Counseling Series: Money and Sexual Sins

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00:04

You know, I've never even met Andrew in person. The one thing I've picked up on is everybody picks on the man.

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And so here's my take. Oh, that's not true. He picks on everybody else. No, no. See, I think he's an innocent victim of just ruthless people who harshly judge him.

00:23

He just seems to me so innocent. I don't know. I need to meet him to find out, but yeah, that's just my impression.

00:30

He'll have to tell me whether I'm right or not. That's hilarious. Wow. I don't trust Chris's opinion on it.

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I mean. This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries.

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We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions you have about God and the

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Bible. We are a ministry of Striving for Eternity, and we are here to help you, train you in apologetics.

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And yes, from that intro, everyone picks on me. I'm a little innocent bystander. So we have,

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I actually don't have any of the co -hosts here, and most of our counselors aren't here yet either.

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We only have one we'll bring in shortly. But as before we do, just some things that we had that were asked to discuss, and Jesse is saying that an ad on YouTube, Kamala just came out asking for a donation with an ad.

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Yeah, we can't control that. But since you brought that up, Jesse, we could talk about Kamala's accomplishments because someone did ask if I could list

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Kamala Harris's wonderful accomplishments. So let me try to do that. She has a policy of no tax on tips.

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Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't hers. That was Donald Trump's that she claimed was hers.

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I'm sorry. She claims she is going to build a border wall.

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Oh, I'm sorry. Silly me. The picture she has of the border wall, that was the one that Trump was building.

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I'm so sorry. Yeah, I guess she could have built it.

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She could have finished it since she's the border czar. Yeah, actually, Biden just came out in an interview and said that she was in full control of everything he did, the economy, the border, everything.

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So yeah, why didn't she finish that wall as the border czar?

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So what are her great accomplishments? I've had to think hard and long, folks, and I figured out what it is because she she mentions it very often and I realize what her great accomplishments are.

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She's black and she's a woman. She can't tell you what a woman is, but she knows she is one.

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I'm just saying. So I guess those are her accomplishments. That's in fact what

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Biden said. Reason he hired her was because she was a black woman.

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But somehow, if we mention that we're racists, yikes. Okay, so I want to share this.

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This was sent to the ministry and I figured I'd play that thing where everyone picks on me because it would be fitting with this.

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But this, just to let you guys know, this is the type of emails that I get.

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I got an email with a link to a YouTube video proving yet again that I am a heretic.

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In case you want to know how I'm a heretic, here we go. Let me just share this. I won't play the video, but I'm going to share the video.

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And if you look at this, this says theme. This is from a sermon from September 14th, 2024.

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Theme, life's greatest blessing, striving for eternity. And it is from the

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US SDA church in Orlando, Florida. What is the US SDA? The US, United States, Seven Day Adventists.

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And because they put striving for eternity in the title, somehow that means

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I am a Seven Day Adventist. Now, some of you are going, Andrew, that makes absolutely no sense.

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Yeah, I get it. But this is the type of emails we get at the ministry. So supposedly,

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I'm a heretic because Seven Day Adventists use the term striving for eternity.

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If any of you could figure out that connection, let me know because I haven't been able to figure out how that's connected to our ministry named striving for eternity.

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That's actually a fallacy called the fallacy of equivocation. Just because they use the phrase striving for eternity doesn't mean that they are referring to us.

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In fact, I'm willing to guess that they have no idea about the ministry of striving for eternity being

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Seven Day Adventists. So, yeah. One of the questions we got in this week, sorry, last week,

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I had this on the list for last week, but we didn't get to it, is the question, when did

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Jesus become God? So let me try to answer that.

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Always. The question is flawed. The person is challenging us in the email

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I got basically trying to argue that when Jesus had to have become

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God somehow, and so they wanted me to know to answer when he became God. So being

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God means that Jesus Christ was eternal, is eternal. And being eternal, it kind of means he always was

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God. He can't become eternal. He had to be eternal. So he can't become

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God. Now, what does it mean to be God? To be God means you have all of the attributes of deity.

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Anyone that took our class on theology, you can find it at strivingforeternity .org.

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Just go to our academy. We have the class on systematic theology. We start with the attributes God, and I divide the attributes in three categories, divine attributes, attributes of personality, attributes of morality.

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So those divine attributes are things that only God would have, things like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternality.

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And so those are things that are only true of God. And therefore,

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Jesus didn't become God. So the question itself is flawed, right?

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What do we do here? We teach apologetics. So what a lot of people would try to do is try to answer how

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Jesus became God. That's actually not something we should do. We should just say, your question is flawed.

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The question is not, when did Jesus become God? The question is, when did Jesus become man?

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He always was God, but he became a man, and that's the incarnation.

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So he was always God because God is self -existent. He always existed. No one can become

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God. I know I just heard a bunch of people in Eastern mysticism. I get it. I'm sorry.

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But you can't become God, and God doesn't exist within you in the sense that Eastern mystics would argue.

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So with that, I hope that that answered that question. Jesse is saying, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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Good verse in Proverbs to use for that. So if you have questions, there's a couple ways you could do it.

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If you're on YouTube watching live, you could join us on YouTube. You can also email us if you so choose, and the email address to send it to.

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If you want to contact us is info at striving for eternity dot com.

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Info at striving for eternity dot com. That will get to actually goes to a couple of people who preview some of those so that we can get it to me.

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And if it's really good hate mail, it may get read online on the show.

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So we're glad that we do get some questions to answer, and I got a couple more piled up that we will probably do an open

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Q &A show and get to some of those. So with that, I want to bring in the only

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ACBC pastor that we have right now. Aaron will be coming in late, but my pastor, Pastor Dan Scogin.

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Welcome, Pastor Dan. Good evening. Glad to be on the show again. Yes. And so if you guys are in the

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North Philly area and want to find a good church to attend in Levittown, Pennsylvania, you can join us at Oxford Valley Chapel, where Pastor Dan is the preaching pastor.

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So you're also an ACBC counselor. Yes, that is true. We do at the church, you do the grief share twice a week because you do one in the like 11 o 'clock and then one in the evening.

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So if there's people that in that area that anyone knows that needs to deal with grief share or needs counseling, they can reach out to Oxford Valley Chapel.

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I think it's probably safe to say it's the only Oxford Valley Chapel in the world. Probably.

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But I'm just curious, so I'm going to go do that search, right? Because why not? Do it live.

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I doubt that there's going to be others, but let's see. It looks like a total of one.

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All right. We are unique, that is for sure. Oxfordvalleychapel .org.

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Yep. So far, everything I'm seeing shows up just our church website, our church

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Facebook, our church YouTube. There's not many.

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There's a Yelp page. So yeah, there you go. So what we want to talk about tonight, tonight's topic is going to be twofold.

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We're going to talk about money issues, and then we'll talk about sexual sins.

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And by then, I think Aaron will come in. We'll let him handle all the... Pastor Dan, you deal with all the money.

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We'll let him deal with all the sexual sins. Okay, that works. We'll ask him all the hard questions.

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So Kathy Deming says, that's good to know. I have a relative in Levittown. Well, Kathy, you could send them our way if they don't go to church, if they don't have a home church.

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If they're not Christian, definitely send them our way, and you could let them know. I'll be happy to take them out to dinner.

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And of course, if I'm buying dinner, I'm sharing the gospel. There is no such thing as a free dinner, you know.

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Yep. They can't run away, at least not till after dessert. Yeah, correct. So your bride is busy, and so she can't be here.

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Please be praying for Anthony Russo, one of our speakers at Striving Fraternity. He cannot be here because there is a storm, and he is currently without power and without cellular.

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Well, he had one bar, so he was able to text me that he's not going to be able to put video up on one bar, so yeah.

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So I think that we can start with the counseling topic of money, and by the way, folks,

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I will encourage you, if you wouldn't mind right now, to share this podcast, or sorry, this video, because we're not doing the podcast yet.

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It'll turn into a podcast, but if you wouldn't mind sharing this out so others know to come and watch and enjoy the show.

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So with that, let's see. Someone put a comment.

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It's harder for me to do both the comments. Usually my co -host takes all the comments, but Fatima says, free grace but not free dinner.

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That is right. All right.

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So Pastor Dan, how often does money come up as an issue when you're counseling, especially with couples?

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Oh, it's one of the top three struggles in marriages is money. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep.

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There's a lot of, yeah, there's just a lot of problems with that. You were joking last night that, you know, had you won that $800 million lottery, you know, you could have solved a lot of your problems, so you thought, but you didn't buy the ticket, so you couldn't win.

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No, yeah, I gotta, well, yeah, I guess in order to win, you have to buy, and I put my money elsewhere, so I get a better return on it that way.

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Well, I keep, you know, my son, when he was little, he used to pick up, he'd see like someone threw away their lotto ticket, and he'd be like, dad, this could be the winning ticket.

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I'm like, nobody throws away the winning ticket. Yeah. Yeah. When you look at those great big buildings that they have here in Atlantic City, especially right there, oceanfront property, it's a for -profit business, and they're making a lot of money off gullible people.

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Yeah. So I know that there's a lot of people that think if they just had money, that would solve all their problems.

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And I remember, so I have a different, as Pastor Dan, you know, my background and my wife's background, very different.

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I always explain this to folks. So my wife grew up with eight people in her house, and I had eight people in my house.

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She grew up in a 400 -square -foot home, and I grew up in an 8 ,000 -square -foot home.

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And we had seven people and the maid. So we had a live -in maid who took care of the cooking, the cleaning, and things like that, babysitting, whatnot.

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And so very different lifestyles for my bride and I. And so being raised in that environment,

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I have a very different view of money, and I see how it affects people. And I remember,

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Pastor Dan, I don't think I've ever shared this with you, but we had a guy that came into the churches going back,

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I don't know, 25, 30 years ago, a guy that came into church and sat down with me because I was in charge of the finances.

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And our policy was you had to come to church to get any, if we were going to give any money, and we wouldn't give money.

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We'd give gift cards to Pathmark or ShopRite or wherever. And this guy comes in, sits down.

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He had just gotten out of prison. The government always tells you, go to a church.

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If you need money, go to a church. So that's what he did. He came to the church, and he had just gotten out of prison.

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And he says to me, if I just won the lottery, if I just had money, all my problems would be solved.

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And I remember asking him, I said, well, let me ask you a question. If you won the lottery, you just suddenly got a couple of million dollars, do you think that your friends would feel that you owe them money?

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He's like, why? I said, well, if your friends suddenly came into money, what do you think about all the times, all the things you've done for them?

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And be like, hey, you owe me. Yes, absolutely. And he's like, yes.

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I said, so when you got out of prison, how did you get home? He said, well, a buddy of mine just picked me up.

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I said, don't you think he would have asked you for money then? He would have expected some of your money. How would you have felt if he did that?

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He goes, man, then he wouldn't be a friend. I wouldn't want to hang out with him. I said, what about your other friends?

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And he's like, well, they probably all act that way. I said, so if you had all this money just dropped in your lap, would you have the friends you have today?

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And he goes, no, I guess not. I said, so what's more important to you, your friends or your money?

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And he goes, you know something? I think I'm good with my friends. Thanks for helping me out.

