Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - What If God Has Something Better Than Your Dream?

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

What if the biggest thing standing between you and God’s plan is your own idea of how life should go? In this episode of Culture & Christianity, Allen Jackson shares a personal story about surrendering his own ambitions and learning to ask, “Lord, what would You have me do?” We explore the danger of asking God to bless our plans instead of trusting Him to lead us, and the freedom that comes when we fully surrender to His will. God’s purpose for your life may look different than you imagined—but His story is always greater.

In many places in our nation, it is Pride Month. June in Tennessee is Nuclear Family Month. Maybe it's the beginning of a movement. We will see June become a time when we celebrate biblical values and biblical worldview and biblical morality. And I think we've got to have the courage to walk this back forward, not in anger, but we've got to use our voices, folks. Talk about it at your kitchen table. Talk about it when you're with your friends. Bring your faith outside of the theoretical.

and let it fill the words that occupy the space that you live in. Well, welcome to culture and Christianity. No guest today, just me and the Holy Spirit. Buckle up. I hope I'm listening. I've had a bit of a bug for a few days, so my voice is still a little scratchy. About the time you hear this, I will be much better. So thank you for your prayers, but I trust the Lord will have brought restoration.

when your job involves talking, your voice not working is problematic, but the Lord's been faithful. So thank you for spending a few minutes with us. I really come to look forward to this time. It's like we get to have a cup of tea in a conversation without the pressure of a fully aligned sermon or complete alignment of all. And so there's a bit of randomness in it. But I think there's some things. I want to start by celebrating with you. You know, we live in a season where there's this tremendous conflict unfolding, if you haven't noticed.

And it's expressed in so many ways. It's expressed between nation states, between China and the U.S., and Russia and Ukraine and Iran. And it's expressed between ideologies between socialism and communism and capitalism. It's expressed between political parties, Republican and Democrat, on around the world. But in reality, beneath that very, veneer of all those labels that we can identify. It really is a spiritual conflict between the principles of God and His kingdom and Satan who stands in opposition to God and His kingdom. But if you'll allow that conflict to become a part of the filter through which you engage the

world, it seems to me that things become a great deal with a lot more clarity. And one of the challenges is there's things happening that are just unbridled expressions of evil in ways that we're not accustomed to. They haven't been a part of Western civilization in the last several decades. And now they're being celebrated, normalized, held up. Our children are being prayed upon all the things. We go through that punch list pretty frequently. And it's easy to get discouraged or dissuaded or you start grasping at false hopes and imaginary revivals because somebody shows you a group of people who were baptized or where God moved into some pocket of people. And all those things are great. Folks, when there are widespread moves of the spirit,

of God, they correspond with dramatic changes in cultural behavior. And I don't think we're seeing that in those broad spread ways yet. I'm grateful for every life that's changed, for every generation that's impacted. So we're left in kind of this cauldron where we feel the conflict. Whether you see it or not, you feel it on a very regular basis if you say the name of Jesus out loud. And so one of the habits I have cultivated and I've encouraged others to do, and I hope you've joined me, is to build a good news list.

to on a very regular basis, if not daily, close to it, identify the things you can say God did. We're having camp for fourth and fifth graders on campus this week. And yesterday they said there was a 90% chance of rain all day today, which is not a great thing for an outdoor camp for kids that want to climb ropes, do ropes courses and cargo nets and zip lines. And what we've ended up having is cloud cover all day. The humidity's a little high, but it hadn't rained all day.

So we got 10 degrees, 15 degrees cooler than you would. would expect, and the Lord has held back the precipitation. Yeah, God, it's at the top of my good news list for the day, because hundreds of kids and their families got the benefit of that and all the volunteers working with them. Didn't melt in the heat, and they didn't have to deal with the intrusion of rain. So God's faithfulness on those small things of our lives are wonderful. If you don't build a good news list, start. It'll help you overcome the gut punch that the evening news so often brings.

or your daily dose of updates on what's happening in the globe, wherever you go to get that. You need a good news list to help you stay focused on what God is doing. Along that line, there's something that's happened on a broader scale. I want to celebrate with you. I celebrated with the congregation all weekend. In Tennessee, this is officially recognized as June as nuclear family month. Not nuclear in the sense of we think of bombs or weapons or nuclear power. Nuclear is a sociological term to define family.

And I went and looked at the state website to be sure I wasn't misrepresenting it. But it's a way to define really a biblical worldview of family with a father and a mother, husband, one wife, their biological children. And if their family system has included that, adoptive or fostered children. So it's really a celebration of a biblical view of marriage and family. And the state legislature in Tennessee put the bill through and the governor signed it. And so June in Tennessee is nuclear family month. In many places in our nation, it is Pride Month.

Not one of the seven deadly sins, but a celebration of the LGBTQ2 plus whatever alphabet letters they are adding in this month. And that has been pretty pervasive. It's been celebrated in the marketplace, in the public square, by professional athletes, professional leagues, all the things. I was in Jerusalem. Oh, I'm there frequently, but when I was there with the previous administration on the American

consulate there, they had an enormous pride flag draped. And I thought, what a horrible message to the world, that that's what the United States wants to export in the way of faith and ideology. So I am very grateful and want to take a moment with you to celebrate Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee legislature that, May June nuclear family month. And I think it's not just Tennessee. There's some other states that happen to be around us that are doing so. Indiana governor's Mike Braun has done something similar. Alabama's governor, Kay Ivy, has done something similar. Arkansas's governor, Sarah Huckabee,

has done something similar. So maybe it's the beginning of a movement. And we will see June become a time when we celebrate biblical values and biblical worldview and biblical morality. Not as an expression of diminishment of anyone else, not of an expression of hatred towards anybody else. I don't believe it need be that at all. It's simply a celebration of those of us who have chosen to endorse a worldview that comes to us from Scripture. I think we have to have that courage.

I was a little, I was interested when we talked about it with the congregation this weekend. There was a little hesitancy, maybe a little uncertainty, is whether or not that was something we should celebrate in church. Some things we talk about, like being proud. life and they'll respond with some enthusiasm or that looting and stealing is bad. And there's usually some enthusiasm around that. There was a little hesitancy around this. And I think it's important to frame this that saying we're for a biblical view of family, a biblical view of marriage is not

an expression of hatred. I think we ought to have a month where we celebrate we don't steal month. Wouldn't that be good? Like no fraud this month. And we're all celebrating the fact that we're going to live upright, honest, integrity-filled lives. I mean, it's a fundamental biblical principle. And at the moment, it looks like we celebrate fraud. It is so widespread in hundreds of billions of dollars being looted. Not somebody's random money. That's our money. I think all the IRS auditors and evaluators should be turned around from facing U.S. citizens in their taxes and be pointed directly at the fraud problem until that fraud problem is reduced by 50%. Let's not worry about what people are trying to do legally in paying their taxes until we get really focused on what people

are doing that's illegal. So maybe we have no fraud. Maybe we have no fornication Friday. Let's start celebrating biblical values. What if we had a month where we celebrated that adultery is bad? Wouldn't it be good just to reinforce in the public square, a biblical worldview issue, that adultery is not a good idea? The Bible's very clear that if you get engaged in adultery, it's going to bring destruction into your life in so many, many ways. It's just not a good idea. So I am delighted, thrilled, happy, excited. I wanted to take a few minutes with you to celebrate Nuclear Family Month

that at a legislative level, it's no less real or more real because the governor of Tennessee signs a bill or the governor of Arkansas. But I do think it brings a blessing to us when those people with authority over us take the time to celebrate biblical worldview issues. So, hallelujah. You know, this podcast is made possible because of sponsors. And one of our sponsors is preserve gold. And I appreciate their partnership with us.

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Well, if you want to learn how precious metals could help protect your savings, text Allen to 50505 today. You'll receive your free wealth protection guide. And I'm very aware that many families that gather with us in worship struggle with the LGBT issues. Our families aren't exempt from that. We've arrived at this place where we have men participating in women's sports and Supreme Court's justices that are unwilling to define what a woman is and all the corporate shenanigans around transgender confusion.

In reality, those things aren't confusing at all. It's an ideology that has been put front and center in our culture. Fortunately, there's a little bit of a reversal of that with the current administration. But we arrived at that place because of the capitulation at the church. You know, two or three decades ago, we winked at sex outside of marriage. You know, boys will be boys, and we don't want the women to have any less opportunities than the men do. And, you know, so it was just kind of a wink and a nod and locker room talk. And we really didn't imagine there was any consequence.

We thought we could ignore God's boundaries and God's parameters, live any way we wanted to live, and we would do that free of any consequence. Because if we were Christians, we just kind of casually go, oh, I'm sorry, God, and we can be forgiven in the blood of Jesus and its efficacy in our lives, and there's no consequence. Folks, the Bible is equally clear that God isn't mocked. And so we walked through that, and we really didn't say much. we walked through seasons where just biblical marriage in general was kind of set aside. We saw all the statistics that said that marriage was less of a value and people were living together

because you needed to understand if the relationship was really durable enough. And I can't tell you how many families I engaged with that they gave one version or another of that where they gave their blessing to that covertly, if not overtly. And, you know, well, they're going to get married anyway. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that they have that intent. But I think anytime we flaunt God's boundaries and live in disobedience, we open our lives up to consequences. Forgiveness of sin does not eliminate all the consequences of sin.

And we watched what that more open attitude towards marriage brought. We moved marriage for the most part outside of churches. Now we all want venues and unique events. Again, I don't think that's evil. But we kind of diminished the centrality of God in the midst of those things. And marriage became more about a party with our friends. and a celebration and an expression of our individuality and our creativity and less of a covenant

that was made between a man and a woman in the sight of God. At the end of the day, that's what a wedding and marriage is. Or it's the beginning of a marriage. And we moved right through those boundaries as Christians with really very little angst. We didn't talk about it much in our churches.

Good families, families that participated in church. I would have these conversations with them and they'd say, well, you know, Alan, if I got three kids and they're all living with their boyfriends or their girlfriends, but you know, if we say something about it, it's going to disrupt Thanksgiving, and it's the only time we all get together and, you know, on and on. We were really casual with the boundaries that God gave us. And then we added into that, you know, kind of rejecting any gender roles from Scripture.

We didn't want to be a, when we get caught into those discussions. So, you know, we were saying men can do anything women can do, and women can do everything men can do. Now, folks, we're fundamentally different, not lesser or greater, but we're different. That's just a biological reaction. And so that all got blurred. And so now we find ourselves where we don't even have the courage to say what a man or a woman is. And we have men competing in women's sports, not because they are able to typically dominate in men's sports, but because they can't, they're looking for a venue where they can participate. So they identify as a woman.

And because we deconstructed those boundaries decades ago, we forfeit a lot of the moral authority to come back and say, wait a minute, this is absurd. And so now we find ourselves living in the theater of the absurd so that a governor of a state passes or recognizes a bill that this month we're going to celebrate family between a man and a woman and their biological children. That doesn't seem like a very deep biblical revelation,

but it is a fundamental foundational building block to the well-being of our lives, our family systems, and our society. If your family doesn't meet all of those standards in a perfect way or it's touched by ungodliness in some way, not a condemnation gives you a place to begin to pray. God help bring my family into alignment with your will. I would have said the same things if your kids were living together or your grandkids, or if you were playing sloppily with God's boundaries around sexual activity.

God's not a prude. He made sex. It was his idea. He knew a lot more about pleasure and sex. and before any of us did, but he gave us the boundaries through which it brings fulfillment to us and contentment to our lives. And he identified the places where it brings great destruction.

And one of the great, I think, misunderstandings amongst Christians is we think if we live through sin, we've avoided any consequence from that. So maybe we had a season of our life where we engaged in ungodly behavior, and we stopped. We got to a place where we changed our attitude and we began to comply with God's boundaries. But we never went back and talked to the Lord.

We never really repented. We never asked for the forgiveness and the cleansing. We never did our spiritual homework to be sure that any spiritual influences that may have come to us because of our ungodliness were ever addressed. We just thought we would live through it. We buried in the past. We're making better choices now. And, well, I'm grateful for good choices and a realignment of our lives.

Be sure that you give the Holy Spirit permission. Take Psalm 51 and pray it. You know, if there's any harmful way in me, let me see it. Give the Holy Spirit permission. Read Psalm 51. It's the Psalm David. It's the Psalm attributed to David after his sin with Bathsheba is exposed. So we've got a lot of good things to celebrate.

God's moving, good things. God's bringing freedom and redemption to his people. If you've got those chapters of your life and you've left them just in the shadow of history, bring them back into the life. to the Holy Spirit. You don't have to rehash them and confess to everybody around you, but you and the Holy Spirit, get your Bible out, invite the Holy Spirit and say, I want to repent. Maybe you take a list, you put the names down of the people or the circumstances down. Ask God for his forgiveness. Forgive those people you need to forgive.

Summertime, it's a growing season. We're working on that as a congregation, a community of faith. I'm working on it with my friends all over the country. And I would invite you, let the Holy Spirit help bring that cleansing to you. It's a great season. and talk to your friends about Nuclear Family Month. If your state hadn't done that yet, start to pray. Lord give us a governor and legislators that will let Nuclear Family Month come to the state where I live. Let's make it a trend that reaches beyond the states

that are already on board. Kind of along that line, I got an email today. I want to share with you. It's from the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins. And they have put together a pledge as a part of our 250th anniversary as a nation, defending our freedoms, celebrating those things. was a quote in it that I thought was really good. It's from John Adams. And this is the quote. He said,

always stand on principle, even if you stand alone. And I think when the conversation comes around to things like family values and biblical values and biblical worldview, sometimes we lose our voices because we understand it in some settings, at least it puts us in a minority. And I want to encourage you to stand on your biblical principles, even if you stand alone. But Tony and his team at the Family Research Council have put together this pledge. And I thought it was, was so good. I wanted to share the highlights with you. They've written it in a very formal. You go out to the Family Research Council's website and you can get the pledge and sign it, so your name gets attached to it. But there's a handful, half a dozen things that they have

are committing themselves to. I commit to keeping God first in all areas of my life. And they use Matthew 2237. I commit to fighting for the unborn. Wouldn't that be good? That the scourge of abortion be turned back in our nation. Folks, it's not a legal issue. It's a hard issue. You know, for years we hid behind the thing saying it was, legal. And when the Supreme Court overturned that, the abortion rate in our country really didn't change. In fact, it may have grown some because it never was a legal issue. It was a heart issue. Let's determine to be a voice for the people who can't speak for themselves yet. And then he said, I commit to honoring the institution of marriage and proclaiming God's good design of it. Again,

not a condemnation of anything, just an embracing of a biblical value, a biblical worldview. I commit to standing for God's creation of male and female and will not yield to the culture. 19 for. I commit to voting in accordance with God's word, 1 Corinthians 1031. What a notion that we don't we don't bring idolatry into the voting booth, that we commit to biblical values. You know, the awkward part of that, and the part to be candid with you is really tiresome to me is how we manipulate scripture. You know, we argue all over some of these cultural issues from biblical perspectives. I saw something just yesterday that said it's the 50th anniversary since the Episcopal Church began ordaining gay priests. And they're having a big celebration around it,

that it's such a milestone for them. And I think that's extraordinarily unfortunate. You know, I saw, I was going out to check a social media post that our team had made, and I saw a social media post that someone had made about Franklin Graham, and they showed a video of Franklin doing something, something like we just said, endorsing a biblical view of marriage and family and values and asking people to pray because our nation had begun to behave in such a blatantly ungodly way and embracing all sorts of alternative lifestyles. And I didn't know the person that had paid the post.

They went on to overlay it with the video, you know, calling Franklin Graham all sorts of very unkind names and that he, how unscriptural he was and unbiblical he was, that Jesus never said the word homosexual. Jesus never said the word jet airplane. I mean, it's just such a farcical way to approach Scripture. Jesus came to fulfill the law. In fact, the scripture says Jesus was the end of the law as a means of righteousness, that our right standing with God is no longer established by the mosaic law.

But it doesn't mean God's changed his mind. It just means that our right standing with God comes to us through a gift by receiving by faith, Jesus' redemptive sacrifice for us. But God's moral boundaries haven't been reduced. God didn't say, oh, just steal when it's in your best interest or commit adultery if it's more fulfilling to you. You know, and Jesus made that very clear in his teaching. You know, he said, according to the law of Moses, if you're angry enough to, and you murder someone, you're guilty. But I say to you, if you're angry enough that you want to commit murder, that you're guilty. He said, Moses, Jesus said that if you commit adultery, you're guilty. I say to you that if you look at a woman

and with lust in your heart, that you have committed adultery. Jesus wasn't diminishing the standards. He was raising them. So it's just nonsense to suggest that Jesus was advocating for some sexual boundary, family boundary different from what's been introduced to us. And I think we've got to have the courage to walk this back forward, not in anger, not in belligerence, not filled with resentment, and certainly not with violence, but we've got to use our voices, folks. Talk about it at your kitchen table. Talk about it at your holiday table. Talk about it when you're with your friends. Bring your faith outside of the theoretical and let it fill the words that occupy the space that you live in. I had a professor at Vanderbilt many years ago in there

Graduate School of Religion was not living a godly lifestyle, but a brilliant biblical scholar. And I remember them saying that in the Hebrew Bible, it was clear that the people who wrote the Hebrew Bible thought that words were tangible. They said it was as if they had a tangible quality, like a rock that could hit you. Words could impact you. And I remember sitting there thinking, I wasn't a scholar of any significance at the time. I remember sitting there going, well, yeah. And so I live with this notion that I live in the midst of words, that they are reverberating all around me all the time.

And I want to live in the midst of words that honor God and honor a biblical worldview. And I want to live in words whenever possible that promote kindness and mercy and forgiveness. But I also want them to communicate truth. and integrity. And I don't like to live in the midst of words that are deceptive or dishonest or manipulative because I think all of those words around you, if they're not godly and God honoring,

invite things into your experience, your life experience, that are really disruptive and destructive. You know, being a spiritual person doesn't make you weird. I've knew too many people weird that tried to convince me they were spiritual and they were just weird. The most practical people I've ever known have been the most intensely spiritual. So use your words to honor the Lord, and it will bring the blessings of God to you, and your good news list will grow day over day, and your focus on what God is doing will grow, and your awareness of what the devil is doing will be diminished. It'll diminish your fear.

It'll diminish your anxiety. Your health will get better. It's just phenomenal what that will do to you. Your voice may disappear once in a while, but your health will get better. Almost everybody I know wants to be healthy or healthier, and I'm, I think most of us would like it to happen to us by accident, but that hasn't been my experience. So what do we do in a world where there's so many options

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I want to turn this a little different way. I had a conversation with some friends over the weekend that I'm in a small group with and we were processing some choices and life changes and, you know, kind of these decisions about how we learn to follow the Lord and how we work that out in our lives. And, you know, the practical part of following God

is more difficult than I would like it to be. In fact, life in general is more difficult. difficult than I would like it to be, and God is a good God, and our lives are lived between those two statements. The fact that life's more difficult than I would like it in no way diminishes the fact that God is good. But I got to figure out how to live between these two realities. And so we're having this conversation, and they had heard me talk about another season in my life. I left home when I was 17 to go to college, and I made the announcement before I ever started school at all. Before I started elementary school, I made the announcement I was going to be a

doctor. My dad was a veterinarian. He went back to vet school when I was, I guess I was five when he started vet school. So I have memories of him going through vet school and his studying. And so I made the announcement somewhere along the way that I was going to be a doctor, but I wasn't going to go to school like my dad did. And so my whole academic life was pointed towards that objective. I used to shadow doctors and I'd go to other states and do that. I'd work in, I worked in a microbiology laboratory and UAB one summer. My academic career in college began in the basic sciences. I mean, that was just my ambition.

And I like the challenge. I still do. I like the challenge of medicine. It was always like a puzzle with me. My dad, when I lived at home, was an equine veterinarian, and you only treated horses, which meant most of the time you went to see the patient. You had to get in the car and go to wherever the horses were. And so I developed a habit really early on.

usually my dad would give me some part of the paraphernalia. He would need to do the exam. And I'd be carrying that along and we'd be going to see the horse. And then I would hold the horse while he did the exam. He'd listen to the farmer or the owner or the horse trainer, whoever give the symptoms. And then he'd do an exam. And then when we walked back to his car, his vehicle,

to get whatever the treatment was, he would usually explain to me what he was going to do. So I started this game in my head. I'd try to make the diagnosis before he told me. And I'd see if my diagnosis lined up with the, the real doctor. And I did that for years and got pretty good at imitating a veterinarian, not in practice, just in my head. So I go off to college to be a doctor and I'm working through that. And when I left home, I had made a commitment to the Lord. When I lived at home as a young

person, I honored God, but I really didn't do it because of my relationship with God. I did it out of respect for my parents. They'd been kind to me. They'd given me food and shelter and clothing and it helped me get an education, and I felt like out of respect to them, I needed to honor their Christian faith. But I also understood when I left home, I wasn't sure I was going to hold that. And so I'd made an agreement with the Lord

before I left Tennessee that I'd do my best while I went through undergraduate school to figure out who he was. And if I got to the end of that and I thought he was real, then I'd be a Christian. But if I didn't, I wanted him to leave me alone because I was tired of feeling convicted. arrogant is the word you're searching for, but that was the bargain I had put on the table.

And so as I'm going through undergraduate work and punching through all my classes and getting ready to go to medical school, I began to get this sense of discomfort on the inside of me that God was inviting me to something other than medicine. And I didn't want to hear it. I wasn't interested. I didn't want to do anything else. I had a plan. I had a lifestyle.

I knew what I wanted to do. And it didn't come to me simply. It took, it was Christmas of my junior year, really, before I ever really got to the crisis point. And it's a longer story than I'll drag you through today. I'll come back and tell you the rest of it another time because I couldn't get to the point of freedom. I couldn't get to the point of making any changes until I dealt with the hatred. I'll stop for a minute. Pre-med, at least back in the day, was about attrition.

There were hundreds and hundreds of us that were pre-med when I started. and the department's objectives were to create as much attrition as possible. So by the time we got our junior year or so, there were only those people that were really committed to the process that would do the hard work to make it on through graduate programming. So there was an enormous attrition rate,

and my friends were dropping out, and they'd come to my room, and they'd cry and say, Professor so-and-so says, I'm too stupid to be a doctor. And I'd look at him and say, you go back and tell Professor So-and-so to kiss your ring. And it got very personal to me. You know, I made up my mind that they couldn't make me quit.

It just didn't matter how unfair it was or how they managed the schedule or how much pressure they put on us or how many exams they would stack or whatever they did because they did some crazy things. But what that became for me, my motivational edge was hatred and resentment. They were a barrier between where I was and where I wanted to go. and I wasn't going to let them win. And so if I needed to study late or work through a weekend or there was some sacrifice demanded of me, I'd use the resentment and the bitterness as my leverage. And I thought, I won't let them win. And through a variety of circumstances, God put this godly person in my life that had been a missionary to Cuba.

At the time, I thought she was a thousand years old. She probably is my age, but at my current age. but I got in a space where I had to spend some time with her and she was asking me about my academics and what I was doing and I told her. She very kindly said to me at the end of the conversation, you were a very angry young man. And I said, yeah, but it's helpful.

And she said, well, you know, if you'd be willing, you could be free of that. And I remember thinking, I'm not sure I want to be free of that. But long story short, I'll tell the rest of it another time, but she stayed with me. She was persistent enough in that conversation that she helped me acknowledge it was wrong. I repented.

She showed me how to get free, how to take those things to the Lord, and really not just casually say that, but I got emotionally free from the hatred and the resentment and the bitterness. And when I did that, all of a sudden, I realized it was like my hearing got restored. For the last few days,

well, my voice has been a little messed up. My ears have been stopped up. And when you can't quite hear as well as you want to, well, I was that way as a young person, I couldn't hear God very well because my hearing was impeded by my own disobedience and ungodliness. Again, there's consequences when you choose to ignore the Lord.

And so when I got to that freedom, you know, I remember sitting and saying to the Lord, listen, at that time I grew up in the church where all the ministers wore black robes investments. I knew I couldn't do that. I knew if I got that job, I'd get fired in 48 hours. So I said, God, you know, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to serve you. I know I couldn't be a pastor. I don't like church. I don't really like Christians all that much. But, but, you know, maybe if there's something I can do. And I'd had lunch one day in the cafeteria.

I had a few minutes before my afternoon classes started. And went back to my dorm room and I was leaning against a little daybed. I was sitting on the daybed. And really for about the second time of my life, I heard the Lord on the inside of me. And I heard the voice of God say, you can go. And I knew exactly what he meant. I knew he meant that the doors that I needed to get on to graduate school and what I wanted to do next would swing the rest of the way open. I thought they were already pretty much open. But I knew that the future I wanted was completely available to me. And you should understand, in my desire to honor the Lord, I've been, I've been quote in scripture, to God. I'd fasted and prayed. I was trying to twist guard's arm with his word. And so I hear God say to me,

okay, you go. And for the first time in my life, it gave me these really cold chills because I understood something that I'd been throwing a fit to get my way. I had never one time, not one time had I ever said to the Lord, you know, what would you have for my life? Because I didn't want to know. I didn't care. I wanted God to bless me and what I wanted to do and the way I wanted to do it and the timeline I had for it. And I, you know, I was willing to be godly and pay my tithes and read my Bible and comply with the moral boundaries. I was willing to do my part to be a good Christ follower. But I had no intention of saying to God, what would you have for me to do? And I walked around that way for a few days. And I didn't really know what to do with it, that recognition. And so I finally said to

Lord, Lord, I'll do whatever you want me to do. And I still didn't have any idea about ministry or being a pastor, but I knew I couldn't stay in that lane. I knew that if I didn't do something, that the inertia would pull me right into that that graduate program. And so I went and found my advisor and said, I can't go to the next level. I at least have to interrupt it. And that was the beginning of putting my feet on a new path.

There were a lot of versions of that and variations and some good news and some really difficult news as I walked through all of that. But as we were having the conversation in our small group over the weekend, back to the story, what I realized is that pattern that got put in place when I was 20 years old I'm still living with. Of trying to do what I can to stay as clean as I know how to stay with the Lord. and that requires consistent attention. You know, I had a shower this morning. I'll probably have another one tomorrow. It wasn't that I wasn't practicing good hygiene today, but tomorrow's a new day.

And you and I have to practice spiritual hygiene. And I still have to give attention to that in my heart, in my life. But I also have to be willing to lay down my demands that God perform my will. I knew how much money I wanted to make. I remember wrestling with this at 20. I was like, God, I can't choose a career that would limit my earning capacity. Nobody does that. I'd be foolish to do that.

And I'm not foolish. I'll be generous with you. You'd bribe God with your stuff. And I find myself now decades on the other side of that decision. And I'm so grateful because I can make choices today for the Lord that I couldn't have made at 20. and they're because of that track record and those patterns, those little simple decisions that I began to wrestle with

and I don't know where you are in your journey, I don't know what the challenges are, I don't know what you think is going to bring you fulfillment and contentment and joy and maybe you've segmented your life and compartmentalized your life and you go to church and you sing the choruses and you do all the God things at church,

but then you go live for you. And I'm not telling you that your Christianity's in jeopardy. I'm telling you that is such a diminishing. life. I think the grandest life you can live is a life to honor the Lord. And that has nothing to do with being a professional Christian. My dad led more people to the Lord as a veterinarian than any pastor I've ever known. So you can make an enormous generational impact for the kingdom of God without being a professional Christian. In fact, being a professional Christian, I think makes it harder. We're celebrating this year the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence

What a wonderful privilege we have. You know, God has blessed our nation so many good things. People say to me, well, our whole history is not good. Well, folks, you know, my history's not great. Your family history is not perfect. But you love your family. You love your children. In spite of our weaknesses, well, our nation hadn't been perfect,

but through that whole story, the goodness of God is evident. It still is. Let's ask God to bless America again. I believe you will. As we celebrate 250 years, of God's faithfulness to our nation. We want to help you carry that message along with you. This commemorative tote bag and blanket are simple reminders of his goodness

and a way to spark meaningful conversations wherever you go. Request your limited edition tote bag and blanket today while supplies last with your gift of $100 or more at allan jackson.com or call 800 8805102. Put the practice in play of saying yes, to the Lord. And I want to be who you want me to be. I want to do what you want me to do. You see, what I discovered, I was terrified to say that to the Lord because I thought he was going to make me go down the Amazon and live in the jungle and eat bugs. You know, God wanted to do something that was punitive to me that would be sacrificial.

And I'm decades on the other side of that. And the Lord has been so good to me. He's been so good to me. You know, he's let me travel the world. He's given me the privilege of learning things that help people's lives be transformed by the power of God. He's given me the opportunity to serve with some of the most remarkable men and women of faith and in my generation. I mean, he's been so gracious to me. He's met all of my needs. You know, I thought I was turning my back on a life of self-sufficiency. And I have learned that God's faithfulness in my life. Now, I've had to learn to trust the Lord. You know, I'm more comfortable trusting Alan if we just get real honest about it. You know, Jesus taught us to pray that

give us this day our daily bread. That's not the prayer I like to pray. I want to pray for all the bread I'm ever going to need in the warehouse and the key to the warehouse. But I've learned that God is faithful. And so today I'm making decisions that at 20 would have been impossible for me to make. Trust the Lord in ways on scopes and magnitudes that come from learning to know the Lord in those ways. So wherever you are in your journey, do the things you need to do to be clean with the Lord. Stop carrying the resentment and the bitterness and the hatred. Stop excusing your sin. You'll never make a case to God that's so convincing that he'll agree with you that you're justified in your sin. You can't hold your bitterness and your anger and your resentment and your

hatred. You've got to forgive. You've got to release the people. You've got to turn loose. He'll bring healing to the rejection. When God accepts you, it doesn't really matter who else doesn't vote you under their team. We belong to the best family in the universe. And so I pray helps you. We had a really fruitful discussion in my small group about learning to trust the Lord. What came out was how many of us in the conversation really were reluctant to say to the Lord or never occurred to us to say to the Lord, what would you have me to do with my life? We just want God to bless us. And that's not a bad thing. You know, most kids start out and think that the adults in their life exist to make their life better, which is pretty much the

normal childish response. But if you get to 25, you, you know, you're going to get to 25, you. years old and you still think the adults in your life only exist to make your life better. That's a pretty broken response to the adults in your life. And so God is still searching the earth for men and women whose hearts are turned towards him and he will help us. He'll help bring the cleansing we need and the freedom we need and the direction we need. He'll write a story for you that will exceed any imagination you hold. I am living evidence of that.

And it's not because I've always gotten it right. Folks, if you look up dysfunctional, you'll probably find my picture. But the goodness of God and the grace of God. Again, we started today saying God's moving in the earth. We're celebrating Nuclear Family Month in Tennessee and beyond. Tony Perkins has got a great pledge that you can sign up for and join tens of thousands of other Christians in our nation saying we're going to stand for some biblical values and biblical worldview. But most of all, we're going to invite the Spirit of God into it.

our lives, to help us be the men and women, the husbands, the wives, the young people, or whatever season of life you're in, to have the courage to say to the Lord, let your will be done in me. Let your will be done in me. And if we'll do that, I have tremendous hope for the future. That is the essence of culture and Christianity, and it's the antithesis of sitting in church and looking through the windows, being critical to the other churches. Stop criticizing other churches. If you have your church you like, celebrate it and hush your mouth. It doesn't, this conversation is not about lesser or greater.

And I'm really, I think we do so much damage being critical. If the church honors Jesus, if they honor the redemptive work of Jesus, the uniqueness of Jesus, and they honor the authority of scripture, there's a whole myriad of peripheral things around that that we could disagree on and still go to heaven. Now, if they don't honor the uniqueness of Jesus, the redemptive work of Jesus, if they don't honor the authority of Scripture, it's not church.

I don't care what the sign says. Turn around and run in the other direction. But if they got those big rock ideas in place, thank God for them. Ask God to bless them, to multiply their effectiveness. We need every good church. We'll do that.

Culture and Christianity, will write a story for our children and our grandchildren that will be a legacy that we'll be grateful for. God bless you. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure and subscribe

to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity Podcast. You can do that on Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith. We can change our culture. I'll see you next time.