June 27, 2023 Show with A. M. Brewster on “The Doctrine of Emotions” (Part 2)

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of Founding Father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Armisen. Good afternoon,

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Kerbalin County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Armisen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 27th day of June, 2023.

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And today is day number two for our discussion on emotions, more specifically the doctrine of emotions, and our guest returning to conduct part two of this interview is someone who has become a favorite in the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listening audience, A .M. Brewster, president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back for part two of our discussion,

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A .M. Brewster. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to it. We got a great foundation laid last time, but the really fun, practical stuff is going to come in today, so I'm really excited about the conversation.

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Me too, and once again, for the sake of our listeners who have not heard you yet on the program, let our listeners know about Evermind Ministries.

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Yeah, love to. Kind of today, I like to focus on one main aspect of what we do, but Evermind Ministries is a family of ministries that tries to keep

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God's truth at the center of the human experience. To that end, we have podcasts and websites, and we also have an app now called the

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Evermind app, which I encourage you to check out, to download. It's free to download.

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There's a bunch of free resources on there as well as resources that you can pay for.

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But I would say that one of the main things I want everyone to really focus on when it comes to Evermind Ministries today is to be thinking about in your head the necessity of spiritual growth, specifically within the context of discipleship or what we might refer to as biblical counseling.

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We all need to grow. We all need to be in discipleship relationships. And of course, the best place for that to happen is in your local body of believers with your pastors and with the elders and with the mature believers in your church.

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That's where it really needs to be happening. However, so often it's not, either because it's just not happening or because unfortunately, individuals in the church either are equipped to do the job and aren't, or they're not equipped to do the job, or they're ill -equipped to do the job.

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And so, biblical counselors like me all over the United States, all over the world, would love to meet with people who have no one else to meet with.

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So, if you go to evermindministries .com, you can click on the link for download the

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Evermind app. You can also find opportunities to ask questions that would be then the nature of biblical counseling and discipleship, especially if you're having a crisis time right now.

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So, as we do our best to keep God's truth at the center of the human experience, we counsel very broadly on topics of family, which includes marriage and parenting, worship and discipleship.

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We talk about holidays. We talk about the church. We talk about so many things. And we deal with people and work with people in the setting of biblical counseling.

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We also deal a lot with, you know, the typical things that people would expect, the addictions and the struggles like that.

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So, that's kind of the thing I wanted to focus on a little bit more today than I usually do. If you'd like to ask a question or reach out for help, definitely reach out to us.

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Go to evermindministries .com to learn more, and we'd love to help you become the person that God wants you to be.

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All righty then. Let me give our listeners the email address for them to send in questions.

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It is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the

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USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Can you do a recap, please, of yesterday's program when we had a discussion of part one on the doctrine of emotions?

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Yeah, definitely. We laid a good foundation, as I said before. We talked about two main things. I'm putting them into categories that are alliterated, not because it'll actually help us to remember, but because, you know, that's what you're supposed to do.

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So, the two things that we talked about first were the emotional discrepancies, and that's the fact that in the

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English language and in most languages, emotions, the words that we use to describe them oftentimes really shouldn't be used to describe them.

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We talked about that feelings, the feeling words are used to describe feelings, to describe actual emotions, to describe religion, to describe our thoughts, and that confuses things like crazy.

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In fact, the church is replete with wrong uses of these emotion words, substituting them for thinking words, and the squishy understanding that we so often have when we utilize these words, that it really confuses things more often than not.

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We know that in part because of our discussion last time about God and emotions. Does God experience human emotion?

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And we discussed the fact that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as spirits do not experience the physiological chemical reaction that is pure emotion.

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However, Jesus Christ in a human body would. He does. Obviously, God being omniscient knows exactly what emotions are and what they feel like.

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But we have to be careful when we're communicating about God because God doesn't experience emotions the way we experience emotions.

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One of the other issues that we talked about was the fact that, you know, when we see different words in scripture like joy and peace and love and anger, wrath, and we're thinking emotion, we're probably thinking really less about what's actually being described there and more about forcing our own ideas about the emotional aspects of those things onto the text.

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We need to be careful with that. And then we also talked about emotional descriptions. We looked at the secular description.

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We saw what it got right, but we also saw what was missing. And as we worked through the scriptures to talk about the fact that from the perspective of the doctrine of emotion, that emotion is a gift, it's a tool, and a gauge, we realized that there are five general phases or steps to an actual human emotion.

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The first is that there's an experience, there's a stimulus. That stimulus can be external or it can be internal.

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Then there's an internal physiological response that happens. That is, that's a chemical reaction happening in our bodies, which then requires an internal mental response or what

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I would like to refer to as a spiritual response. Really, this is the stage where we interpret what's going on in our bodies.

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We're going to talk a lot more about that today because it's really, this is the most practical thing that we can talk about. And then we'll also talk about the external behavior then that comes from how we interpret this physiological response.

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And then the fifth step was kind of just a wrapping around back to the beginning. All of that going on in the inside of me oftentimes prompts and gives birth to other physiological responses that require interpretation and correct action and so on and so forth.

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So, that's the, what I call, biblically accurate scientific description. And the key thing to walk away from all of that is this.

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What you feel and how you perceive it are two different things. And we're going to find that the secret, if I can put it that way, to being able to understand what we're feeling and to be able to control what we're feeling is understanding how the perception side of it works.

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It's kind of a big recap. Is there anything you wanted to touch a little bit more focused on from the recap, Chris? No, I can't think of anything right now.

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So, what's the next phase in the discussion you'd like to start with today? Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about what

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I call emotional delusions. And emotional delusions are, there are a lot of them, but there are kind of five that I want to focus on.

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And I'll go through this one pretty quickly because really it's the next section, what I refer to as emotional dysfunctions, where we start getting really practical.

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Okay, so how do we, what do we do in these situations? But before we do that, we'll talk about the delusions. One of the delusions that we're fed in the world is that only you can know your feelings.

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Now, I say that's a delusion because, yes, to a certain degree, you know, if I have adrenaline or something coursing through my body, at that moment,

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I'm potentially the only one feeling it or I'm feeling it in the way that I'm feeling it. You can't necessarily telepathically or whatever the case may be, you know, put your hand on my shoulder and experience the same thing

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I'm experiencing. But to make the observation that you can't understand what

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I'm feeling, you can't know what it's like to be me, that's inaccurate.

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Solomon tells us there's nothing new under the sun. Really, the number of chemicals in the human body that make up the various chemical reactions that produce the pure emotions that we have been discussing are very few.

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And to believe that you are experiencing something that nobody else is or ever has experienced is foolish.

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If you communicate yourself well, any thinking mature Christian adult should be able to easily understand how it is you're feeling.

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So, don't believe the lie, the delusion that only you can know your feelings. The only way that that happens is if you don't tell anybody about them and then that's really more your fault than anyone else's.

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The second one though, and this is hugely important, is that only you can accurately interpret your feelings.

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This one is what gets us into a lot of trouble. I'm going to talk a lot more about that a little bit later. But this idea that only you can interpret your feelings, again, you can see a very man -centric approach to all of these things.

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And that's how the world, you know, views life. Everything's about me. It's focused here. My eyeballs are rolled backward in my head. I'm myopic.

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I'm selfish. Really, all I'm looking at is for me. And it's convenient to tell people, you don't understand how

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I'm feeling. And only I can interpret my feelings correctly. You know, I'm feeling fear and you're telling me, no, it's not fear.

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It's just an adrenaline rush or whatever the case may be. Well, you can't know that because you're not me and only I can accurately interpret my feelings.

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And tied closely with that is another delusion that you will always accurately interpret your feelings.

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That's another big one. That's huge. Like, you know, like you say, well, I'm, you know, I'm just shy.

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Right? And of course, there can't be any other answer to that because not only are you the only one who can know what you feel, you're the only one who can interpret your feelings and you will always accurately interpret your feelings.

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Therefore, if anyone says anything about your feelings different than you feel, they're obviously wrong. That's not true.

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It's not true. And then two more real quick. So you're the only one who can know your feelings, interpret your feelings, and you will always interpret them accurately.

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Those are the first three. The next one is feelings are reality. Feelings are reality.

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Well, we all had this shared experience a little while back called the lockdowns. I don't actually refer to it as COVID because really had nothing to do with COVID in my personal belief.

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I agree with you with how we with how we responded to all of that. But here's something really interesting.

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So as of late, I'm going to read to you a news heading.

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All right. It said this. Think you have Omicron, but keep testing negative.

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An expert says to trust your gut. If you feel confident you have COVID, you probably have

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COVID. And this was written by Fortune by someone named

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Aaron Prater and is actually a part of Fortune Magazine. It's Fortune Well Magazine.

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So it's about our health. And a similar one. You'll be very surprised where this one came from.

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This was what it said in the article. No, your body isn't gaslighting you. If you're certain you're

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COVID positive, you probably are, regardless of what the test says. Dr. Stuart Ray, Vice Chair of Medicine for Data Integrity and Analytics, Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine, told

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Fortune on Tuesday. This idea that what you feel is reality, even if everything we have detested, everything we have to look at it, says that it's not reality.

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They say, well, Aaron, you're not a medical doctor. You can't speak to that. Okay, fine. We'll use a different one. How about this idea that I'm not a man?

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I'm a woman. I feel like a woman and my feelings. Okay. I'm the only one who can know how

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I feel. You don't know how I feel. I'm going to accurately interpret my feelings. You can't.

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I'm going to always accurately interpret it, and my feelings are reality. Therefore, if I feel like a woman, I am a woman.

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If I feel like this, if I actually truly am a woman, and I have this being growing inside of my womb, but I feel like it's not a person, and I feel like I can kill it, then

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I can. By the way, Aaron, you should be very thankful that I like you, because I could do some interesting damage to your ministry by editing this program.

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Taking those statements out of context. Taking those statements out of context.

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Yeah. I feel like a woman. I am a woman. Man, oh, man.

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I'd get myself into a lot of trouble, wouldn't I? Thank you so much for liking me. I appreciate that. Oh, my word.

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And the last one is, because feelings are reality, if we believe that delusion, that eventually we're going to believe that feelings are more important than anything else.

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Some of you may have seen the headline recently, according to a British police officer, while arresting a man, the

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British police officer said, someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post, and that is why you are being arrested.

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That's not a joke. That wasn't a hoax. That was a real thing. I saw it happening. So, if you believe that only you can know your feelings, and that you can, you're the only one who can accurately interpret your feelings, and that you will always accurately interpret your feelings, then feelings have to be reality, and that they're going to become more important than anything else.

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And it doesn't take us very long to look at the rest of the world and to realize that's exactly where we are as a people.

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Feeling is king. Emotion is king. If I feel it, that's what it is.

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I did a series called the, well, now I can't remember exactly what it is, the most difficult challenges, something like that's not actually what it was called, of parenting, right?

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The different challenges that you face as a parent. And one of the very first things that we encounter is the fact that every human being, regardless of their age, is looking for what

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I call security. And security is a mix of two things, safety and satisfaction.

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And the satisfaction side of things has a lot to do with how we feel. A baby crying because it's hungry, yes, there's the quote -unquote emotional side of things, the pure emotion that might be running through the child's body, but the child also feels hungry, they want to be satisfied.

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And so, this idea that all human beings are pursuing satisfaction, pursuing safety, is hugely a big part of why the world today, as they run from God, are becoming these little control freaks trying to manage their world in such a way that they can hopefully gain control over the events of their lives, and therefore, they can feel what they want to feel.

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They can be happy, they can be at peace, they can be content, and they don't have to feel scared, they don't have to feel depressed, unless of course they want to, and then that's okay.

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I'm not sure if you've ever been annoyed at something or feeling really down and someone tries to cheer you up and you're mad at them because you don't want to be cheered up.

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At those times, we choose negative emotions, but most of the time we like to run from those things.

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Well, we do have a listener who has a question, and it is an anonymous listener.

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And the anonymous listener says, How do you force yourself to become more emotional about things when your spouse is very emotional and constantly complains that you show lack of emotion even during a crisis?

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It is often interpreted as if I don't care about what's happening, and that is not the case.

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Yeah, and I'll say first off, you know, I don't know you, I don't know the situation.

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To be very fair, I mean, it's always possible that you could be responding incorrectly in the situation.

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However, you know, I've been in the situation you're in, and I'll just give everyone obviously the benefit of the doubt at this particular moment and say that yes, it's very possible that a person could be responding very accurately and correctly to a situation.

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They would appear to be lacking emotion, so they're not freaking out, they're not crying, they're not angry.

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Yeah, something like that. And that person could completely be in the right, and yet there are more people in the room who are being more sensitive, more emotional, and not necessarily in a good light, in a good way.

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And it's very easy for those emotional people, we'll say, to criticize the more cool -headed individual and to berate them for not, you know, being an unfeeling monster or whatever the case may be.

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I'm painting this in a very cliche way. If anyone's sitting there thinking to themselves, yeah, I've been in that exact same situation, just know that this is, again, the world we live in.

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I would say that, first of all, if we're berating another person, then we're likely in the wrong.

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We need to make certain that the thing that we're talking to them about, if we're trying to genuinely reprove and rebuke them, that we can point to the scriptures and we can say, this is wrong because thus saith the

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Lord. And because the Lord says this, you need to be acting in a certain way. But you're not going to find anywhere in the scripture where God commands us to feel something with the exception of the verses we pointed out last time about weeping with those who weep and so on and so forth, or rejoicing with those who rejoice.

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So, it's going to be very hard from a biblical perspective for somebody to truly argue that you need to be more emotional.

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I would say it's really going to be impossible without, again, a misunderstanding of these ideas in the

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English language as well as the biblical concepts tied to them. However, we do see in scripture that our emotions, of course, can be influenced, our behavior can be influenced by our emotions, but our emotions can also be influenced by our behavior.

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And I really do believe that the deeper we love somebody, biblically speaking, that the deeper our affection for them, the deeper our emotional responses will be around them.

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Now, this is not going to be true across the board, but I am actually a very emotional individual.

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However, most people who know me casually would say that I am not, not really a very emotional individual.

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I can keep a very cool head in situations, and they just tend to see me as kind of this rock.

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And I've been accused by many people of being a Vulcan or a robot or a stone.

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And it's, I will say categorically that that's not true. I would say that by God's grace, most of the time, the reality is

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I've learned to control my emotions. And that's really what I want for all of us.

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And I believe God wants for all people, all of his people in particular, to be able to, like everything else, control what we say and control what we do, also control what we feel.

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Because as we talked about last time, emotions are a tool that God wants us to use to glorify him. And if our emotional responses aren't glorifying him, he's not pleased.

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So, if I could just say one more thing to your question, the bigger conversation that needs to be had is, you know, what does

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God require in this situation? He requires us to speak truth and love. If that is happening, then likely things are going well.

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And if one person is more emotional than another, that's not necessarily good or bad. And we're going to talk about that here soon.

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I mean, some pure emotions are just that, and they're not inherently bad. But that doesn't require that everyone else in the room feel the exact same way.

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Yeah, I can even remember having an argument with my late wife.

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And it was like an identical situation to at least what the listener was revealing, where there was something important going on, like a negative thing, and I don't remember what it was.

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But my wife was complaining, you know, you're just sitting there expressionless, like this doesn't concern you.

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And I said, would you be happier and feel more at peace if I was in a fetal position on the floor rocking back and forth and crying?

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And, you know, the reality is sometimes they would. People like that. I'm not saying your wife would, but here's one thing that I know.

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Do you really think that most women would be happy to see their husband like that? I'd like to think not, no.

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But here's what I meant by that. So there have been many times, and I'm not going to betray the individuals about whom

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I'm speaking, but there have been many times I'm in conversations with different individuals, and I've been very cool -headed, and I'm just speaking truth, speaking truth, speaking truth, and it's frustrating, it's bothering them.

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They don't want to hear the truth, potentially, or they don't like the way the truth is being communicated. But if I were to tip my hat, tip my hand, and I were to start being emotional, either because I'm not controlling my emotions the way

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I should and my emotions are being motivated by something negative, or sometimes, and yes,

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I'm going to admit that I've done this on purpose as a way to manipulate, which is a sin, and I've also done this on purpose as a way to test my theory, but in any of those situations, what's funny is that when

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I start making the same arguments or sometimes worse arguments, but now I'm all emotional, what's interesting is that the other person will oftentimes respond differently.

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They see how emotional I am, and it's like, oh, well, this is really important to them. It's strange.

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When you don't respond, lose control of your emotions like so many people do, there's this weird thing that goes on in people where they look at you like something's wrong, and that bothers them deep inside.

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Again, I'm not saying that your wife would have wanted that, but in a way, I do believe, and I've seen it on a number of occasions, that if, and I'm not saying that we should, but if we were, whether the husband or the wife, to have a crack and to start being more emotional,

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I think in a way they almost would prefer that because it seems so strange to them that you're not.

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By the way, I do want to say this while we're on the topic. The old stereotype that women are more emotional than men really is scientifically, not impossible, but it's inaccurate.

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The reality is that's a stereotype that's been created based off of two primary concepts.

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Yes, when a woman is pregnant and when a woman's experiencing her regular cycles, there are chemical reactions going on inside of her that aren't going on in men, okay?

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So, yes, to that degree, that's there. But to say that men are less emotional than women or vice versa is inaccurate, 100 % across the board inaccurate.

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We experience our emotions in different ways, we communicate them in different ways, but to say that women are more emotional is not true, actually, factually.

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However, as a culture, we've said that line so many times, that's become a self -fulfilling prophecy.

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And we started to create this idea that men weren't supposed to cry, right?

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And so these men were trying to man up and not let a tear roll down, but women were given free reign to express their emotions in a way that men weren't because, well, that's just how women are, is what we said.

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And so what's really happened here is the idea that we've kicked the door open and we've created our culture, which is what we always do.

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We are not products of our culture so much as we, as a people, we create our culture. What we've done is we've created a society up until recently,

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I think things are starting to change, obviously, the different sexuality and gender movements and things going on, you know, this idea of men being tough is considered toxic and stuff like that.

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But the point I'm trying to make is that when we strip all those cultural things away and we look at the scriptures, we do not find anywhere in scripture that gives us the impression that women are inherently more emotional than men.

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Because to the same degree that, you know, we see that, you know, women are the weaker vessels, which, by the way, there's open, there's a lot of ways to interpret that accurately.

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But there's also, we see that Jesus weeping, right? So we have to be careful when we get this idea that men are less emotional than women and so on and so forth.

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Okay, we have to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question for A .M.

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Brewster, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name. It leaves city and state and country of residence.

27:39

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with more of A .M. Brewster. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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We're back with A .M. Brewster in our discussion of the doctrine of emotions. If you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

38:48

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. I just wanted to say that something that you said earlier actually enforced what

38:59

I said yesterday during Part 1 of our discussion, where I said that an emotional response from congregations to our

39:16

Lord in praise and thanksgiving and worshiping him is a sign how much we love the

39:26

Lord and how excited that we are and how grateful we are. But we always have to be careful not to think we are experts on how to determine someone's emotion because people are different.

39:44

Human beings are different in the way that they express their emotion. So I just wanted to bring that up again.

39:50

Because very often the Reformed community is chastised as being devoid of emotion in their worship, and sometimes that is true.

40:04

But sometimes people who are used to a very energetic worship service, in fact, tragically even to the extreme of appearing as an insane asylum or a circus, when they walk into a more organized, less chaotic, less free -for -all atmosphere of a typical

40:30

Reformed worship service, they are taken aback because they've never experienced that before, and they wrongly think that the

40:37

Holy Spirit isn't present, and they wrongly think that these people have no emotion.

40:42

So I just thought I'd throw that out there. Yeah, really good observation. That's definitely something that happens and happens far too often.

40:51

Somebody once described a service at a former church I went to as being sterile.

40:58

And it was in part because of exactly what you're talking about there. I would say, though, that regardless of what side of the spectrum you fall on, if you walk into a situation and you're more bothered by the fact that the emotional responses around you are not like yours, then you are really the primary motivating factors behind that, you're focusing on the wrong thing.

41:24

It's not about whether or not the emotional responses of the people around me are like mine, it's whether or not their response and my response is falling in line with reality.

41:33

And with that said, I want to really get into this last main point that I want to make and really be able to spend some good time on this.

41:40

I knew we were going to need two parts, and Lord willing, we can get through all of it today. But this last category,

41:46

I don't really like the word because it reeks too much with pop psychology. You know, we talked about emotional discrepancies and descriptions, then we talked about delusions, and now we're going to talk about dysfunctions.

41:58

But when we talk about something like a dysfunction, it definitely gives us the feeling in our culture that this is something that, yes,

42:06

I'm aware that I just used the word, it gives us the feeling. It causes us to think that we're talking about something that's a physiological dysfunction that this person is not capable of controlling.

42:18

But really, a dysfunction is actually something that's just not functioning the right way. And so, there are four that I want to talk through, okay, four.

42:28

And I'm now switching from my D alliteration to I's, and I'm going to talk about four main things.

42:36

Emotional, what I'm calling emotional illness, and yes, I will say that that's the phrase I hate the most.

42:41

I want to repackage it in a different way, but I'll explain myself when we get there. Emotional illness, emotional interpretation, emotional incongruity, and emotional instability.

42:54

These are the emotional dysfunctions where something is not functioning the way it should be functioning as we experience whatever's going on in our lives.

43:07

And this, as a biblical counselor, as a friend, as a disciple, and a teacher, these are the things I'm constantly dealing with.

43:14

So, a lot of times, and again, I want everyone to know, as a biblical counselor, I am certified through the

43:19

American Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. We take a very strong stance on the sufficiency of scripture, that we do not need pop psychology.

43:28

We do not need man's ideas about what is wrong with the world and how to fix it. We need

43:33

God's. He is the creator, and he tells us in his word, he gives us everything that we need for life and godliness, okay? So, that is, across the board, true.

43:42

And nothing I'm going to say now is going to contradict that fact. So, let me explain what I mean by emotional illness.

43:47

There are legitimate physical illnesses that can cause incongruous or unstable feelings in our bodies.

43:57

A couple right off the top of my head are thyroid issues, specifically also a fungal infection called candida.

44:07

In fact, even we mentioned COVID earlier, COVID had a very interesting facet to it, especially certain strains or whatever the case may be, that had a very significant chemical effect on our bodies.

44:21

And let's be honest, everything does. Stressors and pressures and different experiences that we have have these effects on us.

44:28

And so, there are some things, diabetes, that's another one. A person who has diabetes who is having blood sugar issues can have other chemicals pumping through their body, causing them to feel a pure emotion, a pure feeling, causing them to feel in certain ways.

44:44

And those things are not inherently sinful. And let me just say right off the bat, a person could feel anxious, feel depressed, feel exhilarated even, and have it be something that is directly related to a physical illness, an actual physical, biological, physiological problem.

45:03

And these things are neither right nor wrong. They're just the reality of living in a broken, fallen world.

45:09

Again, the problem is, and I mentioned this last time, it bears repeating, the issue is when we say we recognize the fact that there is a facet to depression or anxiety that is biological, that we have no control over.

45:25

There are people who just accept the fact that any depression, any anxiety, all of it is all physical.

45:30

You have no control over it. It's not a sin. Well, then there's other people who say, well, no. And the

45:36

Bible is clear. Anxiety and depression, that would be a sin. And those people are right too. And the reality is to be able to parse out what's going on.

45:47

So, let me give you an example. One of the first times this happened to me, the very first time I ever experienced a panic attack, if you could call it that.

45:53

I was sitting in the basement of my house. I won't give you all the details, but the short of it is I just had this massive panic attack.

46:01

This overwhelming anxiety, feeling of anxiety is pumping through my chest. And I stopped and I went through the checklist.

46:08

Like, what is wrong with me? Like, I wasn't watching a scary movie. The lights were all on. I mean, I was going through, like, okay, did

46:13

I, you know, what is, I just called my wife, make sure everything was okay. I went through the list and there was nothing that I should have, nothing

46:21

I should have been afraid of. Well, I ended up calling my mom, like a good son. I called my mom and said, what is going on with me?

46:28

And she had me do a simple test, and I did this test, and this test confirmed, it was later confirmed by a doctor, that I had a fungal overgrowth in my body called candida.

46:39

And one of the many side effects of candida is that it can cause a feeling in your chest and your heart kind of range of what oftentimes people interpret as being anxiety.

46:50

Was it anxiety? Was I actually afraid? No, I wasn't.

46:55

I was experiencing a similar chemical reaction as what I might experience if I were to be surprised and someone were to jump out at me or if I were to see something that I viewed as dangerous.

47:06

But those things weren't actually happening. It was just a similar chemical reaction that, you know, when we get to the next step, the next step is really important, that in that moment my mind was interpreting as anxiety.

47:17

Same thing happened, or similar thing happened when I had COVID. The second time I got COVID, there was a time when

47:24

I was experiencing what felt like significant depression, literally just a pressing down, a darkness on me.

47:34

And it wasn't related to sinful thinking or anything like that. It was tied to this virus pumping through my system.

47:43

The question is, how am I going to respond to those things? Because yes, I could feel that with candida.

47:49

I could feel that with COVID and not be sinning. Or I could very easily respond the wrong way to those experiences and all of a sudden now be sinning in my responses.

48:00

And that moves us to the second one. Emotional illness is just a pure physical problem in my body that is happening because of some breakdown in my system.

48:11

And by the way, the best way to take care of that is to get medical help. Is candida a temporary issue or is that somebody's lifelong plague?

48:23

No, it's kind of like strep or staph infection. Staphylococcus is in your body, and when it's at the right levels, it's okay.

48:32

But when there's too much of it, you have a staph infection. Candida is very similar. It's in your system. It's part of it. And when you give an overgrowth, you need to work really hard to get it back into the right levels, and then you're okay.

48:43

Does it revisit the same person? Yeah, well, for the same reasons. Candida is a pretty simple one.

48:50

You're eating too much sugar. You have an unhealthy diet. That's one way to really feed the candida in your body.

48:56

So yeah, you can have it coming back over time. I know people that suffer from panic attacks, and I'm wondering if that is the cause of it.

49:09

It could be. It's far more prevalent than most people think. That was going to lead me to this next thing

49:16

I was going to say. When you go to a doctor and you say, Doctor, I'm having a panic attack, and this is how

49:24

I'm feeling. All they do is prescribe you a medication that's going to manipulate the chemicals in your body so that you don't feel that way.

49:32

That's like putting a Band -Aid on a cancer patient. You want a doctor who's going to help you figure out why you're feeling that way.

49:39

Not just throw medication at you like an antidepressant if you're feeling depressed or whatever the case may be.

49:45

What you want is someone who's going to say, Well, you shouldn't be feeling that way, so let's see if there's any physical reason.

49:51

I know exactly why I feel that way when I see the doctor. It's when he hands me the bill.

49:58

Yeah, that can happen. I'm feeling very depressed right now about that. My mom just texted me.

50:05

She's listening to this right now, and she also sent me the one word, antibiotics.

50:10

She can be sometimes cryptic in her writing, and I'm not sure if she said antibiotics, whether that was something that could cause issues, which

50:20

I believe it can in how we feel or how to treat it. She'll send over a follow -up text clarifying herself, no doubt, in a minute when she hears what just happened.

50:31

You want to find a doctor who's going to help you actually treat the action. If you truly have an emotional illness, again,

50:36

I hate that term the way I came up with it, but if you're truly having an emotional illness, you need to find somebody who's going to help you treat the actual physical problem.

50:44

And as a biblical counselor, it's very important to me that my counselee be healthy.

50:50

That's important anyway. It's important as they steward their bodies. It's important also for them to be able to function in a

50:57

Christ -honoring way. I compare it to carrying a backpack. You take a child and you send them onto a playground.

51:04

They'll play and play and play for hours. You take that same child who's well -rested and has had a good meal, and you put a 20 -pound backpack on their back, and it won't be long before they are just going to be tired out and not having fun anymore and whining and wanting to go home.

51:20

And oftentimes when we have these physical issues where we're sick or our bodies are broken down, and it's like we're carrying this huge weight, it makes it harder to respond well.

51:33

Not impossible. Please understand. God promises there's always a way to escape temptation. We never have to sin because of what's going on in our bodies.

51:43

I don't care what's wrong with you. I don't care how terminal the diagnosis is. I don't care how painful it is. You do not have to sin in your illness.

51:51

Okay? Period. However, there's obviously wisdom in pursuing the best health that we can.

51:58

How much time do we have, Chris, before the next break? I think we should go to our next break right now, and this way

52:04

I don't have to interrupt you. Sounds good. And always keep in mind, folks, that we ask of you to be patient during the middle break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

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Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.

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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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01:08:38

Before I return to my guest, A .M. Brewster, and our discussion today on The Doctrine of Emotions, which is part two of a two -day discussion we began yesterday,

01:08:50

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01:12:45

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01:12:50

A .M. Brewster. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

01:12:59

And you asked if we had time to continue your train of thought before the break, but we didn't.

01:13:05

So why don't you pick up where we left off there, Aaron? Yeah. So before the break, we were talking about this idea of what

01:13:13

I'm calling under duress emotional illness, lest we fall to the wrong pop psychology understanding that I have a mental disorder, an emotional illness type of a thing or a mental illness.

01:13:28

I'm talking about an actual biological physiological illness that happens to have an impact on our pure emotions, the chemical processes in our bodies.

01:13:38

And I was transitioning to the next point, which is really the linchpin. It's the key for us in this discussion.

01:13:45

And it had to do with, I want to use the kind of vault off of what I was talking about with my issue with COVID where I was feeling depressed.

01:13:54

And so there I am. And I'll tell you what, man, it was rough. There came a time where I thought to myself, you know what, man,

01:14:02

I completely understand suicide at this point. I get it. Like people who, yeah, people, you know, people who don't know the

01:14:09

Lord who are closer in their homes, they're locked down. They can't see their family members.

01:14:14

They're losing their jobs. They're sick. They're afraid of losing their freedoms. They're afraid of losing all this other kind of stuff.

01:14:20

And they feel the way they feel because of the, what the body, the virus was doing to their bodies.

01:14:28

I totally get why there were so, there was an increase in suicide during that time. Same reason that there's an increase in suicide, you know, after holidays and things like that.

01:14:37

There's that massive letdown. Now, I wasn't tempted to suicide in that moment, but I understood it.

01:14:44

I got it. This is how people are feeling and they are feeling hopeless because they don't have, they're despairing because they don't see what

01:14:54

God is trying to do through the situation. It made sense to me because of how I was feeling.

01:15:00

Now, by God's grace, there was a lot of self -counseling going on. I had to speak truth to myself. I had to focus on what was really going on.

01:15:06

Aaron, you're not feeling hopeless and despairing. You're feeling this way because of what's going on with your body.

01:15:12

Focus on truth. What is the truth? In the Suffering Well online course that you can access in the

01:15:20

Evermind app, we talk a lot about this, this idea of,

01:15:26

I just kind of lost my train of thought there, kind of derailed real quick. We talk about the purpose of suffering, the

01:15:33

God of suffering and the purpose of suffering and the importance of speaking that truth to ourselves and believing that truth.

01:15:41

And so, I recognize the fact that God has allowed this into my life and it is providence to give him glory and to be for my good.

01:15:48

And though I might not see all of it, all of the things that he's doing, I can know for certain because the Bible tells me that from James chapter 2 and Romans chapter 8 and various other passages that God wants to use this circumstance to increase my faith, to mature me, to grow me, and help me to be more conformed to the image of Christ.

01:16:06

That's why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling right now with this sickness or this illness or this relational struggle in my life, whatever the case may be.

01:16:13

I had to speak truth to myself. I had to interpret my emotion correctly because if I had, like when

01:16:19

I had Candida and I had that flush of adrenaline in my chest because of it, if I had chosen to interpret that in a different way, rather than fear,

01:16:29

I would have responded in a different way, I would have acted differently. And if I chose to interpret the feelings

01:16:35

I was experiencing during COVID as hopelessness and despair and, oh, my life is terrible, start lying to myself, start focusing on the delusions and start focusing on things that aren't true, then what

01:16:49

I'm doing is I'm taking an emotional experience of depression, which is legitimate because it's just the chemical reaction, those chemicals, it's not really depression, it's just the chemical response in my body.

01:17:00

But now I'm interpreting it in a certain light that's not true, which is then tempting me to believe things that are not true, and then it's,

01:17:10

I'm calling God a liar, I'm not participating with him in this situation because, you know, all things work together for good.

01:17:17

To those who love God and are called according to his purpose, I'm not working according to his purposes and I'm believing a lie, and so therefore

01:17:23

I'm multiplying the feelings of depression that I have, and now this base chemical response in me,

01:17:29

I'm now defining it as hopelessness and despair, and I'm calling

01:17:34

God a liar, and this is where we start to get into trouble, and that's where that type of depression is sinful.

01:17:41

It's wrong. You should never feel that way. You should never get to that point, and no sickness is going to make you get to that point.

01:17:47

That's the point that we get to when we don't do this next thing right. It's called emotional interpretation.

01:17:54

Emotions are not merely an objective physiological reality. Every emotion, and we mentioned this last time, we kind of spoiled it last time, every emotion is interpreted by the one experiencing the motion.

01:18:07

We talked about this in regard to adrenaline, you have two people on a roller coaster, one person is feeling, they interpret it as dread what they're feeling, and the other person interprets the exact same chemical response in their body as exhilaration.

01:18:20

The one person hates the feeling in their body, the other person loves that feeling in their body, and so therefore they both respond very different.

01:18:27

One's crying and screaming, the other one's whooping and hollering with their hands up in the air. Same chemical reaction, very different response.

01:18:36

And so then again, like I said before, adrenaline is a major player in how we feel when we're physically attracted to somebody.

01:18:43

It's also a major player when we're angry. Okay? So, interpreting it correctly is really, really important.

01:18:49

Well, how are we supposed to interpret it? How am I supposed to know how

01:18:54

I'm supposed to respond to this feeling that I'm having right now? Well, that goes into the next one, emotional incongruity.

01:19:02

Incongruity. Incongruous emotions are those that contradict God's plan.

01:19:07

This goes back to what we talked about last time about emotion being a gauge. When we talked about that, if you weren't, didn't follow that show, if my emotions, if I'm feeling depressed when

01:19:18

God says I should be feeling, I should be experiencing happiness or I should be experiencing a state of joy, then at that moment there's, even then, even then as I tried really hard to be careful with my vocabulary,

01:19:31

I allowed myself to use joy in a feelings type way that really I didn't intend to use it.

01:19:36

Because again, as I've said, you can be joyful even when you're feeling the chemical process in your body that oftentimes is interpreted as depression.

01:19:46

I did that when I had COVID. But the point I was trying to make is that if the Bible says I should be feeling happy and I feel sad, that indicates that there's a problem.

01:19:54

If the Bible says I should be feeling sad and I'm feeling happy, that indicates that there's a problem. That's an incongruity in my emotions.

01:20:01

So, if we're depressed when God says that we should have joy, if we're anxious when God says we should be at peace, if we're happy when

01:20:07

God says we should be grieved, we're experiencing emotional incongruity. And that's where often one of the things that's going to be a big part of the ability to interpret correctly what

01:20:18

I'm feeling. So, as I was sitting there on the couch in my basement having this feeling of flushing through my body,

01:20:28

I at that moment needed to figure it out. That's why I went through the checklist. Is there anything that I really should be afraid of?

01:20:33

Is it the surrounding environment? Is it what I'm watching on TV? Is there something wrong with my wife? Am I concerned about work?

01:20:40

I'm going through the list. There's nothing legitimate to fear. There's nothing of danger in front of me.

01:20:47

So, therefore, I'm not feeling fear. This isn't fear. It would be wrong for me to interpret it as fear. I knew

01:20:52

I wasn't angry at anything. That was pretty easy to figure out. And I could tell that I wasn't exhilarated.

01:20:58

I wasn't watching something that really got my adrenaline going and got me all super excited. I actually don't remember what

01:21:03

I was watching. I need to remember that because what I was watching wasn't scary. It wasn't exciting. I don't know why I was wasting my time on it.

01:21:09

But I wasn't experiencing anything like that. So, I had to figure out what it was. And really, when it came right down to it,

01:21:15

I wasn't angry. I wasn't exhilarated. I wasn't depressed. I wasn't anxious.

01:21:21

I was just having this flush of adrenaline in my system because of the fungal infection. Now, I keep going back to that emotional illness.

