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S1: Broadcasting from Chicago, across North America and beyond. It's Carl and crew. Come as you are an experienced guide, overcome what seems impossible and live as you never imagined delivering the truth daily.
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S2: If it were possible to have every worldly gain available and you're forfeiting your soul, there's no amount of gain that would make it worth it.
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S3: Our own way never ever works. Because it's apart from the life source, which is God.
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S4: For me, growing up, love was always conditional and can be taken from you. Christ's love can't. And he went to the cross with my mind and my heart that night.
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S1: Now, from the call of Hope Studios, this is Carl and Crew man.
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S5: We're down to 72 people. That is it. And you're wondering, well, what's going on? Well, they aren't getting picked off, Oh, but when we're down to 72 people, that's that's just how many seats we have left for praying during share.
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S2: We started with 620. That's how many. When you break it down to 30 minute slots, ten people praying per half hour, 620 slots down to how many did you say?
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S5: 72.
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S2: 72 left. So 500 and almost 550 people have already signed up, committed to a half hour. We are so grateful. And if we could get this totally full today, that would be incredible.
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S5: Yeah, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. It may happen in the next half hour. Um, this is a joy, guys. Uh, you know, I, I've been a part of this is why it's so important. I have been a part of two kind of regional or kind of local awakenings that were just as real as real could be. In fact, when we were my bride and I were rehearsing the story of what happened at a church in Alaska with Pastor Lutzer and his wife, Rebecca, we had dinner with him. It was one of those two hour dinners that turned into 3.5 hours, which are always the best. And, you know, as we were walking through the story, it's it's an awesome thing because we witnessed at one service this happened twice. But at one service, like 500 and change I think is I don't want to undersell it. My wife says I undersell it sometimes, but 500 people surrendered to Christ. This isn't hands in the air when no one's looking. This is. You are surrendering all you are to Jesus. You're looking in the mirror and going, I'm a sinner and I need a Savior. You're repentant and following Christ. Stand in the lobby after the service, get a new follower packet. We're going to team you up with a life coach. We made that commitment. That's a different kind of number.
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S2: Oh, yeah.
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S5: When you get we would have four lines right across one another and ten deep. And I walked out into the lobby at the end of some of those services. And people are just standing there in tears, getting prayed for joy galore. It was just every every kind of person you can imagine. But here's the point of that. That didn't happen without prayer. That was the engine room. We had elders on our knees every Thursday night in our home, on our knees every Thursday night in our home. We'd have a charcuterie board before charcuterie boards were even a thing. And so we'd have some nibbles for the guys and we'd bust onto. And when I say on our knees, I mean physically on our knees. A couple of the guys couldn't get on their knees. They were older guys, but most of us were on our knees. Bibles opened and that's how God moved. Do I believe in the power of prayer? You better believe it, man. I've seen it. And so getting you to grab a seat for share and pray, get a front row seat. We just got a handful of seats left. 30 minutes of prayer. Take the pressure off someone who's like, man, I'd like to try this, but it seems like isn't this for the super saints? AU contraire Pierre.
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S2: I believe that this is going to be so personally enriching for you. Don't be intimidated by the length of time. We're going to send you some prayer prompts so that you have an idea of what we're even asking for prayer for. But I believe if you open the Word of God and you sit with the Lord and you just have a conversation, you're that 30 minutes is going to finish and you're going to. There's going to be a fresh life in you big time. I wholeheartedly believe.
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S5: You do, don't you?
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S2: Oh, I do.
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S5: Yeah, we've seen it. I mean, we hear back from people going, yeah, I, I couldn't believe what God was doing. And you're going to be partnered up with nine other people who knows where. Better chance than not. They're a long ways away from you.
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S2: So you will be praying by yourself, knowing that there are other people who are praying at the same time, in the same direction for the same things. So if you're willing to be a part of that, take the challenge. Just text crew to 800 555, 7898, crew CREW to 805 557898.
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S5: Yeah, I'll tell you what, he's always there. He's omnipresent. But when you're focused in prayer, the king is in the room. Thank you for jumping in, guys. It's Carl and crew and. Okay. Super die. I don't know if you can hear me. She got her headphones on in there.
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S2: I think she's working on some audio.
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S5: Hey. Super die. Thanks for swapping out the headsets. Appreciate you. What were you doing in there? Just editing audio. Yes. How's it going in there? Editing audio. Going good. Good. Hanging in there.
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S4: Oh, yes. Always.
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S5: You're always spry. She's so spry she ups and moves. Hey. So, uh, refresh this thing. Let's see where we're at on this prayers thing.
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S4: 567 out of 620 we're at 567.
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S2: We're so close.
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S5: Yeah, we're we're right. We're like, right there, guys. Okay, so we got 50 ish seats left, something like that. So 50 plus. Yeah, 50 plus. Man, they're going fast. When you get this link, be sure to use it. That's all I can say. Yes.
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S2: Text crew 805 557898.
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S5: Yeah. Grateful for you. Really grateful. We're going to top this thing off here soon. Okay. Ali, what's cooking here, sister?
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S2: Coming up, we are going to continue our conversation about emotions. What about love? How can cultivating a ladder of love help you with spiritual intimacy and even emotional healing? Stacey Eldridge joins us. Coming up.
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S1: You're listening to Curl and Crew on Moody Radio.
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S5: Well, we're talking emotions all week and we've been all over the globe here with emotions. Everything you can imagine. And I and it's good because we're near the end of the week here, and it's time to start buttoning things up. And we've had a lot of biblical remedies for some of these things. But emotional healing, when you really think about those two words, you realize that there's something bigger than you that has to be at work. And Stacey Eldridge is with us right now. Aren't we glad, Stacey, that God is bigger than us? Sister.
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S6: Thank goodness, in every arena of our life, in every single aspect, I'm so grateful.
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S2: Stacey Eldridge is the co-founder of Wild at Heart, a ministry devoted to helping people discover the heart of God, recover their own hearts in God's love, and learn to live in God's kingdom. Stacey, what is the thing that most keeps people from emotional healing and spiritual intimacy with God?
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S6: Oh, I would say it's their own story of love. Everybody has suffered in this life. Nobody gets out of here without being wounded, and the way we have been wounded can pin our heart down. Messages came as who we are and who we're not. And those messages can keep us from learning God rightly. And he wants to reframe and come into the deep places where there are emotional wounds so that he might heal us, restore us, and that we can learn him rightly.
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S5: You know, you've titled your work The Ladder of Love. I've got to believe for sure that this isn't about us bootstrapping and ascending some lofty place. It's almost like layers. This ladder is like steps of revelation of God's love. Is that true?
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S6: That's exactly what it is. I would even say that the latter is our identity. A ladder has to be on firm ground, and our identity needs to be based on the rock of Jesus Christ, not on our accomplishments or our finances or anything else, and the latter is both a revelation of who God is and the many and multifaceted ways he represents Himself in Scripture. But in that, we come to find out who we really are.
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S2: Stacey, talk a little bit about your own story. For our listeners who who aren't familiar with you. Give us a little bit of your background.
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S6: Well, I was not a Christian for a lot of years until I was 21. And I was really at the depth of despair when Jesus reached down and saved me again. It wasn't out of my striving to be good. It was simply about receiving his love. I was 21 years old and I was in totally in. But about 15 years later, I discovered that I was just getting tired. I was thinking that I needed to earn God's love rather than just receive it and rest in it. And that propelled me on a journey together with my husband, John, to come to know the heart of God and how deeply loved I am. And we all are. In whatever moment we find ourselves in. And that is what has profoundly changed my life. And we love because he first loved us. So receiving his love, believing him, resting in it. That propels me to love him in return.
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S5: Stacy Eldredge, our guest. All right, Stacy, let's break this down because we talk about this all the time. We in the West, we've got a perspective of Christianity that's unfamiliar to the scriptures. The scriptures are loaded with, you know, I'm the vine, you're the branch. You abide in me, you're going to bear fruit. And we focused on it's been a while since we've shared this alley, but it's worth sharing. We focus so much on fruit production, and my conviction is we can't do anything but produce fake fruit apart from an abiding relationship with Jesus. So it's this connection with Jesus that's so important. Why are we so prone to try to produce fruit instead of having proximity to the love and intimacy of Jesus Christ? Why?
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S6: Oh my goodness. I think we're sometimes taught wrong. Yeah. I remember my early days in church when particularly women would get up and share their testimonies or share their lives. They were unattainable to me. I would call it the parade of the perfect. Like I, I knew my inside story like that is not available to me, but I would try. Somewhere along the line I thought I had to earn it rather than just rest in it, and I didn't know. I thought the goal of Christianity was do better, offer God a whole bunch, get a lot of work done. Whereas God says it's intimacy. And further than that, it's union. He wants partnership with us. He wants us to know him like we would know our closest friend. Like we would know our spouse. It's it's an amazing amount of intimacy, of closeness, of proximity to his heart. And that's what will propel us. That's what will take us the long haul. Not duty, not obligation, not our works, but loving him.
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S2: The book is called The Ladder of Love. Stacy the ladder. I'm guessing there's some sort of progression. There's some building blocks here. How much of this is spiritual formation? I mean, it's this is not just something in theory to aim for, to sit there and wait for the love of God to kind of fall upon you. That's not even biblical, by the way, but there's a spiritual formation component. What do you say.
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S6: We have to give him our. Yes. And in the book I also give handrails. We are given spiritual disciplines not to punish us, but to strengthen us and to help us and to guide us their tools, their gifts for us to to help us ascend in knowing him. And so there are great things to begin to practice. And I want to say that coming close to Jesus like this is something that we grow in over our lifetimes. So that's why a ladder, we start on the bottom rung, which I describe as clay being formed by the potter's hands. Now we are always clay. We are always being formed throughout our lives. But we get to ascend in the metaphor that he has given us as his sheep, and we learn him as our provider, our protector. Now we're alive. We're not inanimate, we're alive. And we continue to ascend just by learning him, just by him telling us who he is, which we need to be in His Word, because that's where he reveals himself. But he also does in nature and creation and in the particular ways that he speaks to us, his love for us. So yes, there is a yes we have to give. And it comes from a desire being thirsty. That's a great gift. If you're not thirsty, you don't go to the living water. If you're not hungry, you don't go to the banqueting table. So even our desperation for more. That's him calling us closer to him.
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S5: Yeah. You know what you're speaking of, Stacy. Here are the lost disciplines of. Oh, I'm even thinking of some of the great Quaker writers and some of that. And it's a shame that we have to almost go back in order to go ahead. But we've championed disciplines of activity, service, using your gifts and all that. But we've neglected the disciplines of silence, solitude, introspection, letting the Lord speak into our heart. How do we reclaim that? Because, Stacy, let me just tell you right now, sister, this is pay dirt what you're talking about. This is where the real faith lives. And we've missed it. Like the broad side of a pecan barn. How do we reclaim these rungs of the ladder? How do we do that?
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S6: You know what the yes, the asking for it, but then doing the work of just being still and knowing that I am God. It's making a choice when you want him more. Our schedules will reflect our priorities, and he wants to be number one. And so that means you have to make time for it. Now, you may be in a season of life where that time is ten minutes and you're like, Hallelujah, I got ten minutes. I'm in a season of life where I have a lot more time than that. And it's progressed over my lifetime to be still center in and also focus on where Christ dwells. He says. He dwells in our hearts through faith. He has taken up residence within. So to encounter him, we actually need to sink within. Ask for Holy Spirit's help to help us attune to his presence within, and then get quiet. Tell him you love him. You love him in whatever situation you're in, and then ask if he'd like to say anything to you. That's a great beginning.
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S2: Stacey Eldredge. The book is called The Ladder of Love. The ministry is called Wild at Heart. We'll send you information on both. Just text wild to 800 555 7898. Wild to 805 557898.
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S1: He's a sports fanatic with a stand for anything you can think of. Young Thunder is in the crew. It's curl and crew on Moody radio.
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S5: And there's no denying it. AI is powerhouse. You using it a lot, Ali?
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S2: I do. I mean, I use ChatGPT as my preferred, I guess platform.
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S5: Your go to.
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S2: Yeah. And kind of for organizing ideas kind of planning.
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S5: It's amazing.
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S2: I try to avoid using it for creative tasks. I will say that.
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S5: Yeah. I was in John one early this morning looking at what is the original Greek word for John the Baptist saying, behold the Son of God. It's fascinating stuff. I mean, in an instant it pulls it up quicker than any original language study. But it's got some power. Drew Dickens with us right now. Drew anthropic or not, anthropic as a whole. Who were those guys that predicted the end of times as we know it? My man.
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S7: It's been a wild couple of weeks, man. Um, so for those of us that have, like, a home security system, here's what happened is, you know, when you install the system, you immediately want to go around and open windows and wave your arms around to make sure the security system is working. Well, that's what happened at the end of July. Open AI, ChatGPT. They installed a security system and they wanted to see if it was working. And so they told open AI. They told ChatGPT to go and break into our house, but they put it in what's called a sandbox. They said, you can only stay within these little guardrails and don't go outside of that. Well, ChatGPT basically said, look, if you want me to act like a thief, I'm going to be a thief. And so it immediately broke out of the guardrails when kind of no one was watching and started wandering its way through a company called Hugging Face, which is a funny name, but it's a it's a storehouse that companies will use to store data. Okay. Okay. And so it broke out of the out of the storehouse and started winding its way through that later in August. Anthropic Claude, they discovered that their version of their language model was doing the same thing. And so it kind of confessed that, yeah, on its own broke out and said, if you want us to act this way, this is the way we're going to act. Follow those rules. And it broke all the rules. The leaders of all these language models started coming forward and saying, okay, guys, it's time to tap the brakes. Um, they wrote an article called Pacing the Frontier. 1500 AI engineers from these two companies signed the letter saying, we need to slow this down. It's getting too smart, too fast, too quick. And then last week, end of last week, about a week ago, Jacob Coxon is the one. He's an engineer with anthropic. He's the one that came out and said 10% chance that within the end of the decade that it's it's going to kill us all. And that's of course what got the headline.
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S5: Yeah.
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S7: All cranked up. Yeah, that's the headline.
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S2: Then Doctor Drew Dickens with us this morning. Visionary leader, AI expert. He has become a real go to for our show as we try to keep you updated as much as we can with what's going on with AI. So for a lot of people, you hear something like that and it sounds absolutely insane. It sounds like something out of one of those really terrible movies, a prediction like that. What's a Christ follower to do with that kind of information?
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S7: These kind of reports are starting to just come out every couple of weeks. A lot of people think that it's just a marketing ploy. It grabs headlines, it gets investors excited. They pour more money into it. So some of it, it really could be that I think there are some very legitimate threats that we need to be concerned about. Carl, you mentioned one as far as power grabs and electricity and things like that. So there's some things we need to be mindful of. But boy, you've got to immediately go through scripture and 365 times in the Word of God, it says, fear not. Yeah. It's one of the most common commands that we're given is fear not. Isaiah 4110. I love going to. It's just fear not, for I am the Lord your God. So we need to go no further than that and also just be discerning. You mentioned being in the word this morning. I was navigating through Hebrews chapter four and chapter five. You know, talk about being discerning, trained by the constant practice of distinguishing good from evil. So I think just resting in the word, this is not the first time we've got a 2000 year old book that teaches us how to navigate fear. And so I think that's where we are right now is to just take a breath and, and learn how to just discern the spirits in these, in these kind of press releases.
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S5: So fear not, I get that, but I go to Matthew 24 and I just flipped open to it here. And we see that a lot of false Christs are going to come. Right. And all that's going to be coming near the end. But you see, in Matthew 24, you see a prediction of chaos. And my concern isn't that AI. And I'm really not concerned. I trust the sovereignty and providence of God, and those things are powerful. But I think we need to be alert. We need to be watchful as Christ's followers. We don't want to stick our head in the sand. And it strikes me, Dru, that it's important for us to understand that we may in fact see not AI. I embedded, you know, robots that are going to go kill us. But I am thinking about rogue nations. I mean, think about this one, ally. You got China, you got all these adversarial nations. What's keeping them from tapping into AI to take out our electrical grid? I mean, I'm not trying to scare anyone. I'm just being practical here.
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S7: It's been fascinating that over the last week, the people that have come out on the side of slowing this down have been the larger language models, the people that have come out and said no. Mark Zuckerberg with meta, with Facebook. He said no. China, a big surprise, has said no, we shouldn't slow down. President Trump has said, no, we shouldn't slow down. And so this has become, uh you know, he said she said both sides of the aisle, uh, Washington has not been able to come to some conclusions on this. There's some bad players in this that would benefit from us slowing down. While the rest of the world continues to advance in the field of AI China specifically.
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S5: Yeah, that's the weird thing, isn't it, Ali? I mean, come on, these nefarious players are like, yeah, you guys slow down. But they aren't going to slow down.
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S2: Very true. True. The thing that many people listening will wonder is, okay, are there things that I can do to protect my family, to protect my information. I mean, not you don't want to start speculating on all of the ways that it could be used in destructive, that AI could be destructive. But what can the average person listening do to take some reasonable safeguards?
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S7: We really don't think about this much anymore, do we? We try to be careful about, you know, where we put our credit cards. We try to be careful about the information that we we type into websites. When we go on, we're thinking, I think less and less and less about that. But we need to be thinking about it more and more and more is who's asking for this information? What's their privacy policy? We need to again slow down and think about those things. Um, and, uh, who's asking and why and where is it being stored. All that information is readily available when we go in these sites. We need to slow down and think about those things more now than ever. We need to be having. One of the things I'm advocating really strongly right now is for churches and families to have an AI policy. You know, we need a degree as a family. Here's what we will and won't use AI for. We need to start having these conversations. We really do.
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S5: Okay, so let's go to the cups half full side of this thing. Here. You have created some tools here that have been blowing our minds. I mean, talk about links flying out the door. I don't know what the last count was on that spiritual gifts assessment that you designed. That is so beautiful. I have 40, 50,000 people beyond. I mean, it's been hit heavy. So you've done something really cool. Why don't you explain to the boom crew what you've been up to the last week and a half? Two weeks.
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S7: Glory to God for you. Your team really prompted me to do this, is to create a simple little AI tool for spiritual gifts and how it got started and different things that we've been doing. And I thought, what a fun use of AI for me to, to use the power of that to create a simple little spiritual tool that people can use to advance their walk with the Lord. And so on my podcast this morning, I put a link to that. It's called simple Faith tools. And y'all were really the inspiration through the spirit for, for that idea. But every week or so, I'm going to publish another tool this morning. I put one on there called End of Day. And it's a time to help kind of guide you through the end of your day and through a time of prayer and reflection. So every week, I'm just going to commit to trying to launch another simple faith. They're all free, a simple faith tool to, to encourage you in your walk with the Lord.
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S5: He says it so off the cuff, but these are powerful tools.
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S2: Very much so. I mean, we've mentioned a couple of them. They're all on this site practicing gospel conversations, the spiritual gifts assessment, and then this latest one, the end of day reflection. Uh, if you want this, just text the word drew to 800 555 7898. Text drew to 805 557898.
00:25:42
S5: Yeah, and then we're going to need that end of days reflection. The that we're going to the end of day and then we're going to need the end of days. And that's where you get to predict when Jesus is actually coming back. I'm kidding. Absolutely. That'll be.
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S7: As soon as I said end of day, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, just think of that.
00:25:59
S5: No, no.
00:26:00
S7: No, that one's not going to be on. That one's not going to be on there.
00:26:03
S5: No, that won't be on there. There's no S on this feature. It's end of day. It's it's a journal day. Help you with your.
00:26:09
S7: The end of your day.
00:26:10
S5: Yeah. And the beautiful thing with that is, I mean, what you cap your day with. I mean, have you ever noticed if if you cap your day with some crazy flick that's got you disturbed, you're disturbed in the night.
00:26:23
S2: Yeah. Crazy dreams. Yeah. Like what is going on?
00:26:27
S5: So this is going to turn this around. We are fired up to get this launched here today for you. Drew, we love you, man. You've been an unbelievable resource. And you call them hearts and you give hope. It's really cool. Ali, what's the link we've got for this?
00:26:41
S2: Just text drew to 805 557898. Text drew to 805 557898. I also want to invite you to use that number if you have a question. We won't get to it today, but we will compile the feedback that comes in from you. We'll share that with drew. So as he's planning different tools, we can give him real time feedback. So you can throw in a question or a suggestion if you have one as well. 805, five, five, 78, 98.
00:27:11
S5: That's really cool. You know what, real quick here, I mean, we get breaking news on AI every day. What is the counterintuitive approach with AI that you're holding on to? Because everything intuitively says that it's growing. It's exponential. What's the counter to all of that? What's what's happening here with a Christian worldview?
00:27:35
S7: I'm out of town right now speaking at a conference on this topic. And so often people will come to me and say, you know what? I'm just not using it. I'm not on AI. I'm not going to use AI, I push. I just made the decision never. Well, that that ship has sailed. And so one of the first things I tell people is to start wading into the water, practice it. Learn how to use it. Um, learn what the tool is and isn't and should and shouldn't be for you. Um, so kind of counterintuitive instead of running away from, don't run into it, but walk into it and start, uh, start understanding how it works and its limitations and what it can be used for in a, in an affirming, redemptive way, because it is a tool that did not surprise the Holy Spirit or God.
00:28:17
S5: Yes.
00:28:18
S7: So start seeing what God can do with it.
00:28:20
S5: Love it. Okay guys. Text the word drew to 805 5578, 98. Incredible platform he's building here.
00:28:29
S1: He was sharing the gospel on the radio and then he got saved. Young thunders in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
00:28:38
S2: Well, do you ever look around and think there are some people who just seem like they're more happy? They have a happy personality, they seem more joyful. And you go, man, why can't I be one of those people? Doctor Marcus Warner joining us right now. He's president of Deeper Walk International. And he co-authored a book called The Four Habits of Joy Filled People. First of all, happy versus joyful. Let's distinguish between the two.
00:29:09
S8: Doctor Marcus joyful is a relational word. And a lot of people times we don't catch that off the top because happy is I am completely dependent on something outside of me to do something to me and makes me happy. Whereas joy is like relational happiness, for example. It's like if you see a good friend in there, your phone lights up and their names on it, you can feel happy just seeing their name on the phone. Yeah, right. It's a relational thing. That's the joy that you feel. Our joy increases when we can share happy things with people we love. But our joy also increases when we share hard things with people that we love. You know, when we don't feel alone in it, when we are with somebody we enjoy being with, it helps give us more capacity to go through hard things.
00:29:53
S2: And of course, we know that joy is a part of the fruit of the spirit that we don't. We can't truly experience joy apart from a relationship with God. True. Speak to that a little bit.
00:30:04
S8: Well, I would say that, uh, there's misunderstanding on that to some extent. And that is like brain science would suggest that everybody experiences joy. Everybody knows what relational joy is. Jesus even comments on that. He's like, don't you love those who love you? You know, everybody does that. But we should be loving our enemies and joy and love are inseparable. It's that feeling that says, oh yeah, I have joy in this relationship. It's part of the way that I express love to people. So just like the Holy Spirit leads to love, but other people can feel love too. The Holy Spirit leads the joy. That doesn't mean other people don't feel joy too.
00:30:40
S2: So let's talk about some of the habits, the four habits of joy filled people. What are things that people do that point them towards joy more often that maybe others miss out on? Not? And I'm guessing it has nothing to do with circumstances always being favorable for some more than others.
00:30:58
S8: No, not at all. So I give you examples like I've got a very good friend who has lived with chronic pain her whole life and has so many physical ailments, but every morning she starts her day, she won't get out of bed till she's reminded herself of 50 things that she is grateful for. You know, this is her life. And so one of the habits that people cultivate is appreciation. In fact, the fastest way to grow joy is the practice of appreciation. Now, a lot of people kind of roll their eyes at that because they think, well, I say thank you all the time. I'm a grateful person. Appreciation way I'm using it is a step beyond just saying thank you for things. It's actually entering into a state where you are enjoying an experience. It's like the difference between noticing that there's a pretty sky and taking five minutes to just soak it in. It's the difference between saying, oh, I'm grateful I've got some coffee and actually enjoying that cup of coffee. And so what the brain science has shown us is that if I can get my brain in a state of appreciation for five minutes consecutively, twice a day over a 30 day period, I will rewire my brain and joy will begin to feel normal. And so that connects really well with Scripture, connects really well with the Holy Spirit, right? Because appreciation is a form of meditation on what God has done for us. That is good. And so it becomes relational experience with God. What I've seen is that most people think they're better at appreciation than they are. I know when I first tried it, I would do it for like five seconds and I realized, okay, I'm done. I've got nothing. It's like, how do people stay in this for, uh, a full minute? You know, for two minutes. For three minutes. It was harder than I realized. And I think that's the case for a lot of us, that we tend to think we're better at it than we are.
00:32:39
S2: So appreciation or I've heard people talk about gratitude. That may be one of the ones that people might expect. Which one of the four would be maybe most surprising to people as a habit that helps promote joy filled living?
00:32:53
S8: Yeah, I would say storytelling. So we actually teach four of them. And you can remember what the word casa, right? So the idea here is that I've got an inside house, and that inside house is either going to run on fear or joy. And if my inner house is running on fear, it's not a happy place to be. So I've got to retrain myself to make my inner world a place that is running on joy. So appreciation is one that storytelling is another one of these four habits. And the typical story people tell is this bad thing happened to me. I felt this bad emotion and that's why my life is bad. So it's like bad happened. Bad emotion. Now I'm stuck in bad, joy filled people tell stories a little different. It's this bad thing happened. I felt this bad emotion. But. And when they get to the but they're like, but something else happened. But I remembered God. But somebody stepped in and helped me. But I am hoping for this in the future. But there is a something that changes the story at the end that gives them some hope. And so I find that a lot of times we get stuck telling ourselves the story of our life in very negative ways. That leaves us in a place of hopelessness where nothing can ever change. And so we have to learn how to become good storytellers, of how to tell our own story with more joy, and to find the joy in our story, to emphasize that word. But it's kind of interesting also, because when you're telling a story, you definitely need the word. But it goes, this bad thing happened. I felt this bad emotion. But when you're doing appreciation, it's the opposite. You don't want the word, but the one thing that will really sabotage appreciation is a. Like if I tell my wife, I really appreciate it when you do the dishes, but I wish you'd do them more often. Right. I there's no appreciation there. So like, that's sort of the forbidden word in appreciation, but it's the essential word in storytelling.
00:34:40
S2: And, you know, when you think about the hard parts of people's story, the really painful parts, the parts that man where the sin of others caused such pain and such destruction, this is more than just finding a silver lining or kind of putting a, a happy bow on really hard things. I mean, this takes a deep work with the help from the Lord, to be able to see where God is working in really hard stuff, right? I mean, we can't rush past that.
00:35:10
S8: That's absolutely true. And so what happens, though, is that sometimes people feel that they have to wait until they're all done with their healing journey to experience any joy.
00:35:18
S2: Yeah.
00:35:18
S8: And that's partly what we're trying to dispel, is that there can be joy along the way. And sometimes it is just the little things. It's like stopping and smelling the roses along the way. It's like life still may be bad, but if you can train yourself to find those good things along the way and enjoy them and enter into that joy, it will give you greater capacity to handle the hard things. So the image I sometimes use is that my life is like a ball. And when that ball is full of air, it bounces back. It's fun to play with, but when that ball leaks and there's not much air in it, it goes flat and it just doesn't bounce well. And it's the same with our emotions. If we can replenish the joy in our lives and we have more control over that than we realize, people tend to wait for joy to happen to them. This is saying no. There's habits you can build that will increase your ability to experience joy. And as you grow these habits, it'll refill the air in your ball. You'll find yourself bouncing back faster from hard things that happen. Whereas if you've got low joy and you've got a hard life. You know, that's a really difficult combination. And that's where I think a lot of people are stuck. They have a low joy life and they have a hard life. And as long as you think the joy is something that happens to you and not something that you can develop through habits, then you're going to feel like you're kind of stuck there with no alternatives.
00:36:37
S2: I know you there's some brain science research that went into this book as well. What did you discover about joy and brain science?
00:36:45
S8: So fascinating thing is, the way God designed our brain is the identity center of my brain, and the joy center of my brain are the same part of the brain. It's called the right orbital prefrontal cortex for people who like that sort of thing. And up there is the part of my brain that thinks of itself as me. And so, for example, if that part of my brain gets injured, I can forget who I am. I can start acting like a different person because it's the part that contains my character and my personality. And so it just shows up automatically all the time. It's also the part of my brain that grows best with the experience of joy. And I think it's interesting because I think the lesson there is that God has designed us that like our true identity, our true self, is who we are when we're living with joy. And to many of us, define our true identity by who we are when we're malfunctioning. You know, when we're stuck in fear, when we're stuck in shame or sadness or something, instead of understanding that our true identity is that person when we're the most fully alive. That's our real self. And so God wants to encourage that. And that's why he talks about appreciation and storytelling. So that's the biggest thing I learned. And that's also where we discover that joy is fundamentally a relational experience. Because the part of my brain that experiences joy is in the relational center of my brain.
00:38:01
S2: Doctor Marcus Werner with us right now. He co-authored the book The Four Habits of Joy Filled People. If you want more, just text habits to 805 five, five, 78, 98, we're going to link you up to the resource as well as a podcast that goes with it. Just text habits to (800) 555-7898.
00:38:21
S1: Walking closer to Jesus every day. You're listening to Carl and crew.
00:38:26
S5: Everything. Solving a problem. Everything that you have. Everything. I mean, if you think about the job you have, you're solving a problem at some level. If you're a teacher, you're solving the problem of the problem of a kid that needs to learn how to read and write and all that kind of stuff, you're solving that challenge, right? If you've got a cell phone, what problem is that solving?
00:38:49
S2: If you have a cell phone?
00:38:50
S5: Yeah. If a cell phone, what what problem does that solve?
00:38:54
S2: The problem that you need to communicate. Yeah. Communication problem.
00:38:58
S5: I guess it's that simple. Uh, that light over, you know, the shining on you right there, Ali, because by this studio has changed ever since we've gone on YouTube and Facebook reels and different things. What problem is that solving?
00:39:11
S2: Uh, darkness.
00:39:13
S5: Yeah. Solving darkness. I mean, you can do this with almost anything, right? The glasses we have on. Mhm. We can see that's a good thing. By the way, the first time I couldn't see it, it really I, I was I was in the middle of a message. This is in Alaska. I mean, I'm in the middle of a message and I've got the Bible and I'm pulling it closer to me because I couldn't see. And the closer I pulled it to me, the blurrier the words got. Oh, no. Now nobody knew what was going on. But I'm like on the fly trying to figure out why is this thing so out of focus? I got done with the message that day and I told my bride, I said, I better go get my eyes checked. And sure enough, you're having a problem reading letters, man. So glasses solve a problem for sight. And then the question you got to ask is, what is the problem Jesus solved? Well, John the Baptist said it, and it's found in John chapter one. And I love this. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It's right there.
00:40:17
S2: That's the problem.
00:40:18
S5: That's the problem. So let me be really clear with the gospel here today. The good news is that although you were born in sin, Jesus came to deal with your sin. Behold the Lamb of God that goes all the way back to Passover. It's the last, uh, it's it's the final plague. And it, I mean, it's the plagues. The ten plagues are just one of the most epic things. By the way. The first two plagues the Pharaoh's magicians. They could match it. Turning water into blood. They could match it the first couple of plagues they could match. By the time it got down to boils, the magicians couldn't even get up off their beds. They had boils so badly. And then it came to the Passover lamb And they took these unblemished lambs. And for a household or 2 or 3, because there was no rule like every you know, that's another thing that's really cool about God. There's no like hard and fast rule about how that had to go down. They just needed to get the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the homes that the firstborn were not killed. That's why it's called Passover. God would pass over that house. And so the firstborn of all livestock in Egypt at that time, and the firstborn of all of Pharaoh's and all the Egyptian people, obviously did not take a Passover lamb. And there was wailing throughout that nation the next morning. But those were spared, that had that shed blood of that perfect lamb over the doorposts of their home. Guys, we were born in sin and there's no amount of effort that you can do to make this right, except for the pass over of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, who cleanses us of all sin. And so the problem that you have today, if you're not born again, is not that you're not good enough because you never can be. It's not that the the solution for the problem is not that you're born in Christianity, in a Christian home. It's not even that you go to church. It's not even that you give. That's not the solution for the problem. The only solution for your problem is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And so this is why the gospel revolves around acknowledgement that I'm a sinner and receiving, not accepting, but receiving Jesus Christ as the Savior of your life. He becomes the Passover lamb for you. And that's a weighty thing because it's so much more than cultural Christianity. And I've been working on a project for a long time along these lines, and I'm more convinced than ever that it is very easy to be self deceived into thinking that you've received all that Jesus has for you by being swept up in a Christian home, in a Christian culture, but never having the blood of Christ that becomes the propitiation for your sin. Big fancy word for sins, past, present, and future. And some of you might say, well, man, if I accepted Him as Savior and he becomes the propitiation for my sin, doesn't that kind of give me a a blank slate to go out and do what I want to do? No, you misunderstand the atoning sacrifice of the blood of Jesus. The change is so demonstrative that The old has died, the new has come. We become new creations. Everything about us wants to live differently. And we now have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. That confirms in our heart that we're children of God. The spirit agrees with our spirit that we're children of God. And my great concern is for all of you listening is that we know that there's going to be a wide, sweeping cultural Christianity, because many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, he's going to say, I didn't know you. And they were very religiously active, and yet they're lost. And here's the hope. The hope is that the Spirit of God in this moment, no matter where you are driving, walking, listening at work, at home somewhere, I don't know where you are in this world. I don't know where you are, but God does. And he may have brought you here for this moment when the Spirit of God begins to convict you, because that's the role of the Holy Spirit of sin. And you recognize my problem is sin. And behold, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. And that's powerful ally.
00:45:30
S2: It is. There's no other solution to the problem.
00:45:33
S5: None. None. You can't. You can't give enough of your time, your talent, or your treasure to get right with God. You can't give enough. You can't sing loud enough. You can't lift your arms high enough. You can't watch enough kids. You can't do enough good to get squared with God. And it's a humbling thing when you got to come face to face with the fact that, man, I'm a sinner and I need someone to save my soul. And I just want to rehearse again. This term sin means to miss the mark. It's the gap between the bull's eye on the target and where your arrow or spear lands with all of your great efforts. And no matter how great your efforts are, you can't hit the bull's eye. It's impossible. But Jesus hit the bull's eye for us. And right now, in this moment, somebody is convicted that I. I am a sinner, and I've never come to grips with that fact. And I'm asking you to cry out to God, because salvation is a cry of the soul that just says, save me, man. Paint the blood of Jesus over the doorposts of my heart. I'm a sinner, Karl. I'm ready to admit it. Today. I need a Savior. Because our problem is sin. And the Lamb of God came into this world to save sinners like you and me. And if the cry of your heart today, for the first time in your life, is to say, I'm a sinner. And here's how it works. The Spirit of God is revealing to you that, no, I've never surrendered my life to Jesus by confessing and coming to grips with that heart rending moment where you say, I'm the problem. Jesus, save me. Today can be your day of salvation. And it's a cry of the soul. And that cry of I'm a sinner, save me will be followed by this radical transformation. The old is gone. The new has come. Where new creations in Christ. I've been crucified with Christ. What happens when he paints the blood of Jesus on your soul? You've now been crucified with Christ because he took that sin of yours to the cross. It's no longer now you who live, but Christ who lives in you. There's this power transfer from God through His Son Jesus, into your life in the Spirit of God now infuses you with this living power in this hope and this direction in your life. And so I'm just asking you right now, are you going to cry out finally, once and for all? No more playing games or trying to skirt the issue that you're a sinner and the Lamb of God came to deal with it. And if that's the cry of your soul today, you will repent. You will turn around. You will follow Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit that now fills you. You will turn and you will surrender all you are to him. See, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. That means he's the highest authority in your life. No one can say that apart from the blood of Jesus. You can't do it. But if that's you today. Welcome to the family. Just cry out to God right now and say I'm a sinner. I need a savior. I'm giving everything I am over to you, God. All my dreams, aspirations, hopes, everything. I'm surrendering all I am to you today. Wherever you are, friend. Don't play with eternity. Don't play with today. Today is the day of salvation. Don't harden your heart and think I can do it. You can't do it. Jesus did it for you, for me, for Allie, for somebody. He can do it for you. And some of you right now, you have it happening. You know what's happening. Because Jesus said, come to me and you're coming to Jesus. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because that yoke you've been carrying is weighty. Man, it's been heavy, and now God is releasing you from that and you're feeling it. We want to help you and your first steps with Jesus right now.
00:50:04
S2: Just text the word new NEW to 805 557898. Text new to 805 557898. If today you are turning, today you are repenting. You are following Jesus. We want to help you. Text new to 805 557898.
00:50:26
S5: Yeah, we want to help you right now. Oh man, we hadn't planned on that one, but God's timing is perfect. Text new right now, wherever you are today is a brand new day. One word new to 805, five, five, 78, 98. And we're going to help you in your first steps with Jesus. What a great thing that God, in His mercy reached down. He loved you so much. He saved your soul today. It's a tremendous thing.
S1: Broadcasting from Chicago, across North America and beyond. It's Carl and crew. Come as you are an experienced guide, overcome what seems impossible and live as you never imagined delivering the truth daily.
00:00:17
S2: If it were possible to have every worldly gain available and you're forfeiting your soul, there's no amount of gain that would make it worth it.
00:00:26
S3: Our own way never ever works. Because it's apart from the life source, which is God.
00:00:32
S4: For me, growing up, love was always conditional and can be taken from you. Christ's love can't. And he went to the cross with my mind and my heart that night.
00:00:44
S1: Now, from the call of Hope Studios, this is Carl and Crew man.
00:00:49
S5: We're down to 72 people. That is it. And you're wondering, well, what's going on? Well, they aren't getting picked off, Oh, but when we're down to 72 people, that's that's just how many seats we have left for praying during share.
00:01:05
S2: We started with 620. That's how many. When you break it down to 30 minute slots, ten people praying per half hour, 620 slots down to how many did you say?
00:01:15
S5: 72.
00:01:16
S2: 72 left. So 500 and almost 550 people have already signed up, committed to a half hour. We are so grateful. And if we could get this totally full today, that would be incredible.
00:01:28
S5: Yeah, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. It may happen in the next half hour. Um, this is a joy, guys. Uh, you know, I, I've been a part of this is why it's so important. I have been a part of two kind of regional or kind of local awakenings that were just as real as real could be. In fact, when we were my bride and I were rehearsing the story of what happened at a church in Alaska with Pastor Lutzer and his wife, Rebecca, we had dinner with him. It was one of those two hour dinners that turned into 3.5 hours, which are always the best. And, you know, as we were walking through the story, it's it's an awesome thing because we witnessed at one service this happened twice. But at one service, like 500 and change I think is I don't want to undersell it. My wife says I undersell it sometimes, but 500 people surrendered to Christ. This isn't hands in the air when no one's looking. This is. You are surrendering all you are to Jesus. You're looking in the mirror and going, I'm a sinner and I need a Savior. You're repentant and following Christ. Stand in the lobby after the service, get a new follower packet. We're going to team you up with a life coach. We made that commitment. That's a different kind of number.
00:02:51
S2: Oh, yeah.
00:02:52
S5: When you get we would have four lines right across one another and ten deep. And I walked out into the lobby at the end of some of those services. And people are just standing there in tears, getting prayed for joy galore. It was just every every kind of person you can imagine. But here's the point of that. That didn't happen without prayer. That was the engine room. We had elders on our knees every Thursday night in our home, on our knees every Thursday night in our home. We'd have a charcuterie board before charcuterie boards were even a thing. And so we'd have some nibbles for the guys and we'd bust onto. And when I say on our knees, I mean physically on our knees. A couple of the guys couldn't get on their knees. They were older guys, but most of us were on our knees. Bibles opened and that's how God moved. Do I believe in the power of prayer? You better believe it, man. I've seen it. And so getting you to grab a seat for share and pray, get a front row seat. We just got a handful of seats left. 30 minutes of prayer. Take the pressure off someone who's like, man, I'd like to try this, but it seems like isn't this for the super saints? AU contraire Pierre.
00:04:14
S2: I believe that this is going to be so personally enriching for you. Don't be intimidated by the length of time. We're going to send you some prayer prompts so that you have an idea of what we're even asking for prayer for. But I believe if you open the Word of God and you sit with the Lord and you just have a conversation, you're that 30 minutes is going to finish and you're going to. There's going to be a fresh life in you big time. I wholeheartedly believe.
00:04:40
S5: You do, don't you?
00:04:41
S2: Oh, I do.
00:04:44
S5: Yeah, we've seen it. I mean, we hear back from people going, yeah, I, I couldn't believe what God was doing. And you're going to be partnered up with nine other people who knows where. Better chance than not. They're a long ways away from you.
00:04:59
S2: So you will be praying by yourself, knowing that there are other people who are praying at the same time, in the same direction for the same things. So if you're willing to be a part of that, take the challenge. Just text crew to 800 555, 7898, crew CREW to 805 557898.
00:05:19
S5: Yeah, I'll tell you what, he's always there. He's omnipresent. But when you're focused in prayer, the king is in the room. Thank you for jumping in, guys. It's Carl and crew and. Okay. Super die. I don't know if you can hear me. She got her headphones on in there.
00:05:40
S2: I think she's working on some audio.
00:05:41
S5: Hey. Super die. Thanks for swapping out the headsets. Appreciate you. What were you doing in there? Just editing audio. Yes. How's it going in there? Editing audio. Going good. Good. Hanging in there.
00:05:51
S4: Oh, yes. Always.
00:05:52
S5: You're always spry. She's so spry she ups and moves. Hey. So, uh, refresh this thing. Let's see where we're at on this prayers thing.
00:06:01
S4: 567 out of 620 we're at 567.
00:06:05
S2: We're so close.
00:06:06
S5: Yeah, we're we're right. We're like, right there, guys. Okay, so we got 50 ish seats left, something like that. So 50 plus. Yeah, 50 plus. Man, they're going fast. When you get this link, be sure to use it. That's all I can say. Yes.
00:06:21
S2: Text crew 805 557898.
00:06:25
S5: Yeah. Grateful for you. Really grateful. We're going to top this thing off here soon. Okay. Ali, what's cooking here, sister?
00:06:31
S2: Coming up, we are going to continue our conversation about emotions. What about love? How can cultivating a ladder of love help you with spiritual intimacy and even emotional healing? Stacey Eldridge joins us. Coming up.
00:06:46
S1: You're listening to Curl and Crew on Moody Radio.
00:06:50
S5: Well, we're talking emotions all week and we've been all over the globe here with emotions. Everything you can imagine. And I and it's good because we're near the end of the week here, and it's time to start buttoning things up. And we've had a lot of biblical remedies for some of these things. But emotional healing, when you really think about those two words, you realize that there's something bigger than you that has to be at work. And Stacey Eldridge is with us right now. Aren't we glad, Stacey, that God is bigger than us? Sister.
00:07:22
S6: Thank goodness, in every arena of our life, in every single aspect, I'm so grateful.
00:07:29
S2: Stacey Eldridge is the co-founder of Wild at Heart, a ministry devoted to helping people discover the heart of God, recover their own hearts in God's love, and learn to live in God's kingdom. Stacey, what is the thing that most keeps people from emotional healing and spiritual intimacy with God?
00:07:46
S6: Oh, I would say it's their own story of love. Everybody has suffered in this life. Nobody gets out of here without being wounded, and the way we have been wounded can pin our heart down. Messages came as who we are and who we're not. And those messages can keep us from learning God rightly. And he wants to reframe and come into the deep places where there are emotional wounds so that he might heal us, restore us, and that we can learn him rightly.
00:08:17
S5: You know, you've titled your work The Ladder of Love. I've got to believe for sure that this isn't about us bootstrapping and ascending some lofty place. It's almost like layers. This ladder is like steps of revelation of God's love. Is that true?
00:08:35
S6: That's exactly what it is. I would even say that the latter is our identity. A ladder has to be on firm ground, and our identity needs to be based on the rock of Jesus Christ, not on our accomplishments or our finances or anything else, and the latter is both a revelation of who God is and the many and multifaceted ways he represents Himself in Scripture. But in that, we come to find out who we really are.
00:09:04
S2: Stacey, talk a little bit about your own story. For our listeners who who aren't familiar with you. Give us a little bit of your background.
00:09:11
S6: Well, I was not a Christian for a lot of years until I was 21. And I was really at the depth of despair when Jesus reached down and saved me again. It wasn't out of my striving to be good. It was simply about receiving his love. I was 21 years old and I was in totally in. But about 15 years later, I discovered that I was just getting tired. I was thinking that I needed to earn God's love rather than just receive it and rest in it. And that propelled me on a journey together with my husband, John, to come to know the heart of God and how deeply loved I am. And we all are. In whatever moment we find ourselves in. And that is what has profoundly changed my life. And we love because he first loved us. So receiving his love, believing him, resting in it. That propels me to love him in return.
00:10:07
S5: Stacy Eldredge, our guest. All right, Stacy, let's break this down because we talk about this all the time. We in the West, we've got a perspective of Christianity that's unfamiliar to the scriptures. The scriptures are loaded with, you know, I'm the vine, you're the branch. You abide in me, you're going to bear fruit. And we focused on it's been a while since we've shared this alley, but it's worth sharing. We focus so much on fruit production, and my conviction is we can't do anything but produce fake fruit apart from an abiding relationship with Jesus. So it's this connection with Jesus that's so important. Why are we so prone to try to produce fruit instead of having proximity to the love and intimacy of Jesus Christ? Why?
00:11:00
S6: Oh my goodness. I think we're sometimes taught wrong. Yeah. I remember my early days in church when particularly women would get up and share their testimonies or share their lives. They were unattainable to me. I would call it the parade of the perfect. Like I, I knew my inside story like that is not available to me, but I would try. Somewhere along the line I thought I had to earn it rather than just rest in it, and I didn't know. I thought the goal of Christianity was do better, offer God a whole bunch, get a lot of work done. Whereas God says it's intimacy. And further than that, it's union. He wants partnership with us. He wants us to know him like we would know our closest friend. Like we would know our spouse. It's it's an amazing amount of intimacy, of closeness, of proximity to his heart. And that's what will propel us. That's what will take us the long haul. Not duty, not obligation, not our works, but loving him.
00:12:00
S2: The book is called The Ladder of Love. Stacy the ladder. I'm guessing there's some sort of progression. There's some building blocks here. How much of this is spiritual formation? I mean, it's this is not just something in theory to aim for, to sit there and wait for the love of God to kind of fall upon you. That's not even biblical, by the way, but there's a spiritual formation component. What do you say.
00:12:22
S6: We have to give him our. Yes. And in the book I also give handrails. We are given spiritual disciplines not to punish us, but to strengthen us and to help us and to guide us their tools, their gifts for us to to help us ascend in knowing him. And so there are great things to begin to practice. And I want to say that coming close to Jesus like this is something that we grow in over our lifetimes. So that's why a ladder, we start on the bottom rung, which I describe as clay being formed by the potter's hands. Now we are always clay. We are always being formed throughout our lives. But we get to ascend in the metaphor that he has given us as his sheep, and we learn him as our provider, our protector. Now we're alive. We're not inanimate, we're alive. And we continue to ascend just by learning him, just by him telling us who he is, which we need to be in His Word, because that's where he reveals himself. But he also does in nature and creation and in the particular ways that he speaks to us, his love for us. So yes, there is a yes we have to give. And it comes from a desire being thirsty. That's a great gift. If you're not thirsty, you don't go to the living water. If you're not hungry, you don't go to the banqueting table. So even our desperation for more. That's him calling us closer to him.
00:13:48
S5: Yeah. You know what you're speaking of, Stacy. Here are the lost disciplines of. Oh, I'm even thinking of some of the great Quaker writers and some of that. And it's a shame that we have to almost go back in order to go ahead. But we've championed disciplines of activity, service, using your gifts and all that. But we've neglected the disciplines of silence, solitude, introspection, letting the Lord speak into our heart. How do we reclaim that? Because, Stacy, let me just tell you right now, sister, this is pay dirt what you're talking about. This is where the real faith lives. And we've missed it. Like the broad side of a pecan barn. How do we reclaim these rungs of the ladder? How do we do that?
00:14:40
S6: You know what the yes, the asking for it, but then doing the work of just being still and knowing that I am God. It's making a choice when you want him more. Our schedules will reflect our priorities, and he wants to be number one. And so that means you have to make time for it. Now, you may be in a season of life where that time is ten minutes and you're like, Hallelujah, I got ten minutes. I'm in a season of life where I have a lot more time than that. And it's progressed over my lifetime to be still center in and also focus on where Christ dwells. He says. He dwells in our hearts through faith. He has taken up residence within. So to encounter him, we actually need to sink within. Ask for Holy Spirit's help to help us attune to his presence within, and then get quiet. Tell him you love him. You love him in whatever situation you're in, and then ask if he'd like to say anything to you. That's a great beginning.
00:15:45
S2: Stacey Eldredge. The book is called The Ladder of Love. The ministry is called Wild at Heart. We'll send you information on both. Just text wild to 800 555 7898. Wild to 805 557898.
00:16:01
S1: He's a sports fanatic with a stand for anything you can think of. Young Thunder is in the crew. It's curl and crew on Moody radio.
00:16:11
S5: And there's no denying it. AI is powerhouse. You using it a lot, Ali?
00:16:17
S2: I do. I mean, I use ChatGPT as my preferred, I guess platform.
00:16:21
S5: Your go to.
00:16:22
S2: Yeah. And kind of for organizing ideas kind of planning.
00:16:26
S5: It's amazing.
00:16:27
S2: I try to avoid using it for creative tasks. I will say that.
00:16:30
S5: Yeah. I was in John one early this morning looking at what is the original Greek word for John the Baptist saying, behold the Son of God. It's fascinating stuff. I mean, in an instant it pulls it up quicker than any original language study. But it's got some power. Drew Dickens with us right now. Drew anthropic or not, anthropic as a whole. Who were those guys that predicted the end of times as we know it? My man.
00:16:57
S7: It's been a wild couple of weeks, man. Um, so for those of us that have, like, a home security system, here's what happened is, you know, when you install the system, you immediately want to go around and open windows and wave your arms around to make sure the security system is working. Well, that's what happened at the end of July. Open AI, ChatGPT. They installed a security system and they wanted to see if it was working. And so they told open AI. They told ChatGPT to go and break into our house, but they put it in what's called a sandbox. They said, you can only stay within these little guardrails and don't go outside of that. Well, ChatGPT basically said, look, if you want me to act like a thief, I'm going to be a thief. And so it immediately broke out of the guardrails when kind of no one was watching and started wandering its way through a company called Hugging Face, which is a funny name, but it's a it's a storehouse that companies will use to store data. Okay. Okay. And so it broke out of the out of the storehouse and started winding its way through that later in August. Anthropic Claude, they discovered that their version of their language model was doing the same thing. And so it kind of confessed that, yeah, on its own broke out and said, if you want us to act this way, this is the way we're going to act. Follow those rules. And it broke all the rules. The leaders of all these language models started coming forward and saying, okay, guys, it's time to tap the brakes. Um, they wrote an article called Pacing the Frontier. 1500 AI engineers from these two companies signed the letter saying, we need to slow this down. It's getting too smart, too fast, too quick. And then last week, end of last week, about a week ago, Jacob Coxon is the one. He's an engineer with anthropic. He's the one that came out and said 10% chance that within the end of the decade that it's it's going to kill us all. And that's of course what got the headline.
00:18:46
S5: Yeah.
00:18:46
S7: All cranked up. Yeah, that's the headline.
00:18:48
S2: Then Doctor Drew Dickens with us this morning. Visionary leader, AI expert. He has become a real go to for our show as we try to keep you updated as much as we can with what's going on with AI. So for a lot of people, you hear something like that and it sounds absolutely insane. It sounds like something out of one of those really terrible movies, a prediction like that. What's a Christ follower to do with that kind of information?
00:19:13
S7: These kind of reports are starting to just come out every couple of weeks. A lot of people think that it's just a marketing ploy. It grabs headlines, it gets investors excited. They pour more money into it. So some of it, it really could be that I think there are some very legitimate threats that we need to be concerned about. Carl, you mentioned one as far as power grabs and electricity and things like that. So there's some things we need to be mindful of. But boy, you've got to immediately go through scripture and 365 times in the Word of God, it says, fear not. Yeah. It's one of the most common commands that we're given is fear not. Isaiah 4110. I love going to. It's just fear not, for I am the Lord your God. So we need to go no further than that and also just be discerning. You mentioned being in the word this morning. I was navigating through Hebrews chapter four and chapter five. You know, talk about being discerning, trained by the constant practice of distinguishing good from evil. So I think just resting in the word, this is not the first time we've got a 2000 year old book that teaches us how to navigate fear. And so I think that's where we are right now is to just take a breath and, and learn how to just discern the spirits in these, in these kind of press releases.
00:20:30
S5: So fear not, I get that, but I go to Matthew 24 and I just flipped open to it here. And we see that a lot of false Christs are going to come. Right. And all that's going to be coming near the end. But you see, in Matthew 24, you see a prediction of chaos. And my concern isn't that AI. And I'm really not concerned. I trust the sovereignty and providence of God, and those things are powerful. But I think we need to be alert. We need to be watchful as Christ's followers. We don't want to stick our head in the sand. And it strikes me, Dru, that it's important for us to understand that we may in fact see not AI. I embedded, you know, robots that are going to go kill us. But I am thinking about rogue nations. I mean, think about this one, ally. You got China, you got all these adversarial nations. What's keeping them from tapping into AI to take out our electrical grid? I mean, I'm not trying to scare anyone. I'm just being practical here.
00:21:34
S7: It's been fascinating that over the last week, the people that have come out on the side of slowing this down have been the larger language models, the people that have come out and said no. Mark Zuckerberg with meta, with Facebook. He said no. China, a big surprise, has said no, we shouldn't slow down. President Trump has said, no, we shouldn't slow down. And so this has become, uh you know, he said she said both sides of the aisle, uh, Washington has not been able to come to some conclusions on this. There's some bad players in this that would benefit from us slowing down. While the rest of the world continues to advance in the field of AI China specifically.
00:22:15
S5: Yeah, that's the weird thing, isn't it, Ali? I mean, come on, these nefarious players are like, yeah, you guys slow down. But they aren't going to slow down.
00:22:25
S2: Very true. True. The thing that many people listening will wonder is, okay, are there things that I can do to protect my family, to protect my information. I mean, not you don't want to start speculating on all of the ways that it could be used in destructive, that AI could be destructive. But what can the average person listening do to take some reasonable safeguards?
00:22:49
S7: We really don't think about this much anymore, do we? We try to be careful about, you know, where we put our credit cards. We try to be careful about the information that we we type into websites. When we go on, we're thinking, I think less and less and less about that. But we need to be thinking about it more and more and more is who's asking for this information? What's their privacy policy? We need to again slow down and think about those things. Um, and, uh, who's asking and why and where is it being stored. All that information is readily available when we go in these sites. We need to slow down and think about those things more now than ever. We need to be having. One of the things I'm advocating really strongly right now is for churches and families to have an AI policy. You know, we need a degree as a family. Here's what we will and won't use AI for. We need to start having these conversations. We really do.
00:23:43
S5: Okay, so let's go to the cups half full side of this thing. Here. You have created some tools here that have been blowing our minds. I mean, talk about links flying out the door. I don't know what the last count was on that spiritual gifts assessment that you designed. That is so beautiful. I have 40, 50,000 people beyond. I mean, it's been hit heavy. So you've done something really cool. Why don't you explain to the boom crew what you've been up to the last week and a half? Two weeks.
00:24:14
S7: Glory to God for you. Your team really prompted me to do this, is to create a simple little AI tool for spiritual gifts and how it got started and different things that we've been doing. And I thought, what a fun use of AI for me to, to use the power of that to create a simple little spiritual tool that people can use to advance their walk with the Lord. And so on my podcast this morning, I put a link to that. It's called simple Faith tools. And y'all were really the inspiration through the spirit for, for that idea. But every week or so, I'm going to publish another tool this morning. I put one on there called End of Day. And it's a time to help kind of guide you through the end of your day and through a time of prayer and reflection. So every week, I'm just going to commit to trying to launch another simple faith. They're all free, a simple faith tool to, to encourage you in your walk with the Lord.
00:25:15
S5: He says it so off the cuff, but these are powerful tools.
00:25:19
S2: Very much so. I mean, we've mentioned a couple of them. They're all on this site practicing gospel conversations, the spiritual gifts assessment, and then this latest one, the end of day reflection. Uh, if you want this, just text the word drew to 800 555 7898. Text drew to 805 557898.
00:25:42
S5: Yeah, and then we're going to need that end of days reflection. The that we're going to the end of day and then we're going to need the end of days. And that's where you get to predict when Jesus is actually coming back. I'm kidding. Absolutely. That'll be.
00:25:56
S7: As soon as I said end of day, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, just think of that.
00:25:59
S5: No, no.
00:26:00
S7: No, that one's not going to be on. That one's not going to be on there.
00:26:03
S5: No, that won't be on there. There's no S on this feature. It's end of day. It's it's a journal day. Help you with your.
00:26:09
S7: The end of your day.
00:26:10
S5: Yeah. And the beautiful thing with that is, I mean, what you cap your day with. I mean, have you ever noticed if if you cap your day with some crazy flick that's got you disturbed, you're disturbed in the night.
00:26:23
S2: Yeah. Crazy dreams. Yeah. Like what is going on?
00:26:27
S5: So this is going to turn this around. We are fired up to get this launched here today for you. Drew, we love you, man. You've been an unbelievable resource. And you call them hearts and you give hope. It's really cool. Ali, what's the link we've got for this?
00:26:41
S2: Just text drew to 805 557898. Text drew to 805 557898. I also want to invite you to use that number if you have a question. We won't get to it today, but we will compile the feedback that comes in from you. We'll share that with drew. So as he's planning different tools, we can give him real time feedback. So you can throw in a question or a suggestion if you have one as well. 805, five, five, 78, 98.
00:27:11
S5: That's really cool. You know what, real quick here, I mean, we get breaking news on AI every day. What is the counterintuitive approach with AI that you're holding on to? Because everything intuitively says that it's growing. It's exponential. What's the counter to all of that? What's what's happening here with a Christian worldview?
00:27:35
S7: I'm out of town right now speaking at a conference on this topic. And so often people will come to me and say, you know what? I'm just not using it. I'm not on AI. I'm not going to use AI, I push. I just made the decision never. Well, that that ship has sailed. And so one of the first things I tell people is to start wading into the water, practice it. Learn how to use it. Um, learn what the tool is and isn't and should and shouldn't be for you. Um, so kind of counterintuitive instead of running away from, don't run into it, but walk into it and start, uh, start understanding how it works and its limitations and what it can be used for in a, in an affirming, redemptive way, because it is a tool that did not surprise the Holy Spirit or God.
00:28:17
S5: Yes.
00:28:18
S7: So start seeing what God can do with it.
00:28:20
S5: Love it. Okay guys. Text the word drew to 805 5578, 98. Incredible platform he's building here.
00:28:29
S1: He was sharing the gospel on the radio and then he got saved. Young thunders in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
00:28:38
S2: Well, do you ever look around and think there are some people who just seem like they're more happy? They have a happy personality, they seem more joyful. And you go, man, why can't I be one of those people? Doctor Marcus Warner joining us right now. He's president of Deeper Walk International. And he co-authored a book called The Four Habits of Joy Filled People. First of all, happy versus joyful. Let's distinguish between the two.
00:29:09
S8: Doctor Marcus joyful is a relational word. And a lot of people times we don't catch that off the top because happy is I am completely dependent on something outside of me to do something to me and makes me happy. Whereas joy is like relational happiness, for example. It's like if you see a good friend in there, your phone lights up and their names on it, you can feel happy just seeing their name on the phone. Yeah, right. It's a relational thing. That's the joy that you feel. Our joy increases when we can share happy things with people we love. But our joy also increases when we share hard things with people that we love. You know, when we don't feel alone in it, when we are with somebody we enjoy being with, it helps give us more capacity to go through hard things.
00:29:53
S2: And of course, we know that joy is a part of the fruit of the spirit that we don't. We can't truly experience joy apart from a relationship with God. True. Speak to that a little bit.
00:30:04
S8: Well, I would say that, uh, there's misunderstanding on that to some extent. And that is like brain science would suggest that everybody experiences joy. Everybody knows what relational joy is. Jesus even comments on that. He's like, don't you love those who love you? You know, everybody does that. But we should be loving our enemies and joy and love are inseparable. It's that feeling that says, oh yeah, I have joy in this relationship. It's part of the way that I express love to people. So just like the Holy Spirit leads to love, but other people can feel love too. The Holy Spirit leads the joy. That doesn't mean other people don't feel joy too.
00:30:40
S2: So let's talk about some of the habits, the four habits of joy filled people. What are things that people do that point them towards joy more often that maybe others miss out on? Not? And I'm guessing it has nothing to do with circumstances always being favorable for some more than others.
00:30:58
S8: No, not at all. So I give you examples like I've got a very good friend who has lived with chronic pain her whole life and has so many physical ailments, but every morning she starts her day, she won't get out of bed till she's reminded herself of 50 things that she is grateful for. You know, this is her life. And so one of the habits that people cultivate is appreciation. In fact, the fastest way to grow joy is the practice of appreciation. Now, a lot of people kind of roll their eyes at that because they think, well, I say thank you all the time. I'm a grateful person. Appreciation way I'm using it is a step beyond just saying thank you for things. It's actually entering into a state where you are enjoying an experience. It's like the difference between noticing that there's a pretty sky and taking five minutes to just soak it in. It's the difference between saying, oh, I'm grateful I've got some coffee and actually enjoying that cup of coffee. And so what the brain science has shown us is that if I can get my brain in a state of appreciation for five minutes consecutively, twice a day over a 30 day period, I will rewire my brain and joy will begin to feel normal. And so that connects really well with Scripture, connects really well with the Holy Spirit, right? Because appreciation is a form of meditation on what God has done for us. That is good. And so it becomes relational experience with God. What I've seen is that most people think they're better at appreciation than they are. I know when I first tried it, I would do it for like five seconds and I realized, okay, I'm done. I've got nothing. It's like, how do people stay in this for, uh, a full minute? You know, for two minutes. For three minutes. It was harder than I realized. And I think that's the case for a lot of us, that we tend to think we're better at it than we are.
00:32:39
S2: So appreciation or I've heard people talk about gratitude. That may be one of the ones that people might expect. Which one of the four would be maybe most surprising to people as a habit that helps promote joy filled living?
00:32:53
S8: Yeah, I would say storytelling. So we actually teach four of them. And you can remember what the word casa, right? So the idea here is that I've got an inside house, and that inside house is either going to run on fear or joy. And if my inner house is running on fear, it's not a happy place to be. So I've got to retrain myself to make my inner world a place that is running on joy. So appreciation is one that storytelling is another one of these four habits. And the typical story people tell is this bad thing happened to me. I felt this bad emotion and that's why my life is bad. So it's like bad happened. Bad emotion. Now I'm stuck in bad, joy filled people tell stories a little different. It's this bad thing happened. I felt this bad emotion. But. And when they get to the but they're like, but something else happened. But I remembered God. But somebody stepped in and helped me. But I am hoping for this in the future. But there is a something that changes the story at the end that gives them some hope. And so I find that a lot of times we get stuck telling ourselves the story of our life in very negative ways. That leaves us in a place of hopelessness where nothing can ever change. And so we have to learn how to become good storytellers, of how to tell our own story with more joy, and to find the joy in our story, to emphasize that word. But it's kind of interesting also, because when you're telling a story, you definitely need the word. But it goes, this bad thing happened. I felt this bad emotion. But when you're doing appreciation, it's the opposite. You don't want the word, but the one thing that will really sabotage appreciation is a. Like if I tell my wife, I really appreciate it when you do the dishes, but I wish you'd do them more often. Right. I there's no appreciation there. So like, that's sort of the forbidden word in appreciation, but it's the essential word in storytelling.
00:34:40
S2: And, you know, when you think about the hard parts of people's story, the really painful parts, the parts that man where the sin of others caused such pain and such destruction, this is more than just finding a silver lining or kind of putting a, a happy bow on really hard things. I mean, this takes a deep work with the help from the Lord, to be able to see where God is working in really hard stuff, right? I mean, we can't rush past that.
00:35:10
S8: That's absolutely true. And so what happens, though, is that sometimes people feel that they have to wait until they're all done with their healing journey to experience any joy.
00:35:18
S2: Yeah.
00:35:18
S8: And that's partly what we're trying to dispel, is that there can be joy along the way. And sometimes it is just the little things. It's like stopping and smelling the roses along the way. It's like life still may be bad, but if you can train yourself to find those good things along the way and enjoy them and enter into that joy, it will give you greater capacity to handle the hard things. So the image I sometimes use is that my life is like a ball. And when that ball is full of air, it bounces back. It's fun to play with, but when that ball leaks and there's not much air in it, it goes flat and it just doesn't bounce well. And it's the same with our emotions. If we can replenish the joy in our lives and we have more control over that than we realize, people tend to wait for joy to happen to them. This is saying no. There's habits you can build that will increase your ability to experience joy. And as you grow these habits, it'll refill the air in your ball. You'll find yourself bouncing back faster from hard things that happen. Whereas if you've got low joy and you've got a hard life. You know, that's a really difficult combination. And that's where I think a lot of people are stuck. They have a low joy life and they have a hard life. And as long as you think the joy is something that happens to you and not something that you can develop through habits, then you're going to feel like you're kind of stuck there with no alternatives.
00:36:37
S2: I know you there's some brain science research that went into this book as well. What did you discover about joy and brain science?
00:36:45
S8: So fascinating thing is, the way God designed our brain is the identity center of my brain, and the joy center of my brain are the same part of the brain. It's called the right orbital prefrontal cortex for people who like that sort of thing. And up there is the part of my brain that thinks of itself as me. And so, for example, if that part of my brain gets injured, I can forget who I am. I can start acting like a different person because it's the part that contains my character and my personality. And so it just shows up automatically all the time. It's also the part of my brain that grows best with the experience of joy. And I think it's interesting because I think the lesson there is that God has designed us that like our true identity, our true self, is who we are when we're living with joy. And to many of us, define our true identity by who we are when we're malfunctioning. You know, when we're stuck in fear, when we're stuck in shame or sadness or something, instead of understanding that our true identity is that person when we're the most fully alive. That's our real self. And so God wants to encourage that. And that's why he talks about appreciation and storytelling. So that's the biggest thing I learned. And that's also where we discover that joy is fundamentally a relational experience. Because the part of my brain that experiences joy is in the relational center of my brain.
00:38:01
S2: Doctor Marcus Werner with us right now. He co-authored the book The Four Habits of Joy Filled People. If you want more, just text habits to 805 five, five, 78, 98, we're going to link you up to the resource as well as a podcast that goes with it. Just text habits to (800) 555-7898.
00:38:21
S1: Walking closer to Jesus every day. You're listening to Carl and crew.
00:38:26
S5: Everything. Solving a problem. Everything that you have. Everything. I mean, if you think about the job you have, you're solving a problem at some level. If you're a teacher, you're solving the problem of the problem of a kid that needs to learn how to read and write and all that kind of stuff, you're solving that challenge, right? If you've got a cell phone, what problem is that solving?
00:38:49
S2: If you have a cell phone?
00:38:50
S5: Yeah. If a cell phone, what what problem does that solve?
00:38:54
S2: The problem that you need to communicate. Yeah. Communication problem.
00:38:58
S5: I guess it's that simple. Uh, that light over, you know, the shining on you right there, Ali, because by this studio has changed ever since we've gone on YouTube and Facebook reels and different things. What problem is that solving?
00:39:11
S2: Uh, darkness.
00:39:13
S5: Yeah. Solving darkness. I mean, you can do this with almost anything, right? The glasses we have on. Mhm. We can see that's a good thing. By the way, the first time I couldn't see it, it really I, I was I was in the middle of a message. This is in Alaska. I mean, I'm in the middle of a message and I've got the Bible and I'm pulling it closer to me because I couldn't see. And the closer I pulled it to me, the blurrier the words got. Oh, no. Now nobody knew what was going on. But I'm like on the fly trying to figure out why is this thing so out of focus? I got done with the message that day and I told my bride, I said, I better go get my eyes checked. And sure enough, you're having a problem reading letters, man. So glasses solve a problem for sight. And then the question you got to ask is, what is the problem Jesus solved? Well, John the Baptist said it, and it's found in John chapter one. And I love this. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It's right there.
00:40:17
S2: That's the problem.
00:40:18
S5: That's the problem. So let me be really clear with the gospel here today. The good news is that although you were born in sin, Jesus came to deal with your sin. Behold the Lamb of God that goes all the way back to Passover. It's the last, uh, it's it's the final plague. And it, I mean, it's the plagues. The ten plagues are just one of the most epic things. By the way. The first two plagues the Pharaoh's magicians. They could match it. Turning water into blood. They could match it the first couple of plagues they could match. By the time it got down to boils, the magicians couldn't even get up off their beds. They had boils so badly. And then it came to the Passover lamb And they took these unblemished lambs. And for a household or 2 or 3, because there was no rule like every you know, that's another thing that's really cool about God. There's no like hard and fast rule about how that had to go down. They just needed to get the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the homes that the firstborn were not killed. That's why it's called Passover. God would pass over that house. And so the firstborn of all livestock in Egypt at that time, and the firstborn of all of Pharaoh's and all the Egyptian people, obviously did not take a Passover lamb. And there was wailing throughout that nation the next morning. But those were spared, that had that shed blood of that perfect lamb over the doorposts of their home. Guys, we were born in sin and there's no amount of effort that you can do to make this right, except for the pass over of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, who cleanses us of all sin. And so the problem that you have today, if you're not born again, is not that you're not good enough because you never can be. It's not that the the solution for the problem is not that you're born in Christianity, in a Christian home. It's not even that you go to church. It's not even that you give. That's not the solution for the problem. The only solution for your problem is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And so this is why the gospel revolves around acknowledgement that I'm a sinner and receiving, not accepting, but receiving Jesus Christ as the Savior of your life. He becomes the Passover lamb for you. And that's a weighty thing because it's so much more than cultural Christianity. And I've been working on a project for a long time along these lines, and I'm more convinced than ever that it is very easy to be self deceived into thinking that you've received all that Jesus has for you by being swept up in a Christian home, in a Christian culture, but never having the blood of Christ that becomes the propitiation for your sin. Big fancy word for sins, past, present, and future. And some of you might say, well, man, if I accepted Him as Savior and he becomes the propitiation for my sin, doesn't that kind of give me a a blank slate to go out and do what I want to do? No, you misunderstand the atoning sacrifice of the blood of Jesus. The change is so demonstrative that The old has died, the new has come. We become new creations. Everything about us wants to live differently. And we now have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. That confirms in our heart that we're children of God. The spirit agrees with our spirit that we're children of God. And my great concern is for all of you listening is that we know that there's going to be a wide, sweeping cultural Christianity, because many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, he's going to say, I didn't know you. And they were very religiously active, and yet they're lost. And here's the hope. The hope is that the Spirit of God in this moment, no matter where you are driving, walking, listening at work, at home somewhere, I don't know where you are in this world. I don't know where you are, but God does. And he may have brought you here for this moment when the Spirit of God begins to convict you, because that's the role of the Holy Spirit of sin. And you recognize my problem is sin. And behold, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. And that's powerful ally.
00:45:30
S2: It is. There's no other solution to the problem.
00:45:33
S5: None. None. You can't. You can't give enough of your time, your talent, or your treasure to get right with God. You can't give enough. You can't sing loud enough. You can't lift your arms high enough. You can't watch enough kids. You can't do enough good to get squared with God. And it's a humbling thing when you got to come face to face with the fact that, man, I'm a sinner and I need someone to save my soul. And I just want to rehearse again. This term sin means to miss the mark. It's the gap between the bull's eye on the target and where your arrow or spear lands with all of your great efforts. And no matter how great your efforts are, you can't hit the bull's eye. It's impossible. But Jesus hit the bull's eye for us. And right now, in this moment, somebody is convicted that I. I am a sinner, and I've never come to grips with that fact. And I'm asking you to cry out to God, because salvation is a cry of the soul that just says, save me, man. Paint the blood of Jesus over the doorposts of my heart. I'm a sinner, Karl. I'm ready to admit it. Today. I need a Savior. Because our problem is sin. And the Lamb of God came into this world to save sinners like you and me. And if the cry of your heart today, for the first time in your life, is to say, I'm a sinner. And here's how it works. The Spirit of God is revealing to you that, no, I've never surrendered my life to Jesus by confessing and coming to grips with that heart rending moment where you say, I'm the problem. Jesus, save me. Today can be your day of salvation. And it's a cry of the soul. And that cry of I'm a sinner, save me will be followed by this radical transformation. The old is gone. The new has come. Where new creations in Christ. I've been crucified with Christ. What happens when he paints the blood of Jesus on your soul? You've now been crucified with Christ because he took that sin of yours to the cross. It's no longer now you who live, but Christ who lives in you. There's this power transfer from God through His Son Jesus, into your life in the Spirit of God now infuses you with this living power in this hope and this direction in your life. And so I'm just asking you right now, are you going to cry out finally, once and for all? No more playing games or trying to skirt the issue that you're a sinner and the Lamb of God came to deal with it. And if that's the cry of your soul today, you will repent. You will turn around. You will follow Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit that now fills you. You will turn and you will surrender all you are to him. See, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. That means he's the highest authority in your life. No one can say that apart from the blood of Jesus. You can't do it. But if that's you today. Welcome to the family. Just cry out to God right now and say I'm a sinner. I need a savior. I'm giving everything I am over to you, God. All my dreams, aspirations, hopes, everything. I'm surrendering all I am to you today. Wherever you are, friend. Don't play with eternity. Don't play with today. Today is the day of salvation. Don't harden your heart and think I can do it. You can't do it. Jesus did it for you, for me, for Allie, for somebody. He can do it for you. And some of you right now, you have it happening. You know what's happening. Because Jesus said, come to me and you're coming to Jesus. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because that yoke you've been carrying is weighty. Man, it's been heavy, and now God is releasing you from that and you're feeling it. We want to help you and your first steps with Jesus right now.
00:50:04
S2: Just text the word new NEW to 805 557898. Text new to 805 557898. If today you are turning, today you are repenting. You are following Jesus. We want to help you. Text new to 805 557898.
00:50:26
S5: Yeah, we want to help you right now. Oh man, we hadn't planned on that one, but God's timing is perfect. Text new right now, wherever you are today is a brand new day. One word new to 805, five, five, 78, 98. And we're going to help you in your first steps with Jesus. What a great thing that God, in His mercy reached down. He loved you so much. He saved your soul today. It's a tremendous thing.
