Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Hey, Brian Phillips here. Welcome to the Grace House podcast. It's an honor to have you part of our culture. We do ask that you would share this podcast, share our website, share the five star charge, get some gear and apparel, help us spread the mission, the vision and the passion of grease ops. Recently, I was in Lake Geneva. If you've been tuning into the podcast, you know that we're on a little series here of five episodes with Dr. Ryan, pastor Steve, pastor, Bob and I, we got together to kind of break down the Ravi Zacharias scandal and extract what we can learn from it. How does the Bible put up safeguards? How can we build a band of brothers to help us live upright? How does the grace of God train us and equip us to renounce worldliness and, and to, to extract out the darkness? I mean, God Christ constant conquered darkness on the cross for us.
Speaker 1 00:01:05 Darkness literally has no authority over you. Only the authority that you allow it to have. So in this episode, we'll be closing out this series and we're looking at the pain of church leadership, church abuse. This phrase of, uh, LD people were, people will use the Ravi Zacharias scandal just to add to one more reason why they don't go to church or to add to one more reason of how they've been hurt by the church or hurt by church leaders. And I share this all the time. I've been in the church culture for 25 years and hands down, I've been hurt more in the church by people in the church, literally than anywhere else in my life. So why have I not quit the church? I know a lot of pastors that have quit the church. I know church leaders that have said, forget this who needs this.
Speaker 1 00:01:57 I can just, the amount of energy I put into church work. I could make millions of dollars in the marketplace with the skill set that I have. Why do I stay in the church culture? One, because God called me there. And two, I can't quit because you know, God hasn't quit the church until God quits his purpose for his church, his people in the earth, then neither can I. So how do we navigate church pain and still love the gatherings of the saints? How do we not tune out and just check it off the list and, you know, shrug our shoulders at it. The whole can't cancel culture kind of approach. I don't want to just cancel church and cancel this, cancel that. But how do I engage something that maybe did hurt me at one time? How do I try that again? So we, as a band of brothers, we look at this and this final episode. So I, you enjoy it again. I've been saying this now from a point of pure joy or happiness, but you enjoy it from a point of learning, looking into your own heart and always remember to live upright
Speaker 2 00:03:13 Expedition, 44 here with some of my best friends in life. We've got Bob over here, Brian and Steve we're on a grace ops initiative together. We've been talking about Ravi Zacharias and how it filters into living a life set apart. We talked about having red flags in ministry. We've talked about what happens when you're past the red flags. And we're finishing with one that hits a little close to the heart. All of us are involved in, in full-time ministry. This is what our heart is for, is to see lives, change for the kingdom of God. And so you have somebody such as Robbie's that Christ. He's not the only one. There's been a lot of guys like that that have professed to not only be living clean Holy upright lives, but it kind of set the bar of Christianity. He's in this case, it's a person that's unapologetically gone out and said, this is why Christianity and God works.
Speaker 2 00:04:11 And then you come to find out that everything that he was saying was completely fake. I had no place for a Ravi Zacharias book in my library anymore. Even though there were some great things that came about it. And I do know people that he, he brought them to the place where they could start their journey with God. There were great things that happened, but this is what we're going to talk about today. What happens when everything comes, crumbling down? What did we do with that? There's so many people hurt by the church today hurt by the idea of Christianity. And this is not God, this is not Jesus. This is a marred up world that we live in. One of my, uh, one of my ministry mentors, uh, was, uh, I used to work for a TV ministry and he's, he's a great ministry person, but I'm not gonna say their name because of stories like this is that their ministry lost.
Speaker 2 00:05:07 Um, I think it was 58% of their income when, uh, it was either Jimmy Swaggart or James Baker, whichever one that, yeah. And so here, another ministry fell and their ministry, which they, he had nothing to do. I mean, they obviously kind of ran in the same circles, but the person that I've worked for has never had a single warrior, moral failure of any kind in their ministry. Their ministry is 50, I think 52 years into being a ministry. So for 52 years, never had a single moral fail. Failure has always been very, very Holy and in lifestyle, in language, all these kinds of things and their ministry laws, 56 or 58% of their income because this other ministry bell. And here's the one, here's the thing that we all need to understand is that,
Speaker 3 00:05:58 Um, when a person at the top, when some kind of Christianity, when they fall, this is what people use as an excuse for their reasons to not go hard for God, to not be passionate about the things of God. You know, I hear this term and we're going to get into this, but church hurt. And so I've had so many people go into, I've been church hurt, I've got church hurt from the past. And I finally got to the point where the last time someone said something to me about church. And I said, so what do you mean? Do you mean like the church you were walking by the church, on the sidewalk with your dog, minding your own business and the roof fell off and slapped you in the face. And now you've got scarred for life because of a shingle. What do you mean by church heart?
