Podcasts about god okay

"The Master who became the slave of all hates oppression" 1. The background of these laws 2. The burden of these laws

Join us on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/UndeadChurch! Hear previous messages at https://WeirdDarkness.com/Church! Please share “Church of the Undead” with your friends, family, and co-workers, and post a link to this episode in your social media! Thank you, and God bless!IN THIS EPISODE: God does make miracles happen, and if God chooses to cure someone of mental illness, He can certainly do so, just as He can choose to cure someone of cancer, diabetes, or other physical ailments. Prayer does work. But does that mean it's wrong or unbiblical to seek medical solutions for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or other emotional or mental disorders? MENTIONS, SOURCES, AND LINKS…(Over time links can and may become invalid, disappear, or have different content.)https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckuh5ajDarren Marlar is a licensed minister through the Universal Life Church: https://www.themonastery.org. Find his other podcast, Weird Darkness, in your favorite podcast app at https://weirddarkness.com/listen. “Church Of The Undead” theme music by Epidemic Sound."I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeird Darkness® and Church Of The Undead™ are trademarks of Marlar House Productions. Copyright 2023.TRANSCRIPT: https://weirddarkness.com/archives/15212

David Heavener interviews John Brockhoeft

Praying for others has stopped me in my tracks more than a few times. Whether it was simply not knowing what to pray for or, if I'm honest, lacking the motivation to pray for this person or that person, I crossed them off the list with guilty dismissal and skip to the next. Hear me out. I wanted to pray. I remembered times in years past when I looked forward to my conversations with God. Times I kept on praying without a single glance at the clock. My prayer life, however, fluctuated between a willingness to face the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to throwing a pity party right alongside Jonah in the belly of a whale. Bottom line? My prayer life was in desperate need of an overhaul.

Do you ever get mad at God?Anger at God can produce feelings of shame, depression, and alienation. However, as Episcopal priest Laurie Brock says, anger is neither good nor bad in itself, but rather a neutral and natural emotion created by God.In this episode, Brock calls on a lifetime of study and counseling to offer insights into what anger is, why we get angry with God, and how we might respond to such anger in ways that are not only harmless but potentially transformative. Brock's talks include:What is Anger?Why Do We Get Angry with God?Is Anger at God Okay?Coping with Our Anger with God.Transforming Our Anger with God.

Pauly welcomes his best guest yet, his wife, Ryann Guglielmo, to talk about her latest venture into the world of grocery.

Inside today's podcast, I have with me, Angela Jasper. Angela is a daughter of God and a follower of Jesus as well as a wife and homeschooling mother. She is called to speak truth boldly in a world full of lies trusting that God will use her for His glory. In a self-focused, self-care, self-worshipping, you do you kinda world, she wants to encourage sisters in Christ to live Radiant, Extraordinary lives Doing the will of God, not their own. We are talking about abortion today, a topic I have never talked about publicly before but God nudged me, and I knew it was time. Things we discussed: Tell me a little bit about your background. How long have you been following Jesus and what inspired you to do so? What caused you to become so vocal about the topic of abortion? In one of your posts, you said, "Satan loves killing God's image-bearers. And we've become asleep enough, hard-hearted enough to let Him do it without a fight." First of all, I agree entirely with you. Secondly, I'm curious about how do you think this happened? Why do you believe abortion is wrong? What can we do to fight against evil and not become evil too? Connect with Angela! https://www.canva.com/design/DAFAc__mSRw/wq5OV0LHMJTIJxrdYvkNhw/view?utm_content=DAFAc__mSRw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It's no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. ************************ Other Resources: You Don't Have To Be Perfect by Vanessa Luu Truth and Tools Workbook by Vanessa Luu The Relevant Old Testament by Vanessa Luu To Support Leave a review and help spread the word about this uplifting podcast. You can also support it financially here: https://anchor.fm/vanessa-luu --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/vanessa-luu/support

We sometimes read the Old Testament and think that God was okay with polygamy because He never said anything against it... or did He? Purchase the Alive Coloring Devotional for all your friends for Easter! https://www.amazon.com/Alive-Adult-Coloring-Devotional-Devotionals/dp/B08YHYPHHF

Damo and Liam reveal their teams ahead of Round 1; and dust off the SCE-patanted crystal ball in offering some 2022 season-long predictions on the top scorers across each line and potential DPP additions, and answer questions and dilemmas sent in from the SCE community! If you haven't caught us on YouTube yet, this is the episode to do it - with a HEAP of visual gags that you would otherwise miss out on in the audio podcast. So jump across there, and don't forget to like, comment & subscribe -> bit.ly/3hjM4z5 Time is running out to join our exclusive cash league via our Patreon, with the winner to receive the top prize of $400, a SuperCoach ring and a guest spot on the podcast. In addition, throughout the season you also get access to exclusive content, our private Discord community, and more! Cut off is Tuesday, 15th March, 11:59PM! Head to www.patreon.com/supercoachedge for more info! ------------ YouTube: bit.ly/3hjM4z5 Twitter: @supercoach_edge @damoj88 @l_evans_95 FB Group: www.facebook.com/supercoachedge Insta: @supercoachedge

The post “Is God okay with cremation?” appeared first on Key Life.

Going Deeper1. Do you have a “Call Hierarchy” with your friends and family? Any fun tips or stories? Blocked Caller Unidentified Caller Convenient Caller Double Call Single Call 2. Using your same “Call Hierarchy”, where does God fit? 3. Can you identify with “The Jonah Journey” in your own life? Please describe. 4. What's a time that you said “Okay” to God and experienced the “warmth and weight of heaven?” 5. Who is God calling you to right now--either to invite them to join you for the One Campaign's “40-Days of Listening—or to something else entirely? 6. Have you heard the joy-filled “Yeeeaahhh!” from your Father in heaven over you? Teaching NotesAnd the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” (Jonah 2:10-3:2) Where does God fit for you? Blocked Caller? Unidentified Caller? Convenient Caller? Double Call? Single Call? “The Jonah Journey” (Chapters 1-3) NORMALCY INTERRUPTION ESCAPE CRISIS DARKNESS AWAKENING RELEASE Three Key Questions: “Will I receive God's call as an interruption or opportunity?” “In darkness, will I let my heart harden or awaken?” Through it all, do I believe that God loves me no matter what? Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. (Jonah 3:3) Obeying is simply saying to God: “OKAY.” Okay is the sound of surrender. In release, you will experience the warmth and weight of heaven Warmth The affection of the Father The release of all your striving Lightness, freedom Weight Gravitas Conviction A new determination A new authority Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When Jonah's warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Jonah 3:3-10 Prevenience: “the priority of grace.” “We are always coming in on something that is already going on.” -Eugene Peterson, Under The Unpredictable Plant When God calls you to someone, trust that He's calling them too. Who is He calling you to? One Campaign: 40 Days Bible Listening When we say to God “Okay” God says… “YEAAAAH!”“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.'” Romans 10:9-11 Sunday Set List WFC Online/WFC LenexaThere's Nothing That Our God Can't Do- Passion feat./Kristian StanfillWay Maker- Bethel Music feat./Leeland MooringIt Is Well- Bethel Music feat./Kristine DiMarcoGraves Into Gardens- Elevation Worship feat./Brandon LakeWFC SpeedwayRaise A Hallelujah- Bethel MusicIt Is So- Elevation WorshipOceans- Hillsong UnitedGraves Into Gardens- Elevation Worship feat./Brandon LakeBe sure to follow our Spotify Worship Playlist, updated weekly with the upcoming Sunday's set!

Going Deeper1. Do you have a “Call Hierarchy” with your friends and family? Any fun tips or stories? Blocked Caller Unidentified Caller Convenient Caller Double Call Single Call 2. Using your same “Call Hierarchy”, where does God fit? 3. Can you identify with “The Jonah Journey” in your own life? Please describe. 4. What’s a time that you said “Okay” to God and experienced the “warmth and weight of heaven?” 5. Who is God calling you to right now--either to invite them to join you for the One Campaign’s “40-Days of Listening—or to something else entirely? 6. Have you heard the joy-filled “Yeeeaahhh!” from your Father in heaven over you? Teaching NotesAnd the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” (Jonah 2:10-3:2) Where does God fit for you? Blocked Caller? Unidentified Caller? Convenient Caller? Double Call? Single Call? “The Jonah Journey” (Chapters 1-3) NORMALCY INTERRUPTION ESCAPE CRISIS DARKNESS AWAKENING RELEASE Three Key Questions: “Will I receive God’s call as an interruption or opportunity?” “In darkness, will I let my heart harden or awaken?” Through it all, do I believe that God loves me no matter what? Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. (Jonah 3:3) Obeying is simply saying to God: “OKAY.” Okay is the sound of surrender. In release, you will experience the warmth and weight of heaven Warmth The affection of the Father The release of all your striving Lightness, freedom Weight Gravitas Conviction A new determination A new authority Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Jonah 3:3-10 Prevenience: “the priority of grace.” “We are always coming in on something that is already going on.” -Eugene Peterson, Under The Unpredictable Plant When God calls you to someone, trust that He’s calling them too. Who is He calling you to? One Campaign: 40 Days Bible Listening When we say to God “Okay” God says… “YEAAAAH!”“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.’” Romans 10:9-11Sunday Set List WFC Online/WFC LenexaThere's Nothing That Our God Can't Do- Passion feat./Kristian StanfillWay Maker- Bethel Music feat./Leeland MooringIt Is Well- Bethel Music feat./Kristine DiMarcoGraves Into Gardens- Elevation Worship feat./Brandon LakeWFC SpeedwayRaise A Hallelujah- Bethel MusicIt Is So- Elevation WorshipOceans- Hillsong UnitedGraves Into Gardens- Elevation Worship feat./Brandon LakeBe sure to follow our Spotify Worship Playlist, updated weekly with the upcoming Sunday’s set!

Message from Pastor Jimmy Inman on September 27, 2020

This is the teaching ministry of Freedom Church, St. Louis, MO.For more information visit www.freedomchurchstl.com.Facebook: www.facebook.com/freedomchurchstlInstagram: www.instagram.com/freedomchurchstl

Neil talks about his childhood wish to stop the waves. DJ and academic Mike Dimpfl talks about his research on "toilet feelings." ABOUT THE GUEST Mike Dimpfl is a teacher, academic, costume builder, and DJ. His academic work explores the connection between hygiene, bureaucracy, and institutional racism, particularly in the southern US. Mike’s costumes often focus on the comic and confusing relationship human beings have to their garbage and to the possibility of the divine. When music is his focus, he is especially committed to reckless abandon on the dancefloor. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund, Western Bridge, and the David Shaw and Beth Kobliner Family Fund Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Fraser McCulloch Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho Social Media: Lourdes Rohan Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor TRANSCRIPTION NEIL: Mike Dimpfl, welcome to SHE’S A TALKER MIKE: I’m so delighted to be here. NEIL: It’s impossible to imagine you’re as delighted as I am to have you here. Now, can I ask where this recording is finding you? MIKE: Yeah, this recording is finding me, sitting at my dining room table in Durham, North Carolina. It’s a lovely gray, 64 degree day. NEIL: Do you like a gray day? MIKE: I do right now because I have a bit of sort of structural gardening work to complete. And when the summer comes here it becomes so insanely hot that it’s just completely impossible to be outside. We’ve had a really long, cool spring, so the bugs aren’t here yet. NEIL: What is structural gardening work? MIKE: It’s a critique of the, sort of political economy of earlier forms of gardening. We’re remaking our yard and we’ve been doing all of the actual construction work. So not planting plants, but building walls and building fences and moving dirt around and things that. So all the things that are sort of a pain in the ass and give my sort of inner type A control freak a lot of pleasure, but don’t actually produce anything you would say is recognizably a garden. It’s a lot of getting your hands cut by all of the pieces of broken glass that are in the soil around your house. NEIL: Oh, how come there’s broken glass inside the soil around your house? MIKE: It’s just an almost a hundred year old house, and I think that over time things break and people throw bottles into the former dump behind the former garage that’s no longer there, and you find them and I’ve probably taken out an entire garbage can, an actual garbage can of broken glass out of the yard. NEIL: Wow, one shard at a time? MIKE: One shard at a time, yes. I’m going to start an Etsy store with all of the other things I found, like yard cured fork and yard cured wrench, they have a nice patina. NEIL: Oh, I bet, people would pay a pretty penny to give you their new wrench to make it look that. MIKE: To bury, totally, totally. NEIL: It’s like the kimchi of wrenches. MIKE: Exactly, exactly. NEIL: What drove you to leave New York? MIKE: Oh God, I had a terrible day job, crushing, horribly boring development work that I was doing. And I don’t know if you knew, I’d had a bunch of surgeries on my ears. I had a genetic hearing loss condition and they actually messed it up in my right ear, so I’m super deaf in my right ear now. And it meant that I couldn’t DJ as much. And so I kind of lost the love of New York, and I was like, “Maybe I’ll go back to grad school.” And I did, and of course grad school is a little bit returning to the fourth grade playground. But you realize that your bully is secretly closeted and you’d just know that. And then I did my PhD down here at Chapel Hill and was lucky enough to get a job at Duke, and I teach in the writing program there. And I have been kind of unlearning grad school since then, but enjoying life. NEIL: What is unlearning grad school consist of? MIKE: I mean, I’d be curious about what your own experiences of this actually is because you teach in another kind of weird, precious environment. The performance of mastery, I think is one of the most insane and weird things that we encounter. There’s some tension between mastery and a willingness to just be open to what is, I feel they push each other away. And I feel like a willingness to be open to what is, requires a particular kind of thinking and willingness to take things apart in a careful way. Whereas the production of mastery is, do I know these terms? Can I Lord over this seminar space? Can I make some comment that seems complex? And there’s so much value placed on that style of interaction. NEIL: That question of mastery makes for such a great segue to the first card, the connection between teaching art and 19th century medical practices. You tell someone like, “We will bleed you for 30 minutes and then you must go home and apply the poultice.” MIKE: Yeah like, “Wait for the moon to wax, and put these three stones on your back steps.” NEIL: Exactly, but instead it’s, watch this other artist read this text. MIKE: Yeah, I feel like mastery and practice are at odds with each other. NEIL: Yes, yeah. MIKE: Practice is what I’m into, practice, just keep practicing, right? You just have to keep doing. NEIL: Yes, yeah, and if you’re holding onto idea of mastery, you will make one piece of work, maybe. Because making art is about getting to the place of most resolved failure, where the failure becomes clear, and then that is what carries you over into the next piece. Also this idea of professional development, to use that term where, where so many students have the idea of, “Okay, well, if I do this, this, this, and this, I will have an art career versus if you do this, this and this, you will make art, I guess.” MIKE: Well, I mean mastery, it relies on it in some ways, like the way that we’re so addicted to exceptionalism. It’s a weird narrative that despite the fact that all, effectively statistically, all artists are failed artists, right? NEIL: Right, exactly. Exactly, exactly. MIKE: They’re like, “No, it’s going to be me. I’m going to be the next Jeff Koons, but I hate Jeff Koons.” That whole… NEIL: Totally, that is the Vegas thing that keeps graduate programs in business. This card is writing midterm evaluations for art school is like doing a horoscope. MIKE: Oh my God, I love that for a number of reasons, just because I imagined you doing it. Just sitting cross legged with your taro out and the incense going, just watching videos of student work on your phone or something. You’ve got a very rough hewn robe on, you’re like- NEIL: You nailed it. MIKE: … your wicker sandals, whatever it is that gets you in that sort of coastal medieval witchcraft mood. Yeah, it’s funny, as a grader, I tell my students that I’m a harsh critic, but an easy grader. We have to be able to look at our own work with critical kind of generosity and be willing to be wrong. But to be a generous writer is a whole thing that takes your whole life to do. It’s easy to be critical, right? It’s easy to be snarky and sarcastic or funny or quick, right? You can be creative and original, but also quick in a way that I feel is not always helpful, right? Being generous is about taking care, but also I was just thinking about it and if only we could be actually honest. If only you could just be super honest with your students about what they’re doing. MIKE: I mean, would that change what you said to yours? Because I feel like I am honest to a certain extent, but I’m also not, and I don’t mean this in a mean way, but I just want to be like, “This is just a terrible waste of your time, this thing that you’ve written. The way that you’re going here, isn’t going to get anywhere that’s going to be fun for you, interesting for other people, allow you to do the work that you’re going to do.” And I never quite do that. NEIL: That’s where the horoscope comes in though, about I’m honest but there’s always kind of a anomic, is that the word? You add this intentional ambiguity. MIKE: It’s both honest and a little bit of a sidestep- NEIL: Exactly, yeah, yeah. MIKE: You’re like, “There’s something that’s not right here. It’s in this thematic zone of things that aren’t right, consider that zone for yourself.” NEIL: You said something about mortality as it relates to grades and we’re all going to die. MIKE: No, my thing was like… I think the thing that I always want and increasingly want, I always want students to think of themselves in their lives… Think of themselves as living their lives, not as having goals about what it should be. I was at Chapel Hill and now I’m at Duke, they’re both iterations of very fancy campusy bubble experiences. The way that we produce the isolation of education always struck me as a little bit problematic. I used to teach about labor at Duke and I’d be on the first day, my activity was like, “On one side of this card, tell me a job that you want based on your experience here. And then on the other side, tell me a job that you would love to have if money were no object or job security were no object?” And it’s like stockbroker, magician. The world of the jobs they want is the world we all want to live in. It’s like, runs a dog farm, is a chef, is a magician. And the really problematic ones are the ones that are stockbroker, stockbroker. MIKE: I think in my most compassionate sense, I want to be like, for kids who are really freaking out, but really good students just be like, “This is great, it wasn’t awesome. There’s a lot more in the world that you should be thinking about besides this class. Go call your mom, go be with your family, go do something that’s about your life that’s worth living because you’re getting lost in the illusion of mastery.” NEIL: Professor Dimpfl, what’s my grade? MIKE: Yeah, literally at the end of all that, I’ll give them this whole… I will put on my NEIL: shaman cloak, I will go for a walk around Duke’s campus and I’m trying to share some… I’m always trying to get all my aphorisms in check and at the end they’re like, “But do I still have an A minus?” NEIL: Okay, those people who you think are going to eventually feel embarrassed for themselves, but never do. MIKE: I feel like they’re from a more perfected future. People who are never embarrassed, I feel like they just are doing it better, right? Their inability to feel shame is in some ways a rejection of our worst selves, right? Shame is a wasted emotion, it’s not even they’re proud, it’s post embarrassment. Not being able to feel embarrassment is not about not being ashamed, it’s just being beyond embarrassment. If we could only live in that world, think about how forgiving you would be about being wrong, if being embarrassed wasn’t a part of being wrong. NEIL: So where does Donald Trump fit in that? Sorry to do that but… MIKE: Donald Trump is from the post embarrassed future, at his best self. There’s some childhood version of Donald Trump that would be able to exist in the post embarrassed future. And in a tragic way, he was just corrupted in the most horrible way by his life and turned into this horrible… He is his own portrait of Dorian Gray, there was some switch that happened. He walked through the mirror, in the mansion early on and that was it. It’s actually Ronald Trump that we wanted to be living with and Donald was the one that we got. But the ethos there, I think isn’t wrong. The content is horrible and hideous, but the idea that you would live in a world where your mistakes, aren’t the thing that define you is a world beyond embarrassment. NEIL: This episode is going to be called post embarrassment, I think. MIKE: I hope for all of us it is, I want that… Because shame is such a heavy, historical emotion. I don’t know if you read, I always want to call it The Velvet Rope, but that’s the Janet Jackson album, The Velvet Rage. NEIL: No, I never did. MIKE: The Velvet Rage is some queen wrote a book about how, it’s problematic in a number of ways, but the overarching theme is that gaze of a certain era learn shame before they have a word for it. And it just festers inside of them and creates all this anger and frustration and all these problems later on in life, the closet and all that stuff. And I think just in general, we govern ourselves so much through shame. Instagram culture is shaming. Facebook culture is all about shame. Mastery is about shame. Our actual inability to deal with the future, and the inevitability of death is about being ashamed that we’re not going to be living a life that’s rich enough to justify our death. I think that there’s a lot tied up in that experience. MIKE: And to be looking at someone who’s beyond embarrassment. I mean, I think about the people that I was like, “Gosh, I hope they feel embarrassed about that.” And now in retrospect, I just admire them all. I’m just like, “God, you just don’t care that everybody hates that joke. You just don’t care.” And your joie de vivre is unassailable and it’s a like a Teflon joie de vivre, what a joy. NEIL: Okay, next card. When someone mentions shit while you’re eating. MIKE: Oh my God… Okay, first of all, it just reads as when you mention shit, because I am this person. I still get toilet news from people that I’ve encountered across the globe, all the time. NEIL: Could you share for the audience, your professional relationship to shit? MIKE: My professional relationship to shit, I am not only a person who shits, like all of your audience, but I wrote a master’s thesis, I would like to say that it’s about toilet feelings. I interviewed a bunch of people who had been forced by the city of Syracuse to install composting toilets in their lake side cabins, as a means of protecting what was an unfiltered watershed. So they couldn’t install septic systems. They had this kind of high functioning, but archaic system where they all had outhouses, and instead of shitting just into a hole, they would shit into buckets. And then every week the city would come around on a shit boat and collect all of their buckets of shit and take them away from them. MIKE: A job that I think about a lot, just when your job is to, in the hot summer sun, drive around on a beautiful, pristine lake with a boat full of buckets full of shit. That boat is post embarrassment, that boat is living a post embarrassment life. We have nothing on that boat. MIKE: Anyway, so I wrote this master’s thesis and I interviewed all these households and it was a lot of older folks, people who have had these cabins for a long time and a lot of retired folks. And I’ll tell you what, if it’s summer and you’re going to visit an old retired couple and you actually want to talk to them about their shitting, they’re there for that. They are really there for that. In some ways, the knowledge of their own death to get back to it, the fact that they’re like, “It’s coming.” They’re like, “There’s no reason to hide.” They’re all trying to, for better or for worse, are trying to deal with these strange toilets that don’t flush and encountering them with their bodies that sometimes don’t work with them. MIKE: So this one couple, the wife was always on antibiotics and you can’t use a composting toilet when you’re on antibiotics because it kills the bacteria in the shit that actually digests the toilet, so it just becomes a kind of cesspool, kind of anaerobic nonsense. And so they had two toilets, one, one of my favorite, the macerating toilet, which is a toilet that has a food processor on the back that you turn it on and it makes this kind of horrible grinding noise, and it turns your poop into kind of a poo shake. And the other was this incinerating toilet, and it has a little jet engine in it and you poop and then this jet engine thing turns on and just burns your shit to ash, it’s like an outer space thing. I mean, obviously I had to use all of them, so it’s this crazy noise of like, “…” It’s like being in an airplane. MIKE: And so to be honest, I did it for two reasons. One was how we structure our relationship to the nature in our households is a real problem, right? We have a lot of weird ideas about what is inside and outside. I think that’s the kernel of truth behind it, if I were to be my post embarrassed self. But I think the other is that I just was so aware of the absurdity of grad school at a certain point that I was like, “I’m just going to write my stupid master’s thesis about people shitting.” So that I get to go to conferences and give presentations, which are like, “Here are things that people said about their own shit.” On panels of academics who were like, “What is the materiality of the biological other?” MIKE: All this theory that actually not only makes no sense, but it’s profoundly unethical and has no politics. And is the bread and butter of graduate school theory. All of these things where they’re like, “What is the boundary of the human? And we cannot tell.” And what do you say? It makes no sense. NEIL: I was just reading Jacques Derrida on the animal, he’s talking about the violence done on the animal. And someone asked him, “Are you a vegetarian?” And he was like, “I’m a vegetarian in my soul.” It’s like, “Fuck you.” I’m sure the suffering pig is so happy that you’re a vegetarian in your soul. MIKE: So happy to hear that, like in a real zen like moment. NEIL: Yeah. MIKE: But the crazy thing about that shit thing is I was at dinner the other weekend with Jackson’s sister’s family and she’s a plastic surgeon. And I just thought about, I’m mentioning shit at the table and maybe people are uncomfortable with that or whatever. And she was like, “Yeah, this…” One of her former clients was run over by a backhoe or something. But she talked about reconstructing one of her breasts and then did this gesture of like, “And then you just kind of stitched up her chest.” And kind of did this putting out a vest of your chest skin kind of gesture. And I had a bite of food in my mouth and I was like… It turned to like ash. MIKE: On the one hand, it was perhaps the appearance of mime at the dinner table that I was like, “Goddammit, mimes.” I wanted it to seal myself up in my own mime box to not have to hear it. But then I was sort of like, “Wow, props to mime, it’s a powerful medium. Actually, I get it now, you can fake make the wall all you want.” MIKE: But when you hear someone mentioning shit, are you that person? Or are you someone- NEIL: I’m not mentioning shit at the table, no. MIKE: You’re not NEIL: I think about it all the time, but I know I don’t talk about it at the table. And Jeff, for instance, my husband, Jeff will casually mentioned shit at the table and I’ve never told him in our 12 years of being together… MIKE: Don’t do that. NEIL: Yeah, because at that moment, something happens in my mouth. Yeah, where it’s just like, it’s wrong, but yeah. MIKE: You got to be post embarrassed about it. You got to just be like, “Yep, I’m just chewing future shit right now.” NEIL: Right, future shit, future shit. I love… Oh, God. Makers spaces and the fetishization of making. MIKE: I don’t even know what’s that… I just want them to just be like, “Call it a real thing.” Where I understand what’s going on there. Makers spaces, it’s like we work. I find it to be such a twee like… The maker space is just Ren Fair trying to be normal. It’s like Ren Fair without the foam swords. I’m like, “What’s the point of going to Ren Fair if you can’t have a foam sword?” It’s like Ren Fair without the carbs, I guess is what I would say. NEIL: I think it’s Ren Fair with 3D printers. MIKE: It’s Ren Fair with 3D printers. Where is the raw craft in that? I feel like 3D printing is the cheating of making. NEIL: But the flip side of it, first of all, this is going to come back to shit, I just realized. But the flip side of it is the fetishization of making. Why don’t you just make and not tell us about it? MIKE: I think that there’s something there, the fetishization of making, because we live in embarrassed culture, so we know that we don’t make anything, right? NEIL: Right. MIKE: In the system we live in, we don’t make anything, right? You don’t make shit, you maybe make your lunch and that’s the end of it. NEIL: You exactly make shit. That is what you make. MIKE: You only make shit, and even that you’re like, “Let’s not talk about it.” The fetishization to me is just all back to the leg, what is missing? I mean, I’ll wear a cutoff overall that’s handmade, for sure. But I don’t need to post it on it in my Etsy account or the hand carved spoons, even though I really love the hand-carved spoons. It was a local spoon maker that I just found that’s in the triangle or whatever, and they make these gorgeous spoons and the fetishization of spoon making is that it’s very hard. People are like, “Oh, it’s a very…” I don’t know if you’ve heard that, but people are like, “If you carve wooden spoons…” It’s some achievement of woodwork to make a spoon. And I always think in my head, spoons have been around for a pretty long time, we’ve known how to scoop a thing for awhile. NEIL: Well, just the idea that you fetishize it by virtue of its difficulty, that is a… MIKE: Totally, totally. It’s like endurance performance art, right? Which I love, I’ll tell you this, I have been doing a performance art project with my friend Ginger for a couple of years now. It’s called, Leaving Impossible Things Unattended, it’s a waste project. And we work with plastic… We’ve made this half mile long braid of plastic bag that we roll in unroll in awkward ways. But we went to Miami to the art fair this year, and the piece that we did, it’s physically super, super hard. But watching people say stuff about it there, it’s like the fetishization of how painful it is, becomes the mark of its value. NEIL: Oh my God, yeah. MIKE: What I want to be is like, “No, encounter your fetishization of that as the mark of the thing you’re supposed to be thinking about here.” Your fetishization of that is more important to me as a thing that you’re engaging with right now, then anything that we’re doing. What is it about you that you need to see someone bleeding from the cut glass that they’re crawling over to be like, “That’s real.” NEIL: The thing I wanted to add, to just put a button on the whole question of maker spaces and what are we making, is when I was a kid, my parents would ask me, “Do you need to make?” MIKE: Oh yeah… Yeah, totally, to take a shit. NEIL: Right, do you need to make? MIKE: Yeah, no, I feel like do you need to make is a North Eastern cultural description for taking a shit that is so like… I want to just know the colonial etymology of that, is it the puritanical thing or like… Also, I find, do you need to make to be similar to people who say that they make instead of take pictures, I make pictures, I make photos. NEIL: Oh, that’s interesting. MIKE: I’ve heard photographers say I make photos, instead of saying I take pictures. NEIL: Oh, right, right, I take photos, yeah. I get that.   MIKE: …around shitting in the exact same… it’s like, do you need to make a shit or do you need to take a shit? I mean, why don’t we say, I need to leave a shit because that’s really what’s happening. NEIL: Okay, let’s end with one last question, which is, what keeps you going? MIKE: I think the thing that mostly keeps me going is a pretty secure notion that it’s not supposed to be bliss, it’s just supposed to be work. So if you’re ready to work in whatever way, then life is just going to keep unfolding for you moving forward, right? There is a future if you think that life is a struggle. Because that’s a beautiful thing, even though it’s incredibly difficult. And I think that, even though I have a deep, deep concern for the future and I certainly worry about it a great deal, I don’t feel hopeless. I don’t feel like a cynic or a nihilist I guess. I don’t have that energy in me whatsoever because it’s not supposed to be easy. NEIL: Mike… MIKE: Neil… NEIL: This is amazing, thank you so much for being on She’s a Talker. MIKE: And it’s my absolute pleasure.

Is it blasphemy to say this episode of the podcast is on a mission from God? Okay, so we'll just call it our tribute to the movie The Blues Brothers on its 40th anniversary. The classic flick starred Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi - featuring cameos by Ray Charles, Cab Calloway and Aretha Franklin - has aged well. If you're interested in sailing on the 2021 voyage of The 80s Cruise, you can get $200 cabin credit if you use the promo code STUCK when booking. You must be a first-time guest on the cruise and use the code at time of booking to be eligible. Special thanks to our sponsor this week: Awaken 180 Weightloss. With Awaken 180, you get weekly one-on-one virtual coaching, the tools and food all from the comfort of your own home. Make the most of your time at home, visit our sponsor at awaken180weightloss.com.

This devotional episode is based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. We wanted to share how Love covers a multitude of sins and why it is so important that we love with this level of eagerness.1 Peter 4:7-11 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.PrayerDear Lord,We lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy Spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends, and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we would be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God." - [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about how love covers a multitude of sin. 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 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 a 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, - Love, - 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." Okay Aaron, so we, we survived kind of a hard week. - [Aaron] We did survive. - I mean, - We're barely coming on - Our kids survived. - The other side of it, yes. - [Jennifer] But we're not the only ones going through this, so we thought we would just give you guys a little update of our family and hopefully encourage some of you out there who it might be hitting as well. - [Aaron] Yeah, our whole family got the flu. It was bad, but not bad. It was kind of a weird thing. - [Jennifer] Well, I'll say this, the Lord spared me and gave me the grace to be able to help everyone. 'Cause I felt-- - And you didn't even really get sick, you got some of the, like you felt sick. - Yeah you know the gut pain? - [Aaron] But you didn't have any other symptoms, which was awesome. - And the rosy cheeks. I felt like every once in a while, like I really don't feel good right now, I need to go lay down, but for the most part, I was able to be there to help everyone. Which made me really nervous, because people were, you and the kids were throwing up and I just thought, me, at this stage of the game in pregnancy, throwing up would not go over well with my body. - No and so-- - That woulda been terrible. - [Aaron] We're definitely thanking God, which we did a lot of, oddly. But not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty sure I put a rib out from how hard I was throwing up. - [Jennifer] That sucks. - [Aaron] Yeah, it still is really sore. But, what's awesome is, a couple of things, I just wanna praise you Jennifer, because I feel like you handled everyone being sick, and the inconvenience of it so well. I think I even told you, I was like, "I can tell you're walking in the spirit." Like your attitude was good, how much cleaning had to be done. - [Jennifer] It was a lot of work. - [Aaron] It's no fun when literally all the boys are throwing up and it's like, there's no clean blankets. - [Jennifer] It's all at the same time. - [Aaron] Yeah, so we, but we survived, we're coming on the other side of that. But one thing we practiced, I don't think we've ever done it before, not that we're not thankful to God. - [Jennifer] Not in this kind of circumstance, it's not at the forefront of our minds. - [Aaron] I did a post a couple weeks ago encouraging men to thank God for everything, if they get cut off in traffic, if something bad happens, even-- - [Jennifer] You didn't say if your whole family comes down with sickness, did you? - [Aaron] I know, if something good happens, I just said, say, whatever it is that happens today, thank God for it. And I tried practicing that. And so I'm literally in the fetal position in the bathtub, and I'm trying to thank God. I'm like, "Okay God, thank you. "Thank you for being sick." And I was like, why am I thanking God for this? Well, thank you for reminding me that I'm human. Like I'm fragile. Thank you for reminding me that one day I'm not gonna have this sickness. - [Jennifer] Or that we need to pray. - [Aaron] Yeah thank you for reminding, - Ask him. - Humbling me, showing me that my weakness. So there was a lot of things to thank God for for being sick, and I directly thanked God for being sick. And then we of course have thanked God for healing us and sparing our family from being even worse, 'cause it probably could have been worse. - [Jennifer] Something that really stood out to me is I didn't know you had this perspective kind of going into everyone being sick, and I wouldn't say I was there with you in those beginning moments, but you brought the family to the living room, and you said, "You know what, we're gonna pray, "and we're just gonna thank God today." And I think even one of the kids asked, "Why are we thanking God?" - [Aaron] Doesn't make any sense. - [Jennifer] But I was questioning it in my own heart too, like, okay, where's this going? But it was so beautiful to hear your prayer and you starting out saying, "God, thank you for this sickness." And it was humbling for me and for my heart to go, "oh yeah" you know? And to have that perspective before him. And then, I gotta share this other experience is just a friend of mine who, their family also got it really bad. - [Aaron] Pretty much our whole church got sick. - [Jennifer] But I met up with her for coffee when it was all past and she goes, "You know I just found, we found our whole family "just worshiping God through it." And it was so cool, kinda the same thing. And I said, "I didn't really worship him through it, "but at the end of all the laundry being done, "all the bathrooms being cleaned, "and having taken a shower, I came out singing "'Victory in Jesus' so, that was awesome." - [Aaron] But it is worship. Thanking God is worship. So whatever he gives, I think Job says it, "Should we not thank God for the good and the evil?" Like the bad things that happen? We thank God for those too, because he's God and he deserves our thanksgiving. And at the end of the day, salvation is so much greater than anything that we can go through. So, at minimum you can be like, "God, thank you so much "that one day I'm gonna be with you." That is so good. - [Jennifer] So if your family happens to get hit by whatever bug this is, - [Aaron] It's going around, yeah. - [Jennifer] Whatever's going around, we just wanted to encourage you guys to move forward with a thankful heart and to trust God and to be prayerful. And also just to be patient, because we know it's an inconvenience, we know it's hard, it takes away from your work schedule, it takes away from things on your to-do list that maybe you were hoping to do or whatever it is. We know it's hard, but if God's allowing it to happen, we can trust him and walk through it with him. - [Aaron] Yeah, so that was just a little update on our flu campaign. But we wanna encourage you. We have a new challenge. We've been doing a lot of these lately, a lot of new downloads and challenges and free things that you guys can get from us. And our new one's called the parentingprayerchallenge.com. We launched it last week and this week you get to do it. We're still encouraging parents to sign up to pray for either their daughter or their son or both. So if you haven't signed up for the Parenting Prayer Challenge, it's completely free. We're gonna send you 31 prompts every day, encouraging you to pray for different things for your child. - Over 31 days. - Over 31 days. - [Jennifer] Not 31 emails in one day. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's happened one time. Yeah, one a day, and the whole idea is that at the end of the 31 days you've built a habit of praying for your children. I'm sure all you parents love to pray for your children, but we just wanted to give this resource to encourage you to pray more, to pray deeper, to pray more consistently and give you ideas on what other things to pray for for your kids. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll add this, it goes hand in hand with our books, "31 prayers for your son and for your daughter." And if you have those books, oh this'll be an incredible reminder. It's kinda like an alarm, right? Because your email comes through and then you're like, "Oh yeah." So you can get the book and go along with it that way too. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, so parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, spelled the way you would think it's spelled. And sign up for free today. All right guys, we've been doing this new thing, we've mentioned it a few times this season. We're trying to do a marriage episode, we're doing a devotional style episode, a Q&A, we're trying to give a little bit more diversity on the kinds of things we're bringing up and this episode's gonna be a devotional style. We're gonna talk about some scripture. And something that we've been learning, something that I taught on at church. And so we hope it encourages you and why don't you, Jennifer start off by reading-- - [Jennifer] Oh, I was gonna sit back and let you teach for 30 minutes, yeah. - [Aaron] Oh, I'll just do it? No. - Go for it. - [Aaron] Why don't you read the scripture that we're gonna be talking about, - Okay. - And then we'll go into it. - [Jennifer] So it's 1 Peter 4:7-11 and it says this, "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self controlled "and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly "since love covers a multitude of sins." - [Aaron] This is a great scripture in 1 Peter and we're excited to talk about it and what it means for us as believers, not only in our marriages, but just in life in general and walking in the body of Christ. And the power that is in our love for one another. And what that means and looks like. So we're gonna dig into this, these few scriptures, and kinda break it down and talk about some stuff and Jennifer you might have some questions. But we're just gonna break it down and see how this applies to us in our life. So the first thing I wanna point out is where our perspective should be. And Jennifer you read it, the very first thing it says in verse seven is "The end of all things is at hand." - [Jennifer] I feel like there should be an exclamation mark. - [Aaron] And it's almost is, it's a semicolon which says everything I'm about to say is attached to this statement. The end of all things is at hand, and so, we can easily, quickly think this is talking about Jesus coming back, or the end of days, right? But in the New Testament when it talks about the end of days or all things at hand or the end of the generation, it's mostly talking about all of the things that needed to take place, they needed to occur for the salvation story, for redemption, God's plan for redemption that he's been planning and preparing since Adam and Eve in the garden. And so, when Peter says the end of all things is at hand, he's saying that essentially, Christ has been born, he's died, and he's resurrected. - [Jennifer] Like we have what we need. - [Aaron] The thing that God has planned to take place has taken place. - Yeah. - [Aaron] Which means a lot. It means that we can now draw near to God. It means that we now can have salvation and a right relationship with God. Because without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension and him sending the holy spirit there is no, like we can't be made right with God. So all of those things, the end of all things is at hand. The end of everything that God planned for salvation has been done, as Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. So it didn't necessarily mean that hey, the end of the world is tomorrow. But it's also an allusion, it alludes to Christ returning. Because now that the church age has begun, the spirit is living in man, we're made right with God, the bride of Christ is growing, we have an expectation of Christ's return. So we're in this imminent return zone. Like at any moment Christ can come back. - [Jennifer] And we are, we're called to walk a certain way. - [Aaron] Yeah. And so that's kinda, he starts off these statements with here's how you should be thinking. Realize first and foremost you have everything you need because Christ died and resurrected. He's given you his spirit, so now you can walk in his spirit and not the flesh. Like the things that we need to accomplish what he's about to tell us have already happened and are already available to us and been given to us. So that's our perspective in our relationships with our spouse, our children, our church body. That the end of all things is at hand. Like first and foremost, I have everything I need in Christ Jesus, to walk this way that we're about to talk about. And I walk this way because I look forward to Christ coming back, and I wanna not be ashamed at his return, I wanna stand boldly at his return. I wanna be excited for his return. - [Jennifer] It gives those relationships a lot of depth and purpose, how we interact with each other and how we're supposed to be in those relationships with each other. - [Aaron] Right and so, if you think about your marriage. You say, "Well, I just can't because my husband "is this, this, this." - [Jennifer] Or together you're just facing a really hard circumstance. - [Aaron] Yeah, like we went through stuff. And it's like, oh, our love for each other is stifled because of this hard circumstance or these character traits in the other person. But if our mindsets are on wow, first of all I can, because Christ did, and I should, because Christ is coming. My perspective and the way I treated you and the way we treat others would totally be transformed because we're no longer thinking of this immediate, well how did you treat me and how am I gonna treat you? - [Jennifer] Well, it's not about us. - Exactly. - Right? - [Aaron] Which is a powerful thing. And this is being taught to the believer, but the ramifications for this is in every aspect of your life. Most directly in your marriage and then also most directly in all of your relationships with other believers in the church. We need to have this perspective. - [Jennifer] Okay, so, then moving on in that verse, the next word is therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah and-- - [Jennifer] So the end of all things is at hand, - [Both] Therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah, and someone always says, "What's therefore there for?" I mean you ask yourself, "Well, why is that there?" And it's attached to the last statement. So, since the end of all things is at hand, be this way. And what does it say right there, Jennifer? - [Jennifer] Be self controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Aaron] So, in relation to our relationships and in our life and in the way we interact in this world, self-controlled, how often do we say the word self-controlled in our house? - [Jennifer] Well, we're in the beginning stages of training our kids, so I feel like we say it all the time, multiple times a day. - [Aaron] 150,000 times a day. Are you being self-controlled? - Remember, self-control. - [Aaron] Be self-controlled, you're not being self-controlled. You must have self-control. Like over and over and over again. 'Cause that's, I mean our kids are learning to have control over themselves, that's the point. But self-controlled meaning, in my life, am I in control or is my flesh in control? 'Cause when my flesh is in control, we are not self-controlled. We're gonna eat as much as-- - We just give way - We want. - To whatever we want, yeah. - [Aaron] When I'm angry, I'm just gonna say what I wanna say. Oh, well, I was angry, that's why I said that. Well, that's not self-controlled. That's just blurting out what's coming to your mind because you're angry, rather than considering the other person. - [Jennifer] Which the mind is the next thing it says. - [Aaron] Yeah, sober-minded, which yes, this is talking about sobriety, not on drugs, not drunk with alcohol, but sober-minded is much more than just, we talked about this in another episode. I can't remember the name of the other episode, but it's having a right way of thinking. A clear way of thinking. So if you think about, we just talked about anger. You know Jennifer, you do something that really frustrates me and then I get so angry I just start saying whatever I want, like I'm not being sober-minded. I'm letting my wrath and my anger control my words and my actions, rather than my mind. - [Jennifer] It's like being self-controlled of your mind specifically. - Right. - [Jennifer] Like being able to have those thought processes and walk yourself through it mentally. - [Aaron] Another example of being sober-minded is fear. So, there's nothing wrong with natural fear, like you know fire's gonna burn you, so you don't touch it, but we're talking about like there's something going on in the world and it's causing us to have this anxiety and fear which causes us to make decisions and not seek out wisdom and oh, we're gonna go do this thing because XYZ over here, I don't know how that's gonna turn out, therefore we're gonna. And so that's not sober-minded either. Instead of thinking through what is reality, thinking through what is the repercussions if XYZ happens or if we don't have what we need or if, like thinking sober-minded is rather than operating in the fear and just making decisions off that, you're operating in knowledge and wisdom and you seek counsel and you're slow to act, slow to speak. So that's the idea of sober-minded. So since we know that the end of all things is at hand, meaning we have everything we need in Christ, meaning all of the things that God planned for redemption has happened, you have the holy spirit, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Jennifer] So real quick, I just have to, just hearing you repeat that, it says, "Be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers," that means you're praying. So it's almost like it's saying be self-controlled and sober-minded and prayerful. Like be a person of prayer. - [Aaron] Right, and we just talked about being sick. If our minds were in this position of thankfulness and we were just wallowing in the suffering, 'cause throwing up's not fun, not feeling good is not fun, and we could just sit there and be like woe is us. And we're not even being sober-minded in that. But instead we're like, "Thank you Lord." It actually helped us elevate above our current circumstances to be able to see it from a heavenly position. Like, okay, well, just because this thing is happening, doesn't mean I stop being a Christian. Doesn't mean I can now act XYZ, be this way, say these things. No, I actually even in this, can walk this out. Because we know all things have been fulfilled in Christ, and his return is imminent, even in my sickness I get to say, "Well if Christ was to come right now, "I wanna be like him, wanna look like him." This is how we must live as people who claim the name of Jesus. We can't claim the name, but not walk it out. - [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, okay so before you move on, I feel like maybe some of our listeners would have the same question, and that is, it says "for the sake of your prayers" so does that mean your prayers are in trouble if you're not being self-controlled or you're not being sober-minded? What does that mean? - [Aaron] Yeah, I mean, in 1 Peter I think we get another picture of that when it talks about husbands walking with their wives in an understanding way, it says for the sake of your prayers. So, there is a way that the believer can walk that would hinder our prayers. And it could be put this way, someone told me once, "God's not gonna tell you "to do a new thing until you've done the old thing." Like the thing he's asked you to do already. And so it's almost like this, we're looking for a new word from the Lord, we're looking for guidance and wisdom. And he's like, well, but you're not even loving your wife right now. - Mm-hmm, I have a really good example of this when it comes to kids. Olive, just I think it was yesterday, she came up to me and she was like, "Mom, I don't have anything to do." And so I gave her something to do, it was a small task. And she turned around really quickly and said, "I don't wanna do that." - [Aaron] What else can I do? - [Jennifer] What else can I do? And I looked at her, I said, "Sweetheart, "can you go do what Mommy asked you to do?" - [Aaron] Right. Yeah, and there's even a scripture that says, "Go back and do the first things "that you've been told to do." Like you've left your first love, we learned in Revelations. There's this idea of like, God's already given us some commands, given us some things to do as believers. In his power, to do it, and we wanna skip over those things and we're gonna talk about this. We wanna skip over those things to get to the other things. We're like, "Well, I don't wanna do that thing." Loving that person's difficult. Or, praying for that person, ehh, let's pray for this big thing over here. - [Jennifer] Or how about, "I'll be self-controlled, "but I don't care about being sober-minded." - Exactly yeah. - You know what I mean? - [Aaron] Which doesn't make any sense because, - [Jennifer] I know. - [Aaron] If you're not sober, like let's talk about being drunk, you're not in self-control either. Those things go hand in hand. So yes, the Bible teaches that our prayers can be hindered. I don't know exactly what that means, does that mean that God doesn't hear 'em at all? Or is it that I am hindered? Like I'm not gonna want to pray more. I don't have a desire to, I'm frustrated. No, Lord, I don't want to. It's like when our, like you said our kids, when they have an attitude, Wyatt crosses his arms, puts his head down, it's like he doesn't wanna look at us. - [Jennifer] Or like that example you gave of us being sick, if we weren't sober-minded and self-controlled, we wouldn't have prayed in thankfulness, so yeah, hindered in a way that if we're not walking that way and we're not being that way then we won't be praying at all. - Yeah so, - We won't be a people of prayer. - Regardless of how it plays out, I don't want either of those things. I wanna be able to come to God boldly and I also want God to receive me and hear my prayers. The Bible tells us that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, it's in James. And I want my prayers heard. I want them to avail much. And when I pray for my family, when I pray for health, when I pray for opportunities, when I pray for other, my family members, when I pray for the lost, I want those prayers to be heard and to have power with God. So, God says, "Well be sober-minded and self-controlled "so that your prayers won't be hindered." Then I should just do that. - [Jennifer] Do it. - [Aaron] It's not easy all the time, but that's what we get to do, because the end of all things is at hand, so I should be able to do it. Okay, so let's move on to this next part of this verse. - [Jennifer] Well the next verse. - [Aaron] Yeah, the next verse, there ya go. Verse eight starts off, it says, "Above all." Okay, and I just wanted to highlight this idea, so if you're in your Bible, which that'd be awesome if you were, you should be. It says, "Above all," comma, "keep loving one another earnestly." And I just wrote down some ideas of what's the all? Like above all, above how generous you might be financially, like, "I've given so much." Above being right, like "Well I know "that this scripture means this." Above memorizing every scripture, above being debt free, above your health, above your safety, above all. Above everything that you see as good, 'cause these things are good, for the most part, don't neglect to do this thing. So, above all, do this thing, right? - [Jennifer] Do you think it's easy for us in our flesh to justify like, "Well, I don't have to love that person, "and we don't even get along, but I'm doing this "over here, so, I'm good with God because this over here." Do you hear what I'm saying? - [Aaron] Yeah, we do this all the time, and there's a scripture that I'll bring up that shows this hypocrisy. Like, "Well no, that person doesn't need to be in my life, "because of XY and Z, but, you know what? "But I read every day, I'm in the word every day." "Oh but I pray, I'll pray for that person. "I don't have to love 'em, but I'll pray for 'em." I think something that I've heard a lot, and it doesn't make any sense, but we say this, "Oh, I love him, I just don't like him." Almost as if love is this general like, yeah we're in the same city, but I'm never gonna talk to him, I'm not gonna be kind to him, I'm not gonna be cordial, I'm not gonna even, I don't wanna go out of my way for them. I'm not gonna give to them, I'm not gonna help them, I'm not gonna. So what love is that? - [Jennifer] If you're doing that, I was gonna say, what's your definition of love? - [Aaron] And that's my point is we, okay, I'll just do this. So the point of everything I said above all, or not that we shouldn't do those other things, 'cause I never want someone to be like, "Well, all we have to do is love others, "and we don't have to be generous, "and we don't have to read our word and memorize scripture." These things that are actually really good for us. "And my health and my, all these things don't matter, "as long as I just love." No. All of those things matter, but we don't neglect this one thing, and often it's the one thing we neglect. We work on all those other things, 'cause we have, those are easier, those are personal. We can control 'em. We can't control other people and that's why it's so hard. And I think of this in Matthew 23:23 Jesus says this, he says, "Woe to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, "for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, "and have neglected the weightier matters of the law." And then get what he says, "Justice, mercy and faithfulness. "These you ought to have done "without neglecting the others." - [Jennifer] Like do it all. - [Aaron] He's like, "Yeah, you spent time, "you outwardly show all these good things that you do, "yet you've neglected justice, like you don't care "about those in your midst who need justice "and you've been unjust." Or showing mercy and faithfulness. You haven't remained faithful to your spouses, you haven't remained faithful to your people, you haven't remained faithful to, and he's saying these things you should have done without neglecting those other things that you do. And so that was the point I was getting at is like yeah, all those other things are good, but we cannot throw out loving one another earnestly. - [Jennifer] So you used the word earnestly, why don't you define that, just for our listeners really quick? - [Aaron] Okay, 'cause it's a pretty powerful word and it's how he wants us to love each other. It's not like, "Hey, I love you, yeah I'll see you later. "Oh yeah, we're good buddies." It's something deeper than that. He says, "Love one another earnestly." And the definition of earnestly means with sincere and intense conviction. It's so powerful. It's not just a, in passing a word you just say about someone, it's a life lived out way of loving. It's a my actions and the way I think reflect the deepness of my conviction and belief about how I love you. And so a perfect example is in marriage. I love you, and it's not just a word. I show you by how I take care of you. And how I show up every day and how I sit and talk with you. And how I ask for forgiveness, and I'm patient, and all these things are the actions of my love for you. - [Jennifer] Yeah, I think that's really important to point out, because I think in marriage specifically, you can text each other back and forth, I love you, or say it at the end of a phone call, conversation. Saying it in passing or before you leave to go to work. But are your actions proving what those words actually mean? So you've convinced yourself in your mind, yeah, of course I love my husband, of course I love my wife. And I tell them every day. - [Aaron] How do they know? - [Jennifer] But, are your actions supporting your words? - [Aaron] Yeah, and so let's break down this definition a little bit, it says with a sincere and intense conviction, that's the earnestness. Sincere means free from pretense or deceit. Proceeding from genuine feelings. So I don't just say it, it's not just a word that I use so that I look good with my other Christian friends and brothers and sisters. - Or that you know you should use because you're married. - [Aaron] Yeah, like, "Oh yeah, of course I love so-and-so." But yet, you don't truly believe it in your heart. You struggle with believing, like well, do I love him? I mean, I could move on. I'm not going to, 'cause I don't wanna look bad. That's not love, it's a free from pretense or deceit. So there's nothing, you're not saying it to receive anything like, "Oh good, so good that you love that person." And you're not saying it out of, it's not a lie. When you say you love someone it's truthful. It's a genuine, genuineness, a real thing from with inside of you. And then that second part, intense conviction. And I smashed two definitions together, 'cause the word intense and conviction I put them together and it's a highly concentrated and firmly held belief in what you are doing, right? So, it's not going away. My love for my brothers and sisters in Christ, my love for others in the world, my love for my wife, it's real and it's going to drive my actions and my decisions and my attitudes and it's gonna cause me to repent and it's gonna cause me to change and grow because that conviction is solid. It's there, and when I'm challenged in that conviction, when the listener is challenged in that conviction of love, they get to ask themselves, "Well do I truly love so-and-so?" And then they get to remember, well, the end of all things is at hand, I must love so-and-so, regardless. Without pretense, it needs to be truthful and powerful. That's what that word earnestly means. - [Jennifer] I love that definition of intense conviction that you shared, and it makes me think how intentional this type of love truly is, because-- - [Aaron] That's a good word, intentional. - [Jennifer] Yeah, it's intentional because you're motivated by your, like it said, "firmly held belief in what you are doing" so everything that I do in our home, everything I do with our kids, everything I do with you, comes out and is an overflow of this belief that I have that I truly love you and that genuine feeling that you talked about earlier. And that's such a different situation when you compare it to just saying the words I love you or just going about your day without any motivations as to why you're doing those things, you know? It makes me think of the type of motivational speaking you hear when it comes to entrepreneurship, where it's like, "You gotta know your why." You gotta know your why. - Yeah, what's your why? - [Jennifer] What's your why? So it makes me go there when I think about in marriage, why are you doing all the little things that you do throughout your day? It's because you love that person. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, and it's not superficial, and it's not just a word, but it's an actual held belief. Like "No, I love my wife. "I love John over there." Like truly love them, not just, "We're Christians "and we love each other." - Right. And if we truly consider this you guys, then when we get into a hard spot in marriage, when we get into conflict or something happens unexpectedly that you don't desire, you can continue on, because there's this hope knowing that, "Well no, I love them. "You know, I know this is hard, but God's given me "a love for them." - [Aaron] Yeah. What I think is really cool, I just thought about this, often we think about this idea of growing in love, which we do, we change and our level of love deepens. - It deepens, yeah. - [Aaron] But it's actually, the way this is stated, it's actually a starting point. We start at this basis of love for one another. Not build into it. It starts at this place and I thought that was really cool. I just was, - I like that. - [Aaron] I was just thinking it's like it's not, yeah, it does grow over time, but it's also, like you said, even in those hard times, you default to that position of love. Not default to, well we're not in love because, or we're building in love and the default position is no love. That's not actually, I mean marriage starts, usually, for the most part, with a deep conviction of love. And so the default position is love. And I didn't have the scripture originally here, but I thought about this and I think it goes perfectly well. What this level of love is supposed to look like, it's supposed to be remarkable. It's not supposed to look like the love of the world. Like the world loves itself. There's people that they love their own and they do a good job of that, but the love that Christians are supposed to have for one another is supposed to be remarkable, miraculous. And Jesus puts it this way in John 13:34. "A new commandment I give to you, "that you love one another. "Just as I have loved you, "you also are to love one another. "By this all people will know that you are my disciples "if you have love for one another." So it's not like, if we do these great things, or if we have this great band, or if we preach this great message, it says if you love one another the way I loved you, the whole world will know, oh that's a disciple of Christ. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] That's remarkable. So I get, the question I have in your marriage, in your relationships at church, would the world look at how you love them as remarkable? Like that's a remarkable love. How could he love like that? How could she love like that after so much has happened to her, after this or that? It's a remarkable love and it can only be done with Jesus Christ. That's what he says, "If you love as I have loved you." Which is an amazing, amazing kind of love. It's literally remarkable. And I have some notes here and this is, this is exactly why churches fall apart. This is why friendships dissolve, this is why marriages end. When we let the intensity of our conviction to love each other soften. We got to that point a few years into our marriage. Our conviction to love one another, because of the things we were going through, got weakened. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I don't feel like softens is just the right word because it sounds mushy-gushy, but I mean we're talking about the dissolving of that belief and conviction. - [Aaron] Yeah. And it's not that those things that were happening had some external power to weaken our love for each other superficially, - We chose that. - We let our love, yeah we chose it, that's a good word. And so, I just wanna ask you, as we get into this, have you let your love, the earnestness of your love for your spouse, for other believers, weaken? For whatever reason, because someone hurt you, because someone said something harmful about you, because someone didn't pay you back? - [Jennifer] The relationship's messy or hard or challenging and you just wanna, - Walk away. - Walk away. - It'd be easier. - Yeah. - [Aaron] There's been so many times I've thought to myself, it would just be easier to move. - [Jennifer] Well, we thought that in the beginning of our marriage when we were facing hardship and we got to the point at the end of three and a half years where we were, so incredibly close to walking away convinced in our selfish flesh that it would be better for each other if we just separated. - [Aaron] Move on. - [Jennifer] And instead, God got ahold of our hearts in a remarkable way and, I mean he brought the message to you first and then to me, but it's a choice. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And are we gonna let our circumstances dictate that choice or are we gonna choose it in our hearts and move past the circumstances? Or even if we have to deal with the circumstances for the rest of our life, and that was the commitment we had to choose. There came this pivotal moment where, people who've read our books, they know what I'm talking about, but we're standing in church, Aaron, and you're sharing this heart that God has given you for our marriage to continue on regardless if anything changed. That is remarkable. And that saved us, that saved our marriage. - [Aaron] And here's the difference in the types of love. The love that the world has for itself, and the love that we are to have for our brothers and sisters and our spouse. The love that Christ gave to us was unconditional. The love that we try and walk in is often transactional. You do this, I'll do this. You give me this, I'll give you that. Oh you didn't do the thing, or you weren't the certain way? Then I'm not going to. Jesus it says, "Yet while we were still sinners died for us." So even when we were weakest, when we couldn't save ourselves, Christ died. Christ gave himself up for his bride. And this is the message that Christ gave me that day, reminding me, he's like, "Hey are you gonna love "your wife unconditionally, or transactionally? "Are you gonna love her regardless if she ever gives you "what you think you deserve, what you ought to have? "Or are you gonna love her like I did "when you could do nothing for me, "and I still died for you?" - [Jennifer] John 13 comes back to my mind like you said. Jesus says, "Love as I loved you." - [Aaron] And you know what this sincerity and intensity, this earnestness sounds very familiar to how Jesus said we would worship God. He says this to the woman at the well, in John 4:24, he says, "God is spirit "and those who worship him must worship "in spirit and truth." Spirit and truth. And this isn't talking about worshiping each other. But it's how we love each other, in spirit and in truth. - [Jennifer] It reminds me of the definition going back earlier to those genuine feelings. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, it's not from pretense or deceit. It's no, I genuinely love you. I may not know how to do it well, but I'm going to default to love, I'm going to default to giving you the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to love you regardless if you give me what I deserve. And then in Matthew 22 verse 37-48 says this, "And he said to him, 'You shall love the lord your God "'with all your heart and with all your soul "'and with all your mind. "'This is there greatest and first commandment. "'And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor "'as yourself, on these two commandments "'depend all the law and the prophets.'" - [Jennifer] I remember we read this verse to our kids and they got really confused, because we've taught them the 10 Commandments. - Yeah. - And they were like, "No no no, that's not the." - [Aaron] No, you have to honor your mom and dad. Like, yes. And what I explained to 'em is, and this is what Jesus says, he says, "Anyone who does these won't break any of the laws." Because when you love your neighbor, you're not gonna steal from them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna lie to them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna covet their things. You're gonna say praise God that you've given them those things, God. Praise God. They're gonna use 'em for you, I hope. We don't covet. When we love God we don't dishonor our parents. When you love your parents you're not gonna dishonor them. And so, that's the kind of love that we get to have for one another. And it's actually, it's one of the greatest commandments, to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love each other as ourselves. To love each other with that intensity. Okay, so we're getting up to the last part of this section of scripture and it's the most powerful one. It's actually the title of this episode. And it's the reason why Peter is commanding us to love each other in the first place. It's the reason why he's saying to do these things, it's the reason why he gave us the mindset of hey, the end of all things is at hand, be this way, love this way. So before I move on to this next portion of this scripture, I'm gonna read the whole scripture again. It's 1 Peter 4:7-11. "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, "since love covers a multitude of sins." Okay, so here's the-- - You slowed down there at the end Aaron, - I know it's, - [Jennifer] Is that important? - [Aaron] Well, it's the most powerful section of this scripture, I believe. And what's amazing about this is it's the opportunity that believers have to love like Christ. What did Christ's love do? - [Jennifer] Saved us. - [Aaron] It covered us. We've just been teaching the kids through Adam and Eve, the story of Adam and Eve and how they were to, God told that surely on the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And guess what. - [Jennifer] Well the kids asked the question, - They're like, - But they didn't die! - [Aaron] Yeah, they didn't die. Here's what's amazing is something died instead. They covered themselves with fig leaves, God covered them in skins. So an animal had to die. So even then, way back in the beginning, in the very first people, God showed his redemption plan. That he was gonna substitute the death that we deserve for another. And so it was a picture right then and there of what Christ was gonna do. And this is what the believer gets to do. This is the remarkable love that the world's gonna see and be like, whoa, those people are God's, Christ's disciples, because Christ died for them, and look how they love each other. - [Jennifer] They wouldn't be able to do it without him. - [Aaron] Yeah, and so love covers a multitude of sins. So here's a question, I taught this at church and I asked this question, and it was hard for me to get it out without crying. But I said, "Who doesn't want their sins covered?" I said, "Raise your hand." How many hands do you think went up? None. So I ask the listener, do you want your sins covered? Do you thank God that his son Jesus and the blood that he shed covers your sins completely? That you are made white as snow? That you are clean before God? Okay, so if we can answer that question with "Yes, praise God," then our love should do the same. Our love has that same power. I personally love the fact that God no longer sees my sin. I personally love that who I was before Christ is now dead and buried. But, what we often do is we highlight other people's sins. And what it does is it raises us up and puts them down. Oh so-and-so, I can't believe they would treat me that way. You can't believe it? I mean how else do we deserve to be treated, really? We deserve hell. That's what the human state deserves. - [Jennifer] There's other times in marriage that we hold their sin against them. - [Aaron] Absolutely, yeah. - [Jennifer] So, whether it's for ammunition later, or maybe you're not intentionally thinking that, but all the sudden it comes up again, and you haven't covered their sin in love. You've been hanging on to it out of bitterness and anger, and you're gonna spew it out back in their face to make them feel a certain way. - [Aaron] Or waiting for them to trip up and it makes you feel better, because as long as their sin is greater than your sin then you're not a sinner. That's like the logic we use. I know that we struggled with this. You believed because I struggled with certain things you didn't even wanna see your own sin. Things that you were dealing with, your own pride, your own bitterness, your own angers, 'cause I was the sinner in the relationship. I was the one that needed to repent, I was the one that needed to change. And I did, I mean it's not like I didn't. But we do that, we look, we long for the sin in others. Oh, since they're that way, I can be this way. Rather than wanting to cover those sins. Rather than wanting to overlook them and remind those people of who they are in Christ, without pretense, without this idea of like, I'm gonna point this out, because I wanna hurt them. Or I wanna feel better. - [Jennifer] I think just kind of glancing back over those first few years of marriage, something else that I've struggled with is holding on to the sins that you struggled with even after saying I forgive you or trying to make up and resolve things. Because I had this belief about you that you were gonna fail me. So I was building a case, right? - [Aaron] You were waiting for me to, yeah. - [Jennifer] The next time you messed up, I go, "See, this is the type of person that you are." And I held up a mirror to show you your sin instead of pointing you to God and saying, "But he's redeemed you." You know what I mean? I didn't give you-- - Why you acting like this? God's redeemed you. - I didn't give you the positive message, because I truly cared about restoration at that point I was looking for a case in order to get out. To leave, to say, "You're this way, and I can't handle it." - [Aaron] Yeah. And that leads me to this question, do we see our spouse's sins against us as special or less deserving of forgiveness and grace? Do we see the sins and shortcomings of others towards us as less deserving, as special? Yeah, yeah, I've done things, I get it, God forgives me, but what they've done? No, what they've done is not forgivable. What they've done is, you can't tell me to love that person. Well, you know what, I don't. I'm not telling you anything. God says it, okay? When you give that word picture, 'cause I think it perfectly sums up this idea of when we love the way Christ loves, what it does. - [Jennifer] Well, I was just thinking about this idea of covering a multitude of sins by our love, the word picture that I got in my mind to help me understand that is a blanket and it's function. When you think about a blanket and being wrapped up and curled up on the couch with it, it provides warmth and comfort and padding and it consumes you. - It protects you. - [Jennifer] It protects you, it's just all around you and it was a really beautiful picture for me to understand how God covers us. Kinda like even as you said, going back to Adam and Eve, how he covered them, ya know? - [Aaron] And then the picture I got, and the Bible even uses it, says that our sins are made white as snow. And we live in a place that snows. And you see all the landscape, there's all the colors, the grass, the concrete, the trees, the houses. - [Jennifer] Pretty soon everything starts to fade away. - [Aaron] It snows and guess what. Everything's the same color. - Everything's white. - Everything's white. And beautiful and it could be on the dirtiest, muddiest area, and it's a beautiful white field. And that's what Christ's blood does is it covers us. And out of our thankfulness for that, we get to love others the same way. And this isn't an overlooking of sin, this isn't a pretending sin hasn't happened. And I'll talk about that in a second. But it's the way we love that no one, no one's sin is special that doesn't deserve our forgiveness, because what we've done is so worthy of punishment. The littlest sin we've done is detrimental to our own nature. And Christ has forgiven that in us. And I was reading in Leviticus this morning, and it was talking about all of the sacrifices and all the atonements and the priest is supposed to do this and all, it was so weird, I'm reading, I was like, "I wanna watch a video on this." So I watched the Bible Project's video on atonement. - [Jennifer] Oh they're good. - [Aaron] Yeah, it was good. And I almost started crying in Starbucks, 'cause I go to Starbucks after the gym, watching it because it was explaining how the atonement was a replacement and it was talking about the two types of evil, it was the sin against your brother or God. And it washes that away. But the other thing is the broken relationship aspect. Let's say you stole something, you paid it back, right? But there's also now distrust and fear that's in the relationship. And so that has to be atoned for as well. And so there's this picture of the priest sprinkling blood over the temple and the Tent of Meeting, right? And it showed this picture of, there was all this black looking weeds on the ground, and every time the blood hit the ground it turned to normal. And it said the blood also brought us into a safe relationship and a love relationship. And that's what this love does when it's covering. It's not just pretending things didn't happen, it's actually mending relationships so that we can walk with people not in fear, not in angst or anxiety, but we can actually walk with people in freedom and in love and in purity. That's what this does. And I wanted to share that 'cause it literally almost made me cry when I was thinking what God's done for me, and how he's, he didn't just fix the offense, he also fixed the relationship that was broken because of the offense. - [Jennifer] It's remarkable. - [Aaron] Yeah. So, I just wanna quickly, we talked through a lot of the scriptures, but I wanted to quickly say, this isn't to say we ignore sin, because that actually is unloving. Ignoring someone's sin is unloving. The loving thing to do is to address the sin, not out of our own vindication, trying to get something paid back to us, but out of, like you said, pointing them back to the truth of what God said about them. Or if they're not a believer, to repentance and salvation. So the loving way to, we deal with sin lovingly. And we come to people in truth and our position is of we wanna see the best for you. We want you to be in a right relationship with us. As Matthew 18 says, it's like you've won your brother. That's what you go to them for is for the purpose of winning your brother, not for winning the argument or winning the, oh see, all I want is an apology and we'll be good. No, you're going with the intention of hey, this is broken right now. We need to fix this. Love covering a multitude of sins isn't to say that the sins just disappear. It's to say that we deal with them the biblical way, the loving way for the purpose of reconciliation, 'cause that is the ministry we've been given is reconciliation. - [Jennifer] And we do this for people because we desire the same reciprocation, right? Of love? - I want it. - [Jennifer] I want people to overlook and cover the sins that I've committed, even the slightest or smallest, there's no degree. It doesn't matter. If I'm imperfect, I want someone to love me still. And I think that's important to remember, especially in marriage. - [Aaron] So I hope that bit of scripture encourages you in your walk. As usual we pray before signing off, so we're gonna pray. Dear lord, we lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things, love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we'd be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done. In Jesus name, amen. Hey thanks for joining us for this episode. We pray it blessed you, of course. And don't forget to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. That's parentingprayerchallenge.com It's completely free and we pray it blesses you. See you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us 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.

Have you ever thought about whether or not we are praying prayers that matter to God? I know that all of our prayers are important to God because he deeply loves and cares about us. And yes, God answers every prayer that we pray. Sometimes his answer is yes, sometimes his answer is no, and still other times he says wait a while. But have you ever considered what God thought about the prayers you have prayed or perhaps what does God think about the prayers you may refuse to pray.As a parent, you don’t mind your children asking for things that you know you won’t give them. It is okay for them to ask and it is okay for you to say no. But when your child asks for something that you desire to give them or show them it becomes so much more enjoyable, doesn’t it. You find that your heart begins to rejoice over them and you become eager to give them even more than they asked for.What would happen in our lives if we began praying prayers that matter to God? Okay, I’ll concede and admit that might not be the best way to say it. But what might happen if we began to pray with a little more sensitivity prayers that God would love to hear from his children? When was the last time you prayed that God would show you how to be the perfect husband or perfect wife instead of praying that your spouse would change? When was the last time you ask God to show you how to be a model student or model employee instead of praying your teacher would go easy or your boss would let up? When was the last time you asked God to show how you needed to be reconciled to a child, a sibling, or a lost friend? Instead of complaining that they will never appreciate what you were trying to do.When was the last time you ask God to give strength and courage to do something you knew he was asking you to do instead of justifying away the very word of God for you?When was the last time you asked God to convince your mind to tithe and give what you know God has asked for you to give instead of doing the same ole thing hoping it doesn’t really matter?When was the last time your heart went out to the least, the last, and the lost not because of what they might bring to you, but because you understood it was God’s heart to be shared with them.When we live with grateful hearts for Jesus we begin experience and intimate relationship with God and because of his love for us we hear his word different than before and know that what he says will bring a fruitful and fulfilling life and so we respond with love in return. Support the show (http://www.easytithe.com/stbdeland)

Why, God? How, God? You said what, God? Okay, maybe that was me, God. Have you ever questioned what God revealed to you? Have you ever asked Him, are you sure? He gave you signs. He whispered it into your spirit. He sent people to you. He spoke it loud and clear. And you believed Him...at least until life hit you. Brenda of @justlivingforjesus_ and I, took to the outdoors to sit down and discuss God’s plan. This year, she conquered believing in who God says she is. But now she’s struggling with accepting His word. She’s struggling with listening to Him. In this episode, you’ll learn God believes in your dreams too. And how He will give you moments of clarity for you to keep in your pocket. You’ll discover how God wants to hear your questions and extinguish your doubts. You’ll learn to believe Him the first time. You’ll break out of the do’s and don’ts of Christianity and more into relationship. More into just living for Jesus. #dressedforbattlepodcast Loved this episode? Please leave a review and follow me @dressedforbattlepodcast and @adornedinarmor! You can also check out my blog posts adornedinarmor.com. Thank you!

Union Avenue Baptist Church

Union Avenue Baptist Church