March 1, 2019 Show with Frank Mullis on “Sanctification Through Suffering”

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Frank Mullis and the Sanctification Through Suffering Conference

And I am thrilled to have back as a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, someone that I thoroughly enjoyed the last couple of times I interviewed him, and I'm speaking about Frank Mullis. He is a speaker for Striving for Eternity Ministries, the ministry founded by my old friend Andrew Rappaport, and he is co-owner operator at Milledgeville Academy of Mixed Martial Arts.

He's also senior pastor at the Devereux Baptist Church in Sparta, Georgia and licensed professional counselor at STOP, Inc. And today he's going to be addressing sanctification through suffering and we're also going to be announcing an upcoming conference on that same theme, sanctification through suffering, where Frank Mullis is on the speaking roster.

But it's my honor and privilege.

To welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Frank Mullis. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be back.

And did I pronounce the name of the city where your Academy of Mixed Martial Arts is located?

Yes, you did. A lot of people up north thought it was mispronounced, but it's Milledgeville, Georgia.

That's correct. You got it right. Great. And I'm glad that you mentioned the name of the city, because I might have butchered it the second time. Well, before we go into our discussion at hand, why don't you tell our listeners about, first of all, Striving for Eternity.

I know that that is not specifically the ministry that you founded. We know that Andrew Rappaport founded it, but you obviously are one of the speakers on the team at Striving for Eternity, so why don't you tell our listeners about that.

For those of my listeners who have missed hearing Andrew or other speakers involved with Striving for Eternity on the program in the past,.

Let us know about this ministry. Yeah, myself and a guy who founded the ministry, I don't know if you've had a chance to meet Anthony at G3, but we three are all on the board of Striving for Eternity, and taken together to help Andrew's rifling evangelism.

He does a lot of country-speaking engagements. He and Anthony are headed out to the Shepherds Conference. They always leave me behind because I can never go to the Shepherds Conference. They always get me about that.

He'll send me a picture. Rub it in a little bit. Yeah, they always rub it in. Sometimes they crop photos of me in there. But yeah, we've had a great time over the last few years that I've been with Striving for Eternity.

The various disciples, various individuals in churches, in hermeneutics, evangelism, and we're just excited to take this ministry into this area this upcoming next week in dealing with.

Sanctification. Okay, well now let us know about something that we've addressed with you on the show, at least in an abbreviated fashion in the past, but the Milledgeville Academy of Mixed Martial Arts.

Tell us about that. Tell us about how you even.

Got involved in that to begin with. Well, as a young child, I was bullied much smaller than I am now. Growing up, I was bullied a lot, and I had the opportunity in 1988 in karate. I began studying karate teaching.

Once I got my black belt here in Milledgeville. After that, I found Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Seminary in North Carolina. There, I met Henzo Gracie. From there, throughout the years, and eventually began staying under one of his...

Well, his first I became the UFC welterweight champion, and eventually got my black belt under Matt. This past year marks our 11th or 12th year, I believe, here in Milledgeville, and I partnered up with a Christian brother from up there, Tony Academy that we've opened up, and we've been growing.

The Lord's blessed us over the last year. He and I, we've had the testimony through that, and others that I've been able to meet and reach through. Now, mixed martial arts,.

I'm assuming that means when you're having a competition, or if you even need to use your skills in a real-life situation where you're defending your safety and your life or that of someone else, you're mixing your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and your karate, and perhaps even.

Boxing and street fighting and all of that mixed together? Yeah, martial arts has changed, definitely, because of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The belief was that stand-up boxing or karate was the ultimate, and it would save you in every circumstance.

Traditional wrestlers knew that wasn't the truth. Judo players knew that wasn't the truth, but karate guys got away with it for so long until the Gracies came from Brazil and introduced ground fighting, and it changed the whole aspect of martial arts.

Showing that you have to know how to defend yourself standing, you know how to defend yourself when you're grappling, and then if you're taken to the ground, how to defend yourself as well. So, there's not really one martial art anymore that can give you a total.

And so, therefore, I'm assuming in professional.

Competitions, if it is a karate competition or a Jiu-Jitsu competition or one of the other martial arts, they would be judging on your purity involving those individual skills rather than a mixed martial art.

Competition would be a different genre, right?

Yeah, and most of those would be more of a sport. There would be no ground fighting. In a sport, Jiu-Jitsu tournament, there would be no striking. Judo, obviously, action ends if a person, there would be no ground fighting, but you're correct in that.

And have you ever needed to use your martial arts skills in real-life situations where you were defending your safety, your life, or that of someone else?

Well, I will say I have used my mental Jiu-Jitsu.

Well, even I can say that.

I've used my verbal Jiu-Jitsu, and I have the self-confidence. And martial arts really gives you what you need to use. I've needed to even go to a physical altercation. Find that people who don't know how to defend themselves to defend themselves.

Still, in my counseling situation, I work with a variety of criminals, and there have been a few occasions, but not physically threatened. And I'm glad I do have the ability to, if the need came up, to be able to.

Great. Well, I'm thinking of when I travel to different places to conduct live moderated debates and conferences, maybe I should bring you and several of my other martial art experts with me as my team of bodyguards.

Do you know Keith Foskey, pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida? He is also a black belt in at least one of the martial arts and instructs folks.

I want to say you and I have talked about him before, but I don't believe I've had a chance to meet him.

Well, you would love him. And of course, I've had Jeff Durbin on the show, and I've had a couple of other people that are involved in this specific sport. But I always find it fascinating because I know that there is controversy in the body of Christ over those kinds of things, but I did have interviews specifically on those controversies.

But I think it is always a good thing when somebody is learning how to protect their lives and especially the lives of others, because that could be an enormous act of mercy and heroism rather than just waiting for the police to respond to your 911 call when it's too late.

You're also the senior pastor of Devereux Baptist Church in Sparta, Georgia. Let us know about that church.

We're a small congregation. We're about 30 or so. It's a reformed... The the The creeds, literally verse by verse.

Samuel, this Sunday... Coming up on 15 years I've been at this church, I believe I'm coming up on the second-longest time of a pastor in over 100-plus years there. And you don't see many pastors staying that long at churches anymore, and that's really where your discipleship in advance...

Church, we started with, when I got there, with about 18, and we've doubled, tripled. Percentage-wise, we've grown. A lot of people say, oh, a church of 30, but if you take any church and you double it, the Lord is working as well.

Amen. And obviously, numeric size of a church cannot be on its own a litmus test for true biblical growth. It's numeric growth, obviously, but you could have a church packed to the gills with thousands of people, and you might not even have a single regenerate soul in the building, including the pastors and the elders, even if they are professedly evangelical and professedly Bible-believing.

So I never, and no one, should ever dismiss the value and the health of a church by its numeric size, because it may be, especially in the geographic area that they're in, that the truth is so unpopular, people do not want to go there.

Well, that's exactly true. And I've found that, and I get a grief disparaging remarks about numbers constantly, and, oh, you're not doing this and not doing that, and they want to give me a formula. And I was like, the formula doesn't matter.

And that's what I've done faithfully. And I've brought people in over the years who God has sovereignly brought in and regenerated them, and planting, we're just doing a lot of great things.

Praise God. And now we come to the fact that you are a licensed professional counselor at Stop, Inc. And I had, I remember at the G3 conference, I had a fairly in-depth interview with you about two years ago, where you were going in-depth about your counseling with convicted sex offenders.

And it was kind of interesting. I think I was talking to Andrew Rappaport during my interview with him. And he was saying to me, you know, Frank Mullis, I never see him depressed or in a bad mood. And I was shocked by that, because you're talking all day long to people who are guilty of the worst of crimes.

There are people who might say that, especially when it comes to children, the molestation of a child is worse than killing somebody. But if you could, tell us about this ministry of yours as a licensed.

Professional counselor at Stop, Inc. and elsewhere. Yes, I'm a thousand miles a week, over four days, working with counseling. Many of them are on parole serving for... So any criminal in Georgia, any violent crime, I'm going to deal with.

