Volume 3, Issue 1

Becoming a New Creation in Christ

Cover Stories

Becoming a New Creation in Christ
By Candace Chellew
In Christ, we are new creations. But don’t wrongly believe that we spring forth fully as new creations the moment we accept Jesus. No, we are constantly being renewed in Christ.

A New Creation, Make It So!
By Pastor Jim Bilbrey, Ph.D., DD
When we become a new creation in Christ we are transformed by the Grace of God. Sometimes it is dramatic, and people describe a blessed assurance that they have become brand-new people. Other times we may not notice any appreciable change, and are disappointed.

Life in the Brave New World of Jesus
By Dr. Rembert S. Truluck
When Jesus comes into your life, one of the main changes is that your attention is directed to love for other people and not to keeping the rules that will somehow make YOU more acceptable to God.

Learning To Fly: A Meditation on Change
By Dave Reid
When we face change, I think God is often pushing us to the edge of our ledges, asking us to do what we were born to do — ‘spread our spiritual and emotional wings and fly’.

Just As We Are
By Hayden K. Smith
As gay people we have a uniqueness that allows us to perceive both the feminine and the masculine. We can acknowledge both the strength and the delicate world that surrounds us. Far from being separated from God, we are very much in touch with His creation.

Homospirituality

Black, Gay and Spiritual
By Shurron M. Farmer
I write this to not only share with you a small part of my story, but to let others know that God’s grace is sufficient for you.

Flexing Our Spiritual Muscles
By Rev. Vera I. Bourne
Each crisis in our lives is reflected in our spiritual dimensions. When we hear lies or slander, we are reminded of Christ’s truthfulness. When we see society deliberately split asunder by racial tensions, we remember that we are all God’s children, and each is sister/brother, mother/father to us.

Grace: Amazing, Isn’t It?
By Grace Jannsen
Grace means freedom from the bondage of sin and full, unqualified acceptance by God. No longer am I bound by the negativity of the grace killers telling me that just because I’m gay, I can’t be a Christian. I know better because I have experienced the miracle of God’s grace.

An Open Letter to Gay and Lesbian Christians
By Michael J. Spires
The good news of the Gospel is for all-slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female, and yes, gay, lesbian, or heterosexual. God does not play favourites, so you may legitimately question the sincerity and the motives of anyone who does-and especially of those who claim to do so in God’s name.

The Father
By Wanda DeVine
Here is where many gays and lesbians are today. They have spent their lives walking the streets utterly alone. They feel unloved, unworthy, and worst of all they feel like God never really loved them. They feel like God lied to them.

Blaine
By Father Damien Schill
I saw him in July, but we did not spend much time together. Blaine was dashing here and there. It seemed as if AIDS did not infect him that they had cured him. That was the last time he hugged me, the last time he kissed me, the last time I saw him alive.

Coming Out and Coming Home
By Anne
I had thought that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was another nice myth, but I was struck by a thunderbolt of God’s love. I knew, KNEW, that God loved me, that He made me, and that He wanted the best for me.

Features

Freeing the Pulpit So All May Freely Serve
By Candace Chellew
There are many pastors and others who have heard the call to preach the gospel who are muzzled, simply because of their sexual orientation.

Letters to the Editor

From the Pulpit

Meeting Jesus Again
By Russell L. Bennett
The quest for the divine determines all else. This is the one thing for which you will abandon everything, because God is everything. To know God, to know what is real, to know the truth, is to be set free.

Really?!?
By Patricia E. de Jong
I fear that modern Christianity, as a religion, has had all the mystery and the wonder removed from it. In its place is a religion made up of simplistic values, a legalistic bias stressing sin and salvation, and an emphasis on the right kind of behavior providing entrance to eternal life.

Married to a Builder
By Reverend Michael S. Piazza
We are being built by God. That is the beauty of the image before us in the scripture lesson today. The prophet seeks to remind us that it is the everlasting God who is building us.

Bible Study and Inspiration

Christians and “Disputable Matters”: An Examination of Romans 14 as Applied to the Homosexuality Issue
By William Stephenson
As Christians judge “disputable matters” and pass judgement upon those who practice homosexuality, they form a “stumbling block” that is very spiritually harmful to gay and lesbian people.

Purifying Our Faith: A Commentary on James
By Wanda DeVine
Saying that I have faith is easy, simple to do. Anyone can say that they have faith. But when your faith is tried, when you go through the fires of life and come out with a better, purer, stronger, tougher faith than when you began then you know you really have faith.

Holy Humor

God’s Judgment on Heterosexuality and the Church’s Caring Response

Jesus Christ Declares ror President