Social Media

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, and Andrew Hudson.

We have a rather recent question that was sent in to us. We thought it would be a good discussion to have between us and be able to apply from anyone who's a pastor, elder, deacon, or a lay person in a church, and we wanted to take it up and discuss it for your benefit.

The question reads, should I be posting controversial things on Facebook as a pastor?

Michael takes away. That's an interesting question. I could be absolutely off -base about this, but I imagine that the person who asked this question might not be a pastor, but they're like asking, is it appropriate for any pastor to be doing this?

Just guessing there. So the interesting thing about posting controversial topics, you know, on social media,

Facebook, Twitter, etc., is that in general your space is limited, right?

So you don't have any, you don't have as much room to nuance any kind of controversial issue, and this is basically what has replaced bumper sticker life, billboard life.

We just have a small space, and we're going to say something of importance, and we're going to say it without a whole lot of context, and then watch what happens.

So it's exciting, it's interesting, but there are so many different topics and subject matters that are considered controversial, and different people's range of what is controversial is different.

So the question at some level is, should a pastor be posting on social media at all, right?

Because it's going to be controversial to someone, somehow, someway, and this probably should be considered.

The requirements for a pastor, the moral requirements for a pastor, the way he interacts with the public and his congregation, you would read about in 1st

Timothy 3 or Titus and so on, is not actually that far different at all from the exhortations to the

Saints about how they ought to live in Hebrews 13. There are so many similarities between the three passages, so we might expand this question, should

Christians be posting controversial things on Facebook or social media?

Because why would we single pastors out and say they shouldn't but others can?

A pastor is not a political appointee that has to carefully mince and nuance his words to keep the larger audience, right?

I'm not saying that the person who asked the question is saying that, but some people might have the idea that a pastor is essentially a religious politician, okay?

And then there's the idea of what makes Facebook or social media different than the pulpit?

I was struck by the language in the Constitution and bylaws of the first church that I pastored, and in the language it said that the pastor should have the freedom to preach the full counsel of the

Word of God from the pulpit. He should not be restrained from preaching the full counsel of the Word of God in the pulpit, and I appreciate that.

It gives me a little confidence, especially as a, you know, 20 -something year old, you know, that I'm supposed to be up here, I'm supposed to be preaching everything in the

Bible. Well, there's a lot of controversial things in the Bible, and when we try to make application, we're making application to where people are and what they're living through, what they're going through today.

And there's a lot of controversial topics today, and people show up to church and they're wondering, how do

I live and how do I follow Christ today? And so if we just simply open the

Word of God in the pulpit, read through and talk about the original meaning of the original text to the original audience, and all ain't that sweet, then have we done due diligence?

Have we used the Word of God in the appropriate way to, as Jesus said, to feed his sheep, to nourish his sheep, to tend his lambs?

Is this true shepherding? Is this what we should be doing here? There are some people who do nothing but whatever the latest news story is that got the most clicks.

We're going to talk about that and show video clips of that, and I'm gonna riff on that for, you know, 25 minutes, if I go long, and everybody's gonna be like, oh man, this guy is so relevant, you know, he's so trendy.

No, that's not a good idea. But there is something to what Spurgeon talked about, keeping your eye on the newspaper in his day while you're preparing your sermon, because where do people live?

How do they need to be shepherded? This is like, this is paying attention to your flock. John Owen said that when the pastor is writing a sermon, it should be with both eyes on the people and all the heart upon God.

If I'm paying attention to my flock, if I'm paying attention to the members of the church and what they're going through, then

I will be talking about the things going on, and there's a lot of controversial things going on. Now, if I want to do that from the pulpit, and the sermons that I preach are going out to them, and those sermons are going out

YouTube, social media, so on and so forth, then what's the difference between that and making a post on Facebook?

It's just, well, there's no context to it, and it comes off as harsh. Well, what do y 'all think about that? That's just longer form.

Like, if you're posting the sermons, that's just longer form content, if you're putting on Facebook or wherever it is.

Mm -hmm. We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

You know, if there's a thought that's not obedient to Christ, that's fair game, baby. Yeah. But, it's not to score points, to do a red versus blue thing, it's to render service to the

Master. So, interestingly, sometimes people will get offended when they hear something, a short something or other, and like, well, you know, if you had taken more time, if you put this into context, if you had, so example,

Matthew 15 verse 10. Jesus, when he had called the multitude to himself, he said to them, so multitude, this is mass media, social media of Jesus' day.

He calls the multitude, says, hey, I got, you know, these are followers, right?

Oh, yeah. They're subscribed. Oh, Jesus of nature's gonna say something again. Let's go, let's go hear what he has to say.

So, he calls the multitude to himself, he says to them, hear and understand, not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.

Now, that's short, it's pithy, there's not a lot of context that would fit on a

Facebook post, that would fit in a Twitter or an X, whatever. And then verse 12, then his disciples came to him and said, do you know that the

Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? Well, yeah, they'd be offended, because that was a short statement that totally undid everything they thought was important, and they were offended.

And so Jesus, of course, issued a retraction and an apology for being insensitive to, well, no, he answered and said, every plant which my

Heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. How's that for my next post? Here's my third post, verse 14.

Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.

So, at this point, there's three Facebook posts. Now, is Jesus being mean?

Is he being cantankerous? Is he being ornery? No, this is the pitch that's being thrown. The pitch that is being thrown is all of these various legalistic constructs of Second Temple Judaism, this aberration, this unfaithfulness, these feckless leaders of Jerusalem.

They are burdening men, they are sending people to hell, and this is the controversy of the day.

And they're throwing pitches. And guess what? Jesus is hitting. He's swinging, and he's hitting. One time

I was teaching in Sunday school, and we had somebody kind of stop our Sunday school class and say, why are we always talking about, you know, homosexuals?

Why are we always picking on homosexuals? Why are we always talking about that? I said, well, that's the pitch being thrown. If the pitch was something else,

I'd swing at that. But I only have two options. I can sit here and watch the pitch go by and not deal with it, or I can swing.

And with the Bible, I've got a trusty bat, and I'm gonna swing. So, if they want the topic to change, then why don't they throw something else?

I'll hit that instead. But if that's the pitch being thrown, then I've got to swing for it. And the Bible is adequate for it.

So, what about social media? What about, you know, things are happening. How do we make sense of this?

Everyone's talking about it. It sounds like the question is saying, you shouldn't take a swing there. Yeah. Out in public, stay in your lane.

If you're a pastor, then just keep it behind the pulpit. That's where you should be taking the swing, not public platform.

So then, so you're getting to the nature of what is the pastor supposed to be doing? Mm -hmm. Fundamentally, something different than regular parishioners?

Is there a clergy -laity distinction being made here? Am I supposed to stay completely non -controversial so that I can do better therapeutic sessions on Sunday?

What's the point? Was Paul not supposed to go to the forum? Right. It was his custom to go there and swing that bat.

Right. Yeah. So, when it comes down to it, should a pastor be posting controversial things on Facebook?

Now, if a pastor is posting controversial things in the sense of, I like to pick fights and get people stirred up, and I like to be embattled on any given

Sunday, or I don't feel spiritual. Right. That's against what the Scripture says about elders, overseers, pastors are not supposed to be quarrelsome.

Quarrelsome is different than defending the faith, because we're also supposed to rebuke those who contradict. Okay. So, being quarrelsome has the idea that you're always picking a fight with people about things that may or may not matter.

Okay. But always getting into some sort of controversy. There are some men who are in spiritual leadership because they thrive on conflict, and they're not afraid to get in conflict with people.

And it looks like bold, courageous leadership, but it's actually, I don't feel spiritually alive unless I'm fighting.

Okay. And that's not healthy at all. Mm -hmm. And there are some models, and I've heard them being taught in seminary classes and Bible college classes,

I've heard these ideas being preached at pastors conferences and so on, that the mindset is that of, if people aren't angry at you in your church, you're probably doing something wrong.

What? You know, obviously you can't be a people pleaser, but you are to love people and shepherd people and help them.