And it's been growing over the years with the number of violent offenders I deal with. I used to deal with only one adult rapist group, and then, you know, I'm dealing with multiple per group. And then I was dealing with one murderer per city, and now I deal with multiple murderers per city.

And so, you know, I think it's the defunding of the criminal system that's freeing up a lot of the Georgia counseling topics with these men, both men and women. And we deal with it from a cognitive behavioral standpoint.

I work for the state. You know, I tend to be, I am at times able to share too individually, again, you know, as it is in my family as well. My family, it's an interesting field that God has put me in, and I tell you that if I'm depressed, I don't know it.

And it'll be, it usually takes me about six or seven or even eight months to realize I've been going through depression. I just, yeah, it is. I'm more of a manic person. You know, I have been diagnosed with kind of an ADD.

I'm always up and going. And it's usually when I'm probably kind of an introvert that I start realizing, well, maybe I need to start.

Dealing with some issues. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing that you don't recognize you're depressed? I mean, I would even, my first impulse would be to say, isn't that impossible? Because the very fact that someone is depressed, it's something that they are mentally conscious of.

It's a downer, if you will. It's something that is making them morbidly introspective about their own flaws or circumstances or what have you, or even their loved ones. They might be going through trials and tribulations, or they might have died or what have you.

Well, I tell you, one of the things that I dealt with, family members or close friends who died. There was a deacon, a lady who I was very close to at a former church, her husband, she passed away suddenly.

And I dealt with one of my close pastor friends who died of cancer and one of my uncles, and then my grandmother passed away. And then October, two years ago, my supervisor, who had basically been my counselor, mentored me into a six or seven months.

I sought counseling for that. You have a buildup, and I'm the type of person who stays busy. Obviously, you see with all of the various things you say I do, I stay very busy. So staying busy is one of those ways that I avoid introspecting.

A lot of people do too.

And I would imagine that beating the living stink out of somebody can help let out that aggression and make you feel better.

Well, I'll tell you, one of the signs that I was depressed, I didn't want to get out on the mat and have the energy. I have one of my close Christian brothers, he's always at me getting my goat about not training.

He was absolutely right. I found myself not enjoying the things that you do. That's one of the symptoms and signs of depression is when you stop doing the things that you enjoy doing. And those are one of the signs you can look at if you have someone in your life who suddenly just stopped going and stopped doing the things that they enjoy doing.

One of the things I found and noticed, I was like, why don't I enjoy doing this? You know, kind of introspect. Because you're always in the process. Yes. Well, just to correct you, I believe that.

You may have referred to me as a pastor. I'm not a pastor. I'm just a lowly talk show host. I'm not even sure that the church where I'm a member wants me as a member, let alone a pastor. I'm not even sure they want me taking a pew space there.

I'm only kidding. No, they seem to love me very much, especially my two new pastors there. And so I'm very happy. The skills and experiences that you have had, I'm assuming they had some bearing on Anthony, I'm sorry, Andrew Rappaport inviting you to be on the roster at this upcoming conference, Sanctification Through Suffering.

If you could, maybe I'm totally wrong on that. He might have just invited you because of your biblical knowledge. But why do you think that you make a good fit on the speaking roster in regard to Sanctification Through Suffering?

Well,.

I noticed you had, I want to get her name right too. That's right. Justin Peters is coming on.

Wednesday, March 13th for our listeners who love the ministry of Justin Peters. And if you don't know Justin or don't know about him, you've got to discover Justin Peters and make use of his preaching and teaching materials and hear him speak in person and public venues because he is absolutely extraordinary.

And Colleen is actually returning for the second time on Tuesday, March 12th, the day before Justin Peters interview, but I'm sorry,.

I interrupted you. Oh no, and my degrees, obviously in counseling associates and master's in psychology. I have a master of divinity and biblical counseling from Southeastern and I'm in my last semester of dissertation, Lord willing, and I'm graduating in May, and so I think that's part of the reason is I have the counseling experience and the pastoral experience over the years of dealing with many, many different people who deal with suffering.

They themselves are dealing with mental illness, dealing with depression, their own trauma growing up as children. People who commit crimes, obviously some of them have criminal personalities and the majority of them, and I deal with people who have hurt people hurting.

I deal with people who are grieving of loss of loved ones. And so I've just had a lot of experience of dealing with that. One of the things about being a pastor of smaller churches, they tend to be older congregations.

So I've done way more funerals than I have when a man of sorrow is acquainted with that, but so many through them all in so many ways, and he's able to give us peace. So thankful that I think that's the main reason why Andrew.

You just reminded me of a J .C. Ryle.

Quote. I love that 19th century evangelical Anglican bishop, J .C. Ryle, and I may not be quoting him exactly the way he worded it, but he said, Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted of grief. None have such an opportunity of learning the mind of a suffering Savior as suffering disciples.

I really value that quote because it helps bring into perspective, as we read in Romans 8 .28, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.

We put that into work in our lives when we are responding to suffering appropriately by not only being more dependent upon God, but also comforting others with the same comfort that we have been comforted with.

And we're going to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. I can understand that a subject like this, sanctification through suffering, would readily lend itself to people asking personal and private questions, so I can totally understand that, and I will give you the option to remain anonymous.

But if it's just a general question, a general question on theology, a question on how you may be of service to those that you know or love when they are suffering, please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

And don't go away, God willing we'll be right back after these messages with more of Frank Mullis.

And sanctification through suffering. My name is Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries. I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor. It's called New Covenant Church NYC. They are a reformed Baptist church that meets in midtown Manhattan.

You can find their service times and location on their website which is www .ncc .nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. 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 New Covenant Church NYC.

Again, their information can be found at www .ncc .nyc. Have a great day.

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The Sanctification Through Suffering Conference Details

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is Frank Mullis and Frank is a licensed counselor and he has spent most of his time in that field counseling convicted criminals and sex offenders and he is on the roster of an upcoming conference.

I've got to keep my grammar straight here. He is on the roster at the Striving for Eternity conference on the theme of sanctification through suffering. Can you tell us a little bit more about this conference, Frank?

Oh yeah, this weekend it's going to be located at the Chinese American Bible Church in Freehold, New Jersey and it's March 15th and 16th. And for more information, I just want to send to eternity .org backslash conference on suffering and it'll be Justin Peters, the world famous.

He'd be so mad, you know, if I said that he was the world famous Justin Peters. He is a very humble man. He's one of the most humble men I know. He's a theology gal. A breakout session and Colleen will be meeting with the women specifically and from your many different issues that were on India and Delta that he even has, if you did.

And we will be repeating.

That website during the course of this program, but I am urging all of you who live anywhere near New Jersey to head out there. This is sure to be something that benefits you and will enable you to even further benefit others.

So just make sure you write down strivingforeternity .org, strivingforeternity .org and all the information is on the website. And don't be confused by the Chinese American Bible Church. Obviously, the conference is not in.

Chinese. You're just renting that facility. Right. That's correct. Actually, I believe they are giving it to us for free. Andrew. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Okay. And what we have,.

We have an anonymous listener with a question already. Okay. Hi, Chris and Frank. Do you believe that God has actually, I got to enlarge my email here. Sorry about that, folks. Do you believe that God has actually designed our sufferings?

I know that God can use it to sanctify us and also use it for his glory, but do you believe he actually designed them specifically as I have heard this taught? It is difficult to understand how a Christian wife can be physically, emotionally, mentally, and sexually abused and be told by Christian leaders it is her fault because she is not submissive.

How can this be? I know people are responsible for their own actions, but how can it be taught that God designs our sufferings? Something that puzzles me often. Yeah, that's a huge issue that it's called the theodicy.

It's defending the fact that God is a God of love and mercy and grace in a world that is filled with calamity and violence and evil and even quote, quote, natural disasters, you know, like earthquakes and tornadoes and things, floods, fires that destroy many lives, sometimes thousands at once.

So let's have you answer her first question. Do you believe that God has actually designed our sufferings? And it seems perhaps as if she also means by the word designed that he has ordained or that he has predetermined our sufferings.

Well, being one of the there seems to be something behind the question always. There's something up front. Here's an example. I dealt with this person, someone who commits suicide. My response to them, are you thinking about suicide?

So I'm always careful in how I respond to someone theologically because I want to make sure we understand what the person is experiencing or going through before I give a theological statement. Now, since they acted in a theological way, of course, being reformed, I believe all things.

Now, I tend to be, if we're talking theologically, I'm in for a laugh at some people. But I believe that God has ordained it. I think the book of Job is quite clear by design, allowed Satan to cause the suffering that Job went through.

And so when we take of certain things that take place in our lives, we know that God, now, does he ordain it in such a way that he is the primary cause? That is a matter of, I tend to believe that God is moving things.

Only when we look at Paul, God wouldn't remove it. Again, yes, I think God is designed it, but he's designed it in a certain way in which we could, and it ultimately is for our good. Now, I will say all things good, certainly not in that they are working.

Toward good. How would you respond? Well, I am also reformed, as you know, and it is clear that a sinful, finite, fallible creature could never thwart the will of God, could never stifle God from his purpose being accomplished exactly the way he desires it to.

So, even though these things are difficult for us to understand, and we may never understand them this side of glory, in fact, I know that we'll never fully understand them this side of glory, we just have to contend with the fact of what the Bible teaches.

And, for instance, the very death of Jesus Christ, the perfect, spotless Lamb, the only sinless man that ever lived and was 100 obedient to his Father, his death, in order to redeem his people from their sins, involved the wicked acts of sinful men.

They involved the sadism of wicked Roman soldiers, the heresy and the blasphemy of the Jews that cried out for his death. They involved murder. Jesus Christ was murdered. But, all of that was done with his own consent and volition, and it was all orchestrated before the foundations of the world by a holy, righteous, and loving God.

He gave his only begotten Son. So, there you have a clear teaching in the scripture that you have men who are guilty of killing the Son of God, the God-man, the only holy and righteous and perfect person that ever walked the face of the earth.

They are guilty, and those who have not come, or should I say in past tense, those who had not come to faith and repentance while on this earth are going to be, and are now, even being punished in hell because of what they did.

But, at the same time, God is the one that ordained it. So, these are things that I don't think that we can fully understand, and never will. I don't know if you want to add anything to that as well.

Well, I think when being blamed, does it be in their fault? And there are obviously certain, and I can't think of a theological term for it right now, but where the Pharisees were blind, the sin of the blind, and then Jesus said, you know, he's born blind, that he may bring glory to God.

And so, we have to be very careful of anyone's suffering, or anything anyone's going through, that the first thing that we colleen is that it's very easy to point to someone who's got, and it may be true, you know, some suffering is the result of multiple, and I will make an argument, is that slacking within her, but it's one of the reasons, and I'm going to point this out at the conference, I believe one of so much is very poor understanding.

We don't have a true understanding of we, if you follow Christ, you're going to suffer. I mean, that's just as plain and simple. So, we have to be ready to suffer, and be prepared to suffer. And we need to have a good.

Just to add to the fact that God is sovereign over evil acts, even though he never himself sins, being perfect, and holy, and righteous. He is not the author of sin, but he is in sovereign control over it.

And this, I'm not, I don't want my listeners to think that I'm mixing this with our listeners situation where the listener was the victim, or is the victim, or was the victim, where there were wicked individuals involved other than herself.

But we have, in this case, someone suffering because of his own wickedness, and it's someone who is the apple of God's own eye. David, if you remember, when David committed adultery with Bathsheba, wanted to cover it up when she got pregnant, didn't want her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to know that she was pregnant by him, David, while he was on the battlefield being a soldier.

So he not only committed the sin of adultery, but he also committed the sin of murder by arranging for Uriah the Hittite to be murdered on the battlefield, and therefore he would not be able to discover the wickedness of David and his adultery with his wife.