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4: What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?
244 Plays4 years ago
Joining Laura Fleetwood this week is Pastor Jim Mueller. Jim is the Lead Pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church in St. Charles, Missouri. He’s going to tackle what it means to be a Christian and how we live that out in our lives.
Highlights from the episode include:
*How “Little Christ” is in us
*God’s greatest intervention
*Divine Love, what is it?
*The “snap the finger” argument
*Adam & Eve
*Be honest like Paul
*God is for YOU
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Normal Goes A Long Way is brought to you by Messiah St. Charles: https://messiahstcharles.org/
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production.
Introduction and Jill's Faith Journey
00:00:04
Speaker
Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
00:00:41
Speaker
This is episode four of normal goes a long way. I'm Jill Devine. And in episode three, Laura Fleetwood and I wrapped up our conversation about my faith journey so far. And so it is time to start digging in. It's time to start talking to experts. Start getting those questions answered.
00:01:03
Speaker
that I have about all the things. In this episode, Laura Fleetwood is going to talk to Pastor Jim Mueller and they're going to discuss what does it mean to be a Christian and how does that look in your life?
Pastor Jim's Background and Spiritual Path
00:01:19
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to normal goes a long way. We are in the studio today with Pastor Jim Mueller. And in the last episode, I teased this session by saying that Jim is one of the most unpasterly pastors that I know, meaning that if I were to encounter you on the street, Jim, I wouldn't think, oh,
00:01:42
Speaker
He's a pastor for sure. Well, thank you. That seems like a good thing. I thought you might kind of like that. It's not bad. That compliment. So tell us a little bit about your background. How did you become a pastor and what are you doing today before we kick things off?
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, well thank you for having me on and welcome to everybody out there. This is exciting. I was a kid that grew up in Houston, Texas. Two parents, I had a sister who's now a teacher, and my childhood was pretty normal, but my path, I thought, was gonna take me to law school. So I ended up at the University of Texas, and as I was kinda wrapping up, I had a call on my life, so to speak, a mission experience in Mexico.
00:02:26
Speaker
And down in Mexico, working with kids down there, I finally realized why God had given me life purpose. And my purpose was to bring Jesus to the world.
00:02:42
Speaker
And from that point on, I went to graduate school, got a master's degree, including some time at Cambridge University and at Concordia Seminary St. Louis and then recently finished a doctorate a few years ago at Portland Seminary. I now have four kids, one wife,
00:03:01
Speaker
and a really great life and living here in the St. Louis area now. So God's taken me around the world. God took me out of Texas and now he has me in the center of our country where I hope the message can get out to all the borders.
00:03:19
Speaker
I think you are the perfect person for this topic that we're going to cover today because you have the educational background and yet you're such a relatable guy who uses everyday language and can really relate to people where they're at.
00:03:38
Speaker
when it comes to
What Does It Mean to Be a Christian?
00:03:39
Speaker
their faith. So I'm excited today that we're gonna just be starting from the ground up and asking the question, what does it mean to be a Christian? When we first started thinking about this podcast, Jill and I did a survey and we asked a wide range of people that very question. And it was fascinating that there were so many different responses. What were some of the things they said?
00:04:05
Speaker
Oh, it went everything from what you believe, right? I believe in Jesus, to how you act or how you behave, that that has to be a certain way. Some of it was all about where you would spend eternity. Some of it was about how you should live life on this side of eternity.
00:04:24
Speaker
So I think many of the responses hit different aspects, but we want to just start right here for the person who maybe has heard about Christianity or has dabbled in it or has family or friends. They may have a certain perspective and let's just start at the beginning. How would you answer this question?
00:04:46
Speaker
It's a great question, and simply put, a Christian means little Christ. It means you're a little Christ, which is a tall order, because it's saying that a Christian somehow is embodying Jesus still on the earth. And he even promised that to his disciples. He said that he was gonna leave and he was gonna send a spirit, and then his spirit was going to dwell in them and live in them.
Christianity vs. Religion
00:05:14
Speaker
And so I would say like anytime somebody has experienced a Christian in life, they're either letting that light shine, the light of Jesus, the spirit of Jesus is in the room where they're holding it back. And Christianity in general, I think one of the worst things we can call Christianity is a religion.
00:05:32
Speaker
Ooh, say more about that. It's not a religion. A religion is man's attempt to find God or to please God. Christianity is so different. Christianity was God coming to us, God finding us. It's subtle difference.
00:05:50
Speaker
Christianity certainly has religious aspects to it. I wouldn't say those are the best aspects. Sometimes they're just man-made rituals and man-made music and man-made liturgy and man-made prayers attempting to relate to God or to please God or to even to worship God, but sometimes
00:06:09
Speaker
It seems like those religious practices become the thing. They were never meant to be the thing. We were meant to have Christ dwell on us. That is a Christian, a little Christian, a little Christ. So how does one then become a little Christ? You encounter Christ. You encounter Christ. You receive Christ into your life. So when, you know, in the Lutheran church, what we would say is like this process starts at baptism.
00:06:39
Speaker
where God has promised in baptism to forgive us and to give us eternal life. And so at that moment, we would say that you have become a Christian, you become a little Christ. Now, all throughout your life then, you're seeing ways that you wanna live this out, ways in which you can reflect Christ better and better. And we all grow in that. We all need to, I need to, I need to all the time. But it is about,
00:07:11
Speaker
being Christ in the world, which is why Jesus said when he described his church, he never described an institution. He called the church his body. You're the body of Christ.
00:07:22
Speaker
And in the letters of Paul, Paul talks about this a lot. He talks about the body of Christ and he's talking to sometimes the little people and he's saying, hey, I know you might feel like a little finger and that doesn't seem all that important or maybe a little toe and that doesn't seem like it's all that important. I mean, everybody wants to be the brain or you want to be the heart or you want to be the trapezius muscle. Like that's what we all want to be.
00:07:45
Speaker
But Paul says they all work together and they all have a purpose and that when they do, the body of Christ, the Christians, are being Jesus in the world.
00:07:58
Speaker
So let's step back a little bit for the person who may not know a lot about who Jesus is. I mean, Christianity sounds an awful lot about Jesus, right? We're little Christs and Christ is Jesus. So tell us how you would describe Jesus and what does it mean to be baptized into him?
Jesus' Mission and Divine Love
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if you go back to the very beginning,
00:08:28
Speaker
man has been attempting to improve their life because what we realize what people realize is that this world is broken there's people that are against me sometimes my crops don't grow and i don't have enough to eat maybe i lost a child in birth we've all experienced this and people have always experienced this and so there have been attempts that people have made to try to somehow
00:08:56
Speaker
please nature or please the gods to try to get their attention to say please rain down water so that our crops can grow and our family can survive. Please protect us, we might pray, because we're worried about an onslaught of enemies that might invade our home or something like this. We've been doing this forever. And what we believe, what Christians believe,
00:09:20
Speaker
is that God was always intervening despite sometimes the attempts of what people tried to make happen. God was always intervening. And in fact, his greatest intervention is when he sent his son into the world, something that the prophets for hundreds of years, hundreds of years had been predicting would happen.
00:09:44
Speaker
And when his son was born, that's really the story of Christmas. The story of Christmas is God's son coming into the world and suddenly this chaotic world, broken world that we've all been experiencing, suddenly Jesus is born into the world and he is God-man. He is fully God and he's fully man.
00:10:05
Speaker
And he's with us and he starts to show us what God is like and he starts to do God things in the world. We're talking about miracles. We're talking about his teaching and trying to elevate humanity to what the point always was. And then finally he gave his life.
00:10:23
Speaker
He gave his life, and that's the cross, that's the crucifixion experience that we talk about so much in Christianity, but Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice for the world. He destroyed death, which is our greatest enemy. He broke the power of sin, and we still experience it, but he broke its power. And then ultimately, the story of Easter Sunday, we have an empty tomb, and he's back with his friends.
00:10:53
Speaker
And he's saying to them, everything's changed. Everything's changed. The whole place can be set back to order. People can be one. People can know God. People can be whole again. People can be healthy again. And ever since, all of us who look to Jesus and we want to follow Jesus, we want to, as best we can, reflect Jesus in this world.
00:11:17
Speaker
we've been striving to see that this kingdom that he talks about, that we help make it happen. And ultimately, we know it will happen. I mean, that's what we talk about with eternal life, but this is who we wanna be. And to me, the thing about Jesus that he talked about all the time, he demonstrated all the time, and this is what's so counter-cultural is Jesus said,
00:11:45
Speaker
The ultimate force he brings is divine love. And when I think about the world and the ways we react to people, this is why Jesus' teachings are so compelling to me. Because the way to respond to everything, to your friend, to your family, to your enemy, to your mean neighbor, Jesus says the best way to respond is love.
00:12:12
Speaker
And hopefully like divine love, not just like a feeling I have, but divine love. And some of those neighbors won't respond to that, but to imagine just expressing this divine love. And Jesus says, this is the only thing that can change hearts. The heart of your friend who needs to be encouraged or the heart of your enemy who needs to stop seeking revenge.
00:12:40
Speaker
That's powerful. And as I hear you talking, there's, there's many reasons Jesus came, but it seems like it boils down to two. He came so that we might have eternal life for those who believe in Him.
00:12:55
Speaker
And he came that we might experience the kingdom of God here on this side of heaven as well. So it's like wanting to be a Christian and what it means to be a Christian is both about where you'll spend eternity and what you do in the here and now.
00:13:16
Speaker
And I think a lot of people just think about it as where you'll go after you die. Yeah. Right. And that, I mean, that's a huge part of it. It's a huge part of it. Get out of jail free card. Right. But it's also about what, what we do here. And so I wonder if you could talk a bit more about why Jesus had to come so that we can have eternal life. Why didn't God just say,
00:13:46
Speaker
I want everybody to be in heaven with me. So let's start there. Why
Understanding God and Faith's Mystery
00:13:52
Speaker
did Jesus have to come that we may live in heaven after we die? I mean, he had to come because of how broken we all were. Because of how broken this creation is. Natural disasters. Just the fact that the whole planet's just groaning to be close to God. But also all the conflict and everything that we have with each other.
00:14:15
Speaker
Now, I have also heard the argument, if God is good, why doesn't he just snap his fingers and make everything good? Why do we assume that's possible? Is it because of something we heard when we were three years old when maybe our grandmother or somebody else said, God can do anything he wants? I question if that's true. I question, can God be evil? Can God go against his nature? Can God be sinful?
00:14:46
Speaker
I think the answer to those is no. And I think there's a lot of other things that are no. I think the snap the finger argument is really discounting the spiritual powers and authorities that are alive on this earth and in the universe. And in many ways, that's what God was up against. The things we feel
00:15:07
Speaker
when we're sick, when we're sad, when we're just broken, the things that we feel, we're sensing that spiritual battle that's going on. And so every other answer that we could imagine, why doesn't God just do 200,000 miracles today and just kind of clean up our streets? We end up blaming God. And yet throughout the Christian scriptures,
00:15:32
Speaker
The finger always points at us. Why are we harboring our anger? And so like my central belief is this, that God did everything he could to restore this earth and to restore all people. God did everything God could do to save everyone. And so my mission is to make that happen. And so when we talk about Jesus
00:16:01
Speaker
destroying death. When we talk about Jesus taking on sin on our behalf, this seems to be the way. This is the way that the prophets talked about it. This is the way that Jesus talked about it. This is the way that the church has always talked about it. And so when we think about other ways that God could have done it, I think we're just thinking, I think this is the way.
00:16:26
Speaker
It's an important point and something that I'd like to continue to remind our listeners all throughout this podcast is that we can try to understand God, but at the end of the day, we're humans and not God. So we try to put these constructs and these rules into place
00:16:51
Speaker
But so much of it is a mystery, and it will be a mystery until we get to heaven. That's why it's faith, right? So, you know, I'm sorry to disappoint you guys listening. If you're looking for all of the hard and fast and concrete,
00:17:10
Speaker
realities, a lot of it we're just not meant to understand. And all we can do is do our best and trust that Jesus' spirit, like you said, who now lives in us is revealing things to us as we go. It's a journey. Everybody out there, close your eyes just for a second. And I want you to imagine, what does God look like?
00:17:38
Speaker
And if you're picturing an old white man with a beard on a cloud, that's a mistake. In fact, the Jewish people were forbidden to paint God. You couldn't possibly reflect all that God is. Now, if I say, what's your picture of Jesus? That's a little different.
00:17:58
Speaker
We could have some picture of Jesus. He was Jewish and he lived in the first century. And he probably looked like a lot of people at that time and he was descended from David and his mother was Mary. So there maybe are some ways that we can start to picture Jesus who was God's son born into a human body. But just by trying to even picture God or think about what God's like,
00:18:24
Speaker
It's far better to use the metaphors that Jesus uses to describe God as opposed to just the pictures that we draw or the images that we have in our head.
Origin of Sin and Brokenness in Genesis
00:18:38
Speaker
And what would some of those metaphors be that Jesus used to describe him? He talked about them as like a foundation.
00:18:48
Speaker
and a creator, and he's good. Of course, in the Lord's Prayer, he starts by saying, our father, the Aramaic word there is actually abba, which some would say is a little closer to like, dad, a bit more informal. So he's parental, which means he's nurturing like a mom. He secures like a dad should.
00:19:17
Speaker
And for anybody out there with maybe a negative experience with parents, I get that. But this is the way that Jesus talks to him and talks about him. And I think it's also important to remember back to the beginning what we know about the story of creation from Genesis.
00:19:38
Speaker
that God created man and created the world originally as an original blessing. It was good, right? In the beginning, it was as it was supposed to be where man and woman walked with God in the cool of the garden and the relationship wasn't broken. There wasn't pain and sin. And then what happened?
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's funny because each of those six days, the last word of the verse is good. It was good. It was good. It was good. It was good. It gets a little repetitive. Like, why couldn't the writer of Genesis just get to the end and say, oh, by the way, all those days are good. No, he's trying to get that. He's trying to get that into your head. This Hebrew phrase is actually Hebrew greeting that people give to each other. And they say yom tov, it means a good day. Once you have a good day, it's a type of blessing that you would give on somebody, yom tov, have a good day.
00:20:38
Speaker
And that's what it says at the end of each of those verses and each of those days. He separated the water from the sky. It was good. He created the vegetation, the fish, the birds. It's good. He looked at his creation of people, mankind, Adam and Eve. It's very good. It's very good. And I love what you said about the cool of the garden.
00:21:04
Speaker
when it's still a little bit of summer in the air, we miss the cool of the garden sometimes this time of year. Maybe we'll use a different verse around the winter, like we need the warmth of the fire, I don't know. Yeah, but what happens? Genesis three is one of the most powerful stories of the Bible. And I think one of the reasons is because I can read myself into it.
00:21:30
Speaker
I can think about Adam, and I can think about Eve, and I can think about the relationship. I can think about the temptation that comes from the serpent. I mean, the temptation is one that I think we all have. I know I do. The temptation was, take and eat this fruit, and you will know good and evil. And Eve and Adam, that seems to be something they want.
00:21:54
Speaker
The word know though isn't just to know it, it's to experience it. In some ways it's actually to decide what's good and evil. They wanted to say in this whole thing. They wanted to know good and evil. And of course the whole time, God's telling them don't eat with that fruit.
00:22:13
Speaker
because he wants them to know good. He doesn't want them experiencing all the negative that can come from this decision. The human in me wants to say, wait a minute, wait a minute. They ate a fruit. Now their life is lost. Now eternal life is lost.
00:22:35
Speaker
Now their relationship is broken where they're shamed and they're hiding behind fig leaves and they're shamed when God is walking in the garden near them and calling for them. Why is that one little act of disobedience? Why is it such a big deal?
00:22:54
Speaker
And it does seem extreme. And by the way, sometimes when we talk about sin in the world, I'm sure a lot of you are like, look, is it really that bad to tell a little white lie? The answer's in chapter four of Genesis. The bite of a piece of fruit and the disobedience of God was the first sin. The second sin happens in Genesis four, where their sons are seeking to make sacrifices to God.
00:23:23
Speaker
Cain is now jealous of his brother, and he's so jealous of his brother, he murders his brother. And so what starts as like a little white lie kind of sin, like what we would consider a small sin, it leads to the worst sin a mom can imagine. Not just losing a child, but at the hands of her other child.
00:23:47
Speaker
I mean, this thing downgraded fast. Like this sin thing has taken over really, really fast for Adam and Eve. And so when I read myself into the story, it's just a reminder to me that some of the little wrong things I do don't seem like a big deal, but hurtful words to somebody might seem small, but it can do a lot of damage and I've seen it.
00:24:17
Speaker
Now we gotta build each other up. We have to see the best in each other. We need to look at each other through the eyes of Jesus and see who God created them to be. Maybe not the stuff they're stuck in right now, but who God created them to be. What kind of purpose they might have in this world. And we need to inspire that and cultivate that for them.
00:24:37
Speaker
So yeah, it might not seem like a big deal to cut somebody down a little bit. It's a big deal to them sometimes. And apparently it's a big deal in the realm of eternity because there's big consequences for walking away from God. And that's what the first couple did, but I don't blame them because I do the same thing all the time. So if I can make an attempt to summarize
00:25:05
Speaker
knowing this is not a full explanation, but just kind of wrap up where we've been. God created the world and humans to be good. And it was. And it was. Then humans decided they wanted to know, right? They wanted to try to understand, to be able to explain things.
00:25:31
Speaker
And they ate from the fruit and that created what you may hear as the fall, right? The fall. And humans were now separated from God in a way that they weren't before. And they now experienced pain and suffering in a way that they weren't intended or created to. But God gave them the choice. They got to choose.
00:25:56
Speaker
then God says, I'm not okay with this pain and suffering in the world. I want to make this right. And so he sends his son much later, and we'll get into that later in the podcast and other episodes, but humankind waited a long time for Jesus to come.
Jesus' Role in Salvation and Christian Mission
00:26:18
Speaker
But when the time was right, Jesus came.
00:26:24
Speaker
fully God, fully man, to set things straight. He took the pain and the suffering and the sin of the world on his shoulders, died for our mistakes, for our sin, for our suffering, rose again, conquered all of that. And now because of that,
00:26:50
Speaker
Because of his life, death, and resurrection, those who are baptized into him, who have his spirits come into them, their physical and spiritual bodies, are now little Christs walking around in the world and have the promise of eternity in heaven. Isn't that so beautiful?
00:27:14
Speaker
And that's such a simple explanation, but that's the overall story. This is the best story you've ever told. Because the story so often we tell is, boy, those Christians are judgmental, or those Christians, they want to control the government, or those Christians are pushy.
00:27:37
Speaker
But this is the best story he never told because too often we don't tell it clearly enough that God did everything he could to save people and it happened. And now we just want to share that love with everybody who would hear it because we don't want anybody to die without hope. We don't want anybody to despair. And as much as I can in this world while we're waiting for the next one,
00:28:04
Speaker
I want that love to be in this world now. Now there is though still current conflict because just because we are little Christ's does not mean that we're perfect. Like we are still sinners on the daily, on the minute by minute, right? So just because Jesus came doesn't mean that it has been restored yet. Right.
00:28:28
Speaker
So talk a little bit about that and the other promise that we are still waiting on. Yeah. No, we're definitely waiting for it and we definitely all experience it. I mean, Paul complained about it all the time in his letters. It's funny, he's writing to churches and the whole time they're probably reading it like, oh, this is the apostle and he knows so much and we're just going to soak in his words. And then there's like a point in some of his letters where he just says,
00:28:58
Speaker
Man, all the good I wanna do, I don't do it. I wanna do it, but I don't do it, and I try to do some good, and it ends up being bad, and Paul's like, look at me, and he even calls himself this, he says, I'm the chief of centers. So if the best missionary in the history of the world says, if this all depends on me, it's gonna fail, because I'm still so broken, and I'm still selfish, and I'm still, I don't always want what God wants.
00:29:27
Speaker
But he's living for what God wants. He's going to try to live for what God wants. That's where he puts his faith. That's where he puts his hope in his future. That's what he ultimately wants for the world. And so in the midst of all our missteps sometimes to reflect a perfect God.
00:29:45
Speaker
Luckily for 2000 years, this is how Jesus has been working. He's been working with regular, normal, messed up people like me. And it makes me feel good that Paul was so honest in those letters, so I don't beat myself up all the time for the man I wish I could be. And I still want it. I mean, I still wish I could be better and holier, but it makes me happy.
00:30:13
Speaker
that I can be honest like Paul was. I'm never going to be the perfect dad, but I hope to be a Christian dad, a little Christ dad. I'll never be the perfect husband, but I hope I reflect a lot of Christ all the time. It's really hard living in this world sometimes, but at the end of the day, we all have to live for something. And for me, I think it's that divine love in the midst of all of our struggles. It's that divine love that I want to live for.
00:30:43
Speaker
And it's curious to me that when God sent Jesus, it was all about what Jesus did. Jesus was the only being that could take that weight of all the sin of the world and pay that price. No human being could do that for us.
00:31:06
Speaker
He had to do it. But now he invites us to be part of what he's doing in this time and in this space. That's amazing. That is really amazing. And we have a promise as well that he is coming back to this earth to make things right on this side of heaven someday.
Challenges Christians Face Today
00:31:32
Speaker
That's the promise we are yet waiting for.
00:31:36
Speaker
And we get to be part of sharing that divine love so that as many people as possible are going to be standing there with us. And to me, it's just such an awesome, it is a responsibility, it is. But to think that for some reason in God's grand plan,
00:32:06
Speaker
Those of us who are alive now have been chosen to be part of what he's up to.
00:32:12
Speaker
What an honor. And you're so right, because when you talked about Jesus was the only one who could have done what he did, a soldier can give his life or her life, I'm thinking to Afghanistan just a little while ago, we had men and women give their lives to try to help people, try to get people to safety. In some cases, they do it for their country,
00:32:41
Speaker
And it's noble, like it's beautiful to see people who would put their life on the line, who would sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. We know it's noble and it's honorable. And if Jesus had done that, he would have been noble and honorable in her eyes. But those soldiers can't atone for the sin in the world. They can't break death. And that's why it was so important that the Christ would be also God.
00:33:07
Speaker
that God and man were present in Jesus. So he could deal with our stuff.
00:33:15
Speaker
but do it with divine consequences and divine results, divine power. And to think what that means to me and the calling he puts on me, this is like one of the greatest, most challenging, most honoring, most humbling thing that Jesus says. He says to his disciples, and I guess he says to us,
00:33:39
Speaker
you will do greater things than these. The thing he was doing, like here's a kid raised back to life. Here's water turned into wine. You can do greater things than these. Now, not me alone, not you alone, not any of us alone, but that's the power that he's put within his body.
00:34:05
Speaker
Christians, Christianity, the church. And I think so often we lose sight of that and we just, we live in this life just trying to do the best we can. No, no, no, recognize the power that he's put in us. And don't take my word for it, take his word for it. He's the one that said it.
00:34:26
Speaker
And I gotta say, there's been times in my life where I think I've experienced that in people. I have seen a holy and beautiful love in people. I have seen an experience, unbelievable forgiveness. I've seen that in action in people who sacrifice and who are generous and who bless. And it's so beautiful. So yeah, I mean, that's what being a Christian means to me.
00:34:53
Speaker
So how do we wrestle with the fact that there are so many Christians who don't act like that, who we disagree with and who we don't want to be around and who kind of put a bad taste in people's mouth about Christians? Because that's true as well. Sure.
00:35:19
Speaker
So what do you say to the person who looks at Christianity and says, well, the Christians I know, I don't want to be like them. Yeah, you know what? There's a lot of Christians I don't want to be like either. I guess if I could say something to believers out there, I would want to say this. People rarely need your opinion. They rarely need opinions. What they need is friendship.
00:35:48
Speaker
They need relationship. They need to know that they're not alone. They need to know that people are for them. And it seems to me that like a lot of the opinion that we want to put out there
00:36:00
Speaker
you know the facts will often take care of themselves but they can't do it without a relationship and so sometimes we come in and like we want it we want to get our point across I would say pointless and just be present with people and love people and I if we could do that oh my oh my goodness I think I think it would be so much more beautiful but
00:36:25
Speaker
Hey, to anybody out there who you've been around Christians and you're like, oh, some of these people, like I can't stand them. I don't want to be around them. I'm with you. I don't either. Come sit at a ball game and have a hot dog with me and said like, it'd be a lot more fun. And, you know, there's that saying that people say people don't want to know what you know until they know that you care.
00:36:48
Speaker
I don't care what you know until I know what you care. Well, that's so true. That's true for me too. You know, when a professor walks into a classroom and just starts spouting information and your whole goal is just to make sure you get the answers right, that's not what Christianity is.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yes, in heaven, we will get there and we will find out the right answers and we will find out all the ways in which we were wrong. We are not taking a quiz in this life to make sure we get all our facts right or our beliefs right. We're all gonna fail that test to some degree. The question is, who are we walking with when we're going through this life? And if it's Jesus, if we're following Jesus,
00:37:34
Speaker
then we've got the only answer we need. It's that simple. It's that simple. So yeah, if people wanna always draw you into a debate, that's not a Christian thing, that's an unhealthy person thing. If people are always on the attack, that is not something that we tell our people to do from the front. And if we're doing that in church, if we're telling people to be that way, to always be the antagonist,
00:38:02
Speaker
then we're leading in a stray. We are being anti-Christ. We are being against Christ in that moment. So a challenge to Christians out there and also people who are just maybe getting to know Jesus a little bit or getting to know a Christian a little bit.
00:38:17
Speaker
Be very careful that you're around people who don't just want to get their point across, but they're there because they're for you. Because I promise you, God is for you. And somebody who's following Jesus well is going to make sure that gets across to you.
00:38:34
Speaker
Absolutely.
Preview of Next Episode with Jill's Questions
00:38:36
Speaker
And I would also add, get to know Jesus. Read about Jesus. See what he said. See what he did. See how he walked. See who he chose to be friends with. Because all of us humans, you know, are only doing the best we can and we're going to mess up. So if you put your faith in another human,
00:38:57
Speaker
whether it be a pastor or a leader or you're going to be disappointed. But if you put your faith in Jesus, that's a whole nother story. Yeah, well said.
00:39:07
Speaker
Jim, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your obvious passion for helping people understand who Jesus really is and what he can do in their lives. Now, in the next episode, we are going to bring Jill into this conversation. She has been listening in as Pastor Jim and I talked and furiously writing down questions that she wants to ask.
00:39:34
Speaker
So join us for the next episode when we take this conversation one level deeper by having our host Jill Devine join us. Thank you for your support of this podcast and for your support of my faith journey.
00:39:49
Speaker
Lots of questions that I have and I know that I'm not alone in that. So if you have some questions or there's a topic that you want to get involved in or there's a question that you have, please reach out. You can follow us online, normalgozalongway.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram, at normalgozalongway. I would love to be able to help you
00:40:14
Speaker
If you're struggling or maybe it's not a struggle, maybe it's something great that's happened to you and you want to share, please let me know. And I would be happy to address that on this podcast. Lots of good stuff happening in our next episode, including this.
00:40:33
Speaker
That is kind of the sad part of having thousands and thousands of denominations, is we don't feel like we're together as the body of Christ. And that's confusing to me. Yeah, that's hard. My hope is we can come to see how united we are. Uniqueness is not bad. It's okay for a unique denomination to have a unique perspective, but what's not good is when the body of Christ gets fractured.