Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

This week on Ask the Pastor, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted by Tyler who asked, "“I know in my head that my sin is sinful, but I can't seem to 'metabolize' it and get that truth into my heart. How can I do that?”

A glimpse inside this episode:

* The goal of salvation is a new kind of righteousness.
* Understanding sin requires both head knowledge and heart transformation.
* Living by faith means choosing what is right despite feelings.
* Growth in grace involves recognizing our ongoing need for grace.
* Sowing seeds of righteousness leads to spiritual growth.
* Habits shape our desires and affections.
* Choosing against fleshly desires is a step of faith.
* Reckoning ourselves dead to sin empowers us to resist temptation.
* Prayer and belief in the gospel are essential for spiritual life.
* Continuous reliance on God's grace is crucial in the Christian walk.

This week on Ask the Pastor, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted by Andrew who asked, "Could you attempt to provide some clarity on whether an earthly marriage between Christians means that husband/wife relationship carries into eternity?"

Thank you Andrew for your question!

A glimpse inside this episode:

* Jesus teaches that there is no marriage in heaven.
* Marriage was created to address loneliness on earth.
* In heaven, companionship will be fulfilled in a better way.
* Our joys in heaven will be heightened and transformed.
* C.S. Lewis compares earthly pleasures to heavenly joys.
* Marriage is a temporary picture of our relationship with Christ.
* Single people are full-fledged family members in Christ.
* The episode encourages listeners to submit their questions.

This week on Ask the Pastor features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Joseph Backholm. Joseph is a Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council. He combines extensive legal, political, and policy experience with a love for the way biblical truth cultivates human flourishing.

A glimpse inside this episode:

* Politics is the process through which we make decisions.
* Christians should engage in politics as a blessing.
* Avoiding difficult conversations can hinder important discussions.
* Evaluate political choices based on biblical principles.
* Political parties should not overshadow our allegiance to Christ.
* Parents should teach children about the complexities of human nature.
* Election seasons provide unique opportunities for disciple-making.
* Sober-mindedness is crucial in political discourse.
* Confirmation bias can lead to being misled in politics.
* Good politics reflects a love for our neighbors.

This week on Ask the Pastor features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Neil Shenvi where they discuss the complexities of critical theory, its implications for society, and how it intersects with Christian beliefs. Neil is another member of the Summit Church with a Ph.D. from Berkeley in Theoretical Chemistry. 

A glimpse inside this episode:

* Race is a social construct, which aligns with a Christian worldview.
* Privilege is context-dependent and cannot be viewed in absolutes.
* Intersectionality complicates discussions of race and gender for Christians.
* Critical theory can lead to false assumptions about disparities in society.
* Christians should advocate for justice based on biblical principles.
* The church's mission should focus on the gospel above all.
* Addressing systemic injustice requires evidence and context.
* Equity should not be equated with equality of outcome.
* The family unit is crucial for addressing social issues like poverty.

This week on Ask the Pastor features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Brooke Medina. Brooke is a member of the Summit Church and serves as Vice President of Communications for the John Locke Foundation. She’s been published in numerous outlets including The Hill, Entrepreneur, Washington Examiner, WORLD, Daily Signal, FEE, and others.

A glimpse inside this episode:

* Economics is fundamentally about human action and dignity.
* Understanding economics through a Christian lens is crucial.
* Private property ownership is essential for a well-ordered society.
* Disagreement among Christians on economic issues is natural and necessary.
* Welfare programs need to be structured to encourage economic mobility.
* Ideas have consequences; bad ideas can harm individuals.
* Christians should engage in political discourse with charity.
* Free speech in the digital age presents new challenges for Christians.
* The church should encourage members to enter all spheres of influence.
* We must be witnesses of truth and grace in the public square.

This week on Ask the Pastor features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Katie McCoy. Dr. McCoy serves as the director of Women’s Ministry for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. She holds a Ph.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of To Be A Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond.

A glimpse inside this episode:

* The cultural moment we are in is a result of decades of ideological shifts.
* Teen girls are particularly vulnerable to social contagion regarding gender identity.
* Gender identity is both a biological and a theological reality.
* The rise of identity politics has led to a reorientation of moral systems.
* Language is viewed as creating reality rather than reflecting it in today's society.
* Christians are called to navigate these issues with grace and conviction.
* The indoctrination of children through media is a significant concern.
* There is a strong correlation between gender confusion and past trauma or abuse.
* Resources are available for Christians to better understand and respond to gender issues.

This week on Ask the Pastor features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Dr. Jason Thacker. Dr. Thacker serves as an assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College and Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He also is a senior fellow in bioethics and director of the research institute at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of several books including Following Jesus in the Digital Age and The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.

A glimpse inside this episode:

* AI is transforming every aspect of society, including faith and identity.
* The concept of human dignity is central to understanding our value in the age of AI.
* AI should not be viewed as a neutral tool; it shapes and forms us.
* The image of God is crucial in discussions about technology and ethics.
* We must slow down and ask the right questions about technology's impact.
* Humanity's uniqueness lies in being created in the image of God.
* AI raises important questions about what it means to be human.
* Wisdom in technology use is more important than convenience.
* Parents should engage with their children in understanding technology.
* Government regulation of AI should prioritize human dignity.

This week on Ask the Pastor features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Ben Watson. Watson is a former NFL tight end as well as a writer, speaker, and activist. He is a college football studio analyst with the SEC Network, and he serves as VP of Strategic Relationships with the Human Coalition, one of the largest pro-life and pro-women’s organizations in the country.


A glimpse inside this episode:

* The pro-life movement is fundamentally about justice.
* Children have inherent value from the moment of conception.
* Roe v. Wade's overturn is a step, but not the end of the fight.
* Compassion is crucial in discussing pro-life issues.
* Voting is just one aspect of activism.
* Both political sides lack a complete solution for human flourishing.
* Church unity is essential despite political differences.
* Engagement in the pro-life movement can take many forms.
* Believers should seek to understand each other's perspectives.
* Faith should guide political identity over party affiliation.

Ask the Pastor is continuing our Gospel & Politics series. This week features a conversation between Pastor J.D. Greear and Dr. Ed Stetzer. Stetzer is a leading thinker in his field and has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches; trained pastors and church planters on six continents; earned two master’s degrees and two doctorates.


A glimpse inside this episode:

* The cultural moment feels different than prior cultural moments.
* Christians must engage politically without compromising their faith.
* Character in leadership is crucial for effective governance.
* Clarity in beliefs is essential for kindness in discourse.
* Diverse perspectives exist within the Christian community regarding political issues.
* The church's mission should not pause due to political tensions.
* Engaging as winsome ambassadors is vital in today's culture.Christians should be cautious of being influenced by media narratives.
* Political engagement should be informed by biblical teachings.
* The importance of unity in essentials and liberty in non-essentials.

This week's Ask the Pastor episode kicks off our brand new series, Gospel & Politics. This series will feature Pastor J.D. with other respected leaders talking about how we can integrate both the gospel and politics into our lives this election season. 

A glimpse inside this episode:

* Secular beliefs often have Christian foundations, and Christians should recognize the influence of their faith in shaping moral values.
* The witness of the church is not about being good people, but about recognizing our need for Jesus and sharing the gospel with others.
* The decline in church attendance presents an evangelistic opportunity, as many people are searching for meaning and purpose.
* Christians should engage in politics and vote according to their Christian values, while also recognizing the limitations of legislation in enforcing personal beliefs.
* Christian engagement in politics can have a significant impact, and Christians should strive for a holistic understanding of scripture in shaping political discourse.

In this final edition of Ask the Pastor's Greatest Hits, Pastor J.D. talks about the pain of unanswered prayer and the realities of prayer for the Christian.

A glimpse inside this episode:

This is a tricky question. I’ve often heard that behind every question is a questioner. When we’re dealing with unanswered prayer, the Bible has a lot to say. But the heart of the questioner matters a lot here. More often than not, when someone asks me about unanswered prayer, it’s not an academic question for them. It’s a question coming from a place of deep hurt. They asked God for healing in their life—and it didn’t happen. They asked God to reconcile a relationship—but the other person still left. They asked God to work in their kid’s life—but it’s been years and there’s no sign of that child returning. 

So first off, I want to say, when it seems like God isn’t answering prayer, that’s legitimately painful. It makes us question God’s goodness. It makes us wonder if he’s real. Those are the kinds of doubts that all of us, at one point or another in our walk of faith, deal with. I’ve wrestled with them. Every great saint has wrestled with them. So if you’re in that spot, don’t despair. Walk through that difficult question with God.

And here, I think, is the best road forward: If we’re walking in fellowship with the Spirit, there isn’t technically any such thing as unanswered prayer. (Now, this is different than the way God responds to those outside of Christ: He may hear them, but he hasn’t promised to.) With believers, though, the Apostle John reminds us, “This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14–15). If we are walking with God, we can be sure we have his ear. 

Whatever your situation, whatever your request, if you are God’s child, he’s listening. 

Now, does that mean he says “Yes” to everything you ask? Of course not. At times, since God’s wisdom is so much greater than our own, he re-directs our answer. Or he sometimes tells us to wait. Or sometimes he simply says, “No.” 

But saying “No” doesn’t mean he’s being cruel. As Jesus taught, a good father gives his children food like eggs and fish, not dangerous animals like scorpions and snakes (cf. Luke 11:12–13). The point is that even earthly parents withhold things from their children—but that withholding is a result of their love, not a lack of it. 

Sometimes the exercise of God’s love means he gives us what we would have asked for if we knew what he knew. (I think I first heard that from Tim Keller.) What feels like unanswered prayer is actually God answering according to the wisdom and love of the Father.

In this edition of Ask the Pastor's Greatest Hits, Pastor J.D. shares how God called him to the mission field before calling him to be a pastor of a church that sends and supplies the mission field in extravagant ways.

A glimpse inside this episode:

When God called me to be a pastor, he did so by first calling me to the mission field. I spent the first two years of my ministry as a church planter among Muslims overseas. God never relinquished that call to missions; he showed me that my role in it is to be a part of a church that sends and supplies the mission field.

Even though my primary role in the Great Commission is now as an equipper, it is always such a joy to get back on the front lines. Sure, it can be frustrating not being able to speak the language. But I share Christ more, person to person, in a two-week span than I probably do the entire rest of the year here in the States. It is my identity there, the entire reason I had go short term now. So when an opportunity comes up, I simply share the gospel. I wasn’t “Pastor J.D.” there. I was just “J.D. the guy talking about Jesus.” I want that to last: I want to just be the “Jesus guy” even here.

In this edition of Ask the Pastor's Greatest Hits, Pastor J.D. talks how to live in the world but not of the world.

A glimpse inside this episode:

Who do you feel the closest kinship with? Who do you spend most of your time with? The lesson from Lot's life is that you have to make up your mind from the beginning: Who do you really want to be? If it's with the world, go there 100%. If it's with God, go with him 100%.

What do you love? What does that say about what your heart really desires?

Are you trying to get as close to the world as you can without becoming it?

So how can I be around "Sodom" but not make the mistake Lot did? It has to do with who you choose to make your close friends and your community. Those are the ones you become like—just like Proverbs 13:20 tells us.

The most miserable person in the world is the half-committed Christian.

In this edition of Ask the Pastor's Greatest Hits, Pastor J.D. talks about whether the legal use of marijuana is wise or helpful for Christians.

A glimpse inside this episode:

In the past, this was an easy enough question, because marijuana was illegal. It wasn’t a “gray area” for Christians. The drug was illegal, so it was off-limits to those who are “subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1). But as recreational marijuana becomes legal in more states, some Christians are having conversations about whether there could be an acceptable use.

* While the Bible never mentions marijuana, it does prohibit intoxication. If one hit of marijuana makes you high, there’s no way to smoke it and obey the Bible’s commands against drunkenness. No drug should not move us to the point of losing control. But that’s much of the intrigue and mystique of marijuana.
* Furthermore, marijuana has been demonstrated to have a lot of addictive qualities, more so than alcohol and nicotine, and Paul says: “Though all things are lawful, but I will not be ruled by them.”
* So, on the whole, it’s just hard to see how this could ever be wise. And that’s the wisest question: Is it helpful?
* I will add: marijuana use makes you demonstrably dumber. I mean, so does watching the Bachelor or 5–6 hours of golf. But it’s not a helpful variable in this equation.

One deeper issue: the effects of marijuana work against the kind of community we should seek in the body of Christ.

In Ephesians, Paul contrasts being drunk with wine vs. filled with the Spirit. That’s not an accidental comparison. Both are ways you deal with stress and problems. Wine (and we could add marijuana) dull your awareness of reality. The Spirit heightens your awareness of an alternate reality–the promises of the gospel and the sovereignty of God. And you speak those to one another in the church, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

* Some who speak from experience say that getting high “pulls you within yourself, causes you to become more disengaged, not only from people, but also from life in general.”
* One says: “Before I was a Christian, I smoked marijuana to . . . disengage from both people and issues.”
* One guy said: “By causing users to disengage from life, marijuana works against the love of neighbor Jesus commands. Christians seeking to honor God with their lives would do well to avoid it.

In this edition of Ask the Pastor's Greatest Hits, Pastor J.D. shares four important things to keep in mind when responding to instances of sexual abuse.

A glimpse into this episode:

This is an extremely important question, so much so that after becoming SBC president, the first thing I did was appoint a Sexual Abuse Advisory Group to lead our denomination. They have been leading in dozens of ways—one of the biggest is they’re developing a curriculum to help churches answer this very question. Churches should be a safe haven for the vulnerable, so we need to do everything we can to make our churches safe for survivors and safe from abuse.

A few preliminary thoughts:

* Don’t be shocked it’s happening.


* Prioritize the protection of victims, not the guarding of your reputations.


* Your goal is not to meet the minimal requirements--but as a shepherd to protect your flock.

This is just the start of an answer, but here are four important things to keep in mind:

* Disclosing sexual abuse takes an enormous amount of courage, so we should honor that.

This may be the least understood aspect of sexual abuse—it results in a huge loss of voice for the victim. Abuse is usually followed by threats not to say anything, and that’s usually what happens.

What you need to know is that the first time you hear about an instance of abuse, chances are the person talking to you has been carrying this for years. They’ve been terrified about what people will think. They’ve assumed they wouldn’t be believed. To speak up takes bravery.

Now, there are important responses and action steps after you hear of abuse. But don’t be so quick to rush to the action step that you forget your first response—listening to a person, made in God’s image, reveal one of the most hurtful experiences of their lives. Listen, listen, listen.

* If you know of a report of sexual abuse against a minor, you are legally obligated to alert the authorities.

This is not a “Matthew 18” situation. This is a “Romans 13” situation. Because certain sins are not only immoral; they are also illegal. This is never clearer than in the case of sexual abuse against minors.

If you know of sexual abuse against a minor, no matter who you are, no matter who they are, your first response is to alert the authorities. Call CPS or call the police. You may not know all of the best next steps. But they do, and you need to bring them in. The safety of more children than you know may be on the line.

* If an abuser has access to minors at your church, remove the access immediately—and, again, call the authorities.

Statistics here are horrifying. Those who abuse minors don’t just do it once or twice. They do it repeatedly, even after they’ve been caught (if given the opportunity). So if you know about one case, you need to see that as dozens of more potential cases. This isn’t a gray area: Bring in the authorities.

We need to reject any understanding of grace that puts the vulnerable in harm’s way by giving abusers a chance to do it again

* Help connect the survivor to other resources.

If someone has disclosed to you, that’s an honor. And you will have a key role in their healing process. But you need to know you shouldn’t be shouldering this alone.

Questions are going to come up—pretty early—that are best processed through a counseling relationship. So one of the best things you can do for a victim is to get them connected to a counselor. This isn’t a handoff—you need to remind the victim that you are still there and want to process everything with them—but it allows other people more trained in abuse care to do what they do best.

Conclusion: It’s a gospel issue

In this edition of Ask the Pastor's Greatest Hits, Pastor J.D. talks about some key advantages and disadvantages to each type of schooling and how Scripture guides our decision-making.

A glimpse inside this episode:

My friend Joby Martin says if you want some entertainment, get a home-school mama and a public school mama together and ask what the best educational approach is and then just get some popcorn and sit back and prepare for a UFC bout.

* Home-school mom be like: Sure, you can send your kid to the place where they outlaw prayer like in the times of Nebuchadnezzar and teach your kid that he came from monkeys and where he might get stabbed in the face by a gang member… that’s fine … but we love our son and want him to develop a biblical worldview so we homeschool. Statistically they are more likely to walk with Jesus if you do that, so clearly homeschooling is the godly choice.”
* Public-school mom: Yeah, that’s cool. We just want our kids to have things like…  social skills. We think it’s cool that Timmy can churn his own butter and make his own clothes but we want our son to know things like … math. And we think our kids need to learn how to deal with the temptation of the world and not just run from it. After all, Jesus promised he would protect us in the world, not to vacate from it—and if all the Christians flee the public school, where is that going to leave society? How can we be salt and light to the world if we vacate it? Keeping our kids in public school is an act of love for our neighbor.

First, Romans 14. Chapter 14 and the first half of 15 are one extended discussion about how to get along with people in the church who disagree with you on something you feel passionate about.

Second: We’ve done all three: private school, home school, and public school and saw advantages in each.

* 3 in private now, 1 in public
* (Veronica says she couldn’t homeschool all 4 at once because the Bible clearly says Thou shalt not murder. And my wife would’ve killed my kids if they were home-schooled.)

Third, I’ll say: It really is ‘by kid.’

* There haven’t been a lot of studies on this, but those that are out there indicate that there’s not a significant difference in homeschool and public regarding whether the child adopts the faith if the parent is involved.  "The data also suggest that family climate, especially faithful religious devotion by both parents, delivered in a context of loving nurture, is far more important than where a child goes to school."
* Parental involvement is more key than school choice.
* That’s similar to the studies on how much doing devotions impacts a kid. It is the quality of the relationship more than the amount of the teaching that makes the difference. Here it is: Sociologist Vern Bengston says in his book Families and Faith that studies conclusively show that the quality of the child’s relationship to the father is the single-most important factor in whether the child adopts the faith of the parents.

What are advantages to private/home schooling?

* Studies show that both homeschooled kids and private school kids usually do slightly better on standardized testing than public school students.
* Private school students may get more intentionally-tailored Bible teaching and Christian curriculum (takes some pressure off), and homeschool parents have all the freedom they want to disciple their kids and teach them the Bible as a part of everyday school.
* Homeschooling (and private schooling to some extent) allows you the opportunity to tailor your child’s education to that child.
* If in a public school, it can be difficult to control what they’re exposed to at an early age.
* Public school curriculum can be notoriously harsh to Christianity--you’ve got to do due diligenc...

Show Notes:

* The answer to this question comes from the lips of Jesus, the most compassionate person ever to live.
* Marriage is a covenant you make with your spouse before God. God created it in Genesis 2 as a union where two literally become one, and death is the only thing that can dissolve that covenant (with a couple of death-related exceptions which we'll talk about).
* So, is it ever OK to divorce? Jesus says in Matthew 19 that you can do it in the case of adultery. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, is going to expand that to say desertion by an unbeliever. Why are those exceptions?
* The logic is very important. In the case of both desertion/abandonment and adultery, they both kill the covenant. That's why I called them "death-related" exceptions earlier.
* So, you say, what about the case of abuse? Or what if the spouse is involved in some illegal activity that they refuse to stop and it's putting our family at risk?
* First, if you are in an abusive situation, you need to get yourself to a place of safety immediately. Talk to your church, let them help, or if you're not feeling safe reach out to the Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE.
* Second, I would argue that the logic of Paul and Jesus' exceptions applies also to divorce in the case of a spouse who is doing something that makes them unable to be lived with and puts the family in danger. Creating in abusive environment also kills the marriage covenant, and you are no longer bound to it.

Lean not on your ability as a parent; lean on God’s grace as the hope for your child.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Show Notes:

* We should be as intentional with our families as we are with our jobs.
* There is a sense that, on one level, I as a parent affect the faith journey of my kids.
* But on another level, there is a limit to the responsibility parents have for the choices our kids make. God has made them as individuals. A lot of godly parents will have a child who wanders. And it's not because they did something wrong.
* Think about it: God was a perfect Father. And the only two humans he "fathered" directly (Adam and Eve) both rebelled. It wasn't because of deficiencies in God's parenting.
* There are decisions only our kids can make. Even under the best of circumstances, they can decide to pursue things that are contrary to what God would have for them.
* Pray for your kids. Speak truth to them. But ultimately, know that God wants us to lean into his grace.

God cares more for our kids than we do and he can pursue our kids in ways that we can't.

Lean not on your ability as a parent; lean on God's grace as the hope for your child.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Pastor J.D. answers a question about what it really means to be a Christian.

Show Notes:

* Everyone has a different assumption of what it means to be a Christian. In the Western world, a lot of people have the assumption that if you’re not a Jew, not a Muslim, and not an atheist, you must be a Christian.
* Some people think it means a certain amount of “religiosity”—a certain amount of church attendance, a desire to live by the Golden Rule, to do good to others, etc. The problem there is, “how much is enough?” At what point do you become good enough to be a Christian?
* There are two defining marks of a Christian to point out:

* First, a Christian is born again. To be born again means that you’ve come to a point where you recognize that your sin has separated you from God and there’s nothing you can do that would ever make you good enough to be accepted by God. Then Jesus, in your place, lived a life you were supposed to live, died a death you were condemned to die, and was then resurrected from the dead. He wants to take away the penalty of your sin by applying his death on the cross to your account and put the new life of his Spirit into you.
* Second, a Christian is a disciple of Jesus—which means you follow him, do what he did, live like he did, and obey his commandments. You devote your life to him. That’s what it means to make him Lord of your life.



Jesus came to seek and save the lost, which means we should live our lives as disciple-making disciples.

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This summer we are looking at some of the most popular Ask the Pastor episodes over the years. This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question of whether or not you can lose your salvation.

Show Notes:

* At first glance, Hebrews 6 seems to say that not only can you lose your salvation, but once you do, you can never get it back! So what does it mean?
* This is important: I believe the writer of Hebrews is giving a general, pastoral warning to his congregation rather than attempting to delineate how the processes of regeneration, justification and eternal security work together.
* So, the warning here is a statement to believers and unbelievers alike about the importance of the gospel. Hopefully, it will rouse unbelievers out of their slumber. To the believer, we know that God will use it to keep his believers tethered closely to the gospel. Warnings like this one are one of God’s means of keeping believers awake to the gospel.
* If you persevere to the end, that proves you had the salvation you could never lose. If you don’t, it proves you never had that faith to begin with.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This summer we are looking at some of the most popular Ask the Pastor episodes over the years. This week, Pastor J.D. discusses Can a Christian Be Possessed by a Demon?.

Show Notes:

* It depends on what you mean by "demon possessed." It's never used in the Greek language that I know of, and it's not in the Bible. The word in the Bible is "demonized," which actually broadens it a little bit.
* So, if you mean, "Can a demon so overtake a Christian so that they have no will left and no ability to choose right from wrong," the answer is definitely no.
* But if you mean, can a demon influence us or afflict us, Scripture I think indicates yes. But their entry into our lives comes from listening to the lies Satan tells us.

We've got to "talk back" to Satan's lies with the truths of Scripture and the gospel.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question!

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This summer we are looking at some of the most popular Ask the Pastor episodes over the years. This week, Pastor J.D. discusses how to honor a toxic parent.

A glimpse inside this episode:

* This brings us to one of the "big 10" — the 10 Commandments. There are a couple of things to understand starting with the 10 commandments are divided into two sections. The first four deal primarily with our relationship with God. The last five deal with our relationship to each other. Honoring your parents is the "hinge" in the middle, so which group does it belong to? Well, both. It's the bridge between the two categories.
* When we're young, our parents stand in for God. By submitting to our parents, we're learning to submit to God.
* To "honor" your parents means to recognize parenthood as the temporary stand-in for God that it is, and you respect your parents accordingly. When you're young, that means obeying them, and for your whole life it means respecting them.
* If your situation is abusive, you need to get yourself out. Call 800-799-SAFE, the domestic violence hotline.
* If your situation is not abusive, understand that you can respect the institution your parents represent even when you don't represent them as individuals. When honoring your parents, you are honoring the God behind your parents whose authority is represented by them.

Honoring your parents is really a means to honoring God.

Lean not on your ability as a parent; lean on God's grace as the hope for your child.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask The Pastor hub to submit your question!

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This summer we are looking at some of the most popular Ask the Pastor episodes over the years. To start, Pastor J.D. discusses what’s important to keep in mind when it comes to leaving a church and choosing one.

A glimpse inside this episode:

* The no-commitment consumer culture is not appropriate for the church.

Consumer culture works for some things. But not for church. Church is a family: The best parts of church come from that; it’s not a show. It is better to be really connected at a mediocre church than partially committed at the best one.

* I only have one life to live, and I want to invest it where I get the most return. 


* Hearing the Word.
* Community that makes you flourish
* Maximizing gifts: Don’t be a “Lone Ranger Christian,” the one faithful voice in a dead church. You’ll be much more effective working side-by-side with like-minded believers than you will trying to effect change on your own.
* This matters even more to me now as a father. I want my kids to grow up in a place where they will see and experience firsthand the best community of believers I can offer to them. Gospel-centered ministry is an absolute priority; the spiritual health of my family is too important to have them in a place without it.

What are mistakes you've seen people make as they approach this decision? 

* Always thinking about your needs is a sign of immaturity. Paul tells the Ephesian believers to “grow up” (Eph 4:1-16), which he defines as learning to use your spiritual gift in the church, not being fed and having your needs met each week. It is infants and toddlers, not adults, whose primary concern in being fed and having their bottoms wiped by others. Ironically, some of the “seasoned” Christians who complain the most about “not getting anything out of their church” act more like toddlers than mature believers! The church is not about you. This is important for any church, because your church, no matter what it starts like, cannot remain perpetually “the hottest show in town.” Someone younger, cooler, and flashier is right now preparing the next best thing. So, we’ll have ups and downs, cold seasons and hot ones.
* Thinking you can turn it around. If you are not part of the lead pastoral team, you very likely will not be able to turn the ship around. Pray and wait.
* Waiting too long. You get the greatest return on relationships when you invest yourself in one place for many years.

I’m not sure how to give you a “litmus test” for when to stay and when to leave. I have known people who felt called by God to stay in a dying place and believe God for its resurrection and actually saw that happen. I’ve known others who tried that and, because they were not in a place where they could really effect the change they desire, “wasted” some great years in a dying organization. I’ve known others who left a dying church and went on to serve God somewhere else, and were greatly blessed in the process. And I’ve known still others who abandoned ship when they should have stayed.

If you think there’s a possibility of change, I’d say stay and make it happen. When you see that there is not, invest your life elsewhere.

Be committed: There’s a difference in how the chicken and the pig contribute to your eggs and sausage breakfast. The chicken makes a contribution; the pig is committed. Be a pig.

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., as we’re recording gambling was just legalized in North Carolina this month, like it has been in 37 other states. That has us wondering – is gambling a sin?

—

J.D.: Some of our long-time listeners might remember us talking about this 2 years ago, but we thought given its popularity, we’d revisit it. So, look, the reality is that gambling is a HUGE deal right now, especially for young people. If you don’t understand, here are a few numbers:

At least 20% of the American population has or does participate in sports betting.
More than 30 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds nationwide do.
The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) conducted a study on college campuses just last year:

• 58% of the respondents (college students) have participated in at least one sports betting activity, though the NCAA includes fantasy sports in its definition of sports betting.




The NCAA examined what it determined risky behaviors, including betting a few times a week or daily; betting $50 or more on a typical bet, or losing more than $500 betting sports in a single day. The survey found that 16% of 18-22-year-olds had engaged in at least one of the risky behaviors.


The National Council estimates 3 to 4 percent of the population, about 9 million Americans, experience “problem gambling.”

And those that do have a 20 percent higher risk of suicide.



So is it morally wrong to gamble?



Gambling can seem harmless. You throw a little bit of money on a sporting event, on a slot machine, or on a lottery ticket… what’s the harm in that?
I am going to draw distinction… Vegas type stuff and a $20 office pool
The issue of gambling is not small in our society. 
Gambling is at least a $44 billion dollar industry in the US – and that’s just the legal gambling, to say nothing of off-the-books gambling.In fact, as more and more states legalize gambling, it’s getting worse.
Some studies say up to 10% (6-9%) of young adults experience problems related to gambling.
But gambling has some big moral ramifications. 
3 primary problems with it: 

First, it goes against the work ethic in Scripture. 

The Bible has a lot to say about honorable work. There’s always chance, but work creates value: win/win. Gambling by definition is win/lose.
What about the stock market? It’s “risky,” you can win big or lose big. Parable of talents, win big and Jesus commended it. Yes, but even there you are adding value. There’s another kind of playing the stock market that is more speculative and more like gambling.
Al Mohler says: “Gambling severs the dignity of work from the hope of financial gain, offering the hope of riches without labor, and reward without dignity.”








Second, the gambling industry intentionally takes advantage of the poor. 






Grudem: Every single study shows that the largest group of gamblers are those in the lowest financial brackets.It’s no accident that there are so many lottery ticket outlets in low-income areas. 
One study I read shows that “problem gambling” – which we mentioned earlier – is twice as likely to be an issue for those in the lowest-income areas than it is anywhere else. 
There’s a certain desperation to turn around their financial situation, and the gambling industry knows that and plays into it. Any honest politician will tell you that lotteries draw most of their money from the poor, seducing them out of their money on the chance of getting rich






Third, gambling is addictive.

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., some people feel like, because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, we should never have some of these big, mental health struggles like depression or anxiety. The question is, can Christians be depressed? Or if someone is depressed, is that an indication that they’re not saved?

—

J.D.: Matt, that’s a heavy question. Let me start here: Lamentations 3:1-8, written by the prophet Jeremiah, one of the most well-known prophets in the Bible:

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago … though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.

No light. No hope. That’s how Jeremiah felt, and maybe you can relate. The “he” that Jeremiah is talking about is God. Maybe you’ve also felt like God is not listening—or, even more, you wonder, “God, are you behind this terrible circumstance? At the very least, you’re not doing anything to stop it.”

Jeremiah goes on to say, “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord’ … My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me” (vs. 17–20).

As you read those verses, you may think, “Is this the Bible? Shouldn’t an editor have weeded this out? This is Jeremiah, after all—the prophet of God! Jeremiah, this is not you at your best. Why don’t you take a nap and a shower and take another swing at this tomorrow?”

See, it’s easy to think that what we need is more positive and encouraging psalms like David’s about the Lord being our Shepherd and still waters and cups running over and stuff like that. That’s what the people like. That’s what sells.

But God put the book of Lamentations in the Bible, even though it’s depressing and most people will never memorize it, because he wants those of you who suffer in the darkness to know that he knows how you feel. And, like Jeremiah, it’s OK for you to express those emotions to God.

One of our Summit church planters tells the story of when he first felt called to ministry, how he resigned from his job in Tennessee and moved his family to North Carolina to attend seminary, only to have everything fall apart. His marriage came within inches of destruction; he went into bankruptcy. Keep in mind, this is one of the smartest people I know, and yet it still got that bad. But the worst part, he said, was holding his newborn son as he died in their arms. He said, “I had no words. All I could ask God during that season was, ‘Why?’ I didn’t want to talk about God or preach the words of God. I only wanted to rage against God. All I’ve done is try to follow him, and this is how he treats me?”

Many believers have gone through dark chapters and thought the same things as Jeremiah, but they’ve suppressed those emotions, telling themselves, “Real Christians don’t ever feel like this.”

Matt, I’d say we agree on people like Jeremiah and Charles Spurgeon being Christians.

And yet the prophet Jeremiah said his soul was depressed within him.
Spurgeon told his congregation, “I have spent more days shut up in depression than probably anybody else here.” He was said by many to be the greatest preacher to ever live, and he frequently considered quitting the ministry because he was so depressed.
Alright Matt, you’re doing well so far. Last one: Martin Luther, one of the most famous church leaders and theologians of all time. Real Christian?
Well he went through times so dark that his wife would remove al...

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., is cremation (as opposed to burial in a casket) wrong?

—

J.D.: Well, this one’s actually a little more interesting than you might think. If you’ve never thought much about it, you probably (like most people) just think about the fact that when someone dies, they basically have two options—burial in a casket or by cremation, where your ashes are put into an urn. Some people bury those urns, some keep them around…

In fact, a 2020 study showed that 56 percent of people who died in America were cremated, which is more than double what that figure was 20 years prior.
That’s a far cry from how things used to be, when in old England, burial by grave/casket was known as a “Christian burial” and cremation was something only the Vikings did.

You might be surprised to learn that some Christians have strong views against cremation. I’ll lay out that view in just a second. But as we have this conversation, I want to make a few things clear up front because I realize many of you have very dear, important people in your lives that you’ve lost that you know have been cremated.

So, am I saying that what they chose to do is morally wrong and against some biblical command?

No, I am not. I see nowhere in Scripture that gives a clear edict that you must be buried in such a manner that your body is preserved.


Am I saying—like some people claim—that cremation somehow interferes with the resurrection of the Saints when Jesus returns, ruining a Christians chances of eternal life because their earthly bodies weren’t handled properly after death?

Of course not—that’s nonsense! Our bodies are important, but not nearly as important as our souls.
And besides—do you really think resurrection after cremation would be “too hard” for God?


Finally, I of course don’t believe that families who perhaps have to make a decision on how to bury someone and opt for cremation over burial love that deceased person any less than a family that chooses burial.

So, if you have loved ones who have passed away and been cremated, you can rest easy and of course we mean no disrespect. But I do want to point out the other side of this conversation.

John Piper is one of the most prominent voices on this. 

He points out that the Bible teaches us the importance of our earthly bodies—that they’re not prisons for the soul like the ancient Greeks taught.
“Christianity has always viewed the body as essential to full humanity so that the life to come has primarily been seen as the resurrection of the body in glorious eternal life.”  John Piper
He argues that ​​Paul’s understanding of burial is that this was a picture of being “sown” in the ground like a seed that will sprout with wildly superior beauty at the resurrection, when the graves are opened at the coming of Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:37, 42-44


He also points out how fire always has a negative connotation to us as humans in Scripture – especially when talking about life-after-death, and so, to end your time on earth consumed by fire is a symbol that doesn’t align with Scripture’s portrayal of the believer’s afterlife.

Now, while arguing all of this, John Piper also calls for churches and pastors to create a culture where expensive, extravagant funerals (and weddings!) are NOT the norm.

There’s a recognition that burial by casket is more expensive than cremation.
He even says he feels like churches should help families with these extra costs—not necessarily through a line-item in the church budget but by perhaps establishing an external fund fueled by generous donors.

You say, “Ok, well, what he’s talking about is all symbolic and has no impact on where ...

Show Notes:

Matt: Welcome. J.D., here’s a softball… What are your thoughts on the 2024 election? It’s now officially decided through primary votes that we’ll have a re-match of Trump v. Biden in November.

J.D.:

We as the church didn’t respond well last time… we are getting a gracious mulligan
I have a handful of pieces of counsel to that end, 

Let me give a CAVEAT before I share them: Some of you will try to interpret these thoughts as me urging you to vote one way or the other—oh, he means that we should definitely not for this person or that we definitely should vote for this one. That is precisely what I’m not doing. Some of this counsel will pull in different directions. Politics is an imperfect process—we are trying to hold different things in tension and weigh out what is overall the wisest or most moral course for our country.


So, my counsel to Republicans: 

 Don’t equivocate about character. Righteousness exults a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
Don’t equate your secondary strategies with biblical imperatives. Don’t draw straight lines where they should be dotted lines. 
What is your proactive solution to help the poor (if you feel like the great society was a failure, where the greatest argument against progressive politics is the state of progressive cities, what is your solution? 


My counsel to Democrats: 

There are several things in your platform that are expressly evil. Speak out about them. 
Be careful not to equivocate about things that are not equal. What I mean by that is you hear some say, “Oh yeah, well we get abortion wrong but Republicans get poverty relief wrong, as if those things we equal. Many Republicans, whether they are right or wrong, believe that the economic policies they embrace are what’s ultimately best for the poor—they might be wrong, but abortion is the state-sanctioned murder of the unborn. It is wrong to equivocate and act like those things are morally the same. They are not. There may indeed be reasons in certain elections that you think make voting left or abstaining from voting is the wisest choice, but be careful of moral equivocation. 
Realize that someone can share your compassion for the poor, but disagree with your methodology. 


John 17 matters. It was one of the last things Jesus prayed before he gave his life, as he prayed for the unity of the church. I realized that there are things that are deeply emotional. There are things that are clear issues of justice, and we need to talk about them thoroughly and passionately, and we need to never compromise where the Bible teaches clearly. But I also realized that the same Savior that gave us these commandments and the Savior that gave us these moral imperatives, He also He also prayed for the unity of the church and said that this is what he wanted. This is how the world would know him. The apostle Paul, taking a cue from him, was willing to say about a lot of things that, you know what, I know Paul felt like my convictions are correct in this area, talking about eating meat, you know, Romans 14, but he would not hold that position or push that position in ways that disrupted the unity of the church unnecessarily.

Matt:  Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to check out YouTube and subscribe @J.D.Greear.

 

Show Notes:

Matt: Welcome. 

—
Today we have a question today from someone who sent this in named Ronnie. She asked, "Is modesty a biblical virtue or is it a relic of the patriarchy?"

J.D.: So for our listeners that are like, what's really the question here behind the question? I grew up in the, the purity culture. Josh Harris was, wrote the famous book I Kissed Dating Goodbye and the emphasis was on, girl you have to take care of your brother's headspace. And basically it was almost presented as if the guy can't help but think of you as nothing but a sex object. And so dress in a way that keeps him from thinking about that all the time. And it's not that the modesty piece wasn't important, it just left out what is even a bigger issue—the guy needs to not see women in that category. He needs to see them as fellow human beings made in the image of God. The extreme version of modesty culture was it kind of heaped all kinds of shame and responsibility onto the girls' side for what really was the guy's problem. That is unhelpful and untrue. It's even dangerous as abuse can get blamed on what she was just asking for because of what she was wearing.

There was some correction that took place to that purity culture that so strongly emphasized modesty that I think was a helpful correction. But, you know, as with a lot of things we have to be careful not to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater when it comes to modesty. And so what I'm talking with my kids, my family, when I'm talking with people in my life about modesty.

Two tension points:

1.) Style's change from generation to generation. Every generation sees what the next one wears as immodest. What is considered a modest bathing suit today would be considered scandalous 60 or 70 years ago.

2.) The second thing is that modesty is a genuine biblical principle. We are taking into account what other people are thinking about us. And so I tell my kids, there's two anchor points when it comes to how you dress. First of all, what does your dress say about you? What does what you wear say about you? What does it draw attention to? Does it emphasize and flaunt the sexual parts of you that really ought to be reserved for a marriage partner?

Now again, it's not your fault if somebody's looking at you and lusting after you. We're not saying that, but on the other side of that truth is you can dress in a way that certainly draws attention to that. And if it's drawing attention to that and emphasizing that, you should ask yourself why you're doing that. And is that really what God wants you, is that the most important part of you to present to the world?

The second anchor point I always say is what effect does what you wear have on other people? And again, I'll just say it once more. I'm not saying it's your fault that if they think of you in those objectifying ways, but we do recognize that how we dress can have an effect on somebody else and it can make them think about certain things. And I do want to make it easy for people. And I think a believer should be thinking about that. How can I make it easier for my brothers and sisters in Christ to not have one more thing that they're trying to avoid looking at or thinking about because it just makes it too easy for them to get into not a good headspace.

Matt: I'm just kind of curious, because when we talk about modesty, it is typically our women dressing modestly, but it's interesting. I remember back when I did college ministry, eight or nine years ago, on summer project, we had all these rules about what people were allowed to wear. And I remember somebody in the end of summer feedback form asked something like,"I don't understand why you have all these rules for what women can wear, but you let this guy wear a tank top up on stage while he's teaching every week."

Show Notes:

Matt: Welcome

J.D., you’ve heard from a member at The Summit Church’s own Chapel Hill Campus who asked you how to share the gospel with a staunch atheist, which we felt like would be a great topic for this week’s episode.

—

J.D.: Yeah Matt, I’m sure many of us have been in a situation like this where God lays someone on your heart to share the gospel with, but you know they’re firm in their belief—or unbelief—as an atheist. And it can feel like, “Where do I even begin to share the love of God with them when they don’t believe that any sort of god exists?”

A lot of prayer: pray 1st, 2nd and 3rd
Don’t overwhelm them. Don’t talk about it all the time
Pray for opportunities to show extraordinary grace (Acts 16)
Invite them to read the Bible. Heb 4:12: Charles Spurgeon talked about the Bible like a caged lion: all we have to do is let it out because who’s ever heard of defending a lion? Read the Bible… 
After you’ve had a couple of intentional conversations, shift more to answering questions 1 Peter 3:15. Trust the Spirit of God to do the work and think of it more like fishing.

Now, that said… 

Of course, I do think it’s wise to be prepared for conversations like these, and I’ll try to be as practical as I can in that.
Theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer talked about “taking the roof off” of various worldviews that people might hold. 
Everyone has some kind of worldview – even an atheist – and Schaeffer meant that a person’s worldview is kind of like a house that they construct. But there’s only one “blueprint” that can effectively explain all aspects of life, support all the evidence in the world, and be lived out consistently with all of that, and that’s a Christian worldview. All other worldviews are defective in one way or another.
So to “take the roof off” of an atheist’s worldview, I’d ask questions. 




On that topic, Randy Newman has a great book called Questioning Evangelism, where he talks about evangelizing through questions like these. He even points out how often Jesus asked questions of skeptics and people curious about his ministry.
One of the very best questions we can ask people in these conversations, Newman writes, is very simple: “Really?”

Questions like, “Do you really believe we came from nothing, and yet life is so meticulously and miraculously held together?” Or, “Do you really believe that nothing happens when we die?”






Gavin Ortlund, Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t




Christianity versus naturalism in relation to the basic elements that all stories have: origins, meaning, conflict, and hope. The constant question will be: Which is telling us a better story—a story that better accounts for the strangeness, the incompleteness, the brokenness, and the beauty of our world?
A Christian apologist once remarked to me that on university campuses thirty years ago he was asked more questions about Christianity’s truth (Does God exist? Did Jesus rise from the dead? etc.); today he is asked more questions about Christianity’s goodness (Is the church intolerant? Are Christians homophobic? etc.).



—

Matt:  Next up we're answering the question, "Does Modesty Matter?" Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to check out YouTube and subscribe @J.D.Greear.

 

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., this week we’re pivoting from our series on spiritual disciplines and we’ll be tackling some one-off questions our listeners have been sending us for the next few weeks. One of the topics we’ve had several people ask about is how to process what’s going on in Israel and their conflict with Gaza…

—

J.D.: Yeah, Matt, wow. Well, there are a lot of very intense views on this subject. And that makes sense, because it’s a topic that combines worldview with theology—particularly eschatology, or the part of theology that concerns the end times and modern politics.

And we won’t get into a full blown “end times” episode here, but we do need a little help understanding some of the terms that get thrown around. 

“Premillennialism” is the belief that part of God’s plan for the end times involves a 1000 year reign of Jesus that is still to come, and a physical Israel is a part of that.
The relevance to this discussion is this: Many premillennialists viewed the fact that Israel has their own nation – which happened in 1948, in case you failed your history class—as at least a partial fulfillment of biblical prophecy. God was reinstituting the nation.
And that’s led to the embrace of the Zionist movement, which, practically speaking, means that anything that advances Israel’s interests is correct and functionally, means you give them an automatic pass on most questions. Their destiny is to rule the world, at least that part of it, so anything they do toward that end we’re in support of.
Let me say this clearly: that’s not true. Whatever your view of eschatology, it’s never appropriate to wink at injustice. Whatever God does, we never need to “do evil evil may that good may come.” Where Israel, as a nation, commits crimes or acts unjustly, we should unhesitatingly call it out. We should always be on the side of justice.

Now, as a pastor, I typically don’t wade into the finer points of politics or world events—neither called nor competent—and I’m not going to do that here. What I do is talk about the principles that undergird our approach, and that’s what I want to do here: to talk about is a dangerous narrative that has entered the convo that I think it’s important for Christians to identify and reject, and that is: 

That modern-day Israel has no right to the land they’re currently occupying; Israel is basically an occupying power--like Britain was in India, or even like European colonists were in parts of N America or Australia—and because they are an occupying power, whatever Palestinians do to get them out is ok. This is a decolonization project. The myth is that Palestinians were living happily in the land until GB came in and forced the colonization in 1948. And then some even like to say that the Jews there are white and it’s another example of white colonization of POC. 

But that’s a completely fallacious comparison. 
First, the Jewish presence in the land stretches back for centuries. Modern Israel is home to 9 million Jews MOST are descended from people who migrated back to the Holy Land from 1881 to 1949, before Israel became a state.So Britain didn’t bring them in.
In fact, Britain had turned against the Zionist movement in the 1930s, and from 1937 to 1939 moved toward an Arab state with no Jewish state at all
But in 1947, a compromise was made: the United Nations devised the partition of that area into two states, one Arab and Jewish. It was the “two-state solution” we hear a lot about today, BUT the reason it never happened was in 1948, Arab forces refused the two-state solution the UN sought to enact by attacking Israel. That led to the aborting the quest for a Palestinian state, because the claim was that Israel should have no part of the land, and there would be no rest until Israel as a state cEased to exist.

Show Notes:

MATT: J.D., we just wrapped up the last of the spiritual disciplines we wanted to cover, and it’s been a great 8-part series. But before we move on, we wanted to answer a few more questions from our listeners and kind of recap what we talked about. A lot of these are more general questions about the disciplines as a whole, and some focus in on certain ones. We’ll keep this a little more “rapid fire.”

First up, from Ashley: How to help my teens practice the spiritual disciplines?

J.D.: I feel that, and as a parent of teenagers, we obviously want to see them grow in all the areas and habits God wants them to. And at the same time, once they’re that age, it’s hard can’t make them do anything.

I’ve said this before, but a friend of mine told me… (mechanic vs farmer)
Prayer is a big key here.
It never hurts to have conversations with them, to check in about these things. To share what the SD’s look like in your life. To model them for the whole family and explain why you’re modeling them.

Practically: a book list (My Essential Christianity; A Praying Life; for boys: JC Ryle’s Thought for Young Menand Kent Hughes’ Disciplines of a Godly Young Man; for girls, 7 Lies and the Truth that Sets them Free; Rebecca McLaughlin’s 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask; Tacticsby Greg Koukl).

MATT: From Tiffany: How do we avoid guilt as we fail and succeed in practicing the disciplines?

This is such an easy trap to fall into. The enemy wants us to feel guilty.
It’s a relationship: (my dad’s story)

Show Notes:

MATT: J.D., our next spiritual discipline is worship. What do we mean by the “discipline of worship?”

—

J.D.: Matt, good question. I’m excited to talk about this one because I think it’s perhaps the least-understood spiritual discipline. When I say “worship,” what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Probably the 3 or 4 “worship songs” we sing when we gather at church—or even just the genre of the music itself. But Jesus said the Greatest Commandment was to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and this is the heart of everything else we do. This is worship, and it’s the center of the Christian life. The center of the Christian’s life, plain and simple, is worship. The center of our discipleship is not community or mission or evangelism or justice work; it’s worship. 

And that’s because we were created for God. One of my favorite devotional writers, Chris Tiegreen, said: “Worship is not part of the Christian life; IT IS the Christian life.” You could be really busy with all the other stuff, but if it doesn’t come out of a heart of passionate love for God, it’s all just dry, dead, religious formality
At TSC, we attach two important disciplines to the identity of ‘worshiper’: 1. weekly, corporate worship (as in, coming to church each weekend, just like Jesus commanded--he says in Hebrews, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together”); the second is daily personal worship (a daily time where you meet with God, like we see exemplified in the life of Jesus). I hope you practice both.

MATT: From Dalton: “What is the importance of worshiping together instead of online?”

Listen, I get it. Sometimes health considerations keep you at home. And if you’re sick, please, skip a week. But I think of it like this; sometimes when I’m sick, I will quarantine in my room so I don’t get the rest of my family sick. And I’ve even FaceTimed into family dinner so I could be a part! That’s like “Super Dad.” 
But if every night, even when I’m healthy, I go up to my room and FaceTime into dinner for a few minutes, then you would be right to suspect my commitment to our family. Be in person. 
You can’t follow Jesus and not be connected with his family.

—

Matt: Next week, we'll continue our series on the spiritual disciplines by recapping everything we've talked about and answering a few new questions, too! Don’t miss it next week.
We're now on YouTube; subscribe to @J.D.Greear.

 

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., today we’ll cover our next spiritual discipline, and this week, we’re talking about giving. Everyone loves talking about money, right?

—

J.D.: 

Let’s start with the assumption that God doesn’t need our money. In Psalm 50, God says, “I don’t have needs… and if I did have one, I wouldn’t come to you.” God owns the cattle on a thousand hills… The question of money is what it shows about where your heart is.
First of all, money reveals, more than anything, what we treasure and trust most. Our mouth can talk a big spiritual game all day long, but it’s what we do with our money that shows where our heart actually is
Which is why Jesus talked about money all the time. It was his most frequently addressed subject. 16 of his 38 parables were about money. He talked about handling money more than he did about relationships; talked about money than he did about heaven and hell. 500 verses in the Bible are about prayer; less than 500 are about faith. More than 2000 are about money. An astounding 1 out of 10 verses in the Gospels talk about money! 
Jesus didn’t talk about money because he needed it--I mean, he could multiply bread loaves and fish or pull gold coins out of fishes’ mouths whenever he wanted--no, he talked about money because he knew money was the most reliable indicator of where our heart actually was.
In Matthew 6, Jesus warned that money ends up serving as the PRIMARY substitute in our hearts for God. He said, in no uncertain terms, that we couldn’t serve God and money. (That’s the only thing he ever spoke like that about! He never said that about power or sex or anything.) Money is the one thing, he said, that if you love it, you won’t care about God; and if you love God, you won’t care that much about it.

MATT: That brings up a comment from a listener named Rita, who said one of the things she’s been learning regarding the spiritual discipline of giving is how “James urges us to consider why God gave us our money in the first place.”

JD: Yeah, that’s right. And also in Matthew 6, Jesus talked about two different personality types and different ways they have problems with money.
For some, money is their security. It’s their safeguard against tragedy or a rainy day. And so, when they get an extra $1000 in their paycheck, they want to save it. For others, money is their significance, their means of a happy and pleasurable life. So, when they get an extra $1000 in their paycheck, they want to spend it. New TV. New drapes. Go on vacation. Btw, in God’s providence, these two different personality types always marry each other! And here’s the irony—each think the other has a problem with money. But Jesus said they actually have the same problem—in that both look to money to provide something only God can provide. 

To those who think of money as security, Jesus says, “Consider the ravens…” To those who think of money as significance, he says, “Consider the lilies…” 
To both of them he says, “Seek first the KoG…” “All these things” means all the security or the significance we crave.


So one of the reasons Jesus talked about money all the time is that it reveals the truth about what we treasure and trust most. Where your money is, Jesus said, that’s where your heart will be, also. 
The second reason Jesus talked about money so much is that what we do with our money shows whether or not we see ourselves as owners of our lives or stewards. At our church, we often talk about the “Five Identities of a Disciple.” One of them is steward. And that’s very different than owner. An owner believes his resources belong to him. A steward sees all his resources as belonging to God—he’s merely the caretaker. When you become a disciple, you cease to see yourself as an owner of anything in your life, only a steward.

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., our next spiritual discipline is fasting. J.D., tell us about it…

J.D.: I mentioned this in our prayer episode, but as we’re recording this, our church is in a season we do every year called 21DOP and fasting. Fasting is basically eliminating something from your life – traditionally, food is what gets eliminated – in order to focus the time and energy you would’ve put into that thing on God.

Fasting is sometimes relegated to the “varsity level” of Christianity, as if it’s only for super-Christians.

But that’s not true. Fasting isn’t given to us as an option. Jesus in Matt. 6 says, “WHEN you fast…” – not “If you fast.” So how do we do it?

Years ago, I wrote a blog post called “I Hate Fasting.” The title is a little tongue-in-cheek, but many Christians, in honest moments, agree with me. Fasting days put you in a bad mood. You rarely come out feeling more spiritual, you come out feeling like you could eat a raw goat.

The reason for that is that though many Christians know they ought to fast, they don’t know why they fast. They know it is connected to prayer, but they don’t know what the connection is and they end up fasting in a way that is completely out of step with the gospel.

Often, we fast because we assume that “punishing” ourselves somehow makes us and our prayers more acceptable to God. Fasting shows God how badly we want and deserve whatever we are asking for. God is moved, we believe, by our culinary flagellation and he grudgingly grants us what we ask for, since we’ve suffered so much in our fast.

That, of course, is a not-even-very-well-veiled version of works-righteousness, and a flagrant denial of what the Gospel teaches us about God. Rather than making God more willing to answer our prayers, it offends God by acting like Christ’s work is not sufficient

So the question is, why do we do it? 

Bottom line: it’s not to put God in a better mood to hear us; but to put us in a better position to God.

It gives God a chance to purify our hearts from idols--to remind us that we need God’s voice more than we need anything else in the world, including food. It demonstrates to God that we understand that, that we crave it, and trains our own souls to think that way. 
It also gives us a greater sensitivity to the “voice” of the Spirit.

In short: Fasting doesn’t change God; fasting changes us.

Matt: We had a listener question from Shannon who asked, " Should fasting be food like it was in the Bible? Can you explain food fast vs abstaining?"

So, Shannon, great question. Like I mentioned, many people at our church are fasting right now—and we encourage them to start with food, but we don’t limit it to that. 
I know many, many people who have benefited greatly from fasting from all kinds of things.

Social media
TV
This is not unbiblical, btw--Paul talked about a married couple abstaining from sexual activity as a kind of fast. There’s a principle at work--I am depriving myself of something I desire to train my soul how much more I desire, and am desperate for, God and his power


But like I said, I personally think fasting from food is the “best” option.

There are a lot of things our minds and our bodies enjoy, but food is one thing the body needs. 
To deprive your body of its usual “fuel” very quickly creates a noticeable void, and if we’re fasting correctly, we’ll fill that void with both dependence and communion with the Holy Spirit.
(Obviously, you have to do this safely. You should only do it if you are physically or psychologicaly able) 
I’ve heard fasting from food described as “Praying with your stomach,” and “temporarily starving your body so you can better feast with yo...

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., our next spiritual discipline is practicing the Sabbath. That’s something that I think a lot of people have varying views on – talk to us about how to “keep the Sabbath.”

J.D.: So look, Matt… I’m not very good at this. This may shock you, but I’m a very type-A “Achiever” kind of guy. My wife says I’m an Enneagram 8 to the max, the 8iest 8 who ever 8ted.

I do NOT like carving time out of my schedule where I’m not getting something done
It just doesn’t come naturally to me at all.

But like we’ve talked about, these are spiritual disciplines – they don’t come naturally to us. And in the case of “keeping the Sabbath,” they’re sometimes counter-cultural.

We live in a fast-paced world. Every bit of media tells you to utilize every minute of every day to accomplish as much as you can, so that you can obtain as much as you can. And practicing a Sabbath is completely contrary to that – Sabbath is stopping the work that you’d usually do, trusting that God is in control, and focusing on what he wants you to focus on. 

So, let’s dig in here. 

First, we believe that God has instituted into creation a 7-day rhythm or work and rest/worship.

Second, we believe regular corporate gathering on the Lord’s Day is an essential, non-negotiable element in the life of a disciple.

Verses such as Hebrews 10:24-25 tell us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

Matt: J.D., let me stop you and ask Mackenzie’s question: “The Sabbath is commanded to the Israelites as part of the Old Testament law. So because we’re no longer bound by the OT law, do we still have to Sabbath?”

This is where the Sabbath gets confusing for people. It’s true that we’re no longer bound by the OT law… but the design reflected in those laws advises us to set aside a day every week for rest and worship. 
It’s built on a principle, the same principle as tithing: one day a week we stop and declare our dependence on God

BTW, no other society did this… they all felt they had to work to the max., especially in ancient Israel. Survival was often a day-to-day, season-to-season affair. Crops had to be harvested daily. Water had to be drawn daily. To cut your productivity by 1/7 could make the difference in life and death! 
By taking a Sabbath, they said,  God, I’m doing less than I’m able to do because you commanded me to, and so I’m depending on you to make up for what I'm missing here.”  
(Same principle as tithing)


The OT laws are fulfilled in Jesus, so we no longer are bound to the particulars, but the principle behind is the same.

We see this principle of flexibility reflected in the early church, who seem to use Sunday as their primary day of gathering. 



Matt: Speaking of, here’s a question from John: “What’s up with the sabbath being Saturday or Sunday? Your thoughts?”

Early church took the principle of 
But Paul says in Romans 14:5: “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” 

When the early church changed it from Sat to Sunday they were showing that it wasn’t a particular day that was essential.


When non-Sunday might be helpful: 

Some people work on weekends, including pastors and many people in ministry, so observing the Sabbath on Saturday makes sense in those cases. 
Dubai example
Churches with other service times… 


I think for most of you it should be Sunday--that is the “standard” set by early church, and practicing that is consistent with 2K years of church history, but what’s important is to set aside one day a week where ...

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D., today we’ll cover our next spiritual discipline, and this week, we’re talking about the “discipline” of surrounding yourself with Christian community.

J.D.: Yeah, this is a good one. The first two spiritual disciplines we covered – Bible study and prayer – are kind of intuitive. While it’s sometimes easier said than done, most people understand that part of the Christian life involves prayer and Bible study and spending time with God.

But a lot of us don’t think of being in community as a “spiritual discipline.”

We think “If I show up to church most of the time, I’m all set.”
Or, “I got friends. I’m not lonely.”
Or, “I go to my small group most times, so I’ve checked the box here.”

And I hear a lot of people say, “Well, I love Jesus, and I have a strong relationship with God, I’m just not that committed to the church.” 

Hmm. How do I say this? That’s not true. I know that you think it’s true, but it’s just not. You might have great respect for Jesus, but Jesus very clearly said that if you loved him you would be committed to his church. He says it in John 15. You’re to love each other so much that you lay down your lives for each other. You can’t do that for somebody you’re not connected to or in relationship with. Jesus told Peter in John 21, “If you love me, show that by how well you take care of my sheep.”  


You can’t say you’re obedient to Jesus if you neglect those he commanded you to love. 
The church is the bride of Christ. You can’t love someone and hate their bride. 

How do you think I’d react if you said to me, “PJD, we love you. Can you come over to our house for dinner? And here’s the keys to our mountain house, please enjoy it. But… these invitations are not for Veronica. We like you, but we don’t care for her.” 
That conversation is not going to go well. I’m not coming for dinner! If you love me and want to be friends with me, you have to love and be friends with my life. Thankfully, btw, with my wife, that’s easy. People always like her better than me. People always notice me first because I’m up here, but if we get invited back to someone’s house a second time, it’s always because of her. 



Let’s stop for a second and talk about how Jesus demonstrated loving people well.

He lived among them 
He served them.
He spoke personally into their lives 

Now let’s walk through those quickly and apply them to our lives…

Jesus lived among people. 

He walked with them. Gave real time instruction. He commented on conversations he heard them muttering to each other. He confronted them in their mistakes and comforted them in their failures
We see this demonstrated in Paul’s life. In Acts 20, when Paul speaks to the Ephesians elders–

He says, “You know how I lived with and ministered to you night and day, available to you at all hours” (vs. 31). His speech to them included very specific counsel



Secondly, he personally served them. 

John 13. He didn’t do that for everybody, but those 12 

He spoke personally into their lives… 

Me with Paul Tripp on why megachurch pastors fall
Living in community has added richness to my life even though it's messy.
Prov. 27:10 says “Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away,” and we have an opportunity to be that for people through the church.

There’s also a limit to what God can do in your life if you’re not connected to the body. In 1 Cor. 12:25, Paul compares us in the church to members of the body. And at some point he asks, “How does the body care for it’s members?” answer: through other members! 

Show Notes:

Matt: Today we want to talk about our second spiritual discipline. This time, prayer.J.D., there’s a lot to be said about prayer, and you’ve written books on it, you have several Ask Me Anything episodes on it, but I want to start with a listener question from Stephanie, who asks, “How does prayer ‘move the hand of God?'”—J.D.: Wow, strong start. Yeah, Matt, I have spoken a lot about prayer

Can’t do it enough
21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. We always want to be a praying church, but we set aside times throughout the year to really emphasize it in our church and our own lives.

So, to Stephanie’s question, why do we do that? Why emphasize prayer? Does it really change things?

Let me give you three quick points about why we believe prayer “moves the hand of God.” First, the Bible makes it clear that God’s purposes are unchanging.

Verses like Numbers 23:19 are clear: God is not a man. He never learns anything new. He doesn’t wise up with experience or change his mind.
He knows the end from the beginning


So, it seems clear that God’s purposes are unchanging, but, like I said, we have to hold this in tension with another truth, which is that God’s plans are unfolding.

There’s a story in Exodus 32 says that God changed his course of action based on Moses’ prayer. But here’s the irony of the story: God is the one who tells Moses to go down and see the situation (v. 7). Moses didn’t know the people had corrupted themselves. God showed this to him.
Furthermore, the very thing that Moses uses to “change God’s mind” was God’s own promise. (And God, of course, hadn’t forgotten his promises.)
God had put Moses into a situation so that he would see the problem God already knew about, remember God’s promises, and petition God to change his course of action. Moses’ prayer itself is a result of God’s plan. God wants Moses to ask this, so he sovereignly puts him in a situation where he will ask for it.


But here’s the key: Our prayers are instrumental.

The text is clear: Without this prayer, God would have destroyed Israel. The prayer was instrumental in getting God to change his course of action. And that’s consistent with the pattern of prayer throughout Scripture. As I’ve heard it said, “Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.”



Now, many people might ask at this point, “Well, what if Moses had refused to pray? Would that mean that they would not have been saved, and would that mean that it was not God’s will to save them after all? And what does that mean if I fail to pray for something God wants me to pray for? Does that mean that the thing that I didn’t pray about wasn’t God’s will after all? Or would God have just gotten someone else to pray it?”

You may begin to feel your head aching. It’s understandable.

Those kinds of questions are the wrong ones to ask about these situations. Scripture never teaches us to think about the will of God that way.

The 19th century Princeton theologian A.A. Hodge put it this way (my paraphrase): “Does God know the day you’ll die? Yes. Has he appointed that day? Yes. Can you do anything to change that day? No. Then why do you eat? To live. What happens if you don’t eat? You die. Then if you don’t eat, and die, then would that be the day that God had appointed for you to die?
“Quit asking stupid questions and just eat. Eating is the pre-ordained way God has appointed for living.”
So, when I wrestle with this, I tell myself to quit asking stupid questions and just pray.

You see, however impossible it is for our puny minds to understand, God has sovereignly placed us in certain situations for the express purpose of praying his promises and “changing his plans,” so to speak.

Show Notes:

Matt: J.D.,  we’re going to do something we’ve never done, and we’re going to take that question and camp out here on Ask the Pastor for the next several episodes, because you feel like this one is worth unpacking. Like we mentioned at the end of last week’s episode, we’re going to spend the next 8 weeks unpacking something I think a lot of Christians have heard about, but they may not know a ton about: the “spiritual disciplines.” What are some important spiritual disciplines to focus on as we attempt to grow in our faith in 2024?  

J.D.: Yeah Matt, the “spiritual disciplines” – or the practices that every disciple of Jesus should follow and work into their lives – are definitely worth talking about, and rather than giving a short answer with a “checklist” of spiritual disciplines, I wanted to go in depth on a few different spiritual disciplines for the next few weeks here on Ask the Pastor, and we’re going to incorporate some of the many great questions we’ve received from our listeners on this topic. 

So, starting today, we’re going to dive into an eight-episode series on the spiritual disciplines. Along the way, we’ll be sprinkling in a few different listener questions we’ve collected from you, our listeners.

By the way, you can always email your questions in to requests@jdgreear.com.
Or you can even message them to me on Facebook or Instagram.

So to start, I want to talk about one of the most foundational spiritual disciplines: Reading and studying your Bible.

This may seem elementary to some of you, but I’m a pastor… and I have a real sense that the practice of opening up your Bible, reading and studying it, and truly understanding what it says – and even why we read it at all – is unfortunately RARE.

We know from the example of Jesus and the Apostles this was a big deal.

And Jesus himself would go off by himself, early in the morning, to spend time with God.
He used Scripture against Satan
Acts 2, devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching
Acts 17:11 commends the Borreans for not taking Paul’s word for something, but “examining the Scriptures daily”



Matt: Let me stop you right there to ask a question sent in by a listener named Dalton who asks, “What time of day is best for Bible reading? Is there a time of day that bible reading ‘sticks better?’”

J.D.: That’s a good question, and I personally have found that the morning is the best time to read your Bible.

First, when i don’t, i find the day gets away from me and i just run out of time or feel too tired. 
I also feel SO much more prepared for my day when I’ve spent time with God in the morning. 

Orders my day. I can pray through my cal, and also hear from the HS about anything
Orders my mind, sets my mind right.
A way of giving God my first and my best


But one of godliest men I know liked do it better t night, maybe right before bed.
So there’s no “right answer,” but Dalton, I’m partial to studying the Bible in the mornings.

Matt: Here’s another from Josh: “Does not sticking to a consistent daily quiet time mean I am being disobedient?

Great question. My answer would be: MAYBE.
It’s clear that we’re commanded to spend time with God. To neglect that is to sin. But don’t go and beat yourself up if you missed a day.

Look, this question leads me to something pretty important, which is that I want to make sure that we all understand the WHY behind reading you Bible every day.

Yes, reading it will help you understand more about God, about biblical history, and it’ll make you more biblically literate. Yes,

Show Notes:

Matt: Welcome to Ask the Pastor with Pastor J.D. Greear. I’m your host, Matt Love. You might be thinking… “What happened to Ask Me Anything?” Well, I’m glad you asked. We’ve decided to really reinvest in this podcast, keep it growing, and we’ve decided to add a new format, a new structure, and a new name! Ask Me Anything is now Ask the Pastor, and the pastor we’re asking is none other than J.D. Greear.

J.D.: Yes, we’re very excited about the new name, new format. But there is one drawback: Matt has a face for radio and podcasts, so that’s the only downside to this and I know all of you watching on video will have to just overlook that. 

Matt: J.D., let’s get right into it. Here’s a listener question from Madeline. She writes: “A friend of mine is a Swiftie. She has a Swiftie necklace she wears all the time, her lock screen is of Taylor, she wears Eras shirts, she brings up Taylor Swift any time she can. And she recently went to a concert…it is turning into an obsession. How can I help her see that as Christians, Taylor Swift is not someone we want to emulate?”

—

J.D.: Here’s what I want to say first and foremost: I am not anti-Taylor Swift. So, Swifties, don’t hate on me, OK? My family—my daughters, especially—listens to her music from time to time. I took them to see the ERAS movie.

I DO NOT think there’s anything inherently immoral about being a fan of hers.
We’ve talked before on the Ask Me Anything podcast about whether or not Christians should listen to any secular music at all. You can go back and listen, but the bottom line is that that’s an area where every disciple of Jesus needs to use their own conscience.

I know people who do not listen to ANY secular music at all. That’s a conviction they have for themselves, and I can’t blame them for that. Some of them even make pretty compelling arguments about why they choose not to do so.
There are many others (and I’d put myself in this camp) who do listen to secular music--the Apostle Paul seems to have, too, FWIW, based on how he quotes some of the poets of the day—and to you I’d say (and this applies to movies and TV shows as well), you HAVE TO keep your guard up for what gets past your “filter.”

There’s a difference between music that is not inherently Christian and music that is inherently “Anti-Christ”/”Anti-God.” That celebrates the things that God hates and centers the theme. 

I always compare it with going to a secular party. You can go to a secular event with secular people and sometimes while you are there, they sin. That’s different from going with someone when the expressed purpose is to sin. To get drunk or do drugs or watch pornography or visit a prostitute, obviously.
In the same way, If the express purpose of the song, the theme, is sin, I wouldn’t touch it.




And then there’s also an awareness of which temptations you’re just particular susceptible to; ones you can’t get out of your head

It could a certain kind of sexual temptation that you know you are just particularly susceptible to. It could be materialism or even violence or focus on body image.
Luther, if your head is made of butter


Then there’s just the saturation question. 

Proverbs 4: "As a man thinks in his heart…"
Colossians 3 tells us to “Set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” 
Again, I don’t personally take that to mean we should never consume any secular content. But the question is, what are we setting our minds on? What is consuming the majority of our thoughts?




Is Taylor Swift someone you should listen to? I can’t answer that for you—you need to make that decision on your own – but I can tell you for me and my family,

We have a VERY special surprise for you today. Next Monday, Feb. 5, we'll be back with a whole new name and format...

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a listener question from Cameron who asked, "Why does James say we’re justified by works?"

Show Notes:

* That’s a great question and one that I hear a lot and it's one that I used to ask a lot as a young college student. 
* Just so we're all clear and you seen where the tension is, Paul says in Romans 3:28, "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

* And yet, James 2:24 says: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
* So a lot of people read that and they think it's a contradiction. What James is teaching is actually not a contradiction to what Paul had said. It actually harmonizes the discussion. It shows us what faith that saves really is.


* The key point in this whole discussion is that works are the evidence of a decision to follow Jesus and make him Lord of your life.

* I always compare it to sitting down in a chair… how do you know that you made a decision to sit down in that chair? 
* It's probably not because you remember the mental process it took to sit down. The best evidence that you made a decision to sit down in the chair is that you're seated there now—that's proof that at some point you made a decision to or not.
* In the same way, the best evidence that you put your faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior is that you are living a life of works that demonstrate that he is Lord.
* What Jame is saying is that if what my mouth says about what I decided and my posture says differ, my posture is a more reliable indicator. Your posture is the evidence of your decision to sit. In the same way, your obedience is your evidence of faith in Christ and recognition of his Lordship.


You are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone
* As we’re recording this, our church is in a series on the book of James, and coincidentally, one of our teaching pastors–Curtis Andursko–just addressed this question in his sermon on James 2. I thought he did a great job explaining this, and he even addressed the “Paul in Romans versus James” confusion directly.

For Paul, justified: made right with God,
For James, it means the the reality of your faith is proven before others


Paige Benton Brown talked about how Paul was writing more like an OBGYN—he was talking about how we are born into true faith. 
James is writing like a pediatrician—his goal is to talk about how we are living out that faith.
* Both Paul and James both point to a couple places in Abraham's life where we see this kind of obedience.

* In Genesis 15, God covenants with Abraham
* And in Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac (and of course, God takes him right up to the point of obedience and then he provides a ram)



Paul points out that Genesis 15:6 occurred before that dramatic act of obedience. All there was a promise and Abraham believed it.
James points to Genesis 22 as the proof that Abraham had really decided to really trust God and follow him because now he is willing to sacrifice his son in obedience.






* Bottom line: James and Paul do not contradict—they harmonize. And that's actually a really good principle to take whenever the Bible seems to contradict itself. Usually the greatest spiritual truth is found beneath something that looks like a contradiction.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our 

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a listener question from Kelly who asked, "What Is the Occult? Is It Real?"

Show Notes:

* The occult IS real.

* It can refer to different things… witchcraft, worshiping pagan gods, and attempts to communicate with demons and demonic forces…
* It’s difficult to figure out the exact statistics, but a 2018 article in Newsweek cited studies that estimated there are about 1.5 million practicing witches in the U.S. alone…
* Last fall, NBC News cited a 2014 Pew Research Center study increased that projection several times over in assessing that 0.4% of Americans identified as pagan, Wiccan or New Age.
* Which may not seem like a lot, but even that number from 2014 means there’s been a significant increase in people who believe these things, and again, that’s just in America alone.
* Other parts of the world and other cultures have deep ties to witchcraft and the occult — witch doctors are still very prevalent (and very powerful) in many parts of Africa, for example.


* Flirting with the occult is wicked.
* For many, they say worshiping Satan is a way of resisting unjust tyrannical authority—even in that, I can start with a point of agreement that many people have usurped religion to gain unjust authority, Jesus himself was crucified by those doing that. So even there, for the convinced Satanist, I can find a point of agreement to start from. Ironically, they are giving Satan credit for resisting that authority when he’s the one creating it. Satan filled Judas and the Pharisees. Jesus resisted.
* More often, Satan shows up in false religion…

* Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:20: “I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
* In other words, the sacrifices made to pagan gods were really sacrifices made to demons who were behind those gods.


* In America, he’s in materialism and power (angel of light)

* Matt 6:24 talks about not being able to serve two masters. Our modern Bibles translate that word as “money,” but in older translations, like the KJV, they use the word “Mammon.” “You cannot serve God and Mammon.”

* Why did they do that? Follow this: Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and “Mammon” is the Aramaic word for money. The New Testament is written in Greek, so, when the Gospel writers wrote down Jesus’ words, they translated him from Aramaic to Greek. But for this one word, Mammon, they left it in Aramaic.
* Why? ​​Well, when you are translating something, what kind of words do you not translate? Names. You don’t translate names, you transliterate them. The early church said the disciples wrote down this as a proper name because they understood that Jesus was not just talking about a THING here; he was talking about personal power. A demonic power. Something that comes into your heart with a will.
* Satan has a unique power over money. It’s part of his domain. It’s not that you can’t have any of it—no, the world works on it and it has great power for good—it’s just you should realize that it will always be fighting to have you, to possess your heart. God and money will ALWAYS be pulling you in opposite directions.
* You will love the one and hate the other; or hate the one and love the other. With demonic energy it beckons you, Christian, to transfer your trust from God to it. You may never verbalize it, but in your heart you’ll think: “I don’t need to trust God for the future; I have Mammon.”




* On the personal level, we find him questioning identity

* Satan begins his temptation of Jesus with an attack on his identity because Satan knows if he defeats him there, he’ll be powerless against all other temptations.

This week, Pastor J.D. finishes a two-part series about Jesus' return. The second question is: "What does it look like to live ready for Jesus’ return?"

Show Notes:

Let me give you four things that will change in you if you are in a state of readiness for Jesus’ return:

* Spiritual alertness

* How would you live differently today if you knew Jesus were coming back tonight?

* I talked about my church growing up, and it’s a little bit funny to poke fun at now… but one thing my church had that I think we’re missing: the earnest expectation of his return…
* What if you knew Jesus was coming back today? Wouldn’t it make you ask the question: Am I ready? Am I living today in a way that I’d be happy to see him tonight?
* It genuinely could be today… this may be your last chance to repent; last chance to share the gospel.




* Mission urgency

* If you know the world has an end, and it could be soon, doesn’t that rearrange your priorities

* Life is consumed by vacation, hobbies, possessions and bucket lists
* Listen, I’m not a guy who believes God never wants us to have things we enjoy, or that he's not glorified by our secular work. But I also know life is painfully short, and when the master returns I want to have invested my talents to the fullest for his kingdom… and not be found sitting on them.
* There's nothing wrong with a little R&R, hobbies or nice things. But many of us work just so you can go on vacation. That’s the end game. A disciple of Jesus takes occasional vacations so he can work more for Jesus kingdom.
* Are you investing the resources of your life with the expectation of his return?




* Hope in suffering

* Jesus’ return promises us that pain and suffering won’t last forever; all pain is temporary.
* There's a Christian philosopher named Cornelius Plantinga who said, "The second coming of Jesus Christ is good news for people whose lives are filled with bad news. If you a slave in Pharaoh’s Egypt or in the United States in the early 19th century; if you are an Israelite exiled in Babylon, or a Kosovar exiled in Albania; if you are a woman living in a culture where when your husband gets mad at you he can lock you up in a closet or threaten to have his buddies come and rape you… then you don’t yawn when somebody mentions the return of Jesus Christ.”
* I might add, if your son just died of cancer; if your marriage just dissolved; if you’re lonely; if your body is wracked with chronic pain—lift your eyes! It doesn’t last forever. It could be tonight. If your life just hasn’t turned out… “the promise of the second coming shows us the ‘good ole days’ are always ahead of us.”


* Power to forgive

* In Tim Keller's book, Forgive,  he points out that Jesus gives you the power to forgive.
* I’ve seen people who really struggle with bitterness helped by grasping Jesus’ imminent return.
* When someone wrongs us, we want justice. So we run to the judgment seat of the world and we hop on it. We know what they deserve and we want to help them get it. “Go, God. Give it to him.” We want to be God’s adviser.
* But listen, we weren’t meant for that throne. It’s too big for us. And it distorts us.
* Have you ever seen how bitterness destroys someone? Someone is mad at someone else and it colors their whole disposition toward that person, where everything that person does becomes tarnished.
* Or maybe even they begin to be prejudiced toward whole groups of people.

* A woman who is angry at her husband thinks all men are bad; someone who suffers injustice at the hands one person in a people group thinks everyone in that people group is bad…

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted from Brandon. He asked, "What’s going to happen in the 'end times?'"

Show Notes:

* I grew up in a church a little obsessed with the Second Coming.

* On our Sunday School walls we had posters with dates and pictures of dragons and names of politicians.
* We had our annual prophecy conferences (which were the best attended events of the year);
* For special Sunday night services we watched the Billy Graham movies about the Tribulation.
* We had our rapture board games and rapture bumper stickers, “In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.” And we made rapture jokes like there was no tomorrow.


* As a kid, I lived in perpetual fear of being left behind.

* If for any reason I couldn’t find my parents or they didn’t respond in the house when I called them, I’d run through the house yelling “Mom, mom” just sure I’d see her clothes had fallen neatly into a pile on the floor…
* I had this recurring dream where the rapture happened—this is not a joke—and I got lifted up to the top of the house and then as everyone else went on up to meet Jesus I would drop back down to the earth, revealing that my worst fear had come true: My faith in Christ wasn’t strong enough to get me all the way to heaven. And when the roll was called up yonder I’d be here.


* And then, when I was in high school, a little book came out that got instant popularity: 88 Reasons why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988.

* The guy who wrote it said, “Jesus said we can’t know the day or the hour, but he never said we couldn’t know within a 3-day window.”
* It was a big deal at my Christian school… “We’re going to sit here and wait.”
* Of course that day came and went. And then next year the author released 89 reasons Jesus would come back in 1989—he said he had  explained he had miscounted the Gregorian calendar, which, of course, happens to the best of us.
* I have since learned that some of how we approached this topic lacked some balance, but, if you’ll let me be charitable for a minute, there is one thing we lived with that I believe our generation is missing and that is the earnest expectation of his return


* My pastor would often end our services by saying, “Maranatha.” (The Lord is coming). And then he would say, “And it could be today.” And I really felt like that could be true.

* I know we have disagreements about the timing of Jesus’ return, and what phrases like “thief in the night” really mean—friendly disagreement, I hope.
* And I have my own convictions, as I’m sure you do.
* Instead I want to talk about something we all should have in common:
* And that is the need to conduct our ministries with the awareness that eternity is real and the Lord is at hand.


* Eschatology is a fancy word for the theology of the end times—might be the one of the most, if not the most, neglected doctrines in the contemporary church. Many theologians seem to find it embarrassing: the crass, uneducated uncle of Christian theology.

* But get this: the second coming of Christ is the most talked about doctrine in the Bible.
* In the 260 chapters of the New Testament, there are 318 references to it.
* (1 out of every 13 verses mentions it.)
* And for every 1 prophecy in the Bible concerning Christ’s first advent, there are eight that talk about his second. (We have a whole holiday celebrating his first coming but we barely mention the second.)


* Furthermore: Almost every moral command given in the New Testament is tied to the second coming at some point.

* My pastor used to say: “How can we call this doctrine non-essential? It’s in every chapter.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted from Linda. She asked, "If God Draws People to Faith, Why Has God Not Drawn My Lost Family Member?"

Show Notes:

* Linda's question came in response to a message I preached at the Summit Church. I talked about John 6:44, Philippians 2:14, and John 1:12.
* Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that you can't say that Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit gives you the power to say that. So that leads you to the question, "Why hasn't God done that for this person that I love or the 950 million people in India?"
* This conversation has rules. Think of it like CrossFit. You have to obey the rules—otherwise when you start lifting heavy weights you're going to get hurt. I want you to walk with me through them because I think they will help.

* A lot of this was systematized by John Calvin. I've always thought it was helpful that John Calvin identified his favorite verse as Deuteronomy 29:29. It says, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that have been revealed belong to us and our children forever."
* What this shows you is that there are secret things when it comes to theology and there are revealed things. The revealed things are where you and I live—they belong to us.
* So we have to ask, what is revealed about God's desire for us to be saved? The first thing that is revealed is what we said right at the beginning: If you came to Jesus, it's because he drew you.

* There's simply no way to read the verses of the New Testament and not see that if you came to Jesus it's because he put that desire in you and he drew you to himself. That is what is revealed.
* There's another thing that's revealed in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

* So when I think about my family member that needs Jesus, I'm thinking about 1 Timothy 2:4. I'm saying "Lord, you've told me your desire for them to be saved. YOu've told me that my prayers make a difference. You've told me that you will bless me and generations after me and Lord I'm bringing those promises to you to be revealed."






* In my mind, I don't see how that and the truth that for someone to come to Jesus, God has to draw them to himself, I don't how those two things can coexist in the same universe honestly. It seems like one cancels out the other, but Scripture presents both of them.

* We have to accept that people only come to Jesus because God draws them and God desires all people to be saved.


* I know some of you want a resolution on this.

* Well what if this was a secret thing that John Calvin was talking about?


* What I want to emphasize to you is that you have to play by the rules. When it comes to think about your own future, your own salvation, that's where you're supposed to bring those calvinistic verses in. Those verses are supposed to bring assurance.

* And when it comes to thinking about the lost, I apply the second one of those: that he desires all to be saved and prayer actually matters.


* One more thing to ask yourself, what if God's sovereignty was to put me in this situation and to raise the concern in my heart about this person so that I will pray? What if that is his sovereignty expressed? I say that because of a story in Exodus 34 where Moses prays and as a result, God changed his mind. But then Exodus 34 goes on to say God won't change his mind. When you put it all together you realize that God was the one who put Moses in the situation where he could see what was happening with the children of Israel, so that he would come to God to bring the request that would "change his mind." In other words,

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted from Ruperto. He asked, "Is it ever OK to lie?"

Show Notes:

* That’s a tough one. The easy answer is to say “no” as we point back to the ten commandments.

* Thou shall not lie—it doesn't get more simple than that
* Matthew 5:37: “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”
* So Jesus seems to saying that there's not a lot of grey here. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
* But then it becomes a little bit trickier when we consider certain scenarios, even biblical scenarios, where lying doesn't seem like it's wrong. It almost seems like it's the right thing to do.


* For example, in Exodus 2, Pharaoh had commanded all of the Hebrew midwives to kill every newborn baby boy. When Pharaoh called the Hebrew midwives in to ask them why there were Hebrew baby boys still being born, they told him that Hebrew women were different than Egyptian women—that they were more “vigorous” and they’d all have their babies before the midwives got there, which meant they could not murder the baby boys, which was a lie. 
Think about Rahab. She lied to the Jericho authorities when they came looking for the two Israelite spies that she had hidden in her roof.  She was called righteous. “By faith Rahab… did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” Hebrews says that the proof that her faith was genuine was that she hid the spies. (Hebrews 11:31)
* But of course the problem with that is you start using that reasoning to justify all kinds of lies. You think "I don't want to hurt someone" so you tell them a lie. You want to be "kind" to them. 

If I tell them the truth, they’ll get hurt.
If I tell them the truth, I’ll get fired and my family will go hungry.
And that is sin.


* So, how do we interpret this? Well, there is a very important principle that we need to understand and that we also need to be very careful with, and I like how Paul Carter at The Gospel Coalition said this: There is a difference between a general principle and a recognized exception to that principle. 
This is very similar to the call we have to obey our governments. Romans 13:1 says, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities… The authorities that exist have been established by God.” There is no caveat given here, and yet, the Bible also tells us that the very man who wrote those words (Paul) would “break the law” by continuing to preach the gospel when the governmental authorities told him not to.

So was he a hypocrite? No! He was stating a general principle in Romans 13:1, with the understanding that there are exceptions.


* Those legitimate exceptions come—and only when—you are lying or disobeying government to prevent yourself from sinning/breaking God’s laws. Protecting Jews, or something like that. When someone else will use the truth to sin in a way that basically makes you complicit in it.
* Short of those very few, very narrow and limited exceptions, you should tell the truth and trust God with the results, good or bad, because our God is a God of truth and we glorify him most when we radiate truth like he does.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

As always,

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question, "How do I tell someone of another religion they’re wrong?"

Show Notes:

* Great question. This can be one of the hardest parts of evangelism. If someone doesn’t have a religion, it can seem easier to tell them about Christianity and why it’s the only way to heaven. …But if someone is a devout follower of another religion, that can be more difficult.
* Well, first of all, there was a season in my life when every conversation I had was with a believer of another religion — that’s when I spent two years as a missionary in South East Asia which is a very heavily Muslim country.
* The role of relationship: You earn the right to be heard.
* Being a missionary is like paying down a mortgage.

* The longer you do it, you're watching that balance shift from mainly interest to when you're starting to pay down principle.
* You have to be willing to put in the time.


* You have to tell them the truth:

* Paul reasoned with people often proving to them that Jesus had to be the Christ so there is a role for truth telling even without the context of relationship.
* In Acts 20, Paul told Ephesians elders he was free from their blood because he had fully represented the word of God.


* The third thought is something I learned as a missionary: Look for the places in their religion that points to Jesus and show that.
* There was a very popular book that came out in the 70s called Peace Child. It’s about a missionary family, the Richardsons, who were going to minister to an unreached tribe that was pretty brutal…

* They idealized treachery, they were murderers, even cannibals.
* The Richardsons were living there and having real trouble communicating the gospel, until one day, right before a war, reps from the other tribe came and offered a “peace child” (one from each grows up in the other)
* And the Richardsons realized that this “peace child” concept was a redemptive analogy that they could use to communicate the gospel to the Sawi people.


* Finally, this goes without saying, but prayer.

* Never talk to people about God more than you talk to God about them.



Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

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This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question in his recent sermon: "What stands in the way of ethnic unity?"

Show Notes:

* First of all, Satan.

* The next several chapters of Ephesians are all about how the demonic powers aligned against the church. Satan hates this kind of unity, especially in the church. So, you can be sure he’s going to oppose it.
* Let me tell you how he might do this to you:

* He’s going to suggest stuff to you this week about it being too hard.
* He’s going to whisper into some of your ears this week that this is all about politics even though I have said literally nothing about that.
* So, be aware who your enemy is in this and resist that Satanic voice




* Second, pride.

* Whenever we talk about this, what makes it difficult is it cuts all of us down at the core of our pride
* Beware where your own personal pride kicks into gear.
* Church unity, Paul says, is built only on humility.


* Third, preference.

* Our cultural preferences are not wrong. We all have them. It’s just sometimes for the sake of unity, we set them aside to help someone else feel more comfortable.

* Vance Pitman: “The way to know you are part of a truly multiethnic church is that you often feel uncomfortable.” Many of us, he says, say we want a multi-cultural church but we really only want a multi-colored one, with a bunch of people with different colored faces all doing things our way.
* People sometimes say to me, “Well, I don’t like it when we do that in worship.” And I want to say, “Well, maybe this whole thing is not about what you like. If you want to be somewhere where it’s all about you, go pay $800 for a night at the RitzCarlton where it will be all, entirely, exclusively about you. But this church is about the glory of Jesus and the urgency of the Great Commission, and so when you come here, that’s what you should expect it to be about.”




* Fourth, naivete.

* One of the things that my friends of color tell me is that many of us in the majority culture don’t think we have a culture. Other people have cultures; ours is the standard against which all others are measured. Or sometimes we refer to other people as having ethnicities.
* I hate to burst your bubble, but white, Caucasian is an ethnicity and has its own cultural perspective. We have our own, particular views of conflict resolution, romance, parenting and child-rearing; money; dress; music; time; respectfulness; family and so many other things.
* Some cultural perspectives are different; some are wrong; and some are right. The least we can do is work hard to understand the cultural perspectives we all bring into this place.


* Fifth, poor listening skills.
For a lot of us, when it comes to discussions like these, our poor
listening skills really begin to display themselves. James in the Bible tells us that we should be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,” and If there were ever a place for us to apply this verse, it is in this area.

* Yes, there’s a place for you to speak. “Be slow to speak” doesn’t mean “never speak,” it just means that you listen far more than you talk.
* So, that raises these questions. When it comes to talking about this stuff:

* Do you seek to understand more than you seek to be understood?
* Here’s the question: What if we had a church where people listened to each other like that--where we gave each other the benefit of the doubt in these situations?
* And before you come back at them with a solution, or a reason why their pain is illegitimate, to at least validate it and sit with them in it. That’s what love is.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question that was submitted by Jesse. She asked, "What does it mean to be “poor in spirit?”

Show Notes:

We all love the verse: Matthew 5:3. If you've grown up in church, you know it: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It sounds so poetic and idealistic... but I'm going to be honest with you. When I try to really get my mind around that verse, I don't naturally like it. I've never wanted to be poor in spirit — I've spent my entire life trying to become anything but poor in spirit. I guarantee you also don't really want to be poor in spirit.

Maybe some of you listening really grew up poor, or went through a "poor season" (like college). When you're poor, you feel helpless. It takes away your agency, your power, your freedom... it's no fun!

I've always wanted to be "capable in spirit" or "competent in spirit..." if anything, at least "middle class in spirit!" That's just how we're wired as people.

So what does it mean to be poor in spirit and why do people say it's so important?

First, it means that you have no worthiness at all by which you can claim God's blessing.

* When you come to God, there's literally nothing about you that you can bring to God as a way of compelling him to bless you.

Second, you realize that you have no ability to obtain God's blessing.

* God only fills empty hands.

God seems to have a way of bringing his people into a situation of helplessness before using them greatly.

* I think of the situation of Gideon and the Israelite army in Judges 7. God cut the Israelite army down from 32,000 to just 300... and even at 32,000, they would've been outnumbered 5:1 by the other army. And yet, God was making them totally dependent on him, and the Israelites won the battle miraculously without suffering any losses.

At times, God creates in us a "poverty of spirit" so that we are reliant on him, and so that he is set up to perform a miracle. Every miracle in the Bible started with a problem that no person could fix... no problems, no miracles.

Here's a controversial sentence: in one sense, Jesus was the neediest person who ever lived. I don't mean that he was sinful or didn't have capability in himself, but that he demonstrated dependence on the Father. It's why he was so often in prayer. He retreated to prayer to be able to obtain the resources of the Father.

We have to understand how needy we are, but also how willing our Father is to help us in our need. God doesn't delight in hurting us, but he delights when we trust him. So often, he'll put us in the presence of a problem we can't fix, and we've got no choice but to lean on him. When you're flat on your back, you're looking in the right direction.

If dependence is the objection, weakness becomes your advantage. Scripture warns us to beware our strengths; not our weaknesses. A.W. Tozer said, "It is doubtful whether God can use a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.

It’s like Hudson Taylor said: “[God] wants you to have something far better than riches and gold—or personal charisma or talent—and that is helpless dependence upon him.” Dependence is the objective, so weaknesses become our advantage.

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This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question that was submitted by Annie. She asked, "How should a believer handle guilt from sinning?"

Show Notes:

That’s a great question. To be very upfront, there are sins in my life that I would love to leave behind in the rearview mirror, and it's not from a lack of sincerity or fasting and praying or accountability, but there are sometimes that we fall back into patterns that run deep. And they grieve me. It was very encouraging for me to learn that John Newton, and this was published in the book Letters of John Newton, talked about how as an 86 year old, he thought by at this point in his life (and this was the guy who wrote "Amazing Grace") he thought he'd be past some of the struggles of sin, but he said some of them feel harder and more difficult than ever. It was encouraging to me to know that there's not anything fundamentally wrong with me — or that I'm not saved.

I wrote a book several years ago called “Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart,” all about the assurance of salvation, which is something I struggled with for a long time. And for a lot of people, one of the biggest reasons for that struggle is because of this – the fact that we still keep sinning after we’re saved. And then comes the guilt… And the enemy (after tempting us to sin) whispers, “If you were a REAL Christian, you wouldn’t have done that. No way God still loves you. No way you have this whole ‘salvation’ thing right.”

So how do we handle that? And how do we differentiate conviction over sin post-salvation from not really being saved?

There are two big things I’d say here:

* First, ask yourself, have you truly repented?


Repentance of sin always leads to some kind of change in behavior. 
It's like sitting down in a chair... You can tell the chair how awesome it is and how beautiful it is, but until you've transferred the weight of your body to that chair, you haven't actually sat down and trusted the chair.
Belief in the Bible always implies action. So belief in the lordship of Christ doesn't just mean with your lips saying he's Lord; it means you are transferring surrender and your authority from yourself to him.
Sometimes that doesn't look like victory. Sometimes, it looks like bitter struggle.
The struggle against sin is proof of the repentance, and the very fact that you want to escape it is an indication that your heart is turned away from sin, and that you want Christ to be Lord of your life, and that is a kind of repentance.
I don't meant to imply that this change means a complete change of behavior where you never struggle with sin again — sometimes it's a kind of sin where you're entering into that struggle... but there is some kind of change.


* Here’s the second thing: Once you know you’ve truly repented, you have to embrace that God’s acceptance is the power that liberates you. It’s not the reward for having liberated yourself. 


It’s only the assurance of his love enables you to overcome. I often try to break the spell (materialism, lust, etc) of sin as a way of proving I’m saved and earning God’s love.
But the gospel truth is that God’s love is given to me before I overcome,

This week, Pastor J.D. welcomes back Pastor Tony Merida, author of Gather, to answer, "How do you find a good church?"

Show Notes:

J.D.: Every now and then on Ask Me Anything, I get the chance to sit down with someone who I think can answer a question a whole lot better than me, and that's the case today. I'm sitting here with Dr. Tony Merida, the author of several books including his newest book, called Gather. Tony, the question today is, how should someone go about finding a good, solid local church? What qualities are underrated and which are overrated in looking for a new church?

Tony Merida: The Reformers used to say there are two marks of a church: the right preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. Tied to the sacraments was church discipline. That's not all there is, but those are two starting points by which, if you don't have those, you don't really have a church. If you don't have the gospel, you don't have a church.

So the first question I'd ask is, what does this church believe that the gospel message is, and do they not just assume it, but preach it all the time? Is it the "main thing?"

Beyond that, you might start with Acts 2:42-47. You have what seems like the "perfect" church. I think you can categorize what Luke describes in that church with four vital signs, so to speak.

* Biblical nourishment
* Loving fellowship
* Radical generosity
* Constant interaction (with each other)

There's also vibrant worship evident, and then there's "word and deed" outreach — or mission. Evangelism seemed to be a daily thing. Those are some good starting points to look for in a healthy church.

J.D.: So, you start with the right teaching of the gospel. How important is expository preaching?

Tony: I don't know that I would say it is necessarily expository preaching that is the absolute requirement; instead, I would ask, is the preaching substantive and is Christ exalted from his Word week by week? Or to say it another way, is there Word-driven preaching present?

I don't think you have to go through a book of the Bible at all times, necessarily, for it to be considered a Bible church (though I think a Bible-teaching pastor will eventually do a lot of that).

I like to say expository preaching is the "meat and potatoes" of our preaching, but occasionally, we go out to eat.

As far as community is concerned, it's good to consider if the church is just a place where people simply come and go rather than thinking of the church as a people that we can serve.

If I were looking for a church, I'd be in prayer. I'd do my research. I'd want to try to meet with pastors and leaders... It's not easy. There's a whole lot more to church than the website.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

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This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question in his recent sermon: "How does the church achieve diversity?"

Show Notes:

We must seek to reach all people in the Triangle, not just one kind. 

* It’s clear from what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 9 that he was focused on reaching different kinds of people in Corinth, not just one kind.

* You had Jews and people under the law; you had Gentiles and those outside the law. He was trying to reach them all. And that was HARD.


* Do you know how much easier it would have been for Paul to just focus on one kind of person? To go to one side of the city and plant a church focused only on reaching Jews, and then go to the other side and plant one that reached Gentiles?

* To the Jews, he said, I became like a Jew: Which means, I did Jewish things. I ate Jewish food. I listened to Jewish music. I entered into Jewish struggles. I wore Jewish clothes.
* He made all of these cultural adaptations to reach people. 
* Jesus died for all peoples at all stages of life. And to reach them, we all have to be willing to turn down certain things and lean hard into other ones, and, I’m going to tell you, that’s hard.


* It also means all of us are muted on some of our perspectives to keep from causing unnecessary division in the body. In 1 Corinthians 8-9, Paul was willing to be quiet, or muted, on secondary convictions he was fully convinced were right, because he thought the unity of the church and it’s evangelistic mission were more important than maintaining a uniformity of perspective in all things.

* We have people leave this church all the time because we don’t say exactly what they want on some political or social issue. We say too much about some issue. We don’t say enough. I’m not saying all perspectives are equally valid, and I’m certainly not saying we are ever muted or unclear about injustice or wrong—the sanctity of life; the evils of racism, equality under the law


* We see a great example of this philosophy at work in the early church. It’s such an important example, but so overlooked by so many when they read Acts.
* In Acts 15, Jewish and Gentile believers were so divided over a cultural issue that they could no longer worship together.

* Churches led by Gentiles were experiencing a “Jewish flight” and vice versa.
* So the church leaders came together to try to work something out. Their solution, however, at first, seems rather confusing. They basically said that Gentiles should (a) avoid sexual immorality and (b) avoid eating things that had died by strangulation (both of which were regularly practiced by Gentiles) (Acts 15:29).
* The reason for the prohibition on sexual immorality seems clear—stop going to prostitutes! But the prohibition on eating something strangled? Of the entire Hebrew law, that is the regulation they thought was essential to enforce?
* James explains the reasoning for these two regulations: “‘For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him …’” (Acts 15:21).

* In other words, in every city there were a lot of Jews; lost Jews—who needed to be reached for Jesus. And when Gentiles were in the parking lot barbecuing things that had been strangled, that would produce a major stumbling block for the Jews. The Apostles knew that if these unsaved Jews came into the church and Gentiles were in the back choking the gophers and throwing them on the grill, the Jews would not be able to stomach it. And then they wouldn’t get a chance to hear the gospel and be saved.
* The Apostles said, “Yes, you Gentiles have a right to eat choked gophers if you want, gross as it is, but we are asking you to forgo that right so that more unsaved Jews in your community can hear the gospel....

This week, Pastor J.D. is joined by Pastor Tony Merida, author of Gather, to answer, "Why is it important to go to church in person?"

Show Notes:

J.D.: Today on Ask Me Anything, we're "flipping the mic." I'm sitting here with Dr. Tony Merida holding in my hand two books. One is called Love Your Church: Eight Things About Being a Church Member. And then your newest book, called Gather. Tony, we know you're passionate about the local church. So, what would you say to the person who, after COVID, feels like it just works better for them to watch church on their laptop or their TV. Do you think that's a good idea? And if not, why not?
Tony Merida: Technology can be a great gift. Our church benefited from it during COVID, and it gave us the ability to stay connected. I think you can do a lot of good information transfer and a lot of teaching online. I like to say it's a good supplement, but it's not a substitute for in person gathering. So I'm not negative towards it, I just don't think it can do what embodied worship offers us. I think it's different if we're talking about shut-ins or people who can't physically make it to the gathering, or people who are sick, and so on.

Here are a few thoughts:

Our habits form us. That's true in any part of life. Missing worship in-person is going to have an effect. The sacrifice that it takes to be there in person really does have an impact on our lives.

We're made for embodied relationships. Jesus didn't just Zoom us from Heaven... He dwelt among us. He walked among us. We were with him. The resurrection was a bodily resurrection, and there's something theologically significant about being with each other in-person. I've always loved the ending of 2 and 3 John, where he says that he has much more to write to them, but he'd rather be with them so that "our joy may be complete."

"Don't neglect to meet together." That comes from Hebrews chapter 10. The author doesn't say, "Meet together so you can hear the sermon," or "to sing together;" he actually puts the emphasis on meeting together so that we can stir up one another. So, worship is not just about receiving or about listening and hearing — because yeah, you can do that at home. But, what are you giving in corporate worship? How are you contributing to the family of faith if you're not there in person? You can't do those things — at least not at the same level — if you're tuning in from home.

J.D.: Tony, what would you say to someone who's saying, "That all sounds great if I had a really good church like yours (Imago Dei) near me, but I just get more spiritual edification listening to another church than I do from any of the churches near me." What would you say to that person?

Tony: Well, I think I would go back to how you can contribute to your gathering. Sure, your preacher may not be at the same level as someone else's preacher. But, we're called to live out all of the "one another's" of Scripture... and there are a ton of them! And so many of them, we can do on a Sunday morning or whenever we meet for worship. Think about how you might honor and encourage one another at your gathering... which you can't do on Zoom, at least not in the same way.

So, you may not have the "dream church" you want near you, but there are probably still plenty of ways you could live out Scripture's "one another" commandments... and that's satisfying and fulfilling.

This week, Pastor J.D. begins a two-part series leading up to Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. The first question he answers is, "What gives you hope about the direction of the SBC?"

Show Notes:

The latest ACP report has some negatives, but also some big positives.

In some areas, attendance is up – across the board attendance at SBC’s are up, which demonstrates a rebound after Covid. People are returning. 
Church attendance is up. Many are saying that Gen Z as a culture are the most spiritually open generation that what we have seen in last several generations.
In North Carolina, all of our three major gatherings in the past year were as high as they have been in 10 years. People want to be a part of something that is moving.
Baptisms are up. This is huge and something we should celebrate.
Small group/Sunday school attendance up. Remember for like 20 years this was something pastors were lamenting? It’s a big deal when this starts occurring.


SEND Network and SEND Relief

Renewed emphasis on leadership development within our convention. We are seeing churches starting residencies/internships to make future leaders. This was missing in past (which, downstream, led to our current crisis of pulpit-less churches).


A new culture toward abuse.

We have to stay the course on this. I know that there has been a lot of public conflict about this lately. I trust Marshall Blalock and the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, and in the most recent issue with Guidepost I think they demonstrated their willingness to listen to people in the interest of developing a tool that churches will use. They still have a long way to go. 
But at the grassroots level everything I am hearing indicates an increase in churches who are proactively seeking to do this right. The state task forces are seeing tremendous movement on this where they are, and I am incredibly encouraged by that. That was the ultimate goal of everything we have been doing—that the churches would stop assuming “that will never happen here” and would do everything in their power to keep people safe. Yes, reform is hard, but we cannot let this unravel, we cannot go backwards. 


There is a desire in so many to truly be Great Commission Baptists. 

Again, sometimes it feels like there are two SBC’s: the kind committed to making us bigger and the kind focused on making us smaller.



The shrinking ACP numbers… everybody wants to use them as if they’re a club to insist on what they want. They are in large part because of the death of cultural Christianity. I'm not trying to put a happy face on a drop in numbers; I lament them. But, I do think we need to rejoice where we need to rejoice (like the increase in engagement), while asking God to turn around the overall numbers trending downwards, with people that really are following Jesus. 

Preparing for New Orleans:

I hope we see continued resolve to have a culture that is committed to protecting our children and members from abuse, and to caring well for those who come forward. 

I hope we can stand together and refuse to give in to the temptation to fight instead of being about the Great Commission.

What can we do in this room do to help move the mission of the convention forward?

Don't be part of escalating the division. Remember the mission. Remember we are about cooperation. 

We do not have a doctrinal problem. We do not have a missional problem. We have a cultural problem. We are too shaped by the godless ideology of division rather than our unity in Christ. We should be celebrating what’s working well and...

This week, Pastor J.D. begins a two-part series leading up to Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. The first question he answers is, "How should we think about disfellowshipping churches in the SBC that have women as pastors?"

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

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Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question "What does it mean that the sins of the fathers are visited on the 3rd and 4th generation?"

Show Notes:

* There's a phrase from Exodus 34:7 where God says that he will punish the children and their children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

* Let's start with what it clearly doesn't mean. The Bible says elsewhere that it would be unjust for God to hold the children guilty for the sins of the parents.
* What it is doing is stating that sins of the fathers affect the children.


* One of my mentors when I was in seminary said every single major Bible theme is introduced in Genesis and the rest of the Bible kind of just explains those themes.

* So take the Genesis story of Joseph: Joseph's brothers are jealous of him and sold him into slavery. But that sin of jealousy didn't come out of nowhere. Joseph was the son of Rachel who was Jacob's favorite wife. Jacob had showed extensive favoritism to Rachel and Joseph, so the sons of Leah took it out on him.
* I'm not saying they're innocent. I'm just saying that they were actually responding to anger and bitterness over the sin's of their father.


* Our sin affects shapes our children. They learn to repeat our mistakes often to even greater degrees.

* I don't know about you, but it breaks my heart when I see my idols replicated in my children. And I see it all the time. Things that have become a little too important to me manifest in them.

* If we worship the idol of success, then your kids will always have that pressure of feeling like they got to be first or best or top of their class.




* If there's one big takeaway from this Ask Me Anything podcast it's that sin is serious. It is deadly serious. It's like John Owen, the Puritan always said, "You got to be killing sin, or it's going to be killing you at any given moment." One of those two things is happening and not just in you, and you and your children and those you influence for generations to come.
* I don't want to end this on a really negative note. So let me say this: Exodus 34 also says that God keeps faithfulness with 1000s of generations. And what that means is that God is much more merciful and healing that our sin is damaging. So when you sow faith, you can actually break the cycle. God loves to help you break the cycle of sin. I can think of several examples throughout the Bible and in my own life.

* There's a movie out right now called Jesus Revolution about the life of Greg Laurie. Greg Laurie was raised by a single mother who struggled with addiction and had multiple failed marriages. As a result, Greg Laurie himself experimented with drugs and lived a rebellious lifestyle as a teenager. In some ways, that's her sin being replicated in him. But then Greg Laurie becomes a Christian and helps lead this Jesus movement. He becomes a pastor and founds Harvest Christian Fellowship out in California. So yes, it's true that God sometimes lets the effects of our sin go into the third and fourth generation. But it's also true that one courageous act of faith can change not just your life and your destiny, but the destiny of your children, your children's children, and the lives of those you influence for generations to come.


* So for those that are known by God and loved by God, Romans 8:28 says that he can use all things for good, including the sins and the struggles that at one point in our life negatively affected us. God can reweave those for good in our life and produce the gold of his presence and and the brokenness of our sorrow.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our 

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question "Why does God seem cruel in some parts of the Bible?"

Show Notes:

* I always joke that if there are five questions I'm going to be asked on a college campus, this is one of them.
* I don't want to give one general answer here. We've done episodes like that before where you have to press into the individual passage itself, and find within it the clues that shows you that the same God that we find in Jesus—the merciful God, the one who's willing to die on the cross is the same God of the Old Testament. Sometimes people think Old Testament God is like God in His middle school years—He's crank and then he basically gets saved and comes back as Jesus who is loving and gentle. But what Jesus said was far different.

* Jesus said that they really are the same.


* Let's just take one example. David commits the sin in 2 Samuel 24 where he counts the people and God told him not to do that. David does it anyways, and because of that, God sends a plague where 70,000 people die.

* When you look at that, you might think, "What kind of god is this?" in response to something that wasn't really even that bad. David just counted the people that God strikes down 70,000 innocent people.
* What we're not going to dive into is why that sin was actually really bad, but let's talk on the question of 70,000 people dying something that not even really their sin.

* The passage makes it clear: God was angry with the sin of Israel. And David was just his instrument for letting punishment come to Israel. What that means is that these weren't all innocent people. And in a bigger sense, that's the truth of the entire human race. All of us were not guilty of every sin, but all of us are guilty of enough sin that we stand under God's condemnation.
* One time in the New Testament, there was this tower that fell on Jewish people and the disciples asked Jesus if they were the most wicked people in Israel? Jesus said, no. He said, "Truly, truly, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." So the question is, "Why are any of us still living today?"
* Whatever God is doing in the human race is in one sense justified.


* The second part of my answer is this: Others are not held guilty for our sins, but the Bible teaches that our sins do have an effect on others. I mean, we all know that right? If you have a father who is an alcoholic, then the kids suffer. The kids didn't do anything wrong, but they suffer for it. If one marriage partner sins, then both the other spouse and the kids suffer from their sinful choices.

* There's constant things throughout the Bible that just remind you that our sin affects people and when it's the sin of a leader like David, then yes, people suffer.
* Innocent people suffer from my mistakes as a father and as a pastor. It raises the level of leadership.




* One more thing: You might say, "Well, that's what I'm talking about, the 70,000 people didn't just experience some negative effects of David's leadership. They died, and that is just so ultimate."

* It was really liberating for me when I when I finally got my head around it. In the Bible's perspective, physical death is not ultimate in terms of judgment. Every single person in the story of David and the counting of the people are dead right now including David and Samuel—the most righteous people—all of them have passed away. The 70,000  just died early. To use Tim Keller's phrase, "He collected a few people early for the sake of many people's eternities." That is hardly immoral.
* From an eternal perspective, physical death is not the ultimate judgment, eternal life or eternal death. That's the ultimate judgment
* So you have to have an eternal perspective about this st...

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question "Were men like King David really great men of faith?"

Show Notes:

* You know, one of the things you realize are some of the great men and women of faith in the Bible had some pretty significant flaws.

* David's were legendary. There's the situation with Bathsheba, which was, at best, an abuse of power. Then you have multiple places of compromise and he seems to be a pretty terrible father. And at the very end of his life, he commits a sin that grieves God so bad that 70,000 Israelites die.
* So why do we talk about David as a hero of the faith?


* I recently was teaching through the story of David at our church, and at the end of David's life there's a verse that the author of Samuel uses to summarize David's life.

* 2 Samuel 22:21-25, " The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands, he rewarded me, for I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God, for all his rules were before me and from his statutes, I did not turn aside. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt. And the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to my likeness in his sight."

* We read this and we're like, ah, David. Blameless is not the word that I would use to describe your life. How could any of us reading the story of David say, "Oh, yeah, David was blameless and clean."
* Why would David say that? And why would the editor include this at the end of David's life?




* I see three options as to why the author would say that about David as a great man of faith:

* Option number one is what we call hagiography. Hagiography is just a fancy word that means that you tell the most polished version of a person's life and you leave out all the bad parts. Basically, you turn them into a hero. I remember when I was a kid reading this biography of George Washington and the biography is basically said George Washington did no wrong. He walked five miles in the snow to repay a penny somebody had overpaid him. He could tell no lies, and when he chopped down the cherry tree. He was dauntless fearless, a man with no flaws. And that's why that's why America is awesome. To be clear, George Washington was a great man. But we know that he liked like a lot of great men had some some pretty significant inconsistencies, some grievous ones. So is the author trying to whitewash David's past? Well, I mean, no, I mean, the same author that put this here also recorded all of the bad stuff in the preceding chapters and the author is not trying to pretend that what he just recorded didn't actually happen. The sin that David committed was real, and the pain he caused was real. The Bible has been clear about that.
* Option number two is what we call positional righteousness. And that is where you say, well, these statements are declarations about David's positional righteousness in Christ. Because after all, that's what the gospel is about is how God trades our unrighteousness for Christ's righteousness. When we trust Christ, we receive His righteousness. But I would say there are several things in this text that don't quite fit with that explanation. Several things that indicate that positional righteousness is not the not the best answer to this dilemma we find. Look again at what David says in verse 21, "according to the cleanness of my hands, I have kept the ways of the Lord according to my righteousness. I did not turn aside."

* I think it's pretty clear here that David is referring to good things that he himself did, and not good things that Jesus did in his place.




* This leads me to the third option, which I believe is the correct one,

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question from Justin, who asked, "Why Does the Bible Say Women Must Be Silent In the Church?"

Show Notes:

* There's some things in Scripture that even Peter said were often hard to understand. So if Peter had a hard time understanding, it doesn't surprise me that there's some things in our New Testament that we're not sure what they mean.
*  In 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, it says, "For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people. Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." (ESV)

* Paul is clearly not saying that women should never speak in church. How do I know that? Well, for one thing, just three chapters before this in chapter 11, Paul gave instructions for how women were to speak and pray and prophesy in church.
* He said women were to do so "with their heads covered" which communicated that they weren't elders.
* The point is, Paul's not going to give an instruction about how women should speak in church, and then turn around and give a verse that means they should never speak in church, because that wouldn't make any sense.
* The biblical rule of interpretation is that you interpret hard verses by easy ones because the Bible doesn't ever contradict itself. The easy verse here is that women are given instructions about how to speak in church. Clearly, this can't mean women don't speak in church because it would would contradict him own words, so what does it mean?


* Well, you can see from this chapter that there was a particular problem that Paul was addressing:

*  In 1 Corinthians 11 and 14,  you see that in their worship services there were different groups in Corinth who were apparently interrupting each other with with some kind of agenda that they were bringing to the surface.

* Some are speaking in tongues in the middle of a church service and others were disputing those words or disputing the tongue that was given. So Paul gives instructions to three different groups in chapter 14.

* In verse 28, he says don't just yell out in the tongue if there's no interpreter.
* In verse 30, he says don't interrupt somebody else who was given a prophecy with a better one that you think you have.
* And now verse 33, to the women of Corinth, he says, "Don't be disputing prophecies that are given by others and evaluating publicly whether they're from God because that's something reserved for the office of the elder."


* Paul refers to 1 Corinthians 11 to say that the the official evaluation and disputation of prophecy, the authoritative teaching on what is really from God and what's not, is the  function of an elder, and a woman is not to play that role in the church.
* So that's the kind of speaking he is referring to in the authoritative capacity of an elder.




* Now, here's one objection that I've heard. Sometimes people will ask, "Maybe Paul's instruction here is only for a particularly boisterous group of women in Corinth." But here's why I don't think that's a good explanation.

* If that were true, why would Paul say it this way?
* In verse 33, he says, "as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people." In other words, he said: this is not just about Corinth, it's about all churches of saints everywhere.


* So I think the better interpretation is what we've talked about and is consistent with what Paul says everywhere. Women have access to all the spiritual gifts and they should use them in the church and use them publicly and privately...

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question from one of our listeners, James: “Is It OK for Christians to Use IVF?”

Show Notes:

* I do want to be sensitive here, because I know that there are probably people listening right now who are going through this.

* I know that this is an incredibly emotional decision to make. Most of the time that decision has been preceded by a very emotional journey of trying to conceive and not being able to get pregnant. I know there are others who might be listening who actually were conceived via IVF, and and I'll address that here later on as well.


* So I'll just start here, I see a potential problem that IVF can bring about that runs contrary to a biblical perspective on life, namely, that life begins at conception.
* All human life, at whatever stage, is sacred.
* Many times the procedure is carried out in a way where they take multiple eggs, because they're trying to make the process as efficient as possible. Sometimes an implanted embryo won't actually develop into a child or there'll be a miscarriage, so they'll actually fertilize multiple embryos at one time, and then the ones that they don't use, they either freeze those additional embryos, or in some places, they'll actually discard them. And that's where there we find an ethical problem.

* Because if life does begin at conception, then we're dealing with human beings now made in the image of God. And that means we're creating a number of individual people in the image of God who have a soul.
* We create them with the knowledge that we're likely going to be destroying a number of them intentionally.


* Listen, I don't claim to have the last word on this ever changing world of reproductive technologies. In fact, I would refer our listeners to the work of somebody by the name of Jennifer Lahl at the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Her work actually raises a lot of these questions and helps you think through them biblically.
* But I do want to say as clearly as I can, that the idea that we would create babies in embryonic form as a fertilized egg, and intentionally discard them, that runs entirely contrary to a true pro life position.
* While that is agreed on generally by evangelical theologians, there are some trusted evangelical theologians that have injected some nuance into this discussion that I think we ought to be aware of:

* For example, Wayne Grudem, who is a very influential evangelical theologian has a very trusted voice and has been a consistently reliable voice in these kinds of things for years. He has an article with the Gospel Coalition called "How IVF Can Be Morally Right." Not that it is always morally right, but how it can be morally right. It's well researched and helpful if you're considering this.
* What he concludes is that IVF is a morally good action in some circumstances. He says, and I quote, "If IVF is used by a married couple, and if care is taken to prevent the intentional destruction of embryos, then it is a morally good action that pleases God because it violates no scriptural guidelines, achieves the moral good of overcoming infertility, and brings the blessing of children to yet another family."
* Dr. Grudem also says he says choosing to fertilize only one egg or two at a time and using those with the hope that they will survive is far different than the common practice of IVF, where several eggs are fertilized and then most are intentionally destroyed.
* In that case, he says there is a willful and intentional destruction of human lives, which we would say is unethical because it violates the commandment, thou shalt not murder.


* And let me also say this,

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question in his recent sermon: "Does charismatic worship go too far?"

Show Notes:

* Let me give you twin worship principles to hold in tension:

* Different cultures (and different personalities) have different ways of expressing emotion. Different cultures and different traditions have distinct ways of expressing emotion and reverence and worship, and that’s ok.
* I’ve learned this most as we’ve tried to make strides in becoming a multi-ethnic church. As you know, pursuing ethnic unity is much bigger than just worship style. But worship is one area where our church has learned a ton from various cultures being involved.

* For example, we have a lot of traditional Southern Baptists in our church. When they are really into it in church, they tend to sing with a lot of gusto. There’s not a lot of movement in their worship, and many of them can’t even clap on beat, but there’s plenty of volume, especially when we bring out those old hymns. If they get totally into it, they may even lift one arm for a moment like they are trying to ask a question. And if they are experiencing full-on revival, they’ll sway back and forth with both arms bent 90 degrees at the elbows, as if they’re carrying a giant, invisible microwave oven. And when I preach, they’ll let out punctuated, staccato “Amens” when I say something they think is powerful, especially if I alliterate it.
* Mixed in among them is a sizable number of people who grew up in churches that were a bit more loquacious with their sermon feedback.


* During worship, a lot of former Pentecostals add in some rhythmic clapping, shouting, and jumping that I don’t typically see from our members who grew up at First Baptist.
* Our Latino members combine this sanctified enthusiasm with what can only be called a supernatural endurance. For them, anything less than two hours of singing cannot legitimately be called “worship.” I’m serious: the first time I attended a service at our Summit en Español campus, I missed lunch with my family. And I think dinner, too.


* So here’s the question: Which of these is the correct, biblical way to worship? Amen.
* What is wrong is when we elevate our preferences and make them normative. Remember what God told Samuel earlier in 1 Samuel? Don’t judge the outside, Samuel “Man looks on the outside, but I look on the heart.”
* I grew up in a church with some of the godliest people I’ve ever known—many lived the most sacrificial lives; they were people of integrity; they were people of deep prayer, people who brought others to Jesus consistently—they were just quieter and less expressive.

* But I know people who would look at them self righteously and say, “They are not filled with the Spirit.” Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart.


* Here’s the other worship principle: All worship should have elements of passion and self-forgetfulness.

* Remember, “undignified” is the word David used in 2 Samuel 6:22.

* He said to Michal, “And I will make myself even more undignified than this when I worship…!” The word here implies self-forgetfulness.
* What David said is, ‘When I worship, I’m not going to think about what people are thinking about me; I’m going to think about what they are thinking about God.” It is true we all do things differently, but the corresponding truth is that all worship should contain elements of passion and self-forgetful expressiveness.




* More than 20x in Scripture we are encouraged, even commanded, to raise our hands in worship.

* Here’s just a few examples: Psalm 88:9, “I call for you every day, O Lord; I spread out my hands like a child toward you.” Psalm 143:6, “I spread out my hands to you.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question that has been submitted by several listeners: "Should I get a divorce if I’m miserable in my marriage?"

Show Notes:

* My heart goes out to people that are in these types of situations. There's nothing more heartbreaking than being in a relationship that supposed to bring life and joy than when it ends up feeling like misery.

* That's why at multiple points the Bible will advocate caution as you approach marriage because you are about to tie yourself to someone for the rest of your life. It's not a covenant to enter lightly.
* We have done a podcast before here on Ask Me Anything, which is linked here, that walks through the biblical reasons on whether or not divorce is OK.
* But I do want to acknowledge, like I stated on the previous podcast, that there are some reasons where the Bible teaches that divorce is justifiable. This can be remembered by the three A's: adultery, abandonment (1 Corinthians 7), and abuse.


* But the specific question wasn't if adultery, abandonment, and abuse were present should I get a divorce but if I am just miserable, can I get a divorce, and the Bible is pretty clear that in that case, you don't have a justifiable reason to leave.

* Divorce has never been about you and your happiness. It's about a covenant that reflects God's unconditional love and sometimes you show that by being with somebody that at the time is not giving you warm fuzzies or meeting all of your needs.
* Jesus didn't stay with us because we made him happy. It was that love that ultimately showed his greatest glory.


* So somebody might hear that and say, "Well then does God want me to be miserable?"

* Of course not. God does not want you to be miserable at all but here's the thing, the way to happiness in the Bible is never through a change of circumstances. The way to happiness in the Bible is the way to holiness.
* What this might mean is that you stay married even if you feel unfulfilled. Let me be clear, I'm not talking about the situations where there is abuse. I'm only talking about the situations where you feel unhappy.
* Russell Moore said, "Remaining faithful to a wife that you wish you had not married might seem miserable to you but taking up a cross and following Jesus is miserable in the short run at least. That's why the book of Hebrews presents the life of faith in terms as sometimes not receiving what was promised (Hebrews 11:39) but seeing it and embracing it from afar."

* Sometimes the happiness that you're embracing in the midst of a difficult marriage is the happiness that's not now in the present but a happiness that is there in the future.





So how do you stay in a difficult marriage?

* Reject the “Right Person” myth.

* We talked a lot about this in our relationship series, but the “right person” myth says that there’s a right person out there for you and that a good marriage—and therefore your happiness—is determined by finding that person. If you aren’t happy in marriage, you probably aren’t with the right person. Press reset and try again.
* But here’s the thing: You always marry the wrong person. How do I know that? You’re both sinners who will disappoint and fail one another! Plus, you’ll both change over time.


*  Do it for Jesus.

* The covenant you made in marriage was first and foremost to him. Even if you weren’t a Christian when you got married, marriage was  still God’s creation, and you did it in his name. You may not feel, in the moment, that the person standing in front of you is worthy of forgive...

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question, "How do you handle it when a Christian leader falls?"

Show Notes:

* Unfortunately, I think we can all think of a Christian leader that we’ve looked up to and respected who has fallen—either morally, disqualifying themselves from ministry, or denouncing the faith altogether. 

There are few things quite as devastating as when you look to someone as your spiritual hero and they fall. Sometimes it's someone you've seen from a distance whose teaching had a big impact on you and sometimes it's someone who is up close—maybe not everyone has heard of them but they've had a big impact on you.
This raises questions like, "Were they always a hypocrite or was this a moment of weakness they got in? Is everything they ever taught a lie?"
Sadly I can name several men that I've looked up to in ministry who have disqualified themselves from ministry. 


* There was a book that was written by Paul Trip called Dangerous Calling, which is about the danger of being called into ministry and the irony is if you open up the cover and see the names of the men who endorsed the book, they were all really good friends of mine and all of them except for one have fallen.

* So I asked Paul Trip about this and he said, "There are two things—number one they lose peer community. By peer community, I mean the kind of people that look into your life and call stuff out. They don't work for you. They're not impressed with you. They can speak truth to you. Most of those people community around them but not peer community. The second problem is something that compounds the first—they forget the power of indwelling sin. They think that somehow their success in ministry or how much they know moves them beyond that initial call to follow Jesus and die to yourself."


* I can tell you that even after being in ministry for over 25 years, the fight between the flesh and the spirit never goes away. It never gets easier. The raging of my flesh against God is as real as it ever was.
* So when that happens and it effects you personally and you're dealing with that disappointment, there's a few things I try to remind people.

* At their very best, they were still very flawed and they were never designed to be your savior. They were only to point to Christ. Now, hopefully they will point consistently to Christ by their life, but there are just a lot of figures in the Bible who started that way and then disappointed.


* Ultimately, the Christian leaders you look up to you are not there to be the object of your faith. They're just a means to point you to put your faith in him. 

 

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This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question from one of our listeners, Brennan: "Should evangelicals participate in Lent?"

Show Notes:

* This one is going to be one of the classic, "yes, no and it's up to you" kind of answers.
* First of all, if you’re not familiar, Lent is the practice that some denominations observe by setting aside the 40 days leading up to Easter (actually, it technically ends on Holy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter) to devote themselves to prayer and fasting.
* Traditionally, Lent is started on Ash Wednesday, which is where participants signify the start of lent by drawing the cross on their foreheads with ashes.

* People usually fast from something during during this time… “giving ____ up for lent.”


* Let me start by saying that I do not really observe lent, and lent is not part of our Baptist “calendar.”
* However, there is certainly not any harm that necessarily comes from observing lent—and in fact, I strongly believe that more Christians should set aside periods of time in their lives where they devote themselves to fasting and prayer.
* Part of the resistance to this is that there is a certain stream that teaches that these rituals earn merit with God and only in doing these are you filling yourself with grace—a sacramental approach where participating in these rituals fills you with grace.

* And the counter to that is our righteousness has been gifted to us through Christ and there's nothing we can do to add to it—this is not directly commanded in the Bible so why do we need to do this?


* What I want to say is there is a value in attaching yourself to the historic Christian calendar. Many Christians have approached this with the right spirit for many years.

* I'm all for more time spent in prayer and fasting, and if doing that with the global church is helpful, then that is great.
* At the Summit Church we do things a little differently. For the past three years, at the beginning of the calendar year (usually January/February), we have what we call 21 Days of Fasting & Prayer. Each year it’s been an incredibly powerful time both for me personally and for our church.


* Sometimes when people fast, they don't really understand why they're doing it. This happens with Lent, too. People think that because they are hungry, God will listen to them.

* The gospel would say, "No, God's attention to you, his love, is not conditioned based on how hungry you are." Fasting is really about putting yourself in a position to hear from him. It's less about getting you in a position where God likes you and more tuning your heart to the Father's. 


* To make sure we're clear, the commandment of God is that we pray and fast often, but the exact form of the, the calendar in which that happens, isn't subscribed. 

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, 

This week, listen in to Pastor J.D.’s thoughts on revival that he shared at a recent Summit Church staff meeting.

Show Notes:

* There are two ways God sends revival:

* "All at once" and "over time"


* Rick Warren has said that Saddleback has never had a revival, only a ‘vival’

* While Saddleback isn't a perfect church, there's a lot of evidence of genuine spiritual awakening but it didn't happen in one service that extended for eight days. It happened through faithful preaching, teaching and disciple making.
* It's important to be aware that God is the one who chooses how he sends things.


* To quote Tim Keller, the definition of revival is, “The intensification of the ordinary operation of the work of the Holy Spirit, occurring mainly through the ordinary ‘instituted means of grace’— preaching, pastoring, worship, prayer.”

* During these seasons God’s glory gets heavier, sin becomes more real, Jesus’ love and presence become more “felt.” And lots of people get saved.
* So we get up every day and we do those four things listed out: preach, pastor, worship and pray.


* My encouragement to you is, don’t force anything, or assume it has to look just like somewhere else.

* Almost none of Jesus' miracles happened the same way: Sometimes he speaks, sometimes he spits on the ground—it's all in different ways. You can not reproduce a miracle. You keep on doing what he has called you to, and God will work.


* We can long for revival and not assume anything BUT there are a few things that these kind of awakenings always have in common:

* Prayer—the evidence that God is on the move.

* I was reminded of this recently in Psalm 71. David, as he got older, saw his main job as “proclaiming your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.” I’m not older, but I wanted to share this. I want the next generation of the Summit church (leaders that we're raising up), to know in the depths of their heart that God is faithful and he answers prayers.


* The second characteristic is always confession of sin. There's a greater awareness of your sinfulness.

* It starts in the church. The few revivals I've had a privilege to be a part of always start with the leaderships' sensitivity to sin.


* The final characteristic is having an openness to the Spirit.

* We just join God in what he is doing.





Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

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Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. finishes the Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, Essential Christianity. The final question is, "What is the difference between being religious and being spiritual?"

Show Notes:



This is a really important question because the fastest growing category in the United States is "spiritual but not religious," which I talk about in my book, Essential Christianity.
Simultaneous to this growing interest in spirituality, there is also a decrease in trust in religious institutions and historic traditional religious belief systems.
Just listen to talk shows, Hollywood, sports starts and you will hear the message of "I have a religious side to me—I really want to commune with the divine, but I'm just not part of organized religion."
So for Christianity, the world's largest religion, it sounds like it's pretty bad news... but it might not be. I think there is a good and bad version of the "spiritual but not religious."

The bad version is, "I want religion on my terms. I'm not really interested in God or anybody else in telling me what is right and what is true. I don't want morality dictated to me by anything. I want to find truth within me." It's a toxic, self-actualization way of thinking and it's everywhere.
The good version of it is that a lot of the formal religious structures including ritualism and authority structures are being questioned. Jesus taught something entirely different from those things. Jesus focused not on religion but on a relationship (loving God with all of your heart, loving your neighbor as yourself, the gospel is a gift of grace that you receive). So, detaching from an unhealthy dependance on religion can be a good thing.
One of the thing that surprises people when they read through the Bible for the first time is how central a relationship and communion is with all of Christianity.

If you look back at the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked with God. God led them out in Exodus and led them with a plow by day and a pillar of fire by night. When Jesus came they called him God, with us, Emmanuel. Now with the Holy Spirit he is God in us.
 Jesus went so far to tell his disciples that if they have the choice between having him, Jesus, with them or having the Holy Spirit inside of them, they should choose the Holy Spirit if they really understood what the Holy Spirit could do for them.






* All of that to say that the experience with the Spirit is supposed to be so incredible that it really defines all of Christianity, which is ironic that a lot of people think that you now choose between spirituality and religion because, at least in the Bible, they really are one in the same. You cannot have a relationship with God and not commune with his Spirit.

* This leads a lot of people to say, "What does the Holy Spirit do exactly?"

* In Romans, Paul identifies several things:

* The Spirit enables us to believe in Jesus. The fact that you are convinced that Jesus is Lord and submit to him is all produced by the Holy Spirit.
* The Spirit produces the life of Christ in us. Throughout Romans 8, Paul keeps saying the Spirit is life. In Romans 5 Paul says the Spirit sheds abroad Christ's love in our hearts, which means he gives us a felt sense of God's presence and his love.
* Paul says the Spirit prays for us with groanings that can't be uttered.


* The main things that the Spirit does is he sheds abroad Christ's love, communicates Christ's presence, and he fills us with the spiritual fruits—the love, joy, and peace that characterize life in the Spirit.


* So if find yourself saying,

This week, Pastor J.D. continues our Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, Essential Christianity. The fifth question is, "Is downplaying the sinfulness of homosexuality necessary to reach the next generation?"

Show Notes:



I had one good friend tell me I should leave the topic of homosexuality out of the book, since it can be so hard for some people to swallow. I recognize that sometimes, there are issues that you want to time when you bring them up when you're sharing the gospel with someone.
In the end, I decided to put in a small chapter about what Christians have historically believed on this. First, because that's a pretty significant part of the book of Romans (which the book is based on), when Paul talks about the evidence of our rebellion against God. If anyone is reading along in the book of Romans as I go through this, they'd have a big, glaring question about this topic. That's a big reason why I don't think downplaying homosexuality is something we can do anymore.
When trying to reach the next generation, this is one of the top things they come into an evangelical church thinking about. The world says there are only two options: affirmation and alienation. Because of that, they don't give any moral authority to those who they believe are "alienating," and because of that, I believe I have to show them that the Bible offers a third option: you don't affirm the behavior but you do affirm the individual as made in the image of God and worthy of love and respect and protection.
Leaving the subject out was going to be counterproductive in my book, and I believe it's the same situation with our churches: the next generation is coming in with their own narrative about what I believe, so I have to address it head-on.
There are also a couple of biblical problems that lead me to believe downplaying this topic is not helpful (which I wrote about in an article posted on The Gospel Coalition). First, removing the offense of the cross will also divest it of its power. Repentance, properly understood, is offensive—but repentance has always been at the center of the gospel message.
Second, we know from the Bible that Jesus was full of both grace and truth... not just one or the other. Truth without grace leads to fundamentalism and judgment. Grace without truth leads to acceptance amongst people, but not to repentance before the Father. Jesus was full of both, and the two together are the power of God.



For more from Essential Christianity, order your copy today!

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This week, Pastor J.D. continues our Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, "Essential Christianity." The fourth question is, "Can anyone actually know they will go to heaven?"

Show Notes:

I’ve talked about this before, but if there were a Guinness World Record for the amount of times someone asked Jesus to save them, I’m pretty sure I’d hold it.

By the time I was 19, I’d “become a Christian” about 5,000 times. Every time my church gave an invitation to pray a prayer to “accept Jesus,” I did it right away. One year my church had a goal of 300 conversions and I think I fulfilled that goal all by myself.

I know that sounds neurotic, but I just wanted to be sure that I was saved. I was plagued with questions like “Last time I prayed that, did I feel sorry enough about my sins?” and “Since praying the prayer, have I followed Jesus closely enough?”

I knew the Bible said that we were “saved [by] faith,” (Ephesians 2:8) but I wanted to know: what was the faith that saves, and how could I be sure I had it?

I’ve since found that a lot of Christians have these same questions. Ask 20 different people what “faith” is, and you’ll likely get as many different answers. Some think of it as a general sense that God is real. Others think it means sincerity in religion. They say, “I’m getting more serious about my faith.” Some think having faith just means adopting a positive, hopeful outlook on life. Others think it just means that at some point you prayed the infamous “sinner’s prayer,” asking Jesus into your heart.

So here’s the question we want to consider: what is the faith that saves, and how can we know that we have it?

In the book, I used the example of Abraham. How was Abraham saved? He was saved by faith. And his faith was credited to him as righteousness.
The faith that saves is believing God’s promise and resting on it. The only difference between our faith and Abraham’s is that Abraham looked forward, believing God’s promise to send salvation; you and I look backward, believing he has sent it.
Christians trust God to keep his promise to them just as Abraham trusted God to keep his promise to him. If we believe that God has forgiven our sins in Jesus, just as he promised (v 25), then, like Abraham, our faith is credited to us as righteousness. That’s the faith that saves.
We know that faith doesn’t exclude effort, but it does exclude earning. In other words, we’ll never earn our salvation – but saving faith shows evidence (fruit) in the life of the believer.

As Martin Luther said, “The law says, ‘Do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘Believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”



You know, preachers often ask people the question: “If you died tonight and God were to say, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?” The question has become a cliché, but it’s actually a good one to consider. What would you say?

Many say, “Well, because I was a good person.” Or “Because I tried my best.” “Because I was a sincere Christian and always tried to live out what I believed.”


But faith that saves always starts its answer with “Because Jesus…” It would never start with “Because I…” Why? Because any answer that starts with me is going to reveal faith in my work, not faith in his. The faith that saves is the faith that leans all its hope for heaven, and for life, on Jesus Christ.

How you answer that question, then, is how you can know whether you have the faith that saves. This is how the younger, sinner’s-prayer-praying, baptism-junkie J.D. could have stopped worrying about whether he’d prayed some prayer well enough or felt sorry deeply enough or gotten committed to Jesus strongly enough to be saved. I could have rested in the fact that he did what he said he did....

This week, Pastor J.D. continues our Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, Essential Christianity. The third question is, "If God is real, why doesn't everybody believe in him?"

Show Notes:

Like we talked about in our last episode, there is abundant evidence for the existence of God. So then, why doesn’t everyone believe in him?

The truth, Paul says, is that we suppress it because we think we want a world, a life, without God. This means that the question, “Is there even a God?” is one that we answer more with our hearts than our heads. The problem is not that the evidence is not there; it’s that our hearts don’t want to see it. 

The philosopher William James, who many regard as a forerunner to 20th-century postmodernism, said that in determining what we believe, more important than evidence is (to use the title of his most famous lecture) “The Will to Believe.” What we believe, James explained, is less determined by the evidence itself than by what we want to believe. Postmodern philosophy patted itself on the back for this great discovery. And it was a great discovery. 

But Paul got there two millennia earlier: “For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:21). Or Rom. 1:18… we suppress the truth with unrighteousness.

In other words, our heads are controlled by our hearts. It wasn’t that we couldn’t figure out the truth about God; we didn’t want to figure it out because we didn’t really want to know it. The flaw was not in the evidence but in the hearts considering that evidence.

So in a sense, we know, but we don't know, because we don’t want to know. We suppress the truth that is evident to us because we don’t want it to be true.

* We want to be the center of our story, making the rules... 
* We’re the point. Our comfort is the priority. We know best. Our way is better. Our will is supreme.

Humanity’s suppression of truth, Paul explains, manifests itself in two forms: an irreligious form of suppression and a religious one.

Irreligious suppression: Atheism (or agnosticism) 

Listen, I’m not saying there are not people genuinely convinced that they are atheists. I’m saying that according to Romans 1 that atheism is driven by a subconscious desire not to know. We know but we don’t know because we don’t want to know.

Everybody in their heart knows the truth, but we don’t want to admit it to ourselves so some of us convinced ourselves  there is no God. We don’t like the thought of an all-powerful, ruling God, so we suppress the truth.
Which is why a lot of the great atheist-intellects of the last 100 years who have become Christians—people like T.S. Elliot, W.H. Auden, C.E.M. Joad, C.S. Lewis, A. N. Wilson (by the way, ever notice all the really smart people go by their initials)—have all said, “What brought me to faith was not some new argument or evidence. I just admitted to myself that I always knew there was a God.” 
When I am sharing Christ with someone, I often will ask, “If you come to see these things are true, are you willing to change your life in response? “Because a willingness to follow the truth is a prerequisite to knowing the truth.” 

Religious suppression: Idolatry



When we suppress the truth of who God is through religion, we change the object of our worship into something we can control. 

The false gods humanity has worshipped all have one thing in common—they exist to serve us. We worshipped, but our main question was how to get God into orbit around our lives. But the most basic truth of creation is that we were created for God and his glor...

This week, Pastor J.D. continues our Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, Essential Christianity. The second question is, "How do we even know there's a God?"

Show Notes:



This new book, Exploring Christianity, looks at 10 key words in the book of Romans to help us explore the truth behind Christianity. In Romans 1:19-20, Paul makes it clear that God has made himself and his existence undeniable. He says, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.”
Now (like a lot of the book of Romans), there’s a lot of meat there, but Paul’s basic claim is that God has made the basic truths about himself known to every person who’s ever lived. He’s left his fingerprints in various places, if we have eyes to see them.
Philosophers helpfully grouped these fingerprints into four primary categories, and then unhelpfully gave them complicated names. I’m going to use those complicated names, but don’t let them trip you up. The concepts are pretty simple. I figure if we can memorize the name of our $14, 16-ingredient drink at Starbucks, we can learn these. And, if you happen to find yourself in a philosophical discussion about the nature of God at the Waffle House late one afternoon and drop in one of these multisyllabic masterpieces, it’s sure to increase your standing in the debate.




These are four ways that the apostle says God reveals himself in creation:


* The Cosmological Fingerprint


This one goes back all the way to Aristotle. It’s the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and where did the original something come from? 




If the world began 14 billion years ago with a Big Bang, where did the materials that caused the Big Bang come from? 
You can’t keep going back in infinite regress into nothingness. 
Eventually something has to come from somewhere. “Nothingness” can’t just explode. 
In his book God Delusion, Richard Dawkins admits this is a problem. He says, “Darwin’s theory works for biology, but not for cosmology (or, ultimate origins).”  And, “Cosmology is waiting on its Darwin.” 
In other words, he thinks that while they have explained how life took shape on the earth, he admits they still have no idea where life itself, or the materials that produced life, came from.
We need a theory, he says, as to why anything exists, because it is self-evident that nothing x nobody can’t equal everything. 
But don’t worry,” he says in the book, one day we’ll find it. (Which is a textbook example of a blind, hopeful leap of faith.)




* The Teleological Fingerprint


Not only do we have the question of why there is something rather than nothing, but our creation appears to be very finely tuned.

The more we learn about this, the more amazing it becomes. 
Scientists say that life on earth depends on multiple factors that are so precise that if they were off by even a hair, life could not exist. They call it the Goldilocks principle: things are “just right” for human life. 
The makeup of the atmosphere is very exact, yet it’s the difference between life and death. If some of those levels were even slightly off—for example, if the level of oxygen dropped by 6% we would all suffocate; if it rose by 4%, our planet would erupt into a giant fireball. And we’d all die.
Or, if the CO2 were just a little higher or a just  little bit lower (say...

This week, Pastor J.D. begins a new Ask Me Anything series based on his new book, Essential Christianity. First up: "What Is Christianity, In a Sentence?"

Show Notes:

I get asked questions like this a lot because there’s so much misunderstanding about what Christianity is or isn’t. So, I’m going to give you a sentence that I think defines Christianity in a sentence, but first, let’s talk about why so many are confused about it, and why there even seems to be a growing animosity towards Christianity.

This new book, Exploring Christianity, works through 10 key words in the book of Romans to help us explore the truth behind Christianity. And we start off with the gospel announcement that Paul makes very clear in chapter 1. 

Now, this book is not a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. Instead, it uses the major talking points of Paul’s letter to construct a framework of Christian essentials. I’m asking, “If Paul were writing the book of Romans today, to people living in a 21st-century Western post-Christian culture rather than people living in a 1st-century Roman and Jewish culture, how would he write it?”

So, what is the gospel announcement that Paul starts the book with? He says the gospel is good news about: 

* who Jesus is
* what he’s done
* what he brings

Based on that, here’s a workable definition we can use, then, from this point forward:

God, in an act of grace, sent his Son, Jesus, to earth as a man so that through his life, death, and resurrection he could rescue us, reign as King, and lead us into the eternal, full life we were created to enjoy.

That’s the one sentence I’d say we can sum up Christianity with. Let’s break that down:

God… 

The gospel begins with God. God exists, and he’s been moving and speaking throughout history. That’s already a big claim, and we’re only one word in! How can we know he’s there? What is he like? How do we know when he’s speaking to us? I don’t want to “tease” too hard, but we do get into that more in the book.

…in an act of grace,...

That word “grace” means “undeserved kindness.” Grace, properly understood, is what makes Christianity different from every other spiritual approach. Grace is the entire basis of the gospel: the melody line around which all other Christian truths are played.

…sent his Son, Jesus,...

Or, as the apostle John explains it, God himself became a man and dwelt among us (John 1:14). More on the what and why of this later.

…so he could rescue us…

The most important thing about Jesus is not what he taught but what he did. Paul’s letter to the Romans, in fact, speaks very little about what Jesus taught and a whole lot about what he did. It’s not what he taught that saved us, but what he did. The symbol of Christianity is not a lectern but a cross.

Christianity is, in its essence, a rescue religion. Which, of course, raises the questions: Why do we need rescuing? And how can a man who lived 2,000 years ago have done something then that can rescue me today? Those are great questions, and we get into them in the book.

…reign as King, and lead us into the eternal, full life we were created to enjoy.

The gospel is not just about what Jesus came to rescue you from, but what he came to rescue you for: the full, eternal life that we were created to enjoy. As Paul explains, the gospel restores us to the life we were made for all along (the subject of chapters 7 to 10). This is what a lot of Christians, as well as non-believers, forget, but it pulsates through almost every chapter of Paul’s great letter.

For more from Essential Christianity, 

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question, "Should Christians watch Game of Thrones? (or anything with nudity?)"

Show Notes:

* This is similar to our questions on music, but I do think it's more specific.
* I'll talk about nudity specifically, but let's expand it a little bit to shows that have various kinds of sinful things in it.
* First of all, we've got to realize that we are in the world. God knows that, and we are supposed to have an awareness of the culture that we're in, and where it has needs and where the culture is making mistakes. Paul said to be "simple" when it comes to what is evil, but even he demonstrated a familiarity with the culture—like the poets, for instance—even though sin was laced through their work.
* Another thing to realize is that God created art and entertainment for his glory, as a way of relaxing. Comedy, entertainment, drama and suspense that I can read, watch and listen to may not be specifically about the Great Commission, but it's serving a God-glorifying purpose because God created us to enjoy art and to participate in his creation. The enjoyment of art is not by itself a sinful or wasted enterprise.
* Sometimes, there is a place in the arts for the fact of sin because it's part of an overall redemptive thing that I'm trying to teach. But when it comes to acting and those types of things, like John Piper says, there's a difference between depicting sin as an act and actually sinning in doing the depicting.
* But revealing nudity (or taking God's name in vain, I believe) creates a situation where the actor is not only depicting sin but is themselves sinning while doing the depicting. Their body is actually being exposed, or God's name would actually be blasphemed.
* Jesus said that to fantasize about having sex with someone makes you guilty (in God's eyes) of the sin, and Hollywood skin and sex are meant to arouse.
* I read an article a little while ago by John Piper, specifically about Game of Thrones. He said that first of all, Jesus died to purify, and the Bible from beginning to end makes a radical call for holiness.

* Jesus talked in the most extreme terms about pursuing good.
* Some would say that watching these things will help them be more relevant to lost people, but at what cost? That relevance is never worth more than your personal holiness.
* Piper says that nudity is not make-believe. If you're going to value the modesty and self-control of women, you're not going to do something that celebrates and puts that kind of thing on display.
* It's hard to say, "I weep with repentance at Jesus' death," while laughing (or intentionally enjoying) the kinds of things that put him on the cross.
* Piper says prolonged exposure to these things affects us.
* Lastly, he says there's no great film that needs nudity to add to its greatness.


* So, how much is too much? What's the right balance? Well, there's no way I could give something that just applies to everyone. I will say, there's a difference when something has sinful stuff in it and when its central focus is to celebrate and affirm sin.
* Like Kevin DeYoung says, yes, people are wired differently—but those who say that these things don't phase them at all may not really know themselves as well as they think they do. And if looking upon what God has forbidden has no affect on you, I'm not sure that's a good thing after all.
* VidAngel is a service that my family uses from time to time, with some options that will cut some of this out for you.
* Overall, if your conscience is troubled, that's a sign that you should just not watch something.

* If in doubt,

This week, listen into one of Pastor J.D.’s recent sermons as he answers the question, "What Does It Mean Practically to Follow Jesus?"

Show Notes:

What does it mean to become a Christian? According to the gospels, very simply, it means to follow Jesus. It doesn't mean to start being perfect; it’s not to know every answer to every theological question, it’s just to follow Jesus. Jesus invites people everywhere and anywhere to follow him. 

Now, I want to acknowledge that a lot of people don’t know exactly what that means. Back in biblical times, it was pretty straightforward. You literally just followed him—he went that way, you went that way. But today, he’s not physically here anymore, he’s invisible, so what does it mean to follow him? 

Great question. Back in those days, when you wanted to follow a Rabbi, you would go and sit at his feet and he would examine you with questions and put you through a series of tests to see if you were worthy to be their disciple. If you passed, they’d invite you to follow them, at which point you’d literally go everywhere with them, listening to everything they taught, watching all the ways they’d interact, and trying to imitate their every move.

Ray Vander Laan, a historian who specializes in 1st century Israel, said that in those days the greatest praise you could give to a talmid (which is the Hebrew word for disciple) was “the dust of your rabbi is all over you.” That didn’t mean “Dude, you’re dirty! Go take a shower!” It meant, “You have followed your rabbi so closely that you’ve heard everything he said, seen everything he’s done, and everything he’s stepped in has splashed up on you.” 

All of that should give you a picture of what it means to follow Jesus. Here’s Ray Vander Laan’s definition: “A talmid (disciple) is someone who seeks not only to know what his master knows, but also to do what his master does.” There are two elements there:



The first: Learning. You want to know what your master knows. Listen, if you want to be a disciple, there’s no shortcut to this—there’s a lot of learning involved. If you are serious about being a disciple, your life will be filled with a lot of learning, listening to messages, being regularly in church, reading books, participating in small groups and leadership cohorts seeking to grow in your knowledge. You say, “But I’m not really an academic kind of person.” Look, you don’t have to be. I’m just saying if you’re in love with somebody, you’re going to learn all about them—and that’s a big part of the Christian life.
But that’s just half of the discipleship formula...
The other half is doing. A disciple doesn’t want to merely know what his master knows; he or she also wants to do what his master does. How did he live? What were his priorities? 






Following Jesus means seeking to know what he knows, and do what he does. Around the Summit, you’ll hear us simplify that into the 5 identities of the disciple: You become a worshiper, family member, servant, steward, and witness. That’s what he was.



45 Philip (went and) found (a friend named) Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 

46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

* Nathanael said, “Can anything good come outta there?” Totally snobby. But Philip doesn’t answer it; he just says, “Come see for yourself.” Some of you have a friend you want to tell about Jesus, but you don’t, because you are afraid of how they are going to react. Follow this example of Philip. Jesus doesn’t need your help converting them; he’ll do that. Just tell them your story like Philip did, and when they ask you an antagonistic question,

This week, listen into one of Pastor J.D.’s recent sermons on the life of King David as he answers the question, "How can I know where God is moving?"

Show Notes:

David doesn’t figure out what he wants to do and ask God to bless it; he asks God what God wants to do and seeks to follow him. We see countless examples of this, like the question that opens chapter 2: “After this, David inquired of the Lord, ‘Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?' And the Lord said to him, ‘Go up.’ David said, ‘To which shall I go up?’ And he said, ‘To Hebron.’ 2 So David went up there…”

One of the phrases we have started using around the Summit Church is that success in our ministry means joining God in what he is doing around us. Success is not attempting great things for God and asking him to bless us; success is discerning where God is at work and joining him in that. 

A lot of us go through life backwards. We assume that God has put us into the world to figure stuff out and fix everything, so our general attitude is; “God, this is what I think needs to be done; help me in it.” 
But in every epoch of Scripture, God is the primary actor. God is the one bringing salvation and blessing to the earth. Our job is to discern where he is at work and join him. 
Jesus explained in John 5 that this was his whole ministry philosophy. He said, “My Father is always at work around me, and my job is to figure out what he is doing and join him in it.”

A person after God’s own heart seeks to join God in what he is doing.

You say, “But what does that mean exactly?” How do you discern where God is at work? Great question!

Sometimes it can take the form of a divine call that comes to you through an opportunity the Spirit invites you into. Think of Paul who got the vision of the man from Macedonia saying, “Come and help us.” Paul discerned that God was calling him to go over and be a part of what he was doing in Macedonia. Now, you may not get an actual vision, but God might let you sense some opportunity where you are positioned and gifted to help, and you sense the Spirit saying, “Come and join me in what I’m doing.”
Or maybe it’s in a conversation that you sense God has been at work in someone’s heart and he’s put you in a place to participate. That’s what Jesus did with the woman at the well in John 4. He sensed the Father had created a sense of dissatisfaction in her and put him there to point out where she could find living water. All my sharing Jesus on an airplane or in a coffee shop are like that. I ask questions, and get a sense that God is at work in someone’s life, and I join him in that.
Sometimes you discern where he is at work by experiencing unusual success in something. As a church, we have been involved in lots of different initiatives, but we’ve never experienced the success like we have in missions and church planting—it’s like there is a divine wind blowing behind us. We’ve sent out close to 1600 of our members on church planting teams. Other pastors ask, “How do you do this? What leadership strategies?” It’s not my leadership. I know that because a lot of other good ideas I’ve tried here have failed.” This is just an area where God is at work, and we’ve sought to join him. 

One of my prayers for 2023 is that God would open up my ears to hear the sound of his marching so that I can join him. For most of my life, I’ve done the opposite. I’ve assumed it’s my responsibility to fix everything, and seek his help. No, that’s his job. My job is to join him in what he’s doing. At the end of the day, your greatest Strategy for Success = Submission.

Good news: this year, I’m not responsible to win my neighbors or friends to Christ. The Holy Spirit does that. I’m not responsible to grow this church—numerically or spiritually. He does that.

This week, listen into one of Pastor J.D.’s recent sermons on the life of King David and his friendship with Jonathan and discover what makes the best friendship.

Show Notes:

Here's what David's friendship with Jonathan did:

1. It shielded David.

* Jonathan alerted David to danger that he was unaware of. He saw things that David could not see.
The central point is that together is better. 
And that’s partially because our friends see danger in our lives before we do. The definition of a blind spot is something you can’t see because you are blind to it. If you knew about it, it wouldn’t be a blind spot. You can’t see it, but quite often your friends can. Often that blind spot is in our own hearts: Proverbs 18:1, “An isolated man seeks his own desire and rages against all sound judgment.” When you get isolated, selfish heart deformities begin to grow unchecked. 
Are people close enough to you to speak into your life? Be honest. 

Here’s the second thing this friendship did:

2. It strengthened David.

Jonathan spoke courage into David’s life when David was ready to give up. He reminded David that God had great plans for his life even when David’s world seemed to be collapsing around him.
True friends multiply your strength. God designed our hearts to work that way. 
God made us so that our strength multiplies when we pull together with a friend. Have you experienced that?
Close friendships sustain and strengthen us: I was re-reading something Tim Keller said the other day about marriage. He said in times of distress, it’s not the romantic part of the marriage relationship that helps, but the friendship part. He talked about going through one of the most difficult seasons of his life, and says in the middle of it that it dawned on him: His wife helped sustain him but not because she was his wife—but because she was his friend. What I needed, he said, wasn’t sex, or a roommate, or someone I shared my bank account with. It was a true soul friend. 
And so he says to married people, or those looking to get married: “You must do everything possible, you must pay any price, to be best friends with your spouse.” Good marriages, he says, are not basically romance garnished with friendship. They are friendships garnished with romance.
And for those of you not married, it means that the most sustaining parts of marriage are available to you. It’s not sex or sharing a bed—it’s friendship. 

So, this friendship shielded David, and strengthened him, and lastly:

3. It shaped David.

* Later on we’ll see David show extreme generosity and selflessness with others. After tragedy had struck Saul and Jonathan’s house, David asked if there was any of Jonathan’s descendants he could show kindness to. And David found Jonathan had one living relative, a boy named Mephibosheth, but he was crippled. David said, “Bring him to my table. He’ll never lack anything,” and for the rest of his life David treated him like a son. That’s a generosity of spirit he learned, at least in part, from Jonathan.
Jonathan’s character shaped David’s character. That’s what Proverbs says will happen: Proverbs 13:20, “He that walks with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.”
I’ve heard Pastor Craig Groeschel say that this verse means there is one place in your lives I can look right now to accurately predict our future. It's not your New Year’s resolutions. It’s who your close friends are.
Craig says you become the average of your five closest friends. 
You say, “That’s depressing.” The good news in that is that if you want to change your future and are not sure where to start, you have a very actionable step: change your close friendships.  

This week, listen into one of Pastor J.D.’s recent sermons where he explained a question based on Matthew, Chapter 7: “Can you be active in church and still go to hell?”

Show Notes:

On that final day there will be a lot of people, Jesus says, to whom he says, “You were active in my church; you were super religious; but you never really repented; so I never knew you.”

Are you going to be in that number? Part of my own story of coming to Christ came after a Sunday School teacher confronted me with that in middle school. It was a Friday night and my whole small group had gone over to his house so we could go bowling. But before we went, he wanted to do a short Bible study, because that’s what you do in student ministry: you bait kids with things like bowling and then hit ‘em with Bible study. And I remember him reading this passage from Matthew 7, “Many will say to me…” And then he looked at us and said, “Boys, a bunch of y’all are going to be in that number.” And that was about all he said. I knew in my heart it was going to be me.

I was super religious. Been in church all my life. And at my church, you had to go 3x a week for it to count: 3 to thrive! I always said that the only drug problem I had growing up was getting drug to church. So, I was plenty religious, but I had never repented and surrendered to Jesus as King.

Here’s how you can know if you’ve substituted religion for repentance:

A. Rationalization

* You rationalize your sin. That’s what Saul did. Look at all the good things I’ve done!
* You never think about your sin in terms of rebellion against God; only how you compare to others.
* I’m not having an affair, it’s just pornography.
* I may not be fully committed in my relationship with Jesus, but I’m a good person and go to church.

B. Unchanged behavior

* Your mouth says that Jesus is King, but your life says something different.
* There are 2 ways to tell what you believe: what your mouth says and what your life says. If what your mouth says differs from what your life says, God accepts the testimony of your life.
* With Saul’s mouth he said God was King. But his life said that he was.
* Write this down: A repentance that does not change you in life won’t save you in death, either.
* Jesus’ half-brother, James talks about this when he says, “You say you believe in God? Good. Even the demons believe and tremble… They believe so much that they tremble at the thought of God.” But demon’s aren’t saved. Why? Because their belief doesn’t lead to repentance.
* It’s not what your mouth says that God takes as the indicator of what you believe. It’s what your life says.

C. Worldly sorrow not godly sorrow

* Several times in his life, Saul wept over his sin. He did it there in 1 Samuel 28.
* A lot of people confuse worldly sorrow over repentance. Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians 7:10. He says, “For godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation… whereas
worldly sorrow produces death.”
* There are two types of sorrow over sin. There is worldly sorrow--worldly sorrow arises for all kinds of reasons. The embarrassment of being caught. Self-pity. Self-condemnation. Fear. None of those things equal repentance.
* Confessing your sin is not repentance. You may have just been trying to relieve your guilt or get something off your chest.
* Repentance is the Greek word “meta-noia”, which means a change of mind. To repent means you change your mind about the Kingship of Jesus and adjust your life around that new reality.
* No change, no Jesus.

D. Partial compliance

* This is a big one. You start obeying God in one area but not all. Repentance is one of those things that has to be total or it is me...

This week we wrap up our marriage and family series. Pastor J.D. jumps from talking about traditional marriage and family to answer a controversial family question.

Show Notes:

Two perspectives to this: 1. Is it biblically permissible? 2. Even if it isn’t, is this one of those ‘live and let live’ areas? Not everything Christians believe about morality do we believe should be put into laws others who don’t share our beliefs should live by.

NOTE: Please listen to the full length episode for full context. Do not rely solely on these show notes as they do not paint the full picture of what Pastor J.D. is communicating.

Part 1: Six biblical passages--every mention is negative, either prohibiting or condemning such behavior and all very clear. 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, for instance, refers to “men who have sex with men” as a vice that would prevent a person from entering the kingdom of God. The two Greek terms he used, malakoi and arsenokoitai, were the common terms of the day to refer to a broad range of homosexual relationships.

Common objections: 

* “Jesus never spoke about homosexuality.”


This is a claim that is true only in the most technical and unhelpful sense. No, Jesus never uttered the word “homosexual.” He also never mentioned (by name) rape, child abuse, fraud, or idolatry. But his stance on each of those issues is, nevertheless, quite clear.
There are two ways that Jesus could have established what was right and wrong in regards to sexuality. He could have talked about every possible variation of the wrong, condemning each aberration one by one. Or he could put forward a vision for what is right. Think of it like this: if five women were standing side by side, and one of them was my wife, I could identify her in two ways: I could say that each of the other four were not my wife; or I could say, “That wonderful woman there…she’s my wife.” Jesus repeatedly affirmed the Mosaic understanding of the sanctity of sex within heterosexual marriage, and by doing that he disallowed all deviations.
Furthermore, saying “Jesus never talked about it” pits the words of Jesus against the rest of the Scriptures. But Jesus himself said that all of the Scriptures were inspired, which means that the black letters in our Bible have as much divine authority as the red ones.


* “What Paul had in mind was not the same as homosexuality as we know it today.” 


He was, they argue, thinking of male prostitution, rape, or pedophilia. Committed same-sex relationships didn’t exist in Paul’s day, so Paul’s words don’t apply.
This is, simply put, not true. Historian Thomas Hubbard (not a Christian), wrote an exhaustive (and exhaustively long, nearly 600 pages) work on homosexuality in the ancient world, entitled Homosexuality in Greece and Rome. He demonstrates that homosexuality existed in a wide variety of forms, much like today. And that included committed, lifelong, same-sex partners. Had Paul wanted to distinguish between valid and invalid forms of homosexuality, he could have done so.
Or consider Romans 1, in which Paul talks about humanity’s rejection of God’s authority. Because we rejected God’s authority, “God gave them [that is, us] up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another” (Romans 1:26–27). As Richard Hays says concerning this passage, Paul depicts gay and lesbian activity as an outward epitome of the inward posture of sin—rejection of the Creator’s design.


Part 2: But can’t we believe that it is wrong and still allow marriage? Christians don’t think every wrong thing should be illegal. J Budizewski says,

The presents may all be unwrapped, but how much is too much? It may be too late for this Christmas, but perhaps in the new year this is a question you'd like to wrestle with in your family.

Show Notes:

Christmas is about gifts, mostly the extravagant gift of Jesus. 
Jesus calls us to follow him--how did he leverage his resources. Certainly, it’s wise to understand the times we are in, that we are in the richest country in the world, and that comes with responsibility.
1 Corinthians 10:31, "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (ESV). 

Our gift giving should glorify the gospel

It’s lavish generosity: your gift ought to make me thank God for his generosity. When I see it cost you and you care about me.




How we do it in our house: 

Something you want, need, wear, read
Biggest gift at Christmas goes to Jesus! 


John Piper: Why do we give Christmas gifts?

Gift giving is biblical
God’s gifts to us:

God gives us His Son (John 3:16)
2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” The very essence of Christmas includes a divine overflow of generosity, kindness, grace, giving–doing for us, giving to us, what we could never do for ourselves or get on our own.


Our gifts to God:

We have a responsibility to give to Christ. 
It’s dangerous in one sense to speak of giving to Christ because our giving to Christ dare not be seen as a paying him back, as if the transaction were done because he needs to get our services. 
Our giving to Christ is an overflow of affection and thankfulness for our forgiveness.
Part of worship is finding ways to show how much we admire and reverence and trust and value Jesus.


Our gifts to others:

The giving of God to us and our joyful readiness to show affection in giving to him overflow in our giving to others. 
Hebrews 13:16, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
2 Corinthians 8:2, “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed.”
The giving of God to us and our joyful readiness to show affection in giving to him overflow in our giving to others. 
Hebrews 13:16, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
2 Corinthians 8:2, “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed.”
Our gift giving should lead others to:

Rejoice in God as the great and first giver of the greatest gift.
Seek the mindset that offers back to Christ the gift of trust, hope, admiration, joy, and affection.
Seek the mindset that overflows with joy in giving to others.







Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, 

This week, as we continue our marriage and family series, Pastor J.D. discusses how many kids Christians should consider having.

Show Notes:

Proverbs 24:27: Establish your work in the field, afterward build your house.

Doesn’t mean you have to wait a long time or that you need to be rich. But you probably don’t want to be on the rocks. 


In general, we are waiting too long to have kids and not having enough. Not high enough value on childbearing. 

Genesis 1: Be fruitful and multiply.

Many would-be-prophets are currently telling us: too many kids causes poverty, global warming. We are headed for an apocalypse because of too many people. Countries that have low birth rates are the one economically struggling so that argument doesn't hold up.


Psalm 127: no magic number.


But what about taking time to get to know each other? I get it, honeymoon phase. But I got to know my wife so much better after we had kids; I didn't get less of her when we had kids, I got more. 
Have a parenting strategy: 

Contrary to Beatles, love is not ALL you need. 
Parenting catches you so off guard.



Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, as we continue our marriage and family series, Pastor J.D. gives us the second half of his 10 stages of grace-saturated, gospel-centered fighting. He's joined by his wife, Veronica, for another episode.

Show Notes:

If you missed the first half of this episode, take a look now.
10 Stages in Grace-Saturated, Gospel-Centered Fighting:
6. Believe in God’s purpose for your marriage

We knew that God had obviously appointed us to be together even though we felt like we married the wrong person sometimes, and that God had a plan for our difficulties and was making something beautiful out of them! 
There is one factor that, if we could introduce it into your marriage, would do more to strengthen it than anything else, and that is hope. 
And that hope comes from knowing that God has a plan for your marriage, even the difficult parts of it. He knew whom you were marrying, he knew the consternation they would cause you, and he’s got a plan to make something beautiful out of you and maybe your marriage in it. 
Same thing is true for single people. God has a purpose for all things, even the difficult relationship.

 

7. Speak grace-saturated words

* If you are speaking words that build up, not tear down:
For every one statement about what is wrong, there will be five describing what is right and that paint a vision of the beautiful person God is making them. 

* You’ll never demean with “you” statements. Calling names: Names make you feel good, quickest way to alienate an enemy… Say, “You did this,” not “You are this”
You’ll avoid saying ‘never’ and ‘always.’ You’re always this way or that way. Don’t escalate it beyond the problem. “Never” and “always” basically tell the person that “you are this” and “you stink” rather than “you have done this” and “I expect more from you.” 
You’ll avoid being sarcastic (Sarcasm usually functions like a knife. And it’s the quickest way to turn somebody off: Remember: smarty had a party and no one came).
Avoid being condescending (to condescend means to talk down to).


And women, avoid confronting your husband publicly: 

There’s nothing that shuts a man down like having his wife tear him down to someone else.



 

8. Don’t give up until there is no longer a chance of reconciliation

We know divorce is a larger topic, but to just touch on it quickly: we know that God hates it. So do some of you.

In most cases, he sees it as adultery.


There are exceptions: 

Adultery; 1 Corinthians 7 Paul says if you have an unbelieving spouse who leaves you, if you wonder if you fit into that category, see us. 
Abuse: We’ve covered this more at-length on Ask Me Anything, but of course you should never stay in an abusive situation and you should reach out and get some help immediately.


But the point is that you should give grace a chance. 
Before you give up on your marriage, give the power of grace a chance. 

 

9. Truly forgive

Remember: Forgiveness is a choice not to remember or bring up the offense any longer!
* Ken Sande: True forgiveness says:  

* I will not think about this incident.
* I will not bring it up again or use it against you.
* I will not talk to others about it.
* I will not allow it to stand between us or hinder our relationship
* You have to think of past flaws like they are ammunition already spent.


* Never get “historical” in an argument.

This week, as we continue our marriage and family series, Pastor J.D. answers a question about marital conflict. He's joined by his wife, Veronica, for another episode.

Show Notes:

Let me dispel a myth right from the beginning: good couples are not couples who never fight; good couples are couples who have learned to fight fairly; to fight Christianly. If you’re one of those starry-eyed engaged couples who feel like, “We never fight…” Veronica and I were like that, too. How blissful it is to be young! You just can’t get close to another sinner without there being conflict.
10 Stages in Grace-Saturated, Gospel-Centered Fighting:
1. Examine YOUR heart.

Even if you’ve been wronged, what does your anger say about your heart? 
Has malice, wrath, anger, and bitterness snuck in? 
Mind the smoke detectors! Rage, malice, wrath, and bitterness always indicate idolatry, which is a bigger problem in your heart than whatever your spouse is doing to you.
And this is why you need outside counsel in your life. 


2. Overlook whatever you can. 

You don’t have to comment on every little infraction. Choose your battles.

Proverbs 19:11 It is to a man’s glory to overlook an offense. 
Proverbs 12:16 The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.


This would not apply to things that do lasting damage to your relationship with each other or them. Or any kind of abuse. 

Sometimes, we don’t want to bring up their sin against us because we don’t want to disturb the peace. 
Guys are especially bad at this. You just want to maintain the peace. A few times in our relationship (I’m being really transparent…) I’ve had to speak up.


There are times you need to speak up and confront; and there are times just to let it go, and there’s a real art to knowing the difference. 


3. Be practical in how you fight.



Proverbs 12:18: “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
“Rash words.” Words not thought out, spoken in anger, or not given at a good time.
Veronica and I have found it helpful to boundarize conflict within times, zones, and moods: For example, allowing an argument to begin if we are both physically tired. We have set certain rooms, certain times, off limits.

We will invoke what I call the “24 hour rule.” “I promise to come back to this.” 
Now, men, you have to keep your word, otherwise you lose credibility. 






You say, “What about, ‘Don’t let sun go down on your wrath?’ Doesn’t that mean we have to deal with our anger before we go to bed? 


It can’t mean literally before the sun goes down because that would mean some people in Sweden could nurse their grievances for three months in the summer but in the winter they’d only have about two hours… 


The main point of that verse is that we need to deal with our wrath and vengeance and get it out of our hearts.
Sometimes 24 hrs helps us to separate unrighteous, selfish irritation from righteous, loving, others-centered anger.


4. Be quick to listen and slow to speak.



Proverbs 18:13: “He who gives an answer before he hears, it is a folly and a shame.”
This is exactly what some of you do, especially you men. 

Brad Hambrick, our pastoral counselor: “The vast majority of communication problems are not expression problems, but listening problems.”






Let me offer you some remedial help on listening (and I need these two,

This week, as we continue our marriage and family series, Pastor J.D. answers another question about how to parent teenagers. This time he's joined by his wife, Veronica.

Show Notes:

A wandering child does not mean failure: God played the parent role for two humans and they both rebelled. Cain and Abel were parented exactly the same. One became a man of God, the other a murderer.

Key resource: Feeding the Mouth that Bites You, by Ken Wilgus, Ph.D. and the Feeding the Mouth that Bites You podcast.


When a kid is in rebellion, you can’t be prophet and dad at the same time.

Think more like a farmer than a mechanic. Worst thing to do is dig up seed! You give rain and sun. In the analogy, rain and sun are the quality of the relationship not quantity of devotion.


Wait on God: All the defining moments in my life came from somewhere else.

Psalm 136: Israel’s history with “steadfast love of Lord endures forever.” I did this an exercise with our staff team. We wrote out key moments where the Lord worked in our lives, and I had this realization: my mom and dad wrote none of the key moments in my life.
*
Psalm 127
*
Psalm 37:39-40


The role of prayer:

Abraham prays for Lot and angels grab his hand.
Man lowered through roof: their faith. your faith subs for the man in the stretcher.



Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, as we continue our marriage and family series, Pastor J.D. answers a question about how to parent teenagers.

Show Notes:

First, let me say how underprepared and unqualified I am for this one. I'm certainly not the expert!
One of my mentors said the teenage years are like the scene in Apollo 13 where they're coming back into the earth's atmosphere, and they're going to lose radio contact for a while. It's the climax of the movie, and everybody's watching on the other end to see how they'll end up—but it's not clear if they'll be burned up or if they'll be fine. They just have to kind of wait and see! That's how parenting a teenager can feel sometimes.
Every kid is different. 

I heard a Christian counselor say that kids are often either compliant or defiant. The strategies for working with each child and their differences could not be more different.
Scripture even seems to allude to that. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child according to his way.” In Hebrew, that literally means "according to his bent." A good archer adjusts his aim based on the shape of the arrow.


Understand the shift from disciplining for control to empowering for responsibility.

In his book Biting the Hand That Feeds You, Dr. Kenneth Wilgus talks about a "planned emancipation." You're gradually shifting your control over your child (which is in full swing through the elementary years) to your child. It doesn't happen all at once; it's a gradual emancipation. If you don't grant them that independence, they may eventually rip it away from you in rebellion.
John Ortberg, the Christian author and pastor, says you go from being responsible for your kids to being responsible to them.
Andy Stanley said you have to stop thinking of yourself as a mechanic and instead think of yourself as a farmer. A mechanic wants to diagnose and fix everything, whereas a farmer puts down the seed, takes care of it, and leaves the results to the Lord.

But the worst thing to do is dig up the seed and interfere with this process!




You can’t play the role of the Holy Spirit, as much you want to. 

The control you think you have is an illusion, meaning that you can't control every aspect of your child's life forever.
Jesus talked about this in his parable of the soils. Only God can truly cultivate soil. For the non-producing soil, the farmer doesn’t just go out and throw the seed down harder! Instead, he recognizes that not all soil is prepared, and that our job is to put down good soil and let the Holy Spirit prepare their hearts.

Veronica and I identified four guiding principles we wanted to follow if our kids ever decided to do things differently than we'd like them to:

Tell them the truth
Keep our kids from detonating "nuclear bombs" (actions with life-altering consequences)
Protect other kids
Keep the relationship open

One of my mentors said: I won’t play detective in my child's life; I'll trust God to reveal and to guide.








Don’t trade control for influence.

In one sense, the quality of my relationship with my kids is more important than the content of my teaching.
In the seed analogy I mentioned earlier, "rain and sun" that helps the seed to grow is the quality of the relationship not quantity of instruction that you give.

This week, as we continue our marriage and family series, Pastor J.D. shares the second half of his answer to the question: "What counsel would you give young Christians about dating?"

Show Notes:

4. Resolve to seek God first and your significant other second.
When you reject the “marriage completes me” myth, you can put your eyes on Jesus and let him supply your needs.

The best marriages are like two people running down the road as hard as they can after God, where you look over to see someone running about the same speed and direction that you are, and you say, “Hey, where you going? Wanna go together?”

Andy Stanley said it this way: “Become the person that the person you are looking for … is looking for.” That way, if God has marriage in your future, great—you’ll be better prepared. And if not, you still haven’t wasted a decade of your life.

5. Resolve to date “only in the Lord.”
If marriage is about having a lifelong companion, then why unite yourself to someone who doesn’t share the most important part of you?

Scripture is very clear on this: Talking about a single woman in the church, 1 Corinthians 7:39 says, “… she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord,” (NASB). And, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? …” (2 Corinthians 6:14 ESV).

A yoke was a harness put on two animals to keep them pulling in the same direction. If your partner doesn’t share your faith in Christ, you will be pulling different directions when it comes to just about everything—your time, your money, raising your future kids.

We need to see that what Scripture says here is less of a restrictive rule and more of a loving guideline because to be unequally yoked to an unbeliever means you will never be able to share the deepest parts of yourself with them.

6. Resolve to date only in the context of community.
You need godly and wise counsel more in the dating stage of life than perhaps any other.

If there were no other practical reason to be involved in the church, this would be it. Sometimes it’s obvious to people you trust that there are problems with the person you’re dating or your relationship that you can’t see. This could include lust or flirtation problems, a failure to keep their word (which shows they are not trustworthy), or manipulative and controlling behavior.

You won’t have those godly people in your life if you are not connected to the church. God has already given you all the counsel you need. You just need to ask older, wise believers to speak truth into your relationships.

Again, these resolutions are countercultural, but they are not impossible.

Dating is a time of testing. Are you going to be faithful in this? If you use this time to show that you can wait on God’s good plan, you won’t believe the ways he’ll bless you in your marriage and—most importantly—as a disciple.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

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Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, 

This week, as we continue our marriage & family series, Pastor J.D. shares the first half of his answer to the question: "What Counsel Would You Give Young Christians About Dating?"

Show Notes:

You’ve probably noticed this by now, but our culture isn’t doing awesome with the whole dating and marriage thing. Our culture yearns for good, fulfilling, lifelong marriages but obviously doesn’t know how to get there.

I want to give you six biblical resolutions for dating.

These are uncommon, and certainly counter-cultural, but if you want something nobody else has, you have to be willing to do what nobody else does. And the goal is that these will lead to the kind of marriage you long for, the kind of marriage Jesus wants for you.

1. Resolve to prioritize character over chemistry.

The truth is there are different kinds of beauty and they carry different weight.

The Apostle Peter says there are two kinds of beauty that can be applied to both men and women: “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3–4 NIV).

Let me tell you: When your kid gets sick and you are on the way to the emergency room at 3 a.m., it doesn’t matter what kind of six-pack he has. All that is going to matter to you is if he’s the kind of guy you know will petition God in prayer, if he’s a spiritual rock that you can lean on.

When you lose your job, it’s not going to matter how white her teeth are. What’s going to matter is if she’s the kind of partner you know will stand by you and not go anywhere.

You are preparing to tie yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually to someone else for life. Because marriage is companionship and because it is permanent, character matters most of all.

2. Resolve to date for clarity, not intimacy.

If the purpose of dating is to choose someone to marry (and it is), and that means character matters most of all, then physical intimacy is something that, for the most part, you should keep to a minimum in dating.

Physical intimacy works like a drug; it intoxicates you. That’s not always bad: When you are in pain and you pop a codeine pill, the drug deceives you into feeling awesome. At times, you need that. But if you took codeine and then decided to go for a 10-mile run, you’re setting yourself up for trouble.

The same is true for relationships: When the drug of physical intimacy keeps you from seeing who the other person really is, you’re creating problems for yourself.

When the physical excitement of sex fades—which it will—all you are left with is a sick relationship.

3. Resolve to reject the “marriage completes me” myth.

In a sense, you always marry the wrong person. Why? Because your spouse is a sinner—and so are you. They will inevitably let you down. They will disappoint you. That’s not to say the choice doesn’t matter. But if we think the “perfect person” is going to make marriage a breeze, we are sorely mistaken.

What if you gave up the myth that there is a “perfect person” out there for you and instead understood that’s not what marriage is about anyway?

What if you saw that God’s main purpose in life is preparing you for himself, and that marriage is one way (though certainly not the only way) he can do that?

If we approached singleness this way, rather than being on a rabid, obsessive search for the right person who was the key to a happy life, we could put our eyes on Jesus and focus on following out him, letting him supply our needs.

Want to ask J.D. a question?

This week, we continue our marriage & family series with part two of last week's episode: "What Are the Biggest Obstacles Christians Face in Marriage?"

Show Notes:
Myth 3: Everyone else is doing better than we are.

Everyone thinks they are unique in their struggle.
Truth: 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you…” 

Social Media has turned this common lie of Satan’s into a forest fire of destruction today. It always amazes me how people seem to be sure from the curated feeds they follow that they stink at marriage (or parenting or whatever else) and everyone else is a superstar. Satan can use social media to cherry-pick what you see, and lie to you about your marriage. He is a liar.




God has not forgotten you. He has a purpose for your marriage. He’ll give grace for you to glorify him. 

I’ve thought often of the story of manna in the Bible. As much as they wanted it, manna was not given all at once… we want it all up front in the marriage in pre-marital counseling. There are needs in the marriage God won’t reveal until year 5. And he’ll be ready with manna.



Myth 4: I’m primarily "sinned against," only secondarily "sinner."

Early on in our marriage we were both mad at each other. Disappointed. “You didn’t keep up your end of the bargain,” we both thought. 
Truth: With Jesus, I’m always first sinner, and only secondly "sinned against." That came from a counselor, and it changed my life. 

I think about how much I’ve sinned against God…nothing she ever does to me compares to what I’ve done to him. 
Submersing myself in grace is what gives me the ability to forgive her. 1 John 4:19




First, I want to caveat this by saying that I am not talking about abusive situations, just average joe-selfish sinners. If you are in an abusive relationship, Christ is not telling you to stay in it. You should get to safety immediately and reach out for help. So we’re not talking about abusive relationships, just normal selfish ones.

With that said, the question is: What is the “ticker tape” in your head playing? It should be regularly playing your sins, not their’s. Or playing their best moments. Can you remember the last time you repented of something with your spouse?

Jesus told a story that I think might be the most important one for marriage, at least mine: 10,000 talents. So if you don’t naturally forgive your spouse, you must have forgotten how much Jesus has forgiven you.
What you need is not “10 steps to a better marriage,” but to embrace the 10,000 steps. What you need is Christ as the foundation and center.
In no marriage is it always one person’s fault… but with the church and Jesus, it’s always the church’s fault. Yet Jesus never stops forgiving. 





Conclusion: 

Keep your eyes on Jesus. His grace gives you the ability to forgive. He has a purpose for your marriage, and he will give you abundant grace in it.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question.

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter,