January 31, 2025 Show with A. M. Brewster on “Quit: How to Stop Family Strife for Good”

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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 in 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 Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland 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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 31st day of January 2025.

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I'm delighted to have a returning guest on the program today, A .M.

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Brewster, who is president of Evermind Ministries. He's also an ACBC certified biblical counselor, an author, a conference speaker, and host of the

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Truth Love Parent podcast. And today, he's going to be addressing the theme of his new book, Quit!

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How to Stop Family Strife for Good. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M.

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Brewster. Thank you very much. It has been a little while. So much has happened.

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You've had some health struggles. We had this little hurricane sweep through our state, but God is good.

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We're both still here, and I'm very excited to have this conversation. Why don't you give our listeners some updates on the devastating effects that Hurricane, is it

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Helena or Helene? Helene. Helene, yeah. Helene. Yeah. More on a first name basis.

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That Hurricane Helene had upon you and your neighbors there in North Carolina, and the progress that you experienced digging out of that mess.

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Yeah. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to share. Please be praying for North Carolina. There are still people living in tents, people whose houses were destroyed.

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We drive through certain parts of the state, and the devastation is just as extreme as it was the day after it all happened.

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Real help is needed. Real prayer is needed. I recently am joining a committee here in the

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Transylvania County area to help specifically the government, the county's goals to want to focus in on what they call spiritual and mental health.

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And a pastor in town reached out to my pastor, who reached out to me, who got me connected. And I'll be starting up here soon, connecting with them, looking for ways.

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You know, we're trying to help people build back, but we're also realizing that right now there's a huge need for the gospel.

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That's what I and obviously the other pastors are recognizing, and we want to be able to speak into that on a district, county level.

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So please bring him prayer for that. So people ask how we did, and I said, you know what? We are proof that the bell curve exists.

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There are some people who did far worse than we did, and there are people who did far better than we did. On our street alone, our street was actually the hardest hit part of the city of Brevard.

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It's where we live. And there were houses on our street that had two, three, four feet of water in the house.

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But by God's grace, years and years ago, when they built our house before we ever owned it, it was built up.

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They were just dumping tons and tons of dirt where they were going to build the house. And so we're approximately five feet higher than the house next door to us.

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The flood was inches away from getting into the main floor. Now, we lost our

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HVAC. We lost our bottom level. We lost tons of personal belongings. The building back has been difficult.

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There's so much work that it's been—we just recently—this happened back in October, and just now in January, we just recently were able to find people to come out and start the work, basically.

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We still have personal belongings sitting out in our yard. There are two crates of my wife's china that she inherited from her grandmother that have been sitting out in the backyard for months, just because there's just nowhere to put it.

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So the Lord's been good. Andrew Rappaport from Striving for Eternity Ministries started up a

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Gibson to go for us, and so has been trying to collect some money to help us with this. We lost a car to the flood.

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It was really pretty amazing. And the fact that we kind of represent the middle ground and that there are people who fared far worse than we is really just—it's staggering.

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But we praise the Lord that, though I evacuated my wife and daughter on the day that the flood came in, they were taken by police in a boat that pulled all the way up to our house and then took them to a shelter,

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I stayed back with my dad, who could not be transported that way because of medical reasons.

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And so my mom and my dad and I kind of spent the night waiting for the water to get into the house, but the

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Lord kept that from happening. Anyway, it's a very, very intense experience, but we thank the

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Lord for it, and we thank the Lord for where He's brought us. But we are still building back ourselves.

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We could still use prayer and support in that process. But again, like I said, the whole state of North Carolina is in that spot, and there are people who need even more because they don't know the gospel.

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Hey, man, well, how do people actually access that fund app that Andrew Rappaport has created for you?

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Yeah, so it's kind of—it is not a GoFundMe, but it's kind of like that.

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It's called GiveSendGo .com. And then after the

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GiveSendGo .com, if you put slash S -F -E, which stands for Striving for Eternity, that will take you, and it says support the

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Brewsters after Hurricane Helene. Striving for Eternity is facilitating all of those donations on our behalf and then sending them to us as it comes in.

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But GiveSendGo .com forward slash S -F -E. Great.

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Well— Thank you for asking. Hey, my pleasure. I'm going to give our listeners our email address right off the bat in case they have questions of their own.

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For you on the topic of the day, and the topic of the day is the title of your book,

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Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good. And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence.

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So, Aaron, the theme of the book is probably something that is universally experienced by nearly everyone on the planet

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Earth, whether you are the most seasoned Christian walking the planet, or you're an unbeliever, or a member of another religion.

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But what were the compelling factors that led you personally to write this book?

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So the book Genesis actually started back when I was working at Victory Academy for Boys in the

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North Woods of Wisconsin. Wonderful program. It's a boarding home for at -risk teens. And I was the residence manager as well as the lead residential counselor.

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So these boys would come from all over the United States, and we would work with them there. There was one boy in particular early on.

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Really, I mean, just as all these guys are, so, so sweet. You know, they're wonderful creations of God, wonderful individuals, and yet very enslaved to sin.

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And this one boy, he just created strife everywhere he went. There wasn't a single relationship that wasn't strained at best.

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And, excuse me, he, it got so bad that he found himself working downward through our program in the level system.

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And then he and I got to a place where we were spending a lot of time together because he just couldn't be civil with anybody.

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And by God's grace, I just decided to study something that I really hadn't thought of all the time, because for most of us, the word strife isn't really a word that's part of our, you know, our regular daily vocabulary.

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We'll talk about conflict. We talk about disagreements and arguments, things like that. But strife isn't a word we use.

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But as I was reading through another passage in Proverbs, I came upon this word strife. And I was like, oh, that sounds just like this young man.

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So I did a word study on that word through the book of Proverbs. And as I did that, I started sharing these verses with him because these verses were pointing at the different individuals who create strife, the different consequences that come with strife.

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But then also they started hinting at here and there really the cures for strife. And so as he and I started that little study together, by God's grace, you know, he started to change.

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Now, he didn't become perfect overnight, and I'm sure there's still a lot of strife in his life to this day.

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But there was some significance. As he started to submit to those truths, things really started to change.

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And he finished off his year with us at Victory Academy. And I was sad to see him go.

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So that was kind of the genesis where it started. And then one day I was like, you know what? Everybody needs this.

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I mean, literally, everybody needs this. And you made that observation already. Obviously, everyone needs this.

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But you know what? I found that it's not as obvious as you think. And this is another reason I wrote the book. As a biblical counselor, there are people out there who would reject the idea that there is family strife in their home.

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And they reject it for different reasons. I have found individuals who reject it for the same reason that people say they have no sin, as 1

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John tells us. They're deluded. They don't realize that these things are a problem.

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They've kind of redefined in their own minds what's okay and what's not. And then their minds are kind of like, well, this is just normal.

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This is just what we experience. And they say that it's not strife. And then other people, it's similar, but some people are just like, we don't sin.

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There's those people on one extreme. And then the other extreme, they're the people who they've just defined things incorrectly.

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I have a friend. I don't think that man ever stops blowing his nose. I mean,

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I've known him for decades. And he's just perpetually wiping and blowing his nose. And what's interesting is that it's just become his lifestyle to such a degree that that just seems normal to him.

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The idea that maybe there's something wrong that he needs to dig into and address, it's just not there.

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This is just how his life is. And there are so many people who are living with various levels of strife in their home that they don't even recognize the fact that it's there perpetually.

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And so sometimes those people will only come looking for help when the strife has gotten so bad.

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The conflict is so explosive that all of a sudden they're like, wow, well, this is a problem. But the reality is that it's been a problem for a long time.

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And so I want people to be able to acknowledge what strife is, to see it for what it is, and to be able to start working on it before,

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God forbid, things get to that place where everything's just exploding. Well, before we start having you list creators of strife, perhaps you could give some telltale signs that strife exists, because as you just said, there are people who are oblivious to that.

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And by the way, is there anything wrong with being oblivious to having strife in your home?

