My Take on Pastor Worley's Message

As I write this I guess several hundred people are gearing up to protest Pastor Charles Worley in Maiden tomorrow morning. In case you haven't heard Pastor Worley is the NC Pastor who recommended putting all of the homosexuals in a fence and dropping food to them until the all died off in his sermon on May 13. the sermon was recorded by video. It went viral the first of last week and has sparked a bit of controversy around the nation. 

You can see the sermon clip here:

As you can imagine many news stations picked up and ran with this story, including CNN. You can see one of their reports on the story here:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/05/24/ac-intv-tuchman-lesbian-church-member-pastor-worley.cnn

Here is my take in two parts on this:

1. I completely, 100% agree with Pastor Worley that homosexuality is wrong. As a matter of fact I am not going to spend time defending this stance. I will say that the Bible is completely, totally, without a shadow of a doubt against the sin of homosexuality. However, we as Christians should always without hesitation love everyone. After all, we are all sinners, Christians have just accepted God's grace and mercy. Homosexuals are sinners in need of a Savior. Jesus died to save them and set them free. Christians were in the same boat before we accepted Jesus and let him set us free. 

I have known several people including teenagers that God has set free from this lifestyle and they continue to walk in that freedom. I have also know Pastor Worley for several years. I met him several times during the time that Natalie and I served as youth pastors in Maiden and I will say he was very well respected as a pastor and someone I admired for preaching truth. 

2. I do not, however, agree with Pastor Worley's idea on how to solve the problem of this sin in our society. I did not see the entire message, nor do I know the intent behind his comments. I will say this, any time a minister attempts to add their opinion to the Word of God they begin to minister under pride. I am not saying that is what Pastor Worley has done. I do understand what scripture says in the Old Testament about homosexual, however, 1 Corinthians 5 reminds us that God will judge the world for their sins. We must minister and witness to them as long as they will listen.

I do appreciate and admire Pastor Worley's position to preach scripture and biblical conviction. I am praying for him. I ask God every time I preach to help me preach biblical truth and to never let my opinions or ideas to get in the way of what God wants to say or what He has called me to communicate from His Word. 

With all of that said, I want to remind the church: The world for the most part knows what the church is against, but what about what we are for? If you know me, you know that I stand for un-compromised biblical truths, however, we spend lot of time preaching against this and that. Believe me, when we stop preaching against sin, we will lose our power, but we must stand up  and let the world know that the bride of Christ loves sinners just as Jesus does and that we are broken over them and that we do not want them to go to tell. Many will gather tomorrow to protest this pastor and his stance, but, what about the souls that will die and go to hell without hope while the church argues amongst itself. 

I challenge the church to do several things:

1. Pray for each other. It is very hard to talk about and put down someone you are praying for. 

2. Stand against sin, but fight for and love sinners. 

3. Never let your opinion over shadow what the Word of God says. 

                                      
4. Seek to please the Father more than man.


5. Never participate in any activity that would lead the world to believe that we condone or support any lifestyle that the Bible is against. 


6. MAKE SURE THAT OUR LIVES ARE PLEASING AND HOLY TO THE FATHER. THE CHURCH HAS HURT ITSELF BY LIVING CONTRADICTORY TO WHAT THE SCRIPTURE TEACHES. NO ONE WILL EVER FOLLOW US IF WE ARE NOT DIFFERENT.


I hope this challenges to and forces you to think for yourself on where you stand on the areas satan has confused so many.

Accountability, Not Judging!!!

Accountability, not Judging!

i recently heard someone say that 30 years ago the most quote scripture in the Bible was John 3:16. Today the  most quoted scripture in the Bible is Matthew 7:1, "Judge not, that you be not judged."  Everyone is ready to jump at someone that is judging other people and start screaming at them that they are not suppose to be judging. For that reason almost everyone including those inside the church have the mindset that they can do whatever they want to do and no one will say anything to them because that would be judging and we all know we are not suppose to judge. 

WELLLLLL!! Shame on us for allowing the enemy to deceive us and using us to twist scripture to mean something that God never intented. 

Matthew 7:1 is dealing more with judging someone by something you do not know. Just because they are having a difficult time in their life doesn't mean there is sin in their life. Remember Job? Verse 2 in this chapter speaks really of the motive behind what we are saying. If we are judging someone to point out their faults and make ourselves look better we are in error. If we really care about their soul and are burdened for them then we have a responsibility to warn them through correction. 

i believe much of the foolishness going on in churches today would stop if we as brothers and sisters in Christ would stand up and hold each other accountable. 

We find in 1 Corinthians 5 Paul is addressing immorality going on in the church and how it should be handled. He explains that God removing His protection and allowing satan to work will hopefully bring about a spirit of humility and repentance. The goal in approaching someone in sin is that their soul would be saved. The church for the most part has kept quiet about much of the stuff going on in it and allowed sin to continue often times openingly. 

We have to understand just as God described in Ezekiel in explaining the watchman on the walls responsibility was to sound the alarm. We are not responsible for the persons response. We can not control whether a person will repent or not. We are responsible for presenting truth to them in love in hopes that the would repent. However, if we do not confront those that are in living in sin, their blood will be on our hands.  

Please note: this deals only with those that are in the church claiming to be a child of God. Dealing with the unsaved should be handled differently. 

Paul goes on in verse 6 to explain that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. On the night before Passover, the Hebrews would remove all the leaven from their homes. Leaven has a fermenting action that illustrates the corrupting power of evil. Since Jesus was our Passover Lamb we must keep regular check to make sure their is not leaven in our house that will cause the yeast or in this case sin to spread. When we fail to discipline in the church we are actually denying the purpose of Christ death. 

Paul goes on in verse 9 to challenge the Christian to stay away from people in the church that claim to be Christians, but practices immorality, covetousness, extortion, and idolatry. He says to not even set down and eat with them. I know where your mind is going. Paul is not saying if you approach them and they are repentant to turn away from them. We minister to and love those people. He is speaking here of the one who is sinning and will not repent and continues in the sin. Verses 11 and 12 remind us that God will judge the world. That's not our job, but in fact we are to judge and discipline within the church. 

We cant judge the world by the church's standards because they don't care about our standards. we witness to them and let our light shine so they can see Jesus in us. In the church however, we are suppose to bring corrective discipline to those that are not in line with the Word of God. 

We have to love. 

We have to forgive. 

but the church can not continue to allow those in the church that claim to be Christians yet continue to sin to get away with it. We must begin to stand up in love and bring correction to one another when we are out of line. we must hold each other to biblical standards. The world is watching and if they do not see anything different from the church and themselves they will not want what we have because they will think they already have it. 

We must get back to a place of holding each other accountable according to the Holy Word of God. 

I challenge you to begin to exercise spiritual discipline with those that you love so that you might save their soul from hell. We can not continue to allow each other sin without correction. Lets be the church god has intented for us to be!!