You're listening to KFI A six forty on demand. Jeff, Welcome to the
Jesus Christ Show. Hia, Jeff, how can I help you? Hey,
Jesus, nice talking to you. I've fallen in love with a non
Christian. We've been together for about six years, and I guess if I
were going to ask the question point blank to maintain my relationship with God,
should I walk in to the my house today and break up with her?
Or is this a relationship that could somehow work as a Christian? Yes,
of course it can work. There's I think a lot of people want to
jump to the conclusion that it's impossible. It's not. It's it can be
incredibly difficult in ways that you cannot even imagine, and they usually creep up
pretty quickly after marriage. Could be even more difficult with children. Children Bringing
children into the equation makes it exponentially more difficult. So is that a goal?
I mean, six years into a relationship, obviously you're a little slow
on the Yeah, why do you think that is? I think I just
I think both of us have probably had a few a little bit of bad
luck in the past, and that's more of it than anything that we've just
been slow. And you know what, time just flies. It seems like
yesterday. So do you know what bad luck in relationships actually is called?
No, I'd love to know foolishness. Foolishness okay, okay, And so
really, unless someone outright lies to you and misrepresents who they are as a
human being, then the foolishness was on the two of you somewhere. So
if she's had bad people in her life, it's because she's chose to.
And if you've had bad people in your life, it's because you've chosen.
This one's working out really nice, and that's why, you know. But
I've still got that little gunshy well, and that issue of faith is still
kind of bothers me a little bit. But you stick around, you waste
her time and yours six years of it so far exactly. But I again,
I just don't want to give this up. It's just too good,
okay, because I mean, it's it's it's really a tiny verse. Do
not be bound together with unbelievers? For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness?
Or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has christ with bail?
Or what has the believer in common with an unbeliever. So really,
the the verses that talk about this, and often it can be misconstrued,
Really, the concept of being equally yoked is being bound to an oxen of
same strength and purpose and focus. Because if you have two oxen and one
is smaller, then you can't plow straight. One's either going to be weaker
and pull it down, or if they are both strong and wanting to go
in different directions, they're going to be pulling the plow in different directions.
That's the visual and the difficulty there is. You imagine trying to build a
house with another carpenter and you believe in using a ruler, and they believe
in organic measurement. Well, I like to guess and just eyeball it.
That seems like well, usually the person with a ruler starts making the excuses.
Well, I'll just double check their work and I'll go over there.
It ends up not working in many many ways. It's not impossible. I
don't like when people say it's impossible. It can be difficult, and in
relationships that usually are selfish to begin with, a lot of people go into
relationships thinking I just want somebody to be able to cheer for me or watch
me do what I do, and to eat the things I like to eat,
and go to the places I like to eat with me, And that's
not really a relationship. So in this case they can be quite difficult.
You have to remove a lot of selflessness, which is what you should be
doing in any relationship. But now you're yielding not only to your partner,
you're yielding to a whole different mindset. So you may say, well,
I would do anything for her, but then when she wants to do something
that it comes from whatever her faith is or lack thereof, Now you're going,
oh, well, I can't participate in that because that's not my faith.
Right it is a thought that over a lifetime that somebody may come into
my faith. Is that a pretty poor Uh well you may go into hers.
Okay, that not Jesus I promise will never happen. Okay, well
I'm just saying that. Well that then then why risk it. Here's the
thing I get love. It's a beautiful thing. I get connection and and
kinetic response and the sparks that happen, I get chemistry. All of that.
I created it. It has a wonderful place I just think people make
excuses to do the wrong thing so much because sometimes it's easier or convenient because
it's right now. And that's not to say that you guys don't have something
wonderful, but if you really honestly go into it, sitting down and talking
it out, how are we going to raise the kids your faith or mine?
When we come to a life problem deals with X, Y and Z.
I've had somebody call the program not too long ago stating that married to
his wife and they have different views, and that they've always gotten long and
it's always worked out well. They've got four kids or three kids, and
we're having a fourth and she was done. She didn't want kids anymore,
and she wanted to get an abortion, which is a total, totally against
He never saw it coming. Wasn't something that had come up. It wasn't
against her worldview, but it was against his. And quite frankly, he
called from California. It's not in his favor, it's his business, but
not really so legally it was on in her situation. Was she had the
ability to make the decision, and that's not something somebody might think about down
the line. And these are the types of things you need to ask,
Jeff and really make sure that it's that it's what you want, because these
things will arise and you may find yourself in a situation and you have to
go into that going okay, as long as you know, okay, this
may happen and that's that may be the way it goes down, and you
may have to go with the flow, not her going with the flow.
John, Welcome to Jesus Christ. Show how you doing good? John?
How can I help you? Yes, it's always wondering about in Jeremiah how
it says before I formed THEE in the belly, I knew THEE. And
I'm wondering if that is speaking of the pre existence, and also what it
means in other sheep I have which are not of this fold them I must
visit one fold and one shepherd. If you had visited the Americas, well,
obviously someone's knocking at your door these days, aren't they sound? That's
that's definite missionary talk there, Okay. First and foremost, No, Jeremiah
one to five is speaking to God's foreknowledge, not that the soul existed.
And you can find this out because there's other scriptures that would shed more light
on this, and the best thing to do when you come across a scripture
that might, you know, be a little confusing, is to let the
rest of scripture define what it means in context. For instance, John eight
twenty three says, and this is me speaking here, said unto them,
ye are from beneath the earth. I am from above heaven. Ye are
of this world. I am not of this world. So if if everyone
was, if there was pre existent souls, then that wouldn't be true that
I was from above and you are from this world. That would be referring
back to you know that I was from heaven and that they were not from
heaven. In that context speaking to man, so that there's many verses one
Corinthians fifteen forty five through forty seven. I would also recommend, and then
Zechariah twelve one I would recommend as well. Ecclesiastes twelve seven says, then
shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it a lot of groups will point to that and
say, look see now it returns to God. Therefore it came from above,
and that this soul has been pre existent. It's not true. Ecclesiastes
is very clear to point out that from the dust is where you came on
the earth. But the spirit will return to God who gave the spirit,
not who lived with the spirit forever and ever and ever or anything like that.
Your your second concern was what Jeremiah and that Jeremiah and then the other
one was dealing with about the other fold, right, the shape of a
different fold that's speaking to and in context, if you read it in context,
it's actually speaking about Jews and Gentiles. So the one fold is Jews,
speaking of the Jews, and the second fold is the Gentiles. It's
not about visiting the Americas or anything like that. Sam, Welcome to Jesus
Christio. Hello, how are you doing. I'm well Sam, what's going
on? Well, my mother passed away about four years ago and she's from
Illinois and she's like Methodist, and I think it is with Jesus baptized.
But okay, he had five kids and wasn't real active in the church because
my father passed away at seven, I would say him, and she lived
her life totally, you know, unconditional for all her kids. Okay.
I was just you know, wanting to make sure that that you know,
I don't know how that balance goes to going in there and say I got
a mother in law who's a Roman Catholic and she goes into church. I
he's hunting the time clock. But it shall come home and and not not
really act upon anything, whereas like my mom would give everything. You know,
well, it's not it's not a race, and it's not that type
of game. And I know that a lot of the different denominations go back
and forth with one another, as if you know, there's some sort of
contest. And wow, look how good I am, or look at least
I can pretend I'm good, or look how much time I spend in church
or anything. Put all that stuff aside for a moment, Sam, and
I want you to think about, you know, who who your mother was,
and the claims that she made with her life, and trust God to
fill in any gaps that can be filled in. There are people that are
baptized and they live their life for God, and yet they struggle with the
church or these types of things. Yet they're still very devout in their own
way. And you're not going to find a perfect Christian. But you have
to trust God. In these situations you can't know. But there's no reason.
There's nothing that stands out in the story that you shared with us that
stands out and says that your mom is anywhere but in heaven. You know
that your mom is. To think that your mom is not somehow with God,
it doesn't make sense to me. So be at peace with that.
I know that this is a question that comes up every now and again,
Sam, someone will call in and say, oh, family member never really
talked about God, or I don't know if they really meant it, or
maybe they were in church all the time, whatever it might be. You
can't always know. I can assume based on things that they said. And
if you know that they gave their life to Christ, and they followed me,
and they followed my word and all those things, then you can pretty
safely say, well, that seemed to be the balance of their life.
That seems to be what they followed and the focus of their life. But
to sit there and worry about it at this point it will do you no
good. Just trust that God gave every opportunity, as he does for everyone,
the best opportunity possible to make a decision for God to live for God
and that in that decision, it was honored with a ticket to heaven.
As they say, really it's about it's not about ignorance, and people get
caught up in that. And I know it's really easy to make Christianity,
Christianity out to be the bad guy, like it's trying to exclude everybody,
but it's not. As a matter of fact, it's really allowing people to
do they're bidding. If they don't want to be with God for seventy years
on this planet, they don't have to be with God for eternity. But
if someone seeks so, one genuinely seeks, then they'll find. And I
say that when I knock on your heart and that door of your heart,
all I ask is that you open it. Yvett, Welcome to the Jesus
Christ Show. Hi you Vet you there? Oh Hi, yeah, I'm
sorry, there's an ambulance coming by. I'm like, well, anyway,
my question is regarding cremation. My mom has like six burial plots for us,
and I think she's gonna just think that at the end of our you
know, life here, we're going to be all wrapped up and all neatly
stacked together and I'm kind of not feeling that, and I was wondering,
is there is there a biblical there's something biblical that's against cremation. Like now,
our Jewish brothers and sisters have concerns about cremation, but Christians do not.
There is nothing in the Christian theology that would have a problem. The
truth of the matter, and I don't mean to get gross on this,
but the physiological reality is that all bodies with long enough time are going to
look like they were cremated anyways, So there's no I think there's a comfort
level for some people and they feel better when a body is buried. I
think it's part of the grieving process and people feel like, well, they're
still right there, they're just not moving anymore or doing anything. But the
honest to goodness reality is they're decomposing. They're breaking down to their simplest form,
and that'll continue to go on for a long period of time. So
if you feel like getting cremated, so be it. There's there's nothing.
So there's nothing biblically nothing, because for a while it didn't. The Catholics
also have a well, there are different there's a different doctrine that people will
you know, adhere to And that's really religionists. That's nothing biblical that's going
to say, hey, this will cause a problem because ashes to ashes,
dust to dust from the earth. You came to the earth, you will
return. There's nothing. There's no problem with the concept of cremation. There's
people say, well what about you know, there's different people that have different
beliefs about the rapture and what about being raised from the God created you.
God's not going to go oh no, now the pieces are scattered. How
am I ever going to put that back together? Does anybody have the original
instructions? That's just not how it works. So you're fine. If it's
a personal choice, and it's becoming a more popular choice actually these days,
then so be it. That's your choice. Cool, nothing too soon,
I hope, Oh no, hopefully not. Okay, then you might want
to write it down somewhere then for say keeping the family. And of course
my mother has a fit, but I'm like, well, respect that and
ask her what her concerns are. And maybe there's something there, but I
think there We talked about this recently too, the concept of ghosts came up
and all of this and I will tell you more than anything else I talk
about on the air. When I talk about ghosts and that that ghosts don't
fit into the theological structure of Christianity, people light up. They just light
up. And I think that there is a there's an intense desire to not
make things be over. Now, the skeptic could look and say, well,
that's all of religion is looking for a do over or an everlasting or
any of these things as well, and that's that's a very legitimate point.
But likewise, or similarly, humans are always looking for one more minute,
kind of that, you know, cuddling in the morning when you've got to
go to work and it's five more minutes, five more minutes, let's just
cuttle five more minutes. Everybody's looking to squeeze a little more life out of
life. And when someone passes, I think there's comfort both in the concept
of ghosts and all of that, but there's also comfort in the fact that
the body's right there. It's right there, and you can go visit it,
but it's not it's no more important there than the headstone is, or
the grass or the tree next to it, or they're all the same thing.
At this point, and I think sometimes there's a different comfort and going,
well, the body's there, we're all going to be together, but
you're not, and you're all going to be together in a rotting state.
So a rotting state it's not going to be different from burnstate, which is
a rapid a rapid process of decomposition. So it's the same same. It's
an emotional thing. So if your mom has emotional issues with it, then
try and be sensitive to that and ask her, you know, what her
concerns are and why. But really, biblically, there's there's nothing to it.
There's really there's no offense to God. If the body's burned or if
the body's buried, ultimately they returned to the ground. Well, it might
have been that I mentioned maybe putting me in Tuesday's trash might be agger option
was, well, now you know why you upset your mother, because because
you are a dung disturber and you were poking at her, why would you
try and upset her? No, I didn't do that intentionally. It was
just kind of like because I just feel I mean, they're just ashes.
I don't it's just not truly me. Yeah, but I think she just
told your mother that you wanted to be buried in a garbage can, and
you didn't expect her to have any sort of response. I think her,
but it was the whole. I think it was the whole. Being cremated
things was what sets her off. And she doesn't want any of us to
be cremated, and I think, I don't know. I guess I should
ask her why that is and where that comes from. And because for her
to just, you know, automatically buy six burial plots, I mean,
was your mom a pretty controlling person. Probably yeah, I'd say probably too.
That may just be her thing, and she whenever somebody And the reason
why I ask is because your mom's not here to defend herself for to me
her own argument. But whenever somebody tries to control a situation, that means
they have built expectations and that expectation is now the standard in which they're trying
to have everything fall into that expectation, and when something goes awry or something
goes in a different you know, a lot of times parents are upset that
their children are homosexual, not because they're homosexual, but because in their head
they were thinking it was going to be a certain way, and this is
what the child was going to be and they were going to grow up and
this is what and that there was this pattern and it's because of their expectations.
They're let down, not because of the individual or the person, I
would hope and likewise, you're letting her down. Not because you're letting her
down, but because she had an expectation or expectation is you know, because
what parent is buying plots for their kids? Yeah, because you're not going
to be part of that family in the same way. In the same sense,
every family moves away, every family starts a new branch. That's kind
of the way things work. So you borrow, you bury the whole tree
in one place. It's not going to work. So I'm thinking, what
about our children and our spouses and our like ar exactly exactly what with them?
But that's the that's the mentality, is controlling her family and the structure
of her family. People do this all the time. Well we have to
go visit our family for Christmas, and well what does that mean, Well,
go visit the parents. Well, if that's the way things always work,
then your parents would be visiting their parents and you wouldn't have anybody to
visit with. There's people don't understand the cycle. They only understand that that
little branch that they've created, and they try and hold onto that branch.
But the cycle is not built that way. It's built to go off and
to explore and to do your own traditions and to do those things. And
there are times where mother or father can be very controlling or they think,
well, no, this is the expectation, because this is how I thought
it was always going to be, not ever factoring in that the children that
you have are going to be independent human beings with their own ideas, their
own wants, their own desires, and own thoughts of how things should be
themselves. So I think maybe your mom's plan is being thwarted a little bit,
and she's upset about that. I don't think she thinks you're going to
hell, or that God's not going to be able to find you going oh
my gosh, or it's going to get mixed with dirt and he's going to
recreate you and you're going to be half dirt monster and half human, or
there's nothing like that. I don't think she's worrying about that. I think
she's she's going. That's not the way I set this up. Honey,
does she have a nickname for you? Well, she's going to make one
up after this, I'm sure. But just try I think, since you
already know what you want to do, helping your mom understand it and being
kind to her and allowing her to digest it properly, it's probably a good
thing. Try not to, in my humble advice, try not to use
the terms like trash can or things like that. Maybe we'll we'll keep her
out of that mindset. But theologically you're Aokayvett. If you want to get
cremated, Yeah, they see, And then I will bloom forever, reaching
towards the sky, pointing to my final destination, which is heaven. And
maybe that would that would rock her boat a lot less, Okay, and
now go live long and prosper a. Thank you, you're welcome, Thanks
for calling you, Vet. That is a thing that there's a couple other
things going on there. Obviously, the theology question is the simple one.
There's nothing specific that would pertain to Christians about cremation. But there's obviously the
little spin there with the mom buying the plots and wanting everything to be a
certain way, and uh, you know, often parents can be controlling that
way. They even want to when somebody's getting to the point where they're planning
where you're gonna be when you're dead, that's a little bit that's a little
bit controlling. On one side, it could be sweet that they're thinking ahead
and wanting to make sure their family is together. But families branch it's the
way they do. Again, if really the families were going to be together,
then your parents would be buried with their parents, you know. And
then that if you have siblings now and they have kids now, then they're
gonna be buried togat. It just doesn't make sense. It's not the way
things work. Families do split, they branch out. It's the way it
works, and understanding that can be a very powerful thing. There's say in
big families, I'm telling you, there's always a point where everyone's getting together
all the time for all the holidays, and all of a sudden people have
kids and husbands and wives and they grow and then it's like, well they're
not showing up, they're not coming anymore because they're creating their own traditions and
branch the same way your family did originally. If you don't allow that,
then it gets perverted or muted or massive. You have to have everybody over
and it just becomes huge. And I know that's strange because it means for
difference, but that's how people grow and commit to their own self and the
vision of who they are. Poppy, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show.
Hi, how are you Poppy? Good? Hey, I have a theology
question. Sure, shoot, I'm a little confused on the genealogy of Jesus.
I'm totally I love to talk to people about this and I'm trying to
embrace the knowledge more and more. Eleven is to want to know more.
And it says that in scripture he's defendant up David. It thinks Joseph was
the line of David and not Mary. But the biological father of Jesus is
God. Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Yeah. The this
this caused a lot of confusion because people see that the reference of the genealogy
in Matthew Matthew one and then Luke three. People assume this causes a couple
of different problems. One people assume they're both of Joseph and they're not.
Also, people assume when they assume that they're both of Joseph, they they
go, well, there's similarities, yet there's differences, and it causes confusion.
So let's break this down first. In Luke three, that is an
actual genealogy of the maternal side of Mary, not the paternal side of my
foster father Joseph. So if you look through it, you'll see that there
are differences, but there are similarities. Now, both of those trace back
to David. They do it through two different sons, but they both trace
back to David. The people tend to get confused because in Luke three there's
the term, as was supposed the son of Joseph, but it's not saying
that it is the lineage of Joseph. Also, Luke is referred to as
the Gospel for women, and there's certain things about this particular lineage that points
to the fact that it's Mary's lineage and not Joseph's lineage. So in Luke,
if you look at the maternal lineage, it takes it takes my line
back to David. No problem, great, thank you, you're very very
welcome. Yeah, so go take a look at those. They often get
confused and one of the reasons is that these two geneologies have similar names in
them. And this is what's kind of interesting, based on the distance of
time. If you saw, for instance, if you were reading two modern
day lineages and you went through and had the name Mary, had the name
Jason, or you're going through all these names that are fairly common names,
you wouldn't think twice about it. But since you're looking at Zerubable, you're
going, oh, well, that can that has to be the same guy.
But no, back then that was a more common name, and therefore
you would see it like having an uncle Bob. You know, it seems
everyone has an uncle Bob, right, So if you had two lineages and
they both had an uncle Bob in them, you wouldn't naturally, you wouldn't
normally assume that they're both the same guy, because both the maternal and the
paternal side can have a Robert in there, and so you see it.
So people get confused because those names seems so rare upon looking at them now,
but really there were fairly common names at the time, and so they
get kind of tossed into it, and the assumption is they're the exact same
lineage. And they're not. Matthew is tracing the lineage back through the foster
father Joseph, and Luke is tracing the lineage back to through my mother's family
line to show that both both point to the line of David. And some
will go further to say, well one is like the official line. That
shows the official line, and then this shows, you know, the the
fleshly line, to show that this is like the official line as by God,
that shows that it goes to David. And this is even my flesh
line has a lineage to David as well, so the Messiah had to have.
So that's why people see those a little differently at times and get a
little get a little confused. KFI A M six forty on demand