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

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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this first day of March 2019 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.

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 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 the second time 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 Andrew Rappaport, who is the president and big guy who founded the ministry, and Anthony Silvestro.

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 we have taken together to help

Andrew work through discipling people. That's been

Andrew's main focus over the years, his discipleship, evangelism. He does a lot of conferences around the 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,

I'm sure, of him shaking hands with Brother MacArthur. Rub it in a little bit.

Yeah, they always rub it in. Sometimes they crop photos of me in there. We've had a great time over the last few years that I've been with Striving for Eternity in doing different conferences.

We have covered everything from biblical truth, dealing with the various cultural wars that are going on around the country.

We've discipled 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 through suffering.

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 and tell us about how you even got involved in that to begin with.

Well, as a young child I was bullied quite a bit. I was much smaller than I am now growing up, and I was bullied a lot.

I had the opportunity in 1988, my senior year of high school, of starting karate.

I began studying karate in Eastman, Georgia, when I was 17 and started teaching.

Once I got my black belt at Georgia College, which is here in moved up to seminary in North Carolina, began training with some guys, and from there

I met Henzo Gracie, who's of the famous Gracie family, and from there

I trained with him throughout the years and eventually began staying under one of his, well, his first American black belt,

Matt Serra, who also became the UFC welterweight champion, and eventually got my black belt under Matt.

And 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, Anthony Quagliata, we call it Big Tony, who was one of Matt's instructors.

So we have an academy that we've opened up, and we've been growing. Lord's blessed us over the last year.

We're about to mark hopefully 100 students, which is the most we've had, and he and I, we've had the opportunity to reach others, a discipleship, and one of my associates, a pastor now, he has a wonderful testimony.

You met him, James Watkins. He was an atheist who came to Christ, and he just got a wonderful testimony through that and others that I've been able to meet and reach through the gospel, through martial arts.

We've just been so thankful and blessed through that. 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 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 around the world.

But it's also been shown that you have to know how to defend yourself standing. You have to defend yourself when you're tied up in a situation of grappling, and then if you're taken to the ground, how to defend yourself as well.

There's not really one martial art anymore that can give you a total aspect of self -defense.

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 competition. In karate, there would be no ground fighting.

In a sport Jiu -Jitsu tournament, there would be no striking. Judo, obviously, most of the action ends if a person is thrown to their back immediately, so there would be no ground fighting even though there is occasions in Judo where there is the 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 the ability to determine whether or not you need to use a physical altercation.

I find that people who don't know how to defend themselves are more apt to try to defend themselves than people who do.

I deal in my counseling situation, I work with a variety of criminal personalities, and there have been a few occasions where I have been verbally threatened but not physically threatened, and I'm glad I do have the ability to, if the need came up, to be able to defend myself.

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. 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.

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.

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 traditional

Southern Baptist Church. Of course, myself being Reformed, my sermons have the

Reform leaning toward 1689.

We do a lot of reciting of the confessions, the creeds.

I preach expository verse by verse. I'm just finishing up 1 Samuel this

Sunday, and I preach through over... Coming up on 15 years I've been at this church, and I think

I'm the third... 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 and evangelism comes about.

You know, the church we started with, when I got there, with about 18, and we've doubled, tripled at times.

So 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 and possibly triple it over 15 years, you're doing a great job.

And the Lord is working as well, obviously, what I mean through that. 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 lot of grief from church growth people and people who make disparaging remarks about numbers constantly, and, oh, you're not doing this and not doing that, and they want to give me a formula to grow, and I was like, the formula is preaching the

Word. You know, preach the Word, in season and out of season. Amen. And that's what

I've done faithfully, and God has brought people in over the years who

God has sovereignly brought in and regenerated them, and by faith they've come under and been baptized and now are discipling others.

So it's a... God is the one who is planting and we're sowing, you know?

So we're excited with my church there. 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 currently travel about a thousand miles a week over four days working with close to 200 -plus sex offenders through group counseling who are convicted of some sort of sex crime.

In reality, many of them are on parole serving for current crimes and past sex crimes, so I'll have anywhere from murder all the way to possibly misdemeanor sexual battery.