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Because isn't that like the bliss of ignorance? You know, people say ignorance is bliss, but I have found that that's only true in one situation.

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When you are ignorant of the wickedness of sin, and I don't mean the fact that sin is wicked, but your mind doesn't think that way.

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You don't realize the depths to which people will go and the things on which they imagine it, you know?

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When you're ignorant of that kind of thing, that is bliss. When you are ignorant of the consequences of sin because you're not participating in those sins, that's bliss.

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But being ignorant about the strife in our homes is not bliss because that's very similar to being ignorant of the fact that you have cancer.

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Now, I'm not one of those people who likes to compare sin to cancer because we don't want to see sin as a disease. But I do use this comparison only because we all recognize the fact to be ignorant of the reality that there are cancerous cells in our body is not a good thing.

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It's not bliss. You want to know about it as soon as possible, start dealing with it as soon as possible. And the same thing is true with strife.

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Now, the creators of strife are synonymous with—they start to define for us.

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They help us to understand why strife exists. And the book is only 100 pages long.

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Actually, it's like 109, right? But actual content is only about 100 pages long. So it's very short.

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But I broke it up into four different parts. The first one is the creators. Second is consequences.

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Then causes. And then the cure. And yeah, it's alliterated.

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Yeah, you know, they say Baptist preacher thing, whatever. I'm not a huge fan of alliteration unless it comes really naturally. And this one did, so I liked it.

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I leaned into it. But I also want people to remember it too. That's why. If we did alliteration correctly, they'll remember it.

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So the first section, which is the creators of strife, is broken into two parts. And I just stepped through the book of Proverbs, and I'm pulling out the verses that talk about the type of people who create strife.

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And it starts with a really specific. The list that I build goes from a really specific, in some of our minds, exceptionally egregious.

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You know, we're like, wow, that's a, of course, that kind of person would create strife. But that kind of person is not in our home.

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And then it goes out to the more general. But here's the one thing they all have in common. And this is why

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I can say categorically that every single household in the entire world has strife in it.

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It is the fact that strife is the natural consequence of sin. So unless you actually do have a sinless household, and you don't, every time there is sin, there is going to be a certain level of strife.

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And none of that strife is acceptable. None of it's okay. None of it does God look upon and say, that pleases me.

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It's all bad because it's all a consequence of sin in the home. And as we look through Proverbs, we'll see that each one of these creators of strife are identified by a specific sin.

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The last one, the most general, the broadest one that I deal with. So if somebody honestly works the entire list and they're like, oh, well, you know, my family, none of these things describe my family.

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The last one that we look at is from Proverbs 17, 19. Whoever loves transgression loves strife.

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And you know what? Every time we sin, we sin because we want to. We sin because we love it. And the point on this one is this category of sinful people stir up strife.

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All of them do. Every single one. So if you have a sinner in your house, even if none of the other categories apply to them, you are going to have strife.

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It's there. But what I love doing is I love starting with the more specific, even, like I said, potentially egregious sin.

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The very first sin I list in the book comes from Proverbs 23, verses 29 through 30, which if you're familiar with that, it asks who has woe, who has sorrow, who has strife.

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And it goes on to describe someone who tarries long over wine. They go to try and mix wine.

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Right. And we see very easily it's not a problem. We all understand. We all recognize that addicts stir up strife.

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People who are addicted to substances stir up strife. I mean, Chris, you and I have spoken about this on a number of occasions, especially when a person is under the influence of something else.

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Man, most of what they do is strife causing. Here's the thing, though. Most people, especially with younger children, when they get to this point in the book, which is the very first point, the very first creator of strife, they'll be tempted to skip over that.

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Because as far as I know, their kids aren't smoking marijuana. No one's on crack in their home. But I go on to reveal that, biblically speaking, the reality is that every single person in the entire world, including you, including me, including everyone listening and everyone in their family, we are all addicted to something, to something that is far worse than alcohol, that is far worse than any drug.

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We are addicted to our own way. We are addicted to what is right in our own eyes.

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We are addicted to our own desires. We are addicted to our sin. We worship self, and we use everything in our lives to lay on the altar to self.

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And so we are all addicts. And what my hope and prayer is, as people work through this list, what they'll see is that, number one, the vast majority of the people in their house, each one of these nine categories applies to all of them.

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You might find a category that doesn't apply to one person in your house. But I'll tell you what, all nine of them apply to me at different times.

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So not only do I create strife in my house by sinning, I create strife in all of the ways that the book of Proverbs identifies these sins create strife.

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And I, Aaron Brewster, am doing that in my home. So it is a very big deal.

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It's very important. We have to understand who the creators of strife are. We need to be able to identify how they're creating that strife if we're ever going to be able to really help them to stop.

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Well, we'll pick up after the first commercial break with those specific details.

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And once again, if you have a question of your own for Aaron Brewster, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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And this is definitely one of those topics that would lend itself to personal and private questions.

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But we'll be hearing from you and your questions and more of Aaron Brewster after these messages.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today. We're now back with A .M.

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Brewster, and we are discussing his book Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good.

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And before I go into any of our listener questions, I'd like you to begin talking about the root causes of these things.

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I'd love to do that for sure, and I think we will get to that. There's a section, so the second part of the book is called

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The Consequences of Sin. The third part is The Causes of Sin, and I don't mind jumping to the causes if you want me to.

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You can go in the order that you feel is best. In fact, I was actually – had more of the creators of strife in mind when

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I made that statement. Gotcha. Gotcha. Definitely. Originally the book was going to start with the consequences of strife.

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When I wrote it, started working on it years ago, I wanted to start with the consequences because I think everybody – again,

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I wanted people to be able to say – see, hey, look, there is strife in your family. It is there because these consequences are there – excuse me – in your family.

33:27

I wanted to start with that, but a good friend of mine, an author and the lady speaker, Shannon Popkin, she and I were talking a lot about the book, and she said, no, you really should start with the creators so people can start identifying right off the bat.

33:39

I was like, you know what? That's a really good idea. Now the question was, where do we put the consequences? I ended up putting it second in the book because, again, it's really important not just that we say, yeah, of course.

33:50

Well, you know, strife is a consequence of sin, so that's the problem. Well, no, there actually are consequences of strife as well that layer on top of it.

34:01

Different sins hit us in different ways. And the whole – the main verse associated with this book comes from Proverbs 17, 14, which says the beginning of strife is like letting out water.

34:14

Now that sounds really very simple, like letting out water.

34:19

You almost think about turning on a hose or spilling a bucket or something like that. But this is a picture of water that is pouring through a broken dam.

34:29

And all throughout the book we have this metaphor, this picture of our lives as like an aqueduct, as a –

34:37

I just lost the word. The dam is the wall, but all the water behind the wall. The dam is our ability to kind of have self -control, our ability to keep all of this stuff inside of us.

34:48

And we know that because of our sin nature, it always works itself out, whether it's working itself out through our actions or our words, our heart comes out.

34:56

And so when our self -control breaks down and we can no longer hold back these – not that we're victims and that type of a thing, but we choose basically to sin.

35:07

That dam wall breaks and water just comes pouring out and it floods the countryside.

35:14

It destroys houses. It makes a huge impact. And so that's what really the main picture of part two is all about, the consequences of sin.

35:23

And this is something that I think is really important to teach our kids because we focus on all the wrong consequences.

35:30

We know from experience and from the scriptures that sin hurts. That's a concept you can teach to the youngest children.

35:36

That's the title of that chapter, chapter three, Sin Hurts. But how does sin hurt us is the main question.

35:44

And because we're humans, because we're fleshly minded, because we don't think about what we should think about, the secondary consequences of sin end up becoming the most important thing to us.

35:55

The secondary consequences are those punishments that we might receive. Somebody grounds us or we get a spanking or there's marital silence.

36:06

There's quiet going on because there's that tension. Those types of consequences are the ones that hit us where we are and kind of hurt, sting the most in our physical lives.

36:16

But those are secondary consequences. Those secondary consequences are actually there in our lives to point to the primary consequences of sin.

