00:00:04
S1: Well. Hey there friends, welcome to another exciting edition of equipped with Chris Brooks. I am so fired up that you've joined us today. Do me a favor. Strap on your seat belt. We're going to navigate through the contours of culture, as always, with the lens of the biblical worldview on. But before we do that, let me remind you, this is the day that the Lord has made. He has given it as a gift so that you and I can rejoice and be glad in it. So let's do just that. Let's follow the words of the Apostle Paul. Let's rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. Well, what if I told you that the gospel we're preaching today is a far cry from the gospel of the early church. It doesn't mean that we may not be sharing the same basic tenets, but there is something markedly different about the power they experience in the early church. This gospel, when it was proclaimed, turned the world upside down. It caused broken and sinful people to become sons and daughters of God, both witnesses for the truth, willing to literally lay down their lives for the sake of Christ. But yet, when we look at today, so many lives seem to be unchanged, lukewarm, and apathetic about the mission of God. I say that not to condemn, but hopefully to arouse your heart and your passion to the conversation we're going to have today. I'm holding in my hands a phenomenal book. Some of you have already requested your copy of it. Some of you today is going to be a day where you say, man, the light is coming on, the switch is being flipped, and you're going to say, I want to really understand the gospel, have a real relationship with Jesus, and to live with him at the center, driven every day by the power of his mission, to know him and to make him known. The book that I'm holding is The Unstoppable gospel from powerless belief to a true faith that changes everything. The author is Carl Claussen. Many of you know and love Carl. Host of Moody Radio. He's also nationally syndicated throughout the country. Lead pastor of the 180 church in Chicago. He and his bride have been serving alongside their team, and they've been in ministry for nearly 40 years. He's a dad as well, and he brings all of that to bear. In his powerful newest book by Carl The Unstoppable Gospel. Carl, how are you, brother?
00:02:34
S2: It's great to be with you, my friend. I love you, Chris. This is a hot topic, isn't it, friend?
00:02:39
S1: It really is. It really is. So let's just start there. Let's dive in. What made you say. I need to write this book now? What's the backstory behind the Unstoppable Gospel?
00:02:51
S2: It's really interesting. Chris. Um, you know, I'm not a prophetic type guy. That's not my vibe. I don't think I'm real original, to be really honest with you. Uh, I love to write on discipleship, uh, about dealing with issues like sin that need to be put to death in our life and all those kind of topics. But this is different, Chris. And it's, it's an important topic. We have a crisis. And the more the days go by. Since this book released, I heard back from someone that said, I've been in church 33 years, and now I have all the answers for what I've had this holy hunch in my heart. Something's going on in the church in the West. And by the way, it's been exported around the globe because we exported it. But we have so distorted the gospel. We brought another gospel, which Paul says in Galatians one is no gospel at all, that we have created a crisis inside the church, and I can't say this strongly enough. We have churches that are loaded with people who do not know Jesus personally, but they have a hallucination of salvation. They see something in themselves that isn't there, and they will be among the many, sadly, who will say, Lord, Lord! And he's going to say, I never knew you, and they're going to appeal God, we've been in church. We've. Let's just go to Matthew seven, the text itself. We've preached in your name, cast out demons in your name, done mighty works in your name. And he's going to say, I never knew you. So yeah. Translated 2000 years later, we've got a lot of people very religiously active but are very lost. And I do believe, Chris, it's way more systemic and way more of an epidemic than we might imagine.
00:04:53
S1: Yeah. Let me just, uh, the, uh, passage of scripture, uh, that you, uh, referred to, uh, with, with the Apostle Paul. Obviously, there's no more important, um, gift in the world than the gospel of Jesus Christ. The apostles knew it, they understood it. And so they were so fierce about it that Paul says these words in Galatians one and eight, but if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. That is, that is like there are certain passages like you refer to Matthew seven that bring a trembling to my heart a a severity, a seriousness. And while it is right for us to really talk about the grace of God, man, what a. What a gracious God we serve. It's also important for us to talk about the holiness of God. and that's shown no where more clearly than his than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which we must in every generation fight for fiercely. So when you say, man, I'm not a prophetic guy, I mean, this is what the prophets did. This is what reformations are all about. It is about recapturing the gospel. So I see this book, Karl, as more than just a message. I see it as a movement that's meant to awaken Christians to really fight for that. So let's just go back to the central message. If you had to sum it up in a sentence or two, what's the central message that you're trying to communicate in the unstoppable gospel?
00:06:37
S2: It's impossible to disciple lost people. And I think some of the frustration with discipleship in the church broadly, is linked to the fact that we are lowering the bar. Distorting the gospel. And we've led people into Christianity. And I have that in air quotes into a Christian faith air quotes again, that is not of Christ at all. So it's got huge downstream impact. Uh, the and you've, you've known this for years. The amount of people that are in church and even in small groups who may well not know Jesus personally, that's not even speaking to the. Many of our kids that were raised in church had a, a quote, Christian experience, um, a belief, um, an emotional time in their life when we want to harken back to that and say they must be born again, they must be just derailed disciples. All of these indicators lead me to the conclusion that we have given a gospel that is powerless to change people. And there's a lot of reasons for that, Chris, but that is our problem. We have a powerless gospel that is not called people to what Jesus proclaimed the gospel was. And so we have got a mess in our church today. And and I know that sounds strong, Chris.
00:08:03
S1: Yeah, yeah.
00:08:04
S2: But I believe it's true.
00:08:06
S1: Well, you're sounding an alarm and and you're doing it as a brother who loves the church, loves the body of believers and wants us to get this right. Um, many people will know you for the work you do on the radio. Obviously, you also shepherd an amazing congregation there in in Chicago. What have you seen through your work? Carl and crew in the morning that's caused you to say, hey, this is something beyond just an observation that's localized. This is broader than that.
00:08:38
S2: Yeah. Well, anecdotally, I mean, I'm one of these, I was raised in church, memorized a lot of verses, was in charge of a youth group, uh, was heavily involved as a young man in Boys Brigade, you name it. And did I walk down aisles? I walked down aisles was I baptized? I was baptized, but it wasn't until February 11th of 1984 that I was called out of the darkness and into the light. So did I have a mental assent? Yes. Was I fearful of hell? Absolutely. But then you just look at our morning show team. You got super di Diana Berriman. She was raised Greek Orthodox. She thought she was good with God because of her upbringing. Um, God called her out of darkness in the John Hancock building in the middle of the night, 3 a.m.. And she fell to her knees, repented of her sin. Jonathan Reinke is on her show. This is staggering story. Uh, raised in church, pastor's kid, baptized, prayed prayers. Um, came to, uh, Moody, came to Moody Bible Institute, graduated, came on our morning show. I happen to be really tackling Matthew seven and Matthew 25 to very cautionary passages about thinking, you know, Jesus and don't. And within a couple of months in wrestling with this thinking he was being attacked by Satan, he fell on his knees after he heard the words of Jesus, why do you call me Lord and do not do what I say? And he surrendered to Christ, had to tell his brand new bride that she had married a fraud, but now he's truly born again. And then Ali Ali Dawson, she's my co-host. She gladly trumpets the fact that she was a do gooder girl, was afraid of going to hell, prayed a prayer to avoid hell. But it wasn't until she saw some people at Chicago Tabernacle here in downtown Chicago that she said, these people have something I don't have. And that's when she walked into faith in Christ. So there's four for four on our morning show that had a deception, or what I call a hallucination of salvation. We saw something in ourself. All four of us thought we were good with God and we weren't. Chris. That's that's a significant thing, isn't it?
00:11:05
S1: Chris. Yeah, yeah. It's yeah. And what it tells you is that, uh, this is more than just anecdotal. I mean, those stories just illustrate a bigger problem. And I will say this, I pray for revival often like my heart pants for that. Mine too. I pray for awakening my heart pants for that. But one of the things that I have been challenging our local church on, Karl is the fact that I think when we hear those terms revival, awakening, we think primarily about those outside the walls. Yes. Right. We think primarily about maybe this group of people in the world that's living in darkness and sin and getting high and drunk and sexually perverted and all these things. And we say to ourselves like, yeah, those people need the gospel. But what I hear you saying is that it's not just those people outside of the walls that need the gospel. It is those within the walls that need the gospel. So maybe while we're praying for revival, we shouldn't just be thinking about outreach. We should be thinking about in-reach. Yeah. And we need to step back and ask ourselves, what gospel are we preaching? So let's talk about the title. Can we just can you explain why the title is so important? The Unstoppable Gospel?
00:12:28
S2: Yeah. The gospel, as we see it in the book of acts primarily is a gospel that was radically transformative. In fact, when Peter preached in acts two, that great message, these folks that surrendered to Jesus as Messiah. They were born with their backs to God. Now they see Jesus as Messiah. They were cut to the heart and in fact, they were so pierced to the heart they said, what do we do? And what was what was told to them was repent and believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now here's what happened. The cost attached. That was enormous. They had to say goodbye to family. They had to say goodbye to inheritance. They had to say goodbye to a culture that they were raised in. And they had to head out now on a new path with a bunch of renegades that were following Jesus with them. It was a huge cost attached to it. So the unstoppable gospel has the ability to be radically transformative in a person's life. It will exhibit itself by multiplying fruit. It doesn't mean perfection, but it means a total abandonment of all that was for all that is in Jesus Christ. That is the gospel. And we've missed it, Chris.
00:13:52
S1: All right. So what is the gospel? We're going to talk about that when we come back. Karl says this. I invite you into a journey and exhilarating and liberating adventure with God. The unstoppable gospel is not simply expose what is false. It reveals what is true. It frees, it awakens, it transforms. And for anyone willing to receive it, it brings resurrection life. So what is the gospel? Hopefully you are sitting on the edge of your seat saying, Carl, I think this might be me and Lord, I don't want to see Jesus show up and him say, I never knew you, so I want you to sick and say like your life depends on it because for some it does. We'll be right back with more of the clip right after this. We all go through seasons where our walk with God feels more like smoldering coals than a roaring fire and the rekindled heart. Doctor Mark Yarbrough offers six essentials to help you reignite your passion for Jesus. If you're spending more time scrolling than you do in Scripture, this book will help you to get your priorities back in order. Request your copy with the donation of any amount. Call (888) 644-4144 or visit equip radio.org. Welcome back to equip with Chris Brooks. How does a man or woman made right before God? What is the gospel? Man, this is the most important question of life. If we get this right, we get salvation right. If we get this wrong, we. We can miss salvation. Karl Clausen is my guest today. His newest book, The Unstoppable Gospel. I would love, I wish literally, I wish I had the budget and the ability to have a plane in the air. Drop this book on every doorstep in America, every church doorstep as well. I don't though. But what we can do is for every one of you that calls and request your copy today, we will send it over to you. You you just go and give a gift of any amount. You can order your copy. Go to our website, equip radio.org. Equip radio dot ORG. Um, Carl, I do something serious. Just hit me while we were on a break, okay? And that is how many pastors may not have the gospel, right?
00:16:29
S2: Yeah. Yeah. Chris. That's a, that's a tough thing to wrestle with. Um, I've had to look back. We need to be careful with this, in that. Jesus's own disciples said to him, yeah, we've got a problem here. And they said, we know that the enemy has planted weeds where there are wheat, and they're growing up together. Now, wheat and tares looked a lot alike on the outside, but only one was authentic. And that's the wheat. And they said, should we go in and root out the weeds? And he said, don't do that because you may get the wheat. But but to your point, uh, I know personally, I have a, I have a dear friend who was a campus, uh, communicator and they would put him up. He was a, he was an athlete. They would put him up and speak and he would proclaim the gospel. And there would be many surrender authentically to Christ. I'm sure some of those were not real, but some of them were real. And he had given eight consecutive. Not only campus wide, but they then exported them to other campuses. And he was being used to proclaim this message. And after his eighth message, he fell to his knees and said, this very thing that I've been preaching, I've not been surrendered to. And he gave his life to Christ. Now that's a pastor of a church in Oregon. Yeah. Yeah. So do we have elders, small group leaders, pastors? Yes. I've heard of worship pastors recently who came to faith in Christ after ten, 20 years of, of leading worship. Can you be religiously engaged? And I use that word religiously, not spiritually engaged, but can you be religiously engaged, be grafted into the culture of Western Christianity? And as a friend of mine told me in Burundi, yes, it's happening in Burundi, the poorest country on the planet, and not be born again. And the answer is absolutely. And the reason is that in the absence of persecution, primarily, there is no real pressure test for carrying a bunch of substitute gods. And Jesus, in the other hand, which is no faith at all.
00:18:49
S1: That's what. And not only the absence of persecution, but the social advantage that comes to it. There are so many. There are so many years where you know, and it's still true in many ways in parts of the country where you couldn't get elected as an official unless you gave some tacit affirmation to Christianity, didn't mean you had to be a Christian, but you had to at least pretend you were right. There was business benefits. There were social benefits. There are a lot of relational benefits to it. Um, whenever you have a church, every pastor will tell you that part of the way you got to guard the flock is from those who are coming more to network than to actually repent and live as a believer should. So yeah, these are the social benefits combined with the lack of persecution makes it relatively easy. And so in some ways, we need to thank God for the seasons and times when Christianity gets difficult, because then it proves and reveals what is in my heart. My father was a school teacher, Carl, and he used to say, there's two reasons, son, to give a test, to affirm what a student knows and to expose what they don't know. Right? And so this is why these tests come. So let's just answer the question because I don't want to prolong this. There are pastors who are listening, believers who are listening. Uh, Carl, what is the gospel? And, uh, what do I need to know about repentance and about the cross?
00:20:24
S2: Well, I would capture it. I think the, the most concise way I can capture this is by going to second Corinthians 710. And this is what the apostle Paul says. He says godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. So this is what I love to say about this passage. There's two kinds of tears that fall from faces. There's two kinds of sorrow, but there's only one sorrow that saves. Now this word, repentance is the gospel that Jesus gave his disciples in the book of Mark, the first gospel that we have. He sent them out with a gospel of repentance. Not accept Jesus, not lift your hand in the air while no one's looking. See how dangerous this is?
00:21:16
S1: Yes.
00:21:16
S2: Not not. Repeat this prayer after me. Yeah. Not. Do you want to go to heaven or go to hell? Well, who's taking hell for an option? I mean, come on. But there has to come a time. Why? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. First words out of Jesus's mouth. There has to come a time when we come to the end of our self, see our spiritual poverty, that we are empty, that we have no hope apart from God. And in that moment, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit regenerates us through repentance. We have a metanoia moment. We change our mind. We change our direction. We change our allegiances. Then we confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, the supreme authority of our life. American Western Christianity and we exported it. We've invited people into something that, in a moment of sadness, in a moment of tears and regret, we say, Jesus. But have we really surrendered and repented and turned it all over to him? That is what gospel is. That's the unstoppable gospel. It's the gospel of repentance.
00:22:39
S1: Yeah. Okay. So so let's just go back to again some of the things that will cause us to stumble and, and is hard wired into our culture, man. Yeah. You were. I know enough about your story to know that before you came to Christ, you were really driven. You were really, really driven for success. I was wired the same way. A stockbroker or financial adviser. I just wanted to be the top in my field. And man, this is what drove me every day. I was working crazy hours, doing whatever it took to make it and to be successful. I think that a lot of what has caused us to lower the bar, if you will, is the cultural idol of success. Yes. And I think there's a lot of pastors who need to be freed from that. So if you had a room full of pastors right now, what would you say to them, Karl, about the gospel and about how central this is to the Lordship of Christ?
00:23:44
S2: Yeah. So it would be for them personally, but then for the broader congregation around them. You only have to go to the parable of the four soils. And a lot of people have misunderstood this. But the parable of the four soils, Jesus is speaking very clearly about one type of heart that receives the truth, responds, and is truly born again. So he talks about the hard soil and he says, these hard hearted people, the truth hits their heart and it bounces off of them. And then Satan comes along so that it doesn't get a chance to grow and really change something. We get that. We would normally think, yeah, that's that's a prevalent problem. Okay, get that. But the next one is shallow soil. And here's the danger. They immediately proclaim, let's just be real practical. Immediately proclaim, oh yes, Jesus, he's my Savior. And they sprout up and they grow. And there's a moment, a season where they're fired up. But what does Jesus say? A little bit of persecution, a little bit of hardship comes, and it proves that it wasn't grounded in a relationship with Christ. It's not that they prayed a prayer and are saved. And now when they've left the church, because a lot of parents are listening right now and it's like, oh, they left the church. No, they went out from us because they were not of us. But the most dangerous soil is that third one, the worries of this world, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things have choked it, making it unfruitful. Meaning these people are not born again. So here's the problem. When ambition, money, pursuits, taking new hills is our goal, but we've never yet surrendered to Jesus. We can have this great illusion of salvation and never be born again. Three soil types that prove what isn't real. That's scary.
00:25:43
S1: Man. This is really important stuff. I want you to order your copy and maybe, like me, read through it with your family. Go to equip radio.org. Welcome back to equip with Chris Brooks, Carl Clawson, my guest today. You know him from Carl and crew in the morning. Or maybe you're in the local Chicago area, you've got a chance to visit the 180 Chicago church. Um, I'm just really grateful for his willingness to pin, um, what in many ways is a very Confrontational book, and I use that not to be at all provocative, because it's not about that. It really is about being faithful and true to the message of Christ. The gospel is a call to repentance. It's a call radically to profess the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Uh, against all other, uh, of, of your life and to turn from those things to Christ, no matter what the cost is. And if that has not happened in your life, then that means that you aren't born again. And, uh, and maybe that's the problem. And I think that so often, Karl, in the day and age that we live in, and I'm just going to speak as a pastor, uh, it is easy to default to pragmatics and to say, uh, well, our problem, the reason why we're not seeing more people mobilized for the gospel, willing to sacrifice it all, uh, standing boldly different than the culture is because our marketing schemes aren't enough, or our programmatic appeal isn't enough, that we're not a traditional enough. And, and man in a, in a culture and in an environment where there are so many ministries that are built off of that, it's really easy to default to that. And what I hear you saying is that the reason why movement might not be, uh, being made in the hearts and minds of the people you're leading is because many of them may not be saved. They may have a hallucination of salvation. Uh, Carl, this has been deeply personal for me as I got a copy of your book, and I'm grateful to be a part of the Moody family and got an early copy of this book. And when I got a copy of this book, I'm reading through it and I'm like, God, I need to come back to this in my own heart. I need to make sure my kids understand this. So I say all that. Who did you write this for? Who do you hope picks up the unstoppable gospel?
00:28:29
S2: Well, I think the biggest mission field we have, Chris, first and foremost, is inside the walls of the church. And I think it's a staggering number. As a matter of fact, I had a friend talking with a megachurch pastor in Northwest Arkansas. His name is Robert Cup. Good man. Great man. And there's many thousands that go to these multiple campuses. Many, many thousands. And he said, you know, my friend Carl has been just writing on this issue of what it is to really be born again. And he looked at Robert and he said, what percentage? They were in the lobby. He wasn't preaching that day. Someone else was on the pulpit that day. He said, what percentage of people that come here every weekend, not just Christers, but come here every weekend? What percentage do you believe are truly born again? Robert's response is sobering. He said to my buddy, I would be glad if 40% of this church was truly born again.
00:29:35
S3: Mhm. Mhm.
00:29:37
S2: Now that tells me. And this is a good man of God, and he preaches the gospel that tells me that we've got such a cultural phenomenon happening in the West, that we've got a crisis inside the church, and it was born out of. It's interesting. If you go back, you only have to go back 250 years and you find this thing called that has been coined by theologians as decisionism. Before, 250 years ago, during the Great Awakenings, there was a great revival. And then. Then altar calls began to happen. Before that, they didn't happen. Charles Haddon Spurgeon actually loathed them, and he predicted, he said, the fruit were going to get out of these altar calls is going to be very dangerous. He said many people are just emotional. You got them at a soft moment. They're regretful, like we find in Corinthians, where they've they've got some pain in their life, but they have not yet repented. So he neglected he declined to go that way. He stuck with rooms of inquiry at Metropolitan Tabernacle when this was going on Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. So he hung with that. So what what happened was, is we put the onus on the decision of the person rather than the regenerating power of Christ. This doesn't mean we don't have anything to do. But I think the only thing we bring to the the the process of salvation is utter brokenness. I think that's.
00:31:08
S1: And it doesn't mean that we don't call men to repentance. You're saying the opposite. We do call them to repentance. But what you're concerned about here is this phenomenon of a very public invitation to the altar that prays not only on emotionalism, but also social pressure as well.
00:31:29
S2: Oh. Big time. I mean, and, and we, we find this look at the social pressure on transgenderism. Well, we look at that and we go look at these kids are getting swept up in this thing. Well, it's happened in the church. And here's a few of the buzzwords for it. Ask Jesus into your heart. Jesus never instructed us to to say that to anyone. Never. Nowhere. Many have essentially invited Jesus to cohabitate with other gods of this age. So you talk about accepting Jesus.
00:31:59
S1: Yeah. No other God.
00:32:00
S3: Yeah.
00:32:01
S2: I mean, you talk about accepting Jesus, but many have have accepted Jesus. But it's those who receive him that are called children of God. Much different. Make Jesus your personal Savior. Aside from the reality, Chris, we can't make salvation happen. Jesus can only be Savior where he is first Lord of every square inch of who we are. Pray this prayer. Say I believe. Um, I, I was, I was at a mega church. In fact, I was preaching there. This has been a number of years ago now. I was preaching there on a couple of Sundays, and they asked me to stick around and I had heard about the, I believe, services. And it was a it was a great message. And the band came up at the end of the message and the pastor got up and I know he meant well, but he got up and he said, I want you to come to Jesus today and and know that you're secure for eternity. And he said, as the bands playing right now, if you believe in Jesus, I want you to stand up and just say, wherever you are, I believe, and then you can sit back down. And I thought, hold it, hold it, hold it. And pretty quick, here they go. One and two and three and then 3 or 4, and people are seeing in a dimly lit, big, huge auditorium with thousands of people in it that service alone. And I was grieved because the demons believe and they tremble. And I thought, what have we done here? And I know that some people.
00:33:37
S1: Unintentionally.
00:33:38
S2: Unintentionally. And by the way, can God save someone in that? Absolutely. But can we get the gospel wrong? Yeah, that's going back to where we started. This is why Galatians one is so important. If anyone brings another gospel other than the gospel of.
00:33:54
S1: Yes.
00:33:55
S2: Radical repentance, yes, let him be a curse because.
00:33:58
S1: So this is page real quickly. This is page 82 of the book. Yeah. Sentence is not an accessory to faith. It is the doorway into it.
00:34:08
S2: Yes, yes. So this raise your hand while no one's looking. Oh my goodness. Chris. Oh my goodness. What have we done? Charles Spurgeon had a good concern.
