Live Free with Josh Howerton - How we ACTUALLY got the Bible!? (NOT what most people think!) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

In this powerful episode, Pastors Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Paul Cunningham unpack deep truths from Saving Mr. Banks—exploring forgiveness, family wounds, and the authority of Scripture. They challenge the rise of hyper-therapeutic culture and offer a gospel-centered path to healing, responsibility, and freedom. From clarifying how the New Testament was formed (hint: it wasn’t Constantine) to exposing the spiritual danger of bitterness, this conversation is packed with biblical clarity, practical wisdom, and hope for anyone stuck in past hurts.   👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an update!   📝 SHOW NOTES Subscribe now to receive the show notes directly in your inbox with each new episode. These notes are filled with key insights and scripture to help you reflect and grow deeper in your faith – https://lakepointe.church/shownotes    👇 DON’T MISS OUT! There is freedom on the other side of confession. Ready to take your first step? Click the link to check out our ReGeneration Ministry https://lakepointe.church/support-recovery/   ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH:We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know God, Find Freedom, Discover their Calling, and Make a Difference. With 6 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone.  🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://lakepointe.church/give    STAY CONNECTED:🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lakepointechurch   🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO! ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We're so glad you're here. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And this weekly podcast is all about helping you do just that. Each episode is a deep dive into the Word of God, tackling life, culture, and faith with truth and clarity so you can be equipped to live free in Christ.

Thanks for tuning in. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and follow us on all our social platforms to stay connected to everything happening with Live Free. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of The Live Free podcast. My name is Carlos Arrasso, and I'm here with Pastor Josh Howerton and Paul Cunningham. What's up, guys. It's so good to be back.

The theologian, man, I was going to say, you know he's a real theologian when he comes in with, like, a thick book. Buttoned up shirt. I had to look the part. I have to look apart. This actually might just be a prop. We're not going to show the title of this, but it makes me have a little bit more authority to have a really big book like this right beside me.

He's got his Greek books, his Hebrew books, Oxford annotated Bible. The fact that it says Oxford on it, immediately again just like... Oh, my. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my. That's amazing.

Hey, the Paul's first episode on Israel and Times revival. I'm looking at it right now. That's like one of our most viewed episodes. The view is literally like skyrocket When Paul came in. It was Paul, dude. No, no, no. The whole reason, what's been wrong with the podcast is right now, Paul?

Literally all the comments, could you just bring Paul back? Bring Paul back. I mean, did you see that? I saw a little bit of, I think it was the tinfoil hats, though. I think people want more of the tinfoil hats. I don't know that we want more of those because they were kind of hot after a while to wear him on her heads. But yeah, speaking of hats, so this is a true story about this guy. I wore, and this is a burlabo.

I wore this Burlabo hoodie. Somebody from Burlabo watched our podcast and sent me this hat for free. I love that. Would you let him know that there are other hosts as well? Next time send three. Yeah. I got a free hat out of this week. Shout out of Burlabo.

Size large would be a great thing to send. I'm not sure what your size would be, but you know, I just want to say this is not a paid promotion. We don't do it. This is not a commercial. If it was, it would be a pretty subtle one. It would be subtle. It would be subtle. Amen.

Thanks so much for subscribing, liking, commenting. People are downloading the show notes as well. These are the, this is really, we love when people are taking the show notes. We got the Bible verses. Now that we have Paul, the quality of those show notes have gone up significantly.

And they also have discussion questions for people to use for their small groups. That's right. And so to download the show notes, go to lakepoint. That church slash show notes as well. We got a couple of things. we want to celebrate as well from the life of our church.

Big time, man. Obviously, this is week three of other movies, like enormous amount of salvation. It blows me away every time. Blows me away absolutely every time. Packing 30,000 people plus into services, it's been awesome. But what we really want to celebrate,

for the very first time, drum roll, please. For the very first time, welcome to Sunnyvale campus. Let's go, man. Lake Point Sunnyvale. Hey, we have a photo of it. If you want to show it,

there you go. Look at that, man. That's awesome. Good job, Jamie. Trinity is to live free what Jamie is to Joe Rogan. That's it, man. But yeah, that's better. Better, much better, much better.

Yeah, so that was pre-campus open. Construction was going on and shout out to the Sunnyvale campus pastor. That's it, man. He sent it to us. He's a real proud, man. Dude, you guys want to give a, first of all, here's a cool story on that. We have that happen. at an increasing frequency where a church that for whatever reason reaches out to Lake Point

to consider merging, becoming a campus, and that has gone extremely well. Like, extremely well. So pop quiz, pop quiz. And Carlos, I don't know. If you know the answer to this, you're not allowed to answer. Pop quiz. When a church makes the decision, and by the way, this church voted, I think it was like, it may have either unanimous or 97% were in.

when a church makes a decision to merge with Lake Point, what percent growth do, so I actually went back and looked at this data. When a church merged with Lake Point, all right, let me say it like this. Of the churches that have merged with legpoint to become campuses, what percentage growth on average do you think they've seen? I'm let you go first.

I actually know the answer. Oh, I was going to guess one percentage point higher than whatever he said, so you just ruined it. Well, if you didn't know the answer, what would you have guessed? I mean, I would have guessed like 80%. 80%. That's pretty good. Yeah, I would have said around like 99 to 100%.

Yeah, yeah. The average church's Mercer Lake Point has experienced 900% growth. That's average. Wow. That's average. So, dude, this is one of those things like better together. I'll tell one quick story and then we'll move on. So we got some cool things to talk about today.

We're debriefing, the Bible teaching that we, by the way, we do not preach. movies during the movies we use movies to illustrate biblical truths. So we're going to talk about as the biblical truths around some of the themes that we're exploring this. So we're going to talk about things like, we're going to talk about therapy and therapy and therapy culture. We're going to talk about forgiveness and how do you think about flawed parents? We're going to talk about, oh, and then we're going to talk, we're going to react to Andrew Schultz, St. Yugar, talking about Constantine and how, oh, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about how did Christians get the New Testament that we have.

And that's why we have the theologian and residence with us. All the theologian. Wait, what was that getting ready to say? Oh, the story. Yeah. That's right. So it's our North Dallas campus. That's a thriving campus.

Shout out, Antoine, campus pastor over there. Dude, this, just the sweetest group of senior saints were there to vote for. And then they're still like the backbone of a lot of that campus. there's a sweet precious lady up there that when we were at the meeting me and Pastor Steve went up there and we always go up and we spend a few hours answering any questions they got

praying with people, that kind of thing and one of the ladies you know, there's some of the emotion around it and one of the ladies stood up and turned her back to us and faced the group that was there that had been in the church for many years and she pointed back at the little baptismal

and she said, I want to see those ones. water stir again. And that was like the moment that there was like a spirit led, yep, we're in. And they have seen that. I mean, baptized, I would love to know how many. Lots of people get baptized up there. Amazing, man.

It's cool thing. Well, it's going to be a great episode. And so let's dive in. We just saving Mr. Banks, week three. Carlos, you've never seen Mary Poppins. I've never seen it. No. So even as I was watching this movie, I know, I thought it was like,

I'm trying to figure out, okay, she's probably a big deal. They didn't do Mary Poppins in El Salvador? No, not really. What year did it come out? Like what? Super old school. What year? Trinity or Arthur?

What year ago? I'm curious. Can somebody Google it? A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But they didn't do Mary Poppins? 64. 64. So, I mean, it's a little bit of an older movie.

Yeah. So I've never seen it. I grew up watching all the time. Interesting. So for anybody that does know, this is a really good. It's a great movie. Tom Hanks. I don't know that lead actresses name.

I don't know her name. But it's the story behind the story about how Walt Disney chased this, the author of the original Mary Poppins story down. And then she like resists. She was a very eccentric, stubborn person to say it mildly. And she like resists and resists. and resists. And then Walt Disney eventually

obviously wins and wins are over. But the story is really it delves into, man, she had a deep, deep wound from her family. There was some roots there and it delves into those themes of that, forgiveness, dealing with your past, that kind of thing. Great movie.

Which is interesting because, you know, when you encounter somebody that's kind of, you know, grumpy and just kind of very difficult to be with, usually the natural response is to be like, I don't want to mess with you, like, I'm done with you. And yet, Walt just pursues her with empathy, with grace. And so let's talk about some of these things. Her trauma passed. Before we address forgiveness, man, let's talk about like where we are in our culture.

There's a little bit of a strong obsession on therapy. Yeah, yeah. So let's go there. So let me just start. Let's get so that most of the message this weekend. was really about like, hey man, if you need to go back into your past and give some things the Lord and experience some healing from the spirit and the truth, let's do that. Let me give a pastoral counterpoint. You know, it's one of those things like, let me, let me pastor in the other direction for a

second. One of my favorite little quotes is for every one mile road, there's two miles a ditch. So let me just gently give a warning. So yes and amen, we're going to talk about that. man, a lot of people do. They carry some serious wounds from family of origin or parents, whatever it is, and we need to deal with that. Yes, amen, that's 100% of a thing. Let me give a bit of a warning in the other direction. In our like hypertherapeutic culture, by the way,

for people who, you know, might have never thought about this, you live in the most therapeutic culture in human history. It is not close. Like you are in a radical outlier. One negative thing. that's done is, you know, what we like to say is there's the word and there's the world, and you've got to decide, does the world stand in authority over the word, or does the word stand an authority over the world? This is one of those things where there's some tension,

because what the word of God says is, honor your parents, honor your parents, honor your parents. What the world tends to say, influenced by therapeutic culture is blame your parents, blame your parents, blame your parents. And so here's a little known Bible verse. A lot of people have never, or maybe even the theologian it's not a way, you know, we'll see here. Here's a little-known Bible verse. I doubt that, but go ahead. Stop.

He's going to like lift up his sleeve and had it tattooed out. Oh, interesting. Is he said about this. What's about this verse? That's on my forearm. In Hebrew. In Hebrew, yes.

That's hilarious. All right. So here's a little unknown Bible verse that maybe gives a little warning to our culture. Zechal 18. God's speaking through Isaiah says, what do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel? And then he quotes something that was apparently popular to say in ancient Israel.

This is what they would say. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. So in other words, they were saying, man, the reason that things are wrong in my life is because my dad or my mom did, you know. So they were saying, the fathers are eating sour grapes and the children's teeth are set an edge. Verse three, as I live declares the Lord God. This proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. So he's literally rebuking this maybe a totalizing tendency to like just blame your parents for it.

And God's like quit doing that. And so the warning is what therapeutic culture will sometimes do is, you know, and we'll talk about, hey, there's good therapy, bad therapy. Let's talk about that here in a second. what bad therapy will do and what therapeutic culture can sometimes disciple people into is, oh man, you got things going wrong in your life. Okay. Let's go back and figure out how your family of origin and your parents caused that.

And it ends up with kind of this vibe of like everything wrong in your life goes back to your parents. Blame your parents, blame your parents, blame your parents. Okay, agree, disagree, additional thoughts here, which y'all think. Yeah, is I'm just going to say it's fortuitous. I think in God's sovereignty that I'm here today in the sense of, I don't think we originally planned for me to be here today. And then we just scheduled last second. And for me, family wounds and dysfunction is rampant my family. Like I like to joke with people, if I drew my family tree, it looks more like a bush. And so to even like frame it for people to know, after my parents got married, my mom's dad had an affair with my dad's mom. So like, yeah, right now you're trying to visualize in the head. That's where I talk about. the bush. It's like a lot of, a lot of damage, a lot of trauma, and then continued on into my parents and they got a divorce. So I've dealt with a lot in my family. And so for me, family issues and then forgiveness has been one of the key themes of my life. And had to deal with a lot in my teenage years. But then about two, three years ago, I just hit a wall.

It just out of nowhere. And so I actually did go to counseling. And one of the things my counselor told me, because I was like, oh, I thought I dealt with this. He's like, you did, but just not as a middle-aged guy. Wow. Which I loved the insight. I hated the middle-aged comment, but I did. I was like, really appreciate that. And so we dealt with it. On the one hand, we had to go back and I had to wrestle with some things that had with me, maybe from a new layer or new perspective. What I love that he did is in the one hand, we did go back to the past, but we went there to get healing not to dwell something and what had happened to me. And then he gave me things to do. And if I didn't do those things, there was really no point in this meeting. So it wasn't about sitting and dwelling the past

or completely blaming my parents. It was saying, hey, what happened to me? But then also, hey, What does God want to do in me and through me because of that? And then how can we move forward? So I just love that we're here today, that I'm here today getting to talk about this because I actually have experienced this because I've seen what you're saying, which is sometimes it's, hey, blame my parents, don't take any responsibility. Or you just sit there and dwell there instead of saying, hey, the gospel frees me to revisit my past, but it doesn't want me to get stuck there.

It has a better present and future for me. And Paul, what you're saying is, obviously, in your case, man, therapy was extremely helpful. Yes. And, Josh, what you are not saying is all therapy is bad. Exactly. Yes. So it's like when somebody, sometimes people in the lobby, they'll ask this question. They'll be like, hey, is therapy good or bad?

And my response is, I say this, I have a little spiel. I say it every time. I say, that's like asking, are pills good or bad? Well, that depends. Are you taking, does the pill bottle have a skull and crossbones on the side of it? Or is it a multivitamin? You know, it's like, hey, man, some pills are good. Some pills are bad.

You can't just ask. So here's a few things. Let's just sketch this out a little bit because this is like a big, deal in our culture. And Christians have maybe not, and this is on me sometimes as a pastor, have maybe not been disciples to think biblically about, man, what is therapy? And what would make therapy good and what would make therapy bad? And how should I think about that as a Christian? So I think a few things that like I think Christians need to know is in general one thing that's happening when you walk into, by the way, also let me caveat this, I have spent time in,

I'd rather call it counseling therapy. I've spent time in counseling twice. I've spent time in counseling twice in ways that were very helpful and a short time, one time that was not as helpful. So let me just say that. But what I think you understand as a Christian, when you walk into a counselor's office, what you're doing, whether you know it or not, is you're asking them to disciple you. At some level, you're asking them to disciple you and you're opening up the most vulnerable parts of your life, your heart, your emotional pathways, decisions that you're you. you're going to end up making. So what we want to do as Christians is, man, we want to make sure

that we're getting wise and godly counsel from a counselor. Okay. So that's number one. I think that that's really important. And actually, let me stop there. Let's go. Other thoughts, agree, disagree, disagree, additional comments. That's right on. Even like the counselor that I saw was recorded to me by my lead pastor that I was at a time. I was at a different church. And he was a person who used to be in ministry. He was a godly man, knew, knew the word well and would continually take me back to the word. So it wasn't just, hey, go see somebody and see anybody. It was, hey, find the right counselor who's going to give you the right counseling. And it made a huge difference in my life. Yeah, because there's some people that are

also kind of very skeptical completely of any sort of counseling or therapy because they're like, well, you just need to pray more. You just need to read the Bible more. But if I'm not mistaken, Paul, correct me if I'm wrong. Seriously, the word therapy comes from the Greek healing. There I was going to say it's therapeutic healing. There you go. So again, it's like, I didn't know that. All truth is God's truth, right? And so if somebody that's wise, that's studied, you know, that can help you process and lead you towards a healing, like you said, Paul, to do something about it, not just to kind of ruminate on what happened in the past. Man, that's a good thing.

Praise Scott. Because even think about, I like to think of it sometimes like a body, if I have a wound in my body. If I have scar tissue, the doctor is going to have to open me up to address what had happened a long time ago. But they don't open me up and just sit there and stare at it. they actually do something about it. They go in and they do work on it. And again, not so that I can simply think about my past boom, but I can move on and have a more functioning healthy body.

It's the same thing with our emotional state and our mental state and spiritual state as well. I have a thought for the younger generation, but I want to let you keep going, Josh. Well, all right, so this is really good because we're kind of getting, both. You're kind of getting, again, one mile of road, two miles a ditch. Hey, man, there's good and there's bad.

Let's give a gentle, let's give some gentle warnings, maybe. and then talk about this. So first of all, can you guys toss up that tweet that this is really interesting? So by the way, I don't know anything about this guy. So don't go visit his ex account.

There could be horrible. I don't know. I just saw this. It went viral. He said at old books guy. He says at old books guy. So there you go. But this went viral,

hit my timeline, and I screenshoted it. But this is a legitimate, this is a real timeline. So he said, he goes first, therapy is invented. Next. 120 years past.

Next. everyone is more anxious, neurotic, and depressed than ever before. By the way, can we just say that's a fact. Yeah. So like people right now live in the most therapeutic cultures ever existed. Simultaneously, this is the most lonely, anxious, depressed, and suicidal generations ever existed. Now, can I have that? Please do.

So Dr. Abigail Shire, she wrote a book called about that. Oh, you're going where I'm going. Go. But just to echo what you just said, this is what she wrote in her book. This is a great book, by the way. She said in the U.S. alone since 1986, nearly every decade. there has been a doubling of expenditure on mental health over the one before. Ironically, as treatments for anxiety and depression have become more sophisticated and more readily available for basically everyone,

adolescent anxiety and depression, she's just talking about a younger generation. Adolescent anxiety and depression have exploded. And so the more treatment, the more emphasis, she says more anxiety, people are freaking out. In other words, more treatment has not resulted in less depression. It's actually resulted seemingly in more. More. And I want to talk about some things she says in that book here in a second that Christians should be aware of.

But I do want to say this. So as culture has secularized, it's like, here's why I think people got to be aware of is in a secular culture, the therapist replaced the pastors. So that's what you got to watch out. Like, I was just say it one more time. In a secular culture, the therapists replace the pastor.

So a lot of people look to therapists as secular priests. I've read that before. And I do just want to point out that at a net scale, as it nets out, it does not seem at a net scale like it's doing what we may have hoped it would do. And there's a movement that they want the therapist not just to replace the pastors, but they also wanted the therapist to replace the parents. Okay, let me talk about a few things here, because you're going where I'm going.

So first of all, we'll put it in the show notes. The Abbegare-Book Bad Therapy, I read it last year. It's legitimately very good. Here's essentially what she does. What she doesn't have book, by the way, she's not a Christian. I think she's an agnostic, I think she's an agnostic Jew, maybe. I can't remember. But essentially, she just starts with that premise.