If you have the idea of, well, if people aren't angry at me, then that means that I'm not being holy.

That's a terrible mindset to have. And there have been some really sad cases, I think, where pastors get onto social media and they post stuff and go after church members or say negative things about their church, or they say something passive aggressive, snidely referring to things going on in the church that everyone knows what they're talking about, but they're not putting the details in, you know.

How manly of them. Yeah, to be specific about it. That is, of course. Sounds like slander, gossip.

Yeah, that's ungodly. That's ungodly. But if it's a situation such as something comes up about Revoice or MLK 50 or something that happens with tyrannical government crackdowns or the whole hullabaloo about different corporations and the government schools trying to trans all the kids and so on, yeah, fire away.

Say something like, when blind leaders lead the blind, they both end up in a ditch, you know. And you can write that out and if somebody complains, you can give them the scripture reference.

I think it's interesting to ask such a question in the therapeutic age. You mentioned that earlier where, do

I have to post something therapeutic? Everybody's looking for the the next post to be soothing to them or affirming to them in some sort of way.

Whereas, like, I mean, just under a couple months ago, we had a hullabaloo on Reform Christian Twitter, of all places, about posting

Christ as Lord. Because some people might not have the right motivations when they post it. And it's just, it is a mind -boggling area to be in where, like,

I assume people are gonna be offended when a pastor posts something biblical from outside the church.

But now we're gonna say, now people inside the church are saying, hold on, you can't say Christ as Lord in these situations because it's anti -semitic or it's bigotrous or whatever.

And I'm like, and this is coming from guys like the Babylon Bee. And it just blows my mind to think that anything is not controversial to ask.

And I'm not trying to, you know, badger the question asker, but at this point you can go out and say anything because people are so worked up and they're going to find a reason to be upset with you.

They're looking for it. Yeah, this kind of question I think is worth asking because you could see some bad examples and then you could see some good examples.

But a lot of it depends on your starting framework, how you're understanding what the point of social media is, what are you trying to accomplish with it, and do you understand the reason why the pastor is posting this?

Why does he have a Facebook account and why is he posting this? What is he trying to accomplish with it? If you understand all of that, maybe you'd just be in agreement with him.

But if you don't understand it and you see that, oh that's unnecessary, social media is for sharing pictures of grandkids, or social media is to share recipes, or social media is to share important information about, you know, unique opportunities or things like that.

And this is not the forum for for having debates. In other words, for some people social media is

Thanksgiving dinner where all the weird sides of the family come together and they decide to tolerate each other for a meal and don't get too deep into the weeds and everyone goes home.

And you might talk about the zany uncle on the way home, but you don't confront the zany uncle at the table.

And for some people social media is the Thanksgiving table and, hey, let's all get along, let's all be at peace.

And then for other people, they think of social media as the Thanksgiving table where all the different zany parts of the family get together and you hash it all out and you talk about that and you make fun of each other's shirts and their political statements and so on.

So it's just different expectations, I think. How much of this is generational in that I'm millennial, we're all either mid to top in the millennial generation.

I'm pre -millennial. You're pre -millennial. Okay, all right. That explains a lot.

But we're, if not the first kind of internet native group.

And for me, it started out on the internet as just trying to have fun, right?

Like, so a lot of times when, and nobody should ever go look at my social media, you know, just for their own safety, but I use it as a place that is kind of an outlet to be fun or funny, or what

I think is funny and other people might not think so, but a place where I think it's fun or funny and then get into like side things that really no one would ever care about except for myself and then

I'm almost talking to myself on it and it's used more, I guess, I don't know if that's therapeutic or not, but it's used more as just an outlet to have a little bit of fun and sometimes that fun looks extremely controversial to everybody else.

And you know, there's places to pare back certain things, obviously, but it's like the anti -fun police show up and pastor can't post anything now.

Well, you had mentioned the people that are like, if you're not being persecuted, if people aren't mad at you, you're doing it wrong.

But then there's the other side. A pastor should not be quarrelsome, but if you live in an age where if you say something, it's going to cause a fight.

