Misc Encouragement and ADHD

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you."

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry.

Mike Abendroth here. Glad to be on the station, glad to be in your eye buds, glad to talk to you for 24 minutes about the one who never compromised,

Christ Jesus the Lord. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. That's what we are after.

Just a couple quick plugs. You need to read Reformation21 .org, read Carl Truman, and you will laugh and probably cry at the same time.

What else can I promote today? If you want to kind of get some of the scoop on what's happening with evangelical craziness, you can go to a little leaven.

You could go to Do Not Be Surprised, or you could go to apprising .org and find some information that way.

What else do I have here? I want to do this mainly with Steve because I think it'll be funnier, but I do have in front of me from tateville .com,

preshumor, forward slash preshumor, Presbyterian humor from around the web.

You might be a Presbyterian if... Some of these are so funny, but you almost have to know some of the inside scoop with Presbyterianism.

You think the phrase chosen, frozen, is a compliment. You might be a

Presbyterian if you know or think you know the difference between Calvinist and Reformed. Let's see.

You might be a Presbyterian if they aren't Catholics or even Roman Catholics. They're Romanists or Papists.

You might be a Presbyterian if Charles Spurgeon is just a little too Arminian for your blood. I thought that was good.

You might be a Presbyterian if you started drinking, in moderation of course, after you left the Baptist church and became a

Presbyterian. You might be a

Presbyterian if you've got a big bushy beard in honor of R .L. Dabney. Let's see.

You might be a Presbyterian if, when the Spirit comes upon you in power, you don't raise your hands and shout hallelujah.

Rather you scratch your chin, turn to your neighbor and whisper, hmm, that was a good point. That is the end -all and the be -all of the response of the

Presbyterian. Let's see. You might be a

Presbyterian if you think fencing has something to do with the Lord's Supper instead of swords. All right, let's just do one more because this is kind of funny.

You know the—you might be a Presbyterian if you know the meaning of most or all of the following.

PCA—these are all denominations, by the way, for you Baptists out there or you wretched radio listeners like Presbyterian Church of America—PCA, PCUS, PCUSA, PCUSA in parentheses,

PCU period, S period, A period, PCUSANC, PCUSAOS, RPCES, RPCNA -GS,

RPCNA, EPC, OPC, ARP, AARP—I put that one in just for you people 50 and older—NAPARC,

CRC, RCA, BPC, BPC Collingswood, BPC Columbus, CPC, TE, RE, WCF, WLC, WSC, BCO, UPC, UPCNA, UPCUSANPC, and to round it off with texting—NP.

All right, we're going to have to do the rest of these with Steve. Don't forget, Highlights of Greece, 11 -day tour, you want to go with us, we'd love to have you go at Acts 17,

April 17th through 27th, but we are going to open our Bibles to Acts when we're over there.

All right, I got an email from a man, I don't know if I'm supposed to say who he is, but here's the email, and I just thought it was an encouraging email.

I've been waiting some time, I just hit Steve's microphone, what is that, what's that doing there?

Hi Mike, I want to thank you so much for your ministry at No Compromise Radio, that would be

NCR, N -O -C -O.

Twitter, we're on NoCoRadio, this is NCR. It truly is a great blessing to my wife and I, even though we are on the other side of the world.

God used it in a mighty way, let me turn the page here, to deliver me out of a church that had fallen into false teachings and was embracing wolves to plant me in a

Bible teaching church that loves Him and His Word. How exciting is that? I mean, in all honesty, when

I started the show three years ago, I didn't really know what would happen, I didn't know how long we would go about it.

The early shows are quite different than some of these newer shows, and so I'm just happy,

I'm glad to be used. What kind of feeling do you get when you realize that the Lord has used you in someone else's life?

People I don't even know, people I haven't even met. Ted and I, or Roger and I, or John and I, we kind of email on a regular basis, so I'm getting to know some of these people.

But still, I haven't even met anyone in person, haven't talked to anyone in person. Terry from Toledo, holy

Toledo, he came by and I met him, so besides that, running into people here or there, oh, you do

No Compromise Radio, I met some people in Los Angeles or Sacramento, besides that, not knowing,

I'm very, very encouraged. Here's what this person said, in my early teens, I began attending an

AOG church, Assembly of God, N -C -R -O -P -C -P -C -A, that my mom was attending, whether it was from the preaching there or my own

Bible reading, I did thankfully come into a strong knowledge of my sin and need for repentance.

