Initiate meaningful conversation with your family no matter how long the commute with Joe White's age appropriate short talks on scripture, parenting, culture, and community.
Episodes
Monday Jul 29, 2019
Monday Jul 29, 2019
"Advice can be confusing, but examples are always clear."
Family Discussion:
- Why is a lifestyle dedicated to Christ the most powerful witnessing tool that we have?
- How consistently do your friends see you living out your faith in Jesus?
- Does your lifestyle lead your unsaved friends to Christ? And then, how can you change it So it can be just like Brett's and what happened to him and Josh?
Transcription:
00:04 We're going to be in a great book. And not like they're all not great books, they are. But this is, this is one of my favorites. And it's first Thessalonians 1:5-6. And Paul writes this: "for our Gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit. And with full conviction, just as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake, you also became imitators of us and of the Lord. Have we received the word of the Lord in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit."
00:51 I call this one walking your talk. And let me just tell you this story. Josh had been in trouble since elementary school. He'd been kicked out of school for carrying a concealed weapon in fifth grade and using drugs extensively and fighting in high school. It left his heart cold and hard. Although Josh had a religious background, he had ceased to believe in God because he accepted his biology teachers' fraudulent Darwinian ideas that we had somehow evolve by chance over a long period of time from slime. That all started with nothing, that nothing exploded. The cosmos erupted. And out of some lifeless pool of prebiotic soup, life somehow emerged out of nothing and that he literally was an ancestor, and his ancestor was slime. But Josh had a friend named Brett who had been a drug user and a dealer alongside of him for the better part of three years. Brett stopped by my house one day a few years ago after one of his friends that almost died in a heroin overdose. And Brett gave his heart to Christ. And I mean sincerely, I challenged Brett to give up drugs for 21 days, knowing that after 21 days saying no would be a habit, he accepted the challenge and said no. In those 21 days, he told me more times than he could count. Josh saw a complete change in Brett's heart. Brett was a new man. He even broke up with this drop dead gorgeous girlfriend because their relationship had become sexual and he knew it was wrong. So Josh asked Brett to bring him to my house for a life challenging talk. After I cleared up his misconception about evolution and that he indeed was created intelligently, scientifically by an intelligent designer, a creator, he gave his heart to Christ. I asked him why he wanted to make such a life changing decision. He had one word for his answer and his answer was because of Brett.
02:56 Here's the questions today. Why is a lifestyle dedicated to Christ the most powerful witnessing tool that we have? And then secondly: How consistently do your friends see you living out your faith in Jesus? And then the third question is this: Does your lifestyle lead your unsaved friends to Christ? And then: how can you change it So it can be just like Brett's and what happened to him and Josh. And here's the lifeline today: You know your eye is a better pupil and we're willing than the ear is, the poem said. Advice can be confusing, but examples always clear. And that point says, I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day.