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And he walked out of the church, never asking for a dime. And people don't realize that people think, oh, if I just had money, all my problems would be solved.

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If you just had money, all the people just look at you as a money bag.

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I know that because I've seen how my parents and people with money, they just, people come up and just go, hey,

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I just want money. I want money. I want money. And it changes the dynamic.

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It's kind of funny because we had, I was down in Orlando, Florida, and a pastor at the church

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I was preaching at had an opportunity because a woman in his church used to be the secretary for a very, very wealthy man in Orlando.

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He's got, I mean, probably a hundred hotels down there. He's very, very wealthy.

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And this pastor was very concerned with sharing the gospel with him. And he happens to be

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Jewish. And so the pastor had invited a guy who does

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Jewish ministries and figured this would be good. And since I happen to be in town last minute, he's like,

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Hey, Andrew, would you come with us? I said, sure. So the pastor, you know, so they have this meeting and the pastor tries talking to him and I could see the sense.

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This guy's just going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. He just waiting for the time clock. He took the, he took the appointment out of favor, but he's just watching the clock pastor down the guy that does

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Jewish, the missionary that does Jewish missions. He tries talking to him, shuts him down.

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And I, and I watched the reaction now growing up with, with money. I know the, the, the,

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I've watched my dad do this, right? So I was able to then just reach out to him. And I just,

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I asked him actually, because he's in Florida, my dad's in Florida. I mentioned my dad's name and he knew who my dad was.

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And I, and that gave me an opportunity and I was able to then share the gospel, but I did it in a way saying,

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I, what I said was, I said, look, we're not here to ask you for anything.

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We don't want money. We know your time is valuable. We want to share something with you.

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And that's what it took to get him to stop and listen because he knew it realized, oh, you're not looking for money. Okay.

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And I was able to share the gospel. And then as we left, the pastor said, can we pray for you?

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And he said, okay. Pastor asked me to pray. And I just prayed again, reciting the gospel.

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But the thing is like having money doesn't solve problems. Um, you know, any, any thoughts that you have?

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Well, I agree with you completely. And I don't want to give the statistics because I don't have them accurate, but, you know, the lottery winners, there's a lot of people who have won the lottery and it has done completely the opposite of what they thought it would.

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So most, I forget the stats, but I think it's most lottery winners go bankrupt within like three years.

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And the reason being is they don't know how to handle money. They go out and just spend it right away, you know?

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But then there's also the alienation of friends. I mean, you almost have to sever all of your relationships, your family, and walk away because otherwise they're going to keep coming and asking you because, you know, your, your windfall, your ship came in and hey, you got all this free money, which kind of goes on a larger scale with other ideologies.

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So give me just as what you said in the earlier introduction, and you either have to alienate your friends or you end up, you know, running away and hiding incognito, which is not any fun either.

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So, yeah, it's just, you know, I was kidding and, you know, it's always fun to kid like that, but you know, the reality of it is it's just going to hurt you.

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It's just going to hurt you. And then the other thought, just going back further and it, you know, that, that root, that love of it, you know, if that's going to be your

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God, it's not going to go over so well. So you just brought up the first question

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I was going to ask you. There's people who say money is the root of all evils.

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Is that what the Bible says? No, but it's misquoted a lot.

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But it is just the, is the root. The love of money is the root of all evil.

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So what is the difference between money and the love of money?

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Well, one would be a tool and, you know, money is a fantastic tool. You know,

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God owns everything and he entrusts us with all kinds of tools and money is a great tool to accomplish what he wants done.

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The love of money goes back to Jesus there. I believe it's in Matthew where he says, you know, you can't love

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God and mammon or some translated money. So it's going back to what is the love of your life?

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You know, what are you going to serve? Are we going to love the Lord our

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God with all our heart, soul, strength, mind? Or is it, you know, chasing after the dollar?

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So you said that in your counseling, money issues become one of the top three.

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What are the issues that couples have? And we talked about marriage a few episodes ago, but this is more specific.

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Why do does money create problems within marriages? Well, there's a couple of situations.

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One of them would be in sometimes in step relationships.

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And it's not even yet like step kids, for example. OK, we got I got my kids and then

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I got my step kids. How is the Christmas money since Christmas is coming up?

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How are we going to divvy that up? And then, you know, kids are needing money as they get a little older and getting out of the house.

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Do I give them my money or do you give them your money or do we have a pool of money for our money?

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And, you know, the step relationships just make the needs and the presence and graduations.

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It just makes it very difficult. Another situation would be sometimes if you have family overseas, when you have family overseas, you are the and it is true, according to their standards, we are the filthy rich Americans and they are just constantly, you know, hitting you for needs.

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And some of it's legit. The car broke down. They need money for health care.

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They need money for any number of good things. But, you know, back here in the

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States, we still got our mortgage to pay, utilities to pay. So those are just two examples right now that and there's more, but, you know, and those are just two of them.

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Sometimes step families, there's a lot more problems with money. And then sometimes if you got relatives overseas.

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Even but between husbands and wives, I mean, so let me give the for instance, I already mentioned my bride and I.

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So when we before we got married, we spent a lot of time discussing money because that comes up in when

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I'm counseling couples a lot. When you have one person that is a spender and one that's a saver.

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Okay. Yes. And that becomes a real dilemma. And it was even worse in the case with my bride and I, because what

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I was used to growing up and what she was used to growing up, she had no choice but to save, save, save, save and not spend anything.

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And I would be okay with going a while while getting a coffee. No, I can't argue that.

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But, but we, I mean, going, going out and going out for dinner, that, that was something my bride didn't really do.

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It was only on special occasions, really, that they would go and do things like that. That's like a, you know,

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I would always, my kids would complain for, for their birthday. If they, they got a gift they didn't like,

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I would always turn and go, mom, what did you get for your birthday? And my wife would turn to the kids and said, well, on my, on my birthday, my parents always gave me a hard boiled egg.

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Kids would just, what? That's what she got. Like, that was a special thing.

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That was a treat, a birth, her birthday present growing up was every year she could get a hard boiled egg on her birthday.

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So to her, to go out for a nice meal was like, whoa, that's like, we shouldn't do that. That's wasting money.

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And, and that could cause problems. Have you seen that in, in counseling and what would be some ways of, of handling that?

26:36

Yeah, absolutely. I've seen that, you know, all the time, because again, the way that I was brought up and what my parents valued and what they taught me to value is different than my wife's.

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The way she was brought up and what she was told to value. So yeah, we come into a relationship as separate individuals and with separate values that oftentimes we were taught by our parents.

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And that, you know, that just blends into all kinds of specific topics of like going out to eat clothing.

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Do we buy clothing at the thrift store, which I know people will not buy except in a thrift store, or do we just go down to Walmart target or are we buying the name brands?

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And again, a lot of that is just the way we were brought up. So how do we deal with that is again, just through communication, searching out the

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Bible. We have to think through stewardship and I know

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I'm just throwing some broad categories we can maybe unpack a little bit, but, you know, stewardship why is what's a brand name

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Nike? Why is it so important to have the Nike label on our clothing when we could go to Goodwill and just get a

27:56

Hanes tee, Hanes shirt or something. So there's just a lot of stuff that needs to be talked about.

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And depending upon their view of stewardship and how they're budgeting money, there's not necessarily a wrong answer.

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It's just, you know, we just got to agree together on money, and that's very difficult to do for many couples.

28:19

Yeah, and I think that we need to be saving money.

28:25

Sure. We shouldn't, you know, I'm just seeing in the comments,

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Andrew from Australia, you know, he's saying he's just going to he'll leave all his money with his, he's an uncle who's going to leave everything to his relations.

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We have to realize that, you know, we have a responsibility of stewardship. Money is something we're to be a steward of.

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It's not the question of what money can, kind of what money can do for us in the sense of we have our wants and money will satisfy us.

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Because the folks, if you think about this, if you're struggling with money, the question is, what is the purpose of it?

29:11

Is money for you to get what you want, or do you see it as a stewardship of what

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God is giving you? I like what Fatima says here. She said, she's from the

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Philippines, and she said, I have always disliked money. Either I feel guilty having some money or covetous not having it.

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You know what helped me finally? When someone told me it's God's money. Yep.

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And I think that's helpful. I think it's helpful to have the right perspective of money. So, Pastor Dan, what,

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I mean, what should be, as a Christian, what should be our perspective when it comes to money and finances?

29:54

Again, it's, you have to kind of view it as a tool, and it's a tool just like anything else.

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You can use it properly. You can use it poorly. And I think, you know, there is, you know, within marriage counseling, there's often children involved.

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So, yes, a man has to provide for the needs of his family. So, there's the daily needs that need to be taken care of.

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There's also then savings, as you mentioned, and some of the savings, we've always broke it down into short term and long term savings.

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So, the short term savings could be, I need a new computer. Long term savings is going to be like for us, years ago, it was the kids in college.

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Or for us, more recently, it's for retirement.

30:43

When I get to the age that I'm stumbling over my tongue more than normal, then it's time to get a younger guy in there.

30:52

There always has to be money for the church. And this guy that, you know, went in from Australia and everybody else listening,

30:59

I would strongly recommend you put your church in the will. And I would even be so bold to say it is at least 10%.

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Because when you take that 10 % and then you divide it among a couple of siblings or a couple of nieces or nephews, they're not going to miss it.

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But for the church to get 20, 30, $40 ,000 in a chunk, that could really help out a church that might be struggling.

31:26

So, but again, investments, money is also a tool then to further God's plan.

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And that would be both within the local church and then also missionaries and other organizations that maybe aren't local.

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But it's a powerful resource that we could use to advance the kingdom of God, because a lot of what we're doing here in the

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States, it does require money. Uh, so yes, we can by ourselves get out there and holler with our lungs, but with some money, we could get a much larger audience.

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So it's just a tool that God is to use for his glory. That's right.

32:10

And Kathy's saying, yes, amen, Dan. The, the thing when it comes to that, um,

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I mean, we have to have the right perspective. I think that I have seen people who have a wrong perspective of money.

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You mentioned the will. I have seen people do some of the worst thing.

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I mean, just treating their parents horrible as they get older, when they view their parents money as their inheritance.

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It's, I mean, I've seen families just divided and vicious with one another over their parents.

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I knew one couple that the, the, the, the husband, he said, because he had just the way that happened in his family.

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There's the way they handled their parents inheritance. He purposed, he was going to die with no money.

33:08

He wanted to spend his last penny because he didn't want his kids fighting over, over money.

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Yep. I think that that comes from a lack of a proper understanding is of what money is.

33:22

Like you said, it's a, it's, it's a tool. It's a resource, but for the Christian, it's a stewardship.

33:27

Yes. Money is something that God uses in our life to show how our view of him.

33:34

Does it not? Yes. And it's also a catalyst for our growth as well.

33:42

So it's a catalyst in our growth for our faithfulness. You know, are we going to be the good and faithful steward?

33:49

It's a growth for our contentment, you know, Paul's or yeah, Philippians content.

33:56

Whatever state I am to be content. So it's also, it's not just a resource or a tool to advance

34:06

God's kingdom, but it is also is a tool to make us more like Christ. So there again, when you're fighting over mom, dad's money.