If it caused a fight, you're therefore quarrelsome. That can't be the mindset either. Well, one of the concerns is that for some people listening to somebody preach, if the pastor or if the preacher goes out of his way to make the application something that is fairly specific and direct to some current controversial issue, they find that off -putting.

And what they're looking for is some sort of timeless application, some sort of general timeless taking of the text and putting it into people's lives.

Concepts are fine. Getting too particular binds that sermon or that approach to something current.

And you really ought not to be so focused on current ongoings. We're here to hear something from the

Bible. We don't have to think about anything current. We don't think about anything current politically, anything current culturally, socially, none of that.

We're not here for that. We're here to get something completely other than. So when they take that standard and they apply it back to the prophets and to Christ and to Paul, how does that work out for them?

It's so refreshing to think about all those problems they had so many years ago that aren't our problems.

Totally. Yeah. But there's a grain of truth there where I can see that somebody is, you know, so engaged in fighting the latest battles that they're giving that the priority and perhaps even just doing it to look cool.

Maybe it's kind of an immaturity factor. And there's certainly pitfalls and dangers there. As I preach through the

Bible and teach through the Bible, passage by passage, text by text, there are times where there's something current going on and I'm just not saying anything about it because there's not a whole lot in the text that actually gets there.

But give it a couple of weeks. The Bible speaks to the entirety of the human existence.

I mean it doesn't tell you how to sharpen the blades on your lawnmower. But it does tell you what kind of approach you should take in that, you know.

The attitude. Right, the attitude, you know, the diligence, the forethought, the wisdom of it, you know, so on and so forth.

You know, I bring alongside my son to teach him how I do it while I do it. All these things are biblical ideas about it.

The Bible speaks to all of the human experience. So we're, whatever the current issues are, we're gonna get there just by going passage by passage.

But there's always gonna be opportunities. So if I go out of my way, seemingly, I'm not going out of my way.

I'm not going out of the way of the text. If I'm going to try to make application of this, if I've got, you know, we're in an election season right now, this podcast will come out well after all of that comes to pass.

But at the time, some folks are very much wrapped up in the doom and gloom, the anxiety and the worry of what's going to happen on Election Day and what follows it.

And some people are already stocking their their doomsday shelters, making sure that they've got gas in their generators, getting ready for the fall of society.

Okay, now I don't, I don't know, maybe, maybe some people have caught that bug in my congregation.

I don't know. But in general, there's going to be some kind of heightened concern, anxiety, and worry.

Am I going to pretend like that's not happening? Or am I going to make application to try to help shepherd the sheep where they're at?

See, to me, by doing that, I might be saying something controversial because I'm going to bring up buzzwords and hot topics, but it's going to get everybody thinking and making application.

Oh, this thing that happened over here in the book of Acts or in the book of Isaiah, this really helps me with what

I'm going to be thinking about Monday or Thursday or whatever. When you were talking about the questioner, the person posing the question, an element of what the question maybe presupposes is a wrong conception of who

God is and his character, who Christ is, and who his messengers are and what they should look like.

When you were mentioning the retorts, the rebukes of Christ to his enemies, the enemies of God, I was reminded of Malachi that said, who can endure the day of his coming?

Right? And who can stand when he appears where he will be like a refiner's fire and a launderer's soap? The messengers of Christ will be speaking the same thing.

By the Spirit, we will testify of him, of his things. So a messenger of Christ, why would we not also expect to see them engaged in the refining of the earth?

Because of heat. We don't want the heat to be a problem. When we're talking about discomfort, or the controversies,

I'm thinking these people are discomfortable with everything that is going to be talked about or preached about.

And with refining or cleaning, there's abrasion, there's heat, there's all these factors in the actions that are going to cause discomfort for people or hearers of those applications.

And that's usually where I see the motivations to avoid controversy, is avoiding the refining or avoiding the discomfort.

Yeah, it's good to remember in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says, this is how my kingdom operates.

In Matthew 5 verses 13 through 16, we have all those metaphors. You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world. You are a city set on a hill. Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify your

Father in heaven. And very often, these are the sentiments in the passages that people are like, look, that's what

Christians ought to be known for. We ought not to be known for, you know, complaining about various hot topic issues.

Verses 13 through 16 in Matthew 5, that's what some people are like, that's what we should be known for.

That should be our identity. But these verses follow Matthew 5 verses 10 through 12, which says, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus says this before he tells them, you've got to be super obvious. It's obvious when you have salt on your food, okay.

It's obvious when a lamp is lit in a room. It's obvious when a city at night has all its lights burning.

It's just plain and obvious. The temptation is that we would seek to be non -obtrusive, that we would be on the slide, that we would be hidden, that we would just blend in.

We'd be winsome. So we would avoid, so that we would avoid all of that reviling and persecuting.

But so Jesus says, now blessed are you when they revile and persecute you. And it's like, he follows it up by saying, and by the way, don't hide.

You've got to be out there. You've got to be the salt. And salt gets chewed up. And you've got to be the light in the middle of the room.

And you've got to be that city on a hill that everybody knows where you're at. It's an old Chinese proverb that says, it's the nail that sticks out that gets hit.

So the question also has a presupposition in it. Should the pastor post controversial things?

Who gets to define that word? If it's the person that's upset by all of the things, why are they getting to define what you get to speak on or what you don't get to speak on, rather than the

Lord commands us to speak on certain things, whether they find it controversial or not? Well, I move that the nominating committee put a chairman on the committee of committees who will propose a new committee concerning controversial social media posts and that they would filter all of that.

It sounds a little bit like the, you talked about it before, the tyranny of the weaker brother.

Just, you know, a touch. I don't, I don't know if that really applies, but it sounds like it's in line with that.

Yeah. So in the wonderful interplay of the way that Romans 14 verses 1 through chapter 15 verse 7 is written, when you start to apply it, who ends up being the weaker brother in any one of these situations?

Who ends up being the one who is the stronger in the situation? So we would read it as, okay, let's say some member of a church, not just a pastor, okay, but post something controversial online.

Why did they do that? Why did they feel the need to comment about this? Why are they so worked up about this?

And somebody else comes along and they say, you know, why is it even necessary? You know, okay, who's the stronger brother?

Who's the weaker brother? You tell me. Is the weaker brother the one who was so offended by what was going on in society that he just had to post it and to not post would mean that he was going against his faith?

Perhaps he's the weaker brother and the one who's like, what's the need for this? Why are you even doing that? That wasn't necessary.

He's not bothered about this issue in the culture like this other guy is. Maybe he's the stronger brother then, and perhaps because he's in a position of rebuking this other guy for doing that feels the need to rebuke him.

Well, what is the instruction to the stronger brother in the text? To bear with the weaker brother.

Not bring him along, but not for the sake of quarreling. Yeah, and not to have anybody go against their conviction, which would be sin.

But maybe the one who posted it online is the stronger brother, right? And maybe the other one is the weaker brother, okay?

Well, then how does that work, right? It's like, well, then I'll explain what

I was trying to do there. I'll try to help you understand what I was doing there. And if you don't want me sending that content your way, then, you know, we could have a little separation there.

And, you know, if you don't want me sending that stuff to you, that's, I understand. I don't want to stumble you, brother.

There's a mute button for a reason. Yeah, there's a mute button. You can unfollow and, you know, and it's okay.

Yeah, I don't want to stumble you, right? If one family in the church, just no alcohol at all, and there's another family who has wine in moderation, you know, wine doesn't get served at the table when this family comes over, versus another family where it's fine.

All right, so we know how to do that. Let's do that. All right, well, I think we covered that pretty well.

Why don't we move on to our recommendations for this week, Michael? My recommendation is a book called

The Dorian Principle by Conley Owens. It's actually published by First Love Publications, and the publisher and the content of the book harmonized really well.

And they want to talk about not commoditizing the gospel, about putting out gospel resources, but not seeking to make it a commodity.

Selling and marketing and trying to turn Christianity into an economic boon, into a business model, but really stressing the need that's developed from different passages in Scripture, that when it comes to the ministry of the gospel, even though ministers aren't supposed to be going around trying to gain direct payment for what they do, there's also the principle that the laborer is worthy of his wages.

And so the model in Scripture, time and again, is that gifts are given to God, and that God supplies the needs of the laborers.

And so there is a giving unto the Lord, and then the Lord is the one who supplies.

And there needs to be an apparatus that recognizes that and applies that in all

Christian ministry. It's a discouraging thing to see how much money it costs to go to seminary, how much money it costs in order to gain access to certain ministry or resources, and so on and so forth.

It's money, money, money, money, money. So often money's at the heart of so -called Christian ministry, and it really ought not to be.

So Dorian principle. All right, Chris, what do you recommend for this week? I was thinking about the heavens.

So we've got Psalm 19, verse 1. It says, To the chief musician of Psalm of David, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.

I've been blessed by an application. It's basically a map of the stars, and because it's on the phone, it can triangulate where you are and where you're facing.

So if you face south, it'll show you what the sky shows then. It also tracks like comets, planets, the moon.

There's a setting where you can put up the constellations, and all those different things. And it's 3D, so it can actually show you what's below the horizon, so what's coming in a couple of hours, what'll come up.

This one is free. There's several free ones. My recommendation is not necessarily the specific one, but see if you can find an app to go out at night and just become more familiar with God's creation.

Looking at the stars, looking at the planets, and you can see it in real time. Maybe get a telescope and look at them.

It's real awesome. So my recommendation is kind of learning more about God's heavens, specifically the stars at night.

Amen. Andrew? It's interesting, brother, because whenever I stepped out—today was a beautiful day here in Oklahoma.

I stepped outside and I was just struck with just how beautiful it was outside, and I remarked to my wife, if what he has made, if creation is beautiful, how much more so is the

Creator? So thank you for that. Well, on a different topic, do you know how to manage your

UTXOs properly? What is a

UTXO, Andrew? Yeah, it's an unspent transaction output. And the reason why

I'm referring to this is that for people who believe that Bitcoin is part of a stewardship for your home, then you need to—I've heard it said that it is money for adults.

So you need to learn how to steward it properly. And for people who are dollar cost averaging into exchanging their currency for Bitcoin, managing the size of your

UTXOs and your transactions becomes very costly quickly if you have many different UTXOs, which are like bills.

So if you had a dollar bill, it was only worth one cent. Every time I transact with that on the network, it costs me more than if I were to have one big bill that is worth—that one dollar bill is actually worth, you know, like let's just say a million dollars.

That has very, very small fees associated with doing one transaction.

Like billion -dollar transactions, six bucks. On -chain. On -chain. Yeah. On -chain.

Yeah. So I found a resource which was very helpful. It's a text -based resource.

It's a website. I'll make sure you have it in a link in the show notes. But basically it provides an outline of how you should think about it.

It gives you a mental model, has some pictures to help you reason about how to steward your money wisely.

And this is gonna be different from family to family probably based upon how you're going to plan on spending those

UTXOs in the future. That's right. So it really is learning what a UTXO is and how to consolidate properly for your family is going to be important.

So you really kind of have to learn the concept well, right? That's right. There's different models. The idea could be like you're a steward in the sense that you are going to just only be saving and that you're not going to be spending these

UTXOs. Another model is that you're somebody who's a household, who is transacting, who is using it as currency to do your business.

And then there's also the business side. For those who are in business and part of their stewardship is stewarding a business, that's a huge difference whenever you have

UTXOs that are small in size as far as the SAT total. It's a huge difference.

So I would advise you, if you think that Bitcoin is part of your stewardship, learn about it.

Know what it means to be a good steward. I'm into that. So recently I've been going through quite a bit of content where I can on Andrew Jackson, the president, the general, and everyone's favorite

Scots -Irish populist. But it is extremely difficult to find pro -Jacksonian or pro -Andrew

Jackson content. But I do recommend that you go out there and try to do it. One of the places

I've found is some of the writing of Murray Rothbard on Jackson and the

Second National Bank War. His take on Nicholas Biddle, the head of the

Second National Bank, versus Andrew Jackson is actually a breath of fresh air coming from both men's sets of worldview and presuppositions as it is to money and how a nation ought to function with a monetary policy.

And also Jackson's biography, his past, is difficult to swim through with people who really just don't like him.

A lot of the people that wrote about him or have written about him just don't like him. So finding your way through that can be difficult.

But there is a book called American Lion, which the author is escaping me at this point.

But American Lion does a decent job at least giving the picture of what Andrew Jackson thought of himself, thought of his family, thought of what he was supposed to be doing in the

White House. It's actually another breath of fresh air as to not trying to harp on what everybody harps on when they talk about Andrew Jackson.

I'm kind of passing over those things but actually dealing in and honing in on a lot of the things that were actually important to the man himself.

So that was a real breath of fresh air listening to that. So try to find some pro -Andrew Jackson biographical information out there and you will be pleasantly surprised.

So what are we thankful for this week Michael? I am thankful for sleep. I'm thankful for the gift of sleep.

I'm thankful for the goodness of sleep.

The reality that I can lay down and rest and give everything to God and know that it is right for me to rest.

That he is ever watchful, ever wakeful, ever strong, ever providing. That the needs of my family, the needs of the church, the needs that often occupy my attention and weigh me down throughout a day.

That it is the right thing to do to lay them all aside in thankful prayer and rest and know that God has it.

He's in control. He provides and it's a statement of faith, an opportunity to state my faith in a good and sovereign

God every day. Amen. Chris? I am thankful for the patience and long -suffering of my wife.

Recently I've been having some health flare -ups making it particularly hard to get out of bed in the morning and just not feeling well at all.

And instead of nagging or pushing or complaining, she's taken up my slack and encouraged me and tried to do things to help me, help my health.

And I'm grateful that God has given her to me and that I mean she's her own person and God has granted her wisdom and knowledge in how to help me specifically, how to be my help.

And so I'm grateful for her. Amen. Andrew? My wife and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary this past week and it's interesting to think because I made a comment to my wife about how we as one flesh are older now than when we first became one flesh.

And just the things that have happened, the passage of time, it seems like it's been so long ago and yet I can remember it and I'm there instantly.

It's a gift that God has given to be able to remember these things, but it's also a gift at the amount of time that we've been given together.

It's a it's a wonderful thing. So I thank the Lord for that and it is not, it is not we who built that house.

I thank the Lord for keeping us together and building us together. Amen to that.

I feel that one. Although I've only been married six years and not 21 years, so I've got a way to go there, man. It's still the same thing, though, isn't it?

It is. It is. Yeah. Just it's going to be great when I get there at 21 years. Well, I'm thankful for every single man in this room and anybody that has to do anything with this podcast.

Like I've said in previous podcasts, it's harder to leave home to come and do this because I've got more to do at home.

I've got more to love at home, but I know what type of guys I'm showing up to enjoy this time with, to talk over the scriptures with during my day -to -day life right now.

I'm super busy. I've got day job and then I'm working till dark on a part -time job for this season and a lot of times, you know, you're just alone with your thoughts, your meditation, what you're listening to.

If you have a chance to look at something like a text or something like that, great, but a lot of times that time is not there.

So being able to come here and discuss biblical things and one of the things that I appreciate about you guys, too, is when we get to a question, so we go straight to the scriptures, but a lot of times we're just so distracted by what's happening in the scriptures that sometimes we forget about what happens at the question and that's great for me, right?

Because I'm like, I'm trying to, every now and then, I'm trying to work us back toward the question, but then sometimes I'm like, I'm just watching it go on and I'm like, yeah, this is good stuff.

Oh, what was the question again? So I have to, sometimes I feel like we need to draw back, but I really do appreciate how we do get sidetracked with that type of a thing and I get to watch you guys do it or enter into it with you and Joel's over there making us sound way prettier than we are and every now and then

Ryan has to put down a thumbs down, like that's a bad idea, don't go there, and it's usually directed at me and that's great, but no, he doesn't, but we,

I do enjoy this time with all you guys. We have loads of fun on and off mic and this is a very edifying time, so I'm very thankful for you all.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.