April 29, 2019 Show with Noel & Denise Enete on “How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You”

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

Proverbs 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 who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 29th day of April 2019.

And I am just getting back yesterday, last night, from the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. As many of you have been seeing from my

Facebook posts, I had a really blessed time. I was able to reconnect with old friends and some of my modern -day heroes that I have interviewed on this program in the past, some of whom

I've never met in person and some of whom I haven't seen in years. And there were others that I met for the first time, like Kevin DeYoung and others, who

I hope to interview in the future. But it was a really wonderful blessing, and it was a blessing seeing

Matt Stoll from the IRBS Theological Seminary, who had an exhibitor's booth right near mine, and others.

So it is something that I'm going to be looking forward to attending next year as well.

That's the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. And I hope to enjoy the upcoming conferences

I'm going to just as much. But we'll be talking about those future conferences during our midway break here later on.

But once in a while, a listener, an avid listener, a faithful listener of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, who is excited about what we do here and spreads the word about what we do here and the guests and topics that we have, once in a while we have such a listener recommend guests to be interviewed.

And today is that case. We have a wonderful listener in Texas, Maggie Conley, who contacted me and strongly urged me to interview her brother and sister -in -law,

Noelle and Denise Enett. And they are going to be addressing their book,

How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time,

Noelle and Denise Enett. Thank you. And by the way, I forgot to ask you, is it

Noelle like the Christmas song or Noel like Noel Coward? It's the latter, just Noel.

Okay, sorry about the mispronunciation in the beginning. Well, before we get into the topic of your book,

How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You, I want, as we normally do when we have first time guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I want each of you to give a summary of your salvation testimony, what kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in and what kind of providential circumstances or sovereign

Lord raised up in your life that he used to draw you to himself and save you. And I'll leave it up to you two who is going to go first.

Should it be Denise or Noel? I think Noel. Okay, Noel.

I was raised in a lukewarm kind of Christian family.

They would give lip service to church and go to church from time to time, but there was no real power there.

I made a profession of faith in second grade, very young. Then when I was off in college at Cal Poly, I had a campus minister from off campus meet with me several times, and he really shared the strength of the gospel with me.

And I got a real clear idea of what God's grace was all about.

And it's at that time that I rededicated my life, got involved in that church off campus.

And one day when I was singing in the church, Denise and her two roommates came in the back of the church and sat over on the left side of the church.

And, you know, the whole service I was distracted. There was this glow coming from the left side of the church.

I couldn't keep my eyes off of that illuminated part of the building.

And at the end of the service, the pastor said, If anyone has recently made a decision for Christ and would like to make it public, come on down to the front.

And, you know, this girl came down to the front, one of those three. It was

Denise. And, you know, I was looking at her there, and I don't know what, but suddenly

I was burdened to do follow -up. So he did.

But I was raised in a home where we went to a really liberal church, so it never really got to me.

I never really heard the gospel. But I was so glad. I went to Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo.

I was really glad not to go to church for a while. And for the first two years, I didn't go.

But the good thing about being raised in a home where you do go to church, you start to sort of miss that.

So that's sort of a good thing. So when I was coming back for my third year at Cal Poly, I noticed

Campus Crusades for Christ booth. And I was curious, and I thought,

Okay, let me go see what this is about. And after a series of interviews with them,

I accepted Christ as my Savior. And they were the ones that told me I need to get involved in the church too.

So I started. That was the first Sunday I went after my acceptance of the

Lord as my Savior. And so I went to this church, and he said to come forward if you want to make it public.

And that's how I met Noel. He was good at follow -ups.

So you basically stalked her after you saw her go forward on an altar call. Well, I wouldn't use that word.

Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, how long after your first meeting did you two start to court one another?

And eventually, how soon did you get married? Well, it was quite fast.

We had a week -long evangelistic meeting in this church. So he took me every night to the evangelistic meeting.

So that was sort of, you know, jumped through the cannon really fast.

But we didn't kiss or anything for that whole week. And then we just started dating, right?

Yeah, then it was three months until we got engaged, and a total of seven months until we got married.

Pretty fast. Praise God. And may I ask where the both of you attend church now?

We attend a church in Irvine, California, called Terra Nova. It's the combining of two existing startup churches.

And they came up with the name. Nova is an astronomical event where two stars come close together and make a third brighter star that's brighter than the other two.

So that's the way they chose the name. And it may have something to do with the glow that was coming off of your someday -to -be wife that you met.

That glow has followed for years now. Well, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Noel felt called to teach the Bible, so we ended up getting married after our third year and then transferring to a

Bible college. We didn't finish up at Cal Poly. We went to a

Bible college in Pennsylvania, by the way. Where was that? Baptist Bible College in Clark Summit.

Okay, yes, I've heard of it. It's called Clark Summit University now.

Then we went to Dallas Theological Seminary. I got a Ph .D. there. Denise got half of her

Master's there and then delivered twins. After the kids got old enough, she did her

Master's in Doctrine and Psychology and was a Christian psychologist. Oh, wow.

Are you still doing that today, Denise? When we moved from Seal Beach, I had a private practice there for years.

But then we moved, and so I closed my practice because it was too far away. So ever since then, we've combined our ministries.

Our focus is how to help people have a good, quiet time with God, be able to feed themselves from the

Bible, and desire God. Quiet time or Bible study tends to be a problem for a lot of people.

It's hard to make it work, either motivation -wise or skill -wise.

And so we have combined our ministry. I love to do the motivation piece, and Noel typically does the skill piece, what do you do when you study the

Bible. But we've noticed more Bible study times bite the dust because of motivation, because most anyone can pick up daily bread or do something, you know, if they want to.

But if they're having trouble with their motivation, it tends to go awry.

And so that's the part I work on. I help them find their first love.

Ironically enough, when I went to Baptist Bible College, I took Methodical Bible study as one of the classes to graduate.

And by the end of that class, I hated Bible study. Wow. It did not work for me.

It was dry and, you know, it just graphs and charts, and I floundered.

I had been doing, when I was a new Christian, you know, daily bread, and I was growing.

But once I learned how to do all of this more complicated Bible study,

I felt like I couldn't go back to daily bread. And so I just floundered and I didn't do anything.

And until we delivered our first daughter, and then I thought,

I don't want to be the kind of mother that never cracks the Bible for herself and just goes to church. So I had to deal with that.

I had to address it. And what I noticed in the Bible was, you know, like 1

Peter 2 -2, like a newborn baby, desire the sincere milk of the word.

And I thought, you know, you do not have to teach a newborn baby to want milk. If they're healthy, they just, it's a

God -given desire. They want it. And I noticed David in Psalm 42, he says,

And I was like, wow, you know, I would love to feel that way. And then

I noticed in Revelation 2 -4, God says, And so that's when

I made a determination that that's what I need to find again.

Because I used to be drawn, I wanted to read the Bible, you know, and I thought that's what

I need to do. So I spent some time, and we help people do that, finding their first love.

I have some questions you ask yourself and that kind of thing. And I waited until, it wasn't like this, you know, huge fire or flame of desire.

It was a little burn, a little desire. It was what

I wanted. And that's what I help other people find, their first love. It never dies.

It just gets covered over, you know, with the cares of the world. And what we hope and want for people is that they lead with their first love instead of leading with discipline.

Because typically you lose, you know, it gets covered over and you get buffeted by life, and then you come back and you say, oh, wow,

I haven't read my Bible in a while. I need to get more disciplined. And in one stroke, you replace what you used to have, your first love, with discipline.

And it's a sort of a, you need discipline, you know, but you need to lead with your first love instead of leading with discipline.

Discipline is real good for smoothing out the bumps in a road, but it's real bad at building the road.

And, yeah, so we try to help people. You know, it can work. Discipline can work.

You can keep showing up and fall in love with God and get to know Him when you find your first love.

But the danger is you keep showing up, you keep being good, you're faithful, you're good, and the focus is on yourself.

And you can go your whole life being good and being faithful, and you don't really need God, and so you just check it off.

And that's the danger. So I think that's why it's so important to have the relationship put back in center, and then you guard that with some discipline.

But, anyway, that's sort of our emphasis, and Milton talked about the skill part and what he does.

Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to ask you, but you could continue with your thought, and then

I'll ask you what I was going to ask you after I finish. Okay. Yes, we're trying to help people have a meaningful

Bible -reading time, and the first thing we address is motivation.

Most people don't address it, and if they do, they just say, you know, push, push, push. And what we've found is if people can identify their first love and get a sense for how strong it is and design their

Bible -reading time to be consistent with how strong their true desire to get to know

God is, then they'll grow. They'll meet God where they're at.

And, you know, so on the skill part, we have some very simple four steps.

It's a variation of inductive Bible study, observation, interpretation, application, but we've simplified the name and simplified the objective.

It's not aimed at the Bible scholar. It's aimed at anybody that wants to be a self -feeder spiritually.

So the names instead of observation, it's FACTS. Instead of interpretation, it's

LESSONS. And then we have a pivotal step, CHALLENGES. And the last one is RESPONSE.

The classes we've taught this in person turned this into an acronym,

FACTS, LESSONS, CHALLENGES, and RESPONSE end up Flickr, F -L -C -R, and they pronounced it as Flickr.

And after a few classes did that, we finally went along with it. And it is a simple way to remember the steps, the

FACTS, you know, you just say what's there, the LESSONS, what can you learn from the passage, the

CHALLENGES, you turn each lesson into a question.

For example, if I was studying Genesis chapter 12, the calling of Abraham, a fact

I might notice is God told Abraham to go, but he didn't tell him where to go.

That's a fact. No interpretation, just a fact. So what lesson could

I learn from that? And I could learn a lesson that, well, sometimes

God wants us to take action before we know everything we need to know. Okay, so there's a lesson.

That's something I can learn. And then the challenge is really interesting. The challenge is taking that lesson and turning it into a question.

The lesson is sometimes God wants us to take action before we have all the facts.

So turn that into a question. Would I be willing to take action if God asked me to do so before I had all the facts?

So once you do those, the last step is response. And that's a simple two or three sentence prayer.

We write these things down, but you don't have to. And in the prayer you're simply listening to what

God might be saying to you through this passage and then responding to him honestly.

Sometimes that response is real easy. He's asking you to do something that you want to do, and you just tell him that you're going to get on that and just respond truthfully.

But since truthfulness is so important, the problem comes when

God's asking you to do something you really don't want to do at all. And for that, sometimes it's helpful to put training wheels on your response and say something like,

God, I know this is your heart. I know this is what you want. I know that this would be better for me if I did this, if I wanted to do this.

Please help me want to do what I know is on your heart.

So those are the four steps of the Flickr Bible study method that we teach.

And we have an app that we have a tool in the app integrated in the Bible that gives you a panel for each of those steps, to fill in your facts and to fill in your lessons and so on.

