How to Stop Family Strife for Good: Insights from AMBrewster

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Nobody in the world has issues of family strife. I mean, everyone in the family always gets along.
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No problems in your family, I know. But in case you have a friend who struggles with strife within the family, you may want...
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Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.
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This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
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Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the
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Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the
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Christian life, and today we are gonna talk about a topic that no one in the audience, I'm sure, ever has to deal with.
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The issue of family strife. I know, your family is perfect. You just wish everyone else's was, too.
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I get it. But in case you're the one that has the family strife or you have that friend, that's what it is, you have a friend who is struggling with this, we are gonna talk about how to resolve issues of family strife.
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We're gonna talk about a book called Quit. Yeah, just it makes it easy. You know, it's kind of like that Bob Newhart thing, you know, the video maybe you've seen where the woman comes in and she's struggling with feeling that she's gonna be buried in a box, and he just says, stop it!
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Well, here's the similar thing. Just quit! Subtitled How to Stop Family Strife for Good.
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I am with the author, Mr. A .M. Brewster, who happens to be one of the speakers at Striving for Eternity, but he also has a separate ministry he does, so he works with us and does some other things, and I'm gonna introduce him, let him actually introduce himself, tell you all about himself, where you can find him, because at the end you're gonna want to be following his podcast, you're gonna want to get his app so you can listen to different sermons, different classes he's got on his app, and then you're gonna definitely want to get this book, oh, for a friend.
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I know, your family's fine, but it's for a friend. Aaron, how are you? Let folks know a little bit more about you.
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I am doing really well. I would be lying to say that that Bob Newhart sketch,
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A, isn't my favorite counseling little sketch on the internet, and that B, it had zero influence on my, how
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I titled this book. It did, it did have some influence, not as, not as big of an influence as the Bible had, but it did influence me a little bit.
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Stop it! Quit! Yeah, my name is Aaron Brewster. I am married to my wife,
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Johanna, and we have two children, Micah and Ivy, and we live with my parents, so we have a multi -generational home, and it's really fantastic.
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It's kind of sad right now, but my mom is, is in the other room, and she's, she is very sick.
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She is not feeling well at all, but my dad can go to work, and we're here, and we're caring for my mom, and it's just such a fantastic situation here at this house.
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The ministry that I have is called Evermind Ministries, and we have various sub -ministries, different parts of the
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Evermind family of ministries, that speaks into various facets of our lives.
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Evermind's mantra, or not mantra, really the wrong word, I suppose, our mission is to keep God's truth at the center of the human experience.
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The thing is, though, is that as humans, we have a very multifaceted experience. I am a son,
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I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a president of Evermind Ministries, I'm a biblical counselor.
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So to keep God's word at the center of those main facets, we have these sub -ministries.
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So as an example, Truth, Love, Family is, is where we keep God's truth at the center of the family experience.
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We have a podcast called Truth, Love, Parent, we have over 560 episodes. I am starting a new series right now, actually, just started a new series called
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Parenting Your Children to Adulthood. Really excited about this is something that my listeners have been waiting for for a while.
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So that's Truth, Love, Family. And we also have another slice of the ministry called the Celebration of God, or excuse me, the year -long
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Celebration of God, which is all about personal growth and discipleship and corporate worship, how the body of Christ works together to help the body grow and mature into the image of Christ.
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The podcast associated with that is called the Celebration of God. And it takes our, our main events on the
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Christian calendar, as well as the mundane moments of our regular Mondays, and focuses on how can we glorify
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God better? How can we worship him better today in those areas. And then
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I have a speaking ministry where I go around and I speak both for Striving for Eternity, but also for Evermind.
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And that's A .M. Brewster Ministries, pretty straightforward, gets the point across. And then as a biblical counselor, and biblical counseling is a huge part of each facet of this ministry, there is
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Faith Tree, Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. That one in particular, you know, is where people come when they're looking either for the crisis counseling that we so often find ourselves in, as well as looking for discipleship.
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And though we love doing that facet, you know, we love meeting people in their needs and having that discipleship relationship with them.
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I will say that one of our biggest focuses for the church is to get discipleship back to the church.
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I can I should be discipling people in my church and in my family, you guys should be discipling people in your church and your family.
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And that's where we go back to the year long celebration of God where we're equipping you to help disciple the people in your local body of believers.
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That's an overview of Evermind Ministry, a little overview of my family. We also have a bunch of pets in the house.
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I had to throw that in there for all the animal lovers. So there you go. Okay, cats or dogs? We have one dog.
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Okay, you're fine. Don't ruin it. Don't ruin it. I probably shouldn't list any of the other pets or I might ruin it, even though we don't have cats.
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You have snakes, don't you? There is a snake in the house. I just pictured you as a snake person.
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Well, see, my son has the snake. But you encouraged it, I'm sure.
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Well, you know, I encourage my kids to, you know, pursue their pet dreams.
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Yeah, maybe I did a little bit, but yeah. So let's get into the issue of family strife.
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I mean, I would venture to guess that every household that probably everyone grew up in and every household that someone is in where you're dealing with marriage right now has some strife.
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Where do we see the source of this? I mean, where does this come from? What are some factors that create strife within the home?
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I want to answer that question, but before we do, you know, we're messing around, we're playing around talking about how, of course, your family doesn't have strife.
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One of the things I've actually found is that a lot of families don't realize they actually have strife.
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And it's basically the frog boiling a frog. Everyone's familiar with that.
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You know, you got a frog in water. You turn up the heat slowly over time. The frog, in theory, will slowly boil to death because it doesn't know.
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Another example is how some Inuit tribes would kill wolves.
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They would take a sword. They would dip it in blood multiple times, allowing each layer to freeze.
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The wolves would come and they would be licking at this frozen blood sickle.
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And what's happening is that they get into a frenzy with this, but they're also numbing their tongue as they continually are rubbing on this chunk of ice.
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Eventually they get down through the ice and they get down to the blade and the blade is now slicing their own tongue.
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And now they've got fresh blood, but they're also not able to feel it because they've numbed it for so long.
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And the wolf bleeds to death. And those are graphic pictures, boiling a frog and killing a wolf like that.
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But they're designed to illustrate the fact that our families do have strife.
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We have strife every single day. I'll be honest with you. I haven't even been up that long today and there's already been strife in my household because there's sin in my household.
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And any time that anybody ever sins against somebody else, even if that sin is only in their own minds and doesn't come out, that creates strife in the home.
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It creates conflict. So some people, when they think about strife, they're thinking about like, you know, their kids are sneaking out of the house at night, or you've got a dad who's drunk and he's always yelling and hitting people.
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And yes, that's definitely a biblical understanding of strife. But it's so much more nuanced than that.
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It's so much more subtle than that. And I just want to say right off the bat, even though we might joke that our families don't have strife, the painful reality for the
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Brewster family is that we do, in fact, have strife and we have strife nearly every single day because our family is made up of sinners and we do sin.
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So that's true of your family too. I don't say that to Andrew, I say it to you. I say it to all of your listeners.
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I don't say it to be rude. I don't say it to be disrespectful. I say it to be honest about the condition in which we're in.
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So if you if you if you thought to yourself a little bit, well, you know, we don't have that much strife, I would encourage you to reevaluate your definition of strife.
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Understand that strife isn't just the worst case scenarios we can possibly picture.
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It's so much more than that. You know, it's interesting because you're saying that. And I think about how
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I grew up, the house that I grew up in. I would I would describe that as having a lot of strife.
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And I really didn't want that in the house when when I was raising children.
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And yet it's so interesting because my kids felt that there was a lot of strife that I didn't see because it was nothing like what
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I grew up with. Yeah. And, you know, it was actually kind of interesting because my daughter went to Thanksgiving one year when we couldn't make it and she's hanging out with my siblings.
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And she actually said, like, I thought that you were just kind of making it up, like all the strife that was in your household until I talked to all your siblings and realized what you actually didn't make it sound as bad as they did.
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Like you made it sound pretty good compared to what they said. And it was like and it was just kind of interesting to realize that, you know, the strife
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I grew up with, the strife that I knew, I wanted to reduce that. And I thought, like, hey, I did pretty good not having strife in the house.
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And yet my kids are going, yeah, there was still strife in the house. So, you know, it's like even though we may be thinking we're pretty good because it's not as bad as we grew up with that made people or other people.
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And then we realize, OK, it might be worse than we thought. Yeah. Another issue is the fact that the word strife is not one that's in our contemporary vocabularies as much.
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We talk more about, you know, conflict. We talk about fighting and things like that.
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But strife is a word that shows up. When we talk about civil sibling rivalry, that that's a term that's used.
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But it's used all throughout the scriptures. Some of the best, in fact, all of the best translations use the word strife.
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So so another time when we hear the word strife, since it sounds a little archaic, it sounds different.
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It doesn't sound like something that we regularly encounter. So there are a lot of things that I think our flesh and that the
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Satan and the world use to convince us that we don't have as big of a problem as we actually have.
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And that's where I always just like to start. You know, John warns us in 1 John, if we think that we have no sin, then then we're liars.
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We are deceived. And since sin always produces strife, if we have sin, we are going to have strife every single time.
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So it's there, whether we see it or not. So what are some of the things that, you know, from from your book, what are some things that we would see cause strife?
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What are some things that would be the the ways to recognize it? Within the family.
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So the genesis of this book, and I share it in the introduction to the book, was I was working a boy's home for at risk teens,
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I was there for five years and boy, oh boy, it's easy to see the strife when you're in that situation. We had one young man in particular who who was just everything he touched every relationship.
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It was just it was conflict and strife and nobody liked him and he didn't like anybody else.
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And by God's grace, I was the the lead residential counselor at the time. The boys lived in my home and I handled all the counseling.
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He and I started a Bible study together where we just walked walked through what the
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Bible had to say about strife. And we started in the book of Proverbs and it was through that process of talking and reading through what the
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Bible said about strife that I ended up later putting together chapter one of this book and chapter one, sorry, part one, excuse me, has two chapters in it where we look at nine strife creators that are identified in the scriptures, specifically in the book of Proverbs.
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So the very first one that we talk about and I compile the list in such a way that it kind of goes from the most egregious in our minds and in our contemporary view down to potentially what we might consider the most benign.
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But it's designed to help us to see and I'll just kind of give this away as a little as a little sneak peek for your audience.
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The reality is that every single one of these categories, regardless of how egregious they sound, is in fact evident and present in the strife causers in your the creators in your home.
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As an example, Proverbs 23, 29 through 30 says, Who has woe, who has sorrow, who has strife, who has complaining, who has wounds without cause, who has redness of eyes, those who tarry long over wine, those who go to try mixed wine.
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And you say, OK, Aaron, well, you know, nobody in our house drinks. OK, so that category doesn't apply to us.
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But one of the realities of this verse that's also shown to us in other portions of the scripture is that people who are addicts stir up strife.
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And you're like, yeah, I get that, you know, a drug addict, a drunk. Sure, I can see how they would stir up strife.
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But in this little section, what I do is I help us to see that the biggest addiction that all people have is to their own desires.
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We are born, we are created by God to worship and we are born idolaters because we come into this world incapable of worshiping
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God. So all we have is to worship ourselves. We are addicted to our satisfaction. We are addicted to our pleasure.
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And it is that that is that root of our sin, that self -worship that ends up creating all of it, being the root of all the other sins in our lives.
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And so it ends up being one of the biggest reasons we have strife in the house because of the fact that we are addicted to our own way.
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We do what is right in our own eyes. And one of the other things I think that people really like about the book is that it's really short.
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It's only 110 pages tops. I think it actually the actual content of the book itself is less than that.
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But all throughout the book, what I've done is I've pulled resources from the over 560 episodes that I've done on Truth, Love, Parent.
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So as you go through the book and you're reading this and you get to page 20, you will see that there is a little
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QR code there that says underneath it, is your child addicted? You scan that and it'll take you to a podcast resource that I've created that talks about this in greater detail.
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So you're sitting here going, you're reading it like, wow, I think I'm understanding what he's saying about how even my youngest children are in many ways addicts.
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They're addicted to something and that something creates strife in the family. I wish he would have built out on this more.
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Well, I did. And those QR codes are available all throughout the book to help point you to different areas.
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That's very helpful for folks to realize that not only just reading the book, but within the book, you're having extra resources to dig in deeper in certain subjects because that's something, to be honest,
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I haven't thought about doing in a book. I don't know that I've ever seen that in a book is, hey, like, let's dig in deeper on it.
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The book is short. You can get through it quickly. Here's where you dig in deeper on specific areas that you may be dealing with.
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And you're right. I think a lot of people don't realize people think of addiction and we'll dig into this for a bit.
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A lot of people think of addiction just as drugs, alcohol, pornography, something like that.
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People don't think about addiction as work, relationships.
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Well, some people think of addiction with gambling, but gambling's an interesting one because, you know, there's someone
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I know who we think he is addicted to not really gambling, but winning.
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And we say that because his business, he could make millions of dollars and he could lose millions of dollars.
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And if he loses a million dollars, he's just like, OK, let me go make some more. I hate fishing, but I am addicted to catching the boat and catch all day long.
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I really will. But fishing, oh, man, I go too long without catching. I'm done. Well, yeah,
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I would agree with that. But but see, I'm not addicted to catching because it's not enough to get me to go and do it again.
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But well, I just don't catch so poorly. I never actually want to do it. But I'll tell you when it hits, it's like a feeding frenzy.
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I don't want to leave. Yeah. Yeah. So so addiction is something, folks, I'm saying this to say some people think, well, the person has a good work ethic.
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They're working very hard. They're providing for their family. They're whatever. It could be grades in school.
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You know, you're really what it is is in that one. You may be, you know, people are addicted to attention, especially in a social media world.
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People are addicted to wanting to get attention from others. People can be addicted to, if it's grade, the praises that they get from other people.
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Must be honest. We live in America. People are addicted to food to this. Hey, hey, hey, hey, come on.
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Why do you have to go there? You know that that's my weakness, brother. Why? Why do you have to go there?
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I need to share this episode with Dominic. He hates it every single time I preach about food, man. Yeah. And you do it right before lunch.
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So I do. I do. Yeah, I mean, it's look, you know, I will say you mentioned the food, right? So so you know that I usually start my day with a cold plunge.
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I hate the cold. I absolutely hate the cold. I do it for for health reasons, but one of the things it's good for brain function is forcing your body to do something that you know you don't want to do.
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Even the anticipation of it, you start to get good brain activity. So I forced myself to do a cold plunge.
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Do you know that doing something like that, forcing myself into 40 to 45 degree water for five minutes first thing in the morning, everything else is easy that day.
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So so I have I never thought about this as a benefit of that. But as much as I I know
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I'm a glutton, I know I have an addiction with food. It has become easier for me to say no to food when
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I'm doing cold plunges because I've already done something really hard. Yeah, I completely understand how that would work.
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Yeah. The thing about addiction is that we've we've we've forced it. We've keyholed it to mean only one little thing.
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But we have to step back and look at it from a biblical perspective and see that even though the
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Bible doesn't use the word addiction, it does talk about the the basic tenets of what it is.
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Even the physiological things that I just read speak into that idea of addiction.
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And when we look at addiction simply for what it is and we talk about it in biblical terms, we realize that, man, addictions can be literally anywhere.
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A child can be addicted to a toy video games. That is a huge addiction, I think, that most people recognize.
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But it goes far beyond just video games. So, yeah, it's a it's a massive thing. And it is going to create strife everywhere it rears its ugly little head.
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And so that's why it's the first one that I deal with in the book. And then from there, we deal with another eight different strife creators over those those two chapters in order to help us really sit down and identify in our families.
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OK, it's easy to say that, you know, these people all create strife. It's a very general observation.
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But why are they creating strife? The answer to how to fix it is going to start by identifying why it's there in the first place.
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And at the end of each chapter, I have this thing called life work. I joke that nobody likes to do homework, but everybody wants to have a better life.
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And so people don't mind doing life work. I'm not sure if it actually practically works out that way, but I like to think that it does.
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And at the end of the chapter, there's a spot where you just sit for you to sit down, to think carefully about everyone in your family, including yourself, and to go through and to list out,
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OK, do I have this this type of a creator in my family?
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And here's the thing I found as a biblical counselor, as people work through this material, the ones who are being the most honest, but also the ones who are understanding the material and seeing their family through biblical eyes, generally speaking, what
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I will find when I look at their life work is that every name of the family member will be there and then every name has every single one of the nine strife creating personalities underneath their name.
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They're honest enough to say to me, yes, as I look at my life, I see I create strife. My children create strife.
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And it's because we're addicts, because we tend to be God hating and people hating and greedy. And we're liars and we're angry and we're prideful and we're fools and we're sinners.
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And that's why there's strife that we all create. And that's a beautiful place when we're able to start by recognizing,
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OK, this is the problem. This is why we have an issue right here is that we are these things and this is always going to create strife.
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Once you start there, once you realize that makes it a lot easier to start addressing the problems.
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Well, there's two possible things that could cause strife for some people. And we have a solution to both.
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One could be you didn't get a good night of sleep. And for that, we have a solution for you.
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Go to MyPillow .com and get yourself a good pillow, because this is in all seriousness, there are people who have strife in their home because of a lack of sleep.
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There are people who are cranky and upset because they're just didn't sleep well. And so a good night of sleep.
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Struggle in my home. Yeah. I mean, sleep is very important to us. And so getting a good night of sleep will actually can help with some of the strife.
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And it's something we don't often think about. So you could go and I really recommend getting the mattress topper.
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It really did that. That is probably the one thing that made a biggest difference in my sleep is getting that three inch mattress topper from MyPillow.
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I do travel with my pillow. Aaron can attest to that. And he travels with his. I can attest to that.
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Although I use mine in the hotel rooms to go to sleep and Aaron uses his while I'm preaching. I don't know.
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But I have seen him. I have seen him with my pillow while I was preaching. Just saying.
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But get go get a good my pillow and to get a great discount on all their products from robes to slippers to coffee to whatever.
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They have a ton of products out there. You can go to MyPillow .com use the promo code
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SFE stands for striving for eternity. That will help you get a good night of sleep. However, for some they get up in the morning and they're just cranky.
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I mean, some of you are not morning people and you're not willing to get into a cold plunge. I totally get that.
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Cold plunge will work at keeping you wide awake for much better than coffee. But some of you need a good cup of coffee in the morning and therefore the second thing we have to help you with strife in the home other than the book quit how to stop family strife for good would be to get yourself some squirrely
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Joe's coffee. It's a Christian based company. They are they're providing great coffee.
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I love their coffee. Aaron would love their coffee if he drank coffee, but his wife loves it when he speaks at conferences and they give him a free bag of coffee.
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His wife is always glad when he goes away to a conference where squirrely Joe supports us, provides the coffee because it means she gets the bag of coffee that he comes home with, but it's great coffee.
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I enjoy it every day. And so you can go to striving for eternity .org slash coffee.
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That's striving for eternity .org slash coffee. That lets them know if you use that link every time, even when you reorder that they got, that you got there through us.
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So they'll keep supporting us and we appreciate that support. And so you get, if you use the code
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SFE, which again stands for striving for eternity, you will get, I forget, they've changed it up, whether it's 20 % off your first bag or your first bag free one or the other, but either way you will get a discount on the first offer.
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So use the promo code SFE. And if you're, you are getting the 20 % off, do like I do and make it a big order.
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I mean, you gotta make sure you get the most discount. I regret that I didn't get the five pound bags on my first order, but, uh,
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I do, I do, uh, get it, um, uh, regularly and I'm moving to where I'm going to just get five pound bags because I'm going through it a little too quickly.
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So Aaron, let's get into the question of the consequences of strife.
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We talked about the, you know, where it comes from, whatnot. How does strife end up affecting the family?
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So originally the consequences of strife, it's part two of the book. Uh, it, it, it's one chapter.
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It used to be the first chapter of the book. I started off with the consequences and then moved to the creators and a friend of mine, an author named
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Shannon Popkin, a wonderful woman, wonderful author, wonderful speaker. I actually have to give her the credit for the
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QR codes. Uh, that was her idea. Uh, she said, you've got so much content, you should do this.
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And so it was an amazing idea. She also endorsed the book. See, I knew you weren't smart enough to come up with that on your own.
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Shannon suggested it's a great idea. She said she suggested starting with the creators, um, because we all,
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I mean, if anyone picks up this book, it's probably because the consequences of strife are evident in their family. Uh, and to start off with them, you know, moving toward, uh, figuring out what the cause of the issue, the, the deep root of the issue might be.
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Um, so I, I, I ended up moving this, the consequences to the second part.
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Um, but it's still really important. I didn't want to have it too late in the book. And the idea that I've been teaching my kids ever since they were small is to understand that sin hurts.
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Uh, they needed to realize, in fact, that was when, when they would sin and after they've been, uh, reproved and now it's time for them to receive some, some physical discipline for it.
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One of the things I would ask them is now, now remember, why is it that God wants daddy to give you these consequences?
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And they learned to say, because I need to learn that sin hurts. And yet, yes, sin hurts in many ways.
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The problem that we have is that we don't think biblically about the consequences, uh, the, the hurts that come from our sin.
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We focus on the external stuff. We focus on the sting from a spanking. We focus on, uh, the, the fact that we were grounded.
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We focus on the fact that our, our, our relationship with our spouse is maybe a little tepid right now, and we're getting the silent tree where we focus on all of that stuff, which is very real stuff, but they're all secondary consequences of strife.
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And so when we take the secondary consequences of strife, and in our minds, those are the most important when we try to address the strife, we're going to address it the wrong way.
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Every time a child who, uh, doesn't like the secondary consequence of the sting on their, on their posterior, uh, might try to, uh, to, to fight it, to squirm, to move in their mind.
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The most important thing they can do is avoid this consequence. When the reality is that the Bible teaches us that there are three primary consequences that happen every single time we sin.
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And if we want to avoid the secondary consequences, we really need to focus on the primary consequences.
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And the thing about the secondary consequences that they don't always come into our lives. Uh, if I, if a child is very sneaky, parents might not catch them.
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Uh, there are things, ways that we sin in our minds that our spouse might not ever know about, but the primary consequences of sin, those happen every single time we sin, whether anybody knows about it or not.
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And there are three of them I outlined in the book. I call it personal hurt, interpersonal hurt, and divine hurt.
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To be honest, I, I've never really liked the divine aspect of it.
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When I taught this to my kids early on, I taught them that sin hurts you, sin hurts everybody else, and sin hurt, or sin hurts
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God. But even that terminology is not something, uh, I was really, I was in love with,
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I just kept it that way. So it was parallel. So let me explain. When I sin, I make it,
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I hurt myself by making it easier for myself to continue that habit of sinning.
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Every single time I sin, I increase, uh, the, the, the chances that I'm going to sin in that same way in the future, because I'm habituating myself.
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Um, now, yes, there are those secondary consequences. You know, when I sin in certain ways,
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I can literally hurt myself, like if I'm doing self harm or something like that, or if I'm overeating and I'm hurting my health, but the personal hurt that we see in the scriptures has to do with how we actually are spiritually damaging ourselves when we sin.
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The interpersonal hurt, that one's pretty obvious. Um, the way that my sin affects other people in our family, uh,
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Proverbs 17, 25 says, a foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him.
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There's no relationship that can thrive in the soil of foolishness and deception and rebellion. But the divine hurt one though, the idea of hurting
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God is this. My sin actually has an impact on my fellowship with God. Um, the, the scriptures are very clear that, um, that God hates our sin, right?
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Proverbs 15, nine says the way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. But, uh, we also see that there are situations where because of certain types of sins, it can actually have an effect on my, my, my ability to commune, commune with God in prayer,
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God won't hear my prayers because I have this sin in my life.
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So it affects our fellowship. Now I can't lose my salvation. Praise the Lord for that. He, he preserves us and we can't lose that, but that doesn't mean that our fellowship with him is not hurt when we have lifestyles of sin in our lives.
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So when we recognize that we say, okay, these are the main consequences, the primary consequences of the sin in our lives, then we can start to say, okay,
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I don't need to try to escape the secondary consequences that I, if I make that my main goal,
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I'm not going to approach fixing the strife in my house the right way. What I need to do is focus on the sin that is hurting me and hurting others and hurting the
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Lord, focus on that. That's going to be the key really to, again, moving, being able to take that step forward and, um, uh, and find a real cure.
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And I know the question is, well, the cure is the Bible, right? So, but there, that is what everyone's going to say, but there's some practical things we could do, and again, we're, we're talking with Anne Brewster, the author of Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good.
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I encourage everyone to get a copy of that. In fact, I would argue if you've already listened and maybe, you know, people in your church and you're going, you know,
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I know some other people that could really benefit from some of this. I've seen them with their kids.
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They got a lot of strife. I know because your family's much better than everyone else's. So I would just say, get a copy for yourself so you could read it and maybe get a case for your church because you feel they all need it too.
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So that'd be my encouragement. Um, you can get it. It is available on the
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Striving for Eternity website. If you go to strivingforeternity .org in our store, you will see it there where you could pick up a copy of Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good.
33:52
So we've talked about where strife is coming from, Aaron. We've talked about some of the consequences, even a bit of some of the causes, but let's, let's dig in more to the causes because we ultimately want to end on the cure and this is how you lay it out.
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You could, folks, if you haven't realized, he is, you know, must be a
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Baptist because each of the parts of his book start with a letter C. He's got it, he's got it all where it's a
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C and an S. It's all literated. Creators and I have to say he stretched it on the first one.
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I do believe that, but creators of strife, consequences of strife, causes of strife, cure of strife, he even keeps it going with conclusion.
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He didn't, he didn't find a word, a letter C that's means for introduction. So he's got to work on that to sort of, but, uh, but yeah, let's talk about the causes of strife.
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I acknowledge this at the beginning of that, that part of the book. This is the third part of the book.
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And there are a few chapters that are, uh, that encompass that part, uh, that people think that once we've talked about the creators, that we've talked about the causes to what's the difference between a creator of strife and a cause of strife, the creator, it refers to the individuals in your home.
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Is it your son? Is it your daughter? Is it your wife? Is it you? Yes. It's all of you. Right. So, uh, and then why are we creating it?
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Because, you know, we have these, like the Proverbs tells us we cause strife because we're this type of a person. But then we need to take it down to the next level.
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And again, I hope you guys are, are hearing this as something very important that we do in biblical counseling and really needs to be part of the
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Christian experience. We need to go from general to specific. Uh, we need to drill down and see more and more specific.
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So we're saying, okay, so I am a cause of strife in my family and I'm a cause of strife because of this particular thing outlined in Proverbs.
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I I'm, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a hater. I don't love people the way that I should. Okay. So we'll put that in there.
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So then, and then we see the consequences of that. And I need to realize that the most important issue about my, my hatred is that it's a sin against God, against others and against myself.
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Okay. Well then let's look at this sin. What is the cause of this sin?
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And that's where we get to the causes of strife. It digs down into the biblical content concerning why we do what we do.
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Um, and it breaks down to a couple of big areas. The first of which, uh, is sometimes there's deliberate unbelief.
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Sometimes people just will say, I don't, I don't want to believe that now, whether they actually say those words or think those words is beside the fact they consciously do what they know is wrong.
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Uh, that's obviously going to be, uh, something that's going to cause strife. And if we're being, uh, if we're being really transparent and I push people to do this again, as a biblical counselor,
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I can't help anybody if they're not being honest. And, and so I try to be very honest with them in hopes that they will also to recognize how important this is.
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James chapter five tells us that we should confess our sins one to another. And, um, I, I Aaron Brewster can attest to the fact that sometimes
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I high handedly sin. Sometimes I do something that I know is wrong. Um, even though consciously in that moment,
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I know what's wrong and I would be able to, to counsel myself as to the, what the Bible has to say about this.
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And oftentimes I'll say just for me, and maybe it's the same for some of your listeners, that one of the biggest reasons we do that in the moment is the fact that we presume upon God's forgiveness, right?
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God's, we know that God's going to forgive us. We know the Holy spirit is going to help us to, to, to overcome this in the future.
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But right now we just want to do this thing. Now, if you're listening to me and you say, wow, Aaron, you are a terrible person.
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I have never done that. Okay. All right, fine. Maybe, maybe that's the case, but I think we do this more often than we realize.
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So don't, I always encourage people don't skim past the stuff that seems like it doesn't apply to you because I believe it really does, uh, all apply to us.
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So the deliberate unbelief is always going to be at the roots of a lot of our sins from there though.
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Um, there's also just general immaturity. Sometimes we do things not because it's a, it's a decide, like I'm going to high handedly, you know, do this thing and flaunt myself in front of God.
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Sometimes it's just foolishness and immaturity where I'm ignorant of the fact, by the way,
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I hope that as you, as you consider your own sin life and the sin life of your family, I hope that you're realizing that the, uh, the sins of commission are just as, uh, sins of omission are just as big as deal as the sins of commission, the sins of omission, the things that we so often just blindly, uh, apathetically or, uh, ignorantly do.
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And we don't think it or not do are just as much of a big deal. So immaturity is also one of the causes.
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And at each of these chapters, we, we talk about, okay, so this is one of the causes and we need to deny these things.
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We need to deny deliberate unbelief. We need to deny spiritual immaturity. Uh, we talk about what that looks like.
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Um, but then fleshly living then is the third one that I identify as being the, the third part of, um, uh, why we, uh, of sin, why
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I'm sorry, the third cause, excuse me, of, of strife, uh, and the fleshly living. And so we say, well, there's a lot of overlap there.
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You know, we've got deliberate unbelief, we've got, um, immaturity, we have fleshly living, and I completely agree there are, and there's a metaphor all throughout the book.
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I didn't mention it yet, but the, uh, the title for this book actually came from Proverbs 17 verse 14.
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In the ESV, it reads the beginning of strife is like letting out water.
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So quit before the coral breaks out. The cover of the book has a dam on it.
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Uh, it's a beautiful dam overlooking a valley. Um, I'm sure if you ever saw, I know
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Andrew hasn't seen it, but maybe some of the other listeners saw the, the, the original Superman movie, uh, where there's an earthquake in California that Lex Luthor starts, uh, and, uh, there's this dam that breaks and the water just goes crushing through this, this, uh, this valley and all of these houses and cars and people are swept away by, by this, that's a picture of what we see here in, in Proverbs.
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We see the beginning of strife is like letting out water. This isn't turning on a faucet. This is an explosion of water.
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So with that picture in mind, one of the things that I address in the book and dig into a lot deeper, I use this metaphor.
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So how do we deny these things? How do we quit these things? And I use it, uh, the picture of, um, uh, as if there were this massive pipe, this huge, uh, um, pipeline that's just dumping millions of gallons of water into our reservoirs, uh, which putting stress on the dam of our self control.
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And so often it breaks and water and strife and acidic, uh, stuff goes all over the place and affects everybody.
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Well, how do we lower that amount of sinful acidic water?
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That's pouring into our lives every day. And that picture is, uh, is started in this chapter in this part of the book on causes.
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And it continues into the, uh, the part on cures, uh, because the only way that we're ever going to be able to quit the strife is going to be to address the deliberate unbelief, the immaturity and the fleshly living that is in each of our lives.
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Yeah. And it is in each of our lives. So don't think that,
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I mean, I hope people don't think, oh, this is for someone else. I know people probably came in listening to thinking, yeah, this isn't for me, but I hope they're realizing, yeah, maybe it is.
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And I hope that as you read through the book, quit how to stop family strife for good, which you should get a copy.
41:45
But, uh, as you do, I hope that at this point you're going, well, what's the cure Aaron? Since you like those letter
41:52
C words, what's the cure? I know the cure is we've all been in Sunday school.
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Jesus, the Bible. Is it really that easy?
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Is, is there a possibility we could have a cure for strife in the home? So the subtitle is how to stop family strife for good.
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And I'll be honest with you. That title can be a little misleading, but only to the degree that a person would read the scriptures where Jesus says, be holy or God says, be holy as I am holy.
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That is the expectation. And I would say that, uh, everything that we know about the scriptures,
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God gives us everything we need for life and godliness. He gives us everything we need to, to grow in holiness, to deny our flesh and to take up our cross and follow him.
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And the expectation, the goal is very high. I would say it's infinitely high. If we're going to be holy as God is holy.
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And then practically realistically, we understand that on this side of eternity, that is going to be a practical impossibility.
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But it doesn't take away the fact that it needs to be the goal. We don't get to as Christians say, well, since I can't be as holy as God is holy,
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I don't have to try to be as holy as God is holy. No, that is not what the Bible says in the slightest.
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And so is it practically going to occur that after reading this book and putting these things into practice that you will never, ever, ever have any strife in your family ever again?
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Well, no, because you're still a sinner. Uh, your kids are still sinners. So as long as there's stress and sin, there's going to be strife, but that doesn't change the reality that the promise is there when we submit, when we obey
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God, when we take these steps that are outlined in the book and that are outlined all throughout the scriptures.
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And we, I pull from the scriptures all over the place. I'm in the book of Proverbs. Yes. But then I'm in a ton of new Testament books.
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We take a look at David's life here at the beginning of this, uh, this, uh, sixth chapter. Um, as we, as we look at all that, we realized that no, the equipping is there.
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I don't have to cause strife. I can stop by God's grace.
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He gives me a way to escape every temptation. Yeah. Practically speaking, I'm not going to take those because I'm not as faithful as God is, but that doesn't mean that the promise isn't there.
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There is a cure for strife. Your family doesn't have to experience strife. And as long as we realize that that is the expected goal.
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God demands that your family be strifeless. Let that sink in.
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It's not okay that there's strife in our families. It's not because it's a result of sin and God doesn't want us sitting, sitting.
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So as long as we realize that that is the goal, and as we're working toward that, not making any excuses for our failures, then yes, we are exactly where we need to be.
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We can cut down the strife. Now there are some people on the other side. Okay. And I can be, I agree with you,
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Andrew. There are some people listening to this who they just don't see the, see it as being an issue that it needs to be.
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Yes. You know, my kids aren't really as obedient as they should be, but you know what kids are, and they're easy for people to say those things and make those excuses.
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But there are other people on the other side who these, these mothers are petrified for the moment their four year old wakes up and they cannot wait for the moment their four year old goes back to sleep because it is constant strife.
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There are families right now that have young people. They just do not know what the parents don't know what to do with these kids.
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They have, they seem to have lost all control. Their hearts are broken for their family members.
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There are spouses right now who, who each of them falls asleep at night wondering what it would be like if, uh, if they could just get a divorce, the strife is so bad.
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And so those people, the people who know there's an issue, but they just feel so lost.
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I really, I start off, um, chapter six really with, uh, just, uh, stopping and looking at the possibility of peace.
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Biblically speaking, it is possible. Uh, peace is, uh, is many different concepts in scripture, but the way we're looking at it here is really, it's just being free from that strife, free from the sins that cause the strife.
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And we step through, uh, Psalm 18, where we look at, uh, David's one of David's laments about what he was experiencing.
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And we draw such encouragement from the fact that there can be peace in your home.
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God has created a way. Don't lose hope. The people out there who say, oh, we don't need this.
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I can't help you. I can't help you until you come to the place where you realize, no, there is a problem and we need to address it.
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And it's like people say, an alcoholic will never get help until he realizes he's an alcoholic. But my heart, having worked with broken families and worked with at -risk teens and being a biblical counselor for as long as I have, my heart is for those people who know there's a problem.
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They, they're not pretending there's not a problem, uh, but they just come to the place where they feel so much despair that they, they don't think they can ever be, uh, helped.
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And so that's why I start this chapter the way I do, looking at that real possibility of peace.
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And once we're there, once we're like, okay, you know what? I know there's a problem, but God's word is sufficient.
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And I now feel encouraged. I now know that, you know, there is, this is a real possibility because God promises it is.
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Then we can transition and we can start to talk about the cure for strife. And it's really, it's very simple.
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I mean, in some ways it kind of, it could sound if I just, if I just read the headings right now, it would kind of sound a little
47:37
Sunday school -ish when we talk about, uh, at the beginning of the book and at the end of the book, how a self -focus creates strife and a
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God focus creates peace. Well, there you go. That's, that's all you gotta do, right?
47:50
Focus on God. Um, but the real practical nuts and bolts of what it is to take these steps is huge.
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It's difficult. It's why we fail every single day. We, we are sinners, uh, who aren't perfect because it is really difficult and we need to know how to do it.
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So the very first one, I won't go into all of them, but the very first one, uh, is simply trust the truth.
48:15
Again, sounds simple. I want to make it easy to remember, but what does that actually mean? What is truth?
48:20
What does it mean to trust the truth? We dig into that. We open up the scriptures to talk about, uh, to say, if you want to be saved from the strife in your home, you've got to address the sin.
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In order to address the sin, you've got to deal with the causes. In order to address the causes, you've got to start by actually believing, practically believing what
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God's word says. And so one of the QR codes right there at the top of that page, uh, is for a series
48:47
I did called the Mearest Christianity. And that Mearest Christianity, I think, honest, from my perspective is probably the most seminal, the most important information that the
48:58
Bible teaches us. In fact, uh, Andrew can attest to the fact that the few times that he and I have gone out and spoken together at conferences, this topic always comes up, uh, in, in my preaching because it is so absolutely important and vital.
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Uh, so the Mearest Christianity, again, short book, a little, little short, uh, edible, uh, consumable sections, but if you want to take that next step to say, you know what, why do we do what we do?
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How do we really change? How, how can I help my kids? How can I personally grow and, and, and grow, become,
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I'll never be sinless this side of heaven, but how do I sin less and less and therefore cause less and less strife in my family?
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Then so many resources are packed into this book to help you, uh, in this process. So it goes through that section of trust the truth.
49:48
And again, there are these little breaks here for, uh, for life work where you can stop and you can, uh, read some passages and pray, uh, some, some prayers and also understand, okay, this is how
49:59
I need to start helping my family with this. Uh, Andrew mentioned earlier, uh, the
50:04
Evermind app, he didn't mention it by name. I'll mention it right now. If you go to evermindministries .com, you can see the, the, the book quit how to stop family strife for good there.
50:13
You can also see, uh, information about the Evermind app. The Evermind app is free to have, and there are a ton of free resources.
50:20
In fact, some of the messages, uh, that Andrew and I have given at different conferences are there free for you to listen to on the app.
50:29
Uh, there are a lot of, uh, the podcasts are on the app. You can get a digital version of quit on the app, but one of the other things that you can get is a different online courses and different curriculum that I've put together that that's accessible through the app.
50:42
And I keep saying the app, the app is really easy if you like to use that. But if you're the type of person who doesn't like an app on a phone, all of these things are equally accessible on a desktop computer.
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It's all on the website that's accessible, um, straight from your browser or via the app. And, uh, one of the things that we, uh, the, uh, the options that's there is called the biblical parenting essentials conference that has a bunch of stuff with it.
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First of all, it's a conference that I did at a church where we talk about the biblical parenting essentials, which is going to, what you're going to take.
51:12
Again, when we talk about how do I learn to trust the Bible, how do I teach my four -year -old to really believe what the scriptures say?
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The biblical parenting essentials conference is a huge part of helping us to see what's absolute non -negotiables.
51:29
If we want to be biblical parents, in addition to that conference, then there's also a ton of other resources that, uh, are, are again, designed to help you dig deeper into these ideas.
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What is it to be a biblical parent? How do we use the scriptures in our parenting? How do we, um, deal with our children when there's sin in their lives?
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All of these things, I'm mentioning that here and now, uh, is because it builds into this idea about the cure for strife, uh, is really something, something that the
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Bible talks a lot about. It's discipleship. I don't normally say this when
52:06
I talk, I go on other interviews and I talk about the book. I don't always mention this, but, uh, somewhere in the book,
52:11
I actually can't remember where it is because I remember in the writing process, I had it in a couple of different sections, but somewhere in the book,
52:17
I kinda, I say to everybody, now here's the secret I've been holding onto. This book actually isn't so much about strife as it is about family discipleship.
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It's about becoming a follower of Christ and growing in that and helping your family to do the same, because that is how we sin less and less.
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That is how we are transformed into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another. We are conformed into his image.
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Uh, and we are growing toward that holiness. Um, my, uh, my ministries, uh, truth of parents, um, uh, main verse that we, we build, uh, the name for the podcast on, and we try to make sure it influences everything that we do is
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Ephesians 4, 15, speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way into him who is head, the head into Christ.
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So that is the goal that, that every Christian, uh, that's the, the trajectory that we should be on. And so what comes next in the truth, uh, sorry, in the, um, uh, the cure section of the book is really looking at what is it to mature spiritually?
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What is it to be conformed into the image of Christ? How do we do it? What are the mile markers?
53:32
What does that look like? And this, I get, I love the, I wish I could have gotten to the cure section faster, but I, I had to remind myself, just like I have to remind my readers, don't skip to the cure section.
53:43
If you skip right to there, you're going to miss a lot. You're not going to know. Like, so, so yeah, here's a scalpel, but I'm not going to know where to cut.
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I'm not going to know what actually needs to be done in my family's life. I don't know. I'm not gonna know how to apply the cure until I've worked through the creators and the consequences and the causes first, only then can
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I be equipped to take the cure and say, okay, now I see, now I realize that if I'm helping to disciple my kids the way that the
54:11
Bible lists out, that is going to be their greatest need. And yes, by the time you get to the cure section,
54:19
I hope that your biggest desire isn't just to cut down the strife. I hope at that point, your view has transitioned and you're sitting there going, wow, this isn't so much about escaping the strife in my life.
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This is really more about worshiping God, being the son or daughter that he's called me to be, helping my children become
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God worshipers as well. And one of the glorious, amazing benefits, consequences,
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I would say, of growing in our discipleship is the fact that yes, the amount of strife in your home will drastically go down.
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The types of strife, the amount of strife, the quality of the strife, it will all decrease as we are conformed into the image of Christ as a beautiful consequence of pursuing
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God and worshiping him as we should. And if folks do get the book, and again, the book is
55:16
Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good, one of the things that's important about what you said there is the fact that people don't realize, in American Christianity, people just want the easy road.
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They just want it to end. They don't think about strife and things like that as something that will help in my sanctification to make me more like Christ.
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We don't, we just want it easy, right? And that's why, that's why certain segments of Christianity that teach health, wealth, prosperity are so large, because it's giving a message people just want.
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They don't want a message of life will be hard, you'll have strife, but you will be better in the end for it.
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You will worship God more, you will mature more. They don't want that message. And so that is an essential thing for us to get our minds wrapped around is seeing the value, even in strife that we have in family, in relations.
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And I will say, if you get a copy of the book, Aaron has talked about many of the different resources, and in the back of the book, you will get, since he puts
56:28
QR codes in, right? You get the QR code to each of the things he mentioned. His courses are there with a
56:33
QR code. A lot of his talks are there. Throughout the entire book, you will have different QR codes that you can get more information.
56:42
So when you're getting this book, you're not just getting a book to help with family strife within the house.
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So this isn't just a thing of, I'm at my wits end. Yes, I will buy the book because I want to get something that will work in my family.
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And if you're in that situation, I get it. If you're not in that situation and you think, well, hey, everything's good.
57:05
This book is really a quick reference for a whole lot of other resources on the family that will help you.
57:13
And so getting the book, you can get the book and just read through the book, but you also have hours and hours and hours of other content that it's going to give you a quick reference for that had the
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QR codes. And that becomes a really important resource for you to use, especially if you're doing any counseling, you're dealing with other families in your church, there's going to be people who are struggling.
57:35
And this gives you a way to quickly give people some resources. You're dealing with kids and their friends.
57:43
Well, there's a QR code for that. So you can just jump right there and pull that up and share that with others.
57:49
So I would encourage you to get a copy of Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good.
57:55
And if you want to get it, you can get it at the Striving for Eternity store. Just go to strivingforeternity .org,
58:01
go in the store and the book will be there. Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good.
58:07
And I do encourage you to get several copies for those friends who you think really need it.
58:13
Here's the trick though. Don't just buy one or two and give it to those people in church you really think need it.
58:21
Buy like a dozen or so, so that they don't realize you've targeted them. You just say, I'm giving it to a lot of my friends in church, giving it to a bunch of people.
58:28
That way they don't realize that you think they really need it. It just looks like you're giving a gift to everybody.
58:36
It is, you know, our church does something where like on a Valentine's Day or Mother's Day or Father's Day or coming into Advent or something like that, they will give away a small book to everybody in the church, every family, at least in the church.
58:51
And that would be something, one of the things I wanted to, again, as a biblical counselor, I wanted to make this accessible in so many ways. It's yes, there is so much more information in the book than the book can physically hold because of all those additional resources, podcasts, episodes, and online courses that you can dig into.
59:06
But it's also, it's short, again, a little over a hundred pages worth of information designed to kick the door open in our understanding of what the real problem is and our understanding of then how to address it.
59:21
And then when you're serious and you start applying these things, so many more resources to help you drill down.
59:26
So it'd be super easy to get this short little book and to give it out on like family day in August or some other family oriented activity.
59:36
If there's a family thing going on at your church or just to give it out, that is a huge, wonderful takeaway that it's accessible for everyone in the church, the people who have deep theological maturity and understanding, as well as the families who are maybe new to the faith.
59:52
So Aaron, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for the way the Lord has poured into you to pour into us and many others through your counseling, through your ministry, through your speaking, through this book.
01:00:05
And so again, I'll just give it one last time. If you want to go get the book Quit How to Stop Family Strife for Good by A .M.
01:00:12
Brewster, you can get it at strivingforeternity .org in our store. So Aaron, any last words that you would have to close this out encouragement for families or things that you'd want to share?
01:00:25
Well, thank you for allowing me to come on the show and speak with your audience about this. I do pray that the book can be a huge blessing to people out there.
01:00:35
I want to, I want to speak to the individuals who see their need. I like who, like I recognize the fact that I am the chief of centers in my home and I need help from God.
01:00:47
I need to grow in godliness. There is a cure. There is an answer.
01:00:53
There is hope. Yes, this book can help. Yes. We have hundreds of episodes on truth, love parents that can meet you in your need and address your current situation and help you see from the scriptures, how you can see real change in your family.
01:01:10
But the biggest thing I would encourage you to do is to be part of a community of believers, be part of a local body of believers where the truth is not only preached, but where it's acted on pastors are there to equip us for the work of the ministry.
01:01:25
But the work of the ministry is actually something that we keep pushing back on the pastor. The different things that are part of what it means, the work of the ministry, which includes, yes, going out and visiting people when they're sick in their homes and in a hospital.
01:01:38
But it's also more importantly, the discipleship of the church, the one another's to be part of a church where the truth is spoken, where the pastor's equipping you to do that in your family, first and foremost, and then among the other people in the church is hugely important.
01:01:53
And as a biblical counselor, I have to say a lot of the people that I work with are people who, um, they themselves don't have those opportunities in their own church.
01:02:02
They don't have people who are discipling them that are helping them take the steps, that they're having a step stepping through the issues that they're having in their families and their other relationships and struggles they're having at work.
01:02:15
So biblical counseling and discipleship specifically that happening within the church is really how
01:02:21
God created this to work, created us to help each other, created us to be able to overcome these issues.
01:02:27
And one of the biggest reasons we find ourselves at our wits end, coming to a place where there's so much family strife in our, in our homes that we don't know what to do really in part has a lot to do with the fact that we haven't, we didn't get help earlier.
01:02:39
We weren't in each other's lives. We weren't speaking truth into each other's lives. So reach out, whether you're reaching out to faith tree, biblical counseling and discipleship, because you feel like you've got nobody else that you can turn to, uh, or better yet going to your pastor and other mature believers in your, in your, in your church build, grow into the idea that I need to have this community of believers who is helping me.
01:03:05
And we're doing this together. We talk about this in the book, the importance of that and regardless of whether you get the book or not,
01:03:11
I hope that the truths that we've talked about today, that you resonate with them and that you start putting them to practice in your life.
01:03:18
I hope this has been very encouraging to you to, as a listener to hear. I hope that it might be something where you consider getting the book quit, how to stop family strife for good at striving for attorney .org.
01:03:29
Hope that you'd consider listening and following Aaron's podcast that he mentioned, looking at getting the app that he has for evermind ministries, a lot of resources that are available to you there to help in your spiritual growth.
01:03:44
And with that, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the striving for eternity ministry.
01:03:50
For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.