What Man Made Thing Is In Heaven?

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 listeners, for those of you who weren't there, we had kind of a unique experience last Thursday. Russ asked us to represent the different Ask the Pastor broadcasts by doing a standup live impromptu Ask the Pastor during the KCMI banquet. And so I said, "well, what a privilege!" And I'm like, "Russell, what question would you like us to tackle?" He's like, "no problem. We're just going to take questions from the audience. We're going to have them write them on cards, and you'll have about 30 minutes to figure out what to say." Oh my! Usually we have at least a day's notice to kind of think things through and figure it out. But actually, I had fun. Did you have fun with that?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, I had fun.

Garry Schick
It's different when you can actually see the faces, and I just had fun watching you interact, Jonathan. Because I could just see, because I'm busy on Sunday mornings, you're busy on Sunday mornings, we never really see each other doing ministry. And I could just see your gifts coming out when I saw you, the way you addressed a crowd, I just thought it was great.

Jonathan Hernandez
Thank you. I was nervous.

Garry Schick
On the other hand, I was nervous too. I mean, I've been standing up in front of groups for a lot of years, but it's always different when it's not your group. I am always at home in my own church with my own people. Always glad to have some visitors there or whatever, but it is different when you're just kind of in a new venue, in a new way, doing a new thing. You don't really know who's out there and what they're looking for. And certainly some of them may have been looking for something in their questions.

Jonathan Hernandez
You never know.

Garry Schick
And then a miracle happened. Cause you know, it takes us usually about 25 minutes to get through a 15 minute broadcast on one question. How many questions did we go through in those 15 minutes?

Jonathan Hernandez
I would say at least six, seven, somewhere around that.

Garry Schick
Yeah, we got through a bunch of them. Truly, I think if we were kind of settled like we are here in the station today, we probably would've taken 15 minutes on any one of those. But, and I thought really that it went pretty well. In fact, my family did. I know they're unbiased.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, it was an honor to be asked to be able to do something like that. And then, it's always an honor to be able to sit beside you, or stand beside you in that case. And it was so fun to do the questions together. Sometimes I feel like I'm maybe not hitting where I need to be. Then it's like you grab a hold of my slack and you finish. A lot of times you'll finish my thought because my brain might be racing too fast to go in a different direction already. And so I think everything just worked out great. We had a few people that came up afterwards and for me at least, and told me that we did a good job up there.

Garry Schick
You know, we apparently did. We survived. They haven't taken us off yet. Although our lives are so busy. We were just discussing this morning, we're not sure how long we can go with this, but we're going to keep trying for a little bit anyway. So anyway, but even though we did go through, I don't know how many questions, they handed us quite a stack. And what I love about it, and I kind of joked about it at the event, sometimes I kind of feel like Russ comes up with the questions on his own. Which is fine, but oh man, sometimes, where did he come up with this? I can honestly say the stack of questions in my hand actually came from, definitely listeners, in the audience and more than we could get to. And I promised them that we would carry them on into the show. And so today I have a question for us, and we kind of felt when we read it, this may be a trick question. I think this person already has the answer and wondering if we're going to figure it out. And so I'm going to read you guys the question folks, and Jonathan's going to take it up. I'm going to, but then I actually met the person who at the end, he came up to me and said, "did you get a question that said this?" Yeah, I did. And I told him, I said, "we kind of wondered if that was a trick." He's like, "no." But then he told me and I'm like, "oh yes." So there will be a reveal at the end of our broadcast today, what the listener's answer to the question was and why I feel like he's biblically right on target. But first, the question and then the different directions our minds would tend to go with it. Alright, are you ready? Here it is: What manmade thing is in heaven? Jonathan, we read that and we're like, "what manmade thing is in heaven? Come on, the Lord has made it all." But what are some thoughts that have come into your mind as you've pondered that question?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so when I first heard this, it was like, "well, God made everything right?" So, what would be in there? And then my mind kind of started going in some other directions and I was thinking, "okay, well, I don't know if you guys heard this phrase, but I remember hearing it actually in a Christian rap song and it says, "you'll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul." So you're never going to bring all of your stuff with you to heaven if you get buried in a casket with your favorite necklace or whatever it may be. Those things are earthly, they stay here. They don't go with you to heaven. And so that's kind of where I started going a little bit with the question as I was just thinking of that question throughout that early, we had 15-20 minutes to think about questions. That's where my mind started going. Now I'm thinking, "okay, we could look at, well what manmade thing make it up there?" The Bible says, "don't store up for yourself treasures on earth, but store up for yourself the treasures in heaven." So what do we put? So how does that join together with this question? And so I started having all these different thoughts with that, and I was like, "well, when he's talking about that, it's not like he's telling us not to store up all this stuff because it's not going with us up to heaven, but what eternal things can we take to heaven and we can help lead people to Christ? We plant the seed, water the seed. Christ brings an increase, obviously. So are those part of it? Where's this question going? So that's kind of where I was all over the place with that. Well, and the obvious thing I think, just I guess if it was a snake, it would've bit me in that sense, because my mind just went right past it. And I'll let you go with the answer with that one. So that's kind of where I was going as I was thinking with that, with the question.

Garry Schick
But people have said things to you too, in terms of death and what happens to their body. So think about that a little bit too.

Jonathan Hernandez
I think a lot of that too is just the different religious beliefs from across the spectrum of all the different beliefs and where different things can happen. If I get buried with, I don't know, my favorite video game or something, I don't know.

Garry Schick
You see that in caskets. People put things in the caskets.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. People put things in there, and in the sense they're expecting that to go with them up to heaven. If I take my favorite video game, what am I going to play it on anyways? So, if you're following with that thought process, you'd have to put everything in that casket that would allow you to play the video game.

Garry Schick
And a pretty good battery too.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So those things aren't really, it's not happening, right?

Garry Schick
It's a good challenge, because there's an old saying, "you can't take it with you." And yet people live their lives just kind of storing up, storing up, and storing up stuff in this world as if they could.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, we sit on millions of dollars in the bank account, right? Well,

Garry Schick
Well, you might.

Jonathan Hernandez
I don't have that, but that's the mindset. I'm going to store up all of this stuff. But then, and I'm not saying that's wrong. You should have a little bit of a savings to help, but we save all this stuff, and when we die, we don't take that with us. Now, if we have it set up right for our families to be able to have that benefit of it, then great. But that's a whole other rabbit trail. So yeah, that's kind where I was going when I first thought this question, and then when the obvious hit me, I was like...

Garry Schick
Oh, it's not obvious for our listeners.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. And so I'll let you go into that.

Garry Schick
But just to kind of dovetail off of what you said, the ancient Egyptians, absolutely. And not only the ancient Egyptians, but I mean there's a lot of different people groups who have had the concept of, 'taking it with you,' in fact. But the Egyptians probably took it to an extreme beyond anybody else. I mean, when the Pharaohs went into their tombs, they went in with ships, with slaves. Which, I don't know whether they were buried alive or dead, but they went in with them. They went in with food. In fact, I think it's been discovered. Yeah, I know it has. They have found jars of seed and honey in Egypt. And so this stuff so cool! It was buried over 3,000 years ago, and they take the seed out of the jar, plant it, and it still grows. They take the honey out of the jar, and it's still good because honey, I don't know if our listeners know this, it doesn't go bad. Not even 3000 years. I don't know if I personally want to taste 3,000 year old honey or not. That's been sitting in some pharaoh's tomb. But I don't know if somebody tasted it or they just scientifically analyzed it, but apparently honey doesn't attract, it doesn't decay, it doesn't go bad. So literally, they were trying to take it with them because they absolutely believed that they would need these things to supply them in the afterlife essentially. That you go into the afterlife, you take out what you brought in, and so they would try and bring a lot in with them. Conversely, Jesus has an interesting parable when there was a certain man who had a pretty good harvest one year. Remember this parable? And so much so, he didn't have room in his barns, so he built bigger barns. And so he built the bigger barns. He put away everything he got, and he said, "now I can rest at ease because I'm stored up. I'm ready for what is to come." And that night, the Lord took his life and said, "you fool! You have stored up treasures on earth, but you have nothing in heaven." And Jesus talks about, "do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up yourself treasures in heaven." So I think that's where it was really good that you talked about the non-tangibles. You know, who we become in Christ, and C.S. Lewis talks about this. That basically every human being you meet, they're in a process of becoming---The people in heaven, the people in hell in one sense, they're exactly who you knew, but in another sense, they're not. Because I'm not who I was when I was a child. I have grown, I have changed. Well, we are either growing into something pretty wonderful, the new person in Christ in heaven, or without Christ, the diabolical being without God. That we will be whatever's left in that other place we don't want to decay into. But all of that aside, it also reminded me, going back to the idea of bringing physical things into heaven, of a joke I've heard. Have you heard this one? There was a man who shows up at the pearly gates, always St. Peter's there with the keys, and he's got a bag of gold with him. And Peter's like, "well, you can't bring that in here with you." And the man said, "oh, please Lord. I--" I don't know what the excuse was. So Peter goes, and he talks to the Lord about it. The Lord makes an exception. One of the angels is just shocked, "Peter, what is it that God is allowing this man to bring into heaven?" Peter says, "don't worry about it. It's just more paving stones." And not even that good of paving stones, because we know in Revelation it says that the streets not only will be paved of gold, but such a pure gold that it's transparent, which we can't even imagine that. Alright, so are we ready for the answer to the question? And is it biblical? So I was visiting with this person afterwards, and I'm like, "well, I don't know. What manmade thing will be in heaven?" And he looked at me and he said, "Jesus' scars. What he endured for us on the cross." And I think, well, we know that when we get to heaven, we're going to be healed, right? There can be no more sorrow, no more sickness. No more pain. So we're not going into heaven old and bent over, and cancer ridden and blind and deaf and missing limbs, all these. No, we're looking forward to a total, in fact, I remember a man in a former church that I served just kind of praising God as a friend of his. This is an old farmer. And he was talking about another farmer he knew who died, and it was kind of a tough death. It kind of took a while. And he kind of went through a lot in this world, but they'd been friends and they'd farmed together as side by side neighbors. And he just said, "praise God he is completely healed." We ask for healing on earth. And sometimes God does that, but sometimes the healing comes later. But it does come. But is it biblical to say that Jesus will have the scars in heaven? Well, I did have one scripture come to mind. And that is this one right here in Revelation 5:6. John says, "then I saw a lamb." That's of course, Jesus, "Looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders." So when we see Jesus, he's going to appear in different ways. And of course in Revelation, he appears in a mighty way. A fearsome way at the very beginning where John just sort of falls at his feet before him. He's described as the Lion of Judah. He's described as a warrior coming on a white horse. But at least in one scene, he appears as a lamb who has been slain. So yeah. And of course it talks in Hebrews about how, when Jesus entered heaven, he entered the holiest place with his own blood to atone for our sin. So the blood of Christ, the body of Christ, the scars of Christ; he carries it. And they are badges of love for us. There's a verse, I think in Isaiah where he talks, "I have written your names in the palms of my hands." And I just equate that with the nails. Those scars that he, those sufferings that he endured for you and me. Friends, the only reason you and I are here today, Jonathan, on the radio, is because we want people so desperately to know how much God loves them. Whatever they've done, whatever they've been through, wherever they're at right now. Whatever you're addicted to, or doing wrong or whatever it is, it doesn't make those things that are messing up your life okay. They're not. And you know, they want a way out. Well, Jesus is the first step. He is the power that is greater than we. And he is ready to take you by the hand with a strong nail scar hand. He has paid the price for your sin. There is nothing you can or ever will do to wash it away, but he's done it. Just receive his gift. Receive that gift of new life. Ask him into your heart, ask his forgiveness and know that he receives you. And here's another question. Why are Christians called sons of God? I think maybe that would be our topic for next week, just to follow this one, because that's what you get to be. You get to be a child of God, forevermore by trusting Jesus. Jonathan, maybe as you lead us into prayer, maybe you could lead us into salvation prayer. Maybe there's somebody out there who's like, I am done trying to do it by myself. I need Christ not only to help me with my problems, but I need salvation. I need to receive Him as my savior and to ask him to do in my life what I haven't been able to get straight. And by the way, that's all of us. That's all of us. I'm a work in progress. Are you?

