August 25, 2025 Show with A. M. Brewster on “What Really Matters”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 25th day of August 2025.

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And I am thrilled to have back on the program two returning guests who are also old friends of mine.

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We have A .M. Brewster and Andrew Rappaport joining me today to discuss what really matters, which is also the theme of a conference coming up in September the 12th through the 14th at Oxford Valley Chapel in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

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But first of all, let me introduce A .M. Brewster, founder and president of Evermind Ministries, chief editor for Striving for Eternity Ministries, an

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ACBC -certified biblical counselor, author, and conference speaker. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M.

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Brewster. Thank you so much, Chris. I really enjoy spending these times with you.

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I really appreciate that. Thank you for that kind introduction. I am the director of Evermind Ministries, but today really more so I come as a representative of Striving for Eternity because as the editor of the blog and as one of their speakers, this conference that's coming up in Levittown, Pennsylvania is really it's a

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Striving for Eternity conference. So I do, yeah, I have the pleasure of telling people about my ministry and telling people about my new book quick, but I'm super excited to really minister to this church because this church is one of the supporting churches of Striving for Eternity, which makes it possible for us to go and put on conferences for churches that can't afford to put on the big conferences that so many other larger churches can.

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So excited to be here, excited to talk about the topic of the conference as well as invite anyone of your listeners who can get there to plan on coming for this three -day conference.

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Now, did I mispronounce the name of the city? Is it Levittown, like you said, or Levittown? Levittown, like you said.

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OK. You know what? I tried so hard. I've been, I've been so beat up, and there's

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Lancaster, and I was trying so hard, but apparently it's Levittown, and all the people in Pennsylvania now won't come because they don't like me.

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Yes. Well, that name is very familiar to me, having been born and raised on Long Island, and there is a very famous Levittown, Long Island.

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Levittown, Long Island is considered the first suburb in America. But anyway, well,

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I am looking forward to, God willing, being present at that conference at Oxford Valley Chapel in Levittown, Pennsylvania, and I'll be sitting at my exhibitor's booth if anyone cares to greet me and say hello and get some free materials from Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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But a special co -host with me today is my old friend

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Andrew Rappaport, who is the founder and president of Striving for Eternity Ministries.

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He's also an author and a conference speaker.

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In fact, if you actually do a Google search on conferences anywhere in the

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United States, Andrew will be on the roster. And Andrew has the rare and dubious honor of being the,

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I think, the only or at least the very first Iron Trip and Zion Radio guest who actually interviewed me instead of me interviewing him.

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But it's great to have you serve as my co -host today, Andrew. Well, thanks for having me on.

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Yes, you are correct. Levittown, Pennsylvania was based off of Levittown, New York.

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Oh, wow. They created, yeah, the guy who had been involved in Levittown, New York and setting that up came and wanted to create, because so many

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New Yorkers were coming down that way and created a town that had similarities to that of New York.

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And one of its proud sons is Bill O 'Reilly, and that will have a mixed reaction of many people.

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He is not universally loved. I have a lot of admiration for Bill, but despise some of his writings.

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He slandered the Puritans in his book on the

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Salem witch trials, Killing the Witches. And I had to have a guest on the program to respond to his book.

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And of course, his book, Killing Jesus, was filled with inaccuracies and heresies and all kinds of stuff.

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But anyway, that's not why we're here today. Strivingforeternity .org

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is your website, right, Andrew? That's correct. Great. And so, as Aaron said, what we do for our supporting churches, any church that supports us, we come to them on our dime to—well, there's helping support it, but it's one of the ways we try to bless those churches that are helping us get to other churches that cannot afford to—well, to afford, as Aaron said, to have a conference in their church.

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Now, this particular church is a little bit special. There's two reasons why

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I am not speaking at it. One is it's my home church, and, well, they're already used to me.

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I preach there several times a year, so it's nothing special for them to have me there.

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But the other reason is, you know, as you know, you've been helping

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Jeffrey Rice promote the conference, the Roadmap to Revival, and I had already—I had been scheduled to go to that one, so I'm going to be out that way.

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So Aaron's going to be at my home church, and I won't even get to see him. It's really sad. Yeah, Aaron actually planned it that way.

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Yeah, how can I get out of town? Well, if anybody has any questions, it seems, though, that this may open up a very broad spectrum of questions if anybody in the audience has a question, because the theme that I've announced is rather broad, although Aaron might have a lot more narrow definition of what really matters, really means, but that is the theme of the conference, what really matters.

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And if you could even be more specific, Aaron, about what you plan to address at this conference at Oxford Valley Chapel in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

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I love sitting down with a pastor and talking about how I can help minister to his sheep, how

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I can come in and be a blessing in the process that HE is working with them to equip them for the work in the ministry.

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So every single time I'm invited to speak someplace, that's the first thing I do, and we talk about different topics that are ones that I talk on a lot.

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We talk about what they've been learning recently, and we just put together a plan to help equip them in the best way possible.

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So this particular conference, as we discussed some of the things that I am asked to speak about relatively frequently, really a lot of those topics resonated and seemed to be something that the pastor and the church were excited about digging into.

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And as a biblical counselor, the things that I talk most on tend to be a counseling topic.

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I'll be at the annual conference of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors this

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October speaking on counseling children who've been exposed to sexuality. I'll also be talking about giving homework assignments to your counselees that can really get to the heart and help them to have significant change and growth in their lives.

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So I talk on that a little bit, but much more I talk about family and the important roles within family.

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So that's going to come up during the conference, as well as the broader topics of, really,

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I think they come down to identity. I think it comes down to worldview, which everybody has.

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The problem is that everybody assumes that their worldview is accurate, and everybody assumes that their identity is correctly identified, when the reality is so often it's not.

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And I can say this for myself. As a sinner, my worldview is not always accurate. There are times when I think

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I'm right. I do things that are right in my own eyes. The Bible talks about people who roll boulders, only to have boulders roll back on them.

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And I'm certain that this boulder I'm rolling is what I should be doing, only to have it crush me later on. So I don't always view things correctly.

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And my identity is far too often wrapped up in things that it shouldn't be.

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So when we talk about identity, we talk about worldview. I think the most Christians who are being equipped in their churches are saying, they're nodding their heads, and saying, yeah, those are important.

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But I understand those things. I get it. That's not really where I am right now in my spiritual growth.

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I need something different. I'm more interested in looking at different doctrines or niche issues.

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But what I've found, as I've interacted with congregations and counselees and pastors, is that after opening the

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Scriptures to look at the types of things that we're going to talk about at this conference, by God's grace and the power of the

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Holy Spirit, we come face to face with the fact that we really do have deceptive hearts.

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We are delusional so often in what we think we're doing and how we think we're doing it, why we think we're doing it, that oftentimes, to put it into the vernacular, we really do need to get back to the basics and be challenged on, we say that our identity is in Christ, but are we actually living it?

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How do we know? What does the Scripture require of us? So what really matters is the question on the table.

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And I think every person is born into this world asking that question. I have a podcast called

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Truth Love Parents, and one of the series we did was The Biggest Parenting Challenges You Will Ever Face.

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And all of the biggest parenting challenges we'll ever face grow from this idea that all humans are pursuing what

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I call security. And security is made up of two things, safety, perceived safety, as well as our perceived satisfaction.

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Even infants do what they do because they want to be secure, they want to be safe, and they want to be satisfied.

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And as we go through our lives, everything that we do really stems from the pursuit of those things. But at the root of all that is the question, so what really is security?

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What really matters? What is really the most important thing when it comes to safety and satisfaction? And I'll take it one step further, who gets to define it?

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Again, as Christians, we say, well, of course, God gets to define what it is to be truly secure.

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And I'm not talking about eternal security from the salvation justification standpoint, I'm talking about just that variance of feeling safe and believing that we're satisfied.

