Announcement on Family & Parenting

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Well, we are live, but late is what we are. Yeah, folks, sorry, we're having some tech issues that we've been trying to work backstage because it's really kind of kind of bad that we have a guest on and we're getting a lot of strange noise on the mics.

We don't know what it is. We are trying to figure out it could be the tech that I have, because as you can see,

I have a new camera angle. I've made some changes with the cameras. And because of that,

I was thinking, is it my end? That's, of course, where I blamed it. But it may not be on my end.

And so we're trying to figure that out. And I'm going to bring in our guest just to those in the audience.

I'm going to have to ask you to listen to hear if you hear it. If it's if you're hearing anything or just us.

But but yeah, let me bring A .M. Brewster in. Let's see if this will work.

I'm here and I'm unmuted. Do I sound like a normal human being or do you know, it sounds

OK. All right. I pull my microphone closer. Does that make it worse? Better. It's like getting your eyes checked.

I'm not hearing or being a I just got my eyes checked. And that's yeah, that's what they were saying.

OK, people are saying they can hear. No, no, no noise.

So we're going to pray we we didn't even. OK, we didn't even pray before we got the show started, which we usually do.

This is just see Drew's not. Drew's going to come in late. So we're going to blame Drew because Drew isn't here.

Everything fell apart. That's I'm sure that's my story. I'm sticking with it with that.

A .M. Brewster, welcome. Welcome. This is we've never started a show this way. I don't think in the I don't know how many years we've been doing this, over 200 episodes.

And so I know it's like we remember, we agreed it's

Drew's fault. It's always Drew's fault. So let me start. Welcome, folks, to Apologetics Live.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport. If you have any questions about God and the

Bible, we can answer them here. If you doubt that, if you question you think there's you have some question that I cannot answer about God in the

Bible. Well, my challenge to you is go to Apologetics Live dot com.

Just scroll down to the little icon for StreamYard. Join us. Ask your most difficult question.

And when I say I don't know, just remember, I think that's a perfectly good answer.

So with with that today, what we want to talk about is parenting, family and parenting.

But I mentioned an announcement that I was going to make. And so what

I want to do right out of the get go is to introduce A .M. Brewster. I'm going to refer to him as Aaron because that's actually his name.

My mother would be happy if you use the name she gave me. Yeah, yeah. But Aaron, you are going to start to see more often with Striving for Eternity.

You'll see him up on the website. And because eventually when he gives us all his information, hint, hint.

Yeah, I know. I know you're it's Drew's fault. It's Drew's fault. OK, we're blaming that on Drew also.

So Aaron will be one of our newer, newest speakers at Striving for Eternity, his area of expertise is in counseling with family and parenting.

And that is what we're going to discuss today. So if you guys are listening and you go, hey,

I'm hearing some real brilliance coming from Aaron, I would love to get him to our church.

Well, we would love to make that happen. You could just email email us at either info at Striving for Eternity dot com or speakers at Striving for Eternity dot com.

And that will get the information to us. And we'll if you're saying, hey, I really want to get

Aaron. We'll get you, Aaron. Now, we eventually get him up on the website where you can actually book him and come out right from the website.

But we're not ready yet because we need his bio and picture and things.

So but for folks that don't know you, Aaron, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to the audience and then and then let's get into discussing family and parenting topics.

Yeah. OK, great. Well, my name is Aaron Michael Brewster. A .M.

Brewster just was was branding that we like the way it sounded. And you notice like all the theologians, you know, they like A .W.

Tozer and all those guys, always in the first initials. Right. And then their last name. And so like, yeah, that'll make me sound smart.

I don't know that it's worked. So, you know, we'll see. But yeah, please, by all means, call me, Aaron. I am.

If you're going to do that, you need the British accent, too, because that. Yes, yes, yes. And you, by the way, one of our members, a supporter of ours on YouTube is familiar with you because I see this.

Jason Cave says TLP in the house. Oh, yeah. That Mr.

Brewster knows TLP. So we're going to get right where that stands for. By the way, Shane, Shane White is wishing us a good morning.

So he he must be on the other side of the world. Wait, wait. That can't be because I thought the

I thought the world was flat. Silly me. No, no. He's he's hanging on for dear life on the bottom where the sun is right now.

I don't get this one. Facebook user, by the way, whoever Facebook user is, you got to got to go to a politics live dot com.

And there's instruction so we can see your name. But I'm just going to tell you, I can tell you right now why Andrew doesn't get this

Andrew Punky Brewster. So Andrew does not understand pop culture references. He grew up.

They didn't have a TV. He lived in a cave. Punky Brewster was it was a

TV show, man. The main character was it was it was a little girl. And she went by.

She went by Punky. Yeah, well, I you know, I I don't know, folks, if I'm going to call him punky.

Oh, my word. Because I know my martial arts background and I know

Aaron's martial arts background. And I think he could take me. Don't call me punky.

It's bad for your health. I'm just saying, Shane, I get I get that you can only think of punky

Brewster. That makes all the sense in the world. Shane, Shane says he's from Australia. And see my my regular audience, see, they say nice things about me.

They say I'm old. Thank you. Just popped right up there, didn't it?

Couldn't do anything about it. So so, yeah, so, you know, for Punky Brewster, who

Shane watched when he was a kid, look, and now others are getting in on bandwagon. Probably had probably had a crush on Punky, honestly, when he was growing up.

If he's being honest, he probably did. Look who decided to show up. Oh, Drew. Drew, welcome. You know, we had all your fault and we decided it's all your fault.

Thank you for joining. It is your fault. We had technical issues, but. Oh, well, you know, I I take credit where I can, whether it's good or bad.

All right. So so, Aaron, you were getting ready to introduce yourself as or as one of our newer newest speakers at Striving for Eternity so folks can get to know a little bit about you.

Introduce also your ministry with what was just said is TLP, but truth love parent might as well spill the beans on that.

But. Yeah, there are actually so many names to remember. There will be a quiz afterward.

Make sure you guys get this straight. OK, so here we go. So I am the president. Good. Take notes. I'm the president of Evermind Ministries.

Evermind Ministries has multiple ministries that are all have the exact same mission.

We want to keep God's word at the center of the human experience. And we say that way, center of the human experience, because we our lives are so varied and multifaceted.

Right. So we want to. So we have the various ministries that are part of Evermind are all focused on keeping

God's word at the center of that facet of your daily life, your your human experience, if you put it that way.

The one of the first ones that was created was a ministry called Truth Love Family and the

TLP, the truth of parents that you're hearing. If you're not familiar with it already is the podcast, the first podcast that we created that was part of Truth Love Family.

So there we go. So we've got Truth Love Family and the podcast Truth Love Parent. And we have over 500 episodes where we discuss all things, parenting, how we can worship

God better as parents. That's something that Andrew and I have talked a lot about. What exactly does that mean?

You know, that worshiping God through our parenting. Then there were a couple of other ministries that have been added since then.

And by the way, Truth Love Parent and Truth Love Family have been around since 2016. So that's been a little while.

And then the next one that came up was called the yearlong celebration of God. And it also has a podcast called the

Celebration of God. And that's specifically about keeping God's truth at the center of really our personal discipleship and worship.

And again, there's that idea of worship. What is worship? Is that just the songs that we sing on a Sunday? Or does it mean something else?

And then the next one that came along the line was Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship.

Andrew mentioned earlier that I'm a biblical counselor. And so what does that mean? Well, really, when you step back and you look at it biblically,

I believe that the idea of a pastor, a parent, a discipler, someone in the church who's engaging in the one another's really you're all doing and a biblical counselor are all doing the exact same thing, just doing it within different relationships.

So that's what Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship gives me an opportunity to do two things. Number one, to work with individuals who are looking for help.

You might call it crisis counseling, but then also individuals who are just looking to take their next steps in their progressive sanctification and their discipleship and become more like Christ.

But then on the other side, one thing that I get to do is work with counselors. So sometimes I have I'm training counselors to and more broadly, people who want to learn more about biblical counseling.

But I'm also having the opportunity to work with people specifically, as Andrew mentioned earlier.

My my background is in biblical counseling really primarily has been on the family side of things.

I also worked in a boys home for at -risk teens for a number of years. And so, you know, the hard cases, the ugly stuff, the stuff that we don't like to talk about that involves family and children and parenting and marriages, the stuff that I kind of have my specialty in.

So oftentimes I'll work with other biblical counselors who have a case that's kind of outside their wheelhouse.

And they'll connect with me and we'll talk about ways to proceed and things like that. And then the other the final ministry.

So there's Truth, Love, Family, the yearlong celebration of God, Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. And the last one is just AM Brewster Ministries, which has been up until now, my speaking and my traveling side of things.

And I'm super excited really to be partnering with Striving for Eternity. I have had the opportunity now to get to know

Andrew over a number of years. I believe it's been years now, if I remember correctly. I have to go back and look at the dates when we first connected.

A mutual friend of ours got us connected and I started the podcast was put on to the

Christian Podcast Network or that network. I did it again. I always want to say network community.

There we go. Sorry. See, I got I got to work that out because I got to be able to say it the right way. Otherwise, well, of course, that's better than what

I did the last time where I call it the Christian parenting community. I just can't get it right. One of these days,

I'm going to call like the communist podcast community or something. It's just going to be awful. Oh, my word. Anyway, yeah.

So the podcast went on to the Christian podcast community and then had the opportunity to be on a number of theology throwdowns.

And then even though Andrew and I have talked and texted and done the theology throwdowns or whatever for a while now, we actually had the first opportunity to meet face to face in person.

It's weird when you're meeting somebody for the first time that you've you've known for a long time, really kind of strange.

But we had a chance to do a family conference in northern Indiana together, which was awesome very recently. And then as of late,

Andrew invited me to consider and pay about the opportunity of partnering with Striving for Eternity to really to to sharpen both ministries, to have a bigger impact on people and super excited about doing that.

So I'm looking forward to it. I don't know what else he's going to wrote me into, but it'll be a surprise. Well, you know, the first time we met, you actually thought

I was going to be much shorter because my camera was so high up. And, you know, you know,

I thought you were going to be taller is what I thought. So so one of the things

I should have started with this, but because we started kind of awkward. So I had been mentioning for a couple weeks we were going to have the essential church documentary discussed this week.

There's been some issues. So we we are not doing that with just some conflicts that scheduling and whatnot.

So so we weren't going to do that. I'm hearing the noise come back,

I think. Oh, no. First of all. And now it's gone. So it might blame it on me, blame it on me.

Yeah. So I hope hope we don't have that. So Shane, Shane from Australia said to me texting really quick.

He said he's on his phone. He doesn't have data to keep watching. So he's going to he's a parent himself.

So he's interested to watch later. So by the way, Katie just realized that my initials you're giving your initials.

She's like, my initials are A .R .R. So she's asking, is are a pirate?

Yeah, totally. That's totally a pirate thing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So right there are.

So. It looks like it looks like Pastor Darren Sneed finally figured out how to see get his name working.

He was the Facebook user that we saw before. So, yes, Pastor Darren, we can see it.

And there you go. So let's talk. I did tell

Drew, I said, hey, look, let's do for this week. Why don't we do an intervention with Drew and parenting?

Yeah, yeah. And Drew is like, good, I need help. Did you even have kids or two?

I've got a three year old and a one year old. Oh, nice. Yeah, there's not much you can do for that. Sorry.

OK, you know, I don't feel bad because I'm like, what am I doing wrong? They're little pagans.

They can't even understand the English language. It's rough. It's a rough spot. Yeah. So so what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to give some counseling advice to Drew, explain everything he should be doing right.

And I mean, that that sounds fair, right? True. Yeah. OK, let's do that. Even though even though my kids are at that age now where they're figuring stuff out, right, everything's still kind of new.

And then my three year old is always pushing the boundaries. It's like, I want to touch this, but I know

I'm going to get my hand slapped, but I'm going to do it anyway. And then I'm going to do it after I get my hand slapped.

And, you know, but, you know, some things to expect when they get older or as they as they get older, that I can implement or things that I can start implementing now to get them used to it.

Actually, what's funny is that so much doesn't change what you just said.

When I when I was working at the boys home, they would do something I would say to them. OK, so I realize one thing we have to do.

We got to stop Aaron because he mentions things in his past that he doesn't give any context to.

So first off, he did mention the Theology Throwdown podcast. That's a podcast on the Christian podcast community. He mentioned that.

What boys home? Well, I'll give you this. Sorry. Yeah, no, I mentioned it earlier. A boy was this obscure boy.

No. Victory Academy for Boys up in the northern woods of Wisconsin, hour and a half past Green Bay, which puts out about three hours past nowhere.

Yeah, it's actually a fantastic ministry. Loved it. Was there with my family for five years.

The opportunity to be the lead residential counselor there. And I was also the director for a short time before we had to move.

And we moved for a number of reasons. One of them was actually my wife's health. My wife does not do well with extreme cold.

And you can imagine that that doesn't mix if you live in the northern part of Wisconsin.

So anyway, I love the ministry. Absolutely fantastic. So while we're there, we would have anywhere from up to eight at risk teens living in the home with us at any given time.

And we'd have one to three resident assistants, depending on the year and who we could get. And so these boys were coming in from all of the

United States and they would live in the home for nine months to 12 months. Sometimes we have a boy come back the following year.

That actually happened on a number of occasions and really an amazing, unique ministry.

And I love it primarily because a lot of the all of the biblical counseling I do happens across a desk or across a coffee table or across a screen.

Right. But that happened in the house. It was it really changed for biblical counseling, more so just the parenting, you know, from a relational standpoint, because now it was

OK, instead of taking God's word and saying, you're going to need this later this week when you encounter these things that we've talked about.

You're going to need to remember this. It was here in the moment, in the kitchen, in the hallway, in the bedroom saying, all right, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's an issue here.

Let's deal with it in a Christ honoring way. It was really great that life on life practical in the moment stuff. So really loved that.

I even try to take that model and put it into what I'm doing with my biblical counseling.

There are a couple of occasions where I basically would go over to my counselee's home and I would just be there during key times of their day.

You know, let's just say hypothetically speaking, there was a situation with a husband and a wife, you know, after work. There's always this really hot button time.

And so I would I would be there in the home. I'd have dinner with them. I'd be there throughout the course of the evening, not necessarily like a guard dog or some sentinel standing there, but to be there to be a sounding board, to be there, to help them step through conversations and to do things in new ways.

And I would do that for a couple of weeks and then kind of send them off on their own. It's just really kind of a different way of approaching it.

But I found it really very powerful, which when you think about it from a biblical perspective, discipleship in that time period was life on life.

Jesus and the disciples, Paul traveling with the people with whom he traveled. That's where you just you couldn't escape that.

And in our society here in America in particular, I'm sure it's the same in Australia and other places.

You we go to church. We see each other in professional settings. We have our little drawer of church approved things that we talk about.

And we can hide. We can hide our ugly stuff in the car and at home and other times.

And nobody ever really sees it. But being in that constant life on life scenario really makes it easier for us to have those conversations about what's really going on in our lives.

And I think it's a really beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah. So so one thing I mean,

Melissa, for you, Drew, Melissa says, wait till you have teenagers. But here's a question that that came up.

Is this probably good for you to answer, Aaron? Is how would you counsel a child slash teenager who is believing the transgender lie?

This is this is something I think a lot of parents now have to deal with that.

We've we've never had to consider me when I went to seminary. That was never something we had to deal with counseling wise.

So how can we counsel someone with that? So if you haven't been able to tell already, my answers tend to be very robust.

I'm trying to. So so, folks, this means instead of Anthony time, we're going to have Aaron time.

Either way, we're noticing the same trend. But go ahead. So the.

They know Aaron time is Anthony times when he goes over the two hour mark. You know, I'm not there.

Yeah. At this rate, you'll get there. Don't worry. The real issue is oftentimes to to pull back a little bit further.

If somebody is believing a lie, it's for one of two reasons. Either a that's the only information they have.

Or believe or sorry, be they're refusing to believe the truth.

And that's for people who have heard the truth and who have rejected it. And gone for the lie.

We see this in Romans chapter one. They knew something. They had information, but they threw it out.

They rejected it. And they embraced and they followed after these things that weren't true. And so, you know, if I'm working with somebody who they're a worldling, they they've grown up in a secularized environment.

They've never been to church. They don't really know anything more about God in the Bible than they see, you know, characterized in their

TV shows and songs. And it doesn't surprise me that they're believing the lie, because that's the only information that they have.

But most of the people with whom I work are people who are professing Christians or at least, you know, the children are children of professing

Christians. They've gone to church and things like that. And that's a very different scenario, because it's not just that they're only just latching on to what they have.

They've made they've made a choice to reject something else. And that's really where I like to start.

I tell parents when they come for help, specifically, really any counselor, it's true of them.

That big thing that we think is the issue is only part of the problem.

It's the presenting fruit. But generally speaking, there's something far more fundamental deep down.

So a teenager, for example, let's just say a teenager who perhaps has grown up in the church or has had enough exposure, whether in the home or the church, to know the truth.

The truth being that God created you just as you are. He did not make any mistakes. I mentioned my wife's health earlier.

She has a genetic disorder. Now, that's a result of living in a fallen world.

OK, that's the way it is. But God in his sovereignty has allowed my wife to experience this.

This is not somehow outside of his control. Oh, he messed up. Oh, I didn't see that coming. No, no, no. I mean, we know this about God.

He's allowed this to happen for his glory and for my wife's good. For me to say of her condition, this is stupid.

This is this is bad. God shouldn't have allowed this to happen. Really, it's me calling God a liar.

But what I know from the scriptures and the same would be true for our biological sex. So I would want to talk with the parent, talk with the individual, find out what they know about God and find out why they're choosing to reject it, because that's where I want to start.

Why, if God is who he says he is, if he's done what he said that he's done, why are we rejecting it? And the answer to that question is going to be very important.

And there are lots of different answers that people can give. Oh, they just think he's a fairy tale. Oh, that's my parents religion. Well, if God really did exist and they think there's some like there's something that caught

God in some conundrum and therefore he can't possibly exist because he can't be good and all powerful and whatever the reasons may.

Lots of reasons that people will reject the truth. But that that's that's the key thing when you talk about and oftentimes that has nothing to do with gender, has nothing to do with sexuality.

It has to do with who God is and what he says in his word, how trustworthy his word is.

And that's where we have to start. Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned and I highlight this for folks to to consider is a lot of the the issue that we have with the whole transgender movement is.

And I'm going to see some. OK, so I muted, muted Drew and the noise went away. I muted myself, though, to about the same time.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. OK, no, I muted him after. So I wasn't sure. I don't know if it's my new setup.

It very well could be. So we're going to have to test this out. But yes, you're Aaron's pointing to Drew.

Drew, you see why Aaron fits in so well with this group. On my screen, I was pointing at you on my screen.

You know, my screen, you're pointing through and that's. But oh, you look at what

Darren says. Noise always goes away when you meet your thanks, Darren. Love you.

That's a good friend of yours, by the way. So, you know, one of the things we we have to consider when it comes to the transgender issue, and this actually is more than this.

There's this really comes into a whole bunch of issues. Is the idea of contentment.

And I think it was Isaac Watts that wrote a book on contentment.

Drew, you probably know because you're well, actually, Chris Huffwood. Now, if Chris is watching, he'll he'll he's the Isaac Watts expert.

Right. But I believe he's got a book on contentment. And that's really an issue.

I think we we don't talk enough about within Christianity. And what you just said,

Aaron, is really the thing. When someone is biologically male and thinks they're female or vice versa, what you end up dealing with is you're dealing with someone who is not content with the way

God made them. And Drew, I'm just going to mute you until until you talk. Just we'll have to do that just for the tech issues.

I don't know what's causing it, but. But folks, I mean, what Aaron just said. When we sit there and say, well,

God, did you made a mistake? I'm there's got to be something I didn't get my way.

As if God is not capable of creating just the way he wants things created.

And and that's really what I think we find so often is that we are not content with what

God has provided. And that is something that over and over again, we can see in a lot of different areas of life when people are complaining they're complaining because they're saying somehow

God didn't give what we expected, what we want. And what are we doing at those moments?

We're putting ourselves above God. So really, as a counselor, you know, when you're counseling, one of the things you're first taught with counseling is you almost are never dealing with the actual issues that people are raising.

This is what Aaron was getting to. You have to get to the root cause. What's the real issue? And that is something they end up finding.

It's always an issue where it's the issue you think it is, is not the issue it is.

And so you have to dig in to find out what is. So the issue of you and someone saying, well,

I identify as the an opposite gender. Well, you know, I start looking into and, you know, their idea of contentment.

Are they content with what God provides for them in their walk in life? Because when they're content with what

God that God knows everything, he doesn't make mistakes and he created them the way he did for whichever purpose.

Well, that kind of reveals, you know, the mindset we'd have to have with some of this issue.

So, Aaron, a question that I do have for you is when we say you're a counselor, what what type of counseling do you do?

Are you a you know, we refer to a biblical counselor, which basically everyone calls themselves a big old biblical counselor, except for the people that are completely secular.

But there's a lot of different realms. You are you an ACBC counselor? Do you what's your style of counseling?

Yeah, so ACBC is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. Formerly, they were

NANC, and they were started. Really, the idea of biblical counseling was kind of coined and started by Jay Adams.

And yes, I am ACBC certified. No, I don't know anything about ACBC. Never even listened to him.

So don't even try the jokes. The punky Brewster person's gonna be like, did he say ACBC?

No, the ACBC. For the record, I actually know who ACBC is.

Wow. Yeah. It's the difference between plugging into the wall and a battery. I know it's something like that.

It's a band that was back in the 80s, 70s, 80s. So, yeah,

I think that's right. I never listened to him, so I don't know. Yeah, the late 70s and all throughout the 80s.

I think they're actually still going now. One of their I think it was like Angus, who is like their guitar player, had like dementia or something like that.

It's a mental breakdown. OK. Oh, speaking of counseling. Yeah. So the the idea is that God's word is sufficient.

Now, like you said, everyone calls themselves a biblical counselor. You hear words like Christian counselor or counselor who happens to be a

Christian, whatever else. And really what you're going to find is on one extreme, you've got people who are using secular methodologies, the exact, you know, all the all of the stuff that, you know,

Freud, Skinner, you know, all of the people that you would imagine. On the other side, you've got people who are using

God's word as sufficient for everything that we need for life and godliness. And then you've got a continuum of people all really throughout the middle.

And oftentimes somebody who calls himself a Christian counselor, tends to kind of fall somewhere further on this spectrum.

But then again, it's all just terminology. It's hard to really nail people down the way it used to be. Really, what

I encourage people to do is to take God at his word. The fact that he has given us everything that we need for life and godliness.

Now, people will say, well, you know, the Bible doesn't teach you how to, you know, put a carburetor on your vehicle.

The Bible doesn't teach you how to throw a front kick in the martial arts. The Bible doesn't teach you two plus two. And that's true.

It doesn't. But I tell people this, that what the Bible does, it does teach us many things.

What the Bible does for everything in life is it teaches us how to do the thing that we're doing in a way that pleases the

Lord. And really, that ends up being the case so often when people come for counseling.

It's really not the thing. The thing itself either is clearly addressed in Scripture, and if it's not clearly addressed in Scripture, it doesn't really matter.

The question is, are we glorifying God as we're doing it? That's the key thing. Now, I will also say this because it's something that people always bring up.

Well, Aaron, yeah, but but mental disorders. I mean, these are these are health problems, right?

You go to a doctor for health problems. And I would agree that you go to a doctor to take care of your your physiological body, your biological body.

And I will say that people have physiological issues that manifest themselves in lots of different ways.

Again, my wife being a perfect example, she has physiological issues. And going to a biblical counselor is not going to help her with her genetic disorder, but it will help her to glorify

God as she's dealing with her genetic disorder. I recently was meeting with a group of men who all have various forms of stage four cancer.

And we did a series called Suffering Well. And the whole point was that we can't avoid suffering in this life, but we can suffer in a way that pleases the

Lord. Still, some people might hear what I'm saying. They might say, yeah, but you know, what if you know, what if somebody has a mental disorder or mental illness and they're depressed or they're anxious or they're doing something that Christians would say is a sin?

And I'll just be fair right off the bat. We don't have time to answer those questions. But I will say this.

We don't we don't want to call something a sin that God doesn't call us in. At the same time, we don't want to say that something's not a sin if God calls it a sin.

So the biblical counselor works hand in hand with medical doctors. We want to make sure that you're you're physically healthy, that your body is working the way that it should.

But whether it's working the way that it should or not, God's given us everything that we need for life and godliness to escape every temptation, to please him and glorify him in every situation.

The biblical counselor desperately wants to help you do that. Yeah. And I think that one of the things when we talk about biblical counseling, it's got to it's got to be rooted in scripture.

Right. I mean, this is there's a lot of people that just say they're Christian counselors. They use secular means of counseling.

They just happen to be Christian. So I'm glad you brought that out. Let me just one of our other Christian podcast community members post this,

Aaron. This is Rebecca from One Little Candle. She says, I witnessed firsthand Aaron's passion and wisdom for biblical family counseling would highly recommend.

So there you go. Didn't know that much. Yeah. So that was from Rebecca from One Little Candle.

Now, Dee is saying, unfortunately, here in California, the child is rushed into taking hormone therapy that will destroy them for the rest of their life.

Actually, no, Dee, it's even worse there in California, because in California, a bill that just went to the

Senate this week, I don't know if the Senate has voted on it yet or not. But a bill that has gone to the

Senate is one that would basically say that if you as a parent misgender your child, it is now considered child abuse and the child could be removed from your home.

So let me be really clear. Any Christian parents.

Sorry, let me widen that. Any common sense parents in California?

Get out, get out of that state before they take your kids.

Like this is no longer, hey, we could just live in the state and disagree with what? No, no.

They are purposely wanting to cause a division between you and your children. The school system will be happy to to help with the child to get them taken out of your home.

So if you want to see your children, if you want to raise your children, your children, then you need to get out of that.

That state, I just don't see any other way around it. Find another job, find another house.

But yeah. So right now it's it's it's it's California because California is achieving what, you know, the basically right now the

United States government wants to achieve. And Biden just was was he was thankfully trashed pretty hardcore about it.

But he was getting online, talking about how, you know, that these kids aren't your kids or they're all of our kids.

Right. Yeah. Just the idea that these. Yeah. These children are all of our kids. This is coming from our president.

Right. No, no. They're not the government's kids. They're not the village's kids.

They're not the community's kids or the parents' kids. They've been watched to say this. They're God's kids entrusted to the parents to steward them.

But yeah. So California is just, as it always is, I'm on the leading edge of the liberal agenda where they're trying to do everything they can to take ownership of other people's kids.

Yeah. And Pastor Darren put this up. He said California has been at war with J.

Mack, referring to John MacArthur, regarding his church's biblical counseling stand since the 90s.

And what that refers to is John MacArthur. Back in the 90s, the church was counseling a young man who ended up taking his life.

And the parents sued the church. Now that had wide implications.

I mean, I think there were even synagogues that had partnered with the lawsuit because what would have happened with that, the end result that could have been with that is that you can't do any counseling except those that are approved by the state.

And, you know, we're seeing how that would work now. So, Drew, we have you know, this is becoming

I really you know, I'm just going to say I and you could see the comments, but and you see which one's starred.

So you had time to think and prepare. But I'm just saying I just to me, it seems like Brother John here has has something with you every week, this little kind of dig on your end times.

You it's I'm not him to do it. I'm just saying. But he says question for Drew.

Now we have to establish which drew because there's two Drew's here. But OK, I'll go with Andrew.

And I'm just going to say, so he says, do you believe that there is an increase in sexual immorality in the world right now?

Is it possible that is a biblical prophecy? Well, the thing about that is because I mean,

I don't know, just because we are we're naturally geared right to experience sexual tendencies because we're we're made for procreation.

And so, you know, there are those desires and people, you know, even professing

Christians and stuff, have engaged in some form of sexual immorality. But at the same time, the sexual immorality that's going on now is no different than the sexual immorality that was going on, say, in the

Roman Empire in the first century. It's the exact same thing. The only difference between now and then is that now it's in our face more 24 seven because of news and social media and all that.

So is there an increase? I don't know that there's an increase. I think it's just more in your face and you can't get away from it.

Is that biblical prophecy? I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. I think

I think it's just sinners being sinners until they come to profession of faith in Christ.

But Drew, shouldn't everything be getting better and better and better in your view? I mean, the church should be growing and growing and growing.

Yes. What we see right now is the church is being divided and divided. And I'm just saying,

Drew, I have a theory. I have a theory about this working theory. But I think it explains a lot.

And you might agree with part of it. So I think part of the reason we don't see the church growing at like a rapid rate, as we did in, say, like the first century, it has to do with certain sects of dispensationalism, not not

Andrew or Jim or the the faithful brothers that go out and preach the gospel. But those who are always talking about why go do that?

Jesus is coming at any moment. You know, just just sit back and prepare. Right. The escapist mentality type.

OK, but I don't know. I don't know that that dispensationalist exists. He's that dispensationalist.

No, no, no, no. So the question on the table is, you know, why?

Why do we not see the church growing the way we've seen it in previous generations while probably referring to the great, you know,

Great Awakening or the. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that, you know, the revivals and whatever else.

Part of the issue, I think, really, the deal kind of boils down to a little bit of what we saw in the 80s and 90s.

Now that we kind of term that easy believism. Right. But it is actually pretty easy.

And if you think about it, you go to Africa, you go to other parts in the world. Christianity is thriving.

I mean, these these health and wealth all over. We got to. Is that really?

Air quotes. I use the air quotes. Yeah, we're thriving. So exactly, exactly.

So but here's the thing, though. But but see, they're they consider themselves a Christian church. When you have people doing polls and they're looking at, you know, the breakups of different religions in the world, they would include those people as Christians.

We wouldn't. But generally speaking, they do. And so you have these people who are. Who are, you know, coming to having some experience or getting involved in some group.

Right. But they're not truly born again. I really the Bible is very clear. Broad is the way that leads to damnation.

Narrow is the way that leads to life. It's always been that way. It will always be that way. So what am I saying that, you know, in the first century, when five thousand people were added to the church, most of those people.

I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that likely, as we look, you know, in our time frame and the different revivals and whatever of the past, to imagine that all of those people were were born again, growing in their sanctification is likely not true.

And I think what we're what we're seeing nowadays is we're seeing a real honesty about the situation.

I've said this all the time. You're not going to find very many fake Christians in China. You're not going to find a lot of fake

Christian people pretending to be Christians in the Middle East. Yeah, because your life is going to be for that's why you do that.

That's why Joel Osteen never does a outreach in the Middle East. Yeah. Or China is.

Yeah, because he's not going to find it. And to the same degree. But here in the United States, we foster an environment where it's foster an environment where it's easy for people to be part of a label.

But I think we'd be foolish to say that all of the people who call themselves Christians really are. Yeah, be foolish.

So, yeah. And to your point, Drew, like I would actually, I guess, argue that I see more.

I've run into more in the Calvinistic circles of people who don't evangelize because they think, well,

God determines everything. And so so I think you have both. You know, I think

I think that either way, if we're going to be more honest, every camp has people that just people don't want to go and evangelize, period.

And, you know, I would say both camps probably have people that evangelize for the wrong reasons also.

Right. Trying to not really earn their salvation, but earn their sanctification. I think there's a lot of people that that do that.

So so, John, John says this. He says, I have and he likes your answer, by the way.

He says, I have a lot of hope for you, Drew. Thank you for your answers. I don't know anyone that is post and and like learning your ideas.

So so there there is a guy we got. We got some some comments start here that I was going to put this one up.

And that's Pastor Darren Steed says, I'm tempted to come on and join this argument, but I know that it's not the main thing you want to talk about.

Well, it's OK to hear. This is Apologetics Live where anything can be discussed.

That's the whole purpose. You should know that. But he does say Post Mill doesn't postulate that the church will always be victorious.

The victory of the church will ebb and flow. The trajectory will be positive for the generations.

And that's a good point, because I've said to Drew an argument I can make for Post Mill. Like, you know, if we're going to look at the oh, let's look at the culture and say, oh, see, the culture is clearly

Post Mill's wrong. Well, we don't we don't get our theology from the newspaper. I know that's what a lot of people accuse dispensationalists of.

But but either either way, we don't interpret the newspaper or the

Bible by by newspapers and say, well, Post Mill is wrong. I could see that things are just not bad enough yet.

And that I could see a time when as it continues to get bad, there could be a revival and the church could grow.

I think that a lot of the church growth will occur through persecution, which that's already here.

If you don't realize that, it's only going to get worse. But, you know, that's what

I anticipate that we'd we'd end up seeing a good resource for me to say that when the last thing for this before your research,

Melissa says, isn't Post Mill think the world is going to get better? The more

Christians fill the earth, if they really think that they shouldn't be leaving California. Well, yeah,

I'm not Post Mill. That's why I would leave California, Melissa. Get out of there. So so does that make

John MacArthur, since he's staying really a Post Mill? No, it makes him really old and set in his ways.

But the church building. No, I mean, but seriously, I mean, I would if I was a parent, if I mean, if I still had children in the home with this law passing in California, I you know, now

I guess I guess the thing is, is I wouldn't have to. I wouldn't worry because my kids wouldn't be, you know, are not screwed up like that.

But but it doesn't take much in the school systems now for for someone in the school to just talk to the child and knowing they're in a

Christian home, be like, oh, do you ever think that? And just all they need is anything they could use and they'll just be like child abuse.

They're taken out. So, yeah, I wouldn't risk it. Two things. One, a good resource for what

Darren was talking about about the victory of the church and the ebb and flowing. It's called it's by Greg Bonson called

It's Either Victory in Christ or Victory in Jesus. It's a really good book that that talks about that.

But also what you were just saying, Andrew, now all someone has to do is just find out that a child is in a

Christian home. I saw this video yesterday. It was a recording from a hearing.

It was like a small private hearing. That was a man who was a pastor in front of a family judge and a social services type worker.

Well, the pastor pulled his kids out of public school to homeschool and and this social worker trying to take away their kids because they were going to be homeschooled.

Wow. Yes, that's just this is the thing there. They're going to look to cause the oh, oh,

I see. I see trouble in the background. We're talking postmill. See, this is the thing. Postmill and who comes in none other than what's funny.

We started talking about this stuff. It always comes to end time stuff. You know, it always comes to eschatology.

I had no idea what you were talking about. That is just the Lord's providence. Yeah, I was actually trying to talk to Drew and he was ignoring me.

So I figured this is he did. You did text me. I just so you knew how to get a hold of Drew is just coming to the show.

This is our office hours. You know, Drew and I, if you want our office, if you want to speak to us, our office hours are eight to 10

Eastern Time Thursday nights. Apologize live dot com. Well, what were you guys talking about? Well, we're talking about everything postmill and how wrong it is.

You know, things like that. Hmm. So so,

Brandon, let me you you may know, I think it was Thomas Watts or Watson that that wrote a book on on contentment.

Well, Jared Burroughs has a book called The Jewel of Christian Contentment. Oh, maybe that's what

I'm thinking of. I but I think there's two or three Puritans that have one. There it is.

There it is. The art of the art of divine. They have the art, the art of divine contentment by Thomas Watson.

And Jeremiah Burroughs has one as well on contentment. Yeah, there we go. I would have had to do what you did is get up and walk over there.

But I think when we were talking about this, the you slid. That's right. The when we talked about the whole transgender issue,

I think that really is one way of counseling with that is the is, as Aaron said, with the idea of contentment, you know, dealing with.

Go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just going to say I actually was hoping we kind of wrap back around to this because it's going to take a couple of ideas that have been presented.

One was the question about transgenderism. The other one was the question about things getting worse. And I don't

I honestly don't believe necessarily that we can look at the world today and say that things are getting worse. In fact, we had a conversation very similar to this on Theology Throwdown recently talking specifically about, you know, is

America under God's judgment? And one of the questions I was asked was, well, when was America not?

If America was ever not under God's judgment, when was it? And what was going on? Right. And to be honest, sin has always been there.

Terrible, awful things have always been done in America. And the consequences of that have always been here. Anyway, the point

I'm trying to make is that this is not a new thing. When I was five years old, I was in kindergarten. I frequently said to my mom that I wanted to wear girls clothes.

And I'm not going to I'm not going to encourage you to do what my mom did. OK, but at the time I was her first, she didn't know really what to do.

So one day she said, OK. She put me into this frilly little dress with a little a little socks with the frills around the socks and a little black patent leather shoes.

And she she put my hair a little bit of hair into these little. Yeah, well, there are pictures.

There are pictures I have to I don't have one handy, but there are pictures. I want this evidence to use against you.

In fact, the picture that was taken was I was sitting in a swing. It was really hilarious because I I crossed my legs at the ankles sitting on the swing.

I never would have sat like that. Right. My mom said that everything about me changed. I was flouncing around the yard.

I crossed my legs at the ankles as I was sitting on the swing. Get my picture. I started acting very feminine as a five year old.

And then something happened and I said, I'm done. And as quickly as I could,

I want to get out of it all. And I never again ever, ever spoke or as far as I can remember, desired to want to dress up like a female.

Now, I say this just to say the fact that that happens nowadays. And people look at the kid and go, oh, he has gender dysphoria.

Oh, he's a girl trapped in a boy's body. Oh, he's the wrong. Whatever the case may be, they say, oh, that child did that.

But here's the thing. I also have memories of pretending to be lots of stuff.

Robin Hood, Captain Picard of the Star Trek, the USS Enterprise.

Vincent played by Ron Perlman in this old 80s Beauty and the Beast TV show. I was dressing up his stuff, painting my active imagination.

Right. And so there was this time that, you know, I thought, oh, I want to dress up and be like a girl. And so this nowadays we have we look at it differently.

We handle it differently than they did back then. The other people would have had other ways of handling it, potentially better ways, potentially worse ways.

But nowadays we just deluded ourselves into thinking that that right there means something that it doesn't mean. My really the whole point was that this has been around for a long time.

And if we addressed it, the ways that we've addressed it in the past, especially if those ways are biblical, we'd find just as much success as we know nowadays as we would back then.

You know. Yeah. You know, hold on, hold on. Let me just put up Pastor Darren's comment. He says, and now we're back to the punky

Brewster again. That was that was really a lot more punky Brewster for sure. Yeah, that was it.

The female vibe. Drew, and then I'll make my comment. So in in our house, we had something similar last week or the week before.

We were getting ready for to leave for church. And my wife was in the bathroom doing her makeup.

And whenever my wife's in the bathroom, our three year old loves to be in it because he loves to play in the sink and do all that stuff.

Well, he was watching my wife do her makeup. And when she put down her makeup brush, he picked it up and he wanted to brush his face.

And so I why not? Right. Makes sense. I took it and I said, no. And then he picked it back up and I said,

I said, no, we don't do that. And he said, why? I said, because boys don't put on makeup. So I said, no, only girls.

And he just OK. Well, you know, I have to, you know, many people that you look up to, many guys you look up to.

I know for a fact of worn makeup. In fact, I have because when you're when you're out of living waters and you're being recorded on film, they they have to because to get the glitz.

We don't do that. Obviously, we don't do this here because the glare of my forehead is blinding everyone. But right now there is a purpose.

But but yeah, the the thing is, we have a we had a woman in our church who

I had preached a message on, you know, that day when when everyone was preaching against homosexuality, that there was a one day it started up in Canada and everyone in America did it.

And on that day, I preached a message. I had a woman come up to me and she had a lesbian background.

And she had said, had she grown up in this generation, her parents probably would have forced her to have surgery because she was such a tomboy.

She was convinced she was a boy. And and, you know, that may even have affected why she ended up liking girls because she kept trying to be a boy.

And and yet in this generation, instead of saying it's wrong, they would have encouraged that behavior.

And she's so glad that that wasn't encouraged, which is actually what Melissa here is saying. There we go.

Melissa says, I'm so glad my parents didn't pay attention to me when I went through my tomboy phase as a kid.

I grew up with two brothers and just wanted to play football and go fishing. So so this is a big part of it.

When we talk about this whole transgender thing, folks, be looking all the time, because when you look at this, you're always going to find a parent.

That's behind this, and it's usually a single mother and it's usually a single mother that wanted a girl.

We a lot of times that's what it is. You you have much of this is someone who is, you know, convincing their child of the way they want.

You know, there was a mother that had two two boys and she wanted a girl. And so, you know, this became a case that we even dealt with,

I think, here at one time. So I want to say something about what

Melissa just said, because part of this problem, like I was actually going to poke fun of Drew a little bit, because I've been in a lot of theater.

I met my wife in theater. So not only did I wear like my when I first when

I first met my wife, Drew's making fun of me. Well, I was saying I've done

I've done theater, too. OK, so, you know, I was going to poke fun, you know, make up on your face having to have eyeliner on my eyes so they pop for the people in the back.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You may need a pop and say it's not just like the crazy, like fantasy makeup, but it's also just like actual makeup, lipstick and blush and eyeliner.

But the also the things that Melissa mentioned, you know, hunting and fishing and all that kind of stuff. If we look at the scriptures, you actually don't see a lot of what we would call the sex stereotypes.

Right. The idea that little girls play with pink dolls and boys play with blue, whatever, you know, that's not there.

That's actually a product of our society. I think for the longest time, Christians were taking our cultural notions and they were putting them on the level of biblical, biblical truth.

And and they would even take certain things that, you know, you can kind of imply from the scriptures. And they were making that like something that was like hardcore, definitely true.

Like, you know, it was like inappropriate for a woman to have a job outside of the house. That's going to be hard.

It's really hard to prove from the scriptures, especially from the fact that, you know, people point to Proverbs 31 and so on and so forth.

Now, do I think it's wonderful, the fantastic highest calling for a woman to stay at home with the children? Yes. So I think that's better than sending the kids off to some some government school to be indoctrinated all day long.

Definitely. If someone needs to stay home. But the point I'm trying to make is that we put our cultural ideas of what it is to be a boy or a girl on par with the scripture.

And we got a lot of trouble. There's nothing wrong. Ladies, listen to me. There's nothing wrong with a little girl who wants to fish and hunt. There's nothing wrong with a little girl who wants to who we would say is like tomboy out there running around climbing stuff.

She's a she's a child. Why wouldn't she want to go jump in a mud puddle just like her brothers would?

There's nothing wrong with that. And we're being foolish if we look at that and we say, oh, she's acting like a boy. No, she's acting like the 1950s

Opie Taylor. Right. And that we were that's well, that's how boys act. And since she's not over there with dolls and sipping tea, then she's not acting like a girl.

That's ridiculous. I can find that anywhere in scripture. So we have to be really careful. My son, he he said he always hung out with old women.

I say old women. I mean, like women old enough to be my grandmother. If I wanted to find my 10 year old, I wouldn't look at the other 10 year olds.

I wouldn't look at the teens. I would find the women old enough to be my grandmother. And there he would be with them. Well, through a series of events, he learned to knit.

And and so one year I bought everyone in the home crochet hooks and we bought knitting needles and we all had our knitting bags and we all learned from that homeschooling family.

Like we're always picking up new stuff. We all learned in it. And one year, my son hand crocheted 19 beanie knit hats for all of the girls, all the women who were coming to our

Christmas party. And I told him, I said, do just be aware that the average guy, especially at the time in the north woods of Wisconsin, right?

Camo hunting, greenback packers, cheeseheads, you know, the normal guy around here, if were he to find out that you crochet and knit, you'd be like, oh, that's for girls.

I said, but I just want you to understand there's nothing inherently feminine about that. You're a guy and you're making clothing.

I mean, whether you're cutting out a piece of leather or you're sewing something or whatever else, there's not an issue with that.

So all of that to say, it's kind of one of my rants because I mean, there's some really manly men here. You know, we have martial artists here, guys with beards way cooler than mine.

And I know it's just really super simple, especially now, because, you know, this this this we're bringing masculinity back.

And I'm so glad in many ways. But we need to be careful that we don't attach these ideas of masculinity that it needs to be.

If you're going to be a man, you need to be like this, this and this. And those things aren't anywhere in the script. We need to be very careful with that. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, before we bring someone in, you know, you just you almost put me to sleep like Cole here.

So we'd be a good time for us to talk about getting a my pillow in case you put anyone to sleep.

But, you know, if you if you if you want to get yourself a good night's sleep or, you know, and you don't have

Aaron around, you can get yourself a my pillow and use promo code SFV. So so.

But we do have you know, I've meant to put these up. Let me let me we have two folks who have got a my pillow from striving for eternity.

And we always say, if you get a my pillow and you send us a picture, we'll put it up. So I have those pictures here.

If I can figure out. There it is. Let's see which one this one is. This is Keith Foskey.

This is from the conversations of Calvinist podcast. He is we did a podcast together and he got a he got a my pillow and loves it.

He had he's also if you if you're not familiar, I don't know what what channel he does.

He does a channel where he does like when all of the different denominations get together for things.

Oh, there's there's Aaron with his pillow, but that's not a my pillow. He dropped the ball on there.

How do you know? How do you know it's on my pillow? It doesn't look like it. Is it? How do you know?

It's a pillow. How did you know? Because I know a my pillow because they look like this when they're and this is from Dead Man Walking.

Greg, Greg also got one and he posted about it as well. I was hoping that was going to be your face on there.

Yeah, no, I, I, I don't want to work that into the marketing. Yeah, no, it won't.

But but with that said, if you do get a pillow, use the promo code SFE. It lets them know that you heard about it here.

So they keep supporting us, which we really appreciate, by the way. Let's bring in Pastor Darren.

He he's here now. Folks, I'm just going to say we we have a lot of people here with with beards.

Actually, I should post I should put this up. There's there's people that are of the belief that I never had a beard.

I actually have a beard right now. It's just I keep it very short, unlike these guys. But but I yeah, you have to get up to the camera.

I don't know if I could zoom in and just show me, but I literally while we're in the show, this was sent to me.

But if you look all the way to the right, there's there's me in a beard. What do you know? And so way back, huh?

Way back then, I did have a beard. All right. It was one of the Jewish beard with the long sideburns and everything.

No, I didn't have that. But but someone that had a beard and now he's looking more like me is is

Pastor Darren. Yeah, man. What I shaved it off, man.

Yeah. What exactly happened that you went with the child? Look, I mean, you you're like no years younger, maybe 50 years younger.

I shaved off my wisdom, man. You know, I was I was trimming my beard one day and the guard fell off.

I was trying to decide how low to trim it. And the guard fell off the trimmer. And I was like, oh, that makes it pretty easy.

So I had to trim it all the way down. And then I shaved my face. I haven't shaved my face completely in years, many, many years.

So I go walking into the kitchen and look at my wife with a big smile on my face. And she was like, you know,

I was like, what, you don't like my face? What? You know. So I always tell people that's why I grow the beard out, because it's better than the face, you know?

So, yeah, you did. You look like a child without your beard. Just say that. I know, man.

So I have this podcast about wisdom for men. And my picture in it is me with a beard, because if I were to put it up with me without a beard, nobody would listen to anything that I say, because, you know, who's this guy to talk to us about being wise?

Andrew, you got to hear that. Today, he dropped the podcast episode about how people ought to wear suits in the pulpit.

Now, that wasn't the entire. Yeah, that's right. Oh, but it's part of the discussion.

I will. I'm going to have to go listen to that one that that's on your man. I got to go look up the name of.

I love that part. It's manhood moment is manhood moment. That's it. I know.

Not that I came on here to advertise or anything like that, but, you know. Yeah, but I try to. I try to I try to promote what

I can. You know, I appreciate that. What's that? He didn't know he did in the comments section.

He got on there and the only thing he said was you're welcome. I didn't even get a name drop in the pod. Oh, man.

Old thing. Well, I spent like two years being Darren.

Be like me. Wear a suit. And then I leave. And then you can find me. That's not easy.

Wait a minute. You were saying to Darren to be like you in terms. See, that was the weakness in the argument.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because because if I if I remember correctly, if I remember correctly, there was someone else that convinced you.

I mean, I mean, it's one of those things. And it's an ever evolving thing.

It's a domino, man. It's a domino. So I have a million. I have heard a million people.

Andrew has certainly told me I need to dress better when we preach the conferences together before. and he's like, what are you doing with your life?

Everything's like that. But what really did it is I was at G3 and I had talked to Josh Bice about it.

He had, he told me, you know, a unique perspective and I was like, okay. And then I'm standing around, it's me,

Jeff Johnson, Free Grace Press, Brett Baggett and a couple other people. And I just realized

I'm the only one not wearing a suit in this circle of people talking. And I decide to bring it up because that's what you do, right?

Because I'm here and so I need to make everybody aware that there's a woman. And so I say, hey, looks like I'm the only guy with a suit,

I guess, or without a suit, I guess I must change that or something to that effect. And Brett looks at me and he's like, oh no, it's cool, man.

You're the cool church planner. If you wore a suit, that would undo everything. And I was just like, okay,

I'm done. I'm done here. And so I bought a suit and I come back, actually bought it for Cruciform Conference the year prior, but nobody wore a suit until after me.

So I decided not to wear that suit. And then, so I show up in that suit to Cruciform the very next week and everybody's like, what are you doing?

You're an idiot. And I was like, no, this is what I'm doing now. And then the very next week I came back in and everybody else was wearing suits and like nice gear.

And I was like, all right, well, so that's just the way. But he couldn't convince me, he kept trying. And I was, now

I did get progressively better and better as the time Brandon was there. Harmony Baptist Church, Andrew, you've been there before.

Yes. It's a very blue collar rural church. The people that work at my church are like factory workers and mechanics and linemen and things like that.

And I thought, man, if I wear a suit, I'm gonna look like their boss and I don't wanna do that, you know?

And so, but I did get progressively better because when Brandon first came to Harmony, I would preach in like blue jeans and a graphic t -shirt, you know, and he like literally like a

Superman t -shirt, you know, or something like that. And I think I said, what's wrong with you? Yeah, right, what's the matter with you, man?

Aren't you reformed? Only a little bit, but no. Here's the thing, I've always said,

I can minister to anybody in a suit, right? A biker comes in or a businessman comes in, I can minister to either one.

Yeah, I think that's the thing, yeah. It does give a air of that we're, whoop, we lost someone, we lost

Aaron. So it does give an air where, you know, you have a little bit more of the respect of people with that.

I mean, I'll say this, we used to do evangelism on the streets and we had a guy that used to come in and he would come right from work and he was a lawyer.

And we noticed that when he would get up in open air, the crowd just changed.

Even like when he was there weeks before, for many weeks, not coming right from work, and he'd be dressed in like a t -shirt, the crowd would be agitated with him like everyone else.

But when he came in a suit, the crowd was just different. And we often thought like, do we want, you know, do we want to do that even on the street is stand up on the box in a suit?

You know? Well, I think it's interesting. You look at the world, right? And the Oscars, anything, almost anything that goes on the

White House, except for recently, you know, I don't know if that was different. You know, you go to the opera or whatever else and what are people wearing?

They're dressing up. They're dressing up for the occasion. You go to church and all bets are off, right?

Yeah, it's a, I think it's an interesting discussion. You know, obviously you can't argue for a three -piece suit from the scriptures, but I think it says a lot about what we dress up for.

I just saw, I just saw this. I don't know who I got this from. I just shared it, but someone posted this.

McDonald's can mess up your order 101 times and you still keep going back.

One thing goes wrong at church and you quit. People just aren't hungry enough. Yeah, that's true.

It's a hard left turn. Yeah. So one of the things - Brandon, but I don't know if I did.

So one of the things about the suit thing that I was really thinking through. So I looked up at the screen one

Sunday and I was like sloppy. Sermon, it had been a difficult sermon and I was trying to think through what went wrong and I was,

I looked up there and I was like, man, I look like a slob up there. And that was kind of a turning point for me, but I had already been thinking through some things at that point.

And one of the things that I was thinking through was, and one of you guys mentioned this earlier, there was, with the

Seeker Sensitive Movement, there was a shift in the church with regard to decorum. And one of the big things was, it's not only you don't dress up to come to church on Sunday morning, but it's actually kind of more like you really dress down to come to church on Sunday morning.

Cause it's like, it's not even just, it started out as come as you are, but then at a certain point it's not come as you are because it's sort of swung so far the other way that it was like, not only do we not dress up here, but we count ourselves as spiritual because we're not the kind of church that dresses up.

And what I noticed is that people were being very casual with regard to the worship of God.

And it's sort of like - And legalistic in the other way. Yeah, right, exactly. And I don't remember who told me this.

Yeah, right, exactly. And I think it was my grandfather, but I don't remember exactly. It was either my dad or my grandfather told me as a piece of wisdom,

I'm sure you've all heard before, before you tear down a fence, always make sure you find out why it was built first.

And what I was thinking through that with regard to this whole thing with decorum and so forth. And it's like, and as I was thinking that, it's like, it's almost like this whole idea of the way

I dress impacts the way that I behave. True, it turns out.

Yeah. And the thing of the, like I can't read from the text directly to wear a suit with the church on Sunday morning.

But, and I don't get the church stretch of the imagination, but there's a thing in the church of all of the basic standards and expectations across the board.

And if you think about that. Is Darren breaking up for you guys?

Yeah, Darren, you're kind of getting chopped up there. Hold on,

I'm gonna try something here. Cause I know he's gonna, he's saying something good. I'm sure, you know, I just maybe take, turn your video off and see if that improves the.

Let me see something. Yeah, so, yeah, now try. Check one, two.

Can y 'all hear me? Let me try something here real quick. Hold on a second. You're sounding good now. I'm sounding good now?

All right, cool. So the, what I was saying is that the loosening of those standards with regards to dress is sort of a picture or it's a microcosm of the loosening of the standards across the board.

And some people want to look at that and say, well, there's no correlation between those two things. How can there not be a correlation between those two things?

You look, cause the level of seriousness with which we enter the worship of the

Lord on the Lord's day, the way that we dress speaks into that. And it also, the way that we dress speaks into how we're going to behave when the man up there is delivering the word of God and when we're taking the

Lord's table and so on and so forth. And so it wasn't just, it's not just the dress thing. There's a lot more wrapped up in that.

And so, and I think it's important for us to say, and I'm gonna stop here because I know I get on a soapbox here and I just keep going and going and going.

But I think it's important for us also to be able to say as Christians, we don't always necessarily need a chapter and a verse for every little thing that we do.

There are principles in scripture that impact our behavior beyond just this specific, one thing that it says here, there's an application that goes beyond that.

And I would say the way that we dress sort of falls under that category. Yeah, there was, what kind of did it for me was listening to Steve Lawson give an interview about why he always dressed as up.

And I think it was like with Todd Friel or something. And he said, well, think about this in your own life.

If you were to get an invitation to the White House, right? You would sell everything you own in order to get a really nice suit to go meet a carnal man, the president or the queen of England or whoever.

But you can't take the time on a Sunday morning to get dressed in your best to go meet with the

King of Kings for an hour. You know, what's wrong with you, that reveals your heart. Yeah, and that's what

I was gonna point out as well is the fact that when we look at it, we're, when we're going to church and this was the thing

I had said, I remember I was at a conference, this came up in a Q &A and I, you know, it was

Phil Johnson and I having the discussion on this. And I said, I'll wear something

I don't wear regularly. I dress, so I don't generally wear, even when I used to work in a secular job,

I'd go to the office, I had a dress shirt, but I didn't have to wear a suit jacket or definitely not a tie.

And so, but when I go to church, I'm dressing up. I'm dressing better than I do, you know,

I'm gonna, because this is something special that I'm doing. I'm gathering for the worship of God.

And so for that reason, I would dress up. And even when I go to conferences, you know,

Darren, you know, or sorry, Brandon, I'm at your conference. Well, actually both

Darren and, you know, I've spoken to both of your conferences, right? And what do I have? I have specific shirts that I only wear at conferences where if everyone else is not wearing a suit, right?

Then I'm going to have a shirt that I don't normally wear. And so it's something, why?

Because what I'm doing is special, you know, people get dressed up for special events.

Well, church is a special event every week. Yes, that's right. The celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think we can tie though, too, to something a little bit more like,

I think as I'm sorry, is it Darren? Yeah, yeah, that's right. As Darren was saying, because we had

Drew's, Aaron's, Darren's, it's so hard. Come on, baby face Darren. The scriptures are actually really clear.

You know, one of the things that we see all throughout the Old Testament from the very first sacrifice offered by, you know, two humans that we have recorded, you know,

Cain and Abel, all the way through God's communicating his expectation for corporate worship.

God always wanted the best. It had to fit his perspective.

You couldn't offer whatever incense you wanted. Bringing fruits and vegetables wasn't gonna work. If you were gonna bring a lamb, it had to have no blemishes, no broken bones.

And even into the church age, God's expectations, I think really for all of our worship, but in a unique way, our corporate worship is still the same.

God wants our best. And so, you know, some people listening to this, you know, I've heard all this stuff.

They say, you know, well then why don't you wear a tuxedo? Then why don't you know? And oftentimes people making such arguments,

I don't know if they're actually interested in any type of reason, biblical response, and that's fine. But I think the reality that we're going for here is, okay, we have

God, he's communicated himself. And he said, when you come together as my people, and by the way,

I'm not reformed. I don't see the church and Israel being the same thing.

Okay, I'm not that guy. He's more biblical, like a good dispensational would be. But even then, whether I mean, well, even though I'm a dispensationalist,

I still see God communicating himself to the children of Israel and how they were to go to him in corporate worship as being instructive for what we need to be doing as well, specifically from the standpoint that God's character hasn't changed.

Well, he deserves our best. It's a hard issue. You know, Melissa says this, I wear my nice shoes on Sunday.

That's one thing that I do. And see, you know, like the thing is there's, everyone may not be able to afford a suit or a dress, you know, but it's the hard attitude.

So, you know, I think, Brendan, you've mentioned the legalism maybe, but you could be legalistic with it.

Like, oh, you must wear a suit. Well, if you're forcing people to do that, and they're not comfortable, if their hard attitude is

I'm doing this because I have to do it, then they shouldn't be wearing a suit. Well, what

I meant when I said legalistic is when I started wearing suits to preach, and I found that it was far more the people who didn't want to wear suits or didn't think a pastor should wear suits that were far more legalistic about it than the people who were cool with it.

All of a sudden, if you're wearing a suit, now you think you're better than everybody else. It's like, you know, you're kind of doing this -

You're changing your motivations and everything, yeah. They were the ones that had the biggest problem. It wasn't actually the people who were okay with the suits or wanted to wear the suits.

It was quite honestly the exact opposite. There had been a switch. See, and I don't have that problem because I've just always been wearing suits for church.

So I didn't suddenly come dressed up in one. Oh, go ahead,

Drew. There's a, it's not that everyone, or we'll just stick with the men.

It's not that every man must own a suit. Now, I would say it would be good to have one, at least in your wardrobe, but it's not that you must wear a suit every

Sunday. What's the best that you have, right? Is it a nice polo shirt, maybe some khaki pants, or your nice blue jeans or something?

Okay, put that on. You know, just put what you have. That's the best of what you have, and put that forward as an offering to God that says,

I'm bringing my best, even in my clothes, of what I get to the Lord. Yeah, and that's the whole, it's that we want to, we're seeing every

Sunday as this is something special. This is where I'm going to worship the creator of the universe with the rest of the congregation to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If that's our attitude, then we want, we see this, Sunday is not a normal day. This is special.

I think too, like one of the things that people are bucking against, and I recognize this, many people were raised in an era where they were forced to wear a suit.

And if you didn't wear a suit, you're not spiritual. And if you couldn't afford to wear a suit, then you're somehow less spiritual.

There is an idea, there is a legitimate wrong idea that is being bucked against by some of those folks that, you know, in their upbringing, they weren't taught, this is the worship of the

Lord. They were taught, you're not spiritual if you don't wear a suit. And we're not talking about, well, we're not talking about, nobody has said anything in this discussion that is about external conformity to this one specific standard.

That's not the thing. The thing is, this is the worship of God, so bring your best. It's not necessarily this one specific external standard.

I've been a part of, I went to a seminary here in Indiana where it was like, it was an independent Baptist fundamentalist seminary.

And I had some great professors there, but you wore a black suit, a black tie, and a white shirt every day, every day that you went to class.

And if you went to one of their churches, all the men wore black suits, white shirts, and black ties.

That's what was expected. No beards, you weren't allowed to have any, Reformed Baptist or Independent Fundamental Baptist go two different ways on that.

The ones here in Indiana are no beard, and there is a certain sense of conformity to an external standard that people are bucking.

I think we do well to recognize and to explain, no, no, that's not actually what we're saying.

What we're saying here is, it's not about this conformity to some external standard.

It's the scripture teaches, when we come to worship the Lord on the Lord's day, we bring our best.

And that can be different for different people, but whatever your best is, the widow with the two mites, whatever your best is, that's what you should bring.

Yeah, and so - Also, suits are ridiculously cheap these days. My first suit for both pieces were like $183.

Now, everybody who says that they can't afford a suit, I wonder if they're holding an iPhone in their hand. Yeah, I was gonna say, you can go to -

Half of my suits are from the Goodwill. Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say, is you could do that.

You can go to a thrift store and get a decent suit, but the thing is, it's the hard attitude.

I mean, that's what I keep coming back to. Now, here's something interesting to consider, because everything you guys have said,

I agree with 100%, but are you willing to take all of the truth that you've just applied to clothes that we wear and other things, and apply it also to the music in the church?

Because I used to be part of a alternative rock band in the 90s, mid -90s, right?

And it's amazing what a kid who's just picked up a guitar can do.

You know, a lot of popular music out there, especially back then, you're talking like alternative music, whatever else, a couple chords, and you're all set.

Yeah, exactly. And so, if a seventh grader with an electric guitar honestly is the best that you have, fantastic.

But we asked the question earlier, if you're going to visit the president, if you're going to the opera, if you're gonna do this, that, well, how would you dress, right?

Ask yourself this question. If a foreign dignitary, like the King of England, were coming to visit

America, would he have a bunch of 20 -somethings and their guitars and their pop music to greet him as he walked onto the

White House lawn? Interesting question. So, from my perspective, you can see which way

I come at this. I think you might not. If you're in Africa and the seventh grader with the bongo is the best you have, awesome.

Praise God for that, right? But I sometimes, you know, I look at the churches that we have filled with the people that we have, skilled the way that they are in music, and are we actually bringing

God our best? Interesting application. I don't know that everyone's as comfortable to have that conversation.

Well, you know, and I don't know who said about the fences, like know why you put the fence up, but you know, about seminary with the beard.

So when I went to seminary, the seminary I went to, Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary, had the same policy, no beards.

Independent Fundamentals Baptist Seminary couldn't have a beard. I had a beard, I'd have a beard every winter.

And so it was, you know, and so I was kind of bucking the system and they kept having the issue with me.

And I remember sitting down with the Dean and I just said, well, what is the reason for no facial hair?

And I said, just give me the reason, help me understand why you have this policy and maybe

I can understand it. And the reason was because back in the 60s, having facial hair was a sign of rebellion.

I said, but we're not in the 60s. And all of a sudden the staff was like, yeah, that's right.

Like the reason for the policy is no longer fitting in the culture. And so they got rid of the policy, right?

And that's something, asking why is this fence here helps with that. So let me go,

I did star a couple of things earlier. So let me see them just to make sure we wrap up. So D says, oh, okay, this is to me.

So she says, so you don't see California as a mission field. Why should we leave them a mission field? Okay, so D, if you're in California and it's your mission field, then yeah.

I mean, if you're gonna view it that way, but just understand that they are going to be looking to take your kids if you have kids, right?

So I'm saying for young parents, it's something you gotta really consider. The other thing we start, okay, it says,

I agree. John says, I agree 100 % with Andrew regarding the church growing in persecution.

I also believe that the true church will continue to grow in unity, John 17. Yeah, I mean,

I'll say this. I've seen more division in the last several years than I have ever seen with the church within churches.

I mean, I travel around, so I know a lot of pastors and I have been dealing with more pastors that have been undermined by their local church than I've ever had to deal with before.

And so I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna mute everybody who's not talking because someone says, where's that sound coming from?

So it wasn't just me hearing it. So sorry about that, folks. We got something on the line,

I don't know what it is, but we'll just each mute ourselves and unmute when we wanna talk, if that's okay. So let me just ask

Aaron, we got like 30 minutes left. So in the realm of parenting, of counseling parents, we live in a very different generation than the one that at least

I grew up with. I mean, it just seems like it's getting so much radically different.

I mean, just in the last 10 years, it has moved so fast. How do we as parents raise children in a generation we can't even sometimes wrap our heads around it?

I mean, the kids today are dealing with issues that I just, speaking for myself,

I never fathomed. iPhones, the phones and the technology has changed so much of our life.

People have been so disconnected with one another and so connected online. I think the danger of all this

AI stuff is gonna be even more so, because I think that's gonna bring in a component where people are gonna make deep fake videos of people and pass that around in school.

And it's gonna be a new form of hazing or abusing that goes on in schools where when

I was in school, it was just, you did name calling, but now, I mean, you could do deep fake videos and really ruin someone's reputation in life.

How could we as parents counsel through, like what advice do we have for parents who have to deal with raising children in a generation we just can't really conceive of maybe or think through all the craziness that's out there?

Well, I'd start just by giving everybody hope. Hoping that this is a task to which

God has called you if he's given you those kids, that you've given away to escape every temptation, that he's not going to give you a task, that he's not also going to provide you what you need to do.

And I tell parents all the time, you are the best parents for your children.

If there were somebody who could parent them better, God would have given your kids to that person. But there's a caveat to that.

If you are worshiping God, if you are following him, if you are obeying him, submitting to his word, you're the best parents for those children.

However, if you're not, anybody who is striving to love

God and to submit to it could in theory do it better than you could, all right? So yes,

Bible, Bible, Bible, get it in their hearts, minds and on their tongues. 100%, I'm gonna go back to what I said earlier. It's not about a reaction to what we see in the world.

It's about the action of going to God and pursuing him. That has got to be what is, we have to start there.

Honestly, I see what you're saying, Andrew. I'm a huge student of anthropology, huge student of culture.

I'm into it, I'm listening to the stuff, I'm watching the stuff, I'm interacting with the people. I have very interesting groups of people that I try to deliberately go out and interact with and learn more about them.

My wife and I were just someplace recently where I swear like half the guys there were wearing dresses and skirts and makeup and all kinds of crazy stuff, okay?

And it seems very daunting from the outside. But the reality is it's the same heart issues that happened when

Cain killed Abel. He didn't have video games, he didn't have TV shows, he didn't have that kid down the street. He just got so angry at God and at the situation that he killed somebody who really didn't do anything wrong.

It was hard to legitimate that he did anything wrong. So the human condition is what it is, what's always been.

I don't believe it's getting worse necessarily. I believe, like we said earlier, that's just we're seeing it in a different way.

So I wanna give everyone hope. And as that person who just put that, Jason just said, we've got to root them in the scriptures.

We're running around looking for some advice, some pop culture about how to talk to our kids about transgenderism, how to talk to our kids about sex and how to talk to our kids about, whoa, hold the phone.

Are you even talking to your kids about God? Do they really know who he is?

I have this podcast episode that I did called Where in Your House Is God Not Allowed?

Seriously, walk through your home and try to remember the last time in that room you had a conversation with your family about God.

You'll find that there are places in your house, on your property, that God is not allowed. You've never talked about him there.

Or if you did talk about him there, you weren't being fair to who he was and being honest about the situation or being biblical about how it applies to the situation.

