Here's That White Pill You Ordered - On the Local Church

All right, everybody, let's get started today. This is gonna be a good week. I can just feel it. There's something in the air.

I can just smell it. There's something in the air. That's right, I saw Ben Delwarey, he was commenting on how he always is fooled by fake spring.

And me too, I'm always fooled by fake spring. You get those few days in a row of nice warm weather, you start to smell the spring coming and all that kind of stuff.

And then it gets cold again. It's always the same. No matter how many times it happens, I'm always fooled by it.

In fact, where I live, my house is in the backyard. There's like a swampy area beyond my borders.

And there's frogs that wake up in the spring. And you can hear just like thousands and thousands of frogs.

And I always get scared because I'm like, oh no, it's gonna get cold next week. And then the frogs are all gonna die. But I know they're not gonna die because they survive every year.

But yet I'm still worried about these frogs all the time. In any case, beautiful, beautiful sound.

Right now they're just doing the little croaking thing. But then eventually they start tweeting almost.

It sounds wonderful. Anyway, I just wanted to drop some white pills today. You know what

I mean? I've got some aggressive stuff coming. You know what I mean? I've got some plans. I've got some things that I'm doing that are gonna be aggressive again.

But I just wanted to white pill everybody with just a lot of positivity today because I really believe this.

And I think it could help a lot of people because I get messages all the time about people that are thanking me for my content.

Very gracious messages. I'm very grateful to get them. And then they say, you know, I went to this church and I thought it was a good church.

And then they started saying some things. And so I'm grateful that I don't have to go to that church anymore. Or that I found your channel because I was a little bit hesitant.

And I'm not gonna go to that church now. So I'm grateful for what you've done. And that could be totally fine.

You know, I'm not saying that that's wrong. That's the wrong move. Because obviously I didn't visit the church. You did. So you know more about what's going on.

But I always kind of feel a little, I don't know, just like not good about that.

Because here's the reality, guys. It's hard to find a good church.

It really is. And it's especially hard to find a good church if you are expecting that church to really be in agreement with you on a lot of the kind of stuff that I talk about.

Now some of it is non -negotiable, right? If you've got a church that's soft peddling female pastors, you know, homosexuality, abortion, you gotta get as far away from those places as possible.

Right? It's as simple as that. There are some non -negotiables. But there are a lot of negotiables too.

You know what I mean? And I think that, you know, obviously I go pretty hard on the woke church stuff. Well, I used to anyway.

And I personally would not attend a woke church. There's just no way that I would put my kids at that kind of risk.

That being said, sometimes pastors will say woke -ish type things.

And that is not the same as attending a woke church, at least in my opinion. And so I could put up with a lot of woke -ish type stuff.

And of course it depends on the details, but I could put up with a lot of that because I just don't expect everyone to have the same opinions on some of that stuff that I do.

You know what I mean? I don't care about racism. I just don't. It's just a non -factor in my life.

It's such a non -factor in the culture. It is one of the most unacceptable things that you can possibly be labeled as.

You're labeled as a racist, that might as well, you know, that's a scarlet letter. You know what I mean? It's the most unacceptable thing in our culture.

So to pretend like it's this big problem that there's all these racists out there, it's just insane, right? But I don't expect everyone to be in the same wavelength.

There's a lot of well -meaning people that aren't woke, but they are concerned with racism and they're concerned from an honest place.

I personally don't care about that and I don't want my kids to think that it's a big problem. So I couldn't attend a woke church in good conscience, but I could put up with someone saying woke -ish things depending on the context, depending on the details.

And so I just wanna encourage you, like we believe things that pretty much every

Christian believed before 1920, 1940, maybe even. So it's very basic Christianity, especially about the government

Christian nationalism. You know, I saw Stephen Wolf retweeting someone that had this really strong concern about how, look,

Christ has all the power already. He doesn't need us to get in power. And it's like, it's just such a basic error. It's like, you know,

God uses people. He deals with governments.

He uses his kingly powers through like vice regents. And, you know, he does it in a mediatorial way.

Like this is basic stuff that everyone used to believe, but now it becomes controversial or it becomes a question.

Lots of Christians now don't understand that. They don't understand that God in Romans 13 was actually finishing a thought from Romans 12.

This is very common. Obviously God's, you know, is a God of logic and order and he speaks in a way that he can be understood.

Romans 13 means what it does because Romans 12 is there too. And Romans 12 says, look, don't exercise vengeance, beloved, because vengeance is mine, says the

Lord. By the way, this is my revenger. This is what I use for vengeance. It's the civil governing authority.

And so they're gonna, they work for me and they should be doing my will, my bidding.