I was saved and shortly after baptized by immersion. Within a couple of years, my family switched churches to a

Church of Christ that started up in the area, after the pastor had a vision from God to move 1 ,500 kilometers from where he was to our town and plant a church.

While the church was slightly charismatic, it was not as extreme as the AOG, and there was rarely ever talking in tongues are public prophecies given.

I'd been attending this church for over a decade, and my whole family are very good friends with the pastor, his family, and many of the congregation.

However, in the past couple of years, they started becoming more and more charismatic. The pastor lady of the

AOG also shut down her church and began attending the Church of Christ. One instance involved her preaching and urging everyone to pray in tongues at the same time together after the preaching one

Sunday. This particularly bothered my wife and I. Not only this, but the teachings of Bethel Church in Redding, California began infiltrating the church more and more.

It got to the point where our church spent $8 ,000 purchasing a DVD course run by Bill Johnson of Bethel Church.

I should do a show on that, but anyway. It was on how to run a school of supernatural ministry.

Wow! I've been to theological seminary, two different ones, two prominent ones, and I think

I missed that class. Maybe I slept through that class. There had been a school that our church had been running for some time called

School of Kingdom Advancement. That sounds pretty charismatic, too. This was filled with dominion theology and teaching you how to treasure hunt and have dreams of prophecy heal the sick.

Wow, treasure hunting. I like treasure hunting. Latest, Santa Cruz Bible is talking about, that lady was talking about maybe not the church in general, but one of the leader's wives, you pray in colors.

Thankfully, my wife and I never felt easy about attending and always made an excuse not to. By the way, you know you're at a bad church when, because of doctrine from the pulpit, you feel uncomfortable and therefore you don't go.

After doing much research into Bill Johnson and his associates, Rick Joyner, Todd Bentley, Patricia King, along with much

Bible reading, my wife and I were convinced that they were not of God and were wolves attacking the sheep. We had a couple of meetings with our pastor and his wife.

I thought he was going to say with our pastor and his husband and her husband, telling them our thoughts and concerns to no avail.

Since he has invested much time and money into these ministries and has supposedly seen many people healed, he had no interest in looking into our concerns or the reasons behind them.

He simply tried to tell us that everyone in ministry has someone upset with them and some bad things said about them, so there's no need to worry.

After much prayer and study, my wife and I made the decision we needed to leave the church and find a new one that honored

God and stood up against the wolves. Since by this time I had already listened to dozens of episodes of NCR, I was very impressed with how much you base things around Scripture.

Woohoo! I had also come across a few articles and videos by John MacArthur. Who's that?

Therefore, once I found that you were both Reformed Baptists, it led me to investigate as to whether a

Reformed Baptist church existed in my local area. Praise be to God that through the web I found there was one about a 20 -minute drive from my house.

Later, I was to find that there are very few in our whole state, so it truly was a blessing to have one so close.

We have been attending our new church, Sudden Touch Bible Church, for 12 months now and absolutely love it.

The pastor is a godly man that speaks the truth boldly. He exposits the Word and has been working through five chapters of Ephesians since I began attending.

This was a whole new concept for my wife and I after spending over a decade in churches that preach topical sermons that are watered down, seeker -sensitive, and often when using

Scripture they totally twist it. Our new church is Five Point Calvinist, which was also a very new concept to me.

While I had always thought from a plain reading of the Bible that we were predestined, I had always heard contrary opinion from the pulpit.

Therefore, while my mind did struggle and still does against the Calvinist teaching, I did see it as the truth of the

Bible and am glad my pastor does not ignore slash deny it. By the way, isn't that amazing?

Yes, it is hard, but you just submit to it anyway. And so I love that, that the writer and the listener said that very thing.

Since leaving our church, our old church, the walk with God and my wife and I have grown in leaps and bounds.

We felt so depressed and spiritually drained while in the old church and felt hopeless and lost. We both came very close to abandoning the faith altogether.

Thankfully, God has used people and ministries to bring us into the truth and out of darkness. There has always been good seeds planted in both of our lives from the likes of Answers in Genesis.

Therefore, even though my mother was and still is deeply into false teachers like Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, and Joel Osteen, I've always known that they were wrong.

And unbiblical. Your ministry at NCR was also a strong weapon against these false teachings and used mildly by God to deliver us.

Justin Peters is another that has been very influential. I have purchased four copies of his

DVD series to lend, give to our family and friends still caught in the Word of Faith cult.

And then he gives a little more information that is personal.

Sorry to type so much, but I did want to share a bit about my background and where the Lord has led me since He used your ministry in a major way to bring my wife and I to where we are today.

I therefore wish to encourage you to keep going strong with what you are doing since it does make a difference and impacts lives all around the world.

I look forward to listening to many more episodes of NoCoRadio. In His grace. And then he signs his name.

Just how encouraging is that? It is super encouraging. And so whether this man on the other side of the world found out

NoCompromiseRadio through serendipity accident, most likely through Todd Friel, I am very, very encouraged because truth from the

Lord does its work in those who believe. First Thessalonians 2 .13. And so if you're listening today and you're stuck at a very, very bad church, the question is why are you staying?

And so what you should look for in a church, if you're ever going to move, Christ -centered expository preaching, verse -by -verse preaching.

If they're bringing in some DVD series on spiritual kingdom warfare and whatever stuff, you better watch out.

So today just talking a little bit about encouragement, a little humor to start the show.

And now I'd like to discuss, what would I like to discuss? I have all these things in front of me, but sometimes it's hard to know.

All right, let's just pull this out right here. I want to talk a little bit about, while we're at it, shall

I do this or shall I not? I don't know. What you see in here depends a good deal on where you are standing.

It also depends on what sort of person you are. C .S. Lewis. Do I do that?

Do I just read C .S. Lewis? He believed a lot of weird things. Why would

I be quoting him? All right, well, when all else fails, you have to quick turn the barbed arrow Spurgeon book and you just randomly open it and then you have to read what it says.

Charles Spurgeon. The other day I saw my bees swarming. They hung on a branch of a tree in a living mass.

The difficulty was to get them into a hive. My man went with his veil over his face and began to put them into the skep.

I noticed that he was particularly anxious to get the queen bee into it, for if he once had her in the hive, the rest would be sure to follow and remain with her.

Now faith is the queen bee. You may get temperance, love, hope, and all these other bees into the hive, but the main thing is to get simple faith in Christ and all the rest will come after.

Get the queen bee of faith and all other virtues will attend her. How great is that?

That is super encouraging. What else do I have here on No Compromise Radio? Here, this is fun.

A quote from Dwight Schrute. Whenever I am about to do something,

I think, would an idiot do that? And if they would, I do not do that thing.

Oh, that is the best.

Now I try to systematically read through the Proverbs, and so you see themes coming out of the book of Proverbs.

And one theme you see is, as Solomon tries to teach by contrast, the wisdom and the fool.

The wisdom and the fool. The wise one and the fool. Doing foolish things, doing wise things.

And so this is a very good biblical kind of paradigm here, Dwight Schrute. Whenever I am about to do something,

I think, would an idiot do that? And if they would, I do not do that thing.

So ask yourself the question, would a fool do this? And if the answer is yes, then don't do it.

That is No Compromise Radio advice right there, that's for sure. All right, here is a prayer from the

Valley of Vision, which is a collection of Puritan prayers. This is a typo that somebody wrote, they typed it

P -U -R -T -A -N, Puritan, Puritan. This is a prayer, and I find this prayer, well

I'm just going to read it to you and then you can tell me what you think. I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused.

You ever pray that? Thank you, Lord, for not answering some of my prayers, a lot of my prayers.

I have asked amiss and do not have. I have prayed from lusts and have been rejected.

I have longed for Egypt and have been given a wilderness. Isn't that the goodness of God there?

The goodness of God, and I know I've prayed selfishly, I do pray selfishly. And you think, you know what,

God knows better, and to think that Jesus Christ is interceding on our behalf, Hebrews chapter 7, that Romans chapter 8 says the

Spirit of God is interceding for us, that is a wonderful truth that we can just hold on to.

Not everything my children ask me, I give them, because some things I know are not good for them.

And so when I read something in the Bible like James chapter 5, is any among you suffering?

Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is any among you sick?

Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain.

And for three years and six months, it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio, talking a little bit about how thankful we are that God doesn't always give us what we think we want at the time, because God knows better.

And if God saves us when we are dead in trespasses and sins in which we formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, if he gives us the greatest gift, he'll certainly give us the lesser gift.

All right, what else is sitting here? The ADD thing always comes up. People say they've got attention deficit disorder or ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

I know I've talked about this before, but just in this random section here, people say, well,

I'm driven by a motor, I'm on the go,

I'm hyperactive, I'm impulsive, I can't pay attention. And so they go in and they get medicated.

I just want to try to encourage you not to make that your default position. Now since I'm not a doctor,

I can't tell you with the weight of an MD what to do.

I wouldn't want to do that. I think it'd be bad to do. I actually would like to do it, but I know it's not proper.

But I just want you to stop and think for a minute. And I don't want you to act like the foolish person in the book of Proverbs.

Would a fool do this? And if he would, why would I do it? Let's use that little axiom for this particular thing.

The world basically says, how do we control behavior? How do you get boys that should be ramped up and going everywhere, how do you get them to sit down in school?

You really can't, so give them some drugs, that'll calm them down. That's exactly what unbelievers do.

Should I do that? Now granted, there are some things unbelievers do that we should do.

Unbelievers, you know, there are some healthy eaters, and so we should eat healthy. But in this particular thing relating to behavior, would you first just please go to the

Bible and try to work through this issue before you go to the doctor right away? I even remember with my wife, she,

I think it was baby three we had, Maddie, Madeline was born. My wife didn't feel very good after that, she didn't feel well, and so she went in, the

OB basically said, here are a few tabs, take these, you'll feel better, postpartum depression.

Now you know what it actually was? It was what? It was thyroid issue, and so that was dealt with.

Now there are organic issues like that that affect the way you feel, but what I want you to do is think, okay, can we look to the scriptures and ask ourselves the question, how do we view

ADD? How do we look at hard tasks and still do them heartily?

If the Bible says whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord not to men in Colossians 3, does that have any effect on what we end up doing?

If we look to the aunt, sluggers look to the aunt to consider her ways and be wise, does that help us?

We've got to be faithful even though some things are hard. When we look at Proverbs 12, whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.

Do we teach in light of that? Stay focused and there's a reward at the end. Of course we do.

How about Proverbs 24 -27? Prepare your work outside and get everything ready for yourself in the field.

Priorities would be a good thing to do. So just in those few verses, we can teach some tasks are hard, but let's be faithful anyway.

Let's stay focused because there's a good reward coming. And let's have priorities because there's rewards for good choices even in those priorities.

The answer is, of course. And when you read Proverbs 7, oh sons, listen to me and be attentive to the words of my mouth.

And then you think, I've got a kid that can't pay attention. I think, don't you? This could be a spiritual problem.

This could be a problem that's not just going to be solved by medication. This is going to be a problem that needs a little more work from mom and dad and not just take the lazy way out.

That if my kid's not attentive and the Bible says, kids, you should be attentive, I've got to figure out some kind of strategy.

And I don't know if the strategy, it's a tragedy, strategic tragedy.

I don't know if that strategy includes getting up in the morning with your 15 -year -old son and going on a four -mile run so he can just settle down a little bit, but it's going to involve you thinking.

And so, Mike Ebenruth here, No Compromise Radio, things can be hard to remember, but we need to develop reminders.

My son, keep your father's commandment, Proverbs 6, forsake not your mother's teaching, bind them on your heart, always tie them around your neck.

How about self -control? Fruit of the Spirit is self -control, Galatians 5, and you say, well, my kid's not saved.

Well, I think you can even help a child stay disciplined. Even unbelievers can develop discipline, see the military.

Many people in the military are not Christian. So what am I saying? I'm saying, if you have a kid, or you in fact have

ADHD, what they say, would you just consider the Bible? It's your life, you can do what you like, but would you just consider the

Bible? Would you consider doing a little research and talking to some Christian people to help you work through these things before you quickly, lazily default to what everybody else does?

Because I think you're going to be in a world of hurt if you do that. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I'm just encouraging you to read your

Bibles first. Mike Ebenruth, NoCompromiseRadio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenruth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.