How To Deal With An Addiction - Ask the Camp Pastor

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

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

Art Devos
Today we are going to just have a special episode. We're going to talk about one main question. We've had a couple different questions that have come in all related to this topic, but this is just a very special podcast all focused to this one question. And this question is, "how do I deal with an addiction that I've had for a long time?" Alright, so we're going to talk about addiction today, and what that means. And how we can really go deeper into the word about this and to escape that addiction. And we want this to be practical for you. We want this for you to understand that you know that you are not alone, that you are loved, and that we are here for you and many like us. And we just want to walk through this with you. So we're going to start by let's define addiction.

Colby Houchin
Yeah, that is a big and loaded question as this conversation is a big and loaded conversation. One thing I want to say before I attempt to define addiction is that there's a million different places that this conversation can go. We are pastors, not clinicians. We are not counselors per se. We're not psychologists. We would get different perspectives from those different professions. Some good, some less helpful, some more helpful. A variety is really good on this conversation. But we have to remember that this isn't going to be a perfect, full conversation about addiction. There's going to be things that we missed. There's going to be things that you may disagree with us about. We might disagree with each other. I think it'll be good. So I wanted to just start with a definition and I think there's a few different definitions that I kind of pulled from and I kind of put some together. And so a really complicated, complex one. I think I pulled this one right off of Google, off of a medical website. So it said, "addiction is a neuropsychological disorder categorized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces natural reward despite substantial harm and other negative consequences." Not very short. I could barely even read another way to look at it. "It's a chronic dysfunction of the brain that involves reward, motivation, and memory." So that's a very psychological one where it talks about patterns of human behavior that will lead to what they call a dysfunction. One that I kind of landed on that again, it's not perfect, but I think it's something that helps us kind of process through it is, "it's the condition of being given into a habitual dependency." So it is to the point where you have a dependency on something, and it's habitual in your life. And what I wanted to highlight on this, and I feel like Adam, you might have more to say on this, what I wanted to highlight when looking at addiction, and let's say that it is a habitual dependency that shows that not all negative behaviors and actions are addictions per se. There's certain criteria that has to be met in order for something to be an addiction. It doesn't just, I overeat one time and now I am a glutton. That's not quite the way it works. I don't have an addiction to food because I ate way too many Oreos one night. There's a process that takes place. Do you have anything more that you want to say on that?

Adam Sanders
No, I think that's a great intro point to it. And I think one of the things we feel really convictional about as a group is---I don't know if you guys have experienced this. But I've seen in a lot of these areas with an emphasis movement towards counseling, which I think there's been some very positive things of that. I think there has been an tendency for pastors to almost kind of step out and ignore the spiritual component of things like this. And we definitely don't want to do that. We want to make sure that we're addressing the heart and coming at this from the vantage point of what does God have to say about these things and really want to be extremely practical in how we go about offering some wisdom to you today in order to help get you on the right steps.

Art Devos
And we can sit here and we could list off a lot of things that could be considered addictions and whether it be alcohol, whether it could be pornography. I mean, we could just sit here and go down and give a straight list. Now we understand that a lot of the questions that came in most likely are dealing with pornography issues. And we're going to definitely address that as a part of this. I know for myself, I've received multiple calls over the years from parents and some kids of saying, "Hey, my kid has an addiction to pornography, will you talk to them? Will you work with them?" And some kids are saying, "Hey, this is a problem in my life, and can you help me get through this?" And so I know that's a bigger one that definitely needs to be addressed for sure. But the root of these addictions are all really kind of coming from the same avenue. And that's one thing that we also need to address today as a part of this.

Colby Houchin
Before we move any further, I want to talk about a few different common types of addiction. And you touched on them a little bit. And I think these three categories are helpful to think about for a couple of reasons. 1. It shows that there's diversity. 2. There's different ways to combat these different addictions. There's different ways to get trapped in them. There's going to be people that have tendencies to be more vulnerable or susceptible to certain types of addictions. And there's going to be different ways that we, so if you go to a counselor or a therapist for example, they're going to treat these types of addictions in different ways. So, one of the biggest categories of addiction is substance addiction. And that's what we, especially outside of the church, substance addiction is one of the ones that people think about the most. So, that would be if you are addicted to food and eating. If you are addicted to nicotine; if you have an addiction to cigarettes, for example, or tobacco. If you have an addiction to any type of drug, whether that be a pharmaceutical drug or whether that be. A really hard, dangerous drug that we find on the street that isn't medicalized. And really just any substance. So one that we talked about beforehand, that I hadn't even thought about is vaping. Vaping is a very prevalent addiction in today's youth because there's a lot of accessibility. There's a societal element of some people think it's cool. There's a lot of lies about how it's safer than cigarettes, for example. It's actually terrible for you! But the reality is that substance addiction is one of the first major categories. The second category is sexual addiction. Now, there's a lot of ways that sexual addiction can kind of play out. So the first one that Art talked about is pornography. And that's probably the most common. And so there also, and by the way, there's going to be some big adult words used in this episode. We probably should have started with that. I apologize for that. But be prepared to have conversations, and be aware of the age of the ears that are listening to this. So you can have a addiction to masturbation outside of pornography. Those can be separate. They're usually put together. You can have an addiction to sex, especially, and that's often seen in high society where the ability to have sex with a lot of people is more attainable. Lust is kind of just a spiritual reality that just pervades sexual addiction. You can have just sexual thoughts. And I even think there can be body issues that fall under the sexual addiction category. So, body issues that lead to shame and feelings. Worthlessness or distortions in who we are and what we look like. I actually think that falls under the category of a sexual addiction of some sort. And then the third, and this is actually a more prevalent type of addiction, if we're honest with ourselves. It's activity addictions. So there's people that are addicted to adrenaline, and they make really stupid decisions because of their desire to have the chemical response to exciting things. You can be addicted to social media. And again, this is where it kind of gets a little prevalent and a little uncomfortable. Video games: if you play Fortnite every single day for multiple hours a day, I have a hard message for you. You are probably addicted to Fortnite gambling. That's one that's sometimes more of a hidden addiction. Shopping. Shopping can definitely be an addiction. And compulsive behaviors, those are all activity addictions. And so again, what we see is substance, sexual, and activity addictions. And all of them, again, they start in different ways. They're going to be addressed in different ways, but they all fall under that category of a dysfunction in the way that we live; and a dependency that we slowly grow into those categories.

Art Devos
Absolutely. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. And I think that's going to be really helpful for you to know and understand, really a lot of these starting points for it too. As human beings, we're already creatures of habit. We can form habits very quickly and that also includes good habits, alright? But with things that are sinful, with things that really lead us down this road to these addictions and things like that. It always starts innocently enough. And we know this, we understand this, we recognize this. It always starts innocently enough. In there where you get just a little bit of a taste of it. A little bit of a hint of it. Why do you think that sports betting sites offer you a hundred dollars of free money immediately?

Colby Houchin
Yeah, you put in five and they give you a hundred dollars credit.

Art Devos
Right. Across the board, you will see that, "oh, you are new to our site, we're going to give you $250 to bet." And you start to, "oh, I won once." And what do you do with that? You're like, "man, I could win more."

Colby Houchin
It feels good to win in those situations.

Art Devos
It does. And the thing is, you don't have any bettors that lose 100% of the time. Likewise, you don't have any bettors that win 100% of the time. And the law of averages starts to play out and more people lose than win in these bets. And Vegas knows that. But it all starts with just that little bit of a, "I got a taste for it, I got a taste for it." You go into social media stuff---let's stay in the activities department here right now of the categories, social media. You start to see that younger and younger kids are opening up social media accounts. Getting Snapchat, and it used to be Facebook, and obviously Facebook is now for the old people like me. But it started out with that, and even on Facebook, it started out with just mindless scrolling. And you want to make sure that everything you put on there is seen for everybody else, that there's a certain amount of likes that start to come with it. And you start to feed just that human response of like, "oh, I just got 130 likes in two hours because I posted this." And it starts to become more and more.

Colby Houchin
But something to add onto that, specific to social media, is that they design their algorithms in the way that your phone will get a notification. I mean, it depends on your settings, but oftentimes they set it up to where they will hold notifications back, and then flood them towards you as a draw tactic. So it's not just that you so happen to be engaged with things like Facebook, but it's designed to pull you in and to engage you. And to hook you and to grab you and to encourage a certain response that is positive to the human psyche; and to lead you into desiring that more and more. So it's not just that we like it, but it's designed for us to like it and to get hooked on.

Art Devos
No, absolutely. And as we look more in, what's the root of all of this? Where does this kind of start? Well, I mean the most simplistic answer that I could probably give, and I don't mean to dumb this down but, where is our focus? Where does it start? If your focus is on Christ, you tend to stay focused more on Christ and not of these types of things.

Colby Houchin
There's not a lot of gambling that happens in church when you're actually focused on the Lord.

Art Devos
Right? Exactly. No, that's exactly right. And we are actually, we're called to live in a certain way. And so I want to go to 1 Peter, that's where I'm going to start us out here in scripture. But 1 Peter chapter one, and I am going to start with verse 13. "Therefore, gid up the loins of your mind to be sober and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children. Not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance, but as He who called you is holy. You also be holy in all your conduct because it is written be holy for I am holy." Alright. So God has set His standard for us in how we are to live. And it is that we are supposed to continue to be focused on Christ, because before we came to know Jesus Christ, before we were established in our faith in him, lived a certain way. And what was that way? It was, "if it feels good, then I'm going to pursue those things regardless of what that is." Look at toddlers. What do they do? Toddlers are all about themselves. They're all about what is going to make them feel good in that moment. They don't think beyond anything other than that moment. So if they see a toy that another kid has, they want that toy. They immediately go for that toy, right? That's a toddler. They're just acting off of their own satisfaction in that moment. Even as adults, before we come to know Christ, that's what we tend to do. We tend to satisfy ourselves and we buy into what the world tells us we need in our lives. And so we pursue that. Well, God is saying, "Hey, you know me now, don't keep living in those lusts when you were ignorant." You know as, "no, you pursue me." You live and you focus on me in these things. And so that's where we start to see, because how can addiction happen in Christian people? Right? Well, our eyes start to come off of Christ.

How Do We Become More Christlike In Our Lives?

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
Hey, so here's the question, and I think it's great. "What role does the Bible play in our daily lives and how can we become more Christlike in our everyday interactions?" So Jonathan, this is one that was brought to you. What are some thoughts you have about it?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, so as we think about those questions, I think first the Bible shows us God's character. And it provides for us God's revelation of Himself to His people. I think the Bible does an amazing job as we just really step into it and just really read it. Just really seeing that heart of who God is, and as we see His heart, we can see how we can take the scriptures, read them, and just really see it for ourselves and allow it to really take root into our lives or really for us to be able to apply it into our lives. God's word is unchanging, it's faithful, it's loving. Obviously, there's some discipline within it. So we think about that in 2 Timothy 3:16. It talks about how the Bible's profitable for teaching. For reproach or reproof, correction for training, for righteousness. right? And so we look at that and the Bible is this amazing thing that we can just apply into our lives like that; to when we need correction. The Bible will show us as we read through that the Bible is kind of like that place. The Holy Spirit really reveals to us, "oh, well, guess what? I'm maybe walking outside of God's design for my life." Well, the Bible's going to show us that it's going to help us see that as we read through that the Holy Spirit continues just to convict us in those areas. And so like I said, I just love that we get this opportunity as we study the word that, yeah, there's times when the correction hurts, right? But I mean, it's beneficial in the long run if we could just really, I think we live in such a, "see it now," mentality instead of seeing the big picture. And when the Holy Spirit's correcting us, yeah it hurts now, but if we could look at the big picture. We could see what God is really doing in our lives and how that's going to play out ultimately in the end. I think, how can we be more Christ-like within our interactions? I think of the fruit of the spirit, "but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and against such things there's no law." When I feel like I'm not walking in any of those, they're not evident in my life, well, it really helps me think, "okay, well am I in the place that I need to be with God or am I walking outside of that, or walking in something that I shouldn't be?" I think when I look at that, if I have no love in my heart, well obviously then there's something wrong. Something's going on. If there's no joy, if there's no peace, there's things that are going on that's really shaking who I am. So I need to get back in alignment with God. I read a book that's actually part of a discipleship group that I am a part of. I get to teach or whatever, and the book's called Journey to the Inner Chamber. And there's a character in this book, his name's Gabe. And just really seeing Gabe's heart, and how his heart really aligns with who God is and just seeing how he walks through that. I love that book. It's a good book if you guys ever want to go and read it at some point. But in the book, Gabe has a guy that comes and tries to burn down his barn. He has a farm, and Gabe, when the guy lights the barn on fire, he tries to run away and falls and breaks his leg. And Gabe comes and stumbles upon him when he goes out to find his barn. The book says that the character in the book, he actually helps this guy. He braces his leg, takes him back home, and then on top of that, he feeds that guy's family for the next several months while the guy recovers. And our carnal thought process is, "well, he deserved what he got. He broke his leg. He shouldn't have put," but that wasn't Gabe's heart. It was, "yeah, he may have done wrong, but I'm going to give grace. I'm going to extend grace and I'm going to love on him." And I think the more we spend time with God, I think we start learning how we can do that same thing: extend grace when maybe the world's taught us we shouldn't. But God is saying, "yeah, you should."

Garry Schick
Yeah, and I think you're right. The Bible is our standard that shows us a different path. God's standard for us. And think of Jesus' words, "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that precedes from the mouth of God." But with that in mind, we still have to feed on it. We still have to take it in, digest it, and let it do its work in our lives. That question, "what role does the Bible play in our lives?" Not to be a little bit harsh here, but sadly not nearly enough of a role. Some people, you just wonder, does it play any role at all? People identify as Christians. I mean, I'll be honest, even in my own life, I mean I can know the word, but can the word be seen in my life? And one of the scriptures that kind of hits me hard on this is James 1, where in verse 21, he says, "therefore put all filthiness and rampant wickedness away and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres; being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts; he will be blessed in his doing." So, I think even for those of us who have what are called devotions, daily time in God's word, there is a temptation to become very familiar with the word. To kind of let it scratch our interest points, but not necessarily let it go deeper into our living of our lives. And so I just find it so helpful to say, "Lord help me, feed me today through your word. Show me what I need to feed on, and where I need to let the word change how I operate. How I connect with the world around me, how I treat my wife and kids." And sometimes it's hard. You know, I think it's not unusual for people to come to the word or hear a sermon and say, "oh boy, I know exactly who needed to hear that today." And they're not talking about themselves. Every now and then people say, "oh, that is what I needed to hear today." And that's what a preacher loves, and I'm sure it's what God loves. When we, "and it wasn't easy, but I needed to hear that." And to let God's word do its work. And it will! It will build you up, it will edify you, it will strengthen you. And it happens little by little. But again, as you were talking about how the word works in our lives, another parable of Jesus that came to my mind. It was one where he talked about, "those who are faithful in very little will be given more." I think when we are faithful to apply just a little bit in a little area, God will say, "okay, now here's more to help you with some more." But a lot of it will, I think just blow right past us until we make the connect where we don't just hear it, but see ourselves in it, meditate on it, and let the spirit work through it and be prayerful about it. And prayer, meditation on the word, letting it sink in and just really asking the Lord. "Lord, I want to reflect Jesus far better than I do. I know I don't in so many ways. Out in public, but also at home, every area of our life." And even deep inside, just the conversation we have with ourselves about whatever. I think it's so easy to fall into habitual ruts of complaining or crumbling or bitterness or whatever. And so that quenches the spirit and then it cuts off that life flow that brings life change. But if we let the word into those deep recesses of our lives, I think it disciples us. I was thinking the other day, there is such a difference between being taught and being discipled. To be taught is to learn more, to know stuff. To be discipled is to like change. It's to be like Jesus. And I think there's a great temptation for all of us to just sit back and be taught. But God wants to go farther. He wants us to be disciples. Yes.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yes. So good.

Garry Schick
And one more thing, listeners, if you're feeling maybe a little conviction, I hope so about, "am I a learner or a disciple?" It means being willing to step out and do some hard things as a disciple of Jesus. "Hey, I'm out of my comfort zone, but I want to follow Christ." And don't worry, the more faithful you are, the more your spiritual muscles will develop and he will use you in great ways.

How Can You Take A Out Of Context Verse And Teach The Context?

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 Adam Sanders, Colby Houchin, and Art Devos.

Art Devos
Hey, so welcome to the podcast. We're going to answer a couple more questions. We have four questions that we're going to tackle this month and we want to thank you for tuning in. My name is Art DeVos, I'm the executive director here at Camp Rock Ministries. To my right we have Colby Houchin again, who is the youth pastor at Monument Bible Church in Scottsbluff. And to my left here, we have somebody who is new and he's going to be floating in and out of this podcast as well. When Dan Terrell, who is not able to be here, then Adam is going to fill in and he'll fill in if I can't be here and he'll fill in. Basically, he's going to be a regular here as a part of our podcast as well. Looking forward

Adam Sanders
Looking forward to it.

Art Devos
Adam is the associate pastor at Harvest Valley Church. What's your official title?

Adam Sanders
Pastor of Families and Discipleship.

Art Devos
Alright, perfect. I was only on the search committee that helped bring him into the church. You think I would know this, but I don't claim to know everything unless it's with my children, then I know everything. Alright, so we're going to jump in. We're going to get started. Thank you again for tuning in. Let's get going. Gentlemen, how can you take a verse that some people take out of context and turn it around and teach them in the right context? Great question. Because we do live in a day and age where people love to post a random Bible verse and thinking it very much applies to their situation and how they want it applied to their situation. And so we see that a lot. It comes up in conversation from time to time. So how can we do this?

Colby Houchin
Yeah, I can get started. I think there's a lot of different avenues that this question can go. And so we could look at it from the perspective of how do we make sure that we aren't speaking out of context when we interpret scripture, we could talk about on social media, how do we address that or what about with friends or what about those types of situations? So there's a lot of different nuances to this question, but I think in general, one thing I want to just state beforehand; I think there's a lot that we can go back and forth, but just to start, what we encourage and what we call good biblical interpretation is of Jesus. It is looking for the intended meaning and the intended context of a verse. That's what we desire to see. Eisegesis is something that we see a lot in our culture, kind of what Art alluded to. And Eisegesis is when we're going to input our own meaning or our own biases or our own message within the text. And so often, and again, this is just a starting place, this isn't my answer, but often what we see in our culture is what we call Eisegesis. And so what we want to do is we want to pursue Exegesis. And so I can talk a little bit more in a minute about what that means, but do you guys have anything you want to say?

Art Devos
I think I'll add in, the starting point has to be scripture, right? The starting point has to be scripture. If you're going to talk about, "Hey, that's out of context," then you need to also know why it's out of context. What is the context where that passage is found? And to really be looking at that, and we can know that even whether it's something applied to daily living or just our spiritual health, all that in general. I want to start and just look at 1 Timothy 4:1. That's where, "now the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron." And then it starts to go through a list and everything too. The context of that too is, you start to see people going further and further away from sound doctrine. And so we are supposed to test all things by scripture. And so when somebody is speaking just like we are today, even in a podcast, everything that we say; you should be able to come back to scripture and to say, "you know what? That's true and this is why it's true, because it's right here found in the Bible and we know that to be true." So testing it by what scripture has to say becomes very important. We then can start to understand why something that would be said would be taken out of context, whether it was an eisegesis form of interpretation or whether it's truly an exegetical form of interpretation.

Adam Sanders
Yeah, absolutely. I think, one thing that came to mind for me too, even thinking about this question a little more was just the posture that we have towards that person is going to say a lot. And I think I've thought of different scenarios where this could happen, whether it's a brother and sister in Christ or maybe even someone who's not a believer. But I wrote down a list of maybe just some assumptions we can start with as just the beginning point. And one of those, if it's a believer in Christ, we can assume that they love Jesus, they love God's word. The reason they're even going to this verse is because they want to study the Bible and they want to be faithful to what it's saying. And so we can kind of give them that benefit of the doubt. If it's a non-believer, we could even assume things like, "hey, if they're studying the scriptures or going to it, they probably have some interest." The Lord's working in their life. And so, want to approach them as someone who genuinely wants to know the truth. And from there with that posture, I think it helps a long way to teach it as a teachable moment. So you can go to them and say, "Hey, when we study a verse, we look at it within the context of the paragraph that we find it in." We look at what's happening in that particular book of the Bible. What are they addressing? What are the events that are happening? And we even use the entirety of scripture. If we see a pattern in scripture that would debunk that idea, then we know that that can't be what it means in this particular instance. And so just kind of walking someone through that, not only is it charitable, but if you're not doing it in a really smart way where you're trying to make them look bad, then you can really help them to understand more.

Colby Houchin
Yeah, absolutely. I think just going off a little bit what you were talking about, grand narrative of scripture is something that is incredibly important to understand in order to read verses in context. So for example, when you read the book of Proverbs, what you are reading at the beginning of the book, it's a speech between a father and a son of building up his son in righteousness and helping him walk a godly and disciplined life. And then you get all these little proverbs, all these little sayings, and I actually have a couple to talk about at a later question. But what you'll find in the book of Proverbs, you'll read these different Proverbs, and what you'll learn is they're not promises, but they are instruction for godly living. And so what you do is, you read the proverbs and you develop your wisdom based off of the word of God. And you will find that it's not a promise from God, because you read it in the proverb when it says that, I can't remember the exact quote, but when it talks about parents building their kids up in the way of righteousness, "they won't depart from that path." That's not a promise that's not--and so you'll see people utilizing that out of context and then they'll be like, "well, the word of God is not true because this didn't happen for my child." No, what it is is it points us in the right direction, which is to look at Christ and to understand who God is and to let our hearts be informed by Him. And so great narrative of scripture is one of the first steps to understanding context, because we're going to read Jeremiah differently than Proverbs, differently than Psalms. Differently than the Gospel of Matthew, differently than Revelation and differently from the book of Romans. And so you have to understand that. And then within that I think you have to start asking yourself good questions of who? Why? Those types of questions. And so for example, I don't mean to call anybody out here. I don't mean to pop anybody's bubble if they have a tattoo of this, or they have wall art or if it's on your Instagram bio. I'm sorry, but looking at verses such as Jeremiah 29:11 or Philippians 4:13. So Jeremiah 29:11, let see if I can find it here, "for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." That is a really good billboard. That's a great: put it on a piece of wood, put it in your kitchen, right? It's really uplifting. The problem with that verse, when you even look one verse backwards at Jeremiah 29:10, you see, "this is what the Lord says: When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good excuse, my promise to bring you back to this place." So, you don't get the whole context there, but when you read the book of Jeremiah and when you understand the history of Israel, what you understand is Jeremiah, at this point in his letter, is writing to a group of people that are either about to be put into very bad exile or are in exile because of their sinfulness and because of their godlessness for generation upon generation, upon generation. And so he's talking to a destroyed, hurt culture that has been dragged into slavery to a foreign land. And he's saying, at the end of this 70 years, your faithfulness, when you turn back to me, when you repent of your ways, I have a plan for you. You are my people. But it is not this like, "man, if I am raising my kids and I'm living my good Christian life, God has a good plan for me." There's a context there that we need to acknowledge. And it's kind of the same thing with Philippians 4:13. I should have flipped there a moment ago. Do either of you guys have that one memorized? I'm really bad with memorization.

Adam Sanders
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Colby Houchin
Yeah, or I can do all things through a verse taken out of context, right? It's the same thing. So the group of people that usually speak that, or that use that verse, often it's athletes. "I can do all things through Christ that gives me strength." "I can win the big game, I can score the most points, I can hit a home run. I can overcome my enemies." The problem with that is that Paul didn't write that after winning the church softball league. He wrote that while in prison. He wrote that he was suffering, he was in prison. He didn't know if he was going to die or if he was going to live. He addressed that if you read the entirety of Philippians, and he is trying to make a case for joy and hope in a joyless and hopeless situation. He's trying to point his church to living for Christ in everything that they do. And he's saying this beautiful message where, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." It is not in the context of, "if I believe in Jesus or if I work really hard, I can accomplish all of my goals." It is recognizing a dependency on the Holy Spirit and leaning into the plan that God has for me and recognizing that the hardships I'm in God can get me through. There's a different message in there than, "I'm an athlete and I can win if I do the right thing." And so, with context, we have to talk about who's writing this. What's happening during this time in history? Why are they writing it? Who are they writing this to? Another thing that I talk about is the 20/20 rule. This isn't perfect, but in order to get a better idea of what's happening in context, read 20 verses before and 20 verses after. And when you read that chunk instead of just one little verse, you'll actually be able to see kind of what's going on. And again, 20/20 isn't the perfect analogy. It's not saying that if you do that, you'll always understand the context. But that's a start in order to understand the broader message that's being had there.

Art Devos
And if you're a camper that's been out here in the last year, especially last two years, you would've heard, especially in the junior high core camp or high school senior camps, you would've heard us talking about this at some point in time. Because we are feeling more and more strongly about this idea that you have got to be taking these verses in context as they were meant to be taken in there. And though it might be difficult to figure out, sometimes you can, it's there. And so we teach a class at Co-op together along with Dan and stuff too, and we've talked a lot about just the idea that we've got to know the context of it, because otherwise it's so easy to start putting our own thoughts and our own efforts. And so we've established this right? That we believe the Bible to be true in its entirety and that we can know and look at God's word and to start to understand its authority, its purpose, and what it's actually pointing to and to be useful in our daily lives; godly living. But now to fully answer this question, and you started to talk about the posturing of it, how do you now approach that with someone? And so 1. make sure you do understand the context yourself; study up on it. I think that's going to be really important to know because you can't say, "I know that's out of context, but I don't know how," and then just leave it because that's not going to be helpful to you. It's not going to be helpful to them. So know why it's out of context. Understand the purpose of that. Now, it really depends on that relationship that you have with that person of how you can approach it. If it is a complete stranger, you're probably not going to change their mind and not really get very far in a conversation with them. If it is a close friend or even a family member---my grandmother, I had an amazing relationship with my grandmother. But every once in a while she would say things to me that I'd be like, "where? Help me out. Where does it say that?" And it was funny cause she would go, "well, I think it's in there." And so we would start exploring that a little bit and I got to explore the Bible even more with my grandmother at times, and to kind of help that out. But I had a special relationship. I could bring that up and a lot of times she would laugh about it as soon as we started speaking and she'd understand. But she still wanted to continue to grow in her knowledge because she was a believer. She understood, "alright, this is good for me and I want to keep learning. I want to keep growing." So yeah, it really depends on that relationship and how you approach it. But always approach it in love. Always.

Colby Houchin
So, something that comes to mind on that conversation when it comes to people online misusing scripture, or people that you don't have relationships with, it is very challenging to have fruitful conversations. But when we look at the church and when we look at the intended way for people to be built up, we see kind of how this process can be played out. So looking at Ephesians 4:11 and down. "So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and the teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the whole measure of fullness of Christ." What that points to is the church being a place of knowledge and teaching and learning and growing and challenging. And where you come together, you have leaders of that church, but you also just have the body of that church, the diversity of the church that is unified around the gospel, that is unified around the good word of scripture. And what you do is you build yourself up. And then if you look at verse 14, it says, "they will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful, scheming. Instead speaking the truth and love," which is huge in this conversation, "speaking the truth and love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is Christ." This conversation is best had in the church, in loving relationships, in conversation with people that are mature, loving followers of Jesus Christ. And yes, you will find on Facebook that there's some really bad theology and there is, you'll find it and it can be really challenging. It can be really frustrating. Or you can find kids at your school that don't know how to use scripture well, or just use it as almost just like a hammer to bash on people's skulls. What we have to acknowledge is that the body of Christ is there to build each other up, and that is the place where we come together and we study the word and we build each other up and we equip each other for works of righteousness so that we aren't the infants being tossed back and forth by false teaching. But we are the rock that stands strong against those false teachings.

Adam Sanders
That really kind of butts up with the final thought I had in terms of the practicality of the conversation. I think it is important to note the nature of the misrepresentation or the misinterpretation. Because if it's a brother and sister in Christ, and maybe they're expressing something that is true. Like, the Bible does talk about it, but they're going to the wrong verse to get there. Then you could do what we've talked about already, but then maybe say, "Hey, look, these verses actually communicate that same idea." And so you can kind of affirm that they're trusting in something that is true and is good, but maybe then teach them, maybe they're in the wrong spot to get to that conclusion. The other thought I had is, if it's someone who's using scripture to justify sin, oftentimes what I've found is there's not really, the conversation is less about what the Bible says. Maybe they've kind of picked that verse because they still want to hold some respect to the Bible, but really the nature of the conversation goes beyond being able to interpret it well. And you might start by asking those questions and kind of getting into the exegetical component, but once they've kind of found that they have already stuck their feet in the ground and they want to believe this sin is okay, and they're just trying to put a nice little Bible verse on it. And once you get past that, I would say, start to ask more questions about them personally. Take personal interest in them. They're obviously, the Bible's not really at the core of what is going on there. It's a love for sin, and so you're kind of changing the nature of the conversation at that point.

Scriptures That Jesus Fulfilled

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 Pastors Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Garry Schick
It is Friday. A good Friday? Yes, and a great Friday. The Lord went through something horrific for us on this day.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, wow!

Garry Schick
We have at Emanuel the Passion of the Christ tonight at 7:00. Not one for kids and not one for popcorn, but a very authentic---a movie showing of what Jesus really did. The whole movie, a couple hours long is those six hours on the cross pretty much. I mean, it starts actually with the trial. Well actually it starts in the Garden of Gethsemane, but it hones on pretty quick on what he--and leading up to the cross.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah.

Garry Schick
Hey Jonathan, as we are in just this really precious time, today, Good Friday. As listeners are listening, we're coming right up, well, at 9:00 is of course the time he was crucified, isn't it? Yeah. So from nine until three, he was on the cross. So today, maybe we'll just be a little less conversational than the last couple weeks, although we are going to still go back and forth just because we have kind of a lot we want to include today. We thought it would be a neat idea to talk about some of the scriptures that Jesus fulfilled when he died, buried, and rose again. And in fact, you may remember on Easter Sunday as the day's getting late, he appears to two on the way to Emmaus. And while they're going, they're confused, they're sad, they don't understand why Jesus is gone. And by the way, "it's been three days and some of our women had come up with this crazy story about him rising from the dead and we don't know what to think." And so before he reveals himself to them, he just opens up the scriptures and is beginning with the law and the prophets and the Psalms. And so we actually have a little bit from, and certainly not everything, but from the law, the prophets and the Psalm. And for just one verse from the law I've taken. We don't often think of Genesis as part of the law, but it is, it's part of the five books of Moses. It's the foundation of everything. And really a cornerstone, Genesis 3, that is when humankind falls into sin. That is when, not only death comes into the world, but also God's promise of a savior. We read in Genesis 3 as God is cursing Satan for leading Adam and Eve to sin. Verse 15, he says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman. Between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head. You will strike his heel." Now, it's kind of a poetic thing, but literally Jesus, his heel is pierced and his hands as well, and Satan's head is ultimately crushed by what Jesus does. By the way, speaking of the movie, The Passion of the Christ, what I really love in that movie is while he's in the garden of Gethsemane, they show the serpent showing up, and Jesus just stamping on it. You got to wonder, what was Satan thinking? "I've got the victory. He's on the cross." No, you just lost Satan! He just paid the price for sin. And then moving to the Psalms, one of the most beautiful and heart wrenching Psalms is Psalm 22. When Jesus cried out from the cross, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It was a heart wrenching cry. It was that moment when God the Father and the Son, there's a division there because Jesus has our sin. But he is also quoting the Psalm, which is the Psalm that ends in triumph. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning?" And what a lesson to us, when we are going through our darkest hours, to cry out in prayer because guess what...our God is listening. But that's not where it ends. Psalm 22 has a lot more. If you move on to verse 14, it says, "I import out like water. All my bones are out of joint." I think we forget, when they hoisted him up on that cross, one of the things that would happen is that cross would fall into the hole that was dug for it to stand there. What would it do to Jesus? It would wrench his bones out of joint. "My heart is like wax." They're going to pierce his heart, aren't they? Verse 16, "A company of evil doers encircles me." Of course they did. They encircled him. They mocked him. "They have pierced my hands and feet." Well, actually, you are going to talk about that one, weren't you, Jonathan?

Jonathan Hernandez
Well, you already started.

Garry Schick
I'm sorry. But then in verse 17, he goes on and says, "I can count all my bones. They stare and they gloat over me." Were you going to take up verse 18? Why don't you take it? You got it?

Jonathan Hernandez
No, my phone didn't load.

Garry Schick
Okay, I've got it. I'll read it. "They divide my garments among them, and for my clothes, they cast lots." Of course this, they did even before they pierced him. So he was physically pierced, his hands and feet. They did gamble while he was hanging on the tree. They took his garments, the soldiers, and they gambled over them who gets what? So it's just some horrific things that Jesus suffered. But I guess what's comforting is it was all written down before it came to be. Not one thing did he suffer that was not in the foreknowledge and even the plan of God. Part of what he would endure out of great and deep love for us on this day. Alright, I think you're going to pick it up at Isaiah 53 from the prophet. So moving from the Psalms to the prophets.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So Isaiah 53:7 talks about, "he was oppressed and he was afflicted and yet he opened not his mouth; and he was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before the shearer is silent. So he opened not his mouth." And what an amazing thing for him to be able to endure what he does. And not, I mean, in John 1:29 it says, "the next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, 'behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." You start seeing a lot of the stuff unfolding. You see him, like I said, walk through that whole process of being beaten, all of that. And yet it's like, "but yet you're God. You could have stopped all of this, right?" And yet He is like, "no, there's a purpose to all of this. There's a reason why all this is going on." Isaiah 53, where'd you go? 14. It says, "just as many were astonished at you. And so was more than any man in his form, more than the sons of man." This brutality of these soldiers, what they did to him. I don't know how they could do that to someone. Obviously, this was their job and I don't know if they enjoyed it or not, but it just wasn't good. And we know that this was, obviously, this is what had to have happened. God had the purpose. He knew what was going to happen, and He knew all that.

Garry Schick
Yeah, it's just absolutely amazing. Well, and they did enjoy it, unfortunately, because after they finished surging him, they took him in and beat him up some more. That wasn't part of what they had to do. But they mocked him. They put the robe on him and the crown of thorns.

Jonathan Hernandez
The crown of thorns.

Garry Schick
But you're right. And even Pilot was amazed. "Aren't you going to answer these charges?" And all of this is a fulfillment, as you said.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, it's just crazy to look back at that and think about his willingness to do it because he knew the purpose.

Garry Schick
So the last one that I have is Psalm 16. And so most of what we've talked about so far is about what he endured on the cross, but the resurrection is there too. And in Psalm 16, it's a great chapter, but verse 10 says, "for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your holy one see corruption." Well, who's David talking about there? David? And actually Peter points this out. I think he quotes this very verse in the book of Acts. He says, "we know that David is in the grave and his body was corrupted through the process of decay. Only Jesus Christ doesn't decay in the grave. Only Jesus Christ rises forever more." So I know it's good Friday and it's a mournful day. It's a somber day. It really is. Our day of atonement, when he paid the price for our sin. Saturday is kind of a solemn day. He was in the grave and talks about that too. He talks about, as Jonah was in the heart of the fish, that is a symbol. It's a real thing. It really happened. But it's also symbolic of the fact that Jesus would be in the tomb. But Easter morning, he will not be found there. And we tell the story every year about those women heading to the tomb, but they weren't coming to a sunrise service. They were coming to take better care of a corpse that had been hurriedly put in a grave. Was there anything further, Jonathan?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, I mean, just you can look through each of these portions of scripture and these prophecies that were prophesied about the crucifixion; the resurrection in each of those, and just really spend some time in those. I mean, Psalms 22:18 about the garments being split. And then in John 19:24, the fulfillment as we see that happen. Isaiah 53, like you said, we could walk through each and every one through that, about him being oppressed and afflicted. And like I said, it's just amazing just how God has these things in the Old Testament. And then we see that fulfillment happen throughout some of these different events throughout the Bible.

Garry Schick
And Isaiah 53 even tells us the reason why, "all we like sheep have gone astray." Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Let's just take a moment to just give thanks for God's goodness, his mercy. Well, I just wish good things to you and your family during this special weekend.

Why Do Some Churches Teach God's Omniscience While Others Don't?

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 Gary Hashley & Brad Kilthau

Gary Hashley
We are going to look at a thought that they want us to talk about and that says this, "often in some churches we hear about the omniscience of God. Yet in other Protestant churches it is taught that God is not omniscient. Rather he is learning as time moves on. Can you guys touch on this?" And yes, we can! Now you think about Jesus coming to earth and he did give up some of the independent use of some of his attributes. I mean, here Jesus was born and he wasn't born walking, talking, and potty trained. He did learn as he went along. The Bible says He grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men. But that is because he left heaven to become flesh. To dwell among us, never ceasing to be God, but in some way accepting the limitations as a little baby. And as a little toddler he learned to go to the bathroom, learned to feed himself, learn to clean himself, bathe himself, learn to talk, learn to read, and so on and so forth. It doesn't mean that God isn't and that he wasn't originally omniscient, because all three members of the Trinity Father, son Holy Spirit are as much God as the others are. What does omniscient mean? That might be a good place to start Brad. Omnis means "all," and scientia means "knowledge." So you put them together and it means "all knowledge." I think about God's omniscience. I think about a place in the scriptures like Psalm number 139, where David writes, "oh Lord, you have searched me and know me. You know my sitting down and my raising up. You understand my thoughts are far off. You comprehend my path and my lying down. You're acquainted with all my ways for there's not a word on my tongue, but behold oh Lord, you know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. I cannot attain it." So he starts out in this Psalm talking about God's knowledge; His omniscience. Then he goes on to God's presence; omnipresence, "where can I go from your spirit?" And it goes into that. But what do we mean by "-ence?" Let me give you the definition from the Moody Handbook of Theology. It says, "God knows all things factual and possible; past, present, and future in one eternal act." In other words, there's nothing God doesn't know already. There's nothing that God isn't aware of all the time and it's in one eternal act. I think that's an important phrase in that definition. It's not that His knowledge is progressing, it is, He already knows everything. He knows the past perfectly. I have experienced some of the past, but I haven't experienced all of the past. He knows all the past perfectly. He knows all the present perfectly. And there's a lot going on in every moment, and yet He's fully aware. He knows the future. I was thinking about that this week, Brad, as we were getting ready to record, because we're heading up to Easter. And I was thinking and reading this morning in particular, in my own time, in the Word of God from the Book of Luke about Jesus telling Peter, "you will deny me before the rooster crows." And Peter said, "no, I won't," and he had all kinds of arguments about it. But you continue reading and find out he did deny Jesus three times. As he's coming in the gate, the gal at the gate says, "aren't you one of the disciples?" "No," he goes to the fire. It's cold, and he decides to hang out there and warm himself by the fire. He's asked two more times, and after the third time he was asked, he denied being a follower of Jesus, denied even knowing Jesus. And my mom loved to point this out to me, because the last time it even says he "swore." And my mom would say, "now see, you're not supposed to say naughty things. You're not supposed to use profanity." The rooster crowed. Now, Jesus knew that Peter would deny him three times and he knew it would be right then before the rooster crowed. And it happened just like Jesus said, because he knew that that was going to happen before it happened. Now, Peter had the choice. He didn't have to wait for Peter to make a choice to know what Peter would do. There's a thought today called Open Theism out there that says, "God is waiting for Pastor Brad to make his choice. And then God says, 'oh yeah, that's what's going to happen. I knew that." But he's waiting for the choices to be made. He was waiting for Hitler to do what he did, or waiting for President Reagan to make a declaration that he would make. And that God is sitting back waiting for us to make up our minds so he can say, "oh, I knew that was going to happen." I really struggle with Open Theism, because God isn't waiting for me to make a decision for him to know what's going to happen. He already knows what is going to happen. So yeah, we have a God who perfectly knows the past, He knows the present, He knows the future. He knows the action. He does know the puzzle. He knows what I could choose, but He also knows what I will choose. Pastor Brad?

Brad Kilthau
I love how you started out, Gary, with Psalm 139 and you look at the words of David. And when you study Psalm 139, you find that David's words are not a theological study. They're his thoughts of who he has learned who God is, and what God's laid upon his heart of who God is. And he does the best that he can in describing, starting out there with the omniscience of God. And we find that we kind of find ourselves in the same place as David. I guess what I'm saying is, we can't fully grasp the omniscience of God, because our brains are too limited. But we can come up with a lot of things that we do know that are true from His word. And we find that He's acquainted with every detail in life of every being, and not just human beings. You got to think of all the creatures that he has created, and we're talking about every bug, every bird, everything. He knows everything about everything and he knows every being in heaven. He knows every being on earth and what's going on, and he knows even everything that's going on with every being in hell. As it says in Daniel 2, he knows what is in the darkness. And so, no wonder David said, "such knowledge is too wonderful for me." I can't obtain it. It's too high for me. But some of the things that you learn about God when you study His word is, of course, His knowledge is immeasurable and it's beyond human comprehension. So what does that mean, I guess, in everyday terms? Well, it means that he knows more about astrology than the greatest astrologer knows. He knows more about biology than the greatest biologist knows. He knows more about engineering than the greatest engineer does. He's beyond all of that. God never had to go to school. He never had to be taught anything.

Brad Kilthau
There are certain words that we know are not in God's vocabulary. God never says, "Wow!" It's not like I just learned something or anything like that that doesn't fit in His. He knows it. He knows it all. He doesn't have to string a bunch of logical things together to get the jist like we do. He knows the end, just as you already shared, Gary. He knows all of that. And so when we think about it, "who has the understanding of the mind of God?" as it says in Isaiah 40, "or instructed him as a counselor? Whom did the Lord consult or enlighten him? Who taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?" Well, the answer is nobody. He knows it all. And again, I come back to what you shared about Open Theism where there's those who believe that God created the universe and then he just sits back and he sees how things are unfolding, and then he's learning from that. No, He already knows. He knows the end. Look at your Bible. He already wrote the story. You, again, come to prophecy and you find the omniscience of God. And again, how even when you go to the Old Testament. I think some of the things that are probably the best, is when you come to the time of Daniel, and he announced that King Cyrus was going to be this king that was going to rise up in a place of power. He said that through the prophet Daniel 150 years before it ever happened, and He gave the king a name. "King Cyrus is going to be his name." He gave David this image, this image that actually displays every world kingdom from the beginning to the end there. Of Daniel's time, all the way past our time when we get down to the feet and we see all the kingdoms of the world are represented that God already knows about. We know in Zachariah 9, as you're talking about coming into Easter, 500 years before it happened, he prophesied that Jesus was going to ride into Jerusalem, the Messiah, on a donkey. And it happened exactly the way God said that it shows His omniscience. And I think how we can relate to that is, maybe we can't wrap our mind around all the knowledge of God, obviously, but here's what we can think about. We can think about God as our judge and what better judge could we have? He knows everything. He knows our inside or outside. He knows every thought. He knows future. He was past. He knows it all. And so I say the greatest judge is our greatest judge. I'm happy that He is judging us when it comes to where we are and our relationship with Him. If it's true, if it's a personal faith that we really do believe in Him. I'm so thankful nobody's going to pull any wool over God's eyes. And I'm thankful that He is our eternal judge.

Gary Hashley
I hear people, excuse me, every once in a while, they may not say it right out, but they give you the impression that if God would just check with them, they have a better idea. If God would just ask them, they know how things should be turning out. And I think, what an arrogant thing that is. Anytime that would cross my mind that God ought to check with me, because if He'd have to check first I'd have given him a better suggestion on how to run His world. I had a guy come to me one time at first church I pastored and he says, "Pastor Gary, God is doing a lousy job of running His world." And basically what Marvin was saying was, "if God would just check with me, this would be better." But God is omniscient. We're not going to teach God anything. He is the one who already knows it all, which that throws a little concern in my heart because He knows when I'm going to fail him. He knows when I'm going to doubt Him. He knows when I'm going to willfully do something that he's told me to do and that ought to wake me up. The beautiful thing about that is, He still loves us in spite of knowing all those things. And that makes grace and mercy even more astounding.

What's the Deal with Once Saved Always Saved?

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 Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Gary Hashley
I have written in front of me, I did not come up with this question. It's come from elsewhere. It says, "what about eternal security?" There are different denominations with different teachings on this. There are those who are dogmatic---that once a person accepts Jesus as savior, there's no way for that person to ever be lost. And yet there are other Christians who state you can lose your salvation and must be re-saved or saved again or born again. I guess you might say, "what is with this?" That is really a topic that from the time I was a high schooler that was bantered about many times. I had a friend in high school who was a part of a church that did not hold to the security of the believer and the assurance of salvation, and he loved to get together and to talk about that. Actually, he loved to argue about that and I was young and I joined in the arguing about that, but the statement is true. There are some groups who, when they look at scripture, they come to the conclusion that a person could be saved today but maybe not still saved tomorrow or next week or next month or next year. I was part of a children's ministry in Michigan years and years ago, and one of the churches where I held daily vacation Bible school for several summers, it was a Baptist church. But the pastor was one who did not hold to the security of the believer, and he would go to people who maybe missed prayer meeting on Wednesday night a couple times in a row, and he would say, "you need to get back to church and you need to get saved again." He kind of used it as a threat. He used it as maybe a club of correction on people, and I'll tell you, there are times where I would say, "man, wouldn't it be nice if the Bible did teach that, because people would then maybe take serving Jesus and living for Jesus a little more seriously." I have said though in the past, that really if there are those who hold to eternal insecurity and those who hold to eternal security, and we each of us see someone whose lifestyle is one that's not of holiness, it's not of obedience that the normal pattern of their life is in sin and they don't seem to have any remorse, they don't seem to have any guilt in their lives. I've often said the concern is the same and that is this person needs Jesus. Now, they might say those who like my friend in high school might say, "yeah, that person was saved and has lost it and needs to get saved again." I would look and say, "I wonder if that person was ever really saved in the first place," whether they've ever truly been born again in the first place. So really, the concern is the same. If someone's life seems to cry out or clearly say, "I don't know Jesus." Our concern is, they need Jesus as their savior. I really feel bad for those who do not have an assurance of their salvation. I feel bad for those who day by day don't know, "if I had a car accident and were killed, if I were to have a heart attack and die, if I were to be swept away in a tornado on the prairies of Nebraska somewhere and be killed in that storm," they would say, "but I don't know, I would hope I would go to heaven, but I don't know." And I feel really bad, because the Bible does say we can know. 1 John 5:13 is a very favorite verse of mine to share at a time like this. The Apostle John says, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life." KNOW that you may have eternal life. The Bible says we can know it. How can we know it? Well, we can know it because the Bible says, "He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the son of God, does not have life." So if I have put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior from sin according to scripture, I can know. Not hope, not wish, not think I'm on my way to heaven; that I'm a Christian, but I can know it for a fact. And so it is a critical thing. Now, there's a couple versions of belief about losing salvation. One is what I grew up hearing about churches, and that is, if you got saved this Sunday and sometime during this week you told a lie, you had a lustful thought, you broke the speed limit, you cheated on your income tax, whatever it might be that, "okay, you've lost it. Now you've got to get saved again." And I know of churches that, that is their position. And people are at the altar, usually there's boxes of tissue there because people are weeping. "I'm sorry Lord, I lost it last week. I want it back and accept Jesus is my savior again." Then there are others who say, "no, that's not what it is." But they believe that a person could intentionally say, "I have believed on Jesus as my savior before. I have decided I don't believe that anymore." And they call it apostate, and it's a willful rejection of what you say you had believed. And I struggle with either of those, because I believe that God not only saves us, but God keeps us. Doesn't mean I've lived a perfect life. Doesn't mean I haven't deserved for Him to scratch my name out of the book of life, but the fact is He saved me by His grace and mercy. He keeps me by His grace and His mercy. So Brad, I've been rambling. Why don't you pick up from there and share what the Lord has put on your heart today?

Brad Kilthau
Well, Gary, you shared that you have a favorite verse that you like to go to there. And first John---when you're talking about this subject to somebody. I've got a favorite chapter and it is John 10. John 10 has always been my theme chapter. It seems like as people go into ministry, they have something that the Lord just sinks deep in their heart and they hold onto that, and that's just kind of their foundation and their basis of ministry. And John 10 has always been that for me. And yeah, just flat out, I truly believe as I look at the word of God that once a person is saved, they are saved and they are forever saved. And it's not because I grew up in a certain church and it's not because I went to a certain Bible school, it's just because of what God laid on my heart, literally, from John chapter 10. And you come to that passage of scripture where Jesus is, he's in Solomon's Portico there in the temple courts, and of course the religious leaders have him cornered just like they always did. And they're trying to say, "well, if you're the Christ, then you tell us plainly." And then when Jesus gives an answer to that, not only does he tell him plainly that he is the Christ---that he is the son of living God---but in those words, he just gives this powerful, powerful truth about salvation and what it means. And of course, we're already looking at him as being the good shepherd in the previous verses and how he uses that analogy of the sheep folds and whatnot to teach about salvation. But when he gets to this point, he talks to these religious leaders and you get to verse 26 of chapter 10, and he says, "but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. As I have said to you." Clearly showing that they're not part of the fold of the redeemed because they have failed to believe in Jesus and who he is.

Brad Kilthau
But then he goes on in verse 27, and this is where it gets really powerful. He said, "my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me." And that kind of goes back to what you were saying, Gary, about a true believer walks with the Lord. It's part of us. We're a new creation in Christ. And that's what Jesus is saying. So it's not like we're talking about as a kid, you were sitting in the Sunday school class and somebody said, "do you want to pray the sinner's prayer?" And then all the kids raised their hand and said, "okay, I'll do that." And you joined in because all the other kids are. No, this is sincere. This is genuine total faith in Christ and his work. And Jesus said, "if that's true of you, you will follow me." It doesn't mean you're going to live a perfect life, but you're going to walk in the ways of the Lord because you're a new creation in Christ. But then he makes it very clear, he says in verse 28, "and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand." And he says, "my father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. I and the Father are one." And I don't know if it could get any clearer than that. That is absolute security. And a couple of things that just really stand out to me is, first of all, one of the things is you see the double security that Jesus talks about there. He talks about us as a believer being in his hand. And then you have to ask the question, "well, who's bigger than Jesus to get us out of his hand?" No one. But then you could also see the picture where the Father wraps his hand around Jesus's hand and that double security that we see with the Father and with the Son. And so when you put this in clear understanding, I look at it as what Jesus is saying is this: He shares where the good shepherd gives us eternal life, but he also gives us eternal security. And we look at that, because when we look at our triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Jesus purchased our salvation. He paid for it all. The Father as we know, He promised it and is the Holy Spirit as we learn in other scripture too, that he seals us into the family of God. And so when you start putting that together again, that eternal security is powerful. And I think where some folks can fall---for what I believe is not the right teaching on this that they can lose their salvation---is they start to bring in some human reasoning to this. And I think some of the thought that goes into this is some people will believe, "well, my eternal security is based upon my performance." And that is not true. Our eternal security is based upon the promise of Jesus. In John 3:16, Jesus said, "if you believe in me, you have that gift, you will not perish." That's a promise that's off the lips of Jesus. It's not based upon our performance. It's not based upon us going to church, doing the good things, being benevolence and our giving and all of that. It's just based upon the promise of Jesus. And so when you look at that, we don't earn our salvation. We don't earn our way into heaven by good works. We know that from Ephesians 2:8-9. But we don't keep our salvation by good works either. It is totally based upon the blood of Christ. His work on the cross is based upon his promise. When he said, it's true, when we look at that, it's in Ephesians 2:8-9, "for by grace you've been saved through faith, not of yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast." And then when you go to verse 10 of where a lot of folks don't go to, it says, "for we," Who's we? We're the church. We're the believers. "We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Good works are important in the Christian's life. They're not important in the unbeliever, in the eyes of God. They're filthy rags in the eyes of God because they're done in our own effort. Good works as a believer, done with the right heart in the power of the Holy Spirit, become something precious. But in that sense, it's only because we're a new creation in Christ and we're seeking to please him. We're not seeking to keep our salvation by being a good person and never messing up. We're not saved by our works, and we can't keep our salvation by good works. It's only on the promise of Jesus. And just lovingly, I'll have to say this often to some folks, I'll have to say, "if your thought of salvation is ever based upon faith in Jesus, plus works equals salvation, you're not saved. Because you're saying that the work of Jesus wasn't enough. I've got to help you Jesus. And if you're not totally dependent and believing in Christ Jesus, you are not saved. And so you can't have that before. You can't have that after. It's not based upon our good works at any time. It's not based upon our feelings. Any of those things. It's always, always based upon the promise of Christ and his work.

Gary Hashley
I love the terminology Jesus used in John 3, born again. You must be born again. And you think about it. I didn't do anything to be born on November 16th, 1957, but I couldn't ever do anything to be unborn. I was born into the Hashley family. And no matter how many times I disappointed my parents, how many spankings I got growing up, I never ceased to be the son of Albert and June Hashley. And if I've been born again of the spirit of God according to John 3, then there's nothing I can do to get unborn. If there's nothing I do to be saved, how can I do something to become unsaved? So I love that born again statement Jesus used.

What Does the Bible Say About Being the Sons of God?

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 we have kind of an interesting question, another one from the banquet today about what the Bible says about being sons of God. This was fun for me, I hope it was for you too, digging just a little bit. I can't say that what I accomplished was comprehensive, but what it means from a biblical perspective to be "sons of God."

Jonathan Hernandez
So I guess, as we look at that thought, sons of God, the verse that popped up was Romans 8:14. And it says, "for all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God." And if we keep going in verse 15 it says, "for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father." So when I think of, sons of God, this is something that we have received through our salvation. We don't really see this term in the book of Romans until we get up to this. We don't see the, sons of God, term until we get to this point. And as we look at that, it tells us that we've received this adoption. And I think of that. We adopted our youngest son. And the moment that judge says, "he's now your son, he became a full heir of mine. There's nothing that I don't have, nothing that I have that he can't. He has all of my everything. He's right there with my own biological son, there's no difference between them. I look at them both as my full-blooded sons. And so, this is what we see now due to that adoption into Christ's family. We're full sons of God. We have full inheritance. There's nothing that God doesn't want to bless us with. And so when I think of that and I think of sons of God, that's the verse that definitely, right off the bat, pops up. I think sometimes as believers we get stuck in that slavery part. We're not willing to step into that adoption, and being free from our past life of sin. And so, that is a process. It's as easy as we think. I mean as easy as I guess it probably should be. Our carnal selves sometimes get in the way 90% of the time. God is saying, "Here, I've given you all of this. I am setting you free." But we keep looking back at that past life, and I think that's a big hangup for a lot of people. I mean, myself included, it was like, "wow, but I enjoy that." But I see and I hear it and I am seeing what the Bible says and what God is calling me to step into, but how do I step over that? And Jesus did that for us on the cross if we could just realize, "hey, we need to hand this over to him and step into what he has for us. And so even as a listener, if listeners' listening, they're like, "wow, that's me. That's me, Pastor John. I'm that person that's stuck in that past and I don't know how to step into that future with that." And I know for me a lot of it was that mentorship of my pastor and just sitting under him and listening to him. And him calling me and saying, "Hey, let's take that next step. Let's get into the word." And I mean, just getting washed by the word and just listening to the word as you're ; reading the word. Those are all great things to help you take that next step out of that life of sin and stepping into that fullness that he has for us to the new life in Christ.

Garry Schick
Well, I love that you tapped into the adoption model. Jesus is the only one who can, in the fullest sense, claim to be the son of God in a way that we never can, because he came from the Father. And yet part of what he did was make it possible for us also to become children of God. And maybe we just put this whole thing on a little bit of pause here to just also talk about the language we're using. The Greek word {"weo"} is, we translate it, sons of God or children of God. It is in Greek in the masculine plural, which is generic. Just like in the old days, an English man was a generic word for humankind, mankind. And woman was a specialized word for females/women. And so, just as English up until most of my life, the word man/men was actually a generic word for human beings. Woman was a very special word. Now there's gender inclusive language, but we got to find other ways to say it. But when we're talking about, "sons of God," we are talking about children of God. Male and female of whatever age. And so, some thoughts I had, just to tap into what you said though about adoption, we also are an adoptive family and we've adopted two. One internationally and one actually right here in this community. And it's kind of neat because for our son who we adopted out of country, he has obviously a birth certificate from where he was born. But when we adopted him, we were living in Minnesota. And as we brought him home and went through the legal process here, he also has a Minnesota birth certificate even though he wasn't born in the United States at all. And my wife and I on that certificate are listed as his biological parents. And the same thing with the child that we adopted here in this community, we are listed, it's not anything other than the birth mother and father. That is how seriously the state takes it that we have made a commitment to this child as our own. And you know how much more so the Lord. So a couple things real quick. How do we become children of God? John 1:12 tells us, "yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." So of course Jesus says, "nobody can come to the Father unless he was called." God is calling us. We have a responsibility to respond to that call. And when we say yes to God's call, this is how fully he calls us his own. That's why I think we rightly both agreed at the banquet: once you're saved, it's not like you're getting get out of hell free pass that you could lose. You are becoming God's child and he looks at you, sins forgiven, clothed in the righteousness of Christ in the same way that He looks at Jesus. That's powerful. He loves us. In fact, that's why Jesus died. So that we could not merely become "okay, we went from following the laws of the ways of the world and sin. Now we're going to follow God's law." No, there is an aspect to that, but it's an outgrowth of being part of the family. It's not earning your way or keeping your place. In fact, Galatians chapter 3:26 says, "so in Christ you are all sons or children of God." Through faith, through faith in Christ, we receive the forgiveness of our sins and we receive that full adoption. And so, what does that mean? Well, 1 John 3:1-2, "see what great love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called sons of God. And that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is it did not know Him. Dear friends, now we are sons of God and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we do know that when Christ appears we will be like him for we will see him as he is." And so, salvation is this beautiful thing. My past is forgiven. I'm working out that salvation in the present, becoming who I am in Christ. And it will be completed when I see him, because not just physically that we will receive resurrection bodies, but spiritually we will be completed. The old self at last, we will have shed. And there's some analogies we could make of that, but I mean I can't wait. I don't know about you, but it's like, well, it's a little bit like when I started eating healthier. It's really interesting. I barely ever drank water ever. I drank all kinds of soda and everything else but water that wasn't very good. Now water is what I want. It's not just, "I know it's good for me." My body has learned to crave it. And there's things, it's not that they don't taste good, it's just that I don't even want them anymore because I know it did nothing for me.

Garry Schick

And I think that's the part of it. I think we just grow more and more to see, yeah, there were some things about sin that were in some sense attractive to us, but it never brought us anything good. Not in any lasting way, maybe a few moments. And then there were the consequences. But you know what? The consequence of righteousness is life. It's joy, it's peace. And so, that's what we're shedding. We're shedding that which quenches joy and peace and hope and entering further and further into where it's really found. How do we know there's a question? How do we know that we are children of God? Well, have I accepted Christ right there? But Romans 8:16, just a couple of verses after the one that you mentioned, "the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are sons of God," or children of God. So one of the things is, Jesus puts the Holy Spirit in our hearts. And actually, I've known people who in a way, they will question their salvation because, "oh, I sinned and I feel so terrible." I'm like, that's great! "What? That I sinned?" No, the fact that you feel terrible. It shows that God's spirit is making you. Before you knew Christ, how terrible did you feel about committing that sin? "Well, not that bad." See? If you weren't God's child, you wouldn't care. Or you would, but maybe like a child that got his hand caught in the cookie jar like, "oh, I'm so upset I got caught." Versus, "oh, I'm so upset because I got caught up in the sin rather than caught with the sin." There's a difference there. In Christ, you are going to gradually, sin will become more distasteful. It doesn't mean you're never going to commit it. Now, a day goes by that I don't have a thought, a word, something where I'm like, "oh Lord, forgive me and maybe forgive me to the person I'm talking to at the same time." But if you're in Christ, you want to grow to be more like him. And the spirit testifies that we are his. Galatians 4:6, "because you are his sons. God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts and the spirit calls out Abba Father," which also you mentioned in that Romans 8. So Abba is such a beautiful word. It's kind of similar to our English word, "daddy." It's a word of tenderness. My wife, she does not ever want to hear the word mother addressed to her by any of our children. "Mom," absolutely. When we're grandparents someday she wants us to be called Lolly and Pop. I don't know how we feel about that, how the kids feel about that. Lollipop? But mother, no, that formal word, she's not into it. I don't think I've ever heard my children call me father either. But Dad, yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. It's a tender word. It's a close word, because this is what Jesus is open to us. This is what he's made possible. You've already mentioned Romans 8:14, "those who are led by the Spirit are children of God." But I think this shows us a little bit what it means to be a child of God. It means not that we are trying to earn our way through, but there is a new lead in our heart. And as we've already talked about, it's the Holy Spirit and he makes us uncomfortable when we start to wander and stray. Philippians 2:15, "so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation, then you will shine like stars in the universe." As we grow in Christ, it does show in our lives. Again, we're not living this way to earn our way, but because this becomes part of who we are in the world. And you see it all the time. Well, you can tell whose parents that child is because of: here are the characteristics. We see it in this family, or whatever. They're hopefully good characteristics. But you inwardly leave your imprint in who your kids are. They are completely themselves. They are 100% unique individuals. And yet they carry a certain demeanor out into life that says whose they are. And if that's true of our biological families, how much more in Christ? In fact, I want to close with this. What does this look like in the world? Matthew 5:9 says, "blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God." Well, who's going to call them that? Those around them. And so I think there's a challenge to us Christians. Is that our reputation in the world? Is that the reputation of what it means to be a Bible believin', Jesus followin', God loving Christian? That we're peacemakers? I don't know about you. I've known some Christians. I'm not sure if that applies to. Or at least we have the label. But this is what it should look like. And so I don't know about you, but for me that's a challenge. Like, wow, boy, there's a lot of the old self in me that's not much of a peacemaker. But Jesus came to make peace between us and God. And where are we inviting others? Where are we ambassadors of that? We have peace with God? You can too.

Jonathan Hernandez

Definitely.

Garry Schick

I think we need, sometimes, to remind ourselves whose we are and therefore who we are and who we are becoming. And I know I brought us back to this before, but friends, pray, pray. Don't just say, pray that Lord's prayer because where does it begin? "Our Father," father and I know I've heard people say, "oh, we're all God's children." Well, yeah, God created all humankind. But there is a special and a very different sense in which if you are in Christ. He's more than just your Creator. A long time ago, many, many generations back. He is our father right now who's leading us and guiding us and through us bringing the kingdom, fulfilling His will. Providing for us every day, our daily bread, forgiving us and through us forgiving others. Guiding us and protecting us. And by the way, just summarize the Lord's prayer because that's what it's about, friends, pray it. Pray it definitely. And let it imprint in your heart who you are because you're God's kid. Alright, well, we don't know you, but as brother and sisters in Christ, we love you.

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.