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God gets to identify it and gets to delineate it, of course, but again, practically speaking, far too often, and I forget who said it,

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I know Calvin said something about us being perpetual idol factories and somebody else made the observation that we really so often live like practical atheists.

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So opening up the scriptures to say, okay, what really does genuinely matter? How does

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God define what it is to be truly spiritually safe and spiritually satisfied?

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Who is he? Who are we? What does that mean for us? So the topics on Friday, September 12th,

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I'll be speaking on the topic of God, followed up by the topic of the church. And I really like the questions in the description section of the ad that Andrew put together.

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He puts questions next to these, and they're really great questions for us to consider and to pursue and to really not just blithely or say, oh, yes, no,

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I know the answer to that, but really drill down and ask ourselves the specifics, which is what we'll be doing at the conference.

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So as we talk about the topic of God, about what really matters, this question here is, is there a purpose beyond ourselves?

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Again, all the Christians listening say, well, of course there is. But too often, the reality is that when we look at our daily life, everything we did from the clothes we wore to the food that we ate to the job that we did, the entertainment that we consumed really was just because we wanted to.

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And there was no real significant reason beyond that. As we talk about the church,

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Andrew wrote the question, does community still matter? And what's funny is that the world recognizes that community matters.

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I'm actually, I live at the epicenter of where Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina.

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And there is a non -profit group called the Transylvania County Long -Term Recovery Group, and they have subcommittees, and there's a subcommittee called the

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Spiritual and Emotional Wellness Committee, and I have the privilege of being on that.

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And they're putting together a memorial event coming up on September 27. And the whole purpose of this event is really to promote community, to get people out there and in their vernacular, sharing their stories with each other, talking about how we came together as a community and we overcame.

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Now, my purpose in all of this is truly to keep God and his character and his healing and keep him at the center of this experience and helping people to realize that he is the only person who can ever bring true healing.

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He is the only person who can ever bring true security. But I say all that to say that the world understands that community matters, and yet we

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Christians treat it so flippantly far too often. I was meeting with a woman today in counseling, and we were talking about the fact that when she was going through some very, very difficult times in her past, the church that she was part of was not there to support her.

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In fact, when she asked them to fulfill the Matthew 18 process with her, her church said, no, we don't do that.

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Ha, that is bizarre. Yeah. By the way,

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I had a similar circumstance years ago. Not going to identify the church or anything like that, but the church needed to be approached because I was the only one in a conflict where I had been defrauded of nearly $1 ,000 by a professing

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Christian at a place where we both worked. It was a place

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I worked part -time on top of my regular employment, and when

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I sought to confront this individual privately, as Matthew 18 instructs us, he rejected that.

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And then I got his pastor involved. His pastor sided with me, and then the individual who was involved in ripping me off was furious about this.

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The organization hired an attorney to defend this particular employee, and the church backed away from defending me because the lawyer was a member of that church.

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And it was a mess. I was the only one that was seeking to resolve a very serious conflict biblically.

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But anyway, I'm sorry. That was a long detour, just trying to demonstrate some empathy towards that person that you were talking about.

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And it's necessary, and I think that as people are listening to what you're saying and what she said and what I'm saying,

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I think to a large degree, many of us recognize the fact that we're human.

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We live in our churches, and no church is perfect. We have sinners in our churches. We're sinners, right? But the goal is that God has high expectations for the community of God's church, and what is that really supposed to look like?

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How can we look at our church and say, okay, our body of believers is truly fulfilling

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God's responsibility for us? And far too many people don't know. They go, they hear preaching, they get things, and they go home, and the world is actually pursuing better community than we

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Christians have in the church far too often. And as they search for community, they're not searching for it in the church because they find that other communities are doing a better job in many ways.

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So let's dial in church on Friday. On Saturday, I had the privilege of talking about what really matters as it comes to the world.

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Andrew asked the question in the description, can one life really make a difference? I think so many of us don't get involved in being truly the salt and light that God calls us to be in this world because of two reasons.

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One, because we're ignorant of it, or I say two reasons. I guess it's obviously more than that.

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But we're ignorant of it, or we don't want to do it. But sometimes I think some people are just like, what can

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I do? The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and what difference can I possibly make?

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Now, all of that thinking is wrong. If I'm ignorant of it, I need to be learning. If I don't want to do it, I'm clearly rebelling against God's expectations.

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But even that despair, that overwhelming feeling of what's the point is not a Christ -honoring response.

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One life can, by God's grace, always make a difference, but we have to go about it the right way.

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I think too often we're left discouraged because we try things that aren't valuable, or we have expectations that are inaccurate, and we need to reevaluate those methods.

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We need to reevaluate the expectations for how it's all supposed to end up working out. And then the last, well, not the last, but the second to last topic

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I'll be talking on is the family. The question was asked, how do we strengthen the relationship that matters most? Really, when we think about it, the most important relationship any individual in the world has is the relationship with God.

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But the single most important human relationship that we have in this world are with our families.

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God created the family unit, husbands and wives, and then children before he created what we could call organized religion, before he created government, and it's desperately, desperately important.

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And we see, even from a secular perspective, that so goes the family, so goes the culture. So we need to strengthen the relationship that matters most.

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We need to understand that this really does desperately matter. We can't just do it the way our parents do it.

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We can't just do it the way the world does it. We have to do it the way God does it. And then we're going to wrap up that afternoon with a

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Q &A, and I love doing Q &As, and I encourage any of your listeners who are listening today, if they have a question on these topics or others, feel free to submit them.

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Andrew and I would love to tackle them. I pull Andrew into this because one of his favorite things to say in Apologetics Live is that he can answer any question that's presented to him, as long as you realize that I don't know is a completely legitimate answer.

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So we'd love to tackle whatever questions come our way on your show, but then also at the

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Q &A, looking forward to taking the truths that we learned in the conference, and then digging down deeper and looking at some specifics and trying to help some people.

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And then, by God's grace, I have an opportunity to speak on Sunday. I can't tell you exactly what

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I'll be speaking on on Sunday. I haven't quite nailed that down just yet, but still look forward to opening

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God's Word with those people in God's house on Sunday. That's an overview of a little bit more specific understanding of the question, what really matters.

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And the sub -conference title is Living with Purpose in a Broken World.

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I pray that everyone who goes, we will all leave with a better understanding of our purpose and what really matters in this broken world.

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Now, Aaron, there is something else you're doing that most conferences wouldn't have, but you being a counselor.

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We did schedule this with a little bit of time to end a bit early so that you'd be able to meet with folks and actually help them as you're discussing all these life issues.

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Talk about why you wanted to have time set aside for that. Great. Thank you for asking.

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That's another thing that I love to talk about with individuals who are putting on conferences or inviting me to events.

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As a biblical counselor, I recognize the fact that this is desperately important, not because I'm certified or because I'm educated or whatever the case may be.

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Really, when you look at the scriptures, the one another's, the discipling, the parenting, the teaching, all of this is what biblical counseling really is.

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In fact, you won't find the word counseling used in this terminology in the scripture. But when

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J. Adams started the New Thetic Counseling Movement, he pulled that from a

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Greek word, which is frequently translated admonish in the scriptures, coupled with teaching and with warning.

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And so what I'm doing basically is just biblical discipleship. It's one another. So we should be doing anyway with each other.

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But when you have somebody who has experience in certain areas, whether it be working with addictions or broken family, is at -risk teens, oftentimes it can be a real blessing to sit down with that individual and hear what

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God's word has to say specifically to those things. Pastors have a beautiful privilege to open

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God's word, to equip their people. And though everyone does it to varying degrees, generally speaking, as you're preaching through the word, you're covering very wide topics, and you're doing your best to apply it to your congregation as you can.

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And then as a shepherd, you're meeting with your individuals afterward, applying that truth to their lives. And I just like to come alongside, have an opportunity to meet with whomever is interested so I can partner with them and open the scriptures and help them to see the answers that are there, because God has given us everything that we need for life, endowing this in his word.

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And I like to help them to see that. And sometimes I can bring a different perspective because of the experiences and the different individuals with whom

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I've worked. Sometimes it's a little bit easier for me to identify what scriptures speak to the need of the moment, simply because I've had the privilege of talking about it so often with so many people in similar situations.

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So yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. I tell pastors that I'm really excited to come and I want to spend time with the pastors and get to know them.

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But at the same time, I really am there to minister to their body as much as I possibly can. So yeah, you can definitely take me on a whirlwind tour of downtown

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Leathertown, or we could spend some time really just meeting individually with some people in your church and being a blessing.

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And both of those are great. So let me know how best I can help. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break.

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If anybody has questions, submit them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence.

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We always allow for anonymous questions only if the question involves a personal and private matter.

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If it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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Don't go away. We are going to be right back after these words from our sponsors. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this

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September, I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

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Chris Arnzen has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th, at 11 a .m.,

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I'm speaking to Men in Ministry Leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the

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Living Christ in Loisville. Then, on Sunday, September 21st, at 1 .30

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p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

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Bible is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

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For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

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I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

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At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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Christmas is right around the corner, whether you are purchasing something that they already have in stock in the realm of jewelry, or if you're having a one -of -a -kind customized piece of jewelry created, either way, if you mention

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we get 100 % of the profits. So go to royaldiadem .com today and mention

36:48

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with A .M. Brewster, an

36:54

ACBC certified biblical counselor, and also my co -host of Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

37:04

And our theme today is What Really Matters? And we do have a question from all the way on the

37:12

Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, or Queensland, Australia, and this is specifically a question for Andrew Rappaport.

37:24

This is Jack, and Jack says, Hello again,

37:29

Brother Chris. I have wondered for years since I first heard about Andrew Rappaport when he was on the show

37:37

On the Box with Ray Comfort. Why is his ministry called

37:43

Striving for Eternity? Aren't we meant to rest in the finished work of Christ, not strive for eternity?

37:52

This is not at all anything negative towards your ministry, Andrew. Anyone who is endorsed by both

38:00

Ray Comfort and Chris Arnzen has to have a godly ministry. God bless

38:05

Jack on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia. So, Andrew, that's for you.

38:11

Andrew Rappaport Yeah, no, that's a good question, because we actually have on the website why we call it

38:18

Striving for Eternity. And a lot of people think, because they're thinking about it in the area of regeneration, salvation of a works -based salvation, but we're a ministry to Christians.

38:29

And so it's based out of actually Colossians chapter three. The first couple of verses really focused on verses three and four, which says, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ.

38:42

When Christ is your life appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.

38:50

The idea being that we should be—and the verses one and two really, it talks about seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

39:02

Set your minds on the things above, not the things of earth. And that's really what it's about.

39:10

The idea of striving for eternity is not for us to try to work our way to heaven.

39:15

That's impossible. It's as believers to have the mindset that Paul had, that he saw death as a greater value than life, that we would be so fixated on being with Christ and having a mindset on eternity that the things that we struggle with, the things that Aaron counsels people on, just grow, well, as the hymn says, strangely dim, that it would just pale in comparison because we would so want to be with Christ that no matter what life throws at us this side of heaven, it gives us all the greater desire to be with Christ on the other side of heaven.

39:56

So that's the idea of it. It is not working our way to heaven. It is really dealing with the idea of sanctification and just having that mindset of the eternal things rather than the temple things of earth.

40:07

Tom Hanks Well, thank you so much, Jack, for writing in and keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in Australia and beyond.

40:17

Let's see here. We have a question for Ann Brewster, and that is from Andrew, and Andrew in the

40:31

Bronx, New York, wants to know, many

40:36

Christians mourn the loss of Dr. James Dobson, formerly of Focus on the

40:43

Family. And James Dobson is a much -beloved figure and hero to many, but over the years

40:52

I have noticed that theologically Reformed Christians very rarely endorse him, his ministry, or promote his books.

41:01

Why is that, and does your ministry as a counselor, A .M.

41:06

Brewster, differ from that of Dr. Dobson in any significant way? Yeah, that's a great question.

41:15

Actually, I think it's interesting to point out I actually was contacted by Focus on the

41:22

Family a couple years ago to be a content creator.

41:28

Actually, I take that back. Dobson had split from Focus on the

41:34

Family, not in a negative type of way. He had started another ministry, and it was the second, the other ministry, whose name

41:39

I can't remember at the moment. So it was Dr. Dobson's ministry, then? His second ministry, right?

41:46

That was the second ministry, yeah. That was contacting me about being a potential content creator for the ministry.

41:52

I asked what would one of the VPs—a very, very kind man, and I just had the opportunity to share with him that, though I would be honored, obviously, to create content, that I did have some fundamental disagreements with Dr.

42:06

Dobson, and maybe I wasn't the best fit. He really appreciated my candor, and we had a great conversation, and things obviously didn't go any further.

42:17

And so, yeah, I'm very, very aware of this particular situation. And just without putting too fine a point on it,

42:24

I'll be a little bit more general. When there are Christians who are trying to help people, they fall on a spectrum.

42:33

And on one extreme, they used to be known as biblical counselors, and the other extreme, for Christians, anyway, they were called

42:43

Christian counselors. Now, nowadays, those two terms have become almost completely interchangeable.

42:49

Any person from any position will use them for various reasons, and unfortunately, they've lost a lot of meaning.

42:56

So if we expand our spectrum a little bit further to also include secular individuals, then we see that whereas the secularist is on one extreme, the biblical counselor is on the exact opposite extreme.

43:13

But the Christian counselors, or sometimes they refer to themselves as integrationists, are in the middle of those two extremes.

43:21

They're approaching humanity's problems and questions from the perspective of the scriptures plus, the scriptures and medicine, the scriptures and psychology.

43:35

And so they're attempting to help people answer their questions and solve their problems using not just the scriptures, but also man's ideology.

43:46

And again, it's a huge spectrum. There are people who call themselves Christian counselors, and they will use no

43:54

Bible whatsoever. They just so happen to be a Christian, but they use all secular techniques. And then there's any imaginable variation you can.

44:03

And Dobson was on that spectrum. Dobson definitely was more of an integrationist. He brought a lot of secular theory, psychology to the discussions that he was having, to the books he was writing, the content he was creating.

44:20

Because of that, that was not something that I could partner with. And then that was something I never was able to encourage other people to utilize as resources, because God's Word does have everything that we need for life and godliness in it.

44:36

All biblical, all spiritual issues can be addressed. Now, when I say that, perhaps the listener who asked the question, maybe others, would say, well, yeah,

44:45

Aaron, but the Bible doesn't tell us how to change the alternator in our car, so we take it to a mechanic.

44:51

And the Bible doesn't tell us how to deal with cancer, and so we go to a medical doctor. So if we're having mental issues, or if there are issues in our family that can only be addressed by stuff that's discussed outside of the scriptures, wouldn't it be wise to go to those individuals?

45:10

And to that, I would say, yes, if it's true. If we're talking about alternators and cancer, then definitely.

45:18

But so many of the issues that people assume can't be addressed from the scriptures, it can't be addressed from pastors, it can't be addressed from biblical counselors in the church, are things that the world has told them that only doctors and scientists and psychiatrists and psychologists can deal with, but that the scripture has a very different opinion on many times.

45:40

I encourage people to go to their doctors. I frequently encourage people, because I'm not a medical doctor, to pursue secular routes, just medicine and so on and so forth, if necessary in certain situations.

45:57

But too many Christians have fallen under the delusion that the world can help us in areas that the

46:04

Bible specifically says only God can help us in. So biblical counselors are approaching those conversations from the perspective of, let's open up God's Word and see what

46:14

God has to say about this. It doesn't matter what Freud said. It doesn't matter what Skinner said. It doesn't matter what

46:19

Dobson said. It doesn't matter what any of these people said. What matters is what God's Word says. Well, shouldn't we be concerned about what

46:27

Skinner says, like in Free Bird? I'm only kidding. Oh, definitely.

46:34

Yeah, no, that… Leonard, I mean, Leonard knew what he was talking about. Well, the thing that really stands out—and you can agree or disagree with me, but I think with great confidence you'll agree—the thing that stands out that is most aberrant, or one of the most aberrant views that Dr.

46:59

Dobson had, and I don't know of any repentance of this. I didn't really stay up -to -date on his ministry.

47:09

But he had a very high view of the importance for self -esteem, and I can even recall him saying that is one of the greatest needs of a child is to have his self -esteem lifted.

47:32

And there are many Reformed Christians, and it should be all

47:38

Reformed Christians, if they know what Reformed theology actually is, especially with our belief in total depravity, but self -esteem, even though we know from the

47:54

Scriptures that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, so is self -esteem.

48:02

I mean, that is really one of the reasons why Lucifer fell, the primary reason.

48:11

And it's a very dangerous thing to teach, is it not?

48:20

Oh, definitely very dangerous. In fact, just for fun, Andrew and I like messing around with different AI things for various reasons.

48:30

Andrew is very intelligent when it comes to language model learning and all that kind of stuff. I don't really know what

48:35

I'm talking about at all, but I like to mess around with AI. And I just actually punched it into Google, which is not one of my favorites, but I put it on here and I said, what does the

48:44

Bible say about self -esteem? And this was the AI overall from Google. The Bible promotes a concept of God -centered self -worth rather than secular self -esteem, encouraging believers to find their identity and value in being created in God's image and in their relationship rather than in their own accomplishments or pride.

49:04

It teaches that a proper understanding of oneself involves humility, recognizing God's power and weakness, and acting in love and compassion toward others, leading to true confidence found in God's presence and power.

49:15

I have no idea how Google AI came to those conclusions. It shares a number of passages here and so on and so forth, although I would change some of the wording on there.

49:25

What's funny is that AI got this one right far better than a lot of Christians do.

49:30

The secular understanding of self -esteem is very dangerous, and it's actually starting to be pushed back even from secular psychiatrists these days.

49:44

But our worth, our value is not in ourselves. It cannot be in ourselves.

49:50

There is nothing lovable. There is nothing valuable in us. To all the Christians out there who say, well, no, we're special snowflakes and God values us, he values us because of who he is.

50:01

We can have value because of who he is and the value that he invests into us.

50:07

All of that is found through him. My biggest issue is that I love myself too much.

50:15

I esteem myself too highly and not God enough. A lot of people have the wrong concept that, well, if I don't have good self -esteem, if I view myself like that,

50:25

I'll just be all down and depressed. But that's not the reality. Jesus told us in the

50:31

Sermon on the Mount, he started off with the beatitudes, and the beatitudes really is a snapshot of Christian maturity.

50:39

Because it starts with, we have to recognize that we are spiritually destitute. My friends, that is not pretty.

50:46

We have nothing in us. We are poor in spirit, and we are blessed when we recognize that.

50:53

But you know what? That's not enough. That reality, I've met lots of poor people who don't mind being poor, and so nothing ever changes.

51:01

But there are some people who hate being poor. And for us, for the Christian, when we recognize that we're spiritually destitute, what does that cause in us?

51:08

That causes us to mourn. Blessed are those who mourn. In the book of James, we are commanded to let our laughter be turned to mourning.

51:15

We're commanded to mourn and to grieve over our spiritual destitution, over our sin. When we come to that place, what does that produce?

51:23

It doesn't produce pride. It doesn't produce arrogance. It produces meekness. It produces humility, where we turn to God and say,

51:30

God, I am nothing. I am destined for hell. I cannot do this on my own. You are worth it.

51:36

You deserve my worship. I need you. I love you. Our eyes turn to him.

51:43

And it is then and only then can we hunger and thirst after righteousness and grow in the spiritual disciplines.

51:49

We can grow in peacemaking. We can grow in purity. We can grow in all the things that God has commanded us to grow in.

51:54

So yes, it starts with a dark view. And if we stay on that, then yeah, we have all the quote -unquote self -esteem issues that we see out in the world where people hate themselves and act out in terrible, awful ways.

52:08

But the answer to that isn't to esteem ourselves more. The answer to that is only ever going to be to esteem

52:13

God rightly. So my eyes turn from my sin to my Savior. They turn from my inability to his ability.

52:19

They turn from the consequences that I deserve in my sin and the inheritance that I get to have in Christ.

52:28

And just like that, I am overjoyed. I am excited. I'm weeping with joy because I don't deserve what he puts onto me, what he gives to me.

52:38

And that is a glorious thing, far better than any esteem for self that I could whip up because of the things that I've done or who

52:45

I am. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. And once again, if you would like to join those that have submitted questions for A .M.

52:55

Brewster, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:01

chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

53:07

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

53:19

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

53:31

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the

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Internet where folk won't be led astray. I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

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This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

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And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com,

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Puritan Reformed is a

54:26

Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

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We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

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Christ. This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. puritanphx .com

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

55:38

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

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Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

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For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net,

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that's 631 -696 -5711, that's 631 -696 -5711.

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Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

56:54

I'm Dr. Joseph Paipa, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

57:15

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the

57:24

Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism, titled Authentic Christianity, by Dr.

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Joseph Morecraft. It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

57:43

Dr. Morecraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

57:55

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

58:03

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

58:12

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

58:19

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

58:46

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

58:54

Dr. Joe Morecraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai, in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

59:04

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Morecraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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Dr. Morecraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

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Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

59:26

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.

59:32

Joe Morecraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

59:37

Hanover Presbyterian Church, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

59:47

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

59:58

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.

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For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

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that's heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, or call 678 -954 -7831, that's 678 -954 -7831.

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If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, from Attoye in County Kildare, Arlington, sends you.

01:00:36

Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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website. I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

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Apple's iTunes app by typing Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the search bar. You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.

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Just subscribe on the iTunes app and listen to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show at any time, day or night.

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Please be sure to also give it a good review and pass it along to anyone who would benefit from the teaching and the many solidly reformed guests that Chris Arnson has on the show.

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Truth is so hard to come by these days, so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news.

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Subscribe to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now. And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com

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Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith as well as seasoned believers. From Keech's Catechism and the

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Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the Reform Rookie Podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking biblical truth.

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Many things that the Trump administration has ushered in, but here's something that seriously concerns me.

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On July 18th, President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act into law.

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This new law allows financial institutions to convert your hard -earned dollars into stable coins, a digital token backed by 37 trillion dollars in national debt.

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They will not need your approval. You hand over your dollars, and they give you a trackable, programmable, freezeable token.

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This sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. They get control, and you get surveillance.

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How stable is a stable coin? If your account is hacked, or if the power grid goes down for a period of time, you can instantly be locked out.

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01:06:01

Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

01:06:24

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

01:06:40

God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

01:07:02

That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

01:07:08

Welcome back before I return to my fascinating conversation with A .M. Burrister and Andrew Rapoport.

01:07:15

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We just recently, very recently lost two of our largest advertisers, one of which is sadly closing its doors permanently.

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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful,

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Earth, I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the entire globe, and I may be able to help you, no matter where in the world you live, find a church that's biblically faithful, as I have done with many people in the

01:10:34

Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience all over the planet Earth. Sometimes I have found churches that are biblically faithful, even within a couple of minutes from where these listeners live.

01:10:45

So, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful church home, and you don't know where to find one, no matter where you live in the world, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:10:55

and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to A .M.