She just goes like, hey, something seems to be wrong. It's the most therapeutic culture ever, and our mental health is worse than ever. Let me figure out what's going on, okay? So she in this book identifies like, I'm going to say three or four things that are her theories based on her research about, hey, here's some watchouts.

Here's some watchouts. So her thesis is that therapy is a little like chemo-themed. therapy. He's like, man, this is a very aggressive thing. It can have some really negative side effects. But when you have something that's like lethal going on inside of you, it's worth the damage that it could cause to eliminate this thing that's much worse. So that that's probably poorly stated. But she's like, there's sometimes we're like, dude, you need to blast a tumor. If you need it, you need it. If you need it, you need it. You need to go get that thing out of you. and is there a risk that has some bad side effects?

Yes, but it's worth it. It's like for me where I got to my life, I used a different analogy is I actually drew this for my wife when I was trying to explain to her what had happened. I just, if you can imagine on a piece of paper, just a big ball of yarn, just just all jumbled up. And that's how I felt, and I got some point of like, I can't untangle myself.

I had tried. And I had read the word. I had like, listen to sermons, I couldn't untie myself. So I needed to go, like I was at a point or I needed something radical done and some help. And I needed someone who could help me on tango. It's a little bit different analogy, but it's the same thing.

It's like, hey, I got in some point where there's nothing like I at tribe was working. I need to go to somebody to help me get past it. And it did. But it's not at every circumstance of what you're saying. That actually can do more harm if you go in and it's not something that big. Is that kind of what we're saying? That's kind of where she goes. And I'll say same thing.

We've talked about it on the pod before. I don't need to go there. But when I had the eight months of the anxiety attacks in 2019, do you know Rich Plas? Have you heard of that? Do you know Rich? I know we're in similar circles. I know who Rich is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I went, I went to Rich. Okay. Over in Indiana, Rich and his precious wife, Sally. Rich is a an older. Do you know Jim Colfield? Yeah. Jim was in one of my sessions. Okay. Jim's the man. That's that's right. I love those guys. So we're having a little

That's great. That's amazing. I just was wondering when he said it's like, okay, I think you may know. So Rich is like, Rich is an older, godly, wise. Oh, he's wise. Loving, Jesus-y Bible-believing, theological-informed man. And he's a counselor. And so when I had that deal, I flew over there to, I can't remember where in Indiana.

Somewhere in Indiana, wherever he lives. And just spent three days with him. And it was awesome. It helped me get unstuck. Now, so one mile road, two miles a ditch. Here's the watchouts, all right? So here's one thing she says about how it can negatively affect children's relationship with their parents. That's really what we're talking about in this pot.

This is what she says. Number one, she says, never do the materials. I'm quoting her. Never do the materials seem to consider that undermining a child's relationship, even with imperfect parents, creates psychological damage all on its own. How is a child supposed to feel secure after you've undermined her faith that her parents know what's best? or have her best interest at heart. What she's saying is, man, let's say you take an 11-year-old child,

you put them in children's counseling. They walk in and the counselor's like, let's get into how your parents have affected you. Hey, there may be some legitimacy there, and I don't know how to untangle this whole knot right here. Let me just say that. But she's like, man, but watch out because there's an unintended negative consequence. You're undermining an 11-year-old's confidence in her parents.

That's her entire life stability. So it's like, hey, you got to watch out. All right, number two, she says that sometimes therapeutic culture can pathologize normal family dynamics. So it'll slip into calling things that are really just normal parts of living with sinners. And they'll over-label those things with words like trauma, emotional harm, emotional abuse. Other writing I've read recently talks about how, and I'll just, I get hammered for this sometimes, but one of the greatest forms of abuse in our culture is abuse of the word abuse.

It's like, we call everything abuse now. It's like abuse is very real, very real. But hey, somebody making you feel a negative emotion is probably not always abuse. And that's what they're talking about is it's called concept creep where, hey, this word, a word, for instance, like trauma when it was invented in the 60s or 70s, whenever. that word had a very specific definition of a narrow range of things. And their point is that over time, that concept has crept to where it's like everything's trauma.

It's like, that's actually not always true or good for you to think. Number three, and you guys can give thoughts on any of these when we're done here. Number three, Carlos, you alluded to this. She points out that in a highly therapeutic culture, the therapist replace the parents as the trusted source of guidance. Let me just say that's not how God set it up and how God set it up.

And then last, I'm going to actually throw this up here. It's that centipede's dilemma thing. This is a screenshot. And this is something that as I look back and reflect on the one experience I had that was not a good, godly experience in counseling. This is exactly what happened. So it's called the centipede's dilemma. Okay, it says,

Centipede's Dilemma, ask a centipede which one of its hundreds legs moves the fastest, and it forgets how to move. Reflecting on what we normally do without thought, ironically worsens performance. A culture of endless self-reflection therapy

and navel gazing is eroding important life skills. And what her point is, is, dude, if you start walking into every situation, you're in a classroom, you're on a sports team, and the only thing you're thinking is, how does this affect my emotions? Bro, let me just tell you, that is a great way to completely cripple your life. And I think that's one reason why we have this paradox where you have a huge amount of therapy, self-medication, but you have people who are still having the same issues and who don't have joy. And that's because if you think about, I don't know if it was John Piper, someone who said,

if you reflect in the moments where you have the most joy in life, it's usually when you're thinking the least about yourself. That's right. People don't go to the Grand Canyon or a mountain or wherever you love to get out and enjoy and think, I'm awesome. Or I'm awful. They're actually not thinking of themselves that much.

And so again, we're not saying that it is not occasionally good to have that self-reflection to deal with those wounds and those things. But if you're not careful, that's what I love is getting at. It's just that navel gazing and look at myself. If I stay there, I think that's one reason why people can't get on the other side of their issues and have joy that's supposed to be on the other side of dealing with it. Yeah.

And it's interesting because, again, that's very counter to what the Bible says. Like, Josh, you spoke about the word and the world. So the word, the world right now is saying, hey, obsess over you, like your feelings. How do you feel? Are you feeling okay? But what about that feeling that you have over there? But then the word says, ultimately, we were made for the glory of God. So not the glory of you, but the glory of God, which is literally, hey, stop focusing primarily on

all about you. and there's a greater God and you'll find freedom there. And again, Dr. Abigail Schreier in her book, she talked about how now more and more in hospitals, doctors, there's a moment where now we're asking, even in schools even, we're asking kids, how are you feeling every day all the time? Because we want to make sure that you're feeling okay.

And she points out that when you ask a kid or a young person, how are you feeling? And then they start asking, well, how am I feeling? And then they realize they don't feel happy. and they will naturally shift to, yeah, actually, man, my back kind of hurts. And actually, that person spoke this to me and it makes me feel. And she says, actually, happiness is actually a rare emotion. Like, in life.

We just do a dark turn. Like statistically speaking, most people don't feel like euphoric and happy all the time. Like sometimes, man, you just feel okay. Like, how are you feeling? Good. Like, I'm all right. Like, I'm not feeling super happy. But then this kind of disciples this new generation.

to focus on, well, I actually, I don't know if I'm feeling like super happy right now. Is there something wrong with me? There might be something wrong with me. And she says, that doesn't help. Like, this is her quote in her book, regularly promoting someone to reflect under their own current state of feelings. If they're honest, it will always elicit a raft of negative responses. That's an incredible observation. Like what I thought of when you were talking off of that was, it's like, if I had filet mignon at every meal, it would no longer be filet mignon. That's right. law of diminishing returns. Yeah.

And it's almost like I love that observation of that. We almost expect and condition kids in anybody to think, oh, if I'm not super happy all the time, there's something wrong with me. It's like, hey, there's going to be ebbs and flows. That was a great observation. Welcome to life. Yeah.

Welcome to life, brother. Oh, no, go, sorry. Well, I was just going to say, so let's say, if we start taking this back and then let's start talking about, because really what we're talking about, both in the message this weekend and this is forgiveness. Like, and that is one of those things that is,

you know, there's some things that I call them, they're simple, they're not complex. They're simple, simple but hard, you know, it's not complex. It's actually, the answer is really simple. It ain't easy, though. And forgiveness is one of those things. I think somebody's ability to forgive at a deep level determines the trajectory of life more than almost anything else. And I'll talk about why here in a second. But if we take this all the way back, but we talk about in the message, two things. one, what I would say is emotions make a great dashboard, they make a terrible pilot. So I think that's the big idea.

It's like, hey, man, some people just completely ignore their emotions when actually those are God-given things that are supposed to be signals to you, almost like stimuli, that are data inputs for your soul to make good and godly decisions. That's really good. Listen to them. Yes, absolutely. Really bad idea to put your emotions instead of being a dashboard, put them in the pilot seat. And it's just like, I do whatever I feel like. And I follow my feelings. And let me just

tell you like, that's a sign of maturity. Maturity, children live by their feelings. Adults live by their commitments. So it's like we have to have the ability to go, man, I feel like doing this. But instead, I'm going to follow Jesus and do this thing. The other thing I would say here, and this transition is the forgiveness thing, is what you will hear sometimes is people who have had terrible relationships to their parents, especially fathers. They got that father wound thing. We talked about that in the message is they will begin to believe, well, that, man, God is a father. And because I had a bad earthly father, I'm never going to be able to have a good relationship with my heavenly father. So let's transition, and I'll start with a statement,

then let's talk about forgiveness. We don't want to live earthly father up. We want to live heavenly father down. And here's what that means. We don't look at our earthly fathers. I don't want Eliana and Hudson and Felicity to look at me and go, well, that's what God's like. Now, I want to do my best to reflect him, but that's not what I want. I don't want, that would be living earthly father up. God must be like my dad.

