Alright, well everyone, welcome back to another episode of Faithfully Engaged.
Today, my guest name is Scott.
So Scott, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
Sure, Ronnie.
Well, thanks for having me on the show.
Yeah, so my name's Scott Loppeer.
I'm a teaching pastor in Southwest Washington.
I've been here since 2010.
My wife and I grew up together in Northern California, and I'm also an author and speaker,
although primarily I'm at my church most of the time, so I'll speak that frequently.
And we have nine children.
We're expecting our 10th child in October.
Mostly the topics in my books are nonfiction, Christian living, marriage, finances, trials
and suffering, work and rest, drawn largely from my sermons because I don't have the bandwidth
to write separately from my preaching.
So if it's in a book more than likely I've preached it to my church.
My speaking engagements are primarily the marriage conferences I do, although sometimes
we I speak at home school conferences because, you know, we have home school and we have
a bunch of kids and I think that people think we know what we do, we're doing, but frequently
we pretty much feel like we don't know what we're doing.
So yeah, and happy to answer any other questions.
I was an Army officer after college, then tie elementary school.
That's when I became a Christian and wanted to go into ministry.
Yeah, perfect.
Well, that kind of leads into that kind of first question that I had there.
There's a lot that I want to get into, but yeah, just tell me a little bit more about
that journey of accepting Christ.
I know it sounds like you a little bit later in life.
Did you grow up in the Christian family?
Just kind of go through that story.
Yeah, yeah.
Thanks for asking that, Johnny.
I appreciate it.
I'm always happy to share my testimony.
So I was raised in the Catholic Church.
We were, I guess you would say, a devout Catholic family and that we went to church every Sunday.
I was an altar boy.
Never heard the gospel.
I thought basically good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell.
Jesus died for your sins, but you still need to go through all the sacraments and observe
all those confirmation, first communion baptism in the Catholic Church.
And that's how you get to be good enough to go to heaven.
So then in my early 20s, it was just my brother and I growing up.
He was 14 months younger than me and he died of a drug overdose.
He had become addicted to drugs, although he was very functioning well.
He was in the military and I got the news that he died and a couple of friends or teachers
that I was friends with and they invited me to their church and they just said, hey, why
don't you, it wasn't like come to church with us every Sunday.
It was like our pastor lost his brother when he was about your age.
You're struggling.
Why don't you come and talk to him?
And so I didn't have any intention of being born again or saved.
You know, those weren't terms in the Catholic Church.
I'm literally just going to this church.
It was a Calvary Chapel to talk to the pastor about my brother passing because of my struggles.
And I even thought I would encourage my parents perhaps to know that I was getting, getting
some help with what I'm going through.
So I go to this church.
I don't bring a Bible because I never brought one to the Catholic Church.
They hand me this Bible and the pastor begins the sermon and he, you know, tells us to open
it was to Peter, first Peter, and he reads a verse and explains that reads a verse and
explained it.
And it was really a life changing moment for me, Johnny, because I felt like God was speaking
to me through his word.
I understood it.
We're in the Catholic Church.
I'd never really read the Bible.
It's kind of you does this taboo cryptic book.
You can't really understand.
You need, you know, you need to hear from the priests to understand anything or the Pope
and all your prayers are to marry into the saints.
And so here it was like, well, the Lord is directly speaking to me and I heard the gospel.
I didn't even get to talk to the pastor about my brother that Sunday and I was already looking
forward to coming back the next Sunday.
And then I heard the gospel soon after that and I, it bore witness.
It was very contra contradictory to Catholicism, which teaches salvation by your justified
by works.
I mean, that's not a secret the Catholic Church says as much.
I mean, that's why there was a reformation, right?
And so, so then it bore witness to me that we're justified or declared righteous by grace
through faith in Christ.
And I was saved and then just kept going to church and really loved God's word.
I wanted, I thought I would be a schoolteacher the rest of my life, but then I wanted to
tell people to open their Bibles versus tell kids to open their math books, you might say.
So.
Yeah.
What a great story.
And that's actually something my church has fairly recently done.
We have a monthly just get together and four times of those, it's a business meeting, but
the other ones is just kind of get together and eat together.
And then we also have one member each month share their testimony testimony.
And I think it's fantastic because we hear so many different stories.
And sometimes people feel like, Oh, well, I wasn't saved from drugs and alcohol myself
or whatever.
So that makes my story weak.
But no, that's not true.
The beauty is we are all sinners and God saved us.
So there's a beauty in every testimony.
So I really appreciate it.
Yeah.
I heard someone, thanks, Johnny.
I heard someone say one time that they thought they couldn't share their testimony because
it wasn't dramatic enough.
And that really saddened me.
It was like all the testimonies I hear, they were a murderer and they're in prison and
they get saved and they're all of their terrible drug addictions.
And it's just like, and their testimony was not much more than I grew up in a Christian
home and I trusted Christ for salvation.
And I need to hear, I'm thankful for my children to hear those testimonies, because that's
my children are growing up in a pastor's home.
So I don't want them to think that they have to have some ultra dramatic thing and go out
and live in the world for 15 years or 20 years and ruin their lives and then come to Christ,
you know, like the prodigal son.
So I'm very thankful for those simpler testimonies too.
Yeah, absolutely.
And kind of just leading into your family, you talked a little bit about what led you
to be a pastor, but I'm curious on the homeschooling aspect.
And those of you that've kind of listened to the show know that my wife and I, we've
got little ones right now, but we're already doing some homeschooling things with them.
And it's a topic I'm pretty, pretty passionate about.
So I'm curious for you, for you and your wife, did you always plan on homeschooling?
Was it something you came to later?
Yeah, that's a great question, Johnny.
So I mentioned that I went to that church to talk to that pastor.
Well, he homeschooled and his daughter was one of the teachers at the school and she
had younger siblings who were being homeschooled.
And that was my introduction to homeschooling.
I never grew up with any familiarity with it.
I saw these parents discipling their children, spending time with them.
And so I guess I would say this, even if you put your kids in public school, you still
need to view yourself as a homeschooler and that you're schooling your children, discipling
them.
So I have some real concerns about public school, which I can share in just a moment.
But even if you're committed to that route, it's a settled issue for you, you still need
to see yourself as responsible for the discipleship, training and admonition of your children.
Deuteronomy six, there's no way around it.
When your children go to bed, when they wake up, they always need to be hearing God's word.
We're responsible for them.
And so how we came to that was I liked seeing this family that was able to spend a lot of
time together.
I think the time we have with our children is very limited.
When you do the math about the number of hours that your kids will be in public school, you're
going to lose so much of the most important years of their life.
So that's one thing.
And we tell our children that they know it's not like our home is I'm a very extroverted
social person.
So is my wife.
Our family is loud.
Our kids are frequently during family meetings, all trying to talk at the same time.
They're interrupting.
They can get upset with each other.
You know, it's not like everyone's sitting perfectly on the couch just listening.
Hey, daddy, keep keep talking to us or something.
We're actually reading a booklet right now by Stuart Scott from it's from ACBC, the Association
of Certified Biblical Counselors about communication to better communicate as a family because we
have a lot, you know, so many people trying to talk at the same time.
So anyway, my point is my children see the difficulty associated with trying to homeschool,
buying curriculum, how much easier it would be to put them in a public school.
And so we just tell our kids, we say, hey, we value our time with you.
You know, we know that it would be easier.
And that's why many people might do it.
But we want the route that we think allows us the most time with you because you're going
to get married and leave our home.
But then second, we're concerned about many, and I'd like to think any honest Christian
acknowledges that public schools have some very unbiblical at best, but even wicked teachings
like evolution, transgenderism, the pro homosexual agenda, these are things that super undermine
a young person's faith.
And when I was a school teacher, there were some wonderful teachers, they were, they were
Christians.
Like I said, it was that pastor's daughter I taught with, they want to walk with the
Lord, but they're still forced to teach a curriculum that undermines faith.
Now the other thing is, let's say your child has a Christian teacher, when, when those children
go out to the playground, when they're at lunch, they're making friends, they're around
non Christians, there's an environment that was very concerning to us, we didn't want
our children around.
Now one of the things, and the other thing is some people say, well, you were a school
teacher and you want to homeschool, that doesn't make sense.
And I'm like, I want to homeschool because I was a school teacher.
There's things I saw that were very concerning to me.
And so my wife was in homeschooled, we both went to public school together.
That's how we met.
And so a lot of people say this, well, I can't homeschool because I don't know how to homeschool.
Nobody knows how to homeschool.
We don't, we don't know what we were doing.
We're still figuring it out.
And the most important thing is that you're pointing your children toward Christ.
You're, you're planting the word in their hearts.
You know, so my wife is reading biographies of missionaries to our children.
She's, they come to my office and they do some of the math here.
And it's generally, there's two problems, two, two big mistakes people make with homeschooling.
The first mistake is they think way too highly of public school teachers.
So they compare themselves to them and they're like, I can't do that.
They're the professionals.
That's, that's simply not true.
I was one of those professionals and they're not better than you for your own children.
And the second mistake everyone makes is they think way too lowly of themselves.
And so it's like, cause again, they're comparing themselves with the public school teachers
that they think are the experts and have all the training.
You're the best teacher for your children.
God has given them to you.
God has given you to them.
And so nobody is going to be better for your children than you.
And so those are the big three things, you know, we wanted the time with our children.
We thought it was our responsibility.
God has placed the responsibility of training and discipling my children on my wife and
me.
And then third, we were concerned about, so even what they would learn or be around in
a public school.
Now let's say you put your kids in a Christian school.
There's still two concerns for me then.
Obviously Christian school is better than public school.
One concern for, and this is, I'm just sharing cause you asked this question.
I don't condemn or, you know, I don't go out in the world and condemn anyone that's
not homeschooling.
So our concern with the Christian school, two concerns were we didn't know all the other
kids our students would be around, our kids would be around.
And sometimes kids get, actually, I'm not joking, kicked out of public school and then
they go to, they find themselves in Christian school.
And then the second thing, we still had this very strong conviction that our children were
our responsibility and not the responsibility of someone else.
So.
I think those are, those are fantastic thoughts and they are extremely similar to my wife
and I.
And I think at the core of all of that and for, again, for the listeners that either
you're not homeschooling, not playing on it, or if you are just worried, you're concerned,
I don't know how to do it.
What Scott said there though, that even if you're homeschool, or sorry, if you're putting
them in public school, you still need to be involved.
You still need to check in with your kids.
That's something that my wife and I have really been a little surprised at.
Just for the audience and for Scott here, we live in rural Oklahoma.
So we're like the, we're the reddest of all the red areas in the country.
And we had this moment in Sunday school, even a bigger conservative Christian area, Sunday
school in this red part of the country where we weren't even playing on homeschooling at
the time.
But my wife was a teacher like yourself and was planning on taking years off, at least
a decade off.
She was pregnant with her first child and she really wanted to be a stay at home mom.
And that fact alone, not even saying homeschooling, but just not going back to work was met with
almost like a stunned silence in Sunday school in rural Oklahoma.
So this kind of notion is not limited to, you know, Los Angeles.
This is everywhere.
And we have to take serious the education our children are having, whether it's in our
own home or whether it's at public school, that we can't just push that off and think
it'll end up fine because it just won't.
Yeah, well said.
And if any of your listeners have any questions about homeschooling, I'll provide my contact
information, ways to reach me at the end.
You know, I'd be happy to help them.
And I just want to really stress to everyone, Johnny.
My wife would say she's the last person who thought she would homeschool.
This is she basically, I had my requirements when I got married, you know, and I think
I tell my kids the same thing, hey, kind of have your deal breakers with your potential
spouse.
Our oldest is going to be 16 in a couple weeks.
And so we're not at that place where any of our kids are getting married yet, but we still
talk about these things.
And so one of the let's say essentials or deal breakers for me was being a homeschooling
mother.
Well, my wife was never planning to homeschool.
And so she threw herself into something that she still finds to be a very big struggle
for her.
I could have a kid coming into my office here, you know, any minute interrupting us.
That's what our, our lives are kind of look like.
And so I just don't want anyone to think there's some people think this, they think, well,
you homeschool because you're a homeschooling person or mom or dad, but I'm not.
There's no such thing as a homeschooling mother or father.
A homeschooling mother or father is just simply someone who decided to homeschool.
They're not built differently.
They're not gifted better or anything along those lines.
Oh, I think that's a fantastic point and something that kind of has an extra bit of encouragement.
Scott just, just showed this.
If you are serious about homeschooling, ask questions, find people.
That's something I have really have noticed in the homeschooling community, which is quite
large and has all sorts of different people that are in it.
People generally wants to help and they might point you towards a curriculum or, oh, we
tried structuring it this way and it worked or we did it this way and it didn't work.
Ask and more than likely people are going to be willing to help you out.
Yeah.
And well said.
And homeschooling was like this very kind of foreign, almost strange, obscure, nebulous
thing for many people like 40 years ago when there's been, and then now there, there was
like no curriculum.
Now there's like, you go to homeschool conferences, the, the vendor booth, the, the booth selling
homeschool curriculum or like endless and people used to have the problem of, I can't
find homeschool curriculum.
Now it's like, I can't choose between the 40 different things that all look good to me.
And then, and then the second thing is COVID sent a bunch of COVID was a tough season for
lots of reasons.
That's a whole other conversation.
But one of the things that did is it put children at home with their parents and suddenly parents
are like, wow, you know, I got a, I got a homeschool my kid.
Now there's been this huge surge of homeschooling families, homeschoolers, which is really,
really wonderful thing.
So yeah, there's a lot of resources now in helpful people.
Absolutely.
Now this is something you kind of alluded to a little bit earlier, but just in your,
in your own personal life and then just through, I'm sure many of the church members that you've
counseled, what would you say are some of those common marriage type of issues that,
that couple space?
Yeah.
So, so here's kind of what happened Johnny.
I, I got, and I'm going to answer your question, just getting a little momentum into it.
So I, I guess they've the Calvary Chapel, which is verse by verse, expositional book
by book, you know, and I love that.
And that's what I do.
I've been going through Luke for years, but I saw a real need to help marriages in my
church.
It occupied much of my time when our, our church grew to hire an associate pastor full time.
But at this time, sometimes people don't understand that actually I think the toughest
ministry for pastors is a smaller church where you're the preacher, counselor, or disciple,
possibly church secretary, you name it, you know, it's on your shoulders.
A church grows, they can hire multiple pastors where the senior or lead pastor can then focus
more on preaching and teaching, which is kind of where we're at.
But at that time, when I was doing, doing more counseling, mostly marriage counseling,
I thought, you know, I want to quit, I quit my church.
And so I decided, I, we visited another church for some counseling training and they had
a marriage month every year.
And I talked to the elders and they said, Oh yeah, that'd be great.
Let you know, let's do a marriage month at our church.
Well the running joke was the marriage month became the marriage year because I was preaching
these sermons.
And as a pastor, you kind of feel out your, your congregation and I'm trying to kind of
read them as this taken too long as this boring as this repetitive and it's like everyone
seems to really be enjoying these marriage sermons.
And I was finding considerably more content on marriage.
I was thoroughly enjoying the studying and preaching.
You know, I kind of, I kind of think, Oh, I'll go through Ephesians five, you know, well,
then I tackle first Peter three.
And then I see there's all these marriages in the Old Testament that are very instructive,
you know, like Abraham and Sarah, you know, in Samuel and in, you see with Hannah and
her husband and he's like, Oh, you know, why do you care about having having any children
when you get to have me?
He's like super insensitive to his wife.
There's Samson and Delilah, how she nags him to death and the potential for a wife to nag
her husband, all the proverbs about nagging.
So all I'm saying is I'm finding like this wealth of content on, on marriage.
So I'm preaching these sermons and, and then that's the content that became my first book,
Marriage God's Way.
And essentially, Johnny, I just wanted to equip my church.
I just wanted to see stronger marriages to answer your question shortly or simply.
Yeah.
And I think that's such an, obviously such an important topic.
And this is something I, a friend of mine, we talk about often that this friend is, is
still single.
And not that I have everything figured out in my marriage, but he sees, Hey, I'm married,
I have three kids.
So, well, actually I have three kids in the biblical sense, one's not out yet.
We have one that's two in August.
But how many kids do you have and what are the ages?
Yeah.
So I have a three year, three year old, a, he'll be a one year old.
They'll be two in July and then another boy that will be born in August.
So yeah, wonderful.
At the threes.
So we're, we're excited about that.
But so this friend sees asking me some, some wisdom about marriage and things like that.
And he tells me this common theme of people that I think have good intentions.
I don't think they're trying to be demeaning towards marriage, but the common thing is
marriage is just, it's so hard.
It's one of the hardest things that you can do.
There's wisdom in that, that there's, there's relationship problems that happen and you
need to guard against that.
But you also miss in that the joy that there's goodness, my wife and I look at our kids and
we, we think, Hey, there's been a lot of struggles with that, but we can't imagine life without
those kids.
And do you get the sense of that of either couples or people in your church that kind
of focus on the struggles almost too much and miss some of the joy of marriage?
Yeah, I think you mentioned two things there that both involve joy and struggle.
You mentioned marriage and you mentioned children.
And so I think both of those can give us some of the greatest joy and blessing we experience
on the side of heaven.
And both of those can also give us some of the greatest trials or suffering.
I mean, some of the worst suffering people experience can come from a rebellious child.
Okay, so let's just deal with marriage first.
So really the question, Johnny, is not what's going to allow me to be happiest or the most
selfish or, or even the question isn't even what's going to allow me to enjoy my life the
most.
The question all of us should be asking is what does Christ want for us?
So we don't, we don't go through this life saying what's going to be easiest or funnest
for me.
The question is, what does the Lord want for me?
For most people, what He wants is marriage.
That's the typical normal, you know, healthy pattern.
It's not Genesis 2.18.
It's not good for man to be alone.
And so you go into marriage and I generally encourage people to get married, to be honest,
younger than or sooner than later, assuming they're at a healthy age for that.
Because I've noticed the problems for people that are single for a very long time.
It's a dramatic change for them.
It's a shock to go from a life of singleness with a large focus on yourself, because that's
the only person you have to focus on, to then having to live for or with another person.
And so, and I was kind of in that category.
I actually wanted to get married.
I became a Christian in my early 20s.
And then it was like, now I can't, I can't live with a woman, you know, I need, and any
longer I need to follow God's word regarding purity.
So I wanted to get married, but I couldn't find a wife for a few years.
I think I was 26, which isn't super old, but I'd had some years living by myself.
And so I think it would have been much better if I'd have gotten married earlier.
A man needs to be ready to take care of a home and a family, but you don't have to be
wealthy.
I think some people think, now I got to get my career.
I got to get all these things established.
There's some super wonderful couples that are living on very little, you know, in a modest
home.
They might be pinching pennies, but that's a wonderful way for them to get started.
Now with that said, God, there's a lot of wonderful things God wants to do through our
marriages and some of the trials or difficulties we experience can be more sanctifying than
almost anything else we go through.
So for me personally, I'm constantly learning as a husband through my wife how selfish I
am, how impatient I am, how aggressive or intense I am at times.
I wouldn't know that without Katie pointing these things out to me.
And so the question is, do I want the sanctifying work that God has for me through marriage?
And hopefully the answer to that is yes.
Now with that said, there's also great joy and blessing.
Katie's my best friend.
She's my favorite person to be with.
We have our struggles.
And I tell every, I do marriage conferences more than anything else.
I was in Oklahoma for a marriage conference in February, so I'm kind of wondering how
far I might have been from you.
And where are you at?
I was at near Oklahoma City.
Okay.
That was roughly our 15-ish away, not too terribly far.
Okay.
I can't, after we get off the, after we finish the interview, I'll send you the information
for that.
See how far you were.
And so I tell people every marriage conference, look, we don't have a perfect marriage.
We have our problems too.
I need to regularly ask my wife for forgiveness for things and sensitive things that I do.
But all these are ways for us to grow, learn about ourselves and be sanctified.
And it's pretty much the same thing with children.
And so I don't think it's good, just like I don't think it's good to get married super
late.
I don't think it's good to get married and then wait a super long time to have children
because you can get used to just being the two of you.
And then when you have a child, it's kind of a shock, you know, to have to be, everything
changes.
And if you never know anything different, different, if, because Katie got pregnant
pretty soon after we were married, I think she, you know, two or three weeks after we
were married, she told me that she was expecting.
So we only had about nine and a half months of knowing what it was like to be just the
two of us.
And so we've never, you know, someone watches our kids as a special thing for us.
But I, I can't imagine what it's like for people to spend years, just the two of them
to then have a child, you know, that would be, I'm actually glad we never knew life
like that.
