August 24, 2023 Show with Jeff Noblit on “How We Are Having Our Best Days as a Church”

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

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

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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.

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 24th day of August, 2023.

Several years ago, I got contacted by a young man named Luke Baker, and he had said that he had discovered my program and thought very highly of it and wanted to purchase advertising for a conference that was being held at Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. And when he described the church to me, I was immediately excited about this opportunity, and we ran an ad campaign, and on top of this ad campaign,

Luke invited me to be in attendance at this conference,

True Church Conference, and I attended that and met, for the very first time, my guest today,

Jeff Knoblett, who is founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries and senior pastor of Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I immediately was so impacted and blessed and edified and challenged by Jeff Knoblett's preaching that afterward, during a break in the conference,

I approached him where he was sitting and asked him, Brother, I have two times a year a free pastor's luncheon where somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pastors come out, and they hear the

Word of God from a guest preacher, they are fed, and they receive a heavy sack of brand new free books personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers, all of the

United States and United Kingdom, and I told him this was all absolutely free, it was the brainchild of my precious late wife,

Julie, in the 1990s, and I've been continuing to hold these biannual luncheons every year in memory of her and in honor and tribute to her, and since she has gone home to glory with Christ, and I said,

Jeff, will you please be a speaker at one of my luncheons? And he immediately said, I would love to do that, and I was thrilled to not long after that receive a phone call from one of his assistants there at Grace Life Church of the

Apostles who organized Jeff's speaking engagement at my next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is a church in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and the next luncheon that we'll be discussing in a little bit is going to be held

Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., absolutely free of charge for men and ministry leadership.

This is exclusively a men's luncheon. I have a conviction, a very strong conviction, that the

Bible is clear, that only men are qualified to be leaders in the church, and they are to be leaders in their own home as well, and so therefore, since it is a pastor's luncheon, only men are invited, and I hope that you will attend if you are a man in ministry leadership and can get to Loisville, Pennsylvania this

October 5th. Today, we have Jeff Ond talk about how

Grace Life Church of the Shoals is having their best days as a church 40 years into Pastor Jeff Noblitt's pastorate there, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jeff Noblitt.

Thank you, Chris. It's a joy to be with you today. I look forward to, what, a couple of hours you and I get to throw around the things of God and the truths of Scripture that pertain to a healthy or true local church.

Amen. Well, why don't you first start off with a description of Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in beautiful Muscle Shoals, Alabama? Well, our church is only about 46 years old.

Actually there was a split with another Baptist church. I don't know how familiar most of your listeners would be with Baptists in the

Southeast, but there's a Baptist church. No, there's two Baptist churches on every corner. I guess the best church growth that we've experienced is one congregation splitting and starting a new church.

So there's a lot of that that's gone on, unfortunately. But this was actually a split off, but honestly it was something of a godly remnant that split off of a more liberal church and, bless their hearts, some really good and godly people.

But they needed to be taught, they needed to have a shepherd, and they ended up starting a church here in Muscle Shoals just from the remnant of people that says, can we get back to the

Bible? Can we be Christ -centered and glory of God focused and just do what our evangelical or maybe

Baptist ancestors did as a church? And I happened to walk in the door about three years after that, and just as a college guy, but I was called to preach, and they asked me would

I come on staff, and I've been here 43 years. Praise God. And I love the fact that the

Grace Life Church of the Shoals supports pastors all over, not only the

United States, but all over the world, and I had the great honor and privilege to meet a number of them when

I was at your True Church Conference, and even shared fellowship over lunch and dinner with some of them, and let's not forget breakfast.

First time I ever had chocolate sauce on a biscuit. No, you didn't have chocolate sauce, you had chocolate gravy.

That's right. That's right. It was chocolate gravy, and it was delicious, and I just enjoyed so much meeting these men.

In fact, you must not, I should say, let me forget to get contact information for one of those precious

Polish brethren in Poland who I had an opportunity to meet, and I told him

I wanted to get him on the program, and he seemed excited about it, and then I lost his contact information.

So, perhaps he could give that to me later, and perhaps you know who I'm talking about. He was there at the conference.

There may have been more than one pastor from Poland, but there was certainly one at least. Yes, yes.

Forgive me, his name slips my mind, but I know exactly who you're talking about. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, go to GraceLifeShoals .org, that's S -H -O -A -L -S .org,

GraceLifeShoals .org, and nearby of that church are two landmarks that you might want to pay a visit to, as I did,

Fame Recording Studios and Muscle Shoals Music, which were both places that launched the careers of quite a number of world -renowned

R &B singers and performing artists and musicians and people from other genres of music.

Perhaps I will be disfellowshipped after some of my pastor friends hear me say that I took great joy in visiting those studios, but they are indeed fascinating, and so you will have something else to do during spare time there if you pay a visit to this fine city,

Muscle Shoals. And there's even a documentary, by the way, called Muscle Shoals, about the recording industry in that town.

But I am also thrilled to repeat that you have accepted my request to be my speaker at the next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastors' luncheon, free pastors' luncheon, on Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. And I just urge everybody who is listening, if you are a man in ministry leadership, if you want to register for this, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastors' luncheon in the subject line.

Well, our theme today, as I've already said at the outset of the program, has to do with the very congregation that you've been pastoring for over 40 years, how you are having your best days as a church 40 years into your pastorate.

So why don't you tell us about some of the early years at Grace Life Church and how, after all these decades, you actually believe that you're having your best days now, which is a very good sign for a church that's been in existence that long and with one pastor at least for 40 years.

So if you could. Well, we are, like I said,

I've been here 43 years total, and the church was somewhat unique to start with in that we had an expositional pulpit, expository

Bible preaching from the pulpit, but it was a mixture. There was a mixture of what

I would call reformed, biblically healthy convictions and some very man -centered, pragmatic methodologies, if you will.

And I began to be troubled in my heart about that we were, well, the two were incompatible, that we needed to either be thoroughly biblical or not at all.

And so I began the long, long journey, lost about 600 active members during this early year.

Wow. We have, well, God's replaced them, but it wasn't easy. But we decided that we were going to be like the churches of early

America or maybe the Puritan fathers or maybe our Baptist forefathers, all in the vein of genuine conversion, a true gospel, thorough,

Holy Spirit empowered biblical preaching, a healthy membership, not just packing our roles with people.

Baptists in the South are notorious for having 300 on role, but 80 in attendance. So we did an extensive cleaning up of our roles.

We began to practice compassionate biblical church discipline for unrepentant sin in the body, began to take ownership, if you will, of missions instead of just throwing money at a distant missions agency.

We began to get personally involved, that is, take ownership of world missions.

And so we were radically transforming and reforming the church. And it really ruffled a lot of feathers.

But I just had a strong conviction very early on, Chris, that if we could be decently biblical, that God would use us as a model for others, because generally speaking, though, there are many good brothers out there who love

Christ, pastoring churches, et cetera. Nevertheless, they were just not able to bring their churches to good spiritual, spiritual biblical health.

And I thought, if we can just get there, then maybe God would use us to multiply ourselves or reproduce.

And I am not saying we are the only one, absolutely not. But there are some maybe irreducible minimums that a church imperfectly, but a church should be functioning in convictions.

They should hold methods. They should be performing. Let's say that if you're not rolling on those tracks, you're not true or as true as you ought to be or you're not healthy.

And so we thought if we could get to if we could incarnationally live these things out, two things would happen.

First of all, God would be glorified because we would be functioning on his wisdom, not man's wisdom.

And so he would get the credit, the esteem for our success, because it's not humanly explainable when you're just thoroughly biblical.

And the second thing would be that perhaps God would use then our model to encourage so many other brothers like myself who have this conviction that basically say, how do you get started or what does it look like or how did you get there?

And so that's why anchored in truth ministry sort of just developed on its own, because I'd say pushing 15 to 20 years into our reformations, though we were being rejected by the majority of Baptists in the

South and many general evangelicals too, we begin to get phone calls and contacts.

And when the Internet came along, emails by people who would say, I've been listening to your sermons or reading about your ministry.

Would you help me? Would you talk to me about how I can be on the same journey of reforming my church to be more true to Scripture?

And as time went on, this anchored in truth missions and anchored in truth ministries developed out of requests from others to help them develop their churches to be more biblically spiritually sound.

And a wonderful global church planting ministry has developed out of that.

You know, when you said that you had to go through the membership rolls and start cleaning house and locating those individuals who were absentee members, and it reminded me of a friend of mine, probably 20 years ago, when he went through an eschatological change from his former belief system in dispensationalism.

The leaders wanted to throw him out and they had a church meeting to vote on whether he should remain there or be expelled from his position.

And my friend said that when he was sitting there, he saw more than a dozen strangers who were members of the church.

They were still on the member roll, I should say, and had not darkened the door of the church since he had been the pastor.

And they were there voting on his future. But when it comes to things like this, these very uncomfortable things where you know you're going to be inflicting pain on people, they actually inflicted it upon themselves.

But you are an instrument that is going to bring some kind of discomfort at some level for most of these people.

Isn't it something that men of God have to remember that you are doing no favor, first of all, to allow people to continue on in their lives in a merry, carefree fashion, where they can think they have some kind of good relationship with God, even though they are not in regular attendance with the scheduled gatherings of God's people for worship.

And you just do nothing like many churches do. They just let them go on their way.

They don't want to hurt their feelings. And who knows, some of these absentee members of these churches might even be sending in checks or something every month, and people are satisfied with that.

But isn't that akin to a doctor not telling someone who has cancer that they are terminally ill and they just say, oh, there's nothing wrong with you.

You can just go about your business. This is actually a more serious area than that is, isn't it?

Well, it's really astounding, Chris, that we even have to stop and explain this, because if you've been added to a church, what you're saying is,

God the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel, has powerfully revolutionized my soul, changed me completely, and now the driving purpose of my life is to be centered in Jesus Christ and following him and honoring him.

And the scriptures leave it absolutely clear that the centerpiece of your service for Christ is a local church.

Now, I have some empathy and sympathy with people today because we get it all the time.

Guys will call, contact us and say, honestly, there's not a healthy church in my town. And so I understand why they may not be as attracted to the local church as perhaps they would be if they had a decently healthy church.

But I'm saying that to say this, if God's added you to that church, he's changed your heart.

He's the centerpiece, the joy, the treasure of your life. And for you not to even show up when they meet, it's just astounding when you think about it.

It's just, are you kidding me? I mean, you could not get married and three or four weeks later say,

I'm not going to show up anymore at home. I'm just not doing that. And by the way, and I think this is very biblically valid, your commitment to a local church is greater than your commitment to your spouse, because your spouse may die one day, but the local church will be here until Christ returns.

It is the core of your commitment in life. And so we tried to very lovingly and patiently preach these truths.

And as you were saying, this is a compassion toward the professing believer.

Of course, what you find out is a good number of those are not true believers. You do not have a regenerate membership usually if you take over a church.

That's a whole nother subject. I mean, Chris, we would need 40 hours to cover everything I'd love to cover. But saying all that to say, so you begin to find out when you begin to maybe draw a line in the sand, always with compassion and always with patience.

But to say, you know, at minimal, you should strive to be faithful to the meetings of the church that you belong to.

Church is not somewhere you attend only. It's a place, a family you belong to.

And so you're trying to help them understand that first of all, this is just a willful sin and chastisement from the

Lord will be coming. Secondly, you've professed Christ either through baptism or coming to that church from another church.

And now you're living as if Christ hasn't done anything to you, as if Christ gospel and Christ power is not of any effect.

So the dishonor of God, the dishonor and discrediting of Christ in his gospel, the disservice to the local church family you've pledged to serve, care for, love, even lay down your life for one another.

I mean, all of these things and many more are foundational reasons why you have to be striving toward.

And look, it's a many year process. A lot of pastors forget that it takes many years to see these things become well established.

But like I was saying, we're having our best years now after four decades. My church would run me off if I didn't do these things any longer.

I mean, they have seen the result. They have seen the fruit of making these loving but firm stands on Christ's reputation and on the value of the local church.

So yes, you're exactly right. It's a wonderful service to the people who are in sin by not attending.

But it's also a great service to our Lord because he deserves a better representative than that in the local community.

Amen. We have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody has a question for Pastor Jeff Noblitt, please send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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We'll be right back with Jeff Knoblet right after these messages from our sponsors. The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents

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today and mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Pastor Jeff Noblitt of Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We are talking about how Grace Life Church of the

Shoals is having their best days as a church. Forty years into the pastorate of Jeff Noblitt, if you have questions of your own, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give his first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And, Pastor Jeff, we got to the point where you were clearing out the membership roles, making sure that those who are on your membership roles are truly members, are people who are behaving like members, committed members of the body of Christ, and tell us the next phase in this development.

Well, there was an important realization that we came to maybe 10 to 15 years into my pastorate, and that was, why do we keep seeing such a significant percentage of our membership not attending or living in the kind of open sin that required church discipline?

And so we begin to practice church discipline, and as you might understand, there was a lot of people who had been here a while who had never seen this before, who were very disgruntled, even angry that we were doing such a thing.

And I kept questioning, this can't be right. Why would there be such a high percentage or significant percentage of folks on the membership role either not coming or just living in wanton, open sin?

And, you know, my view of God communicating is not that he speaks audibly or anything, but tongue in cheek.

I like to say God spoke to me, and somebody said, well, was that audible? And I said, no, it's louder than that.

And it was just a realization that we were beginning to open the back door of the church, if you will, and see some purging out of those, quite honestly,

Brother Chris, that didn't even act like they wanted to be Christians. Wow. But I became very convicted that we were very loose and shallow in our methodologies of the front door of the church.

That is, what was our understanding of the gospel, and what was our understanding of genuine conversion?

Now, I'm confident our on -paper theology of the gospel was sound.

But what does that look like in shoe leather? And that's why Anchored in Truth Ministries exists,

Chris. A lot of good brothers have never seen a healthy enough version or a long enough practice of a healthy membership process.

They're good brothers. They mean well, but they need some kind of pattern or example that helps them understand, how can

I be more assured that at least a solid percentage of my new members are genuinely converted, regenerated the spirit, born again

Christians? And so I went on a long journey, if you will, in preaching through the book of Ephesians, and God's providence fit perfectly where we were as we began to fine tune, what should it look like if we have experienced the new birth, if we were truly born again?

And then I began to insatiably study church history and studied the old

Puritan pastors and others. Spurgeon was very critical in my research because my conviction was nothing we were going to do could be unique or unusual.

It had to be in church history because we would be most arrogant to think that we're going to find a biblical pattern for ministry.

That was not lived out by our forefathers, at least somewhere in past church history.

And I found out, for example, that, for example, the Baptist in Georgia in the middle part of the 19th century actually disciplined 75 ,000 members that year.

Unbelievable. And I thought this used to be a common thing in Baptist and evangelical life.

So much so that there was a time when the average Baptist church,

I'm talking about a century ago, century and a half ago or so. But the average Baptist church, if they did not properly discipline members who were in willful sin.

And, Chris, we're not talking about it running a CIA agency or FBI agency to try to find sin.

We're talking about this is blatant. You cannot ignore it. I mean, the guy's just living with a woman who's not his wife or something.

So saying all that to say, I realized in church history, a very careful and thorough process of receiving members and disciplining members are those who profess to be

Christians who are members was very well established in Baptist history and in evangelical history.

So I promise the church as I bring these reforms about, it's going to be thoroughly biblical.

I'm going to be able to show you through the exposition of the text and we're going to find it abundantly in church history.

And so we really cleaned up. It probably honestly was a five, if not eight plus year process of reforming how we receive members.

And it's been probably the foundational issue to us becoming a more healthy or spiritually, biblically healthy local church.

If that's not right, nothing else is going to work. And so that was a huge turning point for us to,

I guess what you would say, Chris, is get our methodologies concerning the gospel conversion and and adding folks to the church to get those methodologies in tune with our theology.

And so that was a very foundational aspect of reforming the church to be healthy. Amen. And once again, folks, these very uncomfortable seasons of church life, when someone is placed under discipline, the goal is to be loving to that person in order to rescue them from a circumstance, which is making it evident that they are on the road to hell.

And I can say firsthand, I know that people who listen to this program every day, I know some of you may be rolling your eyes because you're hearing me tell a story

I've told a number of times. But I was under church discipline during a period of my life when after 18 years of sobriety,

I plunged back into the wickedness of drunkenness on a habitual basis, a scandalous level of drunkenness.

And I was told by the elders of my church, very compassionately and lovingly but sternly, that if I did not make it very clearly evident that I had repented, that I'd repented and given up this life and was back into regular attendance and sobriety, that they would have to be forced to excommunicate me.

And I voluntarily went to Hebron Colony in Boone, North Carolina, a wonderful Christian ministry that has been in existence since World War II.

It came into existence when a Presbyterian pastor who left his denomination because of the encroachment of liberalism into that denomination, he left the denomination, moved down to Boone, North Carolina, and he began to witness

GIs coming home from the war who were drunkards. And he started this ministry, and it's the longest continuously running ministry for men with addictions in the

United States, and it's absolutely free of charge. I cannot pass up opportunities to sing the praises of hebroncolony .org,

and I graduated from that season of being disciplined by them.

And thanks be to God, I have never since leaving that place even had an instance of being overcome with the temptation to drink.

I'm not saying that that is the case with everybody who has had an addiction problem, but right now, so far, that happens to be the situation with me.

So thank God that I am even able to sit at a dinner table with people who are drinking wine, and it doesn't even faze me.

It does not lure me into partaking with them. And so I just wanted to say that church discipline saved my life.

I really believe it. I believe that I would very likely not be living right now if I were not placed under discipline by my loving elders and biblically driven and Christ -honoring elders at Grace Reformed Baptist Church on Long Island.

Just thought I'd throw that out there, Pastor Jeff. Well, Chris, I think that's a verification of your authentication.

That means you really belong to Christ. Those that do not respond to loving discipline from their church are not

His. I do not believe you can long -term harden your neck and refuse the formal steps

Christ laid out for us in the Gospels and refuse those formal steps of discipline and still be one who belongs to Christ.

The practice of church discipline is the means by which God proves and purifies the true church.

And that's why I use that phrase. True does not mean we're the only ones and we've arrived. No, we're still repenting and growing and learning.

And there's a lot of good brothers and churches out there that are striving to be true like we are. But my point is, if you go back to Israel, you have

Israel, then you have Judah. And Judah's the godly remnant. And in the New Testament, you have the wheat among the tares, et cetera, et cetera.

They went out from us that it might be known that they never were really of us. So there's a true church or a remnant church.

And then there's the professing evangelicalism or professing Christendom, if you want to get wider, that quite honestly, when the

Antichrist arrives, most of them are going to line up with him because that's who they truly are. So there's a godly remnant, and I think it has a lot of denominational names on it.

The godly remnant has Presbyterians or Church of God or Baptist or whatever you want to call them.

But there's also always that need for faithful shepherds to be purifying

God's church as they follow Scripture. They cannot do it on their own initiative or on their own wisdom, thoroughly following Scripture.

And like you said earlier, if you love that person, the Bible says the wages of sin is death. It's going to kill them morally.

It's going to kill them mentally, emotionally. It's going to kill a marriage. Ultimately, possibly even their life.

So we're rescuing them. But the primary means of exercising biblical church discipline, our primary purpose,

I should say, is that we are purifying the church and glorifying God by having a more pure church.

And very important, though, secondarily, we are rescuing that soul from the destruction that could come into his life.

Now, I didn't mean to get on here and talk so much about church discipline. But it is a it is a foundational element of healthy church life.

And Chris, what I want to get across is to these brothers. I'm 43 years in this thing and we are prospering because of these things.

So I exist. I live and breathe to prove God's word works.

We don't have to cut short. We don't have to bring the clever ingenuities of this fallen world into the church to be successful.

And not only does it work and not only are we prospering 40 years in this thing, it's easier now.

It's so easy now to pastor a church that's functioning biblically. It's an uphill climb to get there.

And that's why I say always early on in these interviews that we lost 600 people over three different splits because there are difficult days.

But hang in there, brothers. Stay with it. You're never going to be perfect. You're going to stumble some.

Get back up, repent, dust yourself off and say, I want to be God's tool to build a true church for his glory in this world.

Amen. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who has a question. He said,

I was wondering if over those 43 years, any of the members who left because they were angry about some of your changes came back with remorseful and repentant hearts, requesting to be reinstated into membership?

Absolutely. We have many come back and gloriously come back. I'll give you this brief testimony, one of the first formal cases of discipline that we had.

And by the way, Chris, if you and I are in the church together and you see me and I had sort of a short attitude to the waitress in the restaurant, you said, brother, you should have been short to her.

That's church discipline. That's an element of discipline. So discipline covers a lot of things.

But typically when we use the word, we're talking about excommunication. So we had this excommunication.

This man left his wife, was shacked up with another woman, put his furniture in the house.

And the men of his small group were very, very committed to small groups here in our church. They came to me and said, this is what's going on.

We're trying and we're trying. Well, eventually he would not repent. He was removed. Two years later, he contacts me.

He makes an appointment. And he's been out of the church for two years. Haven't heard from him. And I thought, oh, no, he's going to come in here with a gun.

He's going to shoot me. And he walks into my office and very sheepishly and humbly says,

Pastor, I ruined my marriage. But the woman I'm with now, we've both repented.

We've come to faith in Christ. We're actively serving in the church, trying to rebuild my relationship with my children.

But I would have never repented and come back to God had you not disciplined me as you did.

Then he said, can I stand before the church and thank the church for this discipline?

And Chris, really, that was early on. And from that moment onward, my church said, this is right.

We must love people biblically and not just according to our emotions. But yes, we've had a lot of people restored through these years.

Praise God for that. And we have, let's see,

Carl in Lexington, Kentucky. And Carl asks, what do you think needs to be done when other churches in the community that claim to be

Bible believing churches welcome in people who have left your own church, who were underdisciplined and chose not to continue the process and start afresh at other churches?

I know of specific churches who have welcomed such people into their membership, even though they know full well that they were underdisciplined at other congregations.

So what would you do, for instance, Pastor Jeff, if you knew that that was happening at Grace Life Church of the

Shoals? Somebody's underdisciplined and then they just say, well, I've had enough of this. And they go over to some other church that you're familiar with, the evangelical church.

And you know that the elders, in fact, you may even contact the elders and say, just want to let you know that so and so has been in the midst of church discipline for a serious matter.

And I understand that you've actually welcomed them into membership, et cetera. What would you do? Well, I can tell you what we do and I can tell you what we did.

Wow. We've had a lot of that. Wow. Now, Chris, I'm talking about hundreds.

Wow. Hundreds who have been welcomed into membership in our area after we discipline them.

In fact, one church that's about four or five blocks from us put on their marquee out front after we had disciplined a group from our church.

And they put these words on their marquee, as your church thrown you out, we will take you in. Wow. So I thought, well, there's a new method of church growth.

You go after the people that a godly church has disciplined. That's actually a method of suicide for a church to be welcoming in people like that.

Yes. Well, I agree with John MacArthur when he says churches that would do those things are actually non -churches.

Right. And thus my phrase, true church. And true church means you're striving toward the truth.

Never arrive, but you can strive toward it and get on a plateau. So what we did was we tried to inform our people graciously, but clearly, this is totally unacceptable.

This is compromise on their part. And we've just got to keep being what we are and doing what we do.

And here's what began to happen for this dear brother in Kentucky. God began to make us attractive to the true sheep who wanted a strong expositional pulpit.

He wanted a church with healthy membership. He wanted a church with a healthy process of discerning true conversion.

God began to send us gospel humbled people who desired a healthy church life.

And he continually led from us those who just wanted their names on a membership role.

And maybe the cultural Southern Baptist Christian experience, let's say.

So and that's what's so key, Chris. Pastor Brothers out there, you've got to know that God will begin to attract to you the right people.

If you are willing to give up on the wrong people. Amen. Now, just to give a caveat here to make the situation even more complicated.

Obviously, there are churches that exist. Some of our brothers who may be in extreme forms of fundamentalism, who may have put a member under church discipline for an unbiblical reason.

You have heard perhaps that a member of the church has been put under discipline because he was caught listening to opera on his car radio.

Or his wife, although they are very feminine, wears slacks.

Or he has hair that goes over the collar of his shirt.

And you could go on and on and on with some pretty insane legalistic things that somebody might be put under discipline over.

And therefore they say, wait a minute, this is not biblical. This is really tyrannical. I'm leaving.

They go to Grace Life Church of the Shoals. Now, I'm assuming that you believe you would still need to communicate with the elders and explain to them your actions, wouldn't you?

Oh, absolutely. We constantly are contacting the leadership of the churches that the people come to us from.

And if we find out it's something that ludicrous, then we just dismiss it and let them in.

That's the worst of the worst. That's the Phariseeism that our Lord so condemned in the New Testament where they're creating rules that come from man and not from God.

For example, Chris, before we excommunicate somebody, we've got to have very thorough biblical foundation.

And if we don't, we're going to show grace, even if we think we're probably being too liberal or lenient.

We're just not quick on this thing. We have had to discipline a lot of people. But unfortunately, in the early decades, a lot of people made it very easy.

I mean, when you're brazenly drunk every weekend and dozens of church members have seen it and watched it, that's easy.

But even then, if you're trying to repent and grow through it, our arms are around you.

We'll help you through it. You have to be hard -necked and brazen and completely disregard the counsel of the elders and continually live in open, clearly biblical violations before we would make it a matter of public excommunication.

So that would be a terrible and gross perversion of the true biblical doctrine of discipline for these little trivial things that the

Scripture is not clear on. Well, we have to go to our midway break, folks. Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the

FCC requires of them to localize Iron Sharpens Iron and all of their programming geographically to Lake City, Florida.

And they do so with their own public service announcements and other local things, while simultaneously, we on our end are airing our globally heard commercials.

Please use this time wisely. Try to contact as much of our advertisers as you can to let them know you appreciate their sponsorship of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And also send in your questions to Jeff Knoblet. We'll be right back with Pastor Jeff Knoblet after these messages.

The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian, A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity, the debate topic,

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Future of Christendom Conference. The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and will run from Friday evening through all day

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Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

Head to futureofchristendom .org. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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today, purchase generously, and mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Before I return to Jeff Noblitt and our discussion on how the

Lord has continued to bless Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for over 40 years,

I just have a couple of very important announcements to make. First of all, if you love this show, folks, you do not want it to disappear.

You look forward to the guests and topics that we have on the program daily, sometimes even guests and topics that you'll never hear anywhere else.

You look forward to receiving free books when I interview authors and give their books away to listeners who submit questions.

You look forward to receiving free brand -new Bibles when you're a first -time questioner.

And I could go on and on and on. Well, if you really want this show to continue, we need your help.

Go to ironsharpandzionradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

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Simultaneously, the giving to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio plummeted deeply, and we have never bounced back even though these mandates have been lifted.

So we need your help more than ever, please. And I want to also remind you, as much as we urgently need your help financially, please never give your own church where you are a member less money than you normally give your church on the

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As much as I really need your money and really would love to receive it, you must obey God, and these are clear commandments in the

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Providing for my radio show is obviously not a command. But if you do love the show and you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to provide for church and family, you have extra money in the bank collecting interest, you have extra money for benevolent, recreational, and trivial purposes, well, if you really want us to stick around, please go to ironsharpandzionradio .com,

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I believe, I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we're just as much in urgent need of your advertising dollars as we are in your donations.

So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

And please don't forget about the free Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheon featuring my guest today,

Jeff Noblitt, senior pastor of Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries.

This is Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is

Perry County, Pennsylvania. Everything is free of charge. Your admission, your meal, and everyone who is attending will leave with one or possibly even two heavy sacks of brand -new free books that have been donated to me from Christian publishers all over the

United States and United Kingdom, books I've personally selected for the pastors who are attending my luncheon.

And you can't pass that up, especially if you live within traveling distance to Perry County, Pennsylvania.

We hope to see you there if you're a man in ministry leadership. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. I also want to mention that the ministry that is live streaming this program right now,

First Love Radio, which is a ministry of First Love Ministries, they are having a free conference on Saturday and Sunday, August 26th and 27th, at the

Reformed Baptist Church of Tama, Iowa. The conference is featuring

Joe Jackowitz, president of First Love Ministries and pastor of Christ Bible Church of Pleasanton, California, and Austin Huggins, who is pastor of the

First Baptist Church of Baghdad, Florida. The theme is sanctification, how to grow in holiness. That's August 26th and 27th,

Saturday and Sunday at the Reformed Baptist Church of Tama, Iowa. To register for this free event, go to firstloveministries .org,

firstloveministries .org. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful, theologically sound church, no matter where you live on the planet

Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of churches that are biblically faithful, including

Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I've also helped many people all over the world find churches, sometimes even just a few minutes from where they live.

That may be you too, no matter where on the planet Earth you live, if you are without a biblically faithful church home.

Just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Jeff Noblitt, and we are discussing how the

Lord has blessed Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Even after 40 years of the pastor of my guest, Jeff Noblitt, send your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com gives his first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Pastor Jeff, we have

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and Susan Margaret says,

Isn't it very wise counsel to pastors, elders, deacons, and church members to be very prepared when they are in a season where everything appears to be going wonderfully, even as is happening at Grace Life Church of the

Shoals, to be prepared for Satan's attack on such a ministry? Isn't that the time when

Satan wants to attack a faithful church the most, when everything is going well? I think that's a pretty good question.

I'm sorry, I accidentally had you on mute. Are you there? I'm here. Great. I'm assuming you heard the question.

Yes, I'm assuming you heard the question. Yes, I heard the question. That's an excellent point.

What I would like to add as an addendum, that's a wonderful word and a great word of caution, if you will.

Spurgeon once said that if a minister will keep his nose to the grindstone in the first half or so of his ministry, he'll find the last half or third is not so difficult.

And I think there's something to that. There's a sense of a bell curve in reforming a church where certain irreducible minimums, we might say, are foundational things, are established, and you're functioning on them.

Never perfectly, but you're functioning on them. It does get a lot easier.

And I want to say that because, Chris, a lot of brothers have gone through warfare after warfare, and they need to hear, will it ever get better?

And I'm telling you, overwhelmingly, yes, it will. And I'm not saying that Grace Life of the

Shoals or any other long -term healthy church cannot face difficulties toward the latter end.