Jonathan Hernandez
Oh, yeah.

Garry Schick
If you don't believe us, ask our wives. Right? Yeah,

Jonathan Hernandez
Exactly.

Garry Schick
Oh yeah. We've been working on him for a long time. I'm so grateful for a good wife. She's so patient, and I'm really grateful for an awesome savior. Well, listeners, we hope that you've received Christ as your savior, and you're walking with him. By the way, don't be discouraged. We know you're not perfect yet. We're not either. Yeah, Jesus' salvation is what he did, what he's doing, and what he will bring to completion in that day when we are fully healed and not just embody, but in soul and spirit. Until then, wishing you a great and godly day.

What Does The Bible Say About Generosity And Giving?

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 Garry Schick.

Garry Schick
Well Jonathan, I'm not sure you got this question, but I think it's a great one. What does the Bible say about generosity and giving? What do you think?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, that's definitely one that I think, as I pastored for 10 years, I always remember hearing this question come up and even in our youth group. Our kids will ask a question that's similar to that. So I think as we look at this, I think a lot of times we think generosity and giving has to be financial and money, and I think we miss it when we just keep it to that. As we look in scripture, we can think of Exodus chapter 35. Here we see that the Israelites are generously giving materials and time to build the tabernacle. So we could be generous in the building of the church, the church building, or even we could take that a little bit further and think about helping our community. If there's, like, we have the firefighter ministry here in town, that when there's a house that's been affected by a fire, there's this community that pulls together to help that family. And so that's a huge thing; that's being generous. That's giving. We could look at Malachi, Malachi chapter three, and it says, "to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. That there may be food in the house." And this is the part in scripture, the only part in scripture that God says, "test me in that tithing part of giving and generosity." And we think about the New Testament and we see that God gave His one and only son that God was generously giving to us as a human race. And so we could look at all of those things and we see where not only is God generous in giving to us, but also where we can be generous in giving back into our communities. Into our churches with tithes and offerings given to missionaries that are out in the field financially. but not only financially, but also in prayer and support that way. So we can't get stuck in where generosity, being generous and giving is just financial; but where it's also us being the hands and feet where we're willing to help out. At Cornerstone, we have a day once a month where we have a food pantry and there's a bunch of us that get together and hand out food into our community for a couple hours that day. That's an amazing opportunity for us to be generous and give back to help support families that are in need. And I know there's lots of churches here in town that do similar things too. Not only with a food pantry, but also I remember my pastor, when I first gave my life to the Lord, him and the men's group would go around and mow people's lawns and things like that where they were being able to give back into the community and show the love of Christ through that. And so I just would really challenge our listeners to really think about, "how can you give generously back into the community? Into your church?" Are you serving in your churches and being generous with your time and things like that. And then also your tithes and offerings too.

Garry Schick
Yeah, I think we tend to look at our money as, and I think you mentioned this in a previous episode, just sort of as an illustration of, "well, this is mine and maybe I'll give you a little bit." And it's just kind of in our nature as we go out into the world. We want to get the most bang for our buck. And so we actually have a mindset to give the least to get the most. When it comes to biblical giving, this is a different motivation. This isn't about getting, and I guess the little phrase that came into my head while you were talking was, "give to what you love." It's a different motivation when you are getting the gifts for your loved ones at Christmas. At that point you're not, hopefully you're not saying, "well okay, my wife has this list of desires. What's the least I can give her this year?" That sends up some red flags in all kinds of areas about your relationship with your wife, if that's the attitude. Usually it's more, "okay, what's the best I can do for my wife and my kids?" What's the most we can afford, and maybe even just a little bit more literally, giving till it hurts to make those we love happy. In the Old Testament, there was some tithing required, and in a sense, it was just a way of giving back to God kind of a minimum. You have this harvest, 10%, that's affordable, right? That's not too big a hurt. And at the same time, it supports the temple, it supports the priest. So it was, in a sense that tithing was kind of a tax and a fairly light one at that. I mean, we love to only have to give 10%, but the idea behind it actually came from a time before there was any law at all. The very first tithe, of course, is given in the book of Genesis by Abraham in chapter 14. Nobody's requiring him to give, but he gives a 10th of the spoils of war to the Lord through Melchizedek, the priest. In fact, it's not only mentioned in Genesis 14:20, but it's taken up again in Hebrews 7:2. And then in terms of the tabernacle, and I think you mentioned this, when they were first building it in Exodus 35:20-29, Moses just kind of throws the doors open for people to give of what they had received from Egypt, when they were in Egypt, and on their way out of Egypt for the building of God's place of worship. And the people gave so freely that Moses actually had to tell them to stop bringing in silver and gold and all the things that were used in the making and the furnishing of that. I mean, we actually studied this in Bible study recently. And my board chairman said, "yeah, when was the last time we told the people to stop giving on a Sunday?" I mean, that just happened so rarely. But you kind of do see it when churches pull together and they're doing a project. There's a building project or a fundraising campaign, or something that people are not just doing because they have to, but they're excited. They can kind of see something beautiful as an end result that will honor the Lord and that they can be a part of. And there's kind of an excitement there, and that I think really should be, as you were pointing out, just the heart of our giving. We see it again in 2 Chronicles 8:24 and following when the temple has kind of falling into disrepair, and at one point the priest put out a box and people just, every time it's full. They just empty it and they give the money to the builders, and they didn't even have to ask for a receipt or proof that the money was used. Well, everybody was on the same page. And again, it was just one of those things where everybody was doing all they could do. It wasn't a matter of, "well yeah, I'll go build at the temple and I'll put in the minimum and get the most out of it from those." No, it was, everybody was like, "Now look at God's temple. We need to get this thing fixed and I need some resources to do it with. But as a builder, I'm going to put my all into it." The people said, "we trust you," and they worked together. I love the passage in Ecclesiastes 11:1 where it says, "cast your bread upon the waters and you will find it in many days." It's a beautiful thing. And you mentioned from Malachi, where God actually asks the people to test him. If you'll give, you just see how I will abundantly reward you, above and beyond. You know, in Philippians, many of us are familiar with the passage where Paul says, "and my God, will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus. But the context of that is where Paul had been in some need, and the Philippians had freely given to them just out of their love for him. And so one of the ways that we love God is to support those who are doing His work and to use our resources toward evangelism. Toward the support of your local church and ministries toward missionaries. And I mean, you can put it all on the plate and designate it one way or another. You can just put it in the general fund. You can pick specific missionaries that you give directly to. I mean, the Bible doesn't say, "here's how you give, where you give, when you give." I love when Paul says in Corinthians, he says, "remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly; but he who sows generously will reap generously. Each should give out of what he has decided in his own heart, not reluctantly or compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver." As you pointed out, God freely gives to us. He doesn't owe us anything ever, but He freely cares for us. And that 10% or whatever---and I think 10%, even in the Old Testament was kind of considered a minimum and we shouldn't be looking, so we're kind of like, "oh, so you're saying it's got to be more than that?" No, I'm not. I'm saying, what can you in faith say, "okay, you have entrusted to me; I give back to you God because I love you and I'm grateful for how you are providing for me and my family." And it's the attitude of gratitude out of a heart of gratitude. With an attitude of gratitude we give to what we love. If the love isn't there, don't do it. If you're not grateful, don't do it. But heart check, do you know the Lord? I mean, have you pondered how He has poured out His mercies and love upon you through Christ? When that becomes the motivation then it's, man, "what can I do to really invest in it and look at it that way?" When we give to a cause, we may not directly receive the dividend, so to speak. You would if you threw it in the stock market, and you're supporting a company that you like and you're hoping to get back from them. This is a different kind of, 'get back.' You are giving to the Lord to say, "wow, and how will He use that?" And He does. He takes the little we give and He multiplies it, like Jesus did with the bread and the loaves. I mean, I've seen it in church functions. I remember once, and I've heard about it where it was sort of a funeral dinner and the lady said it just wasn't quite enough, but then it was enough. Well, how did that happen? They brought out of their hearts what they had, and, "Oh, we're going to be short. There's more people here than we thought," but wait a minute. It went to the very last person. How did that happen? God blesses it, and sometimes He does the miracles and sometimes somebody runs out and buys some more rolls. I mean, it's not even about looking for a miracle, it's just looking to love God and knowing that He's going to love us back in return; in a physical and a practical way. We are physical beings. Yes, we worship in spirit and truth, but we worship with our whole being. And giving is one of those ways that in a concrete way, we can be a part of what God is physically doing in this world. And what a great idea as we enter the new year, and some of us have annual meetings coming up and some of them, they had happen toward the end of last year. But no matter where you're at, if you're part of a church that you love, sit down with your wife or if you're a single person, sit down and just kind of look at your finances and say, "okay, what can I do to really make this thing go this year? How can I bless and be a part of in a positive way?" Not giving in a way that takes control, like, "okay, I'll give if--" no, that is not the standard. It's, how can I just be a part and not only, as you pointed out, not only in our physical giving that should be there, but just in other ways. How can I help out? How can I get involved? How can I take of the gifts that God has given me, the strengths, the talents, the spiritual gifts, the interests? How can I channel that into loving God, building His church, encouraging others, sharing the good news of Christ to world that needs it?

Reading the Bible in a Year

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 Garry Schick.

Garry Schick
Well Jonathan, I want to welcome you into the, kind of really, as I started this I thought, we'll do this for a week. And then last week I was like, "yeah, this is good," two weeks. But I really think what we're going to talk about today is a great conclusion and it's something I'm so passionate about, listeners, which is why I just keep laying it before you. A couple of weeks ago, I laid before them a reading challenge. And I don't know what path or plans you follow. In my own life, I do something different every year. But one of the simple ways I've found to get through the whole Bible in a year is just three chapters a day, Monday through Friday and four chapters a day on the weekends. And if you want to do the Old and New Testament at the same time, it'd be one chapter a day. Monday through Friday of the New Testament, and then a couple chapters a day Monday through Friday of the Old Testament, and then four chapters on the weekend. And then for those who are like, "I want to spend a little time in Psalms and Proverbs," take those four chapters a day in the Old Testament on the weekends and just make two of those chapters on Saturday from the Psalms and two of those chapters on Sunday, one from Psalms, one from Proverbs. Or Ecclesiastes or Song of Solomon and the Solomon's writings. But anyway, a great way to get through. And I know there's many paths through the Bible, and even just reading the Bible in years, not always a good idea. I just spent the last four with a study Bible, just getting a little closer to it. And so that's what we talked about last week, was digging deeper into the word and just some of, I mean, there's so much more I could have talked about. How to do word studies; basically where you look up, and take something like Strong's Concordance, which you can find online. And just, what are the passages in that book? In Paul's letters or John's writings, or whatever you're in. Or even the whole New Testament or the whole Bible or whatever. But taking as much time as you have, not more, but if you're a retired person, you might really have some time to really mine out the riches of God's word, and just using your study Bible for all it's worth. But today, I just wanted to, and I know I camped on it a little bit the first week and probably even more last week. But ultimately, the goal is not just to know more, but to know the Lord and to walk in His ways and to feed on His word. And so I've got some thoughts, but Jonathan, in your own life, not just as a pastor, but also as a man of God, what are some ways that you feed on and draw strength from, and apply the word of God in your own life? I mean, as teachers we know how to do that, but bringing it home, how's that happen for you?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so I think the first verse that really pops out to me at times comes up with John chapter 15. And this is, "I'm the vine." And man, the first time I read through that, I don't think I really understood it. There's a lot of the Bible I read throughout the first time and I didn't understand it.

Garry Schick
Thank you for that honesty. We do. We are learners too when we get there.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, and so just as I look at this and it says, "I'm the vine, you're the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." So when I look at that, I'm like, "wow, I'm so intertwined. I'm so close." You know, like a branch, they intertwine with each other and it strengthens them. And as we intertwine ourselves, in that sense, with God, think about how much that strengthens us to stay strong as we're connected to God. We receive the nutrition that we need for each and every day. And so, as we read through the Bible, I think early on in my walk, it became more of a, I've got to clock in, read the Bible, clock out, go to work. And it became, what do you want to say? A chore in a sense. And I never received anything out of that. Obviously, God's word's going to go out and it's going to take root, but there just wasn't things that were really opening up for me early in my walk. And I think one of the big things that really helped open that up was joining the men's Bible study at our church. And just hearing how some of these other mature Christians were reading and getting things. And I'm like, "Where did you get that? That doesn't even make sense. How did that work out?" I didn't get that when I read that. And just sitting there and watching them just really pull things out of the word from what God's, the Holy Spirit's showing them in there. And that really helped open up my eyes and see, "okay, well what am I doing that isn't helping me, I guess in that sense, in reading the word?" And so as I've seen that, I was like, okay, for one, I am doing it as a chore. I'm not doing it out of a relationship, out of love with God. And so as I moved into reading it to build relationship with God and not, "oh, I'm doing the Christian thing," it really helped me grow in a lot of my walk. And so that was a big thing. One of the things too that, and I can't remember the pastor that does this, but he talks about, every year he reads a different translation. That's a great way, just seeing it from one type of writing I guess, or language use to another, helped open up some scriptures for him or seeing it in a different light, I guess. And so I've tried that. I've always read out of the new King James. That's just kind of what my parents, my uncle was a pastor, and I think that's the bible that he gave me.

Jonathan Hernandez
And so that's usually my go-to. Then I was able to read through some different ones, the NIV and you know, different translations and stuff. And so, that helped open up some things. But I think the big thing is that when you get into the word, you're doing it out of a relationship that you want to know Him more. And so when I look at John 15, it's THAT. It's that relationship. The byproduct of being in that relationship is going to be allowing the word to come out in my life. And then I see, just like tithing. I gave my church five bucks when I was going, "I'll give you five bucks, but the rest is mine." Until I started understanding some more of the scriptures and things, and then I was like, "okay, well giving five bucks, that's not giving it with a joy for heart." My heart was like, "that's my money." And so then as the more I was in the word and the more that the fruit started being buried, it was like, "okay, now I understand. Now I am able to tithe and it's not out of a heart of, "this is my money." Now it's, "okay God, I'm giving joyfully to you." And that comes out too in Evangelism. I am, by myself, more of an introvert. More, I want to be myself type of thought. But when I allow the word of God to come into my life, and the fruit of that is everywhere we look in scripture, there's community. It's always community. We see community everywhere. And so that was really something that helped me learn that I need to live in community. And it's okay if I'm an introvert, but let's get out of that shell a little bit. And that was a byproduct of being in the word. That was the, living it out, part. Now I'm able to talk to other people, show people who Christ is and things like that. So I think the more that you're in the word, sometimes you'll start doing things that you don't realize that you're doing. It starts to shape your perspective.

Garry Schick
Well, good stuff. And that is such a passage because ultimately, as Paul says elsewhere, "it is he who works in us or in you to do and accomplish according to His good purpose." But there is a part of it that we're responsible for too. And I guess as we think about this, here's an acronym that I've taught kids, in terms of just figuring out how to apply. So where's the connect point? A great little acronym for how the Bible applies to your life is the word S.P.E.A.K. SPEAK. S is for sin. In the scripture you've just read, is there a sin to avoid or to confess or to repent of? P is for promise. Is there a promise? It's not just made from God to Abraham, but I mean, is there something there for us too? or a promise that Jesus is making to all believers or that Paul or James or John are saying that apply to us? Is there a promise to trust God for? E - is there an example to learn from? And I say, "to learn from," because there are some examples in scripture that we want to follow that, "wow, yeah, this is how Jesus, he started his day in prayer, I should do that." Or Daniel, he'd spent three times a day in prayer and, "oh, that's a great, I can learn from that." But there's also examples like, "oh, that one didn't work out so well." Like, you know, David. He didn't go out to battle like he should have, with the kings, and ended up staying home. And next thing you know, he's there with Bathsheba, committing sin and covering it up and what a mess. I mean, it basically dogged him for the rest of his life. So, that's not an example to follow. You don't want to do that. But you look at that and you go, "oh my goodness, how is it that he left himself open to that sexual temptation and sin that led to all of those horrific consequences in his life?" And what are some of the weak spots in your life, or mine, where we just need to go, "hey, I don't want to leave myself open to that." Or maybe it's something else totally different than that, but you just say, "I don't want to go there." And so you look at the example. Whether it's him or Saul; when he partly honored what God said, but only went halfway. And ultimately Samuel was like, "you know what? The Lord honors obedience more than sacrifice," or whatever. So we can learn from the good examples, "do this," and the bad examples, "avoid that." But it's not all about doing. The next one, the letter A, is one of my favorites. It's awe, awe of who God is. Is there something you've just read in your Bible that just stops you in your tracks and you go, "Ah! God is awesome." And just to reverence Him in worship. And then the last one, K, is for keep the commands, because there's a ton of them. Not just the 10 commandments, or even the great ones to love God and love others, but keep what God is. And frankly, as a teacher, I do this all the time without even thinking about that. Okay, so here is where we're going, but we also need to bring it home closer than that. Maybe those are all great applications of the word, but I also think it needs to kind of come back to that prayerful, "Lord, what do you want me to get out of this?" And I loved your honesty, Jonathan. Sometimes we read a passage, and nothing clicks right away. But I think sometimes, if we're prayerful, "Lord, is there something in your word that I read today that I just need to carry with me?" And a great verse that speaks to my heart is Joshua 1:8, "do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may be careful to do everything that is written in it. And in so doing, you will make your way prosperous and successful." So there's these two sides of it. There's what God does in us. He will perform, He will do, He accomplishes His good work. But there's also our response. And I looked up that the Hebrew word for meditate, it's the word hagah. And it means to mourn, growl, utter muse, moan, meditate, to devise, to kind of plot in your mind, to speak it forth. And I think when we're meditating, it's basically to mumble it. It is just like this...is kind of what you're talking about, your breath. Just the other day I was thinking about what Mary did when the shepherds had been there. And they're spreading the word and it says, "Mary kept, or treasured, all these things in her heart, and pondered them in her heart. And the Greek word, there's actually a, what is it? It's Sumballo, it means she threw it around in her head. We're constantly throwing thoughts around in our head, but are we throwing around in our head the things of God? Because that ultimately, I think, feeds our souls. And so listeners, I guess of all that I would said, if you would just take a word or a phrase from the word and having read it, having rightly understood it. Dug a little deeper, but then read, reflect, dig deeper, and then renew. Bring that, carry that word or phrase with you and let God feed your heart through the day from that passage of scripture. Whatever He's led you to that day, and let Him, like a shepherd, lead you to the green pastures of His word. The calm waters of His word. It's more than just, "I've read it, God said it, I believe it. Good." It's even more than just digging deeper. Now I understand some great things. And letting God show you what He wants you to do with it. Meditate on it, that you may be careful to actually now do. And in so doing, you will have made, we talk about how God blesses us. But it says, in so doing, you will have made your way prosperous and successful. You will have brought yourself to a better place and a closer walk. And it's amazing how God can take just a word or a phrase of scripture, and just give us strength in the tough moments and joy. Well, some thoughts. Jonathan, I don't know if you have some more, but what a great way to look into the year. Let's go deeper, closer, step-by-step with Jesus. Do you know one of the most repeated words in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is the word for walk. It's a daily walk with. We'd love to run to our goals, but to really get to life change. It comes walking day by day with the Lord.

What Is Hanukkah?

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 Garry Schick.

Garry Schick
So good to be together and here we are in the midst of Advent, and today is actually the first day of Hanukkah, which as Christians, we've all heard of it. We know it's a Jewish holiday. And I came up with this question because today is the first day of it. I thought, what I bet a lot of people wonder, "what is Hanukkah, and why don't I find it in my Bible?" I mean, at least in the Old Testament. And so Jonathan, you want to get us started on that, and does it have any significance for Christians?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so I think my extent of Hanukkah was what you said. I knew that it was a Jewish holiday and that was really a lot of it. And so we look at the word, Hanukkah, it's a Hebrew word for dedication. And so this was the Festival of Lights I think, is what it's also known as. So Hanukkah is an eight day Jewish holiday celebrating the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem that happened in the second century BC. And so they had this candle that they had lit, but they only had, this was during the rebuilding or whatever of the temple, and they only had enough oil for one day. And so they light the candle and the miracle of it was that the candle lasted the eight days. And so we see that that's kind of where we see the eight days of Hanukkah or the different significance in there. And so I guess we don't really see it in the Bible. If you look into the Bible, you're not going to see something about Hanukkah. But if you were to look in the book of Maccabee's, I believe it was, that you can see some of the things that had happened here. And, you know, how can we as believers, how is Hanukkah celebrated in light of being believers in Christ? And so we can look at Hanukkah as a testament of God's faithfulness to the Jewish people by preserving them through war and persecution. His faithfulness and fulfilling his promises that He produces the Messiah through the line of David. And so there's a lot of things that, if we look at all of these different things and what's celebrated during Hanukkah, we can see where as Christians, we can celebrate some of those things also. So I mean, I think that's a lot of things. We can look at it and celebrate with the Jewish people through some of those things too, and encourage them through their time of celebration. It's not a time for us to just kind of sit back and, "oh, I don't understand," or things like that. I know when I was in high school, I had a friend that would celebrate it and I would just kind of, "oh, that's cool." I didn't understand it. I also wasn't a believer at that time either. But how can we help them celebrate it? Also through just encouraging them and being part of that. One of the other things is that, Hanukkah reminds us of God's faithfulness. Like I said, past, present, and future to His church. What is He doing? What has He done? And what is He going to do? Those are some exciting things through that. So yeah.

Garry Schick
Exactly. So for our listeners, the Protestant Bible, I guess we could say it that way, which is exactly the same as the Jewish Bible by the way. We have the same books and our Old Testament as, okay, so the Jewish Bible doesn't have the New Testament, but Protestant and Jews have the exact same 39 books in the Old Testament of which were originally written in Hebrew and a little bit in Arabic. So that Old Testament ends 400 years before Christ. And so there's what we call the silent years, except that they weren't really completely silent. It's true, God wasn't conveying to the Jewish people revelation during that time, but there was still history happening. Now, if you look at the Roman Catholic Bible, they have a few more books and you mentioned one of them. There's 1st, 2nd, I think there's four books of Maccabees, and the Maccabee books in particular are history and they're accurate history of just what was happening in the Jewish nation in the time period leading up to Christ. Now, during that time, some horrific things happened. They were under terrible persecution from the Greeks. I think it was Antiochus Epiphanies who went into the temple, slaughtered a pig on the altar, which was just a horrific thing to do, outlawed the reading of the Torah punishable by death to read the law of God, to study it, to practice Judaism. I mean, basically he was forcibly going to turn the Jews into pagans and Greeks. And he didn't offer a pig on the Jewish alter to God. He offered it to, I think, Zeus. So, I mean, in every way it was a desecration. And then the Maccabees came in, and this is what this history tells. They had a revolt and they pushed the Greeks out. They basically were a bunch of freedom fighters who, they did, they pushed them out. And so in 2 Maccabees chapter 10, it tells the story of how when they rededicated the temple, they did, they had this 10 day celebration. And then it's not in Maccabees, it's actually in the Babylonian Talmud. So Maccabees, it's in Roman Catholic scripture. They have taken these books that we call the Apocrypha and considered them as part of scripture. But the Talmud, it's not part of anybody's scripture, but it's basically a tradition of Jewish teachings and stories. And that is where you actually get the story of, and when they dedicated the temple, there was just one day's worth of oil and it took a week to make the correct oil. And so they decided, "well, we're just going to burn one day's worth according to what the law tells us." And as it turns out, miraculously, it lasted eight days. That actually is a little bit, it seems to me, since it's not even part of their history, kind of a fable, like at Christmas. I don't want to get too far into this, but there are certain fables that everybody loves around Christmas time that a lot of people say, "I don't really know about that, but it's still a whole lot of fun." And yet then there's also the core thing. So the core thing in Hanukkah is that it is, and you mentioned, dedication. In fact, it is called the Feast of Dedication. And with that, did you know Hanukkah actually does appear in the Bible? Not in the Old Testament, but in John 20:22, it says, "then came the Feast of Dedication." My Bible footnote says, that is Hanukkah. Now in Jerusalem, it was winter, right about this time of year today actually. And Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's colonnade. The Jews gathered around him saying, "how long will you keep us in suspense if you are the Christ or the Messiah? Tell us plainly." And Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you did not believe the miracles I do in my father's name speak for me. But you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them. They follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand." What a beautiful thing, a feast that the Jews, to this day, called Feast of Dedication or also the Feast of Lights. Jesus is the light of the world, and when we are secure in him. We have the light of Christ. You'll see, and of course the menorah with that, with, what is it, the seven? Is it like seven candlestick on it? It's from the temple. That's a symbol of that. But in a kind of an interesting thing, there's actually nine candles associated with Hanukkah, one for each day. And then a center one called, the Servant candle, that lights the rest. We often find this in Jewish traditions. I find it in some things regarding their Passover too. There are things that just seem to symbolize Christ, and who is that servant candle that gives light to all the rest? It's Jesus, friends. And so we wish you Jesus today. And if you know some Jewish people say, "Hey, did you know that your Hanukkah shows up in my New Testament?" Jesus celebrated it, and He is the light of the world.

How Can We See People The Way God Does?

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.

Gary Schick
Well, here's a question, actually, it's one that came to you, Jonathan. Which, I just think you've come up with some really great questions and our people have too. This has just been a fun fall, I think, in terms of some of the questions we've had.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, I have a friend that I rely on sometimes to get some questions to me if I can't think of things.

Gary Schick
Really? Well, I don't know who this friend is, but keep the questions coming. They're good ones. So here's the question, "but the Lord said to Samuel, 'do not consider his appearance or his height for I have rejected him.' The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart, 1 Samuel 16:7 NIV. How can we see people the way God does?" Great question!

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, that could be a very tough one, right? In our flesh, we'd like to see people the way we think they're acting, or that we think that they're doing something. And so we want to look at them that way. "Oh, these people are evil. These people are mean. That person's amazing, that person's great." So sometimes we want to see people in the light of our carnal mindset. And I think for us to be able to see people the way that God does, it comes with us being in a relationship with God. I am not going to see people the way God does if I have no relationship with God. I want to see them the way that my mindset sees them or how I see them, or how the world sees people. And so I think the first step for us would be, Hey, we need to be in relationship with God. We need to be in that relationship with God to have that mindset that he has towards people and how he sees people. And that all comes through our devotion life. If we don't have our devotion life in place, that's reading the Bible, praying, those type of disciplines. If we don't have those in place, we're not going to see people the way that God does. And so that's the first thing, is we have to make sure that we have that relationship with God. And then I'm not going to see people the way God sees them either if I'm not willing to be in relationship with them. I can have my own mindset towards somebody, but until I've interacted with them, until I've been active in their life, then I can see through the things that I think the world is saying of them. So those things are important to have, but it all comes down to how is God seeing them? If my identity is wrapped up in the world, I'm going to see everybody else's identity wrapped up in that. Gosh, we just need to get back to being people of the word. Getting back to that, my mind can't pull that scripture into my head. But we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, right? Ephesians, "we don't wrestle against flesh and blood." That's not what we're wrestling against. We're wrestling against the principalities, the powers of this dark world. And so when I see somebody and I don't see them the way that God does, I need to check myself and say, "okay, is my devotional life in place?" And if it is, then "okay, God, how are you seeing this person? Because you see this person as your son, as your daughter. You see this person as loved and as cherished." And so if my thought process of that person has anything other than that, then it's like, "Ooh, I need to get myself back in order." I need to line myself back with Christ. And a lot of us in our different workplaces, we deal with a lot of different people. And if we see these people as useless or worthless, then how are we ever going to help serve? I mean, gosh, Jesus was here and he served. He didn't come and say, "oh, well, this, this, worship me." He didn't force things; he served. And that was an example for us. How can I serve other people? And if I see them as useless or me above them, I'll never be able to be humble enough to serve them. And so my mindset wherever I go, "how can I worship God in what I'm doing now? How can I worship God in serving other people? How can I see these people as priceless? As sons and daughters of Christ?

Gary Schick
And I think it goes back, really, to a question you brought us a couple of weeks ago as we were approaching Thanksgiving, "how can we be the hands and feet of Jesus?" It starts with having the eyes and the heart of Jesus. And really it kind of reminds me in terms of that little tension between the way we see others and the way Jesus does of what happened the day that Jesus fed the 5,000. It's getting to be supper time, and the disciples are like, "Lord, send them away. Send them to the surrounding countryside in the villages so they can get some food." But what does it say? Jesus' response was, even when he first saw the crowd. It said that Jesus, when he saw the crowd waiting, he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And the Greek word for compassion there, basically it's translated in the old King James, "bowels of mercy." He felt it in the gut. And so it really does. It brings us back to that question that you had. Well, how do we get the eyes and the heart of Jesus? The other thing that reminds me of is back when I was in my first pastorate, a little Catholic hospital was nearby St. Mary's Hospital in Sparta, Wisconsin. Shout out to Sparta. And it was just a teeny hospital. Really, all the serious work got done down at St. Francis down in La Crosse, Wisconsin or Gunderson Lutheran. Those are the two big hospitals. Excellent places. But anyway, one of the reputations that they had was just such tremendous care, and there's nuns working there. And so somebody asked one of the nuns, "well, what's different about the way you, why do you treat the patients the way you do?" And they said, "well, we are taught right from the beginning of our becoming people who are---women who are dedicated to Christ as nuns, to treat everyone that we see and to care for everyone as if we were caring for Jesus." And part of me would go, "oh, that is so cool that they do that." Then I got to thinking, wait a minute. This isn't just something for Catholic monks and nuns. This is actually pretty biblical. Remember Jesus in Matthew when he's separating the sheep from the goats? He says, "you know what? I was hungry. You fed me. I was thirsty. You gave me a drink. I was a stranger. You took me in. I was sick. You visited me. Wait a minute. When did we see you, Lord? When did we do these things for you? Well, when you did it to the least of these...and then the goats, you're out of here. I was hungry. You didn't give me anything to eat. I was thirsty. You didn't give me anything to drink. I was sick. You didn't visit me. I was naked. You didn't give me clothes. Well, Lord, when did we neglect you? Well, when you neglected the least of these, you were doing it to me." So very biblical. And for all Christians, it starts with seeing others not only as Christ would, but as Christ himself. And so I just kind of want to wrap up with three things here. Three keys. I think number one: love. Let's remind ourselves as we, and I know people are honking at you as you're going down the road or whatever it is. It's so easy to get frustrated, especially in the chaos of this month leading up to Christmas. But love, remember whoever they are, however annoying or whatever the issue is. This is someone Christ died for, just like they died for you in your sin, in your less pretty moments. Respect. This is somebody that was made in God's image. Every human being was made in God's image. Now, that image has been distorted by sin. It's a fallen nature. But, the imago dei, the original image of God, it's still in there. He's got his fingerprints all over, each special creation, each person. Hope. Hope is important. We don't give up on people. That's something that our kids have watched in us over the years. We don't give up on each other. We don't even give up on our pets. Your story isn't written yet. And by the way, neither is the person across the table or across the room or down the hall. Their story isn't complete. No, this may not be a great chapter, but the story's not done. The ink isn't dry. If God can take an apostle Paul who's out there hunting down and persecuting and dragging off Christians, be stoned to death and thrown in jail, then He can turn around that person. What did it take for God to turn you around? And then faith. God is big enough to conquer any soul, but what a beautiful thing. He uses you and me and the process. Just as we wrap up, 1 Corinthians 13:13 comes to mind, "but these three remain faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these, of course, is love." But those are words not only to memorize and to ponder, but to live by and live out toward others.

What Is Christianity's Greatest Need Today?

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 Pastor Michael Clement

Michael Clement
Some years ago, a pastor friend of mine in another city went through a difficult situation where he had had an assistant pastor and things didn't work out. And after it was all over, he shared with me some thoughts on needs within the Christian community. And he took those thoughts and developed them into a message with three points, and we're going to break up those three points that have three programs. One on each of those points. So the question is, what is Christianity's greatest need today? And I'd like to suggest that the first one is: a need for committed Christians. Let me read from Ecclesiastes 9:10. It says, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." Friends, God has given us not only this life, but He has given us things to do. And in this life, is the only chance we have to do those things. The Bible tells us very little about what we're going to do in eternity and very little about what heaven's going to be like. We have some things in scripture, but not very much. And I think in part, that's because God wants us to be focused on here and now. And one of the things that I see is a need for Christians who are committed. There's generally a need for commitment in American culture today, but what is a problem for our culture is deadly for the church? A lack of commitment. Let me define that a little bit. For instance, we need believers who are first of all, committed to the Lord. You've heard what Jesus said, "if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." And that's not only in one of the gospel accounts. It's in Matthew 16:24, it's in Mark 8:34, and it's in Luke 9:23. God has included that statement of Jesus three times in His word. So what does it mean? Well, to deny yourself and to take up your cross and follow Him is the idea that we come to the Lord. Not just for salvation, not just so that we can have our sins forgiven; not just so that one day we get to go to heaven, but it's a commitment to live for Him. One of the great things that I enjoy doing is reading Christian biographies. Most of them are about missionaries, but some are about others that weren't missionaries, that served in some other way. And what I like to see and hear are Christians who take their Christianity home with them on Sunday. They live it in their homes with their family and they take it to work with them, and they live it in the workplace. And then they even take it when they're involved in entertainment and recreation and Christianity influences their whole life. That's a real joy to me as a pastor, and I believe it's a joy to the Father as well. Some years ago, I heard of a young man whose father was a minister. He was a teenager and he had just gotten a job working with a number of men who were not Christians. He came home one day, kind of discouraged, and his father asked him what the problem was. He said, "well," he said, "at lunchtime the guys always go to a bar, and they invited me and I said, 'no thank you,' but I didn't really give a good answer." He said, "I mumbled something about, 'my parents we're Christians and my church and so forth.' Dad, how can I be a better witness in a situation like that?" Well, his father prayed with him and gave him some advice, and one of the things his father said was, "maybe the next time something like that comes up, you can say, 'I gave my heart and life to Jesus Christ as my savior and my Lord, and I just don't think that's something he wants me to do." Well, the next day when the boy came home from work, he was all excited and he said, "Dad, I need to tell you what happened." He said, "same thing as before: at noon they all drove to this bar and they asked me to come in and I said what you told me to say, 'that I've given my life to Jesus Christ, my savior and Lord, and that's not something that I thought he would want me to do." And he said, "there's an older fellow there, and he looked at me and he kind of gave me a look of disgust." He said, "Dad, I just knew that guy had been around lazy Christians." He said, "so the rest of the day I worked twice as hard as anybody else." He said, "I really threw myself into it, and frankly, it almost killed me. But at the end of the day, that gentleman came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said, 'kid, you are all right."

Michael Clement
I love that story. Obeying the Lord should be my first priority. Oftentimes, I hear people say to me, "well, we moved but we couldn't find a church to go to and now we're struggling." And frankly, I think that if at all possible, that should have been a part of the decision whether or not to move. Some years ago, a family called me and they were living in another state and they started asking me questions about our church. What was it like? What did we teach? And after the guy got done talking to me and questioning me, he told me what was happening. He said he was, like, a foreman working in his company and the owner of the company had wanted him to find a place where they could buy another business like the one that they had there, and they wanted it closer to Kansas. And so he began calling around. He called different churches in different places, and he told me what he wanted to do was first find a church that he thought their family could go to, and then start looking to see if there was a business for sale, and that's what they did. I love that kind of thing. Find the church first. It also means that we need believers who are committed to their family. In 1 Timothy 5:8, it says this, "but if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." In recent years, we've had some fairly well-known Christians who have not just walked away from Christianity, they have publicly declared that they're no longer believers in Jesus Christ and that they're no longer participating in Christianity. And that was tragic. Many of you may know that in recent years there's been just a deluge of Christian young people who have gone to secular schools and then ended up, not just leaving one church and going to another one, leaving Christianity entirely and not going back at all. If somebody was to do that, we'd say, "well, that's just terrible." But this verse says that if somebody doesn't provide for their own families, then they're just like that person that walked away from the Christian faith. In fact, it says they're worse than an infidel or an unbeliever. We need Christians who are committed to their families. That are, first of all, they're concerned for the spiritual wellbeing of their family. They don't just send them to church, they take them to the church. And those kids get an opportunity to watch a mom and a dad who are committed to the Lord Jesus and showing them how to live. And then third, we need believers who are committed to their church. In Hebrews 10:25, it says, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as a manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more as you see the day approaching." The fact is today, that there are many who don't think a whole lot about the importance of the local church. Now, I believe in what's called the church universal. The church universal is comprised of all the believers who have ever received Jesus as their savior from the day of Pentecost until the rapture of the church. But that church hasn't had a single meeting. There's one planned. The first one is in the air when Jesus comes again for the church. But people that oftentimes will neglect the local church will likewise neglect prayer, they neglect Bible reading. They don't have somebody to encourage them to do what they're supposed to be doing. And so they need to be in church. Now, it's not so that it won't be empty. It's not so that the offerings would be bigger. And it's not so that visitors would be impressed. First of all, it's to meet your needs. People need a local church. Christians need a local church. And then it's for them to find a place to fulfill their duties and their responsibilities. And then finally, it's also to not be a stumbling block to other people. And I might add, it's also an act of obedience. In Matthew 18:6, Jesus said, but whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea." Oftentimes, Christians don't think about how their behavior, how their decisions, and how their lifestyle is affecting other people. But it does. We all need others. And that was said by God in the book of Genesis when he said, "it's not good for a man to be alone," and that then He created a woman to be with him. We need other people to encourage us and to keep us doing what we should be doing. And then also, we need believers who are committed to their calling. In Nehemiah 6:3, when Nehemiah was asked if he would go and talk to some of his critics and some of his enemies, he said, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it and come down to you?" Some could have said, "well, Nehemiah could have been a witness. He could have shared who Jehovah (God) was with these people." But that would involve him walking away from his first priority. And his first priority was to do what God is calling him. Building a wall is more important than witnessing to the lost. Well, not really, but doing the will of God is more important than anything. There's a song that is oftentimes sung in church. It's Blessed Be The Tie That Binds. And the story behind that was, there was a pastor who had been a pastor for a very long time in a very small church. And he finally was noticed by a bigger church in another city and they invited him to be their pastor. Well, he was planning on leaving and the church got together for a farewell. And when they did that, people one after another stood up and said what that pastor had meant to them and how he had been a blessing to them until finally the pastor said, "how can I leave? You people are breaking my heart." And he sent a message to the larger church and said, "I'm sorry. I can't come. This is where God wants me to be." We need Christians who are totally committed to the Lord in every facet of their work, and I pray that's you. May God bless you.

Why Would The Israelites Build A Pillar To Remember What God Did?

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.

Gary Schick
Hey, so here's a question that apparently came to you, and I think it's a great one. It says---a question a friend sent to you---"in the Old Testament, whenever God did something or led people somewhere, they would build a pillar to remind them of what God had done. Why don't we still do that?"

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, that's a pretty good question, isn't it?

Gary Schick
Yeah, there you go. So what do you think?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so just like the question asked, when we look and read through the Old Testament, we see where something amazing happens or something big happens, and the people were to build an altar to the Lord. And a lot of times, we would see that they would name that place a certain thing. We see in Genesis 35:1-7, this is where Jacob, he names the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother. So we see some of these places; God does something big or leads somebody through something and then they were to name that place, whatever it may be, like here. And you know, I think, okay, so why aren't we doing that currently now? And I think in some instances, we do. Not to the level of what we see in the Old Testament. But when something big happens in our lives, a lot of times we see people will write that down in a journal. This is a place of remembrance that God did something amazing. And here it is, I think a big one for us, that I think sometimes we look over, is what we call our testimony. God did something amazing in our lives, and so now we have this testimony of what God has done. And I hope that we're going around telling people about our testimony, not just holding that into ourselves. But it's a place of remembrance. "What did God do for us? Well, God delivered me from, whatever it may be." Another great thing is salvation. The day that we gave our lives to the Lord is a huge moment in our lives.

Gary Schick
Yup

Jonathan Hernandez
That's a huge testimony. That's a part of our testimony that we can tell people, "God did this for me." You know, for me and my life, when I really allowed God to speak into my life, the Holy Spirit just really helped lead me to the front of the church, to give my life to Christ. That was a big place in my life, and I remember that. I can drive by the church and say, "in that church is where God really took ahold of me, and I was able to actually start listening to Him." You know before, I was just like, "meh, I don't know. No, I don't know." And so, what has God done in our lives? And we can see that and say, okay, here's an altar in that sense; what God has done for us. I guess we don't see us building something miraculous and then naming it, at least not in my life. I haven't done that. But I mean, we could look at a few different things. The church as an alter. This is a place, if we think about the alters, there's places in the Old Testament where they---Moses led the people through the Red Sea, and at the end they sung praises. They had that whole song that they sang, and this is what they're doing. They're really singing to the Lord, worshiping Him for what He just did in their lives. In church, we sing songs of worship in places of remembrance of what God has done, and we pour our hearts out to Him. And like I said in the earlier one, it would've been more of a personal altar, something that God has done personally for us or has led us out of a situation or through a situation. And the same thing, we would sing phrases to Him or we would give thanksgiving to Him. And you know, those are amazing places where we can just really reflect on what God has done. Communion would be another one. A place of remembrance, right? Of what He's done for us. Yeah, that's kind of that place of worship. And that's another one we could say, that's kind of an altar type of thing that we go back and remember what He's done and then we worship Him through that. So I say, we kind of still do some of it, maybe not to that level that we see in the Old Testament, I guess.

Gary Schick
And it's really not commanded in scripture, it's just something they did. They built an altar, at the point of Bethel, poured some oil over a stone. Said this is Beth El, which means House of God, because God appeared. And they also did it to some degree as a nation. And by the way, we do it too. We put up statues and commemorative monuments all over the place as historical markers. Where battles have been fought and won, where different things have happened; where 9/11 happened. I mean, we mark places as a nation, that's just something people do. But in terms of spiritual markers and pillars, I guess when I read that question, immediately what came to mind, it's kind of an older book now, but I think it's just as relevant as ever. So if people are not familiar with it, I would really like to kind of point you in the direction of the book called, "Experiencing God." I don't know if they even have copies over at our local Christian bookstore or not. I know at one point, it was all over the place. You know, it's funny how as a culture we kind of, "oh, this is the book like The Prayer of Jabez," which was a great book. And then after a while, "oh okay, we did that and it's gone." Well no, if there was truth there, then maybe we need to take note of some of those things. So anyway, Blackaby wrote this great book called, Experiencing God. And in it he talks about how we can discern God's will in our lives through what God says in His word. Through moments in prayer, through the encouragement and guidances of others. And he has a chapter in there talking about how God uses our circumstances and our life experiences. And in that chapter, he talks about physical markers of spiritual encounters. And actually, I just want to read a little paragraph out of that. He writes, "when Israel crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, God gave Joshua the following instructions: Choose 12 men from the people, one man from each tribe and command them. Take 12 stones from this place in the middle of the Jordan where the priest's feet are standing. Carry them with you and set them down at the place where you spend the night, Joshua 4:2-3. These stones were to serve as a monument to the Israelites. Joshua explains, 'this will be a sign among you in the future. When your children ask you, 'what do these stones mean to you?' You should tell them, 'the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the Ark of the Lord's covenant. When it crossed the Jordan, the Jordan's waters were cut off. Therefore, these stones will always be a memorial for the Israelites,' Joshua 4:6-7." And then Blackaby goes on and says, "the stones were to be a visible reminder of God's mighty act in providing for His people in Old Testament times. Others also built altars or set up stones as significant encounters with God." And he notes Noah in Genesis 6-8, Abraham in Genesis 12 & 13, Isaac in Genesis 26, Jacob---as we are pointing out---in Genesis 28 & 35, Moses in Exodus 17 & 24, Joshua in Joshua 3-4, Gideon in Judges 6, Samuel in 1 Samuel 7. Places like Bethel, which you talked about (House of God). Rehoboth, which means room, because God made room for His people. These became reminders of God's activity in the midst of His people. Blackaby writes, "Moses named an altar, The Lord is my Banner. And Samuel named a stone Ebenezer saying, 'thus far the Lord has helped us.' 1 Samuel 7:12; then Blackaby notes, "These altars and stones were physical markers of great spiritual encounters with God. They provided opportunities for parents to teach their children about God's activity on behalf of His people." So notice, these are all in the Old Testament. So it seems to stop there, but I'll tell you what: there's one final marker in the Bible. It's the cross of Calvary. There is one final marker where God meets with mankind in the ultimate way and pays the price for our sin. The last, the final altar is Jesus on that cross and then coming out of the empty tomb. So those are markers for us. And then I love how you pointed out; our conversion is a point. And Blackaby goes on and talks about these in our own lives as points of transition, decision, or direction where we clearly see God guiding us. And so listeners, maybe we're not building a pillar, so to speak, or a monument, but this can be, I think, a healthy exercise in looking at how God works in your life. So take a look back. What are the moments when those crossroad moments, like when Jacob was at Bethel or when you encountered Christ at his cross, where he saved you? Where He's directed you, where He's provided for you, where He's guided you. Maybe you're at a crossroads right now, and looking back at how God has worked before. It can both encourage you, and you know what? God met me at that crossroad in the past and guided me forward. And maybe you'll even see a pattern there in terms of helping you to discern. Blackaby talks about in his own life, there were three different ways he could go, all good, but which one seemed to fit the way that God would move him forward into the next step in his life? And that can sometimes be a help to us in terms of seeing, not only God at work in the past, but God's hand pointing in the present on into the future that He has for us. And I just kind of thought about this: a well-used Bible is a well-marked Bible. And as you were talking about that, I thought, you know, I have at different points, underlined scriptures because they stood out in some way. And some of those scriptures, I've gone back to again and again, and they have become, those very words of God speaking into my life, have become markers in my life that God has used over and over again. And so listeners, if you've got one of those well-marked Bibles at a point of discouragement or crossroads, maybe it's time to go back and look at some of the things that you've underlined and how God has spoken to you before and what he might be saying to you from those passages again. And if your Bible is not well-marked, well get her open. And as God uses a scripture in your life at different points, make sure to highlight it. Maybe put some stars around it. Maybe even make note of a day, the date, and maybe even a reason why that was pertinent in your life at that moment. Because God's word not only tells us the things God has done in the past, but it speaks to us in our present and guides us into our future. To His praise; to Him be the glory both now and forever!

What Led Lucifer To Sin?

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.

Gary Schick
Hey, I've got a kind of interesting question today. "What led Lucifer to sin?" You know, in the light of all the evil in the world, I mean, with what's going on in Israel and Ukraine and just the condition of our own country. Sometimes I think we forget, we tend to look at all the problems in the world and we think of all the people involved. And to be sure, human beings really don't need any help to make a mess. But what does the scripture tell us? Ephesians 6:12, "for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm." Sometimes I think we forget there is such a thing as evil out there. In fact, it's what led the human race to sin. It was Satan who came along and tempted Adam and Eve and he's still doing what he does. So Jonathan, what are some things you were able to dig up on the subject of Lucifer and his fall?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so just looking at some scripture we see in Ezekiel 28:14,15, it says, "you were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you." So here we see them talking about Lucifer. And then if we look at Isaiah 14:12--15, we see here it says, "how you are fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning. How you are cut down to the ground, you who weaken the nations. For you have said in your heart, 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will also sit on the mountain of the congregation of the furthest side of the north. I will send above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high." Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol to the lowest depths of the pit." So we think about what led Lucifer to sin, and it was really that place of pride. He wanted to be who everybody worshiped. And that's not the case. We were not created to worship Satan. Right? That's furthest from the truth.

Gary Schick
There are people that do though, apparently in the world.

Jonathan Hernandez
Oh yeah. And so we look at that, and I think as believers also, we need to realize Satan and God are on the same level, not opposites. Satan and Jesus, they're not opposites. Lucifer isn't God, He wasn't a God. He never will be a God. He was an angel. And so if we're looking for someone that would be in the sense of an opposite I guess of him, we would think of Gabriel or Michael or another angel. And so I think as believers, we need to make sure we have that right. Also, that when we're thinking of God, we're not saying, "Satan's the opposite," because then I think we start getting into some crazy theology and different things that start going in opposite directions. And so, man, Lucifer had such a heart to be worshiped. He wanted to worshiped, he wanted to be 'that.' You know what I mean? We just read that he wanted to be the high of the high. He wanted all of heaven to exalt him and worship him and be like, "okay God. You go somewhere else. Because here, I am the master, I am above everything." And obviously, we see that he got put in his place, right? It didn't last very long. So if we think of what led him to that, to sin, it would be that place of pride, him being so prideful. And I mean, we see this throughout scripture. If we're walking in pride, guess what? We're going to be put down pretty quick, in a sense. Pride comes before destruction, right? We see this and we know this. And so there's times I have to say, "okay John, is there a place in my heart that I have pride rising up?" And if I do, "okay Holy Spirit, highlight this for me so I can deal with it." I can give it to God and say, "okay, I'm dealing with pride. I don't want to walk in this anymore." And so, gosh, if we could realize, hey, we have this place of pride in our hearts, let's try to get this out. I know in my life there's been some places I've been pretty prideful,

Gary Schick
All of us have.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. And so for me, that's where my answer goes straight to, is pride led Lucifer to really take that dive of fall.

Gary Schick
I think that's good. And I kind of like where you started with that about God and Satan are not equal opposites. That's kind of an Eastern idea. The light and the dark; the yin and the yang. The balance of the good and the bad. And probably, that idea again, comes from Satan himself because he wants that. I think the real key to that passage in Isaiah, I'll come back to it in a minute, is where he says, "I will be like God." The very thing that he tempts Adam and Eve with. And so this idea of equal polar opposites; the positive and the negative forces in the universe may not be all he wants. But he's pretty content with the idea of being raised to that level. I think where we kind of need to begin is a biblical worldview. Do we have a biblical worldview? You know, I just got a little bit of this in seminary, but this is probably the least studied part of scripture, is what they call Angelology, the study of angels. And basically a secularist has a very monochromatic worldview. Just, there's man and the creation and that's it. Western Christians are a little bit better. We see man and creation, and we see God above; kind of two realms. You go among primitive people, and they also see two realms, although they're slightly different. They see man and the creation and they see the world of good and evil spirits, what the Bible would refer to as angels. But actually, a biblical worldview is actually that there are three realms of being. There is God who is a creator of all and rules overall. There is the realm of the spiritual, the good and the bad. You know, Revelation 12 actually kind of alludes to the fall of Satan. Where a third of the stars, or another reference to angels there, fall with him. And so only a third of the angels, but still significant number. And even in their rebellion, nevertheless, God rules and He sets the boundaries for Satan and evil. And then there is the realm of humankind.

Gary Schick
So really, kind of a three tier system. As we look at him in scripture, and we've kind of used all of his names, the devil and Satan,these are words that mean adversary and accuser. And he certainly is our adversary, and he certainly is the accuser of the saints. Lucifer's kind of an interesting one. And that is actually the one referred to in Isaiah, the light bearer. Lucifer is actually a Latin translation of that. Jesus is called the Bright and Morningstar. And again, Satan wants to take that. And in the, what is it, 2 Corinthians? It's in Corinthians where it says, "that we should be aware of him, because he can still masquerade as an angel of light." But in terms of his fall and what led to it, it is the same thing that he used to lead our forebearers to fall. "I will be like God," what did he tell Eve? "You will be like God." And what is it that gets us into trouble when we decide we're going to take the position of God? And really, you think about it, pride, that's one that's not really hard for people to admit. They're going to hesitate on some of what we would consider the bigger issues. The sexual things or the anger things or whatever. But underneath it all is P-R-I-D-E. That sense that, "I can get by with this. I can do this. God may say no, but who's going to know?" Well, scripture has a warning, pride comes before a fall. And people do ask the question, "is it legit to go to the very passage that he went to?" Ezekiel is actually addressed to the king of Tyre. Isaiah, that broader passage I addressed, to the king of Babylon. But again, going back to what you mentioned about Michael and a little bit of angelology in Daniel. Michael is sent in response to one of Daniel's prayers and he basically says, "sorry it took me so long. I was battling on behalf of your people, Israel, against the spiritual forces over the nations around you." We see battles like what's going on in Israel and what's going on in Ukraine. And what's even going on with some of the division in our own government. It's just a human strife. And it is that, but there is also a spiritual component. And one of the things we learn as we look at scripture and what it says about angels, they seem right from the beginning to have been put over different aspects of the natural world. And even they have turf that they kind of defend and battle for. And so, okay, here's Ezekiel addressing the king of Tyre, but talking about him as a cherub who was in the Garden of Eden. Well, that physical king was never an angel in Eden, but the spiritual power behind him, Lucifer, certainly was. The king of Babylon doesn't quite fit the description there, but the power, the spiritual force there,Lucifer. So, can we say legitimately these passages apply to Satan, Lucifer? Absolutely. Because there is the physical evil empire, so to speak---to quote Ronald Reagan as he was talking about the Russians. But the evil is not the people. As Paul says, "our struggle is not against the flesh and the blood." It's the spiritual forces of evil, the heavenly realms that are motivating humans in those horrific directions. And praise God! In Christ, we have the victory. Jesus said, "in this world you'll have trouble, but take courage. I have overcome the world." Satan wants us either to be obsessed with him or to just, no, that's a bunch of Halloween nonsense. No, no, he's real enough. But the power in us, Christ, has already overcome. So take courage listeners, in that. Jonathan, you want to wrap us up with some final thoughts?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so just a final thought I was just thinking about. I think one of Satan's tricks, I guess, is that he always tries to get is for us to not realize our identity. He did that with Eve, right? "If you eat this, you'll become like God," trying to get her to question who she is and question identity. He does the same thing when Jesus was baptized and God said, "you are my son whom I'm well pleased." And then later on Satan goes, "well, if you are the Son of God." So he tries to question that and he does that same thing to us. He tries to get us to question who we are, and we need to realize that our identity is found in Christ. In Christ alone, nothing else. So yeah, I'll leave it with that.

Gary Schick
I'm so appreciative that you brought out that last part about our identity, because, you know, it's a funny thing. When we're walking in pride, "I will be like God," we're never less like him, but when we humble ourselves and receive what we need to forgive our sins, Christ is our savior. What is the promise of scripture? And we will be like him when we stop claiming what's not our ground. But humble ourselves and say, "I will be who you made me to be in Christ." That is actually what raises us up to a very special place in the universe; in Christ. And so listeners, there's kind of two ways people go, either pride, "I don't need God," or another subtler form of pride. "Well, I need to clean up my life first." No, no, no. As one of my parishioners, one of the people in our church said to me, "the fisherman goes out and he catches the fish and then he cleans it. God gets ahold of us in Christ and then he cleans our life." Yeah, this is something we can do for ourselves. So listeners, if you haven't already, turned your life over to Jesus, that is where true life begins.

If I'm Not A Missionary how do I Contribute To The Great Commission?

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.

Gary Schick
Well, this one actually, somebody asked you, right? So I'm going to read it and then I'll let you see what you think about this. This is a great question. Jonathan writes, "I had someone ask me the other day, 'if I can't go overseas to be a missionary, what part, if any, do I have in missions or the great commission?" So Jonathan, what was your response?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah well, I mean, I guess first off, I just want to say thank you to all of our U.S. missionaries, and all of our worldly missionaries that just go out and are obedient to Christ's calling. And so just thank you to all of our missionaries. So when I talked to this person, I was telling her, "if you truly have a heart and you feel like God is calling you to missions, then you definitely need to follow up with that. If it's missions work, then what can you do to get to that?" Obviously, you need to start going through ministry classes and things like that in order to step into that field. But if you feel like you're not called to mission's work, in that sense of being a career missionary, there's many things God has called us to; to the Great Commission. I mean, I guess we can back that up just a minute. Make sure we've supported our missionaries. We can do that financially, but we can also do that definitely through prayer, making sure that we're praying for our missionaries on a daily basis. But if we jump into scripture, we see the great commission being given to us. We see that in Matthew. We also see that in the Book of Mark, and so I'll read those both real quick. So Mark 16:15 says, "and then he said to them, go into all the world, preach the good news to everyone. Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved, but anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned. And then these miraculous signs will accompany those who believe. They'll cast out demons in my name. They'll speak in new tongues or new languages. They will be able to handle snakes with safety and they'll be able to drink anything poisonous and it won't hurt them and they will be able to place their hands on the sick and they will be healed." And so this is that commissioning, that we should go into all the world and preach the good news, right? To all creation. And then Matthew 28, it's a lot of the same thing. And it says, "Jesus told his disciples, 'I've been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and the Holy Spirit; teaching these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure that of this, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." And I guess I was getting a little tongue tied, because I'm used to reading it out of the New King James version. So we see these two scriptures that really have that command to go into all the world. And it doesn't say, just the pastors go into all the world, just the missionaries go into all the world. But it's telling us, as believers, that we need to go and preach the good news. My friend who's a missionary, a US missionary here in the United States, he goes, "I always say, 'to Jesus there was no local or foreign missions field. There was just the lost who needed a savior?" And man, that hits so good. People need to know who Christ is. It's the only hope, right? That's our hope. And how can we, and it doesn't matter, like I said, it doesn't matter if we're a pastor or a missionary or someone that's in the church. It's a commission for all of us to go preach the good news. But I think there's a piece that we miss a lot of times. You know, I think we've become really good at making converts or helping people come to Christ. But we don't follow that up, because in Matthew 28, it tells us to teach the new disciples everything that God has given us or has shown us. And so I think the important aspect of discipleship is something that we need to make sure that is strong within our local body. How are we discipling that next person? If we're wanting to see that next person reached and saved for Christ, we also need to back that up with discipleship and help them process through. Because man, I remember when I came to Christ, I had a lot of questions, and I think a lot of people do. We have all these questions and it's so new. But to have someone that mentors us through those questions and helps, that discipleship process is amazing. And so that'd be my encouragement, is that not only are we reaching the lost, but we're discipling them. And man, it's an amazing role that we get as believers to help that next person learn about Christ and grow in Christ. And so for me, I think that's it. If our role in the Great Commission is just that, is to make sure that we're seeing it and obeying it and reaching the lost and then discipling lost, and then we get the opportunity to baptize them. Those are all amazing things, that we get to just be a part of someone's life and watching them just grow in Christ, is an amazing thing. At least it has been for me, is just to watch people grow in their relationship with Christ and then watch them get excited and say, "you know what? I was able to lead my dad--or my brother or my friend or my coworker--to Christ and just see just how excited they are. It's an amazing thing. And I hope that each of us look at this great commission and say, you know what? This is a commission for me to step into.

Gary Schick
And I think you're right. It is a commission to the whole world. Mark, "preach the gospel to all creation," Matthew, "therefore go make disciples of all nations." But where does that begin? It begins where we are. The passage you didn't touch on, that I also love is Acts 1, which really is kind of the table of contents for the book of Acts, but also it's God's game plan. Jesus says there, he says, "but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." So, a couple of things there: 1. Where does the power and the wisdom and the words come from? It's not you or me, it's the Holy Spirit. We are just faithful with what we have to bear witness to the truth, Christ, and let the spirit take it from there. And then 2. where do we begin? You say, "well, Jerusalem, that's a long way away." Well, it wasn't when Jesus was talking to them. They were in Jerusalem, basically. He was saying, "start here and then branching out from there to Judea." Well, Jerusalem was in Judea, so he's saying, "look, start here in the city, proclaim the gospel, take it from there." And that's in the book of Acts. This is the progression we see. The gospel starts being proclaimed on Pentecost with the whole power of the Spirit in Jerusalem. And then we see the disciples branching out beyond the city into Judea, and then Samaria, which was right next door, sort of the next stop along the road to Galilee, which was where most of Jesus' ministry had been; and then to the ends of the earth. And that's exactly how it happens in Acts. First you see it in Jerusalem. The gospel proclaimed, and then it branches out into Judea, and then the disciples are kind of persecuted and they kind of spill out beyond that. And so the gospel goes from there into Samaria. And then finally, with both Peter and Paul, and then really primarily Paul, for the rest of the Book of Acts; taking the gospel even further and further out in the first missionary journeys. But you hear that people say, "well, boy, I'm not a missionary, so therefore, what's my place?" Your place is to start where you are. I mean, all these places that are far away aren't far away to the people that live there. Jerusalem is a long way to us, but it's home to the people who live there. And it was home to the first Christians, actually, where we are here in the United States, think about where the gospel started. To Jerusalem, we're almost as far away as you can get. I mean, we are literally on the other side of the world. So we are the farthest foreign mission field from where the gospel began. And so what does God ask us to do? He asks us to be faithful, to rely on the Spirit, to proclaim the good news, invite people to church. Invite people to Christ. Tell your story of how you came to Christ. A couple of resources. Maybe you're not part of the Gideons, but the Gideons even have Bibles that they will allow people to hand out that aren't marked official. Gideon Bibles, something I've always been impressed by, the P.T.L. (the Pocket Testament League). They give out the gospel of John with some, just beautiful covers. And I mean, I've handed those out with my tip at a restaurant or wherever. I mean, our church has handed out a bunch of those. So you can physically give people a gospel. You could share what Jesus has done in your life, be in prayer for those around you who don't know Christ. But really we are, I had a missionary talk about something that sticks in your head. Many years ago, he came to our church to share, and he had a great little song. I'm not going to sing it, but I bet I can remember every word of it. It went like this: "Be a missionary every day. Tell the world that Jesus is the way. In the city or the country or the busy avenue. Africa or Asia, the choice is up to you. So be a missionary, be a missionary. Be a missionary every day." So, I've been to Africa. Many years ago, when I was a seminary student, spent eight weeks in Kenya. I've been to, I guess Asia in a sense. Well, I don't know, it's the Middle East. I've been to Jerusalem, so is that the Middle East? I don't know if that's Asia. Maybe I still need to go to Asia. I'd love to go to Asia. I'd love to go to the farthest corners of the world. I'd love to see new places and to meet people. But I'll tell you what, when I'm there, here's what I always discover. People are people wherever you go. Some know Jesus. Some have never heard of him. Some are just somewhere along the road. We are right here in the USA, the mission field today. Actually, you pointed out, you mentioned somebody who was a missionary within the United States. There are countries that we have sent missionaries to, that are sending them back to us, sending missionaries here. Now, and actually, I'm just going to close with this. There was many years ago, I read a book by somebody named Al Lung called The World At Your Doorstep, talking about how God is bringing the world to us. I mean, if you go to our local college right here, our local community college, there are people from every country. They come here to study for a couple of years, they need to be befriended. I mean, they're people and they represent an opportunity. You want to go to Africa or South America or wherever? You can't get there? That's okay. Just go share Jesus with somebody who's from there, who's in our community right now, and you have an opportunity when they go home. Then they can take that gospel with them. The world is at our doorstep and what are we doing? And this is a challenge to me. What am I doing to leverage that opportunity for Christ and His kingdom? Because the day is coming, Jesus will be returning, and we want to be found faithful when he comes.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, you kind of hit what I was going to say too. Is just, you never know what that ripple effect will be. Never know even when you lead, get the opportunity to plant that seed or water that seed, or even see them fully submit to Christ. We don't know what that will look like. They may be the next Billy Graham or something along those lines. And so, just be obedient when you feel like God is tugging, the Holy Spirit's tugging on your heart to speak to someone. It can be scary. But when we learn how to be obedient to those tugs, amazing things can happen. So amen.

Gary Schick
I just want to finish with what you mentioned there at the beginning. We are called to be witnesses. They bear witness to what they know. They stand up in the court and they share, "this is what I saw. This is what I heard. This is what I experienced." It's not their job to convince the jury. Let the facts do that, or in our case, let the Holy Spirit do that. We don't have to be the world leading expert on how to convince people of anything. We just bear witness to the truth that has been made known to us, and let God take it from there. I think we make this too hard for ourselves. We make it like, "I need to___," no, you don't need to do anything other than just be faithful and share what you have. And if somebody's hungry for it, they'll take some.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. We're not the one that saves them.

Gary Schick
No, no. And until they're hungry for it, they're not going to want it. But it's God's work to create that hunger in a heart. But then you might be that connect point. You might see them come to the Lord, or you might just be the first itching in that direction, or you may be somewhere in the middle. Just play your role and let God bring the fruit when it comes. We wanted all of it to happen now. Where we share it and they hear it and they receive it and done. That's not the way crops are produced. You plant a seed, it takes time, harvest comes. You and I are just workers in the field. Maybe we're there for the harvest, maybe we're there for the planning, maybe we're there in the middle. But it's God's planning, God's harvest, God's work along the way, and we just need to be faithful while we're there.

What Are Your Thoughts On Fasting?

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 Pastor Johnathan Hernandez.

Jonathan Hernandez
This morning I have received a question, and the question was this: It says, "what are your thoughts on fasting? Does it have to be strictly food or can other things be considered fasting, like the electronics or social media?" So yeah, as we dig into this, what are my thoughts on fasting and what do we see in scripture? And so, if we look at the word, "fasting," if we look at it, the original word, we see it through the Hebrew and then also through the Greek. The word itself means: to abstain from food. So if we think of fasting and we we look at it, "well then, it means to abstain from food." The Greek is, like, "abstained from food or drink," and so would we say, "does it have to be food?" If we look at this, that's kind of what it's showing. I know as a church, this has continued to go on, we've seen where we've fasted electronics, or you have a 40 day fast and we're going to give up "this" for different things. You'll see some churches that give things up for Lent. You have these different seasons, like those things, that were to happen. My thoughts are, if you're giving up something and you're saying, "this is fasting," then the purpose of that would be for you to give something up. And as you're giving that up, you're spending more time in the word, in prayer, and building that relationship with Jesus Christ. That's what fasting, that's what the whole purpose of it is. Is to grow closer to God. And so, if I'm just fasting and if I'm just giving something up, but I'm not turning to God and spending that time with Him; then if I'm giving up food, but I'm not replacing that with the word, well, then all I'm doing is going on a diet. I'm not actually trying to get closer to God. I'm just, like I said, just basically going on a diet. So we need to make sure that if we're fasting, that we're giving something up, but we're replacing that with being with Christ. Whether it be: in the word, prayer, both of them together, meditating on the word, memorizing scripture. Just developing and deepening that devotional life that you have with Him. So, if we look at the law, God would require people to fast annually on the day of atonement, when offerings were made by the high priests for the sins that he and the people had committed in arrogance. And we see this Leviticus, and this was the only time that God kind of expected that fasting process, or that to happen. Now we're no longer bound by the law, because Christ fulfilled it. But we do see that, though it may not be a requirement so to say, like we'd seen in the law, we still see it happening throughout the New Testament. So like in the Old Testament, we see it happen in grief, right? When King Saul was killed and buried, his men fasted for seven days. We see this for Samuel. We see that when Bathsheba's first son was dying, David fasted and pleaded with God for his life. We see this in 2 Samuel. We see people fasting as a place of repentance, as a repenting for whatever's going on. We see this in the book of Jonah. We see that they're fasting. We see these take place even today. You see people fasting as a place of repentance. We see it happen to seek favor, blessing, or the will of God. Moses fasted for 40 days in preparation for receiving the 10 Commandments; we see this in Exodus 34:28. Daniel fasted before God and God gave him a vision; Daniel 10:2-6. We see Elijah fasted before he spoke with God; 1 Kings 19:8. Jesus fasted for 40 days before his public ministry began as Matthew 4:1-11 says. You also see it in Luke 4:1-13. We see that the apostles fasted and prayed; that we see in Acts 13:2. And so the question would come down to, how do we see it happening today? How do we fast today? What's the purpose of us fasting today? Should we be fasting today? That's where the questions, I think, would go. From, once we see that scripturally, they fasted in The Old Testament, and we see that they fasted in the New Testament. We see that the disciples, we see that the followers of Christ fasted, they prayed. So we see that it's a practice that was put into place. So how do we see it today? Should you fast? Right? And I would say the answer to that is, yes. Fasting may not be the easiest discipline of Christ to do. A lot of people love their food, right? It's hard to give up our food. But also, there's great benefits in us spending more time with God. Abstaining from something and saying, "you know what? We're going to dedicate this time to Christ." I've had friends that fasted every Tuesday morning, they'd fast their breakfast and they wouldn't eat until, 'whenever,' and they'd spend that whole time in prayer.

Jonathan Hernandez
I know a lot of pastors fast Sunday mornings until after the sermon or after their service. They just want to make sure that they're in the right place. Making sure that it's God's word that's coming out and not their words. It's what God's wanting to say within that moment, and what He's saying in that time. So as we fast, we can see a few things happen. And so, we see fastening prayer can help us hear from God. So when we're fasting and we're praying, we're giving up something and we're spending more time with God. We're trying to connect to Him and we're going to hear from God. As we're spending that time in prayer, we're spending that time in our word. Fasting and prayer can reveal hidden sins; sometimes, those things that we're hiding and we're continuing to hide that we want to overlook. But then God reveals those times, those things to us when we're fasting and He's saying, "Hey, look John. There's this part in your life that I've been calling you and telling you, and trying to show you that it's not pleasing to me. And that you need to get rid of it." But for whatever reason, we're pushing Him to the side. But here in this time of, in a sense of isolation, we're removing something from us and spending more time with Him. He's going to reveal those things to us and say, "Hey look, here it is. This is what you're doing. Let's get rid of it. Let's repent of it. Let's move forward." Fasting and prayer can strengthen intimacy with God. If you feel like, "you know what? Maybe I haven't really been hearing from God lately. I feel like I'm far away from God right now." Spend a day of fasting and just spend that time with Him and reconnect. He's always been there. He's there already, right? It's us who has drawn away. And so draw back, draw closer to Him and spend that time with Him through prayer, through this time of fasting. Get rid of those distractions and just make sure that you're spending time with Him. Fasting prayer can teach us to pray with the right motives. A lot of times we have have wishlists, and we just rattle off these things instead of just saying, "okay God, what is it that you're wanting? Let me just hear from you. I want to come at you in prayer with the right motives." Not, "I want a million bucks," but "hey, what does it look like for me to be praying for the lost ones in my community? How can I pray for my lost loved ones with these motives?" Fast and prayer can help build our faith. So as we're spending more time with Him, we're seeing things happen. We're seeing how the scriptures just really fulfill those areas. So we just need to make sure that when we're fasting, we're doing it for the right reason. We're not doing it because our pastor said, "Hey, go ahead, you need to be fasting this week." And that's great, and that's motivation to help us, hey, let's step into this. But why are you fasting, right? Not just to lose weight. It's not a diet, but it's a place for us to step into what God has for us. It's an opportunity for us to connect with Him on a higher level. It's an opportunity for us to deepen that relationship, to strengthen our faith, to strengthen that intimacy---like I said---with Him, to hear from Him, to reveal things in us that need to be removed. That chiseling season. So we need to make sure that when we go into this, a season of fasting that, "hey, we've already prayed for it. We feel like this is what God's showing us as we step into this." And then make sure that you're doing the things that you need to do to keep yourself healthy through that too. So would I say that fasting is only food? I know a lot of times we could definitely stay in that route. And I mean, really when we look at scripture, we see that it says, "abstain from food." But also, I think there's an amazing thing that happens when we abstain from social media and all of that distraction. If we can just separate ourselves from all of that extra knowledge and things that we really don't need; separate ourselves from having that phone in our hand twenty four seven. And instead of having that phone in our hand, let's have our Bibles in our hands. Let's have our prayer journals. Let's have those things in our hands, our devotionals, and spending more time with God, and just really see what this season would look like if we would just put down social media for even a couple hours a day. Instead of being on it the whole time that we get home from school, or get home from work, however that looks. But we just make sure that we're spending that time with Him and say, "you know what? I want to separate from social media. I want to separate from whatever it is, electronics. Maybe it's video games. I'm going to separate myself from video games and spend more time with God. And so some of you guys are like, "well, I don't do social media. I don't do video games." What is it? Maybe it's the television, maybe it's whatever it is. Separate yourself from that and spend more time with God, and I think we're going to see some amazing things happening. We're going to see some more spiritual growth happening, and that's really it. We want to grow spiritually and we can't stay infants for all of our whole Christian lives. We need to be able to mature. I think, if we could get into this practice of fasting, I think we'll start seeing ourselves mature on a better level and being able to grow closer to God. And for me, a lot of times, if I feel, like I had just said earlier, but there's times when I feel like I'm not hearing from God. Or I'm not feeling like I've kind of maybe been separating from Him a lot of times, then I'll fast for that day or whatever it may be and say, "okay, I need to make sure that I'm in the right place. I need to make sure that I am hearing from God and I am following Him and all of these things." As a pastor, I've got to make sure that spiritually, I'm healthy, because I want to help other people become spiritually healthy. And so, if I'm not spiritually healthy, then what am I reproducing? And so fasting is a place for me to be able to say, "okay, where am I? Okay God, is there areas in my life that I need to look at? Is there a hidden sin that I'm overlooking? I want to be close to you. So I've got to make sure that if that's my goal, to be close to you, I've got to do the things that we've got to do, right?" If I want to be close to my wife, I've got to spend more time with my wife. We've got to do those type of things. So if I want to be closer to God, I've got to make sure that I'm putting in that effort to say, "Hey, I'm going to get closer to you. I'm going to spend time with you." And that's, a lot of times through fasting. Fasting's an amazing thing for us to practice and to do.