01:11:02

Brewster, our guest today, of Nevermind—I'm sorry,

01:11:07

Evermind Ministries, and he's also on the staff with Striving for Eternity Ministries, founded by my special co -host today,

01:11:19

Andrew Rappaport. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

01:11:26

One thing I wanted to have you clarify about the last question from a listener,

01:11:33

I think it was Andrew in the Bronx, New York, about Dr.

01:11:39

Dobson, who just recently passed, I believe it was last week. In spite of his differences with us, who are theologically

01:11:51

Reformed, and very often you would see Reformed people rally to his side in supporting him when he was in the public arena facing some issue where ungodliness was being forced upon the citizens of this country or any given state individually.

01:12:18

And he was very often a champion for truth in the public square, and he was actually at his best when he was not speaking theologically and when he was not giving his in -depth counsel regarding his version of Christian psychology.

01:12:44

Do you agree with what I said there, Aaron? To a certain degree,

01:12:50

I definitely can. I say a certain degree because I made the decision a long time ago not to follow what he was doing very closely at all.

01:13:02

So truly, he was on the periphery of my attention, so I can't speak intelligently to that.

01:13:09

But I do know what it is like to be thankful for a person who otherwise this person and I would not agree on very many theological perspectives.

01:13:22

I may even seriously doubt their salvation, but when given the opportunity, they have a platform to stand against clear evil and to even point to the necessity of God in your life.

01:13:36

I'm always thankful that the Lord does that, in the same way that Paul was thankful that there are people who are preaching the gospel out of spite just to get under all skin.

01:13:46

I'm thankful for that, and I'm not saying that in any way, Shepard Thornton Dobson was doing that. But I'm just to say that Ness, of course, when he was standing against darkness and espousing light, definitely encouraged that and thankful for that.

01:14:00

Now, the other thing— Go ahead, Andrew. I would just add to that, Chris. I think what a lot of people appreciated with Dobson is not his views that were really

01:14:09

Christian. It was his politics. And this was actually one of the reasons

01:14:14

I separated from him. I mean, he had a lot of strong things to help with people early on with building good family.

01:14:23

And I could agree that he did well there, but he became more political, and he started using money from ministry for political pacts and promoting politics.

01:14:36

That's when I said that he bridged into a different realm, and maybe that's why he left focused on the family.

01:14:43

And maybe the other ministry or the other organization he had was more political. But, you know, we as Christians shouldn't be taking money being donated for God's kingdom to promote politics, because politics isn't the answer.

01:14:59

No, you're not saying that individual Christians don't have the liberty to fund—

01:15:04

No, but they should give to groups that are purposely political, not to groups that are supposed to be standing for the kingdom of God, only to be promoting politics, like that's the solution to the world's problems, because it isn't.

01:15:23

And I think another thing we have to clarify, Aaron, since you mentioned medication, there is no question that psychiatrists, psychologists—well,

01:15:39

I think that only a psychiatrist can prescribe medication. And doctors in general, physicians, have been definitely over -medicating their patients and misdiagnosing what particular problem the person has and prescribing the wrong medication for them, sometimes medications that nobody should be taking.

01:16:11

And young children are being subjected to medications that they should never be taking.

01:16:18

Sometimes doctors are diagnosing young children with psychological problems that are really just normal childhood behaviors, perhaps especially amongst young boys.

01:16:35

But having said all that, I don't think that you believe, like, there is a niche of Christians involved in biblical counseling who don't believe any medication should ever be prescribed or taken for mental health issues, and I don't think that you're supporting that latter view.

01:17:00

Are you? So, initially, as you were talking, my answer was going to be to agree with you completely.

01:17:08

I think I'll tweak the phraseology of the last part of the question to what I can agree with and explain why

01:17:14

I don't agree with the rest. Obviously, in the same way that Paul encouraged

01:17:19

Timothy to take some little wine for his stomach's sake, we understand the fact that God created this world to produce the ingredients necessary to help us to be healthy, right?

01:17:33

It's when we use the phrase mental disorders or mental illness that we start to get a little,

01:17:39

I'll just use the word sloppy with our understanding of what we're talking about, because by definition, you can't actually have an illness of the mind.

01:17:50

You can have an illness of the brain, and I would encourage people to take medication if they have a legitimate illness of the brain that needs adjusting, needs addressing.

01:18:00

So, and we're going to open a huge can of worms anytime we have a conversation like this, but I think it is important just to try to establish what

01:18:09

I mean by all this. We should never call something a sin that the

01:18:14

Bible doesn't call a sin, because then we're saying things that the Lord hasn't said, and we're liars.

01:18:21

At the same time, we should not avoid calling something a sin that the

01:18:26

Bible does, in fact, call a sin. So a good example that I like to use is anxiety.

01:18:32

Multiple places in the Scripture, I mean, more so than anything else, we are told, commanded by God, to fear not.

01:18:38

We are told in certain places that anxiety is a sin, but within the context of the

01:18:44

Scriptures, the anxiety being referred to is the sinful kind of anxiety, and the

01:18:49

Bible goes into deep discussions about what produces sinful anxiety. It comes from not trusting

01:18:55

God, primarily. It can come from other things as well, but here's a perfect example.

01:19:02

Eyes on Christ, walking through a storm on the water, no big deal. Takes his eye off the problem. Oh, he has an issue now.

01:19:11

We see with Elijah after the prophets of Baal, Jezebel says, kill him.

01:19:17

Elijah falls into depression. He takes his eyes off what God had just done on Mount Carmel, and he looks at this impotent woman who wants

01:19:24

Elijah dead, and he runs off, and he gets stuck, all despairing and wishing he would die, right? So the

01:19:30

Bible's very clear what produces sinful anxiety, sinful forms of depression, but the world tells us that all depression, you don't have any control over it, right?

01:19:42

But there are some physical ailments, some funguses and bacterias and viruses, and if you're taking some medication and certain medical treatments, that can produce feelings of anxiety or depression in your body that have absolutely nothing to do with trusting the

01:19:57

Lord and not trusting the Lord. So first of all, you can't trust a secular doctor or psychiatrist to be able to delineate and help you to see, okay, which one is this?

01:20:10

But if it, yes, it truly is a genuine medical condition with a genuine medical—oh, the word just escaped me—pathology, then by all means, treat it medically.

01:20:21

The problem is we need people who know God's word, people who can do what

01:20:27

Proverbs 25 says and draw out the purposes of a man's heart like it's deep waters, who can help this person to identify, okay, is this truly a medical issue stemming from nothing but a physical problem and identify what that is?

01:20:39

Or is it that you are not trusting the

01:20:45

Lord? And that's very general. Obviously, each individual person works itself out differently. But what's most common is a mixture of the two.

01:20:53

Yes, there might be something legitimately producing certain feelings in your body, but then sinful anxiety or sinful depression gets layered on top of the issue that was being caused because of the situation physically.

01:21:09

And you need somebody who helps you to delineate that because we don't want to call something a sin that's not a sin, but we definitely want to call something a sin that God says is a sin.

01:21:17

And so having someone who can wisely step you through that and identify those and help you to acknowledge which one would require physical care and which one requires spiritual care is desperately important.

01:21:27

And I think that you would agree, one of the great problems in this area of medication is that, for instance, if someone is taking some kind of a medication now prescribed by their psychiatrist or general practitioner and they were to cold turkey stop, it can have devastating effects.

01:21:59

I know three people personally who attempted suicide after going off their medication, two of which, thankfully, were not successful.

01:22:13

And I know these two people very well personally, one of which, sadly and tragically, was successful at killing himself.

01:22:25

That kind of thing. Here's the catch 22. Somebody going off this medication needs to be under some kind of medical care when doing it.

01:22:34

But the catch 22 is which and what medical care?

01:22:39

Because the people being addicted to these medications were prescribed the medication by a doctor to begin with.

