August 10, 2021 Show with John Crotts on “Hope: Living Confidently in God”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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.

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, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensirenradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 10th day of August 2021, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest for the first 90 minutes.

He is Pastor John Kratz, an author, a board member of the

Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, also known as FIRE, and senior pastor at Faith Bible Church of Sharpsburg, Georgia.

We are going to be addressing his new book, published by PNR Publishing, Hope, Living Confidently in God, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor John Kratz.

Well, thank you so much, Chris. It's a joy to be with you today. And why don't you let our listeners know about the

Faith Bible Church of Sharpsburg, Georgia. Yeah, so our website is faithbiblechurch .us,

and we are located on the south side of Atlanta, and I've been serving here as the pastor since 1995, so by God's grace, 26 years, and just trying to be faithful, preaching generally through books of the

Bible and equipping the saints to do the work of ministry, and the

Lord has been very kind to us over these many years. And how would you describe the

Faith Bible Church theologically? Well, we would be

Reformed, and we would be... I went to the

Master's Seminary for my Masters of Divinity, so John MacArthur's kind of style of expositional ministry, so I think when you come to visit, you experience a high view of God, great warmth among the people, and hopefully a

God -centered, Bible -based message week by week, and that's been really great.

When I first came to Georgia, I was just going to say that there weren't many churches trying to do what we're doing, but we're very thankful that the

Lord has continued to raise up others that are also trying to have a good

Bible -based ministry around us as well. And I understand you operate there a counseling center.

We do, we do. We're part of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.

We have a training center, as well as do biblical counseling here. One of the dynamics of the

Southern culture is so many people have a church background, we kind of make a joke that everybody thinks that they're a

Christian already, which is really good in some ways, because people in Georgia are just very nice, and great to have as your neighbors.

The bad thing is, because everybody thinks that they're Christians, I sometimes say that my job as a

Southern pastor is to get people lost, so that they can get saved. Yeah, I remember an old preacher from Mississippi many years ago told me in his gravelly

Southern accent, when he found out that I was from New York, where I originally lived for the majority of my life, he said, you folks in New York got it easy.

You just got to get people saved. We got to get them lost, then get them saved.

That's right. That's a pretty good imitation there, too.

And tell us about the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, where you serve on the board.

Yeah, one more thing about our counseling ministry, because of the dynamic of the culture where people think that they're saved, they're very willing to come to a church building to receive biblical counseling.

And so that's provided some wonderful evangelistic opportunities for our church.

So we're very thankful. We've had as many as 45 and 50 counseling cases in a week.

So it has really grown a lot, and we're very thankful for the privilege of doing that.

And like I said, it's been a great outreach to our community. You asked about FIRE.

That's a wonderful network of churches, about 100, 110 churches, mostly in the

United States, but some in Canada and a few others in different parts of the world. And it's more of an association or a network where we have fellowship together and encourage one another, as well as partner on different ministry endeavors, like supporting like -minded missionaries and things like that.

So it's a great blessing. Our church has really... I've been part of it since the

FIRE's inception in the year 2000, and our church has formally been part of it since 2004.

So great blessing to be part of, and a great honor to serve on the board.

Well, their website, if anybody is interested in finding out more about FIRE, the

Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, go to www .firefellowship .org, www .firefellowship

.org. And once again, to repeat the website of Faith Bible Church in Sharpsburg, Georgia, where John is the senior pastor, go to faithbiblechurch .us,

faithbiblechurch .us. Well, John, as you probably know, there are numerous books already available in print before you wrote your book on a subject that would be either identical or somewhat related to the concept of living confidently in God.

And of course, probably most of them are heretical and horrible and garbage, because they're giving the wrong people confidence that they are truly in God.

They very often are lifting up the spirits and salving the consciences of unrepentant, unregenerate individuals.

And sometimes the books are actually reaching true believers, but seeking to instill confidence in them for the wrong reasons and the wrong ways.

But why is it that you said to yourself, you know, I've got to write my own book on hope, living confidently in God?

Well, I had a pastor, and we were having breakfast, and this was years ago.

And he was asking me about one of the TV preachers, kind of one of the scenarios you were just painting.

He's like, he's got a big smile, and he's always saying positive things. Why do you think that guy is so popular?

And I was waiting for the punchline, and instead he said, the reason why he's so popular is because he always gives a positive message, and the world is such a negative place.

So that people just want to hear something positive. And I thought, well, wait a minute, after I kind of got over the shock that I wasn't going to get a punchline.

We're the ones who have the truth. We're the ones who have the right foundation of a positive message.

And yet, it's some of these false teachers that are getting all the popularity because they're being positive in a negative world.

And so that sort of set me on a quest to start putting what became this book together.

I wanted to have Bible -based confidence in a positive future.

And basically, hope in God is what that turned out to be. Well, praise

God. I think that this will be a valuable tool for Reformed folk as well, not only those that have a charismatic or Pentecostal understanding of confidence that is non -biblical, unbiblical, anti -biblical.

There are, I believe, and perhaps you agree with this, there are quite a number of Reformed people,

I believe, who also, although using the right vocabulary and having the right concepts laid out when they are going through a crisis, when they are experiencing a serious illness or witnessing something like that in the lives of others that they love, they rightly will put their trust in God and say that they will trust in what

God's will is in those various circumstances. But at the same time,

I think that it is all too often the case that Reformed folks, such as us, are overly pessimistic in God's will being the same as their own in regard to a situation being resolved or an ailment being healed.

Do you follow what I'm saying? I think so. I heard David Pallison, the long -time biblical counseling guy in Philadelphia, once say, in addition to teaching about God's sovereignty and God's faithfulness, we also need to remind those people in despair about God's goodness.

God is so kind to us. I think that there's every reason for us as believers to expect a better future than we're experiencing now.

God's not out to get us. God loves us so much and is so kind.

He even gives unbelievers good blessings in this world. So, I definitely think when we have a full -orbed view of God's character and we consider the beauty of God's promises to his children, we have reason to hope for better things than just neutrality or even a negative outcome in our lives.

Amen. I just want to read a couple of endorsements for this book.

First of all, Brian Borgman, who is founding pastor at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada, says,

John has excelled in this devotional format, turning the angles of biblical hope like a diamond, bringing forth the true hope we have in Jesus and his hope -giving word.

