and we'll be right back.
Don't get down when you're seeing the worst
Cause the last will be the first
What a day I'm telling you
All things will be new
Living up in a down world
Yeah we're living, yeah we're living
Living up in a down world
Oh
This is JuniorNet and we are living up in a down world
This is episode one of the show.
Wow!
We made it to 60.
I like an even number like that.
It's almost like we should celebrate it.
I know
It's what it feels like to me.
Like this is like a milestone of some kind.
Yes it is.
It's crazy.
We've been gone for a while.
You've been gone for three weeks.
I have
Not that I'm counting.
Has it been that long?
Yeah it's been three weeks.
Well
Cause Pastor Brian and I did one together two weeks ago.
I was out of town.
Yep and then this last week he couldn't do it cause I was gonna lean on him again because
you weren't able to do it last week either.
No I had to stay home for
Something.
There was something.
Yeah delivery or something or pick up.
But you know what?
Okay.
Here we are.
We need to celebrate.
Okay what do you want to celebrate?
No construction.
Oh my goodness.
I mean all they lack is some painting and put the carpet in but nobody's doing anything
this week.
It's a miracle.
I feel very relieved.
And our office is so clean and pristine because Faith is now moving in her office.
Faith has been sharing her office with us for months.
This is our daughter who is on staff and so she thought she'd move in with her parents
again her whole office.
She always, they always come back.
They always come back home.
Yeah that was great having her in here but it was like hey I need to get some work done.
Hey I need to get some study done and it was impossible.
It's been a rough on that front.
It's just we haven't really had our office yet.
No because once we built it then we said oh well we need to build more offices and it
was a domino effect.
Which was important.
We needed it for everybody.
Everybody needs their space.
And everybody seems happy.
Now I'm like I'm going to call the wives to come in here and decorate all these offices
for the men that we made offices for.
Yeah the boys are going to.
And they're like no let us do it.
I'm like okay we'll see what that looks like.
Yeah that'll be fun.
Spartan.
It'll be Spartan.
It'll be interesting.
It'll look like a cave.
Cave men.
It feels good to be in our office finally do our broadcast and it just feels normal
again like we're back to normal except no Chevy.
No Chevy.
It just can't happen.
We can't take a chance.
We've got so much going right now.
We don't have any downtime or free time.
We couldn't take care of him.
Couldn't get him outside.
He would be miserable.
He'd end up either in somebody's lap all day which that would be heaven for him or he'd
end up in his cage.
We just can't do that to him.
He's a good boy and we can't cage him.
Although he's caged at home.
He's caged at home but he's comfortable.
He's in his home.
It'd be harder with him being here.
He'd be freaking out and stuff.
And especially with the construction going on and so many people in and out of the building.
It would interrupt his sleep.
He needs his beauty sleep for sure.
He definitely does.
How are you doing?
Three weeks.
I'm good.
I know.
What have you been up to?
Well, we went out to dinner with Tina and Adam the other night.
He is curry.
Curry and the keeper.
Right.
Curry and the keeper.
No agenda.
But he said something and I was able to respond in a way that I felt like God told me to respond
because he really spoke to me in the last couple of weeks.
He said, I miss you being on the show.
You really need to be on the show, Annette.
And you need to get in a rhythm again.
And I agreed.
And I said, you know, the reason why I'm agreeing with this instead of going, ah, you know,
Jimmy can do it or we can do it more sparsely is because I really felt like the Lord said
this is your platform.
Annette, you preach every week.
Well, most every week.
Some weeks you don't because we have Pastor Brian preaching now.
But you share the gospel weekly.
I don't have that opportunity is like you do at church, but through our podcast.
And I really felt like what he said was just a confirmation of Annette, you need to get
back on your podcast because this is where your voice is heard.
And I appreciate him bringing that up to me because I had already been convicted in the
last few weeks because I'm, you know, in my prayer time, I'm asking the Lord, you know,
what do you want from me?
What is my purpose?
And he keeps saying, you've got a podcast Annette, here's your purpose.
And it just, when Adam brought it up, it was like, yep, this is good.
This is, it reminded me of what God had been dealing with me about.
So I'm excited to be back here and we get in a rhythm.
Now we are going out of town some, but we'll just, we'll continue to do our podcast even
if we have to do it the next day, but then post it later, we can do that.
But we will try to be as, keep the rhythm as much as we can.
Try to be more consistent.
More consistent.
When you're under construction, it's like if those of you that are listening, if you've
ever done that in your house, like live in your house while it's under construction,
anybody's ever done that, you know, while they're renovating a kitchen, bathrooms, whatever,
that's a nightmare.
I mean, it really is.
It's hard.
Everything's disruptive, disrupted and disruptive.
Everything's out of place.
So it's been the same way for our office.
We were so excited about moving into our office.
I think we were on the show saying, finally we have an office.
But we sort of didn't because there was constant construction going on and noise.
We were literally on top of the office.
We built a storage space over the top of the office in our studio.
Instead of adding on, which was going to be so costly.
It just made sense space-wise.
But man, they were building it and then they were putting stuff up there.
Then they had to sheetrock it.
Then they had frame, sheetrock, paint, stuff.
I mean, it was like never ending and they were literally walking on our ceiling.
So it was like a nightmare.
Faith came in here.
So it has been insane.
So this is the first day we've been back where all the offices are almost finished.
Doors are on them now and stained.
We've got carpet coming for those offices as well.
But this is the first time I've looked over our office studio
and there hasn't been all of Faith's video equipment in here on carts and laying around everywhere.
Pretty remarkable that we finally got to this place.
It feels very peaceful right now.
I'm actually very chilled right now.
Who are you chatting with? Tina?
No, but you know what? I just got a red alert.
Oh no.
So for those of you who've been following and who hasn't in America,
the bombings, everything that's going on with Israel and the terrorist Iran bombing.
This is at a school in Israel.
Oh my gosh.
Saddam Moran School.
Annette has this app that we were advised to get or at least one of us
where whenever there is the penetration of airspace by a rocket, you get an alert in real time.
And I saw you looking at your watch.
I know. I know.
We're hoping there's nothing to that.
I didn't hear anything about the red alert.
Because I thought it all stopped and then now it's coming back.
Well, the other night for us, was it Saturday when all that was?
Yeah, Saturday when they sent off the 300 plus rockets, missiles, drones, all of that.
That red alert app was just nonstop.
I mean like red alert, red alert, red alert.
And then we got on the news on YouTube because that's the only way we can get the news.
We don't have television.
We have a television, but we don't have TV channels.
We got on CBN to be able to see what was going on in real time.
Oh, our hearts were just broken.
I reached out to a friend of mine, Rabbi Evan Moffitt from Chicago.
He has a congregation in Chicago.
He and I on Friday did a carnivore interview together.
He's been carnivore for two years.
We are 285 days now.
And so we're coming up on a year this summer.
Super excited about that.
So he wanted to interview me because he had seen my interview with Adam Lacey,
who's carnivore today on YouTube.
So anyway, we just had this great...
So that was on Friday, on Saturday when all this happened.
I reached out to him and said, praying for you, brother, praying for Israel.
We stand with you.
And he said, I've got friends there right now.
Congregates, people from our congregation are there now.
Our former church, there were people there on staff that were there trying to get out.
And they were probably able to Saturday night, because I think they opened up the airspace,
which would have been Sunday in Israel.
Hopefully they got out.
Hopefully they did.
He said that he was going to relay our prayers to them.
They wanted to be encouraged.
These evangelical Christians are praying for them.
So anyway, it's been heart-rending for us because we love Israel and we support it
and we stand by Israel.
Not very many Christians understand, explain why we're to pray for Israel.
First of all, Psalm 122 commands us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
It's not an option.
It's not a...if you feel like it, it's a command in Scripture.
And so, Psalm 122, verses 6 and on, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
All who love it within their walls will be prosperous.
I mean, we're supposed to pray for them.
Then you go into the New Testament, into the book of Romans, which is really the hallmark book
regarding how we're to be for Israel and how God is still for Israel,
even though their eyes have been blinded for a season, they're still God's children.
They're still God's chosen people.
And there's this terrible thing out there called replacement theology,
where some believe erroneously in bad theology that the church has replaced Israel.
It's the apple of his eye, and that is not the truth.
We've been added in.
We're Gentiles who've been added in, grafted onto the vine, as what Romans says.
So, they're still the original vine.
We've just been grafted in.
And mind you, a graft is a powerful thing, but we're not the original.
They are.
And you look at the Scriptures, it says, to the Jew first and to the Gentile, or then to the Gentile.
And so, we support Israel.
We support them financially.
We, as a church, we sow into them.
We pray for them almost every Sunday without fail.
That's on me.
I carry that burden.
And so, yeah, we're all about them.
So, when they are under attack, we feel like our brothers and sisters are under it.
That's family to us.
It's like family.
And so, it's very, very important.
It's very important that we support Israel.
In fact, I'm going to look up that verse, if you don't mind, babe.
No, go ahead.
Psalm 12, actually, I had it up.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
This is Psalm 122, 6.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
May they be secure who love you, peace within your walls, and security within your towers.
For my brothers and companions' sake, I will say, peace be within you.
For the sake of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
So, that's the command from Scripture.
And so, we take that very seriously.
The Scripture also says that those who bless Israel will be blessed.
And so, we just stand on that and trust that.
And God has blessed us because of our love for them, we believe.
So, anyway, that's the importance of it.
And so, yeah, just to see you.
Yeah.
So, you look on your face.
I only got one red alert.
Okay.
I don't have my phone, but it came up on my watch.
So, it always comes up every time a rocket has penetrated airspace.
So, yeah, hopefully that came to nothing and whatnot.
We look at the news later.
Hopefully so.
So, yeah.
So, what else have you been up to?
You've been busy.
Well, I've been busy.
I've been…
Some travel.
I've had some travel time, and we're about to do some more traveling.
We're leaving next week for Nashville, going to a culture and Christianity conference,
which I'm excited about.
And then we get back, and then we go to Wisconsin to Liberty Pastors School.
And then we get back, we go…
That's crazy.
Back to Nashville, to K-Love, to the awards show there with the Currys.
They'll be attending with us.
Then we get back, and we go to Colorado for a week.
And then we get back, and we rest.
We've got a lot going on.
We have a lot.
But it's good.
Everything we're going to are things that are adding to us and equipping us and educating
us.
The culture and Christianity…
I'm so excited about that conference.
I'm probably more stoked about that one than any of them, and thank goodness it's next
Friday, a week from Friday.
And Eric Metaxas is going to be there.
It's at Allen Jackson's Church in Murfreesboro, which is an amazing, amazing church there
in Tennessee.
And Kaylee McEnany, Kirk Cameron, there's many, many people that are influential.
Yeah, I would call them culture shapers.
Yes, definitely.
And they're believers, followers of Jesus, who are saying what we're saying.
Enough is enough.
This world is…
Our nation has been on a terrible slide, downhill slide, since this present administration has
been in charge.
It has been a…not just a slide, it's been falling off a cliff.
It's falling off a cliff.
Morality, moving away from God and Christianity, persecuting Christians, actually.
We're being persecuted in the U.S.
Oh, yeah.
We never thought that it would get to this point this quick.
Yeah, not in our lifetime, anyway.
And since Biden has taken the helm, we are…they're trying to take God out of every aspect.
They already started in the schools years ago.
Now they're taking it out everywhere, the courtrooms, the schools.
They're trying to obliterate the churches.
I mean, literally, it's unbelievable what we're going through right now.
Yeah, never thought we'd see this in our lifetime, or at least in America.
Not in America.
Considering how our church, our nation…
Is founded.
Not was founded, is founded.
And we're calling people back to our foundations in Christ, foundations upon the Word of God.
And what's happened is, is our voice has been removed for the public square.
And I've been reading, doing a lot of history reading.
Can you believe I'm reading history?
God has done such a work.
I prayed for revival and spiritual awakening, and God woke me up.
He woke me up.
Because you were praying for it, for the church, for the world, and then God did something in you over the summer.
Wow, yeah.
Well, you know, you had a message, preached a message two weeks ago called Awake or Awoke.
Awoke or Awake.
And it was very enlightening.
Our church, especially Second Service, because it's the fullest service, really just…
There was so much participation in that message.
And you have had some interesting conversations with people that are woke recently.
And I want you to share, because you shared what happened when you were spending some time with a certain person.
We will not name this person at all.
And you came back and you were talking to the pastoral staff, and you shared a statement about having compassion versus empathy.
And it literally, every one of us in the room when you were sharing this had this aha moment.
We were just like, what?
We have never heard anything.
In fact, Pastor Russ said, where did you get that from?
And you said, it just came to me as I was talking to you just now.
And we were all shocked.
It's like that wisdom of a young person when they say something that you're just like, what?
Only a 70-year-old would say something like that, but a 12-year-old, but you, not that I'm comparing you like you're 12 or 70, but it was so…
I have never heard you talk like that.
And it was, I believe it was the anointing of God.
Can you share that, what happened, because you were talking with this person who thinks the world is just going great, that there's really nothing wrong with the world other than the Christians, and yet you're talking to a Christian.
So, share that conversation.
I won't go deep into that conversation, but what it was, it was just a reminder to me that we all come to circumstances, situations, Scripture, truth, our version of truth, with different perspectives.
We come informed by different life experiences, informed by what we've been through, trauma, no trauma, healed trauma.
We all look at things different, and so I'm sitting with another Christian, and we're having this conversation, and we're having sharp disagreement.
And you love this person.
Oh, love, love this guy.
But we're on opposite ends of the spectrum.
And this is beyond red and blue.
This isn't about politics.
It's about ideologies.
It's about how we see…
It's about worldview, how you see the world, the big word in the 80s and 90s.
It's also a paradigm.
It's a biblical worldview.
Right, exactly.
And yet, you all can both be Christians and have a totally different biblical worldview, how you see Jesus.
That's what threw me off.
Yeah, he was bemoaning the fact that a lot of evangelical Christians are just so simplistic.
You know, the Bible says this, you just throw out a Scripture, and you think that should carry weight.
And I'm saying it should.
Yeah, it's the Word of God.
We don't make the Word of God work for us.
We are for the Word of God.
It's His Word.
Because who's in charge, us or God?
I mean, who knows better?
Who's the boss?
Right.
And at the end of the day, that's what you come back to.
Who's my boss?
Well, my boss, aka Lord and Savior, is God.
It's Jesus.
It's the Holy Spirit, you know, the Trinity.
And so, for me, while for him, that just sounds too simplistic.
And what he was explaining to me was that he's got friends that are transgender, friends that are gay.
And I'm like, well, I know people, too.
I've got friends that are gay.
Exactly.
So, okay.
And family.
Yeah, and family.
So, we both have this situation, but we're coming at it from very different ways.
What it dawned on me while we were talking, and this isn't a knock or a negative.
No.
It's an observation.
Yes.
He is extremely empathetic, and I'm a recovering empath.
So, people that are listening to us right now, you may be empathetic or be an empath.
And that means when you sit down knee to knee with somebody and they start to explain their situation,
even if it's something you completely do not agree with, because of your empathy, you begin to feel what they feel.
You feel their pain.
You feel their trauma.
Which is not a bad thing at all.
No, no, no.
Actually, it's not if it's managed well.
Right.
Empathy is one of those strange emotions that can actually override common sense.
It can override your belief system, because feelings are very powerful.
You know, it's like with children.
We're not teaching kids to think critically anymore.
We're teaching that we're going with what they feel.
We're just going to affirm their feelings.
We're brainwashing them that if you feel that, then you must be that.
Right.
If I feel like I'm a cat today, then I must be a cat and I'm going to, you know,
the teachers are now going to put out cat litter boxes, which they are in schools.
It's happened, yeah.
Which to the normal person, that sounds absolutely crazy.
But to some people, it's totally fine.
Right.
I don't get that.
So empathy, back to empathy.
So empathy is very subjective.
And I wrote this, so I would rather read it, because I think I'm more clear with this.
So hopefully...
Because this was part of your post today.
Yeah, this is a...I write a daily devotional, and this is today.
And you can go to LivingUpInADownWorld.com.
No, LivingUpInADownWorld.com.
Sorry, I say that so fast.
I know.
It's natural.
LivingUpInADownWorld.com and click on the blog, and it'll take you to all the devotionals there every day.
Today's title, Truth Tellers Needed.
There's a vast difference between empathy and compassion.
Empathy is subjective and enters into and gets lost in the emotion of another, thereby losing objectivity and the ability to speak truth when needed.
Compassion, on the other hand, is objective and has the ability to separate a needed action or response from the subjective feelings that may arise.
Compassion addresses a situation or need directly and articulately.
Jesus understood the difference.
He could be moved in his gut with compassion, yet still speak the truth in love.
We would serve others well by choosing compassion over empathy.
Our culture needs compassionate, objective, unrestrained truth.
Which means...put it...okay, bullet down to what that means practically.
Practically speaking, if I'm sitting knee to knee with somebody, and let's say they're trans, they're transgender,
they've gone through all the stuff, and everything in me says, this is wrong.
As I read scripture, as I see this violation of natural...
Because scripture says what?
So as I see this violation of natural order...so you go to Romans chapter 1 and see...you created them female, he created them.
I mean, how we were created, how we're built, our physiology, our psychology, everything is built to be complementary to one another in every way, physically, emotionally, everything.
So then we want to violate that. We want to...we decide...
We decide.
We decide...this is back to Tower of Babel stuff...we decide how we want the world to see us.
So we start calling ourselves by other pronouns or other names, and we expect everybody else to lean into that.
Well, so if I'm sitting knee to knee with somebody and I'm empathetic, I'm a hyper-empath,
that means everything I say I believe can get overridden by my emotions in the moment.
So as they're telling me the trauma that...and this is what was explained to me with this other case.
You know, she was so traumatized. Well, she's a he now.
She was so traumatized as a child, so traumatized by an older brother, so traumatized by men.
So that when she got older, she decided she wanted to be a man instead.
So all that to say...so as he's listening to that, that overrides everything he would ever think about that.
So if he had a biblical view, his empathy took over that view to where now he's taken the Bible
and got out of the equation, and now he's empathetic to her situation.
It's because he's feeling what she's...
He's feeling that.
...she, whatever, is feeling.
Instead of having compassion for the person, not putting down the person.
We're not saying you put down the person, you tell them they're wrong.
No.
But having compassion and disagreeing with their decision, but loving them in it.
So the difference is this. Empathy is subjective.
That means whatever the moment calls for, you tend to mold into that, and then it shuts you down.
You won't speak truth to that individual.
See, we've been shut out of the public square.
So an empath has been convinced that if I say what I really think and believe, it's going to hurt their feelings.
I'm going to add to their trauma.
Okay?
So we shut down.
So empath won't address anything.
They avoid conflict.
Which is how you used to be for years.
Oh, I'm a recovering empath. Big time. Big time.
I totally get it.
This is why I know this, because I am one and was.
I'm getting over it.
I'm growing out of it.
Finally, compassion is different.
Compassion is objective.
Compassion can rise above the emotion in the moment.
They don't get lost in the emotion.
The emotion doesn't ever...
They feel sympathy.
They feel compassion for that person.
It may move them, but it doesn't...
But it doesn't cause them to override what they believe is truth.
Objective truth.
Absolute objective truth.
So by not doing that, they can actually still speak into that situation,
because they're not so lost in the emotion.
Does that make sense?
The emotion becomes like a whirlwind you're caught in.
And once you're caught in that emotional whirlwind, you can't get out of it.
To me, if you...
Let's think this through.
If you have true beliefs, I mean, you dig down and you have these beliefs
that are down to the root, you won't be swayed one way or the other, correct?
I love the term believing believers.
Yes.
You have to ask yourself, am I a believing believer,
or do I believe as so long as it serves me?
There you go.
Because the world's changing, but the Bible and God has never changed.
He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
You don't take away from the Bible and you don't add to it.
But if we're wavering in our beliefs, do we really know God?
Because that means I don't think we really know what the Word says,
or we wouldn't waver so much, because this is what we hear a lot.
Well, you know, we're in a different world now.
Things have changed.
We've progressed.
What does that say?
God hasn't progressed with us?
We're putting God in a whole different plane, a whole different level.
He's the same.
We're the ones who are changing.
We are becoming more evil, honestly, if you think about it,
because we're allowing the times of history, which is repeating itself,
to dictate our beliefs now.
So do we really have an anchor?
You know what I'm saying?
I know exactly what you're saying.
Because when you have an anchor, your beliefs don't change.
The world's changing, but you stay solid to that.
Now, that doesn't mean we just discount everybody who doesn't have the same beliefs.
We love them.
We pray for them.
And if God gives us an inroad in their life, we will say the truth.
It doesn't mean we say that to every single person we come,
because I do believe there's a time to stay silent unless you've been invited in.
But there's a time where God says, no, you go do that.
But you have to have a relationship with God and have to know when to speak truth, right?
Absolutely.
But what's happened is the world says, you don't believe in me, so you hate me.
That is furthest from the truth, in fact.
Well, actually, the world says you don't agree with me.
If you don't agree with me, you...
If we disagree, we have to hate each other.
Yes.
You got a letter recently from someone because you spoke with this message, Awoken or Awake.
You actually spoke against DEI and someone called you a hater.
You didn't even say anything to that effect.
Yeah.
But because they disagreed with what you were saying, they assumed you hated.
Yeah.
They don't know you at all.
Yeah.
It bothered me.
Yeah.
But again, we're coming at something from different perspectives.
Totally.
And the individual is...what she did is she went on our Facebook page and apologized to
everybody who...
Was listening to her.
...who heard that message because it was a message of hate.
And there was nothing hatred in there at all.
No.
But she interpreted it that way because we disagree, which is so woke.
It is.
I mean, that's as woke as it gets.
That is wokeism, the virus of wokeism, where if we don't agree, that means you hate me,
and I have to hate you because the culture has brought this in.
This is so satanic and demonic.
Let's get back to where it really starts.
Right.
This is not people.
This is people being used as pawns in a much larger war.
Exactly.
In a much larger scheme.
It's dark, it's demonic, it's satanic, but it's also been prophesied that these times
are gonna get bad.
It's been prophesied scripturally...
And they are.
...that it's gonna get dark.
And we're seeing darkness descend upon our land, upon the world, upon the globe.
If you have a pulse, I don't know how you could disagree with that.
So we are seeing signs of the times, biblical prophetic signs, that something's up.
And this is when the Scripture says, don't be asleep.
Don't be caught sleeping during the day.
I call it being asleep in the light.
We cannot be asleep when it's light.
We have to be awake.
And so I believe that part of what God had given me, gosh, two, three, four years ago
was to start praying for spiritual awakening.
Right.
I've been using that verbiage for a long time.
Well, let me go back to the story of the gentleman that you were talking with about compassion
and empathy and talking about this transgender person.
And he, who says he's a Christian, said, but Jesus had empathy and compassion.
He was nice, so he would be okay with this person being a transgender, gay, married to
a person of the same sex from birth.
I don't even know how to say all that.
But he says Jesus is okay with that.
Yeah.
Again, it goes back to your worldview and to your biblical view of Christ.
And so I see that and I say, well, actually, Jesus spoke very strong into the culture.
He goes, oh, no, no, Jesus didn't speak to culture.
He spoke to individuals.
I'm like, no.
He spoke to kings.
Yes.
He spoke to leaders.
Yes.
He spoke to religious leaders.
Yes.
This is all culture, by the way.
He turned over the tables in the temple.
He drove out the money changers.
So he wasn't always just this nice person on the earth.
There were times when he had to exercise his authority out of anger.
It's a righteous anger.
There's a righteous anger.
There is a righteous anger.
And it's when you see the principles of a larger kingdom than the kingdoms of men being
violated.
And at that point, there's a call for righteous indignation, righteous anger.
And so to say that Jesus just walked around carrying lambs over his shoulder is a misnomer
of who Jesus was.
I love what Adam Curry says.
I'm just going to say it like he said it.
He said Jesus was a badass outlaw.
I love that because he was.
He didn't conform to the culture.
He was not weak.
He wasn't a conformist.
He was a revolutionary.
I mean, not a rebel, but a revolutionary.
He brought a revolution.
He helped us see things through a different worldview, a different lens.
And so when people tell me that, my empath meter goes off because what they're saying
is we got to be non-confrontive.
We have to stay out of conflict.
And we just need to be quiet, keep our head down, and the government and those in power
will just ignore us.
They'll just go on by.
And I think about what happened with Bonhoeffer in the 1930s in Germany when the Christian
churches, when they heard the Jews going by in the trains, and the trains ran right by
the churches in the town.
The trains ran right through the towns.
And they were loaded down with thousands upon thousands of Jewish people who had been rounded
up, who had been roughed up, beaten, tortured, thrown into cattle cars, and were being taken
off to Auschwitz when they were being taken off to the gas chambers.
And they didn't even know to the extent what was going to happen to them.
No, they had no idea.
They were separated from their families.
Oh, their families were separated, children from parents.
It was horrific.
And it was demonic and satanic and dark.
And it was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler.
So when that happened, the churches, as those trains were rolling by, would turn, would
sing louder and make more noise to drown out the screams of the Jewish people as they rolled
on by.
And that, to me, is indicative of what I see happening now, because we're so empathetic
that we're going to tell somebody, it's okay for you to be that way because you had trauma.
It's okay.
Everybody's got an excuse for bad behavior.
I've been mistreated, so this is the way I am.
But here's the thing.
As Christians, I know that God is a Redeemer.
He's a Restorer.
I had a lot of trauma growing up.
A lot of trauma.
And it continues with issues with my children and what happened in our lifetime.
But you know what?
God restored that.
He healed us because we went to Him instead of going to the world's way of doing things.
If anybody should have turned out gay and transgender, it would have been me.
And I allowed Jesus to restore me, to heal me.
I mean, not that people aren't, but so many people have voices telling them, you should
just do this, you should do this instead of going to God.
Now maybe they have, and things have happened in their lives, and they ended up going that
way.
I still believe that once you bring God into things, He can, but it takes work on our part
too.
It takes work.
I don't, this grace movement, we are saved by grace.
We don't have to work for our salvation.
But there is work to do.
I have work to do on myself to make sure that I am a righteous, holy person.
He sees me that way, but there is still work I have to do.
It doesn't mean I can just go do whatever I want and God is going to cover that sin.
No, there is work.
But you know what?
I was able to get help from counselors and pastors and people to help me get through
all of the issues that I was going through, all the trauma.
And so I, you know, and I am still a work in progress.
It's not, we live in a fallen world and we are always going to, we could revert, I don't
want to say always, we can revert back to our old ways easily.
But when you stay connected to the vine, to Jesus Christ, when you stay connected, it's
a lot easier to follow the right path than when you get away from God, get away from
His Word, you will turn and go to the path that the world is following, right?
Dr. Rice Brooks made a great quote.
I shared this in the last show where he said, for every step you take away from the cross,
there will be a crowd of people patting you on the back and cheering you on.
And it's true because people want Christians to fail because they feel bad about themselves
or they just think you're self-righteous and magnanimous and you're morally superior.
And so when a Christian falls, they're cheering you on.
They're like, oh yeah, see, we knew it wasn't true.
And they will applaud every step you take away from the cross.
But this is the time when the world waxes worse, when the world goes into these kinds
of places, this is where we, this is when we stand up.
It really is the church's finest hour.
This is our opportunity.
But too many people don't stand up and they're, so the world sees Christians as weak.
That's why the world won't turn to the church.
It won't turn, they won't turn to God because they see weakness.
Every believer, I totally agree with that.
Every believer has to make a decision and it is, do I want to be liked or do I want
to be respected?
There you go.
And I made up my mind that I'm done with being liked.
Liked is overrated.
Likes on social media are overrated.
They don't mean anything at the end of the day.
It's just a thumbs up, hey, way to go.
But I want to be respected.
But more important, I want to please my God and my King.
There you go.
That's the key.
That's all that matters to me.
Are we going to please the world or are we going to please God?
Exactly.
And what that means is that God will put things on my heart and in my mind to do that will
make me look crazy to the world.
It'll make us look ridiculous.
To take a stand for the unborn, to take a stand against LGBTQ+, to take a stand against
neo-Marxism and socialism and communism and everything that's trying to be infused into
our culture right now, we look archaic.
We look out of touch, out of step.
We're not progressive anymore.
But at the end of the day, I can sleep.
At the end of the day, I can go to bed at peace knowing I said what needed to be said.
And I did it not just...
We speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4 says, but not just that.
We speak the truth because of love.
Because I've been loved and someone spoke truth to me, got my attention.
And I'm like, I need to consider that.
So at the end of the day, if you're a believer, you've got to make a decision.
Do I want to be liked or do I want to be respected?
And then the second, really the most is this.
Do I want to please God who is my King and my Lord?
Because we've stopped talking in the American church about the Lordship of Christ.
He's the boss.
We're not.
And the moment we think we are, we move right back to Genesis 11.
That's what I was looking at while you were talking.
Genesis chapter 11, the Tower of Babel.
And it was the idea that we're smarter than God, we know more than God.
In fact, we're going to build a tower all the way up to heaven.
We're going to usurp God.
The World Economic Forum just basically had a conversation like that and they said, we
don't need God, we're going to do it better.
They said, we're going to do human engineering instead of theological engineering and spiritual
engineering and spiritual engineering.
So, we can handle it ourselves.
And they basically thumbed their nose at God and said, we got this.
And yet, I feel like God is waking us up going, you've got to be different than even...
I mean, the churches are asleep, Jimmy.
They're asleep.
We used to be.
We had people leave the church because we were asleep.
Now people are coming back because they're going, finally, you're awake, but I've been
praying for you to be awake.
And I'm glad.
I wish more would come back that left.
And we didn't change because of them.
Their prayers were heard and God woke us up and said, wake up to what's really going on
in this world and you be the church that's different.
And so, we're partnering with other churches right now that are speaking up, speaking the
truth in love.
Again, we have to say, this isn't a hate fest.
We don't hate anyone.
We love everyone.
We have compassion.
We have empathy, but it's safe.
We're not allowing it to overtake our beliefs because once we do, we really didn't believe
it in the first place.
It's like if you go to the altar and say, I want to be saved, and then the next day,
you already change your mind and do something that's totally against God.
Did you really believe it?
No, because it didn't really take root.
If the devil can talk you out of it that quick, then you probably didn't get fully saved,
but it is a process.
And that means when things come against you after you do become saved, you don't acquiesce
to that.
You find those eagles that can help you get to the place where you need to be.
You know what I'm saying?
Yes.
And too many of us just acquiesce to the world like the world knows, like celebrities.
They know everything.
We're going to follow those celebrities because they know more than anybody.
Look at them.
They're stars.
What?
What is going on in this world?
Everybody wants heroes.
So it's time for Christians to stand up and be counted.
Everybody else is letting their voice be heard, speaking their truth, speaking their agendas.
And we're the quiet ones because we're so empathetic.
We have no backbone or spine.
Here's what I'm excited about.
There are pastors and churches waking up right now all over.
I think the enemy has overplayed his hand.
He's poked the sleeping giant, and the sleeping giant's waking up.
And I'm going to do my part to wake up as many friends that are in ministry and pastors
as much as I can until my dying breath.
We've got to speak up.
We've got to stand out.
We have a mandate from God, from Jesus himself.
First of all, in the Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.
Matthew chapter 28, the great commission, which we could also call the great omission
in many cases, and that is where to go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.
That is a command.
That's not an option.
That's not like if you feel like it or if you got your act together or if your kids
are grown up and out of the house or if you don't have to go to 15 baseball practices
this week with all five of your kids being a soccer mom or a baseball mom.
No, it's the call for every believer to stand up and to be counted.
And the thing that we're afraid of is that this might cost us something.
John Hoffer wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship.
While grace is free, there's a price to be paid to speak up and speak out in this world
on behalf of Jesus Christ.
Many people have died.
Thousands of people will die today for the cause of Jesus Christ around the globe.
It's happening right now.
Martyrdom is still a thing.
So how do you handle...
This is going to be heavy, and this is probably the last thing we need to say, and then we
need to call it quits today.
And we'll probably get some mail on this.
How do you handle when you have a family member like a brother, sister, or a daughter, son
that is either homosexual or transgender?
How do you handle that in truth and in love?
The best thing you can do is pray.
That is number one.
Don't ever go anywhere without praying.
Ever.
Don't step into any space without prayer.
Don't step into any space without putting the armor of God on.
And you never put that person down because for one, it's not them.
Yeah, exactly.
It is not them.
They are a victim in a very real sense.
Now, when I say a victim, I mean to a system.
They still have to be accountable for their decisions.
They've made decisions.
They got them there, but they're playing into a virus.
The Bible calls it the spirit of the age.
The spirit of the age right now is that virus that wants to separate families, wants to
break up the nuclear family.
It wants to confuse gender, thereby making for a weak culture and easily dominated and
controlled people.
So all that's going on right now.
And so we have to, and one of my monikers and thing I've said for a long time is don't
go where you're not invited.
But I think sometimes we think because no one's saying anything that there's no invitation
there.
The invitation in terms of family, I mean the invitation is the relationship.
The fact that I'm in a relationship with a family member, I have to go in at the level
that that relationship can handle.
That might be treading very lightly.
Or it could be going in because I love you.
You've got to say this because I love you.
And if I don't, then I don't really love you.
The bridge is out, you're heading towards it, and if I don't warn you about it, you're
going to run off the cliff.
Again, you're just, you're disagreeing too with their decision or with their way of life,
but you're not being unloving about it.
I think that's the problem with Christians.
There's so many that are hateful.
Yeah.
Oh gosh, no kidding.
That, you know, put up the signs, you're going to go to hell and all that.
I mean, give me a break.
That's not love.
That's just not love.
There's a way to handle these situations that is totally in love because it's the love of
God that's in you that's going to draw people.
It's when you put people down and you use scripture to make a cause and you're doing
it out of anger versus love, that's when you lose people.
And I don't like any of that.
None of that.
I think everything should be out of love.
That's the thing.
If someone listens to one of your messages and they take, they are filtering it through
what they've seen or heard other Christians do that are acting in the opposite of love.
And that's what happened when this person wrote in last week, I believe, because you've
said it over and over and over in the pulpit, over and over, how much you love and we love.
We have grandchildren that are walking in that lifestyle.
And do we ignore them?
Do we do everything we can to stay away from them?
No.
We're right in their orbit.
They know where we stand.
We don't even have to say because they know because they know who we are.
But we can love them, have a conversation with them, a normal conversation about life,
and be okay.
But we can disagree.
We can agree to disagree.
Correct?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
The goal is not to win an argument.
We're not here to win a debate.
We're here to win hearts.
But what do we do every day?
We pray.
God, intervene.
Yes.
Show them the love you have for them.
Because once we understand the love He has for us, it can really change everything.
It's true.
It can help us love ourselves.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
So anyway, I think we need to end on that because I wanted people to hear that part
of because there's so many Christians out there that are so hateful.
And we don't ever want to come across that way.
We always want to have…
I mean, we allowed someone in our home for months to stay with us that was gay, that
had AIDS.
Oh, another one just went off.
And that we nurtured him.
But what did we do?
Did we say, well, we don't agree with your lifestyle?
We don't know.
I took him with me to where I went.
We loved him.
And he ended up giving his life to Christ and died six months later.
If we wouldn't have acted as a Christian, who knows where he would be right now?
You know what I mean?
He did what God showed us to do for this man.
And I'm proud that we handled it the way we did.
He never felt judged.
Never, never.
We need not shy away from these conversations though.
They tell you there's two things you should never talk about with family, religion and
politics.
But you know what we need to be talking about?
Religion and politics.
Time is getting short.
If we really believe time is short, then we need to be talking about religion and politics.
Because there is a rapture coming.
We're pre-rapture pastors.
We believe in pre-trib pastors that the rapture is going to happen before the tribulation.
I believe we're about to be in tribulation.
Of course, that could still be a hundred years from now.
I believe it's more imminent based on the signs of the things that are happening in
this world and the things that Jesus said for us to look for.
And he says, occupy till I come.
He is coming back.
Our job as pastors, no, our job as Christians is to talk about God as much as we can so
people can see there is a loving God that loves them and wants to save them for what's
to come.
Because if we think hell is bad, tribulation is going to be really bad.
And I want to avoid that at all costs.
We need to save that for another show.
We do.
That should be next week.
So family, we love you guys, but we do have some kudos that we want to share.
We covered some heavy topics today.
This is big stuff.
But you know what?
The love of God compels us.
And the love of God is what leads us to repentance.
So we want you to be encouraged, not discouraged by this.
I've got some things to share.
We had some boosts this last week.
Adam Curry coming in with a striper boost, of course.
77,777 sats.
He says, Pastor Brian sounded like he's been podcasting all his life.
Loved hearing both of you together.
That said, nothing and no one can truly substitute for Dame Annette.
Isn't that sweet?
He said that.
Adam Curry, I love you, brother.
I do too.
I love you, bro.
He and Tina are our favorite people in this whole wide world.
Besides our family, obviously.
So Iris, you remember Iris?
She is Dutch, and she's a sweetheart.
She wrote 50,000 sats.
Beautiful.
Thank you for your inspiring podcast.
You guide my thought processes and often help me to deepen my faith.
So it really was time to boost again.
And then she says, a word I cannot pronounce, grochies.
It's a Dutch greeting from Iris.
Iris, thank you so much.
We love you.
Good to hear from you.
Thanks for the boost and the note.
Boober posted a thousand sats.
Great episode.
Does Pastor Brian have his own podcast yet?
I need to share it with Brian.
I know.
I think it is good for him to come on here with you every now and then.
Oh yeah, yeah.
We've got a lot to talk about.
Yes.
We have an uplifting message each and every week.
Remember that every morning is Easter morning.
From now on, this was one of my late wife's favorite sayings and songs.
Robert Ludwig from Nevada, Iowa.
Robert, thank you so much, brother.
You're such an encouragement.
And then Cady Kitt boosted a thousand sats.
She just said, thank you with praying hands.
Thank you, Cady Kitt.
And the last one is My Thrill the Learned boosted a hundred sats.
It says, I have two links to help supplement this topic.
One from Dr. Tony Evans and then John Barnett as well.
Thank you, brother.
Blessings to all of you.
Thank you for operating in the spirit of value for value and helping us continue to do this
program.
That just tells us that what we're doing helps you and encourages you and you return the
value.
Do go to livingupandadownworld.com.
We would love to hear from you.
Subscribe and then also send us a note.
Do a review.
It's always super helpful.
And we really, really appreciate it.
Well, Daymanette, anything else on the way out?
I think I've said plenty.
Hey, this was your day, your show.
And I love having a free second of it.
Oh, thank you.
It's your show, too.
I love you, baby girl.
Love you, too.
Y'all have an amazing week on purpose.
We are out.