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.

What Is Hanukkah?

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

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

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

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

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

How Can We See People The Way God Does?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Christianity's Greatest Need Today?

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

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastor Michael Clement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Schick
Yup

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

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

What Led Lucifer To Sin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary Schick
All of us have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are Your Thoughts On Fasting?

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

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastor Johnathan Hernandez.

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

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

How Should Christian's View Our Cultures Obsession With Justice?

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

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

Gary Schick
Well, today's question could be what you might call, kind of a hot topic. But I know it's a question that people are asking. So here it is, "We hear a lot about justice these days. Environmental justice, social justice, et cetera. We know God is a just God.' But how should Christians view our culture's obsession with justice?"

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, I guess this is a pretty important question within our society today. And I would say that I guess even in Jesus's time, I guess it would be an important question on this. So we look at this, how there's this focus on this social justice platform, I guess that's been really going on for a while. But really started really sparking a lot for us in what, 2020? Around that time we started seeing a lot of more things, I guess, popping off in that sense, moving forward in that social justice form. And so, if we look at this, if we take the Bible seriously, then justice should be a big deal for us. We see it scripturally, he commands in Jeremiah 22:3, "do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand the oppressor; him who has been robbed." And so we see these scriptures that God is showing, you know, there is justice and He is a just God. We see in Luke 4:18, and this is quoting Isaiah 61, it says, "Jesus declared his mission proclaimed. The good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are being oppressed." Isaiah 1:17 says to seek justice. So this is a strong call. I guess in that sense, in scripture we have to look at those and take them and say, "okay, if we are seeing this call in scripture, how do we see it lived out in that?" If God's calling us to live this justice out, how do we see this happen? And I think if we can look even in the book of Acts, you know, if we look in the church history in that form, we see this happen in the early church as they proclaim the gospel. We see that there was a racial divide happening back in that time with the Jews, the Gentiles, and the Samaritans. We see this racial divide happening and we see that as the early church was proclaiming the gospel, there was a real sense of community starting to be built. And I think if we can look at that for our time now, there is a racial divide that unfortunately does happen within our society. And if we could just get back and say, "you know what? We're going to start proclaiming the gospel. We're going to start walking it out." Not just saying that we proclaim the gospel, actually walking out the gospel. And doing the things that we see in scripture, and start seeing this real community start happening like we've seen in the early church and start seeing people come to Christ. I think this is how we'll see this social justice, that platform, really say, "you know what? Let's just bring this back to scripture." I think for me, some of the problem with the social justice that we see today is, it really starts pitting people against other people. And this is not the justice that we're wanting to see. We're not wanting to see it divide people more. We're wanting to see it bring people together in unity. And I think we're starting to see, at least this is what I'm seeing, is some of these social justice warriors of our day are really pitting our people groups against people groups. And we're seeing more oppression happening than, you know, we should be seeing people that are oppressed, released and freed from these things. And I think unfortunately, we're seeing it where it's really pushing people more into oppression, not uplifting people like it should be. And so I think that's where I'm seeing it from my side. Gosh, if we're wanting to go after social justice, we should be seeing unity not pitting people against people. And so, yeah.

Gary Schick
I think that's an interesting and a good take on it. This world's attempts to achieve justice don't always achieve it. And I think it's in part because it's us working out of our sinful nature trying to move towards something better. Which the goal is good, but if you use sinful means to get there, you're going to continue tofall short of your objective. And I think also, a part of it is some blind spots, which we are reluctant, all of us, to let go of. Each of us have what we might call our hot topics, things that we want to see, areas of justice achieved. But if we're completely honest with ourselves, there are others that others may be fighting for out there we could care less about. And that doesn't mean that those things aren't important to God's heart. Just that maybe, in fact, even the way this question is worded kind of made me think about that. It says, "we know God is a just God, but how should Christians view our culture's obsession with justice?" As if almost to say, "well obviously culture's in the wrong here by being obsessed with it." You know, throughout the Bible, God is just, "period." And He is obsessed with justice in a way that we could only wish we were. One of the great verses, we used to sing it when I was in youth group many, many years ago, from the book of Micah says, "he has shown me, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of thee. But to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." And I think part of the human problem is, we don't know how to balance justice and mercy. Justice by itself is very important, but very harsh. Mercy by itself can come across as just sort of sweeping things under the rug. You know, kind of like Jesus. Jesus came filled with grace and truth. Truth and justice go hand in hand. Grace and mercy go hand in hand---and love. In our way of approaching life, sometimes we've got justice on one side, mercy on the other. In Christ they don't fight, they kiss. Justice and mercy come together in Him. But exactly what you were saying, in terms of the way, in our sinful selves, we go at this, these things actually tend to conflict. In Christ they come together and even when we pray the Lord's prayer, what are those three words? "Thy kingdom come." Now in part, we're praying for the return of Christ, but we're praying for the King of Kings to come to reign over His kingdom when the kingdoms of this world give way to His ultimate justice and rule. So we are actually to be ambassadors and signposts of that. I just, oh man, I've got several just little quick thoughts that I just want to kind of pop out to the listeners here. One, bear in mind, God's view of justice is at times very different from what the culture promotes as just. But at other times, if we take the Bible seriously, even what the culture is asking for doesn't go far enough. Really, the question is not whether there should be justice in this area, but what is a biblical view of it? What's God's view of it? And biblically, I think three things need to be said. 1. part of our sinfulness, both in the culture and the churches, I've already mentioned, is blind spots. We need God's word to wake us up to areas of injustice that we have grown complacent about. If we ever recognized them to begin with. And one example would be, a hundred years ago this country was divided Christians on both sides over, in part, I know there were other factors, but a big part of it was the issue of slavery. Today it's very hard for a Christian to look back and say, "how could Christians have ever been on the side of that?" But they were complacent in their culture. They found verses to back up what they wanted to say and just close their eyes hard to others. You've got to take the whole council of God in a sense that civil war should never have happened. Christians should have been able to come together and say, "you know what? This is hard, but God's word says, "and therefore we must," as opposed to going the direction we did. Another thing is to acknowledge, you know, we hear a lot today, a lot of it came, you're right, a lot of it got going in the 2020. It wasn't just covid that hit that year. We hear a lot about culture wars. I heard an interesting take on that recently. Culture wars, the person defined as this, a culture war is a theological war where one side identifies it as theological about what God says, and the other side doesn't see that. But it's still about that. You know, it's very interesting. In the culture wars, the secular liberal left, they are using, I guess I want to say Christian values without calling them Christian. So often in calling us our attention to this and this and this. Whereas Christians are saying, "and God's word says." And so it is. It's a cultural, it's actually somewhat of a theological war, in which one side doesn't acknowledge that God is part of the equation. And so that is part of what creates the conflict there. And then third, while we are not called to fix the culture, we are called as Christians to be a prophetic voice within the culture. And even to live out higher values than the culture, and in all areas, not just one or two. For example, it seems like over the course of my life, there were a time when Christians kind of stood up for many things, and more and more we have, maybe it's kind of a stereotype, but Christians have been sort of stereotyped as one issue. People, it's all about abortion. That's all or nothing, and nothing else matters. Well, obviously abortion does matter. And I'll be honest, that has cast my vote more than once. That issue, right there. But it doesn't mean that other issues don't matter. For example, I think the question brought up the question of the environment. Whether you believe in global warming or not, I mean, the world is kind of hot this summer for whatever reason. Doesn't really change what our answers should be to the question, "did God make this world?" And we do our best to take care of it, whether that scientific theory is true or complete hogwash.

Gary Schick
Should Christians be not only leading the way to say all life is valuable, which we should, but should we also be leading the way to a cleaner, safer, healthier environment in our planet? I mean, do Christians want the oceans filled with plastic? I don't think so. And yet, I have heard Christians say, "well, it's all going to burn up. Who cares?" I mean, that is not a Christian perspective. God said, "here's this world, you take care of it until, basically, until I come back," it is what we're going to pass on to our kids and grandkids. It shouldn't be either or, it should all matter to us. But from a Christian perspective, fourth---actually my three turned into six---fourth, I think it's important that Christians stand for the right things in the right way. Sometimes we become so passionate about our causes that we forget that human souls are often at stake, the people we are arguing with. And that's where there is, I think, what's the most important thing here? The issues are always important. Of course they are, they affect people. But it's the people that matter the most. Jesus died for souls. And sometimes when I get pretty wound up about an issue, whatever it is, I tend to demonize the people on the other side. I think we all do. And no, those are souls that we need to reach for Christ. And so yes, we need to, I think, draw the line and make clear our stand and make clear why we stand there. But I think it's also a good idea for Christians too, and this is my next point, and to look for some common ground. Not every issue does have to be us versus them. Christians can stand the ground and be sowers of peace, not division. The Bible calls us to that. That's part of, "thy kingdom come." It's a kingdom of peace. And then sixth and last, I think we need to bathe everything in prayer. Even as Christians, we've read our Bibles, we know what the Bible says about this, so here we are ready to go to---no. We need to ask God to show us His solution. How do we bridge this gap? Is there some place that we can build together? Is there a way through this that we haven't thought of yet? Even if we agree with the scientists, here's an issue in our world, there's still one thing that we can bring to the table that they can't. "God, give them insight," whether we're talking about cancer or whatever it is, we should be bathing everything in prayer and every conversation in prayer and every relationship in prayer. And then God's picture of justice, I think really will be done. He looks, I believe, for a world where people are in harmony, first with Himself, then one another, and then the environment they live in, until He comes for us. So Jonathan, anything more you want to add?

Jonathan Hernandez
No, I think you had some great points there. Definitely, things for us to really think about in those areas. And so I think the last thing is, for me, a lot of times when we are raising our kids, let's make sure that we're raising them with that biblical view of things. I think that's where we're seeing a lot of things going astray. Are we going to be committed to God or are we going to just show up to church, but we want to live a worldly worldview instead of what God has shown us scripturally.

Gary Schick
And I think news broadcasts or a topic that comes up at school, those can be great conversations at home. Say, "oh, that's interesting. What does the Bible say about this?" And so, sometimes we will get on board with what the secular culture is saying and say, "you know what? They've actually gotten ahold of something that's right here in the Bible," because all truth is God's truth. Other times we're going to say, "You know, isn't it interesting how the world is looking for a just outcome, but how that's contrary to God's word?" And look at where that will, if they got their way, where that would actually take us. And what that would actually result in. And for example, well the two we've brought up, we could say, "oh, there's a person who doesn't know the Lord and yet they're caring an awful lot about the world God created." What are some responses, as Christians, we could add to that? Or take the issue of abortion, say, "well, it's really interesting. They're talking about a woman's rights, which obviously there's some truth there, but aren't they forgetting about the person that woman is carrying in her body and that that child has rights to?" And so if the world gets their way there, what does that lead to? The loss of that child's life. So we just need to keep going back to the Bible and affirm what's there to be affirmed. Call it when it's going too far, and absolutely draw the line when it's going totally counter to God. It may use all the right words, but if it's going in the wrong direction, how do we know? What's our compass? "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Not what I want, not what sounds good to me or feels good to me or is most comfortable to me. But what does God's word say?

Does God Give Us the Desires of Our Heart?

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

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastor Johnathan Hernandez .

Jonathan Hernandez
So our question this morning is, "Does God give us the desires of our heart?" And we would look at Psalms 37. This is where we would find that scripture where it says, "take delight in the Lord and God will give you the desires of your heart." And I think we've taken this verse and we've just, what do you wanna say? Like, simplified it into just this part of it, not the entire portion of scripture. We've just taken it down to, "let's look at the scripture and take delight in the Lord and God will give you the desires of your heart." And so, I think at times we see this and it's exciting, right? We see it on t-shirts, we see it on posters, memes on Facebook or any of these things. Like, we see this portion of scripture, or just this verse of scripture, and it sounds great. You know, like, if I delight in the Lord, I will have the desires of my heart. And so, I think people get frustrated, because here they are, they feel like they're delighting themselves in the Lord, but yet they still have this desire for say, a million dollars, right? And here we are. We're serving God, we're doing the things that we've, you know, that we see in scripture. And there we don't have the million dollars, right? And so I think when we take these scriptures out of the complete context of what we're seeing, we can get ourselves into a bit of trouble, right? And that's with any scripture, you know, we have to make sure that we're looking at it in the context of the entire portion of scripture. You know, it's not just a vacuum. It's not, you know, we just can't pull a scripture out and, you know, base everything on just that little tiny bit of it, because we have to have the full context. And what is the author saying in this? What is it? What is the whole meaning through this entire part of it? You know? And so we can't, like I said, we can't just take this little bit of the scripture. You know, we have to look at the whole thing. And, you know, in chapter 37 verse one, we started off. Verse four is where we find the, "delight yourself in the Lord." And so we look and it says, "do not fret because of the evil doers; nor be envious of the workers of inequity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell on the land and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your ways to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as a light and your justice as the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him." You know, as we continue to go on you guys, like this whole scripture, we're starting to see things come into place. Like I said, we can't just take it out of it. We can't do that with scripture. We can't just pull stuff out of there. And so, how do we look at this? How do we see, okay, God will give you the desires of your heart. Is this really what we're seeing here? "Delight yourself in the Lord." So verse four, it says, "delight in the Lord." And we find this thought process throughout the Bible, right? But it's also one, you know, maybe we don't really, or rarely we hear somebody preach on what does it mean to delight ourselves in the Lord? And we could probably have an entire radio show that's dedicated to just that. So to delight yourself in something is to take pleasure from that thing or person. Commonly, we would delight ourselves in like, our spouse, right? So it could be friends, our children. Maybe, you know, we see people that delight themselves in a prized possession. They have an old car, and that's, you know, the greatest thing on earth. And, you know, they delight themselves in that. Unfortunately, some people delight themselves in sin. And so they're taking pleasure, or committing themselves fully into this thing. And David is telling his readers to delight and commit fully to God, to find our joy in Him before anything else.

Jonathan Hernandez
And I would challenge us, as believers are we fully committed? Are we taking joy before the Lord? Are we seeking after Him with everything that we have? And so I think, you know, if we're looking at these scriptures, we need to make sure that we're delighting ourselves in the Lord. And then the second part of verse four, it says that God will give us the desires of our heart. And I would challenge us as believers that if we're fully committed, fully going after the things of God, I think our desires will align with His desires. You know, it's not gonna be, "I want a million dollars so I can be rich and famous, or whatever." Now it's, "okay, if God gives me a million dollars, where am I investing that into the kingdom? And how am I helping what God wants to see happen? I think a lot of times, you know, I know when I first became a believer, my desires were still in things that wouldn't be God's plan, right? First, when I give my life to Christ I'm starting to learn how to walk the Christian life out. I'm praying, "God, remove these things from my life," you know, whatever it may be. And, you know, sometimes our desires are in things that they shouldn't be. Like maybe revenge, lust, envy, greed, something along those lines. And so, the more time we're spending with God, the more time we're delighting ourselves in the Lord. I think that's where we start seeing our desires being removed from this worldly context into a godly context of, you know, what is God wanting to see? What is He wanting to see happen? Not only in our lives, but within our communities? How often do we encounter different believers that are seeking after things that we see, "okay, God is showing us these things. God is speaking these things." And so, as I continue to push and move forward in Christ, we're gonna start seeing these things happen. And it's exciting to see those things, you know? And so, as I look at the scripture, if I delight myself in the Lord, that means I'm aligning everything with Him completely. I'm aligning my thought process. I'm completely all in for God, right? And so I will receive the desires of my heart. But I believe my desires now have been formed in such a way that they're aligning with God's heart. And my heart now is that, you know, exactly what God is wanting to see happen. And so, "delight yourself in the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart," isn't, "I'm gonna give my life to Christ and He's gonna give me a million bucks." Or, "I'm gonna give my life to Christ, and He's gonna give me that amazing vehicle that I've always wanted." You know? No, that's not how we're seeing this happen and how it operates. You know, how we see this happen. You know, we delight ourselves in the Lord and our heart will be aligned with God's heart, and we'll see what, you know, will align with that completely. And so I would just challenge you guys to continue to, you know, read that entire portion of scripture and allow God to speak to you through that and allow the Holy Spirit just to really lead you.

Parenting and Disciplining Your Children

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 Kiley Callaway, Tyson Lambertson, John Mulholland and Jon Simpson.

Jon Simpson
So, last time we discussed parenting and specifically discipling your kids. We want to kind of continue in that with that topic. And so we're gonna tackle a passage found in the book of Judges, again in the Old Testament. Pastor John's gonna read for us again from chapter two of the book of Judges.

John Mulholland
Yeah, "After Joshua sent the people away, each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them, and Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua. And the leaders who outlived him, those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the land he had been allocated at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for them. The Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight and served the images of Baal." And then it continues down a really lousy path throughout the rest of the Book of Judges.

Jon Simpson
Just one generation.

Kylie Calloway
That did not acknowledge the Lord.

John Mulholland
Why didn't they acknowledge the Lord?

Tyson Lambertson
Well, first I think we have to give Joshua some credit, because his legacy was substantial and very, very important. Cause he kept Israel on task. He was a father of the nation. He really did a wonderful job. And his kids followed. Then they split up and went and possessed land. And I think a lot of times it's easy to lose focus and we're seeing in our own generation, people walking away from the things of the Lord and being carried into a culture that is full of demonic influence. So it makes sense that it could be one generation away.

Kylie Calloway
We've got something up on our refrigerator and how we acknowledge the Lord. I mean, acknowledging the Lord may be different in each home. But I'll share them with you, cause I don't memorize them. But we call them connecting habits and disconnecting habits. So I think people use them, and I think this is what drives away kids. So the disconnecting habits would be: criticism, blaming, complaining, nagging threatening, punishing, bribing. Basically, all of those are to control. So anytime those go on in our home, we kind of go to the refrigerator and say, "you know, that's not the way we wanna be, because that's not who God is." But we want to be these habits, because these connect us to one another, which is: supporting, encouraging, listening, accepting, trusting, respecting and negotiating differences. And for us, that's birthed out of love of who God is. So when we have those moments together as a family, we feel like in those times we're acknowledging who God would want us to be. So I have to keep going back to that, being, right? Is that we try to teach our kids that it goes deeper than just church attendance and serving in a church. Yes. Prayer is good, studying the Bible is good. But at the essence is: this is who He wants you to be. And so that's our way of acknowledging the Lord. Of course, we acknowledge Him every Sunday in our worship and in our prayer, but further than that. Of our day-to-day life with one another, getting to the core of who we are is acknowledging the Lord for us. And hopefully for our home, that will teach our kids to continue to acknowledge the Lord in their family lifestyle.

John Mulholland
I really like that difference that you explained. What I heard you say was, "there's a difference between being and doing." And we went through Judges several years ago. You know, if we were to read through Judges and we were to read into the rest of the Old Testament, we would see a people who were doing all the right things. You know, all of the things that are taking place here in the book of Judges, in the midst of that, there are people who are still celebrating the Passover. They're still doing all of the right behaviors. But what they've missed is that being and not acknowledging the Lord, not remembering the mighty things that He had done for Israel. So, back to what we talked about last time, just kind of like, that verse 10 is a key text because it tells us; like, when the kids ask their parents, "what is the reason we do these things?"

John Mulholland
They were supposed to say one thing. And my guess is, they made it about the doing, "Well, we go to Temple because we always go to Temple at this time. It's always the Sabbath. It's always the Passover." And they've forgotten the reasons why. And they've forgotten that they were set apart to be a certain kind of people. So I think our challenge is, "what does it look like for us to be a certain kind of people, and then model those behaviors to our kids? And how can we encourage the people and our bodies to do that?

Kylie Calloway
Right. And that's how we're set apart from the world, so to speak. Those disconnecting habits are ways of external control. I can control you with my complaints, but we teach our kids an internal locus of control, that there's something deeper inside of them that they can choose to be other than externally controlling. Cause if I control you, I mean, that's really a form of witchcraft. So, you know, we're not trying to control in those connecting behaviors, which are birthed out of love. It's hard to do with young kids, but the more---I just had to do it yesterday, but the more consistently we do it, we're finding that that's who our kids truly, at the end of the day, want to be. They know who they want to be. It's just our job to kind of guide them towards that direction. And they can choose not to be that too.

Jon Simpson
Yeah. It also seems like, it's interesting that what happened here was that the people were led into the land and they occupied it, right? They got their inheritance. And once they did, they got busy living and taking care of their family and doing the thing that you do. And the mission or the sense of, you know, conquest or accomplishment or purpose, I think it's easy to lose that. And I think of, in my lifetime now, I've been alive long enough to see and hear about, you know, those movements of God, those hay days of either ministry or God moving. And I know I've heard those stories here in this valley, of God. And you know, sometimes there might be some lament about what's happening, or there's nothing. And I'm like, "well, you know, that sense of mission has to continue," and I think every generation has to grab hold of it and move with it and have a sense of, "we've gotta build." Like, why do we have, you know, churches? Why do we do what we do? Certainly in part, it's to raise our own families, but it has to also be to reach the people around me and to, you know, make a difference in the region. And I think that that sense of mission, as I look back, part of the reason for maybe those where something springs up and there's something really incredible going on, people grab a hold of that, you know?

Kylie Calloway
Yeah. As soon as you said, "they got busy living," I heard in me, "but they didn't get busy dying." And I think that's what you have to do, is die to yourself. Right? We do get busy living, but we're not in the business of dying. And we have to die to our flesh and die to ourself to truly show our kids how to truly live the gospel life.

Tyson Lambertson
I think the text lends to the dichotomy of Joshua leaving a legacy. And/Or living your own life. And I wanna live a Joshua legacy for my kids, so it doesn't fail in the next generation, or generations following that. I wanna live that long obedience in the same direction, so that our kids have a good foundation.

John Mulholland
Yeah. So what does that modeling look like? I think last time, Kylie, you said, "we are doing things that our kids are picking up on." So how can we make sure that they're picking up on the right things? One of the pastors I've listened to frequently says, "we are making disciples. We are discipling our children." The question is, what are we discipling and made to?

Tyson Lambertson
I think it's every day. I think, how I respond to certain circumstances, situations. How I talk, how I model, how I love their mom. How I talk about the scripture, how I apply it to my own life. When somebody does something to me, how do I respond? I mean, it's all the time just modeling the weight all the time. Trying to live a godly life in front of them all the time.

John Mulholland
That's an incredible weight that people have on them. And we, I think as pastors, and as the church, have to help people understand that the way around that incredible weight is through, like, Christ bears that weight for us.

Tyson Lambertson
Grace.

John Mulholland
Because I think people can hear this. You gotta be on all the time. Man, for some people that's grounds to not even try. So how can we communicate that their help is in the Lord, not in their own efforts. Other than saying that, that sounds great.

Why Make Man With The Choice To Sin? - Ask the 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 Pastor features Pastors Ben Cline Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Well, today's question, I think it's really a great one because it's one that I've been asked as a pastor. Maybe you have too. I guess there's different ways of phrasing it, but the way it was worded here is, "why make man with a choice to sin? So in other words, when God made this great big, beautiful world, we see what a mess we've made of it. I mean, why give us the option, you know? Why not just make a perfect creation that couldn't go wrong? You know, that's what we're trying to do with all of our, I don't know, our computers and our AI, and I think we're pretty sure it's gonna end the world or something. No, I mean, God's got His plan. He knows when the world's gonna come to its close. I don't think it'll be AI. You know, so I think it is a good question. Because there's a lot of hurt and heartache in the world. Wouldn't it just be easier, better? Could we give God some advice? What do you think, Ben?

Ben Cline
Yeah. Could we, you know, go to God and say, "if you could go back and do something over again?" No, this is a question that really goes back to the reason why God created everything in the first place. You know, why did he do all of this work to put the universe together? Why did he do all this work to put the earth together and make the earth work the way that it does? You know, why did He create man? Well, He created man, and He created the entire universe to bring glory to His name. I mean, I think that's the overarching reason why He created everything. But I think that one of the main reasons that you see in scripture why God created mankind is because He desires relationship. And, you know, this question goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. You know, it's a question of when sin entered into the world. And, you know, you look back and understand that in God's creation, He put Adam and Eve into the garden, and then he put this tree in the middle of the garden called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And He gave them a command, he told them, "you shall not eat of this tree." And he gave them a whole garden full of trees that would've provided everything that they needed. But this one tree was something that would create an environment where it would give them a choice, right? And so, that choice was whether or not they were going to obey His command. And, you know, we see this even in that creation, even in placing them in the garden with that choice, that God is all about relationship. You know, He made mankind in order to, you know, enter into a relationship with His creation. And, you know, the choice is there. Um, what God wants from us is, is obedience. We all have that choice, just like Adam and Eve had that choice. Though, you know, we are are born with that sin nature that carries on from Adam through all generations. But what God still wants from us is obedience. And if you think about it, if God had created mankind and then not given us, you know, a choice of whether or not to obey Him or whether or not to follow him, that turns into, very quickly, a one-sided relationship, which we know is no relationship at all. Cause relationships are two-sided. They're very much two ways. And, you know, it's really important in this to point out a couple of things. You know, number one: God knew when He put Adam and Eve into this set of circumstances, He knew what the outcome was gonna be. Because God knows everything. However, that does not say that God wanted Adam and Eve to sin. That's not what He wanted for them. He gave them the choice to obey Him or disobey Him. And that's, you know, the choice that they made. It's not what He wanted, but He knew that that was gonna be the outcome. You know, and this is a question where we run into the free will of man and the sovereignty of God. And I don't know if we're gonna dive very deep into that today, but, you know, the fact that God gave us the choice to sin just shows us how much He loves us. It shows us that He wants us to desire the relationship with Him that He desires to have with us. And, you know, it's a difficult question to grapple with, because we think that it would've been as easy as just, you know, not giving the choice in the first place, right? But that's not what God had in mind at all when He created us. So those are some of my thoughts.

