You're listening to kf I am sixty on demand. Joanne, Thank you for
being patient and welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. Hi Jesus. My question
has to do with being a fairly new believer. I have a lot of
background and spirituality and other different walks of life, but being middle aged and
becoming a born again Christian at a later age, I have a lot of
pull to want to go back to, you know, things of the flesh
and the world and things like that, and it's hard and I I just
sort of sometimes want to throw my hands in the air and just say,
Okay, this is too hard for me. I'm I can't do this.
So what are your suggestions for someone being a newer believer that's being drawn back
to the other ways of the older life. Well, first, I'm very
proud of you for even bringing it up and recognizing it, because there's a
lot of people that don't, or there's a lot of people that pollute their
faith with the luggage from other belief systems or other things that they did or
past lifestyles, whatever it was, or maybe and they just pollute it and
kind of ignore it. So I'm proud of you that you're even acknowledging it,
and that you're brave enough to even say, Hey, this is what
I think is going on, and I'm fearful of it. The process is
the same as anything else. I mean, Paul said it himself, and
this is somebody who had, you know, a later conversion by some standards,
said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. There is
always going to be the pull of other things, always, whether it's other
belief systems or just stuff, you know, the phone ringing things to do.
There's always going to be distractions in life if they keep you from anything
and everything. And the best way to do it is to build patterns and
habits like anything else. You that's what you did over those years. And
other belief systems, other processes, you spend time in them, and that's
what makes it difficult. That's why you hearken back to that, because you
yield to that which is easier, that which is known, versus that which
is new and more difficult. And so you need to build new new practices
and that is that build regiments for now, and whether it's reading scripture,
going to Bible studies, going to church, hanging out and fellowshiping with other
believers, both young and old, in different stages of their walk, you
know, signing up for the New Believers class at your church, doing things
that are going to build good habits and new habits. And the more you
learn, the more those old habits will fall away, the more you build
new ones and establish that relationship like anything else. I mean, you know,
you've been through breakups, Joanne, and and you can be with the
greatest new guy and you're still going, oh, but that other person used
to do this, or you know that that just happens. That's part of
the process. And you learn to see the newness of the situation for the
glory that it is and for the freshness that it is, and those that
you know, Scripture says that the the new person is created, and the
old self would die and fall away. And but that's a process too,
right, And I am doing all the things you just suggested, all right,
with Bible studying classes and you know, other fellowship and things like that,
And I am I am doing that. It's just that I get sometimes
to a point where I get either exhausted, exasperated, or just tired.
Sure you're learning something new, it's much easier to go back to the old
ways. Always always it's just not better. So I should just stay on
what I'm doing and no other suggestions. I wish I had a magic wand
for you, but I think this is this is what makes it worthwhile.
And a lot of people say, well, gosh, what about this?
One? About that? But really the common sense and the practical are God
given and the solutions to these things. It's like saying, well, I
want patience. You know how you get patients having to be patient, you
know, and you know how you build you don't you know, be careful
when you ask God for humility. By the way, a lot of people
forget that it comes with humiliation often, right. So it's these things that
you want and that are going to be part of your character, that you
want to be part of your character, I have to come with time.
It's the it's the forging process. Like with steel, if if you try
and go for that, when you heat up a metal and it gets that
red hot appearance and they take those hammer and tongs they start beating it into
a shape that there's a cooling down process or a curing process that they use,
and if they cure it quick. In cold water, the metal becomes
fragile and brittle and can break easy. The whole purpose of forging and to
strengthen the metal and strengthen the new shape is to slowly cool it down so
that as it slowly cools down, it becomes stronger and more dense. So
when you want something in life, if it's important enough, you want to
go through the process. You want to take the time. If you rush
through the process of something important, often it becomes kind of a faux version.
It's brittle, it's fragile, it's thin. It may look the same
on the outside, but really it doesn't have the same sturdy structure soundness to
it. So what ends up happening is, Joanne, you leave today and
you try and do it quick, then I'm going to get a call back
from you in a month or two going, oh, it broke down and
this and that. But if you slowly baby steps a little bit of increments
to build that structure within you and trust that God says in scripture that he
is the author and finisher of your faith. So although you participate in that,
God is doing a work inside you, and I'm trying to build those
things and build that structure inside you so that you are strong and can withstand
great things rather than just on the outside. Look, well, she looks
like a Christian, smells like a Christian, sounds like a Christian. Well,
everything should be good, but no, I want it to be a
real, honest to goodness change inside you and that just comes with time.
Honey, that's just very good process. Thank you so much. You're welcome
and you are on the right path. I'm very proud of her. There
is a lot of luggage out there as you are on your quest, and
people tend to bring it with them. You know. It's like talking to
some friends of mine and they're moving and not just moving, you know,
from a house to another house. They're moving out of state and the process
that goes with that. And it's interesting to hear them talk about. You
know, one of them's more sentimental and you know, holds onto a lot
of things throughout life, and the other is much more pragmatic and practical.
Well, if you haven't seen it in a year, then you don't need
it. And to go through that cleansing process of removing certain things from your
life to move into a new area or just you know, start fresh,
and those types of that's very difficult. It's very difficult with with the physical,
with the you know, the tangible and the things in your garage,
let alone when you spiritually and a lot of you know, Christians and you
you can't be you can't fall into this when you're sharing your faith that you
act like it's not a big deal for somebody to jump in. Okay,
come into my pool. I know you've been in that pool forever or you've
been in that belief system, but come over here. And sometimes Christians do
it as if it's a notch on your belt, and it's like, oh,
well, they said the words were good, everybody's good, and they're
done all right, moving on next, next, And do you know Jesus
Christ as your personal savior? And meanwhile, this person is going, wow,
you you picked me up and dumped me off in this foreign land.
And I don't recognize anything, and I'm nervous and scared and sort of excited
at the same time, and I don't know what I'm doing. And you
know, those moves are are huge, and it's not just words, and
it's not just the bad in an eye. It's not just those things.
That make the you know, total sum of the experience and coming to something
new and committing yourself to it. It's a process, and you're going to
be shedding layers of skin from the old YU as you adapt and build layers
of new skin for the new que And I am proud of anybody who is
bold and brave enough to go through that and experience both that physically, but
emotionally and spiritually as well. Genna, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show.
Hello, Genna, Hi, what's your question? Thank you for taking my
fall. It's great to talk to you. My pleasure. How can I
help you? I love your show? Thank is Why is Jesus Christ being
referred to as the God's one and only son? As I believe that.
I think it's good that we're all God's children. Good question. There's there's
differences in the way it's stated, and if you notice, there's also you
know, some capitalization changes when it's spoken about in scripture referring to when referring
to me as God's son, versus referring to the population of Christianity as children
of God. So you look at a couple of things. The big difference
is between the sense in which I am the son of God, and that
all people that are Christians are sons of God. So first you have to
look at the uniqueness, the difference of the son of God that would put
Christ as the son of God, whereas everyone else is only a son of
God's small ass. Why because when you're dealing with Christ's deity and the differences
between the two, Christ is the son of God. With this capital ask
for a reason humans are adopted, if you will, So Jesus falls under
the guise of son of God by eternal right and inheritance. You read about
that and Colossians one fifteen. Whereas humans are sons of God by adoption you
read about that Romans eight fifteen. So Christ is the son of God because
he is God in the very nature of God John one one. So the
difference is really dealing with the nature inherently. So you look over at man
and you say, well, what about man? Well, man is created
in the image of God Genesis one twenty seven, and remade in the image
of via the redemption in Colossians three ten. So you can think of it
this way, I, as Jesus, is of God by his very nature.
But you are as a human from God by way of creation. I
am divine in nature, but humans only participate in the salvation and not the
divine nature second Peter one four. And you can participate only in God's moral
attributes, you know, like holiness, love, those types of things,
but you cannot participate in his non moral attributes like infinity, eternity or any
of the other you know, larger aspects dealing with the omni attributes and things
like that. So there's a difference between the actualness and of sonship versus in
this case the adoption sonship. So there are some differences there, and it's
usually spelled out in scripture. I would go back to those verses when critics
ask. A book by Norman Geisler has a wonderful breakdown as he has wanted
to do about this, and shows that Jesus as the Son of God is
the natural son, no beginning, creator, God by nature. Well,
where as humans as sons of God are adopted sons have a beginning or a
creature or not the creator and not God by nature. So that's what separates
those two and specifically puts them together. Christian Welcome to the Jesus Christ show.
Yeah, so I am real quick. My phone might die in the
middle of this, so just try and answer whatever I say. But there's
been an overall theme. I'm a very faithful person, and I've been so
since I was little. I'm I'm a college student, and I find more
and more in these debates. I'm unable to back myself up. And I
say debates because I actively engage people in and try and show the light and
show them the truth. And I get questions such as, like, you
know our humans God's only focus. If so, why it's a universe so
big and so elaborate, and and I can't answer that. And also being
good just because God says so in the Bible? Is that the most noble
way to be good? And isn't there a greater humunity that we need to
live for? And I guess the overall theme is the Bible being taking more
figuratively now as opposed to literally. When I grew up, it was all
literal, and now it's becoming more and more figurative, which I think loses
some of the credibility. And I'm finding myself questioning my faith. I'm sorry,
I'm talking so fast my phone is just really close to dying. And
I guess one of the biggest things is, you know, looking at the
so and so be gat so and so be gat coming up with the age
or the Earth and having that fly in the face of so much scientific research
whether the Earth is, you know, less than twenty thousand years old or
more than four billion years old. I think that's one of the biggest uh
inconsistencies. And I am I'm finding myself. But you know that all Christians
don't believe that there there are there are old universe creationists. I know,
I know, I know, And that's that's part of the reason, is
that part of my problem is you know, how figurative can we take the
Bible? Well, yeah, but that's that that can be into interpretation.
You could obviously make an argument that to try and guess the age of the
Earth based on on genealogies that may or may not be complete is a bad
way to judge the age of the Earth. So that's that's that's a whole
different that's separate from everything else, some of the other concerns that you're bringing
up. Remember, just because you don't have the answer doesn't mean there isn't
an answer, Christian, that's ridiculous, ridiculous, and you got to turn
your radio down otherwise it's going to cause problems. Uh. So, so
don't assume that you don't. There's a lot of questions you don't have the
answers too, and it doesn't make them wrong. There's a lot of trigonometry
or geometry questions you may not be able to answer. It doesn't mean that
those things don't exist. Uh When it comes to your first question, you
say the universe is so big, what was the format that you that you
voiced that that you know we are humans God's only focus? Are we his
only concern in the entire universe? Knowing that the fact that there is light
years and light years and light years of space, yes, that's what scripture
says. The assumption that that is somehow out of balance is ridiculous because no
scientist understands completely what all of those light years and light years and light years
of space do for mankind. The the sheer numbers that it would take to
try and calculate why life is here and how it is here are so impossible
that to make that statement and say that each of those things don't have a
purpose or a place hanging in the balance is ridiculous. That it's like saying
that that every grain of sand doesn't have a purpose in the gravitational pull or
balance of the Earth. It does. Every little bit of the elements of
the Earth make it different from all other planets, even in your own solar
system. So if that makes the Earth's special in a way that is hard
to comprehend, then equally it is hard to comprehend the specialness of humanity as
it compares to God. And I mean also, I was confronted with a
thing that I couldn't answer, and that is you know, people say believing
and I agree that believing that all of this is random is is so hard
to believe. But believing that something, somebody out there, or some being
out there created it all that seems much more unnatural than a gradual process of
growth and evolution. I mean, how how do you how? No,
no, no, But because you have to already start the ball rolling in
evolution. So everyone jumps to that point and says, oh, well,
look this just kind of it was already there and it just gradually happened.
No, there's no there's no reason for you to believe that if you put
a violin in a corner in a long period of time, that it's going
to become a cello. They're they're just because they're similar in nature. You
wouldn't assume that they came from each other directly. You'd say that they came
from similar designs or specificities. But nothing in science, ever, ever,
states that the effect is greater than the cause. Ever, in any science,
it's always the cause is greater than the effect. Right, Well,
in evolution, that's backwards because you have to come from nothing. Do you
believe in evolution? Well no, not in not in the evolution that they're
trying to make you swallow. In adaptation, absolutely, of course there's adaptation.
There's adaptation. There's a difference between and scientists still have problems with the
concept of uh, certain types of evolution, which is why you get theories
like punctuated equilibrium. And yes, how old do you think the Earth is?
Because that's one of my biggest concerns. Well, that's outside of the
scope of this program, but people like my producer Neil believe that it's not
six thousand years old. But there's nothing that necessarily says that it's billions of
years old. Either the reason why the the the reason why the scientist has
to argue that concept or that theory of it being billions of years old is
because they need that time to be able to have transitionary forms to get to
where you are now. It wouldn't work in other in other words, but
there's no way for them to prove that, So they're all theories. Now.
There are many Christians, uh, I'll direct you to reasons dot Org.
There are many Christians that believe that the that the Earth is probably uh,
you know, fifteen million or more years old, So it's it's not
about that. But you can't just say, well, scientists say this because
scientists change all the time, and the theory of evolution is a theory for
a reason. It is. It was the theory of relativity, I mean,
and we assume that to be. But there's but there's changes in the
theory of relativity all the time, and that the the general theory of relativity
changes, just as Darwinism doesn't exist anymore. The new theory of evolution is
not the old theory of Darwinism, right, and that every five years scientists
gather to try evolutionists that are scientists try and gather to come up with,
well, what do we believe now? Because there isn't a consistency? Is
there a push on the believers side of or the believers front and maybe in
a scientific way to justify all of our beliefs and create better and more elaborate
speaking points other than twipping to a page in the Bible and interpreting that a
different way or using that to convince in an unconventional way. Is there.
It would be silly to use the scripture to argue about the scientific truths.
It'd be silly. And there's many reasons. Dot org would be one of
them. Doctor Hugh Ross and the folks over there at Reasons to Believe are
focused on they're all scientists. He is an astrophysicist. There are chemists,
there are biologists. There are all kinds of GISTs over there that you can
reference if that happens to be your your focus or concern. But a lot
of the things you're throwing out are unreasonable that people are throwing to you.
Things you know about evolution and the pan spermi at the beginning, this primordial
soup where everyone came from you still have to explain where that came from.
And they say, well, there is a big bane or just I mean
every every planet in the orb and everything out there is just a big glob
of chemicals and something so happened to crash into us, which but I think
that's what they is. But that still argues again, now where did that
stuff come from? Right, something has to be eternal, and then you
have to go back to you know, the theory of relativity, and you
have to go back to the law of thermodynamics, both first and second and
then and then I say, then, I say, well, all that
stuff came from God. And then they say, well where did God come
from? And then yeah, but you can't always been there, And they
say that seems like an easy way to not answer the question. That it's
not. It's a reasonable way. It's a very reasonable way that the creator
of the universe would have to be uncreated by definition, because if something created
the creator, now that creator's creation and not the creator. It is completely
reasonable, isn't it just a paradox? I mean, no, this is
this is the most skeptically I've ever questioned my faith, and I good a
hard time. You're gonna have to. I'm sorry, Christian, You're gonna
have to hold on as we have a break. But hold on. I
know your phone's going out, because I do want to talk to you more.
Ah, Christian's phone died and we were going at mock speed trying to
get those things out. So I want to downshift a little bit and go
over some things because there was a lot of garbage that was being tossed at
Christian as he's trying to defend himself. I think it's healthy to question your
faith. It's it's healthy to question your belief system. I've said it here
on the program many times before. You will not change the mind of a
devout Atheist, a develop Protestant, of devout Catholic, devout Mormon, a
devout anything. You will not change the mind of anybody that's devout, unless
they're a devout truth seeker. Those are the peoples who those are the people
who seek constantly and want to know the truth. If you just and it's
not to say that you don't adhere to something, you should. You know,
an open mind has the same qualities or properties as an open mouth,
and that is that it should remain open until something of nutrients falls into it,
and then you chew and swallow and digest. So I appreciate that Christian
was questioning, but some of the things were just ridiculous. One of the
questions is it is it good to or should you be good just because God
says so? If you're not good because God says so, you're going to
be good because someone else says so. I mean by what standard, societal
standard, individual standards. You know, if you go by society and Nazi
Germany, a society said it was okay to kill Jews and Gypsies and blacks
and gays. So is it society that says what's good and bad? No.
The whole purpose, the whole thing about good and bad, and the
fact that you know inherently that Hitler was evil no matter who you are,
no matter what your belief system is, is because there is something written on
your heart by your creator that tells you what good and bad is. In
every society. It's wrong to steal, it's wrong to rape, it's wrong
to murder in every society. And these things come from somewhere outside. That's
another thing. The understanding of God's existence. Everything in this universe is contingent
upon something else. It's pointing to something else to show its existence. The
tree to the acorn, to the tree to the acorn, You to your
parents, to their parents, so on. So it's reasonable to say that
the universe has to point outside itself to explain its existence. That is reasonable.
And another thing is is that Christians have problem. The Bible doesn't oppose
the special theory of evolution. You know that there's great change, it can
be possible within fixed kinds. It's the general theory of evolution where there's a
problem. The amba to human being. There is too many questions that are
left unanswered by that theory. Do not buy the hype and people get insecure
and they don't want to defend themselves because they feel stupid, don't Daryl,
Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. Hi, Jesus, I have a question
for you regarding being filled with the spirit and being baptized in the Holy Spirit,
and hoping you can give me some insight into your word. Okay,
My understanding is in when I believe and receive you, that I then also
receive your spirit and am filled with the Holy Spirit. But I have those
that have been telling me lately that there's a difference between being filled with the
spirit and being baptized in the Holy Spirit. And they are you using as
the criteria which I struggle with, that you're not baptizing the Holy Spirit unless
you speak in tongues. And I know that tongues is a gift from you
and not necessarily requirement for my salvation. But is it true that to be
baptized in the spirit, I mean maybe that's part of the question. Is
there a difference between being filled with your spirit and baptized with the Holy Spirit?
Let me let me ask you also, do they talk about the laying
on of hands? Yes, they do, okay that and they use obviously
people mandate to lay hands on to receive, okay, and where you know
where they lay hands on people and then they immediately received the spirit. And
then they use the example of Paul who people I think it was Annonias who
said that they didn't they had received Christ, but they weren't aware of the
Holy Spirit, and then he laid hands on them and they received it.
This can become a very heated debate in Christianity and different there are different factions
as to believers, and some people get very wrapped up in the Holy Spirit
saying no, you've got to do this, and it's you've got to speak
in tongues, and you've got to do all these things not true that it's
not what scripture says. A matter of fact, it says quite the contrary.
It says that certain people will get certain gifts and Corinthians it talks about
there will be those that have the gift of teaching and those that have the
gift of prophecy, and there will be, you know, all kinds of
different gifts, and not everybody has those gifts. That's what makes them gifts.
And so I this is can be a touchy subject with some. I
will point out that there are some inconsistencies to their belief and what Scripture says,
depending on where they stand in the spectrum of that belief system. But
for instance, there are times in scripture where I laid my hands on somebody
and they were healed, right, But there's also times where I didn't lay
hands on them and they were healed. There was even times, if you
remember the centurion, the servant of the Centurion, where I wasn't anywhere near
his servant and he was healed right. So there's also cases where people were
laid hands on in Acts and they spoken tongues. But there's also times where
people weren't didn't have hands laid on them and still spoken tongues. Acts nineteen
four through six, also Acts ten forty four through forty six. So just
on the surface of their arguments, if that's the arguments they're making, there's
problems. But salvation. Having salvation means that you've received the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one that brings you salvation. You can kind of
see it this way, Darryl, is the Holy Spirit brings you to me,
I bring you to the Father. So that process, you couldn't even
get to me. You couldn't even believe in that in that process unless you
had the Holy Spirit in your life. Now are there are others that say,
no, there's this secondary thing, And I wonder sometimes if people aren't
adding things to the process to make them feel more special. I'm not saying
that in this particular case. I'm saying that if you look at things like
tongues, the gift of tongues is misused. In the majority of churches that
use it, they don't use it in the biblical sense, the three different
types of glossolalia or speaking in tongues, and it's it gets to be like
a look I'm a have or have not, or look what extra? How
much better a Christian I am than you? That stuff bothers me, But
check out those scriptures and that will help you. KF I am six on demand