Paul Bagnasco Interview

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Listen in as Pastor Mike interviews Paul Bagnasco.

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her
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King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is
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Mike Abendroth and we have a little slogan around here and that slogan is, �Always Biblical, Always Provocative, Always in that Order.�
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I�m trying to get you to think about life, spiritual things, news, all through the lens of the
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Bible. What does the Bible say about this, that, or the other thing? Two quick announcements before our special guest today.
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I will be in New Zealand coming up later this month, October 27th through 29th at Fenton Park Bible Church, Pastor Donald Stevenson, and I�ll be teaching the five solas, something from sexual fidelity and a little bit about Jesus Christ, the
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Prince of Preachers. We�d love to see you there. It�s on the North Island. Rotorua is the name of it, at least that�s how
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I pronounce it. I don�t know how they pronounce it. The other announcement is Israel 2018,
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February. You can still sign up, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Now before I took an extended sabbatical this year, here was the format for No Compromise Radio.
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Monday was a sermon from Bethlehem Bible Church that I preached. Tuesday I talked to Pastor Steve and we discussed church issues.
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Thursdays I talked about some doctrine, the act of obedience of Jesus or something like that, His resurrection.
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And then Fridays we critique people. But on Wednesdays I like to interview folks, and I�ve interviewed my son,
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I�ve interviewed my brother, I�ve interviewed authors, Carl Truman, Al Mohler, you name it.
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But I also like to interview my friends who are involved in gospel ministry, whether they�re pastors or teachers or lay leaders.
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And I have a dear friend in Santa Cruz, California, and today I�m going to have Paul Bagnosco on.
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Paul, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Oh, thank you very much. Excited to be on. Hey, Paul, how many years have we known each other?
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Our wives were best friends growing up, and so therefore, by default, you and I are friends.
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Right. Probably, I�m going to say, 25 years. Wow. And I think the old days we hit it off because we both were on the same basketball team together or something.
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Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I know. Well, I�d like to talk to you a little bit today, Paul, because as much as it�s fun to talk to friends,
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I like to talk to friends who are interested in serving the Lord Jesus and involved in His church, the local church.
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Can you give our listeners a little background about your testimony and how you got saved? Sure. I got saved back in 1975.
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Now, wait a second. Are you like 85 years old?
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Just kidding. I still like it sometimes. Yeah, I got saved back in 1975, and I was raised a
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Roman Catholic, went to a Catholic school for actually 13 years. I spent a year at the
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University of Santa Clara in Santa Clara, California. And just through a bunch of different circumstances in my life,
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I just came to a point to where everything seemed kind of just hopeless or nonchalant.
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Nothing really seemed important. Nothing seemed to have any real value to it. And I remember one night
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I was living with two other friends, and we were just out having a good time all the time and partying and all that kind of thing.
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And I remember just one night I just got down on my knees because I felt so empty, and I felt like there was nothing really in me.
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And I got down on my knees, and I just prayed, God, if you're real,
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I need to know that because my life is nothing. And God didn't speak to me in some voice or something, but I felt a sense that God touched me.
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And my life just started changing from that moment on. I didn't end up going to church. I picked up my old
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Dewey Bible and started reading through the Gospels and about loving people and helping people and asking for nothing in return.
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And through about six or nine months of that, I met some of my friends that were in high school that were just, gosh, just crazy guys.
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They went to Vietnam, and they smoked heroin, and when they got back, they were just in a horrible place.
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And I guess I remember visiting them and just going, gosh, these guys are really weird.
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And about a month later, I went back to see them, and their lives, both of them, their lives had totally changed.
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I said, what is going on with you guys? And they told me that they accepted Jesus Christ into their life and just totally changed their life.
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So, sorry. Anyways, from that moment on, my life just rapidly started changing.
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I wanted to serve the Lord, not just after being saved, but I wanted
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Him to be my Lord. And so, yeah, from that point on, in 1980,
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I went to help start a church in Hawaii on the island of Kauai up in Hanalei Bay. And so, it's just been just a,
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I don't know, just a great adventure with the Lord. There's been some struggles, but I know that through those struggles, the
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Lord drew me closer to Him, showed me that He was real. And without struggles,
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I think we'd never know what kind of character we really have or who we're really putting our trust in. And I just realized more and more that the only person
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I could really put my trust in was Jesus Christ. Paul, thanks for that. When you're reading the Catholic Bible, the
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Douay Bible, did you have anybody tell you, oh, read the Gospel of John so you can understand more who
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Jesus is, or here's what repentance is in Acts? What was your strategy? Did you just start picking it up and reading it?
