Guilt or Conviction? How to Know Which Voice You’re Hearing | The Steve Marston Show
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He's just a regular guy with a cool job that God loves for some reason.
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Welcome to The Steve Marston Show, a daily journey in learning how to live more like Jesus, conversations with those that God is working through, and dad jokes. It's the most unique show you'll hear today. Now, here's Steve. Okay, thank you for joining us. The Steve Marston Show is underway. I to say a special welcome to those of you that are listening on radio. Because radio holds such a special place in my heart. I've been in the industry for...
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Gosh, over 30 years now, hard to believe, but that's true. And I'm so thankful we're still on two amazing radio stations. The first one that carried the program is 99.5 The Word in Little Rock. And then we were also joined a few months after launch by AM 630 The Word in San Antonio. So for those of you folks that make it a priority every single day to be here Monday through Friday at 3 PM Central, God bless you. Thank you for joining us.
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We are grateful and humbled that you're here. The rest of you have gone about consuming this program on your own schedule, on your own time, which is fantastic. Nothing wrong with that at all. Whether you're listening on your podcast app, listening at SteveMarsdenShow.com, or if you're listening at YouTube, we are so appreciative of you being here as well. Now, I wanted to start today by doing a little...
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word definition here because I think it's something that we as Christians need to know the difference in and that's discernment. What is exactly discernment? Because as we all grow in our faith, I think discernment comes along as a byproduct. I don't think you necessarily get discernment when you first come to know Christ as your Savior. Or put another way, know some of us
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We're saved, you we got our quote-unquote fire insurance, but we didn't really start living for God till much later after our salvation. So that could be your story too. But discernment is almost a muscle that we're given, but until we start exercising it, it's not going to grow and it's not going to help us a whole lot. So what are we talking about when I say discernment? Well, I think there's two major
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things we have to discern between as Christians, and especially those of us that are growing in our faith and those that want to have a more intimate relationship with God. We have to discern between what is guilt and what is conviction. Now, here's one of the things, let me say as an aside before I really get into this. We as Christians have our own kind of language, right? And depending on what your tradition is, what your denomination is,
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You may not define these words the same way that I do, but yet you're going to agree that, yeah, that's exactly right. You may have a different term for it, but you're going to get what I'm saying. So here's what I define as guilt. Guilt comes from the enemy. Guilt is not something healthy. Guilt is something that is whispered in your ear after you
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mess up and you fail, guilt is something that says to you, well, what did you expect? You were so dumb. You were so unworthy of anything that God may have to offer for you. You are just the worst. I cannot believe you acted like that. Look at all the things you claim to believe in and yet you are going to be like this? Really?
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You are so unworthy. You're so less than everybody else. Those type words, those type things that you hear, that doesn't come from God. We have to discern that that is guilt. That's not what God says to us. What God would say to us is what I term conviction. Conviction says, hey, what you did
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that hinders our relationship. Listen, you have now, because of your behavior, because of your decision, have put a barrier between you and I. And let's remove that barrier. Since I'm not the one who caused it, you need to repent. You need to make things right with me. That's coming from our Heavenly Father. That is a voice that says, let's restore the relationship.
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Yes, you blew it. Okay, let's repent of it, let's acknowledge it, and let's move on. Let's get back to where we were. Whereas guilt is totally the opposite. I'll give you a perfect example of how closely they're related. I can remember as a young father and a young husband how much having a family devotional time was talked about.
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I mean, you listen to programs like Focus on the Family, and they would have experts on right and left talking about the need for it, because your family needs you, especially as the man of the house, to be the spiritual leader and to make sure that the Bible is taken seriously and is talked about in your home. So you need to make sure you have these family devotionals.
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every single night. the implication was, they didn't say this, but the implication was, your kids may not come to know Jesus if you don't. So now all of a sudden, here I am, a young guy with a young family, and I've got a crazy schedule that I can barely find enough time for me to do a personal devotional with, much less get all my family together at the same time. My work schedule was
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a lot of weird hours. I worked in radio, so I was gone way early in the morning, and therefore I had an earlier bedtime than everybody else, even as little kind of babies. My kids stayed up later than I did a lot of nights, and I just couldn't find time. And I would hear what I now know as guilt. Talking about how...
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awful I was and how much I was blowing it as a father because I wasn't having these family devotionals. Now, let me just stop right here and say, if you're having family devotionals with your family and it's working and it's going well, then God bless you. Keep it up. I applaud you for doing that. But after a few years, I came to realize that family devotionals was not the end-all be-all.
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of my relationship with my kids as far as it goes to introducing them to Jesus. What I came to understand through some discernment and through growing in my faith was that just because we didn't have a time where we sat down as a family and opened the Bible and prayed together as a corporate group does not mean that we're doing bad.
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You go back, I found such comfort and such hope in the book of Deuteronomy when it talked about how you're supposed to talk over things of God in your daily routine, in your comings and your goings, in your rising up and your sitting down, just to have it as a part of the everyday life. That's what we were doing. That's what I was doing with my family, even though we weren't having the quote-unquote
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stop down time where we actually had a devotional time. We would always talk about the things of God in all kinds of ways, whether it would be after Sunday school, I would ask the kids, you know, what was your Sunday school lesson about? And we would discuss it a little bit. What was the sermon about in big church? What was, you know, happening in life and how, well, maybe God is using that situation to maybe show you this or maybe
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We need to show that person who hurt your feelings a little grace. Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing and maybe we don't need to harbor such bad feelings and on and on and things like that. And I began to realize that that is what is important. Keeping God at the forefront of your conversation as a family, as your unit grows, not just the five or ten minutes you might have every single night for a devotional time.
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And again, I know that's such a small example, but it is something that really triggered with me discernment as far as what God was speaking to me versus what the world and what Satan may have been trying to whisper into my ear. So make sure whenever those things come along in your life that you make sure you're listening to the right voice because they do sound so similar.
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The Steve Marsden show continues. Thank you for being a part of it. It's where faith and fun are both taken seriously. And we're going to celebrate coming up real soon when we hit our 250th subscriber to our YouTube channel. And I know the grand scheme of things, that doesn't sound like a lot, but when we consider how far we've come since we stripped down to the studs, our YouTube page and really revamped it and redid everything a couple of months ago.
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we're really starting to be on the come. And so, what we're going to do is once we hit those 250 subscribers, I'm going to be giving away a John MacArthur study Bible. You ever listen to the program, Grace To You, on one of our great radio stations? You know what an amazing teacher Dr. MacArthur was. I have his commentary book over the whole Bible in my personal study. But what this Bible study book, our study Bible does,
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is it takes that entire commentary, which is huge, and it puts it into the Bible itself. So you've got John MacArthur's study notes from Genesis through Revelation. And this is in calfskin. It's a beautiful, beautiful Bible, and it's worth between like $150 and $200. So we'll be celebrating 250 subscribers really soon, and when we do, we'll give you an opportunity to register to win that again.
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just go to our YouTube page and if you haven't subscribed, be somebody that does so that we can include you in on the contest there at youtube.com slash Steve Marston Show. Okay, on Tuesdays what we like to do is a little feature called That's Not in the Bible. It's just basically our homage to... remember the television show Mythbusters? It was one of my son's favorite shows where they would take things that you would see in a movie and
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determine whether could that really happen or not and it would either be proven or it would be busted and that's what this is kind of about because there are so many things that Christians and even non-believers believe about scripture that maybe kind of sorta but really is not spelled out in the Bible and that's what we want to do here is to be able again going back to our first segment to be able to discern
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what's really in the Bible and what's really not. So you'll hear people from time to time, especially out of church, but sometimes in churches as well, we'll say something along the lines that, well, Jesus himself never claimed to be God. know, others did that. Did he just come into existence as a baby in Bethlehem? Or was he something more than that? What does the Bible say?
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the Bible is clear on Jesus being the Creator. In fact, you can look at all kinds of Scripture, but especially like in John. John talks about how Jesus was in the beginning and there was nothing created without Him. And so you go back and you look at Genesis and you realize that yes, God the Father was there, God the Holy Spirit was there, but
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Jesus the Son was there as well and Jesus the Son was the creator of all things. In fact, John says of Jesus that nothing was created without him. So that's a pretty bold statement and shows that Jesus was from eternity past. He was there before time even began. However, I know some people
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we'll kind of argue with that point and say, yeah, that's John, his friend, his apostle friend writing that, and Paul will write something about that, but Jesus himself, Jesus himself never declared himself to be God and to be eternal. Well, yes, yes he did, in fact. In fact, in multiple places, but one of my favorites is also found in the book of John, chapter 8, verses...
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58 and kind of following. Jesus is surrounded by some people who are just questioning who he was and why they should listen to him and the whole thing. And Jesus' famous answer was, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Now to our Western eyes and ears, that kind of looks and sounds a little bit strange, not exactly
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sure what that means before Abraham was I Am. We have maybe a little bit of difficulty understanding it, but let me tell you who didn't. The people he was talking to in the moment, they knew exactly 100 % what he was talking about because what Jesus was saying there was, yes, I'm not someone who was just born 30-something years ago. He said with Abraham who was the father of
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the Jewish race and the Jewish people whom God set apart to be the people who pointed others to the true living God. He said, before Abraham was born, I am. Now, again, I am, what does that mean? Well, when you look at when Moses asked God saying, look, you want me to go and lead the people out of captivity,
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What am I supposed to say to these people who say, well, on whose authority? What is this God that you're worshiping? Who is this that we should listen to him? And God said really plainly that his name was I am that I am, meaning he's present always, never had a beginning, never had an end. So when Jesus came along and Jesus...
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said before Abraham was, I am, that really solidified it. But it also made those people that were hearing it mad and angry because they felt like that was blasphemy, that no one should be able to make themselves equal with God. The only problem was he was the only one able to do it because he actually was equal with God.
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And then we find another case in point of Jesus saying of himself that he is deity. In Mark chapter 14, when the high priest was questioning him right before his crucifixion, he remained silent and gave no answer. And the high priest again yelled and said, are you the Messiah? Are you the Son of the Blessed One? Are you the chosen one of God? Are you the...
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God of all gods come to earth and once again Jesus answers by saying, I am. And again, those two words harkening back to the definition that God gave of his name to Moses, that just infuriated them all the more. So yes, there has never been a time where Jesus has not existed. He is the creator. He is the eternal one. He did step
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out of eternity into time, lived the perfect life here on earth, and then ascended back to the Father. So when people say, Jesus never said that He was God, that's not in the Bible.
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Welcome back. The Steve Marston Show continues. It's the Christian radio show and podcast that matters. One of the things you'll notice about this program is that as a rule, we don't talk about politics. I mean, there are so many other programs that do such a wonderful job of talking about the news of the day from a Christian worldview, but that's just not what we do here. We take our opportunities to talk about discipleship more.
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But that's not to say that politics and being involved is not important because it's extremely important. And to that end, several weeks ago we had a chance to visit with Sabrina McDonald. She is the author of a book called The Bible Politics and Culture, A Biblical Worldview Guide for Christian Women. And I started the conversation by asking her about how important it was for Christian women to be involved in the process because
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Quite frankly, it doesn't happen all that much according to statistics. So they did a study and found out that if only women were voting in the last election, that Kamala Harris would have won all 50 states by landslide. So every single state would have been one on her side just from the women vote. So I knew when I heard that statistics, I said, we got to do something because this country is still by and large a Christian country.
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I thought, would women vote that way? Why would Christian women vote like that when this is a woman who is overseeing the death of babies, who doesn't support a lot of the things that Christians support? And I thought, we really need to start re-educating women in this country. And I think the reason, as a woman, part of our strength is our emotional side. So we vote a lot with our emotions. And I think...
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The left has been able to manipulate us emotionally by making us feel like people are being oppressed. And I thought, that's not true. In our country, we have the least amount of oppressed people in the entire world. We have more freedom here than anywhere in the world. So somewhere there's a disconnect with Christian women who don't understand why they believe what they believe. They don't understand how the country was based on really compassion and freedom. And we, because of the country that we live in,
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Women have more freedom than anywhere in the world. So, you we've ended slavery. We've done all these wonderful things throughout our history and yet women don't seem to understand that. So I thought we really need to start educating women in our minds. You know, I think our hearts have been taken over and that's really a good thing. Like I'm glad that women are emotional. I'm glad that we were able to have compassion on people and empathy. But when that empathy gets out of balance with our minds, that's when we lose it. Yeah, and that's the thing too is I think
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God absolutely designed ladies for the most part. mean, again, everybody does a different person, but more emotional. And that's wonderful. But do you think there's also this thing about girl power? Do you think that played a thing in it? Well, hey, that's the lady vote. So I'm going to vote for her regardless what she stands for. She's the girl. So I'm the girl. So we're going to vote and stick together. Yeah. Was that part of Again, I think that's an emotional reaction. Yeah. We shouldn't be,
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Like the Bible says, we don't judge people by the outward appearance, we judge them by their heart. I really don't care if you're a man or a woman, I care that you are doing what Scripture is guiding you to do. And from the very beginning, I mean going way back to the pilgrims, back to the Puritans that came to this country in 1620, that's what they had in mind when they came here, is a country that honors God in everything that they do. And our founding fathers, up in the 1700s, that was their fathers, that was their grandfathers and great grandfathers.
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that taught them to see the world from that biblical worldview. And everything that we believe is based on that biblical worldview in this country. And I think we've lost some of that. So, you know, just because someone's a woman, if she had been a woman who had a wonderful worldview, a Christian worldview, I would say, yay, vote for her. Wonderful. Great. But I don't want our votes being based on what color the person is or what gender the person is. I want our votes to be based on what the scripture tells us about this person's.
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basic beliefs. And I think that's such a thing that is missing, know, where we seem like we take that for granted sometimes. And I'm just leafing through the table of contents here of the book. And you really start at the very beginning because the first section is called, Can the Bible be trusted? And that's you think, well, you're talking about a book about worldview and about voting issues. I mean, that's where really where you got to start because
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If it can't be trusted, if it can't be the linchpin, then it's not worth considering. That's exactly right. So, I mean, you can say that you have a biblical worldview. I'll tell you what happened, partially what happened when I... Of course, a lot of these things start with COVID, right? So, you start seeing these things happening in COVID. Your eyes are open. You're going, we're living through an oppressive situation. So, I start talking to my friends, and they're going, what are you talking about? You know, they're not seeing the things that I'm seeing.
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And I start talking to them from a biblical perspective, you know, but the Bible says about different things. Well, I thought, well, I need to start educating the women in my life. So I go to the girls at my church. had kind of an event for senior girls and we teach them a lot of things before they graduate, you know, how to how to have budget your money. What are your professors going to talk about things like this? So I did the biblical worldview part of it. And so we just went through Q &A. I just start just ask me your questions, sort of a Charlie Kirk style. You know, ask me what you want to ask me.
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And most of the questions they were asking were about the Bible. So they've been taught their whole lives to love the Bible. they said, well, my big brother said that homosexuality wasn't originally in the scripture. Well, so-and-so said that they're hiding books from us. This Gospel of Thomas, how about that one? They're hearing these things in high school, and no one is teaching them about the truth of what these are. And I thought, you can't have a biblical worldview if you don't believe the Bible is true and trustworthy.
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So that is why I started the book there. I wanted people to know, and I go through all the sciences. There are several different chapters. I got through geology, archeology, the fine-tuning argument, which is the one that people used to debate atheists with. Go through all these different ways. I go through prophecy, how the Bible has fulfilled all these prophecies throughout the centuries. And I want people to know that the Bible they're reading, and their Bible today, is trustworthy, it's true, it has not been rewritten, and it can all be proven by scientific
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um approved so you don't need any kind of you know supposed blind faith to believe this it's all proof it's all provable and i'm so glad you said that because that's one of my little wheelhouses i get so upset when people say well you just have blind faith it's no no my faith is in the resurrection of of jesus christ that's that's the foundation of my belief and that's that's what my object of my faith is because
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anybody can say, well, yeah, I have faith or I'm a spiritual person or all of those kinds of labels that a lot of people like to have. But it's the object of your faith that really matters the most. And when that's set up correctly and that is what your foundation is, that's where your worldview comes from. McDonald is our guest. She's got a new book out called The Bible Politics and Culture, A Biblical Worldview Guide.
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for Christian ladies. And as I look through here, so many people have, some big names have endorsed this book, Dennis and Barbara Rainey from right here, Family Life folks, also Amanda Grace from the Ark of Grace Ministries. And you said earlier, again, before we hit record about the Bible for, or this worldview book for Christian women, but really it's for everybody to know these apologetics because I really feel like
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That's the biggest key that's missing in not only young adults and people that are just coming up, but even people our age. We don't know why we believe what we believe in. It's scary a lot of times. Yeah, exactly. When I first started this journey, I was looking for a book that was already written. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I just wanted some material to help teach some of the girls in my life and women in my life.
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And I found a lot of really great books, but it was mostly just right-wing talking points. didn't, they assumed that Christians would already know the scripture that these were based in. And that's the problem is that Christians today don't know the scripture that's based in. I really believe the churches have failed us in that sense that they got so scared about talking about politics, they stopped talking about it. They stopped talking about cultural things, not even political. We're not talking about how your finances should be run or how you should deal with our countries and nations. We're talking about
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cultural moral issues, but people have have come to equate that with politics when in reality this is a these are issues for the church to talk about it certainly is because a lot of times we see the the church Talked to by well, you shouldn't be involved in politics Well a lot of these issues that we're talking about aren't us going into the main main Affairs of the community. It's the community coming in
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and trying to change what has been for eons. And so we're just kind of standing up and pushing back against what the Bible is clearly said. Exactly. People talk about the separation of church and state all the time. And so what I tell them is, yes, state and church are separated, but they're separated like two pillars under the same roof. So you can't take away the church without that roof falling in. So the church is the matter of morality. They're the ones that are coming in and speaking to these issues that are
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on the cultural level. They're telling us what is and is not scripturally based. And we've missed that in a lot of cases. So a lot of these apologetic books or books that deal with culture and issues like that, they're not telling us the scripture. But I've gone through, there's over 500 scripture references inside the content of the book. So that as a person's going through there, they can see where these are based. I read over 60 books to get to research for this, because I was trying to find
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find out from our previous forefathers, where did they get that information? Where does the Second Amendment, for example, how did they decide that that was biblical? Where does that come from? So I read Samuel Rutherford's Rex Lex, and it talks all about basically David was able to defend himself against Saul when Saul came at him. And so that's kind of where he based his entire argument was, well, God was giving his blessing upon David because he had come up against the king Saul.
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So why is that allowed? Well, because God was with David and he was not with Saul. And so he's saying basically it's a righteousness, it's a sense of righteousness that he can come in and battle against the darkness because God was on his side. So he makes the whole entire argument, which I lay out in the book. And those are the things I wanted to know. How did our forefathers decide, yes, this is something that we believe in, or also the just war theory, for example. That's another one that we base all of these sense of violence and war.
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are based in these ideals, which are early, early church father ideas. So this has already been figured out for us. We've just lost the connection between now and then. And that's what I'm trying to do is reattach that connection. This is amazing. It really is a good book. It's Sabrina McDonald. It's called The Bible Politics and Culture, a Biblical worldview guide for Christian women. And just again, leafing through the table of contents here,
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You not only touch on the foundations, you also, you like say, bring it into today with talking about marriage and family and sexuality. Really, I don't know of any more hot button issues than, than those right now in our culture, because so many people believe that, Hey, gender is just a roll of the dice. And I may not have been born in the right body or with the right whatever. So I, I, my ultimate.
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boss and ultimate guide. I can, there must be, if there's, if there was a cosmic accident that put us here, then there could be an accident the way I was born. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And, and I go through an entire section about marriage and family because that's so fundamental to culture in general. If you mess up the family, you mess up children, you mess up gender and marriage, then you've messed up everything. Your entire, your entire culture and, and, and nation.
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is resting upon that. And so much of those kinds of beliefs like, you know, I am who I am on the inside and the outside doesn't matter. These are all Gnostic beliefs, which is an ancient heresy. So I actually go through and talk about the Gnostics and who they were and what they believed and how it's influencing what we think today. And see, that's so, that's so good because so much of what we see is so recent, you know, within the last, what, 30, 40 years, we're seeing a lot of this, but all of it has roots.
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way back in pagan cultures that were again pagan and not Christian. Exactly right. Yeah, it's just like Solomon said, right? There's nothing new under the sun. It's an old. It's all these old things that are coming back under new names. Even even some of these even abortion itself is kind of goes back to to the pagan beliefs of child sacrifice and things like that. And so I go through a lot of these old pagan ideas of old old gods, Bale and Moloch and.
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and Asteroth and all those and how they're, what they did and how we are seeing that mirror today. Jonathan Cahn wrote the book about return of the gods. And I got a lot of information from him and connecting those dots and how it's influencing us today. It's almost like these ancient demons have just come back to life in new ways in our culture. And they're having influence in all these different ways. They really are. And it's up to us to push back. know, it's not us, you know, and I love the scripture.
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that says about spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6, you know, we don't have to take any new ground. All we have to do is stand. Stand where he says to stand. And that's all he expects us to do. But for so many of us, it's tough and I guess we don't want to offend and we want to try to keep the peace and all that. But sometimes you just have to stand. Well, that's exactly right. And here's what I tell people all the time. They want to be loving. They want to be kind. They don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
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But sometimes that is the most unloving and unkind thing that you can do, is not tell someone the truth and not help them. God's laws, God's guidelines in Scripture are not arbitrary. He's not up there saying, well, you're just going to do this because I say so, and I'm God and I make the rules. Everything that He tells us in Scripture is for our good.
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He is the creator. He's the one who built the machine. You don't come to the guy who built the machine and say, the machine's not working right. I want it to work a different way. And the machine builder says, well, I built it to work this way. So here's how you do that. You put oil here, you take care of it. Here's how you take it apart. Here's how you put it back together. He built it. He knows how it works. And so he's given us these rules and scripture and laws to live by because that's what's best for us. And when we live according to his
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rules and scriptures and guidelines, we have the most abundant life. So when we see people who are living outside of those guidelines, they might act like they're happy-go-lucky. They might act like, you know, everything's fine. We know, though, that their conscience is hurting, their souls are desperate for help, they feel like they're living in darkness, they have no purpose. And by just accepting that, we are condemning them.
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to live in a world of purposelessness and hate and fear. So very well said. Again, that's Sabrina McDonald from a conversation we had a couple of months ago here on the Steve Marston Show. The book again is called The Bible, Politics and Culture, A Biblical Worldview Guide for Christian Women. But again, don't let the title fool you. It's for everybody. And you can pick it up at Amazon or wherever books are sold. In fact, we will link to
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for you on the show notes page of both this podcast, both on the website SteveMarsdenShow.com and at our YouTube page. Okay, stay with us. We'll have more coming up.
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Back on the Steve Marston show. Thanks for your company. Discipleship has never been more fun.
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Time for some stories that you may have missed. I don't know if you remember Jessica Simpson. Jessica was someone who was really famous in the 90s. She was, I remember, somebody trying to start out in Christian music, didn't really find a niche there, even though her father was a pastor and everything. She couldn't really find her way there. So she tried some more secular pop kind of stuff and became, like I say, a little bit famous.
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that had that reality show on MTV with her newlywed husband and then that all blew up and she just went from being one of those people who seemed like she knew the right things and but just chased after the world is what I always thought. Well, she's back in the news having like we said grown up singing in church choirs. She's now testifying how God
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made a lovely creation out of her brokenness. She's teaming up for a song with the band for King and Country called My Mosaic from the King and Country's new album called The Most Beautiful Colors. Simpson sings about being born again in Tennessee in 2023, which, okay, I like that because like I say, she talked the part and kind of sorta acted the part for at least a little while early on.
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and then got just about as far away as you can. She's a twice divorced mother of three who moved from LA to Nashville in 2023. It proclaims that her story's told through the stained glass and that the end of the product has been worth it. She says grace and freedom shine through the lyrics of her new song. And I can't wait to hear it. It's going to be on for King & Country's...
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fifth studio album called My Mosaic. And again, it highlights the key moments in Jessica Simpson's life. And then again, like I say, the lyric toward the end of the song is, 2023, born again in Tennessee, back to what I first believed. Now I'm free, finally. Boy, I hope that's true. I really do. I really hope that that's a reality for her. And it would be so good that if it was.
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Let's see, Nick Vukovich is also in the news. Now, he is an evangelist. We've had him on the program talking about, from other podcasts, talking about how he was born without any arms or legs and how doctors didn't give him a chance in the world to really live through childhood. And now he's seen literally thousands and thousands of people come to know Christ through his evangelism.
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He's now got a movie that's going to be made about his life. The story is called No Limbs, No Limits, the Nick V story. It's going to be hitting theaters coming up September 25th. And it's a 96 minute documentary that goes far beyond the images of Vukovic smiling on a stage and telling audiences that anything is possible. It explores the darker parts of his story as well and the faith that changed his journey along the way.
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He also talks about how the church's definition of a miracle needs to change. He says, world often defines a miracle as a dramatic change of circumstances, like the disease disappears or the relationship is restored or the financial crisis ends, the disability is healed. Instead, Nick points to a different kind of miracle, the transformation of a person who once believed his life had no purpose into someone
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whose life now helps others discover theirs. That's why he says this film's message is particularly relevant for people sitting in church who are waiting for their own miracles. Nick says his story doesn't promise that every circumstance will change, but it offers something deeper, that God can still bring purpose out of your circumstances that you never would have chosen. Wow, I love that line. And then Nick went on to say,
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Your value doesn't come from what you do or can do. Your value comes from who you are. And if you're a person who walks out of the theater understanding that, they don't have to wait for God to make their life perfect before he can use them. The movie will have accomplished something far more significant than just simply inspiring them. Love that from Nicky V. Good stuff. Again, that documentary called No Limbs, No Limits, The Nicky V Story.
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on September 25th. Check your local listings as they say. And then let's get to, let's see, one other story that you may have missed as well. This one finds that a new study that forgiveness is hardest for Christians. It says, Christians who are only moderately engaged in their faith may have a harder time forgiving themselves and others than those who regularly...
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regularly practice their faith. That's according to new research from an American Bible Society study. We see that those who are committed to their faith and reading their Bible are more likely to give and experience forgiveness, says the chief innovation officer and editor-in-chief of State of the Bible. His name is John Forquhar, and he also says
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that this makes sense, giving the sensuality of forgiveness in the message of the Bible. Well, of course it does. And the report defines casual Christians as people who identify as Christians and attend church at least monthly, but do not strongly agree that their faith is important to them. He goes on to say among that group, 38 % said they have difficulty accepting themselves after a mistake, higher than both nominal Christians and practicing Christians. And then they go on to say casual Christians
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were also more likely to believe that they had done something God could not forgive. 19 % expressed that belief compared with others with nominal Christians and practicing Christians. The findings also show that a connection between forgiveness and overall wellbeing is there. People who had difficulty forgiving themselves or others scored higher on measures of human flourishing and hope.
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those struggling with self-forgiveness also reported considerably higher levels of stress and loneliness. And among that group, Millennials in Gen Z reported the greatest struggles with self-forgiveness respectively." Well, there you go. mean, science continues every single time it's applied, whether it's something like this or, you know, in archaeology or in something in the universe, whenever science is looked at and...
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data is studied, God's Word just shines through as being right again every single time. It's amazing. It's 100 % of the time accurate to what real life is all about. I love hearing all of that. But again, if you're struggling with forgiveness, struggling with self-forgiveness, that's part of it, man. We have to get over that. We have to give that to God.
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and allow him to work through us because if we don't, we're going to just be bitter and let anger and self-loathing be the definition of our lives.
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Here at the Steve Marston Show, we are serious about faith, but we love a good dad joke.
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The dad joke of the day comes to us from the home office in Pearsall, Texas.
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What did one wall say to the other? What did one wall say to the other? I'll meet you at the corner.
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Yeah, I'm not sure if that should be designated as a classic or not. Means clothes. Been around for a long time. Heard it all.
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just have to get official judges word on that I guess before we get through here. Okay, the Steve Barson show rolling on. Thank you for being a part of it. Again, it's where faith and fun are both taken seriously. And once again, let me just remind you about our YouTube page. We're gonna celebrate 250 subscribers really soon. When we get to that point, we're gonna be giving away a John MacArthur study Bible in calf skin. It is such a nice...
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Bible and we're excited to be able to offer it to you again. That's going to be something just as a celebration of us getting to 250 YouTube subscribers. So by all means, if you haven't already, go to youtube.com slash Steve Marston show and subscribe. We would greatly appreciate it. And then we'll let you know when we'll be able to give that Bible away very, very soon. Okay. Let's get to faith between your ears. This is where
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We learn a Bible verse every single week and we break it down so that we can memorize it, so that we can hide God's Word in our heart, but also have it between our ears so that we know what God's Word says. Because, look, there's so many voices that compete with God's voice and that can make us feel like, we don't know what's going on. But if we have God's Word, not just
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I think so, but I know what God's Word says. That is going to make such a big difference in how you handle the everyday pressures and stresses of life. Isaiah 53, 5 is Faith Between Your Ears verse for this week, and we're learning it. It's called, He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, upon Him the chastisement that brought us peace.
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and with his wounds we are healed. It's again a wonderful and powerful passage from Isaiah chapter 53. So whether you memorize by writing things out long form, whether it's just speaking it over and over out loud to yourself until you get it, or maybe you write it out and put an alarm on your phone to help you to remember to check back in and start trying to...
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reread it and reread it every few hours or something. Whatever your strategies, whatever your methods to Bible study, let's do it. Let's make sure we get that verse in between our ears because it is so, so important and you never know how God is going to use your memorization of Scripture in your life. It's something that you just got to experience for yourself. So, Isaiah 53, 5, Faith Between You.
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Okay, as we wrap up, we always like to give you a little call to action. We call it your next step. Well, I think your next step is to continue to do what we talked about in the first segment. Practice that discernment of learning to listen to which one is God's voice and which one is just noise. We're back on the radio at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Hope you'll be able to join us. I'll be hanging out at SteveMarsdenShow.com. Until then, adios.
