Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Hey, Brian Phillips here. Welcome to the grease ops podcast. It's an honor to be here with you today. Recently I was in Lake Geneva, recorded a five episode series on Ravi Zacharias and the scandal that came out after his passing. I sat with Dr. Ryan venture, Mer, pastor Steve castle, and pastor Bob. Linquist a band of brothers I run with and we're extracting lessons that we can learn from. Robbie's a failure in this area of his life, not pointing fingers, but just, Hey, what can we learn? I mean, guys, we live in a day and age and a culture where pornography and sexual temptation, the lust of the eye, not just lusting after the opposite sex or same sex attraction, but the lusting after possessions and all kinds of things in this world. And we are here to be trained by the grace of God so that we can conquer darkness, the darkness within our own lives and allow his grace to train us to live upright. So we're going to jump right into the audio of this one here of this episode, with my friends, we're looking at the red flags of Robbie's life. I hope you enjoy this from a perspective of learning. What can you learn to change your personal life? God bless you. And remember to live upright
Speaker 0 00:01:45 Expedition, 44 here on a grease ops initiative today, we are continuing our Ravi Zacharias series of what's wrong with this picture. We did an introduction. We also got into board meeting considerations and we set the tone for lots of red flags that look to be part of this story that we're going to go back. And again, just use Robbie is kind of a history lesson to red flags and what we see within the ministry and hopefully do a better job of doing what we're called to do, which is to walk wholly and communally help others to walk. Holy. Yeah. Yeah. That was good for you to say. Um, second Corinthians. It says that the reason that one of the reasons that we have the old Testament is to use the failures of the examples in the old Testament to be guideposts our guidelines and our own new Testament Christian life. And so I'm going to start off with a verse that kind of highlights this specifically about this red flag stuff. So this is a second Samuel chapter 11, and obviously we've been using David along. The course of this is just a general biblical application. And in verse one, it says, and it came to pass after the year was expired at the time when Kings go to battle that
Speaker 2 00:03:00 David sent Joe AB David sent Joe Abin, his servants with him and all of Israel, and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabat, but David tarried still at Jerusalem and it came to pass in evening tide when David Rose off of his bed and walked upon the roof of the King's house and from the rough, he saw a woman washing herself and the woman was very beautiful to look on. There are so many red flags and just these two verses one. Why was David not at war when Kings go to war, why did he send all the other people to go do the thing?
Speaker 0 00:03:33 Red flag. Number two.
Speaker 2 00:03:36 Why are you getting up off of your bed at evening time? That's not when you're supposed to wake up. There's <inaudible> So that means that he'd been playing all night long and then sleeping all day. So that'll tell you something and then why aren't you up
Speaker 0 00:03:53 <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:03:58 Uh, number, uh, number three is why are you creeping on your neighbors? Uh, wife washing
Speaker 0 00:04:03 And herself. It's not the first time we get the,
Speaker 2 00:04:07 Yeah, there's an insinuation that he knew exactly when she was taking a bath and exactly where to look. Why was she taking a bath at midnight
Speaker 3 00:04:14 Or so there's an
Speaker 2 00:04:16 Unreal stuff. There's a ton of stuff. That's just really, that's really quietly insinuated in these, just these first two books, the first two verses a second, Samuel 11 that we need to use. And so in Robbie, so let's, we're going to go into some red flags in Robbie's life and then try to drill them out and see what the application is for you out there. The listener, the watcher. Good.
Speaker 3 00:04:37 Yeah, because in our lives, these are really important in our marriages, in our families, with our brothers that were submitted to walking this out, wherever we're at in this journey. Yeah. Red flags
Speaker 0 00:04:48 Talk about massage. Cause that's the Robbie. No, I, I, to just be careful here because massage in of itself is not a simple thing. There's going to be Christians watching this that are massage therapists. They went to school, they've invested a large amount of money at no point did they go, Oh man, I'm going into sinful worldly culture. But the problem with that thinking is at some point they do know that they're opening the door to something like this. So we're going to be careful here, but let's talk massage therapy.
Speaker 3 00:05:24 So can we lay the foundation that there's a big difference between a professional misuse that works at your country club at the spa. And it's not one of those Oriental massage and I'm not picking on the Oriental market, but, but a lot of them seem to be, as I travel across the country, it's the Oriental spotlights, right?
Speaker 0 00:05:44 It's important with the Rabi message because what we hear is throughout the story, these are not licensed massage,
Speaker 3 00:05:52 No, any owned as a silent partner to have these very type of facilities. We also know in the natural, many of the people who actually do the massages in that style of massage parlor are human trafficked women from around the globe. That's what this looks like. And it does look like that very much, for sure.
Speaker 2 00:06:13 It was participating basically as a silent partner and potentially a human sex trafficking ring. I mean, think about that. This is the depths of sin. This is what happens when you have these moral, uh, non fortitude places in your art and your life. You end up being a part of something where you're just like, wait, wait, wait, I didn't do that. No, you did that. Yes you did. You did that purposefully when you're, when you're failing. And just these little places like the enemy doesn't play fair. He doesn't just come after a really strong godly man. And he goes to war that no, he goes after women, children, the weak, the innocent, that, and this is one of the things that you don't. We, we talked about this before. You're not responsible for making sure that you're living a righteous life just for you, right? You are, but it's not just for you. Well, the way that I live my life with just like with Robbie, what Robbie did literally damaged the entire body of Christ, because he was personally failing.
Speaker 3 00:07:12 This is why this is such a tough conversation because we're taking somebody that is claiming to be in relationship covenant with God in what happens is something so ugly. So grotesque that it ends up going into the sex, sex trafficking world and everything else. I mean, complete opposite of what divine Holy living looks like, right? How do you, how you get there? And we've opened up the store to massage therapy, Bob, you, you tell a great story sometimes about kind of dabbling, but not, not even opening the door to being part of something that could be correctable. That's amazing because w we're frogs in boiling water as men on this subject for a long time, right. In our society. Um, I went to go buy a gun holster two weeks ago, perhaps three now. And I had already funneled one of the holsters from a friend.
Speaker 3 00:08:07 I knew what I wanted cause there's a myriad of holsters out there. Right. And I went to the website and when I pulled up the specific gun that this foster was made for every picture of every style at every camp, right-hand, left-hand smaller back, had a young lady with Daisy Duke shorts. And for those of you too young, to know what that means, that would be Levi shorts about this big, right. With slits up the side, and absolutely a view of her body all the way down across her navel and those shorts to about butter Midlake for me to buy a $12 holster. Yeah. And I had to make the, I didn't have to, I did make the decision immediately. I won't fund that company because I'm there by partnering with that whole process much like we just talked about with Ravi partnering with the sex trafficking,
Speaker 2 00:08:56 Human trafficking side of massage therapy. Yeah. Yeah. You know something about these things like, and I'm a massage you're talking about intimate touching, right. Which a doctor does intimate touching that they're doing it under the, for the very specific purpose of researching medically proven things in medically proven ways. And so a legitimate licensed Michelle massage therapist, who knows exactly what they're doing and their mind is on the business of what they're trying to accomplish. It's not an intimate touch, but it could be an intimate touch to the person receiving them socks. So then it all depends. That's a super potential gray area that you need to really consider. This is the thing that we talked about a lot with the light darkness is that this in of itself is, is not sin. It's, there's, there's nothing there, but when the darkness penetrates into normal things in life in claims them for the dark world, that's where we've got a problem. Right. And that what's, what's interesting about red flags is that these are symptoms of deception, right? Yes. The great decision.
Speaker 1 00:10:10 Yeah, no, I personally, um, I personally enjoyed massage therapy. Yeah. He gives me some insight. Sometimes you're just getting here,
Speaker 2 00:10:17 Hey, wait, you're not coming to my shop.
Speaker 1 00:10:22 No, there's, uh, you know, but there is a time and place where, you know, I train physically, I lift weights, you know, I put it with my body and a lot of stress as most of us do here. And, um, it's, it's, it's, it's one of those things in sports culture, you know, for the massage and, you know, kind of work out those knots and muscles. And I've never one time had anything weird or creepy happened, but I go to the places that are professionals and you signed the contract. I won't be creepy. You won't be creepy. And then, uh, and it's never been, been weird or anything, you know, but
Speaker 2 00:10:47 You got to know our struggles. That's one of the things that comes into this. So, you know, if you struggle there, there's, there's ways you can still medically be treated. But how about you get a couples massage? You know, you go, Oh, that's expensive. It's another a hundred dollars or whatever. Well, sometimes there's a price for purity. There is.
Speaker 1 00:11:05 And I've done that before too. And that's what actually fonts.
Speaker 2 00:11:07 Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, other red flags that Robbie had going on that we, uh, that we want to at least delve into. One of the things that we all talked about was, um, he had at least four cell phones. And, uh, along that same line, he never, it was an absolute do not pass line that he never did anything on any computer inside of his own offices or around any other people. He, he said it was because he never wanted anybody to hack him or steal his manuscript or book. I mean, I don't know, obviously now in retrospect it doesn't make any sense, but he was getting hunt thousands, uh, of, uh, nude pictures, nude text messages. He was obviously surfing on all kinds of crazy, uh, porn sites and all that. So now we know, obviously in retrospect, but the red flag was why you need bores over. Why won't you go on the internet in front of anybody else?
Speaker 0 00:12:09 Michael, are you attached to the server in your own ministries website? I mean, those are questions that you would think the it guy would have asked or the staff let alone the board, Hey, we hear there's a problem with how come that won't happen. Right. When a little bit of that was addressed by a staff member, he literally shut them out. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:12:26 Yep. Is that Brian was talking, Brian's going to do this because we've talked about this. He's, he's working on maybe building an app where, where other people can look what you're doing on your device. Like, let's say me and Ryan are buddies on this app at any moment, I can open up a thing and I can see what Ryan's doing on his app. And I can call him like, Hey bro, why are you looking at the holster for 20 minutes with the girl that's half naked while I'm just buying a holster, Hey, let's, let's legitimately talk about this, bro. So there's a, there's this brothers thing that needs to be applied.
Speaker 1 00:12:58 And the whole point of like identifying red flags in our own lives and then our brothers lives. Cause this Christianity is about plurality. It's about doing those together. It's about the community. And we miss that huge in our culture. You know, my Bible, my time, my devotions might mean I all this narcissistic approach to God, it is really, God's raising up a people in the person of Christ. And so in Galatians that talks about when a brother stumbles, how we're supposed to restore him in a true gentleness and keep, watch over ourselves so that we don't stumble on the same thing. And so that's why we're talking about red flags. We're not just doing it because it, you know, it's fun to talk about other people's stuff, right? Oh, let's talk about Robbie and let's talk about all this stuff he's got, he sucked at, you know, and all the things he was terrible at. It's easy to do that. Cause it feels like we're almost elevating ourselves, but that's really at the heart. You know, the heart is like, Oh, let's learn from this because the world is aching to see a better version of Christianity, a better version of holiness. God's Holy, where's it. Where are those Holy people at? You know? And actually they're everywhere. There's a remnant of people. We just don't read it. That's just not on our headlines. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:13:56 A couple of weeks ago we had a marriage conference that, uh, Steve and I led. And one of the ways that we started this scene is that your marriage, your covenant living, it starts with you and God. You are the first line of your own accountability. And your wife is the second line of your own accountability. And your brothers are the third wall of defense. This is battle language in the Bible. This is one, two, three we've got walls before it gets to the core of who we are. When we look at the life of Robbie, the problem is his core was decimated. There was no line one, two, three, there wasn't a problem of, Oh, am I opening a private browsing window? That should be a red flag to me, you know, right there, you should be calling yourself on the carpet. I lead a lot of, uh, men's ministries and every one of them has something in common that that's when we start to fall, you're your first line of accountability. You need to get a brother wife on the phone
Speaker 2 00:14:52 And say right here, I was driving to church last week. And one of my brothers just call me and said, Hey, I know you're probably in the car with your family or around church people, but I just had to call you. And I said, thank you. And I hung up and most people would go, what do you mean? You didn't talk them off the cliff or off the, and I said, you already talked himself. So that was all he needed
Speaker 1 00:15:14 And making that call. So sometimes the hardest thing to do.
