Balancing the Tools We Use

In this meditation I want to take a moment to return to the topic that originally led us to this series of messages about the balance between mercy and grace on the one hand, and holiness and truth on the other.

You will remember that a few weeks ago we wrote and spoke about the problem of homosexuality and the advance of this very harmful evil that is creating so much disorder in modern culture and that I believe is one of the great, great threats to the health of humanity at this time, to the Church of Jesus Christ and our children, and to future generations.

And so churches and Christian leaders must be very alert and very well informed about this phenomenon of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, because if God does not change things, I am convinced that in the future homosexuality will continue to grow, becoming more and more harmful, entrenching itself more and more in the structures of culture, and we will see a growing number of people practicing this sin that is so destructive and so harmful. That is why we must know how to deal with it.

And because of this, I have wanted to explain the balance we must have in this twenty-first century, which over time will manifest more horrible and destructive sins and produce people so bound to these sinful behaviors that it will take a great deal of work to heal them and bring them out of the trench they have gotten into. It will take a Mother Church, a maternal Church, a Church that counsels, makes disciples, teaches and shepherds, one that can shepherd these devastated lives when they come to our churches seeking deliverance. If they find a Pharisaical, legalistic and demanding Church with a whip in its hand, we will never be able to heal these lives. What is needed, therefore, is an attitude like Christ’s to deal with this.

Homosexuality is an evil that, when practiced, becomes embedded in the structures of the brain and the emotions, and that very often is itself the product of distortions dating back to childhood, and even of generational curses, of sexual abuse suffered by these people and of distortions in family life. This is why homosexuality proves so difficult to break once it has taken root in an individual’s mindset.

And if we try to take these people and subject them to a regimen of immediate deliverance and of breaking these practices, we will discover that we will fail again and again and again. I do not have time to prove this, but after studying this phenomenon many times, after dealing with people in my own church who suffer from this illness, let us say, after observing so many different ministries, reading literature on psychology and Christian counseling, and observing other ministries that deal with this subject, I can tell you with complete confidence—and I hope you will believe me—that this is a matter we must handle with great, great subtlety and with very great wisdom from God.

Machetes are not much use in these cases; what is needed are very delicate scalpels and very subtle surgical instruments that come from the Word of the Lord, so that we can deal with these evils effectively. That is why we have spoken of the balance required between the one and the other.

The issues of pornography, sexual addictions, homosexuality, same-sex marriages, and the changes people nowadays undergo, even physically through operations to change from man to woman or from woman to man, which produce terrible transformations in the very structure of the human brain and in an individual’s nervous wiring, require the emergence of ministries that understand these things very well. On the one hand, they must make use of spiritual warfare and the rebuking of demons, and of the instruments of deliverance; but on the other hand, they must also know that the instruments of counseling, patience and love are needed, along with an understanding that these people will go through periods of falling and relapsing, getting up again and relapsing, until finally the image of Christ is established in them.

If we are not willing to do this, and if instead we prefer the primitive approaches of so many legalistic and falsely holy churches today, rather than having the instruments and attitudes we see in Christ Jesus, we will produce people more neurotic and more bedeviled, so to speak, than they were when they entered our churches.

And so, many times, if we do not maintain that balance, we will produce people like those Jesus Christ spoke of when He spoke of the Pharisees: we will make people twice as much children of hell as they were before they entered our churches.

May the Lord show us through His Word how to help the homosexual, the person addicted to pornography, the alcoholic, the person entrenched in patterns of resentment, depression, anxiety and sexual abuse, and the memories associated with all of this, so that we can deal with these evils so typical of the twenty-first century. To deal with people who have used drugs, for example, hallucinogenic drugs, and people who have been involved in the occult and in witchcraft, for example, deeply involved in it—to deal with all these kinds of people—fasting and prayer will be needed, but also a great deal of understanding of the dynamics of psychology, the human soul and the emotions.

May God help us understand these things and raise up ministries that have these two instruments in their hands. God bless you, and until our next meditation.