36:25

And too often in biblical counseling, people have come to get help for the strife in their families because they want to deal with the secondary consequences.

36:36

But listen carefully, my friends. If your main goal for dealing with anything in your life, any sin in your life, is to just not have to worry about the secondary consequences anymore, you will never find the answer.

36:49

You will never find the cure. You will only ever continually make things worse. Because the secondary consequences, when we get focused on that, we're just focused on how it affects us.

36:59

But as I said earlier, the secondary consequences are designed to point to the primary consequences in our lives.

37:05

And there are three of these that we see in church. The first of which is the real personal hurt that happens.

37:13

But this isn't the personal hurt that comes from somebody giving me a consequence, grounding me.

37:18

This is the hurt that basically the more and more I sin, the easier I make it for me to sin.

37:24

I'm creating a habit. I'm habituating myself to sin in the same way over and over again.

37:32

And by the way, though I'm not doing it right now, I'm hitting the highlights. This book is filled with scripture.

37:37

I'd never like to make a claim, either in my speaking or in the book, that is not paired with the scriptural evidence for that claim.

37:45

But given our time, I am kind of going through this. Read the book, see the scripture, see all the points, dig into it.

37:50

But this personal hurt idea is very clear. In fact, Ephesians 4 .19 talks about the fact that we have become callous and we have given ourselves over to sensuality.

38:00

That practice of becoming callous to sin is part of this concept.

38:06

But then there's interpersonal hurt. That's the hurt that happens in our relationships. Now, here's the thing.

38:13

Secondary consequences only come into your life when it's found out by people, right? But even if nobody else knows, no one else in my life knows about this sin.

38:22

Maybe it's a thought pattern. Maybe it's an attitude. If nobody else ever knows about it, the primary consequences happen every single time without fail.

38:31

That means that if I have a lust problem and I am addicted to pornography and my wife doesn't know about it, my relationship with my wife cannot help but be hurt.

38:42

It cannot help but be affected by that sin issue in my life. And sometimes people can't put their fingers on it.

38:49

They don't know what it is, but it's there. And it's definitely having an effect on my relationship.

38:56

And the last one is to stay with the parallelism of personal hurt, interpersonal hurt, I went with divine hurt.

39:02

When I'm explaining this to children, I'll talk about how our sin hurts. It hurts us. It hurts others, and it hurts God. To be clear, we want to make certain that we understand this and our children understand it, that our sin doesn't hurt

39:17

God in any tangible, physical way. We can't lose our salvation. Really what it's affecting isn't our relationship with the

39:24

Lord so much as it's affecting our fellowship with Him. Scriptures are clear that there are things that I can do that will absolutely keep

39:33

God from hearing my prayers. It's had a very real impact on my relationship with—my fellowship, excuse me, with the

39:40

Lord when I'm sinning against Him perpetually. So those primary consequences are there every single time.

39:47

And when we see strife in our home, we say, okay, that strife is there because of sin. And the consequences of this is, first and foremost, we're hurting ourselves, we're hurting others, and we're hurting our fellowship with the

39:59

Lord. Those are the things we need to address. In order to glorify God, those are the things toward which we need to be running, to be pleasing the

40:08

Lord, to be loving others, and to be having a healthy spiritual maturity in our lives that isn't perpetually habituating us to sin.

40:16

So that chapter ends pretty much—it goes into some more details.

40:22

It talks about how strife explodes without warning and how it separates families. But it talks about how it destroys and how it ruins enjoyable times.

40:30

It talks about what God's purpose for this hurt is, the purpose for the consequences, how

40:37

He wants to work through them. So there's a lot more in here. But one of the things I wanted to mention is that as a biblical counselor,

40:43

I can't help but give my counselees what I call life work. Some of you have probably heard me say it before.

40:50

Nobody likes homework, but everybody wants to have a better life. And so people who are serious about having a better life will do their life work.

40:58

And all throughout the book, I've got these sections where you can do some life work as well. You can sit down and identify, okay, who are the creators of strife in my home?

41:05

Why do they create strife? What are the different consequences do we see? All of these things will help you as you're going through to be able to, when it comes time for the cure, to be able to truly identify the people in your home and the help that they need the most.

41:20

But the other thing that's in here that I found really interesting, and Chris, you can speak into this if you've ever seen a book like this before. Andrew, who has a personal library of probably over 4 ,000 books, and he's already sold a bunch of them, he said that he's never seen this in a book before.

41:34

And I can't take credit for it. My friend Shannon Popkin, again, she suggested this. She said, Aaron, you have so many amazing resources on your podcast.

41:43

We have over 500 episodes all about biblical parenting. And she said so much of this stuff you dig into deeper on your podcast.

41:50

What you need to do is when you're talking about something in your book, if you want to give the reader an opportunity to dig deeper into it, she said just include a

41:58

QR code right there on the page where they can use their phones. They can scan it, and they can go right to the series, right to the online course, right to the podcast episode that will then take that idea and build it out even more.

42:10

So even though the book is only 100 pages, and even though you can learn everything you need to learn in 100 pages, there is so much more resources that could technically be fit into 100 pages of books because of all of the different QR codes throughout the book that allow you to take this one particular thing that maybe sticks out to you.

42:30

You really need more help with and dive into that. Well, we do have

42:39

Wendell in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who has a question for you.

42:45

And Wendell asks, This is compounded when the head of the household, the husband, is an unbeliever.

43:22

That's an amazing question because there are so many people who are in that position. In fact, honestly, you can have two professing

43:30

Christians be in that exact same position where the one doesn't want to get help or the one doesn't accept what's being taught in the

43:39

Scriptures about this type of thing. So that's always very difficult. Obviously, we want to start with, first of all, dealing with the log in our own eyes.

43:47

That's where Jesus tells us we need to start before we deal with the splinter in someone else's. And I'll tell you, even just by God's common grace and a practical level, sometimes my wife is doing this thing, but I look at my log first.

44:01

Sometimes my addressing my log for myself was really all that it took for the

44:08

Lord to convict my wife and for her to want to start dealing with the log that's in her eye, too.

44:13

It's not like a magic potion, right? It's not a formula that's going to work every single time.

44:18

We are sinners, but that's something that God does. And we always want to make certain that we're following his expectations for ourselves first.

44:25

Secondly, we need to pray for that individual. Obviously, God is going to—we can't change them. God's going to be the one who's going to have to do that work in their lives.

44:35

But one of the things that I think—it doesn't take very long to describe, to have somebody see the fact that strife is real and the consequences of strife in the family are real.

44:43

They can't—unless they're living in a huge delusion, right? Unless they're willing to say,

44:49

I have no sin. I am completely comfortable with everything in my family.

44:55

All of my relationships are perfect. Nothing is uncomfortable in my family. And no one's saying that. In fact, in our society, it's cool.

45:02

It's chic to complain about our families, right? And we want to talk about those things about our families that are the hardest, which we do at work.

45:08

So by virtue of that, we're complaining about these things because those things that we're complaining about are strife.

45:14

They're the issues going on in our homes. So everyone acknowledges that it's there. And one time

45:20

I had a young man come to Victory Academy for boys who was a professing atheist, and he was vehement.

45:25

He was unkind. And I told him very early on, I said, hey, listen, you're all about science.

45:32

You're all about reason. You're all about the things that you can see, right? So I want to give you a challenge. I want you to conduct a science experiment.

45:40

This is how the science experiment is going to work. You make a certain number of choices, and those choices have consequences.

45:47

All choices have consequences. Look at your life. Look at your relationships. Look at the fact that you're here at this boy's home.

45:54

Look at the consequences that you invite into your life via punishments or whatever else.

45:59

The way that people think about you. Take all of those things, even how you feel. Man, I said, you're like always angry.

46:06

You're never having a good time. Look at all of those things, and then compare them to the individuals here who profess to be

46:14

Bible -believing Christians, who are at least living consistently to what they believe. You're living consistently with what you believe, so then take us, who are living consistently with what we believe, and see how our lives are doing.

46:26

Look at how we're feeling. Look at our relationships. Look at the things that are happening in our lives.

46:32

Then, if you want to, add an extra layer. Look at the other guys around you. They talk. I want you to conduct an experiment, and I want you to see whose philosophy of life is working better for them.

46:44

Now, this is not a health and wealth gospel. This is just a—because obviously all Christians struggle. This isn't like, oh, we're glorifying

46:50

God, so we have more money than you. No, no, no, no. This is about the quality of the life that we are living, the choices that we personally are making, how it's affecting the relationships, the joy and peace and contentment and gratitude that we have, the delight that we have in this life.

47:03

It's really pointing out those things. And if a person is honest with themselves, and they're rejecting the

47:09

Lord, they've got some really ugly, uncomfortable things in their lives that the Christians don't have. They just don't, and they can see it.

47:17

They might not want to admit it, but they can see it. So, if I can help somebody see that, yes, strife is in your life, and yes, your philosophy is broken.

47:25

Your philosophy of life is not making it better. You're X number of years old, and this is still a problem, or it's a problem that's getting worse.

47:33

And then the question comes, would you be interested in trying something different? Would you be interested in saying, okay, you say that you don't believe in the

47:41

Bible. You say you don't believe in this Christian stuff, but what if you're wrong? What if the

47:46

Bible is true? How would you know? Well, according to what it says in there, one of the things would be that strife in your family starts to go down.

47:57

If you were to start putting some of these things into practice, and that were to happen, maybe that would be what it takes to show you that, hey, the

48:05

Scriptures actually know what they're talking about. Now, I'm not saying that person, just because they put some steps into practice, are going to be born again.

48:12

But hopefully it can lead to that. But it's just a practical thing that I've done just to help people to see, yes, you have a problem.

48:19

No, your way of fixing it is doing anything other than fixing it. And really calling them to just be humble enough by God's common grace to say, hey, maybe there's another way.

48:29

Maybe this is something we could try. And that's not to say that everyone goes for it, but maybe it could be beneficial in this— not

48:36

Wendell's situation per se, but anyone listening who might be in this situation. And guess what,

48:43

Wendell? If you give me your full mailing address, you're going to receive a free copy of Quit, How to Stop Strife for Good, by our guest today,

48:53

A .M. Brewster. It will be shipped out to you by our sponsors, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

49:01

So thanks a lot for your question. And if you are a first -time questioner, you'll also receive a brand -new

49:10

New American Standard Bible. That goes for any of our other listeners who submit questions who are first -time questioners.

49:18

You'll also receive a New American Standard Bible in addition to A .M.

49:25

Brewster's book. But we have— We better have way more questions coming in now.

49:31

Like, wow. Like, you know, giving away a free book. That's awesome. Send those questions in. Well, we do have a very good question from an anonymous listener.

49:44

And this is something that I have wondered about myself.

49:51

I've been an eyewitness to this situation from people close to me.

49:58

But this anonymous listener says,

50:06

I personally am very opposed to the 12 -step programs

50:11

A .A. and N .A. and anything related to them. How do you respond when an addiction is very much a central reason for strife in your home and the party that is battling the addiction is finding great success in one of these programs that you may have great reasons to oppose for theological and spiritual reasons?

50:41

Yeah, another good question. By God's common grace, mankind is able to be decent.

50:49

An individual sinner, though totally depraved, does not perpetually act on the absolute worst parts of his depravity.

50:59

We are able to create. We are able to discover. And we are able to conclude things that can be helpful, can be beneficial, can even kind of imitate truth to a certain degree or really just be truth.

51:15

For example, I used to work for Panera Bread Company. I was a regional training manager and opened up a bunch of different stores, did all the training.

51:21

And I told people all the time, I don't know if the person who wrote the training material, the person who founded the company were Christians, but man, this stuff could preach.

51:29

And in a very similar way, people will find success with man -made ideas, secular concepts.

51:37

Now, that is not a reason to embrace those. I'm a biblical counselor. I'm not an integrationist. I do not lean on man's ideas in my counseling.

51:47

And I don't think anyone else should as well. But it's not surprising when I hear of people who are helped by AA.

51:54

AA helped them to get dry, get clean, right? Because by God's common grace, they do put things into place that are actually biblical.

52:02

One of those big things being accountability. I'll tell you what. Something that a person in AA has that I do not see enough of in the average

52:09

Christian church is accountability. We are not confessing our sins one to another. We are not, when we are spiritually weak, calling people into our lives to help us out.

52:18

We're not doing that the way we should. So it doesn't surprise me that a person has a certain level of success in a program like this, like that.

52:26

And I'm happy for it, especially when it does result in the individual becoming clean or dry.

52:33

However, like I teach parents all the time with their kids, just because your child is doing the right thing doesn't mean that God is glorified.

52:41

Just because your child is doing the right thing in the right way doesn't mean your child is glorifying the

52:47

Lord. True obedience, as identified in the Scripture, has four components, three of which we have a certain level of control over, and the fourth we don't.

52:56

We need to do the right things in the right way. Here's the key. For the right reasons.

53:03

And then and only then does the Holy Spirit empower us to actually glorify the

53:08

Lord by truly obeying. And that's in the right power. That's that last part over which we don't have any control.

53:15

In fact, could you pick up right where you left off when we return from our midway break? I'd love to. Hey, great.

53:20

Just don't forget where you left off. And please be patient with us, folks. This is the longer break than normal.

53:26

In the middle of the show, please write down as many as much of the contact information for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently respond to our advertisers, keeping in mind that their financing is what keeps the

53:42

Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio on the air. So, also, don't forget to send in your questions for A .M.

53:48

Brewster to ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back. I'm Dr.

53:59

Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Piper.

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It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

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Dr. Moorcraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

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For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

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For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

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heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the

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Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr. Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005. The publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors.

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It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the

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

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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

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Iron Sharpens 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, while always defending the key doctrines of the

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

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Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

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In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

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He sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

59:51

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

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Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

01:00:08

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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If you love Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

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Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission?

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. I'm Dr.

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Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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

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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

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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

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

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01:12:10

And so we are now back with my guest today, A .M. Brewster, and we are discussing his book,

01:12:16

Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good. If you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:12:24

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And before the break, an anonymous listener was talking about how they are personally very opposed to the 12 -step programs,

01:12:39

AA and NA, for theological and spiritual reasons, and how do you deal with a situation when somebody in your household has an addiction and they've been finding success using one of these non -Christian organizations, although some of the meetings in these organizations are run by Christian individuals, the organizations themselves are not

01:13:07

Christian, and some would have serious problems with them, just like the anonymous listener would.

01:13:14

In fact, I'm having, at some point perhaps next week, my friend Jason Wallace, who is not only the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, he is also a documentarian, and he has recently done a critical examination of Alcoholics Anonymous, and so you'll find out some information that perhaps you never knew, if you listen in, and we'll keep you updated on when

01:13:43

Jason is returning to the show. But you were talking about how the

01:13:49

Holy Spirit must be involved in whatever ideology or worldview a person is adopting to overcome an addiction, and if you want to continue where you left off.

01:14:02

Yeah, and that's where Alcoholics Anonymous and programs like that fail. They fail because they might want you to do the right things in the right ways, the what and the how, which isn't always true, by the way.

01:14:19

I'm not going to go into it right now, but there are legitimately things about AA that are unvaluable. It's not going to be helpful to follow necessarily that step.

01:14:30

But the key is, and this is where I was going with all of this, we want to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons, and that's where AA fails.

01:14:38

They tip their hat to God, whoever that might be for the individual sitting there, but they definitely are not opening up the

01:14:46

Scriptures and revealing the God of the Bible and calling people to submit to the expectations there in their relationship with Him.

01:14:53

So when I have somebody in that kind of a situation, I celebrate that they're making good steps, that they're on the wagon, yay, but it's not because of AA.

01:15:04

It's because of these biblical truths, some of which have creeped into AA, some of which it was founded on.

01:15:11

But there's something far deeper, far more important than what is being taught at AA, and that's what

01:15:17

I'll use as a springboard with these individuals to help them see that doing the right thing in the right way is no guarantee for success over time.

01:15:26

You will stay on the wagon as long as you personally are strong enough to stay on the wagon, as long as you've got other people on the wagon willing to fight to keep you on that wagon.

01:15:34

But it's God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, in that empowering that enables us to not sin, to truly, in a

01:15:43

Christ -honoring way, obey for the right reasons, for the glory of God. That's what everyone in those programs needs.

01:15:49

I highly suggest people look into Freedom That Lasts, a program put together by Jim Berg.

01:15:55

It's helped men and women come out of addiction in a Christ -honoring way for many years now. They use some of their material while I was at Victory Academy for Boys.

01:16:04

So if anyone's looking for something, a more Christ -honoring alternative, a Christ -honoring way to help people with their addictions,

01:16:12

I would encourage you to check out Jim Berg's Freedom That Lasts. In fact, while you're plugging an organization or ministry or program,

01:16:21

I'd like to plug one of my own that I personally used, admitted myself into over a decade ago, where I did achieve sobriety and maintained it ever since.

01:16:39

This is Hebron Colony in Boone, North Carolina, and a wonderful organization, strictly biblical organization, does not utilize the

01:16:54

Twelve Steps at all, does not follow that philosophy. And if you want more details, it's also free, which is rare even amongst

01:17:04

Christian programs for addiction. It's the oldest continuously running addiction recovery ministry for men in the

01:17:15

United States, and they also do have a sister ministry for women called

01:17:22

Grace Home in Santee, South Carolina. So if you want to find out more about Hebron Colony for Men and Grace Home for Women, you can go to hebroncolony .org,

01:17:34

hebroncolony .org. But pick up where you left off there. Well, I think that would be my answer to that particular question.

01:17:44

So if there's another question out there, we can go ahead and look at that. But I think that individual and the heart that they had,

01:17:50

I definitely wanted to bring it to that particular point, that really the reasons why we're doing what we're doing need to be brought back to the

01:17:58

Scriptures every single time. Okay, Anonymous, if you care to receive a free copy of this book,

01:18:05

Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good, send me an email and include your full name and address.

01:18:12

Of course, that information will be kept private. We just need it, obviously, to have the book shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

01:18:26

So we look forward to hearing back from you. And please, two hours goes by very quickly on this show.

01:18:34

We're already more than halfway through. Why don't you pick up on the next element of your book you want to make sure you highlight today?

01:18:43

Yeah, I will do that. My wife just handed me lemon essential oil. I was telling her my mic was muted, and I said,

01:18:52

I just got this thing in my throat that won't go away. So you talk for another couple seconds while I put this in my mouth.

01:18:58

Okay, sure. And folks, I just want to thank all of you who have been praying for me, the hundreds of you who have contacted me, and let me know that you have been praying for me because of my health issues, my congestive heart failure, my blood clots in my lung and in my heart.

01:19:19

Please continue to pray for me. Please also add to that prayer request prayers for my sister

01:19:27

Mary, who has serious surgery awaiting her due to a wound that will not heal.

01:19:36

She is either having a part of her foot amputated or her entire leg extending all the way up to above the knee amputated.

01:19:46

The doctors have not made a decision, at least the last time I spoke with her yesterday. So please pray for her.

01:19:53

Please also pray that this trial in her life leads her closer to Jesus Christ and to a true understanding of the gospel.

01:20:03

But I'm assuming you're ready now, Aaron? Yeah, yes. Thank you so much. Hopefully, if you're coughing and gurgling on my side.

01:20:12

So the next part of the book dives into what

01:20:17

I call the causes of strife, which confuses some people in counseling. It's easy to identify the creators, right?

01:20:25

Even if we're honest enough to identify ourselves as being a creator of strife. But this book is all about starting very broad and then drilling down to the specific needs that everyone has and what everyone's going to need applied to their particular unique situation.

01:20:43

And so I've identified the specific creator of strife and maybe the particular flavor.

01:20:50

They're an addict. They're a fool. They're an angry person. They're a liar, whatever the case may be.

01:20:55

But still, why do they do what they do? Why do they lie? Why do they get angry? What is this foolishness in them?

01:21:03

These questions have to be answered. We have to understand it biblically to be able to address the real root problem.

01:21:10

And again, I just want to point this out. A lot of people come to counseling for help because they want to get rid of the fruit of the issue.

01:21:17

They think that the fruit is the main problem. But if I had a tree and that tree every single year was putting out gross, nasty, deformed apples,

01:21:29

I don't fix that problem by just pulling all the apples off of the tree. In fact,

01:21:35

I don't fix that problem by pulling all the apples off the tree and going to Walmart and buying really beautiful apples and then going back to the tree and then tying each apple by the stem onto a branch so that the tree just looks beautiful with all these amazing apples.

01:21:47

Because even then, those apples themselves will fall and rot and die on the tree because they don't have any life in them.

01:21:54

And that's so often how we approach fixing ourselves, right? Getting help. Just as long as I don't see the problem in my life,

01:22:02

I'm okay. But as we said earlier, everything in the outer man starts in the inner man. And that's where the causes of strife seeks to get.

01:22:10

It seeks to get down to the absolute root of why we do these things and why we sin.

01:22:17

And I identify three of them. Now, from a concentric circle perspective, there's a lot of overlap among these three.

01:22:25

But they all are unique. And the first one of these is called deliberate unbelief.

01:22:34

Now, we know that self -proclaimed atheists and other people, they say,

01:22:40

I don't believe in God, right? But we as Christians get in trouble when we think to ourselves that unbelief is not an issue for us.

01:22:47

Yes, we, by God's grace, believe that the Lord died on the cross to save us from our sins and we are born again.

01:22:55

And that is a saving faith that God gives to us as a gift from him that we have no part in so we can't brag.

01:23:02

And God preserves that in us, and we persevere in that faith by his grace. But there's also a practical sanctifying faith.

01:23:11

Every time we sin, we are choosing to not believe God's truth. When your child chooses to sin against you in that moment, they think that not obeying you is a better option than God's command to obey.

01:23:23

And so they do what they think is best. They do what's right in their own eyes. They are not believing what they should know and what you should have taught them from the scriptures.

01:23:31

But we do the exact same thing. And whether it's kind of like an unconscious thing where I'm just forgetting that which

01:23:38

I've been taught, or it's a situation where—and I'll admit this. I have no problem admitting this.

01:23:43

It's terrible. It's awful. I'm not proud of it. But I, Aaron Brewster, sometimes choose to deliberately, consciously do something that I know is a sin.

01:23:50

And I do that, honestly, because I presume upon God's forgiveness. I know

01:23:55

God's going to forgive me. I mean, sometimes I will step into a sin knowing full well that in a short period of time

01:24:02

I'm going to be suffering the consequences of those sins. But God will forgive me, and he will restore me, and he will help me overcome.

01:24:08

And how sick, how sad is that, that we Christians presume upon the Lord like that?

01:24:14

Thankfully, he is faithful where we are not. But deliberate unbelief is a problem. It's a problem for professing

01:24:22

Christians because sometimes we choose to call God a liar. Sometimes we want to do what we want to do, and we think that our way is best.

01:24:30

So they have a section that deals with that. What is faith? What is belief?

01:24:37

How do we deny deliberate unbelief in our lives? And then the next part, the next thing that we deal with actually comes in Chapter 5, which is all part of this third part of the book,

01:24:50

The Causes of Strife. And those two are immaturity and fleshly living.

01:24:57

We don't always sin consciously, high -handedly. It's all tied to unbelief in one way or another, but oftentimes it's just as a result of our own immaturity, where we omit something that we should be doing, or we transgress where we didn't know it was a transgression.

01:25:18

And then fleshly living is something, again, a little different, related to the others, but yet something that we need to watch out for.

01:25:27

And it has to do with these patterns of life. I mean, we talked earlier about sin hurts us because it makes it easier for us to continue sinning.

01:25:37

And that living in the flesh, that acting in the flesh, is something that's very real.

01:25:43

Paul in Romans, he goes into great detail in Chapter 8, where he's going back and forth of flesh, spirit, flesh, spirit, flesh, spirit, talking about.

01:25:57

And we can see ourselves in that process where we say, yep, I was living in the flesh right there.

01:26:04

And I wasn't thinking about it. It wasn't deliberate unbelief. And even one would argue that I'm a mature individual compared to many.

01:26:10

But it was still that fleshly living where I wasn't denying myself, taking up my cross, and following after the

01:26:16

Lord. So we walk through these things. We explain all of these concepts in great detail to help people understand how it applies to their lives.

01:26:23

We pour through the scriptures. I've got Romans 8, 1 through 17 right here in front of me, where I bolded out flesh and spirit.

01:26:30

And we can read through the passage and see what God's trying to teach us there. So that comes kind of to the end of Chapter 5 and the last,

01:26:40

Part 3, which was the causes for strife. So if we step back for a second, we were like, okay,

01:26:48

I create strife and I create strife because I sin. These unique specific sins are part of the reason that I am creating strife.

01:26:57

So then I see the consequences of that strife. I see that the main issue is that I'm sinning against God.

01:27:04

I'm not submitting to Him. I'm not obeying Him. I'm displeasing Him. And so, therefore, we need to dig down deeper to the roots.

01:27:11

Why am I doing that? Why as a professing Christian am I doing these things? Well, sometimes it's deliberate unbelief. Sometimes it's immaturity. Sometimes it's fleshly living.

01:27:17

And what we need to do is we need to identify those particular areas in our lives. And the life work projects in the book are there to help us identify these things.

01:27:27

And I continue the metaphor of the dam and that aqueduct of water.

01:27:33

And understanding how, by God's grace, we can start the process of shutting down the flow of this acidic water into our reservoirs.

01:27:43

That's the word I was thinking about earlier or I couldn't think of earlier. This flow of sinful acidic acid into our reservoirs.

01:27:50

And as we decrease that sin in our lives, we are decreasing the pressure on our dams, as it were.

01:28:01

And we're able to, by God's grace, have less and less of these explosions where our self -control breaks down and our consequences go pouring over everybody.

01:28:10

Now, some people might hear me say that and say, okay, Aaron, are we working towards sinless perfection? How does all that work?

01:28:17

To put it succinctly, no. As a friend of mine used to say, we'll never be sinless this side of heaven.

01:28:22

But by God's grace, we should be sinning less and less. We should be maturing. There should be less deliberate unbelief.

01:28:28

Less immaturity. More spiritual in our lives. And more spirit living in our lives.

01:28:35

And when we do that, we are sinning less. There will be less strife in our lives. There will be fewer consequences of our sin in our lives.

01:28:44

And people have asked me about the subtitle of this book. The book's called Quit. That comes from Proverbs 17, 14.

01:28:52

In the New American Standard, it says, The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so abandon the dispute before it breaks out.

01:28:58

But in the ESV, it says, The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.

01:29:06

And there's this video on the internet. It's funny.

01:29:13

It's silly. And his counseling as he works with people is, just stop it. This woman's talking about the issues and struggles we have in our lives.

01:29:21

Oh, Bob Newhart. Yeah, the Bob Newhart one. And he just replies with, stop it.

01:29:27

That's his. This will fix everything. Just stop it. And yes, for those who know that, quit is partially named with that in mind.

01:29:37

But it's scripture. The Bible says, so quit. Quit before the quarrel brings out. Stop it.

01:29:43

And that's what we're working toward. But the subtitle of the book was originally,

01:29:49

God's Cure for Strife. In fact, when I tell people the name of the book, I almost always say God's Cure for Strife before I get the correct subtitle.

01:29:56

Because the change was kind of recent. And the reason we changed it to that was the fact that God has high expectations.

01:30:06

I am holy. He says, stop it through my power. He says, love the way that I love.

01:30:15

And we say, well, that's impossible for us. It doesn't change the fact that that's the expectation. So this book is called

01:30:21

Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good. Not because I'm saying if you read it and understand it, you will never have issues in your family again.

01:30:29

No, you have sinners in your family. You're not going to be holy as God is holy this side of heaven. But that doesn't change the fact that that is the expectation.

01:30:37

And God's expectation for our family is that we quit the strife. We stop the family strife for good.

01:30:44

It's not acceptable. We don't allow it. That's the goal toward which we're moving. And that's what we're doing together as a family.

01:30:50

Not making excuses for the fact that we're sinners and we'll never be perfect. No. We make the observation, and then we take one step at a time, by God's grace, moving forward.

01:31:01

Great. Let's see here. We have Giselle in Waterbury, Connecticut, who wants to know...

01:31:12

Hey, Giselle. What is the youngest age you would ever counsel parents to kick a disobedient child out of the house?

01:31:23

And what are deal -breakers when it comes to whether or not you let a rebellious child remain in your house?

01:31:32

In other words, what are the key issues that would require removing that child from the household?

01:31:43

Yeah, that is a complicated question. I could probably take the rest of our time talking about it. In fact, it's a frequently asked question whenever we have a biblical counselor on the show.

01:31:53

Yep. Exactly. I interact with this so often. I almost have a script at this point.

01:31:59

But first and foremost, we have to acknowledge the fact that because we live in America, and we do need to obey the laws of America, that kicking a minor out of our house is against the law.

01:32:15

Is anyone below 18 in most states? 18. Correct. Yeah, most states, I believe, it's going to be 18 if considered a minor.

01:32:22

And even if they're maybe not legally considered a minor because they could get married at the age of 17 or something like that, we still run the possibility of actually breaking the law by entering into child endangerment and things like that.

01:32:37

You say, well, Aaron, there are states that don't want to spank our kids, and yet we should still do that too. And I understand it is a fine line to walk.

01:32:43

But if your goal is to be able to have this influence in your child's life, having them taken away from you by the state is definitely not what you want because the state is not going to be looking after their souls.

01:32:56

And you ending up with unnecessary consequences aren't going to help the issue either. So I would encourage people that there's a step before then, and that step is a place like Victory Academy for Boys and programs like this.

01:33:07

We took boys as young as 12 into that program. I don't know about other programs that might take people younger than that, but we would take them at that age.

01:33:18

And these boys needed to leave the home. They needed the biblical help from somebody else for this season of their life.

01:33:25

And it was the step right before you're 18, you are a scorner, you're refusing to submit, and you have to leave our home.

01:33:33

The non -negotiables are going to be different from family to family. However, some of the ones I have found that are consistent are the fact that when the safety, the physical safety of other individuals in the family is a big concern, then obviously that person probably needs to be removed.

01:33:52

Just like if a man were to be involved in child pornography or sexual sins against a child, the state says that guy needs to not be around his kids.

01:34:02

And as sad as that is, it's an important thing. And so that man goes to jail, and he's not allowed to see his children. And man, that is a hard consequence.

01:34:10

But if I have a young person in my house who is sexually abusing other people in my house, if there are young people who are grabbing knives and threatening the lives of their family members, those are obviously things that need to be addressed because those are dangerous things.

01:34:29

But other people, I like to explain it this way. I'm a dog trainer. For most of the show,

01:34:34

I've had a Rottweiler sitting next to me. She is a therapy animal. She is a service animal. She's an amazing dog, and I trained her.

01:34:43

And this Rottweiler, she's big. The boys at Victory Academy just loved her to death.

01:34:48

She was fantastic at her job. But she's a big dog, and she can be intimidating. Parenting kids can sometimes, the average child can kind of be compared to training a dog, not because they're anything like dogs.

01:35:00

I actually have a whole podcast episode about how parenting your kids is not like training a dog. But in this particular comparison, you're going to see where I'm going.

01:35:08

If you take the average difficulty of training a dog like that to be a service animal, and you compare that to parenting,

01:35:14

OK, the average child, sure. But then some people don't have dogs. Some people in their homes, they have tigers.

01:35:20

And you know what? I don't know how to train tigers. I love tigers. They're my favorite animal. I have no idea how to do it. But there are people out there who are tiger trainers.

01:35:29

And every now and then in a family, they'll have their dogs that they know how to train, and they've reared their kids upright, and things go well.

01:35:35

And don't take this metaphor too far. But every now and then, they have a tiger in the family, and they literally just don't know. It's like this child is so different from all the others, they have no idea what to do.

01:35:45

So I say if you have a tiger in your family, if you've got other children who are turning out really well, but there's this one kid who is just – you have no idea what to do with them, then, yes, you need help.

01:35:57

And that kind of help may involve that child leaving for a time to go live and work with that tiger trainer perhaps.

01:36:05

But there's so much more I could say. I want to get to the next part of that question though, which

01:36:11

I want to focus – my mind slipped a little bit as to the precision of the question.

01:36:17

But I believe had something to do with having somebody come back into the home, right? And this is where I would say if – especially if the child is 18, right, and if they're going to be a scorner, removing them from your house is completely appropriate.

01:36:31

By the way, when your children are breaking the law, I encourage you to call the police on them. Just like I would encourage you to call the police on anybody else who's breaking the law.

01:36:38

They need to experience the consequences of their sin. Did you hear that, Joe Biden? I'm only kidding.

01:36:44

Yeah, don't farting your kid. Send them to jail. Oh my word. So yeah, you need to do that.

01:36:52

You need to be willing to do that. But let's just say that this child is 18 and they're unsaved but they want to live in the home.

01:37:00

Well, I'm not sure how many of you are landlords out there, but you probably have lots of people living in your rental properties that you would never invite over for Christmas.

01:37:09

People that you don't even necessarily like. But why are they in your homes? They're in your homes because they're following the rules.

01:37:17

If they weren't following the rules, you would evict them. And everyone who has rental property in Chicago is saying, nope,

01:37:22

I can't do that either. In most places, if they're not following the rules, if they're doing things they shouldn't be doing, you move them from the house.

01:37:30

And if you have a child, though they'd be unsaved, are willing to follow the rules of your household, guess what?

01:37:35

We go to church on Sunday. You will help pay for rent. You will keep this area of the house clean.

01:37:42

You will not use this type of language or watch these types of things in the common areas. There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with you having those expectations in your home.

01:37:52

In fact, oftentimes I find, and I'm sure this is not true of the one who asked the question, but I find that a lot of people who are kind of like, they never thought of that.

01:38:01

They never thought of like, wow, if I just had rules and expected them to do it and if they didn't do it, there'd be consequences.

01:38:08

Like that might actually work. I find that those people who have a hard time imagining that when the child's 18 weren't doing that when the child was 12 either.

01:38:16

They didn't have clear -cut biblical expectations that they held the child to, and the child just basically did whatever the child wanted to do.

01:38:24

Now, that's not always the case, but when I find them having a hard time understanding that concept when they're older, and oftentimes they had a hard time understanding it when they were younger as well.

01:38:34

So, and in that case, you got a child coming back into your house or a young person coming back into your house who's willing to follow the rules.

01:38:40

Then they're back under your influence. They are back under your accountability and you still have the opportunity to speak speaking truth into their lives until at what point, again, they continue to prove that they are such a scoffer, such a scorner that they can't even follow the simple rules that you have for them in the home.

01:38:56

Then, yeah, again, they're back out and they have to suffer the consequences of their choices. Okay, make sure we have your full name and your mailing address so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:39:11

can ship a copy of Quit out to you by our guest

01:39:16

A .M. Brewster. Quit, how to stop family strife for good. And we're going to take our final break right now.

01:39:25

And if you'd like to join us like the other listeners did with your own questions, if you want to get in line and have your questions emailed to me, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:39:40

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

01:39:49

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back at A .M. Brewster right after these messages. Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a longtime partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:40:11

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And now they're also shipping worldwide. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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01:41:27

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

01:41:32

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

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01:43:06

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

01:43:17

And I also want to take this time to thank some annual advertisers who have been sponsoring

01:43:26

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01:43:33

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01:43:46

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And I would also like to thank some other dear folks, the publishers of the

01:44:00

New American Standard Bible, who have been sponsoring this show since the first one on the air.

01:44:08

nasbible .com, nasbible .com is their website. Thank you so much for enabling

01:44:15

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to continue to exist. But we're back on the air now with my guest,

01:44:22

A .M. Brewster, author of Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good.

01:44:29

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:44:36

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private.

01:44:45

And we do have another anonymous listener who says,

01:44:53

Obviously, tension between married spouses is a great cause of strife amongst entire families, including the children.

01:45:03

Do you ever suggest separation among spouses when the problem at hand has nothing to do with violence or adultery?

01:45:18

Separation is a word that many people are going to define many different ways, and I'm not talking about separation within a church, which is a biblical principle, biblical command, depending on the situation.

01:45:34

We're talking about the separation of a married couple. Divorce in most situations is going to be a sin.

01:45:45

Even a divorce that per the biblical guidelines, one might argue, would be justified more often than not, unfortunately, is done in the wrong way for the wrong reasons and ends up being sinful anyway.

01:45:58

So when I'm talking about separation, I'm not talking about a divorce. That's a very different question.

01:46:05

And if it's not a situation where we're talking about bodily harm and the person having broken the law and needing to receive the punitive consequences of that, we're just talking about what

01:46:16

I can assume is just a panoply of other issues that we as spouses choose to respond very sinfully to become huge issues.

01:46:25

And there is yelling and there is constant bitterness and fighting and who knows what else is going on in the house.

01:46:32

Is a separation at that point going to be valuable? Well, I think that the only type of separation that I would say is potentially valuable is one that Dr.

01:46:47

Berg used to say a long time ago. And Dr. Berg and Jim Berg, the same guy who put together

01:46:52

The Freedom That Lasts material, who wrote the book Change Into His Image. Dr.

01:46:58

Berg would sometimes say, please give me about five to ten minutes to get my heart right.

01:47:06

And then he would step away. I encourage parents to do this. Your child is being disobedient and you can tell, you know, it's one of those moments where you're about ready to kick into deliberate unbelief and say something and do something you know you should not say and do.

01:47:19

Wisdom dictates that you stop, you remove yourself as long as everyone is physically safe. You remove yourself from the situation in order to get your heart right with God first.

01:47:28

Deal with the log in your own eye before going back into the situation. Now, some people might refer to that as separation.

01:47:35

I will say that I, in my marriage, have tried to do that, though I failed more often than I've succeeded.

01:47:43

Sometimes it has involved me going for a walk, sometimes or a drive, not to stew, not to just rehearse all of the hurts in my mind.

01:47:58

When I do that, I go out. I open the Bible. I pray. I call a discipler. I get counsel because that is what

01:48:07

I need at that moment. I need to get my heart right. Most people listening are going to say, well, Aaron, that's not the separation we're talking about.

01:48:14

And I agree with you. Probably not. We're talking about where he packs a bag and goes to a hotel room, and now he's there for the next day, week, month.

01:48:22

And I'm going to say that's going to be harder and harder to justify. The Bible is very clear that when somebody is sinned against, they need to go to the person who has sinned against them and seek reconciliation.

01:48:34

The Bible is clear that the person who has sinned against another person, there is nothing more important they should be doing than stopping what they're doing.

01:48:40

And pursuing the person against whom they have sinned and seeking reconciliation. So in times like this, we should have people running toward each other.

01:48:48

But for the sake of reconciliation, not for the sake of getting the other person to submit to what I believe is right and good.

01:48:56

But sometimes we need to get our hearts right before that. So yeah, whatever amount of time it takes to have godly wisdom spoken into your life, to read the scriptures, to pray, to get your heart right, to deal with your own logs so that you can get back into the situation, take that time for sure.

01:49:08

But if you're just looking to step back, to avoid the discomfort, to escape the secondary consequences of your sin, that separation, regardless of how long, the longer it is, the worse it's going to get.

01:49:20

But that separation is probably only going to hurt the situation more than it's going to help it when you do something like that.

01:49:29

So no, what most people think of when they think of separation, that's probably not the best idea.

01:49:36

You need to seek out help and counsel, get somebody working with you on that. Of course, unless it involves bodily harm and things like that, then a forced separation is sometimes absolutely necessary.

01:49:48

Yeah, and it's interesting. I don't remember who it was that pointed this out to me. But in the past,

01:49:55

I have interviewed people who are biblical counselors who were addressing this very issue, and at least one of them said something to me that didn't even occur to me.

01:50:12

When the issue is involving a violent spouse, a husband who is violent and is perhaps a batterer of his wife or children, that it is recommended that the wife leave.

01:50:39

Now, that seems like, what? What are you kidding me? He's the jerk that's causing the problem. Yeah, but the wife should leave and be kept safe somewhere where the husband doesn't know where she is.

01:50:51

If she stays, the husband knows where she is. I don't know if you agree with that counsel, but it made perfect sense after I heard it.

01:50:59

Yeah, no, that's, I mean, I think in that situation where the husband is a batterer, I'm asking the question, why is he not in jail?

01:51:05

Why has he not been arrested yet? But sometimes they're arrested, and sometimes for whatever reasons, they're let out on parole or bail or whatever.

01:51:12

And bail is what I meant to say. And yes, I think that if there is no accountability in place, somebody there to oversee the situation, and if it really is a concern that he is just going to be right back there and potentially even angrier than he was before, then yeah, that's a very wise thing to do.

01:51:32

And it's sad. It's sad that we should take this marriage and have to separate them in that way for their own physical safety.

01:51:39

But just like anybody else in the Scripture who's dead set on sinning against somebody to such a degree that they're going to hurt them, they're going to kill them.

01:51:48

Yeah, we need to step in and help defend that individual until the other person comes to the

01:51:54

Lord. By the way, I will say, though, too, in conversations like this, the batterer is always male in our illustrations and in our metaphors.

01:52:01

But I'll tell you what, as a biblical counselor, there are far more women who are physically abusing—I shouldn't say there are more women out there physically abusing their husbands than men physically abusing their wives.

01:52:13

That would probably be inaccurate. But there are far more of those situations out there than we realize. And men in those situations oftentimes kind of feel like they shouldn't say anything.

01:52:24

It's an awkward situation. I just want to say to the guys out there who might be in a situation like that, seek help, please. Don't be embarrassed.

01:52:30

Don't think that this is something that people are just going to look at and like, well, what's wrong with you, dude?

01:52:37

No, a Christ -honoring man is going to want to help step into this situation. A Christ -honoring woman should want to help your wife because, unfortunately, this happens far too frequently as well.

01:52:46

Yeah, you could have a six -foot -four linebacker who is the victim of his wife physically and violently abusing him because he has old -fashioned morals and doesn't believe in hitting women.

01:53:03

He may go too far in his passivity in that situation, but at the same time—

01:53:13

That's what oftentimes happens. In fact, she might not even leave a mark on him. And that's somehow where the women sometimes justify, well, he's just big and strong.

01:53:20

He can take it or whatever else. But what she's doing is she's lashing out in anger, and she is physically assaulting him.

01:53:27

It doesn't matter that she's not hurting him. If that's our argument, we do not understand the scriptures.

01:53:34

We do not understand God's expectations for us to love. And when he expects in a marriage, that woman needs help if that's how she expresses her anger.

01:53:41

And the fact that she doesn't even necessarily leave a mark on him doesn't somehow make it any better.

01:53:46

Now, he doesn't have to leave the house for his own physical safety, but the issue is just as sinful and wicked as a situation where a man is actually battering his wife and risking her life.

01:53:58

Well, I'd like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:54:08

Definitely. So you might have noticed if you've been listening from the beginning that we never got to the final part of the book, the cure for strife.

01:54:16

And there's not enough time to go through that. I really encourage you to read the book. But what you're going to find, and I'll kind of comfort your minds at ease just a little bit here, is that the answer is really what we'd expect to find if this book were entitled anything else.

01:54:31

If it were called Quit, How to Stop Lying for Good, Quit, How to Stop Looking at Pornography for Good, Quit, How to Stop Fill -in -the -Blank

01:54:40

Biblical Sin for Good, then the answer is always going to be the exact same thing.

01:54:48

And that is understanding who God is, understanding who we are, understanding His expectations for us, and submitting to it.

01:54:55

So the last part, you know, sets out hope. A lot of people out there, you feel like, oh, there's no hope for the strife in my family.

01:55:03

No, my friends, don't call God a liar. There is hope. And that hope is all throughout Scripture. He gives us everything that we need for life and godliness.

01:55:10

And I step through the things that we need to do in order to help ourselves and everyone else in the family be able to truly stop causing strife in the family by God's grace.

01:55:23

And then the last chapter, the conclusion of it all, is I basically just step through my own personal experience with this, where God, what

01:55:33

He's taught me through reading this book and how this book really is a labor of love. So I'd encourage you to get it,

01:55:39

Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good. It has more resources in it than those hundred pages can hold because of all of the additional resources that it links, both podcast episodes and online courses in the

01:55:50

Evermind app. And I would encourage everyone to go to evermindministries .com. That's evermindministries .com,

01:55:58

where you can find our podcasts, you can find the app, our online courses. And you can also order

01:56:04

Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good from evermindministries .com. And why don't you repeat the information about how our listeners can financially help you in the midst of you still digging out of the rubble over there in North Carolina after the hurricane.

01:56:22

I know that, as we said earlier, our mutual friend Andrew Rappaport of Striving for Eternity Ministries set up a way for people to help fund your financial loss and the things that you've still got to go through to get your home back in order and so forth.

01:56:43

Yes, he did. And I am so thankful to him for setting that up, as well as all the individuals who have given toward that.

01:56:53

Andrew and I talked about what our needs were, and he set the thing up at $50 ,000.

01:56:59

By God's grace, we have at this point perceived about $12 ,000, and we're thankful for every penny of that.

01:57:08

Actually, it's getting closer to $13 ,000 now that I look at it. But you can find that at GiveSendGo .com.

01:57:16

GiveSendGo .com forward slash S -F -E. S -F -E is the acronym for Striving for Eternity, or the initials of Striving for Eternity.

01:57:28

If you're thinking about how you can be a blessing to my family as we try to get help for our recovery from Hurricane Helene, definitely

01:57:38

I echo everything that Chris said earlier about wise giving, pleasing the Lord with your giving.

01:57:44

But if you'd be so inclined to give to my family in our time of need, I would be greatly honored, and you can go to GiveSendGo .com

01:57:51

forward slash S -F -E. Praise God. Quickly, do you have any speaking engagements our listeners should be aware of?

01:58:00

I'll be speaking at the Great Homeschooling Convention in Greenville, South Carolina in March. It's a good possibility.

01:58:06

It hasn't been confirmed yet. I'll be speaking at a church in northern Indiana at a family conference. And then

01:58:12

I'll also be at another homeschooling conference in Winston -Salem, North Carolina called the

01:58:17

Thrive Homeschooling Conference. I'll have the opportunity to speak there. Later this year, I'll also be speaking at the

01:58:23

ACBC Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, where I'll be teaching on counseling children who have been exposed to sexuality, as well as what the

01:58:33

Parable of the Soils teaches us about giving homework assignments or life work assignments to certain people.

01:58:40

Great. Well, thank you so much for being my guest once again, Aaron. I look forward to future visits from you.

01:58:48

I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I hope that you all enjoy a very safe and joyful and blessed weekend and Lord's Day.

01:59:01

Please do not forsake the assembling of the brethren. Unfortunately, I am still hearing more and more, even from people

01:59:11

I know personally and love, who ever since COVID got used to watching worship services on TV on Sunday instead of going to church.

01:59:21

Well, that's not worship. You're not in a worship service when you're doing that.

01:59:27

You're not submitting yourself to the authority of local elders in a church. You're not being an active participant in the body of Christ when you're doing that.

01:59:39

So please, find a good solid church if you don't have one, and attend that church for worship this

01:59:47

Sunday. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater