You're listening to kf I demand, it becomes very easy in times of pain,
when you're going through a struggle or some suffering, to bury yourself in
that pain and suffering and use it as an excuse to do something wrong.
There will be pain, there will be suffering in this life. There will
be injustices. And as a Christian, you are not immune to suffering.
And if you think for one moment that because you believe in God, that
life's going to be peachy, that's not the truth. And there are some
preachers out there that would love to tell you that everything's going to be okay
and there's never going to be any suffering, and that's wrong, or that
a good godly person who is pushing sin out of their life won't have pain
and suffering, and that is wrong as well. No, as a Christian,
you are not immune to suffering. But God calls you to handle it
in a different way, and that's what sets you apart. The world will
tell you to handle it completely different. The world tells you that pain and
suffering is an excuse to do wrong, a justification for bad behavior, But
God says differently. First Peter four, verses twelve through nineteen. I'll focus
on nineteen, but I want you to hear the context. Dear friends,
do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something
strange were happening to you, But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of
Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed. If
you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for
the spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer,
it should not be as a murderer or a thief, or any other kind
of criminal, or even somebody who meddles in other people's affairs. However,
if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God
that you bear that name. For it is time for judgment to begin with
the family of God. And if it begins with us, what will the
outcome be for those who do not obey the Gospel of God? And if
it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the
ungodly and the sinner? Listen to verse nineteen. So then those who suffer
according to god Odd's will should commit themselves to the faithful Creator and continue to
do good. You can't use pain and suffering as an excuse as justification to
do wrong. As a believer, you're called to more than that. You're
called in the state of suffering one to recognize God, give glory to God,
and to continue to do good. To press on with an attitude of
grace and kindness through the pain. It's very easy, even at the slightest
bit is discomfort. I see people use it as a justification to do bad
things or to act poorly towards others. Oh I'm sorry, I'm tired,
or I'm sick and I'm in pain. You can't use these times of pain
and suffering as an excuse to do wrong or even evil. The cause is
lost at that point. There will be times where you will be treated poorly
by others and by circumstances, and if you use that just as an opportunity,
just as an excuse to go out and do wrong, you will lose
all ground, all authority, all true justice, and all that will be
seen is that you that you used it as an excuse. Now it doesn't
matter why you are suffering, because all you did is caused more suffering,
And how is it better the that this suffering that you caused in comparison to
the suffering that was caused to you? How does that balance things out?
And in a time where it seems every where you turn someone is looking for
an excuse or justification for doing wrong, you will be driven to the point
of anger by other people. You will be poked and prodded. And it
is a believer, it could be multifold because people will look for ways to
get you riled up. People will look for ways to make you break down
and reject your faith, reject what you believe. And it's not just about
believing in God. It's about how that belief manifests in your life. And
here in First Peter four twelve through nineteen, it focuses on how you should
continue to give your life to God and even have points of pride when you're
in pain, knowing that you're suffering for and with Christ. And when I
suffered, it was for you, and when you suffer, it will be
for me. But more than all of that is that in that time of
pain, how you hold yourself, how you conduct yourself as a Christian,
as a believer, as a human being, not to use it as an
opportunity to do evil. You're listening to k I Am sixty on demand.
Rich, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. Well, good morning, hi,
Rich. How can I help you? I was just wondering, are
you familiar with anthropocentric and the christo centric viewpoint of Romans three around twenty through
thirty one is So the battle, just to keep it at an audience level,
the battle between those that believe and through Centric is dealing with that.
It's about man and the christ Centric is obviously focused on the Act on the
Cross. So the dilemma or what people battle with do you get to heaven
based on something you do as a human or do you get to heaven based
on something Christ did on the cross? Right, Well, it's more a
little more specific than that. I'm trying to I'm trying to thin it out
for the for the group here. Let's make sure we don't belief or do
I get through heaven through through Christ act of belief? Okay, this is
it's there is nothing added to the cross. The soul act on the cross,
the blood on the cross is what opens the pathway the possibility of salvation.
The end that salvation is a gift only. But that gift does have
to be received. So if you think that that is some sort of human
centric aspect to it, I think that would be a misunderstanding of that.
But yes, you have to receive it. But there's nothing you can add
to the act on the cross to make it more valuable or less valuable.
You can't add or subtract. You can only receive it. So if that
reception to you is some sort of work or addition to the cross, that's
that's up to your interpretation. But there is nothing that could be added to
the cross. Edward, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. All right,
Jesus, how you doing good, Edward? What's going on? Well,
Um, I called you about four years ago and I'm struggling with kind of
going through life. I've had a you know a lot of failed relationships,
marriages and jobs, and um, I'm raising my daughter. I'm a single
dad, and you know, I haven't worked in a while. You know,
I lost my father last year and it just I almost feel like like
a mini job. Um. I just feel like I kind of got to
the point where I had some big hobbies. I've always been a hard worker,
but I've had some health issues like a stomach problem and a back problem,
and I my my favorite hobby a few months back, I just quit
doing that and that was like the last thing that gave me like a lot
of passionate about in fun. You quit it because of lack of finances or
because of physically, I just lost interest. It seems like each year,
like a few more where things go where I've kind of want stopped wanting to
kind of do them because of my health mentally or physically or both. Um.
And it's gotten to the point now where I really don't even hardly do
anything. I mean, I do a lot of stuff, but it's not
like like I did before, where you know, I did a lot of
you know, um yard workhouse work in my hobby and just stayed really busy.
And it's just kind of like I've lost like my mojo, you know.
And I know some of it's my health. Um. You know,
you go to the health practitioners, they you tell them you're depressed or you
have anxiety or this or that, and they want to put you on all
sorts of drugs and and then you get onto that, you get on that
train and then it's like like I didn't even sleep last night and that that
never I never do that, and I don't know what. You know,
there's a couple of reasons. I thought, well maybe it was this or
that, but in fact I didn't sleep and uh you you you you mentioned
your hobbies or any of them physical? Yeah, the one it was the
one thing I just always love to do since I was little with surf,
and that would that I always had that and it was something I really loved
to do. And I just I don't even do that anymore because I went
out and did it a few times recently and it just wasn't any fun.
And you know, I'm out of shape, but I don't I don't know
what's going on. And it's like you kind of lose you kind of start
losing hope, Like you know, I'm not that old, and it's like
I don't really have a career now and in the market's not that great I've
heard from now. Things are tough all over. Right now they're getting better,
trust me, but they're tough all over. But but but Edward,
I want to point out something that's that's evident already. If you don't eat,
what happens well, you get hungry, and you get kind of weak,
okay, and then finally die. Yeah, your body is fed in
many ways. It's fed physically with nutrients, it's fed spiritually, and it's
fed intellectually. And people don't see it that way. And what you're describing
to me is atrophy. It's the same thing if you don't move, if
you don't engage yourself, and you are probably your your emotional and intellectual metabolism
was probably probably faster than most. The fact that you describe many hobbies and
things and probably needs to be fed more than most. And each time you
you cut one of these things out of your life, or each each time
you uh, you know, stop doing something, you start to atrophy,
you start to break down, and it's going to work against you. Hold
on tight, because I want to talk to you. In just a second.
You're listening to KF I am sixty on demand. Edward, you're still
there. Thanks for holding. You were talking about how you've lost a little
bit of a zest for life when it comes to your hobbies, to things
you do. You've had some ailments, you've been sick, you've had a
death. You're a single dad, right, you're not working, a lot
of things going against you, and you're and you're feeling it. And I
was talking about the the atrophy and how your body craves a lot of things.
It creates, craves nutrients, but it also craves the and has the
desire to be fed intellectually and spiritually. And it sounds like, one by
one you've removed certain things from your life. And I know that our time
will go by really quickly here, but I wanted to tell you that you
need to retrace your steps backwards a little bit, and you need to bring
some of these things back into your life. Interest comes and goes sometimes,
but you can't trust that all the time. The body, sometimes when it
goes through little bouts with change or frustration, will start to almost punish itself,
saying that, well, I don't deserve to have this pleasure. I
don't deserve this right. These types of interests should go away. And it's
not fair to you set out say hey, these are some things that I
want to do. You have to have goals. When you don't have half
twos in your life, the want twos tend to fall by the wayside as
well, and you just kind of stop being a human being. You just
stop because you think, oh well, I can't do this or I can't
do that. And it doesn't mean that expensive hobbies should, you know,
be more important than saving money or any of these things. No, but
spending that time, especially with God's creation and like you did with surfing or
or doing things that are active, and then your body starts to change.
Like you said, if you're you're not surfing, you get out of shape
right now. You're just spiritually and emotionally out of shape, Edward. That's
it, And the only way to get back into it is to do it
one day to time, the same way you would if you were working out.
To put yourself on a program where you inject certain things back into your
life a little bit at a time and work yourself into the ability to do
them once again and to find you know, because joy is always around you.
It's happiness that people seek, strangely enough, which is just little bits
of joy because of things that they're doing. And to do that again you
have to just kind of reverse the process, take the time and jump back
on. Otherwise you're going to continue to cut out one more little thing and
one more little thing until it's all gone and there's no ability. You just
kind of dig your own hole, and now you got to climb out of
that. But it's not bottomless, and there is a way out all those
things. You know this, Edward, And you've built yourself up before,
and I have nothing but the utmost confidence in you that you will build yourself
up again. Barry, Welcome to the Jesus Christ. Show Jesus. Now
you went to heaven from the tomb on Easter. Now when did you return
to earth to show the disciples of the holes in your hands? In what
sense? So well they are? Yeah, I see, you know,
I always see these pictures of you know, Jesus standing there with showing his
hands to the disciples, and there's holes in his hands and his feet.
And my sister and I were just discussing, Oh, where that takes place
in scripture? Yes, well, you can go to the Book of John.
You can go to the Book of John and in chapter twenty in verse
twenty six. We'll start with verse twenty six. It says in after eight
days again his disciples were inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came to
the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst, and said,
piece be with you. Then he said to Thomas, reach here your finger
and see my hands, and reach hear your hand and put it into my
side, and be not unbelieving, but believing. And it says Thomas answered
and said to him, my Lord, my God. Interestingly enough, the
word there God is actually Jehovah. Jesus said to him, because you have
seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and
yet believed. So that may be the reference that you're you're looking or thinking
about. But keep in mind that artist depictions or artist depictions, right,
and sometimes they take license. But yes, there were those that asked,
and there were those that wanted to see because days earlier they were looking at
me hanging on across. Right. Okay, thank you very much, Jesus,
you're very very welcome. And also important in that story is the concept
of of of blind faith. It's not so much that that Thomas was being
punished in any way, shape or form, or you know, doubting.
Thomas is referred to a lot. You know, oh, he's he doubted,
he didn't have faith, And it's not that that faith is not separate
from reason or understanding at all. This concept of blind faith is something that
people have continue to perpetuate, but it's really not what's asked in scripture.
Faith is that which comes after reason. It's that point where you can't reason
anymore because you can't know. And this happens on a day to day basis
in the real world as well. In a court of law, you're you're
doing it beyond the shadow of a doubt. You don't have the certainty because
you're dealing with a past, singular event, an event that happened once,
and you can't really go back or recreate it in a Petrie dish, So
you have to forensically take the information that you do have and put it together
to understand it better. Now that you wouldn't say that that in a court
of law, the jury is convicting somebody on blind faith, but technically that's
what they're doing. That faith has to come in at some point after all
the evidence. The jury has to look and say, well, this evidence
points to this. We weren't there, we didn't see it happened, but
the evidence points to it happening this way, and we're going to take that
small bit of faith and jump from this last bit of evidence that we do
have and the fact that we weren't there to see it happen and close that
gap. And that's really what happens with your faith when it comes to God
as well. There are things that you can know. There's a huge book
that points to the things that you can know. There's history and things you
can know there. There's the way the world works, and there's things in
the natural world that point to a supernatural God. And you can use all
those things to understand and to point you in the direction of God. But
it's not about being ignorant of the facts. Blind faith isn't ignoring what's in
front of you and believing in it anyways. And so when Thomas was here
doubting, it's that he wanted proof, He wanted to see, he wanted
some evidence of what went down and why, and therefore wanted to put his
hand into my side and put his finger in the holes in my hands.
And that was okay. It's not that I was punishing him in any way
and saying that he was less than I was, just saying that there's going
to come a time where people won't have that opportunity and that more blessed will
they be for having leaning to lean themselves upon the truth of God and not
just the evidence of man. And those things can go hand in hand.
You're listening to KF I am sixty on demand. John, Welcome to Jesus,
Christ Show Jesus. This is a complicated question. Okay, okay,
God's people talk to God. God talks to God's people. And here I
am on very super boulevard where the Catholic Church is right next door to the
Temple, and I'd feel like to be in on that conversation. So you
feel how you feel like you don't have a conversation with God. Well,
I can have a conversation with God, and the Catholics can have a conversation
with God, and the Jews can have a conversation with God. But what
is God say to the Catholics about the choose next door and vice versa.
Well, if you want to if you get into you know, uh he
said he said, or they said they said, Or if you're trying to
set up like the ultimate cage match between religions and get them all in and
say who's you know gonna be the most truthful? That's a that's part of
the search for you. If people get kind of weird when it comes to
religion because they don't want to say anybody is wrong. But I'll tell you
religions, the different religions in this world are have exclusivity to the things they
say. That's any truth statement has exclusivity. If you say, hi,
I'm John, you can't be not John. At the same time, if
you're really John, it's just everything you say that has truth. This is
a one dollar bill, well, then it's not a ten dollar bill.
So every truth statement has exclusivity to it. But I'm confused. If I'm
confused us, it would be on the point of when God talks to the
Jewish people on Saturday morning, then he would talk to But you're assuming that
God talks to everybody. No, you're the assumption is that God talks to
everyone who says that God's talking to them. My point being that they can
all be wrong. Okay, if it doesn't mean because someone has a church
or a temple or a building with some symbolism on, it doesn't mean that
they're talking to God. You can walk into a grocery store and yell mom,
and at least fifty percent of the women will turn around. Does that
mean that all those women are the mother of the child calling mom? No,
So don't assume just because someone says they're of a religion or a belief,
that God's talking to them. But God's talking to someone, and the
point of your quest on this planet is to find out who God's talking to.
How would you explain it to the children? How would I explain what?
Well, the kids in they're both schools, Saint Bernardine's has an awful
lot of kids in the playyard when they look through the fence and they see
Temple Eliyah and the kids playing in that playyard, how would you explain to
a ten year old the difference between the two playyards. How do you explain
the difference between any truth and that which is truth and that which is false.
So you're trying to make it about these two belief systems, and I'm
saying, don't even get into that game. Make it about what's true and
what's not true, and how our kids taught about anything. How do you
teach a kid that two plus two equals four and doesn't equalate. Well,
that's a simple one. Why is that a simple one? Well, well,
my belief has always been that if you can't explain it to a ten
year old, then it's wrong. Okay, so quantum mechanics doesn't exist,
and heavy mathematics doesn't exist, and a most science doesn't exist. That's not
fair that you're actually misquoting a very good quote, which is that if if
you know something, you should be able to simplify it, to explain it.
However, you can't explain everything to a child. You can't. That's
why they're children. If a child could comprehend everything, then you wouldn't need
an adult to teach them. Well, what would you say if you were
the pastor and a kid came up you and says, how come I can't
go across the fence and play with the Steinberg kid? What do you Why
couldn't they While you're making this about Judaism and Christianity, why couldn't they play?
The truth is their two separate schools, they have separate rules, and
you can't just hop the fence of another school to play with those kids.
I mean, it's not about segregation. It's about that they have particular messages
they're trying to teach the kids, just like you know, a kid at
a grade school. It might be next to a high school, but they're
not in the high school. They're not in the high school curriculum, and
therefore they wouldn't be in that high school. I don't know what you're you're
trying to make a battle between Christianity and Judaism and and and I know a
lot of people are hoping for this kind of universe universalism. But universalism is
a cop out. It's not There are truths that you can know. And
if you can know truths about math or about science, there are truths that
you can know about God, and they either hold or they don't hold.
Well. The ultimate truth is God is God, and one side whip in.
Both sides are worshiping God. Why should there be offense between them,
because that God is just a term like mom. Not every mom is your
mom, John and not every so someone can say, hey, your mom's
picking you up from school and it not be your mother, and that's a
lie. So this concept of people saying that Gosh, if you believe in
God, then you're okay, No, because who is your God? If
you tell me if you had a kid in class in history class talking about
Martin Luther King Junior, and they think he's a you know, a four
foot tall Asian woman with a mohawk and a limp. They're going to be
wrong. So it's not about the name. It's about the substance of the
name. It's there's more to it than just that term God and this kind
of concept that God's above all things and therefore every religion sees God properly is
wrong because every religion sees God differently, and those differences means something, and
they contradict. And if you say God is you know, if God is
round, and the next religion says God is square, and then the next
person says God is a triangle, they're different and they're contradictory. So you
have to find out if God's really a square, a circle, or a
triangle. And there's ways to do that, but just to pontificate about,
you know, well, how come and there's disagreements, Well, then you
know, you break down all the borders and it's one world and everybody gets
along and there's one currency and everybody's happy, and that's that's not the way
it is. There's borders for a reason. The best thing is not to
say, well, I'm wearing this shirt. I was born with this shirt,
So this is what I believe. It's to seek and you shall find.
That sounds familiar, doesn't it. Kf I on Demand