That's what we gotta get. We have to get there every single time. It sounds like an easy answer, right? Go to the scriptures. But my friends,

Psalm 119, longest chapter in the Bible, right smack near the middle of the Bible is all about the love and the passion and the way we need to pursue

God's word if we're going to have any clarity in this life whatsoever. Now, I wanna try and do a test here and see.

My theory is Aaron can't do this. But Aaron, can you in five minutes, in only five minutes, you have a product on your website at truthloveparent .com

that you have here. It's called the Communication House Rules that people can get a hold of from Truth Love Parent and Evermind Ministries.

You got way too many names for your ministry. I'm just saying, there's, I need a chart to see how they, an org chart to understand how they all work.

But no, you have a thing that you guys produce. It's a small card people can take and have to keep in their homes that you call it the

Communication House. Could you explain what this is for folks and how this could be helpful for folks as he's going to get a bigger version of it?

See, he's got a big version. That's right. The basic gist is this, and this looks different than the card that he has there, but the basic gist is this.

We need to, this is Ephesians 4 .15 pretty much summed up in a graphic. We need to be speaking the truth.

If we're not speaking the truth, we're not loving our kids. And the most important truth that we can speak to them is going to be from God's word directly applied to life.

If we're not speaking in love, we're also sinning against our kids. I put on here, humble, patient, kind, forgiving.

There's lots of ways that we show love. Those are some of the main ones that have to be a part of our communication. But even if we're speaking the truth in a loving, culturally loving kind of way, if we're doing so to manipulate our kids, just to get them to do what we want them to do.

Hey, listen, the Bible says you guys need to love each other and you need to obey your parents and stop complaining. And we're speaking truth and we're doing it in a decent way, but we're really just doing it to shut our kids up, to get them to be good.

We're not really doing it for God's glory. And all communication that happens without this foundation, these walls and that roof are happening outside of the house.

And in the same way that if I were inside the house and the windows and doors were closed, it's pouring rain outside and you're in the front yard, we can't have a conversation.

No communication is actually going to happen. And I argue that in your home, if we're not speaking the truth in love for God's glory, yeah, we understand each other's language.

We get what the other person's communicating, but real Christ -honoring conversation isn't happening.

And it's not really going to end in anything valuable because we're not truly pursuing God's glory and God's way.

So the card that Andrew showed you, specifically I use in counseling, and it also have a video training video that goes along with it, but it's how to help our counselees or our children, our families learn to communicate in a way that pleases the

Lord. There's rules for communicating in the house. There's rules for what to do if somebody leaves the house, what we need to do in the conversation to get them back in.

And I created it when I worked at the boys' home I referenced earlier, and is a wonderfully important, helpful tool.

I have one in my room. My kids have ones in their rooms. We have one out in the living room because the Brewster family regularly needs good reminders of what it is to glorify

God with our communication. Was that under five minutes? Yeah, you actually did it. You actually did it.

So Melissa's asking, where do we get these? So if you go to truthloveparent .com, truthloveparent .com,

you'll not only be able to find where to get these cards, but you'll also be able to find

Aaron's podcast and the other things. A brand new app. He's got, I was just gonna mention, there's the

Evermind Ministries app that you can get and get some of the training and teaching and counseling through that app as well.

So, okay, so I wanna end, I know we got about like less than 20 minutes left.

I wanna end with this. I saw something I shared on social media or on Facebook today that really kind of hit a thing that I think really is interesting.

We hear love is love, right? And that's the argument to say, well, hey, just because someone happens to love someone of the same gender, love is love.

It's a way of kind of putting a stop to criticism because the argument is based on the fact that all love is love.

And it doesn't matter if you love someone that's heterosexual or homosexual, love is love. And as long as you're loving it, it's perfectly fine.

And so someone had a meme that says love is love with the rainbow that they have.

And then underneath it is a picture of a toilet bowl and someone with a straw.

And it says, water is water. Right, now is all water the same?

I mean, is someone willing to take a straw and stick it in their water cup and drink it?

Yes. Are they willing to take that same straw and stick it in their toilet bowl and drink it? Probably not.

Even though the water is probably clean, but it's just the sense of what the toilet bowl represents, right?

Well, there right there is I think when we say love is love, not all love is the same, just like not all water is the same or what contains a water is the same.

Any of your thoughts on that? You got to take the furries into consideration, Andrew.

The what? The animals, they might be willing to drink that water. All right, well, here's the thing.

My wife and I were talking about, there's so much where you see where people identify differently, but you know what you can't identify?

You can't be white and identify as black. You notice that you can identify as a cat, but you can't identify as black if you're, you know, it's interesting how their little rules play out.

So this is one of the comments answered the question. He said, you know, he said Agape.

He said Faleo, right? This goes back to what we were saying. This is what it means to speak truth and love. You got to teach your kids what

God says love is. And the one that missed is the only one the world wants to talk about.

We as believers talk about Agape love, which is a self -sacrificing love where the world is talking about Eros, a sensual love.

It's totally different in Faleo, in case for folks that don't know, the Greek is like a brotherly love, the love you'd have within a family.

So one of the things you and Andrew, you and I talked about one time we were doing ministry on a college campus here in Indiana. I don't know if you remember that day of ministry we had at Purdue University.

Very well. And we had a discussion, Andrew and Jason Storms, the National Director of Operations, Save America.

And I had a discussion about the conversation with the college students at Purdue University.

And one of the things that we were all discussing is how there was a time when you would do college campus ministry, people would come up and they would try to reason with you.

They were atheists or whatever. And they would try to argue with you with reason. There were no reasonable arguments presented that day or no attempt at reasonable arguments.

Everything was all emotion. These kids were all emoting. Their entire worldview and their entire thought process was built upon the foundation of emotion, which means it's very inconsistent and you can show them the inconsistency in it and they don't care because it's not about reason, it's about emotion.

So in a certain sense, it's like trying to nail Jell -O to a wall when you're trying to talk to some of these people. And one of the things

I had a conversation with a young man that day, I ended up having a really good conversation with him, but it took a while to get to that point.

But one of the things he was talking about was this whole love is love thing, you know. Love is love and we're supposed to love everybody.

You guys aren't being very loving. And I asked him, okay, well, what is it that we're doing that's not being very loving?

We are here telling people that they're wrong. And he had come out there to argue with us. He was standing there holding a sign to argue with us.

And so I asked him the question, well, should you love everybody? And he said, yes. And I said, well, do you love us?

And he sort of looked at me and it was like he was caught and because he didn't, he was making it very evident with his words that he didn't.

And I said, you're disagreeing with us. You said that when you tell people that they're wrong, that's not loving and we're supposed to love everybody.

And right now you're telling me that I'm wrong, that's not very loving. And there's inconsistency in the way that these people are thinking.

But the thing I think we have to understand in that whole conversation is the ability to reason on the part of these people because their minds have become so diluted, it's very difficult.

And so it genuinely takes the presentation of the gospel and trusting in the spirit of God to intervene and change the hearts and minds of these people because they have a very hard time discussing and listening to reason.

And that's where this whole love thing comes from, which is what I wanted to get to. It's a strong spirit of delusion.

And this is, it's a very delusional, emotional way of thinking. Yeah. One of the things

I've noticed about people arguing nowadays, right? And it's been said in the comments as well, kids aren't being taught logic.

They're not being taught how to listen and then think and then process things and then respond.

What they're taught nowadays is whoever wins the argument is the person that blames the most people and then complains the most.

But gets offended first. And gets offended first, yeah. That's who's gonna win the argument. But that's because logic is racist,

Drew, is the reason. We're seeing that even at the highest level out of our country right now, right?

You have the very day that we end up seeing that the

Congress gets to see and read this report that reveals that, you know, whistleblower report that says that Joe Biden has been involved in taking billions and millions of dollars in bribers from Ukraine, right?

Where we're spending billions, right? That's a pretty important thing because if he was on the take for a country and now gives them like $60 billion, that's pretty important.

And what does he sign off on for that day? That they would indict the previous president.

And what do you see? It's just all the media is like, oh, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. You know, the reality is, is like, no, we should be looking at, you know, what's

Biden doing? He's trying to, it's no different than what Adam did in the garden. It's the woman that you gave me,

God. Shift that blame, blame someone else, yell at them. That's what our whole culture is doing.

And they feel entitled to the point where I just, I just read something about Amazon.

So there was an Amazon driver that went up to a door and the guy's, this person's house is fully automated through Amazon.

He has the Alexa, everything's tied to it. He has lights and everything. And what ended up happening was some, the driver, the

Amazon driver has headphones on, comes to the door and this guy's door was designed where when you, when someone approaches, it would say, how can

I help you? But this driver thought he heard some racist comment and reported it to Amazon.

And Amazon's reaction was to shut the guy's Amazon account off, which meant he couldn't turn lights on his house and all of this.

And it turned out the guy wasn't even home. Like he had to talk to Amazon.

He's like, look, no one made a racial remark because no one was even home. The driver claimed he heard it inside the house, which first off, it wasn't a comment made to the driver.

It was just something he heard. But you think about the entitlement mentality here of a guy just going, well,

I think I heard something I don't like, even if I'm not involved in the conversation, I'm gonna try to get the company to shut you out altogether.

Like, we should just cancel you. That's the culture we now live in. It is, in my mind, it's like just so foreign to the way

I was raised, but this is what we're dealing with. And I think that it's a very different generation.

But let me just go around with you guys. Let you guys, I don't know if there's any last minute things you might wanna talk about.

And I'm gonna end with Aaron so that he could, you know, we could just talk again. Folks, you'll be, if you are interested in getting

Aaron to come out to your church, please let us know, contact us. He is coming aboard with us as one of our newest speakers.

He speaks specifically on areas of counseling, family, parenting, areas like this.

He can speak actually on a number of topics. One of the things I've learned actually with Aaron, I'll say this now, is I keep learning more and more about this guy.

There's more he does. He's got this wealth of a background of different things, you know, whether it's working in the boys thing, theater, things like this.

But if you wanna get him out as a speaker, just contact us, speaker at strivingforeturning .com

or info at strivingforeturning .com. But Pastor, I'll start with Pastor Brandon.

Anything you wanna share before we go? No, you're shaking your head no.

Pastor Darren. I was just, the last thing I was gonna say was in relationship to the thing that, the thing that you were just talking about, which is,

I always wanna encourage people to think biblically. If you look at the culture that we're living in right now, that situation you just described, when you look at the biblical law of God, what that man was doing was he was actually in a certain sense trying to murder this other person.

In the Bible, when you would, a person would be either, a person would do something that was worthy of the death penalty, there were two options.

You could either put them in death or you could ostracize them, you could push them out of the community. And there's a lot of murdering happening in our culture in that sense of trying to apply the punishment of a crime that's guilty of a murder for what, even if you were guilty of it in previous years would have been considered a misdemeanor.

They say, we gotta cut this person out of society, we gotta take their rights away, we gotta take their liberties away because they said something.

And the thing, maybe let's say he, let's say it was turned out that he actually was guilty and that was an ugly thing to say and that's not good, but is the penalty for that, that we literally ostracize this person as a society?

And this is what happens when a society abandons the law and word of God. And I know we have different theological persuasions here, but I think one of the things that we all agree on is that the foundation of moral truth comes from the word of God and the law of God.

When a society abandons the law and word of God, what you have is the proliferation of laws, unjust laws, and then the ostracization of people with punishments that don't fit the crime, and then severe crimes that are not being punished at all whatsoever.

And so I just wanted to point to the fact that that is just an example of the delusion that I was talking about earlier that's happening in our society, abandoning the law and word of God.

I'll tweak it just a bit. We get the law, the moral law from the nature of God, but it is revealed in the word of God.

I mean, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yes. The moral law is the exposition of God's moral nature, yeah.

Katie says this. She says, a lady in the UK lost her teaching job for not affirming a kid as a gender the kid wasn't, and now they are trying to fine her a lot.

May need to take a mortgage on her home to pay, okay, so here's the thing that, let me just give you how to avoid this whole misgendering thing.

It has worked for me for over a decade now in New York when they started doing it.

I have a pronoun that I expect anyone that demands me to use a pronoun, I have a pronoun

I demand them to refer to. So if I have a guy who tells me

I have to refer to him as a she, well, I just informed that person, my pronoun is your majesty, and you have to bow when you say it.

I mean, I can do this too. And when they refuse to accept my pronoun, well, guess what?

They're the ones that refused. So if they're not gonna respect my pronoun, I'm not respecting theirs. Now, I've never had anyone actually respect that pronoun of mine.

Even on this show, when we had James White on, we had the guy who had already told me that he had on the previous show that he had issues with the pronouns and we had to use proper pronouns.

And my pronoun for that show was God exists and he has spoken. And I expect him to use it.

And if he's gonna refer to me any other way, then he's not using my pronouns. And I, of course, asked him up front, if you watch that show,

I said, will you respect my pronoun? Yes, I will. Okay, my pronoun is God exists and he has spoken.

I expect to be referred to that way. He never once did. Right, the reality is play the game.

Don't sit here and show the stupidity of it. Come up with something completely insane as a pronoun and claim that's your pronoun.

Now, I've had my phone, my phone will say it, my nickname in my phone for over 10 years, 12 years says my nickname is your majesty.

That's, you know, when they change it to saying your pronoun, because they'll eventually have that. What's someone's pronoun?

I'll put it there. Did you see, I just want to say this real quick. On this note, did you see my title when

I signed in? I don't know if you looked at it or even noticed it. I saw it, CEO. Yeah, Ministerial Industrial Complex CEO.

So you could just Google that. I was like, I have to find that ministry. Yeah, that's right. Ministerial Industrial Complex, that's what.

I don't know if you had ever heard that before. That used to be a, I'm sure Brandon, you've heard it. It's one of the things that guys in the, some of the anti -church folks in the abolition movement will throw around the

Ministerial Industrial Complex. Well, I mean. I would say I'm the CEO of that.

If I identify as president of the United States, do I get to move into the White House? I mean, that would be equity.

Would you want to? Yeah, vacate him. Who's, wait, he's not even there.

He's in his beach house all the time. But what if a lot of people identify as the president of the United States? Then what happens?

Well, that is the failure of equity, right? So we have equality and equity. So equality is the idea that you start a race at the beginning and everyone has the same starting point.

Equity is the idea everyone has the same end point, but it's impossible because everybody, so if there's gonna be true equity, then everyone gets to be president of the

United States. Then nobody is, right? That's the problem with equity. Drew, anything that you want to end with?

Yeah. So I want to go back to something that Aaron had said about the question of how do you talk to kids, kids, teenagers, about the transgender issue or about just sexuality and gender in general?

And he made a great point that said, well, are you first even talking to them about God?

And that's such a huge thing because I know people who have had children who have gone into, they were raised in church and they have gone into homosexual lifestyles.

They've left their house, gone into homosexual lifestyles. And when I've talked to them, it's like, they can't believe that this thing would happen because they tried to raise them right.

They tried to teach them the right things. They brought them up in church. And I said, okay, all those things are good.

But have you actually talked to them about the gospel? Do they know the gospel? Just because you brought them up in church, that doesn't mean anything, especially if it's a church where the gospel's not preached.

But have you actually parented them in the gospel and explained it to them, walked them through it so that they know it and then taught them how to apply those things to their life?

And I've seen that. And it's just, it's so true. I first need to talk about God in my home and reveal who

God is through the scriptures before I can even tackle these other things. It's just,

I mean, it's almost people who wanna address the sexual issue, the transgender issue before talking about God, you're just putting the cart before the horse and you're gonna get nowhere fast.

Yeah, I agree. So Aaron, we have a kind of a comment here.

We'd like to share the gospel on this program. And Jason is asking, can we get a gospel presentation from Aaron?

So would you close us out with a gospel presentation? So my friends, this is the most important concept in the entire universe.

The fact that God exists, always has, always will. And for his sole glory, he created mankind.

And he loves us, but he created us so that we would give him the glory that he deserves.

But he also is so fantastically wonderful in that he allows mankind to choose to follow him or choose to reject him.

And left to our own devices, mankind will always choose to reject him. That's what Adam and Eve did in the garden.

That's what every man and woman has ever done ever since. We have rejected him. We have done what's right in our own eyes.

And Bible calls that sin. We have sinned against this God who deserves our all, who deserves our worship and our admiration.

We have turned our back on him. We have pursued our own ways. We have worshiped ourselves instead of giving him the worship that he deserves.

And the reality is that God is so pure, God is so awesome that nothing that is sinful and defiled can exist in his presence.

It's impossible. While the wages of sin is death, separation from God for all eternity in a place called hell.

That is what we deserve because we have turned our back on our creator, God who wants to be our

Lord and our King. And so, but God, again, as I said, is loving. He could have justly wiped out all mankind, but God is loving.

And he sent his son, Jesus Christ, second person of the Godhead to come to this earth, to take on human flesh, to take the place that we could never take.

The only way that I can pay a debt to an infinite God is to pay that infinite debt for all eternity separated from him.

But Jesus Christ, God himself, infinite God can pay an infinite debt in a finite amount of time.

And that's exactly what he did on the cross. He paid that debt. And for those who turn to Christ, to those who choose to stop following self and to follow him, he gives us his righteousness.

He takes our sin and we stand before God positionally in Christ clean, able to have a relationship with God, whereas we couldn't.

We have a relationship with the father through Jesus Christ. It's something that we don't deserve. It's a glorious miracle that we can't even truly begin to unpack and we'll be able to spend all eternity doing so.

And so when we talk to our children, oftentimes we get this idea that these concepts are too big for them. It's not,

I use terminology now that adults are familiar with the scriptures and maybe even adults who aren't would be able to understand.

And we need to have these conversations with our kids. We need to have these conversations with the world because the only reason that God left us here is to be salt and light in this world, to be growing in our conformity to Christ and our progressive sanctification and becoming a brighter bright light and saltier salt in this world.

And I wanna encourage you to start in your homes. If you're sharing God at work, that's fantastic.

If you have a ministry in the church, that's wonderful, but are you evangelizing your children? Are you discipling your children?

Start in your homes and then work out from there and give God the glory, the honor, the majesty, the worship, the exaltation that is due him now and for all eternity.

So there you go. That is the most important message we could ever hear. So Aaron, it's good to have you on board with Striving Fraternity and I know you're still, you're still, he's still doing all the many ministries he is doing.

He's just coming along with us for a few years so that we can help him, you know, and he can help us.

And we're working together as far as getting out there and helping, you know, to further the kingdom of Christ.

So if you have, your church would like to have Aaron or I come, let us know.

Just contact us at the ministry at strivingfraternity .org. We could try to put this on together.

We come to your church and speak. So that would be something we're looking to do. Speaking of speaking, let me let you guys know where I'll be.

I will be up in Redwood City, California this weekend. So if you're up in the

Redwood City area, I'll be speaking at Grace Bible Church of Redwood City.

So that is where I'll be this week. Then after that, I'll be in Los Angeles the following weekend, be out there with Living Waters, training up a bunch of evangelists in Living Waters Ambassador Academy.

So I didn't see Pastor Darren's name on the list this year. Oh, I'm sorry.

Did I just throw you under a bus? Sorry about that. In July, in July. I'm waiting for my beard to grow back first and then.

Yeah. July 7th to 9th, if you're in the Indianapolis area, which

Pastor Darren is. So we expect to see him there. We're gonna be doing some events and training.

Yeah, for Hearts for the Lost. We will be there. So you could search for Hearts for the

Lost, find out about that. I have something coming up on June 26th and 27th on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'll actually be talking about a doctrine of emotions. We talked about that earlier. I'd encourage you guys to check that out from four to six o 'clock on Monday the 26th and on Tuesday the 27th,

I'll be on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio talking about the doctrine of emotion. You guys can actually send in questions and things like that to that show.

Yeah, that's a live two hour show with Chris Arnzen. So that's good. I will be in Idaho in August and I'm doing a number of things.

I'll be up. If you're up in the Northern Idaho Sandpoint area, I'll be speaking at a camp up there,

August 16th, sorry, 18th and 19th at the family camp up there in up in, it's by Kootenai Community Church and that's where I'll be kind of basing out of.

I'll also on August 26th up at Kootenai, the church, Kootenai Community Church, Jim Osmond's church, we're gonna be doing an evangelism outreach.

September, September 14th to 17th, I will be in Mattoon, Illinois for a family conference.

And so there's gonna be some details to follow with that. But with any of these, if you want to, if you're in any of these areas and want to go to these events, please reach out to us at infoatstrivingfraternity .com.

September 21st to the 24th, I will be in Upper State, New York for the

Overcoming Evil Men's Conference. So yes, it's for men only. It's up at a camp up there, up in Northern New York.

So I'm not exactly sure. It's somewhere up in the Adirondacks, but not sure which.

Then I'll be heading into end of the year as we wrap up November 11th to 16th, I'll be at,

I'll be out in Dallas, Texas for the worldview week.

That's gonna be through a school, but I'll be preaching first. It's with Legacy Christian, Legacy Classical Christian Academy.

But I will be preaching at Grace Life Church of Dallas on the 12th.

So if you're in Dallas area, please let me know. And that's some places you'll be able to find me.

You know, I was asked by folks if, there's people that have been saying that they never know that I'm in their area.

Well, this is how you can know. I'm trying to be more mindful to announce that more. So with that,

I'm just gonna end with our show, with the video we usually end with, just so we make sure, even though Darren shared,

I mean, Aaron shared the gospel, we'll just play a little clip and we encourage you next week, there will be, well,

I'm gonna put it this way. Next week, there won't be a show unless Drew decides there will be.

Okay, I will be traveling, I'll be in California. So if Drew wants to do a show, then tune in here and you'll find out.

I'm sure we'll figure something out. Post -meal, let's do an episode on post -meal. I like the way you think,

Darren. You can do that. You know,

Drew, it's your show, go for it. I mean, you only have what, 70, 80 years to be wrong.

So, you know, you have eternity to change that view. All right, so that may be the show for next week is post -millennialism, the wrong view of theology.

All right, we appreciate you guys joining us. Hope this has been helpful. Hope we answered your questions.

If not, join us live, that's the best way to do it. Until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

All other religious systems are based on a system of morality of good works. What makes Christianity unique, it is not a system of morality.

It is about Jesus Christ. Buddha is dead, Muhammad is dead, Joseph Smith is dead,

Mary Baker, Eddie is dead, but Jesus Christ rose from the dead. If Jesus Christ was not both fully man and fully

God, there would be no payment of sin. This was a debate in the first century. Jesus Christ was fully man.

It's important to note that he did not have a human father, therefore he did not inherit a sin nature.

Jesus Christ not only had to be fully man, but he also had to be without sin, never breaking any part of God's law.

If Jesus was not a man, then people would have no payment of sins. But Jesus Christ is also fully

God. Jesus had to be God in order to pay an eternal fine. Only an eternal being can pay an eternal fine.