And so I would say, so I guess I don't want to, I don't know if this is too personal for
your show, but we got married with a conviction to just let God be in charge, being in control
of our family.
You can kind of guess that when I say we have nine kids with a 10th on the way.
So this is not a commentary on what everyone else has to do, although I will give a couple
recommendations.
But for us, we just thought God should be in charge of this and we would let his fingerprints,
we wanted his fingerprints on our family.
So when I reached the end of my life, it's, it's not that I want to have, you know, 12
kids or 10 or five or seven, I just want to whatever God had for us.
It could have been three, it could have been five, maybe it'll be 11 or 12 or maybe it'll
be 10, you know, we just wanted it to be whatever God, God knew was best for us.
I do think there can be circumstances.
We have a young woman in our church whom we love.
Her name is Rachel Diefen, who wants to pray for her.
And she has three young children.
She has been battling stage four cancer.
She has not been able to have children and they've taken medication that can prevent
that.
And I thought that was a very reasonable, reasonable thing.
But to be honest, Johnny, most of the time when people don't want to have more children,
I hope this doesn't sound too harsh.
The reasons I hear are typically kind of selfish, you know, I think people are concerned financially.
That can be very legitimate.
But I've, you know, we lived on a single income, our whole marriage.
I was a school teacher.
Now I'm a pastor.
I think everyone knows neither of those professions pays tons of money.
So it's kind of a quest, you know, God's taking care of us and our church takes care
of us.
And I do believe that most people should trust that the Lord would take care of them.
You know, Matthew 633 seek for the kingdom of God.
All these things will be added unto you.
And so you kind of go through life trusting God to provide for you.
You make the decisions you think he wants you to make.
And then you trust him to pick up the tab, you might say.
And so we've always thought that if God wants us to have five kids or 10 kids or 12 kids,
he's going to give us what we need to take care of five kids or 10 kids or 12 kids.
And we never thought we'd be wealthy, but we never, that was never one of our goals
to be wealthy either.
The one thing I would say if you're thinking about, you know, limiting family size or spacing
out children just don't do anything permanent.
Don't do anything.
Don't choose barrenness is how I would say it.
Don't do anything permanent, you might regret it.
And to be honest, Johnny, one of the most common regrets I've heard from people at conferences
or in my church is I wish we had had more children.
I've sat with people in tears who are then in their late 40s or 50s or even 60s saying
I would do anything to go back and have not made the decision that I did.
And so when I talk about having more children, I don't do this, Johnny, to condemn people.
I'm not trying to say you're in sin, you need to repent.
I'm trying to help people avoid the regret that I've seen people experience.
So it's kind of like when you talk about abortion, when you talk about abortion, you don't do
it to condemn everyone who's had an abortion.
You do it to prevent people from having abortions.
Well, similarly, when I talk about children, I'm not condemning people who just have a
couple of kids.
I'm trying to help people avoid a decision that they could literally regret the rest
of their lives because I've met people in that situation.
So I would just say if you delay for whatever reasons and there's reasonable ways to delay,
just don't do anything permanent.
Yeah, I think that's some good, good practical wisdom because, yeah, once something's done
and you can't go back and change, yeah, that changes of regret certainly can go hard.
I do appreciate your difference there between a sinful act, which I know we both would
and I assume most people listening on the abortion front would like, okay, yeah, that's
pretty clear there.
We wouldn't say that's the same thing here if I choose not to have children, more children.
But definitely distinguish between those.
What the lack of joy there in some of the, uh-oh, I lost my microphone there for a second.
I can't really hear you.
Yeah, I think it picked up a different microphone there, but my own, my USB thing fell out.
Anyways, we'll keep going with that.
But yeah, we don't want to miss out some of that joy.
And I think that's some good sound logic there just in general.
When something's permanent, you better be wise about that because we don't get to go
back there.
I wanted to speak a little bit more on something you touched on just real briefly, which is
really just the financial component of things.
Something real quick on just my personal side of things.
When my wife and I got married, we were okay.
I remember speaking into my wife, like she just graduated college and I wasn't in a super
high pain position, but we didn't have any debt.
And I explained to her that that's a really big deal, that we don't have debts.
And just trying to guide her saying we're going to be okay.
And I'm not trying to communicate here that everybody is going to just get wealthy and
kind of do the health and wealth side of things.
But we have been very blessed and different financial things for me to be able to work
and her to stay home with kiddos and us being able to home school kind of similar in your
way.
And we definitely have trust that God had provided for us.
On the same sense, God gave us wisdom for a reason and we've intentionally structured
things in a way to not have a lot of debt and to not live extravagantly.
And we've been able to care for our kids and everything.
So would you mind speaking to the audience a little bit about finances and maybe some
ways they can structure their finances in a Godfaring type of way?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I'll try to provide a little bit of credibility here.
So I shared earlier, I wrote a marriage book and that's called Your Marriage God's Way.
I don't know if you'll put it in the show notes.
And then another book of mine is called Your Finances God's Way.
Well, if you ever want to publish a book, a publisher, unless you, if you self-publish,
you can do it every month.
But if you expect a publisher, and my publisher has been Harvest House, to pick up your book,
one of the first things they're going to say is, how does your marriage book, how's it
distinguished from all the other marriage books out there?
How is your finance book distinguished from every other finance book out there?
So I think one of the reasons Harvest House wanted to publish my book, Your Finances God's
Way, is they thought, hey, if there's a guy that's taking care of nine kids, you know,
with a tenth on the way on a single income pastor's salary, he probably knows something
about finances.
Well, there's some truth to that.
I did preach on finances at my church.
So I said earlier, I wanted to quit my church with marriage.
Well, one of the other things I found was I'm doing financial counseling.
I see people struggling financially.
Let's go ahead and preach, have a series on finances.
And then that became my finance book.
And so I guess if someone said, why should I trust you?
Or why should I believe you have credibility regarding finances?
Part of the reason is just that I've thrown a lot of hours into studying what God's
word said about finances.
And if I'm looking for an expert, I'm looking for someone that knows what God's word says
about it.
That's an expert to me.
And so if I want to talk to people that know about marriage or children or parenting or
trials, I'm looking for people who know what God's word says on these topics.
So I threw hundreds of hours into studying marriage and studying finances.
And then second, there's probably some personal credibility I have just from being, we never
have had tons of money.
We didn't grow up wealthy.
And so I really attribute it to God.
He's provided.
I kind of think of how when Elijah was with that woman and he tells her to go get all
those pots for oil and they're going to provide for her.
Well, what you notice is the pots, she always had enough, but they're never overflowing,
you might say.
And that's kind of a good way of viewing the Christian life, I think, is you're not
there's a there's a proverb.
I almost wish I could look it up where the the author says, don't give me too much so
that I forget about you, Lord, but don't give me too little that I get upset and curse you.
And there's there's nothing better about being poor.
There's nothing better about being destitute.
You know, God isn't looking for us.
He made certain people rich in the Bible and there's other people that weren't made rich.
So you're not better or worse, but I've never believed that people are better if they're
suffering financially.
And so I think, you know, you make wise decisions.
We generally buy mostly used clothes.
People have given us stuff.
We go to goodwill.
We buy used vehicles.
We've been we've been debt free and plan to stay that way as well.
So if you're it's like I said, I quote in Matthew 633 that you seek first the kingdom of God
and and all these things that we added to you.
Well, if someone goes and, you know, buys a house, they can't afford or buys multiple
new vehicles, you know, instead of buying with cash, they can't turn around and say,
well, God hasn't provided for me.
They need to recognize that instead they've made bad, bad decisions.
And so one of the things I frequently tell people with finances, and this is how I began
my book, is that we should view finances as a stewardship.
And if you're a steward, you don't own something.
You just sort of you're a manager of it.
And this principle of stewardship applies to almost or maybe every area of the Christian
life, like my marriage.
Katie's not I say she's my wife, but she belongs to the Lord.
My marriage is a stewardship.
My children, it's a stewardship.
I don't own them.
I didn't create them.
And God can take them.
And some parents have experienced that.
That's, you know, really when your biggest fear is as a parent that God would take one
of your children.
But it's a stewardship.
I have this time with them.
I can't control their hearts.
Well, our finances are a stewardship.
It's really God's money that he allows me to manage and I'm responsible for it.
And so then it makes if you view finances as a stewardship, it makes it much easier to
be generous because you're not giving away your money or giving away God's money.
And also makes you manage it better because you view purchases as a spiritual decision.
And I've noticed people kind of compartmentalize their lives.
So it's like this.
Here are the things that are spiritual.
My time in the word, my prayer life, my church attendance, finances is not really spiritual.
But I think that things, how do we determine what is and isn't spiritual?
Well, I would say God's word.
If God's word deals with it, then it's spiritual.
And the more frequently the God's word deals with something, the more spiritual it is.
So there's a lot about prayer, love, forgiveness.
Well, those are very spiritual.
Well, there's also a lot about finances.
In fact, money is one of the most common topics of Jesus's parables.
It's a super frequent topic in Proverbs.
And you get to learn in the Bible when people had a lot of money.
You know, God, certain people were rich, Abraham, David, Solomon, Joseph.
And so the fact that the Bible deals with it so much makes it spiritual.
And because of that, every purchase we make and everything we do with our money is a spiritual
decision.
Yeah, that, you know, it's really interesting you saying that just within my kind of my
church life, we are, for one, I've just recently become the treasurer.
So I kind of see how the sausage is made, so to speak, that kind of dig into that.
And it's been wonderful of kind of seeing the back end.
I've never seen that before as a church member.
But we've been dealing with a little bit of a budget issue and I've been so, it sounds
crazy, but so encouraged with this budget issue.
For one, how our elders, how they really led us during that time of, hey, let's not, let's
not be scared about any of this.
And they pointed to all the blessings we've had for years that we haven't had any budget
issues, which was wonderful.
And then their encouragement was, hey, let's pray about it and be able to restructure our
own finances, not so we can line the pockets of our pastor with a lot of money or have
a huge church or whatever, but so we can joyfully manage God's money.
Kind of exactly what you're saying.
And that next month, again, getting to see this back end, giving one up pretty significantly.
We're talking 15, 20%.
People's lives didn't change that much.
They didn't get these huge job increases.
They just dug into the spirituality of giving and realized, yeah, we can shave a little
bit on this entertainment budget here.
We don't have to do that.
And that was the other great thing too, is me being able to dig in there.
I try not to look at names too terribly much, but that's kind of inevitable if you're signing
the check.
But there wasn't that one huge gift, the one mega donor that gave $10,000 or whatever.
It was a bunch of people giving $20 more and $50 more.
And it was just so wonderful to see that and see the joy of church members being able to
give more.
I think that's something, again, that joy word, you're missing out if you don't structure
your finances in a way to give for godly causes.
It's wonderful to really be able to do that.
Yeah, well said, Johnny.
Another topic I really wanted to hit with you is, in part just because this is such a cultural
problem we're having right now, is just masculinity in general.
We hear terms like toxic masculinity and white male privilege and just all of those things
that really beat down the God given role of masculinity.
So for men in this culture that are kind of dealing with that, what's kind of your advice
or role that you see for men that are feeling like masculinity is a bad thing?
Yeah.
Well, just to let you know, Johnny, this is one of my favorite topics.
We didn't connect ahead of time and I say, hey, Johnny, bring this up or anything.
But no, it's very important to me and I'll kind of get a little momentum into this.
So the Bible says that God made them male and female and that's repeated a few times
in Genesis and bound up in that is much more than just that there's a male and female.
It's all the distinctions that belong to men and women.
And so there is a very clear line between men and women that we are not only created
differently, but we have different roles and responsibilities.
Some of them throw out two terms and maybe some maybe many of your listeners are familiar
with this, but just in case some aren't, I'll define them.
So there's a term called egalitarian and egalitarians believe that men and women are
identical regarding their roles and responsibilities.
This would be, you would see this in marriages where there's no headship submission, men
are not called to lead, women are not called to submit or respect their husbands.
You would see this in churches where there's female pastors.
I completely disagree with this view.
The other view is known as complementarian, complementarian, not C-O-M-P-L-I, but as in
like praising the C-O-M-P-L-E complementing or fitting together.
And I don't really don't know how anyone could get around believing this view because God
has clearly given different commands or expectations.
Commands is probably a better word to men and to women.
We have different roles and responsibilities within the church and within the home.
So all, if we, God's pattern has been male leadership.
The patriarchs were men.
There were kings and not queens.
The few queens we see were mostly evil, Athaliah and Jezebel, or Jezebel and her daughter,
Athaliah.
The good queen Esther was submissive to her husband.
She, even though she was married to an ungodly man, she expected the scepter to be extended.
She appreciated his headship, went to him in a very respectful way.
And then God worked through Esther's submission or respect.
So there was patriarchs are men, the kings are men.
And then you move into the New Testament.
Jesus chose 12 men to be the disciples.
He could have done six and six.
The 70 that Jesus sent out were men.
The elders in the church are men.
It says, he, he, him, him, him, husband of one wife.
It never, it never says, you know, the, the wife of one husband.
It's all spoken of very masculinly for men to be leaders within the home and within the
church.
Now the world, first John 519 says the world is under the sway or the rule of the devil.
So we can never expect the world to do what the Bible, the Bible says.
So in the world, we initially saw a blend, a kind of a denial of the roles between men
and women.
But now, not just a blurring, but now that line has been removed.
It's a perversion.
It's been removed so completely that men can become women or women can become men or even
even very bizarrely.
You might not be either.
You might not be a man or a woman.
And I was a school teacher.
So and I write books.
I appreciate good grammar.
They or them as a plural word.
One person can't be they or them.
Right.
And so now we have, we're ruining the English language to accommodate this perverse.
I'm almost wondering if abomination is the correct word, but at least, at least perverse
is the right word for what we're seeing with men saying that they're women, women saying
that man.
Or I've even seen some people.
I like Matt Walsh and he had a, he had, what is a woman, which I enjoyed watching with
my wife and there's people that it claimed, you know, even to be animals today.
It's just, I can't believe people aren't throwing up their hands and even unbelievers saying,
this is just ridiculous.
We need, we need to come back to a reasonable, reasonable view of humanity.
And so biblical masculinity, because toxic masculinity or patriarchal views are being,
are being condemned.
I, I'm the first one to say I have a whole chapter in my marriage book.
I about headship submission when what submission is not, it's not submitting to sin.
It's not submitting to abuse.
Wives are not expected to submit to sin and abuse.
And even if we just briefly talk about submission, what that is and what that, what that isn't.
So if a husband, a godly husband recognizes that the greatest resource for counsel or
wisdom in his life, second only to God's word is his wife.
So Genesis 2 18, God says it's not good for man to be alone.
I will make him a helper.
Now some women cringe at that title helper, but the truth, Johnny, is that when God said,
I'll make him a helper, that is more a criticism of Adam or not more.
That is a criticism or acknowledgement of Adam's inadequacy or insufficiency versus
being a criticism of woman.
It's actually God looking and saying, man needs help.
He is the inadequate or insufficient one without his wife.
It says nothing bad about a wife.
In fact, that's the same title used for the Holy Spirit in the Psalms, the same title.
Jesus says, I will send the helper.
That's the title for God himself in the Psalms.
I think I said Holy Spirit.
I should have said God, title for God in the Psalms, title for Holy Spirit in John when
Jesus says, I'll send the helper.
So it's a title of strength and adequacy.
So anyway, let's say any husband that comes to me and he says, you know, I don't know
what to do.
I can't figure this situation out.
I don't know about this job.
The first thing I say is, you know, what did your wife say when you talked to her?
And he, because I as a pastor, I get people coming to me with questions.
And if a guy says, well, I haven't asked my wife first, I'll say, you know, you need to
go back and talk to her because I expect that frequently, if God made you a helper, that's
her.
He wants to work through her and use her to advise you.
Now let's say a husband and wife talk at length about something.
The ideal situation is when they come to an agreement.
But if it has, but that's not always the case.
And so if you've listened to your wife, all of her counsel, thoughts, suggestions, and
you still feel like you should choose a and she feels like you should choose B.
What's the solution at that point?
You know, do you flip a coin as a paper rock scissors?
God says in that scenario, the default or you defer to the husband and then the wife
puts herself behind him and supports his decision.
Now I've heard women say this to me before, I would submit to my husband if I agreed with
him.
When a wife tells me that she tells me she doesn't understand submission because submission
is entirely in place for when a wife disagrees with her husband.
She wouldn't have to submit if she agreed with him, right?
Like my children, if I tell them go play outside, that's not an issue of submission.
They want to play outside.
When I say go clean your room or go do your homework, that is an issue of submission because
they don't want to do that.
Anytime you want to do something, that's not submission.
I don't have to submit to God regarding fun, enjoyable, wonderful things in my life.
So submission is literally in place for when a wife disagrees with her husband.
She puts herself behind him and supports his decision.
And then an important thing for a wife to understand is that she is not held responsible
for the right decision being made.
If she was, she would actually never submit.
She would never stop pushing for her decision.
And she would probably even begin to nag, which the Bible condemns a wife doing in proverbs.
So, why is need, and I've heard women say this and it's very legitimate.
They say, oh, you know, I'm concerned.
I'm afraid of the wrong decision being made.
And I'll say after you've shared all your thoughts with your husband, it is not your
responsibility to make sure the right decision is made.
And if the wrong decision is made, that rests on your husband's shoulders and not on your
shoulders.
Now, biblical masculinity is not a husband who's physically strong, loud, dominating
authoritarian.
Instead, it's a husband who prays with his family, reads the word with his family, loves
and cherishes his wife, loves her in the language of Ephesians 5.25, as Christ loves the church,
sacrifices for his wife, sacrifices for his family.
That's biblical masculinity there.
It's a man who views his responsibility as the spiritual leader of his family.
You know, if a man said to me, how do I know if I'm ready to get married?
Well, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul said, when I became a man, I put away childish things.
And so I'll say to a young man, I'll say, are you willing to give up all of these things
for your wife?
Because that's what's going to be required to be a godly husband.
Biblical masculinity means you're willing to sacrifice and give up many of your wants
and for your wife so that you can love and cherish her.
It means getting up with kids, changing diapers.
You know, it means sacrificing sleep, giving up your video games possibly, maybe completely,
giving up a lot of your sports and things like that to cherish your wife the way God
commands.
And I'll tell you one thing interestingly, Johnny, I know submission is almost like this
cringe word.
I was doing this marriage conference.
I was one of the three keynote speakers.
They have this meeting, kind of a leadership meeting for this conference.
They bring in the keynote speakers and they want to play on the theme.
So the first speaker says, I'll talk about husbands loving their wives.
The second speaker who was paired up with his wife said, we're going to talk about communication
emerge.
And I thought, OK, well, we've got husbands loving their wives, the primary command for
husbands, communication, there's nothing for wives.
And I said, I'll talk about why I submitted to their husbands.
And it was like the air sucked out of the room.
I mean, people are like, they're like shocked.
You know, they're looking down and it's like, you know, what did he just say?
It was like a bad word or something.
And interestingly, any honest reading of the New Testament recognizes that it's actually
one of the most frequent commands, not just for wives, but in the New Testament.
It occurs five times.
And so any time a wife is mentioned in the New Testament, there's an accompanying command
for her to submit to her husband.
You can't get around it.
So honestly, what I've heard, learned Johnny, is because most people know it's there when
someone gets up and talks about it or preaches on it.
It's kind of refreshing.
And I've had a lot of women, it's like, wow, someone's going to tell me what the Bible
says and not be fearful and shrink back.
And, you know, I've spoken in some liberal places and people have come up and said, you
know, that was wonderful.
I knew the Bible said this, but my pastor wouldn't wouldn't talk about it.
And one of the super interesting things is because submission gets criticized so heavily,
you would expect that women would be like coming to my office or coming up to me at
marriage conferences, criticizing me or talking about how chauvinistic this is or saying,
I can't believe that the Bible commands wives to submit.
This is so terrible.
Instead, Johnny, the most common criticism I hear from women is my husband won't lead.
I'm hearing the exact opposite.
My husband is passive.
I want to be able to look up to him.
I want him to cast vision for our family.
I want him to be a prayerful man.
I want to be able to respect him.
I want him to pray with our family.
So the bigger criticism for men is not being authoritarian or dictatorial or abusive.
Although I do understand there are men in that category.
The bigger criticism is passivity.
My husband is a passive, unspiritual man, even kind of a spineless man.
And it makes it hard for me to be able to look up to him.
I talked a lot.
I hope I didn't talk too long.
No, no.
I'm glad that you're passionate about it because it needs to be said.
And something that you alluded to there that I think is a really important piece is we
have men, married men and single men that see this shift in culture.
They might say, well, there's no good women out there or kind of go listen to like an
Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan, this kind of masculine male that doesn't really have a lot of biblical
nature to them.
And now all of a sudden everything is the women's fault.
And that's something that you really spoke in there of biblical masculinity to text it
on the chin of what am I doing wrong here?
I'm not finding a godly woman.
What am I doing wrong?
Why am I not taking responsibility?
And we're seeing that passivity in men of just accepting defeat.
And that's not masculine at all just to accept defeat and to give up essentially.
Yeah.
And we actually see in scripture a very strong argument for God placing the responsibility
on a husband's shoulders for what happens in home and I'll just give you an example.
The fall took place.
Eve ate first.
She gave the fruit to Adam and then God held Adam responsible.
If you read Romans five and first Corinthians 15 through one man, sin came into the world.
He, he, him, there's no discussion of Eve.
It's all about Adam.
In fact, you can read that and be like, man, I thought you've had a lot more to do with
this than I'm seeing here.
You know, why is Adam completely God placed responsibility completely on his shoulders
because he was the head of the relationship and God holds men responsible for what happens
in our homes.
Another situation with Abraham and Sarah, you know, a right, Sarah, who's a great woman.
She's the first Peter three new Testament woman.
She's the example plucked up out of the Old Testament for women to follow, not because
she loved Abraham, although I suspect she did, but because in first Peter three, it says
her submission and respect toward him, but she wasn't perfect.
In a faithless moment, she said, take my servant, Hagar, I think it's Genesis 15 or, I think
it's Genesis 15 or 16 and have her, everyone knows the account.
Abraham passively submits to his wife.
And then the next thing, you know, Sarah's mad at Abraham about what he did, even though
he's doing what she wanted.
Another example is Ahab, you know, Ahab was a very spineless man.
He wants this vineyard that belongs to Naboth.
Jezebel comes and says, Hey, you're the king.
You know, you should have this if you want it.
And if you remember the whole account, Naboth with Naboth, Jezebel writes up this plan to
have Naboth murdered so that Ahab can get that vineyard.
Well, interestingly, even though Jezebel's fingerprints were on it from beginning to
end, she did everything.
She wrote the letters.
She sealed them and acted like she was a half.
She could not have taken more responsibility for Naboth's murder.
But then God sent Elijah to tell Ahab that Ahab was the one who murdered Naboth because
God held Ahab responsible for what happened in his marriage.
And so the same thing is whether it's Adam, Abraham, you know, or Ahab or Johnny or Scott
or whoever, God holds us responsible for what takes place in our home.
So we must be leaders.
That doesn't mean authoritarian.
That's not a leader.
It doesn't mean dictatorial or abusive.
That's not a leader.
That's that's sin.
I mean, Christ like spiritual leadership in our homes.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's something that men, whether things are going great or particularly if they're
going poor, take that responsibility and don't take it of just the worst dad ever, but do
something.
Get things in order.
And oftentimes that means that you got to confess sin and just keep moving.
Yeah, bring your family together.
You know, I've done this and say, Hey, there was this, there was something that happened.
My sons, he was kind of disrespecting Katie and there's certain things I try to punish
pretty severely in the home.
One of them kind of because we talked a lot about complimentary and versus egalitarian.
My boys, I truly expect them that I have four boys and five girls.
They must treat their sisters and their mother.
First Peter three seven says wives are the weaker vessel or women are the weaker vessel.
Well, that means God.
It means physically.
Women, it doesn't mean emotionally or mentally.
Some women are stronger emotionally, mentally, intellectually, spiritually than husbands.
It means physically weaker.
And we know this because all the men who are going into women's sports are dominating
it.
It's just, it's absurd.
Well, I talked to my boys, you know, why did God give you greater strength?
And they know the answer so we can protect women or protect our mother and our sisters.
And so if one of my brother's sons mistreats his sister, it's a pretty severely punishable
offense.
So one of my sons was being pretty disrespectful to his mother and I responded and spanked
him harder than I than I should have.
And it was very quick.
It was very sudden and he could see the anger on my face and it was a discipline that took
place out of anger.
And I had to and even Katie, even my wife, who was the one being disrespected by his
son told me, said that was just like super out of out of and it's not, we are in favor
of spanking our children, but you don't want to do it in anger.
And I did.
I had to bring my whole family together and say, Hey, you know, I, I sinned there.
I should not have treated my son that way.
That was, that was wrong to have done it in anger.
And there's other times, you know, where you bring your family together and say, I was
impatient or I lost my temper.
I shouldn't have acted that way.
Please forgive me.
That's part of being a man.
That's part of biblical.
And in, we tell our kids, we say things like, Hey, look, mommy and I are sinful too.
We need Christ as much as you do.
We don't preach Christ as though you need Christ and we don't.
We need the gospel just like you guys need the gospel.
I think that's so powerful.
That's something my, my wife and I have been talking about recently.
We're doing some parenting classes and things like that at church and kind of the more in
our parents generation and other generations, there was that more authoritarian type of top
down mom and dad are essentially can do the wrong.
And I don't think that was the intention, but that's kind of how that would come across.
And every mom and dad does something wrong where we're all sinful.
And to have the, basically the pride to not apologize, to not say I was wrong here.
I am sorry.
That's something we have really taken to heart and tried to do the same.
Like you mentioned there, Hey, mommy and daddy are wrong.
That doesn't give you a right to disrespect mom or dad, but we have a responsibility to
to Christ above that like you said before, he's the one in control and we need to apologize
when, when we're wrong.
That's such a powerful thing to teach your kids.
Yeah.
And when, when you apologize, you end up diffusing hostility toward you.
Your kids are immediately in dear to you.
Your kids might be upset.
The moment that you, and this is any relationship, this is in marriage counseling.
Anytime there's a very genuine, contrite apology or confession and request for forgiveness,
you will quickly see a diffuser anger and hostility diffused.
And I mean, a sincere, like the destroyer of apologies is the word, but, you know, you
need to be able to apologize without using the word, but like I've, you can watch it
where someone's like, you know, I'm really sorry I did that.
I can't believe I did it.
But and then it just ruins everything.
The real sincere apology, I'm sorry I did that.
Please forgive me.
I feel terrible.
You can like watch people's hostility be diffused.
Well, if you get your kids together, no matter how angry they are and you're like, you know,
daddy really blew it.
I'm so sorry.
Please forgive me.
You're going to have a bunch of kids that are like, Oh, I love you so much, daddy.
You're so great.
You know, they're going to just suddenly that that's what humility, humility does.
And so pride does the opposite.
If you make it and I've done this too, I was making excuses this one day and my daughter,
I could just see how upset she was becoming at me because I wasn't accepting responsibility,
you know, and she knows that that's what I tell my kids to do and then I'm not doing
it.
So that hypocrisy made them upset with me.
Yeah.
No, that's, and it goes back to that responsibility.
We need to take that responsibility.
Now speaking of these situations, maybe where I need to apologize and I feel uncomfortable
or just something beyond that to just dealing with death, dealing with grief, just some
type of hard trial in life.
How do we prepare for that and handle those trials?
Yeah.
You know, that's a good question, Donnie.
So I read one of the other books I read it's called enduring trials, God's way.
That's kind of my brand.
If you look at my books, you can tell God's way.
Well, I kind of compare some Christians and I used like this sports analogy.
I used to play football.
I went to a small school and so I used to get the ball a lot.
It doesn't mean that I was good.
It just means I was at a small school at a bigger school.
I probably wouldn't have.
But anyway, I got the ball a lot.
So I kind of learned there's sort of like two ways to be tackled.
You know, you're, you're running down the field.
You can tell you're about to get tackled and you prepare for it and, and then it might
hurt, but it's not as big a deal.
You pick yourself up.
The worst kind of tackle is to be blindsided.
You don't see it coming and it just, it can be, you know, you pick yourself up pretty
slowly from the field and even that's frequently when people get hurt.
And the reason I mentioned that is I feel like some Christians are kind of like the
player running down the field.
They're prepared.
They're ready because they spend time in God's word.
They're in fellowship.
They're, they're, um, so when a trial comes, they're kind of like the house that's built
on Christ's teachings that's going to withstand those storms that are hitting the house, right?
Matthew 7, 24 to 27, the parable of the two builders.
There's another type of Christian who's kind of like that player running down the field.
They're totally unprepared.
They don't spend time in God's word.
They're not prayerful.
They may not even, they might not even be in a church or they don't attend church regularly
or faithfully.
And so that trial blinds sides them and they're totally unprepared for it.
Now I've heard people say, Oh yeah, I went through this trial and it really, it really
drew me toward Christ.
You know, that's great, but that's not ideal.
Ideally you are preparing for that trial so that when it comes, it's tough.
It's uncomfortable, but you're ready for it.
You've been built up and strengthened in Christ.
It's kind of like the difference between, you know, preparing for a test the day of
or the weeks leading up to it.
I mean, you can prepare the day of and do better and you can practice for that game,
you know, the day before, but it's much better if you've been practicing for weeks.
And so I tell Christians, if you want to be prepared for trials, you need to prepare for
them when you're not in a trial by those spiritual disciplines being in fellowship.
So you can go through it with your church family.
You know that, that young lady I mentioned who has stage four cancer, well her and her
husband have been super plugged into our church.
Everyone loves them.
They're surrounded by this church family when they go, they go through it and that's how
it should be.
But there's other people, they don't have a church family.
They don't have anywhere to look.
They don't know what to do.
I get these emails from people whose marriages are falling apart.
And one of the first things I say is, are you plugged into a local church?
If they're not, I'm honestly kind of not surprised I'm married to suffering.
I clearly have not been prioritizing Christ because that's about as foundational as you
can get going to church, right?
If people aren't doing that, then what are the chances that they're going to be in the
word and in prayer?
You know, so then I suspect their marriage could be, could be struggling.
Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point that we all need to be aware of that it's
not, oh, if I get a trial down the road, you will.
We're going to face different types of trials.
I'm not going to be harder than others, but, but you will.
Yeah.
Don't go in disaster mode and just have no idea what to do.
If you're not, like you said, especially in a local body and really contributing your,
your spiritual disciplines on a consistent basis, that doesn't mean the trial won't be
hard, but you're going to have people around you.
You're going to be in the word, be prayerful about it.
And it's going to lessen that blow.
I love that analogy of kind of the blindside tackle there.
Wait, those of you that watch any type of football, you, you know what that's like that
hit hard.
And if you can help cushion that blow, and that's something with our current church family
that again, I know it's not of all church bodies.
There's always going to be problems, but we're so blessed and loved in this church.
And we actually moved to this church about, it's been about three or so years ago.
And that was one of the big things is we wanted to, I wanted to, as a, as a husband, of if
something happened to me, and that was the trial for my wife, that she would have people
around her that would take care of her.
I saw that as a really important role for me to care for her as a protector, even if
I'm gone.
And I love having that confidence of, I don't have to live in fear of, oh, what happens
if I die or whatever?
And not, not that I think of that every day, but that really loosens you up that I know
people would take her in.
I know people would take my kids in.
And that is so freeing when you have to face those type of trials.
So I love that analogy of preparing for it and just knowing that it's going to happen.
Well, being a spiritual leader in your family, even if you're not, you're not going to die.
I mean, you went to the extreme and I appreciate your sensitivity toward that possibility.
We had a funeral recently for this father of 12 kids and his wife was pregnant with
their 12th and she had the child after he died.
I mean, it was, but he'd been plugged into a church and he, so there is that possibility,
all I'm saying.
But even if you don't die, you still need to love your family by having them plugged
into a church because you're going to have trials, you want your children to be around
Christian friends and have a community.
And so that's definitely one way to love, love your family and lead them well as to
have them plugged into a biblical gospel preaching church.
Absolutely.
Well, Scott, this has been a fantastic conversation.
I think there's so much on it.
I obviously am a little biased here that I think you should very listen to every episode
just because you should listen to my show.
I do think this is one that there's just so much weight to a lot of these topics.
It probably wouldn't be good if you have some specific struggles to go back and hone in on
some of these topics.
But I know beforehand, before we got on, you said that you've got something special for
all the listeners here.
You got a free gift for them.
So kind of speak to the audience about that.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks, Johnny.
And so I talked about marriage and amount in this and that's kind of one of my passions.
I do marriage conferences more than anything else.
I think I told you I was in Oklahoma in February.
And so I care about marriages and I wrote a short book.
It's called Seven Biblical Insights for Healthy, Joyful Christ-Centered Relationships.
And you can get that for free from my website.
And so hopefully in the show notes, I'll send you some links you can put there, including
a link to that book.
And at my website, that's kind of the hub where you can find everything about me, my
YouTube channel, my books, my speaking engagements.
And so that's where you'd want it.
You can also find a contact page there if you had any questions about any of the things
that Johnny and I have talked about today.
Then I'd love to hear from you.
And even if money's tight, I'll give you a free electronic copy of one of my books on
marriage or finances or trials.
Because my church takes care of me.
I'm not doing the books for money.
I just want to quit people and see them grow in Christ.
And so if you have any questions or issues, then it'd be a privilege to hear from you.
And thanks for all you're doing, Johnny.
Thanks for having me on the show.
And I appreciate it this time with you.
And maybe the Lord will let us run into each other in person someday.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, yeah, I'll make sure to get all those links and stuff down there in the show notes
so everybody can check those out.
And yeah, it was great having you on.
Again, I encourage everybody to go and visit the information for the guest.
But there's so much more that Scott has written more into those hundreds of hours of research
and preaching.
So I really appreciate you being on the show and sharing your knowledge with us.
Thanks, Johnny.
God bless you and God bless your listeners.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Faithfully Engaged.
Continue to go out there and fight for truth.