Gay Marriage - passed first reading by MPs with clear majority

.... of course there is still the committee stages and the House of Lords, etc, but it will be hard to overturn such a large majority.

There was a time when a vote such as that seen in Parliament yesterday would have been a big blow to me - a really gutting defeat, another example of prayer not answered, another case of Satan apparently having the upper hand while God sits impotently on the sidelines.

But actually, the Kingdom of God is advancing.  The Kingdom of God is of course the church, primarily.  But it is not just the church - the whole world belongs to God.  He does with it as he pleases.  He brings peace and righteousness, sometimes having to push the church aside to do so.  One is reminded of the story of the church warden introducing the new vicar to his parish: "There have been many changes and I have opposed every one of them".

The Kingdom of God is about Justice.  It is also about sexual morality.  But in order of priority, Justice far outweighs the other, especially when the 'sexual morality' in question is a layer of European medieval homophobia overlain onto shallow readings of Scriptures that do not in fact support it.

There was a time when the Church of England opposed the abolition of slavery.  Over the last century it was the emancipation of women that the church so openly opposed.  Now it is other oppressed groups. 

My Christian colleague, who has a prophetic gift, sees a time of persecution of Christians coming.  Well, you don't need much gift to see that, but I say that such persecution is both unnecessary and self-inflicted.  We said we 'hate the sin but love the sinner'.  Yet the alleged sinner's experience was of being hated, not loved.  We treated gays astonishingly badly, now its payback time.

If a huge section of the Christian Church gathers and prays on an issue, including its most powerful prayer warriors and church leaders, then I feel that the outcome is probably from God, rather than from the Devil.
The Church has prayed earnestly for God's will to be done in Parliament, and we must accept that it has been done.

Personally, I have stopped praying against God's move in this country, prayed for it instead, and so I am happy with the vote.