Beautifully stated endorsement. And also, Stuart Scott, professor of biblical counseling and graduate program of the

Master's Seminary. I should say professor of biblical counseling at the graduate program of the

Master's University. He says, John has written what I'd like to call spiritual

B12 shots of hope. I encourage readers of this great book to take their own daily dose of hope in God and his promises and to spread it around.

Very excellent and powerful endorsements for this book. Well, why don't you start at the place where a lot of people who are going to be looking for a book like this, looking for encouragement like this.

There are innumerable reasons why people need to be reminded of God's goodness.

They could be, as I've already mentioned, they could be seriously ill. They could be going through a divorce.

They could have some kind of tragedy in the family regarding their children.

They could be unemployed. You could go on and on and on why people are giving up hope.

People are tragically even perhaps on the brink of suicide. They are driven to despair.

They are mourning and grieving the loss of a loved one. Tell us the first thing that somebody grabbing this book when they're in any kind of a state of desperation and sadness and sorrow, what they should be doing to prepare themselves mentally and spiritually as they open the pages of this book.

Well, you're exactly right to enumerate the different kinds of trials people go through.

I remember early in this process, I read a quote by somebody who said, we only need hope when things in our life are going badly.

In a sense, it's as if we don't need hope when everything is going great. Hope is a confident expectation of a better future, a positive future.

And so, as you listed, there's so many people going through such difficulties.

Now, the truth is, we're all going through some measure of difficulties. We live in a fallen world.

It's not the way it was created to be by the Lord. But you're right that some people are in particular moments of despair and difficulty.

And I would just... First, I think I would say, I really appreciate the format of the 31 -day devotional.

So this is a series of books that Deepak Raju from Capitol Hill Baptist Church is the series editor of.

Other books deal with specific issues, and mine fits in the same format, but it's just all about inspiring hope from various places in the

Bible. The format is, it takes a small portion of scripture, and basically it's just a two -page devotional, opening up and applying that little portion of scripture.

And then there's something to think about and something to do each day, 31 days.

So it's designed that you could do one per day for an entire month.

So Stuart Scott's comment that this is just like a booster shot, a B12 shot of hope.

And I'm thinking about the person that is in a time of deep despair where they might not be able to handle a biblical treatment of hope, you know, an intense

Bible study, but something where they could just grab one aspect of God's character or one promise just to give them a glimmer, to inspire a fresh confidence that there can be a better outcome tomorrow than it feels like it is right now.

Amen. And one thing that people very often tragically do, and this is not only people outside of the body of Christ, I myself am guilty, even as a

Christian, returning as a dog returns to his own vomit,

I returned to the sin of habitual and really scandalous drunkenness for a season in my life.

If I had, when I came to Christ, gave up drinking altogether,

I was a really critically serious drunkard as a young man, gave up booze, cold turkey as a new believer in Christ and remained sober for 18 years.

And then when things got difficult in my life, I fell back on a crutch and probably abused the substance of alcohol more than I did before I was a

Christian. And thankfully, I was put under church discipline, in fact, by one of the sons of members of your church, the

Grimaldi. Yes, yes. Mark Grimaldi and Pastor Doug Totter put me under church discipline, and I think this is also a reminder to people, or even maybe a first -time introduction, discipline is not meant to be something horrible that happens to you.

It's meant for the opposite reason. It's meant to restore you to God and to fellowship with the church.

Absolutely, yes. I not only was under discipline, but I went to Hebron Colony in Boone, North Carolina, which is a

Christian ministry, a Christian drug and alcohol recovery ministry or addiction recovery ministry for men.

They have a sister ministry in Asante, South Carolina, called

Grace Home. But I went to Hebron Colony in Boone, North Carolina, and thank

God I left there totally delivered from even the inclination or the desire to drink again.

And I'm not saying that everybody who leaves there leaves in the same mindset, but thank God that was the case for me.

And I say this long -winded thing or explanation because I know that people all too often do not want to experience the mental anguish and pain and discomfort of a trial, and they reach for something to numb themselves.

And that's one thing we should tell people. Even if you believe in a liberty to moderately drink responsibly and so on, that when you're going through something that's real serious, it would be wise to reconsider even tasting anything like that, at least during the period that you're going through the trial.

Am I right there? Well, absolutely, especially if that's been a temptation to addiction in the past.

It would be especially wise to be careful. And I mean, you know, the Bible, even though the

Bible does not forbid drinking, it absolutely forbids intoxication and drunkenness.

And so we don't want to use other things to numb the pain we're going through.

When you think of if your hand was touching the stove, God has put those nerves in your fingers and going to your brain to tell you to pull your hand away.

And sometimes the painful trials we go through, God is using in ways we need to receive the benefit from.

But I know where you're going in connecting hope. If you don't have hope, there's a great temptation to just say, what good is it?

Let me just try to deaden this pain instead of having a confidence that God could deliver me from this sin.

But the stronger our hope in God, the more motivated we will be to do the hard work of disciplining ourselves for godliness and seeing the

Holy Spirit bring eventual deliverance. I mean, in your situation, no doubt this wasn't just, you know, flip the switch, pray a prayer, and then it's all better.

No, it was hard work, even sometimes, like you said, relocating there to North Carolina, seeking the

Lord day by day, and God did the great work of restoration.

J. Adams, one of the pioneers of biblical counseling, he said, hope is one of the most vital ingredients in our counseling.

One of the things you want to do when you start meeting with a person in any kind of crisis is point them to the

Lord to inspire hope. And of course, there's all kinds of ways that the

Bible inspires hope, isn't there? Just from, as it describes, more of God's character, as we see incredible stories of God delivering people, even from impossible trials.

And in fact, could you pick up on that when we return from our first advertising break? Oh, I'd love to.

And if anybody wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. If you have a question for John Kratz, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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

Don't go away. We'll be right back with John Kratz and hope, living confidently in God, right after these messages.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entirety of the program, or actually not for the entirety of the program, for the first 90 minutes of the program, he will be followed by Andrew Rappaport of Striving for Eternity Ministries, but for the first 90 minutes we have

Pastor John Kratz as our guest, author, board member of the

Fellowship of Independent Reform Evangelicals, also known as FIRE, and senior pastor at Faith Bible Church of Sharpsburg, Georgia.