It's a complete thought. But the thing is, everyone used to know that. That was basic. That was milk back in the old days.

Now it's not milk anymore. So I don't expect everyone that I meet that's a

Christian to understand that. And I think that it's not that the bar is too high. It's just that we've been really, we gotta understand, we've had a number done on us.

Your pastors have had a number done on them. And so there are things now that might seem basic to you that people, you know, maybe they don't understand, maybe they do understand, but they disagree.

And they have some concerns that are really not valid concerns, but they're concerns. And you gotta understand where people are coming from, right?

And the whole point of this video is, if you have a church, right, if you have a church, and you've got theological disagreements with the pastors of that church, and it's a good church though, it's a loving congregation, it's a supportive congregation, it's a congregation that practices hospitality that you know has your best interests in mind, your soul and the condition of your soul is important to them, and they have some theological disagreements with you, it's not always the case that you have to leave that church.

You can do just fine in a church like that. And it depends, of course, obviously, it depends.

But I think there's a blessing associated sometimes with theological disagreement.

Now, don't hear me saying that theological disagreement is good. It is not good.

And so if we didn't have theological disagreement, we would be in a better situation than we are, in my opinion.

But we do have it. And though it's not ideal, there are blessings there.

Because you end up having to love and relate to people that sometimes oppose certain things that you hold dear.

Now, of course, there's a sliding scale. There's certain things that you cannot put up with. And I get that. I talk to people all the time that have these kinds of issues, and they are considering leaving the church.

And while I always say, hey, that should be a last resort, sometimes I totally understand because those are non -negotiables for me as well.

You've got to decide what those non -negotiables are for yourself. But let me encourage you that chances are you can put up with a lot more than you think you can.

And I think there's a blessing associated with that. I think there's a blessing associated with those kinds of divisions.

Let me give you an example. This is not ideal, okay? This is not ideal.

But I go to a church that does not practice infant baptism. And I believe in infant baptism.

All my kids are baptized and all of that. But they don't practice it.

And they probably think it's dangerous. I haven't really talked to them in depth about how dangerous they think it is because I came to this church only recently.

But I would assume they think it's a sin. You know, if you're not doing something you should do or doing something you shouldn't do, it's a sin, right?

And so that's a pretty big theological disagreement. And I'll be honest, if there was a valid church close by that I could attend that was an infant

Baptist church, I would be at that church, there's just no question about it. I would not be at the church I'm at now. But there isn't.

I'd have to drive an hour or more to get to a infant Baptist church. Now, to some people, that's worth it.

And I have no problem with that. But for me and my family with my young kids, there's a benefit in being in a community with other kids and other families and other things that you could go to each other's houses very easily and all this kind of stuff.

So I've decided to stay. But even in that disagreement, like it's not ideal, don't hear me saying it's ideal,

I wish it wasn't that way, right? I wish they were infant Baptists, right? I wish they would baptize their babies, that's what I wish.

But even in that, there's a blessing, I think, that happens when we're relating to each other and they've got their

Baptist problems and I've got my problems or whatever.

And yet we still come together to worship the Lord, we still relate to each other in love and understanding.

And I think that there's a blessing associated with that, where there's division and there's some things that are said from the pulpit that I definitely don't agree with.

You know what I mean? There's definitely things that are said from the pulpit at my church that I don't agree with. But I think there's a blessing associated with hearing that and accepting it, thinking it through, thinking about the heart behind it, the person making these cases that I don't agree with, trying to see it from their perspective and loving them anyway, being there if they needed me anyway, you know, that kind of stuff.

Like, I think that there's a blessing associated with that. I think that there's a blessing associated with that.

I don't know how else to say it. And I would argue, I haven't asked them about this, but my pastors, there are things that I do and say that I'm sure they do one of these, you know what

I mean? Constantly. But I think they get a blessing by having to put up with me, you know what

I mean? Having to love me, having to try to understand my perspective. And we've had conversations where there's definitely disagreement.

But what you see out there in the disagreement is not necessarily always exactly where the person is coming from, where their heart is coming from, what they desire, what they cherish, what they love, what their goals are.

And I think they got a blessing for being willing to hear what I had to say and not just what

I put out on the internet and stuff like that. There's a blessing associated with that.

And so again, hear me saying, these disagreements are not good necessarily, but I think being a

Christian with other Christians that disagree with you and having to practice doing that is very good.

And by the way, the other thing about this that's good is that you can get checked.

You know what I mean? You can get checked and it could be that you're still right or it could be that maybe you haven't thought about certain things and maybe there's some blind spots that you have and maybe there's an alternative perspective that maybe they're not correct, but they can at least help you be more correct or at least think things through more, or maybe, just maybe, their pastors are correct.

Just maybe, right? Imagine that. So all that to say,

I think that as Christians, we live a life of conflict, right?

I mean, there's just conflict everywhere and we wanna be as peaceful as we can. As long as it depends on us, be at peace with people.

And I think that being at a church where you have some disagreements and they could be even significant, maybe they don't rise to the level of,

I can't put up with it, but they're significant. I think that practicing love in conflict is necessary.

And so you might be tempted, and this is the thing, like I talk to people like this all the time and I say, you know, here's the thing.

If you're coming home every day from your pastor's sermon and you're just doing one of these two, you know, it's not just the pastors that do this from their flock, it's also the flock that does this from their pastors, right?

But if you're doing this every day, I think you should consider a couple options. You can't get over it, right?

Like I'm saying, like you're going like this, you're complaining with your wife, your kid's here, you're complaining, like there's a couple options here.

Number one, the problem could be you. The problem really could be you. If you can't get over it, these disagreements, maybe you're the problem.

Maybe not, but maybe. And then I tell them, you know, look, if you really take a good look in the mirror and you realize, you know, this is a problem, this is not really,

I mean, maybe I'm part of the problem, but maybe I'm not the full problem, the primary problem. I say, you've got two options.

You can either get the freak over it and man up and put up with it and not, you know, let your kids see you, how frustrated you are every time you hear the word of God preached because that's no bueno.

You can get over it or you have to move on. It's as simple as that.

And so if you hear something from the pulpit and you can't get over it, maybe you're the freaking problem and maybe you do need to get over it.

Or maybe you're at the point where a man needs to know his limits and you have to move on. But I would argue that lots of times, especially if it's not like a major issue, lots of times it's probably your problem.

It's probably your problem because when you're hearing the word preached and there's something you disagree with,

I think self -control is probably one of the fruits of the spirit that needs to be practiced the most consistently with people.

Self -control. You don't have to facepalm every time your pastor says something you disagree with.

You can actually take it as a blessing and say, hmm, you know, I wonder why he's saying that and let me think about that.

And by the way, if you can't get over it, maybe you should go talk to him. How about that? Go talk to him.

Because maybe he didn't say it right. Maybe there's something different than what you thought. Maybe, like, there's so, just talking to people solves so many problems.

Remember when I was managing a sales team, you know, and 50 % of my job was solving conflicts between people.

And it always started the same way. Someone would come to me and say, hey, Adam, you know, so -and -so did this. His name was

Zach. Zach was the big problem child. Zach did this. And, you know, he should have done that. And every single time

I would start, I'd say, did you talk to Zach? And the answer almost every single time was no.

And I'd say, okay, go talk to Zach. And then if there's still a problem, we can talk about it.

Go freaking talk to Zach. Put on your big boy pants. You gotta talk to people.

And I think that that's another blessing of going to a church where there's theological disagreement with the pastor.

It forces you. I think it forces you to talk to your pastor more and to hear him out.

And you know what? It's not smart to always think that you know it all and that you've got all the wisdom and that you know exactly what he meant, even though you know how many times people have misinterpreted your words and it was something you didn't mean, but they interpreted it a completely different way.

Like, it forces you to talk to him. It forces you to respect him. Because I respect my pastors, even though they don't baptize babies.

You know what I mean? I respect my pastors. They're dead wrong on that. And I think they're sinning, but I respect them.

And I understand that they're doing the best they can. Look, pastors are just people. They're just people.

They've got an important job, but they're just people. I don't know, man.

Let me encourage you, man. If you've got a good church otherwise, but then there's theological disagreements, of course it depends on the, you heard, you understand,

I don't have to qualify myself. But I'd argue that that could be a blessing, my friend. That could be a blessing to your life, to your soul.

People like to talk about the church as the group of a gathering of people, an assembly, and it is those things.

And so you should put a high value on that, a really high value on that. Obviously, again, discounting heresies and stuff like that.

I don't know. Probably lots of you guys find yourself in these situations from time to time, and I just want to encourage you that it is okay.

It is not necessarily compromise to stay at a church where you've got theological disagreements with the pastor.

Everyone needs to know their limits, of course, and you need to be clear on those limits, but it forces you to, in my opinion, it can force you to grow in your sanctification, in your personal walk with the

Lord, and not even just your personal walk, but our community's walk with the

Lord, because the church is an assembly, and so we've got to interact with each other, and we've got to do these things.

I want to encourage you that maybe it's right to stay. Again, so many of you have examples that I would be like, get the heck out of that church, right?

So many. But not as many have that as they think they have that.

You know what I mean? I guess. I don't know. Anyway, I hope this episode made sense. I hope you could hear where I'm coming from with this, and I hope it was helpful.