Sunday Service 9.9.18

Personal Thought…

Faith makes all things possible.

Love makes the possible into all things.

Hope builds faith and love.

Joy is the acceptance of grace.

 

Pastor Dan

Romans 8:6-7

(NLT) ⁵ Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. ⁶ So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.⁷ For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. ⁸ That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.

We’re free, free forever, amen.

Children’s ministry

1. We need young families
2. Invite friends
3. a

Produce truck was phenomenal

God gives us all different visions, different gifts.

(My gifts are rejected because my life is called sin.  How do you stop the unstoppable when failure to stop leads to destruction of all things holy?)

Thirst for more than water.  Like a fire, it starts small.

John 4

• Meaninglessness
• Competition
• Boredom
• Fatigue
• Envy
• Guilt
• Shame
• Fear of public opinions

So long as we’re thirsty, the more we will take God’s gifts and complain they are not enough.

Live your life with the desciples.  Jesus walked with them.
Followers of Jesus are called to love foolishly.

24. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

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God in Work

I’ve started a Bible devotional with Becca called “Practicing The Presence Of God”.  We’re on day 1.  Immediately several items struck me.

1. I need to pray more while working on the computer, especially when working on my personal projects.
2. 1 Thessalonians 4:11: Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before.

I try to speak honestly and openly about God and how my experiences affect the common interpretation of the Bible.  Of course most of this work is carried out in YouTube comments.  One-on-one conversations that hopefully make the other person think and discover a new path to love.

Am I speaking for myself or for God?

 

A Fair Response to Gender Critics

I know my 23rd chromosome is XY.  I cannot change that.  But that’s not my problem.  My problem exists between the abstract and the physical.  How much more esoteric can it get, right?

You’re looking at a crevasse from a thousand kilometers away and telling me it’s just a tiny scratch. I’m traversing it and can tell you it’s a massive chasm.

You’re perspective is not wrong, just incomplete and lacking the tools to measure. If you want to know more I can offer my experience. Otherwise your statement is noted and I bid you well.

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Okay.  We get the physical.  What is abstract in this comparison?

Simple: The mind.

There is no physical existence to the mind except as the firing of neurons.  But there’s an enormous gap between interconnected neurons firing in patterns to those patterns imagining a warm sunny day in a grass field or contemplating a future event.

Thus the mind is an abstract thing that rides within patterns of firing neurons.

Identity is an organisms’ sense of self.  Just like the mind this sense doesn’t exist physically.  It’s an abstract concept that is unique to every organism.

Now being abstract we cannot say how identity emerges.  We can say it’s influenced by the body and the environment but that’s not creation.

Identity rarely fits perfectly with biology.  A majority of people look at some part of themselves and say “I should not be this way.”  What is wrong and how much is wrong varies from person to person.  Sometimes it’s being overweight.  Sometimes it’s a destructive habit.  Rarely it happens to an entire limb – BDD.  And then there are cases where sex is the problem.

When sex is the problem we call it gender dysphoria – a sense of unease about our biological sex that causes distress.  In this case the problem that emerges is not that the mind is faulty or the body is faulty.  Both work correctly.

The problem is identity developed the wrong sense of self.  This setting of identity cannot be undone without causing severe trauma, damaging the person in the process.  Changing the body on the other hand is not traumatic in and of itself.

Either way, aligning body and mind fixes the problem.

My Avatar

(Work-in-progress)

Name: Samantha Angel Talpin

A.K.A.: Super Nerd Woman

Age: 35

Race: Human, Caucasian

Occupation: Professional Driver

Chapter 1

Faster and faster the car raced.  Sam was pushing the limits of her car and her body.  The dashed lines of the road moving so fast as to be a blur now.  She could feel the inertia dampeners trying to compensate then become overwhelmed, slamming her body against the sides of the car by the shifting forces as the car reeled though the maze of weekend traffic.

Over and over one thought consumed her.  “Get away.  Gotta get away.”

Behind her a dozen vehicles were losing ground.

The car lurched as an explosion knocked her car into a parked sedan.  She corrected, narrowly avoiding the remainder of the line of parked vehicles.