01:21:28

I want to say, though, this happens, too, even when that's not a factor. If I'm as healthy as a horse, one of my wife's favorite

01:21:35

TV shows, Stargate in Atlantis. Well, all of the

01:21:40

Stargates, really, they did it. Even all the space -age type of sitcoms and things like that or TV shows. You go to the doctor and everyone's in perfect health, right?

01:21:48

You're in perfect health. If you're actually in a place of perfect health, and so you're not experiencing emotional illness of any kind whatsoever, your emotion is going to come from someplace.

01:22:00

And where it's going to come from is that external or internal stimulus, where I'm now having to interpret this situation.

01:22:08

So, a good example of that is, I'm a young person, and I am in the public school system, and I know that God wants me to be a shining light in that public school system.

01:22:21

But I look at this, how I'm going to interpret that situation is going to produce certain chemical responses in my body.

01:22:31

If I interpret this as, I'm excited about this, this is awesome. God is giving me everything that I need for light and godliness.

01:22:37

I can walk into this school, and I can be a shining light. And even if they hate me for it, I can rejoice and be glad, because if they persecute me for this, they did the same thing to the prophets who came before me.

01:22:47

Praise God for this opportunity. Walk in there with my head held high. I get that adrenaline rush as I step forward into that situation to be that salt and light in that school.

01:22:57

That adrenaline rush is going to come from what I'm focused on, and I'm going to interpret that adrenaline rush in the right way.

01:23:04

Obviously, you can imagine the flip side. I'm going to the situation, oh, this is going to be so awkward, and people are going to think

01:23:10

I'm weird, and people aren't going to like me, and who knows what they'll call me, and they might do unkind things to me.

01:23:17

And now I'm getting that adrenaline rush, and I'm interpreting it now as fear. And that adrenaline rush came in both circumstances because of what

01:23:26

I was thinking, how I was viewing the situation. This is a huge part of what Paul teaches us in Philippians chapter 4, a passage

01:23:34

I go to quite frequently when I'm working with individuals, regardless of what emotional experience they're having.

01:23:42

First of all, I need to choose to rejoice in the Lord. That's what the first person did. They also needed to let their gentle spirit be known to all men.

01:23:50

They had to go into that and say, I need to do what's best for my classmates, what's best for my teachers, because the

01:23:56

Lord is near, and he's left me on this earth to be salt and light. And if I'm anxious at all, I need to realize that I'm supposed to be anxious for nothing.

01:24:04

This is not anxiety that grows from an actual physical illness. This is anxiety that comes from thinking incorrectly. And so, what

01:24:10

I'm supposed to do, take it to God in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, and then

01:24:16

I'm told that the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. It'll guard it like a group of soldiers surrounding my heart.

01:24:26

And really, we know from the scriptures, my heart there is referring to my mind, referring to that core of my being.

01:24:32

And then verse 8 comes in and says that we need to think correctly. I need to go into this situation thinking what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and good repute and excellent and praiseworthy.

01:24:43

I need to dwell, I need to meditate on those things. And he goes on to say, everything that you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, you need to practice these things.

01:24:54

You need to obey, basically. He says you need to think right, you need to obey. And then the God of peace will be with you.

01:25:01

So, even if you're having an emotionally distressing situation in your life where the chemicals are flowing either because of a sickness or because of some pressures on the outside,

01:25:09

I can still be at peace. But even if I'm not experiencing those things that are outside of my control,

01:25:15

I'm just walking into a situation, when I'm acting right and I'm thinking right, I will feel right and I'll interpret what happens next correctly.

01:25:25

And by the way, we know that adrenaline responses oftentimes decrease. You know, that first time speaker getting up, man, they're shaking like crazy because of the adrenaline flowing through their bodies.

01:25:34

But a seasoned performer or public speaker can get up and they'll have a little bit of butterflies, but it goes away pretty quickly.

01:25:40

So, again, we start to have better control over what we're experiencing. And the last one,

01:25:46

I won't spend a lot of time on, I definitely want to answer questions, but the last one is emotional instability. This is where you may be experiencing what could be correctly considered a right physiological response.

01:25:59

You know, you're on a roller coaster and you're like, yay, you're having a great time, but you don't come down from that high.

01:26:07

It just stays. You might be experiencing an appropriate sadness in a situation, but like we talked about last time, it doesn't end when it's supposed to or it's bigger than what seems appropriate even to you.

01:26:23

And there's this instability. The emotion may contradict or agree with God's plan when there's instability, but it's overwhelming.

01:26:32

It feels like it's out of control. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about emotional instability that, again, can wrap back to emotional illness and be because of a physiological issue.

01:26:43

But it can also wrap back to wrong interpretation. Again, like I said, when we're experiencing something and we respond to it sinfully, it doesn't add to our problems, it multiplies it.

01:26:54

And sometimes our instability in our emotions comes from the fact that we've gotten completely out of control, out of self -control, out of spirit control, and we are just multiplying emotion upon emotion and responding the wrong way to them in our interpretation.

01:27:09

So I want to turn it back over to you, Chris, here in a minute, especially answer any questions if they've come up. But just kind of put a fine point on this and tie a bow.

01:27:17

The key to all of this is how I'm going to interpret what I'm feeling, but also how

01:27:23

I'm going to interpret the stimulus, this experience in my life. What does

01:27:28

God say about it? What is true about the physical experience I'm having right now?

01:27:33

How does God want me to respond to this situation? And every single time we do that, every single time we focus on God, the fulfillment of Isaiah comes into us.

01:27:45

And those who anchor our minds on God, he keeps us in perfect peace because our minds are fixed on him and because we trust in him.

01:27:54

And that's going to be the goal in every situation. By the way, that verse of Scripture was what the

01:28:03

Lord used to prevent my dear friend Fern Hill, my friend

01:28:09

Fern Hill, who is now in heaven for eternity. She and her husband,

01:28:15

Jerry, were founders of the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch, a home for orphans and homeless children in Riverhead, Long Island.

01:28:24

And it's named after their son, Timothy, who I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 years ago was killed in a tragic accident when he was 12 or 13 riding his bicycle to school.

01:28:41

He was hit by a truck and killed. And that that text is what Fern, God immediately transported her mind to that text when she got the news.

01:28:52

Amen. And that helped her from not completely falling apart. And just for the people who are uncertain, it's

01:29:00

Isaiah 26 .3. 26 .3 and 4 actually, the steadfast of mind you will keep in perfect peace because he, referring to the one who is the steadfast of mind, he trusts in you.

01:29:13

And then verse 4 says, trust in the Lord forever. Trusting is a choice to think correctly and to respond correctly to the situation.

01:29:23

Trust in the Lord forever, for in God the Lord, we have an everlasting rock. That picture of not just the actual positional position that we're in with God, but also that idea of that steadfast of mind, that peace, that surety, that calmness that comes from trusting in the

01:29:42

Lord. And what's really interesting is the very next verse says this, for he, referring to God, has brought low those who dwell on high, the unassailable city.

01:29:51

He lays it low. He's talking about people here who do not have a relationship with him. And this idea of being brought low is a

01:29:58

Hebrew word that oftentimes has the idea of despairing. So the people who do not trust in God, the steadfast of mind, who are anchored on him, they are the ones that are in a position that they're potentially going to be brought low and be in a position of despair because they're not in the right relationship with God.

01:30:18

If anybody, by the way, wants to hear my interviews with Jerry and Fern Hill, and in particular my very last interview with Fern before she was taken home to glory, just go to the ironsharpensironradio .com

01:30:33

website and in the search engine type in Fern Hill. You can even just type in Hill to get the interviews with both

01:30:42

Jerry and Fern. Or you could type in Timothy Hill Children's Ranch. And Fern Hill is just coincidentally named after sharing the name of the

01:30:55

Dylan Thomas poem. It's not any connection. She had the married name

01:31:02

Hill with no connection to her birth last name. And so there was no intentional connection to that poem when she was named.

01:31:13

We have an anonymous listener who says, I'm sorry if you've already covered this, but I'm just tuning in for the first time now.

01:31:22

I have a friend who is very much involved in yoga, and she swears by yoga, saying that it totally changes her frame of mind and relaxes her, lowers her high blood pressure and all kinds of benefits.

01:31:42

I know that yoga has its roots in paganism, but this friend swears that she does not practice yoga with any kind of religious connection, especially not to paganism or the occult.

01:31:59

Can somebody be involved in something like that just because in their mind they are doing something innocent, even though in its root it has pagan or occultic heritage?

01:32:14

It's a question I encounter quite frequently. We could dedicate hours and hours of interviews to this.

01:32:21

And maybe in the future, Chris and I will, if we really want to crack open that can of worms.

01:32:27

But I want to simplify it simply by saying this, that yoga is a series of movements that has been shown to scientifically and medically, when done in appropriate ways, have beneficial physiological responses.

01:32:49

In a similar sense, I've studied the martial arts for over 30 years. And in a similar sense, how you learn to control your body, there's a big emphasis in the martial arts as well as in yoga and things like that, tai chi and stuff about controlling your mind.

01:33:05

For the Christian, learning to control what they're thinking about, learning to control their movements, to control the beating of their heart and their breath rate and all of that, there's a significant value to that.

01:33:17

To be honest, the same pagan religions that gave us yoga to a large degree also gave us tea.

01:33:26

How they plant their rice fields, how they stirred and made their tea was a deeply religious experience for these individuals.

01:33:34

And I would not say that that should produce in us a desire to stay away from rice and tea and yoga and the martial arts.

01:33:41

But what it should do is it should actually be a challenge to us. Are we as Christians making everything in our lives so deeply religious?

01:33:48

Because the reality is we don't. We watch our sporting events and we eat our food and we have our barbecues and we live our lives for self far too often, not giving a thought to how we can glorify

01:34:01

God in this situation. So, yes, I believe that your friend can glorify God by doing the exercises, the stretches and the things like that that are in yoga and have zero type of a focus on any type of paganism.

01:34:17

It's not going to – she's not inviting demons into her life or anything like that whatsoever.

01:34:23

And I know I don't – I've done a little bit of yoga. I don't really – I don't technically do it and it's really if I did it, it's more of a comedy routine than anything else.

01:34:33

I would say that overall, it's a good exercise for some people and really beneficial and valuable.

01:34:41

So if it, of course, is done the right way for God's glory to please him. And we'll be giving

01:34:47

Aaron Brewster's direct address later where you can mail your complaints. Do it.

01:34:55

I dare you. Now, obviously, we have to be cautious when we have that mindset, don't we?

01:35:02

Like I'll give you an example. Tina Turner became a

01:35:11

Buddhist and I don't really know how serious or authentic her

01:35:16

Buddhism was. Some people in Hollywood and on the left become all sorts of things that involve

01:35:24

Eastern mysticism just because it's hip, it's cool. And you will not be anathema among your peers like you would be if you became a born -again believer in Christ.

01:35:35

But she would repeat chants and things that totally changed her frame of mind and her opinion for the better.

01:35:46

But she was actually quoting the phraseology of Buddhism, which who knows what kind of satanic incantation that really is.

01:35:58

Don't we have to be careful about things like that? Oh, 100%. Even if we look at it innocently.

01:36:06

Sure, yeah, yeah. I can't necessarily point to any Buddhist incantations or mantras and truly to be able to pick them apart.

01:36:17

The Bible calls us to be discerning, okay? There's nothing in the scriptures whatsoever.

01:36:23

If Buddhists or some other pagan religion hadn't, you know, if yoga hadn't been rooted in that, nobody would be having this question.

01:36:32

We would never talk about it. But let's be honest, bodybuilding, weightlifting, these different exercises were created by people who predominantly are also pagans, who worship at the altar of self, self -improvement, beauty, vanity, right?

01:36:50

That's where a lot of our American exercise concepts came from. And so, to be completely honest, it doesn't really matter why they created it.

01:36:59

If weightlifting is a good idea, it's a good idea, even if the person who invented weightlifting did it because they were super vain, arrogant people who wanted to do nothing more than look at their beautiful bodies in a mirror.

01:37:12

To the same degree, if the guy who invented yoga or something else were a pagan, and he just so happened to recognize the fact that these various poses and whatever else can be healthy to the body, fine, great, good.

01:37:25

But it's absolutely necessary for us Christians to be discerning.

01:37:33

If this mantra that I'm repeating contradicts the Bible, well, that's obviously wrong.

01:37:39

If this mantra I'm repeating is taking the place of God's truth, that's a problem.

01:37:46

If when I'm feeling all anxious, I run to yoga before running to God and his word, that's a problem.

01:37:53

So, yeah, there are a lot of things and we can't just, you know, we can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. That's wrong.

01:37:58

But we also shouldn't just embrace every part of a system. We have to be discerning.

01:38:04

And unfortunately, we Christians aren't. We turn the TV on. We watch these things. We just kind of accept it. It's mostly good and we don't really – we amuse ourselves.

01:38:13

We turn our brains off and it's then that the sinful things in this world and the world system and from Satan in the flesh really start to truly affect us in ways that go unseen.

01:38:24

So, yeah, Chris, I believe that we need to be super discerning, but we also need to be careful that we're not just – we're not making up stuff that's not true.

01:38:35

I can't point to anything in the scriptures that would say that a certain exercise is inherently wrong.

01:38:41

In fact, let's go back to what the Bible says. Paul said that it's not wrong to eat meat that was offered during a pagan ritualistic worship service to a false god.

01:38:57

You are – it is okay to actually eat the meat that was used. Me personally,

01:39:04

Aaron Brewster, when I go to like a Chinese restaurant and I see that little bowl of fruit and the other food kind of set out next to their little idols, someone tosses me that orange and said, here, eat this.

01:39:14

I'm kind of going, I don't necessarily know that I want to eat this. I know there's nothing wrong with it, but I feel more about that than I do about potentially doing the – than obviously doing the martial arts.

01:39:24

So, we have to be discerning. We've got to look at it biblically, and I think we need to ask good questions like your listener did, and we need to search for biblical answers.

01:39:32

We have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

01:39:53

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

01:40:01

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd, on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

01:40:14

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

01:40:27

And there's more great news. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 % discount off the registration fee.

01:40:35

Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo code

01:40:41

G3ISIR. That's G3ISIR for the 30 % discount.

01:40:49

Chris Arnzen and I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the

01:40:54

G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on the sovereignty of God. Make sure you stop by the

01:40:59

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while you're there.

01:41:04

Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your 30 % discount off the registration fee.

01:41:30

As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

01:41:44

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

01:41:53

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

01:42:01

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

01:42:07

God in spirit and truth. Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a

01:42:12

God -centered focus. Reading, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

01:42:27

Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

01:42:36

.com. That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com.

01:42:43

Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

01:42:52

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. This is

01:43:19

Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

01:43:25

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.

01:43:33

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers who strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

01:43:46

Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

01:43:52

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

01:44:06

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

01:44:16

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

01:44:24

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

01:44:30

Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.

01:44:54

I'm Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Program.

01:45:03

The SecureComm Group provides the highest level of security, closed -circuit television, access control, and communication systems for Manhattan's top residential buildings, as well as churches, commercial properties, municipalities, and more.

01:45:18

We custom install exactly what you need to protect yourself, including digital recording, off -site viewing, and connectivity from most smart devices.

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From simple code -activated systems to the latest technology using facial recognition, the

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SecureComm Group has it. We also provide the latest in intercom and IP telephone systems.

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In addition, we provide superior networking platforms. We'll create, maintain, and secure your local network.

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Whether it's a Wi -Fi or hardwire network, we'll implement the latest secured firewall, endpoint solutions, and cloud backup.

01:45:55

I would love to have the honor and privilege of helping protect the lives and property of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners and their associates.

01:46:04

For more details on how the SecureComm Group may be of service to you with the very latest in security innovations, call 718 -353 -3355.

01:46:15

That's 718 -353 -3355. Or visit securecommgroup .com.

01:46:23

That's securecommgroup .com. This is Brian McLaughlin of the SecureComm Group, joining

01:46:29

Chris Arnzen's family of advertisers to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air.

01:46:38

Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

01:46:49

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

01:46:56

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

01:47:09

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

01:47:15

Christ. This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

01:47:22

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

01:47:29

Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. Puritanphx .com

01:47:37

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor.

01:47:44

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:47:55

They specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for everyone.

01:48:02

CVBBS has been a family -owned book service since 1987, operating out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

01:48:08

They seek to bring you the best available Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices.

01:48:13

Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available or popular because, frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

01:48:24

That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting materials promoted by the secular book vendors.

01:48:36

Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:48:44

Order online at CVBBS .com. That's CVBBS .com.

01:48:50

Or you can order by phone at 1 -800 -656 -0231.

01:48:56

That's 1 -800 -656 -0231. Please let our friends at CVBBS know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

01:49:06

Getting a driver's license. Running a cash register. Flipping burgers. Passing 6th grade.

01:49:13

Do you know what they all have in common? They all require training, assessments, and certifications. But do you know what requires no training at all?

01:49:21

Becoming a parent. My name is A .M. Brewster. I'm the president of Truth Love Parent and host of its award -winning podcast.

01:49:29

I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s. And what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have never been biblically equipped to do the work of the ministry in their homes.

01:49:40

That's why Truth Love Parent exists. We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents

01:49:45

God called and created them to be. We produce free parenting resources, train church leaders, and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life and godliness.

01:49:57

Please visit us at TruthLoveParent .com. When Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

01:50:09

New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

01:50:17

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.

01:50:23

I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the

01:50:29

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and the

01:50:37

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the

01:50:46

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and the

01:50:53

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and the

01:51:01

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Steve Herford of Eastport Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the

01:51:09

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Roy Owens Jr. of the

01:51:15

Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

01:51:20

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew

01:51:27

Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

01:51:38

Go to nasbible .com, that's nasbible .com to place your order.

01:51:48

Hi, this is John Sampson, Pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

01:51:57

Iron Sharpen's Iron Podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions.

01:52:06

While always defending the key doctrines of the Christian faith, I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

01:52:17

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

01:52:24

Chris up for just such a time. And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

01:52:33

I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

01:52:39

Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

01:52:48

I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:52:55

where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:53:07

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

01:53:13

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

01:53:18

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

01:53:26

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

01:53:43

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

01:53:50

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

01:53:59

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

01:54:06

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

01:54:15

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:54:31

Welcome back, and please remember, folks, you've been hearing every day the ads for the

01:54:37

Historical Bible Society, a ministry founded by my friend Daniel P.

01:54:43

Buttafuoco, attorney at law. Please don't forget that Dan Buttafuoco is also a serious injury and medical malpractice attorney.

01:54:52

So if you are the victim of a serious accident or medical malpractice, no matter where you live in the

01:54:57

United States, he can get you help in all 50 states. So please call him at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit his website, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com.

01:55:09

We're now back with Aaron Brewster. And Aaron, I would like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:55:20

And if we have time to squeeze in another question, I will. First of all, feel free to go to TruthLoveParent .com

01:55:27

forward slash iron to get a lot more resources to supplement our conversation today. Second of all, remember this.

01:55:34

Your emotions should not control you. You should be in control of them. If you see that spider on that floor and you freak out and you become completely unhelpful and irrational, that's not a

01:55:48

Christ -honoring response and you don't have to feel that way. If you focus on truth, the truth of the situation, in a situation like a silly situation with a spider or a more aggressive situation like an illness or financial problems or relational carnage, if you focus on the truth of this, who

01:56:07

God is, what his plan is for you, you can find that your emotions will subside, will run in line with what the scriptures say we should be feeling, and that is always going to be the answer.

01:56:17

And this is every single time I lead my counselees, I lead myself, I lead my family to the truths of scripture.

01:56:24

We put our trust in God and we are held up in perfect peace. He is our refuge and his strength, and hope and despair, anxiety, depression, and sinful anger just fly from us in that moment as we run to God.

01:56:37

That's what we must remember. By the way, what if the spider is on your neck? Well, you can still deal with that without becoming irrational and making the situation worse.

01:56:49

Listen, I'm a beekeeper and I don't wear bee suits. If I went out there and started freaking out at every bee that landed on me, oh,

01:56:55

I would have so much trouble. I do not freak out with insects typically, but I know people who do.

01:57:01

More women than men, but I do know some grown men, big, strong, weightlifting men who run out of the room screaming like a little girl when they see a spider in the bathroom.

01:57:15

But anyway, a harmless spider. That's really rational. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's harmless.

01:57:20

Of course, there are black widow spiders out there and things. It's true. It could be. It could be. But even then, you know, you can still handle it in a rational way.

01:57:28

I mean, I'm just saying. Well, I want to thank you for being such an excellent guest today,

01:57:34

Aaron, as you always are. I look forward to your return to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio soon and frequently.

01:57:41

And I also want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sponsoring Iron Sherpins Iron Radio.

01:57:47

Just to remind our listeners, Aaron Brewster is an annual sponsor of Iron Sherpins Iron Radio through Evermind Ministries and Truth Love Parent.

01:57:57

So please, not only for your own benefit, first and foremost, contact his ministry for those resources that he has, but also to remind him of how much you as a listener love

01:58:15

Iron Sherpins Iron Radio. So I would really appreciate that very much. I want to also thank our listeners, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:58:24

And I do want to remind you, folks, please don't forget about the three day

01:58:30

Bible conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, featuring my very dear friend,

01:58:35

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. Which is going to be held at the

01:58:44

Spooky Spooky. What is it called? Spooky Nook Spooky Nook events at or should

01:58:56

I say in Mannheim, Pennsylvania. And that will be September 15th, 16th and 17th, which is a

01:59:03

Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And for more details, you can keep revisiting

01:59:08

Iron Sherpins Iron Radio dot com. And you can also keep revisiting

01:59:15

Mid -Atlantic Reformation dot org, Mid -Atlantic Reformation dot org and click on events.

01:59:23

And we look forward to hearing from you, the listener, with your questions tomorrow.

01:59:31

We have a first time guest who is with the aforementioned Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society. His name is

01:59:38

David Stolfus Stoltzfus. And I'm looking forward to interviewing him for the first time.

01:59:46

And I will be finding out momentarily the topic of that discussion tomorrow. And I do hope that all of you listening will always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater savior than you are a sinner.