So any criminal in Georgia, any violent crime

I'm going to deal with, and it's been growing over the years of the number of violent offenders

I deal with. I used to deal with only one adult rapist per group, and then

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. I think it's the defunding of the criminal system that's freeing up a lot of the more violent crimes here in Georgia.

But I deal with these sex offenses, and we cover a wide range of 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 more of the sword. I am at times able to share with the guys who

I talk to individually and able to actually share the gospel at times with them. But again, as it is in a secular situation,

I have to be guarded in a lot of the things that I do, and even more guarded about my own personal life, because I try to protect my family as well, because I have had guys who have threatened me and would possibly even harm my family if they could.

So, you know, it's an interesting field that God has put me in, and I tell you, the depression, you know,

I'm not a...I'm the type of person 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. 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 over the last two years, I dealt with 12 church members, family members, or close friends who died.

It was about 10 in a row. It was several close church members, a deacon, a lady who

I was very close to at a former church, and 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 counseling supervisor, mentored me.

She was killed suddenly coming home from group in a car accident, and that sent me into a deep depression for six or seven months, where 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,

I would say, and I think 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 is that I didn't want to get out on the mat and work out.

I really just didn't have the energy or the desire to do that. And so,

I have one of my close Christian brothers, he's always at me getting my goat about not training, and he was absolutely right.

I just found myself not enjoying the things that you do. That's one of the symptoms and signs of depression is when you stop enjoying 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.

They're just not really doing it. And that's one of the things I found and noticed. I was like, why don't

I enjoy doing this as much anymore? And so, that's when I start, you know, kind of introspecting and talking to the

Lord, you know, and trying to start working through the grieving process. And, you know, being a pastor, and I'm sure you've dealt with this, you're asked to do a lot of funerals.

Very rarely do you sit down and grieve because you're always in the process of helping others grieve.

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 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, and I want to get her name right too, Colleen Sharp and Justin Peters.

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 just 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. Andrew's pastor, Joe Suazo, is also doing a breakout, him and Colleen, and Justin and I are the main speakers.

My counseling background, I have multiple degrees, obviously, in counseling associates and bachelors in psychology.

I have a master of divinity in biblical counseling from Southeastern, and I'm in my last semester at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in their professional counseling.

So hopefully this time next year, maybe, I should be finishing up my dissertation,

Lord willing, and graduating and be a doctor, maybe, hopefully.

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.

And my clients who have committed these terrible crimes, they themselves are so far on the spectrum of dealing with mental illness, dealing with depression, dealing with their own trauma growing up as children.

You know, people who commit crimes, they, you know, obviously some of them have criminal personalities, and they're just, you know, enjoy committing crimes.

But the vast majority of them are hurt people, hurt people, as the cliche goes.

And so I deal with a lot of hurting people, and I deal with people who have hurt people. I've dealt with people who are survivors of sexual assault and have dealt with that hurting.

You know, 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 weddings. So I'm acquainted with grief.

You know, Jesus was a man of sorrows, and he himself was acquainted with that. The Bible speaks a lot about sorrow and depression and so many things that we as humans go through, and Jesus went through them all in so many ways.

And he's able to give us peace. And I'm just so thankful that, you know,

I've had the ability to help people. And I think that's one of the, I think that's the main reason why

Andrew asked me to be one of the speakers. You just reminded me of a

J .C. Ryle quote. I love that 19th century evangelical

Anglican bishop, J .C. Ryle. And he, 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, you know, being more dependent upon God, but also comforting others with the same comfort that we have been comforted with.

Amen. 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 chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n 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.

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Chris Arnson. 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 of an upcoming conference.

I 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. So the conference is coming up next 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 you straight to the website, strivingforeternity .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.

Yeah, he's one of the most humble men I know. He and myself are the keynote speakers, and Andrew's pastor,

Joe Suazo, and Colleen Sharp from Theology Gals, her and Joe will be doing a breakout session, and Colleen will be meeting with the women specifically.

And from your recent interview with her, you know, she's dealt with some many different issues of her own, physical pain and dealing with stuff going on in the life of her children that she's going to share.

Joe was a missionary in India and dealt with issues, and obviously

Justin, you know, Justin has dealt with terrible palsy throughout his life.