We are discussing Pastor John's new book, Hope, Living Confidently in God.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And I asked you before we went to the break to give us some biblical examples of how

God gives us hope, but I think even before you do that, we should get a correct definition of what hope is, because in our vernacular, in this day and age, and perhaps even for centuries, very often, if not most often, hope is usually used in a pessimistic fashion.

And in fact, Christians who believe they can lose their salvation even if they are genuinely born again, sometimes if you ask them the question, do you believe you're going to heaven when you die, they will say on occasion,

I hope so. And you will have that word used in various other ways when it's being expressed as an of pessimism, something that you want to happen, but you really aren't sure or you doubt it will happen.

But give us a correct definition, especially how you're using it in your title. Right. A very important distinction is the way the world thinks about hope, which is almost just a wishful optimism, just wanting the future to be better than the current situation is.

So we, I mean, in a similar way, we do have confident expectation and a positive future, but the big distinction is it's within God's will.

It's within what God has revealed in Scripture about His character or specific promises.

So for example, if somebody was sick and they were going through a very difficult, long lasting sickness or trial of some kind medically, there's not a guarantee from God that they will be healed instantly or even in this lifetime.

But we have still much reason for hope that God will give grace to go through the trial.

And certainly as we extend that hope, extend the timeline to the future after Christ returns and eternity in heaven, we have ultimate hope that there will be a positive future as well.

So there's no reason for hope to be considered any kind of a negative thing.

The question is just what kind of hope do we have ground for being confident in?

And when it comes to God's specific promises, they're guaranteed.

I was preaching this past week on 1 John 3, 1 through 3, thinking about the return of Christ and how

God loves us so much that He has made us His children. And when

He appears, we will be like Him. And verse 3 says, those who have this kind of hope purify themselves as He is pure.

Well, we don't wish that Jesus would come back. We're not just, you know, wouldn't it be nice if He will deal with our problem.

No, we have complete confidence that the Lord's return is a certainty.

It's a guarantee. And so our kind of hope is not the same thing as a worldly wishfulness of good things to come.

But it is limited to what God has revealed in Scripture.

But God's word has all that we need for life and godliness, so no problem with that.

Yes, and although God very often does answer the prayers of His children according to what they are asking from Him, He also exceeds in how

He answers those prayers of even far greater things than they are asking.

But one thing about a Reformed understanding of God's sovereignty is that as a believer, we know however

God answers a prayer, even if it looks in this life on this earth nothing like what we are asking for, it is the best answer.

Because if we are His children, He will never answer a prayer or ignore a prayer in such a way that brings about something that will intend our ultimate harm.

Even when a believer may pray to be healed and he dies of an illness, he is obviously in eternity with Christ experiencing no sorrow, no pain.

But God will always answer a prayer in the best way.

Am I correct on that? I mean, I'm talking about, of course, His true children here. Right, yes, definitely.

God's plan is the best possible plan. And if we knew all that God was up to, we would never have any doubt about that.

The reason why we don't, the reason why we are discouraged and sometimes even drop into despair is because we're limited in what we can see and what our senses tell us.

So we have to build a bridge, the bridge of faith, where we take what we can see and experience, but we add to that what

God's Word reveals about God's character, His love, His goodness, His sovereignty,

His wisdom in all these things. And then God's specific promises that He's revealed to us.

I will always be with you. I will never forsake you. You can cast all your cares upon me because I care for you.

I will never let you be tempted beyond what you're able to bear, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

God faithfully gives us all of these sorts of things. And so yes, when we see

God's plan, even if it doesn't turn out like we would want it to, we need to build the bridge of faith and hope.

Faith and hope are very related to one another. Faith is believing what

God's Word says or has said or believing what Christ has done and is doing.

Hope is taking that faith and aiming it to the future. We have believed that Christ's death satisfied

God's wrath on our behalf, but we look forward to what God says about Christ's return.

We look forward to God hearing our prayers and being with us and giving us grace to honor

Him in the midst of difficult times. And so we have faith and we also have hope.

And when we see God's plan, once we know all that God is up to, we will know for sure that God's plan was the best plan.

Amen. We have a listener who wants to ask about 1

Peter 5 verse 7. Let's see, I just had that question in front of me.

Where is it? Oh, Mike from Monroe, New York. He says, casting all your care upon Him because He cares for you.

May your guest please offer some pertinent comments upon us, upon this passage of Scripture.

Okay, I love this verse. Yes. The English Standard Version says, casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.

But the word anxieties and the word cares are the same word. And it's definitely, we're burdened in this life.

And God, this is a wonderful promise. And the promises, of course, are what fuel our hope.

We know that God cares for us. We know that God is open.

He's not too busy to hear your prayers. He's told you to come.

He's called upon you to come. He's given you promises that you can come with all of your burdens and roll them on to His shoulders because He cares for you.

It's incredible. When we think about, of course, I'm very full of the thought of God adopting us to be

His children from the text from last Sunday sermon. But J .I.

Packer said that adoption is the greatest blessing of salvation. And he meant that, yes,

God could have saved us and just made us His slaves to work in the salt mines of heaven forever.

And that would be so much better than we deserve to be bearing God's wrath in hell for eternity.

But instead, God has not just made us His slaves. He's made us His sons and daughters because He loves us so much.

And this verse in 1 Peter 5, 7 goes right along with that. That we humble ourselves before the

Lord. We go to God with our burdens and we know that He cares for us and He loves us.

We are His children and He will hear our prayers every time. Doesn't mean that it all gets answered immediately as we think would be the best, but we know that God does hear us and care for us, and that God is looking out for us in the best possible way.

Well, thank you, Mike, in Monroe, New York. Give us your full mailing address, because you have won a free copy of the book that we are addressing today,

Hope, Living Confidently in God, compliments of our friends at PNR Publishing and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

who will be shipping that book out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Just make sure you email me your full mailing address in Monroe, New York.

We have an anonymous listener who says many of my friends are

Pentecostal and charismatic. And very often, even if they are not a member of the extreme version of those things known as the

Word of Faith movement, which is completely and utterly heretical, there seems to be an overconfidence expressed by them in the way that they pray, saying things like,

I command this to happen, and that if any doubt were to rise up in your mind about something being answered exactly the way you are praying, it is sin, etc.,

etc. How is the confidence you are speaking of today different from that?

Yes, Mike, the confidence that we are to have about a positive future is based on God's character and God's Word, where I think that some of my charismatic brothers and sisters, and certainly those in the

Word of Faith movement, they almost believe, well, some actually do believe, whatever we say is what's going to come true.

And so we need to pray these certain types of prayers, and that will guarantee certain things in the future.

Well, that's complete presumption. We dare not come into God's presence presuming that our will is better than God's.

Even our Lord Jesus Himself in the Garden, when He prayed that if it was possible that the cup of God's wrath would be taken away before the cross,

He submitted His will to God, the Father's will, and prayed, not my will, but Yours be done.

And I think that when we know God's will, which God's will is revealed in God's Word, we can pray with confidence when our prayers are lined up with Scripture.

When our prayers are lined up with our wishfulness, then we don't have that kind of confidence.

In fact, we could be on the danger of presumption and demanding things of God that He's not promised at all.

Now, sometimes we don't know. We don't know what God's will is. I think of our sister,

Johnny Erickson Tata, and all that she has suffered and endured. It doesn't appear that it's

God's will to heal her. God could raise her up even right now, but we can certainly cast our burdens on the

Lord if we were in a difficult situation. We could ask, but we don't want to presume.

We want to submit our will to God's will. Amen. And one of the travesties and absurdities of the many heresies involved in the

Word of Faith movement is that if your prayers would always be answered the way that you want them to be answered, you very often would be bringing curses upon yourself, because God being omnipotent knows what the true best way to answer your prayer is, and that is very often not what you think it is.

Right. Absolutely. And sometimes God lets us know this, right?

There's been times in our life where we've seen that, like, oh, wow, if that prayer had been answered like I initially prayed, that would have been a mess.

But even the other times that we don't see that, we can still know it's true because of what the

Bible reveals about God's character. And we have to go to our midway break right now.

If you have a question, please send it in to chrisarnsen at gmail .com immediately or as quickly as you can, because Pastor John has to leave the program earlier than normal.

We do have a final half hour with my dear friend

Andrew Rappaport of Striving for Eternity Ministries, who's going to discuss the challenges of planting churches in 21st century liberal

America. But before that, we still have some time left with Pastor John, so if you have a question, please send it immediately or as soon as possible to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Remember, folks, the midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show so that they can comply with FCC regulations and air their own public service announcements and other things that localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida.

So please be patient with us as the break is a little bit longer, and we will be right back after these messages, so please don't go away.

Christ is supreme over all. I'll be joined by over 20 other speakers and musicians to lead in the worship of God through preaching, teaching, and singing, including

John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Conrad M. Bayway, Daryl Bernard Harrison, and Virgil Walker.

For details, visit g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com. Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you

September 30th through October 2nd at G321. This is James White reminding you that Christ is supreme over all.

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

New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the

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Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, had to say about Iron Sharpens Iron recently.

Through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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

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

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 internet where folk won't be led astray.

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

Chris up for just such a time, 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.

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

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

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

where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hello, my name is

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

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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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 Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino, and thanks for listening. We are excited to announce another new member of the

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With an aim to glorify God and reach the nations with the gospel, it is a blessing to see how

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To find out more about this vital work worldwide, visit anchoredintruth .org.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads, will never be read.

He who never quotes, will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

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Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com. That's solid -ground -books .com

and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. from authors not only from the past, even centuries ago, dating back to the

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and always mention that you heard about Solid Ground Christian Books from Chris Arndsen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Before we return to our discussion with John Crotts on his latest book, a book that we are actually giving away today,

Hope, Living Confidently in God, we just have a few more very important announcements to make.

I want to continue to thank all of you who have been praying for my oldest brother John, 76 years old, in a skilled nursing facility now in Denton, Texas.

He has critical stage emphysema, and he also has cancer, and the doctors, sadly, have given him a very grim prognosis of six months to live.

Please pray for not only his physical healing, but most of all that he is truly saved by the grace and mercy of our

Lord Jesus Christ, that he continues to produce evidence that he is transformed by the mercy of God and has a new heart and is headed for heaven, and also that he is given the peace and the confidence that he will be with Christ for eternity, so that he will not depart this earth in a state of fear or terror.

I just ask of you, Lord, to please answer this prayer of your child

Chris and all those who are listening today who join me in prayer. Also, folks, if you are a man in ministry leadership,

Dr. Conrad M. Bayway, a man who I believe is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet earth, is going to be my next guest speaker at the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon. It's going to be held Monday, September 27th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Bongiorno Conference Center here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

This is absolutely free of charge. You will not only receive physical food and nourishment for free, and you will not only receive spiritual nourishment from Dr.

Conrad M. Bayway for free, but you'll also be getting a very heavy sack of free books from most of the major Christian publishers in the

United States and the United Kingdom who donate books to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio twice a year for my biannual

Pastors Luncheons. I ask for a hundred copies of each title from each publisher that I want to bless our pastor guests with, and they have been doing so since 2005.

And if you would like to be in attendance, as long as you're a man in ministry leadership, a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a parachurch ministry leader, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. Also folks, if you love this show and you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

If you prefer a snail mail, mailing in a check through your local postal service, by all means go to ironsharpensironradio .com

and click support, and you will also see on your screen a physical address where to mail those checks. If you would like to advertise with us, well, you can send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. As long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe, we would love to help you launch an ad campaign immediately.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line.

Please remember folks, I never want anybody siphoning money away from their regular giving to their own local church where they are a member in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I never wanted this show from the moment I launched it in 2005,

I never wanted it to be in any way a hindrance or something harmful to the local pastor and the local church.

I wanted this program, always intended this program to be a friend, a platform, an extension, a helping hand to the local pastor and the local church.

So please don't harm your church financially by giving to us.

Also, don't further plunge your family into financial peril if you're struggling to survive at this time by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Those two things are commands of God and scripture, providing for church and family, and obviously providing for my radio show is not a command of God.

But if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands and you love this show, please give at ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now. We are in urgent need of your help and we have between 30 and 40 ,000 people downloading this show every single month, and yet only a tiny, tiny handful comparatively give to this show, which is amazing to me.

So if you do love this show, please help us as long as you can do so without disobeying those two commands, providing for church and family.

Please go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, no matter where on the planet Earth you live, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I may be able to help you no matter where you live.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to John Kratz if you have a question about hope.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Pastor John, if you could provide us with some more biblical examples of how

God extends hope to his children. Well, I think that some of the stories in the

Bible are so helpful, and I'm afraid that sometimes we get so familiar with them, or maybe we've grown up in church and just heard them, and just kind of have a category of kid stories from Sunday school.

But the reality of these stories ought to inspire hope. One of the ones

I'm thinking of is just even the story of Zacchaeus right now. You know, we just make the little song about him being the wee little man, and that's fine, and he did climb up in the tree to see the

Lord, but when you think about the background of that story, Zacchaeus was despised.

He was a tax collector. He had forsaken Judaism, so he basically went against his own people by selling out to the

Romans, the occupiers, and bought a franchise where he could skim money off of his fellow countrymen.

And I mean, it's not just he's betraying his country, but Israel was

God's people. Like, he's betraying God's people for his own pocketbook, and is there hope for a guy that sinful and that despised, that rejected?

And when we see the Lord reach out to him, tell him to come down, say he's going to go and spend time at his home that very day, that's the kind of story that ought to say, hey, nobody is beyond God's reach.

There's nobody that's so wicked and despised that God can't save them today.

God can change nations in a day, and he can save the farthest sinner away from him at this time.

I also think of another one. One of my very favorite stories is when

Hezekiah prays to God because the Assyrian armies of Sennacherib are surrounding

Jerusalem. They've wiped out everyone in Judah.

They've already annihilated the allies that Israel had tried to reach out to in Egypt and others.

They've wiped out the northern kingdom, and all that's left is the capital city, and they're threatening to bear down on them.

And Isaiah and Hezekiah spread out the letter of the wicked king and his subordinate guy, and they put the threats before the

Lord, and the Lord sent his angel and killed 185 ,000

Assyrians that night, so that the very next day, instead of being threatened to annihilation, they had a harvest of plunder from their enemies waiting to be taken for free.

And those kinds of stories, they show us something about God's character,

His intervention, His power, His concern for His people, and they're the kind of stories that ought to motivate us.

Amen, amen. We have another anonymous listener.

Most of my children are lost. I very often cry myself to sleep praying for their salvation.

How can I find hope when they are adults and they are still rebelling against God, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel regarding any change in their lives?

And especially if I reach the point where one of them may die before I do, and I have no evidence that they are saved, please give me some reasons for hope to cling to.

Absolutely. Well, that is such a sad situation, and my heart goes out to you, because I know that that has been a heartbreak so far.

So, here again, it's important to say, hope is looking for a positive future.

What hope can we have in a situation like this? Well, we don't want to presume upon God, because we don't know who the elect are.

We don't know who is going to be saved. But we do know that God loves sinners, and that your children are not beyond His reach of being saved.

And even though they have rejected God so far, He's been so patient.

He is a patient God, just like He's been patient with us. He's being patient with them right now, as long as they still have breath.

Another reason we can have hope is, I trust that you have shared the gospel with them.

If they've grown up in your home, and none of us are perfect parents, so don't worry about that.

I'm talking about how well you did. You know, none of us have done perfectly right, but if we've tried to be faithful, to live out the gospel, to share the gospel, to bring them up in a good church, we know that this is the seed that God uses to save sinners.

So, God has put your kids under the influence of gospel seeds.

I mean, imagine if your children grew up in the jungles of the

Amazon River basin, in tribes where there was no access to the gospel at all.

They've never heard the name of Christ, and they're about to die without Christ.

Well, goodness. God could save them, absolutely. God could send missionaries there, absolutely.

But how different it is that God brought up your children under the hearing of the gospel.

And we know that sinners suppress the truth in unrighteousness, but what that means is they actively know the truth about God as being the

Creator, and Christ being the Savior, and they're working to fight against it.

Well, the Holy Spirit can certainly bring those truths to mind as long as they have breath, and God can make it all click to where there would be repentance and faith in their hearts, and they would be saved.

So, God will give you comfort. God will be with you in this.

God will not put on you more than you're able to bear. So, there's lots of reasons to be hopeful, even though we don't have guarantees of the salvation of our children.

Amen. And Anonymous, send me an email with your full name and address.

Obviously, since you asked to remain anonymous, I'm not going to announce that information over the air.

So, please just send me an email with your full name and address, and you will receive absolutely free a copy of Hope, Living Confidently in God, compliments of our friends at PNR Publishing, and compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

who will ship that book out to you. If you are a first -time questioner, on top of that, you will also receive a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. I'd like you now,

John, to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before this portion of the program is over and we move on to our second guest.

Yes. Well, if you don't mind, I'd love to say a word about Cumberland Valley. I know they're a sponsor of the program.

They're such a wonderful book ministry, and I've been blessed to pass through Carlisle, Pennsylvania a few times over the years, and I always try to stop into the store because I've ordered so many things online, and what a blessing that they are.

I've heard that they have a new store. I need to get back up there as soon as I can.

They're on Britner Highway now. They're no longer on North Hanover Street. Wow. Yes. Well, it's a great place to stop in when you're anywhere in central

Pennsylvania, for sure. They also have one of the best prices on the book.

They come out with a really, really great discount on the whole book, so I would recommend you picking it up from them if you were interested at all in this.

Great. The Bible gives us lots of reasons to hope. Hope motivates us.

Hope inspires us. Hope keeps us praying for our lost children, for our sickness, our trial.

Hope is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other, and God delights when

His children hope in Him, and He loves it when we trust in Him.

And so, the book is a help, I think, to give 31 different days to be inspired by different parts of Scripture that carry us from all different kinds of situations.

But it's not just patch on the head, I hope it gets better. It's based on biblical truth that we can count on.

Our hope is confident expectation in a positive future because of God, His promises, and His character.

And this book is designed to inspire it in your heart from Scripture. Praise God.

Well, remember, if you want to find out more about the book, if you want to order it, go to cvbbs .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. Also, if you want to find out more about Faith Bible Church in Sharpsburg, Georgia, go to faithbiblechurch .us,

faithbiblechurch .us. Thanks so much, Pastor John, for being on the show. We look forward to your return to the program very soon.

All right, Chris, and hope to see you at G3 in Atlanta. Amen, definitely. Definitely come by my exhibitors booth.

Absolutely. Have a great day. You too. God bless. Don't go away, folks, because we are going to be joined by Andrew Rappaport of Striving for Eternity Ministries any moment.

And if you have a question, email it to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Hi, I'm Phil Johnson, host and executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of John MacArthur.

I hope you plan to join me and Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, for the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd.

The theme this year is Christ is supreme over all. My friend Chris Arnzen and I will be joined by several of our other friends, including

Votie Valcom, Justin Peters, Daryl Bernard Harrison, Virgil Walker and James White.

More than 20 other speakers will be joining us, and the lineup this year includes my pastor, John MacArthur.

For details, visit g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G3 2021.

This is Phil Johnson reminding you that Christ is supreme over all. And the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the

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NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and the

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Church of Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart?

Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio.

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If you love Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnzen is doing is

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. I'm Dr.

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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 Coram 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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That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops and local hangouts,

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It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages, enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

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Call Lynnbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit lynnbrookbaptist .org.

That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen and our final guest of the day is my dear friend

Andrew Rappaport, founder of Striving for Eternity Ministries, and he's also involved in a new church plant in Northern Philadelphia, Grace and Truth Bible Church.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Shepherd Zion Radio, Andrew Rappaport. Chris, it is always a privilege to be with you on the

Iron Shepherd Zion. Amen, and I have been hearing from more and more people who really appreciate and are blessed by you and your podcast and your

Striving for Eternity Ministry, and so I'm very glad that word is definitely spreading about you.

Well, that's good. I think one of the best episodes I had was the one where I interviewed you on your own show.

That's right. I enjoyed that, actually, as nervous as I was.

We got to do that at G3, where we will be again soon. Looking forward to seeing you there. Amen, and I hope that many of our listeners will register as soon as possible.

Why don't you tell our listeners who may be unfamiliar with you, that small number that would be unfamiliar with you, about Striving for Eternity Ministries?

Well, Striving for Eternity Ministries is a discipleship, whether through materials or directly to churches.

Our focus is really on small churches. I don't know if you even know that 10 ,000 churches closed this year in 2020.

That's the number of small churches that are closing, and that's really where the heart of American Christianity is going to be fought, not in the big churches that are going woke.

The real issue is going to be in the small churches making a difference. So we actually bring seminars to churches that can't afford to have us.

We have monthly supporters that support us so that we can go into smaller churches and train them and give them seminars so that they can disciple within their own church and then make an impact on their community.

Yes, and I know one of your favorite guest speakers at your events is our mutual friend,

Justin Peters of Justin Peters Ministries. I always love hearing him preach in any venue that the Lord provides for him.

Well, he and I were just in Fort Worth, Texas. He was speaking at First Baptist Church Keller, and that was in the evening.

And during the day, we went over to the Kenneth Copeland—Kenneth Copeland had his big

Southwest Believers Conference, or as Justin Peters called it, the Southwest Unbelievers Conference. We went to do some research and listened to these guys.

We heard Kenneth Copeland, Jesse Duplantis, Creflo Dollar, a couple others, and we got to hand out tracts, talk to people during lunch and breaks.

And I'll just tell you, this is a quick, short story. You don't have to get into all the details, but Justin was afraid he'd get spotted there.

And what ended up happening was, there was someone there that we had no knowledge of, that they had a friend who had been trying to bring this person out of word of faith.

And this person just recently had watched Justin Peters' Clouds Without Water session with their friend.

And so when they saw Justin at a Kenneth Copeland conference, they couldn't believe it.

Well, of course, they see this as confirmation that they need to start rethinking things, but watching his seminar, they actually started to see some of the stuff that Justin teaches and are starting to question things.

So that person has now been in contact with Justin. He's given this person some materials to read about and to study up on.

So it's just neat that you can go to something like that, and the last place you'd expect to be spotted and see an impact.

And he's got a great ministry. Folks aren't familiar with it, justinpeters .org. Great. And what's the

Striving for Eternity Ministries website? That is strivingforeternity .org.

Great. Well, our theme today is planting churches, the challenges of planting churches, biblically faithful churches in 21st century liberal

America. Actually, before we even go into that, why don't you give us a little description of this church plant work in northern

Philadelphia, Grace and Truth Bible Church. Yeah, we're just getting started with it at Grace and Truth Bible Church.

What we're trying to do is, I've been in a lot of churches that have a lot of grace and some that have a lot of truth, and what we're trying to do is have grace and truth.

And our goal, our mission is going to be to disciple people to worship God. And that's really the lacking thing in the 21st century, is a lot of focus has become on church and not

God. And it's about getting people infused and how to keep people infused, rather than getting people in awe of who

God is and worshiping Him, rather than some preacher or getting enough people in there so that the church can have a bigger platform and, you know, pastors get paid more or whatnot.

The reality is we're seeing a lot of problems in churches these days. The churches that haven't gone woke and given into social justice, they're still stuck in the, you know, from the 80s and 90s, where the church growth movement, where they just want to have a really big church that placates everybody and disciples nobody.

And we just wanted to see that there was a change. There weren't too many good churches in the Bucks County area, and so we wanted to plant the church there, because there's a lot of hungry people that really want to grow.

And so we're looking to disciple people there. And that really gets into some of the issues that we see with churches.

There's a lot of big churches in that area, as in a lot of different areas. There's big churches that they're really not discipling people.

They're not helping people mature spiritually. Their focus is on being a big church, because they say they could do more for God.

And, you know, the reality is I'd rather maybe do less in the world view, but see more people growing in their walk with Christ and being more in awe of who

God is, rather than saying, oh, look at how many numbers we have in our church. I think there's going to be a lot of pastors that are going to be surprised

God is not impressed with their numbers. Yes, and at the same time, I'm sure you wholeheartedly agree with what

I'm about to say, is that although there may be a problem in the church today where pastors are becoming idols, and churches are even becoming idols, there is a very prevalent problem that may even exceed that, and that is people who don't think they need the church at all.