01:22:48

So it's one of those hard issues to address because you don't know what doctor would be recommended to be caring for a person when they're weaning themselves off of these drugs.

01:23:02

Am I making sense? No, and yeah, you're completely correct in what you're saying.

01:23:10

God miraculously created our bodies to be what

01:23:16

I call equilibrium machines. We can fill it with a bunch of stuff that really should kill us.

01:23:24

But by God's grace, our body fights against that and finds equilibrium with this substance that should kill us.

01:23:31

Building up an immunity of sorts in a way that if somebody were to get off of this, and I'm talking now like illegal drugs, illicit drugs, if somebody were to go cold turkey off of those drugs, they would die.

01:23:44

Why would they die? Because their bodies come to a point of dependence on that. Now, done correctly, it can find equilibrium on the other side as slowly as it did as it originally found it on the dependency.

01:23:57

It can find some on the counter -dependency. And that has to be done the correct way.

01:24:03

And oftentimes, unless somebody is a medical doctor, understanding the physical things that can happen and knowing how to do that in a safe way, that requires that.

01:24:12

So what I tell people when I'm working with them, and I've worked with young people who are on ADHD medications and antipsychotics and all sorts of things, antidepressants, and I would work with them, their parents, to help them to find a doctor who, whether secular or not, and I always encourage them to try to find a

01:24:31

Christian doctor if possible, but regardless of which one they are, the types of questions to ask them, the types of ways to approach them so that the doctor will be their ally, be on their side, and help them to accomplish what they're doing.

01:24:44

A simple example of that is if you're struggling with depression, but your mind, you're trusting in the

01:24:50

Lord, and you've worked with a counselor to identify if you are sinning in any way, and it's basically, for most, no, it's not.

01:24:58

It doesn't seem that depression is tied to any spiritual immaturity in your life, but we're pretty certain it's a physical one, and now you're going to go see a doctor, right?

01:25:06

You just walk in there and you tell the doctor that you're feeling depressed. Doctors who aren't psychologists, who aren't psychiatrists are just going to throw antidepressants at you so often.

01:25:15

They're not actually going to look at you to try to figure out what's wrong with your body. So I work with these individuals how to have conversations with their doctors about how to get the doctor to try to actually find what might be the cause of why they're feeling the way they're feeling instead of throwing medication at them to mask it.

01:25:33

Okay, we have Herbert in Strathmore, New Jersey, and Herbert says,

01:25:43

You were speaking earlier about the importance of community. I have seen and heard

01:25:50

Christians who are advocating the idea of trying to develop solely

01:25:56

Christian communities, even to the point of purchasing large areas of property in their area or an area that they are targeting where members of like -minded congregations are the sole residents of these types of communities.

01:26:14

Is this something that you would advocate, and if not, why? So there's a part of me that would love the idea of that, right?

01:26:27

You know, if that worked the way we think it should work, right, that would be amazing.

01:26:33

Of course, history has shown us and the scriptures show us with the nation of Israel and the church that where you have sinners, you have sin.

01:26:40

And I wrote a book about called Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good, and the reality is that where you have sin, you always have strife.

01:26:49

So it's nice, right? The idea of a commune, and no one likes to use those terminologies, but the idea of this community where all these

01:26:57

Christians are getting together and living should work really well. I'll give you a really interesting example of one that does work, and it wouldn't fall under that category.

01:27:06

To put this ministry and that word in the same sentence or paragraph is almost offensive, so I need to be careful not to do that.

01:27:12

But my sister works at a camp called the Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center in Brevard, North Carolina, an amazing camp, summer camp for teens.

01:27:20

They have school -time camps and all sorts of amazing things. They are very far removed.

01:27:26

They're up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and so all of the staff members live on campus, and they basically have a subdivision there on front campus where all the full -time staff members live.

01:27:40

And it's just roads and roads of houses, and everyone lives there, and they all work there, right? It's a beautiful thing.

01:27:46

It's wonderful to have all of your—and you can send your kids out to play. And I think one of the things that attract people to the ideas of what you talked about is that they can send their kids out to play and know that they're going to be overall safe, and they're not going to have to deal with a lot of the same issues that other people in other communities are dealing with.

01:28:02

And that's the mentality. Now, the Wilds never set out to do that. They're just—practically speaking, it makes sense to have your staff living on the campsite when you're a camp like they are all around the year.

01:28:15

But the reality is that there's still—still kids do get hurt, right? If people make poor choices, stuff happens.

01:28:22

So I'm not a Christian nationalist. I think sometimes Christian nationalists also lean in that direction, to want to do that type of thing so that they can have basically an

01:28:33

HOA that has built off of Christian principles and that type of an approach.

01:28:40

I know that we are supposed to be in the world, but not of the world. I know that we're supposed to have relationships, both with the unsaved that are evangelistical, as well as relationships with God's people that are done in discipleship or sanctification.

01:28:55

And I think that both sets of those relationships are desperately important. And I think if somebody has the opportunity to live someplace where their next -door neighbors are

01:29:04

Christians, right, and that would actually make it easier for them to do life -on -life, one -anothering type of relationships, because we live in a very insular society where we don't.

01:29:14

One of the biggest problems I was mentioning earlier with the church is that we're not really in each other's lives.

01:29:20

It's a social club experience. We go do our thing. We talk about certain things before service and after service, and then we go home and our lives don't come back together again until next

01:29:29

Sunday. So the people who are next -door neighbors or doing life as co -workers with other

01:29:36

Christians, that's a beautiful thing that we should be very thankful for. Do we need to take the separate step of proactively creating those environments because there are so -and -so than other ones?

01:29:52

No, I would say not, because if my next -door neighbors are unsaved, God has a purpose in that too, and that gives me an opportunity to be in their lives and build relationships with them, as we should be doing, but unfortunately, too often do not.

01:30:05

And this is some of the things you're going to actually talk about at the conference in Levittown, Pennsylvania, in September 12th to 14th, and if folks want to attend, the website for that is oxfordvalleychapel .org,

01:30:21

oxfordvalleychapel .org, and this is some of what you're going to be covering there in September.

01:30:29

I mean, this conference is for all people, right, whether they're new believers, seasoned believers, you're kind of covering things that will—where no matter where they are in their spiritual stage, they're going to be able to learn some things from God's Word, correct?

01:30:45

Definitely. Yeah, that's the goal, to equip all of God's people. My dad had a ministry for many years that he was working with young people, and individuals who worked in schools, individuals who worked at camps would come and they would watch what my dad did and how my dad did it, because it was unprecedented when it came to working with young people, because he had a singular program in which he was working with children from the ages sometimes of four all the way up to young adults in the age of 20 in the same program, catering to all of their needs, reaching them, teaching them.

01:31:22

It was really a beautiful and amazing thing that my dad was very gifted with. And that's really how shepherds, that's really how preachers of God's Word need to approach this.

01:31:34

Too often, our conferences are for only the erudite, only those who are—I'm not bashing conferences where we talk about deep doctrines and things like that, but even those conferences should be accessible to God's people at any stage of their spiritual maturity, and if we're not careful, we put up barriers for entry and we make it hard for people to be able to understand what we're teaching.

01:32:00

But my goal is, in many ways, to do exactly what Christ did, whether with the children or the disciples or the

01:32:05

Pharisees, to communicate in such a way that God's meaning came through and was clear and was able to be taken.

01:32:13

They had an action step of what to do, and though I don't do it perfectly, I do try to make certain that anybody from any stage of life is going to come and hear

01:32:22

God's Word, understand it better, and have a good understanding of how to then apply it and live it out in their lives.

01:32:28

When you mentioned that people running conferences have to be careful not to be exclusively seeking out an audience of extremely erudite individuals, of course, that would depend upon the theme and the purpose.

01:32:47

It might specifically be a conference for pastors or theologians, but…

01:32:53

Yes, and I actually didn't say they should not seek out those people. Exclusively, yes.

01:33:00

It's wonderful to say, hey, this is a conference for pastors, but am

01:33:08

I putting the information out there that everyone who comes to the conference is going to truly be able to understand it, or does everyone have to think the way

01:33:14

I think to be able to get what I'm saying? I think that's really the bigger issue. I saw a hilarious meme recently on Facebook where this man behind a pulpit, in the bubble for what he is saying, as comics and cartoons often have, he is speaking a very long list of 16 -syllable words in his message, and the two people sitting next to each other in the pew, one of them turns to the other and says,

01:33:50

I thought that Reformed people didn't speak in tongues. I know

01:34:00

Andrew has to leave five minutes early, so maybe if you do have a pressing question for A .M.

01:34:09

Burster, you'd like to ask it now. So I just want to make sure we include you in as much of the conversation as possible since you're leaving early.

01:34:18

Yeah, it would be good, Aaron, to… The fact that the subtitle of the conference that you're going to be doing is

01:34:25

Living with Purpose in a Broken World. As a counselor, you get to see a lot of the brokenness that we have in the world.

01:34:35

So how can we live with purpose? What are some of the things that you would be discussing?

01:34:42

Well, thank God we've had the opportunity to actually address some of it right off the bat.

01:34:48

When I'm working with counselees, sometimes I have to have a very hard conversation, and I have to tell them that their life is currently worthless.

01:35:01

Now, that sounds like, whoa, hold on one second, what are you trying to say?

01:35:07

Don't we all have value? Weren't you all saying that earlier? Yes, yes, but Ephesians 2 .10

01:35:12

says that we are God's workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus for good works.

01:35:18

So if I create a vacuum cleaner to clean carpets, and that vacuum cleaner doesn't clean carpets, it's not useful for anything else.

01:35:32

We would look at that vacuum cleaner, and we would say that it's useless. It's worthless because it can't do the job.

01:35:39

It's not doing the job it was created to do. And we have no problem saying that about inanimate objects that were clearly created to do a task.

01:35:48

But my friends, we have been created in Christ Jesus for good works, not to earn our salvation, but to be sanctified, to be transformed into his image from one degree of glory to another.

01:36:00

And it goes on to say, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them, so that we would live in this

01:36:06

Christlikeness here on this earth for the purpose of being in light to the lost, and iron sharpening iron to God's people.

01:36:14

So if I were created for that purpose, and I am not fulfilling that purpose, how am

01:36:22

I not any more useless than a vacuum cleaner that doesn't do its job? How am

01:36:27

I not any more valueless than a vacuum cleaner that doesn't do its job? Now, we need to stop for a moment and allow that just to sink in, and to see that from a biblical perspective.

01:36:38

If I'm not doing the job, in fact, if I'm not doing the job that God called me to do, I'm actually doing the opposite of that job.

01:36:44

In that moment, I'm actually pursuing things that are the antithesis to what I should be doing. That's bad.

01:36:49

That's all sorts of bad. So the only way that we can truly have value in our lives, the only way that we can truly matter in any type of substantive way that, spiritually speaking, has any real value to it, is we have to have a relationship with God, and be growing in that relationship with the

01:37:14

Lord so that we know him better, and we love him, and we are pursuing Christlikeness, and we're living as the redeemed individuals he's called us to be, and the reason he's left us here on this earth.

01:37:26

Otherwise, you know what? It doesn't actually matter. It really doesn't.

01:37:32

My job doesn't matter. My entertainment doesn't matter.

01:37:37

How I rear my kids doesn't matter if I'm not doing it in a way that pleases the

01:37:44

Lord. And that really needs to be jarring. It needs to shake us.

01:37:49

It needs to rattle our cages a bit, because we too often are doing just that.

01:37:58

As I said earlier, I get up in the morning, I put on the clothes I want to wear, eat the food that I want to eat, get into the car that I wanted to buy, go to the job that I want to have, do the things in that job that I want to do, go home, watch the television shows that I want—well,

01:38:14

Andrew doesn't do that, but I watch the movies and television shows that I want to watch, go to bed when I want to go to bed, and we really functionally give no thought whatsoever to how we are to be actively, as Jesus said, being alert and awake and watchful and pursuing, whether therefore

01:38:30

I eat or drink or whatsoever I do, truly pursuing doing it all to the glory of God. What does that mean?

01:38:36

What does that require? What does that look like? We're functioning as practical atheists, and to that degree, it's not going to matter what

01:38:43

I did. On the judgment seat, that wood, hay and stubble will be absolutely burnt up with absolutely no eternal value whatsoever, but only what's done for Christ will last.

01:38:58

So I think that is the first and foremost key, to recognize who

01:39:03

God is and who we are to be in him. That is the only way that we can truly have a life of value, a life that matters.

01:39:13

I love, in the little book of Philemon, Onesimus was

01:39:19

Philemon's servant. Onesimus had stolen from Philemon, had run away by God's providential grace, had met up with Paul in Rome.

01:39:30

God had used Paul to help Onesimus see his need for Christ and to be born again.

01:39:36

Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon, basically, to reconcile their relationship.

01:39:44

And the letter he wrote to Philemon was encouraging Philemon, and no doubt Onesimus had been counseled heavily by Paul on what to do.

01:39:51

But Onesimus' name meant useful. That's what his name actually meant, useful.

01:39:57

And there's a little bit of play on that word in there as Paul was talking about how Onesimus wasn't useful.

01:40:05

He didn't have a useful relationship. But maybe now, after coming to Christ, and maybe now coming and repenting and asking for forgiveness for his sins, they could finally have a useful relationship.

01:40:20

And I do a lot of teaching from the book of Philemon, a lot of counseling from the book of Philemon on how we can have useful relationships in the body of Christ, what it requires of us and what it looks like.

01:40:31

And we all need to be looking at that. If we think we've plateaued, if we think we've made it, we're lying to ourselves and everyone else.

01:40:37

We all should be in a period of transforming into Christ's image from now until the day that we die. And I know that I'll never come to a place where I'm as useful in my relationships with other believers as I should be.

01:40:48

I need to always be growing in that. And I know far too often that I do things that don't matter.

01:40:55

And I'm useless to the cause of Christ far too often because I go into autopilot and I'm just pursuing things that I want to do in self -worship instead of pursuing what pleases the

01:41:04

Lord. Now, I'm sure you would agree with me is when you are saying these things that are not done according to the design of Christ, that they don't matter, you're not saying they're innocuous and harmless in their meaninglessness because they do matter in the lives of many around you.

01:41:33

In fact, they matter to you in a devastating way. Definitely. Yes, that is 100 % right.

01:41:40

And I'm glad you said that because the vacuum cleaner that doesn't do its job is a waste of space.

01:41:47

It's a waste of money. It'll take up space on landfill one day. But when a human being who was created for something isn't doing what he was created to do, it's not just simply a waste of space.

01:42:01

It is actually destructive. It has a damning and damaging effect on ourselves and everyone that we touch.

01:42:09

As I tell people all the time, sin hurts. One of the most important lessons I ever taught to my little kids, sin hurts.

01:42:15

It hurts our fellowship with God. It hurts our relationships with others. And it hurts us every single time.

01:42:22

So yes, it is not that it is just benign or innocuous.

01:42:28

No, no, no. It is worthless in the worst possible ways. It's like toxic smudge.

01:42:35

It is worthless for any good use, but very damaging in its existence.

01:42:43

Well, we have to go to our final break. And if you do have a question for A .M. Brewster, our email address is chrisorensen at gmail .com.

01:42:52

Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. You may remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

01:42:59

Don't go away. This is

01:43:10

Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

01:43:16

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01:43:25

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

01:43:37

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

01:43:44

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Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

01:44:07

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

01:44:15

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

01:44:20

Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

01:44:30

Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a

01:44:51

Christ -centered gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the

01:44:59

Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio advertising family.

