Openness Unhindered Quotes

“When the Lord entered my world, I experienced that gospel-ignited “expulsive power of a new affection” (to quote the title of Thomas Chalmers’s famous sermon). That new affection was not heterosexuality, but Jesus, my Jesus, my friend and Savior. I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Whether the pain you face now is the consequence of your sin or the sin of others, in God’s providence and in saving faith, Romans 8:28 still reigns: “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” It is not the absence of sin that makes you a believer. It is the presence of Christ in the midst of your struggle that commends the believer and sets you apart in the world.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“It is the moral anesthetic of our day to ask God and our friends to only understand our sin from our point of view. This mind-set of seeing sin from a personal point of view has led to, at best, weak Christians crippled by sin and untouched by gospel power, or at worst, wolves in sheep’s clothing who hunker down with offices in the church, teaching feeble sheep a perverted catechism, one that renders sin grace and grace sin, one that confuses doubt with intelligence and skepticism with renewed hope. When we live by the belief that sin is best discerned from our own point of view, we cannot help but to develop a theology of excuse-righteousness. We become anesthetized to the reality of our own sin. One consequence of this moral anesthesia is the belief that you are in good standing with God if you give to him what the desires of your flesh can spare. But sin, biblically rendered, is both a crime and a disease, requiring both the law of God and his grace to apply it for true help.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Stepping into God’s story means abandoning a deeply held desire to make meaning of our own lives on our own terms based on the preciousness of our own feelings.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“When we confess a sin, we are not asking that God or others see it from our point of view, from the vantage point of our intentions or our motives. Instead, we use God’s point of view. We submit to the righteous hand of God. We consent that the Bible is true and that the law of God condemns us. And this either drives us into mad depression or into the open arms of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The implications are far-reaching. Confession of sin is meant to drive us to Christ, for our good and for his glory.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Often because of misplaced priorities, we unwittingly limp along on a starvation diet of Scripture, forgetting that we have an appointment with Satan, our deceiver and accuser, the minute we rise from our reading chair.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Repentance is the threshold to God. When heat meets ice, the solid substance liquefies completely. Repentance liquefies the will of the flesh. Repentance is our daily fruit, our hourly washing, our minute- by-minute wakeup call, our reminder of God’s creation, Jesus’ blood, and the Holy Spirit’s comfort. Repentance is the only no-shame solution to a renewed Christian conscience because it proves the obvious: that God was right all along. To the sexual sinner, repentance feels like death—because it is. The “you” who once was is no longer, even if your old feelings remain.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“In the LGBT community, the opposite of pride is self- hatred. But in the Bible, the opposite of pride is faith. Was pride keeping me from faith, or was pride keeping me from self-hatred? That was when the question inserted itself like a foot in the door: Did pride distort self-esteem the way lust distorts love? This was the first of my many betrayals against the LGBT community: whose dictionary did I trust? The one used by the community that I helped create or the one that reflected the God who created me? As soon as the question formed itself into words, I felt convicted of the sin of pride. Pride was my downfall. I asked God for the mercy to repent of my pride at its root.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Take my hand and join me on this journey, please. If you are a Christian and you are struggling with sexual sin, this book is meant to equip and encourage you in your daily walk of faith with Jesus. If you are not yet a Christian, my hope is that I can reach through the pages of this book, take your hand, and put it in the hand of our Savior.             If you call yourself a Christian, but you do not believe that you need to repent of the sin that claims your identity, heart, and perhaps body, my prayer is that this book sounds a serious alarm to you. Your soul is at stake, and I will take the risk of offending you to help. Salvation is a gift, offered to all who have a broken and contrite heart (Ps. 51:17). God promises tenderness to the brokenhearted: “I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick,” but judgment for those who defend the right to their sin: “but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment” (Ezek. 34:16). A humble and a broken heart is a gift from God. Pray for a heart that breaks on the rock of Christ. Pray for a tender conscience about sin, even your deepest, most primal sin.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Hospitality is not a house inspection, it’s friendship.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“When we are too functional, we forget the point of hospitality in the home: fellowship, not entertainment. Don't let pride stop you from opening your home. Ignore the cat hair on the couch (or in the mac and cheese). It likely won't kill anyone as decisively as loneliness will. Add as much water to the pot to stretch the soup. If you run out of food, make pancakes, and put the kids in charge of making that meal. See how much fun that is.

And know that someone is spared from another humiliating fall into internet pornography because he is instead walking with you and your kids and dogs, as you share the Lord's Day, one model of how the Lord gives you daily grace and a way of escape. Know that someone is spared the fear and darkness of depression because she is needed at your house, always on the Lord's Day, the day she is never alone, but instead safely in community, where her place at the table is needed and necessary and relied upon. Know that someone is drawn into Christ's love because the Bible reading and psalm singing that come at the close of the meal include everyone, and that it reminds us that no one is scapegoated in this Christ-bearing community. Know that host and guest are equally precious and fragile, and that you will play both roles throughout the course of this life. The doors here open wide. They must.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“When God approaches Cain after he rejects his sacrifice, God says this: “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4: 6–7). God does not take Cain’s point of view into account when he rejects his sacrifice. God does not reconsider his position because of Cain’s intentions. A sacrifice must bleed in order to count. This bedrock truth can only be apprehended through God’s point of view, not my own good intentions. So instead God rebukes Cain for pouting, and warns him that if he does not change, worse things are in store. God proclaims to Cain something vital about this enemy we call sin: it lurks at the entrance of your life, it knows you and desires you, it has a key to your heart and affections, and you must go to battle with it. Every day.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“My conversion left my former friends and family thinking I was loony to the core. How could I leave a worldview that was open, welcoming, and inclusive for one that believes in Original Sin, values the law of God, seeks conversion into a born-again constitution, believes in the truthful ontology of God’s Word as found in the Bible, claims the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, and purports the redemptive quality of suffering? Only one reason: because Jesus is a real and risen Lord and because he claimed me for himself.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Apart from Christ, we cannot stand against our own hearts. The verses above presume that we will struggle with sin, but they warn us not to declare any sin a “sanctifiable” character quality, even if through it we may learn valuable lessons about life. Learning lessons is not God’s first priority for his children. Transformed character is. I learned here that God may, in his providence, bring good from my past, but the good that comes is not because of the sin, but in spite of it. It is very tempting to see “good” in those things that tempt us to sin or lead us to sin because then we don’t seem nearly as corrupt as Original Sin renders us. According to God, sinful temptations are inclinations to do something or become something that cost Jesus his life for my sake. We are not to try to ransom it on our own terms. Suggesting that our sin is good or produces good is tantamount to calling cancer good health.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“What is the root of the sin of sexual identity? Being a lesbian was not just a description of the kind of sex I liked to have. Being a lesbian encompassed a whole range of feelings and perception, character qualities, and sensibilities. It reflected the depth of my nonsexual friendships and the integrated community I wanted to build with women. Being a lesbian also reflected the kind of professor I was, the classes I taught, the books I read, and the dissertations I directed. I was all in. And, I was a jumble of emotions, because according to the Bible, what I called community, God called idolatry.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“God’s story is our ontology: it explains our nature, our essence, our beginnings and our endings, our qualities, and our attributes. When we daily read our Bibles, in large chunks of whole books at a time, we daily learn that our own story began globally and ontologically. God has known us longer than anyone else has. The Bible declares that he knew us from before the foundations of the world.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Christ redeems. Even our struggles, our failures, and our suffering are redemptive in Christ. But there is blood involved. There is a cutting off and a cutting away that redemption demands. Stepping into God’s story means abandoning a deeply held desire to make meaning of our own lives on our own terms based on the preciousness of our own feelings. We leave and we cleave. Or we never really understand what it means that Christ died in our place.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Sin is treason, not sinus trouble. God forgives sin; he does not heal sin.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Temptation yielded to is lust deified” (My Utmost for His Highest, September 17 entry). Temptation comes in many forms, but it is always personal, uncannily tailor-made for our individual moral weakness, and it takes aim at God’s character, seeking to ransack our faith.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Jesus is the Word made flesh, and that “knowing Jesus” demands embracing the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus of someone’s imagination. The whole Bible. Even the places that took my life captive.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“One very difficult aspect about sin is that my sin never feels like sin to me. My sin feels like life, plain and simple. My heart is an idol factory and my mind an excuse-making factory, especially when it comes to dealing with the kind of sin that clobbers me the most—indwelling sin—the unrelenting, ever-present kind that never takes a Sabbath”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Like it or not, because I stand in the covenant of grace, I must mortify my sin. Because I stand in the covenant of grace I am able to mortify sin. Daily. Hourly. No matter how long this sin has been my companion. I must never become sentimental about it. I’m called by God to put it to death. And one big proof that the grace of God is at work in me is that I know that I need to do this, even if I can’t imagine how.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“God is calling us to so greatly love others that we do not desire for them anything that might separate them from God. Holy sexuality is a love so big that it treasures the purity of another, exonerating that person's status as an image bearer or a daughter or son of the King, and not dehumanizing him or her through manipulating lust.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Christian fruit is known by its root (Christ), not by the contribution it makes to a better world.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Even our struggles, our failures, and our suffering are redemptive in Christ. But there is blood involved. There is a cutting off and a cutting away that redemption demands.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“The work of a believer is responsive, not initiative. We respond to God’s love because we must. Like Peter, when called to do the impossible, we do not look to our limitations, but we ponder this: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Owen says this: “Mortification of any sin must be by a supply of grace. Of ourselves, we cannot do it.”31 The gospel does not take us halfway there. God takes us all the way home. But if what you seek is grace apart from Christ’s blood, you will never get home.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Union with Christ is part of the saints’ armor.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Oswald Chambers says that “temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature…. Temptation yielded to is lust deified” (My Utmost for His Highest, September 17 entry). Temptation comes in many forms, but it is always personal, uncannily tailor-made for our individual moral weakness, and it takes aim at God’s character, seeking to ransack our faith.             In Matthew 26:41, our Lord commands this: “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation.” From this verse we know that temptation is an alluring evil or a moral test.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“The business of the Christian is not to desire just enough grace to be strong in ourselves. Indeed, strong personalities can and do make behavioral changes on the grounds of will, many of these for the good of their health and well-being. But there is no new life found in the fruit of a self-willed behavioral change. Only the risen Lord can give new life. What separates the admitting of sin from the confession of sin is the cross of Christ.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ

“Christians who indulge the habit of admitting rather than confessing sin over time tend not to see their sin as sin at all. It just seems like life. At first, they may hate the sin. They may truly wish to be free of it. These brothers and sisters may be forgetting or not knowing that even in our battle with sin God gives us an opportunity to glorify him. Indeed, I believe that the job of a Christian is to glorify God in all situations, including in the repentance of sin.”
― Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