That could happen. But generally, I think, as a rule, as things are established, the primary reason is because the church membership has matured to where Satan doesn't easily get an inroad.

He needs unregenerate church members, or he needs very carnally acting true

Christians, and I don't think you can stay there long, but it can happen, to get a footing, let's say, and get a hearing.

Give you a brief illustration. We had a man join our church several years ago, and he came from a large city up north, that's all

I'll say, and he oversaw a large company and was very wealthy.

And he moved down here. He was impressed with our ministry. He met a profession here that he was a genuine

Christian and moved his membership to our church. It was within a few months he began to think that we should change the church to function the way that he thought was best.

We always want to hear what people have to say, but I have about a thousand active people here, and so I can't listen to a thousand different voices, obviously.

But we have a thoroughly biblical system that we've developed here that's nothing new.

It's well -established in Scripture and in church history. So he would say it, and he would say it in a way to other leaders of the church, not to me, but to other leaders, like, well, does

Brother Jeff Novot, do you think he's really right here, right there? And they would stop him immediately and say, we don't do that here.

If you've got a question, you can contact the senior pastor and talk to them, but I can't talk to you about your criticism or your corrections.

Well, when you have a body that's that mature, it's much harder for Satan to get an inroad.

So I want to encourage pastors out there, stay the course. Be thoroughly biblical. Find out the foundational elements of biblically healthy church life.

Do those well. And as the seasons and the years roll by, God will build the kind of strength and fortitude, not that it can't happen, but it's far less likely to happen that Satan can get a foothold and cause the kind of troubles and divisions like we experienced in the first 15 or 20 years of our ministry.

Thank you very much, Susan Margaret, for the excellent question. We have

Brewer, B -R -E -W -E -R in Biloxi, Mississippi. And Brewer asks, what are the primary things that you are using as a litmus test for the blessing of God upon your church at this point where you are celebrating how wonderful things are going in the midst of your ministry?

Well, I don't know that I would use the term litmus test. I know what the brother means.

But I would say the overwhelming thing is a permeating spirit of gospel humility.

Very, very often, hundreds of times at least over these last two or three decades, when people come to our

True Church Conference, where we kind of we preach on to an overview of all the things we believe in practice.

And we bring in our partners and our mission associates from all over the world. It's a glorious family reunion is what it is.

Well, we often have a lot of guests and people who come and everyone's welcome. And here's what I hear, Chris, all the time.

I hear things like, man, the music was wonderful and the preaching was expositional and sound.

The theology was true. And then they'll say this. But I was really impressed when I met your people.

And that's what blesses me the most. Jesus did not say all men will know you're my disciples because you can articulate theology correctly.

That's important. But he did say they would know by the love you have one for another. And the devotion and the love and the service element of this church is so special.

And it's not me. It's God. But it's so special. It vindicates my doctrine. And so that's that's what

I would say is the litmus test is an ongoing gospel humility where no one cares who gets the credit, who's in charge.

They're just glad to get in on serving Christ in their local church. And I have an army of servants.

I'm just super blessed. I stand on the shoulders of a gospel laity. So the church is indeed, as Paul said about the

Corinthians, our letter known and read of all men. And if I might just say this and throw this in, we have wonderful, gifted men who are great preachers and writers who help us to keep the theological parameters, the theological foundations firm.

We need those brothers. But what we don't have enough of is long term proven pastors who can help brothers and mentor brothers in the actual outworking of that theology in the life of the local church.

The scripture is not primarily written to increase our knowledge, but to guide our footsteps and primarily our footsteps as we are serving and working in a healthy local church.

Great. And let's see here, we have another listener.

I just had it in front of me and it just escaped me. Oh, here it is.

I don't know if he pronounces it Stephen or Stephan because it's with a PH. But Stephan in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York has to say, do you believe in the importance of a plurality of elders?

And I'm assuming a church that is as large as yours must have that. Yes, we do function under the oversight of elders here.

That's another reform that we had to put in place. Traditionally in the southeast,

Baptist churches have one pastor and is a dear, dear man of God that I respect a lot.

Who's in heaven, Dr. W .A. Criswell, who pastored First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, used to say that the senior pastor is a benevolent dictator.

Well, I'm not going to argue with Dr. Criswell, but I would say that in addition to that, there needs to be a body of men who function equally with the preaching pastor.

I do believe there's a leader among equals. That's John MacArthur's view. That's my view based on gifts and calling.

And he is the primary preaching pastor of the church. But yes, we have 12 other men who serve alongside me, at least 12 at this time.

We don't have a definite number, but that's how many we have at this time who serve in the overseeing of the church with me.

And then we have deacons who work primarily through our small groups to minister to the body in service needs.

Well, I don't want to take any more listener questions right now until you have more time to be more detailed with your praise reports about how and why a

Grace Life Church of the Shoals is having its best days over 40 years into your pastorate there.

Well, Chris, one of the first things I would say is you have to make sure that you are relying on the things that are effectual and important today.

And they were also effectual and important one, two, three, four, five, six, 700 years ago, whatever it may be.

And also they are effectual and foundational for the future. In other words, some things don't change.

And we have to make sure we're not just giving a wink and a nod to sound doctrine and we put that in a file somewhere and it gathers dust.

But we really are striving to find the main, if I would say, categories or the main tracks that a local church is to be functioning on, because the scripture makes it so clear that it should be functioning on those.

And then do those well. And then add the other things that a church may or may not do, because scripture doesn't say they're wrong, but scripture doesn't teach they're essential.

And so if I might elaborate, I use the illustration of a wheel. And you have to be careful with even systematic theology and illustrations, because all of our attempts to organize

God's truth has weakness. Yes, especially when we're trying to describe the Trinity. Well, are the five points of Calvinism reformed theology?

That's very helpful. But there's challenging elements to the exposition of each book to make them squeeze into that perfectly.

So I'm saying all that saying as a preface to my wheel illustration.

So there are weaknesses, but I do think it's helpful. I'll run through it real quickly. The hub of the wheel is the most important because all the driving power comes from the hub of the wheel.

And the hub of the wheel of the local church is the preaching of the word and the power of the spirit. That's it.

That's where God, through his Holy Spirit, transforms people, radically humbling them under the weight of their sin, but at the same time giving them a great joy and contentment and rest in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

And when you have people who are wrought upon by strong, faithful, spirit -empowered preaching of the word, you have people who will follow you anywhere if you're biblical.

So that's the hub of the wheel. Then there's an inner hub around that hub, or I might say an outside hub around the hub, or not out to the rim of the wheel, just an element around the inner hub that I call competent leadership.

As you're preaching the word and the power of the spirit, you may not have a formal elder body yet.

You may be like Paul in Corinth, where he just had the household of Stephanus and others who were giving leadership, but the church just hadn't come along far enough to identify and install elders at this point.

So I don't care what you call them, but you need to be looking for the men that God seems to be working on, humbling, calling them aside to be your core team.

So you have the hub of the wheel, preaching the word and the power of the spirit, and then around that inner hub you have competent leadership.

Then you have three spokes that come out. The first spoke would be every member of ministry through small groups, where the ministry the scripture requires has the biblical environment to flourish and prosper, people ministering one to another, caring for one another.

And our strategy statement for that spoke of small group ministry is that we provide fellowship for evangelism, discipleship, and meeting individual needs.

And God's blessed us with an army of people through small groups who care for people, so that it's become more and more rare that the elders even get involved in body life because they're caring one for another.

Now, a second spoke coming out from the hub would be local church -centered missions.

Sometimes we use the phrase personalized strategic world missions. And what we mean by that is where your local church takes ownership and personal responsibility to be involved in spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth and planting or revitalizing biblically, spiritually healthy local

New Testament churches. Then the third spoke in the wheel coming out from the hub would be what

I call home life discipleship. And all we mean there, we don't mean a real structured, organized home family devotional system.

That's fine if you do that. But the point we mean by home life discipleship is you take what you learn from church home with you.

And the head of the household is talking about it during the week, sharing the scripture he's memorizing, making application to daily family life from the word of God as he's brought it home from his church elders.

So there you have the hub of the wheel, three spokes, and then the outer rim says spiritual empowerment.

If the Holy Spirit is not empowering this, it's just another system.

It might make a good book, but it's worthless. The Spirit of God has got to be empowering this.

And Chris, I'm confident that comes from the leading pastors desperately and wholly relying on the

Spirit of God, not their ingenuity, not their cleverness. God, your spirit has to empower these biblical truths and methods or nothing good's going to happen.

And if and when he does, the outside of the realm, I have these words. That's a

God glorifying local church. In other words, when people look at your church, visit your church, meet your people, analyze what you're doing.

They have to be there. They're wrought upon to say man's not doing this. God must be doing this.

A God glorifying local church. And then also around the outside of the wheel, the words, a church

God will use as a pattern for others, because we desperately need more healthy or true churches to be mentoring and encouraging, especially our young pastors to stay on a thoroughly biblical course.

God will bless it. Amen. We have a listener in Cooperstown, New York, the home of the

Baseball Hall of Fame. Her name is Gertie. And I'm assuming that may be a nickname for Gertrude.

I don't know that for a fact. But Gertie asks, I happen to be a complementarian in my understanding of exclusively male headship in the church.

But sometimes churches who have this very biblical view abuse it, and they do not offer any opportunities for women to use their gifts in the church.

I was wondering how Grace Life Church of the Shoals takes advantage of the fact that there are gifted women, and how do you use their gifts in ministry in the congregation?

Well, that's an interesting question, because we are experiencing, as I speak, somewhat of an awakening among our ladies following the biblical teaching of Titus 2 -4, that the older ladies are to teach the younger ladies, actually women's transplation,

I should say, to teach them to love their husbands, love their children, and in effect be good keepers of their home.

That's a paraphrase, but that's where he's going. Now, that's an interesting thing because that's not the happening thing in the culture at all.

Yet we've seen here that God is stirring among a lot of our ladies who've been with us for decades, that we've got to do better here at being very intentional of the older ladies mentoring the younger ladies in these specific areas.

Now, in addition to this awakening we have right now, for example, we have about 300 women signed up already for a

Sunday night fellowship around the principle of mentoring. Wow. That's a congregation in and of itself.

It's received very little promotion. Just as I preached through the word, my wife's kind of heading it up, and God's just moving, that's all

I can tell you. Now, but in addition to that, week in and week out, we have about 35 women small groups who are all led by two to four typically older ladies.

So there's vast, exhaustive caring, serving, discipling, evangelizing going on in those small groups.

And not just in the hour they meet on Sunday morning for Bible study, but it's really a 24 -hour day, seven -day -a -week ministry as those small group ladies or the men, whichever it may be, are contacting, caring, holding each other accountable, serving, helping the hurting, whatever the ministry need might be.

So that would be a primary or a foundational element of our lay ministry or what

I call every member ministry is the ladies in their small groups and the men in their small groups.

Now, we do not allow women to exercise authority over men, and particularly in the area of preaching or establishing of doctrine.

But there are exhaustive... Matter of fact, I think most of our ladies would say, we have enough.

They're not looking for something else, but they're very satisfied and very thankful for the vitality and encouragement and strengthening they get, particularly through the ladies' small groups.

Great. And we have Maxine in Ocean City, New Jersey, who asks,

I am not a believer in denominations, but I believe in the importance of like -minded churches being closely connected in many ways so that they can have iron sharpening iron, just like the name of this program suggests.

I think that it can be dangerous for a church to be an island unto itself, and it can have a tendency to grow more cult -like when they don't have enough healthy relationships with other like -minded churches.

Would you be on the same page with me on that? Yeah, exactly.

Absolutely, I would. We formally separated from the Southern Baptist Convention or the

Southern Baptist Denomination just a few years ago. But even before that formal break, we were very, very loosely connected.

And our purpose in breaking was really missions. The purpose of the

Southern Baptist Denomination or Convention is to pool our monies and resources and manpower and help plant churches and do missions around the world.

However, though there are so many good and godly brothers who are pastors of Southern Baptist churches and many members of Southern Baptist churches who love

Christ, and I'm always grateful to all of them, but in the huge, big tent that has become

Southern Baptist, there is a lot of false doctrine and a lot of mildly biblical methods, you might say.

And so we found that we just could not, with a clear conscience before our Lord, join hands and resources when we didn't really know whose doctrine is being taught and whose structures and methods are being established as we do missions.

So to do missions together, you've got to agree on some things. Primarily, of course, your doctrine, but there has to be some agreement on methodologies within the local church, obviously the ordinances, etc.

So we had already been experiencing this growing family of churches and pastors who would contact us and say, can we connect with you guys at Grace Life Church of the

Shoals and do missions together, be mentored together, hold each other accountable. And again,

Chris, I didn't have a vision for this to happen. It simply happened from people contacting us and asking if they could connect with us.

And so we've at one level or another. Last time I checked, we had 400 and something, I think, churches that were affiliated loosely and probably more like 50 or so that are more seriously in a long term commitment of fellowshipping together, sharpening one another.

And I love your name, your program, Iron Sharpens Iron, because that's what we're doing at Anchored in Truth. And so we're fellowshipping together, sharpening each other and doing missions together.

Well, praise God. Thank you, Maxine. And we're going to our final break. If you have any intention to submit a question to Jeff Knoblet, please do it very soon because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our e -mail address again is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves personal and private matter.

We'll be right back with Jeff Knoblet. Don't go away. The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents

The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian, A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity.

The debate topic, Is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's Church?

So come join us for the 6th Future of Christendom conference. The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and will run from Friday evening through all day

Saturday with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reform Bible Church. This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching with a theme of the

Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

Head to futureofchristendom .org. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

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

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, 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 Reform 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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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider

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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

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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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We're now back with Pastor Jeff Noblitt of Grace Life Church of the Shoals, who is also the founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries, and my next keynote speaker at the next biannual

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. And I am so thrilled and so grateful to God and so grateful to Pastor Jeff that he has accepted this invitation to speak this

October, and I know that everyone in attendance will be blessed richly. And I'd like to give our email address again.

If you want to squeeze in an email before we run out of time, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

And we do have Gasper in Laurel, Mississippi. Wow, that's the only city in Mississippi that I've actually been to.

I wonder if you, Gasper, are aware of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, a very fine, biblically faithful congregation pastored by Carrie Kimbrell.

And I also wonder if you know about Mimmo's Italian Restaurant. I'm a New Yorker by origin, even though I live in Pennsylvania now, and I'm very fussy about Italian food.

Mimmo's in Laurel, Mississippi, is one of the best Italian restaurants I've ever been to because it happens to be owned by an

Italian immigrant. But anyway, Gasper says,

How do you balance yourself when you compare your own congregation to others and prevent yourself from being lifted up into a sinful area of pride?

Please don't think I'm accusing you of doing that now, but I was just wondering how not only pastors but even church members should also not only be grateful to the wonderful things going on in their church, but be careful not to exalt themselves above other churches.

And again, I had you on mute again, brother. Sorry about that. The question, are we going now?

Yes. Okay, that is a great question. You would have to understand, how shall

I say it, the torturous suffering of reforming a church and losing 600 faithful members over about a 20 -year span in a town of 8 ,000 people, which means you saw people who left your church angry, mad at you.

You saw them when you went to Walmart. You saw them when you went out to eat. And it was just difficult.

Here's what I'm saying. The core of my church that has been with me a long time have suffered for the truth.

They really have. They've been antagonistic things from fellow workers in the plants or the offices, etc.,

for going to church here, for staying here when we were trying to stand on things that were not typical in our

Southern culture. So God humbled us a lot and often in those early years, and he still does.

Are we exempt from pride? No. Could we get arrogant? Sure we could. But we strive toward repentance because we say the things we say in the same vein that Paul would say when he says, follow my example.

Paul didn't mean he was perfect. He's just saying we're walking on a pattern that we fail some, but we stay on that pattern.

And we see, Chris, so many churches, so many pastors who say these things won't work.

They won't work. The only reason I try to give this testimony that 43 years in,

God's blessing, not to puff us up, not to be braggadocious, but to say, yes, it does work.

You can survive it. God will bless. So don't be afraid of staying through the fire and through the storms and through the desertions, through the church splits, whatever might come from standing on the truth, that there's life at the end that is glorious.

There's nothing like a imperfect, needing to repent a lot, but biblically healthy local church family.

So we exist to show that with all of our warts and failures and need for continual repentance, because when we get saved, we become repenters.

We didn't just repent. We became repenters. In view of all of our weaknesses and struggles, you can follow the path, and God can and will bless his church if we strive to be biblically obedient.

Amen. I can't remember who was the author of a booklet I saw years ago, but the title of the booklet was

The Unrepenting Repenter. And I remember it was an excellent book.

I just can't remember who wrote it. Well, I'd like you to summarize before we run out of time, what you most want etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners today,

Pastor Jeff, before we go off the air. Well, everything is the glory of God, or the glory of God is everything.

We must have an intentional glory of God focus, and God is most glorified in his

Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Son's preeminent work of building his church. So we must be cooperative with Christ in building that church, his way, by his power, for his glory.

Everything in time, now listen to me, and for eternity is going to be around the church.

Now don't misunderstand me. Christ is the preeminent one, but his church is his preeminent work. So he brings us together with him in the eternal state, his church with him, the exalted

Christ, in glory forever. So we need to give the church our very best to make sure we are thoroughly biblical, glory of God focus,

Christ honoring, preaching the word based, every member of ministry in function, and world missions in passion.

That would be my final word, Chris. Well, I want to make sure once again that everybody listening knows, in case they are living in an area near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or if you are visiting that area, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones in or near that area, go to Grace Life Shoals.

Grace Life Shoals, and that's spelled S -H -O -A -L -S dot org.

Grace Life Shoals, Shoals dot org. And if you pay them a visit, mention that you heard about them from Chris Arms and of Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

I want to thank you so much, Pastor Jeff, for once again doing such a remarkable job as my guest today, and I eagerly look forward to you coming back to the program many times in the future.

My studio door is always open to you, brother. Thank you, Brother Chris. I look forward to coming to the

Northland and fellowshipping with some good brothers up there. Amen, and don't forget, folks, that's Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m., at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County. Pastor Jeff Knoblet will be my keynote speaker at the next biannual

Iron Trap and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon. Everything's for free. If you're a man in ministry leadership, send me an email to and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.

Once again, I want to thank Pastor Jeff for being my guest. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater