Live Free with Josh Howerton - Breaking Free From Toxic Relationships | Pastor Josh Howerton

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Are your relationships helping you grow or holding you back? Today, Pastor Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Hannah Lane unpack how our relationships either build us up or break us down—and why surrounding yourself with the right people is crucial for spiritual freedom. They explore the downfall of Solomon, known as the wisest man who ever lived, the reality of generational patterns, and biblical wisdom for cultivating life-giving friendships. Plus, they tackle a thought-provoking question: what does God’s Word really say about illegal immigration? Tune in for a deep dive into faith, relationships, and practical discipleship.   If you're ready to build deeper relationships, join a Life Group at Lakepointe Church—learn more at https://lakepointe.church/groups/   - STAY CONNECTED -    Website: https://www.lakepointe.church/  Facebook: https://lp.social/facebook  Instagram: https://lp.social/instagram  To support this ministry and help us continue to reach more people with the Gospel, click here: https://lakepointe.church/give   Groups A post from Lakepointe Church on Lakepointe Church provided by: https://lakepointe.church  

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And our prayer is these deep dive conversations about the Word of God equip you to live free in Christ. This is a test drive, and we'll decide whether or not to do more seasons based on engagement. So if this is helpful to you, if you could rate, review, or share, that will help us to know what's helpful. For more digital content, visit lakepoint.church slash livefeworth. free. And now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of Live Free podcast with Pastor Josh

Howardson. I'm here. And Hannah Lane. Come on. Welcome, Hannah Lane. I'm here with Hannah Lane, groups pastor, central groups pastor. That's correct. Hannah, thank you for joining us. I'm excited to be here today. Legend, part of the Mississippi Mafia. Mississippi Mafia. From Mississippi. Wow. I feel some comments coming. That was not true. No, it's not true. We were talking about, Hannah, you don't have any social media other than maybe just Instagram that you barely use? No. So like when the TikTok withdraws were happening, there's a lot of blessings in your life. There are. It's kind of, it's been semi-conscious. My husband Austin is completely off the radar. Good for Austin. Except for LinkedIn because, you know, he's a, he's a business.

I've never been on LinkedIn. Never? Never? I've literally never looked at it. Wow. Good for you. That's a blessing over your life. Is it? Yeah. It's not as fun anyway, you know. Well, that's why it didn't sound as fine. It doesn't sound as fine. And so far, I have, I didn't need a job. So I'm, so far. We're grateful for that. Yeah. Well, your life probably looks very different without social media. And I was just telling her, she probably embodies really well what she preaches as you lead other people and invite them to join groups. Yeah. Well, and I think I know my own like proclivities. Yeah. And so it's like I've, I've noticed in myself that my rhythms become checking TikTok and Instagram too much. So to live what I reach. I have to do that for myself. Dude, it becomes second nature. Yeah. Like, I deleted X off my phone. Recently, X is my

favorite social media thing. And I don't post anymore. I just lurk and read. Still do? Yeah. Yeah. It's a great news source. Yeah. So I'm a news junkie. Yeah. So like I deleted, you're talking about it become second nature. I deleted X off my phone. And for like the next three days, I notice every time I pick up my phone, It used to be on the second screen, bottom row, second app. And I would pick up my phone and just instinctively swipe down. Like my muscle memory was to go to X. It's strong. It just becomes, it's in you.

Are you in TikTok? No, I deleted TikTok. Your stuff is on TikTok for sure. I know that for a fact. You have me on TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. Our team got you on TikTok, yes. But you don't necessarily use TikTok.

Ever. I don't have it. Okay. Good for you. Again, blessings to you. Somebody sent me today. And sometimes I'm like, maybe I should. Because like literally today, somebody sent me some, it was like a viral React video.

Okay. Something that I said. So I don't actually. Something that you put on TikTok for me, I guess. Yeah, something like that. I mean, here's what I changed a while back. Because, again, just intentionality, I want to be very intentional with my time. Any social media will just suck your time.

Yeah. So you just need to know that. So that's why I'm saying, whenever you say you don't have TikTok. or whatever, hey, blessings to your life. But what I'm doing is I do use it to keep myself updated with whatever's trending. So in similar way, you use Twitter. I will use TikTok. So I'll intentionally scroll.

And literally today. 32. There you go. X. Yeah. TikTok. Well, literally today I was scrolling just to, hey, 10, 15 minutes. I just want to make sure that I'm updated with whatever is going on.

And you showed up in a reaction video by somebody that I had no idea. Was it a negative reactor or a positive react? No, it was a positive one. It was a positive one. Imagine that. Really? Maybe I should get back home. Yeah, I'd say he's downloading it right now.

There's some people that like what you're saying. That's great, man. That's awesome. A lot of likes. We'll say that. All right. Yeah, man. So good news, yes.

The reason we don't know anything about Hannah's social media accounts because we're practicing the Glenn Beck rule before we've. We were talking about this before this. So here's where that comes from, I got a buddy that I'll recap. And this is going to be boring for you because we talked about before the podcast and broke the rule. We broke the rule. We broke the rule.

I got a buddy. Josh McPherson, who extended family member of Lake Point, who was invited on Glenbeck's radio show. And he walked in, I'm telling this to our audience. And he walked in and he started to introduce himself. And apparently Glenbeck was like, shh, hmm. And they explained that he doesn't let anyone say anything because he wants everything to come out fresh. So Hannah was trying to speak to me before the pod. And we said, shh.

Yeah, I didn't talk again. I'm kidding. Very intimidating. This is what I had to let it out right now. That's right. That's right. Amen. For somebody that's going to be new to our podcast and say, what are you guys doing? What is this about? Give us just a brief, Josh Houttson. This is what we're doing. The enemy only comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

But Jesus said that I've come that you have life and life the fullest. And where the spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. And so what this is, is a deeper dive typically into the sermon or whatever biblical passage the sermon is on with a focus on discipleship to empower us by the scriptures to live free. Live free. So deeper dive into the message, we'll just say if this is helpful to people, people vote with their feet. And honestly, that helps us determine if we keep doing this.

So, man, if this is helpful to you, man, if you could like, comment, share, subscribe on YouTube. Am I getting that right, Carlos? You got it. I will say this. What did I miss? Nothing yet. 60%

60% of I learned this this week 60% of people watching on YouTube are not subscribed Oh wow So the fact that you're saying that's actually really important

Sounds like a challenge to me I think so So if you're watching right now on YouTube What did you have to do something? They got to subscribe Right right now And one more thing

Subscribe and then click that little The bell thing The notifications button Notifications button And comment Because we want to hear from you Oh yeah We will say this

We're going to test drive So at the end of like At the end of each these podcast We try to do something this like, I don't know, it's kind of almost not necessarily fun, but a little more cultural engagement or answer a question. So like today, just heads up, because we're trying to help Christians think through stuff this in the news at the end of the pod. We're going to talk about all the conversation around immigration, illegal immigration.

How should Christians think about that? What we'd like to do is sometimes do viewer questions. So if you've got a question, you're like, it'd be awesome if you guys would respond to that. Drop that in the comments and we may hit that at the end of a pod. It'd be fine. It'll be great. All right. Hey, man, let's dive in.

Kingslayer, week two. Week two, man. Let's talk relationships. Yeah. And let me ask you this. What didn't make to the sermon, but it's too good not to share? Let's start there. First of all, week one of the series could not have been better.

I agree. We had over six. over 600 people, by the way, responded for salvation in one week. Wow. Like, I was a pastor for seven years before my whole church was 600 people. So, like, it was just kite caught in a hurricane race. This one, I feel like, and I said this in the message, if somebody was going to go, hey, I'm going to listen to one sermon.

If they were already a Christian and they were like, I'm going to listen to one sermon you preach the whole year, this would be the sermon I go listen to listen to that one and if you do that because we can riff on this together hey and I'm sure you got thoughts is overseeing some groups here because if you get everything else in your life right but you get this wrong getting this wrong will overcome everything else you got right if you get somebody can walk into life and have every other disadvantage in their life that's right everything else can be wrong but if you get this right, then everything else will self-correct and become right.

So it's like, I really feel like this is the most important one. So kind of gist of the message. Let me do this. And then you guys want to talk about generational curses? I do. Why not? Let's talk about-softball. This is why we came.

Yeah, let's talk about generational curses here in a second. The gist of the message is obviously we're in First Kings, 11 and 12th. You see the family line of David in. King Solomon. Think about this. He has every advantage in life. He is inordinately wealthy. By modern standards, he would be like a deca billionaire. So inordinately wealthy, has a kingdom incredibly powerful, entire kingdom. His dad, he had the ultimate, my dad was better than your dad. His dad was the only guy in the whole scriptures that was a man after God's own heart that God called that. So, Dad, man, after God's own heart, he's whatever word you want to use, baptized,

filled with a spirit, whatever you want to say. Whenever he's filled with wisdom, the Bible says that it calls the Holy Spirit a spirit of wisdom. So most Bible scholars say whenever Solomon asks for wisdom and God gives him supernatural wisdom, that was like a filling with the spirit. So he's got all these things. Oh, he didn't just read the scriptures and know the scriptures. He writes three books of the Bible. An extraordinary amount of the Old Testament. He has every advantage in life, but he gets one thing wrong. And because he got that one thing wrong, it overcame every other advantage he had. What was it? It was his relationships. So if you didn't know this, First Kings 11, it accounts how he had 700, 300 wise, 700 concubines. I may have

that backwards. And he disobeyed the explicit command in the Old Testament, not to intermarry with foreigners. By the way, heads up, that's not a prohibition on interracial marriage. It's a prohibition on interfaith marriage. Because at that time,

obviously other nations worship other gods. And it specifically says they turned his heart after other gods. And he ends up falling under the judgment of God. So if, you know,

you were asking, what did it make it into the sermon? One of the things that didn't was the the question of like, hey, are generational curses a thing? Yeah. If so, what do we do with that?

You guys want to go first? You want me to stay? What do you want me to do? Hannah, it's first-hand is time. Hannah, tell us about generational curse. Right here. I heard Carlos say he wanted to go first. Oh, man.

I love to come back. Hannah, you came ready today. I did. I got my coffee. I'm out. I've been talking for a while. Do you want to be to just frame it out? Wait, hold on.

Before you go there, let me just ask you this. For anybody listening, King Solomon went from a man who's communing with God, who walks with God, who loves God. God gives him wisdom because that's what Solomon asked. He asked for wisdom to lead and bless his people. God was like, yes, I'm definitely going to give you that. I'm going to give you so much more. From there to 700 wives, 300 concubines, kind of, you know, seems like he lost his way a little bit.

What happened if somebody's asking you? Yeah. Well, that also didn't make it into the sermon. So like, man, you know, every avalanche starts with one pebble. You know, every stronghold starts with one tiny sin. So it all starts in First Kings 3. I think it's First Kings 3, 1, where early on in his reign, in order to pacify a potential militaristic enemy and political enemy, he forms a king's show.

alliance with Egypt by his first wife he took was the daughter of Pharaoh. So, dude, it seemed very innocent. Like, Matt, I asked for wisdom. The Lord gave it to me. I had this wise idea. You know, honestly, he may, we don't even know if he had like marital relations with her. It may have just been like, dude, this is strictly a political alliance to help God's

kingdom. But it was against the commands of God. And, you know, it's like that one thing. the pebble became an avalanche, so it starts there. And then he wakes up one day and he's got 700 concubines, 300 wives, or vice versa. I need to get that right. Yeah, 700 wives. Yeah, so 700 wives, 300 concubines.

And just for people that maybe are not familiar with the term concubine. It's like a heron. Yeah. It's just like a group of women that it was just like they were physically available to him as a king. Very common in ancient Near Eastern kingdoms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it starts there. It seems like he's kind of just bragging at this point, like with 700.

wives and 300 concubines. I'm not sure. I'm just trying to figure out why is, the Bible's very specific. And I love how brutally honest the Bible is. This guy wrote books of the Bible. This is King David's son. And yet, again, the Bible says he had a relationship with God, and yet here he is. And so I find that interesting. Yeah, man. I mean, Satan's only got, so it's really, we didn't plan to talk about this. So like the New Testament talks about Satan's three strategies. Lus of the flesh, lest the eyes, pride of life. So I like to fish.

Satan's like a fisherman. He's only got three lures. Literally, he's only got three lures. Those are the three. Lus of the flesh, desire to feel. Lust of the eyes, desire to have. Pride of life. Desire to be.

Well, Satan's going to figure out, just like I do at my bass pond, I figure out what are they biting on right now. And once I figure out what they're biting on, I throw the same thing over. and over and over and over and over. Satan does that in your life. He figured out, oh, Solomon will bite on, lust of the flesh.

And he threw it a thousand times, and he bit every time. Well, let me, from there, it's interesting because it seems like his father had a similar bait, similar encounter. So let me ask you this. Let's talk about generational curses. Let's talk about generational curses. Okay. But before, can I kind of set it up for you? Is that okay?

Do anything you want. This is your podcast. Great. You're great. Well, I've heard people talk about generational Christas before. Hannah, have you heard anybody? I have. I came from a background where that wasn't talked about as much.

And then I would say- Yeah, that's just background? Yeah, me too. So that really wasn't talked about. And then I remember, the more I started hearing about it, I was like, do I have one? Like, is there, you know? And so then it kind of came mystic and out there.

And so, yeah. Pentecostal background. So that's all you talked about. So basically every. No, not necessarily. There's other things that we talked a lot about, like the rapture, for example. But that's a different podcast.

Okay, we'll get that. We're going charismatic later. But I remember, I do remember attending different Bible studies where somebody would come and they would be more like the, you know, somebody that knew more on this topic. And they would share stories or testimonies about somebody in their family lineage basically was a witch or, you know, did some things that basically were repeated throughout the family. And I do remember as a kid hearing a little bit more about how, man, this is a thing. And, you know, you want to ask your family around. And there are some repercussions in terms of like potentially for some sicknesses or habits or addictions. And so throwing it your way, Pastor Josh, are they legit?

Is that true? Is that biblical? So if somebody just asks the question, are generational curses a thing? So the reason that this comes up in this passage is you have. you pointed this out, you have David who commits adultery Obashiba. Interestingly, I'm fine of the verse right now. Interestingly, Nathan, the prophet that confronts David, he specifically tells him that his, I'm quote,

his household will experience violence and calamity for generations. So, okay, seems like something's there. And then David's son, Solomon, has a thousand wives disaster of a family. And then in First Kings 12, this is very interesting. Solomon's son Rehabom. Carlos, would you like to pronounce Reha Balam? I was asking you, hey, how do you pronounce this name? I'm sure there's many ways of pronouncing it.

I'm happy to pronounce it. Rehobom. That's great. I mean. Hannah Rehobam. Yeah, right, right. I thought it was Rehobam. Just kidding.

I thought it was like Robloam or, I don't know. It's my... Raahe-Bome's like, not when I was expecting wrong. Dude, I may be saying it wrong. Okay, fun fact, I actually Googled it. But I found two different... Yeah, he did.

Am I wrong? Am I the one that's wrong? Right now he's going to go as a master's class? It was just heard. It went from, hey, Pastor Chosh, how do you pronounce his name? To, like, who do you pronounce it? Hey, there's different ways. Okay.

Because, you know, there's like a British way, and there's like a Canadian way and an American way. This is what... Italian way. Ah, Rahembaum. Here's what you need to know as a... I'm not allowed to do that. I'll probably get in trouble.

You're okay. Okay. I give you my blessing. All right. As Nelsavadorian, I give you permission to do an Italian accent. That's it. That's it. No, because people need to know this.

I genuinely, this is what I do whenever there's a word that I'm not sure. Yeah. Because what happens is somebody who had to learn how to speak English at some point in my life, I'll say a word and then I'm saying it wrong and then like nobody says anything. And then later down the road, I'm like, have I been saying this wrong in my whole time? And like, nobody's, anyways, that's why I ask you. Dude, I said. You're probably saying it right.

I'm going to choose to believe. So as a preacher, people are hearing you all the time. All the time. I said, for years. This is embarrassing. For years,

I would read the word misled as misled. Okay. As misled. No. Like literally in sermons. Who taught you how to say that? And then another one.

My mom. Misled. That's the word. rough, dude. Why did you get that? How did no one stop you? Finally, a guy named Sean Goodwin who may listen to this podcast.

It was in my life group. He was like, bro, it's Ms. Litt. Oh, of course. Shout out to life. You're right there. Life group plug. You need one. My group will save you.

Another one was, I said the word, you know, it's pronounced malevolent. I kept saying malevolent. My mom was finally like, hey, son. Like, you know. Where did you hear of these words? I don't know, dude. I'm just reading my Bible. Okay.

And I'm like my son's sounding it out. The devil, my soul. I'm sweating because I'm like, that's such embarrassing. It's hilarious. We respect your transit. Generational curses. Sorry. All right.

So, all right. So generational curses. People wonder about this stuff because Nathan says this is going to happen. And then it does happen in his family. Now, so somebody says, are generational curse is real? What I'm going to say? It's really hard to compose my. after that is yes and no. So one reason I want to say no is I'm going to read it. This is Exodus 18.

Our Baptist brothers and sisters, that's the team we came from, will say no because of a passage like this where God says, why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father? When the son has done what is just and right, it has been careful to observe all my statutes. He shall surely live. This is really important. The soul who sins, shall die, the son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. Interestingly, this is a little tangent. I do think there's a passage in Ezekiel that has like a pretty heavy rebuke for, we're not antitherepherapy. Like there's some forms of therapy in situations where it's really helpful and needed. But there is an aspect of

therapy culture where it's like literally everything that happens in your life is because your parents were terrible. And that's unbiblical and evil and wrong. We actually have a Bible verse for that. Right after this in Ezekiel, God says, I hate it when you say the parents have eaten sour grapes, but the children's teeth are set on edge. So three thousand years ago, God was like, quit blaming your parents for everything wrong in your life. I was going to say, you think that's because people are saying, oh, well, you know, this just comes to my family. That's just the thing. So there's an abdication of responsibility. That's what God's saying in Ezekiel is, I guess the people of Israel or gone, oh, man, I can't succeed. Look what my parents did. All the stuff this bad in my

life is because my parents. And God's going, no, no, like, you know, you have a free will. You've been given this ability. So anyway, that's why people say no. Now, let me go on the other hand. On the other hand, a lot of our charismatic friends, and the reason that I would say, I would also say yes to generational curse reality, rightly to find Ezekiel 34 when God pronounces his name in front of Moses? A confusing part. So he says, the Lord, the Lord,

the compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger, abounding in love of faithfulness, forgiving, wickedness, rebellion, and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty. And then he says,

visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. So people are like, huh, well, which is it? So if somebody says our generational curse is real,

what I would say is in the sense that sin always brings a curse and sin is contagious. Yeah. So I think what this passage is saying when it's gone, God visits the sin of the fathers on the children and the children's children. What the Bible is simply pointing out is that sin is naturally contagious. So when Hannah is fighting sin in her life, when Carl is fighting sin in his life, when I'm fighting sin in my life as a father or a mother, we're not just fighting for us, we're fighting for our kids.

Yeah, that's good. Because if I slay that dragon, then I stand a chance not to pass it down to my sons and daughters. So what I'd say is yes and no. Now, last thing I'll say, and then I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts, maybe riff on this for a second. What's also really awesome is that there is also such a thing as generational blessings of righteousness. So I love the story. This is kind of thing that would never make an sermon because I don't have time. So the king in the Old Testament that led the biggest national revival was Josiah.

Very interesting, Josiah had a wicked dad named Amon. It's very, very wicked. I think it's really cool. It's the kind of thing you would never notice just skim in your Bible. When the Bible describes Josiah in 2nd King's 22, it says that he walked in righteousness like his father David had done. So what Josiah did in his heart is he went, hey, my dad was not a righteous man. But he went back all the way in his family tree. And he found a man that walked in righteousness.

And in his heart, he went, I'm patterning my life off that man. And there was a blessing that got passed down from David and it skipped a whole bunch of generations to Josiah and his family. That's so good. Thoughts? I feel like as you're talking, and I'm curious what your thoughts would be on like where this fits. but the axiom that comes to my mind in parenting is that saying of like what you do in moderation your kids will do in excess but I mean like when I'm listening I'm like it's both ways right like sin grows over generations and it's not taken care of but I think when you cut it off and you

get under God and under the word of God I like the blessing goes for generations too moderation to excess but would you say like that I mean that's where my mind goes amen you know amen sis yes yeah it's interesting too because if you go I mean you go really basic theology go to Genesis 3 the original generational curse is Adam and Eve sinning. And then the rest of humanity we are you know we're sinners by nature and choice is what the Bible says. And so there's a sense in which yeah, that's a lot of generations to today we are still dealing with sin and that's why we trust in Jesus because he dealt with it at the cross. That's right. And so and then if you read the whole Bible, you actually see this really interesting pattern where dad does this.

then son does it again. Yes. I mean, I'm sure we can throw examples here, but it comes to mind. It was it Abraham? That's exactly what my mom. Yep. His wife, Sarah. She's my sister.

Yeah. And then literally, his son does the same thing. The exact same thing. I mean, even here, I don't know if you, when in, I'm trying to think, first Kings 12. I don't know if you, I'm sure you caught this as you were studying this after Jeroboam. After Jeroboam. That sounds great. No, actually, it's not it.

Tell me how to say it. Well, Jeroboom? That's what I do Jerobon. Here's the deal. Man, we don't know. Okay, great. We're saying it fast and confidence. I'm giving you the Hebrew version.

After Jeroboam became king of Israel, he feared that people will go to Jerusalem. And so they were saying, like, man, like, I need to do something. So again, the backstory is that Israel split. Jerobone became king of the northern region or northern kingdom. That's right. Then Raoboam? Rehobom became king of the southern.

So what Jerobam did is basically he set up two golden calves. Yeah, that's right. One in one place called Bethos, what scripture says. And another one in Dan telling the people, hey, this is literally what First King's chapter 12, verse 28 says. He says, as a king, he says, here are your gods who brought you out of Egypt. So if you're paying attention in scripture, this is an echo of exactly the same thing that Aaron said in Exodus 32. Where Aaron is, you know, Moses is gone. And the people are like, hey, we need a God.

So Aaron's like, oh, hey, here. And he literally says, here are your, here is your God who brought you out of Egypt. And so, again, there's like this pattern. And then if you keep reading, this is really interesting, if you keep reading, this same pattern of worship to this golden calf happens with his son, in this case, this king. And then with future kings as well. And so again, there's this thing where it's just a pattern all over scripture where you see, man, father did this. Son does it again. And then it just keeps going until something happens. Something is broken.

man and it's like if we needed any more motivation to walk with the Lord as mothers and fathers like there it is that's right like man for you know I said this earlier I just want to like verbally highlight it like for every man listening to this podcast and every woman listen to this podcast when you are fighting sin it's not just about you you're not just fighting for you you're fighting for your children and your children's children and all who are far off and some of you some of you like just very frankly, there'll be people listening to the podcast who like, honestly, they got dealt a really bad hand in life. Like I had a Jesus loving father and mother.

You know, they raised me to know and love the Lord. I started on third base. Some people are starting back in the dugout. But you take heart because you're going to slay some dragons and your children and their children's lives will be different because you stood up, bent the knee, acted like a man. and then you submit to yourself the Lordship of Jesus, that doesn't just change lives, it changes legacies and lineages.

It's right there, man. Can I do one more thing? Please. So let's do a theological theme. It struck me. So on generational curses and blessings, you really can read the whole Bible through the lens of that.

All right. So, like, obviously Adam is our first father. Right. He fails at the tree. His failure at the tree obviously gets passed down to all of his lineage. Romans, I think it's Romans 4, refers to Jesus as the second Adam.

So Jesus is the second, you see where that is, the second Adam. The second, the big theological word is federal head. It's called the federal headship of Adam, the federal headship of Jesus. Jesus is the second Adam where Adam failed at a tree and his curse got passed down. Jesus succeeds at a tree, the cross, and his righteousness gets passed down to all of us and imputed. whole Bible really can be viewed through the theological lens of generational blessings and curses. So somebody's listening right now and they're asking, okay, well, I put my trust in Jesus. I am free from generational curses. Is there anything else I need to address in terms of, you know,

do I need to go back and maybe ask my mom or dad or grandfather, hey, did you do this? Or because I'm, you know, struggling with this sin. Is there anybody else in my family? Do we need to, is there anything else that needs to be addressed or done? Or is it just, hey, put your trust in Jesus and trust that he will bring freedom. And you are the one by the grace of God who are empowered to break a chain that has been repeated in past generations. What would you guys think? I cannot think of any example. I'm just a Bible guy.

I cannot think of any example in scripture where somebody has to go up in their previous lineage and have a conversation with. and have a conversation with an ancestor about breaking a quote-unquote generational curse. That's why I said, do generational curse exist? Yes and no. No in the sense that you're referring to of like, oh, my grandfather did this. So there's a supernatural power on me to do this thing. That's like, we're Christians not witches. So good. But yes, in the sense that sin is a curse unto itself and sin is contagious. Well, we already know this. How do you break the power of sin? We call that repentance. That's so good. So I don't need to have a, I need to repent of my sin.

My grandfather doesn't need to repent of my sin. So, man, any man or woman that's like, man, they turn from their sin, they turn towards Jesus, they receive forgiveness and grace. And then they use the means of grace to walk with the Lord in intimacy. And you're breaking. You broke it. Yeah. That's good news. Yeah, no.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, and I think for, like, even for me personally, like, I think when you look back as I've gotten older and continue to hear stories, you know, of my family line. Something I have struggled with in the past is anxiety. And I've learned that there's a long line of women behind me who have struggle with it as well. And so I think for me, it's like praying and asking God, God, through the power of the spirit.

That's great. For the power of the spirit, I want my life different. And so, and even I have a daughter, and I'm praying. Like, I actually talked to my group this past fall. And I asked them, I said, well, you just pray for me, like for my daughter, that this would end with me. You know, that we would be women that are marked by like peace and like joy and trusting in the Lord and that we wouldn't be controlled by this. So, yeah.

No, you're right. I think it's interesting to start thinking and looking back at your family and start kind of seeing, you know, because when you get to a certain age, you start looking back at your family and be like, huh, like that. I see that now. That's a little more sense. I do not want that in my family. And then obviously with your children, I do think about that all the time. I want to set a legacy. I want to set a standard and example that my son can look to me.

And say, by the grace of God, that's what it looks like to follow Jesus with integrity. That's right. And so, I mean, what comes to mind is 2 Corinthians 517. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, the Lord says, all things have become new in Christ. That's good news. That's right.

Amen, man. That's great, man. Dude, I think if we want to, so let's gear shift into the practical. Yeah. You know, if we're talking about defeating, we're talking about killing, really what we're talking about is killing toxic relationships. That's really where we're going here. And then even fighting for a generation center family. That's right.

As this passage demonstrates an enormous part of that is Christians as disciples getting their relationships right. That's right. Like, so I just, you know, let's use this as a jumping off point. Maybe talk about a few things. Yeah. But it really is like for everybody listening, we cannot be more urgent with this. You can get literally everything else right. You're reading your Bible every day.

You go to church every week. You tithe, you serve, you all the things. You do all that stuff right, but you get your relationships wrong. Yes. Your life will go wrong. On the other hand, there are people who are like, dude, I ain't a church person at all. Like they just stumbled in hired drunk last week to Lake Point. They were one of the 600 of the raise their hand.

It's like, man, literally everything's wrong. Yeah. My life's wrong. I got bad habits. If you make a decision to get your relationships right and righteous, everything that was wrong will slowly become right. To put a verse on it for us, he who walks with a wise becomes wise. But a companion of fools will suffer harm. Nobody defeats that law.

That's gravity. The quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your relationships and set in to 20, 25 way, show me your friends. I'll show you your future. That's right. That's right. I'm about to say, I feel like the world even operates by that. Like, you know, don't matter what your worldview is, you know, like the people I surround myself with, I become like, that's right. You know, we just have a biblical lens to know the kind of people that we want to surround ourselves with to become more like Jesus. That's right. Yeah. So briefly, so somebody's asking right now, okay, so how do I identify the quality of my

relationships? Yeah, this is really important. So, let me say a few things. There's some things that didn't make into the message. But one thing, and you guys help me riff on this for a second, one thing that did make it into the message, but that I'd like to click on and go deeper, is one of the biggest mistakes that well-meaning but naive Christians make, and especially Christian parents, is they operate with the naive mentality of,

man, I'm supposed to love everybody. That means I treat everybody the same. Very frankly, treating everybody the same is really stupid because not everybody is the same. If what I would never do to my five-year-old Hudson, if there were three animals in front of him, you know, a snake, a bear, and a puppy, I wouldn't say, well, they're all animals, treat them all the same.

Well, not animals are all the same. I mean, you should treat a puppy a little different than you should treat a polar bear. Yeah. So what we should do is... Even if you're a Christian? Even if you're a Christian. Christians should not pet snakes and polar bears.

Yeah, great. So what we should do, the Bible says, is treat everybody according to their character. So the big point here, and this really comes in in parenting. It does. All right, what we do as parents, especially if you're a parent with young kids, watch out for this, is we will teach our kids to view people through a binary lens of nice and mean.

Like those are the words we use. Are they nice? Was he nice? Is she nice? What would they mean to you? There's the only words we use. those are not biblical categories. The biblical categories from the book of Proverbs

are three categories, wise, foolish, and evil. And man, we can talk about this. We can go wherever you want with this. I'll let you just out where we go. But dude, both as a parent and as a disciple, you better figure out real quick that there is such a thing as nice, evil people and there is such a thing as rough, wise people.

If you don't figure that out real stinking fast, you will destroy your life. The greatest pain that comes in people's lives is always the same. They mistake a person from one category, wise, foolish, evil, and they think they're a different category. And so you relate to an evil person as if they're wise. Or you relate to a wise person as if they're evil. The greatest pain in your life, if you look back, will come from having treated somebody who is evil as if they were wise or vice versa.

So if we teach our kids to just nice and mean, what they'll do is they'll grow up and they get 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, into their teenage years. And anybody who makes them feel good. Yeah. Well, those are the nice people. And then they're like, oh, well, I'm supposed to be friends with the nice people. Man, actually, sometimes there's nice evil people. And they make you feel real. All of Solomon's wives made him feel really good.

Yeah. They cheered him on and they loved him. And, oh, Solomon, you're the best. They were empathetic towards all of his pain, but the Bible says they turned his heart, after other demonic gods and led him into wickedness. So like, A, let it dawn on you as a disciple. There is such a thing as nice, evil people and such a thing as rough, wise people. Get rid of the nice, mean categories in your head.

Replace them with the biblical categories of wise, foolish, and evil. Wise feels like it's easy to identify. foolish and evil, how do you know between those two? I mean, somebody's just foolish. No, no, no, that person's just evil. There's a difference there. How do you, how do you guys think you can spot it? What I'll try to do, here's our, here's our touchstone. So if you're only an audio listener, I'm holding up a Bible. That's our touchstone. So the Bible says, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. So how do I know if somebody's wise, they fear God and obey his commands. So the categories I'm going to use is believers, deceived, and deceivers.

So a wise person is a believer in the word in the sense that they believe that it's true and they do it. That's a believer. Foolish people, so wise people are led by the spirit of God, led by the spirit. Foolish people, they're not led by the spirit, they're led by the flesh. So these are people who are usually deceived. A lot of times they're like well-meaning people who just got told someone. Nice people. Yeah, sometimes.

Yeah. Sometimes they're nice. They just, honestly, man, whether it's because of what they read or how they were raised, they just believe and do some dumb things. But a lot of times with foolish people, when they're shown, excuse me, in the Word of God, what the Bible says, they're like, oh, I was wrong. That was foolish. And they change.

So they're deceived. And when you show them the truth, they undeceive. You know somebody's an evil person. When they're not just deceived, they are a. deceiver. They do reverse evangelism in your life. They'll come into your, by the way, they'll come into your life and they'll come into your kids' lives. And they do reverse evangelism and they call good things evil and evil things good. They do what these women did to Solomon and they deceive him away from, they're not just deceived, they do the deceiving. And these are people

with hard hearts. They hate the Word of God and some of his values. And again, what, what people have to get into their head is sometimes evil people are really nice. Yeah. Yeah. They're really empathetic and kind and high EQ. Likeable. Very likable, very charismatic. Yep. Yeah. So that's why I'd say you guys want to riff on that. What I'm processing is, okay, like when you are deceived, right, often, especially if you're a believer, like when you hear truth, it can pierce that deception, right? So I'm just processing. Like right now, people are listening to you. And there could be like a reality in their life where they're like, oh, no. Oh, dang. Like I'm listening to and I'm, I'm surrounded.

Like, or I've got a relationship. Like, what do we do then? I think that's what I'm like, man, you look up and you're like, I want to live life the way y'all are calling us to live. Like, I love this person, and I just now realize that's where they are. Can I answer that? Yeah, please do. All right, because I also didn't get to this in the sermon.

So that's the question. Yeah. All right. So there's a tension that we feel. Hey, man, I'm supposed to love the world. Right. But I'm also not supposed to. I'm supposed to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

So which one is it? Yeah. All right. So obviously we're Christians. Yeah. So our example is Christ. Amen. It's very interesting.

If you pay careful attention to how Jesus did his relationships, there's a genius to it. So Bible scholars have noted Jesus fed 5,000. He had a different proximity to different groups. Jesus fed 5,000. He trained 120. he disciples 12, he was friends with three. That's good. This is really important.

So he structured his friendships very intentionally as concentric circles and related to the concentric circles differently. Fed 5,000, train 120, disciple 12, friends with three. So he was friendly towards all people, but he was only friends with a few. Christians should be the same. We should be friendly with everybody. But I'm only to be friends with a few. I'm going to be friends with the wise people. So, you know, I think what Christians should do is structure their relationships like Jesus.

Hey man, you need to have three circles of friends. And I'd go, man, on the very out, like the far outer circle. So, hey, 120 maybe or so, you're going to have this circle that I'd call like the circle of care. Yeah. There's like about 120 people with me and Jana where it's like when the meal train happens, we're going to hop on a meal train. That's right. We're going to care for them. Some of those people are believers.

Some of them are not believers. We're going to care for those people. there's probably there's probably you know you go circle of influence i don't know i probably got 12 15 20 people that i'm like dude i would call that guy a friend yeah like you know i'll go golfing with that guy or fishing with that guy or we'll have a good time and you know we'll we'll we do life together a little bit but then honestly in my life there's probably five guys that i'd like um they're not in that huge circle of, they're deeper than that huge circle of care. And even deeper than that 12 to 15 circle of influence, I'd call them like the circle of intimacy. Where it's like there's probably not much

they don't know about me. If I'm struggling with an embarrassing sin, that's the guy that I'm calling. And so I'd just say, Hannah, to your question, if somebody's listening and they're like, shoot, like, whoa, through the lens they're talking about, I'm really close to some evil and foolish people. well what you need to do is your friendships may need a friend shift. Yep. And you just need to gently in an unspoken way, don't write them a note. You just made it to gently go, oh, let me move that person from my circle of intimacy to like my circle of influence or care.

That's good. And I can love you from a bit of a distance, but I'm not going to go to you for wisdom. What would you guys add there? Carlos, you're good at this. No, I mean, I've learned some things from you. I think that you mentioned intimacy, I think I heard you say this before. intimacy is into me see. That's not original to me, but yeah.

Well, it makes, it's helpful in terms of just intimacy, the people that really see you. I think when I think of my experience, you know, just being in the social media world. And I heard somebody, I think it was Pastor T.D. Jakes said this once. Bishop, T.D. Jakes. Thank you. And he was with another pastor. And the pastor said to Bishop T.D. Jakes, hey, it's good to see you. And he said, it's good to be seen, not viewed.

And I heard that. And I'm like, whoa. Oh, that'll breach. This just like spoke to my heart. Like, I just heard. This is literally like 30 seconds in. That was great. And I, that was my life for, I don't know, just like years where, man, I was viewed but not seen.

And I think I've shared this before, even just become, before coming in a lake point, we just needed a church where we can have people and into me see and have that intimacy and just finding those relationships. we just didn't have it. I feel like our generation, if you ask your average person, they could probably relate to that and say, man, I have known. I got some quote unquote friends

on whatever social media platform that you're in. I got followers. I'm not sure I have people that can see into me or that make me feel seen. Yeah, I mean, that's how I break it down too.

Well, you know, I think of it for me. I think of it like seen versus known, right? And I'm seen, I can be seen by a lot of people, but who really knows me? And I think, you know, I feel like you've said this, just that idea of like the enemy will sell us the counterfeit. That's right. You know, and I feel like the counterfeit is the scene. And like that's what he's selling our culture.

Like is that. Yeah. But the truth, like what we were designed for is not just to be seen, but to be known. And we know that because God sees and knows us, right? Like he does both. When you're seeing, it seems like you have to pretend that you're something that you're not. That's our world today. That's our culture, man.

Yes. I look good on the photo. My hair's, you know, fine. I look okay. I sound okay. I put a filter on it. But when you're seen, people can see you through just your vulnerability, who you are, when you look great and when you don't. And I think it goes beyond superficial relationship.

It's just, and those are hard to find. That's the thing. Very hard. We live in a quick, fast. Give me a friend. Swipe right. Swipe left. Relationship life.

And those intimacy relationships, they just require time and investment. Which is, I think it makes me think, you know, very easy. Lake Point is a church. How can Lake Point help me? For somebody that's asking, how can Lake Point help me move in the direction? Hannah, you are here. And I think you know a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's twofold.

You know, so I think when you think about the church, we believe in biblical community, right? Ultimately, that's what we believe. Pass the word life groups. Like what we believe is biblical community. But within the context of Lake Point, the vehicle for that is life groups. That's where you can find a safe place to be known, right? Past just seen to be known. Prayerfully, that is a safe place for you to do that.

And so if you're not there, I think it's a place to start. And let me say this too. There is no such thing as following Jesus in isolation. Right. We don't see that anymore. That is. That is not existence. It does not work.

It's an oxymoron. You cannot say, in fact, even, you cannot say, well, I have God. It's just what I'm good. Yeah, we're good. Well, I have a good relationship with God. I don't need other relationships. Well, Jesus himself didn't do that.

So, yeah, so we just know that's not the model. Yeah. Yeah, but I think, too, like one thing that I've been processing a lot of the last couple years is, I think we get in a life group or we start living life with our five, and it gets messy. And then we're like, well, this isn't working, and we bail. And I think the truth is, is like, from, Genesis, sinners the world, and brokenness is unleashed. And now, as kingdom bears and bringers, I plant myself in community and I fight. That's great. I fight for what God has called me to.

And so it's not just like go join a life group for you, which is true, but also like, because our community is better with you in it, you know? Man, so this is more important than people think. Yeah. So first of all, I'm just say like, you know, we're smoking what we're selling. Like to use an old youth group analogy. They probably shouldn't be a youth group analogy. Wrong. Yeah. You know, it's like Carlos knows this.

You know, it's like I got a, there's a spiritual family that's over at my house. You know, multiple times at least once a month. Yeah. And that's spiritual family. Like we literally call it family dinner. We do the meal together. All our kids are there. When dinner ends and dessert begins, we all tell our Jesus stories.

with our kids sitting around the table, we pray for each other, et cetera. I'm in a rooted group right now. Yeah, you are. I'm in a rooted group right now. Week two, day two. I did my divo this morning. I'm in a rooted group right now. And especially men, you know, it's like, I'll just say this.

Like, you know, for men, I think the decision that men have to make is don't get a, you're going to get yourself a false positive if you consider your buddies, your community. That's good. And so I think you got to figure out like, because I'm, dude, I'm like this. I'm pre- introverted. Yeah. You know, I got a bunch of stories here. But it's like, are your deepest relationships with other believers?

Are they rooted in Christ or are they around a hobby? That's right. Because I got guys that I'll fish with, you know, before I had kids and I played a lot of golf. I had a bunch of guys I played golf with. But with those relationships, when the hobby ended, the relationship ended. Yes. And like, you know, what I need is I love the story. This is from Jobi Martin.

I love this so much. I love the story in the New Testament where the paralytic dude, he gets, you know, he gets brought to Jesus. And then they do the little hole in the ceiling. You remember this? And then they bring it down to Jesus. And you remember it Jesus looks at the guy and says your faith has made you. And, you know, you look at that and you may go, man, that's amazing.

Look at his faith and power. Who, Jesus? Nope. Who the paralyzed guy? Nope, the four dudes. So it's like, so do you, like, you look at Solomon's life. This is so interesting to me. This also did make any of the sermon.

You look at David's life who imperfectly did walk with God. And he had assembled a spiritual king's table. He had men around him who loved the Lord and walked with him. He had a Joab that was like, bro, I'll bleed for you and I'll bleed with you. He had a Nathan the prophet who was like, you are the man. Hey, dude, you got a blind spot in your life. and let me call you to repentance. He had Jonathan his life.

You know, he was the friend that sticketh closer than a brother. That's what David had. You never hear a story in Solomon's life of a male friend. Wow. You never hear it. He lived in isolation. And when you're isolated, here's what you got. You got a friendship with you.

That's all you got. And so if you're friends with you, guess who you're going to become? Exactly who you already are. It's just, honestly, it's just you and Satan. Yeah. And so it's like, you know, it's kind of that thing. of like, man, if you're fighting a polar bear, don't fight in the snow. If you're fighting a shark, don't fight in the water. If you're fighting a terrorist, don't go to the desert. If you're

fighting the devil, don't go to the dark. Don't fight the devil in the dark. The darkness is his domain. That's his territory. And if you're alone in your sin, bro, you don't stand a chance. Like, he always going to win in the dark. That's another joby. He's always going to win in the dark because that's his domain. And so it's like, what I got to have is guys around me who know me and love Jesus. And our relationship is rooted in the Word of God and the purposes of God. And that's where all the best, that's where all the best men and women come from. That's right.

That's really good. So get in a life group. You need to be in a life group. If anybody's thinking, man, I love to do that. Man, we'll say this very often here at Lake Point intentionally. We want to be emphatic about it. This is literally what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, to be a part of a community, to be a part of a group.

We're here to help. That's right. How do you do it? Hannah, how do you, if somebody's listening right now, no matter where they are, what do they do now? Yeah, I mean, I think there's, you know, one of two next steps for you. It's like, and you heard this, you know, but if you, even this week or like, I don't even know where to start, we do. Yeah. It's perfect. So it's like, let us, let us come alongside you. That's what we want to do. Not just like in our awesome pastors, but we had like so many life group leaders who the minute you raise your hand, like, there's just men and women who are like, I'm coming. There's some of the

best people in the whole church. Yes, on 100%. And so just like super simple text group, you know. Text group right now. She's 0-4-1-1. But hey, I would say too, the second thing is this, is like if you're like, man, I have some people. We just need more intentionality. Like I heard you, I think it was last week's podcast talking about a group of guys. And it was like, man, they listen to the sermon. They listen to this podcast. They go get coffee. And they talk about how it applies to their life. And it's like for some of you this week, your next step is bringing intentionality to what you already have. Yeah, there's,

I heard of another one this week. It's doing this same, but after that, after last week's podcast, there's a group of guys they meet down at the, I think it's the DAC, Dallas Athletic Club,

where it is. And the exact same thing. They message me. Like, they listen to the sermon, they listen to this podcast. They read whatever scripture was preached that week. And then these are golfing buddies.

And so before they golf, they sit down, they get a cup of coffee or whatever it is. And then they read the word together, talk about the word. They pray for each other. and then they go play around a golf.

That's a fantastic. There you go. Every guy right now is like, maybe I can. Maybe I can. I can do that. That's great. So text group to 20411. And if you're joining from outside the U.S.,

we also just let us know in the comment section of YouTube or reach out. We have a team that is ready to connect with you as well. And that's really important. We want to help you. This is why we're here for. That's exactly right. And man, this has been a really good conversation. There's one thing I really want to, anything else before we move on from relationship.

Obviously, there's so much that we really wanted to touch on. Let me see you. Don't ask me. I'm like, community. Let's just keep talking. I mean, we could. Yeah. Honestly, we don't have time.

There's just stories I want to tell. It's like every great thing that happened in my life is, is honestly, I've never had a season of rebellion or like just meltdown in my life. And it's not because I'm awesome. It's because I just always had a group of godly guys around me. It's like whenever I moved somewhere or went to college or moved to a new city, it was like priority. was let me find my squad. Yeah. And I started doing that middle school.

My mom and dad encouraged it. And it's just, you know, the Lord has protected me from evil and heaped blessing in my life. And so go for it. And like to tie back to that, like back to the generational, we're going all like, I'm going to all it back to the beginning. But like the community you fight for now models for the next generation of your family. That's it. What is possible for them, you know? That's it, man.

And I mean, I'm just, I know some of your story. and it's like your family lived it. That's exactly. I grew up. We didn't mean to talk about it. I literally just grew up. Like, I don't know. I don't remember what night of the week it was.

But Mom and Ed would have their life group over to our house. Yeah. I grew up my whole life watching Mom and Dad open the Word of God with other men and women in our church. And so I grew up. If you're a parent, by the way, this is a total hack. I'm a hack in a good way, like life hack. Like you're crazy. If you're a parent with young kids, you are insane.

not to have this in your life because I grew up watching mom and dad do that. So then all the adults that I looked up to and respected the most is Bruce, Bruce Wilkerson and Scott Schupeman. It's all my parents, friends also walking with Jesus. The wise ones. The wise ones. So then if I wanted to walk away from the Lord in my life, I wouldn't have just been walking away from mom and dad. I would have been walking away from all the adults that I respected the most in my life, which, by the way, that's why I do this family dinner right now. Yeah. And my kids, I want my kids, if they want to walk away from the Lord, they got to walk away someday.

Yeah. Not just from me and mom, they got to walk away from Carlos and Tim and Berkeley and Mark and these families that they sit with once a month. That's incredible. There we go. We don't have time to unpack this, but unfortunately, but one more thing. God is Trinity. Yeah. God is community.

if the Lord of the universe, if God is community, what makes you think you don't eat one? Yeah, man, that's right. That's right. All right. You want to do the hot potato? I do want to do a hot potato. I want to talk about illegal immigration in the U.S. Very casually going to bring it up.

Yeah. Now that we talk about generational curses. Let's talk about illegal immigration in the U.S. All right, so let me riff on this for a second. And let me give a little background on why we do. do this. I'm totally out on the concept of everybody tells Christians what to think about stuff except their pastors. I'm just, I'm totally done with it. So like I made a decision at the end of 2020, I'm never doing that again. You know, sometimes I think on accident churches, we, we accidentally

replaced the command from the New Testament. We destroy arguments. And we replaced it with, we avoid arguments. Yeah. It's like, no, no, like we have a. So anyway, as a pastor, kind of just like I do with my kids, I lean into difficult things. I don't run away from them. So that's why we're doing this. So let me just say a few things. And then because Carlos, legal immigrant. So we got a background here.

And then so if any questions that come up, we can talk about this. Yeah. And to be to bring some clarity, basically that just means anybody that was not born in this country that now lives here legally. And, you know, I'm a used to a citizen. That makes you, by definition, you're an immigrant. That's right. Yeah, yeah, because some of the conversation is getting confused. People are calling it an immigration conversation.

Yeah. It's actually not an immigration conversation. It's a conversation about illegal immigration. A little different. Very, very different. So let me just say a few things real quick. First of all, I'm not like a, I haven't accepted the GOP into my heart. You know, it's like not my thing.

I'm not like a, you know, I'm not a, here's my Trump flag. I'm a Jesus guy and I'm a kingdom of God guy. And as long as a leader or a party, it doesn't matter who it is, is doing Jesus and righteousness things, I want to cheer that on. Honestly, this is a whole different thing. I think Christians have kind of forgotten how to win in our culture. Like what we've forgotten like, oh, like when righteous things happen, we should cheer it on. Like we're allowed to like, yay, great job guys. So honestly, I've been really encouraged by some things I've been seeing in the last few weeks of new administration. But let me just say a few things here on this.

You know, you're going to hear everybody listening to this podcast. You're going to hear and see a lot of emotionally loaded things. Our people are going to hear and see that. So let me just frame this out really quick. Let me riff on this. May take a couple minutes. And then you guys, hey, but what about? Hey, maybe let me add some, that's totally cool.

We can have an adult conversation. So number one, obviously, we all agree. Every Christian is called to love every person. What I would say is nobody should let debates about illegal immigration taint how their heart feels about illegal immigrants as people. That's good. Like we're called to love every person. I'll just say this, man. At Lake Point, I don't care who you are. I don't care why you're here. I don't care what your legal status is. If you walk into this door, we will love you. And if you ask us to disciple you, we're going to go absolutely yes and amen with joy. So like that's just,

that's who we are as a church. That's what we do. We're all in. I do think this sometimes is tough because the human realities in they can kind of get lost like dude just just for heads up because we we love and know some of these these folks is man like most people who are here that are not here legally they didn't walk into the country to rape and murder people yeah you know not some did you know not not the ones you know we know but you know the stats are the some did but that that's not most folks a lot of them man it's just like dude my family has a hard time and I'm trying to make a better life for my family. We should have care and compassion for that. So number one, love all people. Number two, I do think Christians can get confused on the distinction between the role of the

individual and the role of the state. So let's do a little political theology really quick. What will happen to some Christians is this conversation will come up and they'll go, oh man, the Bible says to love the sojourner and the immigrant. I'm like, well, obviously that means that, you know, we should just be for all, any, you know, we should be against any, any deportations or any immigration restrictions. The reason that's not true is because the Bible distinguishes between the role of the individual and the role of state. So, for instance, Jesus forbids individuals living by the sword, but Romans 14 commands governments to bear the sword. So a government has a different responsibility than an individual. Jesus commands individual Christians

to feed the hungry, but the- The New Testament commands a church government. If a person will not work, they shall not eat. So there's a distinction between a role of an individual and a role of a governing authority there. Can I say one more thing on that? Please do. Again, we don't have time to go into this, but I'm pretty sure. We can talk for like an hour just on this.

I'm pretty sure that if you go back to the law in the Old Testament, whenever it did speak about the sojourner, it basically, or the immigrant or somebody that's outside. Whenever they came in, there's an expectation. and I'm pretty sure it's in there. And again, this is a different conversation for a different time where people were required to submit to the law.

I've got the verse. You got the verse? What you got? Yeah, you're right, Carlos. So this is a, I've been, so I'm trying to read on this so I can speak wisely and in a biblically informed way.

So I've got this. So the Old Testament, I wasn't planning to talk about this. The Old Testament has three distinctions for people who were, who were living in Israel. You have the Hebrews who are obviously native born

to the area. You have sojourners and you have aliens. And those are three different words. Obviously, so Hebrews, native-born, aliens are people, use the word aliens. That may sound weird. That's just the word a lot of Bible translations use. Those are people who live permanently now in ancient Israel. And then sojourners is the word the Bible uses for somebody who's passing through.

They're on a sojourn. So what you're talking about, this is Numbers 15, is the Old Testament makes it very clear, is the same law that applies to all of them. Everyone is expected to obey the laws of the land, whether you are a Hebrew, an alien, or a sojourner. This is number 15. There shall be one statute for you and the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations.

You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord. In other words, the same law applies to the Hebrew, the alien, and the sojourner. One law and one rule shall be for you and the stranger who sojourns with you. So, yeah, you know, you start applying that, that same principle. You got to watch out with the Old Testament how you do that application. That's called Theonomy.

That's a whole different discussion. But the principle is, hey, man, if there are laws of the land, everyone is expected to obey the laws of the land. And it's not wrong for a nation to enforce the laws of its land. So, you know, we could say that and point out different distinction between role of individual and role of state. Now, some people would say, okay, but man, if the state starts, you know, enforcing its immigration laws and they, man, that's really hard on people who came, whether illegally or not, like, man, didn't it really hard? That's really painful for those families. Isn't that hate? And we just have to understand this is sometimes our empathy instincts will take us places that maybe aren't as rational. No, no, no. no, that's not hate. Nations build walls and have borders for the same reason.

You and me have a lock on our front door. I don't do that because I hate the people on the outside. I do it because I love the people on the inside. So it's the same. That's why nations have immigration laws, not because they hate other people, but because the leaders of the nation love the citizens of that nation,

and they want to properly vet, assimilate people to make sure that it's safe. I do just want to point this out, because sometimes this gets lost. The United States for quite some time, from what I've read, for quite some time has allowed more legal immigrants per year than any other nation in the world by more than double. So it's not like it's just this super cruel, close the door in everybody's face.

Like, this is the most, you know, immigration-allowing nation in the world. A couple other things, and then we can kind of riff on this, and any questions that come up. I can skip that. I don't even talk about that. I think the big thing that people need to get in their head is that, and we get this as parents and as pastors, that a leader has a responsibility to the people entrusted to them that they don't have for people that are not under their leadership. So in the same way, hey, Carlos, you're a dad.

Your job is to treat, can I, I'm allowed to say your son's name? I don't know. I'll skip. I'll skip. Yeah. I'll skip it. We're good. I'll skip it. Your job is to treat your son. You're supposed to love him in a way that you don't love every other son in the entire world. That's correct. You have responsibility to him that you don't have to everybody else. Hannah, with your kids. You got to, well, it's the same way with a president. A president has a responsibility to the citizens of his nation and to care for them that he doesn't have to every person in the entire world. And that's just, dude, that's just, that's normal.

Let me ask a question that. Please. A lot of people on social media are asking. And this is one of the main narratives right now. Some people might say, hey, is it just for the government to separate a family member that maybe came here illegally and then their kids were born here? And at that point, at the time, you know, for a while now, and I don't know how long, but for a while, like if somebody came here illegally and they had kids, their kids were born here. So now they're U.S. citizens. But then there's like this difference between status between the kids and the dad. Is it just, is it righteous to separate those families now that the government seems to be enforcing more of these policies? So first of all, I mean to say, there are some things that where I think wisdom requires me to go, I don't know the best answer to that question.

So for instance, like I've done a little reading in the last two weeks. And for instance, you have some situations where it seems like, hey, it seems a little more rational for, you know, birthright citizens for that to apply and the constitutionality of those things. And then as the current administrations pointed out, there's some instances where like, hey, man, if a foreign dignitary is traveling to the United States and while they're on a vacation or a dignitary trip, they give birth. Obviously, it's not like, oh, all of a sudden your child's a, you know, a legal citizen. So there's some complexities there that, very frankly, I want to have the humility to go, bro, I have not, I'm a pastor and not a politician.

I'm going to do my best to apply the Bible and y'all figure some things out. I will say this man on the family separation thing, and I want to say this with huge compassion here. I do feel like a little bit of this is getting, we're not doing a good job of viewing it rightly. And what I mean is some people, I'm a family guy. Like if you listen, I'm all in on the family. That's like I'm all in on the family. I hate, like your heart ought to break if you see a family get separated, full stop, all the things. We're Christians.

At the same time, sometimes we got to remember whose responsibility was it that the family got separated. Because breaking the law always has sad consequences. If I on the way home today, I'm not going to do this. If I get drunk and get a DUI on the way home and I get thrown in prison, I'm getting separated from my family. that's not the government's fault. That's my fault because I broke the law. And so sometimes we do have to remember, ah, man, that is really sad.

But, man, hey, the government didn't cause that. Somebody's choice to break a law caused that. And let's remember where the responsibility lies. That's good. It's so good. I know this is tough. I mean, yeah. Carl, you can do anything you want to.

How does this strike you as somebody that like, hey, man, you're watching this. And it's like, man, bro, I've, you know, you did the work and you love the, you love this country. I do. I do. I do love this country. I'm grateful.

Yeah. I'm a citizen. I became a U.S. citizen like five, six years ago. I came in as a student to, I went to college in Michigan. And I had, I never would have thought that I would become a citizen of a country that's not my own. It's born in El Salvador. And so today I have much more appreciation of just all things. I love to read about.

legal stuff and law and in U.S. history. I love being here. I'm grateful. My son has been born here. And so I think when I look back to my country, El Salvador, yes, it is heartbreaking. Great country. I'm excited about El Salvador right now, by the way.

By the grace of God, there's some good things happening. And so, but yeah, I mean, I understand when somebody from a different country, I mean, that's a big risk they're taking. and there's a lot of aspects of the system that seems to be broken to me just because if somebody's going to leave everything they own in their home country to risk their life, to pay a significant amount of money for somebody to illegally help them cross the border, it's a very dangerous thing. They call them coyotes.

And I mean, that's a whole... That's what they call the people that help them... That helps smuggle human beings across the border. and from what I know is very expensive and it's very dangerous. This is a situation where you're paying somebody and these are women and children being basically taken from one country to another. And it's kind of just kind of, you're hoping it goes well. And there's no law.

There's no order in this. And so it's heartbreaking to see that, especially somebody when I look back and I see, you know, I just see the people in my country and at the end of my people and it just breaks my heart. I think on this end, I understand. And the other side of you do need walls to protect the people inside. You do need enforce policies and law. And so definitely a complex issue.

Yeah, man. Well, if I'm going to put a period and exclamation point on it, it's like, you know, hey, most of us are not presidents. And most of us are not, you know, sitting around writing immigration law. Most of us are individual Christians. So where I really want to put my exclamation point is the command that individual Christians have. That's right. And the command the individual Christians have is to love every person that the Lord puts in front of you. Now, obviously, you can walk into a voting booth and you can vote for, you know, vote for, you know, responsible, you know, legal enforcement, that kind of thing. But day to day as we walk around wherever we are, what you are called to do is to love every person God puts in your path.

And watch out. You watch out because don't let debates about immigration policy. see, influence your heart towards unrighteousness and an unloving posture towards people who might be illegal immigrants. Watch out. Because you end up becoming the dude going, well, who's my neighbor? Who's my neighbor? Who do I have to love? Everybody.

That's right. Everybody. That's right. So let's put our exclamation point there. And as followers of Jesus Christ, that's where our emphasis should be day to day. Would you pray for us, Pastor Josh? I would love to. Lord Jesus, thank you for.

your mercy, and even today as we're talking about relationships and family. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for paying our adoption price to adopt us as sons and daughters of the living God. Thank you for making us a family of brothers and sisters. Lord, I especially pray for people who are lonely and they're listening to this podcast. They're going like, man, I need a band of brothers. I need a band of sisters. but I just don't have it yet. Father, in the same way that Solomon knew all the right things, he just didn't do them.

Protect our people from being knowers of the word, but not doers. And I pray that you would give them the courage, the faith, to take a step to actually change their lives. Lord, bring brothers and sisters into their lives immediately, Lord, that will point them towards your son. and help us be conformed in his image, not just for our sake, but for the sake of our children and our children's children to the third and fourth generation. We bless you, Lord, and we commit all these people listening to you

in the name of your crucified and risen son. Amen. Amen. Thanks for joining us. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our Lake Point Church online live weekend services on Saturdays and Sundays. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out. For more information about all the digital resources of LakePoint, visit lakepoint.church slash live free.