A warning alarm sounded distracting Sam momentarily.  “Heat seekers.  Damn!” She mumbled to herself.  Even if she shut down the car and coasted the remaining mile her red-hot exhaust would draw them right up her tail pipe.  Chaff would confuse the rockets but if they were as smart as she expected, chaff wouldn’t be enough.  She needed to hide and quickly.  That’s when she spotted the garage and instantly made her decision.  She turned sharply setting the car skidding in a wide arc right into the parking garage, though the cheesy wooden gate and up the incline.  Even at speed she could navigate this structure without trouble.  This was no ordinary car.  Sam was no ordinary driver.

Sam felt more than heard the boom from the rockets impact.  No time to waste, she sped around a corner and flew out the other side of the building onto 9th street.  An angry driver honked but she was gone before he could attempt anything more.  The car was increasing speed quickly.

A quick left and a right and Sam was back on the road out of the city.  All her instruments read clear.  She lost them.  A single blip appeared near the edge of her screen.  It was trying to follow her.  Then it was gone, out of range.

Sam took a deep breath.  She made it.  She let up on the acceleration, holding her current speed of 350 kph.

Great Article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/08/26/where-in-the-bible-does-it-say-you-cant-be-transgender-nowhere/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.86f950509f43

 

Genesis 1:27 says: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” It’s this interpretation of “and” between male and female that creates a foundation for understanding gender to be binary. But the “and” isn’t meant to be binary.

Genesis 1:1 says: “God created the heavens and the earth.” In reading this verse, Christians interpret that God created not just the sky and the ground but everything in between. The “and” encompasses a spectrum by pointing to the two ends of the spectrum. Similarly, scripture says God is the “alpha and omega,” the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. That’s not meant to say God is just those two letters. God is the entire alphabet, from alpha to omega and everything in between. As Alan Hooker and others have noted, Christians acknowledge throughout scripture that “and” represents a spectrum, not a binary.

 

Topics for YouTube

I’d like to make a video but need topics and notes on each topic.

1. Side effects of keeping your dysphoria hidden
   1. When anyone starts to get close, to prevent exposure you will lie, redirect the conversation, even become hostile.
   2. To accept who you are physically means lying to yourself.
   3. When asked how you are you lie with a smile rather than disclose how ugly you feel or how desperately you want to be the opposite sex.
2. Resolving my faith in Christ
   1. If God didn’t want me to change He would have provided some way for me to cope with my dysphoria.  I was desperate for years and was blessed but never did God help me deal with my dysphoria.  Not once.

 

Christian

Being transgender and Christian is tough. Many judge first, saying I am sinning and from that decide my punishment and pronounce me unfit or unworthy to carry the title of Christ Follower.

Yet He made me who and what I am. He calls me to be my authentic self. This authentic self is not defined by what I wear or how I look. It is based on how I act and what I think every moment of every day. If I use love as my guide I am doing well and fulfilling the Mosaic Laws. It is when I stop using love that I am sinning. This means no lasting judgement against anyone. I may judge guilty those that wrong me and I should forgive anyone who asks forgiveness. I leave God’s judgement up to God. He alone decides what is clean and what is not.

There’s a gotcha with love. I must also love myself, all of me. So long as I pretended to be a man on the inside I was neither loving nor authentic.

“I find any religion lacking that leads with judgment instead of leading with acceptance and love.” – Rev. Dr. Paula Stone Williams

The NY Times had an opinion piece on being transgender.  I found it following Paula’s story on the Internet.  The first story had me captivated.  It rang true, every word of it.  I had to read another.  I stopped myself from continuing.  I was already emotional and ready to cry.  The stories, just those 2 stories were pure reflections of my past.  They don’t tell my whole story but they certainly pointed out several highly important points.

I forced myself to go back and click instead on Paula’s story.  More truth resonated in my head.

As you grow older sometimes a path no longer feels like an option. It calls relentlessly toward the elusive land of authenticity that is always just over the horizon. You have built kingdoms, slain dragons, saved the world, but is time to go home, even if you’ve never been there before. It is time to walk through the door of the place that looks like it has been expecting you.”

– NY Times Opinion
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/opinion/transgender-today/stories/paula-stone-williams

I cannot tell you, even today, how often I look at a woman and say, “Lord, I wish I could ever be that beautiful.”