34:15

Yeah, you're right. They got the whole wrong perspective. So the

34:21

Bible tells us that the rich man, it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

34:31

And a lot of people have struggled with that passage. What's he trying to say? And I get the whole thing of, you know, people talk about the camel going through a needle gate and things like that.

34:42

I don't think it was, I think it was the eye of a needle, which would have a sewing thing.

34:48

And it's absolutely impossible for a camel to go through something so small that only a thread could go through.

34:55

So, you know, when we think about that passage, we get into why, why was he saying that?

35:02

Let me ask you the question. Why do you think it's hard for a rich man to enter into heaven?

35:08

Because he's using the example of saying it's impossible. I mean, obviously rich people do go to heaven, right?

35:14

They can get saved. But what was Jesus saying, do you think, in that passage to say that it's impossible for rich people to get to heaven?

35:23

Well, in my limited exposure, I found that people are usually more open to the gospel in times of trouble and in times of transition.

35:34

Usually when life is going very well, well, unfortunately, even with us sometimes, you know, when my wife was having some surgery back in March, I think

35:45

I was praying a little harder then than I was praying right now. But usually when things are going well for rich people,

35:54

God is not a factor in their mindset at all. Because money not only is their

36:00

God, but they have the means to live life the way they want.

36:10

And God is not part of that equation. And, you know, so, yeah,

36:16

I don't know if I've answered it. No, you hit it right on the head. I mean, for wealthy people, they're self -reliant.

36:24

They don't understand dependence. And that gets us to the heart of the issue.

36:32

What is it God wants? Does he want us to be self -dependent or God -dependent?

36:41

And we have to acknowledge we have a need and, you know, we need a savior. And again, need is oftentimes a missing vocabulary word in someone who's very wealthy because they don't need anything.

36:57

And I think that's one of the things, I remember we had a young lady who worked for the ministry and she had a very good friend who was getting married and that she was going to marry into wealth.

37:10

And the friend had told her that she was going to donate to Striving Fraternity once she got married because she's going to have all this money.

37:18

And a few weeks later, that woman got in a car accident and never got married. And because she died.

37:25

And so, you know, the woman that worked for us was so saddened because she was like, you know,

37:31

I really thought that the ministry would have all this money, be able to do all these things. And I remember talking to her and I just said, you know, you have to understand that God wants us dependent upon him.

37:43

That's what prayer really is. Prayer shouldn't be us going, God, we want you to do this and do this and do this and do this.

37:50

It should be us coming to the Lord and saying, what do you want?

37:55

We're dependent on you. You're the sovereign. We're the slaves. We serve you.

38:01

What would you like us to do? And money has a big part of that because the stewards of the money

38:08

God gives us. Notice what I said, folks, God gives us the money for us to be stewards.

38:15

It causes us to be dependent. So Fatima says, so can a wealthy person still be

38:23

God dependent? What do you think, Pastor Dan? Well, absolutely.

38:29

Absolutely. Because, you know, you know, you got to define wealthy, but we'll just stay within the context of money.

38:37

But again, money is just a tool. And I do know some wealthy men who are very

38:42

God dependent and they're very spiritual and if their life is any indication, they're definitely going to heaven because they understand that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.

38:56

So it's as God has given it to them. They're good stewards of it. They don't love it. They don't worship it.

39:02

They just use it and invest it as they feel God wants them to. But God is the focal point of their life.

39:09

So, yes, a very wealthy person, extremely wealthy person can absolutely be saved.

39:15

God loving and on his way to heaven or her heaven. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. So Andrew is saying budgeting is also a skill we must learn.

39:27

How important is, I don't know, as you know, when I was a deacon, I had to do a lot of helping people with budgeting because the policy we had at our church was anyone, you know, if there were someone from the church, someone outside the church had to attend a service to get any money.

39:48

And that meant that they were going to listen to me, share the gospel with them or one of us, one of the pastors were going to share the gospel with the person before we gave them any money.

39:57

So they had to sit through a service and get the gospel. But someone in the church asked for money.

40:02

Our policy was someone has a need. They come to the deacons. In that case, it was me.

40:08

They come to me. They say, hey, I need money for, you know, I remember one woman. Her husband passed away.

40:13

He had his own business. He had no life insurance. She had no job. She was just took care of their child.

40:21

And so when he died, kind of lost everything. And so she had a need for money.

40:29

I said, okay, we went to, I think it was Pathmark back then, got a couple hundred dollars of gift cards so she can go grocery shopping.

40:42

But when she came to us a second time, our policy was the second time they had to sit down with me with a budget and we do a budget.

40:52

And if they couldn't live within their budget, then we wouldn't give money.

40:59

And I still remember it was just so heartbreaking. This woman, she had a dog and I forget how much money that for dog food and care for the dog.

41:10

And then she had cable and she had every cable channel. And I'm like,

41:15

I don't even have a, like, I didn't have TV. You know, if we had a TV, it was just whatever we could get through the air, you know, the antennas.

41:24

And so, you know, she just made it. I have to have the dog because my son needs his friend and he's,

41:31

I have to keep every cable channel because my son needs to be able to watch TV. And I was like, but you don't have the money for these things that you have to make decisions.

41:42

Right. And that's hard for people. So how important is budgeting? Do you feel when you're counseling people with money and how hard is it when you see people that can't make good financial decisions?

41:56

Yes, it's very important. And we have presently at Oxford Valley Chapel have the same procedure that you had in your ministry.

42:04

In fact, we have a husband and wife that went through the requirements to become a budget to become budget coaches.

42:14

They're not financial advisors, but they're budget coaching. And it's very difficult because, you know, if we would view every expenditure as a spiritual decision, that would help.

42:30

But, you know, budgeting is basically planning, planning how we're going to use

42:39

God's money. And I'll give you, I'll give you, it's not so much the negative, but here's just one thing positive to encourage the listeners.

42:48

And that would be my wife and I'm sorry, my daughter and son -in -law are missionaries.

42:55

They're serving in camp work. They're missionary supported and they're not making a lot of money.

43:00

And they got four kids. So, you know, they're broke most of the time, but they have a budget and she's been putting money in her budget for her clothes.

43:13

And then she said in the recent past, she says, I'm going shopping. I have money in my budget for clothes and I'm going to spend every dime of it.

43:24

So that's kind of fun that you can, when you budget your money and you have saved up money for it, you can spend it, you know, guilt free.

43:33

The problem though, is it comes back to competing desires, competing wants, competing priorities.

43:43

You know, we have people that don't want to cook. Okay. So man, a lot of money every week is going out for food.

43:52

And then you've got another guy who says, well, I just want, you know, horsepower and I got to get the old or the newer, whatever, or technology.

44:03

And when you're spending all the money on food and you're spending all the money on technology, you're going to run into a problem.

44:10

And the trouble is, is that oftentimes, and here's where it gets frustrating, rather than yielding and relinquishing and esteeming others better than themselves or trying to come to a compromise, they just dig in their feet.

44:24

It's like you said, the person is not going to sell their dog. This guy's not going to give up his computer.

44:30

She's not going to try to cooking. And it just makes her something that's really ugly because pride gets in there.

44:37

They get stubborn. They dig their heels in and it just, it's really frustrating. So then you try to tell them, yeah, but it's

44:43

God's money. And they don't even want to listen to that. You know, they've, they've, they've built their fortress up and they got their draw guns drawn.

44:52

They're ready for battle. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing a comment here from Melissa.

45:00

She says, there are people who hop from church, church just to get free handouts as a pastor.

45:08

Have you seen that? And how, how you look as a church, we want to be people who are caring and loving for those who come in.

45:17

Yep. And yet there are those that you see, and they, they're just coming for, you know,

45:23

Hey, I want some money. Will you give me something? How should we as a church deal with that?

45:29

And as individuals, because I know I have individual friends that are really bad with just, they feel bad for people and here, let me give you money.

45:36

Let me give you money. And then they're taken advantage of. Well, two things with that. First of all is it's okay to be taken advantage of.

45:44

Jesus says that, you know, someone wants your coat, give them your cloak. You're going to go one mile, go two miles.

45:51

So it's okay to be taken advantage of within your budget per se.

45:58

So here's what we do it as a church, but we don't want to become or enabling code, you know, dependent, uh, uh, uh, lifestyle.

46:07

That's something else we get to, but we do at our churches. We also have gift cards to the local, uh, stores.

46:14

And, uh, if they call on what's today, Thursday, if they call me Friday morning,

46:19

I will say we have a 25 or a $30 gift card. You come to church nine 30 at the end of the service,

46:26

I will give you that gift card. So you're getting paid 25, 30 bucks an hour. I don't remember what it is.

46:32

You come to church. We'll give it to you. If they call me on Monday, Tuesday, uh, cause

46:38

I'm getting a lot of calls now. Cause again, you're right. The people hop and they, the numbers and everything kind of gets on some sort of a list and you're on the list and they call you.

46:49

And then I say, great, you come to church Wednesday night, seven o 'clock, and I will give you your $30 gift card.

46:57

So that's when we do it. One, what we, what Robin and I, my wife and I don't want to do is we don't want to enable destructive lifestyles, correct?

47:07

Because again, the money that I'm going to give them, and even if I had to wherewithal to give them thousands of dollars, that is not what they need.

47:17

So we, we are taken advantage of occasionally when, you know, we hear the stories, we all heard them, you know, a mom calls me and she's getting kicked out of her apartment today.

47:29

Now, how come she didn't know this 30 days ago when they gave her notice and, you know, the dog is sick and the kid is bleeding and the cars broke down and she just lost her job because she's got whatever.

47:41

And you hear all the heart sobs and I say, come to church. And it's kind of like you did at your church.

47:46

Come to church. We'll give you some money. Those that are on the corner begging for money.

47:53

No, we, we just don't go that way. Yeah. Cause there's always someone out there.

48:00

That's, you know, there's a fine line and maybe you can help with us to understand. There's a fine line between giving and enabling.

48:08

Yep. And it's, it's, it's hard for me to know where that line is.

48:14

So I tend to just keep giving, giving, giving until I go, you know what, there's been five, six, seven times and you have, you keep coming to me.

48:22

Yep. Is there some good advice as a counselor with things like that?

48:29

Well, yes. And that is where, you know, as you said, you, they had to, you had to have a one -on -one, you know, our policy is church.

48:38

And I don't know how open I want to be with all of our money.

48:43

Things are, we're going to have a stream out the door, but, but the first request, and this even goes like with unsaved people, the $25 gift card or whatever, even within our church, it's a lot more than that.

48:57

But if someone says, Hey, pastor, the car broke down, the kids, we got hit with deductible, the furnace went out, you know, all this stuff.

49:05

We give them a pretty good chunk of change and say, here you go. Now, if they come back again, like within that year, it's like, you got to go visit these two people.

49:15

You know, we got to hear what's going on. We got to see your budget, how you're spending your money and all that kind of stuff.

49:20

And it's the same thing, very similar with the gift cards. Usually, sadly, most of them will not come for the service.

49:30

They don't want that. But if they do come to the service, we welcome them, you know, we give them the card.

49:36

Sometimes people also open up their wallets and give them. And that's fine.

49:42

Now, the next time if they show up, which very rarely they show up the second time, but that's when we sit down and say, we need to talk and you can just start talking.