00:34:23
S1: Yeah. And again, a lot of these things are done with good intentions. So this is not to disparage motives. No. But it also is to be able to question practices. And it is important that we do so. And, and I would encourage everyone. Man, I want you to get the book. But but even more importantly, I want you to read the words of Matthew seven. Uh, even more importantly, I want you to open up your Bibles to Galatians one and eight. Even more importantly, I want you to read what the Bible says in Romans concerning what it means to repent, to turn from sin to Christ for salvation. When these things are properly understood, then the gospel is unstoppable. So what's the power of the gospel? We're going to talk about that on the other side of this break. Because when we have rightly understood the gospel, and we have experienced radical repentance where Jesus is really Lord of our lives and unstoppable love, unstoppable surrender, unstoppable examination, obedience, weakness. All of these things are a part of the Christian life. We'll talk to Karl about those things and more. Hopefully you hear the urgency of my heart. I would love for you to get a copy your copy of The Unstoppable Gospel. Maybe you get it for you. Maybe you call your group your small group right now and you say, hey, can we read this together? Either way, go to our website today. Go to equip radio.org. You'll find links there, equip radio dot ORG. Do it now. We'll be right back right after this. At equip, we're searching for partners who share our vision and passion for addressing the challenging issues in our society. Are you ready to make a difference by becoming an equipper? By joining our team, you'll contribute to our mission of providing people around the globe with the timeless wisdom of the Bible that's applicable to our modern world. To become an Equipper, call us today at (888) 644-4144 or visit equip.org. Welcome back to equip with Chris Brooks. Man, my heart is beating. My pulse is racing. And it is because I think that the conversation we're having right now with Carl Clawson is the most important conversation in all the world. That's not me being melodramatic. It's not me exaggerating. I really, really believe this. And I want to make sure we get the gospel right, because I really want you to know the spirit filled life. I want you to know what it means to walk with Christ. I want you to know what it means to make Jesus Lord, to know him so that you can make him known to others. So part three of your book is unleashing power. What is that all about? Carl.
00:37:28
S2: It's about what happens when the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit has reached into our soul and revealed to us that we're a sinner who needs a Savior, and that by his grace and his grace alone, he has saved us. We have repented, and even that by his power we have turned, had a metanoia moment. We've surrendered all of our dreams, our aspirations, our history, all of our churchianity to Jesus. And we have turned and followed Him as Savior. You know, I have a thought that just hit me. I've had people asking me recently, boy, aren't you going to just really discourage people who are born again? I don't think that's possible, because I'm going to let the Word of God speak here, Chris, before we go into this really spirit filled life here, this is what this is the promise. The Spirit himself. Holy spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. So when we're born again, the Greek word bears witness. It means to testify together with or to confirm jointly. When you're born again, the Holy Spirit will agree in your spirit that you are children of God. That's in Romans 816. And then you go on to Galatians four six, and because you are sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of His son into our hearts, crying, ABBA, father, daddy! So there I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not going to go there, Chris, because the you never see Jesus talking someone into something they don't possess. In fact, over and over again he says, be careful in. Paul says, examine yourself to see if you are in the faith that's written to the church of Corinth. And there are at least ten other central passages that we find a warning to those in the church, but are not who are not in Christ. So when we are born again now we shift gears into the third part of this work. We now have a power by God's grace that is fueling us to live the Christian life. And yeah, I think.
00:39:39
S1: That.
00:39:39
S2: That's right. I think the most amazing passage in all the New Testament about the grace of God to save us and to us up by the power of the spirit to grow and go with him is Titus 211 and 12 for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. Comma, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age. Here's here's the deal. And it's beautiful. Chris. The grace of God saves us. I think most people would say, yeah, we have to have the grace of God to save us. The same grace that saves us, trains us. So here's a secondary dilemma we have. We have a massive mission field in the church who are lost and think they're saved. Okay, we've we've established that, but now we've got a bigger mission field for those that need to grow up in their relationship with God. And we have, we have we have adopted a bootstrapping, self-willed mentality. You know what? You know what we find here in Titus two, the same posture that we were born again is the only posture that we will grow with God, utterly dependent on him, utterly dependent. And so what I try to unpack in the third part of this book is that we need to understand how much. And I start with this how much God loves us. I tell a story in the book. I just got this dog from Alaska. He's great. A sled dog for my buddy Mitch Seavey, who's won the Iditarod three times, comes out of his kennel. I bring him home and I'm sleeping downstairs and and I got a kennel near to me. And when he stirs and I got to get him up as a puppy and take him out. Well, one night he didn't stir and I woke, or he did. And I didn't hear him. And I woke up and Chris, I smelled a smell like you can't believe. And I look and I get up and I look into through the dark of that kennel, and this guy's sulking and he's got pee and poop everywhere, and he's laid down in it and he's a mess. Oh, I opened the kennel door and I look at him and I say, come here, blaze. I named him after Blaise Pascal. I said, come here, Blaise. And he had his head slung low pretty quick. He took a step and then another, and he crawled up into my lap. And he was about 12 weeks old. And I said, listen, I love you, buddy. And I knew that this is going to cost me my jeans. This is going to cost me my t shirt. Oh, man. And I got poop and stink all over me. I want to tell you something. That is the love of God. Yeah. Our God loves us so much that the the the the, the need that we have is to understand that the God who loved us enough to, by his grace, save us, loves us.
00:42:47
S1: I gotta ask you about about another group of people. All right. So you got those who think they're safe. False confidence. So much of this book is written to them. But then you have another group of people who feel they're unsavable. Yeah. Um. Man. Carl, you don't know what I've done. I've heard so many people. I've flown it so bad. I've said so many times I'm going to get right and didn't do it. And yeah, and I think God is about done with me. What do you say to that person?
00:43:16
S2: Oh come on. You're hearing a voice right now of a guy who was a raging cocaine addict, Crown royal addict. I caroused in ways that I don't even want to talk about. It's too embarrassing. It's pathetic. I was a mess. Chris and God reached into my car, driving down the road in Anchorage, Alaska, and he asked me one question. Are you done yet? And it was in a condemning word. It was an invitation. The love of God's arms are open wide. And I've been enveloped in those arms since 1984. And he took me with spiritual pee and poop all over me.
00:43:59
S1: Yeah.
00:44:00
S2: Just as I was. There is no one out of reach of God. No one and no one beyond the reach of him growing us up out of our mess as well.
00:44:11
S1: So whether you are hearing this and you say, I need to repent because I've never done that, or you're listening and you feel like I am so messed up and beyond salvation. I just want you to know Jesus died for you and he loves you, and he invites you to sit in his lap. Today. Here's what I need you to do, though. As you're listening to Carl and I, I need you to dial this number. If this is you and God is calling you to repentance, we want you to learn more about what repentance is and how to walk with God. So there's a phone number going to give you. It is one 800. Need him one 800 need him. I'll give you the number one 806 3334461 806 333446 And what you'll find on the other end of that call are people who are who are willing to walk with you slowly through this process of understanding what the gospel is, what repentance is, so that you can turn from sin to Christ for salvation. What are you looking to as your ultimate security? What are you looking to as your ultimate hope? What have you hitched your wagon to? Your success, your performance? Another person, um, being a good moral person, uh, alternative religions, all of that junk, all of it is what you and I cling to that keeps us from Christ. But we are called to repent of it. And. And I've had to do it. I'm inviting you today to repent radically. Turn to Christ. He's the only one that can save you, but he can't. And I don't care if you're in a jail cell. I don't care if you just came off of a high a binge. I don't care where you're at. Yes, God is able to save you because he loves you with the love of the cross. Look at the cross and you see the love of Jesus. Carl, I can't thank you enough, brother, for writing this book. Thank you. Thanks for carving out time being with us today, brother.
00:46:21
S2: Yeah. Thank you, Chris, so much.
00:46:23
S1: All right, friends, I want you to do me a favor. Get your copy of the Unstoppable Gospel and maybe get one for your pastor as well. Some of the best gifts I've ever gotten in ministry from people in my church who say, pastor, I just want to bless you with this. So if you could do it, what a blessing that would be. Go to equipped radio.org, equip radio dot ORG, and until we're together again next time. As always, remember equipped with Chris Brooks is a production of Moody Radio, a Ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
S1: Well. Hey there friends, welcome to another exciting edition of equipped with Chris Brooks. I am so fired up that you've joined us today. Do me a favor. Strap on your seat belt. We're going to navigate through the contours of culture, as always, with the lens of the biblical worldview on. But before we do that, let me remind you, this is the day that the Lord has made. He has given it as a gift so that you and I can rejoice and be glad in it. So let's do just that. Let's follow the words of the Apostle Paul. Let's rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. Well, what if I told you that the gospel we're preaching today is a far cry from the gospel of the early church. It doesn't mean that we may not be sharing the same basic tenets, but there is something markedly different about the power they experience in the early church. This gospel, when it was proclaimed, turned the world upside down. It caused broken and sinful people to become sons and daughters of God, both witnesses for the truth, willing to literally lay down their lives for the sake of Christ. But yet, when we look at today, so many lives seem to be unchanged, lukewarm, and apathetic about the mission of God. I say that not to condemn, but hopefully to arouse your heart and your passion to the conversation we're going to have today. I'm holding in my hands a phenomenal book. Some of you have already requested your copy of it. Some of you today is going to be a day where you say, man, the light is coming on, the switch is being flipped, and you're going to say, I want to really understand the gospel, have a real relationship with Jesus, and to live with him at the center, driven every day by the power of his mission, to know him and to make him known. The book that I'm holding is The Unstoppable gospel from powerless belief to a true faith that changes everything. The author is Carl Claussen. Many of you know and love Carl. Host of Moody Radio. He's also nationally syndicated throughout the country. Lead pastor of the 180 church in Chicago. He and his bride have been serving alongside their team, and they've been in ministry for nearly 40 years. He's a dad as well, and he brings all of that to bear. In his powerful newest book by Carl The Unstoppable Gospel. Carl, how are you, brother?
00:02:34
S2: It's great to be with you, my friend. I love you, Chris. This is a hot topic, isn't it, friend?
00:02:39
S1: It really is. It really is. So let's just start there. Let's dive in. What made you say. I need to write this book now? What's the backstory behind the Unstoppable Gospel?
00:02:51
S2: It's really interesting. Chris. Um, you know, I'm not a prophetic type guy. That's not my vibe. I don't think I'm real original, to be really honest with you. Uh, I love to write on discipleship, uh, about dealing with issues like sin that need to be put to death in our life and all those kind of topics. But this is different, Chris. And it's, it's an important topic. We have a crisis. And the more the days go by. Since this book released, I heard back from someone that said, I've been in church 33 years, and now I have all the answers for what I've had this holy hunch in my heart. Something's going on in the church in the West. And by the way, it's been exported around the globe because we exported it. But we have so distorted the gospel. We brought another gospel, which Paul says in Galatians one is no gospel at all, that we have created a crisis inside the church, and I can't say this strongly enough. We have churches that are loaded with people who do not know Jesus personally, but they have a hallucination of salvation. They see something in themselves that isn't there, and they will be among the many, sadly, who will say, Lord, Lord! And he's going to say, I never knew you, and they're going to appeal God, we've been in church. We've. Let's just go to Matthew seven, the text itself. We've preached in your name, cast out demons in your name, done mighty works in your name. And he's going to say, I never knew you. So yeah. Translated 2000 years later, we've got a lot of people very religiously active but are very lost. And I do believe, Chris, it's way more systemic and way more of an epidemic than we might imagine.
00:04:53
S1: Yeah. Let me just, uh, the, uh, passage of scripture, uh, that you, uh, referred to, uh, with, with the Apostle Paul. Obviously, there's no more important, um, gift in the world than the gospel of Jesus Christ. The apostles knew it, they understood it. And so they were so fierce about it that Paul says these words in Galatians one and eight, but if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. That is, that is like there are certain passages like you refer to Matthew seven that bring a trembling to my heart a a severity, a seriousness. And while it is right for us to really talk about the grace of God, man, what a. What a gracious God we serve. It's also important for us to talk about the holiness of God. and that's shown no where more clearly than his than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which we must in every generation fight for fiercely. So when you say, man, I'm not a prophetic guy, I mean, this is what the prophets did. This is what reformations are all about. It is about recapturing the gospel. So I see this book, Karl, as more than just a message. I see it as a movement that's meant to awaken Christians to really fight for that. So let's just go back to the central message. If you had to sum it up in a sentence or two, what's the central message that you're trying to communicate in the unstoppable gospel?
00:06:37
S2: It's impossible to disciple lost people. And I think some of the frustration with discipleship in the church broadly, is linked to the fact that we are lowering the bar. Distorting the gospel. And we've led people into Christianity. And I have that in air quotes into a Christian faith air quotes again, that is not of Christ at all. So it's got huge downstream impact. Uh, the and you've, you've known this for years. The amount of people that are in church and even in small groups who may well not know Jesus personally, that's not even speaking to the. Many of our kids that were raised in church had a, a quote, Christian experience, um, a belief, um, an emotional time in their life when we want to harken back to that and say they must be born again, they must be just derailed disciples. All of these indicators lead me to the conclusion that we have given a gospel that is powerless to change people. And there's a lot of reasons for that, Chris, but that is our problem. We have a powerless gospel that is not called people to what Jesus proclaimed the gospel was. And so we have got a mess in our church today. And and I know that sounds strong, Chris.
00:08:03
S1: Yeah, yeah.
00:08:04
S2: But I believe it's true.
00:08:06
S1: Well, you're sounding an alarm and and you're doing it as a brother who loves the church, loves the body of believers and wants us to get this right. Um, many people will know you for the work you do on the radio. Obviously, you also shepherd an amazing congregation there in in Chicago. What have you seen through your work? Carl and crew in the morning that's caused you to say, hey, this is something beyond just an observation that's localized. This is broader than that.
00:08:38
S2: Yeah. Well, anecdotally, I mean, I'm one of these, I was raised in church, memorized a lot of verses, was in charge of a youth group, uh, was heavily involved as a young man in Boys Brigade, you name it. And did I walk down aisles? I walked down aisles was I baptized? I was baptized, but it wasn't until February 11th of 1984 that I was called out of the darkness and into the light. So did I have a mental assent? Yes. Was I fearful of hell? Absolutely. But then you just look at our morning show team. You got super di Diana Berriman. She was raised Greek Orthodox. She thought she was good with God because of her upbringing. Um, God called her out of darkness in the John Hancock building in the middle of the night, 3 a.m.. And she fell to her knees, repented of her sin. Jonathan Reinke is on her show. This is staggering story. Uh, raised in church, pastor's kid, baptized, prayed prayers. Um, came to, uh, Moody, came to Moody Bible Institute, graduated, came on our morning show. I happen to be really tackling Matthew seven and Matthew 25 to very cautionary passages about thinking, you know, Jesus and don't. And within a couple of months in wrestling with this thinking he was being attacked by Satan, he fell on his knees after he heard the words of Jesus, why do you call me Lord and do not do what I say? And he surrendered to Christ, had to tell his brand new bride that she had married a fraud, but now he's truly born again. And then Ali Ali Dawson, she's my co-host. She gladly trumpets the fact that she was a do gooder girl, was afraid of going to hell, prayed a prayer to avoid hell. But it wasn't until she saw some people at Chicago Tabernacle here in downtown Chicago that she said, these people have something I don't have. And that's when she walked into faith in Christ. So there's four for four on our morning show that had a deception, or what I call a hallucination of salvation. We saw something in ourself. All four of us thought we were good with God and we weren't. Chris. That's that's a significant thing, isn't it?
00:11:05
S1: Chris. Yeah, yeah. It's yeah. And what it tells you is that, uh, this is more than just anecdotal. I mean, those stories just illustrate a bigger problem. And I will say this, I pray for revival often like my heart pants for that. Mine too. I pray for awakening my heart pants for that. But one of the things that I have been challenging our local church on, Karl is the fact that I think when we hear those terms revival, awakening, we think primarily about those outside the walls. Yes. Right. We think primarily about maybe this group of people in the world that's living in darkness and sin and getting high and drunk and sexually perverted and all these things. And we say to ourselves like, yeah, those people need the gospel. But what I hear you saying is that it's not just those people outside of the walls that need the gospel. It is those within the walls that need the gospel. So maybe while we're praying for revival, we shouldn't just be thinking about outreach. We should be thinking about in-reach. Yeah. And we need to step back and ask ourselves, what gospel are we preaching? So let's talk about the title. Can we just can you explain why the title is so important? The Unstoppable Gospel?
00:12:28
S2: Yeah. The gospel, as we see it in the book of acts primarily is a gospel that was radically transformative. In fact, when Peter preached in acts two, that great message, these folks that surrendered to Jesus as Messiah. They were born with their backs to God. Now they see Jesus as Messiah. They were cut to the heart and in fact, they were so pierced to the heart they said, what do we do? And what was what was told to them was repent and believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now here's what happened. The cost attached. That was enormous. They had to say goodbye to family. They had to say goodbye to inheritance. They had to say goodbye to a culture that they were raised in. And they had to head out now on a new path with a bunch of renegades that were following Jesus with them. It was a huge cost attached to it. So the unstoppable gospel has the ability to be radically transformative in a person's life. It will exhibit itself by multiplying fruit. It doesn't mean perfection, but it means a total abandonment of all that was for all that is in Jesus Christ. That is the gospel. And we've missed it, Chris.
00:13:52
S1: All right. So what is the gospel? We're going to talk about that when we come back. Karl says this. I invite you into a journey and exhilarating and liberating adventure with God. The unstoppable gospel is not simply expose what is false. It reveals what is true. It frees, it awakens, it transforms. And for anyone willing to receive it, it brings resurrection life. So what is the gospel? Hopefully you are sitting on the edge of your seat saying, Carl, I think this might be me and Lord, I don't want to see Jesus show up and him say, I never knew you, so I want you to sick and say like your life depends on it because for some it does. We'll be right back with more of the clip right after this. We all go through seasons where our walk with God feels more like smoldering coals than a roaring fire and the rekindled heart. Doctor Mark Yarbrough offers six essentials to help you reignite your passion for Jesus. If you're spending more time scrolling than you do in Scripture, this book will help you to get your priorities back in order. Request your copy with the donation of any amount. Call (888) 644-4144 or visit equip radio.org. Welcome back to equip with Chris Brooks. How does a man or woman made right before God? What is the gospel? Man, this is the most important question of life. If we get this right, we get salvation right. If we get this wrong, we. We can miss salvation. Karl Clausen is my guest today. His newest book, The Unstoppable Gospel. I would love, I wish literally, I wish I had the budget and the ability to have a plane in the air. Drop this book on every doorstep in America, every church doorstep as well. I don't though. But what we can do is for every one of you that calls and request your copy today, we will send it over to you. You you just go and give a gift of any amount. You can order your copy. Go to our website, equip radio.org. Equip radio dot ORG. Um, Carl, I do something serious. Just hit me while we were on a break, okay? And that is how many pastors may not have the gospel, right?
00:16:29
S2: Yeah. Yeah. Chris. That's a, that's a tough thing to wrestle with. Um, I've had to look back. We need to be careful with this, in that. Jesus's own disciples said to him, yeah, we've got a problem here. And they said, we know that the enemy has planted weeds where there are wheat, and they're growing up together. Now, wheat and tares looked a lot alike on the outside, but only one was authentic. And that's the wheat. And they said, should we go in and root out the weeds? And he said, don't do that because you may get the wheat. But but to your point, uh, I know personally, I have a, I have a dear friend who was a campus, uh, communicator and they would put him up. He was a, he was an athlete. They would put him up and speak and he would proclaim the gospel. And there would be many surrender authentically to Christ. I'm sure some of those were not real, but some of them were real. And he had given eight consecutive. Not only campus wide, but they then exported them to other campuses. And he was being used to proclaim this message. And after his eighth message, he fell to his knees and said, this very thing that I've been preaching, I've not been surrendered to. And he gave his life to Christ. Now that's a pastor of a church in Oregon. Yeah. Yeah. So do we have elders, small group leaders, pastors? Yes. I've heard of worship pastors recently who came to faith in Christ after ten, 20 years of, of leading worship. Can you be religiously engaged? And I use that word religiously, not spiritually engaged, but can you be religiously engaged, be grafted into the culture of Western Christianity? And as a friend of mine told me in Burundi, yes, it's happening in Burundi, the poorest country on the planet, and not be born again. And the answer is absolutely. And the reason is that in the absence of persecution, primarily, there is no real pressure test for carrying a bunch of substitute gods. And Jesus, in the other hand, which is no faith at all.
00:18:49
S1: That's what. And not only the absence of persecution, but the social advantage that comes to it. There are so many. There are so many years where you know, and it's still true in many ways in parts of the country where you couldn't get elected as an official unless you gave some tacit affirmation to Christianity, didn't mean you had to be a Christian, but you had to at least pretend you were right. There was business benefits. There were social benefits. There are a lot of relational benefits to it. Um, whenever you have a church, every pastor will tell you that part of the way you got to guard the flock is from those who are coming more to network than to actually repent and live as a believer should. So yeah, these are the social benefits combined with the lack of persecution makes it relatively easy. And so in some ways, we need to thank God for the seasons and times when Christianity gets difficult, because then it proves and reveals what is in my heart. My father was a school teacher, Carl, and he used to say, there's two reasons, son, to give a test, to affirm what a student knows and to expose what they don't know. Right? And so this is why these tests come. So let's just answer the question because I don't want to prolong this. There are pastors who are listening, believers who are listening. Uh, Carl, what is the gospel? And, uh, what do I need to know about repentance and about the cross?
00:20:24
S2: Well, I would capture it. I think the, the most concise way I can capture this is by going to second Corinthians 710. And this is what the apostle Paul says. He says godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. So this is what I love to say about this passage. There's two kinds of tears that fall from faces. There's two kinds of sorrow, but there's only one sorrow that saves. Now this word, repentance is the gospel that Jesus gave his disciples in the book of Mark, the first gospel that we have. He sent them out with a gospel of repentance. Not accept Jesus, not lift your hand in the air while no one's looking. See how dangerous this is?
00:21:16
S1: Yes.
00:21:16
S2: Not not. Repeat this prayer after me. Yeah. Not. Do you want to go to heaven or go to hell? Well, who's taking hell for an option? I mean, come on. But there has to come a time. Why? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. First words out of Jesus's mouth. There has to come a time when we come to the end of our self, see our spiritual poverty, that we are empty, that we have no hope apart from God. And in that moment, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit regenerates us through repentance. We have a metanoia moment. We change our mind. We change our direction. We change our allegiances. Then we confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, the supreme authority of our life. American Western Christianity and we exported it. We've invited people into something that, in a moment of sadness, in a moment of tears and regret, we say, Jesus. But have we really surrendered and repented and turned it all over to him? That is what gospel is. That's the unstoppable gospel. It's the gospel of repentance.
00:22:39
S1: Yeah. Okay. So so let's just go back to again some of the things that will cause us to stumble and, and is hard wired into our culture, man. Yeah. You were. I know enough about your story to know that before you came to Christ, you were really driven. You were really, really driven for success. I was wired the same way. A stockbroker or financial adviser. I just wanted to be the top in my field. And man, this is what drove me every day. I was working crazy hours, doing whatever it took to make it and to be successful. I think that a lot of what has caused us to lower the bar, if you will, is the cultural idol of success. Yes. And I think there's a lot of pastors who need to be freed from that. So if you had a room full of pastors right now, what would you say to them, Karl, about the gospel and about how central this is to the Lordship of Christ?
00:23:44
S2: Yeah. So it would be for them personally, but then for the broader congregation around them. You only have to go to the parable of the four soils. And a lot of people have misunderstood this. But the parable of the four soils, Jesus is speaking very clearly about one type of heart that receives the truth, responds, and is truly born again. So he talks about the hard soil and he says, these hard hearted people, the truth hits their heart and it bounces off of them. And then Satan comes along so that it doesn't get a chance to grow and really change something. We get that. We would normally think, yeah, that's that's a prevalent problem. Okay, get that. But the next one is shallow soil. And here's the danger. They immediately proclaim, let's just be real practical. Immediately proclaim, oh yes, Jesus, he's my Savior. And they sprout up and they grow. And there's a moment, a season where they're fired up. But what does Jesus say? A little bit of persecution, a little bit of hardship comes, and it proves that it wasn't grounded in a relationship with Christ. It's not that they prayed a prayer and are saved. And now when they've left the church, because a lot of parents are listening right now and it's like, oh, they left the church. No, they went out from us because they were not of us. But the most dangerous soil is that third one, the worries of this world, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things have choked it, making it unfruitful. Meaning these people are not born again. So here's the problem. When ambition, money, pursuits, taking new hills is our goal, but we've never yet surrendered to Jesus. We can have this great illusion of salvation and never be born again. Three soil types that prove what isn't real. That's scary.
00:25:43
S1: Man. This is really important stuff. I want you to order your copy and maybe, like me, read through it with your family. Go to equip radio.org. Welcome back to equip with Chris Brooks, Carl Clawson, my guest today. You know him from Carl and crew in the morning. Or maybe you're in the local Chicago area, you've got a chance to visit the 180 Chicago church. Um, I'm just really grateful for his willingness to pin, um, what in many ways is a very Confrontational book, and I use that not to be at all provocative, because it's not about that. It really is about being faithful and true to the message of Christ. The gospel is a call to repentance. It's a call radically to profess the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Uh, against all other, uh, of, of your life and to turn from those things to Christ, no matter what the cost is. And if that has not happened in your life, then that means that you aren't born again. And, uh, and maybe that's the problem. And I think that so often, Karl, in the day and age that we live in, and I'm just going to speak as a pastor, uh, it is easy to default to pragmatics and to say, uh, well, our problem, the reason why we're not seeing more people mobilized for the gospel, willing to sacrifice it all, uh, standing boldly different than the culture is because our marketing schemes aren't enough, or our programmatic appeal isn't enough, that we're not a traditional enough. And, and man in a, in a culture and in an environment where there are so many ministries that are built off of that, it's really easy to default to that. And what I hear you saying is that the reason why movement might not be, uh, being made in the hearts and minds of the people you're leading is because many of them may not be saved. They may have a hallucination of salvation. Uh, Carl, this has been deeply personal for me as I got a copy of your book, and I'm grateful to be a part of the Moody family and got an early copy of this book. And when I got a copy of this book, I'm reading through it and I'm like, God, I need to come back to this in my own heart. I need to make sure my kids understand this. So I say all that. Who did you write this for? Who do you hope picks up the unstoppable gospel?
00:28:29
S2: Well, I think the biggest mission field we have, Chris, first and foremost, is inside the walls of the church. And I think it's a staggering number. As a matter of fact, I had a friend talking with a megachurch pastor in Northwest Arkansas. His name is Robert Cup. Good man. Great man. And there's many thousands that go to these multiple campuses. Many, many thousands. And he said, you know, my friend Carl has been just writing on this issue of what it is to really be born again. And he looked at Robert and he said, what percentage? They were in the lobby. He wasn't preaching that day. Someone else was on the pulpit that day. He said, what percentage of people that come here every weekend, not just Christers, but come here every weekend? What percentage do you believe are truly born again? Robert's response is sobering. He said to my buddy, I would be glad if 40% of this church was truly born again.
00:29:35
S3: Mhm. Mhm.
00:29:37
S2: Now that tells me. And this is a good man of God, and he preaches the gospel that tells me that we've got such a cultural phenomenon happening in the West, that we've got a crisis inside the church, and it was born out of. It's interesting. If you go back, you only have to go back 250 years and you find this thing called that has been coined by theologians as decisionism. Before, 250 years ago, during the Great Awakenings, there was a great revival. And then. Then altar calls began to happen. Before that, they didn't happen. Charles Haddon Spurgeon actually loathed them, and he predicted, he said, the fruit were going to get out of these altar calls is going to be very dangerous. He said many people are just emotional. You got them at a soft moment. They're regretful, like we find in Corinthians, where they've they've got some pain in their life, but they have not yet repented. So he neglected he declined to go that way. He stuck with rooms of inquiry at Metropolitan Tabernacle when this was going on Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. So he hung with that. So what what happened was, is we put the onus on the decision of the person rather than the regenerating power of Christ. This doesn't mean we don't have anything to do. But I think the only thing we bring to the the the process of salvation is utter brokenness. I think that's.
00:31:08
S1: And it doesn't mean that we don't call men to repentance. You're saying the opposite. We do call them to repentance. But what you're concerned about here is this phenomenon of a very public invitation to the altar that prays not only on emotionalism, but also social pressure as well.
00:31:29
S2: Oh. Big time. I mean, and, and we, we find this look at the social pressure on transgenderism. Well, we look at that and we go look at these kids are getting swept up in this thing. Well, it's happened in the church. And here's a few of the buzzwords for it. Ask Jesus into your heart. Jesus never instructed us to to say that to anyone. Never. Nowhere. Many have essentially invited Jesus to cohabitate with other gods of this age. So you talk about accepting Jesus.
00:31:59
S1: Yeah. No other God.
00:32:00
S3: Yeah.
00:32:01
S2: I mean, you talk about accepting Jesus, but many have have accepted Jesus. But it's those who receive him that are called children of God. Much different. Make Jesus your personal Savior. Aside from the reality, Chris, we can't make salvation happen. Jesus can only be Savior where he is first Lord of every square inch of who we are. Pray this prayer. Say I believe. Um, I, I was, I was at a mega church. In fact, I was preaching there. This has been a number of years ago now. I was preaching there on a couple of Sundays, and they asked me to stick around and I had heard about the, I believe, services. And it was a it was a great message. And the band came up at the end of the message and the pastor got up and I know he meant well, but he got up and he said, I want you to come to Jesus today and and know that you're secure for eternity. And he said, as the bands playing right now, if you believe in Jesus, I want you to stand up and just say, wherever you are, I believe, and then you can sit back down. And I thought, hold it, hold it, hold it. And pretty quick, here they go. One and two and three and then 3 or 4, and people are seeing in a dimly lit, big, huge auditorium with thousands of people in it that service alone. And I was grieved because the demons believe and they tremble. And I thought, what have we done here? And I know that some people.
00:33:37
S1: Unintentionally.
00:33:38
S2: Unintentionally. And by the way, can God save someone in that? Absolutely. But can we get the gospel wrong? Yeah, that's going back to where we started. This is why Galatians one is so important. If anyone brings another gospel other than the gospel of.
00:33:54
S1: Yes.
00:33:55
S2: Radical repentance, yes, let him be a curse because.
00:33:58
S1: So this is page real quickly. This is page 82 of the book. Yeah. Sentence is not an accessory to faith. It is the doorway into it.
00:34:08
S2: Yes, yes. So this raise your hand while no one's looking. Oh my goodness. Chris. Oh my goodness. What have we done? Charles Spurgeon had a good concern.
00:34:23
S1: Yeah. And again, a lot of these things are done with good intentions. So this is not to disparage motives. No. But it also is to be able to question practices. And it is important that we do so. And, and I would encourage everyone. Man, I want you to get the book. But but even more importantly, I want you to read the words of Matthew seven. Uh, even more importantly, I want you to open up your Bibles to Galatians one and eight. Even more importantly, I want you to read what the Bible says in Romans concerning what it means to repent, to turn from sin to Christ for salvation. When these things are properly understood, then the gospel is unstoppable. So what's the power of the gospel? We're going to talk about that on the other side of this break. Because when we have rightly understood the gospel, and we have experienced radical repentance where Jesus is really Lord of our lives and unstoppable love, unstoppable surrender, unstoppable examination, obedience, weakness. All of these things are a part of the Christian life. We'll talk to Karl about those things and more. Hopefully you hear the urgency of my heart. I would love for you to get a copy your copy of The Unstoppable Gospel. Maybe you get it for you. Maybe you call your group your small group right now and you say, hey, can we read this together? Either way, go to our website today. Go to equip radio.org. You'll find links there, equip radio dot ORG. Do it now. We'll be right back right after this. At equip, we're searching for partners who share our vision and passion for addressing the challenging issues in our society. Are you ready to make a difference by becoming an equipper? By joining our team, you'll contribute to our mission of providing people around the globe with the timeless wisdom of the Bible that's applicable to our modern world. To become an Equipper, call us today at (888) 644-4144 or visit equip.org. Welcome back to equip with Chris Brooks. Man, my heart is beating. My pulse is racing. And it is because I think that the conversation we're having right now with Carl Clawson is the most important conversation in all the world. That's not me being melodramatic. It's not me exaggerating. I really, really believe this. And I want to make sure we get the gospel right, because I really want you to know the spirit filled life. I want you to know what it means to walk with Christ. I want you to know what it means to make Jesus Lord, to know him so that you can make him known to others. So part three of your book is unleashing power. What is that all about? Carl.
00:37:28
S2: It's about what happens when the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit has reached into our soul and revealed to us that we're a sinner who needs a Savior, and that by his grace and his grace alone, he has saved us. We have repented, and even that by his power we have turned, had a metanoia moment. We've surrendered all of our dreams, our aspirations, our history, all of our churchianity to Jesus. And we have turned and followed Him as Savior. You know, I have a thought that just hit me. I've had people asking me recently, boy, aren't you going to just really discourage people who are born again? I don't think that's possible, because I'm going to let the Word of God speak here, Chris, before we go into this really spirit filled life here, this is what this is the promise. The Spirit himself. Holy spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. So when we're born again, the Greek word bears witness. It means to testify together with or to confirm jointly. When you're born again, the Holy Spirit will agree in your spirit that you are children of God. That's in Romans 816. And then you go on to Galatians four six, and because you are sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of His son into our hearts, crying, ABBA, father, daddy! So there I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not going to go there, Chris, because the you never see Jesus talking someone into something they don't possess. In fact, over and over again he says, be careful in. Paul says, examine yourself to see if you are in the faith that's written to the church of Corinth. And there are at least ten other central passages that we find a warning to those in the church, but are not who are not in Christ. So when we are born again now we shift gears into the third part of this work. We now have a power by God's grace that is fueling us to live the Christian life. And yeah, I think.
00:39:39
S1: That.
00:39:39
S2: That's right. I think the most amazing passage in all the New Testament about the grace of God to save us and to us up by the power of the spirit to grow and go with him is Titus 211 and 12 for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. Comma, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age. Here's here's the deal. And it's beautiful. Chris. The grace of God saves us. I think most people would say, yeah, we have to have the grace of God to save us. The same grace that saves us, trains us. So here's a secondary dilemma we have. We have a massive mission field in the church who are lost and think they're saved. Okay, we've we've established that, but now we've got a bigger mission field for those that need to grow up in their relationship with God. And we have, we have we have adopted a bootstrapping, self-willed mentality. You know what? You know what we find here in Titus two, the same posture that we were born again is the only posture that we will grow with God, utterly dependent on him, utterly dependent. And so what I try to unpack in the third part of this book is that we need to understand how much. And I start with this how much God loves us. I tell a story in the book. I just got this dog from Alaska. He's great. A sled dog for my buddy Mitch Seavey, who's won the Iditarod three times, comes out of his kennel. I bring him home and I'm sleeping downstairs and and I got a kennel near to me. And when he stirs and I got to get him up as a puppy and take him out. Well, one night he didn't stir and I woke, or he did. And I didn't hear him. And I woke up and Chris, I smelled a smell like you can't believe. And I look and I get up and I look into through the dark of that kennel, and this guy's sulking and he's got pee and poop everywhere, and he's laid down in it and he's a mess. Oh, I opened the kennel door and I look at him and I say, come here, blaze. I named him after Blaise Pascal. I said, come here, Blaise. And he had his head slung low pretty quick. He took a step and then another, and he crawled up into my lap. And he was about 12 weeks old. And I said, listen, I love you, buddy. And I knew that this is going to cost me my jeans. This is going to cost me my t shirt. Oh, man. And I got poop and stink all over me. I want to tell you something. That is the love of God. Yeah. Our God loves us so much that the the the the, the need that we have is to understand that the God who loved us enough to, by his grace, save us, loves us.
00:42:47
S1: I gotta ask you about about another group of people. All right. So you got those who think they're safe. False confidence. So much of this book is written to them. But then you have another group of people who feel they're unsavable. Yeah. Um. Man. Carl, you don't know what I've done. I've heard so many people. I've flown it so bad. I've said so many times I'm going to get right and didn't do it. And yeah, and I think God is about done with me. What do you say to that person?
00:43:16
S2: Oh come on. You're hearing a voice right now of a guy who was a raging cocaine addict, Crown royal addict. I caroused in ways that I don't even want to talk about. It's too embarrassing. It's pathetic. I was a mess. Chris and God reached into my car, driving down the road in Anchorage, Alaska, and he asked me one question. Are you done yet? And it was in a condemning word. It was an invitation. The love of God's arms are open wide. And I've been enveloped in those arms since 1984. And he took me with spiritual pee and poop all over me.
00:43:59
S1: Yeah.
00:44:00
S2: Just as I was. There is no one out of reach of God. No one and no one beyond the reach of him growing us up out of our mess as well.
00:44:11
S1: So whether you are hearing this and you say, I need to repent because I've never done that, or you're listening and you feel like I am so messed up and beyond salvation. I just want you to know Jesus died for you and he loves you, and he invites you to sit in his lap. Today. Here's what I need you to do, though. As you're listening to Carl and I, I need you to dial this number. If this is you and God is calling you to repentance, we want you to learn more about what repentance is and how to walk with God. So there's a phone number going to give you. It is one 800. Need him one 800 need him. I'll give you the number one 806 3334461 806 333446 And what you'll find on the other end of that call are people who are who are willing to walk with you slowly through this process of understanding what the gospel is, what repentance is, so that you can turn from sin to Christ for salvation. What are you looking to as your ultimate security? What are you looking to as your ultimate hope? What have you hitched your wagon to? Your success, your performance? Another person, um, being a good moral person, uh, alternative religions, all of that junk, all of it is what you and I cling to that keeps us from Christ. But we are called to repent of it. And. And I've had to do it. I'm inviting you today to repent radically. Turn to Christ. He's the only one that can save you, but he can't. And I don't care if you're in a jail cell. I don't care if you just came off of a high a binge. I don't care where you're at. Yes, God is able to save you because he loves you with the love of the cross. Look at the cross and you see the love of Jesus. Carl, I can't thank you enough, brother, for writing this book. Thank you. Thanks for carving out time being with us today, brother.
00:46:21
S2: Yeah. Thank you, Chris, so much.
00:46:23
S1: All right, friends, I want you to do me a favor. Get your copy of the Unstoppable Gospel and maybe get one for your pastor as well. Some of the best gifts I've ever gotten in ministry from people in my church who say, pastor, I just want to bless you with this. So if you could do it, what a blessing that would be. Go to equipped radio.org, equip radio dot ORG, and until we're together again next time. As always, remember equipped with Chris Brooks is a production of Moody Radio, a Ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