We want to live heavenly father down. We want to start with a heavenly father and then go down and go, that's what a good dad would be like. earthly father we don't want to leave earthly father up one of heavenly father down now let's start talking about Carlos we want to talk about forgiveness let's talk about forgiveness man I mean obviously I think the caveat that you gave was really good at the beginning man somebody's probably listening I'm sure and they're saying yeah but what I actually went through it was legitimate like I actually have some some real wounds and I'm really struggling and I am aware intellectually that I need to forgave, like you said. But I just can't figure out what to do. So let me, let me start here.

I want to make sure that we help people understand, man, what forgiveness is not. Josh, could you, I've heard you say some things about this, man, help us clarify when we use the word forgiveness. What do we actually mean by that? And what do we not mean by that? Yeah. Well, first of all, can I just, let me give a, let me give, and Paul, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too. Let me help people with a diagnostic question that may help somebody go, man, I actually do need to do a deep dive into my past. Here's what I would say, if you are stuck in the past and you find yourself emotionally reacting to something that happened a long time ago and you can't stop doing that, that's when you probably need to go back and dig some stuff out.

Yes. So what you'll find out is what if people, do not have the ability to grieve, heal, forgive. What really ends up happening is it freezes you in a moment in time and you spend the rest of your life reacting to something that happened long ago. That is when you need to realize like, all right, man, it's time for me to go back, deal with that thing that I didn't with the gospel under the Lordship of Jesus, get free. That's our whole thing. Live free. so that now I can, Apostle Paul, forgetting what lies behind

and pressing forward to what lies ahead. So that's a diagnostic I would give. That's good. Yeah, I mean, unforgiveness is basically deciding to push Paul and something terrible that was done to you and just to live there. And even though the word forgive in the original language in the Greek is to let go or to release. And so literally people were holding on to things in the past,

except by doing that, they don't realize that actually now it's holding on to them. And they're being held captive to something in the past. to what you're saying out. If you find yourself replaying and staying there, you're not going to have freedom until you can let that thing go, which means forgiveness. Dude, it's also, honestly, it's demonic. It is a very strong demon.

Like, listen, I'm going to get me of a tin foil hat again. But, like, it's a very strong biblical theme that there is a relationship between satanic and demonic activity and bitterness and unforgiveness. Like, so here's a theme. A lot of people, can I tease it out real quick? Yeah. So number one, you've got.

I'm a pop quiz, Paul. Oh, goodness. One of the things the New Testament calls Satan is Beelzebub. Do you know what that means? Oh, why do you have to do this right now? I got it. I won't do that. He's faking it.

He's just trying to make me feel good. It means Lord of the Flies. It means Lord of the Flies. And the point is that it's like when a wound gets infected, flies get in, it's nasty. Flies get in there and they nest and do all their thing. And it turns what otherwise, would have been a normal wound that healed into something that gets infected and becomes fatal. And what the Bible's pointing out is that what Satan will do is he'll wait for you to incur a wound.

He wants to get up and get in and infect and infest the wound. And then that becomes a portal to his control in your life. He controls you through bitterness and unforgiveness. I'll do some more. A lot of people do not notice how strongly the New Testament connects demonic activity and unforgiveness. So in 2 Corinthians, too, Paul says, we have forgiven anything so that we would not be outwitted by the devil's schemes. The book of James, it says that bitter people are earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

Points that out. Book of Ephesians, a lot of people, I could keep going. Book of Ephesians, do not let the sun go down on your anger so that you give no opportunity to the devil. So here's the big point. I heard this from Pastor Mark. he said, hell is the place where nobody's forgiven, and heaven is the place where everybody's forgiven. So when we forgive, we pull heaven down into our lives. But when we choose not to forgive, we pull hell up into our lives. That's good, man. So this is a big deal. Do you want me

to talk about what forgiveness is not? You get comments here? Just to add to that. I mean, again, like a forgiveness is anti-g gospel. At the center of Christianity, you have Jesus at the cross, and he says, Father, forgive them. There's a reason why at the sinner's prayer, Jesus says, hey, forgive us our trespasses. It's a big deal. For God to say, you will not receive forgiveness if you don't forgive. So yes, let's talk about, so speaking of forgiveness, what is it not? Yeah, some things that forgiveness is not.

What do these real quick? Common Christian myths. Forgiveness is not forgetting. You hear that all the time. Forgive and forget. Some people get tripped up on that Jeremiah passage that says God remembers their sin no more. And I will just say, hey man, what the Bible is, it doesn't mean like, like, God literally stopped being omniscient.

You know what? He's like, he's aware. What are you talking about? What you do? Yeah, I forget. He's aware. He didn't stop being omniscient. It means he chooses not to relate to us on the basis of our sins. So forgiveness is not forgetting. All right. Number two, forgiveness is not waiting for an apology. I'll just say, watch out for this. Some people say, I'll forgive them when they say they're sorry. And what I'll just say is, man, if that's you, some of you will die with your legs still in the trap of bitterness. You're going to die in bitterness.

Number three, forgiveness is not ceasing to feel pain. You really, Jana, this is something I've had to help Jana with at times and encourage Janma with. A lot of people, and I've noticed particularly women who have maybe more, their consciences, honestly, they got better, more sensitive consciences than men sometimes. there'll be people who are like, man, I'm trying as hard as I can to forgive somebody, but it still hurts. And then on top of their pain, they have this guilt that, man, because it still hurts, I probably just haven't forgiven. And no, man, like, that does not mean that. Jesus, in Revelation 21, it says that the last thing Jesus does at the end of time is he will wipe away every tear from every eye. And here's what that means you're going to be crying all the way to

heaven. Well, hey guys, one of the reasons we are intentional in creating this kind of podcast episodes is because we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Having said that, what we want to do through the Live Free podcast is model what it looks like to be in a discipleship group where we come together and open up the Word of God and honestly just grow together as followers of Jesus to live free in Christ. And so for this reason, we love that you're tuning in. but honestly we don't just want you to be a passive listener we want you to be an active participant and so if you have not yet joined the group whether in person or online I want to challenge you to test drive one and so to do that just text the word group

to 20411 or go to lake point to that church slash groups because listen you're not one podcast away one habit away one decision away one book away one sermon away Listen, you are one relationship away to experience freedom in Christ in community. And now, let's get back to the podcast. So just because it hurts doesn't mean that you fail to forgive. Number four, forgiveness, this is really important. It is not a one-time event. So I'll give an example, names and details obscure to protect the guilty.

There's a couple, probably two months ago. where many, over a decade ago, the husband committed adultery. She chose to forgive him. God redeemed their marriage. They're doing awesome now. Like, amazing redemption of Lord. Her husband, like I literally can see him when she, he's across the lobby. And she comes up, wasting the line, and she's talking to me and Jan, and she's like,

hey, you guys know my story. You've prayed with me before. I'm really struggling because every time, she's like, he has never given me any reason not to trust him since that time, been totally faithful. But for some reason, when I see him talk to another woman, even in a totally normal way, all those feelings come back up. And I'm angry at him for something again. And, you know, hey, that doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. It doesn't mean you failed to forgive him. that wound is still a little bit there,

and you're going to have to choose to forgive over and over and over. I've experienced this when my parents got divorced my freshman year, and relationship with my mom has never been the same. And it was tough. I had an initial moment of forgiveness where I drifted away from God because that had a season of rebellion and came back, but I wanted to hold on to the hate from my mom, and God said it doesn't work that way.

You're going to have to go and release it, forgive. But even then I would find it coming up again. But then when I was a teenager reading C.S. Lewis, and he actually pointed out that when Jesus says to forgive 70 times seven, it doesn't just mean for different sins. It actually might mean for the same sin. Wow. I remember reading that as a teenager and it just unlocked something.

Because I would, because I thought I was okay. And these feelings of bitterness and anger would come back. And just reading that, I unlocked it for me. Where I was like, no, like every time, like you said, it comes back up again, take that same journey, forgive and then move on. And so, yeah. So somebody's asking, man, that's, that's right. That sounds right. How do I do it?

Wait, can I finish? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My bad. My bad. And they're important. No, no, no. You're right. Yeah, we need that. These are good. Just two more real quick. Number one. And then number five, forgiveness is not trusting. So that's one thing. Some some well-meaning but gullible Christians will think, oh, I've forgiven them. That means I need to trust him again. Nope. Forgiveness is not the same thing as trust. If Uncle Billy abused your kid, you can forgive him. Can he ever. Can he ever. ever babysit again? Nope. Because, you know, forgiveness is given. Trust should be, well, here's is important. Trust should be gained in drops, but lost in buckets. That's just how trust works. Hey man, trust is earned. So that's not bitterness that you're not trusting that

person. That's not bitterness. That's called wisdom. That's called wisdom. Okay. So trust should be quickly lost and slowly gained. And the number six, this is really important for, forgiveness is not always reconciliation. Takes one person to repent, takes one person to forgive, takes two people to reconcile. This is why Romans 1218 says this is important. Romans 1218 says,

if it is possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. So you can totally forgive somebody. But if they don't, depending on the action, some caveats here. If they don't repent of what they did, change what they did, regain your trust from what they did, their relationship might not be totally reconciled. That doesn't mean you have failed to forgive them. So there you are. Six things forgiveness is not. Those are

great. Those are really good, very helpful to clarify. So now if somebody is feeling paralyzed by their past and they want to get past or past and maybe they're wrestling with guilt, shame, dysfunctional family, trauma, real trauma, what are some of the things that they need to be doing. What do they do now? Do you want to start? You want to start? I can start. Yeah, I actually a few years back, reflecting what I've been through and just reflecting on the scriptures, came up, was really, in essence, a two-step

method. Step one is actually to be very brutally honest about what happened to you. Because sometimes you be like, oh, yeah, there's no big deals. It may have been a very big deal and just be brutally honest. In the Old Testament, the Psalms, there's an occasional psalm where someone had been deeply victimized and hurt, and they would just unload. And I think it's a biblical thing to say, hey, what happened to me was wrong and be very specific.

I even encourage sometimes for people to write it down. But then you have a choice once you do that. Once you write it down, once you have it out there, you can hold on to what they did to you, but that's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It's just not a good strategy. You can give them what they gave you. You can return the hurt that they gave you. Or you can give them what God gave you.

And so step two is that take that pain and take that, that, that, that, that, basically I'd be very blunt about what happened to you, but then take it to the cross. And there, at the cross is where justice is served. And so anytime someone has hurt me, I have to realize if I take it to the cross, justice is going to be served in the sense of either the person who hurt me is going to be held responsible for their sin, or that sin is going to fall on Jesus on the cross if that person is a Christian or becomes a Christian. And so in that moment, if I sin at the cross and I'm still holding onto bitterness, I'm basically telling Jesus, yeah, what you did isn't enough.

I need more. Wow. And so then I have to... Wait, that's what you said is so important. Will you say that one more time? If I stand at the cross and I want to hold on to my bitterness and forgiveness, I'm basically looking at Jesus and said, what you did wasn't enough, I need more.

Somebody told me one time, you cannot carry a cross in a grudge at the same time. That's right. And then with that, when I'm at the cross, what I realize, if I'm looking around just if you can like even just picture this metaphorically, I'm going to see like notes there with my name on it, meaning I've heard others. And also, I have sins against Jesus.

And so in that moment, I realized, like, I'm only here because of what Jesus gave me and that was forgiveness. And so now I'm called to give them what he gave me. So that's, so basically step one is be very honest. If you need to write it down, I'm not saying to give it to the person who hurts you, but write it down. And then step two is just metaphorically, in a sense, take it to the cross if it helps you go to like a physical cross and then just release it and say, justice is going to be served either because they're going to have to deal with that or Jesus, you have dealt with it. But I no longer have to deal with it. I no longer have to carry it. That's fantastic.

Just saying not to post it on Facebook whenever you read it now. Probably not a wise thing to do. Or X. Probably not or X. That's what, that's all X is. That's kind of all X is. Honestly, that's true. It's like George Costanza.

What's the holiday festivist? Now it's time for the airing of grievances. Nobody will know where, you have no idea what we're talking about. You didn't see Mary Poppins or Seinfeld. You don't know who George Costanza is? I don't know. Oh my gosh. I never saw Seinfeld.

So is okay. the time of prayer right now. I will. I will gladly receive it. I'll say. I'm even to learn from you. Stop, dude. So a couple things. One, you're talking about action steps. I'm going to agree with a lot of things Paul just said. So first of all, let me just say your ability to master the Christian, let me just say this, the Christian responsibility to forgive every sin that's ever committed against you. Your ability to do that will determine the quality of every relationship you have in your life. Families run on forgiveness. Marriages run on forgiveness. In general, I don't do, you know, when I used to do a lot of marital

counseling, in general, couples don't fall out of love. They fall out of forgiveness. Because when we sin, every time you sin, it's like, that's the, you're bringing trash into the family. Forgiveness is how you take out the trash. And if you don't take out the trash, the whole thing starts stinking. That's good. So forgiveness is the take out the trash model. A lot of guys will do this, especially men. I've noticed this. Maybe not especially. I'm just a guy, so I notice it more. But they feel like forgiveness makes them, I'd be weak. I'm letting them off the hook. And man, holding a grudge doesn't make you strong. It makes you bitter. And forgiving somebody doesn't make you weak, it sets you free. So it takes a lot of strength to just go, you know what, man, vengeance

is gods. I'm going to leave it to him. Romans 12. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. I'm going to leave it to the Lord. I release myself from the responsibility of paying that person back for everything they've done. That's a big deal. A couple of action steps. Number one, Paul already got it. You got to believe the gospel to a real deep level. You will never be asked to forgive something more than you have already been forgiven. Number two, I will say this. I feel like maybe more Christians we need to remember. Proverbs 1911 says, is the glory of man to over look in offense. So honestly, dude, like the vast majority of the time, you know, you know, honestly, dude, like toughen up buttercup, you know, it's like, hey, dude, yep, people are sinners.

They're not always going to do what you want. And, you know, part of maturity is the ability to go, you know what, man, I'm just, I don't even, I'm not even going to treat that as a big deal. We're moving on. We need that verse on X. Proverbs 1911. There you go, man. I will, both, I didn't know you had done this, Paul. Both me and Jana, a couple times when we've been, like very egregiously sent against. We have done what you said and we wrote out letters. And honestly, we wrote what we would say to that person if they had the maturity and humility to receive it.

That's good. We did not give it to them. But we needed to get something out of our heart and acknowledge what had been done to us. When we were done, Jana burned hers. Just in case. Did you say you grab a couple of sisters and then Jenna just threw it in the wire? Bro, Jana, I just threw him out away, you know.

Jana literally went out to the fire pit and burned it. Jana's got a high justice bone. Healing. Healing. It's healing right there. It is healing. It is healing. That is, by the way, why some people think this is cheesy and dumb at encounter.

That's what I, we still, we put up to old wooden crosses around every sanctuary auditorium, whatever we call them now. Every sanctuary we got at every campus, and we do that at encounter during the prayer time. If you got sin, you need to get rid of or sin that's been committed against you, go up to all these crosses and nail it there. You can call that cheesy. I think it's awesome. Yes. We do that.

And then I would say sometimes you need some help in community. So heads up, there is, I think, an entire week in Rooted. But Rooted is our 10-week discipleship experience that literally every Christian should do at some point in their life. Like you can't walk out of rooted without going, oh, that's what it's like to be a disciple of Jesus. There's a week that gets real heavy into, it's a strongholds week because I think part of that. Yeah, it's a, you get to open up.

And I mean, again, you have some authentic, real raw conversations in that group. Yeah, so that's coming up in a couple. That's a new initiative in our church, root it 10 week discipleship experience. And if somebody right now is tuning in right now and they're not in a group, we're launching that. like soon. Yeah.

Everyone needs to do rooted. And so to, we'll make it easy for you to sign up to attend Ruta and to be a part of a group, text rooted to 20411 and then we'll be in touch. But yeah, that's huge. Just the aspect of being surrounded by the right people. You need to have that. You got to gang tackle that thing with some brothers. There you go.

And then last thing I'd say here is Jesus said to pray for your enemies. and Jan and I have found that a significant part of getting freedom from a wound is us just making a decision. We're going to pray that God blesses that person and prospers that person. And there's something that it does in our hearts. So I say that. Man, what about the person that maybe is wrestling with this and they say, yeah, yeah, I know this, but man, I'm really just struggling to forgive myself. Yeah, like, yes, I've, you know, I have done some things. and I just, I'm, I guess I'm happy to forgive other people.

I just, I can't do that with myself. What would you say? What would you say? I don't like that language. Yeah. I don't like the language. I can't forgive myself because you're not the judge. He is.

And honestly, honestly, what I think it does is there's one sense where that puts you in too powerful of a position. And there's actually another sense where it puts you in a powerless position. So number one, don't put yourself in God's seat. God's the judge. So let's remember that. Number two, that puts you at the mercy of your own emotions. Whereas if I go, man, actually, I don't need to forgive myself.

I need to receive the forgiveness the father has already spoken over me. Well, now it's not dependent on my emotions. It's dependent on the propitiation that God has accomplished through the crucifixion of his son. Yeah. And if somebody's, I would say if somebody's wrestling with that, man, I would say it sounds like you need to differentiate whether you're feeling condemnation or conviction because they're different, right? And so like condemnation, we would say, is when your enemy, which you have an enemy, your enemy is hatefully attacking you for past forgiven sins.

Hey, you have been forgiven. You don't need to forgive yourself. You have been forgiven if you are a Christian. Conviction is when the Holy Spirit is making you maybe uncomfortable for a present sin that you need to bring to the cross. And so, again, there's a difference between those two. If somebody's saying, man, I'm just trying to forgive myself, hey, is that condemnation from the enemy or is that conviction of the Holy Spirit, identify which one,

and then take the necessary steps. Yeah, briefly, when I talk to people about this, when they say something on these lines, it's, this is going to sound like a weird quote at first, but just follow me is I'll often tell them, God expects less from you than you do from yourself. And what I mean by that is that he already knows every sin you're ever going to commit. And by the way, Jesus died for every sin you're going to commit. So oftentimes people think, like, oh, like when I accepted Jesus, it's all for all my past sins. No, he died for. for all past, present and future. By the way, that doesn't mean we should go out and sin

and do whatever we want because of that, but by no means. But what it does mean is that when you committed whatever sin, you can't forgive yourself of, God isn't surprised by that. Jesus isn't saying, well, I didn't see that one coming.

I guess I got to get back up on the cross. He already paid for it. Or I would have gone to the cross if I knew you would have done that. Yeah, yeah. He's not saying that all. It's like, so again, it's like, don't hold something against yourself

that God is no longer holding against you. And so. There you go, man. That's really helpful. You guys are going to do a hard transition Let's do a hard transition. I was trying to make it a little spoiler. But I was going to say, man, that's great.

We live in a time where we see comedians and podcasters are now theologians. Well, are they? As you're about to see this, this was rough to watch. And so we got a video that I would love for us to react to. This is a, it kind of went a little viral. Obviously, we have three. How many views that thing have? Yeah, it's at 400,000 pushing 400,000.

And a bunch of clips shut on social media. Obviously, we got three strong personalities. This is, this is, if I'm not mistaken, I'm not sure if this is it. But, so Andrew Schultz, he has a podcast named Flagrant. Did he interview Trump during the, during the, uh, I think he did. I think he did. I think he did, man. And then, Josh, you want to introduce the other guys, you know. The other guy's name, I think I'm pronouncing it right, Sink Yugar.

Yeah, Ugar. And he's, he's a, I think he's a CNN guy. Young Turks. Young Turks. POD does the name his podcast? Or it's his thing. It's like the, he's a very leftist. if I'm not mistaken, left is liberal.

The opposite of daily wire, basically. By the way, I'll just say, we need to do a whole podcast sometime on Islam. Someday we're going to do that is one of the most interesting things, and we're not going to talk about right now, the alliance between Islam and political progressivism, literally every value they have is the exact opposite, but they always stay on the same team,

and it's a very interesting why. We'll talk about that in a different podcast. So anyway, Sink Euger, he's a, that's it. And then Charlemagne the God, who has a huge, what's name of his podcast? The Breakfast Club. Breakfast Club. It's a huge, huge. So these three guys was, I saw this.

I was like, Carlos, we got to talk about this. These three guys, they just start talking about the Bible, because Andrew claims, he claims Christ. And that's not me casting shade. I'm just, that's, he says. I'm a person. These three guys, like, start talking about where we got the Bible, Constantine. And this, like, a lot of shared. ignorance here. And I thought, let's react to this. And then let's, let's real quick,

let's talk about how did we get the Bible that we have and why can we be confident in it? Why these 27 books in the New Testament? All right. Let's go. Also Turkish. No. That's a, really? Tell me if I got the story right. Christianity was created by Constantine and Constantine essentially needed a mascot. No, wrong. And the mascot was Jesus. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Christianity was not created by Constantine. I think Constantine. Codified. Yeah, he codified. He basically made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. What he put a pha?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, first of all, nope. I'll go ahead and say the problem this video is pretty much everything they say is wrong. You're like, what's the biggest problem? Well, that literally everything they say isn't true. I love how Andrew's like, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Which is good on him. Yeah.

So Constantine did not make it the official religion. That's correct. legalized it in the sense that it had been a persecuted religion before. And so he legalized it, but he did not actually, Constantine did not prohibit paganism. He just legalized Christianity. It did not become the official religion of the empire for a list another 60 or seven years. So he didn't create Christianity and make Jesus the mascot, Paul? No, I think it's safe to say that the founder of Christianity is the person it's named after. You know, it's, and when I say that, some people are like, well, Jesus didn't create a religion.

It's about relationship. Yes. But if we define religion, maybe one way we can define religion. maybe one way we can define it is this, is the acceptable beliefs and practices that are related to the central figure of that faith. All right. And so Jesus did say to go out and make disciples and teach them to obey all that I've commanded you, which was both things to believe and things to do.

And those apostles then went out and did that. And so the fact that you did that and then it spread over the next 300 years and people called themselves Christians, which means little Christ. I would like to tell people briefly is that, like with Buddhism, if I took Buddha out of it,

someone else could have come along and taught the same things. Same thing that if I took Muhammad out of Islam Allah could have revealed himself to someone else If you take Christ out of Christianity You lose everything It's not just the teaching This is his death This is resurrection is everything

So the fact that he's a central figure Yeah I would say the person The same after is the founder of Christianity So he's not the mascot No No That's hilarious If I had hair I'd pull it out

You know kind of a thing Sorry Carlos Mews No you're good No that's great man Okay so let me hit I'll do a couple of quick things here there's more myths about Constantine and Christianity than you can imagine. So let me just hit, these are like things you'll hear around the water cooler or your workplace.

And now, from now on, dear live-free listener, you can be the person that's going wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and you can correct it. Number one, myth number one about Constantine Christianity. We already hit it that he made Christianity the official religion in Rome, wrong. He decriminalized Christianity at the edict of Milan in 313. Actually, there was a future Roman emperor Theodosius in the year 380. that the edict of Thessalonica made it the official religion of Rome, but he, if I understand correctly, he didn't then criminalize all other religions.

He just said, that's us. We're a Christian nation, et cetera. Number two, myth number two, Constantine decided that Jesus was God. Oh, it was around Constantine that they went, oh, Jesus is God. A, that's totally insane because Jesus literally says in things in the New Testament,

things like before Abraham was, I am. Like he just openly just says like, yeah, I'm God. It's in the Bible. Like in the Bible way before Constantine. Number two, will you toss that little McGito mosaic thing up? So this is, can you, yeah, yeah, I see what we can get that. So we have even external to the Bible evidence of people believing Jesus was God way before Constantine and worshiping him as God. So this is called the Megito Mosaic. It was discovered in ancient Israel. It's a little, well, you know, it's a mosaic. It was at the bottom, the floor of a chapel.

That thing was made in an estimated 230 AD. And I'm going to read you the inscription of what it says. The God-loving a keptus, that's my best shot, has offered the table, listen to this language, to God, Jesus Christ as a memorial. So in the year, 230 AD, 100 years before Constantine, you have outside the Bible evidence Christians were already worshiping Jesus as God. So no. Constantine did not decide Jesus was God. That's literally insane.

And then number three, the other myth about Constantine is that he made Sunday the day that Christians worship. That's apparently like a very common myth. And number one, like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Bible. Yeah. You have evidence of this in the Bible versus like Acts 20, verse 7, where Paul goes, hey, on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break. bread, Paul talked with them. It's implied, New Testament Christians had already changed their day of worship to Sunday the day Jesus rose from the dead. You have this in the Bible. First Corinthians 16, 2. On the first day of the week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper,

etc., etc. Again, Paul's assuming, oh, these New Testament Christians gather on Sunday, first day the week. And then Revelation 110, a lot of people miss this. When John receives the revelation of the book of Revelation. It says, I was in the spirit on, and he uses the word the Lord's Day. He's talking about Sunday. So way before Constantine in the Bible. Way before. Like the Bible. They're already, so we already busted. Those are the three Constantine myths. We just busted them. Let's keep going here. Okay, because he, so Constantine pulls together all the different books that are out there. But remember, there's 300 years after Jesus, right? I don't even think that's true.

Yeah. I don't think, I know what you're talking about. I think that they found texts that had existed before that. But I think a lot of times we confuse what the council is at. But there was no religion called Christianity. Of course. Let's go ahead. You want to talk about it? So here's myth number four.

Constantine made up the Bible, Paul. So what do you say? Yeah. So again, probably the biggest problem with this is that the first council that the New Testament canaan was established at. It was a local council, but still, when that happened, Constantine had been dead for almost 60 years. So, I mean, he had some powerful.

but deciding the books of the New Testament. Yeah, it was at Hippo in 393, and then it was reaffirmed at Carthage in 397. All right. Now, before that you had- Like Hippo as in Augustine of Hippo? Yeah, he was there. He was there.

And so, he was there in the influence. So you have- By the way, I love how excited you got when Augustine of Hippo was there. He was like, yeah, he was there. Yeah, I love that so much. He was so there. It was so there.

But yeah, so again, the problem would be like, man, if Constantine created the New Testament, he did it from the grave. And so he'd been dead for almost 60 years. So, yeah. When people repeat this, usually what I assume is that they have either read or were taught by people who read the Da Vinci Code. And I'm not even just saying because Da Vinci called popularized this myth that Constantine was the one who put the books of the Bible together. When again, it was not even established out of counsel until almost 60 years after he had died.

But it was established among Christians. Christians recognized the New Testament canon way before Constantine. Talk about that. So let's answer this question. How did we get the 27 books that comprised? the New Testament. Yeah. So early on, you definitely had the apostles going around and teaching and preaching about Jesus. But even then, they then wrote letters to these churches, basically further instruct them of faith, putting down herescing false beliefs about Jesus. And it's not simply,

it wasn't about being right. They wondered what's real, namely the real Jesus. And people were coming around and preaching fake Jesuses. And so though, as time went on in the first century, they've realized, in addition to the letters that were being writing, hey, we need to record these things because the apostles were going to begin dying out and hey we need to make sure that the real jesus is taught so people don't come to believe in a jesus that didn't exist hence why the gospels were written and all those kinds of things so almost immediately anything or really anything that an apostle wrote was considered scripture we actually see this in the new testament where peter refers to paul's writings as scripture i've got the verse

let me just read that real quick because this is important second peter three 15 and 16 uh in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom of wisdom that God gave him. Listen to this real close. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His, I love this part. His letters can say in some things that are hard to understand. So let me just say, if you've ever read your Bible and gone, dang, what the heck's that mean? So did the apostle Peter. This dude's tough to understand. Yep. Yep.

But then he says, which ignorant and unstable people distort, watch this, as they do the other scriptures. And when he says scriptures, he uses the Greek word grafe, which is reserved for sacred writings. It is the word that is always used to refer to what, scripture, Bible. So even in the New Testament, the apostles were recognized. by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, that dude's writing under the inspiration of God and that scripture. And it is authoritative. So then in the 100s, we also get writings from early church fathers that are quoting the Gospels.

They're quoting Paul's letter. And they're quoting them as scripture. So in the early church, they universally saw the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Paul's epistles as authoritative. But what happens as the copies are made, churches start making collections for them to have because people weren't wealthy enough. And a lot of people didn't read and write. And so they would go to church, hear these things read.

So churches are making collections. And what does happen over time is different things are written. And they have to discern, hey, what is authoritative, what is inspired, what is from God, and what is not. So use three broad criteria. But again, this was very organic. This wasn't everybody got together at one meeting because this is our criteria. This was happening organically, which actually to me gives it more weight. If they all decided in the back room, I'd be more suspicious.

But the fact that churches across this area and across the world were using pretty much the same criteria is pretty incredible to me. Number one, apostolicity. So was it written by an apostle or associated with someone who had a close relationship with the apostle? So for example, the book of Luke, Luke traveled with Paul. And so therefore it was authoritative. So written by an apostle or someone associated with the apostle. Number two. Can I pause on that? Oh, please. Let me pause on that. So written. So a book had to be written. This was an early measure. Book had to be written by an apostle or was called an amanuensis. Yes. And amanuensis is somebody that either was right. was essentially right next to the apostle, writing down what they saw or what he wrote. That's right. Okay. That's right. So, and here are the New Testament books that were not written directly by apostles.

They were written by amanxes. You have gospel, Mark, traditionally attributed to John Mark, who was a companion of both Peter and Paul. This Paul, Paul Cunningham. You've got both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts written by Luke, who was a doctor that was Paul's traveling companion. So you got that. You got the book of Hebrews.

By the way, what's your theory on Hebrews? If you had to, if you had to guess who wrote Hebrews? Yeah. If you had to guess who wrote Hebrews? I'm an Apollos guy. I'm an Apollos guy. This is, it's total, by the way, for people who are listening to don't know is it can't be for sure.

This is actually one of the reasons why the book of Hebrews was adopted a little bit later because they couldn't establish the authority and was it connected to Paul's. I'm probably more of an apollos guy who would have been connected to Paul. That's my favorite theory, by the book. way Apollos writing it because he was a preacher and people say it reads like a sermon. The rhetoric of Hebrew is the highest in the New Testament and it would tie that. Who are you? Are you? Apollos. I love it. We're three for three. I love so much. So you got Hebrews and then the book of Jude and Jude was written by Jesus' brother. All right. So those are the ones.

Now you keep going, Paul. So that was number one. Episoccal authority. Number two would be universality or some people would say Catholicity. Is it widespread? In other words, it's not just hey, these random little cluster of churches in this one city really like this text, is, hey, is this accepted by churches in different parts of the Roman Empire where the church had spread? Number three, is it Orthodox? Does it teach things that align with the rule of faith? So there's actually hilarious stories that are out there in the first few centuries of people like, hey, we found this new thing by Peter, and they started reading it.

And actually sometimes because the person that was leading this church in this area, wouldn't want to have to go and investigate it. It was like, oh, yeah, go ahead. And then the teaching would get back to him. It would have things like, oh, yeah, Jesus really didn't suffer and die on the cross, really didn't race in the grave. It was like, oh, no, no, that's not true. Because they had an established rule of faith.

They had the right beliefs of the faith. And so it had to align with that. And so basically they were using these three criteria to say, hey, what are those books? They have to be written by an apostle or associated with the person that was associated with the apostle. It had to be more universally used and it had to be orthodox in teaching. That's also why we can talk about this in a second. A lot of people ask the question, wait, so why does it is the Catholic? Catholic Bible have, I think it's like four. Why does the Catholic Bible have four books that we don't have?

And in the Old Testament, so the New Testament, we kind of match. We can go back to that. We'll do this a second. We'll do this a second. This is called the Apocrypha. But really, those books break that, they break a couple of those, but they break that one in particular as far as like having a, having a, being doctrinally aligned. So for instance, the Apocrypha, that's where the Catholic Church gets the idea of purgatory. It was just, totally in opposition to anything else the rest of the Bible teaches. So we'll get to the Apocrypha in a second. Well, and even, although I would go ahead and say this now, it's a good quote to bring in. So Jerome, who actually put together the first Latin authorized version of the Bible, the Vulgate, he included the apocrypha, but he specifically said that it is not the same thing as the Old and New Testament in its way. Actually, here's a quote from him. He's giving

advice to someone is basically, I think it's a mother who is basically wants her daughter to grow up in the Lord. So he's given advice of what books to read. He read, I'm thinking of our fall sermon series. says, read the Song of Song, Song of Psalm and last, just to make sure you read it correctly, kind of a thing like, that's just funny. So here's what he says, let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such, not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain, but out of respect for the miracles contained in them, let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt.

Dude, so here's why that's a really stinking big deal, is Jerome, including those books in the Latin Vulgate, around 400, is like the biggest reason they ended up in the Catholic Bible. So the guy that was the primary cause, not the exclusive, but primary cause of those books ending up in the Catholic Bible, himself said, nope, that's not scripture. And we can, again, we'll get back to in terms of how the canon developed and de-desmond developed. But what's interesting is the apocry wasn't even established by the Bible.

the Catholic Church has scripture into the Council of Trent in the 1500s. And why? Because a few people came along called Protestant reformers. Team Protestant, that's us. And basically said, hey, this is not scripture. This is not, because they were, the Catholics were appealing to the apocry, for example, for purgatory. And Martin Luther said no. And they're like, well, actually it is scripture. I'm like, oh, we decided that. Interesting. 1100 years after. All that kind of thing. Anyways. So Paul, just real quick. So before that, then what was the term used to say this is scripture?

Because if they made it quote unquote official, they would say we closed the canon in 1500s. Different terms were used for it. You had, some people did consider it to be inspired. Some did. But I think, again, the misnomer among both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers is that, no, everyone is always considered them fully authoritative inspired. That's simply not the truth.

All right. And so anyway, so basically, some people would call it ecclesiastical books. So there's not, like, it's books that are used to maybe help the church. church or maybe like devotional reading, but not like when I read the Bible, I am reading the words of God. I am reading truth itself. If I read the apocrypha, it might contain truth, but it isn't necessarily true. Sorry, you're about getting his back? Well, we didn't plan on going on apocrypha there. I'll just get into it. So here's somebody's going, so those are the four books. Does you remember it's first and second Maccabees, one called Tobit. And then what's the,

there's one more. We got Estrus, ecclesiasticus, wisdom of Solomon. Wisness Solomon. That's the other one I was looking for. So those are the books that Catholic Bibles include that Protestant Bibles don't and no one should. And let me just say, so here's four things to keep in mind on those things. Number one, Jesus and the apostles quoting the Hebrew Old Testament never cite the Apocrypha ever. They never cite the apocrypha. That's number one. Number two, the New Testament contains more than 300 Old Testament citations, no, not one single New Testament book ever cites any apocryphal book. Very interesting. So real quick, because some people say, oh, there's allusions to it, even if there were allusions

to it. Jude? Do they say Jude? Jude, what in and it's drop. Is that that whole Janus and Johnbris? Yeah. Does that come from the apocryphal? Yeah. But even though they do, I think it doesn't get anything you just said, is that even if there are illusions to it, and again, there are illusions. It's like, oh, this could be an allusion to it. The key is, is when, they are referring with Jesus and the apostles to the Old Testament, it'll say it is written or God has said. But any kind of illusion, even that's possible to the Apocrypha, it is never said that way. They do not introduce it as scripture, even if it is an illusion, just to get out of it. If there's any of my Catholic or Eastern Orthodox friends, they're listening to it.

Paul also alludes to pagan poets, and that doesn't mean in Scripture. Yeah, and he quotes that person again in Titus, but he's not literally saying that they are inspired. He's just simply saying that, hey, in this one specific thing, they're right. Number three, number three, apparently particular the book of Tobit has like significant proven historical errors. Whereas like in the New Testament books, archaeology just continues to like, whoa, the New Testament books are like, they're dead on like archaeologically historically. Apparently there's like extremely agree. I'm not familiar with this. I read this in prep for this.

Historical errors in Tobit. Do you know something about this? Yeah. Well, and even with that, actually keep going. And then number four, this was really interesting to me. the vast majority of Jewish people have never considered, at any point, have ever considered the apocryphal books as scripture. Here's why that's significant. Romans 3-2 says this. This is really important. What advantage then has the Jew or what value is there of circumcision? And Paul's

answer to much stuff here. But then he says this, much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. Yes. And so even to connect some dots for people, in terms of how the apocrypha came about, and I'll try to keep this brief, because I know we've got to get back to the New Testament canon. But we were going to get this anyway, so nice little slide to it led right into it, is that the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic. But then what did happen around 3rd century BC is a Greek version was commissioned called the Septuagint. And so it translated that into Greek. And so what did happen with more Greek-speaking Jewish people is they would have the Old Testament, as we know it, but then they would actually what's called intertestimental books, which is the Apocrypha. So books that were written between the Old Testament that Protestants would have in the New Testament. And so they would include those. But Hebraic Jews would not include them. So for example, Josephus in the first century, early Jewish historian when he is relating to the Romans about the Jewish religion, does not include them as a scripture. It only includes the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. And so that's how they got in.

Early Christians that were Greek speaking, often then would use that. And that's how men, early Christians began using the Apocrypha. But it wasn't unanimous, it wasn't widespread. And again, there was generally a distinction. I mean, I quoted Jerome. I could also go to the Eastern fathers of Cyril and others who basically say the same thing. And so. Interesting.

Very briefly, because I know we have to keep going here. Because people would say today, well, especially like our Catholic friends would say, well, the Catholic church had the Bible and then like, you know, 1500 years later, the Protestants basically remove the books. What would you say? Well, a few things. Actually, Martin Luther didn't remove the books. Oh, really? No, he had them in there.

But he basically said the same thing, which is these can be useful, but they're not true. So, other words, there's a difference between saying something has truth or is true versus it's inspired. Inspired means it can't not be true. If it's infallible, if it's inspired, that is the Oden New Testament. It is completely true. Martin Luther would say it has some truth in it. And so even though he would rail against, for example, the doctrine of purgatory, he would include it. So we didn't remove it. And what we would say

also is that, again, throughout the history of the church, actually going back to the earliest days, is even though it was included, it was not included with the idea that this is sacred scripture. It was included almost like, again, now the best analogy I can use is if imagine we created a Bible today and we had things like Jesus calling it and other stuff like that. Commentary. Yeah, commentary, exactly. It's like just because it's literally in the pages doesn't mean that it's inspired. Interesting. So, yeah. You want to keep looking at this. called Christianity. Of course, the believers of Christ were Christians. This has happened for years. Hodge, podge. Until the Turks came in,

no, no, Constantine branded it. He marketed it. To be fair, Constantine was Greek. Right? And so, just like the yogurt. So anyways, what he does is he puts together the book, the Bible. Did he say Constantine was Greek? Was Constantine Greek? No, I think he was actually trying to say he's Turkish. When I watched the whole thing, he's big on Turkey. And so even like when he just mentioned just like the yogurt, he's making that argument that pretty much every, everything good is from Turkey. You want to know, is you want to do something really interesting?

So when I went to Turkey to film for the Seven Church of Revelation thing, like they eat like yogurt. I was gonna ask you to do it. They have yogurt. Bro, it's all yogurts everywhere. They put yogurt on their meat. Like season yogurt?

I'm out, or just straight yogurt. Like yogurt yogurt. I'm out. I'm so out. But this is really interesting. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And that's what I figured out. I'm out. Okay, there you go. So like, so this is a true story. Janna loves Greek yogurt. So originally, when they started selling yogurt in America, all the popular brands,

most of that yogurt that's marketed as Greek yogurt, it's Turkish. But they started selling it. And because of like cultural connotations and religious connotations, Americans wouldn't buy Turkish yogurt. So some dude, marketing guy over in Turkey went, let's just call it Greek. And so like most of the yogurt that you get this called Greek yogurt is Turkish. That's funny. Yeah.

So anyway, let's keep going. He would disagree with you, but he seems to like it. What he does is he puts together the book, the Bible, right? He's like, okay, these books, we don't like them, they don't help. These books, we do like them, and he makes out the Bible. So he's kind of the creator of the Bible, for sure. For sure.

Did you hear him? For sure. Again, I mean, Constantine's got some power to be able to do that from the grave. He said he's kind of the creator of the Bible, for sure. For sure. One thing we didn't hit, and let me just read this real quick. So Paul was talking about, Paul Cunningham, was talking about how the Christians, they didn't decide what was in the Bible. They recognized.

Yeah. They recognized. These books are inspired. Jesus told us, by the way, this is what would happen. So, John 1613, I think you may disagree. I think this verse, in part, Jesus is specifically referring to how the New Testament canon would come about. Jesus said this, but when he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. I think Jesus, before he dies, he's referring to spirit-filled Christians will guide you toward which books are inspired by God. Yes. Well, and even, I think there's this misnomer even take away Constantine that some people would say, well, the church created the Bible. And like we said, it's not, we didn't, we received, and I think it went the word discerned. We, we didn't create the Bible any more than Newton created gravity.

There, yeah. He discerns it. So even sometimes an analogy I use is like basically imagine someone who is trained to spot real gold from fake gold from fools gold. So there's certain things they're going to look for. And going back to those three criteria, those are the criteria that were used. Not again to create the Bible. It was used to discern, hey, which of these are inspired and so should be in what's

commonly referred to as our canon. So the church did not create the Bible, the church recognized the Word of God. That was already authoritative. That's exactly right. Okay, let's keep going back to sync over here. For sure. For sure. Did it go away?

There we go. But those books did exist. That's why Andrew's right about that, right? I think that's when it takes off. Was that it? That's it, Trinity. There was. There you go, man.

So here's the big lesson. When people are standing around the water cooler or around the baseball field or on the golf course and they just start throwing out, Constantine created the Bible. We made out like, they're all wrong. and then now you've been equipped to go wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and help them out. One more thing, if you don't mind me, may jump in in in, which is, because I think even in connection to this, they referenced a few times, oh, there's other books, there's other letters. And by the way, there are, that's not shocking.

You've got the Gospel of Judas, Revelation of Peter, I mean, the apocalypse Peter, and you've got different things like that that are out there. But here's what's interesting is that usually secular scholars, their critique of the New Testament, we can't believe it because it wasn't close enough to the time of Jesus, which actually was extremely close at times. That's been so debunked. But then what's interesting is then they'll take things like these alternate accounts and say, oh, but see, we should accept these and learn from these.

Even though they're hundreds of years older. And so basically they don't even fell to the same criteria. So just if you're listening out there watching this, because this is another thing that's thrown out all the time. So what about this alternate book that didn't make in the Bible? The reason it wasn't accepted is because it wasn't written by or associated with an apostle. Some of the words, it came much later. And because it contradicted the teaching that was already established.

So like Da Vinci Code, didn't the DaVinci Code? I read it years and years ago. The whole thing was about the Gospel of Thomas. Yeah, Gospel of Thomas. And it's like, okay, well, let's go back to our criteria we talked about. Number one, was the book connected to an Apostle of Christ? Nope, because Thomas totally did not write it. It was written like the 300th? I think is what they figured out. So like, Thomas had been dead for hundreds of years. Number two, was it Orthodox? In other words, did it align with Christian doctrine that had already been clearly established by the apostles and the Gospels? Nope, sure didn't. There's crazy insane stuff in there. Number three, was it written in the era of the apostles? We've already established, nope, sure wasn't. And number four, was it accepted as authoritative across the universal church, not even close? So if you're going, well, I've heard about these books. Why didn't they get in?

That's why, right there. It's amazing, man. Well, the Bible is God's revelation. It's not human speculation. Today we get to hear the words of God. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness that the man and woman of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Praise God we get to do that today, man. That's why we love the Bible so

much. Carlos, will you close this? I love to. Absolutely. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much because you are a God that reveals yourself to us. Thank you because your word is active, is living, and it is powerful. And today we get to study it. We get to talk about it. We get to enjoy it. And we get to be blessed and enriched by it. But I pray for our listeners and our viewers. I pray that that may be true of every single one of them as well. May you continue to stir our affections for you that ultimately we may look to Jesus as we talk about forgiveness and reconciliation

and restoration, God. There is good news that you are a good, good God. Father, I thank you for your word. Thank you because all truth is your truth. And today we get to learn from you and your word. We love you and we pray all this in your name, Jesus Christ. Amen, amen, amen.

Thanks for tuning in to live free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We pray today's episode helped you take a step forward in life, culture, and faith as you live free in Christ. If it encouraged you, be sure to rate, review, and share the podcast, and don't forget to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. Join us for Lake Point Church online every weekend and find more resources at lakepoint.church slash live free. We'll see you next time.