Speaker 3 00:06:40 Well, no, you know this person. Okay. Okay. Okay. So this person in the church. Okay. So if that person is a pastor or a leader, I get that you trusted them. You, you depended on them to do the right thing with your heart, with your family, whatever. And they used it for their own good or their own manipulation or, or to kind of justify something in their lives. Or oftentimes it's more this way. Some other person in the church that you were close with, that you were friends with, they ended up having a moral failure, or they ended up abusing you or hurting you in some way. And so now, because of that, you think that you're justified to completely exit the system because one person or maybe a few people did something wrong and it's such, it has such inventory. And it's also such arrogance to think that you're going to accomplish outside what the Lord specifically said could only be done inside. He said, my ekklesia was going to keep the Gates of hell at Bay, not my Christians, not my individuals, but my group together. My ekklesia was what was going to accomplish what I needed them to accomplish. Based upon the revelation of Jesus Christ, being the rock, the Petra of salvation.
Speaker 4 00:08:01 I think when, when a Ravi situation happens and when he falls and what a great fall it was, the enemy uses that to reinforce every type of church problem in church air. And the church is money hungry and they're hypocrites and all these little fragmented headlines and pains and aches, because I say this to people a lot. I wasn't raised in church. My mom and dad took me there every now and then I wasn't raised in like every Sunday kind of church culture. I gave my life to Christ my 17 and I, this is my story. I've been hurt more in the church by pastors and leaders and people who weren't than anywhere else. I mean like you don't like the church is a community we're supposed to be. And we're so far from the moorings of that biblical worldview of the church, actually being a community of mothers and fathers were so far from that, we turned into some kind of spectator thing and you know, the lecterns in the middle and one speaking to the masses and it's such a Greek.
Speaker 4 00:08:57 I'm not saying it's all bad, but it's not necessarily how Jesus did is not how you always learn. So what, how can we tinker and make the church better? There is a lot of church pain. A lot of church hurt. It's run by humans. There's no perfect church. And like when a Ravi falls, it can reinforce the dark view of the church in a culture. And just, it just gives the guy, you know, that could care less about church. Anyway. Five more reasons why he's tells his wife is not going to go all, look at that hypocrite. And he's up there because, you know, on the flip side of like what Dr. Ryan was saying earlier, you know, I agree with him a hundred percent, but there's a tension too. I agree. Let's take his book off my shelf. But the other side of it goes, what he put in his book was actually pretty good stuff.
Speaker 4 00:09:35 It was really, you know what I mean? Like the dude, the dude had a gift from God, like, and that's the thing where the gifts of God are irrevocable. When our character was off, we weren't tethered to the ancient path or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you know, we lost communication with God, but that gift it gave me, you know, and we all can be prone today. You know, we can function in a gift that is actually not connected to our character, got disconnected somewhere. And then it's not God honoring as much as it could be. It loses its power.
Speaker 2 00:09:59 So the struggle that we're defining is that to a certain extent by the world standards, every person in church, as a hypocrite, you're walking in and every person is struggling with sin, but God is in their life. Right. But how do you, what, what's the difference between that person? And when you get to a picture of Ravi Zacharias and you go, nothing, I can't take anything that he had anymore because it's all tarnished in the name of God.
Speaker 4 00:10:29 And it's kind of hard because Robbie was a para-church guy. Yeah. And then you, but you're looking at the local church, you know, we're kind of looking at two different spectrums a little bit. We're making a similarity out of it. What happens when the local church steps over the line of actual church use, what are those lines and what's going on because are my church to grow? Is there, she's so passionate and grace offs kind of carries that same evangelism and discipleship focus. We're so passionate about reaching people and then making disciples that it can feel. It can probably feel like we're trying to control, you know, intrusive like weird because every other church you can go to inch deep mile, wide style church. So I called the clapping monkey church, right. The circus. And it's like, you're getting entertained, but you're not getting challenged.
Speaker 4 00:11:14 You're, you're, you're not getting, there's no standard of the gospel in the community. And so I it's, it's, you know, that's not abuse though. It's not abuse to come to you and say, Hey, you know, I, I think you should pray every day or, Hey, you should get married. You two are living together. You guys should get married. You know, that's not abuse. Abuse is like, when we start telling you how to spend your money and who you can marry. And like that gets cultic. How much are you typing while you're all leaders? <inaudible> leaders of those people.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 Yeah. And this thing, how do you get out? How do you, how do you get around?
Speaker 4 00:11:41 How do you get through that without quitting the church forever? So
Speaker 2 00:11:44 This is the thing, this is, this is so important that Brian brought those up because, um, we are, I, I pastor a church to Bob, Bob and I are in a church's beloved church. And we are
Speaker 3 00:11:54 Crazy involved with discipleship. It is a major, major aspect of who we are. And I cannot tell you how many people are like, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, you know, you guys are like really wanting to be involved with people's lives. And that's kind of not where I'm at. And so I'm like, okay, that's fine. Go down to the church, a block away and go sit there and get your three points and a poem. Don't get, let nothing goes into your life and go on and pretend like you're a part of the body. You're obviously not going to pretend. And so then you've got other people that show up on our doorstep, like, Oh my God, I am so glad that somebody is really truly discipling. And it's because they came out of what Brian's, I've, you know, an inch deep and a mile wide and there, and the people that are resisting, it are probably some of the people that need it.
Speaker 3 00:12:42 The most, you need someone in your views and cues to be in and involved with what's going on in your life. And this is something that, um, if everybody had done it, you know, imagine Jesus walking up to Peter and say, Hey, Peter, can you stop by for an hour a week? Can you, can you swing by my house for an hour a week? I'll give you a cool little sermon at, I'll tell you the cool things about the kingdom of God. And then you'd go back to fishing. Just go fish. All you want, just stop by the house for an hour a week. It would never happen. He literally walked up to these guys and said, quit your business. You're not going to be around your family for the next three and a half years. Everything you've been doing no longer goes anymore. You need to die.
Speaker 3 00:13:24 Take up your cross and follow me. And you know, a bunch of people said, no, a bunch of people came to Jesus and said, Nope, I can't do it. Rich young ruler. Um, a bunch of people said, you know, in, in Luke chapter 17, the Lord gave all of these examples about people where he said, Hey, you mean to come and be a disciple? Well, I just married a wife. I don't have time to be a disciple. I just married a wife. I just bought a yoke of oxen. I just bought a new property. I need to go check it out. And he literally used these as examples as to why these folks were not capable of being true disciples of his.
Speaker 4 00:13:58 And I think the painful thing of this whole topic that we're on. And I, you know, we have to walk this road really carefully. I, so I'll say this first one, I haven't quit the church. And I have every reason to quit the church. As far as the church has a gathering, not the church is a building, the actual collective people who've got. I have every reason I've every heard pain. I could make myself a victim. I could make myself, you know, this guy, that guy, but I'm not serving. I'm not in the community of God for that man's sake. I'm in those community, God for God's sake. Right? And so until I see Christ quit on what he's doing in the church. I can't quit either. I can't just sit on the sidelines. I've got to be involved to help bring the reformation. The church needs because that's the painful thing I've seen all these years.
Speaker 4 00:14:39 Two decades, more of church culture is I see the ideas of man's religion. Um, it forced over a group of people, these ideals that when you really, to tinker with them and get into them, you don't even find them that strong in the scriptures, this behaviors and the way people think and the way they trade. Like, I'll give you a quick example. There was a guy who was a top leader of an of denomination. Um, he was one of the main regional leaders. He left his iPad at the district headquarters. They found the iPad, opened it up and it had porn on it. He forgot to turn his password on. So he opened it up and it was like, he'd Google some bad words and all the pictures were there. So, and this guy has been in, he was in the community for 20 some years.
Speaker 4 00:15:20 So what they do is they, they take the ivory tower police department down to his church and they basically expose the guy and pretty much remove them and rip them out. And when I heard that story, my heart was so painful. Now, I didn't know all this deadline, the details. So I went to the main guy who did it, the superintendent guy, the leader of all of them. And I said, why did we do that? I'm like the guy had been there for 25 years. Why did we just throw his whole name and his ministry and his character? We just ripped them out of his life source. I'm like, you know, is, they're not sending your life anywhere. I mean, like, you know, w where did we just rip people out because of this? I'm like, where did, where did we help me see where we did Galatians six one, let me see where we generally try to restore them.
