For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established—that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

—Romans 1:11-12

The other day, I came across the following clip in which Dolly talks about her spirituality on Person to Person with Norah O’Donnell:

Dolly may look flashy, and she once said that “It takes a lot of money to look this trashy,” but she has always lived a beautiful life. She may be one of the richest woman in America, but she also donates to many charities. Her Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school. She’s not calling for books to be banned or that libraries be defunded because they contain books that ignorant people find offensive. No, she is sending out books to children for free. She’s never claimed to be the “best Christian” or told others how they should behave. She has famously refrained from entering the political fray. “I don’t do politics,” Dolly once said. “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence. Of course, I have my opinion, but I learned years ago to keep my mouth shut about things.” Staying out of politics is more than just being a shrewd businesswoman, but she is following Christ’s teachings of not judging others. Some people believe she should be more vocal about politics, especially the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in the South, but she has always shown support in other ways.

In the clip above, Dolly talks about spirituality and living by example. I don’t think you have to be the most vocal person in opposing evil and hateful politics, because some people can do more by living in a way that is an example to others. I think that what Dolly does so well. She’s never pretended to be something she’s not. She was raised dirt poor and through hard work and incredible talent, she has prospered and has made sure she takes care of others along the way.

For true Christians, God lives within our hearts. We don’t have to go to church, sit in the front pew, sing or say AMEN the loudest, or nod along with every word the preacher says. However, what we do need to do is to live our lives in a way that honors God. By following the teachings of Christ we can do that. Dolly lives the life that James advocated in his Epistle. I want to leave you with a passage from the Epistle of James in which he talks about the best way to practice our faith:

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

—James 2:14-20, 26

Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

—Matthew 7:20

Only two of the sermons Jesus gave were ever recorded in the gospels. Matthew wrote down the more well-known of the sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, and Luke wrote down the lesser-known Sermon on the Plain. The two sermons are very similar, though the order and location of what was said are different. While Matthew groups Jesus’ teachings into sets of similar material, the same material is more scattered when found in Luke. The Sermon on the Mount and the shorter Sermon on the Plain occur at the same moment in both Matthew’s and Luke’s narratives. However, both feature Jesus heading up a mountain, except in Matthew he gave the sermon on his way up the mountain, and Luke says he gave the sermon on the way down at a level spot. Some scholars believe that they are the same sermon, while others hold that Jesus frequently preached similar themes in different places. Whichever it is, the two sermons present the core of Christ’s ministry.

I want to focus on two similar passages from both sermons in which Jesus describes two types of people. Both talk about how you can know a good person from an evil person. Matthew 7:16-20 says:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

In Luke 6:43-45, Jesus says:

“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

Often we are asked to turn inward and reflect spiritually on ourselves. Any thoughtful and faithful person should look inwardly at our own spirituality. For me, my faith is a deeply personal experience. I believe that if we are true believers, the Bible speaks to us in a way that comforts us. It doesn’t speak to everyone in the same way. Some look for the negatives and fill their hearts with hate, and others look for the positives and fill their hearts with love. 

Even with that said, we do not take our personal journey alone. We are influenced by outside forces and the Christian faith as a whole. If we look at Christianity as an orchard of trees, some of them will bear good fruit and some bad fruit, and Jesus says that we cannot expect good fruit from a tree that has gone bad. If we do not take care of our roots, and our core beliefs, our tree will wither and die. If we do not water our soil, we will perish from malnourishment of our spirit. James 7:15-17 says, “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” If our branches are withering, we cannot bear good fruit, and if we follow the withering branches, those who preach hate, we will also bear bad fruit.

Currently, I believe that the orchard of Christianity is filled with trees bearing bad fruit. The healthy trees are being pushed aside and poisoned by the bad trees. Look at many of the people who loudly profess their faith, and you will see them bearing only bad fruit. They build great churches, have huge congregations, and pay their ministers huge salaries, but are they feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, or providing shelter to the homeless in these great churches? For the most part, the answer is no, and if they are doing those things, they come with certain expectations. You have to believe the way they do. For a long time, the Salvation Army would only feed, clothe, and shelter the homeless as long as they were not LGBTQ+ and fit their idea of a Christian. They still require those who come to them for help to listen to a sermon instead of giving freely.

The Christian community does not look at itself as a whole in order to see the problems with our religion today. Many instead only look outward to see the problems with the world around them, but they do not look at themselves. In the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, they believe in a duality of the universe. They believe that there is a universal war between good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Angra Mainyu). Zoroastrians believe that when the war is won, Ahura Mazda will be the victor for good always will win out over evil. However, as with any war, one side or the other wins the battles along the way. We know the great evil characters in history, and they seemed to win for a time, but in the end, they were defeated by good.  Likewise, those who preach hatefulness seem to be overpowering Christianity, but I believe that one day, the good that is Christianity will win out. We just have to be diligent. 

In war, if you become complacent or become overconfident, you will be defeated. You must conscientiously build and nourish your army. Napoleon Bonaparte is an example of this. When Tsar Alexander I of Russia refused to abide by Napoleon’s policy forbidding trade with Britain, Napoleon began an ill-fated invasion of Russia. He reached Moscow only to find the city abandoned, and a huge fire broke out that same day, destroying the greater part of the town. Since it is impossible to winter in the ruined city, Napoleon begins a retreat in October across the snow-covered plains. The retreat from Moscow is one of the great disasters of military history. Of some 600,000 troops who had set out with Napoleon’s Grand Army in June, fewer than 10,000 men fit for combat remained with his main force by November. A year later, Napoleon’s withered army was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig followed by the loss of Paris and the abdication and imprisonment of Napoleon. Because Napoleon could not provide for his troops, he lost.

The same will be true of those in Christianity who preach hate. Eventually, at least I hope, their congregations will realize that their needs have been ignored by the church. The churches I speak of are bad trees and eventually, people will realize that they are only producing bad fruit. They will realize that their trees have not been nourished and will look for ways to heal themselves. It is at this point that the good trees can nourish the bad trees back to health. With the strength of the good trees, they can help the bad trees once again be healthy and bear good fruit, but it will take time. We have to make sure that we care for not just the fruit or the branches of the trees, but the whole tree and ultimately, the whole orchard.

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; you have been very pleasant to me; your love to me was wonderful,surpassing the love of women.

— 2 Samuel 1:26

When people talk about the Bible being against LGBTQ+ individuals, one of the things I think about is the verse above. In gay theology, many people claim that David and Jonathan were lovers and gay. If they were, it would certainly not be the only incidence of two male lovers who were in public positions. Plato believed that the love between Achilles and Patroclus in The Iliad had the purest kind of love, that between two men. Alexander the Great had his great love Hephaestion. The Roman Emperor Hadrian was madly in love with Antinous to the point that when Antinous died, Hadrian declared him a god. The list could go on, but those are the most prominent and the list goes on from ancient times forward. 

Whether any of these men were gay lovers or not has been a debate for centuries. We will never know for sure because we cannot ask them. In the passage above though one thing is clear: Jonathan and David were two men who deeply loved each other, whether romantic or not. Often, we are taught that a deep love is not a masculine virtue, especially if those two men are both very masculine individuals. The exception is the Greek scholars who followed Plato’s belief that true love can only come from two equals, which in Plato’s time meant two men, not a man and a women because women were inherently inferior to the Ancient Greeks.

Gay or straight, people often look disparagingly on men who are more feminine than masculine. You often see “Masc 4 Masc” on gay dating profiles. However, the wider world, i.e, the straight world, doesn’t believe that two masculine men belong together, although they often have no issue with two “less manly” gay men or they think most masculine gay men belong with more feminine gay men. The problem is that we are taught at a young age that gender roles are very rigid. Yet, they obviously are not. Not all gay men are fully feminine and flamboyant or stoic and masculine. Those gender roles mean that men are supposed to be masculine and not show emotion, while women should be feminine and more emotional. Yet, there are sweet and tender masculine men and mean and unemotional queens out there. 

There is nothing wrong with being masculine or feminine, no matter what your primary sexual characteristics are. Being masculine does not mean that you can’t love and show emotion. There is nothing wrong with masculinity. It’s toxic masculinity that is the issue. I’ve always called toxic masculinity testosterone poisoning. The problem with masculinity is the belief that masculine individuals cannot show gentleness, affection, or love. This belief creates fear and hatred. It’s why some deeply closeted gay men are rabidly homophobic. If we were not taught strict binary attitudes about male and female, and encouraged people to be who they are, we would likely not have self-hating gays or as many young suicides by LGBTQ+ people. 

We need to be who we are, not what is expected of us. Sort of a gentler version of “let your freak flag fly.” The Bible shows us that two strong, decisive, masculine men are capable of loving one another. But more than that, it shows us that love can come in many forms and dynamics. If we are able to be ourselves and express our sexuality and not be tied to strict gender roles, we will be happier individuals.

For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

—Jeremiah 29:11

No matter who you are or where you find yourself at this very moment, you’ll likely have reached a point where you question what your purpose in life is. You might be going down a career path that feels unfulfilling, or maybe you have only just begun to search for your purpose in this world. Either way, rest assured, God has a plan for you. We all have a purpose, a destiny, that God has given us. We may not know what that is, but if we have faith in God to guide us, then we will follow our destiny. The 19^th- and early 20th-century American politician William Jennings Bryan said, “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

The Christian theology is in support of a divine destiny. That is, God has a predetermined plan for each one of us. For instance, in Jeremiah 1:5, God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” This shows us that God had a pre-determined plan for Jeremiah and has a plan for all of us. This also implies that the birth of a Christian is not an accident, but pre-planned for the purpose of God. The Reformation-era theologian John Calvin believed in predestination that God has an unchangeable decree from before the creation of the world that he would freely save some people while others would be “barred from access to” salvation. Calvin took the idea of God having a plan for us too far. Yes, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, but He gives us free will to follow the path He has chosen for us.

God created us with the ability to make our own choices and decisions. People live with the consequences of whatever choices they make. Proverbs 16:3 tells us, “Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.” If we follow the teachings of Christ and trust in the Lord, then we will find our path. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. We should all understand that our lives are full of unlimited possibilities. We just have to trust that we have divine guidance to know those possibilities. We have to believe that there is a place for the will of God, but also, there is a place for personal choice. For us to fulfill our destiny, we must make the right decisions and choices. 

We don’t have to make these decisions in a vacuum. God puts people in our lives to help us find that destiny. The astronomer Galileo Galilei said, “You cannot teach a [person] anything; you can only help [them] to find it within [them]self.” Not only must we trust that God is sending us on the right path, but it is also our obligation to help others follow their own path. We can do that by encouraging others to follow the Word of God and the teachings of Jesus.

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

—Matthew 7:12

In 2022, Harvard Business Review published an article by Irina Cozma, “It’s Time to Stop Following ‘The Golden Rule’” In it she writes, “It’s time to adopt a “New Golden Rule:” Treat others as they would like to be treated. It’s a small change, but one that can make a huge difference. All it takes to put this new mindset into practice is understanding, curiosity, and compromise.” In a way, she has a point. She says, “In our modern workplace, with all our different preferences, cultural backgrounds, professional disciplines, ages, genders, sexual orientations, etc., treating others as you would like to be treated isn’t always the best option. Although it can be helpful to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, doing so can actually lead to making assumptions based on your own perspective — not theirs.”

My issue with this is if we are truly following the Golden Rule, then we are not making assumptions about other people. Matthew 7:1 says clearly, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” When we make assumptions about people, we are making a judgment. If we truly follow Christ’s teachings, we will not judge or make assumptions about other people, but instead, we will treat them as we want to be treated. We do not want people to make assumptions about us; therefore, we are commanded to not make assumptions about them. People outside the South may hear my Southern accent and automatically assume three things: 1) I’m dumb, 2) I’m racist, 3) I’m a Republican. None of which is true. In the South, people would hear my voice and automatically assume I was gay, but while that was true, I didn’t always feel comfortable with that assumption. And if you’re wondering, people in the North don’t hear my “gay voice;” they only hear the Southern accent.

I was thinking about this last night and this morning after I saw a clip on Instagram from the comedian Karen Mills (@karenmillscomedy). I love Karen. She is so funny, without being raunchy, which has its place sometimes, but Karen is just clean fun. She just discusses everyday life in the South. Most of it, I can absolutely identify with, which makes her so funny. Karen also does some motivational speaking. She is a cancer survivor and had a near-fatal car accident. She often uses humor to help people who are facing hardships. Occasionally, she can also be very serious. This clip from a Ted Talk is one of those times, and she says everything else in this post that I would say, just better than I would say it:

And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

—Exodus 33:14

It’s been a long two weeks of constant work. I spent yesterday trying to get caught up and preparing for my class this week, and I will spend some of today doing the same. When I think about rest, Matthew 11:28 usually comes to mind: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Sometimes, we do need to look to God to give us the rest we need.

Work, especially if it’s work we love, gives us a sense of purpose and well-being. Genesis 2:15 tells us that God created us for work, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” However, it is not healthy to work all the time. There are times when we can become consumed with work, leading to increased stress, and straining our relationships. This is how I have felt these last couple of weeks.

God calls us to take a break from work. He gives us a day of rest each week. God set apart the seventh day as a holy day, to help us enter God’s rest and experience restoration, though Christians now take the first day of the week for rest. Some of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were so concerned about keeping the Sabbath, they prevented any form of work from taking place, even healing those who were suffering. Jesus corrected this misunderstand of the Sabbath on several occasions (Mark 3:1-6; Luke 13:10-17; John 9:14). Mark 2:27 teaches people that “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath is a gift of God’s grace, that helps us to experience life more fully by setting apart time to reflect on God as the center of our life. God is the one who provides for us. He is the one who heals and restores us. He is the one who saves us from our sin and invites us to share in His rest by placing our faith in the finished work of our savior, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 4:9 says, “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.”

When we rest in God, we deepen our relationship with Him. We increase our dependence on God for both His material and spiritual provision. Glorifying God should be the central aspect of both our work and our rest. God promises that if we turn to Him for rest, He will restore our souls. The beginning of 23^rd Psalm in verses 1-3 says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” Sometimes, we need God to remind us to rest.

P.S. Even Isabella could tell I was tired and needed rest, she let me sleep until 5:30 this morning.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

—Galatians 3:28

At the end of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. alludes to the apostle Paul’s words in Galatians 3:28. This verse seems to strike an almost modern note about human equality. Contemporary interpreters have updated Paul’s statement and added pairs to the three original ones: “neither gay nor straight,” “neither healthy nor disabled,” and “neither black nor white.” While these creative rewritings make Paul’s statement speak to new situations, they also highlight something about the original: These three pairs must have been as relevant in the first century as the additional categories are today.

This ideal of unity that Paul shared with his contemporaries was influenced by cosmopolitanism, a popular philosophical idea in the early Roman Empire. Cosmopolitanism’s main component was the conviction that all people are first and foremost citizens of the cosmos (universe) rather than of their local communities. This shared cosmic origin was thought to connect all people with each other and with the divine, and it suggested that all people could live in a unified society rather than be divided into different ethnic and geographic communities. Cosmopolitanism had implications not only for contemporary ideas about ethnic differences but also for ideas about the positions of slave and free and about marriage and the relationship between husband and wife. It, therefore, affected all three of the pairs mentioned by Paul. Galatians 3:28 envisages a social ideal of harmony and connection, where those factors in society that create division and conflict have been removed.

If you look up Galatians 3:28, you will see many people try to tell you that this doesn’t actually mean what it clearly says. They say it is taken out of context, yet Paul continues to say this over and over. In Colossians 3:9-11, Paul writes, “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” Romans 3:9 says, “What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.” In 1 Corinthians 7:22, Paul again says we are all one in Christ, “For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ’s slave.” 

Again, in Ephesians 6:8, Paul removes any distinction in mankind, “Knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.” In this verse, he tells the Ephesians that it does not matter who you are, but if you do good, then the Lord will accept you for any other way you might be identified or might identify. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Romans 8:38 says, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come.”  Like the other passages, this message is for all people, including LGBTQ+ individuals.

Many anti-LGBTQ+ people who call themselves Christians will claim that we are not born with same-sex attractions, and even if we were, God made a mistake. However, God does not make mistakes in his creation, and God did not make a mistake in creating LGBTQ+ people. Psalm 139:13-14 affirms that God made us the way we are, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. Sexual identity and gender identity are components of our very being and are part of who God made each of us to be. All people have been intentionally created by God, including LGBTQ people.  Isaiah 43:1 tells us, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.”

On this Labor Day weekend, we should remember that we are all equal and should be celebrated. Labor Day is a day to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the work and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. It is also a call for equality. On September 30, 1859, at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair, rising politician Abraham Lincoln answered the elitist vision of a society dominated by a few wealthy men. “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account for another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor—the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all—gives hope to all, and energy and progress, and improvement of condition to all.” 

In Lincoln’s worldview, everyone shared a harmony of interest. Ultimately, what was good for the individual worker was good for everyone. There was no conflict between labor and capital; capital was simply “pre-exerted labor.” Everyone was part of the same harmonious system except for a few unproductive financiers and those who wasted their wealth on luxuries. In the same way, we are all part of God’s harmonious system. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The Bible cannot only be applied to what was the social structure or understanding of sexuality in ancient times but also should be extended today to include everyone, “neither gay nor straight,” “neither healthy nor disabled,” and “neither black nor white.” We are all one in Christ, and He demands that we understand and strive for equality and acceptance for all.

When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

—Mark 2:17

I’m not feeling great this morning, and I was thinking of how Jesus is known as “The Great Physician.” He is called this for several reasons, not least of all because of the many miracles of healing He performed during His earthly ministry. The Bible tells us in John 6:2, “Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were sick.” He healed many sick people in the cities he traveled to. But Jesus wanted more than to heal their physical bodies. He wanted them to believe in Him.

When we read the four gospels in the Bible, we see many accounts of miraculous healings that Jesus performed. He healed people from leprosy (Luke 17:11-19), paralysis (Matthew 9:1-8), blindness (Matthew 9:27-31), deafness (Mark 7:31-37), and other illnesses. He cured many people (Luke 4:40). He even brought three dead people back to life: the son of a widow (Luke 7:11-17), the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). In John 4:48, He once said, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” All the signs and wonders Jesus performed had the purpose of proving that He was the Son of God, the promised Messiah. John 20:30-31 proclaims, “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

A clear example of the purpose behind the miracles is His healing of a man born blind (John 9:1-41), a miracle that no one had ever heard of before (John 9:32). John 9:33 tells us that the Jews knew that “If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.” That’s why the Pharisees did everything they could to dismiss this miracle, up to the point of excommunicating the main witness (John 9:34). They knew, if they admitted that Jesus had done it, they would have to admit that He was the Messiah. So, they kept on refusing to believe the evidence because they didn’t want to believe in Jesus (John 9:39-41).

During His ministry, Jesus didn’t heal only people’s physical bodies. He cared for the other aspects of their ailments as well. He knew what they needed besides getting rid of their sicknesses. For example, when Jesus healed a man with leprosy in Matthew 8:1-4, He first touched him. We don’t know for how long that man had been sick. Due to the strict laws regarding skin diseases, we can assume that, for the duration of his illness, no one had ever touched him, until Jesus did. Leprosy is spread through touch, and Jesus’s touch was the first physical contact he had had in a long time. Jesus also told him to show himself to the priest and follow what the Law of Moses determined that he should do in that case. The procedure would allow him to be socially and religiously active again. After the priest confirmed his healing, he would be able to go to the Temple, to move back inside the city, and to touch and be touched. He would have his normal life back. It was not only about physical healing. Jesus took care of this man’s emotional, social, and psychological needs as well.

The Bible mentions other aspects of the mind and the heart that Jesus takes care of. For example, He takes care of our anxiety. First Peter 5:7 says, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”  He gives us peace (John 14:27), rest (Matthew 11:28), and joy (John 15:11). He gives purpose to our lives (Philippians 1:21) and makes us part of His family (John 1:12). Every good thing that we have and everything we need comes from the Father through Him (James 1:17). Jesus also gives us the respect we deserve in this life. No one can take away our faith because they say LGBTQ+ people are unworthy. He gives us the love so many of us need in this life. He wants us to be part of his family, and it is through Christ’s teachings that we can make the world a better place.

Jesus never promised to heal every sickness we have in this life. We will inevitably experience suffering (John 16:33), but Jesus wants us to be healed and saved. That’s why He died and was resurrected. The Bible tells us that, one day, we will meet with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:17). He will give us an immortal body (1 Corinthians 15:54). There will be no more sickness, no more pain. We will be free from all suffering (Revelation 21:4). And we will enjoy eternity in His glorious presence.