Speaker 2 00:15:16 Yes, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:15:19 And that people will say all the time, well, how do you stay out of porn? Or how do you stay clean and all these other areas and categories. And that's right, right along with what you're saying is like, it's, it's a pure heart work on your own heart. Let yourself be, give yourself the credit that God gives you, that you actually can matter in this whole thing. We're not just victims and just flying around, you know, that's the problem. I have the massage thing. You had a condition, which was what, I mean self self-diagnosed disease or maybe it was Dr. I don't know. But it draws on the sympathy of a person, a board of, uh, of people that say, Hey, is a red flag. Exactly. Oh no, I got this condition on it. Oh no, I got, and that our culture, that's a Babylonian spirit of the age kind of approach to think like, Oh no, I got this thing. And then if I have this thing and I've got to go over here and do this other dark thing, God, God loves, God still loves me. Gus still, God's still smiling on this. You know,
Speaker 2 00:16:06 Spiritually conditions lead to disease. Let's talk about that for a minute. No different people's theology are going to play into this thought pattern and we can open the door to some of that thinking, but let's talk about spiritual disease. The goal is that I'm not going to let myself get into spiritual disease and I'm not going to let you guys get there either. And this is Pam. This is so important because this is a huge, huge place that I, that I like to minister into, um, is that, you know, first off the devil never comes to anybody as a, as a 10 foot tall, you know, massive muscles, horns, and a tail and Pitchfork and breathing fire. He comes to you as the cute little girl modeling the modeling of the holster that you're looking at. Nobody, if you think about the people that I am sure that everybody out there you are absolutely appalled, like turns your guts to know that there's some creepy, Greazy fat, ugly dude out there buying children to do terrible things to them.
Speaker 2 00:17:09 I know that turns every one of your stomachs, but you need to back this up. So how does some 45 year old grease ball end up to the place where he's so sexually depraved and so on is so broken in his own inner self that he gets to the point where he's buying gifts for sex. Greaseball nothing. How about the pastor that this, yup. Yeah. Yeah. So back that, because that's our image, our image is that he's just some Creek over there and some cabin and he know it. It's probably somebody in your neighborhood. Yeah. And so back that up, where'd that come from? Well, he probably had some, uh, some other sexual problem maybe, maybe was, had to be with younger and younger and younger. And then that started with, uh, getting into crazy, really nasty kind of porn. But that started with being in kind of regular hardcore porn.
Speaker 2 00:18:00 And then that started with soft core porn. And then that started with every commercial, how somebody naked on YouTube paced in cars, right? You got to understand like the reason the enemy is doing this is that he's trying to get you on that path of getting into that. And if you say, Hey, I'm going to be completely appalled and disgusted by the toothpaste commercial with the naked people, you've already set the border that you are not going to have stage four cancer because you're not even going to let the pimple get to the place where it turns into some kind of melanoma you're going to stop it right here and deal with it. And part of that is dealing with that with your friends, with your brothers, your band of brothers, or your people, your counselors
Speaker 3 00:18:43 In your life, your spouse, there had to be red flags with a spouse. I find it absolutely crazy that there wasn't a sexual appetite change. Yes. And Ravi over the years, right. Something had to be out of balance. So again, from a kingdom perspective, not beating anybody up, did that precious sister have those sisters in her life or she could go, golly, I don't understand. Something's changing. Something's different. Let's pray about this together. Seek counsel on that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the red flags, again,
Speaker 1 00:19:22 Glaringly obvious, and I think of the spiritual condition where like the human body can go 40 days without food, but it can only go three days without water. And so when the, when God describes his own word as the living water, they we're supposed to be going to, I mean, you really got to look at it about, you got about three days, about a ton of time before you really got to have a time with God, you know, and daily is the preferred discipline, but it's, we've got, when we miss time with God, we become spiritually. We start to decay quick. You know, we start, we start to break down and decay and then we're living off yesterday's power yesterday's revelation yesterday. So thought, I mean, here's a guy who could speak to millions of people had huge platform yet scripturally. He was described as a predator. Yes. The Bible says that you're supposed to walk for a minute. You know what I mean? They're supposed to take, take them out. So here's the guy that had, like, you had like the fame, the whole world went after. And he actually had a pretty powerful message. I mean, he, he had all yesterday's anointing, but he didn't have today's character. He didn't have, today's disciplined to be with God. And that's where the decay comes from. When we miss time with God, you're already on the path to deaths.
Speaker 3 00:20:29 Let's frame this theologically in the old Testament, spiritual warfare was a mess. It's running rampant. Whether you put this as falling, spiritual beings and net Balaam, water, whatever you say, these spiritual entities invaded the rights of men. And they seem to be able to that regularly.
Speaker 0 00:20:48 However, at the cross, something changes here. And so when you look at spiritual warfare at the cross, we're going to be receiving healing. Now there's spiritual healing and maybe there's physical healing. You can talk to my brother, Steve, about this one. That's the difference in theology. Now we do know that once the cross happens, these evil entities are bound. Now we don't have this whole story. I want the story. I always say that I want to watch this movie in heaven about what happens. And I know you guys, you know, we all have our own ideas here, but one thing that is clear is demonic presence no longer can just invade us because of the cross, because we are marked with the name of Christ, right? So they can't come over and just jump on us. We have to invite it. We have to come in agreement. Yes.
Speaker 3 00:21:43 And he, because of the loss of that legal authority on and in us, we have to literally come in agreement. Yeah. Oh, this is the warning label from the manufacturer. And I agree. Yeah. I agree to that. I want a drink.
Speaker 0 00:21:56 So this is the problem is that even as spiritual entities that we're opening the door of sorts,
Speaker 3 00:22:02 You're absolutely right. We are absolutely allowing that into us in this case via our eye gate. And then why not? If we've got it in the eye gate, we might as well go for the Gusto and let them lay our hands on us, imparting whatever that spiritual entity wants to impart on our carcass. Right? I know that's a whole nother film, but reality is that's, what's taking place
Speaker 0 00:22:28 Careful as Ms. Men, we don't even open this store. This should have never happened with somebody like Ravi.
Speaker 2 00:22:35 And one of the things we want to talk about, like the reason that it seems like these doors are so easily and frequently opened in people's lives is because here's the part that, that some people, um, don't understand about their nature. God created you to last, right?
Speaker 3 00:22:53 It's purely natural. God
Speaker 2 00:22:55 Created you to be an addict, but he created you to lust after righteousness and lust, after intimacy with him. And he created you to be addicted to his glory and to right. And we just lost after the wrong thing. And we became addicted after the wrong things. And so I'm here. Here's what I, as a pastor, as a minister of God, I am telling you, you have permission from heaven to last, and you have permission from heaven to be an addict, but you're supposed to be addicted to him. And as it says in first Corinthians chapter 16, that the house of Stephanus was addicted to the ministry of the saints, be addicted to the right things, lost after the right things. And then you won't have to worry about any of these other irrel IR revelent of lust coming in and trying to site to sidetrack user, or get you down into a rabbit hole that you were never born to be in.
Speaker 0 00:23:51 The world thinks of this kind of thinking is nuts. They like it, people like that. And they go, Oh my gosh, those spiritual, you know, crazy diseased people. But that's the backward thinking of kingdom culture. That's who we want to be. That's that's who we are at the core. Right? Yep. It's proven out time and time again in the world's thought process, because we have this inherent desire for something we don't even know what it is. Yeah. It's the two foot bigger boat. It's the different job. It's a more farm ground. It's the bigger animal to go hunt. It's that big man, when I can get that, Oh, I'm going to be satisfied. Yeah. I never guess what causes all of those suicides that make us in the flesh go, wow. How could I add it all up? Billionaire? So it's that loss that the enemy wants to get us into? Yes. For something that we don't even know what it is when yet we should be lusting after you've been saying, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:24:49 The flesh, the pride of life that comes down to it.
Speaker 0 00:24:53 Now there's another part of this with the Robbie thing. And that is that this isn't just a one-way street. There's a lot of different things going on here. So one of the things that I've been listening to, I w I've listened to a lot of YouTube films about Ravi Zacharias and one person in particular kept saying, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You did nothing wrong. Talking to all these victims that Robbie had. And it made me cringe because I've got four little boys and what I'm constantly teaching and preaching to my four little boys is this is a two way road and you need to run how many thing that looks like this, because the other side doesn't think spiritually, the way that you have been taught and learned to think grounded in this kind of kingdom principle.
Speaker 2 00:25:45 Yep. Yeah. One of the things, and I know that this is a super, super tenuous subject matter. I get it. We're in the, we're in the me too, uh, society, the cancel culture that everybody's a victim, nobody has any personal responsibility. And so I understand that I'm about to make myself the enemy of, of the whole world. I get it. That's why we brought you on the show, but here's the thing. One of the quotes and I, and I, I could find it if I need to, but one of the quotes was one of these gals that said, well, I had to do these things with Robbie because my financial situation was so terrible. And Robbie was paying my rent and given me enough money for my groceries. And I know this is stupid.
Speaker 0 00:26:31 God, God was giving us yeah.
Speaker 2 00:26:33 Scott and, and put in the spiritual thing. But here's the thing. At what point did that gala not realize that she was prostituting herself period? At what point did she say, I am selling sex for rent and food and say, I am not that kind of person. Right. And cut off that, that, that relationship and cut off literally that hooking herself and, and using some kind of a justification because otherwise she'd be homeless or hungry. You know, here's the thing when a person, a gal guy, because this happens in ministry, I know a bunch of pastors that prostitute themselves, they just do it. You know, when you're doing something, how many pastors stand up at a pulpit? And they won't say what God wants them to say, because they might lose the big giver. That's prostitution. It's just prostitution. And that happens a bunch. How many people go to work?
Speaker 2 00:27:25 And they violate their moral codes because the boss told them to, or their working environment doesn't want them to it's all prostitution. And the thing is you can solve this both ways at any point that anybody stands up for righteousness and for godliness, it becomes separate. And any one of these gals could have said, this is not right. I am going to trust God for my groceries. I am going to trust God for my rent. And I am not going to sell my body and sell my sexual affection. I don't care how much money you're promising me. And I don't care who you are in the body of Christ. I will not go there. And it could have been all dealt with right there at the head. And so there's both, there, there is two sides to all this kind of stuff. Not every one of these girls were victims. Were some of them. Yes. Were all of them. No, there's personal responsibility that every single human being has out there. And if you stand with God, you give God an opportunity to come into your life and protect you, provide for you and give you all the things that you need that you think you can only get through hooking yourself. And that is not, not, not ever an option in the heart of God.
Speaker 3 00:28:38 And it just brings the conversation that we've all had at various times together in just another application, that condition of the body and the believers on a global basis. And the lack of understanding of their identity in Christ, which only comes through reading his word and being in that level of intimacy with them, or at least in one case, this woman was raised a believer and she was taken advantage of she was lying to manipulate it. Yeah. That shouldn't be the case, which is why we're having these discussions. So this film is entitled red flags, the red flags to you. You shouldn't be seeing these in your own lives. Your second line of defense is your wife, your spiritual family. You have pastors, you have people that hopefully keep you accountable. Every guy needs four or five of these in his life. Hopefully you've got a small group that you go to from there and another band of brothers, so to speak, what are some of these red flags? Sometimes we get blinders on and we don't see them. It has to reach the second line of defense to bring those to our attention. But what are some of these things? I think some
Speaker 2 00:29:42 People watching this film, they might not identify these in your own life. Let alone somebody else's what do these look like?
Speaker 1 00:29:50 Well, the first one to me is, is, uh, arrogance. When you, when you set yourself up to it's the pride, like you can even, like, there's a vibe that arrogant people put off. It's true. Like you can just kind of pick up on it's like, dude,
Speaker 2 00:30:06 We've all been there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:30:08 And so it's, I was snowboarding with my kids the other day. And my, my daughter, she was telling me this story. She was like, well, I know how to stop and do all these cool things. Now she's learning. And she's like, all these boys were watching and I was going to go make this perfect stop. And she goes, and then the next thing I know, I'm just rolling and fall. We had this really fun. Talk about how pride comes before a ball. I mean, pride and arrogance. Self-deception not listening to a brother, not being able to take a rebuke. And the scripture says that when you, if one of you guys rebuke me, I, that should be refreshing to me because one, it shows me that you love me. Yeah. It lines up with God's heart, God disciplines, those he loves. Right? So God's discipline. Isn't like one season of your life. It's a perpetual ongoing 'cause, he's, he's cares more about your maturity in Christ. And he does about anything else is you're maturing to be like his son. And so his discipline is always going to be there. And so, you know, when we're, when those are red flags, to me, just deception arrogance, we're, we're not disciplined people. We're not take receiving rebukes work.
Speaker 2 00:31:04 Yeah. Lack of being willing to be corrected. This is one, that's a such a huge, huge thing that I think so many people go past is that, um, gee, if the scripture say that Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered, like Jesus learn things by going through the hard things it says in Proverbs, I think it's chapter six that it says that, um, he, that hates his child, uh, will not spank them. You know, the RA, he, that hates the child, spares the rod, you know, the world quotes that is spare the rod, spoil the child. It makes it sound kind of cool and kind of hip. And here we are a generation, at least in my generation, we were growing up as like a spank list society. And we have some of the most terrible people that have ever been birthed on the planet in our generation, because we grew up the spank list society.
Speaker 2 00:31:52 And it's the Bible says, if you hate the child, you spare the rod. Well, how much more for us that are better grownups. Now we're past our parents correction, but we're still people in society and we still have a father. God, and we're still children of God. How much more should we, uh, should we desire to have correction come into our lives to make sure that we're not getting into some broken detestable place? I, my number one, prayer, and I say this all the time from the pulpit in our, and in my personal small group, my number one prayer is Lord, correct me, Lord, correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm missing it somewhere, please, correct me. Guess what we have been, he will absolutely. The other kind of flag thing
Speaker 3 00:32:40 Is if you can't self-examine yourself, right, right. To start there. That first line of defense is ourselves. And be honest and be honest, but, but what's stopping me from having that draw for me. It's that first cup of coffee in the morning. Anybody that knows me knows that my phone's not on typically. Right. That's me and my daddy for real in the scriptures. Right. Okay. So what is stopping me from really being driven to being drawn into him in that place? It's gotta be something in the flesh. It's a red flag. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:33:09 So this isn't ideas of judging or condemnation. It's actually the opposite. It's trying to build up the brothers' positive, encouraging love. And that's something we don't identify that it seems like when we come to each other, either person that come in or the person receiving has these ideas of judgment and condemnation, and we need to set the tone and all of our relationships for love and encouragement based on this kind of red flag thinking. So when, when my brothers start having these ideas of spiritual leadism, or they maybe have a tendency to start marginalizing the word of God, or even neglecting the word of God or problems with prayer in their life, or, you know, knowledge or something like that, all of these things, you know, shouldn't be conversations that somebody has with them. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:33:57 But they, you know, uh, Ryan touched on this is like, um, you should be hearing this. And condemnation is not any part of this. Right? The definition of condemnation is I'm fit for you. You know? But building's condemned. The only thing you can do with that building is tear it down because there, there is no repairing, there's no brain of backup to the standard. I used to buy and sell cars. And once a cars had a junk title, I mean, it, it it's, it it's, it has a junk title. You can pick it up, you can sell it, but it's still always going to have a junk title. And so condemnation is unfit for you. So the only thing left to tear it down, and some buildings can be condemned quicker than others. But here's the thing. If a building is kept in proper repair and it's kept in proper maintenance, it should never get to the place of condemnation.
Speaker 2 00:34:43 And so if I come over to Brian, I'm like, dude, what's the big yellow stain in your, in your ceiling. Oh, I think my roof's leaking, dude, fix your up. Fits your roof. Nah, nah, the house is fine. I sleep here every night. There's no problem. The truth is, is that Brian's house is going to be condemned way faster than my house because he wouldn't take the correction of fixing his rule. And this is when guys come into your life and they say, fix your roof. You shouldn't get Mel. How dare you judge my roof. I've got a good group. I put that on with my own bare hands 20 years ago. And I'm like, okay. So you suck as a roofer, but fix your roof. You don't get mad at the guy that comes in and says your roast leaking, you shouldn't get mad at yourself, then someone else. And to come and point out the fact that you're broke, right?
Speaker 0 00:35:32 Good stuff. All the way around. These are all red flags of normal people's life. People in ministry, life, the people you think are super heroes of life. We all are called to be accountable before the Lord. One to ourselves that we need to start recognizing this and to, to be open to the course correction of your brothers, your church, your wife, and really quite frankly, all those around you show you warning signs. It's a sensitivity to the spirit that everyone might speak life into your life. God bless you.
