right not to necessarily hear a voice or see Jesus visibly, but to be led and led by the Word, obviously, but also led by the Spirit of God. And so you need to just say, Lord, I trust you that I'm going to be led by the Spirit all throughout the day. How does that happen, Mark? How does that, we understand being led by the scriptures, I think, but how does being led by the Spirit happen? I think the number one thing is being led by peace. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Many scriptures talk about being led by peace. It can be an inward witness. It can be an inward voice, but most of all, it's just that peace, that green light, so to speak, compared to a red light. Sometimes you have that red light stop. I'm not really going to get down that road, but sometimes you have this peace or this green light and you feel the Lord is leading in that way. And to me, that's what I'm looking for. If the other ways come now and again, that's great, but the ultimate way is that peace on the inside. Any last quick thoughts? I believe it's important to walk in the Spirit too. To his point, prayer is vital. I don't believe you can hear from God and be led by the Spirit if you're not a man or woman given to prayer. That is utmost important, not just praying, but getting alone until you're no longer alone and then allowing him to lead you to the rest of your day. There's a book years ago called Practicing the Presence of God. And the more you get in that presence of God, that voice doesn't get louder and louder. So thank you pastors. And thank you for the question. We're going to end with a scripture. We love to do that. It says, bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. That's Colossians 313. Boy, is that something we need to put into practice? We hope you enjoyed the program today. Remember, you can always email us your questions, hard questions at ctvn.org or you can call our hotline. Have a great day.