Now, what I was going to ask before is, I heard earlier

Denise basically talking about how difficult it was at one time for her to study the

Bible. And how did, obviously, your writing this book came out of disappointment with other ways in which people were instructing you or suggesting that you study the

Bible. And how did this come about to a full -blown book where it started from just disappointment?

And how did you develop something that appears to have borne fruit in your lives and that you feel so strongly about or believe so strongly about it,

I should say, because we Christians should be less and less concerned with feelings and what we believe and think.

But how did this come about? Were you being encouraged by your pastors, other members of the church?

Tell us how this went from disappointment in what existed to a full -blown book and an app.

Well, I started wrestling with the idea of finding my first love.

And I spent like five minutes a day just considering things like, do

I want to know God? And how do I want my life to be? You know, all just one -dimensional? Or do

I want it to have a spiritual aspect? And do I want to know His will? And do

I want to please God? You know, all those kind of questions. I would take five minutes a day and think about it until I started healing my desire for God's purpose.

And then I thought, okay, what do I want to do with Bible study?

And I'm sort of, you know, a simple, straightforward kind of person, and I thought,

I want to get to know God. And so I just started reading in Genesis.

And I said, I'm just going to read for one thing. I'm going to read until I learn something about God, what

He values, what He reacts to, what He cares about, what makes

Him upset, what makes Him happy. And I'm just going to read until something hits me about who

He is. And so some days I would just read two verses and I'd say, oh, wow, He really cares about family.

Or, you know, He's really into details. And then other times I might have to read two or three chapters before something would hit me.

But I was reading for one thing, and it was, what can I learn about God and what

He cares about? And so I went through the whole Bible that way. It took a couple years, but that's what

I did. And some women came to me and they asked me if I would mentor them.

It was sort of like out of the blue. And I thought, oh, okay, I could do that.

I can share with them what's been helpful to me. And so that was the start of this mentoring.

And so Noel and I were sort of like, and then Noel and I were teaching, we started teaching a

Bible study. And so we started writing this book and passing out the next bit of chapter each time we met, each week.

So that's sort of how it got started, the book anyway. Each chapter of the book is basically one session with the group, and it's divided in half.

Half of it, Denise addresses a topic about motivation, how to find it, how to first love, how to guard it once you find it, and the desire killers that will suppress it.

And the other half of the chapter I talk about skills and what to do when you actually sit down with the

Bible. So this way we feel if we can help somebody improve their ability to study, at the same time they improve their desire to want to know

God, we address it from both sides, and there's the best chance of finding something that'll work.

Well, we have to go to our first station break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Noel and Denise Enett, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. We're discussing how to read the Bible so God speaks to you, and we'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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Visit CitizenPriest .com today. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our two guests today are husband and wife,

Noel and Denise Enett, and they are discussing their book, How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You, and also their app,

Wave Parallel Bible. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

Let's say a few words of clarification, if you will, on the title of your book,

How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You. We were chatting before the show a little bit, and just to let you know that the majority of my listeners,

I believe, judging from those who write in questions and respond to me by email and Facebook and so on,

I believe they are theologically reformed cessationists and do not believe in extra -biblical revelation as some of our charismatic and Pentecostal friends do.

So this might put a chill up the spine of some when they read the phrase,

So God Speaks to You. You're not talking about hearing voices from God or hearing some unique special extra -biblical revelation that's meant only for you that comes from heaven or anything like that?

No, no, nothing like that. That's the downside of that title. No, what we're talking about is the opposite of reading a page in the

Bible, turning the page and not knowing anything of what you just read. We're talking about when you read the

Bible, it actually soaks into you, and you can connect with what

God is trying to tell you through the Scriptures in your heart. That's what we're trying to say.

I'll give you an example. We have in the Word of God, we have in Isaiah 55 -11,

So will my word be which goes forth from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what

I desire, and without succeeding in the manner for which I sent it. So we know this to be a truth, a

God -breathed truth of the Scriptures that the Word will never return void. So how would what you are teaching

Christians to do be different from what

God has promised will always happen? Well, I guess sometimes

God's Word doesn't go out from the page. If you read it and it never connects to anything in your head, you know, it goes in one ear and out the other.

We're in a very fast -paced society, and we will do anything for convenience and to accelerate our life in some way.

And it's very challenging to read a section of Scripture and actually sit with it long enough to have it actually go out from the page and reach the part of you that responds to it.

We do have a question for you both from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

She says, I don't know if this would be a person -to -person kind of a question where the answer would vary greatly depending upon the individual, but as far as what you know from your experience and what you recommend, how great or large of a passage of Scripture should one read and meditate on before stopping?

In other words, some people might be so enthusiastic about what they're reading they'll read an entire gospel or several chapters of a book of the

Bible, but then some might be reading too long and not even remembering what they have just read, which is something that you just said,

Noel. So what is your answer? And I know as I just said in the beginning of my question, this may vary from person to person.

Sure, yeah. I think the biggest variable that affects the answer to that question is how good a reader you are.

If you take five people, you'll find that their reading skills vary tremendously.

Some people, if you say, read Luke's gospel, they'll say, okay, no problem. I'll read that and I'll understand it because they're a good reader.

But there are other people that either are more scientific oriented or weren't good in school or don't feel like they're very smart.

They'll have a hard time with one verse. So I think people in general tend to be overly ambitious about what to read when they take on something.

For example, in the Bible reading programs for read through the

Bible in a year or read through the New Testament in a year, what we've recommended to our folks is to learn how to read.

Say you have a passage for the day. Learn how to read lightly through the passage until you find something that you want to sink your teeth into.

It's sort of like looking for what to read. When you do that, you get a sense of the context, but you're looking for something that hits you.

I've never ceased to be amazed when we teach this in person to groups, how we can have one passage, and I know that a passage has a single interpretation and many applications.

But when I stop at the end and I say, what have you found helpful in this passage?

You will find such a variety of things that hit people because everybody's at a different place, and God is trying to reach them where they are.

So, for example, when I read the passage, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, when

I read that and I was 18 years old, well, I was very sure what it meant, and it had all to do with what my dad shouldn't tell me to do.

But when I was a parent and raising a child, then I read that passage, and suddenly what hits me is something different.

What hits me is, oh, I need to be really reasonable. I need to tune in to what is frustrating my child and not go beyond that.

So, for a single answer,

I would say a paragraph is a single answer. But if you're not a good reader,

I wouldn't feel bad at all about getting something like a daily bread and find their passage and then just stick with that one verse and try and surface the facts and lessons and flicker the verse.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, I think there has been a danger in the church, especially in fundamentalist circles, where they think that commentaries are not necessary and, in fact, are unwanted and people are not encouraged to read them.

But I think that it can be very arrogant to approach the Bible as if you need no other guidance and no greater minds than your own, who have exhaustively studied the

Scriptures and who have really become brilliant minds who could far better understand things knowing the original languages.

Do you think that every believer should, at least from time to time, refer to a commentary on the

Scriptures or books by great authors of the faith who know the

Scriptures far better than we can? Yes, we do. I think the issue is when.

In learning theory, they say that the reason why it's hard to read and it's harder to read new information is because you have to open up slots in your mind to receive the new information.

And when you're looking at a passage, if you don't try and see what you see in the passage first before you consult an authority, then you might get a question and if you go straight to the authority, you'll get the answer.

And then ten minutes later, you'll forget the question and the answer. The only issue here is to first get a sense for what you think it means.

Then you've opened up the slot in your thinking and you have the ability to retain it.

You have a hunch as to what it might mean. That's when you're prime and you're perfect to consult authorities.

Authorities can be commentary writers. They can be pastors. They can be professors at a

Bible school or a seminary. And that's when you can compare what they've found in the

Scriptures with what you've found. And again, what you're looking for is you're looking for how to feed yourself from the

Scriptures. And God works in your heart as you're reading the

Scripture to identify something that He wants you to look at.

And I think the authorities are very helpful once you have a sense for seeing what you think the passage means.

And, you know, there is an old saying in the real estate business in regard to how valuable a piece of property or building will be.

And that is location, location, location. And some of the greatest errors that Christians or even those that are not

Christians that are attempting to read the Bible is that they take text that they're reading totally out of context, out of the location from which these words are springing from the page in the

Bible. And don't you think that it is very important when studying the

Bible to go back far enough in a text to know exactly what the context and the background of the following verses are?

Yes, I do. I think context is crucial. It can completely change the frame of reference.

And with a different frame of reference, this is especially true with the parables.

But as we've taught people, what we've found is it's very easy to know the fact that context is important and then decide that they end up making the passage too long to study in the amount of time they have.

It's a pragmatic kind of a problem where, you know, really, if you want to do it right, you synthesize the whole

Bible first and then you break it down to its parts. And that's how you really get the best context in each of the sections of the

Bible. But that's unfeasible.

And what was so interesting in our experience was in seminary, the guy that was teaching

Bible study methods, not in the Bible college where Denise had the bad experience, but in seminary where we both had a wonderful experience, he took one verse,

Acts 1 -9, and he had us focus on that verse and that verse. And it was, you know, he had us focus on it for about two weeks.

And we got lots and lots and lots of information by continually looking at it.

And then we broadened to the paragraph context and got more information and corrected some things that were incorrect because of the narrow context.

And then we broadened to the chapter context and the same thing. We got more information and we corrected.

So practically speaking, if you insist that you have to have everything in the perfect context, you just will have a hard time getting to it.

And yet, if you just start with a verse and use it as your context, what you know and what you've heard, what you've been taught, have that be your filter.

And if you read something and it just doesn't make sense, well, don't go with that. Go with what does make sense.

Those kind of practical things will help you get out of the worry that you're going to make a mistake.

The Bible is self -correcting. If you keep studying the Bible and you have some kind of a thing you've taken incorrectly, it will correct you.

God will keep... You know, there was a pottery class once at a junior college, and they divided the group for an experiment.

They divided the group into two parts, and on one group they said, at the end of the semester you will be graded on the quality of your pots.

Even if you just made one pot the whole semester, your grade will be just on the quality.

On the other side, they were graded on how many pots they made. No matter if they were terrible, the more pots, the better the grade.

Now, at the end of the semester, they graded everybody, and then they showed the pots.

Which group do you think had the better quality pots? That's what you would think.

That's not what happened. Wow. Practice makes perfect. And you see, people that stopped from studying the

Bible because they can't do it in a large enough context, lose everything.

But if you make it a small enough context that you can get through that context, then the context becomes your combined

Christian theological knowledge. That's why, by the way, it's a very good thing to check with authorities.

That helps you with context rapidly. The authority has in their mind the context of that passage, the context of that book, the context of the human author, and the context of the covenant and what's at play at that piece of Scripture.

So you can get the important context other ways than you having to do it all yourself.

Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. This is the longer than normal break that we have every day because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM, in Lake City, Florida, they use this midway break to air their own commercials and public service announcements in order to localize

Ion Sherp and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida, while we air our own commercials that are heard globally.

So during this break, since it is longer than normal, please use this time wisely. Write down questions for our guests

Noel and Denise Enett on how to read the Bible so God speaks to you. And also use this time, please, to write down information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them.

Because I got to keep reminding you folks that without our advertisers and without the dollars they spend with us to fund this program and keep it going, if our advertisers disappear, we will as well, because we rely upon our advertisers to exist.

So the more frequently you patronize them, the longer we will likely exist.

And so please patronize our advertisers as much as you can and as heavily as you can. And also remember to send in your questions for Noel and Denise Enett at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Chris Arnzen, host of Ion Sherp and Zion Radio here.

I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years. His name is Dan Buttafuoco.

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Or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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Hi, I'm Stephan Lindblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Our churches and our people need to be well grounded in these truths.

Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.

If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.

Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio? We remain on the air because of our faithful sponsors and because of listeners like you.

There are four ways you can help. First, do you know potential sponsors who may wish to advertise their goods or services on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

Second, whenever possible, purchase the products or use the services that our sponsors advertise, and then let them know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Thirdly, you can also donate to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio by going to our website at ironsharpensironradio .com.

And click support at the top of the page. But most importantly, keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in your prayers.

We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Did you know that all believers are priests?

In 1 Peter 2, verse 9, the Apostle Peter describes Christ's church as comprising a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

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I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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.nyc. Have a great day. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Shepard's Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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Oh yes, I remember reading about him or what have you. This man's life should be known to every single

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He pastored in New York City for a while, for a good number of years at the

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And now, just before I return to my guests, Noel and Denise Enett, when we are going to be returning to our discussion on how to read the

Bible so God speaks to you, I just have some upcoming special events

I want you to make sure that you can take advantage of if at all possible. The first of which is my

IRONSHARPENSIRON Radio Pastors Luncheon. It's going to be held Thursday, May 23rd, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, featuring the aforementioned

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

Costa will be addressing the theme How the Dead Sea Scrolls Vindicate the

Reliability of the Holy Scriptures. He will be using a PowerPoint presentation as well, so you can see with all kinds of imagery and easy -to -read instructions and so forth on the screen, or descriptions,

I should say. You'll be able to learn a lot from what Dr. Costa has to say about this very important topic.

If you are a man in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor, an elder, and I believe those are the same office, by the way, a deacon, a leader in a parachurch organization, as long as you're a man in ministry leadership, you are welcome to attend this free luncheon.

Nearly every single Christian publisher, every single major Christian publisher in the

United States and the United Kingdom is donating a hundred free books each, a hundred free copies of a title that I select from them, so that every man who attends the luncheon can leave with a copy of that.

So, in other words, every man attending is going to be leaving with a heavy sack with a couple of dozen, if not three dozen books, brand -new books that I've selected.

So, I mean, this is all free. Not only your attendance and hearing Dr. Costa speak and getting fed, but you're also getting the free books.

Everything is free. There's no hidden agenda. There's no ulterior motive. These luncheons were founded by my precious wait wife who went home to be with the

Lord in 2011. She started these luncheons with me in the 1990s.

It was a burden on her heart to see pastors blessed and treated to a day of rest, relaxation, fun and feasting and fellowship and not have to worry that they were being sold

Amway products or anything like that. No offense to Amway. If anybody's listening, it works for Amway. But there's no ulterior motive.

It's just to bless pastors. So, if you would like to attend, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put pastorsluncheon in the subject line and I will register you and I will look forward to seeing you on Thursday, May 23rd, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Then, from Friday the 24th of May through Sunday, the 26th, we are going to be having

Dr. Costa go straight from Carlisle, Pennsylvania to Long Island, New York where he will be speaking at several churches including

New Hyde Park Baptist Church in western Nassau County, Long Island, Wading River Baptist Church in central

Suffolk, Long Island, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, which is also in central

Suffolk, and then finally in Ridge, Long Island, which is eastern Suffolk at Missio Church.

I will give anyone all of the details about those speaking engagements if you send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Those are all free of charge as well and they're open unlike the luncheon. The speaking engagements at the churches are open to men, women, and children.

Anybody can come. You don't even have to be a Christian if you are listening, if you're an atheist, if you're a

Muslim, if you're a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Swedenborgianist. We would love to see you at any of these events.

So send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And then immediately after that, or at least two days after that, from Tuesday, May 28th, through Thursday, May 30th,

I am heading to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania to the Elizabethtown College where the Banner of Truth is having their

East Coast Ministers' Conference. And just like my pastor's luncheon, the

East Coast Ministers' Conference is open to any man in ministry leadership, whether in his own congregation or in a parachurch organization.

So this is going to be, I'm sure, a fascinating event on the theme,

I Believe in the Holy Spirit, featuring guest speakers Jeff Kingswood, Terry Johnson, I'm sorry,

I added a T in there accidentally, David Vaughn, Stephen Nichols, Michael Morales, and Chad Vegas.

It's May 28th through the 30th in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the Elizabethtown College.

I Believe in the Holy Spirit, the East Coast Ministers' Conference of the Banner of Truth. To register, go to banneroftruth .org,

banneroftruth .org. Then after that, I am going to be heading, in December, December 19th and 20th, to the

Foundations Conference in New York City. I love this conference. It is run by Sermon Audio, very fine and biblically sound folks at Sermon Audio who provide such a great service to the body of Christ.

They are having their next Foundations Conference in the heart of Manhattan. And if you would like to attend,

I strongly recommend that you register as soon as possible because the venue that they are using is small and can only seat about 200 people.

So, just to let you know something about the conference itself, first of all, let me repeat that it's going to be held on Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th, in Manhattan.

And the roster, the speaking roster, includes Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, who you've been hearing advertised,

New Covenant Church, NYC, one of our sponsors here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Dr. Lawson is one of the most powerful preachers alive today, and the founder of One Passion Ministries.

Paul Washer is on the roster. And what a powerful and extraordinary preacher

Paul Washer is. You've got to hear Paul Washer if you've never heard him before. Reverend Jeff Thomas, who

I just heard, or should I say, who I just had as a guest once again on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, in fact, he was our guest last

Wednesday, discussing the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones. What a precious gift to the body of Christ Reverend Jeff Thomas is, now retired from pastoral ministry after 50 years, after over 50 years, over half a century pastoring the

Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth Wells. He is now retired from pastoral ministry and is an itinerant evangelist and author full -time now.

He is extraordinary. Reverend Armand Tomassian, he's a man that I've mentioned before here on this program and I've interviewed him.

A young brother, a young pastor, but with gifts and abilities far beyond his youth, and I believe within the next decade he's going to be a household name amongst

Reformed Christians because he is that extraordinary, that powerful a preacher. I am really looking forward with bated breath to hear

Reverend Armand Tomassian again. Richard Caldwell Jr. and Andrew Quigley are also on the roster.

I have not yet heard them preach, but I am sure that knowing of the discernment of Sermon Audio that they are phenomenal preachers as well.

So remember, it is Thursday and Friday December 19th and 20th in Manhattan. That's the

Foundations Conference, the Conference of Sermon Audio, and the website to register is thefoundationsconference .com

thefoundationsconference .com Then in January, I am going to be heading to the

G3 Conference, and boy do I love the G3 Conference.

The G3 Conference is held in College Park, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

Over 5 ,000 people attend this. I will be manning an exhibitor's booth there. The theme is worship this

January, and the speakers include Kosti Hinn. That's H -I -N -N, and if that name sounds familiar, it probably is familiar to you for a bad reason, because Kosti Hinn is the nephew of Benny Hinn, the notorious charlatan, fake faith healer, and Kosti, his nephew, has repented of his word of faith heresies that he was raised in, and has become a

Reformed Baptist. He's a cessationist, and he is on this roster. I actually am the first one that introduced

Kosti Hinn to Josh Bice, who runs the G3 Conference, and I'm so glad that he took me up on my recommendation to have

Kosti speak at the G3 Conference this January. David Miller is also on the roster,

Derek Thomas, my friend of many years, Dr. James R. White, Joel Beakey, Paul Washer is going to be at this conference as well, and so is

Stephen J. Lawson, who I just mentioned before, my friend Tom Askell, Executive Director of Founders Ministries, and Vody Baucom, another name that everybody listening needs to be familiar with, what a powerful speaker he is as well.

That's the G3 Conference, it's going to be held in January from Thursday, January 16th through Saturday, January 18th, as I said, at the

Georgia International Convention Center, College Park, Georgia. If you want to register, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. I also urge you, if you have a business or ministry that you want to promote, there is every year over 5 ,000 people attending this conference.

I will have an exhibitor's booth there, as I said, so I would strongly recommend that you invest in having your own exhibitor's booth if you want to promote something that is of value.

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. Now, if you love Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, you don't want us to disappear from the airwaves.

You absolutely love the guests and topics that we feature on this program that are sometimes never heard anywhere else.

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Please never do that, and never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio. Those two things are commands of the

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Please give to us as frequently as you can and as heavily as you can if, indeed, you don't want us to go away because the likelihood of us disappearing in the near future is very real if we do not get more advertisers and more donations.

We have some bills that urgently need to be paid that are not yet paid, so please help us out. ironsherpansironradio .com

Click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. If you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. Whatever it is you want to promote, I will help you launch an ad campaign as long as whatever it is is compatible with what we believe.

You don't have to believe exactly as I do, but you need to be promoting something that's compatible with what we believe here. And I will help you launch an ad campaign because we are in urgent need of your advertising dollars.

If you are not a member of a Bible -believing church and you're not prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

You've got to rectify that, and if you need help finding a church where you live, no matter where you live in the world,

I have lists of biblically faithful churches globally, and I may be able to help you find a church.

I've already helped a number of people in our audience find churches that they have joined or that they have visited when they were on vacation.

So please send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put in your subject line, I need a church or something similar.

And that's also the email address where you can send in a question to Noelle and Denise Enett on the subject,

How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com chrisarnsen at gmail .com

And let's see, we have a listener B .B.

in Cumberland County Pennsylvania and B .B. asks Do you recommend somebody who is not very familiar with the

Bible to begin a study by starting in Genesis and continuing through chronologically until they end in Revelation or would you recommend they read a chapter or a portion of the

Old Testament every day and be accompanied by a portion of the New Testament every day so they have the balance of teachings from the

Old and New Covenant and don't have a long period of time where they do not have readings from the

New Testament Yes, the latter I think that's much better for a balanced exposure to God's Word So yeah,

I would go with the latter Now, somebody who is a more seasoned Christian who has read the Bible already

I'm assuming that would be quite alright for them to begin an annual

Bible study where they read the Bible through the year chronologically from Genesis to Revelation Yes, yes because they have the information that they can use to live on and so they can weather a longer amount of time with information that's not so immediately applicable

We like the idea of people following what they're curious about what they're interested about if they want to just get to know

Jesus or read in the New Testament the Gospels where He is recorded if they want to know about Heaven they can do a topical study just follow what's intriguing to you and it usually works out if you follow what you're interested in and I think most people just have good questions and they have things that they want to know about and forgiveness and God's grace

If you start where you're interested you can get more confidence built up so that you can branch out to things that are not quite in the center of your interest and that will continue

If you do it all based on what you think you should do, well that's not intrinsic to you and it'll be hard for you to keep that motivation going

We like to foster it growing so you start where you need to and then your stamina, your desire your discipline it all grows, it gets stronger

Well I would think though and I don't know if you agree with me or not but I would hope that you would that there's a difference between starting where you have interest and just sticking with areas that you have interest because there are multitudes of people who think that they're there are multitudes of people who think or profess to be

Christian that are going to hell because they avoid all of the areas of the Bible that are uncomfortable for them, they avoid the warnings of sin and damnation and you know you have a lot of liberal

Bible scholars who are thrilled to read the portions of the Bible that they like the stories that fit within their pagan worldview but they don't bring up the fact that things like homosexuality is an unnatural and damning behavior and so on so I mean would you agree with me?

Yes of course Yes of course Let's see we have another listener here we have

Bobby in Hartsdale New York and Bobby in Hartsdale New York says

I hope that I'm not making you repeat yourself but I was wondering what extra biblical helps you could recommend when studying the

Bible any particular books other than your own perhaps great heroes of the faith that have written on studying the

Bible or have written commentaries that you recommend As far as tools we have a free

Bible app Wave Parallel Bible that is set up to help you study it's not loaded with commentaries it's focused on making the

Bible itself more accessible to you and the tool to capture your

Flickr Bible study is built into it it's a free app on the Apple App Store Noel had this vision about helping people jump the wall to have access to the

Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and so he has made it simple for people to just you get the

Greek free and King James it's a parallel Bible so we give you free what we're able to get free and you can touch on a word and it'll show you in the

Greek the parthene and I should let Noel describe this yeah

I was an exegetical major at theological seminary, Hebrew major grammatical thesis and what has impressed me the most is to see how much interest people have in the original language if they could just get to it most of the reference works are daunting to somebody who doesn't even know the character set and so I designed this app so that I could help people jump the wall from English Bible to original so if you're in a verse and you want to know what the

Greek word for a verse is we have a special tool that lets you it's called

Wavelength if you have Wavelength for Romans and you're in Romans 5 .1 you can touch on a word and it will highlight the phrase that's in and highlight that same phrase in all the translations that you have in the app as well as in the

Greek and so that'll get you back to which words are in the phrase then when you touch the

Greek word it gives you the option to look for a custom translation of each

Greek word in the phrase and these translations are not just computer lookups these are translations written custom in context by Greek teachers, mostly from Talbot, some from Dallas Theological Seminary and so that's a tool that helps you get to the original.

Now once you find the word you're interested in you don't know you don't need to know how to pronounce the word, you don't need to know how to write the word but you just touch the word and you can press the search button and get a list of every place in the

New Testament that Greek word occurs and when you touch each spot it's a parallel bible, all of the translations you have go to that spot and you can see how each translation renders your word and do a

Greek word study there's the same thing for Hebrew but we can't get the Hebrew free so that is part of the in -app purchase, you can purchase the

Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament so that's a tool that will get you actually to the

Greek and Hebrew and give you a good start exploring those realms.

And let me just throw my two cents in, especially since these wonderful ministries sponsor

Iron Trip and Zion Radio first you have Solid Ground Christian Books, you can look up their catalog at solid -ground -books .com

solid -ground -books .com and also cvbbs .com Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service cv as in victory bbs .com

cvbbs .com and of course Banner of Truth and their website is banneroftruth .org

banneroftruth .org and they have a fountain of information, all of those ministries publishing ministries have a huge treasure trove of material that will be of enormous help to you and I strongly recommend all of them we have

I don't know why this listener wants to be anonymous because it's a fairly general question it's not really a personal or private matter but we have an anonymous listener who asks which method of studying the bible would you recommend for young Christians topical or systematical or studying books, book by book or verse by verse obviously young Christians is relative because that could mean little tiny children in the home or it could mean somebody who's 65 years old and is a brand new believer so there's a lot of different ways of answering that I'm assuming depending upon what is meant by young Christians but if you could give me your answers on that, topical, systematical or studying book by book or verse by verse well that's a good question

I think it would depend on what kind of support the young person has if they have somebody that is um if it's like a teenager if they have a parent that is able to communicate with them,

I would go with the answer the parent would give to that question whether the parent is more able to help with the topical or with the verse by verse

I think they all have value I know when we taught our

Bible study with the Flickr method our people it was an adult

Bible study and our people were teaching their kids how to Flickr passages because it was so simple and their kids were you know in the teens maybe 10 to 16, that sort of age if they're if they're young if they're elementary school you have to be a little simpler and they won't have much stamina so I would say it has to go with whoever is teaching them their method would be the most effective one for that person well we have to go to our final break right now it's a shorter break than the last one and if you would like to join us on the air with your own question

I would do so now because we're rapidly running out of time so please send in your question if you intend to write one to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com please as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away we will be right back with Noel and Denise and we are discussing as I said before the subject of our topic or should

I say the subject of our interview today is how to read the Bible so God speaks to you which is also the title of their book and our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors

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Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guests have been today, Noel and Denise Enett, and they have been discussing their book,

How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

You've got to do it quickly because we are almost out of time. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city, and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We have a listener. Let's see here. We have

Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, I'm sorry

I tuned in late, but I heard you mentioning something about a Flickr app. How do I get this app, and exactly how does it work?

It is an app for the iPhone and iPad. It's a free app,

Wave Parallel Bible. You just download it and you use it the way it's organized.

It addresses the problem that many people have now with all these translations.

The new translations that come out, it becomes increasingly hard for the

English Bible reader to identify which translation he or she should go with.

You know, it used to be there was one Bible, and everybody had the same Bible, pretty much.

You just went to it. It was a unified experience.

But now, even if you go to Bible apps and you want to see what other versions say, it's presented like a cafeteria of options.

There's no way for a thinking person to identify the strength of each of the options.

We've encountered people that are just really frustrated with a lot of translations.

This Parallel Bible addresses that problem by organizing them in a way that helps you understand what the translation is good at.

Each translation is in its own column, and the columns are arranged parallel so the translations are next to each other.

And they're arranged from left to right, from the most literal translation to the most readable translation.

So if you read your favorite version most of the time, and then you get focused on wording, then you move to the left to the translations that are more literal.

Like the King James, or NASB, or the original. He gives you the original.

When you say the original, you mean the Greek and Hebrew, is that what you mean? Yes, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic. Yes, that's on the column.

That is in its own column. And if you're in the New Testament, what's in there is the Greek. If you're in the

Old Testament, what's in there is the Hebrew and the Aramaic and Daniel. So if you're reading and you totally lose your trend of thought, you move to the right and the highly readable translations will help you get your trend of thought quick.

As you scroll it vertically, all of the versions are kept synchronized on the current verse.

And how that's done, when some verses have nine lines in them and some verses have only two or three lines in them, it's a really beautiful thing to see how that works.

But anyway, that's the function, and that restores the sense of a unified

Bible with several stripes of focus. And then you can look at the original and see what liberties have been taken in the more paraphrased translations.

So you can make an evaluation like, oh, they really sort of took liberty there.

And you might say, no, I'm going to stick more to the left. But if you get confused, it's always nice to have some options for how other translations translated it.

And then you can go back. King James is there and the Greek is there. That comes free. But it helps with Bible study.

It's nice to have those kind of options. And you can do word studies really easy by pressing on the

Greek word. And it will show you where that word was used in other verses in the Bible. Now, when you kept repeating that the

King James and the Greek are there for free, I'm assuming it's because many, if not all, of the modern translations require some kind of a royalty financially.

Whereas the King James is public domain since it goes back to the 16th century.

Right, right. Yeah, the publishers of the Bible have to recoup their costs that they paid to the translators.

So they charge us for any Bible that we download to a user's device.

Oh, that's another thing about Wave that's special. Most Bible apps will download the

Bible by chapter. And if you go to a new chapter, you kind of have to wait for it to come down the

Internet. Not so with Wave. Every Bible that you have that you use with Wave Parallel Bible exists on the phone or on the device.

So it's very, very fast. So we give you one

English translation in each category, and the Greek. The category for word -for -word translations, we give you the

King James. In the phrase -by -phrase translations, we give you the new

English translation, which is a lot like the NIV. And then for the thought -by -thought translations, we give you

God's Word. So those are the translations that come down for free.

And by God's Word, you mean an actual translation called God's Word. That's exactly right.

Because they're all God's Word. Yeah, yeah. Actually, that's interesting. Before I built this,

I wasn't familiar with God's Word translation. So I read up on it and did some research.

It's by a group that is a mission organization. It's not

Wycliffe, but it's another mission organization. And their normal thing is to go into a country that doesn't have the

Bible, study the language, and create a Bible that addresses that culture and that language.

What those people did is study the United States culture and the United States people and the

United States language, and created a translation just like they would for a foreign country, only for the

United States. Yeah, in fact, the publishers of God's Word years ago provided free

Bibles to all of the pastors that attended an Iron Trip and Zion Radio pastors' luncheon on a cruise ship.

So I am somewhat familiar with that, and I did hear good reports back. But, of course, this is an opportune time for me to mention the

New American Standard Bible, since they helped keep this program on the air by their financial support. That's nasbible .com.

nasbible .com. We thank the publishers of the NASB for their generosity and their faithful support.

That's one of our favorites. Yeah, that's one of our favorites. I've done translation for the coming up 2020

New American Standard Bible. But, yeah, that's included as one of the

Bibles you can add with the in -app purchase in Wave's Parallel Bible.

Well, please give our listeners all the information they need to get a hold of How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You and also the

Wave Parallel Bible. Okay. The best place to get the book is on Amazon .com.

Just search for the title, How to Read the Bible So God Speaks to You, and you can find it there and get it there.

For the app, you just go to the Apple App Store and search on Wave. That's W -A -V -E,

Wave Parallel Bible, three words. And when you find it there, it's free.

You just download it and you can begin using it. We also have three study guides,

What Kind of Person is Jesus? And those are fun if you want to learn the

Flickr method of Bible study. But it's chronicles.

It goes through different accounts of Jesus, and you study that. It goes through the life of Christ, and you learn the

Flickr method. And then you learn what kind of person he is, what kind of personality, what makes him angry, what makes him happy.

And you get to know Jesus in a way that you would get to know a friend.

And what would be a specific website if you have one where they can find out that information? That's our website, wavestudybible .com,

W -A -V -E studybible .com. And that will give you information on all of our writings and the app.

Great. Well, Noel and Denise, Ena, I really enjoyed interviewing both of you.

I really thank you for being our guest today. I want to thank Maggie Conley again in Texas for...

Thank you, Maggie. ...for recommending my guest today. And I hope that all of you listening always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater