Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Andrew and this is Pastor Greg from Grace Church. We're sitting here in our building on a Tuesday morning. We're in the middle of awesome August here at Grace Church, which is a time where we have special guest speakers coming through our building on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights to talk about different topics and different themes, and it changes from year to year. But this year, we're talking about the concept of origins. and kind of foundational thoughts, foundational issues that affect us today. And our speaker this last Sunday, Dr. Christopher Yuan, he's a professor out at Moody Bible Institute. He travels around the states and actually around the world sharing his story of what God has done in his life and teaching a theology of sexuality and speaking to this fundamental foundational issue and how it affects us today in our world. talking about sex. So we both were impacted by that topic, that teaching on Sunday. So we're just gonna take a couple minutes this morning to kind of talk about how it impacted us personally and what our takeaways are from that. So Pastor Greg, why don't you lead off? What was one of your, because I know you had a couple, what was one of your takeaways from Sunday morning and Sunday night? Well, I think one thing that I've thought about before, but it was reinforced by Christopher's testimony and his talk on Sunday night, was just the fact that sin is sin. And he put it this way, our sin is just as odious as anyone else's sin. And in Romans 1, certainly, there is an emphasis unnatural nature of homosexuality. But Paul is trying to prove that all of us are guilty before the Lord, and he doesn't stop with that sin. He goes on at the end of the chapter with a list of sins, and it includes such things as envy, and covetousness, and being disobedient to parents, and gossiping, and things that all of us would find ourselves in that list. Yeah, because if you haven't seen or heard the message yet from Sunday Morning or Sunday Night, which if you haven't, you need to go to our church website and check it out. We've got the archived copy there. Christopher comes from a background of unbelief, of not knowing the Lord, grew up in an unbeliever's family, and dove headlong into a very kind of crazy and even criminal lifestyle as a drug dealer. and very involved in the homosexual lifestyle as well. So a lot of his story is him dealing with that particular sin, and he brought a very personal viewpoint to that, which I found very helpful hearing that. Yeah, one thing he said that stood out was Jesus didn't have to hang on the cross any longer for that sin than my sin, personally. And that doesn't mean that there's not an impact. Different kinds of sins have different kinds of impacts on ourselves and on other people. We have to understand and view what the Bible says about that. So I think that was one thing that really stood out. How about you? So sin is sin. That's a good takeaway. I really liked how both in the Sunday morning and the Sunday night sessions, kind of putting the two of them together in my head, his emphasis on, as you said, he talked a lot about identity, like who we really are. And one of the problems that we face in our culture today is we put such an emphasis on our sexuality that we elevate it to like, my sexuality is what defines me. And I forget exactly how he phrased it, but the truth that I'm more than my sexual desires. And there are more important things in life even than my sexual desires. And instead of defining myself by my sexual wants, and looking at others and defining them by their sexual wants to look at myself and look at others in relation to who they are in relationship to God and changing that perspective point. And really, Sunday Morning was not a story of someone dealing with a particular life issue of homosexuality or the drug or anything. It was really a story of conversion. Sunday morning was him and his mother and his father all sharing how they came to know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. And then all those other things were just the auxiliaries. They were the things in the background that were going on at the same time. Well an identity is something we all have to come to grips with. Who am I? How do I define who I am? Exactly. So as a student pastor, I work a lot with students. That's part of the job. Man, I always have these conversations with students who just feel like sex and their sexual experiences or their sexual desires in life are like the ultimate thing that like decide everything else about them. and decide everything that that they are going to pursue, everything that that they're spending their time on, everything that they define themselves to their peers as, like, whether they've had this or that sexual experience or what their priorities are and different, like, and it's like, guys, Life is not about all that. There is more to life. And what I liked, one of the things that Dr. Yuan said was for us as believers, as followers of Jesus, it's not about being homosexual or heterosexual. It's about being holy. that that is the defining thing that we need to deal with. Am I a holy person or not? And let God's definition of what it means to be holy then dictate everything about our sexual wants and desires. And kind of putting sex in its place. It's just a part of the bigger picture of who I am. So I really liked that. Yeah, well it's interesting both of us started with something that stood out to us that we could latch on to and even apply to our lives regardless of our specific situation, whether it's looking at ourselves and our own sin, looking at our identity. Another thing that I took away is how we interact with our gay family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and we could discuss that at length, and he gave some great I think one thing is just balancing, you know, John 1 14 says Jesus came in the flesh and he was full of grace and truth and he was full of both. So how to balance those is always hard. Yeah, and people always want to pit one against the other, right? They're like, if you love me, you just accept everything that I believe and everything that I want and everything and leave out the truth aspect, but then there are other people that go to the way other extreme and say, I can't love you until you accept my truth. And it's like this whole, we're pitting those two things against each other. Or we're so focused on communicating the truth that we lack the grace. And so he shared some things, and we do have to stand for the truth, but interacting with people and showing Christ's love to them, He had some things to say about that. I was just looking at my notes here, and just assuring someone of your friendship. They're a fellow human created in God's image, regardless of the sin that they're struggling with, and interacting with them. There's a point in a time where you may have to stand for the truth, and that is important, and that's necessary. but showing Christ's love and grace. And again, you can go and listen to the talk and get some of the specific ways. You should do that. So anyway, that was another thing that, because even in our church doctrinal statement, we've put something in there about that grace and truth and trying to balance those. I loved, to your point, he said in the morning service towards the end as he was wrapping up, he said as you're approaching this and you saw in his life the different people and the different things that God had used to get his attention and ultimately draw him to himself, he challenged us and he said, don't just be a good Christian. you know, where you're just like staying out of trouble and avoiding certain sins or whatever. Be a great Christian where you're actually looking at the people around you and understanding, okay, this is who I am in Christ. How can I help other people get to know Jesus? How can I help other people to grow in Him and grow in a knowledge of Him and His will for your life? And that resonated for me, that statement, don't be a good Christian, be a great Christian. And I think you crossed that line when you stopped looking primarily at yourself and going, how is this going for me? And what am I getting out of this whole Christian thing? And you start looking at others and going, man, how can I affect the world that God has put me in for him? And you might be able to change someone's life by introducing them to Christ. And that was cool to me. That's a big takeaway. So yeah, I thought it was a great Sunday, and you know, what did you come away with? What did you take away with? If you were here, or maybe you listened to it online, you can certainly let us know, and we'd love to hear that as well. And if we can help you in any way with this particular topic, struggles that you're having, or how you might interact with somebody, or respond to somebody, we have resources, and certainly two of them were the books that Dr. Yuan wrote, but others as well. So, thanks for watching, and we hope you enjoyed this, as well as Dr. Yuan's talks with us. Love to see you at church sometime soon.