49:51

So basically, the only way that you can differentiate between helping and enabling destructive lifestyles or whatever, or bad life choices is if you sit down and you've got to hear the matter.

50:04

So you're just going to have to sit down and talk with them. Yeah, I mean, I remember at our church, we had we had a gentleman, you'll remember this, but came in, walked in from kind of a bit late, but came into service.

50:20

And you were talking with him and he claimed he knew me. And I came up, talked to him.

50:26

And he came. So for folks to understand, we have you get done preaching. And then afterwards, we have a growth group where we discuss the sermon.

50:34

And he heard a woman that shared that she had helped someone who is homeless with money.

50:43

And he just immediately, like, latched on. He was he was following her to the car, you know, and if you remember,

50:54

I came up, I came up and kind of interrupted. You were in a conversation, interrupted, say, hey, you know, give you some background.

50:59

And, you know, rather let you handle it as the pastor of the church. Right. And so you get that you get people who will come and, you know, it's hard to know, you know, because are we judging motives?

51:15

Well, somewhat. But in that particular case, my concern was that someone doesn't get taken advantage of.

51:21

Right. And, you know, so it was like, we've got to be careful.

51:26

We don't want to is it's such a hard line. At what point do we say, well, we're we're trying to show love and care to someone.

51:36

And then in another point, we don't want to be taken advantage of. For me, it's like if they take advantage of me,

51:41

I'm kind of OK with it because that's my decision. But if they are going to take advantage of someone else in the church,

51:47

I kind of feel protective. And I'm thinking almost the opposite, because there's various procedures and kind of operating procedures there at the church.

51:58

We're very rarely are we really going to be taken advantage of. But when you get into the family situation, it becomes so much harder, you know, because even let's say now we're talking about the grandkids.

52:14

So mom and dad are being foolish with the money. Are we going to how much are we?

52:20

Yes, not are we. But how much are we going to let the grandkids suffer? And that's where it really gets hard.

52:27

So for me, just being, you know, of a smaller church, we've got it worked out pretty good.

52:33

I've been there 26 years. We got it worked out. We've heard about everything there could be heard. So we're well prepared for that.

52:40

But what I find is the real difficulty is and this is again, the finances and how come people fight?

52:50

It's not just steps. It's just not step families. It's just not overseas families, but it's dysfunctional children.

52:59

And it's not so much the children because, you know, they can suffer. But yeah. But what about the grandkids?

53:05

And that's when it really becomes difficult. And that's where I'm not going to be able to answer your question as to where's that line, because, you know, we'd have to come up with it.

53:16

Yeah. Yeah. So let me see. So just give a quick shout out here.

53:21

Brother Andrew, one of our regulars here says, Andrew, you're on my live stream. I gave you a shout out.

53:26

God bless you. Thank you, Brother Andrew. Folks who don't know him. He's a Canadian brother who is always out on the street and evangelizing, even though he's a continuationist, we will won't be for long, only for a few years here on Earth.

53:42

But we had we've had some great conversations about that. And he is someone who really wants to live according to the word.

53:50

And and he is tries to be careful to rightly define what cessationists believe.

53:58

And so he's corrected himself at times and taken down videos when he said things.

54:03

And, you know, I really love his humble spirit. So Fadim is asking this question,

54:09

Pastor Dan, helping versus enabling. Can you help with a Bible reference for this?

54:16

And I'm going to I'm going to let you think on that because I know I couldn't think of one.

54:22

And so while you're thinking on that, now would be a good time for us to mention that this podcast is supported by or has donations by my the coffee company,

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57:04

So with that, I hope I gave Pastor Dan enough time for him to now answer the question that we had from Fatima.

57:14

And I'll put that back up here, which is helping versus enabling. Can you help with a

57:20

Bible verse for this? Well, yes, I think helping is easy, you know, but if you see your brother have need and you shut up your bowels of compassion, you know, how can the love of God dwell within you?

57:37

Galatians 6, we're to bear one another's burdens. You have many of these that are going up.

57:43

That's very good. I think the enabling part is, I think in my mind, is very easy.

57:50

And we're working through the book of Ephesians and Ephesians chapter 5. Also with, well,

57:58

I'll just say the book of Ephesians clearly says that, let's just go to 5.

58:05

In 5, 7 through 14, it says, listen, you were that way.

58:12

You are not to be like that anymore. In fact, it says on two different occasions, you are not to participate.

58:19

You are not to join them. So I think just from Ephesians 5 verses 7 through 11, that idea that of participating with them to be joining up with them.

58:33

No, that would be enabling and you can't do it. First Timothy 5 says you're not to participate in the sins.

58:42

Uh, so I think that whole idea of holiness would just be a topic that you could chase down.

58:50

Uh, you know, again, 2 Corinthians 6 and such were some of you, but you are now.

58:58

And again, I know it's a heart, it's a heart wrenching thing because we're not talking about now, probably with this question, people we don't know, but these are people whom we love and care.

59:10

And we just cannot take God's money and use it to finance sinful behavior.

59:17

So yeah. So to specifically first Timothy 5 and then also

59:23

Ephesians 5, I think you could find some very good material there that you should not be enabling, uh, uh, bad behavior.

59:31

Yeah. So Cecil on Facebook says, uh, first, third, first Thessalonians 5, 11 and 14.

59:40

Fatima says Ruth 1, 21 to 22. Cecil says

59:47

Acts 20, 35 and Romans 15, 1. And then he also gives us

59:54

James 2, 15 to 16. So just some verses, uh, and here

01:00:00

Fatima is giving us one last one. Uh, uh, well, she says Timothy 5. I don't know if that's first,

01:00:05

I guess that's first Timothy. First Timothy. She had first Timothy 5. First Timothy 5, uh,

01:00:11

Ephesians 5, which is what you're now in preaching Pastor Dan at church. Um, and so I, you know,

01:00:18

I've been missing that because I'm downstairs with the kids. So I, we, we have to watch later, but, uh, so, and then she says, thank you so much,

01:00:27

Pastor Dan helps with discernment on this question. So we're glad we're able to answer that.

01:00:34

So there's ways that you can use the money a little more effectively. I've known of people whose family is struggling and they're out of town, so they will call a pastor up and, uh, say,

01:00:50

Hey, listen, you know, this is a person we, that really needs the gospel. Uh, we want him to go to church.

01:00:59

Okay. So let us know if he goes to church and if he goes to church, then you could help send him some money just to get him into the gospel.

01:01:09

And I don't know if that's the best way, but just, you know, as we're thinking through, well, how can I help them without enabling them?

01:01:16

Well, maybe you could give them, we give them a gift card to come to church. Well, if you're a loved one, you could give them the proverbial gift card after they have attended a church out of town.

01:01:27

Yeah. I mean, I look, I'm a proponent of giving money for sharing the gospel, but to random people, not to people who are asking for money.

01:01:36

Right. So, um, for many years when I used to work, I worked a secular job where I had to go to the office every day and just my pattern,

01:01:46

I would go to Wawa before I went to work. Pick up my coffee and I would just go in the cashiers kind of all knew my, my, my, what

01:01:59

I did. And so I would go in and I would have the cashier ring up my order and who's ever behind me in line.

01:02:09

And I would, I would leave a gospel track. The cashier has always got a gospel tracks, but I would leave a gospel tract and they would, it was always funny because I'm standing there.

01:02:18

I haven't paid and people never figured out that the cashier is ringing up their order.

01:02:23

Who's ever behind me. And I pay for their order and they would, they, after I walk out, they would, the cashier would give the person next in line to say, the guy in front of you is a

01:02:37

Christian. He just, he paid for your breakfast here. He just wanted you to have this. I would do that all the time.

01:02:45

And it's, it's really an amazing way of sharing gospel. I remember once when I was, when I was pastoring and I was headed over to church,

01:02:52

I'd go to Dunkin' Donuts, get coffee and, and a breakfast sandwich and, and then go to the office.

01:02:58

And they had someone that was out that day. And so I had a really long line and it was unusually long.

01:03:06

And I realized this was, this line is going to take a while. And so I walked,

01:03:11

I just, I just decided I walked straight to the front of the line. Because I went there, you know, all the time, knew the guy.

01:03:19

I'm like, Danny, Hey, let's, why don't we do this? Let's get this line moving. I said, here's $40.

01:03:25

If this doesn't cover everybody in line, I'm in the back of the line. You know what I want to order. I'm going to just stand over there.

01:03:31

If it's not enough signal to me and I'll give you some more. Oh, wow. And so he just was like, okay.

01:03:37

And it sped the lineup. And with each person, he's like, no, that guy that's standing and like, everyone's upset with me because they thought

01:03:44

I just cut the line. Right. And then I'm just standing there and my order is going to be last.

01:03:51

They're all getting their orders before me. And I, and so what ended up happening was one by one, he's telling them, oh, that guy standing over there just paid for your breakfast.

01:04:01

And they were like, what? And I'm standing, there were gospel tracks and one after another, people like, did you win the lottery? No, but here's something that can tell you that can win your eternal life.

01:04:11

You know, I could tell you where you could spend eternity where, you know, and person after person. Like, I remember the one, one lady, she came up, goes, she bought a $2 cup of coffee is what

01:04:20

I bought for her. And she was like, you made my day. And I handed her gospel track and said, well, read this.

01:04:29

It might make your eternity. Wow. Right. Can I spend $40 to get the gospel out?

01:04:35

Yes, because it's not my money, right? But you've traveled with me.

01:04:41

You, you see, you see how, how I can be with the gospel when I travel. So that's wonderful.

01:04:47

No, that's, and that's a good, again, example of what we could do with our money. And, uh, you know, instead of wasting it on, uh, a widget, you know, we have an excellent opportunity to get the gospel out and even to make someone's day.

01:05:02

So wonderful opportunity. Good. Yeah. I mean, it's, we have to think about what the purpose of money is.

01:05:08

It's, it's something that causes us to be more dependent upon God. It's a tool. It's a resource we can have.

01:05:15

So, um, let me see if there's any other questions we had here. Um, okay. So Melissa asks this when it comes to the homeless, is it better to give a gift car or card or buy them some food instead of giving them money?

01:05:31

Any thoughts on that? Well, for me, we don't want to give them cash. Yeah. So we just don't do that.

01:05:38

A homeless here. There is, there are, there are a lot of resources right around us.

01:05:44

There's a lot of meals they can go to. Uh, and just for us, uh, it's easier for us not to have a food bank and perishables and some of that kind of stuff.

01:05:57

So we just give them the gift card because again, within walking distance, they can get to, you know, something like a target or something like a grocery store and they can get everything they need just because of our local, uh, approximation to various stores.

01:06:17

And we have, uh, Stefan Israel saying hello from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So Stefan, if you want to take a little bit of a ride, you can come out to our church at Oxford Valley Chapel, which is in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

01:06:30

So, um, let's see. I'm trying to see if there's any more questions that we have on money.

01:06:37

And folks, if you want to give questions, by the way, uh, unfortunately the way that StreamYard works, you can only do it if you are on, uh, from our, those that are on the

01:06:47

Facebook, uh, the page that we have is Striving Fraternity Ministries page.

01:06:53

Uh, you can share from there or from YouTube. I wish Twitter, which is where most of the watchers are, would allow us to do that.

01:07:03

But, oh, well, um, maybe one day, hey, Elon, Elon, fix that. Yeah. For some reason,

01:07:11

I don't think he's, he listens to me. Uh, Steven says he, he would, he would love to sometime, many blessings.

01:07:18

Uh, Chris Honholds is in the house. He's saying, howdy. We have not seen him. He's been, uh, he's now a seminary, a seminary student going back for his master's.

01:07:27

Uh, so he has been a busy little boy. And so now that he is retired from law enforcement, he's finding out how hard studying is again.

01:07:38

So welcome, Chris. So, uh, I think as we, we, we think about money, there are people who fall into the danger of debt and sometimes excessive debt.

01:07:51

Uh, what kind of counsel can we give to people when they, they get into that situation?

01:07:59

Uh, yeah, reactively, you're just going to have to bite the bullet and you're going to have to make cuts.

01:08:07

And this is again, where the fights come in, because using the idea of, uh, uh, eating out or new technology, you know, it's very easy for the one to say, well, fine, you quit your technology and we'll continue going out.

01:08:23

But that aside, you're just going to have to bite the bullet. And you're just going to have to pick up some extra hours and cut things back and start living a very minimalistic type lifestyle and try to get out of debt because the credit card interest,

01:08:40

I mean, it's not even just bad stewardship, but it's just bad economically. I mean, you're just, you're, it's going to kill you.

01:08:47

So you're, you're going to have to plan it and it's going to be some very painful cuts. Uh, but you can do it.

01:08:55

You can do it. You can get out of it. Yeah. And with, with that, there's a question or a statement.

01:09:02

Someone said, uh, Andrew says decision -making is another skill that we must learn early on too.

01:09:10

And, and with that, let me, let me just tell a little story of with my son, my, my bride and I had an agreement of what we did with our kids growing up.

01:09:20

They had a fixed amount of money that we spent on clothes and shoes and things like that.

01:09:25

And so we felt as the kids would grow and keep getting new shoes every year, $25 was plenty for a pair of shoes.

01:09:34

I thought $25 for sneakers was just fine. Uh, you know, a hundred dollars for clothes for the year was just fine because they're going to outgrown.

01:09:44

But so we didn't want to spend too much, but that wasn't good for my son. My son wanted the name brand.

01:09:50

Like you were saying, he wanted the Nike. And I remember the time that, uh,

01:09:56

I sat down with him and said, you know, I, I remember it was after dinner. We sat down.

01:10:02

I said, you know, I wanted to let him know. I said, son, you know, I just want you to know mom and I love you, but we're done buying you clothes or shoes because you don't like what we're getting you.

01:10:15

And so you're on your own. We'll give you the hundred dollars to use for clothes, the $25 to use for shoes, and you figure out how to get what you want.

01:10:26

And we're done. And at first he thought that was great. He got the hundred dollars for clothes and he spent it in a day, you know, and we're not all of it, but then he suddenly realized, oh, all that money went.

01:10:41

And my wife was totally against this. My wife was like, he's going to spend it. I want him to blow that money.

01:10:48

He was 14 years old. I wanted, I said, I said to my wife, I would rather him waste a hundred dollars on clothes than $40 ,000 on a car.

01:10:59

Exactly. Let him learn this lesson while he's young. And so what ended up happening was he started to learn about sales and he started to buy his clothes.

01:11:08

He got on eBay and learned to buy clothes that were used and shoes that he liked, but they were used.

01:11:15

And so he found ways to make that money last, but it wasn't enough. So what did he do?

01:11:21

He started on eBay since he was now on eBay. He went and started buying gum, like stores that are, it's close to the sale date.

01:11:29

He would buy large lots of gum and then sell it at school. So he'd get, he'd pay 50 cents for a pack of gum, sell them for $1 .50

01:11:37

in school. But he wasn't making enough money that way. Even though every day he was the guy selling gum in school, the principal had mentioned it to me.

01:11:47

And so he ended up somehow, I still don't know how he did this, but he made a connection all the way in China where he would get

01:11:54

Beats headphones sent to him. He'd get them for like 55 to $75 and he'd sell them.

01:12:00

He'd be like, they sell for 300. He'd be like, I'll sell them to you for 250. But you know, how many headphones do you need?

01:12:08

So it got him thinking, well, what can he do? He went on eBay and spent $25 to buy an iPhone that was broken.

01:12:15

He then spent money to get an iPhone repair kit and he took apart a phone that was broken just to learn.

01:12:21

So it wasn't going to work anyway. And he taught himself how to fix phones, right? And so what did he do?

01:12:27

He goes to high, he's in high school. He goes to college. He gets a master's degree.

01:12:33

And when he gets his master's degree, I paid for his undergraduate degree, but his master's he had to pay for.

01:12:39

So he's got a master's degree in occupational therapy. So he realized he's got this business fixing iPhones. He had to ramp it up.

01:12:46

He now has employees that work for him. And he never has used his occupational therapy degree because he's got this business where he's got employees that work for him.

01:12:58

And it all came out of the fact that he had to learn, be taught a lesson on how to spend money.

01:13:05

Yep. And what ended up happening was my son now has a very good business.

01:13:11

He makes three times, three times the amount of money that I make that I actually, he makes three times what my wife and I make combined.

01:13:20

Okay. And he does that because he learned how to save money early on.

01:13:26

He learned how to budget and he realized I need to figure a way to make some money to do what

01:13:33

I want to do. And so, you know, now it's like he, he realizes,

01:13:39

Hey, like you said, he wanted the car. He wanted a fast car. Both, both my kids, um, we came into a little bit of an inheritance and I gave both of the kids money for, for cars.

01:13:49

And he likes a, he wants a car that has some, some pick pickup to it.

01:13:55

Well, he realized, Hey, it's a business expense. Now I can, I can, you know, do a lease and do this.

01:14:03

And so he learns all this. Why this all came about? Because when he was 14 years old, he wanted things that we didn't want to pay for.

01:14:13

And we, we let him make those decisions. So, you know, it is something we do have to learn early on.

01:14:21

And anything else that you'd want to add about financial, uh, counseling?

01:14:28

Uh, no, other than, uh, you know, you, you do need to budget. And some of the budgeting is very easy because they're fixed expenditures.

01:14:37

You know, the electric bill, the water, the heat, you know, insurance, etc. That doesn't change too much.

01:14:43

So, you know, the, the non -fixed items we have are very limited usually.

01:14:50

But, uh, but really a budget is a budget's a wonderful tool. There's a lot of, uh, budgeting resources online.

01:15:00

And I would, uh, avail myself to them. They now have budgeting apps you can put on your phone for every expenditure.

01:15:07

It reminds you that, you know, you just spent this percentage. There's a lot of really good technology out there to help you create and maintain a budget.

01:15:18

Because again, you know, as one guy said, this is all decision -making, you know,

01:15:24

God has entrusted us with this money. And we have to, and see, that's one thing I guess we didn't mention that I think

01:15:30

I should. And that is that, you know, we have the judgment seat of Christ. And we will give an account as a steward of the resources that God has given to us, money included.

01:15:42

So when I stand before God, I want to make sure that he's going to be somewhat pleased with how

01:15:49

I spent his money rather than just paying what, you know, whatever.

01:15:56

So yeah, budgeting is very important. We have to spend it wisely because we will give an account for it.

01:16:02

And the nice thing about budgeting, as I mentioned a little earlier, is if it's in the budget, then you can spend it without any, any, uh, any hesitation.

01:16:11

I've saved this, I've earned it. And as my one daughter said, and I'm going to spend every dime of it.

01:16:17

So go out and have a good time. And my daughter and her husband have, um, they're really good with budgeting and they have a bucket for fun money.

01:16:26

And so, you know, my daughter is obviously the way that I treat my kids, right? She, she saves.

01:16:33

She's a, she hasn't, she doesn't spend a lot of her fun money. I mean, my daughter, this, this is son with that I did because I wanted to teach my kill, my children to be generous.

01:16:45

And so my daughter actually had a fund that I provided. Uh, I think it was,

01:16:51

I can't remember, maybe $25 a week for her to treat other people each week to go out and do things.

01:16:59

You got a friend that wants to get ice cream or dinner. You got $25 a week to go, to be generous toward other people.

01:17:09

And, and that's sort of, you know, when it comes to our kids, we got to train them young and there's, there's ways of training. My, I remember my son came to me, friends in his high school, kids in his high school got an allowance and my kids never got an allowance.

01:17:24

And so my son came to me one day and he's like, dad, can, can, can we talk? And this is after dinner, we sat down.

01:17:29

He's like, um, you know, friends of my school have an allowance. Can I get an allowance? I said, see, you just want me to give you money for doing nothing.

01:17:37

He said, yeah. I said, okay, what are you thinking? He goes, how about $300 a month?

01:17:45

I said, well, that, that sounds good. I said, you know, let me think about it. And can we talk tomorrow night after dinner?

01:17:52

He said, okay, he's all excited. So after dinner, next night, I said, we said, we sat down.

01:17:58

I said, all right. So the way I see this, and, and I tell you this story as parents, so that you learn, there's a way to train your kids and there's a way to get your kids to do what you want, but giving them the choice in doing it.

01:18:11

And so I said to him, I said, the way that I see it, you have three possibilities.

01:18:18

We can leave things the way they are, which is that mom and dad take care of your needs. So the second option is you could get paid for doing things around the house that I might pay someone else to do, whether it's mowing the lawn or things like that.

01:18:34

Or the third, I can just give you an allowance, give you money for doing nothing. I said, which would you like?

01:18:41

He says, I would like an allowance. I said, okay. And, and you think $300 a month is reasonable.

01:18:48

He said, yeah, that, that sounds good. I said, perfectly fine. I'm good with that.

01:18:54

He has this big smile. And I said, now that you have money, uh, your rent,

01:18:59

I've, I figured out the, the costs, your rent is your portion of the rent for living in this house is $250.

01:19:07

Your food bill, the grocery bill for you is going to be $50. Your electric and gas bill.

01:19:14

And he's like, whoa, dad, dad, stop. That's all the money. I don't have anything left. I said, that's not my problem.

01:19:20

You got to figure out how to work, how to make the ends meet. And suddenly he goes, Hey dad, can we leave it the way it is?

01:19:26

Great idea, son. I'm glad you thought of that. And so there are ways we can encourage, you know,

01:19:35

Melissa's saying $300 allowance, sign me up, you know, so there, there are ways we could do things like that.

01:19:43

We could, we could train our children to have a better view of money. Uh, let let's move on.

01:19:50

And I think that Aaron may also be affected by the storms as he's down South. And so I don't know if he's going to be making it in, but.

01:20:00

Um, assuming that he's not, uh, pastor Dan, let's, let's talk about our next topic that we have, which, which is sexual sins.

01:20:10

Okay. Uh, this is, uh, this is more prevalent in, in our day and age,

01:20:18

I think seemingly than ever before. I mean, there's such a wide range with this.

01:20:26

It is probably now that one of the top things that as counselors we have to deal with, uh, whether in marriage or out of marriage, uh, you know, we, we just recently heard of a case, a well -known preacher who is now out of ministry for some sort of inappropriate relationship with someone who is 50 years or about that younger than him.

01:20:55

Yeah. Okay. And, and so let's deal with this, uh, to try and tactfully,

01:21:03

I mean, there's so much we could deal with this and, and there is the possibility. I mean, we could do a whole episode, two hours just on this folks.

01:21:10

Um, I mean, you have the transgender issue now and the, the homosexual issue and, and all that.

01:21:17

We're not usually dealing with that within Christianity, uh, where people are coming to us for counseling, but you know, the number one thing that I hear in counseling, when it people will say, well, this makes me happy.

01:21:38

Someone's having an affair and they're like, well, this makes me happy. I wasn't happy in my marriage or they're going to say, you know, my, this is,

01:21:49

I'm following my heart. Um, things like this,

01:21:55

I've heard where people try to say, well, you know, this is, they, they want

01:22:00

God's blessing on it. They're saying, well, this is what God, you know, God's approving of this because I'm, I'm, I'm in a relationship that, that gives me happiness, whatnot.

01:22:09

Uh, is our goal as Christians to be happy is, is, can we,

01:22:15

I guess when it comes to these issues, can we just say, well, Hey, whatever makes me happy is okay.

01:22:24

Yeah, you know, we had a, uh, a question last night that someone raised and, uh, we're working through the book of first Peter and, you know, one of the prominent themes there is suffering.

01:22:39

So the question was asked, uh, yeah, that's true. The question was actually just more true for folks who are listening on audio.

01:22:47

Jason Heller, we put up the comment says the heart is a, is a fad. Sorry. The heart is a factory of idols by Calvin.

01:22:57

So, uh, the question was, is which is more powerful suffering or joy? Uh, but you know, that really gets you to think about, you know, what is the controlling desire of my life?

01:23:13

So is the Bible concerned with making us happy? No, the

01:23:19

Bible is not concerned with happy and not that they have to be mutually exclusive, but I often say, you know, you have your choice between being happy or being holy.

01:23:31

And, and most of the time they are exclusive, you know, to deny myself, to take up my cross.

01:23:39

Uh, there is often a cost involved. Now the older I get in Christ and I'm getting off topic here a little bit, but, uh, yeah,

01:23:47

God doesn't want us to be happy. You know, God wants us to be holy. And usually with the remnants of the flesh still within us, there's usually some inner consternation, you know, that to do right is going to maybe sacrifice or cost us a little bit of our quote unquote happiness.

01:24:07

You know, you recently got done preaching out of Ephesians chapter four, and that has some instructions that could be valuable here about the putting off and the putting on.

01:24:21

How could, how could that apply to this? And a follow -up question is you're now in Ephesians chapter five.

01:24:28

So you're going to be getting into some of the, the second, you just, you just ended up preaching on, uh, last week on the, the whole sexual joking, the forced jesting, the sexual innuendos, things like that, that are done and, and where it says it shouldn't be named among us.

01:24:45

So, so Ephesians four, Ephesians five, how does that help us in the area of sexual sins?

01:24:54

Well, yes. Um, let me see if we can back up just a little bit and we back up a little bit by saying, you know, we got to realize that there's some things that are just sin, uh, and we have to acknowledge and recognize it as sin.

01:25:13

And in our culture today where, and even within Christian circles, there's all different Christian takes or viewpoints of this, but we have to acknowledge that there's some things that are just sinful.

01:25:30

And again, my feelings, the relationship, but I'm committed.

01:25:36

You still got to use it with the standard of God's word. So once we recognize that something is sinful, then yes, then we have to work through Ephesians four, 22, 23 and 24.

01:25:50

And, and we just have to recognize that, you know, we, as again, we were talking a little bit in going through first Peter and in all of our lives, the question is, and I'm sorry for all of this disjunct thoughts, uh, but is

01:26:07

God really loving and does God really know best?

01:26:14

So if we obey what God tells us about sex within the confines of marriage, is that really the best thing for us?

01:26:27

And that is something that we have to wrestle with because many times, especially in this sexually saturated society, we say like, yeah, are you kidding?

01:26:34

That's so old and outdated and archaic, but that's one presupposition. The next one is, is that, okay, it's sinful.

01:26:41

So then we have to go back to Matthew or I'm sorry, Ephesians four. And that is, we have to really acknowledge that this is wrong and it's sinning against.

01:26:51

And again, I'm assuming we're talking about two Christians here so that, you know, we were one time doing this as first second

01:27:00

Corinthians six says, and such were some of you, uh,

01:27:06

Paul and Philippians two said, and you were practicing this just like everybody else, but now you're children of light.

01:27:13

So it's like, oh my God, I have sinned against you. I brought shame and dishonor.

01:27:19

You know, you pulled me out of darkness into light, and now I'm jumping back into the darkness that is so wrong.

01:27:26

We have to be really, truly willing to repent and confess. And then verse 23 is we need to rethink things because again, as a man thinks, so is he in the thoughts that we cultivate and maintain through life or the thoughts that are going to shape our life.

01:27:44

So we have to really come back to some of these questions like, is what God's saying really true?

01:27:50

Does he really love me? Is this the best way to reach the destination of the abundant life that he promised us in Christ?

01:28:00

And then we put on, so, you know, we're going to have to stop some actions and kind of rethink things and get new priorities and new value systems.

01:28:09

And then we have to do some new activities and put off, renew, put on.

01:28:18

Yeah, I mean, and this is where we go, folks, scripture, right? So as we think about some of the sexual sins,

01:28:32

I mean, it's just, it's so prevalent in this culture today. What, let me ask this, what kind of advice would you give folks for purity?

01:28:44

I mean, there are some who believe it is impossible to live pure in this culture.

01:28:55

No, I disagree with that. I mean, yes, you know, when I was growing up, the only way that, you know,

01:29:01

I could get a hold of pornography was some kids would steal it from their dad and bring it into school.

01:29:08

And that's how we got, you know, I couldn't go to an X -rated bookstore. I couldn't go to an

01:29:13

X -rated theater, but I'm in my ending my sixth decade of life. So this is going back 50 more years and now you can get it within just clicks.

01:29:24

But even then, you know, you can purpose in your heart, you can make a covenant with your eyes.

01:29:33

And there has to be an acknowledgement that I am not going to let these thoughts or this person draw me to sin.

01:29:47

So how can we stay pure in a sexually saturated society? Maybe we could kind of take it like this.

01:29:54

We can't stop the meme or whatever that is flashing or what's on our screen or whatever.

01:30:02

But we can't stop the bird from flying over a head, but we can't prevent it from building a nest in my hair.

01:30:11

So another more current example would be is my boy and I, we're going to the gym and we go in the morning and there are some women who are very tightly dressed,

01:30:24

I guess is probably the best way to say it. But I can honestly say that I did not have any mental adultery with any of them in the gym today.

01:30:37

You can acknowledge that that is an attractive looking woman and that's it.

01:30:44

You know, there have been people when I was growing up say, you should never go to a beach. You should never do this and you should never do that.

01:30:51

And I'm not saying that we should put ourselves in tempting situations. But in our culture today, you have to lock the door and pull the blinds.

01:31:00

So you just have to keep your thoughts under control. And that is, you know, yeah, that's a good looking woman.

01:31:07

That is God's creation that I hope that individual is saved. You know, there's so many thoughts that you can go down rather than having an adulterous relationship with your thoughts.

01:31:19

So to answer your question, it would be, yes, it is possible. You can make a covenant with your eyes.

01:31:25

You can purpose in your heart that you're not going to defile yourself. You can acknowledge the beauty of God's creation.

01:31:34

But you just say, I'm not going any further than that. And we just train our thinking.

01:31:41

Yeah, I know that. I mean, I typically don't go to a gym. I started to because I need to use the elliptical instead of my treadmill.

01:31:50

I have a full gym at home. So the only woman that I have to worry about at my gym is my bride.

01:31:56

Now I go to a gym, but at five in the morning, there's no one there but me. So I don't worry about it.

01:32:05

The advantage of that. But, you know, when we think about that, you're right, it's everywhere.

01:32:12

And even driving, I remember a gentleman at church, he would drive past a billboard down in Philly going to work every day.

01:32:21

I haven't seen the billboard, so I don't know what it was. But he was explaining how this billboard was such a struggle for him on a daily basis.

01:32:32

And some of the other guys, it was interesting because as he was explaining it, two of the other guys were like,

01:32:38

I know exactly which one you're talking about. So, you know, it's everywhere in this culture is prevalent.

01:32:46

I mean, look, we have a whole group of people, LGBT +, that they define everything by sex.

01:32:58

And so it's really hard to get around it today.

01:33:07

Did God, let me ask you this way, did God create sex?

01:33:13

And if he did, did he create it for just to be a temptation for us?

01:33:19

No, absolutely not. You know, in the Garden of Eden, you know, he made him male, female.

01:33:26

And before the fall, they were running around naked and they were not ashamed.

01:33:32

And I would imagine that in a pre -cursed society,

01:33:38

I mean, there was great sexual experiences and stuff going on there. So God is not against sex.

01:33:45

And this is where, again, I'm just disappointed that there are so many people who think that, you know,

01:33:51

God is anti -everything and that by trying to follow God's plan, we're going to live limping along through life.

01:34:00

It's just not true. So, no,

01:34:06

God created sex. He created it wonderfully. And there's nothing wrong with sex within the biblical confines of within a marriage.

01:34:16

One other thought that I think, and before I quickly lose it, another thing that really helps people to be pure is contentment.

01:34:26

You know, godliness with contentment is great gain. So if I'm a single individual,

01:34:33

I don't have to be, and again, there's so many different ways that we can fill our minds, whether it's reading literature or books or websites, it's not always listening to it or even watching it.

01:34:46

But just I'm a single person and I'm not looking for any physical type relationship.

01:34:53

I'm content with my singleness. And then when we get married, oh, my goodness, you better be content with your spouse or your chances of a long marriage are not going to be very good, but you just learn to be content.

01:35:07

I am so grateful and thankful for the spouse that God has given to me. Because again, when we started this thing, we both said that it was

01:35:16

God's will for us to get married. So therefore, I guess this is what

01:35:22

God wants for me, because we're saying this after the fact. But I guess

01:35:28

I'll be content. So contentment is just another great thing for purity, but that's hard because denying self and learning to be content is something difficult.

01:35:38

So sorry, I got off on a little rabbit trail there. No, that's fine. I mean, that's a good point, because we have to have a right view of this.

01:35:47

I mean, like Kathy's saying, amen, amen, Dan, right? So it's interesting.

01:35:57

So let's deal with, I'm seeing comments flying by. People are talking about Steve Lawson, right?

01:36:05

So that's the guy that I mentioned earlier. I referred to earlier, I should say. There's a video of him coming that's been out there.

01:36:14

I don't know when he said this, but he's just talking to someone. They're videoing it.

01:36:19

It's a short minute and a half clip. And if I had it queued up, maybe I should have.

01:36:25

But he's saying, men are going to give up their entire ministry for 90 seconds of pleasure.

01:36:34

Is it worth it? I mean, your name is going to be just smirched. You're going to have all this.

01:36:41

And so all these people are sharing that clip because of the, I don't know, irony?

01:36:47

Irony, yeah. Yeah, of him now, his name is now forever associated with the fact that he had some sort of inappropriate relationship.

01:37:03

Now, let me be really clear with this. All right, let me go, I'll go off on a rabbit trail now,

01:37:09

Pastor Dan, sorry. Let me be really clear. I want to say some things. I had a pastor call me and he told me he's been watching the program because he's been waiting to see what

01:37:21

I will say about Steve Lawson. I haven't said much so far because I don't have enough information to speak to it.

01:37:32

The details that I have have been confusing. First off, it's been called an inappropriate relationship.

01:37:39

That's not very helpful. That doesn't tell us anything. And, you know, we do have scripture that tells us exactly how to handle pastors that sin.

01:37:52

This is what it says. 1 Timothy 5, 19 and 20. Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.

01:38:07

Those who continue in sin rebuke in the presence of all so that the rest may be fearful of sinning.

01:38:22

We did not have that. Okay, there was not a public rebuke in this case.

01:38:30

There is a vague thing of inappropriate relationship. What we have discovered is he is 73.

01:38:39

She is in her late 20s. Concerning? Yes. It's been a five -year relationship.

01:38:48

Concerning? Yes. Both sides have made it clear that it was not a sexual relationship.

01:39:00

Confusing? Yes. So it was described as a romantic relationship that was conducted online through texting or something like that.

01:39:16

He did not come out and publicly repent. He came to his elders,

01:39:26

I guess, as it's been explained is, to me at least, that the father found out about it after five years and was going to go and talk to the elder.

01:39:37

So he got ahead of it. Okay, fine. I mean, one issue

01:39:43

I have is that this has not been, we don't know what the sin specifically is because I can't find anywhere in the

01:39:52

Bible that talks about an inappropriate relationship. What is that?

01:39:58

I don't know. The Bible talks about an affair. Yes. The word poronea is used as a general thing.

01:40:09

It includes pornography and all kinds of that. But romantic overtones, as I heard it described in texting, what exactly does that mean?

01:40:22

And there's people who are saying, we got to throw out all of our, anything from Steve Lawson, toss it all.

01:40:29

Are we committing cancel culture? I mean, cancel culture, we saw this with Alistair Begg.

01:40:36

He says one thing and we're like, throw out 40 years of ministry. And we dealt with that in two episodes here on this podcast in the past.

01:40:45

Do we just throw out everything he's ever done because of some advice he gave?

01:40:51

You say it's bad advice. Yes, but he was very clear that that's advice he gave to that grandmother and no one else.

01:40:58

He said he wouldn't give that advice to other people. What does he know about the grandmother? We don't know.

01:41:04

What do we know about Steve Lawson? That everyone is jumping the gun and going, we need to cancel him everywhere.

01:41:11

I don't know. Can I say he's disqualified for life? No, I can't.

01:41:19

Why? Because I don't have enough information. So we're now in an age where it's just, it's so hard because any accusation becomes something where, oh, we all have to reject them.

01:41:35

We have to cancel them. We have to get away from them. Is Steve Lawson, has he helped many people in his writings and his preaching?

01:41:44

Yes. Is this a sexual sin? I have to say no, according to what

01:41:52

I read and what I've heard. It doesn't seem that it was. Can you have a relationship that is sinful without having the sexual part?

01:42:04

Yes. And so that's where it's too hard for me to know this situation because we don't have the details because they're not public.

01:42:12

You can make it public without naming the woman. That's what scripture would say we do.

01:42:19

If a pastor continues in sin, you rebuke them publicly. Right.

01:42:25

Then we would know whether this church is overreacting and everyone's jumping the gun and committing cancel culture within the church or whether or not it's an actual sin where we have to say this guy is disqualified.

01:42:40

I'm laying that out there because I want people to think through that because look, there are people within the larger

01:42:47

Christian audience that are big ministries that want to protect themselves and since they're tied to Steve Lawson, any little thing he might do wrong, they want to run away from with anyone.

01:42:59

They want to protect their ministry. So I just want to caution people with things like that.

01:43:07

Just because everyone says there was some sexual thing that happened. We got to be really careful.

01:43:16

There is a there's an apologist that I used to be friends.

01:43:22

I haven't spoken to him in years. I'll name him because it's public. He has publicly admitted to having a sexual relationship with a woman he was engaged to and he repented of that.

01:43:39

But there's people have canceled them completely because of the fact that they've I mean, there's people that have said he it was multiple women.

01:43:47

It was underage women. It was married women. He has said it was one woman who he was engaged to.

01:43:59

So we got to be careful with what we hear online when it comes to these issues because man, this stuff just it runs rampant.

01:44:09

And so sorry for that rabbit trap, Pastor Dan. So it's sort of in the realm of counseling, but in the counseling of let's be cautious.

01:44:18

We hear these things. Yeah, the accusations, you know, it's kind of like, you know, in Ephesians 429 where it says, you know, don't let any corrupt words come out of your mouth.

01:44:31

So, you know, we can vomit all this stuff out and then we can retract and say, oh, you know,

01:44:38

I'm sorry, will you forgive me? And yeah, we're supposed to forgive you. But then what am

01:44:43

I supposed to do with all this vomit all over my clothes? Yeah, you know, words are powerful.

01:44:49

You know, life and death are in the power of the tongue. And, you know, we don't need to go through all the Bible teaching of the tongue.

01:44:56

But you better be careful, you know, and we're so and then again, and this goes back to the purity.

01:45:03

You know, why is it that we're so quick to find fault? You know, even sometimes it's kind of funny, you know, some person could create something or make something and paint something.

01:45:16

And there's one little thing that's askew. We just focus on that. You know, we're there's just that negative component to it that we tend to focus on.

01:45:30

And it shouldn't be what's where everything's are pure. What's where everything's are true. What's where everything's are lovely.

01:45:36

You know, we need to be focusing on this stuff. Now, that's not to say we shouldn't do our due diligence, but just to run out and throw all these accusations and, you know, look for the proverbial execution or something.

01:45:50

It just saddens me. Yeah. So let's deal with the person who's struggling with sexual sin.

01:45:59

Pornography, you mentioned, is probably the most prevalent. But whether it's so let's deal with that, actually, whether it's pornography or someone has done something sexual, they know it's a sin.

01:46:12

They're struggling with it. I mean, there are a lot of people struggle in this area. And one of the big things that happen is they don't come to church because they're embarrassed.

01:46:21

They're ashamed. They avoid the very place that they need to go to get help.

01:46:29

What kind of counsel can we give someone who is struggling in the area of sexual sins?

01:46:38

Well, yeah, the church, you know, that is sometimes sad because, you know, we're all still a bunch of sinners saved by grace.

01:46:47

And, you know, we got to remember that most of the New Testament, Paul was writing to churches.

01:46:54

And if they were a perfect church, most of what he wrote to Thessalonica and Corinth and Ephesus wouldn't need to be written.

01:47:02

So that's one thing. But secondly, I think, you know, since we're in Ephesians five, you know, where do we go with this?

01:47:10

OK, we've struggled. We've been engaged. We've done this stuff or whatever. We're still plagued by it.

01:47:16

I think if we go to Ephesians five one or even four one, four one says that we are to live a life that is worthy of our salvation.

01:47:26

Walk worthy in a manner of our salvation. So basically, God's supposed to be looking down from heaven at us and saying, oh,

01:47:34

I'm glad I saved him. You know, seriously, I'm glad I did that because we're going to see in Ephesians five in just a minute.

01:47:43

We're supposed to find things, the ways and find out what pleases God. There in four through 17.

01:47:50

So that's one idea. I need to walk in a way that is worthy. This is our renewing of our mind.

01:47:56

Chapter five says that we are to be an imitator of Christ.

01:48:03

So, you know, we got to realize what it means to be in Christ. And all that affords us, again, the book of Ephesians.

01:48:12

I know I'm biased because we've been preaching in it now for a year, finishing it up here in a couple of months.

01:48:18

But, you know, the power that is given to us in Ephesians one that raised Christ from the dead, the power that's available to us in chapter three, that can do exceedingly abundantly above all, even conquering this pornography lust.

01:48:32

It's available to us. So our motive in life now here again, it's not necessarily just to stop porn, because we've all said if we're just focusing on stop porn, stop porn, stop porn.

01:48:45

All we're focusing is on porn. You know, I want to be imitating Christ.

01:48:51

I want to imitate Christ. And that's just we just got to give ourselves up to him and what he did for us.

01:49:00

Then, you know, the other thing, too, is is with this. A lot of it is, you know,

01:49:06

I talked about we need to be content. Well, what we need to put off is the covetousness.

01:49:12

You know, the lust, the desire, you know, sin grows out of wanting something we don't have.

01:49:20

Even going way back to the garden, you know, of all these trees you can eat, but just not this one.

01:49:28

So, you know, less grows out of just something that we don't have. So we need to repent of that.

01:49:35

And instead of just, you know, repenting, repenting, repenting, what we need to do then is pursue gratitude and contentment and thanksgiving.

01:49:46

And if we would focus on contentment, gratitude and thanksgiving, that's going to undercut or knock the legs out of our out of our lust and covetousness.

01:49:58

And then we've got to, again, confess it. And then we got to get accountability.

01:50:06

And I think that is very crucial. We've got to get honest and we got to really encourage other people to be honest, because, again,

01:50:15

I'm always fighting the battle of the bulge. You know, as I get older, the metabolism just really stinks.

01:50:24

And this is kind of a side. I think sometimes the way God created us is kind of a picture of the consequences of sin.

01:50:31

You know, I can eat 300 calories in about 30 seconds.

01:50:37

You know how long it takes me to burn 30 seconds on the 30 calories? Wait, I'm all tired up.

01:50:44

All right. 300 calories I can eat in 30 seconds. It takes more than 30 seconds to burn that off on a treadmill.

01:50:51

Yep. Yeah. I used to I used to run and I think I shared this with you, but I used to be a glutton.

01:50:58

Well, I still am. I still struggle with that. But I used to run 40 to 60 miles a week, and I would

01:51:04

I would look at everything I ate by how many miles that is. Oh, that's four miles. That's two miles.

01:51:10

That's, you know, and and I used to say, I run so I can eat like a pig and it doesn't show. And then

01:51:16

I realized, oh, wait, I'm actually a glutton. It ruined my running. But yeah, I mean, it takes a lot to burn off what we can.

01:51:23

We can eat very quickly, but it's hard to burn off. So but going back to accountability, you know, if I were to get up there or tell my wife, you know,

01:51:32

I need to lose the weight that I gained on vacation because the Thanksgiving and Christmas is coming up.

01:51:39

And if I just tell her that may or may not happen. But now if I go before the church and say, you know,

01:51:47

I need to lose about 10 pounds, and if I don't lose 10 pounds, I want you to do this.

01:51:53

And every Sunday morning we jump on the scale and, you know, mirror screaming up to the projector.

01:52:01

The odds of me losing weight when I confronted to the church is going to be a lot greater than just telling my wife.

01:52:08

So, you know, we have to we have to identify Christ that we want to imitate him.

01:52:16

You know, we're going to have to, you know, repent of our covetousness and we're going to have to really work hard and being grateful, be content.

