In case you’ve been hiding somewhere underground for a couple of decades and just came up for a look see, you’re already aware of the push by every possible media outlet for homosexuality to become acceptable.  Gay and lesbian couples have been featured more and more prominently in any number of the popular television shows and movies over the last handful of years, and this past Sunday night’s Grammys – the music awards show turned political talk show – was just one more step, albeit a pretty dang big one.

Towards the end of the show, 33 couples lined up to be married as Queen Latifah officiated the ceremony.  The wedding singers were none other than Macklemore & Ryan Lewis singing “Same Love” and even Madonna got into the mix with a special verse for the wedded couples.  Some were old, some young, some straight and some gay.  But all of them took part in another push for a homosexual agenda.

And it isn’t just the Grammys.  That’s never been a surprise.  This is the season on The Biggest Loser when Bob and Jillian made sure to let viewers know that they’re gay, and one of the biggest themes of the season has been how one of the contestants (Bobby) found the strength to come out to his dad.  There’s the (admittedly) hilarious gay couple on Modern Family, and the icing on the cake (at least for our family) was the introduction of a lesbian couple on the Disney show “Good Luck, Charlie” with just 3 episodes remaining until the series is over for good.  Really?  You’ve had 4 seasons of a really good show and pull that out of the hat with 3 shows left?  Talk about an agenda.

And as much as you think you know where I’m going with this (because it’s easy to spot an agenda, right?), I’m pretty sure you’ll be wrong.  I know I’m running the risk of being labeled a homophobe or a gay-basher just for writing on the subject, but what I really want you to see is that the people who seem to love homosexuals the most really don’t, and the people you thought didn’t love them really do.

I know this will be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow, but the world doesn’t love homosexuals.  The world loves homosexuality, and there’s a big difference.  Because the world loves homosexuality, it will gladly accept anyone – or anything – that will help it push its agenda.  Heck, even the recent uproar in the church over the Duck Dynasty controversy was probably welcomed by pro-homosexuality groups because the attention in the media gave them another opportunity to show Christians as uneducated and unwilling to accept anyone different than us.

But what happens when a homosexual walks away from that lifestyle?  Does the same world that appeared to love them as homosexuals still love them as straight?  At least one group found the answer to be a resounding “no” when they were routinely discriminated against by the very people who used to accept them.

If you’ve hung in here this long, thank you. Now let’s try to land this thing with some extremely clear, easy-to-understand statements.  God loves homosexuals, and so should his church.  Not because he – or we – approve of homosexuality because we don’t, but because approval has never been a prerequisite to God’s love.  God has an incredible capacity to love, and the best evidence of God’s love in us isn’t when we love those who like us, but when we love those who don’t.

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. (Romans 5:8-10, NLT – emphasis added)

Make no mistake: God loves his enemies.  I’m proof of that, because I was born his enemy, and every desire I had at birth not only took me farther from God, but also made me his killer when I got close to him.  Asking whether or not we were born gay or straight is the wrong question because the answer will always be that we were born sinners and enemies of a God who always meant for us to be his children.  That’s why he sent Jesus to die on a cross.  It wasn’t to make gay people straight.  It was to make dead people live.

It was a clear statement that, while the world loves homosexuality, God loves homosexuals. It’s the difference between an agenda and a Saviour.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated yard work.  I’ve secretly fantasized about sneaking out in the middle of the night and painting my entire landscape so that it would look good without needing any upkeep.  Yes, I know this is unrealistic, and so I’m caught somewhere between having a great yard that requires work and living in an apartment with flowers around the front sign that someone else takes care of.  Until very recently, I’ve been the guy on the riding mower constantly being chased by a cloud of dust.

If you read The Blog Channel with any regularity, then you know that a couple of months ago we took some pretty extreme measures to fix our yard (check out some pics if you’d like), which has resulted in a yard with a bit more grass and a lot less of the things that I hate the most about yard work: weeds and sticks.

If there was one thing that could ruin a perfect Saturday growing up, it was these five words from my dad at breakfast: “Today, we’re picking up sticks.”  That short sentence always felt like a lifetime sentence in yard work hell.  Growing up on 17 acres of land with about 2 of them covered in grass under large trees meant that there never seemed to be an end to sticks and weeds and rocks to be cleared out of the way so that my dad could come behind us on the mower.

Stick and stones may break your bones, but they can definitely break the will of a teenager on a Saturday morning.

Fast forward to life as I know it today, and now I’m the dad saying the same thing to my kids, except I don’t say it as often, because I’m not the dad who has a lot of yard maintenance motivation.  I’ve seen those guys, and I think I’ve even had conversations with those guys, but I am not one of those guys, and I think it’s because – deep down – I’ve always felt like the battle with lawn trash like weeds and sticks was unwinnable.  Limbs fall down and weeds grow up, and they both have to go if you have any hope of an attractive yard.

“Green and clean” is a phrase that gets a lot of mileage about yards, and I even read one guy who said if he couldn’t have green, he could at least always have clean.  My dilemma? If the sticks match the color of the dirt because there’s no green, what’s the point of picking them up?  And if the only thing you can grow that’s green is weeds, why pull ’em?

In case I’ve lost you, let me sum up before we move on: while it is possible to be clean without green, the truth is that a yard without growth is demoralizing, and at some point the reality is that we’ll just end up letting it go.  That’s the cold truth about our humanity, and unfortunately, that truth carries over into our spiritual lives, too.

It’s easy to become discouraged about the fight we wage against sin in our culture and ourselves.  We do have days when it feels like we’re winning, but many days we feel more like Paul did when he wrote these words:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:15, 18-19)

Sounds like that unwinnable weed war, doesn’t it?  Paul sounds about as hopeless against his struggle with sin as I did in my argument to my dad growing up that Saturdays were for sleeping, and I can assure you that I’ve muttered things like this under my breath as I tried to turn a dirty yard into a clean one. “I want to pull these weeds.  I want to pick up these sticks.  But I know they’ll just be back tomorrow and there’s too many to get them all.  It’s too far gone. I want a clean yard, but I’m powerless against the onslaught of yard trash!!  I give up!”

Paul said it a little differently, but his response to the overwhelming reality of the sin – the sticks and weeds – in his heart was the same: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)

Thankfully, there is hope in this war against sticks, stones, weeds, and sin.  Actually, there’s a lot more than hope.  There’s victory, and it all comes from a hopeless life living surrendered to the ultimate Gardener.  We have a rescuer, and His name is Jesus.  Paul, overcome with the joy of knowing he wasn’t left to a heart full of multiplying sin, penned the equivalent of the first words spoken at the press conference of a liberated POW: “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25)

Now, it’d be great to end it right there, wouldn’t it?  Sin is defeated, the sticks and rocks are removed and covered up with fresh topsoil, and Roundup has made sure that the weeds that were there aren’t any longer.  But the truth is that the war still rages.  We still have sin that creeps up in our lives, just like my brand new yard still collects sticks and weeds.  But just like I’m no longer trying to make a dirty yard clean, we’re no longer trying to make a sinful heart good.

I don’t have the same yard I once had.  I (along with help from good friends) removed the old one and put down a new one.  New soil, new seed, new bushes, new pine needles.  And here’s the best lesson I’ve learned: it’s a whole lot easier to keep a clean yard clean than it was to keep a dirty yard clean.  Because my yard is no longer overgrown with weeds and covered with limbs and sticks, I can spot a new weed or a fallen limb from clear across the lawn.  I still pull weeds – it seems daily, too – but it’s just one or two at a time instead of feeling like I need to run Roundup through my sprinkler!

In our spiritual lives, the principle is the same.  We’re not trying to scrub a dirty heart clean.  Religion tries – and fails – to do that.  Instead, Jesus has given each of us a new heart, a new life, and new strength, and now we simply do the upkeep.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

How do you guard your heart?  The same way I guard my yard against the inevitable weeds: daily. Spend consistent time in prayer and reading the Scriptures each day, and you’ll be amazed how much easier it will be to spot the sin in your life that doesn’t belong.  It will literally stick out like a sore thumb.

Or, at least like an unwanted weed.

John 11:39
Jesus said, “Move the stone away.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, “But, Lord, it has been four days since he died. There will be a bad smell.” (NCV)

I have an ugly yard. I guess I can say that and not hurt anyone’s feelings because I’m the guy who takes care of it (and I use that phrase loosely). Our yard is the final resting place for the bad plants, kind of like The Green Mile except that, well, there’s not a lot of green. Bushes last only a few seasons, there are rocks embedded in the lawn, and the only things that seem to flourish are weeds. It is, as I said, ugly.

But every now and then I look at my yard and see beauty. Typically it happens once a year, on the day of the first mowing of the season. I start with a yard full of sticks and leftover leaves from the fall and end with a yard that is clean and a little more green than the brown it was before I mowed. I edge and trim it and then blow the clippings away and it always strikes me how much just cleaning away the junk can make even my ugly yard look good.

Our faith is like that, and Easter is the perfect reminder of it. We spend so much effort and energy trying to keep covered up what we feel is ugly, and yet our Lord knows that the first step towards beauty is the uncovering of the ugly. Martha knew that, and tried to warn Jesus that moving the stone would release a bad smell, but Jesus wasn’t buying it. If He really is the resurrection and the life, then not only can He bring life where there was death, but He can handle all the old smells that try to linger around, too. He told Martha that if she truly believed, she would see the glory of God.

What shows His glory? The dead live, the old is new, and there is no longer any hint of the previous ugly condition. Hope springs eternal and in a moment, the uncovering of what we fear is the most ugly gives way to a beauty and a hope that we could never have imagined.

On this Resurrection Day, know that He has uncovered the myth behind the enemy’s greatest tactic: the ugliness of death is no longer to be feared because even in that, our Lord brings life. He is the victor, and finally, I am made new.

Now, if I could just sprinkle some of that on my lawn…