Did God Create The World In A Literal Six Days?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Camp Pastors Adam Sanders, Colby Houchin, and Art Devos.

Colby Houchin
So, we've been asked this question before and we're going to answer it, or respond to it in this format. So, we were asked the question, "did God create the world in a literal six days?" That was the way that we were asked. So Art, I'm curious about what you want to say.

Art Devos
Yeah, no, absolutely. This is a question that I used to sit in the camp of. "It really doesn't matter, because it's not a salvation issue, if I'm being honest." That was the camp I sat in. I said, "if you want to believe that God used evolution, so be it, as long as you believe God created it and it's not a salvation issue." So that's where I used to sit. And then I actually started studying the Book of Genesis more. I started to understand how that was actually a very flawed way of my thinking. Because, if I could think that about this, I could also think that about other parts of scripture. And that's why I love how you started this out. About this kind of being, the theme of this podcast is, what is your view of scripture? How do you hold it? Because if we don't hold it in a high esteem, if we don't look at it as, this is all God's word, then it's very easy to take a passage like Genesis 1 and it's very easy to turn it around and say, "it's just poetry or it was just," and you could add in whatever you wanted to. You could try to then say, "well, God created it and then let evolution take place over the next couple of millions of years and do that." But there's problems with that way of thinking, because if you want to say that there were millions of years after God created the world, and in between these days, there's a lot of issues with that because evolution is also based on the premise of destruction and death. So that would mean that all had to come before Genesis 3. But you're trying to say that it came before man, but otherwise that would say that then something's wrong in the Bible. Also, when you study the Hebrew and in these passages, and it's, Ken Ham has some great resources on this and there's one in particular that I'll make sure to share. I can't think of it off the top of my head what it's called.

Colby Houchin
Put a link, maybe, in the YouTube notes.

Art Devos
Yeah, I'll make sure that's all on our website as well and with this video. Because he explains it incredibly well. And he's absolutely right, that it's kind of odd that biblical scholars will universally agree throughout all of scripture that when the Hebrew word "Yom" is used, that it represents a 24 hour day. And they agree all the way through the rest of the Old Testament, whenever that word is used for the word 'day,' that's a literal 24 hour day. But then they argue that it can't be in Genesis 1, that there are those that argue that it can be. Well, that's kind of fascinating in and of itself. But then, you go a little bit deeper, anytime that there is a number associated with a day, it always means a literal 24 hour day all through the rest of the scripture. But then people still try to argue that here in Genesis 1:1, it isn't. And then to go even a step further, he also says that there was morning, there was evening. And anytime that that statement is made, it talks about a literal 24 hour day, all throughout the rest of scripture. And Bible scholars agree to this...until it comes to Genesis 1:1. Then there's suddenly all this argument. But yet, it's like God is saying, "I'm going to make sure they understand." There was evening and there was morning, the second day. There was evening and there was morning, the third day. There was evening and morning, the fourth day. And so you start to get into that, and when you really start to look at it, it's like, "okay, I think it's a literal 24 hour day. I think that's what God is trying to get across to me." And oh, by the way, God can do that. Like I said, I really have changed my stance. And I believe to give God His ultimate sovereignty and His all ultimate authority of scripture. And when it goes through Genesis 1 and you see the statement, God said, "and it was so." Then I believe it to be true. So that's where I start on it. That's where I want to start.

Colby Houchin
So I think we talked about this beforehand, just because it's a really important question to be like, "Hey, how are we going to approach this?" We could probably go for about three more hours on this topic, because there's a lot of implications for what Art just said. And there's also a lot of counter arguments that people will throw back in this. And so I wanted to throw it back over to you, Adam, because you had a really interesting perspective or that came up when Art was talking that came to my mind. It's almost a question to ask, and I think it's going to set you up well. A question to ask on this is, what comes first in your mind? Does what you heard in 10th grade biology class come first or does scripture come first? Because what often happens is, people will go, "well, I'm reading Genesis and it says this, but I've heard all of these different things. And because I've heard all these different things, I've got to figure out, what holes do I shove scripture into and anything that I don't like is just not going to be shoved in there. I'm just going to push that aside. I think one temptation that we have is to take things and to flip the hierarchy away. And so, I'm saying this poorly. Scripture is meant to be authoritative. And so, we switch that in our minds. We have a temptation to switch that in our minds where we say, "well, it is authoritative, but not as authoritative as what I read in this one textbook." And so that relationship is kind of important. But what were you going to say? We talked about this at the beginning.

Adam Sanders
Oh yeah, no, I think what you're saying is, I think it's a good question to ask yourself. Especially if the question is probably coming from a Christian perspective. I think something Colby was getting out there is just the question of, why is it in your mind? Do you immediately default the Bible to the lesser authority position that must prove itself while elevating your scientific textbook to the higher authority that demands an answer?

Colby Houchin
Thank you for being smarter than me in your wording.

Adam Sanders
But yeah, and it's a fantastic question. It's something that probably needs to come from us, and starting from a heart issue. And we were talking about earlier, something I found a lot of times is that there is maybe a weakness in another area that kind of gives way for that line of thinking. To where we are maybe unknowingly or knowingly pursuing worldly things. And so as a result of that, we were growing affection for worldly things. And maybe that is causing us to elevate worldly wisdom above godly wisdom as a default position, whether we recognize that we're doing it or not. And I think, so it's a good opportunity to have a heart diagnostic under those circumstances for sure. Part of me goes back to the thought too, kind of what angle are you asking this question from? Is it a personal question or is it something you get asked from a lot of people? I feel a little bit like Art, a little bit like a fire hydrant that's trying to maybe just give a trickle right now and not just kind of let the floodgates open up. One thing I think we've talked about on here before, but something I think bears repeating is that, the world is really not truly broken down into these kind of separate binary categories. Where we have science here, and we have religion here in almost all of these areas. I think the more you study scientific inquiry, and especially a lot of theories like evolution and the age of the earth, and you really are leaving the realm of science. I know we said that before, but it bears repeating over and over again. You're getting into philosophical questions as soon as you start to try to ask things like, "where did the world come from? Why is it here? Why is there purpose?" I think we give a little too much credit to the secular perspective without asking the same degree or even a higher degree of probing and hard questions back towards that.

Colby Houchin
Yeah, I think a way to say that is, the enlightenment is this time period where just thinking through really hard things became very popular. There's a million and one good things that came from that, but there was also a lot of negative things. Where we became very critical as a just human people group. We became incredibly critical of all kinds of things and it ended up leading to a lot of people saying, "Hey, you know what?" Going back to our first question, "maybe marriage isn't that important. Maybe it's okay if I just, maybe a monogamy is not important. So, I could be married, but I can also have people on the side that I sleep with. Or maybe this rigid fundamentalist structure of loving your children and raising them as a husband and wife; maybe that's arbitrary and old and we can throw that out." A lot of these movements are birthed out of a very similar time period, a similar university movement. And when you look at church history, and just history in general, you see a lot of correlations to where a lot of these different societal things changed. And that's also where a big push of questioning scripture, and like you said, questioning scripture where you don't have the same scrutiny of what is said by the scientists. That causes some issues. Did you have anything else you wanted to say before I kind of switch it up a little bit?

Adam Sanders
No, I just think, like I said, I'm kind of trying to refrain maybe from just diving headfirst in. I definitely don't ever want to promote a sense of anti-intellectualism, or causing you to always be very harshly, overly skeptical of all authority figures or that kind of thing. I think there's too much of that in our culture today. I will say, a lot of the ideas that affect the Western world today are born out of, like what Colby was saying, an era and a time where there was a desire first and foremost like, "Hey, we don't want Christianity. How do we get rid of it? Oh, Charles Darwin went to this island and he found these bird beaks. Maybe this is how all of life came about. Oh, Karl Marx has come up with this new system of government in which we don't need to have a higher authority power to tell us how to do things. We can do it on our own through rationale and reasoning." Mind you, when I say this, all of these things have been terribly bad for human beings. The record proves.

Art Devos
Adam, what did you go to school for originally?

Adam Sanders
To be a science teacher.

Art Devos
I mean, let's just say I went to school to be a history teacher.

Colby Houchin
I went to school to be a physical therapist, so it doesn't really help.

Art Devos
No, but knowledge is a good thing. We need to continue to learn and grow, and there is a lot of great things. But as Christians, there is one thing that we are called to do, and that is to test all things by what scripture has to say, which is the importance of knowing God's word from the very beginning. And so when you do sit in that science class that is talking about evolution and things like that too, test it by what scripture has to say first, and you're going to find out it's not the truth. Look, evolutionary theory is just that it's only theory. And they stopped using words like theory because they realized that people are like, "oh, well, it still says theory, so therefore it's not proven." They're trying to now teach it as that it's a proven fact that evolution is true. And they do those kinds of things, because the world is trying to lie to you. Satan is using those things to try to lie to you. Test all things by what the word of God has to say, and you will realize that the word of God actually continues to be proven true over and over and over again. And so a lot of these tools that they try to come up with to prove their theories to be true, sometimes even accidentally prove the Bible to be true. And oh, but what about carbon dating? Carbon dating is actually a very faulty science.

Colby Houchin
It's absurd.

Art Devos
Yeah, it is very faulty. It's like, "well, we've come up with a way to count carbon atoms and figure out the deterioration, and-"

Colby Houchin
It's built on about 15 assumptions. All the assumptions have to be correct for their measurements to be correct.

Art Devos
And if one assumption is false, it completely then throws the whole thing off. And so it is not a factual science in any way, shape, or form. Which is why, again, test all things by scripture. And that's why too, when you can go back through scripture and you can follow the genealogies and you can get back, and you're suddenly like, well, the genealogies, when you add this all up and there's a way to do it and to do it accurately well, the world is just over 6,000 years old. And then you kind of look at it and you're like, even outside of the Bible, when they have done archeological digs and things like that, they continue to find artifacts of people that truly did exist that are biblical figures. And you're like, yeah, because they're real. They're here in the Bible. We can see that it's true. And they find these things and it only emphasizes more and more that the Bible is true. And that's why when we look at, "did God create the world in a literal six days," we can say with confidence, "yes, and this is why."

Colby Houchin
I want to change the perspective and kind of speak directly to you, the listener. Because I've watched people get themselves in trouble on this topic a couple different ways that people can get themselves in trouble. The first thing is my students, and I am sure some of you are listening, and you guys are going to roll your eyes. But you know that if you ask the questions on a Sunday morning of, tell us how to win these arguments or help us learn how to argue these things in school. So when they say this, we can combat it. And what I will never do is just say, "here's your argument." I can't just learn my words and recite them in front of you. Because what's going to happen if you know the words, but you don't actually understand what you're saying or understand the nuances of how we're talking about this. What you're going to do is, you're going to say, "well, 'this,' 'this,' and 'this." And then a educated, informed person on the other side is going to push back and you're going to crumble and you're going to have no idea what to do. And so I encourage kind of a sparring to boxing idea. My job is not to just put a boxing glove on your hand and go, "okay, go hit somebody whenever this comes up." My job is to spar with you. I have my ring at the table. I swung my arm to spar with you, to box with you, to train you and to help you learn how to box so that when you get in the ring, you're not just doing what I tell you, but you know how to do it. And so with these topics, I want to encourage you that you don't, first of all, you don't need to be an expert in all of the nuance of this thing. You don't need to be an expert on Genesis 1-3 in the Hebrew, in the original intent of everything in order to be a good Christian. You don't need to know any of those things. It's good to know, I don't want to say you don't need to know any of it. You don't need to be an expert on all of these things. You don't need to be overwhelmed by these things. But you also don't need to be intimidated by people that are really good at arguing specific elements because I'll find it all the time. I've been a pastor for years. I am about six weeks away from having my master's degree. I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable on some things, but people will ask me a question even on a topic that I know really well. They'll just ask it in a way that's weird, or they'll catch me at the wrong moment and I'll be like, "oh man." I'm like, "I don't know what to say." And they're like, "ah, you're an idiot. You don't know anything." And I'm like, "that's not true though." And so one thing I want to encourage people, and when I kind of found this out, it just liberated me in a lot of areas. You don't need to answer questions that are not asked in good faith. That's one thing that I have found. Unless you are really solid in where you are at in your knowledge of things. If somebody is asking you a question and you can sense that they're asking me this question, hoping that they can trick me and trap me, you don't have to answer them. You can present a brand new question. That's one thing that I've taught my students. If somebody goes, and I did this at senior camp, some of the students might remember it. We had a counselor kind of test me, ask me a question about, "well, you're telling me about the gospel and you're telling me about all these different things, but I believe," and this was a character he was playing, "I believe that the world is 780 million years old." And I think that disproves scripture. And I went, "okay, well, Adam was created with a history because he was created as an adult. And so maybe the world was created with a history, but here's what I want to tell you about Jesus." And so what I did is, I was like, here, I'm going to sidestep the bullet that you shot at me. I'm going to present my own question, and I'm going to answer that question, because that's a very valid thing to do, to go, "Hey, you know what?" At the end of the day, this is an important topic, but we can recognize that this isn't the evangelistic conversation that's going to change everybody's lives. When we convince people that Genesis 1-3 can stand up against the academic rigors of evolutionary biology, I don't think the church walls are going to be stormed by a bunch of people repenting. It's actually the message of Christ that does that. And so that doesn't mean that this isn't important, but it shows us, "Hey, at the end of the day, you don't need to box yourself into a corner and be afraid of this topic." We can stand on the truth of the gospel. We can lean against the truth of the cross and the resurrection, and that can be our strength.

Art Devos
And if someone is trying to entrap you and to get you into that kind of an argument, give them Colby's number.

Colby Houchin
I'll fight them, like I said. I'll put on my boxing gloves.

Art Devos
This is great. And again, it really boils down to, what is our viewpoint of scripture? Is this the authoritative word of God? And you believe that it is and you should believe that it is, then we should also take it at its value in what it says.

How Do We Deal With Temptation In The World?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Tim Hebbert
Today, the question is, "I think we can all agree that the temptation to sin against God are numerous and in our society there is an overwhelming amount of media, entertainment and suggestive advertisements to lure us into sin. How do we deal with this as believers?" And I'm first of all thinking of that concept that we live, that we're in the world, but we're not of the world. And unless we're living in a plastic bubble, or we've segregated ourselves from society, the reality of it is we're going to be looking face to face into the eyes of temptation, of the allure of sin. And the devil is really good about making it look tenderizing and beautiful. When actually what it is, is it's dark and it's destructive. So I want to talk about a couple things that I always think about with this. And then Brad's going to bring some scripture to underscore a lot of that. But I want to tell you out there today, if you're feeling the temptation of certain sins, the best thing that you can do is run in the other direction. I sometimes think we forget what the word 'repent' really means. It doesn't mean, "say you're sorry." It means, "take another course, move the direction of your life." It's better to avoid the things that are going to tempt you than to think for a second that you can face up to those things over and over and over again and beat the temptation. Because what happens is we begin to obsess about sin and it's one of the great blessings I have. My wife tells me that I don't overthink anything, Brad. So I don't focus on that as much. I really want to focus on my relationship with Jesus Christ. But there are times everybody is tempted. I think that we have bought in, in some Christian circles to this thought that God tests us, but He never puts temptation in front of us. But have you heard that one, Brad? People think that God is putting that temptation in front of you. He is absolutely not ever going to do that to you. Why would he do that? Does he allow us to become tested in our life over things? Yes, but one of the ways to pass a test of temptation is to move completely away from it. I heard Pastor John Maxwell read this at a Promise Keeper event. Brad, this has been like 28 years ago.

Brad Kilthau
Yeah, it's been a while since those happened.

Tim Hebbert
And it stuck with me ever since. And he was speaking that day and in a conference for men about the allure of sexual immorality and adultery and the temptation of those things. And he read this poem, and it was written by a woman by the name of Portia Nelson. I guess it's a poem. It's entitled, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk. And it goes like this, chapter 1, "I walk down the street, there's a deep hole in the sidewalk, and I fall in. I'm lost. I'm helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out." Chapter 2, or we could say Day 2. Day two, I walk down the same street, there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it, I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place, but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out." Day 3, "I walk down the same street, there is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it, it's there. I still fall in it. It's a habit. Now my eyes are open. I know where I am. It's my fault. I get out immediately." Day 4, "I walk down the same street, there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it." Day 5, "I walked down another street." Seems like we ought to learn to take day five and move it up right behind day one. If you're out there today and you're struggling with some sin in your life, I don't know what it is. And sometimes when we're talking about sin, we tend to look at the big sins and ignore the small ones that are actually as destructive as the big ones. But if you're struggling with temptation in this media, sexualized, me first, consumer oriented world we live in, if you're struggling with those things, God's saying, "walk down a different street." And that street, I heard it's a modern telling that somebody wrote of the 23rd Psalm. When it talks about "He leads me in the path of righteousness." The righteousness that He's leading you and I down today friends, is the footsteps of His son Jesus. And when we keep our eyes focused on who Jesus is, what he's done for us, what he wants to continue to do with us, and we keep our eyes focused there, all of a sudden all the allure of the things of this world are in the side mirror. They're not in the front view of where we're at. But when we obsess on those things, it's easy to begin to look on those things. I say, once we examine and see what we're struggling with, it's time to trust God's plan for us. Look to Jesus and move in a different direction.

Brad Kilthau
That's exactly right, Tim. We are to look to Jesus, and to look to Jesus means getting into his word. And we can see that the Lord speaks to us so clearly about this issue and struggle that all of us deal with temptation. Temptation to be led into sin. And one of the passages is, looking at Luke 4:1-13, of that time of when Jesus was in the wilderness and Satan was tempting him. Now, of course we need to know that not all temptation comes from Satan. We can't give him all the credit. Sometimes it just comes from our flesh itself. But we need to recognize the arsenal, the tools of Satan. And in doing so, that'll help us to stand strong against temptation. When we look at that very familiar account, Satan tempted Jesus in three temptations. First of all, he was saying, "well turn that stone into bread." The next time it was, "all the kingdoms of the world can be yours if you just bow down and worship me." And then finally taking him to the top of the pinnacle of the temple and saying, "jump off of this," this 450 drop that you would have. "But the angels are going to catch you up and preserve you and save you." So when we look at those three temptations, we learn some good things again. And that is, first of all, that Satan has three general categories of temptation. The first one is, he tempts us to start to think that the father doesn't love us. That's why he was saying about the stone being turned into bread. He was saying, "Jesus, oh, you're out here in the wilderness. You haven't eaten for 40 days. What kind of father do you have that hasn't provided food for you?" And so that's where that temptation thought comes from. Second of all, he says to just worship me and then all of these kingdoms of the world will be yours. Well, what's he saying? He's saying, "well, don't trust in the plan of the Father. In fact, you don't have to go His way, You don't have to do His plan. Here's a shortcut, just worship me. You don't have to go the way of the cross." And then finally, he has another category, and that is he wants us to doubt the protection of the father. And we can see that in every temptation that he brings against us. You see, Satan is, he's tactical. And we need to learn that, because what Satan will do often is he will attack us after we've experienced a great time of blessing. We find that again in Luke 4, because when you look back in Luke 3, Jesus as we know, was just baptized in the Jordan River. And remember what happened as he came up out of the water? The Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. And the Father spoke from heaven and said, "This is my son in whom I am well pleased, my beloved son." I mean, what a beautiful blessed experience. And then, the next thing that happens is Jesus finds himself in this place of temptation by Satan. That's the tactic of Satan. When there's a blessing or something good that happens in our life, he immediately is there to lead us into sin. Whenever God moves, Satan moves. We also need to know that Satan comes after us when we are vulnerable. Sometimes when we're struggling with an illness in our life, maybe the loss of a loved one, maybe financial woes or whatever. He's watching us, and he knows that when we are in those positions of vulnerability, he recognizes that. And that's when he comes and starts whispering false things and temptations into our ears. And then also you got to know that Satan's very practical. I think we see that in verses 5-6 especially. Satan is logical. Again, telling Jesus, "just take a shortcut. You don't have to do this the hard way. You don't have to go the way of the cross." He's a great theologian. He knows the Bible probably better than any of us. And some people have a hard time believing that. But you got to remember Satan, he graduated from the greatest seminary of all, from heaven, even though he doesn't live by the word of God. But he knows it. And he tries to come down to us and use this logic and practical thinking to lead us astray. And we've got to recognize those things. We've got to recognize that when we're going into those areas, when we see these things happening in our lives, that that's Satan. And we need to call upon the Lord. We need to get close to the Lord. We need to abide in the Lord. We need to study His word. We need to know what the word really says so that Satan is not manipulating the word of God and leading us astray. And here's another thing we need to do as Christians: we need to start standing our ground and quit cowering to the messages of the world that Satan is putting out there. Quit cowering to the immorality of our world. Quit cowering to being afraid that if we speak up for Christ and speak the truth that we're going to be mocked. We've got to keep in mind that greater is He who is living within us as believers than he who is in the world. And we need to stand against the woes of Satan.

Tim Hebbert
As you're talking about that, Brad, it took me right back to the beginning of Genesis. Adam and Eve in the garden, and Satan comes with a voice of reason. "Did God say that you can't eat these things? No, no, no, no." And then they begin to correct him. "Oh, that's not what He meant. He just doesn't want you to be like Him." And he challenges them. He tries it with Jesus, and he gets the beat down. I refer to him in my sermons a lot as 'the coward,' because he doesn't ever come at us when we're strong and empowered, feeling strong in who we are. He waits till there's a weak, vulnerable moment. And that's where he attacks from.

Brad Kilthau
That's right.

Tim Hebbert
But we have the confidence and hope in Jesus that he's conquered him already. And we don't have to listen.

Brad Kilthau
And to even add to our thoughts here, Tim. I think when you look at that passage and you get to verse 13, it says, "Now, when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Jesus until an opportune time." I think one thing we want to finish up by sharing with our listeners, is that temptation is seasonal. We might have victory over him in one temptation. We might have success and we've got through it. But Satan will be back. He's relentless, just like he came back at Jesus towards the end, as we watched as he's going to the cross. There's Satan working in those scenes behind. And he is relentless. He will continue to come back. He's not going to look at us like, "oh, you're a strong Christian and you know the Bible really well. I'm going to leave you alone." No, he'll just go back and change his tactics, and he'll watch for another place to get us. And he will be back. So anyway, this is something I think when we look at temptation like this, just as you were saying earlier, Tim, with these things that every one of us deal with. We can't escape this, so we need to learn how to deal with it. How to walk in the way that the Lord tells us through those times of temptation.

Tim Hebbert
I think the thing to remind ourselves too, if we falter, don't be like Adam and Eve even hide in the bushes. Bring it to the Lord. He doesn't want us to live in the prison of something that we've done wrong.

Brad Kilthau
That's right. 1 John 1:9, "confess that sin. He is faithful in the small and righteous."

Why Is Marrying Someone Who Is Not A Christian A Big Deal?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Camp Pastors Adam Sanders, Colby Houchin, and Art Devos.

Art Devos
So, let's kick it off right away. "Why is marrying a non-Christian such a big deal to some people?" And that's a question, I think, that gets asked a lot.

Colby Houchin
Yeah, I always like the wording of our questions. And so I look at this one and I'm like, I try to get into the mind of whoever out there asked it. You know, this could be a very innocent question of, "why is it that people care about this?" And this also could be almost like a hostile question of, "why is it that it's such a big deal to some people? Like my mom and everybody else in my life." And I don't know who you are, but I don't know what mentality you have going into this question, but I think I can confidently say, and I'm going to assume that you guys agree, that I'm one of those people that would say, it's a big deal. I'm assuming you guys would agree, right?

Art Devos
Yes, absolutely.

Colby Houchin
It's a really big deal. And I think we need to start this conversation of, why is it such a big deal if Christians marry non-Christians? Or, why is it a big deal that we affirm Christian and Christian marriages, not interfaith marriages? I think we have to ask, what is marriage? That's the first question. And this is sprinkled throughout the scriptures. We see this in Genesis, too. We see this throughout the Old Testament. We see this in the mouth of Jesus. We see this in the teachings of Paul. We see this all over the scripture. But marriage is the union of a man and a woman for life. It is considered a one flesh union. And I think something that we have to highlight, looking at Matthew 17, the words of Jesus. It is what God brings together. This isn't something that we choose to do. Obviously, we have a choice, right? All three of us here are married. We all made a decision, we all asked a question. We all went through that awkward, terrifying moment of going down on one knee and then the shakes of asking a woman to marry us. And then turned around and potentially teared up on the altar as our wife walked down the aisle. We all chose those things, but at the same time, all we did is say some words and put a ring on our finger. God was actually the one that instituted this beautiful covenant at the end of the day. And so, just a theme of this episode, I think, is going to be kind of defining how serious are we going to look at God's word? How serious are we going to look at the things of the Lord? And are we going to take those things seriously, or are we going to kind of throw them to the wayside and say that what we think and what we feel is more important? And I think that as you listen to this episode, you're going to go, "oh yeah, that is kind of a theme for today." So just to start, marriage is something God created. And so we have to start there. I'm curious what you guys want to say.

Adam Sanders
Yeah, definitely. I like the way you used the word covenant there, and I think it doesn't exactly catch the imagery of it, but another way to describe that is, it's a contract. And I think a lot of times when we're in our younger mode, we're thinking of relationships through the vantage point of, how does someone make me feel? The friendship, and the fun component of that. And all those things are important. I think a healthy good marriage incorporates a lot of that, and is able to appreciate that part of it too. But when we think about the contractual part of it, it makes you, especially as you get older as an adult, you kind of think whenever you enter into a serious agreement with someone, that has serious ramifications and serious results that come from that. You begin to ask yourself more serious questions about that person's character. The alignment that you have for vision in the future, and in the present. And you start to realize the significance that comes with having that agreement in accord when it comes to how you're going to conduct life moving forward. And you need someone who's on a similar page as you in order to do that well.

Art Devos
All of that is true. And one of the things I think about too is, even take a spouse out of the equation here for a second, alright? Just look at it as a friendship. So the Bible has a lot to say about, who our friends are and what kind of friends we are to keep, right? We can look at the book of Proverbs and the advice that Proverbs gives us about who we should be hanging out with. And it really is about the company that we are keeping. And so we can look at passages, and I just turned to the first one here that I have on my list, 2 Corinthians 6:14. And this one is very much used in the argument for why you don't marry a nonbeliever. But really, it is here in the context as well of your friends. "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?" And we can continue on there, but really your spouse is going to be your best friend, or should be your best friend. They should be your number one in all things. They should be the first person you go to when something goes wrong. They should be the first person you go to when you want to celebrate something. Like, your spouse should be your best friend. That is the company you are going to keep for life, and that company that you keep is going to be your biggest influence on you. And so, that is why when we start talking about the context of marriage and not marrying an unbeliever, it's because that believer is going to have the biggest influence on your faith. Because, what about when you want to go to church and they don't? What about when you want to start attending a Bible study and they don't?

Colby Houchin
What about if you want to support a missionary and the other one wants to buy a bunch of alcohol on the weekend and party? Because it's often a choice one of those two, like those lifestyle decisions that are one or the other.

Art Devos
Right, it means that, well, "I want to live for God," while they want to live for the world. And that's exactly why that question would come out that way. 1 Corinthians 15:33-34 is another one. It says, "do not deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. Awake to the righteousness and do not sin. For some do not have the knowledge of God." And so you look at that and it's like, we shouldn't keep close company. It doesn't mean, don't go out and interact with unbelievers. In fact, we're supposed to for the sake of telling them who God is and showing them who God is through our lives. But it's not in a marriage context. It's not, my best friends shouldn't be unbelievers. If you're a believer, your best friend shouldn't be. Because again, that's the greatest influence on your life. And so that's where I go with this argument, as far as why it's that important.

Colby Houchin
Yeah. Another area that, I wanted to bring in Genesis 2 really quick. I think that the language is really important, and this is an NLT. It's not a translation I usually use, but I didn't want to drive back to my office on my day off to grab my usual Bible. But Genesis 2:24, it says, "that explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." And that again, that just highlights everything that Art said, that the seriousness of marriage is a oneness. There's a unity that is required there. And if looking at Ephesians 5, when I preached through Colossians, you get to the end, it's either at the end of three or, I think it's middle of three. And the end of three into four, it talks about the order of the home. I read the Colossians passage, but then I immediately flipped to the Ephesians 5 passage, because it's the same thing but in more detail. But just to highlight a few parts of Ephesians 5, it says, Ephesians 5:21, "and further submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Verse 22, "for wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord." Jumping down to verse 25, then there's a couple more things it says, "husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church. Now, here's what we don't often talk about in the church, and we need to talk about more, is that the model that Ephesians, that Paul is laying out to the church of Ephesus and laying out to all of his churches. It's not like he taught something different to the Corinthians and taught something different to the Thessalonians. This was the model that the Lord called for him to teach, but it was a subversion of the Roman system. And it still is a subversion of our secular current system of family, where the Roman system said, "the husband is all powerful and everybody else is just subject to whatever he wanted." We see a very broken, pleasure-based, like, just do what's best for you. A, "You go live your best life, whatever makes you happy system today." Both of those are completely shattered by what we see here in Ephesians and other places in the New Testament. And really, what this is calling for is a deep and profound submission to Christ where the head of the household is not the husband. It's Christ. Basically, the imagery I like to use is, I like to think of Christ having his arms wrapped around the family, the biblical family. And when hear this language of wives submitting to your husbands, why is that a good thing? Well, it's only good for wives to submit to a husband in this biblical, godly marriage where this man is living the way he's called to. It goes for nine verses of, what does it mean for a husband to be married and to love his wife? It basically describes Christ loving the church.

Colby Houchin
So okay, women submit to and trust your husband. Husbands, be like Christ to your family. Why is it good to submit? Well, it's the same as us submitting to the Lord. It is God wrapping his arms around the biblical family and saying, "this is I Am at the head. I am the authority figure. I am the person that you're going to turn to." And husband, wife, kids, and everybody we are called to submit to that authority. And that's when marriages work. That's when you go, "oh, I'm not trying to out-compete my spouse, I'm trying to Out-serve my spouse. I'm trying to out-love my spouse. I'm trying to walk in the ways of the Lord with my husband and wife, with my children, building them up." Oh, all of a sudden, family looks really good in that situation. And then you go, okay, throw in a nonbeliever into that context, and it's just not going to work. There is just no way for that model of marriage to work where one submits to the Lord and submits to the other, but the other is not submitting to the ways of the Lord. How can that actually produce the fruit that we're called to produce?

Adam Sanders
Absolutely. Yeah, that was a lot of what I had in mind. Even with that idea of, if the Lord is calling you to this, why would you want to jeopardize that by jumping in with somebody who is not following with the reciprocal value of it. If you're a young lady and you are going to be submitting to someone who is not submitted to Christ, and has no desire to lead your family in godliness, then you have been given an impossible task to submit to something that will only lead to: a stripping of your joy, a stripping of your faith, and leading your family in the wrong way. And likewise for a young man, if you're marrying someone who's not submitted to Christ herself, she's probably not going to submit to you. And as you're laying your life down for this person and they're laying their life down for the world, it's going to build up bitterness and resentment. I know you hear old people like us (I've entered into that category now. I'm officially an old man giving you advice.), but you hear this kind of advice all the time of just imploring you to think with future perspective and not immediate perspective. And I've been in your shoes before, so I know how hard it is to hear that sometimes. But a lot of this really does come down to that. You're investing in something in the future, and the fruit of it will be very bitter if you invest in the wrong way. And so we're asking you to maybe even listen to someone against what your heart, and your emotions, and the time are telling you to do. But maybe trust that these people actually do care about you a little bit. Your parents care about you, and they're not just trying to strip fun from you by saying, "Hey, I know he's cute and he's funny, but I don't think he has the qualities that are going to lead to your flourishing." There's a reason they're saying it.

Art Devos
No, absolutely. And we live in a culture that has damaged marriage significantly. Our culture has looked at marriage as something that is dissolvable and just like, look, if you want out, just be out. That's not what the Bible says. Marriage is in that Genesis 2 passage when it says, "and they shall become one flesh," it is one. It is about loyalty. It is about having the same passion and it is permanent.

Colby Houchin
And what does it say in Matthew 19? "What God brought together, let no man separate," right? It is the hardness of our sinful hearts that leads to broken marriages, but God desires that union forever for life.

Art Devos
Yeah. And so when we look at just the cultural context for marriage, yeah, it's really easy to question why guys like us would say, "don't marry an unbeliever." In fact, we will keep shouting it. Don't marry an unbeliever. If you are dating an unbeliever, you need to break up. We will tell that to you in love. It's not because we don't feel the same way about them, but here's the thing. It is for your-- It is for your, what am I trying to say here? It will do you way better, it'll serve you way better, your life will be better. And I know it's hard to see that, because you're having so much fun probably in that relationship with an unbeliever. Unbelievers are very fun sometimes, and it's very appealing. But the thing about it, is that fun stops. And if your faith is important to you, you'll realize that they're not doing anything to help you and encourage you and build you up in that.

Colby Houchin
And you said something that I want to make sure we say explicitly because we need to hear...we're talking about marriage, but you also said dating. This goes for dating as well. Because dating isn't actually something that like, "Hey, let's go to the dating passage of the Bible." Dating, the way we think about it today, wasn't what was practiced during any of the biblical times. And so we kind of have to apply some practical wisdom to, what does it look like to date because there is no biblical precedent. But what we see is that courtship or those relationships that led to marriage in biblical times. Like, the version today is dating. And they had a very similar standard of, we have these similar values and virtues and goals that we're trying to have. And so in dating, you need to have the perspective that, "Hey, I'm dating." It doesn't mean that we're so serious that we're definitely going to get married, but we need to have a certain seriousness of dating, of like, if we are completely misaligned to where marriage is not going to happen, then that's not a good relationship for believers to pursue. For all the reasons that we've already talked about, it just is not going to work out. So we're talking about marriage, but we're also talking about dating of, do not date unbelievers and also do not date to evangelize. That is a very foolish way to go about relationships. If it's, "I'm going to date this boy and I'm going to bring him to church, and then Jesus is going to change his heart, and then we're going to get married and have lots of babies." That's a really stupid way to do it. And your hearts are going to say, "but we can do it. We got it. We can do this." But it's a very foolish thing.

Art Devos
"This time it'll be different."

Adam Sanders
Yeah, but it won't. I would say this goes beyond just, even the non-believer. But I think as just a general piece of advice towards relationship, as it stands to that point, I think it's unfair to expect someone to drastically change any kind of characteristic or quality upon marriage. Yes, we all grow. I'm sure if our wives were here, they would testify that we're not the same men they married. And probably a lot of those things are for the better. A little

Colby Houchin
Or a little heavier maybe.

Adam Sanders
Growing in maturity, growing in girth, all of those kinds of things. But in a very real sense, if it's a core character value or belief or ideal, if it doesn't align with what you're looking for, don't expect marriage to flip someone around. And this is another, maybe I'm calling someone out here, and if I am, I'm doing so in love, I promise you. But there's also a component, especially when it comes to dating and puppy love. If you're engaging in any kind of flirtatious attention giving, even physical components of relationship (the handholding, the hugging, the bumping up against each other), our bodies are designed in such a way that that's going to knit your heart closer to somebody. And so, if you're doing that, your body is sending signals that says, "this person is the greatest person in the world and there's no one like them." I do promise you, that goes away to a certain extent, and it goes away very quickly. If there is a completely unequal yoking of ideals, purpose, belief, those things no longer cut the mustard, to use an old man phrase, since I'm an old man.

Colby Houchin
So, when I studied psychology and counseling, we tested the idea of, well, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And to go along with what you said, it doesn't. Scientifically, it doesn't. That distance actually, it fades that attraction and that bond, I think would be a good way to say it. But on the flip side, yeah. Being close and flirty and touchy and rubby and just close in proximity, it does bring people together. We are made for relationship, whether that be in romantic relationships or friendships or acquaintanceship. We are created to connect with other people. And so you're very right. That's going to be the natural process that takes place in that.

Adam Sanders
So if you're dating a non-believer, refuse to hold their hand for a long time, your emotions might change.

Why Was John Called The One Jesus Loved?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Garry Schick
So we often think of John as the beloved disciple, or the disciple whom Jesus loved. And, of course, that's kind of a quote from the gospel, but why is he the beloved disciple? What did you come up with? My take on this is, we look at Peter the Rock and John the Beloved. These are the results of Jesus. This is not who they were coming into the discipleship though.

Jonathan Hernandez
You know, I always hear people say, like, "John coined himself the beloved disciple right?" Because it's only seen in the Gospel of John as him being called the beloved. He actually doesn't name himself throughout the gospel, but I think so we could look at that as, he's bragging, right? "Oh, I'm the beloved one. I'm the only beloved one." I mean, we could look at it that way. Or, you know, I think we could also look at it as he's telling, "this is who I am. This is who Jesus is. I am that beloved one." And he gives us that for us also, you know, as he's in there saying, "I'm the one that Jesus loves." We can coin that for ourselves too. "I am one that Jesus loves."

Garry Schick
Especially because he doesn't name himself. He gives the eyewitness account and we see through John's eyes and feel the love of Christ. I love that.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, and so that's the way I always look at it. He's setting up, in a sense, a roadmap for us that as he is walking through these things. He's saying, "I am the one that Jesus loved, and Peter is the one that Jesus loved. And he could go through all those and say, "Jesus truly does love each and every one of us." And so let's look at it that way as, "Jonathan Hernandez is the one that Jesus loves." And it's not a way of me bragging and saying, "oh, well, Jesus loves me more than He loves you." No, it's me grabbing a hold of that identity in Christ and saying, "I am the one that Jesus loves." And so, when I think of John and think of that, that's kind of how I think of it that way. John was called to follow Jesus with his brother, right? It was James. And I always think, in those moments, we don't hear them or we don't read them saying, "oh, should I follow him? Should I not follow him?" It's an instant, "I'm going, I'm doing this." And, you know, that really helps me too. When I feel like God has called me to step into something, I have a million questions. But also I know, am I obedient? And we see John being someone that who has been obedient. In the book of Revelation, it says, "Jesus calls him to come up here and I will show you these things." And he doesn't just say, "oh, well that sounds cool, Jesus, but I'm just going to keep on doing my own thing." No. He goes, and he witnesses and he partakes in those things. He partaked in the Last Supper. He was in all of these places where he had the opportunity to really see who Jesus truly is. Like I said, he was at the Last Supper, he was at the crucifixion, he was at the resurrection. He was at these important places and he was truly saying, "here I am, I am the beloved one because I'm following through." And so, that's what I like about John's story. Also, it's my name so that's kind of cool. But he was someone that was authentic. He truly had intimacy with Christ.

Garry Schick
He was in the top three.

Jonathan Hernandez
He was part of the inner circle.

Garry Schick
Peter, James, and John. Those were the inner circle.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, and so he was part of that circle. And it wasn't like, I don't want to say he didn't earn it. I don't know how to coin it better, but he desired to be part of that. He was part of that, and he enjoyed being part of that. And he, I hate using the words "works," but he worked within that and he knew his identity. And so when we know who we are in Christ, we can move and operate within those gifts. John operated within who he was and who God has called him to be. And when God called me to be a pastor, I truly didn't want to do it. I was like, "no, I don't want to be in front of people. I don't like to talk. I stutter sometimes. I have a learning disability." I had all these excuses, right?

Garry Schick
Yeah. You and Moses.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, exactly. I used all these excuses, but God called me. And so, out of obedience, I was like, "okay God, if this is who you've called me to be, I'm going to operate in who you've called me to be." And John, he does that. He operates in who God has called him to be. And he was there and he did the things that Christ had called him to do. Like I said, in the Book of Revelation, he penned the gospel. He was willing. And I think that's what we need to be, is we need to be willing to be who God has called us to be. And we see that with John.

Garry Schick
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it's interesting. We again, like with Peter, we call him the Rock. But when did he firm up? When Christ was raised, when he received the Holy Spirit, he was always a work in progress. And to a degree, so was John. He's called the beloved. And you're right. In a sense, it's a name he kind of gives himself in the gospel. We think John wrote it. The evidence, the witness to him as the author of the Gospel of John is universal. And he really does make sense as that person. But he is giving us a glimpse through his eyes, letting us with our own eyes, see Jesus. And it's such a beautiful thing. But when we really look at John, the man throughout the four gospels, we see that this gentle, loving, faithful follower of Jesus, he didn't start off quite that way. Faithful? Yeah, I think we could say that. But really a guy with some rough edges. I mean, he and his brother James were known as Sons of Thunder. And it is a nickname they earned. I mean, at one point, they wanted to call fire down on some people and have them utterly burned up for not letting Jesus enter their town. They were people who they were in the inner circle, but they wanted even further in. At one point, whether it was them or whether they were through their mom. But one way or another, they were asking Jesus, "Hey, when you enter your kingdom by the way, we'd like to sit at your right and your left. Can we get that done?" And they were angling for themselves, John. And if you read particularly his letters, they're powerful, but they're a little rough because he's such a black and white thinker. So John had some really rough edges, and yet as you point out, he was an authentic guy. He was passionate. We read, and we also see the balance coming. For example, the word "truth" in his writing shows up 45 times. So truth was big, and truth is tough. Truth can be harsh, you know, but he learned the balance in Jesus. In his gospel, he writes, "the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." We have seen His glory. The glory of the one only came from the Father full of grace and truth. So, we do read "truth" 45 times in his writings, but we read the word "love" 80 times. So love is something he experienced through Christ, and he grew to emulate in Christ, and he had to learn in Jesus to put himself aside, to put others first. At the cross, Jesus puts John in charge of taking care of his mom. So, I don't know what John's plans were before that, but he becomes the one who takes care of Mary until the day of her death, whenever that was. I don't know how old she lived to be, but his plans had to be put on hold. He was a man who suffered a great deal. Yes, he is the one who on that walk on the beach, we kind of talked about that last time. The breakfast on the beach that he and the other disciples had with Jesus. He and Peter take a walk. Peter learns how he's going to die. But John, Jesus says, "well, if I want him to be alive till I come, what's that to you?" Now, John clarifies, he didn't say, "I will be alive till he comes." But John does appear to be the only one who dies a natural death. You say, "oh, well, he didn't suffer much." Well, his brother was the first one to be martyred. So he suffered the loss of his brother. He stood there. He was close to the cross when Jesus died, standing there with Mary and the other women. He may not have been physically put to death. He may have lived to an old age. But we know from the gospel of John that at one point, he's exiled. He's in exile on the island of Patmos when he receives the revelation. Tradition tells us, again, is that historical? We don't know. It was written, like, 300 years later, but it was the next earliest history after the Book of Acts. Tradition tells us at one point he's boiled in oil. Now, I don't even know how he survived that. But he apparently was tortured for his faith at some level. So he suffers for Christ and sees, not only his brother die, but if he's the last remaining alive disciple, he sees all the others go to the grave for Christ. And he's still holding the torch when he is literally the last man standing. Again, this doesn't come from Eusebius, the writer of the verse history, but I think it's Jerome. He tells us that he was living in Ephesus and it seems even from the scriptures that we get the impression that John has a close connection with the church in Ephesus. And it appears that in his very old age, he's restored from the island of Patmos and literally being carried into the congregation. And as he is, and this is our final take on John, because this is who he ultimately became. He would say, "love one another." And somebody asked him one day, "why do you keep saying, 'love one another?" He said, "because the Lord commanded us, 'love one another." But that was a hard lesson for John. We kind of read it. We go, "oh, that's John." Actually, if you look back to his early life, that's not who John was. John was a self-serving, independent, fire and brimstone, son to thunder, argumentative, angry guy. But having Jesus in his life softened him, formed him, shaped him anew into this incredibly; not kind of a weak, oh, loving, gentle John. No. A strong, passionate ardent, devoted, love for Christ and because he loved Jesus, love for others. And you know what? Loving others can be so tough.

Jonathan Hernandez
It can be.

Garry Schick
But to love when you're getting knocked in the nose, that's a different thing. And that's the way Christ loves us. And you know what John did? He sat close to Jesus, and ultimately he embraced not only Jesus as Savior, but Jesus, Lord of his life. This is who Jesus is. This is who I choose. This is what the path I choose that I'm growing up to be through Him. So friends, I know you're sitting out there thinking, "man, I got some rough edges. I'm a long way from John." John was a long way from John when he started. The story's not done on any of us, but do what John's gospel just helps us do. Keep your eyes on Jesus and know that he who so loved the world, so loved you. And His love can live in you and through you. And that is the love that transforms the world. It's John who writes, "by this all will know that you're my disciples." Not by what you know, but by your love for one another, which is tough, but it's how Jesus loves us every day. Tough love, Jonathan.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. John came from a fishing family, more than likely, a fairly well off fishing family. And when Jesus called him, he went, you know? He could have stayed there and stayed rich, but there was something rich with being with Jesus. And he ultimately got that great reward at the end.

Why Did God Make Things That Could Kill Us?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Camp Pastors Adam Sanders, Colby Houchin, and Art Devos.

Art Devos
Hey, we want to welcome you to Ask a Camp Pastor podcast. We took a one month hiatus while summer camp was still going on, but I can tell you that we have way more questions. We're looking at two printed out sheets here full of questions, some of which we've already answered, but a lot of which we haven't. We're going to get to those and we are going to do our best to answer them honestly and biblically. So let's kick it off right away. We have a fun little follow-up question that we paired here with this question about creation. And it is, "why did God create things that can kill us?"

Colby Houchin
There's a few different ways that we can talk about this. And what I think is funny about it is, if you're super astute, you might be like, "doesn't that argue against something that you just said with the creation thing?" And I am going to say, "I don't think it does." I just think that's part of the, like, as we talk about how things are introduced into this world. One idea that I thought of through this, I heard somebody say that---and I don't know where I land on this. I think this is kind of kooky, but it kind of makes sense. And they're like, "you realize that carnivores and stuff would just eat grass in the garden, right?" Think of lions grazing with cows and goats and stuff. And they would look at just the, well, what did God give to animals? He gave them the things of this ground. And I don't think that lions were tearing apart animals in Eden, but were lions there? I mean, it doesn't say it, but it doesn't say they weren't. And it doesn't say that lions were introduced in Genesis four. So, you kind of have to ask those questions of like, okay, when did lions come? When did they start ripping goats in half? Or, you know, "eat of all of the trees of the garden, eat of all of this, but that mushroom will kill you though." When did the mushroom come? I don't know. And so, it's like, would that have killed Adam and Eve? Would it have given them a big stomach ache? But an apple from the tree of life would've made it all better? I have no idea. But I'm joking(I'm half joking here). But those are kind of the fun questions we can ask in this question.

Art Devos
I mean, we're told our days are numbered, right? So if I'm going to get taken out of this world because I stubbed my toe one day, so be it. I really hope that's not how I go.

Colby Houchin
I will laugh at you so bad.

Art Devos
"Remember that podcast he said he'd stub his toe and die and he did."

Colby Houchin
Your funeral is going to be so funny if you die with a stubbed toe.

Art Devos
Or, you know, I just had an amazing trip up to Alaska. I could have met a bear and also met my end because of the bear. It's just, you'll look at things like that. My days are numbered. It doesn't mean I just go out and live crazily and try to test this today. I'm not going to do that. But at the same time, I don't worry about what's going to come by and take me out of this world either. Animals have instinct, right? And their instinct for, you know, after the fall and everything, their instinct is for food. Their instinct is not just destruction. There's very few animals that actually kill for sport. Few. There are some that do.

Colby Houchin
Humans being one of them.

Adam Sanders
And Ducks.

Colby Houchin
Ducks?

Adam Sanders
Ducks are nasty animals, man. If you look it up sometime...

Art Devos
Okay, but listen, I mean, I feel like that could use some more explanation after this is done. But orcas, they play with their food. They definitely torment their food.

Colby Houchin
But it's still food. I think they just pick on 'em.

Art Devos
Right. But they're going for food. So you just kind of look at that sort of stuff, like they're out to satisfy their instinct of getting food.

Adam Sanders
I think, so, I might be misunderstanding the way this question was asked. But I do think one important part of the equation to bring into the conversation is, there are two things that are both separate, but also work together in the world that we live in. I think there is God's intended created design and order. And then there is the corruption of that through sin. We see throughout scripture the idea that sin begets death. And so we do see a direct line through there of where death is occurring. Sin is the culprit. It wasn't God's design and purpose in that thing. And so part of me thinks in that regard, there is a natural process in which we recognize that things, killing other things, are outside of their God-intended created function to do so. Another thing that kind of immediately pops in my mind when I say this is that pretty much everything can kill you. There's kind of funny stats. You can look at that. But there really are a few things that couldn't kill you if there was the right amount of them at the right time and the right place.

Colby Houchin
Is it Missouri's shark? Statistics are not zero. And by the way, Missouri does not touch an ocean. I think there's a river.

Adam Sanders
Yeah, the Mississippi great white or something like that. Yeah, for sure. And I think even within that, this kind of goes back into God taking even corrupt and sinful things and yet using it for his glory still. I just recently preached out of the book of Genesis, the flood account. I didn't preach the flood account, but immediately after that, we see the first time that God gives the prescription that you may eat of animals. What just happened with the flood, though? The entire earth was stripped of all its resources, all of its nutrients, all of its plants. There was nothing else to eat. And so in many ways, God is giving them the way to survive and stay alive. We also know in our fallen world, what happens if there are a bunch of mice running around? They bring diseases with them. Most of us here probably don't like snakes, but snakes regulate those mice. They eat 'em, keep from getting too far away. So we see even within that, there is a benefit to areas to have this process of things eating and killing. And so, not to get overly philosophical and complicated, but--

Colby Houchin
Well, maybe to get slightly over philosophical and complic complicated. I think it's worth pondering. I don't feel like we have time here, but I think it's worth pondering just the depths of just the way that our world works. And kind of what you said of what part of this is God's design and what part of this isn't. So we've talked here about the God's design of the thing within each and every one of our cells, the protein molecule that binds us together is shaped like a cross. That is a design, that is something beautiful. I kind of alluded to it. I don't think lions ripping goats in half, I don't think that was a design of God. I think that was in order for this animal to survive in a sinful, broken world, there's an act of death and destruction that is required in order to do that. And I think we can really think deeply about the tree that falls, that tree that God created, that it falls and it hits us. It's gonna kill us. But that tree that falls and dies eventually rots and it is a dead thing that also now gives life and nourishment to the land. And so God can redeem even broken things. A really good scripture that I wish I had looked up, it's spoken in biblical prophecy, but it talks about how spears and sickles, and I can't remember where it is. If you know, let me know. It's about where basically weapons are going to be used as tools for farming and tools for creation. And so the idea is that one of the beautiful things about God's redemptive plan is that humans are going to make things that are pokey and will kill each other, but in the fulfillment of God's promises, those pokey things that could kill us, they're not going to have a use. So we're going to use it to cultivate the ground, to build more life, because death isn't going to be a part of it. Life is going to be the only thing that exists after that. And we just want a beautiful picture of, yeah, this thing that could kill us, God's going to use it for good eventually, and some of this stuff that kills us is going to be damned and destroyed, but other parts of what can kill us and harm us is going to be redefined in a way that brings life. And that's just part of the promise of God and it's beautiful.

Adam Sanders
Yeah, I was actually thinking of that same passage. I believe it's in Isaiah. I'm not entirely sure, but I also think I was thinking with that too. There is a reference to, children will be playing next to the nest of an asp, which is a very poisonous snake and they won't be bitten, right? And so yeah, just to piggyback on what Colby said with that redemptive nature of it.

How Do We Deal With Anxiety To Follow God's Command?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
We have a question that is to be answered today by us, and the question goes this way: It says, "health officials are telling us that worry and anxiety are at an all-time high in the United States. Yet, we as believers are told in the Bible not to worry. How are we supposed to deal with anxiety and be obedient to the Lord's commands?" And so Tim, I'm going to let you take it and start with that.

Tim Hebbert
I think that first of all, it's good to acknowledge and understand that all of us have moments and times where we deal with anxiety. It's one of those things that we're never going to completely escape. Yes, we're not supposed to worry, but I always tell people, "when I got saved, I got grace. I didn't get perfection." So, it's one of those things that we have to deal with from time to time in our lives. But God gives us, in His word, and Jesus teaches us things about it. One of the scriptures, Brad, I think most people like to quote---I'm one of those---comes from the sixth chapter of the gospel of Matthew. Verse 25 says, "that is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life. Whether you have enough food or drink or enough clothes to wear, isn't life much more than food and your body more than clothing?" It's true. But if we don't look at what Jesus is teaching ahead of that, we don't completely understand what he's saying. And I think one of the things that anxiety does in our life is it exposes what we value most. So, if we want to back up, say to verse 19 in Matthew, Jesus begins that teaching from that point with this, "don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desire of your heart will be." Then he goes on to say in verse 22, "your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is." Verse 24, "no one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; You'll be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." One of the things that my dad always told me about the years, his almost 50 years of pastoring, that peoples' struggle with anxiety had to do with money. And he said, in most cases it's because of debt that they'd acquired, because they had their eyes on the wrong things. And I think what Jesus is telling us before he says, don't worry about things is, "what do you value most? Who do you value most?" And then after that passage of, don't worry, he goes on over the next 10 verses to talk about who his father is, what his father will do in our lives, if we'll just trust Him. We don't have to worry about the things that we need. God's going to provide all the things that we need in our life. And so, at the very end of chapter six, he says, "don't worry about these things saying what will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear? These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers. But your heavenly Father already knows all you need. Seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously and He will give you everything you need. So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow we'll bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for us." He's basically telling us through that, is, the things that we really need also reveals who God is for us. He is the provider. He's Jehovah-Jireh, as the Old Testament would tell us. He's the one that we can count on and trust. And I got to thinking about this on the drive over today, Brad. We talk about the faithfulness of God, but until we're in a place where we need it and we experience it, until we've had that moment in time, then it's just a theory that we're taught. Experiencing that faithfulness of God sometimes comes, and He begins to reveal Himself when we're the most anxious. What do you think?

Brad Kilthau
I agree Tim, and I like how you brought that together because this is the Sermon on the Mount. It's a lot of red ink all the way through our Bibles. It's not just some little cherry picked topic that Jesus brings out here. And that's true, that's true. And when you think about worrying, worrying is really, you feel like it's out of your control. And once it's out of your control, that's when you start to worry. And of course, finances and so forth is going to bring that up in a person's life when things start to get tough. And some of the things, I look at the same passage, I look at the words of Jesus here. I think this is so straightforward when it comes to this very important issue that we're all dealing with right now, is this worry and anxiety. But you'll notice that there's a rule that Jesus gives in these verses, especially these last 9 or 10 verses that you mentioned here. And the rule is, "do not worry." He says it three times. Three times. It is an absolute command that God gives to us. And so I look at it as the Lord is saying this. It's an action that you're already involved in that you need to stop. So if you're not worrying, don't start worrying. And if you're worrying already, he says, "Stop it." Stop it. And we say, "well, how can we do that? How can we stop worrying, especially about certain things in our lives?" But you got to notice in the verses, Jesus is talking to this crowd about what you're going to eat and what you're going to wear and those kinds of things. And here in Western Nebraska and in the United States, we're not worried about those things like those people were. You know, those people, the crowd that Jesus was talking to at that time, they were worried about if they were going to get another meal. We don't worry if we're going to get another meal, we wonder what we're going to eat. We'll say, "well, am I going to have Italian or German or whatever tonight?" But they wondered if they would ever get another meal. They wondered if they'd ever have enough clothes when it got cold, because the only clothes they had was what's on their back. They couldn't go to a closet. All we do is wonder if it looks good on us, and if it doesn't, we go put something else on. They had absolutely some very important things to worry about. And just like you said, Tim, if we get to that place of where we're going without, then we'll finally realize what worry really is. But Jesus speaking to that crowd, then can also, we can see the application for ourselves. He says, "I'm telling you, do not worry." And the reasons we don't have to worry, as you read through those verses, is first of all, you got to realize he's our master. And again, when you look at the culture that this was written in, it was a master slave culture. I think there was like 120 million slaves at the time of Jesus, I've heard. And so this was very common. People were used to that. But today, when we think about being a slave, we go, "oh, I'd never want to be that. I want to be a free man. I want to make my own decisions." But actually, the people in that day and time, when they were a slave, it was something of comfort. Because they knew that when it comes to food, that's my master's responsibility. When it comes to what I'm going to wear, that's his responsibility. All I got to do is go to work, do what he tells me to do and it's his responsibility to take care of me and my family. That's the deal in this situation. And that's the way the Lord, I think, wants us to look at Him. "I got it. I'm your master. You just do what I've called you to do. I will take care of my end of the deal." Another thing is, he says that, "don't worry because of our father." I mean, look at verse 26. He says, "look at the birds of the air, for they neither sown or reap nor gather into their barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you much more valuable than they?" And think about what Jesus just said there. He didn't say, "their heavenly Father feeds them." He said, "your heavenly Father feeds them." In other words, "your father, who loves you so much more than a bird in air is taking care of everything else, even outside of your realm." And the birds don't worry. You know, if you get up in the morning, those birds are singing, they're making noise, they're running, they're all over the place. They're just having a heyday. They're not worried about anything. I think if those birds could talk to us, sometimes they would say, "you fools, look at how your father has taken care of us. And yet you sit here and you worry and fret about different things." I often have to laugh because I think maybe a bird brain could straighten us out sometimes in our thinking and how he would talk to us. But then also, of course, verse 27, I think because of our future, he said, "which of you by worry can add one cubit to his stature?" Some people look at that cubit by physical growth. Some people look at it, "could he add one more day to my life or whatever?" But whatever it is, why would you worry about that? Because worry isn't going to change your future. The only thing worry is going to do is starve you of the present, because you're worrying about the future. And we should never be in that place. We should be people that are like the birds. Again, just get to work. Be busy about the kingdom and the kingdom work, and He's going to take care of all the rest. And you might say, "what's the kingdom work?" Well, as in that same chapter, he talks about how we're supposed to pray, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name," the Lord's Prayer. He teaches us how to pray. One of the things we should be doing is praying, praying, praying. Not just for ourselves, praying for others. Find your spiritual gift. Get to work. In other words, rather than worry, work. I think work is the antidote to worry. That's what Jesus is saying here. And so again, there's so much good stuff to draw out of these verses, Tim. And I think, if anyone's in a place of worry in their life right now, this would be a great passage of scripture to go to.

Tim Hebbert
And you touched on it, that master slave relationship. The key to anxiety relief is like the old hymn says, "perfect submission, all is at rest." A couple of weeks ago, I'm working through a series of sermons on praise. I'm using the Psalms as the basis for that. And there's seven different Hebrew words that are used in the Psalms for praise. And one of them is, "Barak." They use it as, "Barak Ata Lot," which means "unbended knee." And we talked about, before we went on the radio, that even Jesus had a moment where he struggled with anxiety. He's in the Garden of Gethsemane and he's laboring over this. But the way he worked his way out of that anxiety was with bended knee. He was obedient to his father, and he got to work. The best way for us to get out of a place of worry and anxiety is to move away from the obsession that's causing that and moving our focus on the kingdom of God. "What is it that you want from me today, Father?" What can I do today for you?" Not, "oh, I need you to take this anxiety away from me." He will, but he's going to do it in a way that draws you closer, it moves you to a place where you get up and you start doing things for Him. As we've been visiting about this, I remember in my own life, it's been many years ago, but I was struggling with some anxiety over an issue and I'm going to the Lord day in and day out asking Him to relieve that and relieve that. And one day, I finally in my morning prayer, I said, "Father, I'm not going to ask you for anything today. I want to just spend my time telling you why and how much I love you." And I don't know about you, but I love to journal a lot of prayers. So I just began to write all the things that I love God for. And left it there. And what He did in the next day and a half was, He brought three men into my office who were in need of counsel. All three of them left having made a commitment to Jesus before they left. And it was like that, "aha," moment that the Lord says, "do you understand now what this is all about? It's not about your worries. I've got those taken care of." And oh, by the way, the problem that I had been struggling with resolved itself in about 12 hours after that.

Brad Kilthau
It resolved itself. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God," right?

Tim Hebbert
"And all these things will be taken care of."

Brad Kilthau
Yes. So amazing. So it's right there. It's red and white on the pages of scripture, the words of Jesus. So yeah, good discussion, Tim.

Tim Hebbert
Good discussion. And it is a good one, because all of us have those moments where we struggle with this and it's just a good time to look at chapter six of the Gospel of Matthew and be reminded that God's got this.

Who's My Support Team So That I Can Run For Jesus Well?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Garry Schick
So, I don't know about your eyes, but mine are probably like, "this big," because they've been plastered to a television screen every night after work. Are you watching the Olympics?

Jonathan Hernandez
Bits and pieces of it, yeah.

Garry Schick
Little bit?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yep.

Garry Schick
Oh man. At the beginning, I can't get enough, and by the end I'm done.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, I watched some soccer. So we enjoy watching that.

Garry Schick
A little soccer. Some gymnastics, some swimming, some equine stuff going on out there. I mean, all kinds of stuff. Well, I think I know what we should talk about today. And I kind of thought about, maybe something about, "run the good race." But then, I don't know about you, but one thing that has really impressed me, and I know it's always there, but it kind of really impressed me this year, is these understories. Here's this athlete, they're up there, they're doing magic on the screen, but we all know that it's so much more than that; and it's a team. It's not just that moment today. It's every day, 365. For the last, how many years of their lives. So listeners, I guess today I kind of want to turn around on you as you're listening. I want you to be thinking about this: "who's my support team so that I can run for Jesus well?" Because, and I say this to people---I don't know if they get it. "There's no Lone Rangers in Christ." It's not just, "me and Jesus." At least, not if you're going to succeed. I guess any of us can go out and run around the block and hopefully not sprain our ankles. But if we're going to be in the Olympics, it's going to take more. And, you know what? If we're going to run a race for Christ, shame on us if we're doing it by ourselves, because God did not intend that. The Bible talks about it quite a lot. Jonathan...some thoughts?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. And just kind of with that Olympic thing. I love how you have different, there's all these different sports or activities or whatever you want. These sports that are part of the Olympics. But you see, say the soccer players are rooting and cheering on the gymnastics, or vice versa. So you have people from different categories that are all in it and saying, "Hey, we want to see you succeed. We're cheering you on. We're motivating you." Or, "helping push you to that finish line." And we have that same thing within the body. Man, I love that there's no lone ranger. If you look throughout all of the Bible, you always see community. There's community all throughout scripture. Acts 2:42-47, it really talks about some of that. And it says, "and they continued steadfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in breaking of bread and in prayer." Then it says, "then fear came upon every soul and many wonderous signs were done through the apostles. And now all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they sold the possessions and goods and divided them amongst themselves as everyone had need." You know, you start seeing that whole community being together, right? That whole, "if you have need," let me help you meet that need. We may not be able to meet all the need, but if I put in a little and you put in a little, we're going to help meet all of those needs. It said, "they continued daily in one accord in the temple and breaking the bread in the houses." You see that community just continuing to take place. "They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. Praising God, having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, those who are being saved." And I love that because that really shows that community aspect. Who is part of our community? I am part of Cornerstone Fellowship Church in Bayard. That's part of my community. I'm part of that community. They're rooting me on. I'm rooting them on. We're really challenging each other to grow deeper in Christ. And sometimes there are stumbles, but we don't take them and beat them up and throw them out of the church, right? We love on them and we help them. "Hey, let's get back to where God had intended you to be," and help them walk through those things. You know, there's support. I mean, within pastors, there's support groups. We root each other on, and man, I want to see you succeed. I want to see you succeed, and I want to see the church that you pastor succeed. And praying for each other, and rooting each other on.

Jonathan Hernandez
It's amazing to see how diverse the body of Christ is, and you know, we're not battling against each other. We're there, you know, when the USA goes over to the Olympics. They're not battling against each other. They're together, they're unified, and they're rooting each other on. And that's what the body of Christ needs to be. You know, that we're rooting each other on. It doesn't matter what fellowship that we're a part of, but we're rooting each other on because we want to see each other succeed. And we want to see the church grow. Seeing people being saved, the church being added to daily, right? And that's really amazing when we can start seeing that happen within the body. And not some of those bickerings that happen, but we're rooting each other on. So, for you listeners, are you connected within the body of Christ? Do you belong to a church? And if you do, are you just---I know when I first came to Christ, I just sat in the back. "Hopefully this pastor doesn't talk long. I want to be able to get out fast," because my heart was just starting to be changed. And then, as I started reading the word, I'm like, "man, I could sit here and listen to this pastor for six hours." I dunno. But, you know, you start feeling those changes and you start connecting with each other, right? Hey, so how are you doing? Let's go have dinner together. Let's go have lunch together," or whatever. And start building those communities/helping build that community. And so hopefully, you as a listener, are connected within your home church and really help build the community there by being a part of the community.

Garry Schick
So, so important. The passage I thought about, as we were sitting down to this, was that passage in Hebrews. "And do not neglect meeting together." Some are in the habit of doing that, "but encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching." You know, we need to fan the flame. And in fact, I've talked to people about this. Well, it's camping season, right? So, if you ever have a campfire, I don't know why it is, but all those logs have to lay together. They have to be touching. If one log is burning bright and rolls away from the fire, it's going out. Now, I don't know why. It has the fuel, the wood. It is wood. It has the oxygen, it's burning. It has the flame. I don't even understand this. My son, he's pretty smart about a lot of this science stuff. He could probably tell me, "dad, this is why." But in order to keep burning, those logs need to be up against other burning logs. They need to share the fire. And you know, think about the big names in the Bible. Apostle Paul: he was never alone. I mean, okay, he was once. We read about him alone. I think he was in Athens, and he was miserable until his team came and caught up with him. He always traveled with a group of people. He always had people that were receiving him. I mean, you look at, what is it? The end of Romans. He has all this, thank yous to all these people, and hi this one, and, "thank you to that one who helped me in all these ways." Even in his last letter, 2 Timothy, he's saying, "come before winter. Bring the parchments; bring this." He was alone every now and then. He didn't do well. And frankly, we don't either. Yes, when we're watching the Olympics, we're watching one gymnast. Maybe if it's not a team sport, maybe we're seeing one gymnast alone on the balance beam, or on the parallel, or uneven bars or those rings, or whatever. For that moment, It's kind of like the David and Goliath moment. But you know, where did David learn about the Lord? Probably his parents. For everybody that succeeds, you know, there's more than that moment. There is everything that went into that moment. We are watching, for two weeks, the best of the best on screen doing their ultimate moment. But the years of training, the years of support. The financial support, the coaches, the parents, the family coming together, communities coming together. I mean, so much. And I don't know about you, but to me, the Olympics at their best are just a taste of heaven, because that's what it's going to be. It's going to be people from every background, every nationality coming together, offering their best to the Lord. And you even see it in the Olympics where, even if we don't win, our people will congratulate somebody who had just broken a world record. Because guess what? There is a common humanity. There is a common bond of both striving for this. And you can do that. You can, "Hey, I wish it had been me," but if it wasn't me, "wow, good job." So you even see in the Olympics, this cheering, this empathizing, this concern for others at the best. Now, I know probably by the end of this, there'll be a doping scandal somewhere, whatever. I hate that, because that's not what it is about. And I am glad to be part of a nation that doesn't support that kind of thing. If our people get caught, they're in trouble. It's not like I'm not going to mention certain countries where it's government-sponsored doping. One of them I'm happy is not involved this year. I feel bad for those athletes. But that's not what this is about. This is about a world coming together in a good way. And ultimately, that's what heaven's going to be about. But how are we going to get there, friends? Well, Jesus, obviously. The only way to heaven is through faith in Jesus. But when you are born again, just like in human birth, you were born into a family. So, what is your connect point with that family? Now, I know some families are a little dysfunctional and some of our churches can be really dysfunctional, but there are options. Every community, I mean, there's a million churches in this town. Well, not quite. You've got to be able to find fellowships somewhere, my friend. And if you're hopping from fellowship to fellowship, there probably is a problem. But guess what the problem just might be. If you are hopping from one church to another, to another, to another, somebody's bringing their baggage with them. And I don't know who you are, and I'm not bringing in accusation. I'm just saying, "look," address the problem because the body of Christ needs you and your talents and your gifts. And you need the body of Christ. I'll tell you what; I am so grateful for a supportive church family behind me and my ministry and service to the Lord. And I'm also grateful for people like you, Jonathan. I mean, I look forward to our time together off-mic, even much more than on-mic. Just supporting one another in Christ. And there have been others who've been just encouragers, brothers, mentors, need it. And, you know what? There are times when it's a healthy decision to move from one church to another. I'm not saying that, but if you can look at your life and say, "Hmm, I don't seem to stay anywhere very long." Now that brings a question. That constant, "what? Do we bring it to the Lord?" And bring it to whatever body of believers you're at and just confess it and say, "Hey, I got a blind spot here." I don't know what it is, but find it and be a builder wherever you're at. Be a builder. Let us not just, let's come to be encouraged. There's times we're absolutely looking for that encouragement, but be part of the solution. Part of what makes the body strong. Build one another up.

Jonathan Hernandez
Definitely.

Garry Schick
Alright. Hey, let's go out there and run our race for Jesus, friends. And I mean, they do it for, in New Testament times, it was for what? Literally a wreath crown that withered pretty quickly. Now I think, are those metals real gold? I would guess so. But you know what? Even if they're 14 karat and thick, it's nothing compared to, well, gold bricks that are just paving stones in heaven. Can you imagine what that reward, that crown ultimately is all about? Well, the well done from Jesus, more than it's so wishing that to all of you as you run your race, because we're all crossing that line at some point. And may we fall into our Savior's arms and hear that, "welcome home. Well done!"

What Will The New Language Of The New Kingdom Be?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Garry Schick
Alright, so we are still using questions from that KCMI banquet. So today, kind of an interesting one. I didn't even know where this was exactly coming from when I first read the question and did a little digging and kind of found out. So the question is this, "there was one language before God mixed them up at the Tower of Babel. True enough, in Isaiah, God says He's going to give one pure language. What do you think that will be?" Well, I did a little digging, couldn't find anything in Isaiah. But in the King James version of Zephaniah 3:9, it reads as follows, "For then I will turn to the people a pure language that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent." Jonathan, what do you think about that?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so I guess I'm reading into that question a little bit and thinking that maybe they were wondering about one certain language. Is it English or Chinese or whatnot? I don't know if that's the direction they were going with the question.

Garry Schick
That is the direction. And maybe, what was the original language before Babel, which probably in their mind, was the pure speech.

Jonathan Hernandez
Could be, yeah. I was telling you earlier; when I was going to church before I was pastoring and whatnot, I'd always remember my pastor would always say, "Jonathan, you need to learn Spanish because that's going to be the heavenly language." So I think that was his thought on that one.

Garry Schick
I think most of us think that about our own native tongue, don't we? "Well, this is what they're going to speak in heaven."

Jonathan Hernandez
And I would always tell them, "well, if that's going to be the heavenly language when I go to heaven, I'll know it." Unfortunately, I don't know it here on earth. But I think, as we look at this scripture, I think it's kind of, to me as I start looking into that, it looks more as in line of that purifying of the speech. They were in those times worshiping other idols. And so, out of their mouth was coming, I mean like slander kind, essentially. Yeah, unholy things were coming out. Worshiping idols and different things like that. And so I think, as we see this, the pure language, they're going to be purifying the lips. Purifying the words that are coming out. And we see this, really in a few different spots, quite a few different spots throughout the Bible. The Bible speaks a lot about how we should speak, and we can look at some powerful scriptures that even point to this. We could look at Psalms 37:30, it says, "the mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom and his tongue talks of justice." So we see even throughout scripture where God is telling us that our speech should be pure. It shouldn't be bad. Ephesians 4:29, it says, "let no corrupt words proceed out of your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification that it may impart grace to the ears." So when I looked at this and as I was just looking at some scriptures and looking at what it was showing, "okay. What is my mouth speaking? Am I saying things that are unpure? Am I having that same language coming out that shouldn't be?" And if I do, then now it's time that I need to repent. And make sure that I am speaking the things that God wants me to speak. And Proverbs 15:4, "A wholesome tongue is a tree of life." If our tongue is speaking good, right? Is speaking holy things? It says, "the wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perseverance breaks the spirit." We need to make sure that our speech is that of which God wants it to be, not this of the world. We shouldn't be downgrading people or speaking ill of people, but uplifting them and encouraging them in their walk of Christ. And so like I said, as I look through that scripture that we just talked about, I don't know what the one language will be spoken in heaven or whatnot, but according to that scripture, I see it in that way that the people then were speaking things that they shouldn't have been. And God was purifying that speech.

Garry Schick
And I think you're dead on, and I think it for several reasons. Yes, it's true that the King James version talks about the Lord giving them a pure language. But then if you look at that in the ESV translation (the English standard version), it says, "For at that time, I will change the speech of the people to a pure speech that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord." Now, when I dig back into the original Hebrew, it could kind of go either way. And if I go to the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was read in New Testament times, the word there could go either way as well. But what you can do without even having to know the biblical languages, which obviously, if there was one language, it would probably be Greek or Hebrew, right? That's what we maybe would assume, but that's not really what the passage is talking about. I think this is a great opportunity to say, sometimes we'll spot something in a verse that will kind of scratch our interest. And I think that's one, you know, so what will be the pure language? What will be the pure speech? What is that? Well, context is key. Listeners, get that little phrase in your head. Context is key. What in context is God talking about there? And I have a little subtitle to kind of help me know the context. In my ESV study Bible, it says, "The Conversion of the Nations." And if you look at this for that time, "I will change the speech or the language of the peoples," literally the nations, the Gentiles, "to a pure speech." Well, what was their speech? Without God? It was exactly what you pointed out. Idol worship and blaspheming God, and everything contrary to God. And so, what did Isaiah pray? Speaking of Isaiah---even though this verse isn't in Isaiah---when he saw the Lord, he says, "woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips." And actually, the Hebrew word there isn't really, "language," or, "speech." It's the word for lip. "I will give them a pure lip," is literally what the Hebrew is saying. The Greek, the Septuagint, the Old Testament in Greek that the New Testament church read says, "glosa," tongue. Now, a tongue can be a language, but it can also refer to speech or what trips off the tongue. And you, I think also did a great job of not only giving us the context, "what is this verse about?" It's not really about languages. It's about the Gentiles coming to faith and coming to praise the Lord with one voice, a clear voice of praise to Him. Not idolatrous and...it's purified. But then if you look at the breadth of scripture and how it speaks of the lips and the tongue, but regarding languages---and again, we look again at the scope of scripture. Revelation 7:9 talks about heaven. It says, John, the Apostle John, says, "after this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation and tribe and people and language standing before the throne of God clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and giving praise." So freedom for those of us who love our native tongues. It may be all, I think it will be all of them. I think we're going to speak all of our languages, and I think we're going to all understand each other, because God hears us in all the multiplicity. When God divided the tongues at Babel, He wasn't making them something impure. He was making it so that we would need to focus on getting our direction from Him instead of just, as a united world going on without Him. But He is praised. I mean, from the lips of children and infants. Jesus said you every day, and praise. By the way, this writer/caller was not the first to ask this question. There was actually a man somewhere, I don't know how far back in time, who he assumed that this was a reference to the language of The Garden of Eden. And he wanted to know what that language was. And so when his children were born, he wouldn't let anybody speak to them. He wanted to know what the language of the Garden of Eden was, and he just assumed that children would naturally speak it before they learned---. Well, it didn't work out so well. Children learn language; and they learn your language and whatever your language is. Listener, I guess at this point, most of our listeners are listening to us in English. That's what we're speaking. Your language is a beautiful language. And if you grew up knowing the mother tongue of your parentage, for Jonathan, it would be Spanish. For me, it would've been German/Russian. Those are beautiful languages. And God is praised in all those tongues. But whatever language we speak, are we using our tongue to sing and speak His praise and honor Him? Not only that our tongues are cleaned up from idolatry, but how we speak to others, boy, there's some conviction there. I've got to admit, sometimes I'm kind of grumpy. And sometimes it comes out of my mouth and, oh man, that wasn't a good witness today. Part of this reminds me a lot of, years ago, I spent some time in Africa. I think I've told you about this before. We're so blessed as a nation, we're really English, and now Spanish as well are kind of the two languages. I know some people struggle with that, but in Africa, everybody speaks their tribal tongue. At least in Kenya, the part of Kenya I was in, they speak their tribal tongue. They all know Swahili because that's how they communicate with each other. And then they know a little bit of English to get along with us Europeans, because Kenya at one point was a British colony. So I mean, they're trilingual and they're pretty good at it, because I mean, a lot of them are actually fairly good at English, and that really is their third. But one of the cool things there, when we were in a really small, not that big of an area, but I mean there were nine different tribal tongues. And I collected, I don't have it with me, I wasn't really thinking about this, but I collected how to sing, "God is so good," in all of these different languages. Kalenjin and Swahili, and of course I had it down in English. I mean, I can't even remember all the different tribes. And it's kind of fun saying, "God is so good," in all those different languages, and I just think that's going to be a taste of heaven. We're going to get up there. We're going to be singing amazing grace in all the tongues, and we're all going to know what we're, I mean, that one, you would know what they're singing. Maybe not what verse they're on, but because that's when we know. But we're going to know the Lord and we're going to sing His praise and He's going to know what we're saying just like He does now. And He's going to hear, not only the whole group, but He's going to hear every voice that's singing His praise. And He's going to know more than just our tongue, but the heart that it comes from.

How Should Christians Live During The Last Days?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Camp Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Gary Hashley
Today, the question we're going to think about, talk about, and interact on, I guess would be a good way to put it today is a question that's really at the forefront of many believers minds. And that is, "how should Christians live in the last days?" Now really, the last days I believe started when Jesus ascended back to heaven and said, "I'll be back," and that the clock has been ticking in God's economy toward the time when Jesus returns. I'm convinced the apostles thought it was going to be in their day and age; and that Paul thought it might happen in his day and age; and that Peter's audience he was writing to in first and second Peter thought it was any time. Now, I remember being in high school in the early 1970s and hearing sermons basically saying, "the world is so bad; things can't get any worse. Jesus is coming back any minute." And I remember thinking as a teenager, "would I ever graduate high school? Would I ever go to college? Would I ever get married?" And here I'm not only a grandpa, but come January 1st, I'm due to be a great grandfather. And we have been living in the last days for a long time now. I know what people are thinking, and Brad, you're going to pick up on this in a minute. I know what people are thinking and that is, "well, maybe you thought it was bad in the 70s, maybe you thought it was bad in the 90s. Maybe you thought it was bad in the early 2000s, but this has got to be the tailgate of God's prophetic calendar for humanity." And people are thinking, "this is it." I remember my dad telling me years ago, he said, "Gary, we need to live like Jesus is coming today or tomorrow, but we need to plan like it's going to be another 100 years." And I think that was good advice from my dad, but Brad, let's let you get going on this. How should Christians live in the last days?

Brad Kilthau
Yeah Gary, in the last days, you're right on that. It is, the last days is technically---you look at the Bible, it's the time between Jesus' first coming and his second coming. That's the last days. One of the ways I usually explain it to folks is, they'll talk about the last days. We live in the last days. And you talk maybe about a football game. Your wife's getting tired of watching that game and she looks at you and says, "how long do we have to watch this game? Can't we watch something else?" And I'll say, "well, we're in the last quarter." And she'll look at the screen and say, "Well, there's 15 minutes left." Just 15 more minutes. Well, it might be an hour before that 15 minutes is over. And that's really what we mean when we talk about the last days. It's that last quarter. It's that last period of time. There's no new messengers coming from God. We have the completed word of God now. There's not going to be another time period for the church. It's over. This is it. But it could still go on for an extended period of time. Yet when we look at prophecy in the Bible and we see so many prophecies that had to be fulfilled in order for the second coming of the Lord to happen. We see those are all fulfilled. And so we can say, "yeah, we're living in maybe the last of the last days." But we can't put a time limit on it and we can't act like it has to happen tomorrow. It doesn't have to happen tomorrow, but it might. We're still, as you said Gary, we're supposed to live like it's imminent. It can happen at any time. And again, the disciples, the apostles instructed people, he instructed the churches to live that way. And I'm not sure what passage of scripture you were thinking about Gary, but I was thinking in 1 Peter 4:7-11. Where the apostle Peter, he says, "but the end of all things is at hand." Listen to that word. I mean, it sounded like he was saying to the church, "It could happen anytime." The Lord could come at any time. "The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers and above all things have fervent love for one another. For love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. As each one has received a gift, minister to one another as good stewards of the manifold of grace of God. And if anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as the ability with God's supplies. That in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

Brad Kilthau
And I think that passage of scripture, Peter really sums it up well for how we should live in these last days. The first one is: we should be fervent in prayer, obviously. And I'm going to leave that one for you, Gary, but the other one is found in verses 8-9 where he says, "we are to love one another." And I think that's kind of odd when you think about our society today, because if anything, we're a society today that's more hateful towards each other than I think we've ever seen before. The rudeness, the self-centeredness, the self gratifying thing that's going on in people's lives. So what's Peter saying? He's saying, "well, in the last days Christians, you need to be different than the world. You need to love in a way that actually astonishes the world." They look at you like, "how could you love others like that?" And I think we need to step outside of the norm, and the incognito of being blended in with all of the people of the world and show what it means to have Christ in your life and to love people. What does that mean? Well, I guess first of all, get a circle of people that you can love on, that you can express to them love. That you can help them out in their time of need. But don't just have that circle. Put a bigger circle outside of that one, because get out to people who you don't even know and express love to them. And the reason we know that that is, I think the advice of Peter here is, because he said that we are to be hospitable to others. We are to be hospitable. When you look that word up in the original language, it means to love strangers. And man, we have to do better as the church I think Gary, because I think the church is becoming such a little hub and a close knit club. And we can love on each other, but we can't love outside of the walls of our church, and we're in trouble when we do that. I was reading about the Albanians. I guess the Albanians are known for loving people who are strangers. It's called The Albanian Love. And when I was reading through this article, it was actually that the Albanian people will buy extra food and extra supplies and they'll stick it up on a shelf or something and store it away knowing that if there's a stranger that comes into their life, they have it. They just grab it and give those to somebody who they don't even know and help them out. And I think we could learn from that, and we should be living like that in these days. Jesus said, "love one another, that others will know that you are my disciples." That love is a way we can express to the world that Jesus is real. In fact, when Jesus said that he actually gave the world a tool to grade us as Christians by, in other words, it's like the Lord is saying, "go to my children and see how they love you." And that'll be their grade. "Check them out. Look how they love others." And that should be a wake up call, again, to us is the church. Another thing he expresses there is, we need to use our spiritual gifts to the fullest. In verses 10-11 in that passage that I read already. Use it to the fullest; our spiritual gifts. Our spiritual gifts are actually our fingerprint on the things that God has called us to do. And the reason it's a fingerprint is because it's very unique. Even though the spiritual gift list is very short, it is a list that every one of us can say, "one of those gifts is mine as a follower of the Lord." But when it is yours, it's a little different even with the other people who have the same gift. And the reason is because you have a different personality, you have different ability, you have different tendency. And so you kind of color your gift a little bit---in a way that's very unique. And I think we see that when we look at what the Lord said. He said that we were called and designed as workmanship for the Lord since the beginning of time. And God has a unique plan for us each as an individual to do with our spiritual gifts. So, if you're not finding out what your spiritual gift is, you're not living right in the last days because you need to know what your spiritual gift is. You need to use it and use it to the fullest. In fact, if you don't use it to the fullest, the Lord actually tells us through his apostle here. He said here that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belongs all the glory and the dominion forever. And so if we're not using the spiritual gift, not employing what we have...we're not finding out what it is, then we're not giving God the glory that He is due. And so there's just a couple of things I guess we can look at Gary, and how we should be living in these last days. You want to add to that?

Gary Hashley
Yes, I do. You talked about what Peter wrote in the first letter, 1 Peter, and I had that down and I wrote down some things about that text. He emphasized being prayerful and loving and forgiving and serving and focused. And those are all good things. Then we get to the end of his second letter and what we have is chapter three. Now, they didn't divide their letters into chapters and verses. We did that since then just to help us find things. But he closes out his letter, and the whole third chapter has to do with the second coming of Christ, the day of the Lord showing up. And he talks about the fact that there are those who are scoffing saying, "He probably isn't coming because he hasn't come yet. If he hasn't come yet, he's probably not coming at all." And Peter says, "no, no! Don't think about it that way." And then he uses that statement about, a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. Now, don't fall into the trap of making that a mathematical formula. He's not saying that 24 hours equals a thousand years or a thousand years equals 24 hours. What he's saying is, God doesn't think of time the way we think of time, or function in time the way we function in time. So don't figure, because it's been a while that he's not coming at all. Because God is going to fulfill everything He said He would do. In fact, verse nine, God is in slack concerning His promise. In other words, if God said it, it's going to happen. Then he alludes to the fact, the day of the Lord will come. That's in verse 10, 2 Peter 3, "the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night." Then it talks about the heavens and the earth passing away with a fervent heat. The first time God destroyed things on earth, it was with a flood. The second time it's going to be with fire. And he says everything's going to be dissolved. And he says, "what we should do is look for and hasten the coming of the day of God," because the heavens and the earth will be dissolved. They'll be on fire. And then he says, "beloved," verse 14, "looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found in him, in peace without spot and blameless. And consider that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation. As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you." So, as I look at 2 Peter 3, how should Christians live in the last days? Well, we should live looking up, so to speak. Looking for Jesus to come. And it could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. It could be another a 100, 500, 1000 years from now. We don't know. And if anybody says they know, Jesus said even the son of man doesn't know. So if they think they know, they don't know. It is just a fact. But we ought to be waiting. Waiting for him to come. If we knew a thief was coming, we'd wait. We would watch, and we would wait. But he also talks about winning. He said, "it's salvation!" I think back, if Jesus had come in 1975, the year I graduated from high school, how many people that didn't know Jesus then but know Jesus now, they wouldn't have been ready for Jesus to come back and spend eternity in heaven. I know it's one thing to pray, "Lord come quickly." I mean, we all do it, when at a test or quiz in school wanted Jesus to come because we hadn't studied. But we should be concerned if Jesus were to come today, who doesn't know Jesus yet that needs to know the Lord. Jesus is savior. So if I can sum this all up before we run out of time, I think what Brad and I have been saying is, how should Christians live in the last days? How about three Fs? 1. Focus: We need to be focused on the fact that this isn't going to keep going like it is forever and ever and ever. When Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples standing there with their mouths hanging open, the angels said, "he'll be back the way he left." He'll come back. So focus on the fact that Jesus is coming and could be any time. 2. Faith. Have faith. It will be at the right time in the right way. And that no matter what happens leading up to it, that as followers of Jesus, our home is heaven. No matter how much we're called to suffer here, and some will suffer greatly here, that our home is heaven. And then the third F is Fear. But it's not for us to fear. It's for us to not fear. I think there are Christians out there and they're stockpiling food and they're stockpiling bullets because we may be in the last days. Trust me, stockpiling food and stockpiling bullets is not how we prepare. It's, how did he say, "be diligent to be found in him in peace without spot and blameless." Live for Jesus today, knowing that he could come at any time. So, I don't know if that answers anybody's questions, but how should Christians live in the last days? Go to the scriptures and find out.

Is It Bad To Envy A Good Quality That Someone Has?

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Camp Pastor features Pastors Adam Sanders, Colby Houchin, and Art Devos.

Art Devos
We love having these questions come in! The first one is a recent question that came in and it says, "Is it bad to envy a good quality of someone else?" For example, humbleness, love or charity?

Colby Houchin
Man, that's a good question. That's a deep question. And, I don't know. I think a lot of our listeners wouldn't realize how deep that question can be at face value. So the first thing I wanted to say, "is it is a very good thing to desire to have the good qualities of others?" The good godly qualities that others possess is a really good thing for us to want to pursue those things.

Art Devos
And the first time this question came out, I showed it to Adam, and the very first thing we said was, "it's great to emulate, right?" To emulate those qualities in someone else. Just as we're seeking to emulate Christ, right? To be Christlike, it doesn't mean that we're envious of that. It means that we're striving to be like that. When you see that good quality in someone, you could recognize that when you see someone who is just so good at loving people, just loving people, you can see that in them. And there are times that I'm like, "man, I wish I could love people. They love people." And I need to maybe be a little bit more earnest in my attempt to do that. And I don't believe that's envy. I think that's close to envy. "I'm striving to emulate that in someone," right?

Colby Houchin
Yeah, I think we talked before this of the importance of defining the word envy. I had my own analogy, but Adam's actually was much better than mine. And so I am going to kind of set him up to talk about it, cause we all have coffee in front of us. So words that we commonly use today that I think we often get mixed on what they actually are supposed to mean; so we have this word envy. We have words like jealousy. We have words like coveting, and so you might recognize that word from one of the 10 Commandments. We have words like greed, we have pride. We have these different things that tend to be, I'd say misused, or we kind of see them as synonyms, but each one of those is actually a specific state in a specific heart issue. And I think we should start by defining those. So again, I was going to have my own analogy, but then Adam's was way better. So Adam, what did you say as far as when it comes to mine, yours, coffee cups, what's the difference between Envy, Jealousy, and Coveting?

Adam Sanders
Sure. No, absolutely. I think, yeah, defining the word is very important, and I think especially when it comes to envy there, I think we'd all agree it is maybe the most sinister of all of the words that could be used. I'm not saying that to attack the questioner, but just for the sake of asking the question in a helpful way and understanding that. And yeah, that was kind of the analogy, we were thinking of talking about coffee. And we mentioned that something like jealousy would say, "this is my coffee and I don't want anyone to take it from me." We would say covetousness would be like, "oh, Art's coffee looks way better, and I want his." Envy, as maybe the most sinister of them all, would say, "you have coffee and I don't. I'm jealous. I hope you spill it, and no one gets coffee." There's almost like a vindictive nature to it in the sense of like, "Hey, I would rather nobody get it than you have it." And I was even thinking of, I mean, we preached in our church on Sunday on Cain and Abel. And just that nature of envy being found in the sense of wanting someone else to fail rather than succeed.

Art Devos
And that's Genesis 4, if you want to go through the story again of Cain and Abel. I went to James 3, and I'm going to read that here for us. James 3:13-18, "Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield; full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." So envy stems from, a lot of times, the dissatisfaction in one's own life, right? That's kind of where it comes from. And so, when you start to recognize this, what do we need to do about this? If this is truly something that you are struggling with and having that real envy in your life, first of all, envy is inherently evil. We need to understand that, and we need to turn away from that. So being repentant of that, but we need to humble ourselves in that, right? And we need to ask God to reveal, "what is our motivation behind it?" Because envy, there's always that motivating factor behind it. And if we can get to the root of that, we can start to understand, I think, a little bit more about what this is. And then you can read a little bit further on in James as well. When you get to chapter 4, starting in verse 7, it talks a little bit more about pride and things like that right before it. But then it says this, "therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up." Again, it's all about seeing what that motivation is. Humbling yourself and just submitting to God even in these good qualities that we see in somebody, if we're going to do that, what's your motivation behind it in there and stuff too? So how can we get past that? There's our answer right there.

Colby Houchin
And I think that leads us into a good conversation about our relationships with other people. Even when we acknowledge good things about other people, we have our heart in a place where we can be in proper relationship with them, we can be joyful. So let's say that Adam did, again, Adam and I are pastors of different churches, love each other, we feel like we're partners in ministry just because we believe in the same things, but we're in different churches, different congregations, different flocks. Let's say that he had a youth group event and 450 kids showed up and gave their lives to Christ. That would be a massive praise. That would be amazing for me to have a proper relationship with Adam. And I'd argue with the Lord. I would want to celebrate that type of moment. I would want to see a good quality or maybe whether it's because Adam's just such a wonderful preacher that the spirit moved in him in a mighty way and used him to bring those people to Christ. And I'm just putting words in my own mouth. I'm not saying anything about you or Adam. "Adam's a terrible preacher, but the Lord used him anyway." And that we get to acknowledge that Adam, Adam was able to do this wonderful ministry. And if I was moved in a way of, "man, I know that a lot of people gave their lives to Christ, but like, man, wouldn't I have been a better fit for that?" So here's the--- Go ahead.

Art Devos
Oh, I was going to say, when I came here to Camp Rock, there was a question that I actually got asked frequently. And when I say frequently, I really mean I was getting this question asked a couple times a year for a period of a couple years. And it was always, "Don't you hate Maranatha? Aren't you getting sick of Maranatha?" Maranatha is another camp that has the same mission, the same purpose that we have. And in order for me to hate them, it would literally mean that I am envious of their success because of their numbers that they have every summer. And what I would desire is: that they start to fail so I can start taking their kids. And if I can't have their kids, then nobody should be able to have their kids. And I am like, "No." In fact, I support them fully, because if they're going to be true to teaching the word of God, then I'm their biggest fan. I want kids to go to Maranatha and hear about that, and they should want the same for us. And so that's kind of what I started to think about too in this question and that thought process.

Colby Houchin
Absolutely. And that would be a classic definition of envy. Again, the difference, and you did, I love that coffee analogy. The difference between, for example, coveting and envy. Coveting is wanting something specific. So I'm like, "I want that coffee cup. I don't want a coffee cup." Greed would obviously be if I took all three of these coffee cups and I said, "they're all mine." Right? These are all similar. And jealousy is, and again, jealousy is often misdefined because we'll say, "I'm jealous of you." No. Jealousy is, "I'm afraid that this is going to be taken from me." And so no, "I'm jealous and get away from me!" But envy is---it's that classic---it's a step away from hate. And it starts with that comparison game when you're not in proper relationship with God or other people. Where I'm going to go, "you know what? There's something about Adam that I want to see in myself. I want to have the success he has." Or, "I want to have the good looks that he has," or "I want to have the skills and talents that he has." And because of that, and again, that's not envy. Envy is, "And because of that, I want to see him fall. I want to see him fail. I want," it wouldn't even be about, "Hey, what if I gained the gifts of Adam? And we were very similar. No, no, no, I don't want to see Adam succeed." And so, it is a step away from hatred. That's the reality of it. And I think we see a really interesting example of that playing out in 1 Samuel 18 with the story of David, shortly after David and Goliath, everybody's favorite Bible story growing up. Shortly, the story continues on after that. There's this really interesting line, this interesting song that's being chanted as Saul and David and the army comes into town. And so the women of the town are singing and dancing, and they say, "Saul has slain thousands, David has slain tens of thousands." We don't really have time to talk about the slain thousands and 10 thousands of people in battle, but let's go with just the comparison game really, really quickly of where the heart's at there. So what happens after that, is a dark ungodly spirit takes over Saul because he allowed that comparison to just warp his view of David. And it got to the point where he wanted to kill him. He wanted to strike him down because he recognized, "I'm only attributed to a thousand, but he's attributed to 10,000 or tens of thousands," and that's hyperbole. This was shortly after the David and Goliath narrative. So it's not like, David immediately went out and slayed 30,000 people with his own hand. This is a hyperbolic moment to exaggeration. But it really shows us the dangers of even good things like, "Man, Adam is just such a wonderful pastor and shepherd and just so gifted at that." We can still see the good things in others, and respond sinfully towards them. And so really, we talked about envy in the fall, at my youth group. And one of the things that we talked about as a remedy is really going back to the source of recognizing the love of God and the way that He loves all of us. And really just finding, what is it about yourself? What is it in your heart that does not allow other people to be blessed by God? Well, why is it that I can't love Adam as he is blessed or through his gifting?

Art Devos
And when we see those gifts in other people, we should be intentional about encouraging them in those gifts. I mean, really, that's what we should be doing. If I see someone that is truly, again, just a very giving person, somebody who will do anything for anybody and serve them and serve them well, encourage them in that. Lift them up, build them up, and be supportive and learn from them in that. Rather than taking that on, even where it starts to build towards that envy. I don't think for a lot of this, especially in good qualities, it generally doesn't start as envy, just flat out. It builds to it.

Colby Houchin
It festers like a wound. And that's kind of like when you read that story in 1 Samuel, that's what happens with Saul. It's not like he went, "oh, David killed 10,000. I only killed a thousand. I'm going to turn and stab him with my spear." There was this, kind of narrative of him just building and pacing and almost being tormented in his selfishness and in his twisted logic, and it led to a place of envy.

Adam Sanders
Yeah, for sure. I think you guys have really nailed it. I really, I just want to double down on the notion of, there are probably a few things better that we could posture ourselves to doing than to aspirationally look around and see greatness in other people and want to be like that. I mean, that is essentially the call of a Christian. I think we've said it many times, but to be Christlike is to imitate Christ. We see even the Apostle Paul mentioning, "Do as I do. Follow my footsteps of faithfulness." And so we see that there is an appropriate nature of seeing these things and recognizing the quality that I have and the blessing it is to other people and how it enriches our own lives and wanting to follow forward in those footsteps. And so it really is the heart. I think that's what we've been nailing down over time is at what point, if we let it shift to that, "Hey, it's not that I want to be good. Because the Lord has called me into these things and because it's a blessing to others and myself and my community and my family, I want the recognition he has, and if he has it and I don't have it, it's attack on my character, my quality, my personhood." And that's when we really start to lose the plot on that.

Colby Houchin
One thing I wanted to say real quick, and then we should probably move to the next question is, because I think the inevitable question is, "okay, but is it bad to envy people that are doing bad things? Is it a good thing to desire to see bad people fall," For example, bad people that are doing bad things. To see them fall? And this is a question I was asked in the fall when we were at youth group discussing envy, and I don't think I had a great answer. But I think I found an acceptable answer over the last few days as I've been doing some studies of missions and cultural exegesis through seminary. And one thing that the book I was reading talked about was the, "how do you do effective missions to lead inevitably to the development of the people group towards Christ?" So you get past the initial needs, you get past maybe the sin issues, but then what you do is you work towards seeing them become closer to their right relationship with God. And what I would say is, if you're like, "well, I know it's bad to envy good qualities, but what about people that are sinners or that are drunkard or that are cheaters or that are terrible, awful people that do terrible things?" What I would say is, your desire should not be to see them fall. Your desire should still be to see them move closer to Christ. And if God decides that they're going to fall, that's His choice, and there's a good chance that will happen because pride leads to destruction. And so, prideful people that are living in their sin often need a hardship in order to turn to Christ, but that's not our job to decide. I want to see them fall for the glory of God. Now, God can decide that, but our desire should just be, "I want to see them turn to Christ." I want to see that.