Podcasts about christiany

In this gripping episode, we dive into the harrowing journey of Jena, a survivor who grew up in a cobbled-together toxic Christiany cult. The cult's roots trace back to Southern California before its leader convinced the members to uproot their lives and relocate to the Bible Belt, White House, TN.Jena shares the chilling details of her upbringing within the cult, where a rigid doctrine based on perfection and blind obedience dominated every aspect of life. As a survivor of sexual abuse, she courageously opens up about the traumatic experiences she endured at the hands of the cult's leaders and members.Discussions in this episode:Meet JenaRelocating to CA and joining the “church”Childhood controlled by the cult400+ members migrate to the Bible BeltTrauma of it allExposing and escaping the abusive cultSurviving the stress of the news circusAs Jena transitioned into young adulthood, she found the strength to expose the cult and take legal action against them. Her brave pursuit of justice involved filing lawsuits for rapes, molestations, underage marriage, and a web of cover-ups that extended through generations within the congregation, often comprised of tightly-knit family members.Join us as Jena recounts her journey from darkness to light, shedding light on the complexities of escaping a manipulative cult, seeking justice, and ultimately reclaiming her life. This episode serves as a powerful testament to resilience, courage, and the human spirit's ability to break free from oppressive environments.Content Warning: This episode discusses various forms of toxic abuse, narcissistic abuse, child abuse, rape, religious abuse, and any topics that may disturb some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.We are not doctors or therapists; you should not take our opinions as medical advice.Have a story you would like to share? Please fill out our form.Would you like to help support the show more? Donate or subscribe to our Patreon for exclusive content.Hosts: Behk & LAHFollow us on Instagram + Facebook @ngcompodProduction & Design: LAHardenMusic: No Reason Why by Anchor Help us keep the show going on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're talking about your PURPOSE and how you can figure it out if you don't already know it. ----- Let's do a BOOK CLUB for WORLD SPLIT OPEN (my first and only novel)! WORLD SPLIT OPEN is about a couple in a very difficult Christian marriage (and it may or may not be about 90+% autobiographical, just sayin'!) *Looking for a good read to finish off your Summer? *Want to read something that was called “too Christiany for secular publishers but too raw for Christian publishers”? (yes, an agent actually told me this) *Like fiction but not the kind that gets all wrapped up in a pretty little bow? Here's what you need to do: 1) buy the book: https://elisabethklein.com/books/ (it comes in paperback or Kindle) 2) email me with a copy of your receipt (elisabeth@elisabethklein.com) 3) if you're on Facebook, I'll send you an invite to a private Facebook group 4) we'll read it together over the course of a couple weeks, I'll post discussion questions, and I'll do a couple webcasts Join in today! ----- resources:Meaningful Life e-course: https://elisabethklein.com/product/meaningful-life/So You Want to Be a Writer e-course: https://elisabethklein.com/product/so-you-want-to-be-a-writer/UnStuck e-course: https://elisabethklein.com/product/unstuck/ journaling questions:what topics or issues do I gravitate towards?what do I talk about, think about, read about, give to, what upsets me the most in this world? what hard things have I been through? what groups of people do I feel passionate about or long to serve?what am I good at? what am I not great at?what do I know a lot about? what are my gifts and strengths? what do I love to do? what do I not like to do?what did I like to do when I was a little girl?how am I wired up? 3 simple challenges: every day this next week, ask yourself: what can I do for someone else today that will make their life better?every day this week, pray this prayer: Jesus, lead me to the ones I need, and to the ones who need me; and let something I do be of eternal significance today. every day this week, tell Jesus one way you'd like to help someone or serve him that seems out of reach and ask for him to make a way. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elisabeth-klein/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elisabeth-klein/support

Let's do a BOOK CLUB for WORLD SPLIT OPEN (my first and only novel)! WORLD SPLIT OPEN is about a couple in a very difficult Christian marriage (and it may or may not be about 90+% autobiographical, just sayin'!) *Looking for a good read to finish off your Summer? *Want to read something that was called “too Christiany for secular publishers but too raw for Christian publishers”? (yes, an agent actually told me this) *Like fiction but not the kind that gets all wrapped up in a pretty little bow? Here's what you need to do: 1) buy the book: https://elisabethklein.com/books/ (it comes in paperback or Kindle) 2) email me with a copy of your receipt (elisabeth@elisabethklein.com) 3) if you're on Facebook, I'll send you an invite to a private Facebook group 4) we'll read it together over the course of a couple weeks, I'll post discussion questions, and I'll do a couple webcasts Join in today! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elisabeth-klein/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elisabeth-klein/support

Ask A Question: saythatpodcast@gmail.com bridgechicago.tumblr.com/ask (Anonymous) I have been thinking about the idea of “bearing fruit”. It seems like it's just a Christiany way to say “be busy and accomplish a lot”. Am I missing something? (15:47-30:28) A famous pastor recently said online that the most important thing a Christian can do is read the whole Bible repeatedly. Honestly, I get a little tired of the Bible sometimes. Is that okay? (30:32-48:21) Romans 2:5 says that because of stubborn you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath. That sounds bad. What can I do about that? (48:24-59:09) Closing Song: 2 Corinthians 3:17 (The Poolhouse Guru)

1 (2s): Good morning, harvest church. We wanna invite you to come and come on in and take your seat and stand and worship with us. We worship the God who was, we worship the God who is we worship the God who ever more will be. 1 (43s): He opened the prison doors. He parted the rag agency. My God holds the big there's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't. We shout out your praise. There's joy in Lord. We shout out your, we sing to the God who eats. 1 (1m 30s): We sing to the God who saves. We sing to the God who always made away. Does he hung up on that cross? That he rolls up from that grave? My God still rolling stones away. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your there's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place and we won't be quiet. 1 (2m 11s): We shout out your prayer. We were the beggars. Now we are royalty. We were the prisoners. Now we're running free. We forgive and accepted, redeeming his praise. Let the house of the Lord were the, now the, the business. Now we're running free. 1 (2m 51s): We are forgive and accepted graves. The house of the Lord, praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God surely in this place, then we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. 1 (3m 32s): And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the 0 (3m 38s): Lord, 2 (4m 24s): Worthy of every song we could ever see worthy of all the praise we could ever breathe worthy of every breath we could ever agree. And we live for you. 1 (4m 45s): Oh, 2 (4m 45s): We live for 0 (4m 46s): You. 1 (4m 51s): Jesus. 2 (4m 52s): The name above every other name. 1 (4m 58s): Jesus. 2 (4m 59s): The 1 (4m 59s): Only one 2 (5m 0s): Who could ever say of 1 (5m 6s): Every breath 2 (5m 7s): We could ever breathe. And we live 1 (5m 10s): For you. Holy, we 2 (5m 13s): Live for you. 0 (5m 17s): Holy. 1 (5m 19s): There is no one. You, there is not beside you up 0 (5m 28s): Eyes and 1 (5m 29s): Wonder and show 0 (5m 32s): Me who, 1 (5m 41s): Oh, Jesus, the name above every Jesus. The only one who could, could, could pray live 0 (6m 19s): You. 1 (6m 21s): We live for you. There is no one. There is of my eyes and I will build, 0 (7m 22s): Put 1 (7m 23s): My trust in. 0 (8m 4s): No, my 1 (9m 13s): Trust Christ is my firm foundation. I stand when everything around me, shaking, 0 (10m 0s): I've never 1 (10m 2s): Been more glad that 0 (10m 4s): I put my faith 1 (10m 6s): In Jesus. He's never let, so he won't, he won't. I've got these. That makes no sense. So 0 (10m 58s): He's never, 1 (11m 21s): He 0 (11m 22s): Won't, 1 (11m 26s): He won't, he won't, 0 (11m 45s): You won't 1 (11m 49s): Christ is my firm foundation. He won't, he won't. 1 (13m 12s): And with 0 (13m 23s): You 1 (13m 25s): I'm 0 (13m 42s): You 1 (13m 44s): I'm gonna save 0 (14m 0s): With you. 1 (14m 3s): I'm gonna I'm make it. I'm strong on get is rock. 0 (14m 41s): I've never 1 (14m 42s): Been more glad 0 (14m 44s): That Jesus 1 (14m 50s): Cause he's so he won't won't won't 0 (15m 14s): He won't, 1 (15m 19s): He won't, he won't. So I throw up my hands and praise you again and again. Cause all that I have is a it's for king on don't you get me lift up son. 1 (16m 24s): Cause you've got lion. Get up and praise the Lord on my well don't you get shy on me. Lift up your song. Cause you've got on, on my oh don't you get on me. Lift up your soul you've 0 (17m 8s): And 1 (17m 9s): The don't you get shy on me. Lift up your soul. You gotta lion inside of those. Get 0 (17m 26s): Up and praise the Lord 1 (17m 35s): And praise you. And again, it's all that I have is a 0 (17m 52s): I it's not, but I have nothing except for singing hall. 3 (18m 19s): Jesus, we, we, we thank you Lord that you are our rock. Our firm foundation, Lord that we look around the world. We have nothing. We, we find chaos and trouble all around us. Lord yet in you Jesus, we find a piece that just passes all understanding. We thank you, Lord. We think that we could, we can find a piece in you Lord. That just does not comfort anywhere else, Lord. So thank you for this morning to be able to gather with other believers, to, to lift up your name, to praise who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, we look to you this morning, Lord in Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Good morning, everyone. 3 (18m 59s): Good morning. 0 (18m 60s): Welcome 4 (19m 0s): Harvest church. So today is family Sunday. And for those of you who don't know every fourth, Sunday of the month, we have the first graders and up stay in service with us and we have donuts and they're out in like the side area along with tea and coffee. So please help yourselves to that. 3 (19m 21s): Yeah. Hey my name's Jeremy. I'm the youth and family pastor. And this is Kylie. One of the high school students joining us, give an announcements today. That's what's fun about family Sundays. We wanna let you know that, Hey, we are devoted to prayer at harvest church. And one of the, the areas that we meet is 8:00 AM on Sunday mornings. And we meet in the vault, the old bank vault right behind this wall. And we gather up for prayer at 8:00 AM to pray for the service to pray for the day. So if you want to feel, if you wanna join us in that, in that war room to pray for the service, to pray over the message to pray for hearts, be touched by Lord. We would love to have you join us at eight o'clock. And if it fills up that vault room and we need to move it to another place, praise the Lord 4 (20m 0s): This week, we have a really exciting family movie night. It's gonna be on Friday the 29th from six to 9:00 PM and we're gonna have two movies. One of them starts at six and for it's for like the younger kids, it's gonna be a paws and tails. And those are super fun. I remember watching them when I was a kid. And then at seven we have like a big family movie. What was it? The blue blue miracle. Yes. That is what it is. And there's gonna be snacks available. It's gonna be in the worship center, which is here and we're gonna have a big screen this time, cuz we usually have it out in the patio patio. And that was really cold. But now we have, we have a big place for it to be. 3 (20m 41s): Yeah, sweet. So that's this Friday. And then coming up on August 7th, we're gonna be having our annual beach baptism bonfire. Wait, I've got those mixed up beach, baptism, barbecue and bonfire. Not in particular in that order, we're gonna be doing baptism down at the beach. So it's gonna be from five to seven it's a Sunday evening. And so if you have not been baptized yet, that's one of the things that Jesus asked of his followers to be baptized. So that's a great place to do that. You can sign up online or you know, through a website to, Hey, I wanna be baptized. We have four people already signed up, so there's gonna be people baptized. We're gonna have some worship. And then one of my favorite things too is we have some bonfires on the beach, give you some sticks, some skewers and you get to roast up your own hotdogs. 3 (21m 25s): And s'mores, it's really fun. So join us for that. That'll be August 7th, five to 7:00 PM. But lastly, before we have Steve come up, I wanted to bring up breaker Wade. And Kylie's up here already. So as you know, as you guys know, two weeks ago, you prayed us out. We went to summer camp first. The first week was high school week and then the second was a junior high week. So we've had some students come back and I just wanted to have 'em come up and share a little bit about what, what the Lord did up there. So if you guys could tell me a little bit about your time at, at camp challenge, it's you think about summer camps? You think about wild, crazy running around. Sometimes you think of Hume lake and like 2000 students going camp challenge is a little bit more smaller of a camp. 3 (22m 9s): It's a sweet place. This is my second year taking students there. So it was a great time. But tell me a little bit about your time Gregor. 5 (22m 17s): So it was just a great time just to spend a week with a bunch of people I knew. So I was in one of the guys cabins in the high school week. I was just friends. I've known for years. I've gotten to know over the years, this has been my second year. They've made it an amazing just second and last year as I am graduating. Now I, you just feel welcome when you go is always just an amazing experience just to connect with God and just hang out in fellowship with other believers, just like you and to learn and grow in him. 3 (22m 52s): Yeah. Thanks Kelly. Tell me about your time. 4 (22m 56s): What I like about it is it's very tight knit, super like you get to meet everyone. So you never, you never feel like you come back and you wish you met someone. You wish you grew closer, cuz like you don't really have a choice. And it, it feels a lot like youth group except for like an entire week. And I really like that and we had two amazing speakers. We had Dean der and we had Mr. Lib and we had them last year and so super great to hear them speak again. And they they're both very wise, not elderly. They are wise adults and it's, it's good to hear. 4 (23m 38s): It's good to hear people speak and like hear about their testimonies. And we got a lot of good stuff out of it. 3 (23m 44s): Yeah. What was, what was your, your favorite part? 4 (23m 46s): Oh, my favorite part. I feel like you have to say something Christiany no, you don't. That was one of them that one of them 3 (23m 54s): Water, balloon fight. Could've been one of them. 4 (23m 57s): My favorite part was definitely our night devotions because like we got to meet, we got to grow closer to a lot of our friends and like gotta hear about everything. We thought about what we talked about that day. And it was, it was a lot more intimate and it was really, yeah. I felt like I got a lot closer to everyone. 3 (24m 19s): Sweet break. You wanna tell me about yours? 5 (24m 22s): I gotta say it was cabin cleanup. 3 (24m 26s): A very Christianese 5 (24m 28s): No, that was a lot of fun. We had this whole story going along, but also I really enjoyed the night hike on the last night that we stayed there. We would all go up to the top of this, the hill and we would look out at the stars and we would kind of just share our experience. And that was really great. And on the way back down, I got to have a real big heart heart conversation with Jeremy and the owner of the camp. Mr. Stanley. So 3 (24m 58s): Yeah, 5 (24m 59s): Chris, that was really amazing. 3 (25m 1s): ER, I decided he's going off to college. He gonna Cal poly. So you're staying local. Yes, but we decided we're not gonna lose contact. 5 (25m 7s): You'll see. 3 (25m 8s): We're gonna stay friends. 5 (25m 8s): Yeah. You'll see me for another four years. At least. 3 (25m 10s): Yes. Okay. Good. All right. And then did God reveal anything to you? Did you, what would you learn? What was your kind of take home? 5 (25m 19s): He revealed to me that no matter how far I wander, he's always gonna be this beacon of hope that I can always turn and look to because I was looking out at the stars on the night hike and I saw the north star and it reminded me of like, if you get lost, you can always look up into the night sky. You can find the star Polaris. It's always gonna point north and you can always find your direction from there. And it just reminded me that if I ever wander, I will always, especially with the groundwork that Jeremy has laid in my life and just the, this church here, I will always be able to look and find Jesus and everything 4 (26m 4s): We watched at camp challenge. We watched this insane video about like this it's a whole star thing and you have to watch it. What is it? It's 3 (26m 12s): Louis GIGO. How great there are, I think. 4 (26m 13s): Yeah. Yeah. How great is our God or something? How that anyway, it was like, it was so crazy and it kind of put into perspective how like how huge God is and how powerful he is and that no matter what he can make and what he can do, he still cares for us. And he still wants like a personal relationship with all of us. Yeah. So I feel like that was really meaningful. 3 (26m 37s): That was, that was an awesome video. I don't think it's easy to be a youth in this, this generation this time. How can we as a church be praying for the youth group for, for y'all, 5 (26m 49s): Especially this year, we've got a lot of new graduates that are going to be going off to college. And the college, I, I just came back from the slow days. If you get days ago for Cal poly. And I was kind of like a few days just in the life of a Cal poly student and you just get bombarded with the world. It's like, they're trying to shove stuff down your throat and just pray for the strength of all of our students that are gonna go off to college and have to endure this. Just pray that God stays strong in their lives. 4 (27m 23s): I'm yeah. I would agree with you about all the college students leaving, cuz there's a lot of close friends of ours that are leaving for college and my brother, he's going across the country to go to college. Dunno why I did that. But I think, I think we just need prayer that cuz it's literally youth group is just a bunch of kids. And so I feel like we need to pray about being welcoming to people and just very open to new people coming in because kids, especially high schoolers can like foreign little groups and it can make people feel like unwelcome and that's not what, what we want our youth group. 4 (28m 3s): Yeah. 3 (28m 3s): Yeah. Well let's pray real fast for the youth group. For, for our youth heavenly father, we lift up the youth in this generation, this world that's just, just forcing, pressing their own worldview on them. Lord, keep our students strong in, in all that you're doing in their lives or keep them strong in, in, in, in your word and in a close abiding relationship with you. Lord Jesus, thank you for the, the summer camp experience this this a couple weeks ago and, and just pray that that would remain and they would go out and they would be lights and witnesses and missionaries to their fellow students. Lord just thank you so much, Lord and Jesus. Name me pray. Amen. Amen. 3 (28m 43s): Amen. A break. Just say meet and greet time. So get up and say hi to someone around you. 8 (29m 2s): You sent your son down, set me 0 (29m 4s): Free. Everything happens 8 (29m 7s): World will 0 (29m 27s): You, you are get cue up to up you 10 (31m 27s): A break of day and hoping rise. We speak your name, lift our rise to our hearts into your beat. 9 (31m 38s): Alrighty, good morning. 10 (31m 40s): They 9 (31m 41s): Come on back. Grab your chair. Glad you got to say hello to a neighbor. It's kind of a testimony weekend. You know, yesterday we had an amazing men's breakfast and Joe Deleon gave his testimony. And man, I I've heard Joe's story before, but when he spoke yesterday, man, it was, it was powerful. He held us all kind of captive for about 30 minutes as he shared his story in just the best possible way we were all just so blessed and encouraged to hear his story. I think, I think it's important for us to know each other's story. And so I love hearing the young people up here sharing what God is doing in their lives. 9 (32m 26s): And it reminds us to be praying for them. I mean, can we remember back when we were in high school, it was, it was a little bit different than it is now and just saw my brother back here. Larry Kabong he, we were in campus for Christ ministry. Larry was the leader when we were in high school and we've known each other for all of these years. And so it's just those formative years where God is doing good stuff, wonderful stuff, eternal stuff. And, and where the enemy's working overtime to try to get us distracted and hindered and all that kind of stuff. So we just need to be remembered to praying for those guys. If you miss the breakfast, man, catch it next time. We're gonna do another one in the fall. And everybody, we had just a great team. 9 (33m 8s): Rick, our coffee guy, Rick was there at five 30 this morning on Saturday morning brewing coffee. I got there at six thinking. I'd be the first guy there. And Rick always beats everybody there so he can get the coffee brewing. And my brother was there early and Ron D was there early and Brian Healy was there early and people were setting up and you know, cooking and all kinds of stuff. And some people got there at, you know, five 30 or six and stayed till about 11 o'clock until we were all wrapped up. It was just a glorious glorious day, had a really good time. And so if you missed it yesterday, we'll do another one in the fall. It's really, really worthwhile to come out for that. It was really well attended and just really, really fun. So it was good. 9 (33m 49s): Hey, real quick announcement, Ron D pastor Ron D where's Ron D is he in the house? There he is. Pastor Ron D is retiring. Can you believe right? Whoa. Yeah, he's been threatening to retire for years. So when he came to my office, I don't know, a few months ago or six months ago or whatever it was, I don't know. He is like, Hey, I think I'm finally gonna retire. I'm like, well, duh, you've been talking about it for years. So he, Ron is go going to be and DJ they'll still be here at the church. DJ was up here helping to lead worship this morning. In fact, Ron will still be an elder. 9 (34m 29s): He'll still be preaching from time to time. In fact, he preaches in August. He's gonna retire at the end of this month, but I've already got him scheduled to preach in August and just trying to make sure the hook is still in him, you know? And so he can't get away. And then, so he'll be just still be an elder, still be serving, just won't have office hours and that sort of thing, but he'll still be available for stuff. And so we'll get a chance to bless him on August 7th. So a couple weeks from now, we'll, we'll bring him up front and pray over him and bless him as he transitions. And also Christy SWO is transitioning. So Ron's been with us for 14 years on staff and Christie's been on staff probably about the same amount of time. 9 (35m 9s): I mean just a good long stretch. And so Christie SWOS done everything from children's ministry to small group stuff to you name it. And so she's actually started, started her own company. And so she's been slowly trying to kind of transition as well. Just feeling like, man, I, I want to stay connected to harvest, but I feel like this other stuff has kind of drawn me as well. So I wouldn't let her quit for months for year. I think it's been a couple years. I just said, no, you cannot leave. You cannot leave. And so she's been super gracious and patient with me as I've just said no. And then finally she's like, no, I really need to now. So I'm like, whatever. Okay. So she's wrapping up at the end of this month as well. 9 (35m 49s): And so we're gonna honor both of them on August 7th. So if you'd like to write letters or send them a note, we'd like to, you know, give them a little love on their way out. And again, the SWOS are staying, the DS are staying. No one's leaving. They're just not gonna be like on staff anymore. So we'll be blessing them as they head out and, and it'll be really, really good. Hey, just as a, a note, some people have asked, Hey, how do we pay for all this? Cuz we initially said it was gonna be, you know, a couple hundred thousand. And it swelled when I say this, this worship center, we took over a year renovating this space and we went into it kind of ignorantly about what it was gonna take. 9 (36m 30s): And if we do it again and we will do it again, we'll do another project down the road because I think we'll always be about projects, but we'll actually get some better information before we actually jump into it. And so you kinda learn things along the way. We've always been renovating buildings, you know, from the beginning. And so you kind of think, you know what to expect, but then you get into a, you know, a project like this that's and we were just, we had no idea what to expect. And, and so the, the price went from like a couple, two or 300,000 up to 700, we've got $750,000 into this place. And so a boatload of money. So along the way we raised like, I don't know, a few hundred thousand. And so we got an SBA alone to, to pay for the rest of it. So it's a two and three quarter percent SBA loan. 9 (37m 13s): That's paid back over 20 years and 30 years, something like that. And we get, you know, two years before we even start paying for it. So people have been asking, that's how we paid, made up the like $450,000 lack that was there. So, you know, we just, we did what we felt like we needed to do by God's grace. And we, we calculated the risk as elders. I gotta get rid of this mint, you know, it's, it's like making my throat grab, I'll put that in the back pocket. I'll save that for second service. If you need a mint, I got, I got in my throat's like grabbing, all right, get a comic relief there. 9 (37m 57s): Here we go. All right. Anyway. So as elders, you know, we don't make any decisions unless there's like agreements unanimous agreement with our elder team. And so if anybody on the team says, Hey, I just don't feel like that's a good decision. We just shelve it or table it or never come back to it or come back to it later. And so just so you know, that's kind of, that's how decisions are made, whether it's, you know, staff decisions or building decisions, any kind of financial decisions like that, as well as spiritual decisions. So that's kind of, what's been going on behind the scenes to get, get this project done. And so anyway, people have been wondering, and I just like to be completely candid about everything that's going on. 9 (38m 46s): So if you've got any questions about anything, you know, don't all come to me because I can't answer everybody's questions, but it's a, we really have an open door policy. Like if you have questions, ask an elder, ask a staff member, ask somebody to get your questions answered. I, some people have been kind of frustrated that we haven't come forward with that information, but nobody's been asking. And so maybe we should have just proactively just done that. But anyway, so yeah, now we're being, you know, if you've been here at any for any length of time, you know that we'll tell you whatever you want to know, and we try to be proactive about information everything's, you know, available to everybody. 9 (39m 34s): So anyway, so that's just kind of the deal. And so don't don't if you got any questions, just pull us aside and ask and I've heard some people say I'm not gonna tithe until I get those answers. And somebody says, well, have you asked the question? They say, Nope, I'm just not gonna, you know, that's just silly. Let's just, you know, so first of all, tithing is a or giving is an of worship to the Lord. So you're saying I'm not gonna give because I don't have the answers. Well then you're just saying, I'm not gonna honor the Lord with my resources. I'm choosing not to do that. Some people say I'm not gonna serve until I get answers. Well then, you know, with service is just an of worship to the Lord, you know? So God has given us gifts and talents and so use your gifts and talents. 9 (40m 17s): And if you get the answers that you're seeking and you don't like the answers, you know, you can do two of, one of two things. You can, you know, have conversation with us and we can agree to, to disagree, or you can just extend grace to us because boy, we, we need, we need grace or you can go to another imperfect church cuz there's imperfect churches everywhere. And we're at the front of that line of imperfect, imperfect churches. And so, but don't do that, just, you know, just extend grace where we needed grace. And that's just the kingdom thing that God's called us to do and love us. And we'll love you, you know, just that kind of thing. Don't, don't withhold your giving, not be, I mean, honestly, if you don't want to give, don't give, don't give cuz God wants a joyful cheerful giver. 9 (41m 8s): And so as the song we were singing says, you know, our hope is in Jesus, our, we, we never planted a church or anything based on, you know, how many dollars we can get in the offing box or anything like that. We just say, Hey, we feel like the Lord's leading us. And so we're gonna do this by faith and everything we do is, is by faith. And so if you want to give greats, if you don't want to give don't because God wants its cheerful giver. So don't give under compulsion, just give because you feel like your heart's full and you want to honor the Lord with your resources. And then if you don't wanna do that, hold on it, please just hold onto it. And cuz God's, God's in charge of this whole deal. 9 (41m 51s): You can't go 19 years. And of all the stuff that we've gone through without God being at the helm, you know? So, so we love you no matter what you do, because that's just what we do by God's grace. We try to love people and serve people. And so do whatever you want to do. As long as the Lord is leading you. And, and you know, that's kind of my little soap box there and we'll get into James chapter four and we'll just see what the Lord does as we get into James chapter four, happy family Sunday. So because it's family Sunday, as you know, we typically do a joke or something, but I've got some statements. So when asked some kids when asked, you know about stories in the old and the new Testament, kids offered these answers and these are unedited answers and statements. 9 (42m 44s): So the first one is Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. So that's the kids' perspective. Noah's wife was Joan of art, right? Noah built in arc and the animals came on in PS, PE a R S. They came, they pairs kids, you know, unedited the greatest miracle in the Bibles when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him, kids kinda get the stories, a little big stuff. David was a Hebrew king who was skilled at playing the liar. He fought the Finklestein, a race of people who lived in biblical times, right? 9 (43m 28s): Solomon, one of David's son had 300 wives and 700 porcupines. Yeah. Feels a uncomfortable. I dunno Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption, Saint John, the blacksmith dumped water on his head and Jesus, unsedated the golden rule which says to do unto others before they do one to you. He also explained to man death not live by sweat alone. So kid's perspective on the Bible, the old and the new Testament. 9 (44m 8s): It's good stuff. Funny stuff. Let's jump into Hebrew chapter or excuse me, James chapter four. We're asking the question. How do we align our lives with God? And it's important that we align our lives with God. When I think about alignment, I think about my truck. You know, if my truck is out of alignment, what happens? My tires begin to wear unevenly. I don't break as effectively. The steering can sometimes shake and get all wobbly. Everything just kind of begins to go south. When your alignment on your car is not right. What happens when your alignment in your life is not right? Well, it's a lot of the same things happen. Our life begins to get a little crazy unnecessary wear and tear on our lives from well from resisting God, because if we're choosing not to align our lives with God, with his word, then there's stress and unnecessary wear and tear. 9 (45m 6s): There's an inability for, for, in our lives, from not having a, a clear direction. There's an inability to make wise choices because we just don't have a lot of clarity about, well, about who we are about who we're trusting and the direction of life that we're taking. But when we're aligning our lives with God, we're saying, God, my life is all yours. All, all parts of it. Every part of it, my life is yours. When we're not aligned though, there's a constant movement to the right. And then to the left, due to a double-minded approach to life and decision making. So we're kind of all over the road. 9 (45m 47s): There's a general sense of IRRI irritability due to an internal conflict concerning life. So you just, you can't, there's just this wrestling match inside. When we haven't decided like I've talked about this the last couple weeks, we have to decide who we are and who we're going to serve. We have to make this decision. And when we haven't fully made the decision, there's this battle inside of us. And the result is just some kind of irritability because we're not fully committed to the Lord, but we're not fully committed to the world. And so we're just kind of tossed to and throw double minded unstable in all our ways. 9 (46m 27s): And James chapter four, I love James because he just kind of nails his points and speaks directly, which I really appreciate it. And James chapter four versus 11 through 17 and our opening verse this morning, James is addressing the way in which beliefs are speaking to and about one another. So he's addressing the tongue again. Remember James chapter three, we talked about this a few weeks ago. James was addressing the tongue, the power of the tongue, the impact of the way that we use the words and the way that we speak to people, let's say go James, four 11. He says, don't speak evil. 9 (47m 8s): Don't so he speaking of the, the tongue, he's addressing the tongue again. So there must have been an issue there as it is probably in this culture and in this century and in this community and in this church, there's probably just things that we need to get under control in the way that we address people. And the way that that we speak to people, James is saying, don't speak evil against each other. Dear brothers and sisters. What does that mean? Who is he speaking to? He's speaking to the church, right? Brothers and sisters and the Lord. So he's not speaking to the world. He's speaking to us, to believers. People who say, Hey, I'm a follower of the Lord, Jesus Christ. 9 (47m 50s): I am, I am God's kid. And I'm following him. He's saying, Hey, dear brothers and sisters, don't, don't speak evil against each other. He says, if you criticize and judge each other, then you're criticizing and judging God's law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge, whether it applies to you. So this verse is actually speaking to any form of speaking against someone else. You say, well, that person deserves it. Well, this verse is actually addressing it. We there's plenty of things that we can complain about and critique people about and they deserve it and blah, blah. 9 (48m 31s): And, but James is challenging us to approach things differently in life that we might speak the truth and love everything that God has called us to do. And we, when we confront people so that they might be edified. So they might, they might be built up when Jesus was challenging, the religious leaders, it was to call them out of their darkness, into his glorious light. So it wasn't to condemn them, but to pull them out of darkness. And so when our, when we're complaining and grumbling about people, we're often we're doing it to the wrong person. We're not doing it directly to the person like we're supposed to. We're supposed to go directly. 9 (49m 10s): So Perry, if I have issue with you, what do I do? I go directly to you. I don't talk to David about her Mary about it, because that won't do any good. It just pollutes their perspective about Perry. So what do I do? I just go to Perry. Hey, Perry, let's talk. And as brothers in the Lord, we talk. And usually when there's issues, it's been just a big, old fat misunderstanding. And when we extend grace to one another and our heart is to reconcile and to be building our brother and sister up and the Lord, we can speak with a tender heart, with compassion, with grace, with kindness, with an expectation of good and not evil. 9 (49m 51s): So we've got a responsibility. It's a hard road because it's so much easier to talk to David about Perry than to talk about Perry with Perry. And I got no issues with Perry Perry's my brother has been for decades and we'll be forever and ever amen into eternity. Right? Right. We'll be celebrating forever and ever. So the idea is, Hey, let's just extend grace to one another. And if you need to talk to get things, some things cleared up, just go directly to that person. Don't come to me complaining about somebody else. Don't go to somebody else complaining about me, just come directly, directly and talk to us. Don't speak evil. 9 (50m 32s): Don't speak evil. When a person breaks this, we'll call it the law of love or any law for that matter. That person, places themselves above the law. When we disobey the laws of God, we're actually placing ourselves above that law. And we're actually judging that law as unimportant and unnecessary. What law, what might we be talking about? Well, Leviticus, 1918 in part says, love your neighbor as yourself. So we can't love our neighbor if we're speaking evil about our neighbor. And so I say this almost every week, everything that God requires of us expects of us, asks of us, requires his supernatural power and grace to get it done. 9 (51m 22s): So, man, when you're struggling with somebody, you just need to say, Lord, I, I either need to extend grace and just forgive this person, forgive this offense. Or I just need to go to them with grace and humility and try to work it out with the expectation that we're gonna work this thing out because it's clearly a misunderstanding, there's something going on. But when someone decides to speak evil of a brother or sister, that person has essentially judged that that law is irrelevant and declares that he or she is above the law, that kind of puts things in a whole different perspective. When we're disobedient, when we're rebelling against God's word, we're actually dis we're saying in our heart, Hey, this law, it's this way. 9 (52m 10s): It's irrelevant. And I'm actually above it. I can do kind of whatever I want to do. Theologians agree. The specific grammatical construction use here usually forbids the continuation of a practice already in progress. So James, his readers had fallen into the habit of criticizing one another. And so he says, stop speaking against one another there's these things are habitual. I mean, we can fall into this habit of just kind of grumbling and complaining about people and, and kind of speaking harshly about people, judging people. And, and this became kind of the pattern within the early church. 9 (52m 52s): And so James addresses, it says, stop, stop, stop speaking, evil against one another. Those who do so place themselves again, above the law and by their actions, declare that, that law to be a bad and unnecessary statute. So rather than submitting and keeping it, they pass judgements judgment on its validity and set it aside. Whoa, ah, I don't stick in your crawl because as we read the word, we sometimes read it and ignore it. We pass judgment on it. We say, it's not valid for me, valid for everybody else, but it's not valid for me. 9 (53m 33s): I'm not gonna do it. I, I'm not interested in doing it. Listen, our job is not to decide if we will obey the law, the laws of God, our job is plain and simple to obey the laws of God, the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Now there are three different, at least three different types of law, especially in the old Testament. There is ceremonial law, civil law, and then there's moral law. And so the Bible's broken down and we see different types of law. And so we're gonna ask the question today. 9 (54m 13s): What laws in the Bible are we still required to follow? Are we still required to follow the ceremonial laws we're gonna find out? Are we still required to follow the civil laws? What we're gonna find out? What about the moral laws? Are we still required to follow the moral laws? Let's find out ceremonial civil moral. So the ceremonial laws con gov concerned gov Israel's worship of God. Ceremonial laws were ways in which God outlined a path forward. So that sinners, the Bible says that all have sin and fall short of God's glorious standard. 9 (54m 56s): So ceremonial laws were instituted so that the people of God could have their sins forgiven covered. So that's where the sacrificial came. Sacrificial system came into place. God said, well is told us though, wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our Lord, we see in the old Testament and the new Testament that, that, that the wages of Senate's death, we see it in Genesis two 17. It says, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. 9 (55m 39s): Where are we talking? We're in the garden, right? The beginning, right? For in that day, you eat of it. You shall Shirley die, ultimate physical death, but spiritual death separation from God. That's the result of sin. Proverbs 11, 19 says whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but he pursues evil will die. The wages of sin is death. We see that in Romans 6 23 in the king James version for the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our Lord. So the SAC sacrificial system was God's way of dealing with sin in the world. 9 (56m 22s): God allowed sacrifices to be made to atone for the sins of people. The atonement was sufficient for a season, but this system, these ceremonial laws ended when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, for all humanity, Jesus became the final sacrifice. He became the final sacrifice, making atonement for the sins of humanity, all the ceremonial and sacrificial laws pointed to and were fulfilled by Christ on the cross. How did we know? Because we, what we just talked about this in Hebrews nine, a little bit, Hebrews nine, 11 through 14 says, so Christ has now become the high priest over all the good things that have come. 9 (57m 11s): He has entered that greater, more perfect tabernacle in heaven, which was not made by human hands and is not part of this created world with his own blood, with his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves. He entered the most holy place once for all time and secured our redemption forever. Under the old system, the blood of goats and bowls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people's bodies from ceremonial impurities. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deed so that we can worship the living God for, by the power of the eternal spirit. 9 (57m 53s): Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sin. So now when Jesus declared it is finished on the cross, it is finished. All the ceremonial laws were rendered null and void. So as we look at the old Testament and we read about ceremonial laws, null, and void, because of Jesus, he offered himself as the final sacrifice, the atonement for us, for the world, so that we might know the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ. So we don't follow the ceremonial laws because Jesus followed and fulfilled all of them for us. So anybody, anytime, any place can come to God through Jesus Christ. 9 (58m 37s): That's the beauty of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So ceremonial civil, the civil laws brought order to the nation of Israel. There were guidelines for the people of Israel to live in Palestine in that day, in that nation, the civil law deals mainly with relationships between individuals, the settling of disputes and the description of proper behavior. There is now there's value in the civil laws, but we're not obligated to obey the civil laws of God. There's value in really all of, all of the laws. And if we understand the deeper meanings of these laws, they typically point us to Jesus or cause us, or call us to a place of greater purity and sanctification that we might be set apart as followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ. 9 (59m 32s): So there's, there's value in, in a lot of these laws, but we're not required or obligated to obey the civil laws of God. So here's couple examples of civil law. Deuteronomy 22, 1 through four says, if you see your neighbor's ox or sheep or goat wandering away, don't ignore your responsibility. Take it back to its owner. Who's got a ox, who's got a sheep. I've got, I've got goats. Who's got goats. A lot of us have goats, right? We can see how in this culture, a lot of this stuff doesn't make sense. If it's owner does not live nearby, or you don't know who the owner is, take it to your place and keep it until the owner comes looking for it. 9 (1h 0m 18s): Then you must return it. Do the same. If you find your neighbor's donkey, who's got a donkey. Somebody's gotta have a donkey, right? No donkeys represented in the whole. So, so do the same. If you find your neighbor's donkey or clothing or anything else, your neighbor loses. Don't ignore your responsibility. If you see that your neighbor's donkey or ox has collapsed on the road, do not look the other way, go and help your neighbor, get it back on its feet. So these are some of the civil laws that were spoken about in the old Testament. These are civil laws that might also be considered moral laws. There's some morality that we see in some of these laws. Like if your friend is kind of broken down on the side of the road, what do you do? 9 (1h 1m 1s): Or if anybody's broken down on the side of the road, what do you do? You stop? Like, it's a, it's the story of the good Samaritan, right? You stop, right? So may not be, you know, as animal that's broken down, but it's cars, bike or whatever. So there's a deeper sense of understanding when we really think about these laws, got us calling us to love one another and serve one another and be considerate of one another. So one more example, example of a civil law Leviticus, 1935 through 36, do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or volume. How are things sold based on their measurements, length, weight, or volume, your scales and weights must be accurate. 9 (1h 1m 47s): Your containers for measuring dry materials or liquids must be accurate. I'm I'm the Lord, your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. So God is declaring his Lordship and his leadership and their lives. And you saying, Hey, be fair with one another. So this is a civil law. That's got some morality behind it. Don't cheat one another, don't be a liar and cheat. So it's perfect for the civil laws for the people of God, but it's also so applicable. Now God wants us to, to love one another. We don't demonstrate love for one another when we're cheating one another, when we're being scoundrels and lying. 9 (1h 2m 29s): So there's ceremonial and civil, and then there's moral laws, the moral laws based on the character of God and extends from old, from the old and into the new Testament, therefore, as it was wrong to lie in the old Testament, is it still wrong to lie in the new Testament? Absolutely. Yeah, it's a no-brainer right. So if you see a law repeated in the new Testament, it's usually a moral law that we're required to walk in and to obey. So we've got these responsibilities recorded for us in scripture. And sometimes it's confusing because we look at the ceremonial laws or the civil laws, and we think, are we still, are we still obligated and responsible? 9 (1h 3m 14s): We're not. There's value in all of the word of God from Genesis to revel, there's value there, but we need to be careful in understanding what we are responsible to. OHEY like many of the 10 commandments prohibitions against stealing an adultery and coveting transcend time and space, right? Jesus fulfills the moral law by his perfect righteousness. Every he boy, he lives, sinlessly fulfilling the law of God. And then he was sacrificed for us crucified for us as the perfect lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 9 (1h 3m 56s): Jesus fulfilled the moral law by his perfect righteousness. Every commandment, he obeyed every requirement he met. He lived up to every standard. He lived perfectly there by satisfying the law of God. The law of God is written so that we might realize our desperate need for the grace of God sounds that we can work harder so that we can understand the character of God. And so that in understanding the character of God, we can see our own flawed lives and recognize that no matter how hard we try, because the Bible says, if you break one part of the law, you're guilty of breaking all of the law and we're all born into sin. 9 (1h 4m 39s): We're, we're sinners by nature and we're sinner by choice. And so we need the grace and the mercy of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Jesus was asked about the law and he made a very clear point when he answered Matthew 2236 through 40, he said, teacher says teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses religious leaders. Trying to find a loophole, trying to trick Jesus, trying to trip him up. And Jesus replied, you must love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. Hmm. This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is equally important. Love your neighbor as yourself, the entire law, the entire law, and all the demands of the profits are based on these two commandments, the entire law and all of the requirements of the profits, the demands of the profit. 9 (1h 5m 30s): They hang here. If we do this, if we love each other and love Jesus will do great, will do great. Jesus declared that the two most important laws are clear. Love God and love others. This moral law transcends time. Doesn't matter if we're a hundred years from now, or if we go back in time, a thousand or 5,000 years, the law is the same. We are obligated to obey the moral laws of God. There's value again, some of the other laws, but the new Testament requires that we simply obey the law of Christ, which is love God and love others. 9 (1h 6m 12s): It's all encompassing love. God love others. Again, the entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments. So when James writes, don't speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters, is this a direct, is this directive consistent with what Jesus said are the two most important commandments? Is it consistent? Of course it is speaking evil of each other. Why? Because that's not the loving gracious way. Now we're called to speak the truth in love. Meaning again, that our heart in speaking the truth is for redemption redemptive purposes for reconciliation purposes, to build somebody up, to help them come along and come in their faith as followers of Lord Jesus, to, to express love and grace to them so that they might come out of their place of deception, evil. 9 (1h 7m 12s): What's evil. Let's just speak to speak against someone. So let's unpack that word incriminate or to charge with a crime to introduce or to criticize disparage or malign. None of these words describe a positive exchange, but only negative and hurtful. So James three, seven and 10, as a reminder, James had said this earlier, and he's kind of touching on it again. He said, people contain all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but no one contain the tongue. It's a restless and it's a restless and evil full of deadly poison. Sometimes it praises our Lord and father. And sometimes it curses. Those who have been made in the image of God. 9 (1h 7m 54s): And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely my brothers and sisters, this is not right. So he is nailing us about how we're speaking. It's an indication out of the abundance of the heart. The mouth speaks what's going on in our hearts begins to spill out of our mouths. And so we need to make sure that our hearts are set apart, consecrated pure. So that means we're just always making the choice to extend grace to one another, to expect the best from people to love people, to pray for people. When you wanna get angry about somebody, just begin to pray for them. 9 (1h 8m 36s): Just pray. God's grace and blessing and peace upon them. Somebody cut you off on the road. You say Jesus name. I bless that person. I ask that you would cover them and fill them with your goodness. And with your love when you're fighting with your spouse, Jesus bless them, right? When there's disagreement, Lord bless them. Everything that God calls us to do is direct its indirect contrast to the world. The world will tell you, go after 'em be angry. You got a right to be angry. They, they did you wrong. Who cares? Right? Jesus is being executed. 9 (1h 9m 21s): Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Lord help that person. They're obviously hurting. They're they're they're lashing out at me. They gotta be hurting inside. Lord help me to be gracious with them and be patient with them. I've done it Lord. And I, I feel like that's what's happening here. I just want to extend grace. Lord. I want to grow in my ability to love that person, Lord and, and serve that person and be humble with that person. Lord, show me what that looks like. God, I don't boy, anger just causes a cancer within our souls, man. It just tears us up from the inside out. 9 (1h 10m 2s): And we're just our accountant shows it. You know, my BA when my grand babies are born, they're they're helpless. Right? And so I love to take their little brow and push it down and it makes em look angry, right? And I say, why are you so angry? Little guy. I did it yesterday with Theo. I do with all the kids as they get older, you can't do it as much. You know, because they resist. I don't know why they resist, but so you play. But our accountants as Christian sometimes looks like somebody's going, you know, pushing our, our foreheads down. We look just all constipated or something. It's not good. It's not good, man. Relax in Jesus name, extend grace in Jesus name and watch what God will do to set your life free, to free up in your heart and your mind. 9 (1h 10m 51s): And man, you'll just all of a sudden have just this fresh unexplainable, joy and peace. It's contrary to what the world will tell you to do. Don't do what the world tells you to do. It'll lead you yesterday every time. Do what the Bible says to do, do what God's called you to do. James four 12 got alone who gave the law is the judge. He alone has the power to saver to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor? Everything that makes us angry is it's based in judgment, right? Like that person should be living differently. I don't like what that person is doing or how that person spends his time or her time. I don't like it. 9 (1h 11m 31s): So I'm judging right? Judging their lives. I, I, I have a hard enough time just get my own life. Right? When I start trying to judge and figure out somebody's somebody else's life. I mean, everybody's going through such hard stuff. So we don't know why they're doing what they're doing. People, people are getting diagnosed with sick cancer and sickness and all kinds of stuff. Chronic stuff is con people are people's. Marriages are struggling. People's relationships are tough. People with this economy, everybody's strap financially. There's just so many hard things going on. If we can just extend grace to one another, our job is not to judge our neighbor. 9 (1h 12m 15s): Now, sometimes we speak the truth in love. If we see a brother going off and say, man, I, I see that you're making this bad decision, but it's not a not meant to be condemning. It's meant, meant to be like, I'm throwing you a lifeline. I love you so much. I want you to come out of this mess that you're making of your life. It's it's, it's meant to be done in love. You will be able to love your neighbor. As you love God with all your heart, soul strength and mind. This is how you begin to love your neighbor. When you decide I'm gonna love God with everything, heart, soul, strength, mind when God becomes your priority and you make him your priority in every area of your life, you will figure out how to then love others effectively. 9 (1h 13m 0s): So how, how do we align our lives with God? Number one, we must love God. And we must love our neighbor. You want to align your life with God. You gotta start loving people. You have to, you gotta start loving God wholeheartedly with everything that is within you. How do we align our lives with God? Number one, we must love God. And we must love others. This is God's moral law for his follower. So you're wondering what laws to obey do this. And you're you're you're you're gonna be good, James, four 13. Let's continue. Look here. You who say today or tomorrow, we're going to a certain town and we'll stay there a year. 9 (1h 13m 40s): We will do business there and make a profit. How do you know? How do you know, how do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog. It's here a little while. And then it's gone. What you ought to say is if the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that. Otherwise you're boasting about your own pretentious plans and all such boasting is evil. How do we align our lives with God? We gotta, we gotta love God. We gotta love others. Number one, number two, we must submit all of our plans to God. We gotta submit all of our plans to God. 9 (1h 14m 21s): We are born again, followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ. And we're born into a new life with new priorities, new perspective, new Lordship, new leadership in our lives. And so that means everything is at the altar at the foot of the cross. And so we're saying, Lord, whatever you want to do with all my life, it's totally up to you. And so you just begin to be prayerful about everything, not about the color of socks that you wear. Cause I've got some really cool socks on today. These are Lexus socks. These are a gift for my son. Where is he? Right there. Gave me Lexus socks. Maybe I'll get a Lexus. Someday reminds me of my, my mother-in-law her husband Marv was asking for a Rolex. You know, he was like, I just want a Rolex. 9 (1h 15m 1s): And he's like, you know, 75 or 70 or whatever he was. And so she thinks it's funny. She gets in a Rolex box, wraps it up and there's no Rolex inside. So its this box and she thinks it's funny, but it's not funny for anybody. Right. It's funny for her, but there's an empty Rolex box, right? You're like all my dreams have go. No. So a few years later she bought 'em a Rolex and there we go. What does that have to do with, I don't know what that has to do. Oh, you don't have to pray about the color of your socks. Right. But man, you're praying about most everything about financial investments, about where do I put my money, Lord, what do I do? 9 (1h 15m 43s): I move? Do I buy this? Do I, how do I treat my, my wife? How do I live in relationship with my coworkers? And you know, the Bible says pray without ceasing. So you're just praying without ceasing. You're just always prayerful. And so even when up, up here preaching, I'm praying. I'm like, Lord, help me to get this across. Lord help me to be humble when I'm preaching, Lord help me to be clear in my preaching. So we're just praying all of the time when I'm in a counseling session, Lord, I have no idea what to say, but you do. So give me words, Lord. Like when we're in any given scenario or situation, we're just prayerful and asking for the Lord to direct us. And he'll direct us by the peace that we have as we open our hearts and avail our plans to him, which Lord lead me. 9 (1h 16m 27s): I, I need peace and wisdom about this direction. So about everything. You're just praying about it. You're just asking the Lord. You're just bringing him into the fat middle of your whole life. And there's nothing excluded your relationship. Should I date this person? Should I marry this person? You really need to be asking God about those things, right? You know, whatever the case is, God will speak grace and wisdom and truth into your life. Not because he's trying to keep something good from you, but he is trying to give you the best possible life that you can have in him. And so he wants to give you wise counsel, he wants to help you understand the right path. And so you open up the word and say, Lord, how do I apply this in this situation? It's very difficult. 9 (1h 17m 7s): Well, you won't be able to apply it unless you just allow the holy spirit to fill your life and to give you the wisdom that you need. We gotta submit all of our plans to God, all of them like everything. Again, not this God doesn't care about your socks. I don't think, but he cares about most everything else in your life. Like how many kids should we have? You know, you know, should we take this vacation or is this really a good time to do that? Should we spend the money? Is it wise? Is it gonna be good for our family? What's you know, just asking the Lord for wisdom, like, like having the faith of a little child, believing that when we ask God is actually listening and he's wanting to direct us. 9 (1h 17m 52s): And so we need to get childlike in our faith. Sometimes we, we feel all grown up and we, we can make our own decisions. Don't buy into that lie of the world. Man, don't buy into that. You need the grace of God. We all do. We need the, the wisdom of God, the word of God to direct our path. So if you want to align your life properly with God, you've gotta bring him into the fat middle of your life. We, we gotta submit all of our plans to God. And so that means we do what he asks us to do. James four 17, the last verse in our day, our study here today, James four 17 says, remember it is sin. Do you know what you ought to do? And then not do it. 9 (1h 18m 32s): It's sin to know what yacht to do and then not do it. So loving God, loving your neighbor, no law against that. No sin in that, just do that. Submitting our, all of our plans to the Lord, meanings, listening and obey, doing what he's asked you to do. It's a sin to know what you ought to do, and then don't do it. So that's a sin that's gonna contaminate your life. And so number three, we must repent of our disobedience. We must repent of our disobedience. Remember in second King's chapter 22, we talked about it a couple weeks ago with Josiah king Josiah. He's eight years old when he becomes king and he's rebuilding the temple, refurbishing the temple and they come upon the word of the Lord and the, the word of the Lord is read to him. 9 (1h 19m 22s): And he's distraught. Second King's 2211. When the king heard what was written in the book of the law, he tore his clothes in despair. He tore his clothes, despair. He responded with repentance second King's 2213. This is why he responded. We have not, this is what he said. We have not been doing everything. It says we must do. So he is looking at the law and saying, I'm not aligning my life as a leader. And as a nation, we're not aligning our lives with everything that God asked us to do. And so he's renting his clothes. He's ripping his clothes, a sign of brokenness and contrition. 9 (1h 20m 2s): But Joel, two 13, I was reading Joel this week and it says, don't tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead. Oh, like we're talking deep work of God in our lives needs to happen, right? No, just tear your clothes. You know, that's his first step, but man, let your heart break open. When you hear the, the word of the Lord and let him do what he wants to do. He don't tear your clothing and your grief, but tear your hearts instead return to the Lord. You're God, this is real repentance. Repentance means I'm. I was doing that, heading that direction. Now I'm heading the opposite direction. It's like, I've changed my mind. It's not like, I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep doing it. It's like, I'm sorry. I'm never doing that again. 9 (1h 20m 43s): That's repentance. It's not repentance. If it's like, ah, I got caught, busted. Forgive me, Lord. And the next day you keep going after it. That's not repentance return to the Lord. Your God for he is me merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfeeling love. He's eager to relent and not punish. Isn't that the goodness of God, man, it's fun to align your life with God because the grace and mercy and the, the adventure of doing that, trusting him. It's a faith journey. Everything we do in this life as believers is a faith journey showed up early yesterday morning. And Rick's like, how many guys are we gonna show up for breakfast? How many guys are showing up? I said, Rick, I, I have no idea. It's always a faith journey. 9 (1h 21m 24s): Whenever we do anything, we're just gonna get ready, put out a spread and bless whoever shows up. That's the deal. It's just all by faith. You know, let your life be marked by faith. Joy filled faith, obedience, the love of God for others and for the Lord, just keep short accounts to the Lord. Just keep repenting of anything that you're made aware of. You say something you shouldn't have said, Lord, I'm sorry. You said it's your spouse. Ah, I'm sorry, babe. Right? Whatever the case may be. Just keep short accounts, align your life with God. And then the unnecessary wear and tear in your life will just begin to dissipate. 9 (1h 22m 4s): There'll be peace. You know the shaking of the steering wheel from a bad alignment and that your life will just begin to smooth out, man. Not perfect. Not without issues, but man, there's peace and joy because you know, you've made, you made God the Lord, the leader of your life. And so with that, let's go ahead and stand up. We're gonna worship and bite the team up and, and then we'll get outta here. Lord. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. As the team comes up, who got something out of this message today? Good. Tell me what you got Jim. What'd you get outta the message. Speak it loud so everybody can hear you. 9 (1h 22m 44s): Oh, 11 (1h 22m 45s): Praise the Lord. Just 9 (1h 22m 47s): What I'm do. Okay. Okay. Who else? Who wants to who? Who's got something like a nugget, a nugget, a nugget. Go ahead, Marilyn. Forgive and move on. Forgive and move on. Marilyn. Say I'm I'm I'm forgiven and moving on. Get, move on. Shut your mouth about other people. All right. Forget. Move on. Shut your mouth about other people. What else? What else? That's good wisdom. I think that might yes. Yeah. Just the 12 (1h 23m 11s): Simplicity of 13 (1h 23m 13s): Love. God 9 (1h 23m 13s): And love others. Yeah. That's all. It's the simplicity of love God and love others. We want to complicate things and try to know everything. And under what else? 12 (1h 23m 24s): Guard 9 (1h 23m 25s): Your tongue. Right? What else? Brian? What'd you learn? Same thing. Same thing. Yeah. Chris, what'd you get 12 (1h 23m 35s): Two short 9 (1h 23m 36s): Accounts. Short accounts. There we go. Mike what'd you get 12 (1h 23m 39s): Two 9 (1h 23m 39s): Commandments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's let's remember. Let's let's grab, hold of the truth. That is communicated on a Sunday morning. No matter who's doing it. And just maybe write it down in your Bible or your journal and say I'm doing this slogan. What'd you get? 12 (1h 23m 55s): I got the love like loving the, your neighbor and loving, loving the Lord. Like we know to do that. Yeah. And that we can't just go home and sit on the couch and not do that. 9 (1h 24m 8s): Right. Have to 12 (1h 24m 9s): Be proactively loving 9 (1h 24m 12s): Others. Yeah. Not 12 (1h 24m 13s): To 9 (1h 24m 14s): Do it. Yeah. Doug what'd you get 14 (1h 24m 18s): Listening to God and obey what he says. Like when you're angry, God will speak to you at that moment. And he just, you need to repent. Yeah. Turn around at 9 (1h 24m 30s): That time. Yeah. Listening to God in obey, repent, turn around. Do some business with the Lord Linda in the back. What'd you get? I knew. Well it's because you're my family and I'm gonna Linda's my sister's mother-in-law so there we go. Extended family. Go ahead. Linda, speak loud. So we can all hear you. 13 (1h 24m 51s): The secret to joy in the Lord is to follow that 9 (1h 24m 55s): Command. Yes. You 13 (1h 24m 57s): Can't have joy. 2 (1h 24m 58s): If you're holding onto other things, 12 (1h 25m 0s): You have 13 (1h 25m 1s): To move forward in 9 (1h 25m 2s): Business. The secret to joy in the Lord is honoring that command. You gotta love God. I love others. You got joy. That follows joys. That is part of that decision. Lord. Thank you. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for teaching us. We love you. Let's worship and spirit in truth. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. 2 (1h 25m 45s): I just want the name of Jesus. Oh, every heart and every mind. Cause I know there is peace within your presence. I speak Jesus. I just want to speak the name of Jesus to every dog. Addiction starts to pray. Declaring. There is hope and there is free. 2 (1h 26m 29s): I Jesus, 0 (1h 26m 35s): Your 2 (1h 26m 36s): Name 0 (1h 26m 36s): Is, 2 (1h 26m 39s): Is your 0 (1h 27m 3s): Just wanna 2 (1h 27m 4s): Speak the name of Jesus 0 (1h 27m 9s): Over anxiety. 2 (1h 27m 16s): Every soul, 0 (1h 27m 30s): Your name drive 2 (1h 27m 44s): Through 0 (1h 27m 44s): T

In this episode, Jeremy discusses the ways the Spirit of God pulls hope down into the very core of our being, into all parts of our lived experience. This discussion includes a critique of how Christiany is usually presented in our current moment, and then commentary on the sacred practice of contemplative prayer, as framed by Thomas Keating. Scripture References: Proverbs 28; 1 Kings 19; 2 Corinthians 12 Additional Sources: "The Method of Centering Prayer" (Keating) A Passion for Truth: "A World of Veils" (Heschel) Desiring the Kingdom (Smith) The Experience of God (Hart)

In this episode of Walking with Jesus, Evan and Malcolm reason over Luke 16 and the parable of the shrewd steward where they ask if one can be so christiany that they miss the opportunity to bless another and build treasures in heaven. 'If, then, you have not been faithful in handling worldly wealth, how can you be trusted with true wealth? ' Luke 16:11 https://my.bible.com/bible/69/LUK.16.11 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walking-with-jesus/message

"Your spouse will be worth the wait" might seem like a very Christiany thing to say. At times, it can be hard to hear. I know for me I have always struggled with believing that this waiting season is beneficial and necessary but, as time has passed I've realized that it really is important. This is the time to start growing on your own, shaping your life, healing traumas, and strengthening your relationship with God! Let's talk about my season of singleness, how I'm dealing with it, and what are my tips for walking through it without losing your mind :) - Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/doriannygodoy/ https://vm.tiktok.com/7TydVB/

A new MP3 sermon from The Refuge: Baptist Community Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Clarifying Christiany- Discussion about Communion Subtitle: Apologetics and Life Speaker: Paul Erdos Broadcaster: The Refuge: Baptist Community Church Event: Sunday Service Date: 6/21/2020 Length: 63 min.

O episódio trata de diferentes tipos de violência, perpassando a dimensão individual e também a do Estado, que se materializa pelo Sistema Penal. De forma didática, a Profa. Christiany Pegorari Conte explica a relação entre formas de violência e questiona se a violência que levou o Sistema Penal à superlotação em presídios é o caminho mais adequado para a interrupção da violência? #TopaPensar recebe a contribuição da Profa. Christiany Pegorari Conte, docente de Direito Penal e Processo Penal na PUC Campinas, do canal do YouTube "Direito com Elas" (link abaixo e recomendamos os conteúdos). Profa. Christiany é também especialista em Direito Digital e tem participação ativa na OAB como Vice presidente da Comissão de Direito Digital e é membro do Instituto Brasileiros de Ciências Criminais (IBCCrim). Instagram: @cpcpegorari Direito com Elas: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFC-1elSuEXoTYQLkHTkzaA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.pegorari Podcast: Topa Pensar?

Isaiah 53 is an amazing text prophesying the coming of a Suffering Servant and the good news of His death, burial, and prolonged life. This ancient text predates the rise of Christiany by centuries and is essential to the convincing many of the Christian faith. This message draws from Isaiah 53 to display the good message of the salvation that has come to all nations.

Can I get God to love me any more by my performance? Christian Actor David Novak has some definite thoughts on this subject for sure!

Join the Marriage After God movement and grab a copy of our new book today. https://marriageaftergod.com In this episode, we interview Matt & Lisa Jacobson From http://FaithfulMan.com and http://Club31Women.com & Faithful Family podcast. Here is a quote from our book Marriage After God “Your marriage is the message you are preaching to others. The way you and your spouse interact with each other reveals the gospel you believe.” Dear Lord, Thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the Spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain a deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry and the impact we have in each other’s lives and in this world, just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order or if we are not unified please help us to change course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point others to you and may you be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith of Marriage after God. [Lisa] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're in part five of the Marriage after God series, and we're gonna be talking with Matt and Lisa Jacobsen about marriage being your first ministry. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage after God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is marriage after God. [Aaron] Hey, thanks for joining us on week five of this series that we're doing. I hope you're enjoying it. You're definitely going to enjoy today's guests. But before we move on, as always, we want to invite you to leave a review. Those reviews help the podcast get seen by new audiences. So, if you've been enjoying the content, we'd love a star rating, which is the easiest way to do it, all you gotta do is tap a star in the app. And if you really, really want to and have time, leaving us a text review would be awesome. We read every single one of 'em, and we love them, so thank you for that. [Jennifer] Another way you can support this podcast-- [Aaron] So today on this episode, we're gonna be talking about content from chapter five of our book, Marriage after God. And the chapter's titled, "Your First Ministry." and we thought, what better way to talk about this chapter than to talk with our pastors and ask them who inspired us and showed us what it looked like to recognize our marriage as ministry. And now we actually reference them and talk about them in this chapter, and so today we have Matt and Lisa Jacobson with us, welcome. [Lisa] Hey, nice to be here. [Matt] Awesome to be here, you bet. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're in our garage, sitting on our couches. And today we're gonna be talking about this topic. But before we talk about that, why don't you introduce to the audience, just in case they don't know you guys, who you are, children, marriage, all that. [Matt] Okay, well, Matt Jacobsen, and this is my lovely woman. [Lisa] Hey, hello. [Matt] Lisa, and so we've been married for 26 years. We have eight kids between the ages of 12 and about 25. [Lisa] Yup. [Matt] Right, and there are four of them are out of the house and moved on. And so, what keeps us busy when we're not just hanging out and kissing in a dark corner somewhere. [Lisa] That's right. We also, we do homeschool and we do a lot of work with our kids. Our kids help us out with what we do at home and also in our ministry. [Matt] And so, speaking of ministries. So, my website is Faithfulman.com. [Lisa] And I'm Lisa with Club31women.com. [Matt] And so that is a writing ministry that speaks to marriage, parenting, church, and culture. Biblical perspective on those things. And so, that comprises a lot of what takes up our time in a given week. And then, of course, we're the pastors of a small local fellowship as well. [Aaron] Yeah, it's our fellowship. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] You're our pastors. And we love you guys. And by the way, if everyone listening didn't hear what those were, that's faithfulman.com and club31women.com. You guys should definitely check them out. And why don't you tell them about your newest podcast that you guys just launched? [Matt] Awesome, okay. Well, the name of that podcast is Faithful Life. And it's essentially a podcast that is pursuing the and exploring the topic of what does it mean to live as a biblical Christian. There are a lot of people in the world, lot of Christians, people who identify as Christians, who are living a life that is really separate or tangential to the Bible. And really, if you're going to be a biblical Christian, you've gotta know what the Bible says about these various aspects of life: marriage, parenting, how we're to live within church community and then how we're to interact with the culture. And so, that's the focus of the podcast, faithful-- [Lisa] With a lot of emphasis on practical ways to do that, sometimes we kinda know in our heads what the right thing to do is, or what we believe the Bible says, but then how does that look in our day-to-day life, and that's something that matt and I really have a passion for is just connecting those two things. [Matt] And a little bit of experience. It's only been, what, 26 years you've been married and walking with the Lord and learning through all of the eight children. [Aaron] So we just want everyone to check out their podcast; it's called Faithful Life. And you're gonna love it. Just search for it wherever you listen to podcasts. So, let's get into the icebreaker question. And this is how we start all the episodes. It's just a fun question. How does your spouse like their coffee and what does that say about them? [Lisa] Okay, I get to go first on this one. Because everybody that knows Matt Jacobson well knows that he likes his coffee black, but, even more importantly, he likes it burning hot so that it burns a hole in your tongue, so he, if-- [Matt] And you better not put it in a cold cup. [Lisa] Right, the best way to show love to Matt Jacobson is to heat up the cup first and then pour his coffee into it. [Matt] Wow, that's one of the ways over the years you've shown love to me. But right, so anyway-- [Lisa] In the coffee-- [Matt] No, that's right in the coffee, in the realm of coffee. And Lisa takes her coffee with a teaspoon of sugar and cream and-- [Lisa] That's right, I like it a little sweet. [Matt] She likes it a little sweet, that's right. [Aaron] And it's just like her character too. Little sweet. [Matt] And I love making coffee for her; I do. In the morning, I love making coffee. I love bringing her a cup of coffee in the morning. [Jennifer] And you guys do coffee as a family a lot, so can you just share a little bit about that 'cause I just love that. [Matt] Okay, so, why don't you tell how we've corrupted our young children? [Lisa] Well, we started off in our marriage. We started each day with having coffee. Matt would make a coffee tray for him and I, and we would sit and have coffee together. And then as each child came along, we then slowly incorporated them into this special time until it became something our whole family just loves and so even our older kids when they come home for the holidays or different vacations, they'll come and that's the thing they look forward to most is having our time together over a pot of coffee. And we just talk about what we're thinking about, what's going on in our world, and it's just a really close family time. [Matt] And you know, oh, sorry. That whole process of incorporating the kids into it. It's kind of funny because it's really a metaphor, or an example, if you will, of what happens in your family. Over time, we're very strict with the older kids. I don't even remember when we began allowing them to have coffee. Including them. I don't even remember, do you remember how old they were? [Lisa] No. [Matt] But, as time went on, the younger kids just get to start earlier and earlier. And I think we started, did Hawkin have his first? [Lisa] He was about seven or eight maybe-- [Aaron] It was a bottle right? [Lisa] When he had his first cup of coffee. [Matt] That's right. [Lisa] A very, very tiny cup of coffee, mostly milk. [Jennifer] Mostly milk, yeah. [Matt] Yeah, right, and so now we're going, okay, so. [Lisa] Almost because their dad's kind of soft on the issue. [Matt] I am; I am. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, I follow Lisa on Instagram, and I love watching your stories because you'll post about it every once in a while of just your guys' family time around that, and it's beautiful and you can just tell, just from that short glimpse that you give the rest of us that it's a really beautiful time that you're cultivating in your family. [Matt] And in some senses, like you see the snapshot, and it is awesome, it really is. But, it's just so normal, a part of life, and a wonderful life is built on a lot of normal moments that you just string together over time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, it's true, yeah, it's good. [Matt] And so, yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, there's the big one-offs that are memorable, but then there's the, it's the everyday things that shape who we are, it's all those habits that we have and those routines. I love that. Why don't you share the quote from the chapter? And then we'll just start asking questions. [Jennifer] Okay, so this is from chapter five of Marriage after God. "Your marriage is the message you are preaching to other, "the way you and your spouse interact with each other "reveals the gospel you believe." [Aaron] Matt and Lisa, how would you that that is true in what you guys have experienced, because it's something that you've definitely not only shown us through your own marriage, but also directly have shown us in ours in saying hey, you can't expect to have this ministry over here if your home doesn't match. So could you give me some insight on how this quote plays out in real life? [Matt] Well, one of the things that you just naturally see in life is you see people in ministry and what's the big joke in America, at least it used to be, I don't know if it still is, who are the worst kids in church? The PKs, the preacher's kids, right? And so, that is so antithetical to how we're called to live in the word of God because we are called ambassadors. That means that we are representatives of the kingdom of God on earth. We bear the name of Christ, and we're his representatives. And how is it possible that you have this ministry or you have this public presence, and then it's not true in your own personal life. You wanna tell somebody about the wonderful truths of Scripture. And you wanna tell somebody the gospel and explain to them how they can have a wonderful relationship with the Lord. And then you don't have, you're not living those wonderful relationships in your family. I know that we had seen a lot of this early on. And we were even involved in a particular church, years and years ago, they were lovely people but focused just on evangelism and kinda lost the relationships with their kids over time. We just saw-- [Lisa] And in their marriage. [Matt] This family's disintegrating. And the marriage is. Then we though, you know what, the life that we're called to as believers is much more holistic than that. And the truths of the gospel are supposed to be manifest in our lives. And if I could just say one more thing. I know you've got a lot to say, too. You see in the instructions for church leadership in the book of 1 Timothy, one of the principal requirements of anybody in ministry and this is serving as an elder or a deacon within the church. [Aaron] Yes, specific position. [Matt] One of the principal requirements is that you've demonstrated that your children have yielded hearts to you. You're governing your family well. You're leading your family well. There's a sense of order and peace in your home. So God wants it to be true at home before we go out to represent him to the world. [Aaron] And what does Paul tell Timothy, he says how can you presume to manage the household of God if you can't manage your own home, which is how he, after all that teaching, he says that it doesn't make sense. [Matt] Yeah. [Lisa] And I think that Matt's kind of big picture guy. And I'm more of what does that look like in my day kind of person. And one thing I had noticed that in Scripture, when it talks about how we are to be towards one another, how we're to be, to be loving, patient, kind. And we apply all of those things to out there. So, just an example: I go to the grocery store, and the cashier's taking forever to get me through the line. And she apologizes, but I've read the Bible, so I'm going to be, oh it's fine, I'll wait. I understand you're trying your hardest, and we'll get through here because I'm being patient, and I'm being kind. And then I go home, and I have a different response when it takes Matt forever to come out and help me bring in the groceries in the house. Or, because I'll be snippin' at him-- [Matt] Has that ever happened, like even one time in our marriage? [Lisa] Like I wait for you? Do you really wanna bring that up? [Aaron] Everyone listening was like that was just today. [Lisa] So, but it really struck home to me that all those things that we think apply to out there to strangers or maybe to friends. It somehow, or maybe there's a disconnect, to actually sometimes the hardest person, sometimes, is actually the person your married to. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, thinking about our own marriage. I used to do this thing where I would always be upbeat and positive and smiley with everyone. And then I'd come home and immediately my countenance would change, and Aaron-- [Aaron] I finally called you out on it, I was like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 'cause Aaron would be like-- [Aaron] Why do they get the smiles and then I get this? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] What is this? [Jennifer] And then I remember specifically him saying, I want your best. And I had to figure it out. I had to figure out why I was doing that and check my flesh on it really. [Aaron] Well, I think there's a default position of, well, I have you, therefore you should deal with who I actually wanna be today, and everyone else has to, I want them to see the best part of me. It's almost like it's just totally backwards. And it's actually lying. [Matt] Well, the harsh reality of the circumstance is who you actually are in terms of your personal character is who you are when the doors are shut and you're letting your hair down, so to speak, and you're just being your natural self with the people where the consequences might not be as immediate or severe as they might be if you do this in public. And so, that's the reality of who we are. And so, it's important to take stock on those things. How am I with the people that I'm closest to because those are the people that we tend to take for granted and those are the circumstances that we tend to be a little less guarded. [Aaron] Now that you're saying that, I'm thinking, it's actually probably infinitely less damaging to be that kind of person in public, when people they may be offended for the moment, but they're gonna forget your face in like eight seconds 'cause they don't live with you than the person that we literally spend hours and hours a day and our lifetime with: our children, our spouse. We sacrifice the main thing for the non-main thing. [Matt] Totally, and that's of course humanly speaking, in terms of the cost, over the long-term. [Aaron] Yeah, publicly. [Matt] But relative to the Lord's perspective on these relations, he wants it to be the same everywhere. [Aaron] Yeah. [Matt] He wants us to be loving and in the spirit everywhere with the people, especially close to us, but also with everybody else that we're interacting with. [Aaron] Or repentant if we're not. [Jennifer] Yeah, yeah, there is grace Right? [Aaron] Which changes us. [Matt] Well, you know what, you brought up the R word: repentance. And that is such an important word and such an abused word in our Christian religious world because repentance has a specific meaning. It's a word that has a definition. And we cut ourselves so much slack and we dip back into the same sins over and, how about this, just this sin we're talking about here where we're not being kind to our spouse, but we've got it for everybody else. And, oh, I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that. Please forgive me. And Lord, I was unkind to my wife, please forgive me. I should have been more kind. And then we go on our day, and then I do it again. And then I do it again. Have I repented if I just keep walking in that same sin? [Aaron] No, you've apologized. [Matt] I've apologized, right? [Aaron] You're sorry for being-- [Matt] Because to repent means I used to do that, and now I'm doing this. It means to turn from, that's the definition of the word. And it's such a good word for Christians, all of us, to really wrestle with, and say, you know what, have I really repented and forsaken that sin? Because that's what it means to walk as God would have us as a couple and not to just keep going back, over and over and over again. [Aaron] I think of this quote. I'm not gonna say who said it, but someone in our family used to say, "If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it." That's kind of the idea; we say sorry over and over and over again. But in reality, our heart hasn't changed. We're just allowing something, whether we're intentionally doing something. We're not intentionally walking in the spirit, so therefore, we're defaulting to walking in the flesh, and we haven't repented of anything. This is something that I had to recognize in my life with certain sin in my life was I was sorry, but usually I was sorry for the shame or the regret or being caught or the remorse I see in your face or the pain I've caused you, Jennifer, but I'd never had been sorry for my sin which is what leads to repentance, and then I change and walk in that. So thanks for bringing that clarity. [Matt] Yeah, absolutely. And so to come full circle on your question, what does it mean to have a marriage that is reflecting the gospel? Well, if you have a marriage that is the kind of marriage that someone else is interested in, then you're not creating this incredible disconnect in the mind of the person that you're sharing the gospel with because what are you inviting them to? If the gospel hasn't affected and hasn't made your marriage beautiful, what are you inviting them to? Here we are married, and we have a bad, bickering, difficult, challenging marriage, and I'm out there telling somebody that Jesus loves them and died for them. It's so critical 'cause as we, and I know you guys have talked about on your podcast and certainly in your book, that your marriage is the gospel you're preaching, that is the gospel you're preaching. And the power of your message will not be one iota stronger or more influential than is the meaning and the love and the strength of your marriage relationship. [Jennifer] That's so good. I hope everyone hits rewind and just listens to that a few times. [Aaron] Yeah, and let's take marriage out of the picture, just in the Christian individual's life. If the gospel's not true in our life, so for me, when I was walking in my addiction to pornography, and I wasn't repentant of it, I thought I was, I was sorry for it; I was sorry for what it did to me, but I wasn't truly repentant of it. I could never tell someone that Christ came to bring freedom, which is what the Bible teaches us, that's the fruit of the gospel. [Matt] There you go. [Aaron] Because I couldn't walk in freedom. Like you said, I'm literally showing them, like, hey, here's God, he's awesome-- [Jennifer] He's powerless. [Aaron] He's powerless. [Jennifer] In my life. [Matt]right. [Aaron] He can't, and this isn't about just all of the sudden everything being healed and perfect and great, but this is definitely the truth of freedom from sin and death, which is what the Bible teaches, which is what Christ came to destroy. He took the power away from it. [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] But he doesn't have that in my life. Therefore, you should love God and believe in Jesus, but he can't actually do anything for the core of who you are. He can't change your physical situation or your spiritual situation, but, you know what, he's the thing you should believe in. It just doesn't make any sense. [Matt] No, it doesn't. We just need to remember that even if we're not saying anything, even if we're not on the street corner, preaching the gospel. We're preaching a sermon every time we walk out the door together. We're preaching a sermon. We're literally saying, this is what it means to be a Christian man and a Christian woman. Whether you mean to or not, you're preaching a sermon. The question is, what's the message that you're giving other people? [Jennifer] And how, can you explain, just for those people listening, how are they giving that message to other people? [Matt] It tends to be if you're living in a town and you've got your immediate circle and then you've got your circle of influence, the people you interact with, the people at the bank, the people at the gas station, the people at the grocery store, they know, over the course of time, they know whether you're a Christian or not. It just becomes evident that that is who you are. People probably don't realize it, but as somebody who identifies as a Christian, people watch you a little closer. They tend to want to just scrutinize you a little bit, or when we're at a restaurant. [Lisa] I was gonna say, what I was thinking about was how many times we've been in an airplane, traveling together, in a restaurant together, we have been stopped so many times by people we didn't even realize were watching us, someone who's serving us or the flight attendant, and said, you know, you two are just such a loving couple. And they could just see the way we were just interacting. And so people do notice that. And often times, especially at a restaurant, they'll see that we've prayed, so they also know that we're believers. And we've had a lot of opportunities to share the gospel with those people just even based on their observation of us. [Aaron] Well, it's uncommon. It's uncommon; it's normal to have cold relationships and being on the phones. It's uncommon to see engagement and true infatuation and adoration or-- [Lisa] Yeah, like the last time we were on a flight, we had a flight attendant come to us at the end of the flight, it was a long flight. And she said, "You know, the other flight attendants and I "were all talking about you two." Really? We're not that interesting. [Matt] Well, we were kissing, I mean. We were getting along kissing. [Lisa] That's right; that's right. And they were just observing how we were with each other, and how cute it was and thought we were maybe somewhat newly married. And I'm like, "Oh, no, we've been married 26 years, "and we have eight kids." Like, no way, yeah, really. [Aaron] And you're still in love? [Lisa] Yeah, yeah, it was really astonishing. [Matt] And you mentioned something about praying in a restaurant. And I know a lot of people listening probably do. It's probably less common these days than it has been in the past, but a lot of people still bow their heads and pray in a restaurant. Personally, I love doing that. I love just the witness: I'm a Christian, and I'm gonna give God thanks for this food. So I like doing that. But if you're somebody out there who does that, can I just encourage you to leave a fat, hog tip? Okay, because-- [Lisa] It's like a bonus. [Aaron] It is a bonus. [Matt] Because you've literally hoisted your flag at the table, I'm a Christian, and so, leave a great taste in your waiter's or server's mouth. [Aaron] It's a little sacrifice. [Matt] It's so small, yeah, so small. So small, but it's a good testimony, too. Just to say, you know what, love the Lord, and oh, by the way, God bless you. [Aaron] Going back to the, I think that's a great little bit of advice of how to spread the love of God. Like, hey, we love God and we just wanted to bless you, thank you-- [Matt] And certainly if it's a place that you go back more than once. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's true. [Aaron] Oh yeah! [Matt] You have struck up, well you've created an opportunity to strike up a conversation with the person because they're, well, first of all, they're business people, right? They wanna make money. So they wanna serve you well, and it's just an opportunity, that's all. Just an opportunity, if you're going to pray, then by all means, please don't complain about the food. [Aaron] I was gonna say that actually. There's certain Christiany things that we do, maybe we were raised that way, and we just pray. We're Christians, we love God, we pray. But then, let's say we're bickering at the table, or we are being super rude to the waiters, or our kids are throwing food on the floor and silverware. That is a part of our witness. [Lisa] It is. [Aaron] How we are. And they're like, you did the thing that I thought you were gonna do. They're looking for us to fail. [Jennifer] To fail, right. [Aaron] Doesn't mean we're not gonna fail, but the majority of the time, our hearts should be aware of how we're being, which goes back to that marriage being your ministry. You guys had this awesome, oh, people noticed us, and they stopped us and said thank you. We've had the other side of it. And no one's actually confronted us and saw us fighting, but we've had people message us after the fact. We've mentioned this a few times. And like, "Hey, we saw you in the store. "I didn't stop and say hi, but just wanted to say hi." And they'd message us on Instagram. And then we were like, "Oh my gosh, I think we were, were we fighting?" [Jennifer] This was a long time ago; we've gotten better since then. This was a long time ago. [Aaron] It made us aware, man, like, well, A, we have a social media presence, but it doesn't matter if you do. Like if you're a Christian, there's people that know you. You have friends, you have neighbors, you have, and people that may not know you personally, they're gonna see you regularly in your small town, or big town, I guess, because you frequent the same places. What kind of fragrance as a couple and as Christians do we give in this world where we say one thing and act a different way? That's literally what hypocrisy is. We talk about this, actually, in this chapter. We talk about, we're gonna ask you a question in a second, another question, but it doesn't make any sense if we're trying to minister in other ways, and then in the home, there is no real ministry happening. And so, question for you guys is are marriages being a ministry, and being our first ministry, because it's our first one another, our closest neighbor, we always like to say is our spouse and then our kids and everyone else. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Well, this husband, he's a minister, and he doesn't actually have time to be focused on his family. Or a wife that's doing this thing over here for God, and she doesn't have time to serve her home and children. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Why or why not? [Lisa] I don't know that there are exemptions in that sense although Matt might want to address that, but what that's come to mind, I do have many women write me who are in a marriage situation where the spouse is not a believer or at least not walking with God. And I know that that's a greater challenge, and I wouldn't want to put undue burden on that couple, especially the one that's trying to be faithful, and the other is not walking that way. There has to be grace for that, and the one person has to, you know, scripture tells us to keep quiet and just keep shining the light of Christ in their home. But I also wouldn't want to feel like, oh, I can't minister to others now because my spouse is not walking in truth right now. [Matt] And the way I would look at that is the Bible teaches us what is normal and how we are to walk as normal Christians in this world. And when it comes to marriage, what's normal is the way Jesus loves the church, his bride. That's how we're supposed to love our bride. That's normal. And that instruction, love your wife as Christ loved the church, that's not a special instruction for somebody who happens to be in the public eye. That is an instruction for absolutely every Christian man, every man who stands up and says, I follow Lord; I have committed my life to Christ. I have repented of my sin, and I'm a Christian. Every man who has said that should have a wife who says, I'm the most cherished woman I know. And no man is exempt from that. And so, here's the thing, if a church lays claim to being full of godly men, then there's one thing you know for sure, it's full of cherished wives. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot be a godly man and not cherish your wife. And so in that sense, I would say nobody's exempt from this, but, of course, we live in a broken world with lots of relationships and circumstances, and people have struggled. And God has grace for those things. But in those circumstances, the person, whatever they are, wherever they fall on the spectrum, difficult and virtually sad and very challenging to not that bad, wherever they are in the spectrum, their job is to draw near to God and walk as closely to God as he wants them, as he desires them to, and to seek them in those circumstances. But I appreciate you bringing that up because there are lot of people, lots of wives, lots of husbands, a husband called us recently. His wife left, he's got, I think they've got five kids. One of the kids has Down's Syndrome, and the wife's just like, "I'm done." And she left, and he didn't want her to leave, he tried to love her right up through, for several years, up to point where she left. He himself has remained faithful and has a ministry even though she's left, so it's true, it's not that you don't have a ministry. It's just that God provides his standards and principles and requirements for Christian men, for Christian wives, and for marriage. And then sin comes in and everything else is an exception to the rule, but the rule is every man is to cherish his wife in the way Jesus Christ loves the church. [Aaron] So, I do appreciate Lisa that you brought that up, too, because I'm sure that we have people that listen, and one of the spouses is not walking, is not a believer, and we get, praise God, he gives provision for this in his word, in 1 Peter, he shows, it's funny because it's to the wife, it's almost like he knew that men were gonna be more prone to this, not being faithful, which is sad, but it's true. But even then I think, you're right, that it doesn't mean they can't have ministry outside of the home because their marriage isn't in order correctly faith wise, but that doesn't mean that their first ministry still isn't their spouse. Like you said, they still have a call, the wife or the husband, to serve and love their spouse the way the Bible has called them to, faithfully, whether they receive it or not, of course. And that's also, I don't wanna say qualifies, I don't know if that's the right word, but, it still prepares them to do ministry outside their home because it's in order. Instead of, I'm not going to love my husband or my wife like this because they're treating me this way, but I am gonna go love over here, that's not gonna produce the kind of fruit that God's looking for. But I did appreciate that. I think it's totally relevant to recognize that there are these non-ideal marriages. [Matt] You know, and one of the things that might be important to mention here is wherever you are on the spectrum: you have a spectacular marriage all the way to it's terrible. We tend to fall into this wrong thought process that goes something like this: you're walking in sin; therefore, I can't help being the way I am. [Lisa] Oh, now, that's a good point. [Matt] And the fact of the matter is is the way you act has nothing to do with my capacity as a believer to walk in holiness. [Lisa] Right, no that's-- [Matt] And we kinda cut ourselves a little slack there, don't we? 'Cause if you're a certain way, well then that gives me license to be another way in response-- [Aaron] Yeah, if you only respected me, I would treat you or love you as Christ loves the church. [Matt] That's right, and every one of us has the capacity according to the word of God to walk in holiness, irrespective of how our spouse is walking. Now we certainly make it easier, right? If we're walking in holiness for the other person. But, we can't blame our distance from God on how someone else has chosen to act. [Aaron] Amen. [Jennifer] Taking a look into your guys' marriage. You know, you've been married quite a while. So go back to the beginning. Was there a learning curve in your guys' relationship on how to love and respect each other and cherish each other in that? [Matt] OH, absolutely. I was the most loving husband in the world. The only problem-- [Aaron] That's a real laugh, by the way. [Matt] The only-- [Lisa] Revisionist history, I think that's what it's-- [Matt] The only problem with it is I was loving Lisa in the way that said love to me. [Lisa] Oh, that's true. [Matt] We'd like to tell the story, in fact, we tell it on our own podcast. We just have this crazy story where I literally am superman husband, okay? I am helping out with everything. [Lisa] It's our first year of marriage. [Matt] First year of marriage. I am helping out with everything. I am helping with, not the laundry, you wouldn't let me touch the laundry 'cause she said, nope, that's mine; I will do the laundry. Everything else, the vacuuming, folding the laundry. [Lisa] Cleaning the bathrooms. [Matt] Cleaning the bathrooms, everything else, the dishes, everything, I'm helping, I'm helping. I'm doing it all, and I'm thinking-- [Lisa] And I'm getting madder and madder and-- [Matt] And she's over in the kitchen. And there's the flames, you know, the ones coming out of her eyes, are visible from across the room, and I-- [Aaron] Although I have never seen Lisa angry before, so I couldn't-- [Lisa] Oh, I'm capable. [Matt] And I thought, what is wrong with this woman? You can't find five guys in the entire state of Oregon that do the things that I do with a willing heart, and I'm trying to bless you, you're just, there's nothing that will make you happy. You can't be blessed; I don't know what your problem is. And so, she just takes the towel, and she almost busts a dish on me as she sets the plate down on the counter. And then she takes the towel and throws it on the counter. [Lisa] Thank you. [Matt] And I'm going, what in the world. She turns to me, and she goes, "I just don't know why you don't love me." [Lisa] True story. [Aaron] What's happening? [Matt] And I'm going, okay, am I losing my mind here? And I'm going, you've gotta be kid, you've literally got to be kidding me. [Lisa] So my thinking is I can vacuum, I can clean the bathrooms, anybody can do that. But there's only one guy in my life that can take me out and spend some time with me and listen to my thoughts. [Aaron] Look in my eyes-- [Lisa] Yes! [Aaron] And talk to me. [Lisa] And so he could just feel my frustration over time. So, the more frustrated he would feel-- [Matt] I would try harder. [Lisa] The more he'd vacuum. [Matt] I'd do more! [Lisa] And I'm just like, put the stupid vacuum down. I just want to spend time with yo. [Matt] So I'm going, wow, that's easy. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who knew love was that easy? So in our case, it was just me taking the initiative to say, okay, we're gonna go out at such-and-such a day, and it didn't matter what it was. We'd go for a walk; we could go have a cup of coffee. And I mean, at any time you as a husband tell your wife, "Hey, I just wanna spend some time with you." You can turn one cup of coffee into an awesome date. You really can. [Lisa] It doesn't take much. [Matt] It doesn't take much. You talk about learning curve, absolutely we had to learn each other and what was important to you and what was important to me and this is so true in absolutely every area of marriage. For instance, we've given you the for instance in terms of the learning curve, but in terms of discovering what it is your spouse is interested in, what they like, what's important to them. There's a very, very interesting way of finding out. [Aaron] You ask. [Matt] You ask a question! Yeah, yeah, and it's such a great thing to do because you know what happens when I turn to you and I ask you a question about you. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who doesn't like talking about themselves? Who doesn't like being known and explored and discovered. Who doesn't like someone being interested in them. So that's what we do when we turn to our spouse and say, okay, I wanna ask you a question. I wanna ask you what are three things that I can do that would make you feel loved? So that's just the normal stuff of marriage. But you know what? And you can even take it right into the subject of sex. And you can say, what are things that you enjoy when we come together physically? What are some of those things? Because, you know what, we tend to love the other person with the things that we want. [Lisa] I think that sometimes people boil this down to love languages, which is interesting and helpful. But what we're talking about is so much more than a love language, for one thing, those things change over time. It depends when the season when we had four kids, five and under, the vacuum really helped a lot, and I had a, not that I still didn't want to go out, [Aaron] Right, in that season, that was much more loving. [Lisa] Yeah, it was loving; it did mean a lot. [Matt] And physical touch when we had five kids. What would the age's spread have been with our five kids? [Lisa] Yeah, six and under. [Matt] Five kids six and under. Physical touch was less important to her in those years. [Lisa] Imagine that. [Matt] You know? She's got kids. You got enough of that. [Jennifer] Her tank is full. [Matt] Yeah, I'm touching 24/7, exactly. Right, so it does change over time. [Lisa] So instead of thinking of it as big subjects of love language, think of it as who you are as a person and where are you at today, where are you at in this season, where are you at in your life right now. And that involves that continual seeking and pursuing and asking. [Jennifer] So continual even after 26 years. Like you guys are still asking? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You have gotten there yet? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You haven't gotten to the-- [Matt] No, we're seeking each other all the time. And you know what? [Jennifer] And it's fun, right? [Lisa] It is. [Matt] It is fun, absolutely fun. And the thing is, if you love the other person, it's not a burden to do it. You actually want to know where they're at. You wanna know where their heart is at. [Lisa] And I think it can even be in somewhat negative things like say, I notice something triggers Matt into a bad mood or just like a dark, you know. And it used to be, when we were younger, that would just like, oh, fine, if you're gonna be in a bad mood, then I'll just stay away from you. I'm not saying those things, but that was my basic attitude. And I feel like over the years, now, let's say something like that happens, which it does, then I can say, I noticed, like something happened, you know, we had a good start today, and then something kind of went sideways. You wanna tell me about that? Did something happen or did I say something? Not in a defensive way, but just really, we've had some really good conversations about that. He'd go, "You know, I wasn't aware of that." Sometimes even going back to your childhood. As a child, my mom treated me a certain way, so now whenever I hear this phrase, it takes me back to a time when I didn't feel cared for. [Aaron] Yeah. [Lisa] And you're thinking, oh, well, I didn't mean to [Aaron] I know how it feels. [Lisa] communicate that I didn't care for you. But I can see that that would translate to that. And now I know, and I can be more mindful of that. [Aaron] And lovingly. Just the loving hey, is everything okay? Not because you're bothered by it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] But because you're concerned for it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] Which then, I'm sure, Matt, you would experience. There's been times that I don't even know why I'm brooding. It just takes a moment to be checked on it. And then I'm like, oh, I actually don't know why I'm brooding right now; I actually do feel irritated. I don't know why. Which it totally could be a hormonal thing, it could be a something I ate, and maybe there's something spiritual going on that we need to be praying through, but that approach of not taking it personally because we do that. Why are you doing this around me? I was in a great mood, now you just brought me down. But rather, helper, but for each, an actual concern. Hey, is everything alright? That was a really good bit of advice. I think everyone listening is gonna be loving these tips because this is 26 years of you guys learning this. We're only 12 in, what is that? We're not even half. [Matt] It'll go quick; it'll go quick. [Aaron] We are halfway to the kids, though. [Matt] Oh, that's right. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] And you got started earlier than we did. [Aaron] We got started earlier, so we might bypass you So you guys'll [Matt] Outpace us, yeah, that's right. But then there's adoption, we can stay ahead of 'em. [Aaron] It's true, that's true. So I'm loving these tips. And it all plays back into this. Right now, you're talking about how you guys minister to each other. Loving each other, cultivating intimacy, the communication, the strong bond which allows us, then, it frees us to be more able to minister outside the home. Not that it can't happen, but when you guys are so connected, so close, there's more freedom, and less internal turmoil. [Matt] I might even say it a little differently. I would say what it does is it authenticates the message. [Aaron] That's perfect. [Matt] And you know, we see this principle, well not just principle, we see this exact teaching in the high priestly prayer that Jesus prays in John 17 where he's saying, their unity, let them be one as we are one, Jesus is praying. Let them, his followers, those who come to Christ, who come to a repentance and become the children of God. Let them be one as we are one that the world might believe that you have sent me. The unity that we have, the oneness that we have is the authentication of the message of Christ that he came from the Father. And so, that's so true in the church as a whole, and it's absolutely true in marriage. When we're walking in love, when we're walking in unity, when we're exuding that, where we go through life, it authenticates the message when we do speak the truth of the gospel to someone. [Lisa] And not just out there, but in our own homes, to our kids. [Matt] Oh, that's just so true. [Lisa] When your kids are little, you can kinda get away with it, or at least you think you are. [Aaron] We think we think we are. [Lisa] Believe me, as they get older, they'll tell the world what it's really like at home. They'll tell their friends. [Matt] They do. [Lisa] I'm just saying because it's reality. And the opposite is true, too, that if you are loving each other, it's a witness to them, it's an encouragement to them. Our kids all want to get married. They want to have that kind of marriage. And that's a huge blessing. One of the things that we recently asked one of our older daughters, who's in her twenties. I think it was a Father's Day thing. What do you like most about your dad? She said that, "He loves Mom so well." And it was such a beautiful testimony that yeah, they're watching, they know whether you have loved each other in those quiet moments. [Aaron] Well, when you think about it, almost everyone probably listening, when they look back and they think about their home and how they were raised, I'm sure a lot of them, being raised in Christian homes or not, maybe heard the Bible, but did they see it? Did they see the Bible; did they see the gospel? They don't remember what they ate. They don't remember all the places they've been. But they definitely remember how Mom and Dad were together. They definitely remember how Mom and Dad treated them. And that's where the ministry in our home comes in. 'Cause I've told Jennifer this. I said, Jennifer, all of these things that we have, Unveiled Wife, Husband Revolution, our podcast. I said all of that means absolutely nothing if my kids don't know the Lord. And so, not just our ministry to each other that we have a healthy marriage and that we're godly, and that we love each other and respect each other and honor each other and cherish each other and serve each other, but that my kids see it. And that they recognize what we're doing and why we're doing it, and that at the end of the day, they look back and they say thank you to us, not because of us alone, but because we were obedient. I want my kids to say that. I want my kids to say, "Mom and Dad loved each other. "I just know it; they loved me, and they showed me "who God was and they lived it every day. "They didn't just use their words." As James says, don't just be hearers only, but doers of the word. Are we just listening and not doing? Are we just telling and doing the opposite? The do what I say, not what I do? [Lisa] Right, right. [Matt] Do what I say, not what I do. It works every time, just not the way the parent thought it was going to work. [Aaron] Exactly and so I just, going back to that, that's what I want everyone listening to understand. The main purpose of this chapter in the book, is, and it's early on in the book, it's chapter five, and it's setting this idea of we could want to do lots of things for God, but God wants us to do what he's told us to do. And if we can't be faithful with the little thing, and the little thing is our children, our spouse, our home, this is a little picture of the world. If I can't minister to my wife and love her as Christ loves the church, I have no right going and loving a stranger like that. I could. [Matt] I think what we do is we tend to think like, I know what you're saying, as this is the little thing, so to do the big thing. I actually think that reality is kind of on its head. [Aaron] Okay. [Matt] I think the big thing we're doing is we're being faithful with our spouses, we're being faithful in discipling our children. And it's a great, big deal, and see-- [Aaron] Man, I heard that, yeah. [Matt] If the church had been teaching and focusing on that these past, what, I dunno, however many years. [Aaron] 60 or 70 years. [Matt] Would the church be in the state that it's in today with disintegrating families and churches filled with unfulfilled marriages and disappointments and divorce and all of those things. It's a great big deal. And if we're faithful here, God can entrust with ministry elsewhere. [Jennifer] In chapter 14 of the book, we talk about how what God sees as extraordinary is so different than what the world deems extraordinary. When we look at our own lives, it is that day-to-day, all those little choices of discipling our children, being faithful to one another, that is extraordinary because that is where God is working. [Aaron] Especially today, it's normal, you brought up the word normal, it's common, that's what it is, it's common in the world for there to be divorce and unfaithfulness and children who are rebellious and hate their parents. It is extraordinary and remarkable now even though it should be normal for a marriage to have love in it. [Matt] Well, that's just it. [Aaron] The gospel. [Matt] It is normal, biblical marriage to have a loving, close, wonderful, fulfilling, enjoyable, beautiful oneness in marriage. That is normal Christianity; that's normal marriage. The problem is, is we see what's common around us in the world, and we get used to what's common, and start thinking that that's normal, but it's not. If you have a biblical perspective, if you walk God's way, and your marriage reflects God's priorities and principles, then you're gonna have an awesome, wonderful, beautiful, loving, enjoyable marriage because that's what a normal Christian marriage really is. [Jennifer] And the power of God's testimony in your life is actually powerful. [Matt] Absolutely, right, exactly. [Aaron] Well, people can't argue with it. I mean, they can argue with anything. We were just talking about this. When you're around people that are walking a certain way, makes it easier to believe that you can too. That goes both ways. So when you see someone, and you're like man they're, like the stewardesses looking at you. They don't your whole story, but they know the story they just saw. You're not faking it when you're sitting in the aisle, whatever row you're in and like, oh we want everyone to see that we're perfect. We have this smile on because you can't fake it. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] Everyone fakes it, and no one falls for it. Like, oh-- [Jennifer] Maybe for a short flight, but not long one like you said. [Aaron] Yeah, the short flight's, but yeah. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] And again, we keep going back to this. God's not interested in just us having a happy marriage and a healthy marriage. [Matt] No. [Aaron] For the sake of happy and healthy marriage. That's not an end game. [Matt] That's exactly right. [Aaron] It's the means to the end, like you said. It's what, what was the word you used? It verifies, no-- [Matt] Authenticates. [Aaron] It authenticates. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] What's sad and still is very powerful to realize is when we're not it doesn't make God the liar. It makes us the liar. [Matt] It reminds me or brings to mind that phrase. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power. 'Cause you look at it from a galloping horse at 100 yards, and it looks like Christianity. It looks like something that's related to God and related to the Bible. But then you get close and you see, well, no, actually. It's not real; it's not true, and that's when we see the disintegration in the next generation when the kids are like, I don't want any part of that. Again, you just can't hide that. And especially, you mentioned, Lisa, you said, yeah, you can't hide it, your kids will absolutely tell the story and we know of a family. The snapshot looks amazing, and nobody would know this, but their kids told us recently, oh yeah, our parents yell all the time. And you'd never know it, but the kids know it. And the kids are now talking; they're all older now. And now they're saying, oh, no, no, no, no. Parents yell all the time. So that's why it's gotta be true there because if you're out witnessing, if you're that parents, and it could be yelling or bickering or fighting or cheating on your taxes or any number of things, but if you're that parent, and in the gas stations, you're telling a guy, oh, hey, the Lord Jesus Christ died for you, and God loves you, and he wants you to have a relationship. The kid is sitting there going, "Are you kidding me?" it's so important that for the things that we say to be true about how we live. It's called not being a hypocrite, and your kids can figure it out at a very early age. [Aaron] All of this was so good. I'm encouraged; it makes me think about my marriage even though we're constantly working on it, I just think, man, I wanna-- Makes me think [Jennifer] Of the kids. [Aaron] Yeah, I wanna pursue you more. I want to constantly be doing that for the sake of our outward ministry and for the sake of our home, so thank you for these stories, the openness with us. We're gonna ask you our question that we're asking everyone. What is your definition of a marriage after God? [Lisa] I think that it's that ever growing a deeper love for each other. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think sometimes we just go, well, it's perfect, so we throw our hands, or it's not perfect, so we throw our hands up. Instead of thinking, no, I'm gonna move forward in this. And I'm gonna grow in these areas. I can even think of things I have struggled with. Believe it or not, I do have a temper. And Matt has the ability, somehow, to press that button better than anybody else I know. [Matt] Well, I mean, just on a boring Saturday. I mean if there's nothing else to do. [Lisa] Press my buttons. So I'll find myself reacting to him, and I will stop myself literally mid-sentence and go, wait, it's like, yep, like okay. [Aaron] That's a good-- [Lisa] What I wanted say was. I didn't quite the first two seconds or minutes, however the situation was, wasn't right. But checking myself and going, okay, but that's not who I wanna be. That's how I was, but that's not who I wanna be anymore, so I wanna try again. And giving each other that grace to grow, but being determined to change and not say, this is not who I wanna be; I do want us to be loving close. [Matt] And for me, I think I would boil it down. I mean, that's a huge subject, right? And there's so many facets to it. But I would boil it down to this. The fundamental understanding that my marriage is what God is doing in the world. It's not what I'm doing in the world. It's not the thing that I have; I have a marriage. My marriage is what God is doing in the world. The Bible says what God has put together let no man put asunder. This is something God is doing, and so if you have that basic, fundamental faith about this relationship, it's a foundation and a starting point for moving forward. [Jennifer] Thank you guys so much for joining us today. This has just been, like Aaron said, incredible and inspiring. If people were inspired today and they want to follow you more, can you just remind them where they can find you? [Lisa] We have a podcast, Faithful Life. And we'd love to have you join us over there. And we also, both of us have a website. Matt has faithfulman.com, and I have club31women.com. [Matt] And then you're also on Instagram, club31women and faithfulman, on Instagram, so you can find us there as well. [Aaron] Everyone listening, definitely go follow them, they are golden. [Jennifer] If you like Marriage after God, and you like what we share, you're definitely gonna like them. [Aaron] We actually just steal all of our content from them and repurpose them. They have been integral in the growth and maturity in our life. And so, we appreciate you guys. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] And we thank you for not only sharing with our audience now, but for sharing with us over the last five years. [Lisa And Matt] We love you guys. [Aaron] That we've known you guys. So, we're gonna close out with a prayer. Jennifer's gonna pray and then, yeah. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry, and the impact we have in each other's lives and in this world just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order, or if we are not unified, please help us to change our course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point other to you, and may you be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Matt] Amen. [Aaron] So, thank you all for listening today. I hope this blessed you guys. And as always, we want you guys to have a conversation about this. Go on a date, and discuss the things that we talked about today. We have, what is it, 11 more episodes in this series. 11 more interviews to come. They're gonna be awesome; please stay tuned. We look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageafterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Tim Hur is the Managing Broker of Point Honors & Associates, a residential real estate firm in Duluth, GA. Tim has built a great firm and has also served on NAR's Fair Housing committee during 2018. Tim joins us to give life to the fair housing conversation and why it's important in our business. He also answers great questions around involvement in the industry and commitment to clients needs. Don't miss this episode. Tune in and listen to your favorite real estate podcast, reThink Real Estate. You can find Tim Hur at https://www.pointhonors.com The re:think real estate podcast is hosted by Chris Lazarus, Nathan White, and Christian Harris. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 36:42 RTRE 49 – Tim Hur, Managing Real Estate Broker of Point Honors [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. Guys what's going on? [Christian]: Not much. Talking to my favorite people.   [Nathan]: Speak for yourself. But I am glad to be here on recording so that's good. Excited we get to talk about some new stuff. For someone might be boring but I still find it interesting so I am excited about that. And this is about it. [Chris]: How is your CMA going? [Nathan]: My CRM…I am just slightly…I'm doing alright. [Chris]: CRM. I say CMA because Christian was just talking about could services and CRM. You know. [Nathan]: That is something I am still failing at. We won't talk about it. We have a guest and we don't want to bore people. [Chris]: We'll move on. We do. We do have a guest. We have great guest. His name is Tim Hur. For those of you who haven't seen him at NAR events, Tim is the managing broker of Point Honors. His bio is a freaking novel. So we're gonna let Tim. Tim thanks for joining us today.  [Tim]: No thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate it. It's a lot of fun.  [Chris]: It's great to have you on. So for…for our audience you have achieved quite a lot of honors. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? And what you're doing. [Tim]: Sure. Thank you so much for that [laughter]. I appreciate that. Well my name is Tim Hur. Unfortunate not related to the fictional character Ben Hur otherwise I would be not selling real estate. Of course. But no I am…I was your 2018 chair, national chair for diversity for NRA based here in Atlanta. And I have been rocking and rolling ever since, been a realtor for what 12,13 years now. Kind of have been doing this right after college.  [Chris]: Nice. So tell us your story. Did…Where did you grow up? How did you get into real estate? Where did you go to school? All the fun stuff. [Tim]: Sure. I was born in Huston. Moved to Atlanta than got too far away. You know, I went to high school here. I went to Georgia Tech right after that. And… [Chris]: [inaudible] [Tim]: I know. [laughter] Either you hate me or you love me. One or the other. But I had a really good opportunity going to real estate. So I got my license and got into real estate right before the crash. So it was really good. We all…I think a lot of us who have endured the pains of early real estate and have been in the industry at least for a while and everyone is complaining about interest rates right now but you know we started real estate when we were selling into it. It was 7,8,9,10,11,12%. So you know.  The market tanked so I moved over to commercial for a little bit. And sustained myself with Doreos [phonetics] and commercial and came right back swinging and we've been…You know we have a small team here. We have about 18 agents in our company and we operate pretty well. So… [Chris]: That's awesome so you were the 2018 national chair for Federal Fair Housing and implementing that. [Tim]: Well slightly. So yeah I was 2018 chair diversity.  [Chris]: Can you tell us on how that went on.  [Tim]: Yeah so the 2018 yeah chair for diversity. [Chris]: OK. [Tim]: So the diversity committee from the national association of realtors we were…one of our tasks was to make sure that we helped launch the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the fair housing act. So we were…we were very hands on on that last year.  [Chris]: So what was the…like how did that go? What did you do for the 50th anniversary? I know I saw you at several events. But what was the whole…What did NAR put together for that? [Tim]: Sure. So you know a lot of us you know we think of fair housing and fair housing violations more as…I mean this...It is obviously a very dry subject and a very boring subject at times but it is very instrumental and very important. But a lot of us put their housing as a risk. More than something that you can violate… [Christian]: You can't [laughter] [laughter].  [Tim]: …Trouble and then we learn about it. But really we were trying to take it different aspect of it and try show that fair housing really should be implemented in the beginning where you really should know about fair housing.  And the 50th anniversary was very, very instrumental and very…is very important because as realtors we are on the wrong side of the law. Back in 1924 our code of ethics actually said that we would not be instrumental in introducing members of the community that would actually bring down poppy values. It was a direct attack on you know Asians, Blacks, Hispanics. So there was actually red lining and we were instrumental in doing that. Obviously we…that's why it was very important. [Chris]: We as realtors, not… [Tim]: Right. Realtors [laughter]. Yeah that was in the code of ethics. And you know can you…Nobody really believes that 50 years ago that we were actually fighting against fair housing.  And you know obviously people don't know this as well but you know Atlanta has a very strong history with Dr. Martin Luther King and he actually was a very big pioneer in fair housing. And the day after the assassination of Dr. King, about a week later was when the fair housing act was signed.  So it kind of…you know it kind of…there was a lot of things that went out to it. And realtors got smart and the legal issues got smart and we started putting restrictions and covenants. And you know building you know, fair housing violations into them. But now it's obviously, it's all been taken away.  You know as realtors or you know, people that are in the real estate industry we are now looking beyond race and all the…classes at the fair housing act and trying to include LGBT queue housing rights and stuff like that. So we are looking at the future as well to make sure that stuff like this does not happen again.  [Nathan]: So question for you than Tim, and I don't want this to sound ignorant.  [Tim]: No no. It's OK.  [Nathan]: Right [laughter] you know, like fair housing you said it sounds boring but it's not but then again how big of an issue is it? Like it's not…Like I just don't…my mind doesn't think that way to say “Oh we can't take you here because of this, that or you know redlining as we talk” or steering. My mind does not work like that. Like it just… [Tim]: And that's like…that's the point. Right. So a lot of us…And that's why it was very important. Not a lot of us don't think to vio…Intentionally violate the fair housing act. Nobody goes out and says “I am gonna discriminate tomorrow” or “I am not gonna do this and that”.  We do it unintentionally and it brings up…that's why it was brought up to light. You know when we…for example you know there is issues such as you know I know that you know we as realtors and tidal companies you know there is a lot of D distinctions where it says “This property cannot be sold to somebody of black descend or Asian descent”. It is actually built into the legal description. [Chris]: I saw somebody post one of those online the other day. Yeah. [Tim]: Right isn't that crazy? [Chris]: Yeah and it's the first time I have been in real estate since 2010, that's the first time I have ever seen it. [Tim]: Yeah and you…it's still there. What people don't realize is that Tidal companies they assure over it because it is illegal. They don't really remove that portion where it says, this portion you know “This must sold…”.  So you know a lot of it is awareness but a lot of us don't go out and say “I am going to go and discriminate against you know, somebody in some, you know one of the protected classes.” We just don't think that way. That's why it's very important. That's why NAR really…and a lot of people took this as a moral of risk issue. Our committee was very…we were very adamant about you know rewriting the fair housing camp book. And making sure that everyone is tarter at the beginning. Yeah not to intentionally violate but a lot of us just don't know. And we just don't know. Sometimes you need a refresher.  [Christian]: So I have a question so if some would say, I have heard you know going back… [Chris]:[inaudible] [Christian]: Yes. And I am in Seattle. So you know it should be much more progressive and more focused on… [Tim]: Sure. [Christian]: …Discrimination. That sort of thing. You know I have heard you know very well articulated points that you know the history of real estate is reared with if not has a lot of racism and discrimination in history. And sounds like back in the day NAR and probably the whole real estate industry as a whole is on the wrong side of this issue. When did that change? Was that kind of the process of the civil right movement as society started shifting? Or.. [Tim]: Yeah I think…So I think you know I can't speak on behalf…I am not a history bud, but you know a portion of it you know when FHA started issuing loans. You know a lot of after World War 2 a lot of our veterans wanted to have the white big fences and to live in suburbs. And they were denied that because of FHA insurability and saying there whole fair housing violations here.  You know, as people came back and they were promised they could live in suburbs and they don't have to live in you know in the city limits sometimes and you know a lot of this stuff that were not allowed they weren't given the same rights so to speak. Some were African Americans but you know we also have to look at you know women. Women were not allowed to own real estate without the permission of their fathers or their husbands until certain parts of the country until the 70s or 80s. So you know, this is a very recent event. These are not stuff that again you know you talk about Seattle being very progressive and you know and California LA but you know fair housing violations come all the time.  [Chris]: Really? No way. [Tim]: I know that there are several instances where I have been, when I go around the country for renters. Renters they see an interracial couple. And the landlord is like “No not renting to you”. But in the beginning it was fine because they look at the last name and they were like “Sure sure sure”. And than they come and meet the tenant and they're like “I don't want to rent to you anymore”. Why? “So what's really the case. Why are you not renting to me?”  So you know there is a lot of those…there is instances and maybe there are one offs sometime but I think that if you talk to some of our women or if you talk to some of our multicultural clients or agents they may have a lot of different stories. And it was really interesting to hear a lot of stories.  You know there was one case in Chicago. There was one of the champions that I know. And he was talking about how he opened a real estate company and people just kept his phone lines busy so that he cannot sell real estate. So you know back in the day we didn't have email so you know all we did was we had a group of people keeping his phone lines constantly busy so that nobody could call his real estate office. [Christian]: Wow. [Chris]: Because he was black. [Christian]: That's messed up. [Tim]: That's crazy. Yeah it's crazy. You would never think that. That's just something they thought about. [Chris]: You know what year it was? What year was that? Do you know? [Tim]: This is right…I think this is…I don't know. He does speak often. He is at the VLNAIR [phonetics] conference. Well…But yeah it's crazy just to hear this. [Chris]: It's nuts.  [Christian]: That's in our generation. [laughter]. [Tim]: Yeah.  [Christian]: That's… [Tim]: It's only a few years. So what can we do? [Christian]: Yeah for like your situation you're talking about with the…the rental discrimination with like mixed race couple or whatever. I mean what sort of resort they have because I mean let's say “Why don't you rent to us?”. I would imagine most landlords aren't gonna be dumb enough to be like “Well because you're black”.  [Tim]: You actually would be surprised.  [Christian]: OK. [Tim]: Actually you would be surprised. So you would actually be very surprised. And a lot of realtors you have to be very careful as well.  [Christian]: Sure. [Tim]: Because you know and you know the way that you…You have to be puritan. If you report it you have a special dedicated line. You know you have to really be careful and they'll make the calls. [Christian]: Sure. [Tim]: You know if it's not any to you and they deny you. They may not sustain. They may not claim race or they may not claim sexual orientation or whatever the case is or classes. But they can…if you are denied they will call the landlord back and see if it is available for rent. And if it is they will try to go through the whole process you know with a very different case scenario. And see why they wouldn't rent. So you know if you don't report it, it doesn't get reported. So we encourage everyone. If you see violations, you have to report it. [Christian]: Sure. Now I would imagine that the violations, well I mean you know prior to the fair housing act you know it was just kind of part for the course. But I would imagine with those initially enacted those violations were much more obvious you know as they were struggling to civil rights and racial discrimination stuff. I would imagine it is much subtler these days. I mean what are you seeing as the most common violations you know and I would imagine a lot of those are even unknowing violations. What are you seeing now?  [Tim]: Yeah I don't know if there is any common violations. Right. And again nobody goes out there and says “I am going to discriminate against a certain race or you know religion.” It's you know…it may be more nuanced or a little more subtle than before. It may not be so plain. But you know it does exist and it does happen.  You know it depends…depending on what part of the country you may be in and if you're not aware or how to work with a certain culture you may…you may…you may be found in violation. Especially from the code of ethics not if you are a realtor. But you may be found guilty of violating their housing. And again it's a matter of reporting it. Rather than you know…And figuring out was it really a fair housing violation they really…”Are they doing something against me?”. [Christian]: Sure, do they take into account kind of intention versus ignorance or kind of just kind of if you were violated you violated it. [Tim]: That's…it depends on how that I guess would…how they want to…you know, how they want to approach it. You know I think a lot of the familiar status gets…gets you know found upon. You know being single versus with family right you know with 2,3 children,4 children, 5 children. You know what…I see that part often as well. You know, disability. You know, you have to make sure you don't discriminate on disability. So it's…I think some of the…You know…A lot of the stuff…some of this comes up especially during the rental process. No, I don't think you know someone says no to somebody when they buy or sell as much as you may see that in more of a lender, tenant sometimes. [Christian]: Sure. The ones I have seen…You own a brokerage, is that correct? [Tim]: I do. [Christian]: OK. As do I and Chris. And the thing I have seen most common that I had a couple of agents on would be like listing descriptions. Would be like “This is a perfect friendly house”. I am like “Yeah you can't say that”. You know, great for kids, you know.  And the other think I heard recently you know was an agent who was working with an Indian buyer and they were like “I want to live in a neighborhood hat is primarily Indian”. He is like “I can't tell you that. You do your research, you tell me where you are looking and I will support that”. But you know… [Tim]: Yeah if you say like “Oh yeah this is…you know…I think I know where you would like to live because there is a very big Chinese community”. You know that…that's…you're steering somebody so you have to be very careful how you do that. You know the next kind of the big one you know is schooling.  You know schools and how much is good schools. Is that also kind of rooted into fair housing right. Because sometimes some of the better schools will have certain races that would make them more predominant. And so people have been using sometimes, may be using schools for fair housing violations. So you have to be as an agent and as broker, be very careful of schools. Because they are looking at that now. [Christian]: So you're saying they're kind of using that as the avenue to be in a predominantly white neighborhood or something like that? [Tim]: Potentially yeah, potentially right. So you may need to be careful on how we present schools. You know if you're saying that this is a really good school it's very different form saying “Hey this school is predominantly white”. You know in a predominantly higher class subdivision, or a neighborhood so you have to be very careful of how you use school in it too because they can use that… You know it is interesting that you bring schools up too. Or I brought it up but you know the listing descriptions anyway. Because the other day I was browsing around and there is a couple of apps on…on target marketing. And some of the target marketing for properties I have seen clearly violates fair housing. And I brought it to their attention and they're like “Wow wow we don't do that”. But I am like “But you can click male or female and you can click how many children that they have and you can click you know…”Because the data is out there.  So you have to be very careful on how you do your advertising as well and this is why Facebook got sued. Because you know make sure that you're advertising when you do decide to purchase ad space, that it is open to all. Because you know in certain people…and this is another unintentional case.  So people have said “Hey this million-dollar house I envision this to be a certain client. You know it's gonna be someone with a certain amount of wealth. And you know a certain race and sex”. And so they target, hyper target it you know a certain demographics so to speak. And you know instead of targeting based upon salary they were doing it…you can literally click on the different options and I was telling them “This is very bad”.  And then of course they redid their algorithm and they took out some of the choices but that it happens. So again another unintentional violation. You're not going out there as an agent to intentionally say “Hey I am going to market this property only to white people or only to Asians in this market or only to certain you know, Chinese”. You know whatever the case may be. So unintentional. [Chris]: That's interesting that you…you know with the whole schools and how Christian you mentioned being a predominantly white neighborhood for a school with…you know Harvard was just recently sued by Asian students for… [Tim]: Right. [Chris]: For not being able to get in because they were too good. So I mean it…cultures are changing. The demographics are changing and you know us as agents…what are some things Tim that really brokers or agents should know? Brokers can train the agents or things that agents should know to be aware of outside of the normal like federal fair housing. Because you mentioned online with algorithms. [Tim]: Yeah. [Chris]: There really has not bene anything that comes down formally that says “This is how you can use demographics online to advertise”.  [Tim]: Right. [Chris]: In the past we've had…Say you're in the Buford Highway area and you're advertising in a Korean newspaper. In Korean. In…In my training it has been that if you were advertising that elsewhere in the general population that is sufficient but if you go online and you target that it's a completely different story.  [Tim]: Yeah I think the intent is always a key factor, right. So you know as brokers our jobs are getting much harder. You know as an agent it's very important to train them but you know we…they're independent agents. You know we don't…They're not employees of our companies. You know we do have to watch what they do and what they say and I have seen a lot of employment agreement or…You know not employment agreement. I have seen a lot of independent contractors in the game that are actually saying that they are able to monitor social media. Right? Because that's one of the places where a lot of people do market their properties now.  And it does get a little harder as our jobs you know, as you grow you firm and your brokerage firm gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You know, how do you control your 3000 agents in you know do not violate right and who is the one that gets the trouble the broker or the agent? Right? Who is the one that has to go through the whole process and who is the one that is gonna get fined?  So it is you know…It's hard to always…Our job is you know to not employ…not only to encourage our agents to make money but to help them you know elevate their business. But it is a harder job for us. You know you mentioned advertising in different languages. And yeah you know I always say make sure that you just don't advertise it just to 1 community or 1 avenue. Make sure it is available to everyone.  And I think just in general it's good practice anyway. You know, why would you put everything in all Chinese or in all you know or in Spanish. You're limiting your market sphere anyway so why would you do that? [Chris]: Yeah. [Tim]: You know it's good practice. [Chris]: So what got you involved with NAR? So you came into this before, divide, you got into commercial. What created your firm and why did you get involved on the level that you did? Let's steer a little bit off of fair housing. [Tim]: Yeah. It was fun stuff. NAR you know being a realtor, starting off in a realtor world, you know that is something that we kind of naturally gravitate towards. I was fortunate. I kind of took a different path. I went to NAR and started on committees at NAR first.  I am kind of a little bit of a goof ball and I was taking a…auditing a class. ABR class. And I just happened to be with a lot of the past presidents and future presidents of NAR in the class. And it was really cold and being from Georgia I am always cold. I don't like snow and I took…I was in a hotel room and me and the instructor were just fighting you know over the thermostat and I just eventually took the hotel robe and I just brought it to class. And the minute he started playing with the thermometer I was like “Done, can't do it anymore”. Just put on my robe. Out at the NAR building. All the along had no idea. I didn't even know who I was even talking to. I was just like “Oh I came to take a class”. And then everyone was like “Is that the robe from the hotel? Did you just steal a robe? We're paying for your class”. And I am like “Oh no no I will take it back, I will take it back”. Come to find out that was Ron Vapes and Steve Brown and those were all the future presidents and the past presidents of NAR. So I think I made a little bit of an interesting impact rather [laughter]… [Chris]: Yeah that's a little bit of an impact.  [Tim]: Yeah but and you know I started getting involved with the realtor world just because it's very important for us to really ensure that our business is sustainable. You know there's so many things that we do and one of the few plan to my president circle…planted our members in Georgia. And I just…you know. Right? [Chris]: Our Pack baby. [Tim]: Our Pack. Yes. I do believe in giving back. And so I do give quite a bit back just because I have seen the policy world. I am a policy wonk. I have you know as…I want to make sure that our housing rights are protected. And you know yours and my jobs are…you know we're not impacted every day and I see that. So I want to make sure that we give back. [Chris]: Well you know what Tim is a former Our Pact chair. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your contribution. [Tim]: Of course. [Chris]: You did everything that Our Pact does. So what made you go out and start your own brokerage? How did you get back into residential? [Tim]: So I work with a lot of international clients. You know, the good thing about having a dip or diversifying in the real estate world, you know, when I jumped back into commercial I also started working with a lot of international clients and global clients.  And so you know our firm is a little unique. Most or our agents actually are bilingual. They do speak more than 1 language in our firm which is nice just because we do cater to a whole different demographics of clients at times. And we can help them.  So when I started working with a lot of international clients they weren't really affected a lot by the recession. So they were able to work with a lot more investment properties and stuff like that. So when I started coming back into the residential world they were looking for commercial and then they were looking for something to buy on the residential side. So I kind of put my foot back in and it was fun. I started my own firm because I wanted to have a little bit more flexibility you know. Back in the day I would have said that it was because of commissions but looking at it now as a broker you don't really make that much money. You…There is a lot more headache. But I wanted to… [Chris]: A headache [inaudible] changes [laughter]. Yeah. [Tim]: But I did want the autonomy. So I started the firm and ever since I did it has been going ever since out. You know there is a lot of changes going on in the industry and I hate the word “disruptor”, but there is a lot of change going on. But I think at the end of the day if you service your clients and you take care of your clients that's why they have always been with me and you know I think they will always come back. [Nathan]: A [censored] men to that. [laughter] [Tim]: Yeah so I just… [Christian]: Nathan said the first F bomb in the day. Ladies and gentlemen Nathan [censored]… [Nathan]: Well you know how I feel about that so you know you don't need a big name, you don't need a gigantic flag, you don't need to have all the tech in the world. Just need to take care of people.  [Tim]: Yeah absolutely. And you know in that thing that is you know going to independence or working in a mega firm there is always pros and cons. But people always go…they go back to you. They back to Nathan White because they know Nathan White is in real estate. They go back to Christopher because they know that Christopher is in real estate.  So I think that if you know…and that is what I try to teach my agents like “You guys can leave me any day, I mean I have to sign your release forms if you decide to leave tomorrow or today or within the hour. You know, I hope that you know, during the time that you were with me that you were able to build your own brand so they come back to you for ever and ever and ever for real estate purposes. And if you can't than tie yourselves with…if you're not gonna be in real estate than tie yourself with a referral company and make some money that way”.  There are so many different avenues in making money in real estate. And I have a top agent, a top agent in my office. I call her top just because she doesn't sell real estate. She refers. And it's funny because she works for a company that does a lot of relocations and if they don't offer real packages she's like “Where are you moving? I know where you're moving to. Let me find you an agent”. And she just collects a referral check all day long. And so in my world that's a top agent who doesn't sell real estate but is able to collect and really utilize her license. But it's funny how…I know when the checks come in. And I am like “These are yours”. I know exactly whose check it is. It's fun.  [Nathan]: So Tim I always like to ask some fun questions and I typically pluck them out of a great book by Tim Ferriss. [Tim]: So you're the one? [Nathan]: Yeah I am the one right. Tim Ferriss wrote a great book called “Tribe of mentors”. He asked everybody the same questions and I always like to ask guests a few of these questions that he asked people. So I will fire away with the first one. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it? What would it say?  [Tim]: A billboard with anything that I want on it? [Nathan]: Yeah what would that message be? [Tim]: [laughter] I think people very close to me would say…It would probably say “Leave me alone”.  [Nathan]: Really [laughter]. That's great. [Chris]: Tim Hur wants to be left alone.  [Tim]: You know when I am at home and I want to be by myself, I want to be by myself but you know you don't get that luxury as a broker and working with international clients. We're always…We're always doing something but you know just having the time alone to be like “Give me my 15 minutes”.  You know I try to turn off my phone when I am working out just because I am like “That's my 1 hour that I have, don't have to worry about clients. You can wait”. But yeah I think that's…you know that was the first thing that popped into my head. [Nathan]: That is fantastic. Might be the best answer that we've gotten for that one yet. I don't know. Leave me alone. [Tim]: I think that's the most truthful one you could get on the show. Right? [Nathan]: Yes and I appreciate that. So... [Chris]: That's good. [Nathan]: So number 2, what are some bad recommendations you hear in our profession? What are bad recommendations you hear all the time? [Tim]: Bad recommendations. You know I don't think anything is ever a bad recommendation. I think you just...you're just…you're just very misguided, right. You just…people don't realize all the ins and outs of how difficult it is to buy and sell a home.  Recommendations…Gosh I hear that every day. I hear bad recommendations every day. I will say that rather than giving examples you can probably tell by my face. My partner says that I have facial trots. And I can't hide it anymore. So when I hear something really weird or wonky my face just turns. So you know I don't say anything. You just kind of tell from my face. [Chris]: You just see the reaction.  [Tim]: You see the reaction. So I have been told that I need to really control my facial [laughter]… [Christian]: Start doing Botox. Just numb your face. [Chris]: Yeah it will tone it all down. Just nothing to worry. [Tim]: Yeah just gotta tone it down. That's probably you know sort of recommendations I hear all the time. I will tell you that. Just kind of be careful of that. [Nathan]: Got you. So 3rd one. What is a book that greatly influenced your life?  [Tim]: A book that greatly influenced…Who reads books? OK. [Nathan]: Audible counts. [Tim]: Yes I am a bad millennial. I like to have something in my hands. No this is… [Nathan]: I am a book nerd so… [Tim]: Oh you're a book nerd. You know I am a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia and I do like reading a lot of of very you know I don't want to say Christiany but you know it's very interesting reads. You know things that are kind of up in the air and Scrutiny…One of my favorite books is the Scrutiny of Letters. It was…I re-read that book not long ago and it's a very good book. I would recommend it. [Christian]: Allegory. Allegory story. [Tim]: Yeah. I just like the title too. I mean Scrutiny of Letters. It's kind of like…you know. [Nathan]: I will tell you I like books. I do have to do a quick plug. For those that do listen and like to know what book…Right now I am reading a book called Men's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. If you haven't read great lately go grab this book. It's really interesting. He was an Auschwitz survivor. If you are having or struggling with your why in your life, go read this book. It will speak to you. Great book right now. This one right here. You can't see it because you're listening but those that are recording right now can, but an awesome book. So anyway, onto that. Well best answer ever. Leave me alone. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. [Tim]: [laughter]. [Christian]: I have a quick question as we're wrapping up here. So you own your own brokerage. So you're a managing agent. So are you selling real estate yourself? [Tim]: I am. I am a compete broker.  [Christian]: OK. So you're doing that [inaudible]. Whatever. We know what you mean. You're still involved in NAR? [Tim]: I am. [Christian]: Right you're still committee. So what's…What's…I mean I don't know how you find time for all of that. But what's kind of your next move? [Tim]: Mainly. [Christian]: Because of your involvement in the association. [Tim]: You know in this…as long as you can constantly serve and you know I don't mean that there is always ways to always get involved. You know I am a big Our Pack guy. I am a big global guy. Big diversity guy. You put your hands in a lot of business.  But the thing as…the important thing rather than what I want to do or what I see myself in 5 years with what the realtor world is really more of “Let's get everyone else involved too”. I think that's just really important on a local level. State level. International level. You know we hear all these different stories about “The realtor committee doesn't represent me” or certain things, “Certain communities don't represent me well”. We can find you a mission. We can find you a way to get involved. And I think that's the really more important story than trying to find where I really need to be plugged in the next life. We can all…We're all…We're realtors. We're selling real estate. We can bounce around. We can serve wherever we're asked. [Christian]: Yeah. Do you…Do you believe that non realtor, non-members have an ability to serve and make an impact without being a member of the NAR. Is there…is there diversity in that or… [Tim]: Yeah, so actually there's 4 multicultural associations that NAR recognizes rather. There is the agency of real estate association of America. There is a national association in… [Christian]: ARIA.  [Tim]: Yes ARIA. There is the national association of Gay and Lesbian in Real Estate professionals. NAGLREP. And National association of real estate brokers for the black community and the national association of real estate…of Hispanic real estate professional. NAHREP. So you know just because you're a realtor…You know if you're not a realtor and you want to get involved with some of our multicultural associations that's where to go.  And so they make an impact on their own communities itself. So yeah you don't have to be a realtor. We would always encourage you to be one but if you want to be one. But even if you're a part time or…you can still make an impact because there is so much to do in our world. And yes we don't have…There's only 24 hours in a day and we don't have a lot of time but you know there is always…You can shrug along and you can find something to do.  [Chris]: I couldn't agree more Tim. Thank you so much for joining us today. We got a lot of really great nuggets both on the fair housing side, both on your background and getting involved. For anybody who wants to reach out how can they find you? [Tim]: You can find me again…My name is really easy just think of the fictional American character of Charles Helson and think of Tim Hur. Other than that you can find me on Facebook. I am easily available on social media all summer. It's always nice when you get hacked and someone makes a fake profile of you which I found very recently but yeah you can't miss me.  But you can find me…the easiest way is just google me and find me. If you don't google yourself and do a vanity search of yourself I highly recommend it. [Chris]: Definitely. Awesome. Everybody thank you so much for tuning in for this episode of re:Think Real Estate. Catch us back next week as we celebrate our 50th anniversary…not anniversary. Our 50th episode.  [Tim]: Congrats you guys. [Chris]: Could be a long year. But thank you Tim for joining us. Everybody if you haven't go to rtrepodcast.com. Put in your email and name in the little subscription form and be alerted every time an episode drops. So you can hear great nuggets from guys like Tim Hur. Thank you and we'll see you next Monday.  [music] [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Gearbox Head Allegedly Mocked Lawyer's Christiany: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/gearbox-ceo-allegedly-mocked-ex-lawyers-christianity-with-slurs-ridiculing-gifts/ Impact Costreams: https://impactwrestling.com/how-to-co-stream-impact-on-your-twitch-channel/ PCIe 5.0: https://www.techspot.com/news/78355-pcie-50-ready-before-pcie-40-can-launch.html Motorola Razr: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-motorola-razr-is-coming-back-as-a-smartphone/ Overwatch Lunar New Year: https://www.destructoid.com/overwatch-s-next-event-is-lunar-new-year-2019-and-it-starts-on-thursday-539444.phtml Follow on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/reetin Follow on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/reetin Buy Stuff From Green Man Gaming: https://t.co/fhL17TWpi4 Subscribe on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/reetin Follow on Mixer: https://www.mixer.com/reetin Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/I6jatgkdbr7mbmgkilzbwbo5li4?t=Reetin_Podcast iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/reetin-podcast/id991683896?mt=2 Tunein: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Video-Games/Reetin-Podcast-p1142473/ Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/reetin-podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Sv8URFI0C02rejZc3yo9M See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Podcast 8.12: Satan’s Demons and the Greco-Roman Gods in the Church Fathers (2nd-3rd centuries CE) (Download).

Podcast 8.24: Satanic Imagery And Conspiracies In Modern Culture (Download).

Podcast 8.16: Satan’s Home, part 3 – Developments among Early Jesus Followers (Download).

Podcast 8.17: Satan’s Home, part 4 – Tortures in Hell and Christ’s Descent (Download).

Podcast 8.18: Satan’s Home, part 5 – Medieval Depictions and Dante’s Inferno (Download).

Podcast 8.11: The Jealous Creator and the Serpent of Wisdom in Gnosticism (2nd century CE) (Download).

Podcast 8.19: Satan and Demons in Everyday Life in the Middle Ages (Download).

Podcast 8.20: Witchcraft Accusations and Pacts with the Devil (1400-1600) (Download).

Podcast 8.21: The Devil and Internal Struggles of the Reformation Period (1500s) (Download).

Podcast 8.22: Milton’s Traditional Satan in Paradise Lost (1600s) (Download).

Podcast 8.13:  Satan as Father of Lies and Heresy in the Church Fathers (2nd-4th centuries CE) (Download).

Podcast 8.15: Satan’s Home, part 2 – The Birth of Judean Hell in 1 Enoch (Download).

Podcast 8.1: A Cultural History of Satan – Predecessors of Satan from Mesopotamia (Download).

Podcast 8.2: Predecessors of Satan from Canaan and Israel (Download).

Podcast 8.3: Predecessors of Satan from Persia (Download).

Podcast 8.4: Other Predecessors of Satan from the Hebrew Bible (Download).

Podcast 8.5: Fallen Angels in 1 Enoch (ca. 225 BCE) (Download)..

Podcast 8.6: Mastema in Jubilees and Beliar in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ca. 100 BCE) (Download).

Podcast 8.7: The Devil and Beelzebub in Early Biographies of Jesus (70-100 CE) (Download).

Podcast 8.8: Internal Functions of the Rhetoric of Satan in Paul and John (ca. 50-110 CE) (Download).

Podcast 8.9: A Satanic Empire in John’s Apocalypse (ca. 80-100 CE) (Download).

Podcast 8.10: Jealous Satan, the Image of God, and the Serpent in the Life of Adam and Eve (Download).

Podcast 8.14: Satan’s Home, part 1 – Cultural Origins Of Hell (Download).

Podcast 6.8: Phoenician Immigrant Associations, part 2 (Download).

Podcast 6.2: Social, Religious, and Burial Activities of Associations (Download)

Podcast 6.4: Associations and Greco-Roman Society (The City) (Download).

Podcast 6.5: Associations and the Roman Empire (Download).

Podcast 6.6: Approaches to Studying Ethnic Associations and Identities (Download).

Podcast 6.7: Phoenician Immigrant Associations, part 1 (Download).

Podcast 6.9: Judean Immigrant Associations, part 1 (Download).

Podcast 6.10: Judean Immigrant Associations, part 2 (Download).

Podcast 6.12: Jesus Groups as Associations and Cultural Minorities, part 2 (Download).

Podcast 6.13: Cultural Minority Associations and Ethnic Stereotypes, part 1 (Download).

Podcast 6.14: Cultural Minority Associations and Ethnic Stereotypes, part 2 (Download).

Podcast 7.9: Daniel’s Visions as Veiled History (Download).