01:52:24

And we're going to give Thanksgiving and even Thanksgiving that in some cases I'm single.

01:52:30

That is going to be tough to do, but it'll be a great strides to purity if we can say, thank

01:52:37

God I am single right now. And then what we have to do is they confess it. And then we just got to seek accountability.

01:52:43

And I know that's kind of a truncated version of it. But if we would just be honest and open with someone and then, you know, there's a whole accountability structure, but there's got to be some teeth to it somehow.

01:52:57

Then then that is what, you know, that's just a very quick fourfold way. Yeah, I agree.

01:53:04

And it's a thing where, look, folks, in the sexual area,

01:53:09

I understand and Pastor Dan understands there is a huge struggle in this area.

01:53:17

It's prevalent in our society. And so we have to be, we just have to be really careful because we live in a society where it is just everywhere.

01:53:31

And it's even the clothing of the kids in school is just appalling.

01:53:40

They're already dressing now in the high schools and various schools that we thought would be the streetwalkers, you know, 60 years ago.

01:53:50

So, but here's this, and this is why it's so much difficult for us is because that's acceptable. Yeah.

01:53:56

You know, our social cultural norms have diminished so much. That this is just acceptable and it's just embraced.

01:54:04

And that's why one of the things that we have to be constantly on guard with is we have to say that we are children of light.

01:54:12

We are children of darkness, and this is wrong. And it's wrong for me even to begin to entertain this thought.

01:54:19

It's wrong for me to think that this is acceptable. It's just, it's just wrong.

01:54:24

And if we go into a mindset with this is wrong, I'm not going to do this. And then, you know, contentment and stuff.

01:54:32

You have a, you can really get the victory over this because again, God didn't create us that we always have to be defeated.

01:54:40

You know, we can have victory. And just with the proper strategies, not that we're going to be sinless, but we can have victory.

01:54:48

I don't believe God expected us to lose every spiritual battle. There's a victory there.

01:54:54

And we can live pure God honoring lives in this perverted sexual culture in which we live.

01:55:02

Yeah. And so let us end with this is to say, there can be hope in this area.

01:55:09

Absolutely. There's so many people feel if you are listening to us, you're hearing this and you're saying, but I struggle with this and there's just no hope.

01:55:22

I feel ashamed to go to church. I can't tell my pastor. There's hope you can have victory in this area.

01:55:31

Plenty of others have. And so we just have to stop thinking that we're all alone.

01:55:40

There's no one that has struggled with this before because that's not true. And so there is a way to have hope in this area.

01:55:51

I want to encourage folks with that question. Anything else you want to say in this topic before I mentioned some resources that we have for folks?

01:56:02

Nope. But again, just with hope, 1 Corinthians 10, 13, you're not alone in this struggle.

01:56:08

It's common demand. Go back to David and Bathsheba. But again, God has offered us victory.

01:56:16

And if we would just take some of these strategies, some of which we alluded to others, your pastor and stuff, you can get victory over this.

01:56:26

Not that you're going to have, not that you'll be struggle problem -free occasionally. I'm tripping things up.

01:56:32

No, I don't have anything more to say. I'm done. Okay. You're getting tired. Let me give some resources, folks.

01:56:38

And for those who listen on the podcast, if you're not following the podcast version of this, just go to any podcast app, search for Apologetics Live.

01:56:49

You'll get the podcast version. I'll have the links in there. I will have to, for legal reasons, admit that some of these links will be affiliate links.

01:57:00

So Striving for Eternity will make some very little money from Amazon on them.

01:57:06

But on the area of money, we have the book Money, Debt, and Finances by Jim Neuhauser.

01:57:13

The other book in that area is Help, I'm Drowning in Debt by John Temple.

01:57:19

In the area of sexual sins, what we have is some books for you is The Secret Thoughts of an

01:57:26

Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield.

01:57:33

She also is the author of the second book that we have here, which is Five Lies Our Antio -Culture

01:57:43

Age. I'm not sure. A -N -T -I -O -Christian

01:57:51

Age. So whatever that one is. I'll have the link in the podcast.

01:57:57

The next book is from Heath Lambert called Finally Free. The next one is

01:58:03

Addictions, A Banquet in the Grave by Ed Walsh. That's a good one.

01:58:10

And then two others are more pamphlets, Help, He's Struggling with Pornography by Brian Kraft and Help, She's Struggling with Pornography by Rachel Coyle.

01:58:22

So those are some resources we'll have in the show notes for you. This wraps up our series on counseling.

01:58:30

So what do we have for you? Well, next month, we're going to start a series and we're not going to do this every month.

01:58:37

It just happened that we're going to do two series back to back. We're going to have a series on apologetics.

01:58:42

So on October 3rd, we're going to have a gentleman come in,

01:58:48

Matt Marano, who's going to talk about classical. He's going to make an argument for classical apologetics.

01:58:55

Then on October 10th, Dan Kraft, which some of you may know, he's been on here.

01:59:01

He's one of the speakers at Striving Fraternity. He's going to make an argument for what I'm going to say is the biblical position, presuppositional apologetics.

01:59:11

October 17th, we're going to have Daniel McAdams come in and talk about an argument for evidential apologetics.

01:59:19

Just saying, October 17th, you may want to come in. I've been on a podcast with this brother, talked with him, talked with him privately.

01:59:30

His background before becoming a Christian was he did research into the paranormal.

01:59:36

The guy has an extensive history in looking at paranormal activity and doing studies in that that got well known.

01:59:46

So we may talk about paranormal. I know what his view is of the paranormal. And so we may get into that, but then we won't be around for Thanksgiving.

01:59:58

I'm sorry for those who are watching in the Philippines, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, but in America, we'll have

02:00:06

Thanksgiving and I will be with my family along with all my co -hosts. So they won't be here.

02:00:12

So we will pick up on Reformation Day. I know some call it Halloween, but October 31st, we plan to have a one on the cumulative apologetic with Dr.

02:00:28

Donald Williams. I will be traveling that day. So whether, I don't know if I will be here for that.

02:00:35

I will be in Texas. And so I may not be there.

02:00:41

Now for November 7th, I just wanna give what we got in November, a couple of things.

02:00:48

If you struggle or know someone which struggles or is involved in the

02:00:53

Hebrew Roots Movement, November 7th, I will have a friend of mine, Robert Sahlberg, who wrote the book,

02:01:00

Torahism. He had done a discussion slash debate on someone's channel that someone asked me to debate.

02:01:07

I said, I would debate that person, have not heard back from him yet. Not surprised.

02:01:13

And so I'll have Robert Sahlberg on. We're gonna talk about issues with people that put themselves back under the law of Judaism.

02:01:23

And then for November 21st, we are going to be talking about, is

02:01:34

Jesus God or the son of God? And I just realized that October 24th is not,

02:01:40

I had that marked off as no program. That's not Thanksgiving. Dan, you should have told me that.

02:01:47

That's November that we have Thanksgiving. That's marked off because I will be traveling and none of the co -hosts said that they could do it.

02:01:56

But we won't have something for Thanksgiving, just so you know. But I don't know what we'll have for November 14th, but we will have something,

02:02:06

I'm sure. So with that, Pastor Dan, I do thank you for coming in these past four weeks and the other guys that have come in, although with the hurricane, others couldn't make it.

02:02:19

Kathy says, thank you for doing these difficult topics and your helpful wisdom,

02:02:25

Dan. I think she means Dan, but she said Dan and Andrew, but I think she just means Dan there. So, but I appreciate you coming in.

02:02:35

I know this is, I think for you and your bride, this is the first time you've ever done a podcast or a live stream even.

02:02:43

Yep, that is correct. It's our pleasure. We're kind of techno dinosaurs. So yeah, this is our first.

02:02:50

Well, it was a pleasure to be here. I hope that it won't be the last. I hope you keep coming back and that we can have you on more because well, as my pastor,

02:03:00

I love having you on. So it's been a joy. Thank you. So folks, with that, we want to encourage you.

02:03:07

I will be, just so you know, if you're listening live tomorrow morning and folks, you could be praying for this.

02:03:14

I leave for Indiana at oh, dark 30. That's going to be actually before 30 in the morning.

02:03:21

I leave for the airport and I am struggling with this.

02:03:27

Because the hurricane, I have to fly to Atlanta to then to Evansville, Ohio, Evansville, Indiana.

02:03:35

And the struggle with that is the fact that in that I will be with their, they're claiming that there might be delays.

02:03:47

And so I have the next flight I could possibly get. The problem is I got an event.

02:03:53

There are ambassador evangelism weekend seminar that we're doing. And the church that asked us, which is the click church,

02:04:01

K E C K. It's pastored by one of our bloggers that's striving for eternity,

02:04:06

Josiah Nichols. He is now pastoring there. And so he is, you know, he has asked that I do a

02:04:13

Friday, three to six, Saturday, three to six for our ambassador evangelism. The problem is if I don't make that first flight,

02:04:22

I don't get there till 430, which means I don't get speaking at three o 'clock. So be praying that we don't have any conditions with the weather.

02:04:30

That would be a wonderful help. So if you're in Evansville, Indiana, go to the click church, kick church.

02:04:40

I don't know how to pronounce that K E C K church. And so if you can check that out and October 31st,

02:04:50

I mentioned I'll be gone the 31st to November 3rd. Uh, right now the plan is

02:04:57

I will be at the love fight feast conference with a friend of mine,

02:05:03

Greg Moore. He has invited me to come to that. Uh, I will be there if you're going to attend there.

02:05:09

Yes. I know it's filled with post -millennialists. I get it, but there's gotta be someone teaching the truth.

02:05:16

There's gotta be some guy that knows the biblical position while I'm going to get,

02:05:21

I'm going to be roasted alive. I'm sure as the dispensational pre -millennialists there.

02:05:27

But if you're going there, uh, may I encourage you to come and, uh, come up, say, hi,

02:05:33

I will be at, uh, Greg Moore's booth, which is a part of his podcast, uh, which

02:05:41

I hate this. I just drew a complete blank on his podcast, which is really bad of me. Um, so I'm looking it up live, which is a dead man walking podcast.

02:05:50

I can't figure out why I just drew a complete blank. Uh, Jesse says post mill all the way,

02:05:57

LOL. Well, Hey, if you're going to be there, Jesse, definitely you should come find me and say, hello,

02:06:04

I'll be at the dead man walking booth. I'll probably be doing some recording there when, when Greg isn't.

02:06:09

And so, uh, you know, just for Jesse's sake, Kathy is saying pre -mill all the way.

02:06:16

Well, I could say this when we all get to heaven, we're going to agree. Uh, so, so no problems there.

02:06:24

So those are some places I will be. If you're, if you guys are coming out, I encourage you to come and say hello to me.

02:06:31

I do greatly enjoy when all you guys don't understand how humbling it is.

02:06:36

When some of you that come up to me and say, Hey, I watch Apologetics live every week. I listened to the rap report.

02:06:43

It is so humbling to me because I don't get to see faces unless you come into this live stream.

02:06:49

I don't get to see the faces. So it is so enjoyable to me when you guys come up and just encourage me to let me know you listen.

02:06:58

So if you, if you do listen and you see me at those events, please let me know. I appreciate it. And so with that, we're going to encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and we'll see you next week.