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Yeah, I just ended up, I don't know, in the midst of my life craziness,
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I just picked it up and I probably just turned to Matthew and just started reading there. Because I remember before I did that, and I kind of felt that touch,
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I went back to the Catholic church right by the high school I went to, and I went in that church,
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I figured, oh, you know, this is a familiar place, I'll feel good about going in there. And I felt empty.
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I felt like there was, you know, nothing really there. And so no, no one ever told me to read this or that.
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It was just, I don't know, you know, it just had to have been the Spirit of God to, you know, be reliable.
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Because I know that it wasn't me, I know that, you know, God touched me and brought me there to start reading the
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Word of God. Right, I'm trying to figure out, Paul, as we look back, and it's probably hard because it's
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A, so long ago, and B, you know, none of our theologies are very good when we first get saved.
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Going from kind of that emotional experience to understanding really who Jesus was and who
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He is and what He did, and maybe how He's not the Catholic Jesus, how do you process all that?
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Oh, gosh. In other words, you know, Jesus is a...He saves us by grace alone, through faith alone.
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What He did at Calvary was sufficient, and He was raised from the dead. And some of that stuff maybe, you know, you don't learn from the
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Catholic Church, so I'm just wondering, who taught you that? No, I didn't learn it from the
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Catholic Church. Actually, when I started going to church, it was just the teaching of the
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Word of God. And really, you know, just being encouraged by people to, you know, to pick up the
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Word of God and to start reading it. And you know, just realizing and reading those parts where it talks about, you know,
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God sent His only Son and, you know, into the world, and just reading that and getting to the point where, you know,
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He just gave all, He sacrificed all, and talking to, you know, some different pastors and some different friends that I had that were, you know, older than me in the
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Lord anyways, and just to realize what Jesus really did.
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You know what, Ann, and I think even now today, as I still read, you know, and constantly come before God with my sin and repent, you know, it's just more and more, it seems like God is, you know, drawing me closer to Himself.
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And so, just to realize that provision that Jesus, you know, provided for me, it's just, it's mind -boggling, you know, that the
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Son of God would come down and die. You know, for me, you know, the perfect one would take my sins upon Him and die for me, that I might be saved, that I might know
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Him, that I might serve Him, I might love Him. So it was, I think it was just, you know, reading the
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Word and hearing the Word from the pulpit, and then also being around other believers all the time.
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My life totally changed. It's like my old life disappeared, and I just wanted to be around, you know,
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Christians, and I wanted to go to every Bible study that there was at church.
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And so, it was just a hunger that the Lord produced in my life, just, it's like Jeremiah 15, 16.
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I saw the Word, and I ate them, you know, and to me, they became the joy, the delight of my heart.
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And I remember praying that after I'd got saved. I just prayed, you know, Lord, let us eat Your Word, you know, like we eat food.
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And someone told me, oh, that's in Jeremiah. And so, that's really been something that I've really held on to, you know, these past 40 years or so.
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Paul, when you, well, when I think of you, I think of someone who is very serious when it comes to matters of life and death and ministry.
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You had a successful background in sports, but that doesn't move you. You're very serious when it comes to the
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Word. But you also, I think it's a neat balance that the Lord has balanced in your life, that emotional side.
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And even when you were tearing up there and getting emotional when you were giving your testimony and talking about other people, there's that heart of,
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I want to serve and be nice, but very serious. Do you think there's a big problem in evangelicalism today where so many people, they don't think, take the things of the
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Lord in a serious, solemn manner with any kind of reverence or high importance? What's your take on modern church life?
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I don't know. As I see modern church life, I see that people really don't, you know, take the
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Word of God seriously. People, it's kind of saying, oh, you know, well, you're supposed to love everybody.
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And I think a lot of people, Christians included, think that, oh, love means that, you know, I just be nice all the time.
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When I see that something's wrong, I don't speak into it. No, I believe that, you know, if I'm going to serve the living
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God, that the Word of God has to be really true and valid in my life.
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And if other people that I see, other believers I see, if there's something in their life or in my life, you know, iron rubs against iron, so one man against another.
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I just believe that, you know, it's our responsibility to reach out and express, you know, hey, what are you doing?
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It seems to me like you're, you know, going the wrong way there. And I am serious because this is a serious business.
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This is life and death. This is heaven and hell. And so, yeah, I want to serve the
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Lord with everything that's within me. And the small group that I meet with, I mean, we actually, you know, hold each other accountable to the
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Word of God, to what we're doing because, you know, it's serious. The world out there and evangelical churches too, it's just like they want to preach this gooey gospel that everything's, oh, everything's okay, you know,
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God's love and we have no responsibility and we can, you know, do what we want and God's going to always, you know, be there and he's just this big
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Santa Claus in the sky. And, you know, it's way more than that, you know, and I see even in our church, you know, where we need to, the men need to stand up and be men and stand up and be the leaders that God's called us to be and be examples.
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And yeah, I'm fired up. I mean, even as old as I am, I know that God's not done with me or with His church, and I know that He continues to want to work in our life.
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So yeah, I see it as, oh, I see it as sad and a sad place where a lot of the churches seem to be going to this prosperity doctrine and everything else, and it's just, it's producing very weak
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Christians, if Christians at all. Talking to Paul Bagnosco today on No Compromise Radio, my friend in Santa Cruz.
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He's a butcher there during the day, and pretty much with your free time besides your wife and grandkids, you are involved in the local church.
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Tell us about your church there. Well, I love this church.
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I mean, actually you, Mike, were one of the ones, I've been a Christian for a long time and helped start a church and went through some tough times and never stopped believing, but just kind of, you know, was going to a church here and there and went to church a couple years here and went to another one and just kind of never really felt like I, you know, was being fed the
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Word of God. And through you, Mike, encouraging me, probably the last five or six years, you were saying you need to get yourself into a church and you need to, even if you have to give up your small group, you need to get into church and become part of the body.
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And so I remember you were coming out one year, five or six, seven years ago, and I went, uh -oh, Mike's coming out again.
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I better take seriously what he's been telling me. And so actually I just,
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I was driving by on the road and I saw up on the church sign, verse by verse, and that's something that I've always yearned to sit under.
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And so I came into the church here where I'm at now, and it was verse by verse, and I loved it.
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The people were just so gracious, so loving, and so I was,
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I just have ended up being planted here. I'm part of the, you know, the board here at,
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I go to a Calvary Chapel in Capitola. I'm part of the board here and part of the men's ministry, and it's just,
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I am so thankful, you know, that God's put me here, that I'm still able to be used, whether it's to encourage people, whether it's to teach once in a while, whether it's to come up alongside of, you know, people, and they come up alongside of me.
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It's just, it's just been a real blessing, and it continues because God's continuing to work in the church, and it's just exciting to be a part, just to be a part of seeing
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God work, you know, in Santa Cruz, in Capitola, which is a very dark area, and yet where it's dark, you know, our
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Lord is that much brighter. So I'm excited about where I'm at, and I'm just very thankful for it.
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You could almost walk down the street, couldn't you, to that church building? Pretty close. I know. It was right under my nose, and it took a while to find it.
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You're still in pretty good shape for how old you are. Tell our listeners how old you are, because you sound like you're about 35, fired up for the
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Lord. How old are you? I wish I was 35. I'm 67. Okay. 67, and will you retire from being a butcher anytime soon?
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I don't know. That's up to the Lord. I'm looking at maybe a few other options here and there, and you know,
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I can't retire fully, but you know, when I do, you know,
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I will not retire my life from the Lord, I'll just dig in that much deeper to serve
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Him where I'm at. So in one sense, I'd like to be able to say, yeah, I'm going to retire at the beginning of the year so I can serve our
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God with a lot more energy, and just, yeah. So I don't know. That's kind of in the
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Lord's hands, and I'm looking forward to whenever that happens, to be able to serve Him in a greater capacity. Now, Paul, you're an old -school butcher, right?
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You don't just get the chunks of meat, you do everything, or teach the other men there to do that.
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But when I think of you and being a butcher, our other men, and of course, ladies who work, was it
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Tyndale, I think, who said, you know what, I want to have the Bible translated into English.
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He used Erasmus' second edition Greek New Testament. I want the Bible translated in English so the plowman, the man in a field with a plow, would know more than the
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Pope. And in this sense, you know, here you are a butcher, but it doesn't matter, blue collar, or what you do, or your other jobs that you've done, being a pastor, to know the
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Word of God. Tell our listeners a little bit about how, yes, it is a grace from God, but how you need to personally study, how you need to long for God's Word, and not just show up on Sunday with your
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Bible, but you have to get up, and I think you get up at two in the morning or something, or four to go to work, it's something crazy.
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But there's some discipline when it comes to reading the Bible, and what do you end up doing?
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Well, yeah, I do get up. I'm usually at work about 315, 320 in the morning. Okay, say that again for our listeners.
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315 AM. AM, yes, in the morning. So that's what time I'm usually at work, and so I do try to get up at two o 'clock in the morning so that I can set some time aside to read the
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Word of God, to pray, and I know that a lot of times my routine might be to get up and read the book of Proverbs.
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If today's October 11th, I'd read the 11th chapter of Proverbs, but I also have been going through the book of Hebrews, because if I don't eat the
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Word of God, we are what we eat, and so I need to eat healthy stuff, and I need to eat the
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Word of God because that's the only way I can get to work and lean on Jesus, and I know
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I listened to one of your sermons, Michael, a while back when you were here, and you said in Hebrews chapter 3, you said, consider
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Jesus, and I need to do that all the time, and I just need to eat more of the
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Word of God because the more of the Word of God that I have in me, the more the Spirit of God can bring that to my mind, and so I encourage the guys that I meet with on Tuesday nights at my house that it's all about the
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Word of God. It's all about eating the Word of God. It's all about practicing the Word of God because if we read the
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Word of God and there's no fruit in our life, then what are we really doing? What's our life really about?
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And I know even at work it helps me to be able to, especially in Proverbs, I've got 13 other guys, 13 or 14 guys that work with me, or I'm the manager there, and it just gives me wisdom on how to serve them because I figure if I'm the manager that I'm there to serve them.
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They're not there to serve me. I'm not some aristocrat guy. I'm there to serve them and to make their lives count.
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So there's a lot of times I can, you know, use the book of Proverbs when I have meetings with them.
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I can use different passages in the Bible to share with them to get my point across.
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And so the Bible is just, you know, the best source that I have other than Jesus Himself.
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Well it's interesting because I read in 1 Peter 2, Peter says, And I'm encouraged,
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Paul, because you talk about Proverbs, and there's some good moral exhortations, very wise man,
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Solomon, writing those, and of course he was inspired when he wrote those. And then we've also got not just things to do in Proverbs, but who to think about and consider
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Jesus, and not to forget about the Savior because our lives are more than just moralism, or just do these things, or just be good people, because I think every religion says that.
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But there's something different about Christianity, and that is the object of our faith, and we're walking by faith in Him, not by sight.
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Paul, I know this has nothing to do with really anything except you have brought back a recipe from Hawaii, and we love that particular recipe for chicken and all that.
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What's going on there with this recipe? Tell our listeners a little bit about it, because they could even eat this special chicken to the glory of God.
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The recipe I brought back from Kauai, it's a teriyaki recipe, and we just started, well,
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I started doing a little bit of it, I actually leased a meat department quite a while ago, and so I've been at this place called
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Shopper's Court, I've been there for 23 years I think, and so my wife kept telling me, you need to use that recipe for your chicken, for your skirt steaks and stuff, and I said, nah,
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I don't think it'll really work. And one of the other guys who actually came down from where I was working up in Philly came down with me and goes, hey,
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I think you should try that. So I tried it. Obviously, offending my wife a little bit shows you didn't want to listen to me, but you listened to one of your guys.
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But anyways, it's a teriyaki recipe that we use, and it actually makes the meat almost like candy,
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I think, and it's really been probably our top seller for, I don't know how many years now, both in the chicken and in our skirt steaks.
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So I take no credit for the recipe other than I brought it over from Kauai, and it really has been a huge, huge seller for us.
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Well, when I think about that skirt steak, one time, Paul, I bought a bunch from you, they're choppers, and I froze it in Santa Cruz, and then the next day
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I flew home, and I put it in my luggage. They lost my luggage. And so several pounds of that did not get delivered to my door for about three days, and I was tempted to eat it, but I figured
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I better not. Yeah, that's a good choice. Yeah, now we've only got about a minute and a half left.
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Any advice for young Christians in the workplace, just for about a minute? You deal with so many young Christians who come in to the workplace at this retail location, and I'm sure you see, because you and I talked about it, lots of errors that these young people make.
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If you wanted to give a young 25 -year -old Christian man some advice about work ethic in one minute, what would you tell him?
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Well, I would tell them, first of all, to continue to read the
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Word of God and realize that we're accountable to those over us. We're to serve them as best as we can.
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We're getting paid eight hours, and we should give eight hours of work. I think that, and the
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Bible teaches us that. It teaches us to respect those over us, and to work hard.
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So that's my biggest thing, to sit down and pray. You can pray with them, but to read the
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Word, and not just to keep it in their mind, like I said before, because it's got to have some fruition to it.
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It's just the Word of God, and it's being faithful, and it's listening. Proverbs talks about, correct a wise man and he becomes wiser.
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Just to be able to have that attitude, that pliable attitude, that you're willing to learn.
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I don't know, I think it's all about attitude, too. Without a pliable attitude, it's really hard when we start thinking more of ourselves than we ought to.
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Well, thanks, Paul, for being on the show today. If you want to learn a little bit more about Paul, you're either going to have to go to Calvary Chapel there in Costa Mesa.
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Sorry, that's just my default. I was saved, and I was first in Calvary Chapel, West Covina, with Raul Reis, and sometimes we went to Costa Mesa.
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That's Calvary Chapel, Capitola, or if you want, some of that famous Santa Cruz skirt steak.
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That's going to be down at Shopper's Corner. Paul Magnosco, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio. I appreciate you and love you.
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Thank you, I love you too, man, I really appreciate it. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.