Gary Schick
No, I think those are really good thoughts, you know? So, the passage really is Genesis 2, "the Lord God," verse 15, "Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, 'you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." You know, people have asked a kind of related question, "what was it about this tree?" You know, I don't absolutely know that there's anything specific about the fruit on it, other than it could have been just a random anything, but that God was basically giving them a rule. A point of obedience for no other reason than, "I am the Lord, and you are my creation." And I think you pointed out rather well, is that, you know, the big picture is that we are made for God's glory. But when He made us, really He made us and gave us a very high position in creation for at least four things. 1. we've already touched on for just the aspect of relationship with Him. 2. we're told that we're created in His image, so we reflect Him. 3. so that we might rule under Him. We were created to rule, you know, rule over the creation under Him. And then finally, so that we would continue to rely on Him. And just kind of unpacking those one by one. You know, I think you touched on it rather well. God certainly could have made a bunch of automatons, you know? You know, like a computer program. We've kind of touched on that. So you put the information in and you know what you're gonna get out. It only can do what you have given a license to do. Why did God give us license to do these random things, you know? Other than the fact that you don't have a relationship when there's no one out there to relate to. And so that, just by definition it creates, in a sense, the necessity of some kind of a free agent to who can freely respond. We would be responding to God out of automation, but not out of real love. And well, scriptures say God is love, the triune God. He's lived in all eternity in relationship. When He created, He expanded the possibilities of that. And the angels had the same choice. You know, some of them have fallen. The difference is, we don't read about the redemption of angels. But for some reason, God has smiled on man in a way that we can be redeemed through Christ, which is so exciting. So yeah, there's a relationship aspect, but let's also not forget, you know, God says, "then let us make man in our image, in the image of God, He made them male and female." So what is that about? God is spirit. So, you know, physically, are we in His image? No, God's not sitting up there with gray hair and a beard or whatever. Nor is He a beautiful woman or something, you know? He is a spirit. He is not male, female, physical. But we reflect him. We are created in His image in terms of things like character. And again, a part of that is an aspect of freedom. We aren't able to create the environment we're in, but we are able to be creative within it in a godlike way. And He intended this, He intended that we would reflect him in this created order. And so part of that, again, comes to a certain freedom of not only freedom of choice and freedom of will, but just part of what it is to be a being with thought. And then, why were we put here, you know? To subdue and rule over, you know, and fill the earth. So we were put, you know, to care for the garden. We were put in this world to be God's overlords under Him in it. But again, what does that entail? He didn't just say, you know, "go do whatever you want here. Here's a creation for you. Go be the God of that creation." No, he says, "I'm putting you here to take care of it. You have free reign." But again, this one point of contact, this simple rule is a reminder that, "in everything you are under me. I am the overlord, and you are free. I have made this for you to enjoy, but in relationship to me." It all comes back to the relationship to God. And then finally, and this is ongoing even today. As forgiven children of God in Christ, we absolutely, in order to obey Him in any meaningful way, we have to rely on Him. In order for Adam and Eve to sin they, in a sense, had to first, take a step away from Him. They had to go about their own thoughts. They had to turn away from Him. They had to turn away from what He had commanded. They had to turn away from what they knew. They had to turn away from what they knew was right so that immediately afterwards, they're hiding in the bushes. You know, what is that about? Well, they chose to rely on faulty information from someone else. Satan. They chose to rely on what appeared to appeal to them. They saw that the fruit was good to eat and pleasing to the eye and all of this. And they chose not to rely on God. So, you know, as Christians, our sins have been forgiven through faith in Christ. We've been given new life. How are we doing, friends, at living the life? I'll be honest, there's days I just really struggle. And a lot of times, when I'm struggling, it's because I'm stupid enough to be trying to do it in my own strength. We are never meant to do that. You know, we read about Adam and Eve walking with God in the cool of the day. We are called to walk with Him, rely on Him, draw our strength from Him. You can't, listeners, you can't live to God's glory on your own strength. In fact, that won't glorify Him at all. That would just glorify you. "See what I can do?" But see what you can do in and through Him. Now that's a whole different story. And so, you know, as we seek to live a life, to give glory to God, let's think about those four things. Those four precious gifts that are newly ours again in Christ. They're restored to us through faith in Him. What is it that we could jeopardize, could actually lose in sinning? It's these things. What are the things that are restored? It's relationship, it's reflecting the creator, it's acting as ambassadors for Christ. In the creation, now under him, ruling under Him and representing His kingdom. Representative, I guess that would be. And then finally, it teaches us moment by moment by moment to rely to look to Him who is our life. Jesus didn't just say, "I will bring you the way. I will teach you the truth. I will give you new life." He said, "guess what? I am these things. I'm the way, I'm the truth. I'm the life. You can't have it apart from me. But in me, you have it all." So, Ben, you wanna, any more thoughts?

Ben Cline
No, I think that's great. This is such an important question and such a good one to be able to, you know, go all the way back to the beginning of the pages of scripture.

For Those In Ministry What Would You Say To Your Younger Self?

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 Ben Cline and Johnathan Hernandez.

Jonathan Hernandez
So this morning, I guess we're gonna kind of hit on a topic that is maybe a little bit more for pastors or people that are in ministry. But I know the listeners would enjoy hearing some of these things and also as listeners, and maybe you have a new pastor that's stepping into the role as a pastor. Maybe you can hear some of these things and know, "okay, well maybe they may experience some of these things, so let's help them along the way and give them a little bit of a hand." So our question is, "what would you say to your younger-ministry self if you were starting all over again?" And so one of the first things that popped into my mind as, you know, as I was looking this over and just remembering. So I started as a senior pastor at River of Life Church on December 1st, 2012. And so, that was a little over 10 years ago. And stepping into that role, I was just, "what do I do!? How do I do this?" You know, this was my first ministry role. And so it was fun, but it was also a little hectic and a little, "I don't know what to do." And so I remember thinking back, you know, years later, and somebody had said this to me, he said, "Jonathan, your first calling is to intimacy with Christ." And I was like, "Wow, that makes so much sense." You know, and then your next ministry, or your next calling, is to your spouse. And so for me, it would be my wife and then my family, and then the ministry. And I think we know this, but as you start getting into ministry and you start all the busyness of life, what happens is you start trying to flip that around and start pushing ministry first and then everything else. And then your wife's like, "whoa, wait a minute, what about me?" You know? And then obviously, God too is like, "Wait a minute, you're forgetting me." So we gotta make sure that we keep that in order. You know, make sure that we're having that time with Christ and making sure that we are spiritually healthy. You know, cause if we're not spiritually healthy, it's hard to help other people get to that point.

Ben Cline
Yeah, that's right. And that's funny that you say that cuz that's similar to something that was on my list too. You know, make sure that your personal time with the Lord doesn't get pushed aside for: studying for Sunday or, you know, doing other ministry things. And, you know, that seems counterintuitive because you're a pastor, right? You should be fine. But that's not true. You know, we need to take that time to have a close walk, a close relationship with Jesus so that we're spiritually prepared for handling whatever it is that might come through the doors. And so that's a great one to start out with. Another one that I was thinking of as well is, and this would especially be to my young ministry self is, you don't know everything and you never will. You know, my path into ministry was a little bit different than yours. But, you know, we went to Bible school for a few years and we had decided early on that we wanted to go into church planting ministry. And so we took some time praying about it, you know, visiting the place where we wanted to go. And, you know, by the time that you finished Bible school, and they really do warn you against this, but you know, you're young and impulsive. So they warn you against this. But, you know, you go out onto the ministry field and feel like, "I got this, you know, I can handle anything that comes my way." And then you're humbled very, very quickly. So, you know, that's something that I would try to get my younger self to listen to is, you know, "just realize that, you know, the ministry is not something that you step into knowing how to handle every situation." It's something that you're actually going to be learning in for your entire life.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. That's definitely good, cause I remember those moments. "Oh, I know it all." And then, "Nope. I don't know that." You know, and that's such a good one too. You know, the other thing, you know, one of the other things I wrote down, it's kind of along those same lines too. Is, you need to be in the word for yourself, not just for your sermon. You know, you kind of hit on that too. And, you know, there's so many times that you're looking at the week and it's like, "where do I sit?" Things like, "how do I schedule my week when I already know that there's so much stuff going on?" And I know people are like, "well, pastors only work 45 minutes a week. On Sundays." Well, no, there's so much more to it. And then if you're bi-vocational, you know, there's even more to it. Trying to squeeze everything in, you know, on top of already having work and home and stuff. And so, you know, I knew that there was weeks that I'm like, "gosh, how do I get both of those going?" And so those were tough. So my next one would be, "people will leave and it will hurt, but it's not always your fault." Right? Cause we always blame ourselves if somebody's leaving. "It's because of me." And that's not always the case, you know? There's times, you know, I remember people leave and it was after I had preached a sermon and, you know, and I was like, "oh, well maybe I shouldn't have preached that." And then I would sit back and I was like, "okay, did I preach what God wanted me to preach?" If it was a yes, then obviously you're preaching what you're supposed to, right? If the Holy Spirit's leading you to that, that's what you're supposed to preach. And so, you know, people will leave and it's going to hurt. And I think that's why it's important for pastors to have a tough, you know, a tough skin in a sense. You know, because people leave for all kinds of reasons. You know, it could be the smallest reason. It could be your fault. You know, there's multiple things and, you know, the best thing for us to do is to bless them on the way out. And just pray for them and pray that they will find a church home where they can grow and that they can mature in Christ. And so those are always tough moments, you know, cause I'm like, "oh, I want you here," you know, and the different things like that. And so, you know, I remember my pastor saying, "Jonathan, just keep praying for them," you know, bless them on their way out." You know, "you'll be fine. God will provide." And He always did.

Ben Cline
Yeah. And that's the thing about the body of Christ is that, you know, God has made us all a little bit differently. We all deal with things in different ways and we all feel like we have different needs for our families. So, you know, as a pastor, yes, it does hurt when people walk out the door and say that they're not coming back. But, you know, and that's something also, you know, that you experience as a new pastor in a church that you had not been the pastor for before. But there's gonna be people who just decide that it's not for them. For whatever reason, who knows. But, you know, that's a really good point and, you know, maybe a good reminder to our listeners who are our churchgoers. To, you know, really understand that these are things, you know, decisions that really do affect people.

Jonathan Hernandez
We're pastors, but we still have feelings.

Ben Cline
Yeah, exactly. And another one that, you know, I wish I would've taken on and really tried to understand, as you know, a younger pastor in ministry, is the importance of rest. You know, that's something that will catch up with you every time. And, you know, I'm not even a type of person who has a lot of energy in the first place. But I think I can tend to be a little bit of a workaholic and say, "oh, I don't really need to worry about resting this week." And then it just builds up and builds up and builds up and then you hit a wall and you're just like, "I can't do this anymore." And so, you know, resting is extremely, extremely important. You know, I know that people have different ideas about the application of the Sabbath. About that Sabbath rest that God has had set up in the Old Testament. You know, Jesus dealt with it as something that the Pharisees were, you know, kind of using to condemn other people with. But, you know, rest is something that's still extremely important for all of us as believers to have rest that is scheduled. And I really wish that's something that I would've done, you know, earlier on in ministry, because it's extremely beneficial. And that rest time is not just to, you know, sit around and do nothing all the time, although that might be what it calls for sometimes. But that rest time, is to really take time to, you know, not necessarily focus on the things that are going on around you, but to focus on Jesus. And so, yeah. That's definitely something I would tell myself.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, for sure. And that would kind of go along with the thought process I had with the power of "No." You know, knowing how to say, "No." Cause, you know, there's so many times I think, you know like, I'd always seen my pastor doing something and so I thought, "well, if he can do all that, then I should be able to too." Not realizing that he had said, "no," to a thousand other things. You know, that he was like, "does this align with the vision of the church?" If it doesn't, well, you know what, maybe if we have time at some point, then yeah, we can do it. But if it's not, then we're gonna have to say no. You know? Is that taking away from my family time? Okay, well then that has to be a, "no." You know, I need to guard those times with my family. And so, you know, that was something that, gosh, it was such a hard thing to learn early on. Cause I'd seen, you know, pastors doing 60, 70, 80 hours a week and, you know, I'm like, "okay, well that's the norm." Right? Well, here I am also bi-vocational. I was like, "well, how do I fit---

Ben Cline
How do you do that?

Jonathan Hernandez
Both of those 40 hours a week?" Plus, you know, 60, 70 hours at the church? You know, how does this all work? Well it works because there is this word that we can say, "no," you know? Obviously we need to be led by the spirit, you know, and knowing which directions we go. But also knowing that, you know what, it's okay to say, "no," to things and you're gonna be empowered when you're able to say, "no," to things that you shouldn't be doing anyways. You know? And so knowing those things, I think's always powerful to be able to step into what you're called. Instead of stepping into things that I just don't know how to say, "no," to it. You know, cause there's many things early on that I was just doing because, well, "I want to be a good person. I want to, you know, I want help people." Not realizing, "well that's not the calling that God had called me into." So here I am doing something that, you know, I'm not even equipped, you know, in a sense, to do those things. And if I could have just said, "no," you know? And also, I think that's where, you know, maybe with this next point would be having connections. I think if you look throughout scripture, everywhere you see community, you know, I mean if you look through the Old Testament, look through the New Testament, every story is connected to somewhat of a community of people. And so, you know, I think we think our community is just within our church, and that's a great community that you should be growing and maturing in. But there's also this wider community, you know? As pastors, sometimes we get so zoned in only our church, you know, and that's all we're looking at. But gosh, we're missing out on so many relationships if we could just learn how to, "hey, you know what, now I have great friends with Gary and with you." And so it's like we can grow in a community outside. And so if I know, "hey, this isn't what our church is called to, but I know that that's what your church is called to." "Hey, let's help you guys, you know, jump into that," and be able to grow in that too. And so, learn how to work within a community. I think that would've been something great that I could have known early on, you know? Cause, you know, I think you always hear people say, "well, they're not part of our church, and so we don't want to go be a part of that." And it's like, "whoa, that's so backwards," you know? Thinking like we should be, "Hey, if that church is doing something amazing for the kingdom, why don't we support it?" Why don't we, you know, gosh, we could even just, even if it's just a simple posting on Facebook to help somebody else see it. Maybe we can't go to it, but you know, let's help each other. We're all part of the kingdom. Like, you know, we're all gonna be worshiping in heaven together, so why don't we help and worship with each other here on earth?

Ben Cline
Yeah. It makes you think of, you know, Jesus and his ministry and in establishing the early church. You know, we didn't have all these denominational differences and whatever you want to call them. But, you know, the course of time has really kind of drawn some lines that get in the way of us having that community of fellowship as fellow Christians. And, you know, it's important to stand for what you believe doctrinally. But, you know, God just wants us to be a community of believers and that's true. Like, you know, we're all gonna be in heaven together and worshiping God together. So why don't we start practicing that now? It's interesting. One of the things that I just look back and I feel like I was really, really bad about this: when I was a young, a much younger pastor, is that I would always worry about all of the little things that were going on. And, you know, you hear the phrase, "don't sweat the small stuff." Well, it's really true. Like, you really just gotta let that stuff roll off. And, you know, that's something that I wish I would've done as a younger pastor. You know, if I could go back and say, "don't worry about that stuff." Like, there's all this stuff that just, you know, when you think about why you're doing the work that you're doing. You know, why you're doing the ministry that God has called you to. It's not so that you can worry about, you know, why somebody did this or that or whatever, and or why somebody's making the decisions that they're making. The small stuff is small stuff. If we're gonna focus on what we need to be focusing on, it really should be about, you know, making sure that we understand the gospel and that we're living our lives for Christ. And that we're, you know, out there witnessing to the world that is lost. And, you know, those are the big things and we should really be worrying about those things instead. So that's another thing that's on my list.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yep. Oh, I think I was still not the best at that all way up in time. You know, now as a youth pastor, things are a lot different and I'm trying to learn how to even balance the small stuff there, right? That's what some of the, you know, small things that, you know, I'm trying to learn. I went from being a senior pastor to a youth pastor, and a lot of times it's the opposite way, you know? You've been a youth pastor or children's pastor, worship pastor, something else before the lead role. And so, you know, here I am, the lead role right off the bat and now, you know, transitioning to youth pastor and it's just like, well, this is a lot of different things. And some of the things are similar, but just on a smaller scale. And so I think for me, the last one, at least for today, would be really with the finances. I think in a small church sometimes the pastor's doing everything. And with the finances, I would encourage, you know, cause I know I had to do finances pretty much the whole time I was the pastor of the church, you know? So it's like trying to find somebody that can do it, I think. You know, we weren't a big enough church to be able to pay someone outside of the church to do it. So a lot of times, it was me and then someone else trying to help. So that way, you know, we're not having one person do it by themselves, you know, for integrity reasons and stuff. But, you know, make sure that there's multiple eyes on the finances and not just yourself. You know, we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble. And we're human, we make mistakes. You know, not saying that we're gonna steal anything, but, you know, just not being able to do the accounting software, right? You know, so if we have multiple eyes on it, you know, I know I'm not an accounting major. I took accounting in high school and that was the extent of it. So thank the Lord that he had me go through that in high school to know how to do it now. So make sure that we have multiple eyes on those things. It's something I would tell my younger self is, you know, make sure that you're having people and just training people up. You know, there were people that could step into it but, you know, I was just always like, "well, it's easier, I'll just do it myself."

Ben Cline
It's too much work.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, you know, I can get this done in half the time that it would take to train. And so instead of, you know, and that's the whole thing about the, "no" earlier. You know, knowing that I can say, "no," to myself. "Okay, John, you're doing enough. Allow someone else to step into these roles." You know, all those who are attending all the churches that are out there, just know that your pastor's not perfect. And he needs grace just like everybody else does. And, you know, these are things that we are all learning as pastors in ministry and will continue learning for the rest of our lives.