Warning! You may feel nauseous after reading this.
The American Family Association (AFA) sent out a newsletter today reminding pastors and church members of the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court deliberations on same sex marriage. Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter:
As hard as it is to believe, nine people will decide if our nation will honor God and obey Him, or turn its back on the most fundamental building block of society and on God himself.
This will be the most important decision in the history of America.
I don’t have to tell you, the consequences this decision could have on people of faith is staggering. As you know, private business owners have already come under great pressure to surrender their religious liberty and provide services to same-sex marriages. It would only be a matter of time before pastors and churches would be coerced to do the same.
As Christians, we know that prayer has changed the hearts of leaders and the course of nations. Never before has the need to pray been so critical to the future of our country.
Sign the I Will Pray pledge right now and let us know you will be praying with us.
Join me and millions of others in prayer, starting today.
I thought the Supreme Court’s job was to determine the constitutionality of our laws? Evidently, AFA sees the Court as the legal wing of the Evangelical party.
The AFA newsletter includes a sermon for pastors to preach this Sunday:
TWO Becoming ONE: What a Journey!
Genesis 2:19-25
Introduction: Adrian Rogers– “Man is far superior than woman, at being a man. Woman is far superior than man, at being a woman.” The differences are amazing and natural.
- Adam didn’t find a mate suitable for him when he named all the animals.
- Beastiality (sp) is not God’s Design
- God made a woman for Adam, not another man.
- Homosexuality is not God’s design.
- God made one woman for Adam, not two women.
- Polygamy is not God’s design.
I. The Position of Two Ephesians 5:23 “….the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the Church…”
A. Physically (I Peter 3:7) “Husbands, in the same way, live with your wives with understanding of their weaker nature yet showing them honor….
- Men are the provider and the protector (Physically stronger)
- Women are the nurturers (Physically softer)
B. Forcefulness
- He has more energy. (Hare) “Pointman” “Trailblazer”
- She has more durability. (Tortoise) “Support” “Supply”
II. The Disposition of the TWO Song of Solomon (3:1-4, 4:1-5)
A. In the Relationship
- The man is the gardener.
- The woman is the nurturer.
- Men respond to physical sight.
- Women respond to romance.
B. In the Reception (of information)
- Men primarily use the left hemisphere of the brain, Which controls logic, reasoning, and calculation. Women use both hemispheres (right side deals with Feeling, emotion, sympathy, love, intuition.)
- Women are spider-web thinkers–thinking like a Radar. Men are step-by-step thinkers–thinking like a computer.
III. The Communication of the TWO
A. With Information
- Women speak in code. (I Peter 3:7) “understanding”
- Men speak in reports.
B. With Passion Eph. 5:33–“To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as Himself, and the wife is to respect her husband”
- The deepest need of the woman is romance. “cherished” (to be loved)
- The deepest need of a man is admiration. (respect)
Conclusion:
- God made us different that He might makes us one.
- God made both man and woman in need of a Saviour. We are not only husband and wife, but because of the blood of Christ we can be forgiven and spiritually cleansed and because of that we can also be brother and sister in Christ.
The newsletter also includes four prayers for churches to use. Here’s two of the prayers:
PRAYER ONE
Heavenly Father, we know that you designed marriage. You created it and you defined it as the union of one man and one woman. You are the one who said, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” As our Supreme Court deliberates over the issue of marriage, we pray that you will cause your truth about marriage to resonate in their hearts and minds. We pray that you, by your Spirit, will remind them of your truth, guide them in their thinking, and warn them of the danger of turning their backs on your eternal word.We pray that you, by your Spirit, will remind every elected official and every man, woman and child in our land of your standard for marriage. Cause us all to tremble at the thought that we might reject you and your word to our own harm. Please prompt the justices of our Supreme Court to reflect on your word and to align their ruling with your abiding truth. This we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.
PRAYER TWO
Heavenly Father, we are reminded of what your Son taught us about marriage, when he said,“He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said,‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” We pray together that as the justices of the Supreme Court consider the issue of marriage, your Spirit will be at work to cause the words of your Son to penetrate deeply into their hearts and minds, so that their deliberations will be guided not just by the Constitution and the law but by your abiding standards of right and wrong. Grant them a deep awareness that you and you alone are God.Our Founders sought to conform our public policy as a nation to the “laws of nature and nature’s God.” We know, Father, that man-woman marriage is prescribed by the laws of nature and even more importantly is prescribed by your eternal law. Please guide the deliberations of our Supreme Court so that they will be prompted by your Spirit to conform the law of our land to your law as our God. In the name of Jesus, amen.
As you can see, the AFA sermon and prayers are laced with fundamentalist and theocratic verbiage. It will be interesting to see how the U.S. Supreme Court decides the issue of same-sex marriage. It will even be more interesting to see how Evangelicals and Catholics respond if the Court rejects their demands for biblical law and instead affirms that same-sex couples have the right to marry. Think of all the sermons that will be preached and prayers that will be prayed. If God doesn’t come through, groups like the AFA will blame the liberals on the Court, atheists, secularists, and Satan. Surely their God is bigger than all of these, yes? Here’s what they’ll never do; they will never look inward and consider that maybe God didn’t answer their prayers because they are bigoted, hateful people who want to deny gays the same civil rights they have.
Many Christians believe that God should get all the praise for the good things that happen and Satan and sinners should get blamed for the bad things that happen. This fact poses a conundrum for those praying for my demise. If God kills me, this means it was a good thing, right? But, if God is the giver of life, the fact that I am still alive is also a good thing. Perhaps God wants me to live so the Holy Spirit can regenerate me, effectually call me, and impart to me his wonderful irresistible grace. Or perhaps I am not one of the elect, not in the Lamb’s Book of Life; then I am an unregenerate, apostate reprobate. If I were God, I would kill someone like me, seeing that I do so much damage to the faith of others.
Some day, I will die. The way I am feeling as I write this post, it could be today. Or tomorrow. Or twenty years from now. Regardless of the date of my demise, there will a Christian somewhere who will see it as proof that their imprecatory prayer worked,;that God whacked me because they asked him to.