What happens when the faith you’ve been taught runs headfirst into the pain of real life?

On today’s show, Steve tackles the growing conversation around deconstructing Christianity and asks an important question: Are people really abandoning Jesus—or are some struggling with a version of faith that couldn’t withstand suffering, disappointment, unanswered questions, and the failures of other Christians?

Then pastor, author, evangelist and speaker Brady Weldon joins Steve for a powerful conversation about moving from deconstruction to reconstruction. Brady explains why pain has a way of testing our theology, why questioning what you were taught isn’t necessarily the same as questioning Scripture, and why Christians need to create safe places for hurting people to wrestle honestly with difficult questions.

They also discuss church hurt, addiction, divorce, grief, disappointment with God and the difference between being hurt by people who represent Jesus and rejecting Jesus Himself. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can offer someone isn’t a quick theological answer—it’s simply sitting beside them in the wreckage and pointing them back to Christ.

Also on Episode 477:

Seek and Find: Steve takes a look at the often-overlooked book of Obadiah, the judgment of Edom, the danger of pride and what this short Old Testament book teaches us today.

Stories You May Have Missed: Franklin Graham and Samaritan’s Purse turn down participation in a major government grant program; 22-year-old Christian creator Bryce Crawford asks Vice President J.D. Vance about heaven and faith; and a couple gets married at 35,000 feet aboard a Southwest Airlines flight.

Faith Between Our Ears: This week’s memory verse is Micah 6:8—do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.

Plus, Brady talks about The Undoing of Not Doing and why hesitation and procrastination can keep us from stepping into what God has called us to do.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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He's just a regular guy with a cool job that God loves for some reason. 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. All right, welcome in. The Steve Marston Show is underway. Happy to have you aboard. Just like every day, we are here.

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on great radio stations like AM 630, the Word in San Antonio.

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And on 99.5, the word in Little Rock, both broadcasting from their powerful transmitters, flame throwing it all over their listing areas in central Arkansas and in south central Texas. So we're appreciative of that. Also to the rest of you for being here, listening online on your own time, on your own schedule. Thank you for being a part of the Steve Marston show. And again, the show is growing. We are not, you know,

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as we would say in either South Central Texas or South Arkansas, we're not setting the woods on fire, but we are growing. We're continuing to chug up the mountain. People are finding us every single day. We're having more likes on our videos. We're having more people listen to the podcast and the audience share is just continuing to expand and expand and expand. And it's been beautiful to see and I'm so thankful for it. And if you'd like.

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to get your business or your church or your ministry as a part of the Steve Marston show, you can do so. We would love to partner with you to get your message out. It's one of the beautiful things about this radio and podcast business, being able to introduce my loyal listeners to my friends that are business owners slash ministry leaders and be able to connect them. It's a wonderful thing for me and I love being able to do that.

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So if you want to get your message out to a group of people who are committed to trying to live more like Jesus, to be able to walk deeper in faith with Him every single day, we can help you. Just send me an email, steve at Salemmedia.com. Whether you're looking for digital or radio or combination of both, I can put you in touch with the right people. If you're listening in San Antonio, if you're listening in Little Rock, or if you're listening anywhere else,

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we can take care of you. So just hit me up, steve at Salemmedia.com. I wanted to talk a little bit about this deconstruction of faith, because it's been a popular topic, it seems like, over the last, gosh, several years now, probably going back maybe as far as 10 or 15 years, to see how some of these people who we have looked at as quote unquote celebrity Christians and how they have

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now come to the point where they don't believe anything at all. They're just completely and totally atheist. I came across a story recently, it was just about a month or so ago, this guy from Dallas. He was on staff at a megachurch. He had graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary, which is an amazing Bible institution, and now has just rejected all his faith and rejected everything about Christianity, even

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after spending time, as I say, on a staff of a church. Then I can think back to those guys who I really looked up to and really thought a lot of, Rhett and Link, the guys that were one of the people on the ground floor of YouTube. They are still making videos every single day and they are incredibly popular and they started out working for Crew.

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which used to be called Campus Crusade for Christ, and they were very involved with that and led a lot of college and teenage ministry rallies and different things and was kind of a big name in the Christian bubble there for a while. Went off to Hollywood, started making their YouTube videos, again from a Christian perspective, but then all of a sudden they stopped believing what

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They had always claimed they had believed in and said they are quote unquote deconstructing their faith. Same thing for a guy. If you're as old as I am, you may remember a book from the nineties called I Kissed Dating Goodbye by a guy named Pastor Josh Harris. Josh wrote this book and basically it was saying to kids, don't put so much pressure on yourself to go out and find your quote unquote soulmates, you know,

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as your teenager, as a young adult, just take some time and go in a group setting and kind of just kind of get to know one another as friends without putting so much pressure on yourself. More of a purity culture kind of thing. Well, he wound up not only recounting his faith, but actually calling people who had said that that book harmed them in some way and apologizing personally for

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writing that book and he's been on this kind of apologetic tour of in the worst kind of way for a while now. And you look at all of these people and I think they have one thing in common. The fact is they will all tell you that yes, I did all the Christian stuff. I was saved. I was born again. was living for Jesus. I was the person that everybody said I should be.

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and I found it to be hard and found it to be not satisfying and I found it to ultimately to be empty. And I have, and they will all say this too, I have found the greatest freedom since I laid Christianity down. Where I have a lot of problem with that. First and foremost, if you really do a deep dive into the some of the things they were doing, all of these people, it was so much trying to

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keep up and make a brand for themselves and a name for themselves in their own little areas and to keep constantly going and to keep constantly putting out content and putting out good things that people will see and request them to kind of, you know, continue to come speak and continue to come lead different kind of conferences and things like that. And what is always missing is

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true relationship with God. See, because I really believe all of these people that I mentioned and pretty much everyone else who says that, I was born again, but now I'm not anymore. That's not what happened, because if you truly were born again, you can't go back. I mean, the Apostle Peter said it so good. In fact, this is my favorite Bible verse. It comes from John 6 68. Jesus is talking to this massive group of people.

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and tells him what it really takes to follow him. And the group goes, whoa, I'm out. That's too much. And Jesus looks at his disciples, the 12 that he hand chose, and said, well, what about you? Are you going to leave me too? And Peter stood up and said, where else am I going to go? You have the words of eternal life. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. See, Peter couldn't deny that. And I don't think anybody

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who is truly born again could ever come to the point and say that no, that was just all fake, that was all messed up. And this whole bit about finding freedom and finding and being able to just live, that kind of attitude and mentality is not freedom, but I think relief. Because I think all of these people who have tried to live the Christian life

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and do everything right and dot all the I's and cross all the T's and be what they're supposed to be, instead of living and relying and allowing Jesus to live in and through you, they are now finding just relief. They don't have to push the boulder up the hill anymore. And I don't blame them. I would feel the same way, but it's not freedom. It's relief that they're feeling.

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because they have been trying to do something that they never could do. You know, we always talk about this, that nothing we can do on our best day, the absolute most glorious, unselfish, pure-hearted, motive thing that we can do on our best day, still doesn't qualify us for God and qualify us for heaven, right? Our righteousness just doesn't cut the mustard.

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We have to be saved through Christ. And once we are saved through Christ, then all of a sudden, this life that feels so hard and feels like pushing that boulder up the hill, man, it becomes so much easier because it's not you doing it. It's God doing it through you. That's why this whole deconstruction thing is a joke.

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You know, just to try to close the loop a little bit on this whole deconstruction business. Maybe it was a little stiff me saying that deconstruction is a joke. I know people struggle with that, but I'm just telling you, based on that Bible verse that I quoted where Peter said, where else are we going to go? People who are truly born again can't deny that. There's just no way. Welcome back. It's the Steve Marston show. Discipleship has never been.

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more fun. are grateful for you being here. Our YouTube channel is something that continues like this show overall to grow. We're seeing a lot of people share our videos, like our videos, view our videos, and we upload a bunch on the regular every single day. So we would love for you the next time you're at YouTube to just swing by Steve Marston show.com and click like click subscribe.

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Click the notifications bell so that you'll know when we upload and you can be one of the first to be able to take away the new content and check it out for yourself. And of course, it helps us continue to put this show in front of a bigger audience. So whether you're listening on radio or you're listening online right now, please check out Steve Marston's show at youtube.com.

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Okay, let's get to our weekly feature we do on Wednesdays called Seek and Find. And we do this so that it will encourage you to jump in the word. We hope that maybe something we say sparks your interest here to check it out. Because, the Bible talks about seeking and we will find. Knock and the door will be opened, right? Just keep on seeking, keep on knocking, and eventually...

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it'll be opened up to you. That's what God says in His Word. And we've been looking at the last several weeks the minor prophets. And again, not to sound like a broken record, but the minor prophets aren't minor because of the importance of their message, but because they are smaller in verses and in chapters. They're just smaller than the bigger major prophets. That's the only delineation between the two.

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So let's get into another book that we haven't covered yet and that's the book of Obadiah. And this ought to be easy for you to read all the way through. Now you think, Obadiah really? How easy is that going to be? Look, it's one chapter. It's like 21 verses and it's powerful because it talks about the nation of Esau. Now let's do a little deep dive here so stay with me, okay?

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Obadiah was this prophet who used the opportunity to condemn Edom for their sins. Now Edom is Esau, and Esau was Jacob's brother. They were twins, you remember? And Jacob didn't want anything to do with the religious part of what his family was about. He was Isaac's son. He kind of rejected it all, and Jacob was who the lineage of Christ would eventually come through.

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Okay? And God had a plan for both brothers. And the Edomites have been quarreling with their brothers for, at this time, like thousands of years. And the division between the Edomites forbid Israel to cross their land during the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. So when Moses was leading the children,

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out of Egypt, or of Israel out through Egypt. That's where they wanted to go. And their kin, their family members, their brothers said, no, you can't come through here or else we're going to attack you. We'll look at it as a sign of war. So God remembered all of that. And the whole thing comes down to Obadiah's message is final and sure, that the kingdom of Edom will be completely destroyed because

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of one reason and that's because Edom is arrogant. They've been gloating over their brother Israel's misfortunes and when enemy armies had attacked Israel and the Israelites asked the Edomites for help, they refused and chose not to fight for Israel but to fight against them. And then it really gets down to their pride.

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It really got down to their sense of being better than and not concerning themselves with anyone else but themselves. And God says the sins can be no longer overlooked. And then the book of Obadiah kind of ends with a really pretty neat little foreshadowing of the coming Messiah. In verse 21, the book contains

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Jesus and his church because listen what it says it says then the Savior shall come from Mount Zion to judge the mountains of Esau and the kingdoms shall be the Lord's and the Saviors in this instance They're also called deliverers in some versions are the Apostles of Christ the ministers of the Word especially Preachers of the gospel what we would say in these latter days and it says they're called Saviors not because

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They obtain salvation but because they preach salvation through the gospel of Christ and show the way to obtain salvation and they preach the word and it is celebrated and shared to all who will receive it. While Christ is the only Savior alone who would come to purchase salvation and is the author of it, Saviors and Deliverers of the gospel will be more and more evidence as the age draws to an end.

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That's from GotQuestions.com, which is an amazing little website that helps you kind of break down all these different books of the Bible. again, Obadiah pronounces judgment from God on the nation of Edom. And Edom has been so much a thorn in the side of Israel and has been so rejecting of

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anything about God that it's time to pay up. And we say that a lot. And I use this analogy many times. It's that, like as parents, if we tell our kids, okay, look, you don't need to do that. You need to stop messing around. I need you to be better at doing this. And the kids say, well, I'm not going to do it. And they continue to rebel. They continue to do what they are told not to do.

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Pretty soon your patience is going to run out, is it not? Pretty soon you're going to have to bring some kind of judgment, whether that's a grounding, whether that's a spanking, whether that's just taking away some kind of privileges. Something's got to change that behavior. And God had put all of this in the path of Edom, and they had completely rejected it. Well, God now says that He is done.

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and he's going to deliver the punishment to Edom and it's very severe. In fact, you can find out how severe it is when you check out the book of Obadiah, verse 9, when you seek and find for yourself how much God is going to punish the nation of Edom. The Steve Marston Show continues. Thank you for listening and this is the place where

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Discipleship has never been so much fun. And when I think about fun, I think about my brother Brady Weldon. He and I have known each other for a very long time, and it's always fun to get to welcome him back to the program. And I got kind of a God story that we're going to tell here in just a second. But first, Brady, welcome back, man. It's always good to have you here. Steve, it's always good to talk to you, brother. Yeah, man. Now, you are a pastor, an evangelist, an artist, an author. mean,

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You're kind of a jack of all trades, and it's always fun having you here and getting your perspective. But I was just telling you before we hit record here on our little segment that I had mentioned that I had did the first part of the program about deconstruction and how I didn't think that that's really a true term that people really kind of go through. I think those of us that are truly born again can never just say, oh, well, Jesus doesn't exist.

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But yet, we go through a period maybe of reconstruction. There's a difference there. And then lo and behold, I opened up my Facebook page just minding my own business, and there's Brady Weldon with the post exactly about what I just talked about, and we hadn't even discussed it, you and I. Well, the fact that you and I, our brains and our spirits are centered is wonderful and scary at the same time, know. It's a blessing and a curse, right?

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Of course, mean, you know, when you're ADHD like this, what do you expect? But it's amazing because I had discovered that a lot of people aren't the ones that have faith, people that have faith, they're not losing their faith. They're confused because the faith they were handed maybe in the beginning doesn't always explain the life that they're living or the experiences that have come through life. And, you know, I think that people, instead of trying to deconstruct,

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Which to me is just a word of saying throw away and get rid of Something that they think is a weight to them Instead you can you can go through the pains of like christianity is not for the successes of life but through the darkest moments of life also, I mean If jesus modeled anything for us, man, you know, I just I just kind of started with my own honesty, honestly, uh, honestly, honestly and

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I just kind of had an admission publicly that a lot of the things that I felt like, legalistically, that was put on me in my early years, the experiences of life shed light through the mosaic of the pain that I had experienced in my own life at different points. That didn't make me want to deconstruct. It made me want to reconstruct. And what I found is there's a mosaic, if you will,

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that is built around reconstructing your life. And man, that's where the light shines through and misery becomes ministry. If you can reconstruct and realize that Jesus is in the center of whether he allows it, produces it, whatever happens in your life, the painful moments of your life is where Christ really shines the brightest. Yeah, absolutely.

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I think so many times we are kind of given maybe a bill of goods as new believers that, well now that I am following the savior of the world, the guy who paid it all, well now everything's just gonna be sunshine and lollipops and rainbows and waterfalls. And when we find out that it's not, that life still goes on and there's still unjust, there's still things that are rotten that happen, it can knock us for a loop. But if we've got that

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solid foundation of Christ, it may knock us for a loop, but at least we've got a foundation. Yes, and there's a difference. I think people need to understand, too, that there is a difference between your disappointment with human beings and those who say they represent Jesus and Jesus himself. That is such a good point. I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's such a good point. I worked a lot with college students.

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And I had a chance just recently to visit for a couple of minutes with one college student who said, look, I go to church and my family is really religious and the whole thing. But I have been church hurt to the point where I just don't believe anymore and I just can't take it anymore. And I'm just, I'm just, I've laid it all down. I'm not going to go back. And I, and I said, well, I don't have a whole lot of time to talk with you, but let me encourage you by this.

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that don't miss God because of people. Because that can happen so often, right? Yes, absolutely. I mean, when I put the first post up the other day, I was amazed. We had 30, which doesn't in the Facebook social media world, doesn't sound like a lot, but from my little social media corner of the world, it was incredible. We had 30,000 different views, hundreds and hundreds of responses.

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And I just encourage people to give me their deepest, darkest question. And the questions not necessarily were kind of rebellious. They were, they were, to be honest with you, what surprised me was that they weren't people saying, I don't believe in God anymore. They were primarily saying, I love Jesus, but I just don't understand why these things have happened. Why these people have done this to me? Why?

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you know, um, uh, the old, the old adage of, uh, of polygetic background, why does God, um, allow bad things to happen to good people? know? Um, and I think, I mean, I'm telling you, see the amount of, of responses that came in and they were just gut wrenching. Um, my inbox was filled, uh, overflowing with people.

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Whether somebody, there was somebody trapped in, you know, a mother who was praying for her son because her son was trapped in meth and alcoholism. You know, could this boy still find God? That was the question that somebody asked me. Someone who buried four siblings asked me whether all that tragedy was punishment for their father's alcoholism. You know?

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I mean, it just got deeper and deeper and deeper. And what I began to realize is that when you, whether it's, know, whether you have the expectations with human beings who fail you, especially in the church realm, or you have life that just has dealt you just the most crushing blow. They want to know is Jesus on the bathroom floor? Is he at the bottom of the ditch? Is he there?

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with me. you know, the great news about our faith and that what God gives us is that He is not only giving you answers from on high, He is stooping down and He is there when you have your questions. And to me, that's a God worth following. Absolutely. And I so agree with you because those questions are legitimate. Those people are going through legitimate hurts.

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It's not something we can sweep away as those of us on the other side that are listening and hearing their hearts. We can't just say, well, just buck up, you know, it'll be okay. God loves you, God has a plan. Those things may be true, but being able to relate to those people and to just to hurt with them is something more than trying to do something with these cliches, right?

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Yeah, exactly. mean, you know, for 20, 25 years out of my 36 years of ministry, God has, for some reason, allowed me to be a shepherd of the shattered. And so I thought, you know, it's worked everywhere else where I'm speaking and writing and doing things. What about on social media? And when I ended up writing about it, what I began to realize is that there's hurting people out there trying to understand

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everything they've been taught all of these years, you know, it's kind like a, it's kind of like a pilot of an airplane or even a ship. You've been trained over and over and over to go through all the protocols of what is it? What do you do when everything goes wrong in an airplane or a ship? Um, and I think that a lot of times people are, have to have to, they're thinking they have to deconstruct and tear down.

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because the ship is going under for them or they feel like it or they've somebody's knocked a hole in the side of their boat. And I, I'm not encouraging people to deconstruct until there's nothing left and the whole ship goes under. I'm talking about as you are reconstruction, take the questions, the wounds, the things you were taught, the things that don't make sense anymore to you, bring every bit of that back to the foot of the cross because, because pain has a way of

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testing your theology. You know, I read this article just on this post again, and I read your words that says that you find answers easier today than you did like 30 years ago in situations like what we're talking about. You said, but strangely I trust Jesus more because I've discovered that faith isn't always having everything neatly explained. Explain that a little bit.

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Well, I it goes against the grain of a lot of popular Christianity here. And so forgive me for sounding crazy about it, but you know me well. So, you know, what do expect? What I'm really meaning in that is that when you go through pain, especially surprising pain, which most pain is the death of a loved one, the death of a child, your own pain, your own wounds, your own

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your own fatal decisions that you might make for your own self worth or whatever. I, what I have noticed is a lot of times I'm questioning my understanding of scripture. Um, there's a difference between questioning scripture and the way I understood what I was taught, maybe growing up. Oh, that's so good. I have to, I have to, in other words,

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You know, I went to Bible college, went to seminary, did all the things I should do. But what I realized is that when you hit the brick wall of your own life, everything you've been taught suddenly stands up in front of you and says, okay, systematic theology, all of these other things, or whether you just sat in a small group in a church and learn things or listen to preachers and applied the word of God. Everything then says, do you believe what you've been taught?

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does everything that I've taught you, you know, the Lord says everything you've been taught, does everything I've poured into you, can you now pour that out on the wounds of your own experience? And I think that's where we have to realize that that's where, as we've said for years, that's where the rubber meets the road, if you will. And I think that, you know, and the amazing thing is that I've had most of these

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people that have been coming in. mean, even while you and I are talking right now, I'm getting responses coming through right now. But I wanted to create a safe table for people who love Jesus, but have and have great belief systems. Even some of them, many of them do, but they ran into the wall of their own real life. And I realized a lot of times that church works really hard to take people away from their life.

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instead of giving them the answers and a safe place for them to fall and and maybe even question some things especially when they're in the whirlwind of their own pain and I think that's one of the things where I Really saw this explode where I said hey you can just sit at my table here and you say Brady I don't understand why God didn't heal my mom. I don't understand why my marriage failed. I don't understand why Christians hurt me

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And I don't have to panic. You know, sometimes the most spiritually honest answer I can give somebody is, I don't know. But I'll what I will do, I'll sit here and I'll wrestle with it through you and through each other. And we'll see what God speaks. Nine times out of 10 so far, Steve, the Holy Spirit has just poured his precious oil over the wounds of so many people. And they've talked.

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and the Lord's talked them into a healing process, and it's a wonderful thing to see. It really is. Brady Welding is our guest. Again, he's an author, he's a pastor, he's a corporate speaker, he's the rock and roll reverend, he's a man of many trades, but he's a guy that loves Jesus and reaches out to the broken. And I'm just so impressed with you, as I am all the time when I read your writing, but your Facebook post will post this on our podcast and let people have a link to it to be able to see it all for themselves.

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But as we continue to talk about how to reach out to the broken, sometimes, Brady, it's like the book of Job, right? Job's friends, before they started all the accusations, what did they do? They sat with him, and they didn't say a word, and they were just there with him. That, to me, I think is the biblical road of some of these really hard things. Man, I don't have the answers, but I'll sit here with you just like you were saying.

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Oh my goodness, I'm telling you, it's the most important thing somebody can do. I'm discovering right now, Steve, I mean, just in the beginning of this little social media experiment that I've tried, I'm discovering thousands and thousands of people, some of which are not trying to walk away from Jesus, they're just trying to understand Him through the wreckage of their real life. They've got questions about suffering, addiction, divorce.

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church hurt and theology and somewhere along the way they were made to feel guilty about asking them. So I'm saying ask the question, bring the broken pieces. We're not tearing down. We're reconstructing a more honest faith around the center of faith who is our King Jesus. if we'll do that, I'm telling you, man, we can...

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We can, we can get you built back up. We can build something out of this. Amen. We've got about a minute and a half left. want to, I did want to hit on the undoing of not doing. You've got that book that's out and now it's out in audio book form, right? That's right. Yes. It's a, it's out now. And, uh, I, uh, I had to sit in the studio.

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and read my own stuff and it was, it was torturous, but I'm okay. I made it through. I can imagine with the way you move at a thousand miles an hour all the time. I bet sitting in a recording studio for hours on end was, was a test from Satan.

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It was, it really was. I'm okay though. I made it through. They stuck me in a broom closet and said, don't play with the brooms. Just talk to the mic. Man, that's fantastic. that, a little thumbnail. We got again, like 45 seconds. Give a little thumbnail about what the undoing of not doing is. The undoing of not doing is, to be honest with you, it is another form of reconstruction.

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We need to, we have a generation of people that have dreams and visions and, they hesitate and hesitation ruins our futures. And so I wrote a book that dealt with tackling just destroying and crucifying procrastination in our lives. Brady, we're just out of time. This always goes by incredibly fast, but we'll link to everything on our podcast, the book, the audio book, and for the Facebook page as well. It's always a pleasure, bud. Love you.

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Thank you, Steve. Love you too. Talk to you soon.

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The Steve Marston Show continues. It's the Christian radio show slash podcast that really matters because of the content. It's good to be with you and we would love to put into your hands speaking of content a free PDF that we've got called Five Tips for Bible Study. If you're to the point where you would like to be able to open up God's Word and be able to read for yourself and really feel like

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you're handling God's Word correctly and you're understanding what it says without having a benefit of a teacher or a devotional book or a workbook, this is for you and it's absolutely free. You just go to our website stevemarschenshow.com and click on the little free PDF subscription and it will be a digital download for you. We really think it'll help you. Again, it's nothing earth-shattering. You're going to look at it go, oh, yeah, that makes sense, I think.

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So check it out again, Five Tips for Bible Study at stevemarshdenshow.com. It's absolutely free to download. Let's get to some stories you may have missed. This one kind of shocked me, especially the headline, when you see a nonprofit organization turn down $300 million in grant money. Kind of gets your attention. Well, that's what Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse did. The story is that last month, the State Department announced

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this grant program, and it was designated for Samaritan's Purse, marked for a consortium of jointly led World Vision and Compassion International. So was really for three ministries. But Franklin said, after a lot of prayer and discussion, Samaritan's Purse decided to withdraw as funding, as a funding recipient in a statement with churchleaders.com, Samaritan's Purse

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CEOs Franklin Graham said he and his organization appreciated the government's confidence but noted that we have always relied on God and not government for funding. I just love that. I think that is so good because if the government's not giving you money, then they can't tell you how to spend it. And Franklin Graham went on to thank God for the incredible donors who support Samaritan's Purse by saying the ministry will continue sharing the hope.

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of the gospel of Jesus Christ while responding to crises in Jesus' name. And then he went on again further to say, we're grateful for our working relationship with the U.S. State Department and will continue to be available to partner with the U.S. government in response to emergencies, but not just through this grant program. So that's pretty neat. Now, this is another story you may have missed. Bryce Crawford, he's getting a lot of airtime on our program, but he is doing such a

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wonderful job. He's 22 years old, this kid. His YouTube channel and podcast has really blown up, and he's been able to have a lot of big-time people on his show. It started off, the first time I became aware of him was when he interviewed Kenneth Copeland, the prosperity gospel preacher, and really asked him some hard questions about prosperity. But he did it in a very respectful way.

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and I think they had some middle ground and some understanding there. I don't think either one of them changed their beliefs, but it was still a pleasant conversation and I thought an educational one. And then we talked about just the other day that Bryce was a guest on Howie Mandel's latest podcast where he was offered all kinds of questions and he did such a good job in relating the gospel to

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not only Howie and his daughter who's the co-host, but also to this massive audience who probably don't know anything about Jesus. So he's just been afforded a lot of amazing opportunities lately, and this one is probably the biggest one yet. He got a chance to interview Vice President J.D. Vance, and here's one of the questions he asked the Vice President on his podcast, Do you think you're going to heaven?

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Every every guess that we have on I love to ask this question On a scale of one to ten ten being absolutely certain one being not certain at all How confident are you that you'd go to heaven? Oh, man, that is a tough question It's high but it's not ten, right? mean, it's it's it's a seven or it's an eight like I'm always one of these people who is always gonna have little doubts and

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Like if you'd asked me that question a year ago, it probably was like a five or a six. Wow. Wait, why the change? Like five or six, now it's seven or eight? Because I'd say the difference is, and again, all respect to God, but you know, I still occasionally have doubts like, is this actually real? Yeah. Right? And, you know, maybe...

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That's sort of where I come. So it's not like if it's real, feel confident that I've done the things necessary or more importantly, that I have followed what God has told me to do. Believe in Jesus Christ. I believe he's my savior. I try to do the things that are, you know, sort of necessary to walk the path of faith. And I think that eventually leads to heaven. But I'm not 100 percent certain.

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And I'm always going to be one of those people who has, who has little doubts about it. Again, that's Bryce Crawford with the vice president of the United States. mean, the kid is 22 years old and he's interviewing people like that on his podcast. And I would say to JD Vance or anybody else that has that answer of an eight or a nine that look, we all struggle. We all have these kinds of doubts sometimes that will kind of creep in. And to me, the perfect antidote for that.

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is actually getting into the Word and reading what Jesus says like in John chapter 14, hey, I'm going to prepare a place for you that where I am, you'll be also. Those words are comforting and those words drive away doubt. So if you ever start having those creeping in, like is this really real? all of this stuff really that I'm investing my time and effort in? Is that really gonna pay off with a place called heaven? Get in the Word and it will absolutely shine the light.

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And one more story you may have missed. Imagine being on a flight, just minding your own business, and all of a sudden a wedding ceremony breaks out. Well, that's exactly what happened for a group of about 200 people on a Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas the other day when the couple told the flight attendant just casually, hey, we're going to get married in Vegas. Well, the flight attendant said, not so fast.

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We'll make you get married right here if you want to in the air 35,000 feet. And so they did because the flight's pilot happened to be an ordained minister. So the couple agreed and the couple walked down the aisle as fellow passengers watched and cheered and became honorary wedding guests, whether they wanted to or not. And the bride didn't have her traditional wedding attire. So the flight attendants

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On board did what they could to find anything to make the moment feel special. They created a veil and a one ply wedding dress. Are you ready for this? Out of toilet paper, toilet paper wedding dress. And the crew also fashioned a bouquet out of Southwest coffee stirrers and handed it to the happy couple. And they got married 35,000 feet above the air.

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Here at the Steve Marston Show, we're serious about faith, but we love a good dad joke too. The dad joke of the day comes to us from the home office of Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas, and it's another classic. It says, I'm reading a book about anti-gravity and it's impossible to put down.

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The classics are just the best, aren't they? Steve Marsden Show rolls on. It's where faith and fun are both taken seriously, and it's great to have you here, whether you're listening on the radio or on our podcast. And speaking of said podcast, we would love for you to subscribe to it, because I hear from people that say, yeah, I love the podcast, but they're not subscribed to it. So let's change that. That makes it so much easier for you because

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You'll be alerted exactly when the new podcast drops and it'll come straight to your player in your phone. You don't have to worry about searching for it every single time. So cut out the middle man and subscribe to the podcast. And those of you who haven't yet listened on your own time, please do so. We would encourage you to do that. There's a lot of good stuff and it's not just from me, but from other people that we have on the program, like we did with Brady Weldon earlier, such good stuff.

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that you want to be able to share or maybe hear again when you can't listen to the radio. check it out, Steve Marston Show, wherever you get your podcasts, just like and subscribe and all that fun stuff, okay? Faith Between Our Ears is our Bible memory verse that we do every single week. We take one on Monday and we take the rest of the week and dedicate to memorizing it, to putting it in between your ears because I am just convinced that that's how

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our faith grows. If we want to have a closer and a deeper walk with God, I'm not sure of any other way to have that happen other than knowing what His Word says and being able to have it in our heart but also in between our ears. And the other benefit of it is not just knowing God but also when those situations in life blindside us, we can have His Word right there

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forefront of our thinking so that it doesn't knock us for any bigger of a loop than it has to, right? So here is our verse of this week. It's Micah 6-8. Comes from the Old Testament. It says, He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? Well, it's simple. Three things. To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. That is the only thing God requires.

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of any of us. So let's learn it and let's put it in between our ears so that we can have it there when we need it. And look, it's going to be a huge benefit for us and you can memorize. I know you're going to say, well, I can't do that. That's I'm too old. I'm too this. I'm too. No, you can. You just got to take a little practice, take a little time and maybe a little more effort than you used to when you were younger. But you can absolutely memorize Micah 6 8.

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our first for Faith Between Your Ears this week. Okay, we wrap up every day with a call to action. It's your next step and I think today your next step should be to realize that God's not done with you. The undoing of not doing is so powerful and it means so much when you really get a chance to step out of faith like Brady Weldon was talking about. All right, we're done for the day.

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Tomorrow we'll back on the radio at three o'clock and everywhere else at SteveMarsdenShow.com. Adios.

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