All R Called

This is the journey ahead for the next 4 weeks

At the beginning of this week and with the invitation from God to come and talk to you. How would you describe your heart coming into this week? Something to think about, you are welcome to respond here if you want to.

A weekly prayer guide for our theme. Reach out to me if you would like to receive the Prayerbook and I will send the pdf to you.

Welcome to our August theme of Receive: Receiving the Whisper. We are doing something new this month and would love for all of you to be part of it. If you can not be part of the Zoom groups, interact here with us.

Everlasting.
Not "everlasting if."
Not "everlasting unless."
Everlasting.

This month we have walked through the 7 clobber passages — the verses that have been weaponised against LGBTQIA+ people for decades:

📖 Genesis 9 (Noah and Ham) — a story of shame and r**e, not orientation
📖 Genesis 19 (S***m) — about gang r**e and inhospitality, confirmed by Ezekiel
📖 Judges 19 — a parallel S***m story where a woman is the victim
📖 Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 — addressing Canaanite cultic prostitution and the exploitation of boys
📖 Romans 1:26–27 — addressed to idol-worshipping cult practitioners, possibly the Isis religion
📖 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 — using a word Paul invented, likely targeting pederasty and sexual trafficking

Not one of these passages, understood in context, condemns a committed, loving, faithful same-sex relationship.

Not one.

And over all of them — over every chapter, every letter, every poem — hangs Jeremiah 31:3:

Everlasting love. Unfailing kindness.

This is what overarches everything. This is what cannot be broken — not by 7 misread verses, not by centuries of mistranslation, not by the voices that told you that you were the exception.

God's love is not a policy.
It is a Person.
And that Person has drawn you — yes, you — with unfailing kindness.

💛 Share this with someone who needs the full picture today.

The very first baptism recorded in Acts outside of Israel was a gender-nonconforming African.

A eu**ch was a person who did not fit the gender binary of the ancient world. In many cases they were castrated, but the term also encompassed those who were simply "different" — outside the expected male/female categories of the time. The Old Testament law (Deuteronomy 23:1) explicitly excluded eu**chs from the assembly of God.

And here, in Acts 8, one approaches Philip and asks: "What is to prevent me from being baptised?"

And Philip baptises him.

No condition.
No "but first you must change."
No asterisk.

And the Spirit? The Spirit confirms it — snatching Philip away, leaving the eu**ch alone, rejoicing, on his way.

The very first recorded baptism beyond Jewish Christianity was a gender-nonconforming person from Africa.

And they went on their way rejoicing.

That's not a footnote in the story of the church. That IS the story of the church: a Spirit that outpaces our prejudice, who welcomes who we would exclude, and who writes the outsider into the very first chapter of global Christianity.

The doors of this kingdom have always been wider than we imagined. 💛



Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash

The Psalmist didn't write: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made — except for this part."

He wrote: I am.
Fully.
Wonderfully.
As made.

We have spent this month looking at what the Bible does NOT say about LGBTQIA+ people. Today we look at what it does say — about every human being:

God knit you together.
God saw your unformed body (v.16).
God knew every day of your life before you were born.
And the response to knowing all of that — every cell, every trait, every part of who you would become — was to call His work wonderful.

If God is the one who formed your inmost being — including how you love, who you are, the full texture of your humanity — then your identity is not a mistake. It is not a flaw in the fabric. It is part of the weaving.

You were not made in spite of being LGBTQIA+.
You were made.

And the One who made you looked at you and said: wonderful.

This month has been about truth. The truth of the text. The truth of history. The truth of scholarship.

But underneath all of it is this simpler, deeper truth: You are loved because you are known. You are known because you were made. And the One who made you has never stopped calling you His own. 💛

🔗 Join a community group — link in bio. You don't have to walk this alone.

Everything.
All of Scripture.
Hangs on love.

Here is something that doesn't get talked about enough:

Jesus — God in human form, who walked the earth, who knew everything, who addressed sin directly and unflinchingly — never once mentioned homosexuality.

Not once.

He spoke about divorce. About wealth. About hypocrisy. About judgment. About pride and legalism. He spoke to and about women, Samaritans, Roman soldiers, tax collectors, Pharisees, adulterers, fishermen, lepers, and outcasts of every kind.

He never mentioned same-sex love.

Some say: "Silence doesn't mean approval." But consider this: homosexuality existed in the Greco-Roman world of Jesus's time — openly and visibly. He encountered it. He chose not to address it. And He chose instead to make love the measure of everything.

Jesus condemned judgment ten times more frequently than any sexual sin. He condemned religious hypocrisy constantly. He called out the self-righteous who used religious law to exclude the people He came to embrace.

When the church uses 7 debated verses to exclude LGBTQIA+ people from God's love — and does so in the name of Jesus, who never said a word about it — that is worth examining carefully.

Love God. Love people. On this hangs everything. 💛

Paul wrote this.

The same Paul whose words have been twisted to exclude LGBTQIA+ people — this same Paul, writing to the Romans, ends his great theological argument with this declaration.

Nothing.
Not death. Not life. Not powers.
Not your sexuality. Not your gender identity. Not who you love.

Paul lists every force he can conceive of that might try to stand between a person and God's love — and then says: none of it works. None of it.

The love of God is not a reward for correct theology.
It is not contingent on your denomination.
It is not withheld from the LGBTQIA+ community.

It is the ground on which every human being stands, whether they know it or not.

We have spent two weeks walking through the 7 clobber passages — not to be controversial, but because we believe that the truth about God's Word frees people. Today we simply stop and stand in that truth:

You are loved. Without condition. Without asterisk. Without end.

That is the gospel. That is the core of all Scripture. And not one verse — properly understood — contradicts it.

💛 Save this. Read it on the hard days.

Before 1946, no English Bible translation used that word. Not the King James. Not any of them.

In 1946, translators of the Revised Standard Version made a decision to combine two Greek words (malakoi and arsenokoitai) and translate them together as "homosexuals" in 1 Corinthians 6:9. The lead translator, Dr. Luther Weigle, later admitted this was a mistake when challenged — but the damage was done. The word spread into other translations and into pulpits around the world.

One translation decision. 1946. And millions of LGBTQIA+ people were told they were excluded from the Kingdom of God — based on a word that didn't exist in the original text.

The concept of "sexual orientation" — the idea that a person IS homosexual, that it is an identity rather than an act — simply did not exist in the ancient world. Ancient people thought in terms of actions, roles, and power, not orientation.

Paul could not have condemned something he had no concept of.

This doesn't shake our faith in Scripture — it deepens it. Because it means the Bible, read faithfully, has never excluded you.

Jesus said the truth sets you free. This is that truth. 💛

🔗 Watch the All R Called YouTube channel for the full teaching. Link in bio.

#1946