01:45:11

At Linbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired

01:45:16

Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

01:45:27

We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.

01:45:44

Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern for all who bear

01:45:52

God's image. If you live near Linbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the

01:45:58

Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit linbrookbaptist .org.

01:46:04

That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

01:46:17

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

01:46:23

May the Lord bless you in the knowledge of Himself. The Chair of Alpha and Omega Ministries announcing that this

01:46:47

September, I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

01:46:52

Chris Arnzen has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th, at 11 a .m.,

01:46:57

I'm speaking to Men in Ministry Leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pre -Pastor's

01:47:04

Luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville. Then, on Sunday, September 21st, at 1 .30

01:47:11

p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

01:47:16

Bible is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

01:47:22

For more details on the Pre -Pastor's Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:47:28

That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

01:47:39

That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

01:48:01

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

01:48:06

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The NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Mark Rimaldi, Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee, and the

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01:49:48

And don't forget, folks, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &

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Associates. If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice, please, wherever you live in the

01:50:06

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01:50:33

And we are now back with A .M. Brewster. Are you there, Aaron? For some reason,

01:50:41

I— Yes, the camera was on. I do apologize. I am here. Okay, great. And I know that Andrew Rappaport had to leave us early.

01:50:50

And good riddance. Now, Andrew's a dear friend.

01:50:58

That's the only reason I would say such a thing. It's more fun to say when they're good.

01:51:05

No one likes to say it when they're not. And it would have been better if he actually heard it. I want you to make sure, before we run out of time, that some of the main points you intended to make—because sometimes, as much as we love listener questions, they can bring us to areas far and afield of what you intended to speak on or what the conference will be about—not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

01:51:38

But I just want to make sure that you highlight some of the things that you most want to say today.

01:51:46

Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you so much. So I would point people to OxfordValleyChapel .org.

01:51:55

That's OxfordValleyChapel, all one word, dot org. That's where you can learn a bit more about the church, where the conference is going to be, learn a little bit more about the conference and the specifics, the dates and times and things like that.

01:52:08

Really, I'm very thankful to say that I believe that I had a chance to say everything that I wanted to say and more.

01:52:15

So I'm really excited. If your listeners were here from the beginning, then you know that we're having a conference on September 12th to the 14th, and we'd love to have you there in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

01:52:26

And we're going to be talking about what really matters. It's going to be a gathering of all

01:52:31

God's people, regardless of your age of maturity, regardless of your physical age, regardless of how long you've known the

01:52:38

Lord. We want to feed you, we want to equip you to live a life that matters, so that you can live with purpose in a broken world.

01:52:45

I hope you'll join us for that. Well, we have a listener, and it's either called the city

01:52:53

I'm speaking of in Connecticut. It's either Barkhamstead or Barkhamstead.

01:52:58

I don't know how Connecticut folk pronounce it. I'm going to pick the one wrong one. But Cyril of Barkhamstead or Barkhamstead, Connecticut, asks,

01:53:13

From what I have learned over the years, I do not think that all

01:53:18

New Thetic counselors are identical, like most Christians in general, but do you know of any differences that may exist from what the late

01:53:29

Dr. J. Adams taught and believed and the organization known as CCEF, which are all in some way, shape, or form advocates of New Thetic counseling?

01:53:45

CCEF is the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, for those of you who aren't familiar with that group.

01:53:53

Do you know of any differences, Andrew? I mean, Aaron. That's okay. So I can't speak too carefully.

01:54:02

Everything I'm about to say is really just going to be my personal opinion and observations. CCEF and ACBC definitely were partners very early on.

01:54:14

Paul Tripp and other wonderful men that God has used greatly came out of that organization, actually really was part of founding it and working in it.

01:54:26

So I'm very thankful for the work that they have done. I've had some questions over the years, just as CCEF has started to embrace certain terminology that has just made me ask the question, well, why?

01:54:39

Because it seems that from everything I've consumed of them recently, I've liked their conclusions.

01:54:48

But they're a little more comfortable, I would say, redeeming secular terminology.

01:54:55

So they might have someone on their show who uses the word play therapy.

01:55:01

I wouldn't use that terminology myself, and though I could find value in what somebody might describe as a

01:55:10

Christian version of play therapy, I think it's probably—I would avoid using that terminology for the exact same way that I would avoid using the terminology planned parenthood, because though I think

01:55:25

Christian parents, there's wisdom in planning out and wisely stewarding and discerning the size of your family, right?

01:55:32

Obviously, when you use those two words together, planned parenthood, it fills our brains with something that we did not intend.

01:55:39

Same thing with Black Lives Matter. Obviously, Black lives definitely matter, but that was an organization that had a purpose far beyond just the statement of the name.

01:55:49

And so in a similar way, I personally am reticent to try to redeem terms like that.

01:55:57

I'm actually very big on building a biblical vocabulary, not just using the terminology that we see in Scripture, but using it accurately as the

01:56:06

Scripture uses it. It's a very important thing that we need to get into, and I would much rather with my counselees point to what the

01:56:13

Bible calls these things than to utilize terminology that the world uses but try to have a more biblical take on it.

01:56:22

I'm not throwing them under the bus. I'm not in any way, shape, or form saying that they're doing anything that they shouldn't be doing.

01:56:28

That's just my personal opinion. But he's right. Your listener was right. There are—you can ask a hundred different biblical counselors a question and get sometimes a hundred different answers, you know, and it's very important that you are researching and that you're knowledgeable about the people that are speaking

01:56:47

God's truth to you so that you don't inadvertently swallow something that you thought was true only to find out later that it wasn't.

01:56:54

That goes for me, too. I hope that you're comparing what I'm saying to the Scriptures as well. Right. Is there something innate, intrinsic to New Thetic counseling that requires

01:57:06

Reformed theology? The only reason I'm saying that is knowing that Dr. J.

01:57:12

Adams, the grandfather of that movement who is thoroughly Reformed, I know personally a pastor who describes himself as a

01:57:25

New Thetic counselor, but he is a rabid Arminian and vehement anti -Calvinist. Do those things really coincide logically and consistently?

01:57:36

I would have to say they do to a certain perspective.

01:57:41

Obviously, our hermeneutic is going to impact absolutely everything that we say and do in ministry, okay?

01:57:48

So that's a given. Because of that, people with different theological positions, because they have different hermeneutics, are going to approach things differently, which is also they're going to approach the care of souls differently based on their hermeneutic.

01:58:04

They may not use and apply some of the passages that I think we can use in this conversation today the same way that we do because of their hermeneutic.

01:58:11

But the basic idea of being a biblical counselor, if we can pull everything else away and really just say that God has given us everything that we need for life and godliness in his

01:58:20

Word, then yes, people of different denominations and theological perspectives could be biblical counselors because when people come to them for help, they're opening up God's Word to shepherd their souls and to help them find

01:58:33

God's will for their lives. How they approach the Scriptures, obviously from a hermeneutic standpoint, could differ, but they're still not engaging in using man's ideology for how to help people find truth.

01:58:45

So to that degree, I would say definitely a biblical counseling approach, just like an hermeneutic can disciple, right?

01:58:53

We might disagree with some of the conclusions that they come to, but they can disciple people using

01:58:58

God's Word, and so I would argue that it could be done. Well, we are out of time. I want to make sure

01:59:04

I repeat the necessary websites. AM Brewster's website is evermindministries .com.

01:59:15

Andrew Rappaport's website is strivingforeternity .org.

01:59:22

And the website for the church where Aaron Brewster's conference is going to be held

01:59:28

September 12th through the 14th is oxfordvalleychapel .org.

01:59:35

I want to thank you so much, Aaron, for doing such a remarkable job today.

01:59:40

I also want to thank Andrew Rappaport. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your entire lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater