The Other 167

There's a subtle, but huge difference, between knowing about God, and having a personal relationship with Him. You can know that God is all powerful and all knowing, without experiencing the peace that comes from trusting Him.  You can know that God forgives sin, without experiencing the grace of His forgiveness for the worst thing you've ever done.  You can know that God wants you to have joy, without experiencing the patience He shows while you fight His plans to provide it.  You can know that Jesus paid for your access to this relationship, without feeling the love that compelled Him to pay such a price. Knowing God, vs. knowing about God, is a distinction that makes all the difference.    Chapters (00:00:02) - Swimming in the Pool(00:03:08) - TRAVEL: Adventures along the Mississippi(00:04:11) - Strengthening Yourself in the Lord(00:05:09) - Lost Phone(00:06:02) - Strengthening Yourself in the Lord(00:12:01) - Trusting God(00:16:18) - Heavenly Wait: Praying For Changes(00:19:45) - How to Strengthen Our Souls in the Lord(00:26:24) - Part 3 of Humility(00:31:57) - Knowing About God and Knowing God(00:36:37) - Getting Away From the World(00:41:45) - Quiet Time on Vacation(00:46:08) - Pray Without Ceasing for the Lord(00:48:16) - Another homework assignment for Philippians(00:48:33) - Philippians 1:21: To Live Is Christ(00:52:16) - Andy Griffith on His Face

As I grow closer to the Lord, the more I am marveled by His creation around us. I love to point out nice sunsets to the kids, or find a good place to go for a walk away from the man made stuff.  But it can be easy to forget that of all of God's creation, we are His most precious. He created the world around us to show us His power, but He created us to show us His love.  How can we be a light that points others to His love the same way the sun points us to His power?  Chapters (00:00:02) - Hong Kong Phooey(00:03:23) - Dukes of Hazzard(00:05:41) - Andy Griffith on His Color Episodes(00:08:52) - Southern People Driving On Highway 401(00:11:43) - God Seeing Me As Righteous(00:15:31) - God Isn't Here for Me, but I Am(00:20:29) - How Can a Holy God Love Me?(00:23:31) - John 1: Truth in Our Hearts(00:28:44) - Labor Day is the earliest it can be(00:33:07) - Does Flood Insurance Work?(00:34:51) - Prayer: To glorify God(00:40:00) - Blowhard on His Condition(00:41:14) - Brain Task: Judas Never Had a Spiritual Interest in Jesus(00:46:37) - Separation of Judas and Jesus(00:50:17) - Pride is the Biggest Sin(00:53:14) - David at his lowest point(00:57:03) - Judea on Judas in the Bible(01:01:09) - Saved From Other People's Sins(01:04:46) - North Carolina History

Serving God isn't an obligation. It's a priviledge, one given by Him and Him alone. God doesn't take church attendance. He doesn't count Hail Mary's. We aren't credited with righteousness based on mission trips or Sunday school. We are credited by grace alone, through faith alone.  We are natually born scorekeepers. We appreciate that Jesus wiped out the bad that we've done. But we still want Him to credit us for the good He's done through us.  He doesn't need us. He can do anything, any way He chooses. And He chooses, above all else, to have a relationship with us.  He paid all He possibly could to offer us this gift, and we expect a pat on the back for accepting it.   Chapters (00:00:02) - Benjamin on Confessions(00:00:57) - Daniel Had A Funeral(00:03:35) - Sausage in the City(00:06:05) - Birthday Gifts for Kids(00:09:09) - Swimmer's Swim Cap(00:12:31) - A Good Guy's Gift(00:14:03) - Brandon Gets A Birthday Gift(00:15:28) - Ben's 55th Birthday(00:18:05) - Kenny Westbrook on His Birthday Present(00:18:29) - God's Love For Crazies(00:22:03) - Don't Worry About Relationships at 25(00:25:37) - Don't Worry About Tomorrow(00:29:39) - God's Love for Us(00:34:11) - Walking by the Spirit(00:37:18) - Golf Lessons For Amateur Swimmers(00:39:15) - God's Weight on Us(00:42:07) - Daniel 9: In Jesus Name(00:45:17) - The Lord's Prayer(00:49:31) - He Uses The Sip Club at Panera(00:52:39) - How To Get Out of a Racket(00:54:14) - Daniel 9: The End of Man in One(00:57:49) - Patriotism in the South(01:03:24) - Understanding the Infinite Love of God(01:05:39) - How to Love Your Mother(01:08:40) - How to Pray for Your Own Life(01:12:18) - Ben's Car Gets Passed Inspection(01:14:12) - The 6 P's of Bible Study(01:18:43) - Reasons We Had A Pool

Have you ever gone out to eat and filled up so much on the bread that you didn't have room for the entree? How frustrating is that!? Load up so much on the free bread that you only have room for 3 bites of the main course. Worst of all, the bread only lasts about 2 hours. Then you're hungry again and settling for a $40 microwaved steak.  The same thing can happen in our spiritual lives. In our haste to be satisfied, we fill up on the carb loaded junk, leaving no room for God to truly satisfy us.  More often than I want to admit, I'm asking how I can seek God so He will give me what I think I need, forgetting that seeking God is all that I need.  Chapters (00:00:02) - Biblical Questions for the Week(00:03:09) - Ticket to Heaven(00:06:06) - Easter Crosses on a Bank Sign(00:08:07) - God's Help For Hair!(00:10:17) - Mark 5: Legion and the Message(00:12:01) - MacArthur Study Bible: The Miracles of Jesus(00:16:27) - Luke 11: The Spiritual Healing(00:20:51) - Life is Not Equally Fair(00:26:26) - What She's Got and Don't Compare(00:27:05) - Ecclesiastes 9: The Prosperity Gospel(00:27:57) - The Secret to Living a Rich Life(00:31:03) - Scott Scheffler on Renewing His Mind(00:35:09) - PGA Champion Brandon Lee on the Trophy(00:38:50) - God's Love Is Not Promised(00:41:21) - How to Write a Good Sermon(00:44:32) - Pastor's Prayer for Saturday Night(00:48:07) - Colossians 3: The Most Important Part for Teens(00:52:49) - Demon Possession in the Gospel(00:57:20) - Pierce on the Spiritual Stuff(01:01:32) - Non-Baptists and Islam(01:07:22) - How to Convert a Muslim(01:10:25) - Are All The Religions Anti-Christ?(01:12:54) - Starting the Series on John 1(01:14:12) - God's Plan for Luke 12(01:17:28) - Pl polo

I'm the world's worst for keeping my car on empty. My theory is that I get better gas milage by keeping my fuel load light. $10 bucks at a time, every day or so, that's my game plan.  But apparently the shelf life on a 4-runner's fuel sensor is about 213,000 miles. So I recently started playing the old odometer game. Fill up, reset the odometer, and keep the odometer below 400. Now I'm not quite so confident in my splash-and-go stategy. I check the odometer more often than I check my mirrors, and if it hits triple digits I start second guessing if I remembered to reset it. We can do the same thing with our spiritual tank. If we're not careful, we start relying on the fuel light to tell us when we're getting low. But God didn't create us to run on fumes. His desire is to fill us with the Spirit so we can fully enjoy the fellowship with Him!  Chapters (00:00:02) - Prayer: Taking the scenic route(00:00:47) - Who Really Owns the Church?(00:03:27) - Seniors Get Confused By Birthday Texts(00:06:12) - Happy Birthday!(00:08:55) - How to grow a fig tree(00:11:31) - Big vines grow wild in Montana(00:11:48) - Israel Was Scattered For 2,000 Years(00:17:57) - Separation of Jew and Christian(00:23:07) - Adam Levine on Jews and Christianity(00:28:47) - Biblical parallels between today and the Bible(00:33:49) - How do you prove God is real?(00:36:50) - Is Doubt Just as Serious as Idolatry?(00:41:17) - Doubt in the Life of God(00:45:54) - Daniel the Man of Prayer(00:49:32) - Moses and the Prayers(00:54:06) - Praying for a Distressed Person(00:57:02) - Prayer for the World(01:03:25) - Reclaiming the Promises of God(01:08:16) - Taking the Longer Route(01:13:56) - Deacon's List

Awesome to have Brandon Goss join us this week. This was a lot of fun and we hope he'll come back whenever he can. (And the Monster diet does seem to work, by the way.) How much fear, worry, and doubt to we carry around with us? These aren't fun, and they aren't what God intends or wants for our life. He wants us to trust in Him completely.  When we follow Him with our whole heart, there's nothing to fear, because we know He is with us. There is nothing to worry about, because we know He holds the future. And there's nothing to doubt, because we know He is faithful.  It's simple math: fear, worry and doubt show us the part of our heart the Lord doesn't have.    Chapters (00:00:02) - How to Lose Weight on a Challenge(00:02:54) - Softball Coach(00:04:57) - Fat Kenny on 'This Morning'(00:07:36) - Brandon on The Fishing Podcast(00:08:46) - Kenny on Cutting My Grass(00:11:36) - How Real Is Podcast Analytics?(00:14:35) - Gardener Takes Over the Yard(00:15:55) - Eminem's "Use This Gospel"(00:20:16) - DJ Khaled on Eminem's 'All In'(00:23:56) - Josh Hamilton(00:30:10) - Josh Hamilton on Social Media and His Christian Calling(00:34:42) - Pastor: Do We Judge Others?(00:40:32) - Kenny on Judgeing People(00:42:26) - Another example of this is with Gabe(00:45:26) - Does God Allow His Anger to Last?(00:48:35) - Daniel the Book of Suffering(00:52:55) - When You Can't Get Down on Your Kids(00:53:25) - North Carolina drivers on the road: Too judgmental(00:57:32) - The Best Places to Live in North Carolina(01:01:13) - Malcolm Phelps on His Training(01:04:14) - Bob Phelps swims for fun(01:05:56) - Getting the Numbers this Week(01:06:24) - Joshua and Caleb: What Set Them Apart?(01:10:18) - Outcasts in Society(01:13:53) - How To Survive In the Heat

God desires truth in our inner most parts. That sure is inconvenient isn't it? None of us want to admit our struggles, maybe even to ourselves.  Kenny said people might be shocked to know who I really am, and you might be. So, brace yourself... I cuss a lot. Not as much as I used to, and I'm working on it. But I say a lot of things I'm glad y'all don't hear. I also like Miller Lite more than I probably should. And I'm about two cute blondes in yoga pants away from actually gouging my eyes out. And the pride, oh, the pride.  To be fair, I don't say the Lord's name in vain, I'm rarely actually intoxicated, and I've never committed adultery. I mean, technically, according to Romans, well and Matthew....look, I've never cheated, alright?!  This leaves me just enough wiggle room to also struggle with self-righteousness. I'm basically the worst parts of the Old Testament masked as a Pharisee.  Why admit this? Because in the hidden parts, God shows us wisdom. It's only by admitting the truth that we allow God to start changing it. 

I've had a lot of opportunities on this podcast to say some things I'd later regret. But of all of them, I think the line I regret the most came from the very first episode. I said "As long as I know I'm where God wants me, I don't care what the purpose of that is." I don't regret it because it was wrong. Honestly, it sounds pretty righteous to me. I regret it because it turns out it was a lie. To my pastor. In chruch. God reminds me of this pretty much every time I question Him.  Sometimes we feel like we're running on a treadmill. No matter how hard we try, nothing we do seems to move us where we are trying to go. Other times, we feel like dust in the wind, blown all over the place with no control at all over where we are heading.  But sometimes God wants us to stay put for a while, so He sends us a treadmill to keep us busy. Other times, He knows that we can't get where He wants us on our own, so He sends a gust of wind to help us get there.  There's a lot of peace to be found in what I said in the first episode. If you mean it. 

Sometimes life happens. This episode was recorded just before Christmas. Also 2 days before my computer crashed taking all of my files down with it. Fortunately, the recording was already uploaded to YouTube, so I was able to get my hands back on it. It comes in handy to have some extra episodes laying around when vacations and life keeps us from recording as often. I hope you enjoy the irony, considering we’re about as far away on the calendar from Christmas as we could possibly be. But Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!

Every hour of every day, we face the decision of doing things our way, or God’s way. With so many opportunities to make the wrong decision, we are inevitably going to miss a few steps. But the more we practice walking with the Lord, the more instinctive it is to choose His way over ours. His Word teaches us, His Spirit guides us, and when we forget to rely on those, His Grace sustains us.

There’s a great quote from one of my favorite movies: “Good judgement is the result of experience, and a lot of experience comes from bad judgement.”Certainly, God wants us to develop good judgement. But we get frustrated that He allows us to have bad judgement along the way. Free will isn’t always convenient, but it is part of His plan. When we make mistakes, or things just don’t work out the way we hoped, we have a choice in how we can handle it. It’s so easy to fall into blame, regret, and guilt. But when we remember God’s patience, grace, mercy and faithfulness, we can find joy and gratitude in how God will use them for growth.

Jesus bought our freedom with His blood. Before the Cross, we were bound by our sin, but now we have a choice. But it still our choice. We decide how to use this freedom. Unfortunately, part of having freedom is being free to make the wrong choices, too. But we are not free from the earthly consequences of sin. And freedom shouldn’t be mistaken for God's apathy toward our sins. He will still love us, but He will hate our decisions. And out of His love for us, don't be surprised if He goes out of His way to redirect and correct them if they become habits in our lives. When we see our kids in danger, we tend to throw tactful out the window. Sometimes God has to do the same with us. But as His children, we shouldn’t lose sight of the love that He is showing us, even in the harsh corrections.

One of the threats to our walk with God is becoming so hard-headed and rigid that we forget there are two sides of every coin. Work needs to be done, but we also need rest. We show patience and grace to others, but there’s a time for discipline and hard truth. The joy of God’s love should never leave us, but neither should the fear and awe of His power. Sometimes we try so hard to figure out God’s magic formula for our lives that we forget He created all of these concepts and intended for us to have a healthy blend of them. It’s Ecclesiastes 3 in motion. But how do we decide where the line is and exactly how much of each we need, and when? Simple, we don’t. The solution to the magical God formula comes from accepting that He is the only One who knows it. Being humble enough to submit to His will when you don’t know what His will is, that’s peace. Because He doesn’t usually give us the answers the way we want them. He tells us it’s time to rest by taking away our job unexpectedly. He tells us we need to be more patient by sending us people to test it. And if He decides you need a little more humility, well, I’ll be praying for you. But the only way He can truly teach us how to stop leaning on our own understanding is to send us situations beyond our comprehension. That’s how He develops the one thing we can never have too much of: Trust in Him.

We tend to use the fruits of the Spirit as a guide for our own behavior and actions, but they also give us insight into God’s character. His power and perfection can make it easy for us to paint Him as a tyrant in our minds. But if God’s Spirit is manifested by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, then I think it’s a safe bet that those could be used to describe Him. My kids love steak, and I cook a pretty good one. But if they asked me to cook it in the toaster, I’d slap them upside the head with a sirloin and tell them to get out of my kitchen. Our plans probably sound even more insane to God, so He has to lovingly redirect us a lot. But we shouldn’t lose sight of His love and joyful nature through these corrections. We should be grateful that He cares for us enough to not let us settle for our own plans. The Lord has all the power in the world, literally, but He uses it to show us those fruits of His Spirit. I imagine that God is pretty happy and upbeat, probably quick to draw a laugh or smile, and somehow maintains that even when we test His patience and self-control. He doesn’t boss us around to feed His ego. He just loves us too much to want us to do things the wrong way.

It’s easy to forget that God can hear the subtext of our prayers. We can pray “not my will but Yours be done” until we are blue in the face, but if we really mean “God, I think this would be great so please give it to me”, He hears that part too. So, it does us no good to say the “right prayers” that we don’t really mean (I wouldn’t suggest praying “God, I don’t care what You want, I know what’s best for my life” to the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of all things either). Every hour of every day is a constant choice to choose our path or God’s path. Both will involve heartache, disappointment and struggles. But God’s path uses those struggles to grow us closer to Him, and our path uses them to compound our problems and distance ourselves from His love. But when we ask for His will and mean it, our anxiety fades into peace, because we know His ways are better than ours anyway. We don’t even have to worry about what that means. We can just live in gratitude for what He’s given us, and is giving us, even when we don’t yet know what that is.

The W.W.J.D. bracelets give us some words to live by, but I agree with Ben’s take on this; it is a tough question to try to answer. The fact is, we are not Jesus, and we cannot possibly expect to know how He would handle every situation we encounter in our lives. For one, we create scenarios He didn’t face because we sin, He didn’t. A more important question we can answer is what DID He do? It won’t give us the answer to every situation we face, but before we even begin to try to guess what He would have done if He had faced a situation we are in, we should at least do our homework and use His actions as a reference to build on. But we often skip, or forget that step. What was important to Him? How did He encounter sinners? Who did He challenge the most to change their ways of thinking? What were His commands? Jesus didn’t tell us to know what He would do. He told us to do what He told us to do. But when our pride tells us to take on more responsibility than He asked of us, we may find ourselves breaking His commandments in the process.

When we think about the guidance the Bible offers us, it can be really easy for me to focus on the judgement of God. “Do this, or else” might be the way of thinking about it. And if you are defiant, yeah, it can get pretty ugly. But I don’t think that’s God’s preferred message. He guides us, developing us to be more like Jesus, who was perfect. And it’s not just so we’ll be better people and make Him happier. It makes our lives better too! He knows it’s best for us. That’s why He tells us to do it!Honor and treasure your spouse, and you’ll be more likely to avoid an expensive painful divorce and enjoy a happy marriage. Treat others the way you want to be treated, and you’ll spend less time fighting and probably have more friends. Don’t stay out drinking until 2:00 in the morning and you’ll feel better the next day and not have to ask your friends to fill you in on what happened. Some of God’s plans to develop us aren’t quite so obvious to understand. That’s where we have to trust Him and remember He knows a lot more than we do, and whether we see it yet or not, He’s right.

A couple of weeks ago I had my first physical in about 10 years. I hate going to the doctor. Most of all, I hate having blood drawn. Judge me all you want, but I hate it. I don’t mind shots, but I can’t stand them taking blood. I started to dread it, and after a day or so I realized that the process that would take 3 minutes was another week away, and it was stupid to turn 3 minutes of misery into 168 hours. I tried not to think about it too much, and when the time came, I held my breath and survived the 180 seconds of horror. That was dread. I knew it was going to happen. I just dreaded it. Worry is an even dumber emotion. When we worry, we don’t even know the thing we are worrying about is going to happen. But we still let the possibility of something bad happening rob us of days, weeks and months of the joy and peace that God intended for us to have. Maybe that’s why he told us not to do it. We dread bad things we know will happen and worry about bad things we think might happen. But if we believe in who God says He is, we should be able to remember that God already has the future covered and He didn’t forget about us in His preparations for them. If the bad happens, He’ll give us peace to get through it and ultimately use it for His good. We can believe that and enjoy His peace or trade our joy in for the pain and fear that accompany doubting God. It’s a simple choice. It’s just not always easy.

One of my favorite Episode titles that we’ve had is “He Loves You the Way You Are, But He Refuses to Let You Stay That Way”. I liked the line at the time, but it has grown to mean more and more to me over time. As a non-believer or maybe even a new believer, I think the first half of that line is important to remember. God doesn’t expect us to clean ourselves up. He loves us as we are and that’s how He wants us to come to Him. But make no mistake, He wants us to come as we are, so we don’t have to stay that way. I loved Ben’s analogy about giving his dog a bath. The image that came to mind was Simba fighting his momma trying to give him a bath in The Lion King. We don’t always realize that we need a bath, and most of us probably fought them when we were young. Christian often asks me to smell under his arms in protest of the process. But God knows we need it. And like our kids, the process isn’t usually worth the fight we put up to prevent it. Yeah, some soap might get in our eyes once in a while, and a little water might go up our nose. But more often than not, God uses “gentle correction” to steer us toward the path of righteousness. It’s having to correct your nine-year-old for doing exactly what your eighth-grade basketball coach ripped your hair out for, but you still do every day. Or your 12-year old’s Bible test being on your favorite verse, the one about not worrying, when all you’ve done for a month is worry. God has His ways. As we grow in Christ, the second half of that line starts to become more important to remember. We already know He loves us the way we are. Why wouldn’t He?! But no matter how much we think we’ve grown, He still sees work to do. As “mature Christians” we’re awfully grateful for the work God has done in us, as long as we think He’s finished. But when He breaks the soap back out, there we are, asking Him to smell our arms in protest.

It’s so easy to overcomplicate spiritual matters, and yes, I realize I’m the extreme example. But I don’t believe that’s God’s intention. God went to great lengths to drive home the simple truths He wanted us to anchor to in our lives. The 66 books of the Bible tell a lot of stories and provide a lot of wisdom in a lot of areas. But the common themes seem to keep repeating. God loves us. God is perfect. God is there for us. God is patient and forgiving. Far from an exhaustive list, but when we remember these things, the minor details of our lives fade in significance. When we cling our hope to things of this world, we will be hurt. Money can be lost. People can hurt us. We can get sick. There’s no limit of things that can go wrong in our lives that may be out of our control. God knows that when our joy is determined by these things, our lives will be emotional roller coasters. But His love never leaves us, and His power never fades. He knows that the only true peace and joy are found in our relationship with Him, which is why He gave so much to prove His love and provide us a path to it. It’s up to us each day to decide which path we are going to walk.