Speaker 4 00:15:58 Cause I'm like, I think you could have probably restored the guy behind closed doors and maybe never, never had to be a headline ever had to be a removal from the ministry. It's like, that's one of the reasons why there's a problem. When it comes to sin and the churches, the leaders get stuck. Leaders get pinned in who the heck do I talk to? When are they going to come? Are they going to come? They're going to send in the ivory tower police to remove me from my, my life source and hot provide for my family. You know what I mean? Like this is a painful topic. Cause I run into so many people that have church pain, church hurt, you know,
Speaker 3 00:16:26 And obviously Brian and I are probably dominating the conversation a little bit, but because we're pastors, like we deal with this all the time with these, with people that are hurt or people that are, that are shying away from you because they don't want you to hurt them. You know, one of the things that, that I thought about incessantly on this particular topic is people are way, way more committed to, uh, their gym membership than they are to honestly, their wife, their spouse, or their church to Jesus. Because I, I, you know, I've worked out for most of my life. And so I've had tons of gym memberships that do you know, I can go to a gym and do something wrong, make a mistake, a little tiny itty bitty mistake and tweak a muscle and not be able to work out for a month.
Speaker 3 00:17:12 Right. But I still go back to the gym. Like I get it started. I figured out I still go back to the gym because that $15 a month is really important to me. But yet my wife would hurt me a little bit and average Christianity. I'll just dump her and get another one. I don't need to be committed or she hurt me. Don't, you know, I've been hurt my, my life so I can just divorce her and go get another one. Well, I've been hurt monitor. And so I can just divorce. Jesus. I don't even need a church. I'll just sit at home and read my Bible by myself. Oh, isn't that convenient that you're having a Christianity that you get to design and you get to determine the parameters and all those verses that tell you how to do it. Those don't actually apply to you.
Speaker 3 00:17:55 That's just to someone else that's way less Holy and way less spiritual than you. The fact is is that most people are way more committed to their gym membership, to Walmart and to McDonald's than they are to their marriage, their covenant of marriage and their covenant of blood with Jesus. Because when McDonald's gives you bad service, you keep going back. And when the people at Walmart offend you, because 450 pound people in yoga pants, offense the heck out of me. But I still go to Walmart because I need the goods and the services that they provide. And I give them my money. And the fact is I can't get past being hurt or being offended at a church because I'm more committed to Jesus than Walmart and McDonnell,
Speaker 5 00:18:38 You know? And some of that revolves around the lack of intimacy being taught right across the body of Christ, right? Because if you're in true intimacy with Jesus in that ginosko relationship that we all need to be in and we all desire to be in it, all of a sudden lessons, the fact that it's all about me at all, I got to be involved with that body because it's not about me. It's about him, right? It's all about consuming. Yes. So we're being the body parts. We were perfectly and wonderfully created to be, to exalt his name and to advance the light into the darkness, to, to bring others into that kingdom. And that doesn't allow a place for her then to enter. Now, does that mean he can't get ticked off at somebody? Well, of course, yeah. They stubbed my toe. They kicked me. They spit on me, whatever. Guess what? It's not about me. It's all about him.
Speaker 3 00:19:28 And the, and one of the things that really irks the heck out of me is that because some other church or some other minister did some terrible things to you. Now I have to live with the guilt or the shame as pastor Steve Gasol at beloved church. Okay. So another church hurts you. It sucks for you. Yeah. Super, super sorry that that happened. Honestly, I have a bunch of empathy and compassion for you, but for you to project that on to me, for you, to, for you to project that on to Brian, because he's just the next church like that doesn't work in your marriage. Let's say you had a bad relationship before you're in the one you're in now. And you're in the kitchen with your wife and you say, well, you know, my other ex wife used to cook meatloaf this way. And how well is that going to go over?
Speaker 3 00:20:17 You think you're going to be super intimate tonight? No, no, no, no, no. You are going to the couch and you don't get to do that in natural life. You don't do that in, in nearly any other place of your life. How dare you do it in the church? I get it. There's bad churches. I get it. There's bad ministries. I get it. Robbie Zacharias was terrible. And his example in Christianity, for sure. And I can also give you a thousand examples of people that are real, authentic, genuine, and Holy, and here's four of them. And so I get it. Ravi is bad, but you don't get to say it's all bad. Just like you don't experience something good and say, it's all good, right? You are a grown up and you understand you have a judgment and a discernment that's been given to you by God to walk into an environment and say, all right, Ryan's the real deal. And so I'm going to go ahead and follow that. And if I get any indicators that something's out of alignment, I'm either going to talk to him or I'm be gonna follow what the father might be leading me to do, which is find someone that is really authentic and genuine. But I don't get to give up the service.
Speaker 5 00:21:25 See, in a lot of times, those revelations that we're just going to stay with doc Ryan for a minute. He may say something to me, that's regulatory that may put my head sideways. I may be emoji face for a moment. But does that mean you made me uncomfortable, brother? I'm out. I'm missing that. I want that I'm missing that, that right. Cause revelation will make you uncomfortable when you first grabbed a revelation that came to somebody else. For sure.
Speaker 4 00:21:53 We're talking about Robbie and his abusive, um, practice of leadership over people. Yeah. And so if you're, you know, there's all different kinds of water levels of this, right? So, you know, you might not like certain things, but we're talking about the heavy hitters stuff where you might be, we're talking about abuse at the level, not I'm, or at least I'm bringing this to, to a focus here that abuse at the level of an abusive leader will always twist the scriptures. They will always manipulate for them. And they can only do that to a people who don't know the scriptures. I mean, think about that, right? Like, you know, I not to pick on the Catholic church, but I asked a lot of Catholics. What is your priest? Tell you to read the Bible 90, 90, 95%, maybe 99% say no. And you know, so it's just kind of like that whole spiritual abuse of power can come into a people that don't know their constitution. I mean, the Bible that's my parallel. I just did that. That was part of parallel. That was part of my message yesterday.
Speaker 3 00:22:57 I literally did the balance there where Jesus in the great commission basically said, we, the people and he gave us a government and I paralleled it to the constitution where obviously the constitution starts off with we, the people and we are in charge of the government. But the reason that I made that parallel and I made that comparison is exactly for what Brian said. If you don't know your rights, they can be easily taken from you. If you don't know what your nature is, then someone else can tell you what your nature is. If you don't know your value, then someone can come and take your value away. That's one of the reasons that these things can happen. You know, if everybody in America, for sure, if you quit given to the hypocrites on TV, the hypocrite pastors on TV, the hypocrite ministers on TV, the ones that are using the pictures of the kids in Africa with flies, crawling on their faces.
Speaker 3 00:23:46 If you'd quit giving money to them, you know, they'd just go away. A lot of the spiritual abuse, a lot of the leadership abuse that's taking place, at least in the body of Christ is because we fund it, right? Because we don't actually do the right thing, which is research and make sure that they are serving well, you know, the Bible says that the ones that serve well among you are worthy of double honor. And I I've literally ministered to people in our church and spent tens hundreds of hours sometimes ministering to individuals that a problem, I don't know, I don't check the financials, but maybe don't give us any money or give us very little. And then they'll give TV, preacher a thousand dollars a week. And I'm like, you don't read us in. Everything is so, so out of balance because we are not doing the simple things that are already a highlighted and outlined in a scripture. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:24:39 I want to finish this series with, uh, going to Luke seven. This is Luke seven and I'll start at verse 38. It says, and standing behind him and his feet, we been, she began to wet his feet with her tears and kept wiping them with her hair of her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with perfume. So what's the situation here is Jesus is invited to a Ferris he's home for dinner to sit at his table and eat with him. And he might've been getting set up. We don't really have that little thing, you know, but he sits down and this woman comes to him and in verse seven 37, it uses the word center. Well in Greek, that kind of meant immoral woman, all, uh, just let your, your, you get the picture. And so it says, now the Pharisees who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of person, this woman who is touching him, that he is a sinner.
Speaker 2 00:25:33 So from this point, this, this girls coming in this woman of not good reputation, she's touching his feet, which in the culture was extremely erotic. She's letting her hair down. I mean, even in our culture, this picture is kind of like a massage therapy, submissive position, all this going on. And in Simon that, you know, basically said, surely, this man is not a prophet. I think to everybody at the dinner table, they're wondering about hypocrisy during this story. They're, they're looking at this and going, is this man a hypocrite? We're going to have this beautiful woman come down and kind of seduce him. Now what's crazy is look at the way this ends, I'm going to, I'm going to go after his parable of the two debtors, I'm gonna jump down to verse 49 says those who are reclining at the table with him, began to say to themselves, who is this man who even forgives sins.
Speaker 2 00:26:30 Now look at verse 50. And the woman said, and he said to the woman, your faith has saved. You go in peace. There's something spiritually going on between this woman in Jesus, which to the, which to Simon and the fairest user, might've set them up here. This doesn't look religious. This doesn't look churchianity to us yet. What was going on was kingdom work guy, God, God was looking past the wrapping on the outside of this and, and really ministering to the forgiveness of sins in a way that we can't do that. Jesus can only do that today. We look at the church and a lot of things, sometimes we don't know what to do with them. We don't know if this is right wrong halfway in between, in what we want to do is be judgmental and condemning of it yet. At the same time, I hope that you're involved in a church that you believe in. This is half. The problem is too many people have put themselves in churches. That aren't good. They're, they're there for the show or the song and the dance or the field good or whatever. They're not part of something where real kingdom work Jesus' work is happening. And because of that, they can't quite bring themselves to kingdom thinking
Speaker 5 00:27:52 It's that glazed donut. And we'll keep that powder church. It's skinny jeans and fog machines. I mean, they're everywhere, right? But they're not treat, they're not teaching Shrew scriptural journey with Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's really, it's really, it's really watered down horribly. There's a, um, there, there is, there are so many things that, um,
Speaker 3 00:28:16 One of my mentors said, I wish that every Christian
Speaker 5 00:28:19 Had the pastor for at least 10 minutes,
Speaker 3 00:28:21 Because there, there would be a whole perspective, James, that would take place from the fact that, you know, when you are the pastor and how you have to do things is different than sometimes what the perspectives are. Sure. And I tell people in our church all the time, I said, Hey, if you're coming here and you're hunting something that you don't like
Speaker 2 00:28:41 Found
Speaker 3 00:28:41 That here it is. If you're looking for something that you don't like, that's bad that maybe don't fit your, here it is. I'm telling you right now. But if you came here and your heart is to search and to seek for the right things, I can, I can tell you how many people I've seen physically healed, spiritually healed. How many marriages we've seen reconcile. We literally just not that long ago, did a, uh, a rebel renewal service for a jacked up couple by the world standard. Um, I, you know, so w and our church is growing and people are coming from miles and miles around to come be a part of this. And at the same time, there's people, some people are quitting. Yeah. So what's the, what's the balance here? How can some people be in our church and their marriages are being healed and they're growing and they're developing. And then some other couples, not that long ago, sends me an email and tells me I'm a poor, terrible pastor and they quit. And now they're divorced. So, so what's the difference here? It's your fault. It's my fault. And it probably eventually it'll come out that while Steve
Speaker 2 00:29:42 Would have been a better pastor. You're not preach. Here's the thing. Jesus was the perfect pastor, right? Yeah. And one 12th of his church Judas literally crucified him. What about the 70 that walked away from him? Yeah. So it's, it's not about the perfect church or the perfect pastor because Jesus was the perfect church. And Jesus had the perfect pastor. And there was a fudge of dysfunctional activity that was taking place around him. It's about you individually in your heart. If you come in humble and submitted and you understand the scriptures and what your identity is in Christ, or at least you're pushing into those things, the father will even maybe make it so that maybe you're the only healthy person in that church. But it's because you came there with the right heart, doing the right thing. Now in bringing this in these guys all work at a church, I don't.
Speaker 2 00:30:31 So I'm going to go on a limb here for a second. You won't find a pastor that will tell somebody, leave your church and come to my church. It doesn't happen. They build up the kingdom that way. Those are bad pastors. Right. But here's what I'm going to say. And I'm going to take you guys off the hook there. If you're a part of a church like we're describing, leave, get out of that and find a church that preaches the word of God. If you're leaving more than two Sundays in a row saying, I didn't learn anything, I wasn't challenged. I didn't, I didn't get something out of the text that I wasn't aware of. Or I didn't know. Before I came to church this Sunday, if you didn't worship in a way that you've never worshiped before Lee get theirs, find a Bible church, that's preaching the word of God.
Speaker 2 00:31:20 That's challenging by the spirit of God. And that's really the core of this Ravi Zacharias message, absolutely surround yourself with people that have authentic relationships based in scripture, which is your local church that are going to encourage you and walk with you every step of the way that make it near impossible, to not see the red flags as they come in. The people that will battle for you. When you find out that you're in more than just the red you red flags, that won't let you continue to live that kind of a life that you might be lifted up out of your grave, into righteous, living on the journey, set apart, committed 100% to godly living. May God bless you.
