Welcome friends to the Line of Fire.
This is Michael Brown with a pledge for you. I will not get your blood boiling unless I also get your faith rising. We're going to talk through some really difficult, challenging, controversial issues here on the Line of Fire, but we'll do it with grace and truth.
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Call a friend, text a friend, encourage them to tune into their broadcast. If they missed it today, all this month we're going to be talking about, can you be gay and Christian? What if you have a family member who comes out as gay or bi or trans? Are we rightly understanding what the Bible says about this? Did Jesus really have anything to say about these issues? Where has the church made mistakes along the way in the culture wars?
How do we separate people from agendas? We'll go through those questions and many, many others. The practical questions that you ask we'll go through.
And along with the Bible, the textbook we're using is, can you be gay and Christian? We'll tell you later in the show how you can get the book. In fact, I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you a story to start, to encourage your heart. I was broadcasting on our live talk show.
We have a daily live talk show we've been doing since 2008, in addition to this 30-minute equipping broadcast, also called The Line of Fire. And I got a call one day from a young woman, oh, maybe in her late 20s, early 30s, something like that. A Christian woman married to a godly Christian man.
And she wanted to tell this amazing story. Her sister, with whom she was very, very close, had been in a committed lesbian relationship for some time and was going to, quote, marry her lesbian partner. When I say, quote, marry, I don't want to insult those who are same-sex attracted and who say, hey, our love is as real as your love, and how dare you degrade our marriage? I simply don't believe it's marriage in God's sight.
Hence, I put scare quotes around it. I know that may be offensive to some of you who differ with me on this, but I have to honor God and speak what I understand to be truthful. That's the only loving thing to do. So she wanted me to know what happened. She and her sister, very close, she herself had only recently really got serious with the Lord. And she and her husband were really praying for that sister, really praying for her to come to know the Lord. And her sister kept reaching out to her and said, hey, we've got different dates for the wedding because they lived in different states. If I remember, the caller was in the Phoenix area and the sister was in the Minnesota area. So they lived in different areas. And she said, listen, we've got possible dates for the wedding.
I need to know when you could make it out of these dates because we want to make sure you're there. Well, she was reluctant to get back to her because she felt in good conscience she couldn't attend the wedding. That's a whole question we're going to discuss. And the controversy surrounding Pastor Alistair Beggs saying, yeah, you can attend a wedding if they know where you stand on the issues, et cetera.
We'll talk through all that. But she, in her heart, knew that she couldn't go. She couldn't go to celebrate that event. So she was reluctant to talk to her sister as she could understand. So she and her husband had just finished praying maybe an hour or two of fervent prayer for the sister's salvation. And she gets another text.
So she says, OK, I'm going to call her. Now, this woman, this Christian woman had read Can You Be Gay and Christian? And it really impacted her. And she digested a lot of what was in there, the biblical arguments.
And of course, she had a compassionate spirit. This was her sister. So she talks to her sister and explains, I can't go to the wedding for all the following reasons.
Lays out what scripture says was amazed how much of the book she had remembered. I remember her telling me that. Well, to her shock, when she finishes talking, she thinks, OK, my sister's going to be really hurt. She's going to be really offended. She's going to lay into me. And and instead, her sister was under deep conviction of the spirit. And she said, OK, I can't I can't go on with this wedding.
I want to get right with God. She asked her sister to come out and spend time with her because basically everyone I know is gay or lesbian. It's the community we live in. So she and her partner amicably separated, you know, worked out how they, you know, they were sharing things and amicably did all of that. And now this this young woman, being a lesbian all these years now, wanting to follow Jesus. OK, so that was that was first thing. And we were just rejoicing together at the mercy and goodness of God. Some months later, was it a year later?
I don't have the precise dates. We get another call. It's the original caller, the woman, this time with her sister there also. And they send me a link to their Facebook page where they're writing worship music together.
One of them plays the guitar. They both say writing worship music together. Yes.
Yes. What a beautiful, beautiful story. And the sister who had been a lesbian all these years, she said, you know, basically, I've I've lost everything for Jesus because all her friends, her community, she said, I basically lost everything for Jesus, she said. And it's wonderful. Wonderful because he is everything.
He is more than enough. So I want to encourage you, friends. God is at work and that message of grace and truth and fervent prayer.
Boy, does it make a difference. Yesterday, I told you about the calling I received beginning in 2004 to get on the front lines of these issues having to do with LGBTQ activism. At the same time, God broke my heart for the people and put a word within me, reach out and resist, reach out to the people with compassion, resist the agenda with courage. I've sat with another local gay activist. In fact, the gentleman who became the editor of Q Notes after that first gentleman had moved on that I shared yesterday meeting with him, talking with him. I sat with a young man that took over Q Notes, the gay publication of the North and South Carolinas. And as we were having lunch together, oh, this is maybe 15 years ago, he looked at me and he said, Dr. Brown, I misjudged you.
I thought that you held the positions you did for political power or influence or something like that. He said, I realized I misjudged you. And I began to cry.
Tears began pouring down my cheeks. I said to him, Matt, I just want you to know the love of God. I just want you to know the love of the Father.
That was my heart from I just want you to know the love of the Father. He didn't know what to do with that, friends. He knew where I stood. He knew how clearly I'd spoken. He knew I opposed gay activism in the city. He knew I opposed gay curriculum in the schools. He knew where I stood on all these issues, unashamedly, without compromise. He knew where I stood on what Scripture said. But he saw my heart. And as we talked, he didn't know what to make of it. Well, he concluded I was loony. That was the only thing. He couldn't understand how I could be clear thinking, rational, full of love, and yet reject same sex relations, especially love and committed same sex relations.
How can I reject those as being valid? So I must have a screw loose. So he published an editorial in Q Notes, a prayer for Michael Brown. And then they let me respond with my own editorial, reaching out, not defending myself, but reaching out with the love of God. Let me say this another way in terms of God's calling on the church. We need hearts of compassion and backbones of steel.
Hearts of compassion and backbones of steel. We live with a certain holy tension as the people of God, because we love people, but we know that the loving thing to do is hold to the truth. And if we emphasize too much grace, and in other words, hey, I just want to be loving, merciful, kind, tell people how good God is, tell people how God accepts them, tell people how good God is, tell people about his kindness, and all of that. Okay, that's wonderful. That's wonderful.
That's good. But that's not the whole message. You know, what if you have a Muslim or a Hindu neighbor, and you just want to be loving, you want them to know how good God is, and how loving the Father is, and how kind, and on and on and on. But you don't tell them that salvation only comes through Jesus. You don't tell them that Jesus is the Son of God. You don't tell them that we've all sinned and fallen short and need mercy and redemption.
Well, you're loving, but you're not fully loving, because you're not telling them the truth. On the flip side, on the flip side, if you just hold to truth, well, you're on to hell. You know the Lord, you're on to hell. That's sin.
That's wrong. Well, where's the love of the Father? Where's the beauty of the cross?
Where's the reality of why Jesus died? Where's John 3 16? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And the next verse, for God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. So if we're just grace, grace, grace, with no truth, we're not helping anyone.
If we're just truth, truth, truth, without grace, we're not helping anyone. And for me, if I'm speaking at a church, and maybe the pastors asked me to talk about, can you be gay and Christian? Or talk about Christians and the culture wars. So I'm going to be talking to believers. I'm going to be strengthening them in terms of what the Bible says and where we should stand on moral and cultural and social issues. I want to do it as if there's a 15 year old kid on the front row, same sex attracted, raised in a Christian home, feels condemned, feels hated, thinks there's no hope for him. I want to speak as if he's there on that front row, hearing a message of love and truth, hearing me say that Jesus died for gay and straight, just the same. Jesus shed the same blood for heterosexual, homosexual, just the same, that all of us in ourselves fall short, that all of us in ourselves need mercy and redemption, that all of us are lost without the cross, and that all of us in one way or another are broken on the inside, broken on the inside, and needing healing and mercy and forgiveness. I want to make that clear and make clear that the issue I have is with the activism and where it's going and what's being put on our kids and our society and the attack on our freedom of religion, speech, and conscience. So I want to bring that message, holding out the truth without compromise, at the same time, full of grace. And friend, if God could put compassion in me, Mr. Debater, Mr. Arguer, Mr. Confrontational, he can put compassion in you.
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And of course, it's absolutely free. Hearts of compassion, backbones of steel. Let me come at this another angle. If you cut us, we should bleed blood. Let me say that again. If you cut us, we should bleed blood. You can't put on a front of love. You can't give the appearance of love. People will know.
People are looking for authenticity. Decades ago, when we lived on Long Island, I was born in New York City, raised on Long Island. My wife Nancy, born and raised on Long Island.
We spent our first 32, 33 years living there. There was a store in Rockville Center, Long Island called Parrots of the World. And it became known as Jeff's Parrots of the World because the guy that ran that store and managed that store, the TV show and all this, there are all these amazing birds there. So of course, they had all kinds of different pets, but they specialized in these exotic parrots, these really, really expensive birds. So the macaws, those are the biggest of all.
The cockatoos. And then the yellow-naped Amazon, that was considered one of the two best talking birds in the world. And the African gray, that was the other one. And one time we had an African gray, at one time we had a yellow-naped Amazon. Long story, but we actually had those for short periods of time.
A cockatoo as well. And then endless little parakeets and finches and all that kind of stuff. So we go in there just for fun. We loved just checking the birds out.
We go in there with our daughters. And you had the birds on their perches, right? So Nancy would go over to one bird. And you got to remember, they've got these giant beaks, and they have these incredibly forceful bites. So if you've ever been bitten by one of them, oh, oh, it hurts.
They even actually bite to the bone. So you put your hand out, and Nancy put her hand out, and the bird would get right on her hand. So I put my hand out, and the bird next to that would go to bite me, and I'd pull my hand away. Okay, this guy got the ornery bird, she got the nice bird. Fine.
So we switch. I said, hun, you put that one back on. So he puts the bird back on the perch. I go over to that one, put my hand out, goes to bite me. That's the bird that just got on her hand. The other bird gets right on her hand. He said, the bird that went to bite me got on her hand, the bird that got on her hand went to bite me. I said, hun, what's going on? She said, they can tell you're afraid.
Whoa, hang on. They can tell you're afraid. A bird can tell if the giant human being standing next to it is afraid. What a lesson. I've never forgotten that, in terms of interpersonal relations. If you have genuine love, people will know it. People will feel it. People will sense it. It doesn't mean you won't be hated and rejected.
Look, it just comes with the turf. Jesus said in John 15 18, if the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. 2 Timothy 3 12, Paul writes, all who live godly lives in Messiah Jesus will suffer persecution.
In the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5 verse 10, Jesus says, blessed are you, truly happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for greatest reward in heaven. So as followers of Jesus, who stand for truth and righteousness, we will be rejected, misunderstood, hated. And if you do a search online, put my name in Michael Brown or Dr. Michael Brown, homophobe, transphobe, Nazi, bigot, whatever, you'll find people attacking me in these ways.
So you will be attacked. Pastors, pastors, leaders, it's just the reality. We can be as loving and kind and gracious as we know, but if you take a stand for what's right and hold to it, biblical sexuality, biblical meaning of marriage, if you hold to these things, you're going to be attacked. Your church is going to be attacked, but that's life in this world as followers of Jesus. But let us not be attacked for being hateful. Let us not be attacked for being insensitive. Let us not be attacked for being self-righteous or hypocritical. If we're attacked, let it be for standing for the truth. You'll be called a hater, but when people read your words, there should be no hate in the words to say it again. If you cut us, we should bleed blood. So again, let me speak for myself.
By nature, I am not a deeply compassionate person. You know, I can be driving home one night with Nancy and maybe we see on the side of the road, a bad accident, traffic's delayed a little bit, and you see a couple of cars really badly damaged. You see the ambulances there, and it looks like people are really badly hurt. So we just draw, I don't know who it is, the strangers, right?
Don't even know any of the details. We drive by and I just pray a prayer, Lord, have mercy and intervene and turn this for good. And I forget about it. That's happened. And then a few hours later, I'm talking to Nancy and she sounds a little down.
I say, how much to match? Cause that accident. In other words, that still hit her. That's still on her heart and mind because those are people. Those are someone's life was radically altered.
Maybe someone died. She's a much, much more compassionate person than I am by nature. I know many people much more compassionate than me by nature, but God really broke my heart for people. Well, when it came to, to, to those who identify as gay or lesbian or bi or trans, God knows he's my witness about the tears I've shed. I re I remember reading one book and I was so pained to read these stories of people who left the church and who thought God hated them, who thought that in God's sight, they themselves in their essence were an abomination based on Leviticus 18, 22 and Leviticus 20, 13.
They felt that they themselves were an abomination in God's sight and that God hated them and the church hated them and they left the church. And I remember putting this book down and going alone in a room and we were in a small rental house then, but I remember it distinctly going alone in this room where I would pray and getting on my knees, weeping and saying, God, I don't want to hurt people. I just want to help people. I don't want to hurt people.
I just want to help people. Once I was flying to Rome for ministry in Italy and upgraded, I'm in business class and I'm sitting. So it's just one seat next to me. And I sit down and the guy's instantly out and proud telling me he's gay and he's going to visit his partner in Rome. He's a flight attendant. He's got a day off with some miles to use. So it's costing him nothing.
And his friends are flight attendants and his partner are going to meet up in Rome. So he's out and proud. I'm out and proud. I'm a follower of Jesus, conservative biblical values minister of the gospel, told him who I was. And then I said, tell me your story. Tell me your story. I really wanted on that flight.
I wanted to read some, write a little rest and then maybe watch a clean movie instead. We must've talked for several hours and he poured his heart, told me his whole life story. And, and I was choked up. I was, I was tearful over some of what he shared with me at the end of the flight. I said to him, if you met someone like me who held to these conservative biblical values, would you call that person a homophobe, a bigot? He said, absolutely. I said, do you think I am?
He goes, no, I hurt your heart. I love to meet conservatives with a heart. Friends, I'm telling you, if God could break my heart for those for whom I had no particular sympathy or burden or care, and I could become known as compassionate.
So can you. So I encourage you to start by saying, God, give me a baptism of love for those who identify as LGBTQ. I will help you get grounded in the truth, but ask God, Lord, give me a baptism of love for those who identify as LGBTQ. Hearts of Compassion, Backbones of Steel.
This book, Can You Began Christian, will really help you on your journey. As you read it, it will break your heart with love and it'll also ground you in such truth, such understanding of scripture, such practical understanding of how to reach out and love that, that you won't struggle or waver again, once you digest these truths. This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