You wouldn't know that he even has it if you didn't know he did from the way he carries himself.

He's just one of the most amazing, godly men that I've had the opportunity to meet, and just so honored to be on the same podium with him.

Amen. 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 it 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, so Andrew, I think if I remember correctly,

Andrew was the pastor there in the past. 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 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 Reformed faiths, here's where I'm always am careful how

I respond to a question because there seems to be something behind the question always.

There's something up front. Here's an example. I dealt with this person who asked me a question regarding eternal destiny of 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 asked it in a theological way, of course being Reformed, I believe all things come to pass by God's direct will.

Now, I tend to be, if we're talking theologically, I'm in for a laugh versus super laughs as some people.

But I believe that God has ordained it. I think the book of Job is quite clear that God, by design, allowed

Satan to cause the suffering that Job went through. So when we take of certain things that take place in our lives, we know that God has ordained it.

Now, does he ordain it in such a way that he is the primary cause, or the secondary cause?

I think that, you know, that is a matter of theological debate.

I tend to believe that God is moving things forward for our sanctification.

Certainly, when we look at Paul, Paul said, you know, he had a thorn in his flesh and God wouldn't remove it.

So again, yes, I think God has designed it, but he's designed it in a certain way in which we could go through it, and it ultimately is for our good.

Now, I will say that there are all things good, certainly not in that they are working toward good.

How would you respond with that, Chris? 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 will 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 with Colleen was on, there was a question about the hyper -patriarchal people that I think that was one of the questions the listener answered, and there's,

I think, part of what the tinge of what she was asking is someone being blamed for what they are going through as it be in their fault.

And there are obviously certain scriptures where, and I can't think of a theological term for it right now, but where the

Pharisees were asking Jesus, whose fault is it that this man was born blind, the sin of the mother or the father?

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 kind of look at is, well, you're suffering because of sin, and I think that was the issue with Job's friends that you mentioned as well in your discussion with Andrew and Colleen, is that it's very easy to point to someone who's got sin in their life, quote -unquote, and say that, you know, what they're going through is because of their sin.

And it may be true, you know, some suffering is the result of sin, that's quite biblical as well, but there's obviously multiple times we see in Scripture where people are going through some sort of problem, and it is not the result of sin.

And I will make an argument is that this person who is being attacked by these people in her church,

I believe that was the kind of thing is, is it's not what's lacking within her, but it's what's lacking in the spiritual life of the people that's attacking them.

One of the reasons, and I'm going to point this out at the conference, I believe one of the reasons that we suffer so much as Christians and as people is that we have a very poor understanding of biblical doctrine and of theology, that we don't have a true understanding of what suffering is than who

God is. And we develop this whole pride -centered, centered me, thinking that, that woe is me kind of mentality,

I might as well eat worms and die as the whole adage goes, and not understanding that we're not in control to start with, that God is the one in control, and that the

Bible tells us, look, we're going to suffer. 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 understanding of how to deal with suffering in a biblical way when suffering comes.

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 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 loyal 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.

Then you have Nathan the prophet confronting David, and this is, I can't think of a more clear passage in the

God -breathed words of scriptures where you have God declaring his own control over evil acts.

It begins in 2 Samuel 12 verse 9, why have you, this is

Nathan the prophet, this is God, I should say, speaking through Nathan the prophet to David, why have you despised the word of the

Lord by doing evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.

Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the

Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold I will raise up evil against you from your own household.

I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.

Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all

Israel and under the sun. Those are pretty astonishing words, aren't they? Absolutely, and notice that David's sin brought about a lot of suffering, not only upon himself, but upon his family and his descendants.

Right, and his child died, we don't have any indication that the child suffered, it was in some kind of pain or anything, but the child who had nothing to do with the sin died as a result.

So this is just further evidence that people find comfort in thinking, and I think this is very odd, it might be initially understandable why somebody would try to find comfort in God not being a part of their suffering in any way because they think

God loves me too much, he would never want this to happen to me, this is all about the devil and sinful people and so on and so on.

But when you think about that long and hard enough, that is a very terrifying notion to think that God's will is being thwarted and overcome by wicked people, by wicked, finite, fallible, mortal men are thwarting the very desires of God for you.

How could anyone sleep at night if they really consistently, logically added all of those elements together in their lives and knew that somehow the devil got the better of God in the case of your suffering?

Right, and since you brought up David, if you remember, I believe it is when he numbered the people and God had told him not to,

I believe, and God was going to punish Israel, and he gave David the choice, and I think one was his enemies coming into captivity, and I think one was the pestilence, and he chose the one sent by God because he said, who knows that God might be merciful.

You know, and that's the thing about our suffering, is that even if God is allowing the suffering, that we know that he's a loving and merciful

God, and he may relent. And that's what we have to deal with.

I mean, Job truly suffered because God allowed Satan to come in to his life.

And we forget that God is an awesome

God, but he's also a God who does things according to his will and his purpose and his plan, and his ways are higher than our ways.

We don't understand suffering. I don't think we ever will, and I don't even know if we'll truly understand it, as you said, and certainly not in this life, but in the life to come, who knows?

He may not even reveal it to us then. We might not care. We may not care, and we may have forgotten all about it, but we know that, look, and this is the thing is, if this is our best life now, we're in trouble.

You know? You're obviously quoting Joel Olsteen. I didn't want to mention his name.

Oh, that's fine. I know that John MacArthur said that if your best life is now, that means you're headed for hell.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And look, what is it, 70, 80, 90 years at the most that you're going to have to suffer?

What is eternity with a loving, merciful, gracious God compared to that, where we will no longer shed tears or suffer?

I mean, that is the hope of glory, is it not? Amen. And we have to go to our midway break right now.

The midway break is longer than normal. It's longer because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program, they need to air commercials and public service announcements that reflect their locality there in Florida.

So they air their own announcements during this break. We air different ones. And so during this time,

I'm asking you to please write down all the information that our advertisers provide, because that way you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers.

And remember, we rely upon our advertisers to exist. The very fact that we are on the air is the result, obviously, of God's grace.

But as far as the physical realm, we are in existence because of the fact that there are advertisers that keep us on the air through their advertising dollars.

And there are also generous people out there who donate to us. So if you want us to continue to be in existence on the air, keep patronizing our advertisers as much as you can and make sure that they know that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors,

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Orrinson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Frank Mullis, who is a licensed Christian counselor, and he also primarily deals with clients, patients, if you will, who are convicted offenders, criminals, especially sex offenders.

And today we are addressing the theme of sanctification through suffering, which is the theme of a conference where Frank is on the roster, the speaking roster, coming up very shortly in New Jersey.

And we are going to be continuing our discussion with Frank on that theme momentarily. But right now,

I just have a few announcements to make. First of all, I'm going to announce some of the details on the conference

I was just mentioning. The Sanctification Through Suffering conference is being held March 15th through the 16th in Freehold, New Jersey, and the roster includes

Justin Peters, who is a phenomenal speaker that you don't want to miss. A man who has battled cerebral palsy nearly his entire life and has just shined with the light of Christ amidst his suffering, and you don't want to miss him.

If you can take a plane, train, or automobile to hear Justin Peters speak, you should take every advantage of that opportunity.

Also, the guest that I am now interviewing, Frank Mullis, as I was saying, he is a part of this speaking roster and a phenomenal speaker in his own right.

Joe Swozo, I'm going to be relying upon the discernment of Andrew Rappaport and the folks there because I don't know

Joe yet, and I haven't interviewed Joe yet, but hopefully I will be able to get him on this program soon. And Colleen Sharp, who we had on just recently and are going to have

Colleen back on the program again. They are the four speakers at the Sanctification Through Suffering Conference, March 15th through the 16th.

For more details, go to strivingforeternity .org, strivingforeternity .org.

Then coming up, not long after that, I am going to be once again attending the

Banner of Truth Conference, the East Coast Ministers Conference. That's being held

May 28th through the 30th in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the Elizabethtown College. The theme is,

I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Speakers include Jeff Kingswood, Terry Johnson, David Vaughn, who is a

Reformed Baptist missionary in France, Stephen J. Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late

R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Michael Morales, and Chad Vegas. That's May 26th through the 30th in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Once again, the theme is, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. If you want to register for this conference, the

East Coast Ministers Conference, go to banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org,

click events, and then click on East Coast Ministers Conference. I look forward to seeing you there. There are other conferences that might be closer to you.

We have listeners all over the world in the Iron Sharpens Iron audience, so we know that we have folks on the

West Coast where they have another conference. There are also listeners in the UK that we hear from regularly, and there are

UK conferences, so attend the conference that you will more likely be able to travel to.

We hope that you tell the folks at Banner of Truth that you heard about the conference on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Last but not least, the Foundations Conference is coming to Manhattan once again. I love this conference,

December 19th and the 20th in New York City. If you intend to register for this conference,

I would do so as quickly as possible because the venue is very small. They only can seat about 200 people at this conference in Manhattan.

The speakers include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, whose voice you just heard a few moments ago, advertising a client of mine,

New Covenant Church NYC in Manhattan. Stephen J. Lawson was the professor of the pastor there,

Andy Woodard, and they have become advertisers of mine. I value them very much for wanting to help keep

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air, so we thank Stephen J. Lawson for doing the ad for them. Reverend Jeff Thomas, who is now retired from pastoral ministry in Wales.

He is just an extraordinary brother in Christ, a powerful preacher, phenomenal, fascinating author, and with all these gifts, he's still an incredibly humble brother in Christ.

I look forward to hearing him preach again. Richard Caldwell Jr. is on the roster. Reverend Armand Tomassian, who although not globally well -known right now, he is going to be if my gut feelings come to fruition, because this man is extraordinary.

This young man, Armand Tomassian, another powerful, powerful preacher and teacher, and yet simultaneously extremely humble, and I really love this brother.

I have interviewed him and intend to interview him again often, God willing. And Andrew Quigley, who

I don't know yet, but I trust the discernment of the folks at Sermon Audio who are orchestrating this conference, and they must know that Andrew Quigley is an excellent teacher and preacher.

If you want more information on registering for this conference, the Foundations Conference, December 19th and the 20th, go to thefoundationsconference .com,

thefoundationsconference .com, and please tell them that you heard about the conference from Chris Arns and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Now we are back with our guest Frank Mullis. If you have a question on suffering our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com

chrisarnzen at gmail .com and 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 only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We have Tyler from Eastern Suffolk County Long Island and Tyler asks does

God use suffering as a means for our sanctification to make us more like the Lord Jesus? Well I think the fact that we've been advertising a conference called

Sanctification Through Suffering kind of gave that answer away, but Frank maybe you want to be more detailed.

Yeah absolutely I think that's the point of the conference is to help us understanding that through suffering

God is teaching us many different things. One of which he's teaching us perseverance.

I think that is one of the things the Bible's quite clear on is that when we persevere it is because we go through many trials and tribulations.

One of the pastors I served under he always said, Frank never pray for patience.

He said because God's going to send you trials and tribulations. So when suffering's truly understood we begin to understand

I think God's glory a lot more. When we are at our happiest

I don't know if we really recognize our need for God as much a lot of times.

Even as Christians we often forget it seems that when

Israel was going through the good times it seems that they often fell into wickedness but God brings them down to suffering.

Suddenly they're turning back to God and so a lot of ways our suffering brings us to our knees a lot.

I know when my wife and I through the years when hard times came

I noticed that we prayed a lot more together. We turned to God in study of the word a lot more and so I think absolutely that God is teaching us and sanctifying us and that we're growing in him through suffering.

Thanks a lot Tyler and perhaps you should make every effort to be there at this conference in New Jersey because obviously as you know

Eastern Suffolk County Long Island is not very far from Freehold New Jersey.

So why don't you go to strivingforeternity .org and get all the information you need about attending this conference

March 15th through the 16th right around the corner and make sure that you tell the folks there that you heard about the conference from Iron Sherpins Iron Radio.

Let's see here we have we have

John in Bangor Maine who says seeing that your guest is a counselor of criminals and sexual offenders

I'm assuming that the suffering that some of them may be going through if they do not have two seared a conscious is a very different kind of suffering because it is guilt of their own wickedness that is causing the suffering and perhaps even multiplied many times over because of the suffering their own loved ones are experiencing through the horrifying embarrassment and perhaps scandal that has brought into their lives.

How do you counsel those who are going through this suffering because of their own actions and of course

I'm assuming it would be different if the person is a Christian who has now come to repentant faith and if the person is still in their sin.

Right exactly. My chief goal in a sense of as a secular counselor is to is to protect society from these guys in that teaching them ways in which they can learn to control themselves and pray to the

Lord you know in my own mind that they will not reoffend. You know the good news on at least from a secular standpoint is that reoffense rates are much lower than that than people want to make them out to be.

But on another another level there is no there is no true there is no true hope outside of Jesus Christ to remove guilt to remove to remove the evil in this world outside of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now as far as dealing with these guys many of them are consciences are seared.

I deal with many guys who do not see what they did as evil.

Many of them deny they did anything. They often blame the victim in the crime that they they harmed.

They see themselves as victims many of them. That's why they're why they're in counseling.

So I see the depravity that the Bible speaks of on a daily basis in that many many many of these guys they live a life of debauchery.

They live a life of wanting to continue heading down the road to destruction.

So yes they're exactly right. However there are those who have through prison ministries through themselves finding the

Bible in prison from finding other Christians who witnessed to them while they were in prison have come to know the

Lord. And God has dealt with their own

I guess dealt with their own sinfulness in a way in which they have been able to deal with their guilt.

However some of them still struggle and deal with what they see how they have hurt others and they still deal with that.

You know I think Paul I think Paul in a sense struggled with guilt over the death with Stephen throughout his life.

You know I think he knew that he was forgiven for his part with Stephen but I think

Paul still dealt with some of that. I think it bothered him in some way. What do you think about that Chris?

Do you think that we still deal with dealing with guilt of people we harmed?

Yeah I would imagine that. I don't know if I could think right now of a specific text that deals with the battle of remorse and guilt and depression other than the fact that he clearly identified himself as the chief of sinners.

And of course it's even more than Stephen. I mean he rounded up men and women to be executed for their

Christian faith almost like a member of a Jewish Gestapo. I mean he was a very evil man doing things that he believed were glorifying to God.

But I would be shocked if being a

Christian filled with the Holy Spirit he did not have remorse that was also obviously buffered with the knowledge of his forgiveness.

And that's an interesting concept because Christians that I know and even in my own life, in my own heart and mind personally,

I know that I struggle. It's a weird thing. It's almost a schizophrenic kind of a thing and I don't don't mean it literally but you are happy and filled with gratitude and praise for God's mercy in forgiving you and you know that you're not going to hell after your regeneration and your salvation because of the blood of Christ that redeemed you from every single sin that you ever committed and you ever will commit.

But even having said that I know Christians and I know myself personally at times when

I start and when they start to feel just prolonged periods of joy and peace of heart and mind all of a sudden you start to feel guilty about feeling that way, about feeling happy, about feeling joyful.

Can you speak on that? Is it appropriate for a

Christian who has been forgiven of his sins or her sins and yet who is guilty of horrible things, especially people like those that you counsel, some of them may come to Christ or maybe they already have, how do you balance that notion of embracing the joy of being redeemed and forgiven and having the penalty paid for and at the same time there may be people still alive who are suffering greatly because of things that you've done?

Yeah you know and you know I struggle with you know things that I've said or done to people you know that I love and sometimes they haven't got over it.

You know you've expressed remorse to them, they've said that they've forgiven you, something, some memory pops into your mind, maybe something they said kind of triggers that and you remember,

I can't believe that I said or I did that to them. Thank you, you know I would immediately thank

God for his forgiveness and understand you know that we are going to as humans, we're going to struggle with the flesh.

We're you know and in a sense it may be just Satan, you know some demonic presence that is wanting you to be reminded of things that you've done and I mean that guilt that we experience, we remember that we have been forgiven you know and speaking of sanctification, justification is the fact that God has pronounced us not guilty through the blood of Jesus Christ through faith.

Sanctification is the process in which we are continually growing in Christ and cooperating.

I think you and Colleen kind of discussed this in the cooperation and I think that as we grow in Christ we learn to deal with that guilt.

We learn to deal with understanding, accepting God's forgiveness and we become more like Christ and we're renewing our mind and we are applying the principles of scripture to help us deal with not fluctuating so much between joy and sadness.

We have, let's see Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania who has a question. We are supposed to take comfort in the words of scripture that say that Jesus was tempted in all ways such as we are but how could that be true if Jesus obviously never contemplated or fantasized about things like committing adultery and things that are sinful?

How could he have he been tempted in ways such as we are in every single one of those ways and yet we know that he never sinned?

This seems to me to be contradictory. I guess that somehow relates to our topic on suffering because people can suffer because they may be battling wicked desires and it brings suffering in their lives either because of the guilt and grief that they feel over this or because they are perhaps not experiencing some kind of fulfillment in their life.

For instance if somebody is single and they are constantly battling lust and there is a particular reason in their life where they can never be married you know that could bring suffering so I'm just trying to connect the question to what we're talking about.

Well I would think to answer it in a different way in a more theological way you know a lot of people look at the theological term peccability and impeccability could

Christ have sinned you know if he was God he could not have sinned so it wasn't true temptation. I think that this is a comparison in a sense to Adam.

Adam was tempted, the first Adam was tempted and he failed. There was no hope for Adam when he failed.

There was no hope for humanity. In Adam we all died. In Adam you know we were destined to hell and we see that Christ was tempted in every way.

He was tempted in every way but he did not sin. So it was him who lived the perfect life for us that we place faith in that perfection and that he gives us his righteousness.

So we have the righteousness of Christ and that is the wonderful thing about the gospel is that we often forget that he took our sin upon himself but he gave us his righteousness and so it is that he was tempted yeah but he didn't fail.

When we are tempted we often fail but through Jesus Christ he lived it a perfect life so we could place that faith in him and we know that when we stand before the

Father we are going to be found guiltless because we have the righteousness of Christ. Now I believe that there is some clarification that is required in regard to the terminology of temptation because especially the way we use it in our modern understanding whenever somebody says that they're tempted or perhaps at least most of the time it might not be all of the time we are summoning up in our minds the idea of somebody who is looking at a woman in a bathing suit and going wow

I really really want to do something with this woman that I shouldn't be doing or it could be a whole host of things.

Somebody sees a purse unattended in a waiting room and they see money bulging out of it and wow

I could really use that money right now probably more than that person. Jesus never did that because those that action even if it's confined to somebody's imagination is sin even if they don't consummate the thought into a physical action or deed it's still sin.

I mean Jesus himself said that you've committed adultery already if you just lust after a woman.

So obviously in fact that was shocked years ago in the 1990s when I worked for a major Christian radio station when

I heard well actually it was like five people independently of each other told me that they had heard a very famous Christian radio host say that Jesus frequently wanted to commit sin but never yielded to that temptation.

Well wanting to commit sin is a sin so we know that Jesus we know Jesus didn't get tempted in that way.

Right. So should we assume then that it was completely and strictly an external temptation that he received in every way that we have received?

Well I would say you know very much in the similar way in which Satan when he took

Christ to various places in the wilderness and tempted him that's the type of temptation.

It's an offer to sin. It's not a it's more the offering of sin.

You know I'm sure there were prostitutes who came to him and said come with me. I'm sure that there were probably people offering him to imbibe to drunkenness and so it was almost the constant offering

I think in a sense that that's what it's talking about. He saw the allures of this world of greed and and lust and all of these things and he rejected it all.

Well we have to we have to go to our final break right now. It's a lot more brief than the last one but if you want to send in a question do it now because we're rapidly running out of time chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com please give us your first name city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away we'll be right back with Frank Mullis.

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Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back this is

Chris Arnzen and this is the final segment of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Today with our guest

Frank Mullis we are talking about sanctification through suffering. If you want to send in an email do it right now because we're rapidly running out of time.

chrisarnzen at gmail .com chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania who asks must we not be very careful not to judge others because of their suffering automatically assuming that they are being punished by God.

Frank are you there? Yes. Okay could you uh respond to the question? Yes um yeah she's absolutely correct um that that um you know as I mentioned earlier we we must be very careful when we see someone that is going through some trial or tribulation as I mentioned uh the same in the context of Job and Job's friends,

Job's wife. We we see where the Pharisees tried to blame someone's illness on their mother or father's sin so we we need to immediately uh not place a judgment until we get more information.

Now there obviously are people who are suffering a lot of the the criminals that I work with they they're suffering financially they are suffering uh emotionally they're they're they're suffering um in many aspects because they have harmed uh people in their life they've harmed others they've harmed society and yes uh some some of our suffering is the result of sin uh but many times uh we've got to be careful especially in the health and wealth movement that is out there today that points to everything uh uh where whether it's poverty or illness uh that is the result of sin we as Christians must must uh defend uh defend that aspect of scripture.

Yes and we've been talking about uh your fellow speaker at the upcoming conference Sanctification Through Suffering uh

March 15th and 16th in New Jersey uh your fellow speaker Justin Peters has basically made his primary life's mission uh second to the gospel of Jesus Christ of course uh to expose the word of faith movement teachers uh for their very dangerous uh heresies and uh harmful uh teachings and uh

J uh Justin and I also have developed a mutual friendship with Kosti Hinn the nephew of Benny Hinn one of the worst one of the worst culprits in this heresy and Kosti has repented of that heresy and is now a

Reformed Baptist and not only a Reformed Baptist but a cessationist. Wow. So I'm looking forward to uh trying to get

Kosti out here to Pennsylvania at some point in the future and I would love to have have that happen soon but he's very busy right now but I will keep everybody up to date on that.

I want you to have at least three minutes of uninterrupted time now to unburden your heart and leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds regarding this topic today.

I think ultimately what I want people to understand about uh suffering is uh is that you're not alone number one uh whether it's depression or or uh going through the loss of a loved one you're not alone out there um there are many many uh

Christian brothers and sisters who are going through similar struggles um you see it uh in scripture uh with Job and uh you see

David which we've already talked about uh you see Paul uh you see others who went through uh trials and tribulations our

Lord Jesus Christ himself uh was a man of sorrows uh he wept uh at Lazarus uh grave knowing that he was about to raise him from the dead uh he still grieved with others um

I think that um that we need to understand that uh scripture is a comfort to us that we should turn to scripture first uh when we began to suffer uh we turn to scripture we can read many passages uh in regards to that I would suggest uh if you're going through depression uh

Psalm 43 Psalm 42 are excellent passages that talk about that uh there are a multitude of going through the

Philippians and and reading through the book of Philippians that speaks of joy that can help us out in in times of of trouble um we need to uh learn to live by faith and not by our circumstances a lot of times just remember our circumstances are temporary uh and learn to trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ um Psalm 32 reminds us if we're suffering to go and look for uh that uncondensed sin like you mentioned

Chris earlier about introspecting that we may we may have sin in our life that we have not repented of and that that the

Holy Spirit is convicting us of that we need to deal with and look if we can change our circumstances there may be you know you're going through a job that is uh you're just having trouble with your job or you're you're having trouble with um with your children or with your marriage and and um you understand that those things uh can't uh can't change then you need to learn to change your attitude

Philippians 4 for 1st Thessalonians 5 16 uh help us to understand to uh learn to be um learn to be faithful and learn to understand uh and be um what's the word

Chris I'm looking for um uh learn to be um I keep using the word home there a friend of mine joked with me about that to be content that's the word

I was looking for Chris is learn to be content in our circumstances I'm never content that's why I couldn't think of the word is learn to be content in our circumstances but here's here's what

I want to say if you're not Christian the depressed person the suffering person does not need to feel uh better they don't simply need medication um they don't need a good counselor they need a redeemer if you are hurting you're suffering and you don't know the

Lord Jesus Christ you need to turn to him and place your faith and and repent of your sins and believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ because today is the day of salvation amen and of course I'm assuming that you don't rule out people uh being prescribed medication as long as you know absolutely absolutely not and I know that's a whole different topic for a program topic because there are there are doctors that dole out medications like candy that wind up ruining people's lives but uh and and I'm surprised that wasn't a question um you know and I uh you know

I'm I've run the middle of the gambit with that um I think that there's so much over prescription today and then there are those who don't want to um take medication that can and does help people right so I'm I'm I'm I'm the middle of the road there okay well we're out of time make sure you get a strivingforeternity .org

for more information about the conference on March 15th and the 16th I want to thank you so much