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The Attributes of God: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction #ScriptureUnfiltered
74 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we discuss the importance of supplementing scriptural knowledge with theological resources, and the role of our church community in shaping our understanding of the divine. You'll hear personal stories from Pastor Barron and myself, highlighting the impact of our relationships and culture on our theology.
We will also confront the challenging idea that God's will is not synonymous with personal happiness, and question how culture might distort our view of God. It's a journey through systematic theology to bolster your faith, and invite you to join us for a meaningful exploration of the Christian worldview and its foundation in absolute truth.
Timestamps:
04:45 Negative perceptions of God drive people away.
06:55 Finite mind conceiving infinite God; exploring holiness.
13:00 Series explores logical pattern of absolute truth.
13:52 Challenging one's belief and applying it.
20:13 Studying God is essential for Christian belief.
23:45 Seek advice from knowledgeable people in church.
24:59 Seek community for scriptural understanding, avoid charlatans.
28:34 Associate pastor predicts divorce from Bible study.
31:42 Pursue understanding of God to impact lives.
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Transcript
Starting a Podcast: Tools and Inspiration
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the church. I'm just going to leave that in there this time. Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church podcast. It's funny, I have a lot of people roll up and say like, oh, we want to start a podcast, but I can't do what you do, Dan. I'm like, dude, Ridley and I are just getting up here on a microphone and talking about the sermon. Yeah. If God's put something on your heart to do this, like talk to me, you could set up a podcast and do some stuff. A little software and a $80 microphone and all of a sudden you're off and
Impact of the Grove Hill Podcast
00:00:31
Speaker
away.
00:00:31
Speaker
Um, but here we are at the grove hill podcast and it's fun to have these conversations with you really about what's going on in grove hill about the sunday sermon i've had multiple people come up and say even just this week that they've been listening to the podcast they've been watching it listening to it
00:00:47
Speaker
consuming it on on long drives vacation Commutes while they're doing laundry and I'm starting to realize I'm like, oh my gosh people are listening to this people are being impacted people are consuming it So I know we're quite a few episodes
Understanding God's Attributes vs. Islam's 99 Names
00:01:03
Speaker
into this now. I think looking at the recordings We're 20 recordings in and of course we post all the sermons here, too but I'm excited to continue in to talk about the this scripture unfiltered series around
00:01:17
Speaker
the do not believe series you're doing for the sunday sermon this last sunday you did god is right god is talking about the attributes of god talking about what god is and you didn't go too much into what god isn't you just focused on this is what god is yeah you hit off i don't know probably a dozen two dozen different names somewhere i wanted to be in 16 different 16 different names
00:01:40
Speaker
names of God attributes of God the omnis Yeah, all the terms and it got me thinking about why it's important to Know God.
Defining God to Avoid Misconceptions
00:01:52
Speaker
I mean there's multiple reasons you gave a bunch in the sermon. Uh-huh But one of them is to know what isn't God and as you were talking about it as you were rattling off all these different names of God or attributes of God it reminded me of
00:02:05
Speaker
of this thing I went through called the crescent project to teach Christians about Islam and Allah. And they, they, I found out that they have specific names for God over in Islam. They have the 99 beautiful names of Allah. And I remember at the crescent pot project, they were like, Hey, and almost all these names.
00:02:26
Speaker
same attributes we would give to our God, except for three. And I remember one of the three different ones, but one of them was the trickster. The Allah is a trickster. He plays pranks.
00:02:40
Speaker
And I'm like, that's different. I don't know if I want to follow a God that plays pranks on me. So there are different gods out there. And some of them actually have overlapping attributes with our God and, but are still different at the core, which is why it's important to have all these attributes to kind of like define who God is and what he's not. Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I, I thought about this.
00:03:09
Speaker
as I was different places along the way preparing for the sermon on Sunday because it kept taking me back, even though I've not actually seen the movie or read the book, it kept taking me back to the shack because of that portrayal of God in the shack. Not again, because I don't know that much about the movie or the book, but just in this idea that there are lots of ill-conceived perceptions of God out there that we
00:03:36
Speaker
We hang those signs on his character and we're going, that's really not the God we're talking about. Don't know where you got that impression or got that idea, but that's not who he is. Are you not a fan of the shack then?
Cultural Misconceptions about God's Nature
00:03:53
Speaker
It's not fair for me to say, my gut says no, just because
00:03:59
Speaker
I try to err very seriously on the side of fear and reverence for God and his character. And I think when we portray God as a human being like that, that's crossing the line for me that doesn't make me very comfortable. I get what they were trying to do, I think, based on what I know. But I don't want to say too much about it just because, again, I'm speaking from ignorance here when it comes to that story. Maybe I should go watch the movie and see if it's
00:04:24
Speaker
I mean, that book was controversial when it came out and the movie was even more controversial when it came out, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because there's some other ideologies probably affecting that. I have not read the book or seen the movie. I've just stayed away from it because I don't know what it was. I think maybe the marketing around it or the hearsay around it just smelled
00:04:42
Speaker
off to me and I just don't know. And that's what it kind of, for me, is the more people talked about it, the more I kept thinking, I'm not hearing a whole lot of good about this. So I'm just going to kind of stay away from this one. But you know, we, we have evidence all around us of the, the wrong ideas of God that we see because you ask people, especially people who did not grow up in church, you know, what do you think about when you hear God and you'll hear people talk about the big guy in the sky and
00:05:09
Speaker
Kids quite often will describe a grandfatherly figure who sits on a throne. Some people, maybe because they've had more negative experiences, think of him as nothing more than a disciplinarian that wants to punish people for doing wrong. And all of those things, even the most subtle ones can have a tendency to drive us away from the honest truth about who God is and the way he portrays himself from us in scripture.
00:05:37
Speaker
I find we all have an imperfect understanding of God, right? Yeah, right. And it's really about like how much of an imperfect understanding do you have? Yeah.
00:05:47
Speaker
We'll probably, I mean, like you said in the sermon, we'll never have a complete understanding of God because he's the uncreated one and we are created. So we'll never know everything he knows. And I remember I had some friends a long time ago that loved this term called, I don't even know if it's like Greek or if it's Latin, but it's reformata, like always reforming, always reforming my understanding instead of forcing God into the mold that I believe he is in.
00:06:17
Speaker
It's a constant process of trying to learn who he is over and over and even nuances of it. You think you know what holiness is, but do we really understand holiness? You could do a deep dive in holiness and read all about all the mentions of holiness in the Bible and better understand it. It's like we understand it to some degree, but
00:06:35
Speaker
There's always more we can know. There's always more of ourselves we can reform or change. Right. I feel like a loaded theological word reform, but, you know, essentially to change, change who we are to align more with who God actually is. Yeah. What do you think is kind of a process, right? Oh, yeah. And, you know, going back to what you said to start this part of the conversation, when you try to conceive as a finite human being with a finite mind,
00:07:05
Speaker
the infinite nature of God, what you find is that there's no ground where you walk that you've already covered. There's always something new, something different to explore, and it's kind of like walking around in the dark in a flashlight. What you see right in front of you is going to be the thing that's portrayed at that moment that's made visible by the light, but you turn in a different direction, and suddenly you see, oh, well, here's a different aspect of God.
00:07:35
Speaker
maybe never discovered or maybe haven't discovered in a while. And so holiness, great example, that word just has such depth of meaning to it for anybody, but especially for a God who is not bound by space or time or the limits that human beings typically think of.
00:07:54
Speaker
So we are invited into this personal relationship with God. He does want the light to be shown on his character so we can come to know him better, but our light's not big enough to fully cover who he is. And so it's always going to be this new discovery day after day after day as we dig into who he is.
00:08:12
Speaker
I find that there's often a drift if you're not careful. If you don't stay plugged into the word, your view of God can drift because you're going to be influenced by somebody, by some thing, somewhere, some way.
Cultural Influences and the Drift in Understanding God
00:08:24
Speaker
You're going to be influenced unless you, even if you live up in a cave for the rest of your life and interact with nobody or no media, you're still going to drift in some ways because of your own thinking.
00:08:37
Speaker
And that's the part that scares me is I know what, I don't know if we're in the end times or not, but the thing that scares me the most is in the end times somewhere, like it said that Jesus will be like a rock of offense. Like he will come and people will be offended. Like this isn't Jesus. This is, this is a false prophet. This is Satan. This is, they're going to call him everything, but who he is. Right. That scares. That terrifies me that he could come back and I, I wouldn't recognize, not only not recognize him, but accuse him of being the opposite. Yeah.
00:09:07
Speaker
It's more and more convinces me. I'm like, I got to stay close to God. I got to stay close to the word. I got to keep reforming me because I don't want to be terrified. I think of him not only just being a lamb, but him coming back as a lion. So I try to remember like he's he's not always soft and gentle. Like we make him out to be like there's a part to him that's probably terrifying. I mean, you read him in Roman Revelation one, you read that picture and you're like, it's kind of a scary picture.
00:09:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's definitely in the book of James. I think even in Hebrews, this idea, this concept of how as humans, we have an ability to drift. If we don't keep ourselves moored to something that is absolute and true and eternal, we have ability to drift. And so back to what you were talking about,
00:09:54
Speaker
this idea of constantly staying connected to God and learning more about God, digging into his word more constantly keeps us in line with where we need to be. Whereas kind of like when you're at the ocean, you swim a hundred yards out from the shore and you look up and all of a sudden you're drifting down the beach because the current's taking that way. The current of our culture is to pull us further and further away from God.
00:10:20
Speaker
It requires intentionality to keep your eyes on the shore and make sure that you stay aligned with where God desires you to be so that you can discover the truth about who he is, uh, instead of those false concepts out there. I, I don't even remember what the article was about. I read yesterday and who said this, it was some celebrity who said I'm an atheist, but I'm always asking God for stuff. Well, that sounds, that sounds really funny on the surface and obvious, obviously it's completely
00:10:48
Speaker
I don't know, just didn't make any sense to think that way. But as you're thinking about that, I'm thinking, you know, that's just one of those little subtle comments because it is a celebrity that somebody else picks up on the idea and goes, okay, I don't necessarily have to believe in God, but I can ask him for stuff all the time. Well, that that's just not how it works. You know? Yeah. So culture, again, constantly skewing our concept of God and what he, in reality is.
00:11:14
Speaker
It
Systematic Theology: Building a Foundation
00:11:15
Speaker
was just recently I was reading about like the the father of moral relativism and I realized like they have no people who really buy into moral relativism and relativism in general like have no no problem with contradictions.
00:11:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm. That's how they live everything contradicts and they're totally okay with it I'm like, oh my gosh, like how are we ever gonna win that fight? Like if they're okay with contradictions and they're okay with Completely believing in completely opposite things like I'm an atheist, but I still ask God for stuff all the time It's a contradicting belief, but in a more world the moral relativism that's like Complete a hundred percent. Okay. I just like of course
00:11:54
Speaker
And I don't think that's by accident. I think that's one of the reasons why especially Christians, and I would say most religious people today who have any conservative leanings in them get frustrated by progressive movement stuff because there's no logic in arguing with them. They don't use logic. Logic does not stand in the face of moral relativism because I can literally look at you and say, you're wrong. I'm right.
00:12:21
Speaker
except for when I agree with you, then you're right. And I'm right. So the storage is constantly is changing. There's moving targets and it becomes impossible to have a serious conversation with somebody who doesn't have anything to hold onto. And again, that ties it back to last week's sermon, talking about the need for absolute truth in our universe and that that truth is what helps keeps us moored to something that is eternal.
00:12:45
Speaker
which is why you have to stay close to who is the originator of truth. And it makes sense you start with truth and then going on to, well, let's start with God because if you can't get the understanding of God correct, everything else is going to be difficult. I hope this whole series is going to kind of follow a logical pattern. First, here's a need for absolute truth.
00:13:06
Speaker
And if there's going to be absolute truth, there has to be a truth giver. His name is God. And well, next week we're going to come back and we're going to talk about the Bible and why we can believe that is the explanation of his truth, how we can rely on that. And so as it unfolds, I really, the series, I don't want to say this probably publicly because it might scare some people. We're really kind of taking people through a basic systematic theology class. And I think just giving them in very surface level stuff, but enough to give them confidence that when we talk about our faith,
00:13:35
Speaker
It's not something we just threw together last week. This thing has been hammered out over 2000 years among people who have tested and dried it and have seen it to be true. I find the thing that I think about as I sit down and listen to things is sometimes I hear something where I'm like, well, I've heard that before. But even on this Sunday, I'm like, I've heard this before, but I'm like, yes, but how well do I actually know this? How well
00:14:00
Speaker
Am I actually applying this? How much do I actually believe in this? Does my life align up to this? I find oftentimes as a Christian, I can hear something. And just because I've heard it before, cause I've sat through, you know, sermons my whole life now, you know, released as far back as I have memories, my church, I grew up in a Christian church. So sometimes I'm like, yeah, I've heard God is holy.
00:14:23
Speaker
And the thing that I want to challenge others with, the thing that I have to constantly challenge myself with, as we're going through this series and grappling with the truth, is how much do I actually believe the truth?
00:14:34
Speaker
That's why I like this title of the sermon series, like, do you really believe? And I think you put it as like, do you really believe the truth versus the not truth, the untruth? But I'm like, yeah, but how much do I believe the truth? Do I really believe the truth?
Misinterpretation of 'God is Love'
00:14:49
Speaker
Am I really lined up with this? That's the thing that I challenge myself with every Sunday sermon, of course, but even now when we're grappling with truths, how much am I leaning into the truth as the evidence in my life showing it?
00:15:01
Speaker
And the sermon on Sunday was intentionally titled to kind of lead towards that kind of thinking. God is. Well, that plays on two things. Number one, His statement to Moses, I am.
00:15:12
Speaker
What does that mean for us? And, you know, what did it mean for Moses and his people? And here we are, you know, thousands of years later, what does it mean for us? But also this idea that many of us do go, God is, I believe he exists, but we never finished the sentence because we don't know how to finish that sentence. We don't know what God is.
00:15:31
Speaker
We know that he's there and he exists, but that's just the beginning of the conversation. The conversation has to go much deeper for us to understand how this relationship is meant to work and what God has promised us and what God has not promised us. And I think these, it's almost like just a kick, a starting point, because we really have to understand the nuances. You even said it in the Sunday regarding the most on the most like, um, misunderstood one in this day and age is God is love.
00:16:00
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It's the one people cling to. It's the one they ran a Superball commercial about. And it was a bad commercial because everybody's debating on what the heck that means right now. Right. I'm like, so great. You created unclear commercial because people, and I think the devil specifically is trying to make it as fuzzy as possible, right? To manipulate it and change it. So it's not enough just to understand the word. You have to actually dive deep into what it means and how God views it, which is difficult.
00:16:30
Speaker
The Bible is clear again, if we know the Bible, that our God is not a God of confusion. He's not a God of chaos. He is a God who desires to reveal himself to us, has been doing it literally since the first day of creation. Whereas the enemy wants us to remain confused. He wants us to remain unsettled. He wants us to have this ambiguity about what God is and desires for us. And so I think while that commercial might have come out of a
00:16:57
Speaker
might have come, underline that word, might have come out of a sincere desire for people to talk about God. I think instead it left people talking about the purpose of the commercial rather than talking about the God they were talking about. And it did. It gave every indication that because God is loved, then God receives everybody just like they are and is okay with them being that way. But the Christian version of that sentence is God loves people where they are, but refuses to
00:17:25
Speaker
all of us, not just prostitutes, but pastors, deacons, Sunday school teachers,
00:17:32
Speaker
I saw a clip, it was actually a video of Ben Shapiro reacting to a clip. But the clip, it's so shocking because again, people believing contradictory things, in this case, the opposite thing. It's to those who like to cling to the truth, it's just shocking, hence it makes good social media content, hence Ben Shapiro reacted to it and published it because it's just, it almost becomes sensational. I said that right.
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah, you said sensational. Yeah, that's it. Yes. Sensational news, because it's just so crazy. But it was a video of a woman who is an adult entertainment worker, let's put it that way. And it was asked, she was wearing a Christian cross on this podcast. And the host was like, Well, do you believe in God? She's like, Yeah, I'm a Christian. You're like, Oh, so is God okay with what you do? Yeah.
00:18:30
Speaker
Would you say that God wants you to do what you do? Yeah. Would you say that Satan doesn't want you to do what you do? And she thought about it. She's like,
00:18:43
Speaker
Yes. So he's like, okay, so you're saying that God wants you to do what you do for work and Satan doesn't want you to do what you work. He's like, well, God wants me to be happy. God loves everybody. And I'm like, there it is. It's literally the complete opposite.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And what, you know what I picture when I hear that statement, I hear it way too often from people, especially when you're confronting them about some questionable decisions they're making. God wants me to be happy. I think about some poor child growing up and their sweet little grandmother who was trying their best to just kind of introduce a subject that they probably didn't have a grasp over themselves. And they're going, baby girl, God just wants us to be happy.
00:19:26
Speaker
God just wants us to be successful. I'm like, no, no, that's not the way this thing works. We don't get to just fill in the blank with our lives and go, okay, God, check this off and tell me it's okay because that's not God.
Encouraging Theological Study and Community Wisdom
00:19:40
Speaker
It's one of those ill-conceived ideas.
00:19:43
Speaker
Do you think reading the Bible is enough? Or do you think that most Christians should take it upon themselves to actually dive deeper by a few commentaries, like going deep on some things sometimes? Not that you're a theologian, not that you're even going to be a preacher or a teacher, but that it would be worthwhile for Christians to grow in their, I'd say their intellectual, or they're essentially going after him with their minds. Is that a good pursuit?
00:20:13
Speaker
So I'm going to back up because you use this word and I want to make sure we understand it because I think it helps to lend itself towards answering this question. The word theologian scares us, but the word literally means study of God. So if you are a Christian, if you are genuinely a follower of Christ, you by necessity must be a theologian. You should be constantly studying God and studying God's commands and his promises and all those things, his moral boundaries for our lives.
00:20:45
Speaker
The question you asked was, is knowing the Bible enough? And the answer is, depends on what you're asking. Enough for what? Is it enough to know what salvation is? Absolutely. Is it enough for us to be content to get the minimum amount in order to be safe? No. Because just like every other relationship, whether it's a parent and their child or a husband and wife,
00:21:11
Speaker
healthy relationships are constantly growing and constantly gaining more knowledge. And so while God has infinite knowledge of me and knows every ounce of my being, so he doesn't have to keep working on the relationship. I have to, because I'm a frail finite human being. And so I start with the Bible. I base everything I do on the Bible.
00:21:31
Speaker
But sitting around in a life group with other people and asking questions about God in the Bible is helping me to grow. Digging into a commentary, reading solid theological works by good men and women who've dug into the scriptures, all of those things help me to grow. They can't replace scripture, but they can add some depth sometimes to the scripture and what we know from it.
00:21:57
Speaker
find whether you like it or not, you do have a theology, which is a understanding of God in different ways. The question is, like we started the beginning of the podcast, how much does it actually align with who God actually is? To some degree, it's not lined up, and we don't know which parts of it, but that's why we have to study and go deeper and more nuanced on love and his omnipotence, on his omniscience, and all those different things. Hey, you triggered the balloons. The balloons.
00:22:27
Speaker
So here's a question though. I think as, as we are in a world today that has boundless amounts of resources of information, I can sit down and type God and I'll get a million different hits on Google, you know, or I can go to a bookstore, even a secular bookstore and get 150 different books on God and who God is. How do we,
00:22:54
Speaker
How do we stay in line with what is true versus what is opinion or what even is outright false here? Heretical teaching. And, uh, I think that's an important conversation to have because, um, again, we have more information at our, our fingertips now than any other generation in the history of the world, probably more than any generation combined, all the generations combined in the history of the world. So I literally can get.
00:23:21
Speaker
with a Google search, I can get Dan Sanchez's podcast on God mixed in with some Buddhist guy over in China, their take on the divine. And so how do you get into that stuff? And I mean, as a reader yourself, how would you advise people who are listening? How do you stay true to the word of God as you're looking at other resources?
00:23:45
Speaker
I mean, if you're unsure, then I would be going to people. There's always people in your church that you're like, this person knows a lot. Just last night, we were at the men's meeting and Adam taught, and I've noticed that every time I listen to Adam, I'm like, man, Adam knows stuff about God that I don't.
00:24:04
Speaker
Like an Adam would be a good person for me to go to and be like, Hey, what would you recommend? I want to grow in X area. I want to understand God about this, or I just want to know more about God. What should I start with? And Adam would probably make some really good recommendations. And there's lots of people in, in our church that are great resources. And they're probably the ones already teaching a Sunday school or, you know, they could ask you, but there's, there's multiple people they can go to that are studying and actually have great, great recommendations. Um, would probably be the best way to go off the top of my head.
00:24:34
Speaker
But it's honestly a question that I've wrestled with because I realized I'm like, shouldn't we all having sat in church our whole, or many of us our whole lives, be like as knowledgeable about the Bible as a 24 year old or 26 year old coming out of seminary with an MDiv ish? Yeah.
00:24:54
Speaker
Or maybe just a master's in theology, considering you haven't taken like Greek or Hebrew, which is, I've heard that's a, well, and you know, the reason I asked that question you Dan, cause I knew this is where you would go because I know you and your, your knowledge of the scripture that the things, the best safeguards for us as we're digging into this stuff, go back to, um, being in community with other believers we know and trust.
Accessible Theological Education for All
00:25:16
Speaker
Because I mean, to be honest that, you know,
00:25:19
Speaker
10 years ago, I remember walking into a, I'm not gonna call the name, but a famous Christian bookstore, not just a bookstore, but a Christian bookstore, walked in the doors and right there in front of me were their top 10 sellers of the week. And on the top shelf, one of the top sellers was a book by Benny Hinn, who is obviously a charlatan and a heretic.
00:25:38
Speaker
Contact me by email if you want to know all the reasons why, but he's not a true believer in the God that is of the Scriptures. And I walked in there in disbelief and thought to myself, why in the world are they selling his book in this store? So I did the only thing a good Christian could do. I went and turned every one of them around on the shelf and put books over the top of them so people wouldn't read it. I thought, this is crazy.
00:26:01
Speaker
But the only reason I knew that is because I knew other people who knew his character who had revealed to me that this is not a man of God that you want to trust his judgments. Yeah, it's funny. I I've struggled with this one question so much that I have a future ambition even in my life to to be at least part of starting a seminary that streamlines school because these days you can just
00:26:29
Speaker
Record all the lectures and have all the books ready to go and just like charge minimally for a proctored test to be able to work through so layman can actually get accredited and stuff and then maybe elders and you know Staff and even pastors because I feel like seminary is just outrageously expensive like I do think that's really expensive for the body of Christ Worthy go for you
00:26:53
Speaker
for anybody. And that's really kind of what we've been trying to do here at Grove Hill, trying to give people solid grounding in their theology. Like I said, this series right here has kind of been a basic systematic theology. The study you and I are doing together on Wednesday night for our men, hopefully giving guys a way to look at and develop a worldview for them that is based on true scripture.
00:27:18
Speaker
I hope that the content that they pull away from that is not just great leadership ideas for the church, but it's leadership ideas for their businesses and their homes. Too many churches, I think, approach what they do as let's pump people up with a motivational speech and send them back out into the world. And you know, I both know motivational speeches are good till you go bad and wake up on Monday morning and then they're gone. I really am trying to push our staff to focus on giving people meat that can carry them through the week.
00:27:49
Speaker
That's the thing. It's a it's a daily thing, right? Yeah, that's why I know like I Don't know I'm getting more and more integrated into Grove Hill and I find the more integrated it and the more it comes up The more I'm thinking about it again and Sunday this conversation on Tuesday. Otherwise, I'd be listening to it Wednesday and then I don't know I just daily and rip it
00:28:10
Speaker
daily prayers and Bible readings of my own. So the more integrated you become into the community, the more you become... Like I've heard it said, you're the averages of the five people you spend the most time with. Yes. That's true.
00:28:23
Speaker
bring other people around your church around you and you're going to be the average of them. And if we all do that collectively, then we're all going to be more like each other. Right. And then we'll start to seem weird to the outside world because we are, we're different. I saw that played out in real life. Um, years ago in a church that I was serving in, we had a group of women that wanted to form a Bible study together and
00:28:45
Speaker
They came to our associate pastor at the time and talked to him and said, hey, we're wanting to get together to do this Bible study. And he said reluctantly, yes, we'll let you do it. And he came back to me and he said, you want to know my prediction? And I said, what? He said, before this is all over with, most of the women in that group will be divorced. And I looked at him and I was incredulous. I said, why would you say something like that? Well, at the time when they started the group,
00:29:09
Speaker
three girls out of the eight that were in there had just gone through pretty bad divorces were pretty bitter. He said, you watch and see if that bitterness doesn't become a poison to the entire group. And within about less than a year, six of the eight were divorced. Oh my goodness.
Community Influences on Personal Beliefs
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah. And I was floored because he basically had prophetically announced over that group, that bitterness is going to become a poison. He said, I'm going to try to fight it. I'm going to try to do what I can. He said, I want them to do the study together, but
00:29:37
Speaker
It did it, uh, the people that they were spending their time with because they instantly kind of connected and started hanging out together on the weekends. And, uh, we were even watching it. It was, it was unfolding, um, some pictures of them on the weekend. The girls would go have girls weekends together and leave their husbands at home. And I thought, Oh, I'm watching it unfold. And I don't, I don't even know what to do about it. So it was sad.
00:30:02
Speaker
I always felt like my secret skill in life was just picking better, picking good friends. I married my wife because she's much better than me. You did very good with your wife. Fantastic choice, my friend. So he who walks with the wise, uh, will be wise, but the companion of a fool will be destroyed. That's right. It's proverbs. I think it's 1320. That's a good one. And so let's put that out there right now. And this is where we live in. How many of us spend way too much time online with all the fools? Good work.
00:30:31
Speaker
We've even cut down into the amount of time we spend with our family and friends. I saw a friend of mine post something the other day about what life used to be like in the eighties when I was in high school, which was way before you were born probably. But in the eighties high school, you used to get out of high school and you would go and you would hang out in the parking lot with your friends and you would play games or you would go to bonfires on the weekend and listen to music together and that kind of stuff. Kids don't do that stuff anymore.
00:31:00
Speaker
They get online and it's sad. And yeah, so I know I sound like an old man and maybe I am. They do in my neighborhood though.
00:31:09
Speaker
Do they? There's a lot of Christian parents here. A lot of Dave Ramsey people live in this neighborhood, and they all have very similar values, and they all kick their kids outside. My kids probably have more of an upbringing of what it was like in the 90s or the 80s, because they're not even allowed inside a lot. They're like, can we come inside? I'm like, no. We want to play video games. No. Why? No. There are two things we know about your kids and your neighborhood. They're getting good Christian values, and they all know how to budget.
00:31:40
Speaker
You know, that's great. Well, cool.
Podcast's Mission: Spreading the Gospel
00:31:43
Speaker
Let's continue pursuing God. We need to better understand God in order to really understand what the truth is. We all have an imperfect understanding, but through time and discipline and study, we can continue to be, understand him more, understand the truth more.
00:32:00
Speaker
and therefore have a better alignment with ourselves on the truth. That's the whole point. So let's continue to go after him and remember that our goal here is to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible. And that's the mission of Grove Hill. That's the mission of this podcast. So share this episode with somebody who is wrestling with God, might want to know more about God or is thirsty, is hungry,
00:32:28
Speaker
or just needs to understand the truth more.