People who think they could just sit at home and watch their favorite televangelist, or read their favorite so -called

Christian authors, or even just sit at home and read their Bible. But if they were reading their

Bible carefully and prayerfully, they would realize that there is a command in the scripture that we're not supposed to be forsaking the assembling of the brethren, and we are to submit ourselves to local elders,

God -ordained elders in local churches. There is no such thing in the Bible as a faithful Christian who is a maverick or a lone wolf.

Would you not agree with that? I absolutely agree. I mean, I think COVID really caused a lot of problems.

It had some good things with the church, in the sense where a lot of churches just said, hey, it's great that we could just sit at home.

And a lot of people are saying, well, if we're going to be at home having church on Zoom, I might as well watch a

John MacArthur. I mean, here's a guy, 50 years faithful, but he hasn't, you know, he's never looked to be a big name.

And there's people who think, well, I could just sit and watch great preaching and call it church. No, you can't.

The very definition of church, ekklesia, the Greek word for church that we call church, it is a gathering of people.

So you cannot, by definition, have church without a gathering, because it is the people coming together for the worship of God.

So when people say, I can have church at home, no, you can't. I mean, you can have a house church where, you know, where you're starting in a house and you're going to grow that, you know, if God's plan is to grow that church.

But the thing is that when you're sitting by yourself or just your family and saying it's church, where are your elders, where are your deacons, where's your church discipline, where's your communion?

These are all the things that should be going on. All the one -anothering, the 21 one -anothers that we have in the New Testament, those aren't going to be fulfilled.

We each are given spiritual gifts, not for ourselves, but to serve others in our church.

But if we're not gathering together, if we're sitting home and watching someone on TV, we're not doing all that the church is commanded to do.

And we think many of those people that are doing that think that they're learning the reality of their hurting themselves spiritually.

They're not maturing in faith. They're not having that real fellowship, which sometimes is having someone come alongside us and tell us the areas we all need to grow in.

You're not going to get that if you're avoiding the people. That's right. And I'm sure you also agree that this idea of having communion, the

Lord's table via Zoom, where you are alone or with your family, taking the bread and wine while you're watching your pastor or a pastor on Zoom, this is not really celebrating the

Lord's Supper, is it? No. I think the reason that some people think it is is because they don't understand what the

Lord's Supper actually is. This is a communion service. Not only is it a memorial of what

Christ did on the cross on our behalf, when He bled and was put on a cross where His body and blood are there as the representation from what was the last

Passover with the matzah and the wine. There is that, but it's also part of it is we come together as a church in union together.

You can't do that when everyone's at home, you know, doing this on their own. This is something the church does together.

That's why when we would do a communion, we do it as one, right? We all do this together.

So there's two elements that we think of with a communion service. One is our self -reflection of what

Christ did on our behalf when He bled and died for us. And the other element is what

God created from that, which is the organization He works through today, which is not the nation of Israel, but the church.

The church is the body He works with, and we commune together because of what

Christ did on our behalf. Amen. Well, tell us something about the community, the area of northern

Philadelphia where you are seeking to plant this church. Well, there's a different area in the sense there's some sections that are very affluent, and then there's...we're

not far from Philly, which is very different, you know, from the affluent, so we're trying to be right in between those two areas.

It becomes a really difficult area. There's some large churches that have no denominational, no doctrinal distinctions at all.

They just...there's some big churches where basically you could believe anything and go there, and no one's going to complain.

I know of one church where I was told the elders don't all agree theologically. That becomes a real problem, because their argument would be that, well, doctrine, that divides us, and it does, but doctrine also unifies us.

If we don't have a unifying doctrine that we all agree to, we're going to avoid teaching doctrine altogether because we wouldn't want to be divided.

And then people aren't maturing and growing, and so there's been a number of churches in this area that have been like that for many years, and because of it, people are driving over an hour to try to find churches in the

Bucks County, northern Philadelphia area. And so for that reason, we're trying to plant a solid church that's going to be focused on good, solid doctrine and discipleship as a main component of the church in the area.

And we want to see people just...as I said earlier, we want to see people that are going to be discipled to worship

God. That's the thing. That's a key element of the church that has really been forgotten.

You know, when they started the... in the 80s and 90s, this whole church growth movement, if you want to build a big church, the way really to do that is not get too personal in people's lives.

Just let them come in, be entertained, sit in a pew, give their money, leave, and don't do anything that might upset them, because then they might not keep coming back.

Well, discipleship has been dropped, and we see people that are hungry for teaching.

That's why you're seeing them gravitate toward different ministries online, watching

John MacArthur or others, listening to tons of podcasts, because there's a lot of Christians that they want good, solid teaching, and they're not getting it in church.

They're not getting the one mothering. They're not getting the one -on -one discipleship. It's, I think, one of the largest lacking components in the church today, and that's why

I think we have such an anemic church in America, is because the church has given up the voice in our community.

We're now...and I know you know this, Chris, with all the social justice and all that.

You're seeing all the churches, they have no voice. They're trying to follow the world rather than speak out against the world, and with so many churches doing that, the churches that are...those

churches that are going to stand up for doctrinal distinctives, they're going to be looked down upon, and that's okay with us, right?

And that's what it should be for all Christians to say, you know what? We're here to please God and not men.

Praise God, and from what I gather, from what you've said, you are not intentionally, as some folks have done, and it really annoys me, plant a church right near a biblically faithful church that might even agree with you on most, if not all, theological distinctives in order to be a magnet to disgruntled members of that church to be sucked into your fellowship.

I've seen that happen. I am very annoyed by that, but you're looking to plant the church where there is the most need for the biblical orthodoxy that you are seeking to proclaim, correct?

Yeah, and one of the things we're really trying to focus on is that we want to see, and this is going to sound crazy to the way so many do church today, but we would like to see church growth happen through evangelism and not sheep -stealing, right?

This is the model that so many churches have now, is they are looking to see how they could find out where there's good, solid believers in other churches that they would come over and help out, you know, and serve in this church, and you know what?

If they're already in a church, stay there. If you're happy there, that's where you should be.

If you can serve there, the church is biblical, great. One of the things that COVID has helped with is with so many churches that haven't been open, what ended up happening was people were like,

I want to go to church, and when their church won't meet and gather, they're going out looking online, they're starting to look for churches, and that's what's happening is a lot of people are starting to say, you know what?

It's time for me to leave the church. I haven't been in for a long time, but they're not meeting to go look for a church

I should be in. Now, if you're in a church that doesn't have good theology, has some issues, but you've had a lot of friends there, okay, then maybe there's a reason to leave, but I think a lot of people just jump at churches too quickly.

We wouldn't jump from marriage that way. What would we do in a marriage? We would find ways to work out our differences, yet when it comes to church, people aren't willing to stay and work out their differences, and I think unless differences cannot be worked out, we try to work them out, but the focus

I think that churches should have, especially church plants, is on evangelism, looking for those who don't know

Christ to come to know Christ, and then you disciple. That's, I think, a biblical model. Yes, and I'm glad that you have in mind the two core elements of, or two of the core elements,

I should say, involved in seeking to be a biblical body of Christ, a biblical local church, not only evangelism, but also discipleship.

Many people have an idea that even if they are in many ways theologically sound or have a theologically correct gospel, that the main emphasis throughout the entirety of a worship service is to draw the laws to Christ.

Now, that should be obviously a very important element, but the true saints, those that have been drawn to Christ and delivered from the world, the flesh, and the devil, those have been regenerated by the mercy and grace of the

Holy Spirit, they need to be instructed. They need to be taught correctly, and therefore the whole counsel of God needs to be taught.

There should not be merely the milk of the word, but the meat of the word. Am I off base here?

Oh, you're, yeah. I mean, the thing is that there are churches that, this is, again, a product of this whole church growth movement, when you had

Willow Creek and others that say, well, if we want to have a big church, we want to get numbers in, what do we got to do?

Well, we got to focus on making it about bringing the lost in on Sunday, and they'd have their main service on Wednesdays, where they would do teaching, and then they really don't want to do teaching, so Sundays they'd have all the drama and the acting and the entertainment, all to try to win the lost.

But what you win them with, you keep them with. You won them with drama and shallow theology.

You're not going to suddenly get them into deep theology. And so they've even realized that they have to change things there because of that.

And the thing is that church is not for the lost. I remember speaking at a church where I loved, when you walked out of the sanctuary, they had a sign over the door that said, you're entering the mission field.

In other words, the church is not where the evangelism gets done. Evangelism is not going to your neighbor and saying, hey, why don't you come to church this week?

And then you call your pastor and say, my neighbor's coming. Can you share the gospel? No, that's your job to share the gospel with your neighbor.

And when they get saved, you bring them to church where they get fed. The church is for Christians.

And then the Christians, after being fed, go out into the world to evangelize.

It's not that we ignore evangelism. It's not that we don't do that. But when we come to the text, we're going to preach what the text says.

When there's the gospel there in the text, we're going to preach that. But what we need to do is not say that the church is just about sharing the gospel.

What that ends up creating is very immature believers because all they know is the gospel. They're just being given the gospel over and over and over every week.

And like you said, they're just getting the milk. They never mature into adulthood spiritually because they've just been given milk.

That creates children abnormal children nonetheless. If you take a baby and just give it milk, never give it baby food, just milk all the time for five years, you're going to have an abnormal child.

You're going to have a child that's not properly developed. That's the same thing with Christianity. And churches that focus just on evangelism during the preaching time, during the main service, they're not feeding.

And they're actually having church for the wrong group of people. Church is a gathering of the saints for the worship of God.

And if we have that in our mindset, then what we're doing when we're having a worship service is we are in awe of the great and holy

God who created the entire universe and came to earth to dine across for our sin.

That's the God we're in awe of. How much he loved us, that this is what he did while we were wicked sinners.

He adopted us into his family. That should cause us to be in wonder. And that's what the worship service is about, is worship being in awe.

Worship actually comes from the word worth -ship. It's where we see worth in God. And that's what we do in a service.

The whole thing of a Sunday morning service is to be in worship to God, whether it's in singing, whether it's in the proclamation or the reading of God's word, in the giving, in the fellowship.

Everything we should do should be drawing us closer to being in awe of who God is and how great he is.

Amen. And obviously, I'm sure you would agree that when seeking to accomplish by God's grace the planting of a biblically faithful church, great patience needs to be used because those that are overly anxious about growing the church may resort to some of the tactics that you have been dismissing.

They may look for ways to lure people into the church that have nothing to do with the scriptures and obedience to God and the truth of God.

In fact, the church should in many ways behave as if, even if they had an audience of one, being

God himself, being faithful to that one person in the audience that God alone is the one that needs to be pleased through the proclamation of his word and the worship of him.

That needs to be first and foremost, and relying upon him to bring the increase.

We're not supposed to be manipulating people or tricking them into the kingdom, right? That's right.

Yeah, I mean, one of the big problems that churches have is, and part of this is because of the

American idea of success, is numbers. And many people think they have to have a big church and they have to have people coming.

The reality is, God may be most glorified in you having a small church, and if that is what brings

God most glory, then that's what we should be doing. You always think of Adonai Judson. He goes to the mission field.

He doesn't have a single convert for over a dozen years, but still reaches to the tribal people he's reaching to.

And then after a couple decades, the entire tribe is professing

Christ. Now, if he just gave up because he says, well, it's been 10 years and I haven't had a single convert,

I should go back home to England. No! What ends up happening is he ends up in a thing of just being faithful, and that's the missing element for many.

It's not about numbers. Success in God is not about numbers. It's about faithfulness.

So what we need to do is be faithful to wherever God's plan is. Whether we're planting a church or even to the listener and listening now, you work a job, you go out and you try to witness to those people you work with.

Be faithful. It's not about how many people come to Christ or come to church. It's about being faithful to where God has planted you and serving where God has planted you.

And if you're in a good church, that's where you serve. Don't go and say, well, there's a better church up the road. If God planted you in a church and there's no reason to leave, that's where you serve.

Use your gifts that God has given you by the personal Holy Spirit to be a blessing to that church and serve them to all but one another and use the spiritual gifts

God's given you to work there. Amen. And we're out of time, brother, and I want to repeat your website.

It's strivingforeternity .org, strivingforeternity .org. I'm looking forward to your next visit to Iron Trumpet's Iron, brother, and I want to remind everybody listening that I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater