Transcript

 

TCP Episode 019

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 

SPEAKERS

Linda McConnell and  Zack McConnell

_Speaker 0:00
Hey guys, welcome to the Christian point with Zach and Linda. And today we’re gonna be talking about being thankful for our spouse. I mean, can you relate? So Zach is a seasoned married couple of 37 years, we sometimes have to work at being thankful for each other.

_Speaker 0:16
And it’s 37 short years. Right, exactly.

_Speaker 0:19
And there are some things that come up in our marriage where I’m not exactly counting my marriage blessings, unfortunately, and sometimes my head can get so bogged down with the stresses of the day, and I forget to pause and count my blessings instead. So what did we do? And in those scenarios, well, that’s really the topic for today. And we want to discuss some steps to take when you need to be more thankful for your spouse, and marriage is a huge blessing. And I’m here with my husband, Zack McConnell, and we’re here in Texas, and it really looks sunny outside, but gosh, it’s really not, it’s really cold out there. And my walk has been really rerouted due to heavy rains. And we’ve had all this mad covering up the road. So it’s really, really wet. And there’s a lot of standing water around. But guess what, I have some flowers starting to bloom. So stay with us, as we’ll have this discussion on being thankful for our spouse on the Christian point.

Intro 1:18
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linda McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Belinda.

_Speaker 1:53
Today, our discussion is about Christian marriage and family life. We want to talk about being thankful in your marriage, for your marriage. And you know, this is being thankful to the person that you’re spending your life with. So let’s be people who love one another, and share and say it and say thanks a lot. Being thankful and appreciative can be very helpful in the marriage. Absolutely. It

_Speaker 2:19
is so helpful. And I think God wants us to be thankful for people in all circumstances, and in every category of life. And so kind of talking, taking the will of God. And what’s what are you supposed to be thankful for? While you’re supposed to be thankful in all circumstances, and you can take a look at First Thessalonians, 518 and 19. And applying that to this relationship here in marriage. So included in all circumstances is your marriage? Oh, yeah, that’s right.

_Speaker 2:49
And that’s a big part of everything. It probably affects most everybody, and everything about your schedule, your time, your decisions. This is very important stuff. Right? Right. After all, this is your marriage we’re talking about. So your spouse is so central in your life. And this should be the one thing we definitely work on all the time, right, being thankful and saying words that are kind and showing appreciation. You know, for many people, words are a big problem, Linda, and you know, I’ve run into that as myself. And we read passages like in the New Testament, such as First Thessalonians five. And this is one of the places talking about giving thanks, rejoicing, rejecting what is evil and Ephesians. Five, that’s that’s another place where the New Testament just says, Hey, Christians, you know what, one of the things that ought to describe you is thankfulness. And being thankful to God in all things in all circumstances, and here’s the big one all of the time, right? You know, it’s a big problem for Christian husbands or wives not to be thankful in their marriage, you know, even if your marriage is difficult. And you know, many people consider their marriages to be difficult, you know, it can be tough. And marriage can be a difficult thing. So it’s not necessarily a prerequisite that you have to have a fantastic marriage in order to be faithful. No, not at all. You need to be thankful as a Christian. And that includes your relationship with your spouse.

_Speaker 4:23
Yeah, difficult times good times, everything in between times. We’re supposed to be as believers, people that can say thank you to God, and see the blessings and see the benefits and see all the positive effects, even in this marriage relationship, even if not every single thing is going the way we want it to go. And we can still say thank you, God for this marriage relationship and knowing it’s really a gift from God.

_Speaker 4:51
Yeah, that’s right. And I think the reason we came up with his topic for today, Linda, is one of the big reasons is well, last week I was swamped. I missed you and the family. I miss you guys. And I hope you guys all miss me, you know. So lately we were missing you love it. And I was away at reading. So we’re just reminded are fresh of all the different ways that we’re thankful for each other, and all the different things we do the things you do to serve me and I do to serve you in all the great aspects of our relationship. Yeah, and I was just kind of missing out for a week.

_Speaker 5:26
Absolutely. And I was kind of like, oh, man, this is not as good. You know, when you’re gone. And it’s just puts everything in my perspective that, gosh, it’s just not good. It’s not as good in the morning. And I’m up by myself. And I’m doing everything on my own no one to share coffee with I mean, it’s, it’s even just the simple things. But sometimes we’re not even taking a bunch in in the morning, we’re not talking that much. And but it’s just your presence there was missing. And the same thing at the end of the night, like going to bed, you’re off at meetings, and I know you’re gone, and you’re absent. And it makes me think, Oh, I really enjoys that being here. And by then there’s, there’s way more than that, right? And there’s missed conversations, no one to help with the cooking, or the absence of laughter or joy, or just missing that friendship. And I mean, there’s just a ton of things that I missed by having you not in the house. Yeah,

_Speaker 6:25
I understand that. And me too. And I was reminded of all things that you do to serve our family, Linda, and help our kids and the constant stuff you do, and the kind of stuff that you do for our family that just goes unmentioned. So here’s the deal, I was away it several church building media sets, I’m kind of hitting up this large project for our church to build an on site daycare, in our church building. And so I’m sitting around talking with the staff, the architects, a project manager, and I hear a lot of opinions. You know, everybody’s dreams, everybody’s ideas, what each person wants. And then I stick at one point to make a fault phone call to check on you, and are a member standing outside. And I call it I’m like, Hey, how’s it going? Let’s see what you’re up to. And you know, I’m in the current church construction building rolled in my head. And you’re like, Well, right now I’m doing the laundry. I’m going to vacuum next. And my focus was me, stressed on what everybody else was bringing up in the meetings. And that was my focus. And then here you are, you’re in a totally different world. You’re just handling stuff. You’re just putting out fires, yes, dealing with problems making it happen. And just being an amazing mom and wife, and Mimi, for our granddaughters. Oh, thanks. You know, well, thank you. And so I was reminded of all that stuff you were doing, and I had not called at that time, I wouldn’t have even realized that your plate was full. And you were busy. You know, I was looking forward to having fresh sheets on the bed tonight. And the trash out and yummy dinner to eat when I get home.

_Speaker 8:05
Yeah, and there’s all kinds of stuff that we don’t think about, at least for me, I can so easily think about what I need to do today, what my goals are for the day, even within our family and our marriage, and our church serving and all that. And sometimes I forget that you have a gigantic list as well at your job. And you have lots of things that people are counting on you for and a lot of items that you’re trying to accomplish. And you have been so swamped lately, and you just feel the stresses from church and from business and from family. And I was just reminded about how much you do, how hard you work for the family and how much you do for other people. And I’m super thankful for the way you go about serving the Lord, and with your talents. And he’s given you all these opportunities and your church and in your job and with your friendships with your children and with me. And I mean, it’s just like we have so many items. I have to stop, get my eyes off of myself and think about you. And I can really be thankful and think through the tons and tons of things you do that go totally unnoticed. And for me and for our family that makes me think about that, too. So one of our grants got hurt falling off of a wood beam on the ground when we were out camping. Oh, it could have been so much worse. She was totally fine. Totally fine, but you know, is there hurt and crying and and when the kids get hurt, you know? How do we move through this? How do you feel? Show me where it hurts? Give me a hug. And the grand gets a sweet hug. Oh look, there’s no blood. You’re all good. And I’m thinking you know, Dad totally gets it. She feels that protection and that love from you. And when you’re tender with her I mean it goes so much with our kids and our grandkids and that is really sweet. And it is such a blessing to all of us. Yeah,

_Speaker 9:55
Kevin. Remember our Gran was sniffing he was crying a bit So, you know, I jumped into the grandad boat, actually my granddaughter’s call me Poppy. So I guess it was the poppy mode. And I was asking questions if she can wiggle her hand, you know, if her legs to work, stuff like that, you know, stuff that didn’t make her lap. And you know, give a little kiss on the booboos. And tell her I’m proud of how quickly she’s recovered and getting back and having fun.

_Speaker 10:21
Absolutely. And really, it was very quickly, she was like, Oh, I’m fine. Now, I want to get out there again. And I’m thinking, You know what, I am so glad she has a puppy around, who does that sort of stuff with her. And that is such a blessing.

_Speaker 10:34
You know, if this is kind of sounding a little bit like a rah rah SEC session, that we’re giving each other and patting each other on the back? Well, exactly. That’s the whole point, guys. You’ve got to be the cheering crowd. You’ve got to be the person in the grandstands cheering on your spouse telling them how great they are, you know, so I guess our experiences over this last week have reminded both of us separately and independent of one another, just how thankful we are for each other? Absolutely. You know, and sometimes it takes moments away getting away, sometimes it takes to be an absent or having your spouse be absent, in order to really see or feel the perception of how thankful you are for them. Right? Right. But it doesn’t have to be the case that there’s a week long break where someone’s gone out of town, or it could be in order for you to cultivate some feelings of gratitude. Right? Right. You know, because as Christians, like we said, at the beginning, you have a responsibility, I have a responsibility to be thankful. And we have to direct that gratitude toward our spouse. And so this is a helpful reminder for us to talk about this, to think about this, and to remind all of our listeners to express not only to be thankful to your spouse, but also to express that gratitude towards your spouse. And so I think there’s really two ways, takeaways from this episode number one, if you’re not, you ought to be thankful. So develop a genuine depth of gratitude for your spouse, right? Right. Find things that you’re thankful for, and develop that gratitude. Number two, secondly, I want to say talk about expressing that gratitude. But there’s something you want to say about developing it, I think, Linda,

_Speaker 12:19
right, I think pray throughout the day for your spouse is really important. And I’ve been praying for you, and coming to God on your behalf, thanking God, your spouse, and having those conversations ongoing with God. And when you keep that focus in your prayers, that that way, they can’t be tempted, and focus on yourself. And you say, Hey, God, I’m praying for my husband, would you really work on his heart for this thing, or you need to change him. And I think you can develop a whole gratitude to the heart, by coming to God and saying, Thank you, thank you, Lord, for my spouse. And thank you for these things that you’ve done in my life. And thank you for the ways that you’ve grown him and really focus on that thanks, rather than focusing on all the things that you need to or you want changed in him. And thank him for how he’s working in this area or that area, and where he’s showing up with him at church. And I think if we continue to just not neglect thanking God for our spouse, then we can go to him on behalf of our spouse, and that’s going to help us even develop that heart of gratitude. Even more.

_Speaker 13:22
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think the only thing I would add is, you know, crack open your Bible, look at a couple of passage in this will really help you. I mean, look in your Bible. Let’s look at Ephesians 520. It says, I mean, read this during your devotion, time, tomorrow morning, give thanks always, and for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s direct our gratitude to God for always and everything. And I think if some of you are going to carry this into your relationship with your spouse, thank you to be thankful for them in even showing thankfulness to them. So another passage I mentioned earlier, is First Thessalonians 518. So read that one as well. So just let’s spend a few minutes talking about the importance of expressing thankfulness. How do you express thankfulness? What does that look like? Why, and why is it hard for so Linda?

_Speaker 14:14
Well, you know, I think some people are just that glass half empty person. And that’s not really good. I’m just saying sometimes people can kind of be that person and say, Well, I just view everything half bad. And I just see the problems and I see the issues and I’m just a really critical person. And I don’t think we can use personality as an excuse or what we lean toward, because encouragement and prize and thankful words go so long and so far in our marriage, and it’s so helpful. And just think about that today. Zack, like you have already said three or four things that you know I’m a good wife, I’m amazing person.

_Speaker 14:57
I’m a great is an amazing person. Thank

_Speaker 14:59
you Have a great navy. And you know what, that just you stating those things out of the blue and weren’t prompted for them. And you’re looking at me. And that encouraged me that helped me to move forward. And those positive words really do bolster me up to do the next thing. And just keep going and keep serving and keeping it all happening. And that’s going to do go so much farther than any kind of criticism or say, Well, I don’t think you did this one thing, right? Or I wish you could have done that better. Or next time. Why don’t you try this? I mean, nitpicking my life, which I’m sure you could point out multiple things that I could do better. Instead, you’re really focused on encouraging me and pushing me in the right direction. And thanking me for those things. And that is huge.

_Speaker 15:49
Yeah, do I think it’s just a simple and straightforward thing? I mean, it’s not rocket science here, guys. Here’s the solution. It’s just simply verbalizing things. Just state things that are true about your spouse, state things that are encouraging, express thankfulness. So I said, What’s the importance of expressing thankfulness? How do we do that? And so far, we’ve said, Just pretty straight forward elements of this. Just get out of your regular pattern. start expressing thankful words to your spouse, spouse, start by saying encouraging things to your spouse, then you should say something nice today, send a text right now guys send a text, okay? Just Just before we did this podcast, I’m over on my phone, and I’m clicking away. My wife could tell I was texting, she said, who you’re texting. I said, Hey, I’ll just mute it. Hang on. Now finish up my text, and I hit send. And then right after that, I get a little chuckle from the other side

_Speaker 16:46
of the room. He was texting me with a compliment. It was so cute.

_Speaker 16:50
Yes, I did. So just send that text. You know, we’re they’re not expecting it. Do something. unprompted, unprovoked for your spouse, just take a little effort to show love and encouragement and bless them and express thankfulness verbally to them.

_Speaker 17:09
Right? Absolutely. Well, you know, it makes me think back to the dating days, right. And I mean, for like, most people, when you hear about the dating days, those first months, or that first year, whatever, the other person could do no wrong. And you loved everything about them. You know, it was the way they walk, the way they talk, the way they dressed, the way they smelled. I mean, every interaction was like angels were singing behind you that because everything you did was magical. And still

_Speaker 17:36
still Yes, it is. It is Oh, that makes me feel some smiling.

_Speaker 17:39
Yeah. But as time goes on, we sometimes lose some of that, and our words change. And we start talking, taking that relationship for granted. And our feelings have changed a bit. But what we really need is think back to those days, and all of those things you saw in your spouse or your future spouse at the time and, and make sure you’re verbalizing some of those things that you love about them and say it out loud. And it really might feel weird at first if you’re not used to that. And if that’s not common in your marriage, but you’re going to be thinking about the positive elements, and you’re going to be encouraging your spouse. And when you bring up those positive elements. So it’s like a double whammy, you get the benefit and the Boombah bow.

_Speaker 18:23
I think that’s really good. And maybe one thing I would add is to be aware of sarcasm, you have to watch that, because sarcasm is one of those things you just got to you’ve got to choke out of gratitude. And yes, you know, you might start off with just the intention of saying something is a joke, saying something to be funny. But here’s the deal. Oftentimes, the reason sarcasm hurts because there’s a little layer of truth to it. And if you’re just trying to be funny, with something negative, it is not a good thing.

_Speaker 18:55
Yeah, when you’re on that receiving and you’re it’s like, I know, it’s a way to express dissatisfaction or not thankfulness without really stating it. And it’s not, I’m not thankful for you, I’m just kind of laughing kind of like and Oh, brah that was just a joke. And then the person receiving the sarcastic comment is sitting there often. And when they receive that you’re like, way, are they paid serious? Do they really think that? Well, is that true? And now my mind is all focused on the one little negative Zinger in there. And that really is a rough reaction, and it really gets away and I really think that’s an awesome point you made Zach.

_Speaker 19:40
Yeah, you know, I think we’re also thinking of being intentional with your first words, whether it’s the first word in the morning, or the first word at the end of a day or have a workday or when you’re going to bed. It’s those intentional times. Good words need to be used, as opposed to negative complaining and bad Herb’s

_Speaker 20:00
right. And let me just say this for a second, okay, we’ve really got to be careful wives. Because for me, it’s really a temptation. And when Zach walks into the door, it’s like my shoulders have been, you know, all up in the air, I’m on the edge, or whatever it is like, relax, Oh, thank God, he’s home. And it’s like, I’ve got somebody else fighting in my corner with my family. Now, you know, and you can take an hour. And all of a sudden, like, Oh, I’ve got this to myself. So now I can give them a list of all the things that have gone wrong, are all the things that I had to do that were negative. And like, almost, I want him to know. And I wanted to know how hard I work today. And by the way, I want to feel a little bit of that pain, and I want you to feel that steam with me. And, you know, you really have to stop and do this 30 minute discipline session, where you don’t go into all of those negatives, and get into all of these issues. And I’ve really done that poorly in my area, before in our marriage. And I know that’s not what you want to hear when you come in the door. And I know that’s not what you want to hear first. And that really sets the tone for our evening, after you’ve worked a long, hard day of work, where you probably could list off multiple tough things you had to walk through. And we’re just setting off on the wrong foot. So let’s have the first words be joyful words. Happy words, thankful words. So glad you’re home. And guys, I gotta stop and work on that. And how everything is going and not turn to my day was horrible. It was so tough. Let me just tell you let me bet everything on you.

_Speaker 21:44
Yeah. So you know, I think those first words, at the end of a workday, there’s an opportunity guys to be strategic here, this opportunity to express intentionally, you need to express thankfulness. And I think the same can be said in the morning as well. The first words of the morning, what’s the first thing you say to your spouse? Do you have an opportunity when we have breakfast, the first thing you eat in the morning is breaking the fast? Well, there’s been a conversation fast. That’s happened all overnight as well. And so the first thing you did here, what’s the first thing you can say to your spouse in the morning to break the conversation fast? And how can it be positive? So can you pause just before you open your mouth? Be careful and strategic, and intentional? To say something is nice and encouraging and positive? Yes. Don’t be that kid who’s been in the habit of coming down the stairs and immediately spew rotten words, wrong side of the bed, just a bad attitude, complaining, whining everything. And we’re like, Alright, go back upstairs. Let’s try this again. And do that until we’re able to articulate something positive, right? So we’re not complaining, expect and show tremendous progress when you do these things. So we’re seeing growth in using the opportunities to pause and be careful about the first thing you say,

_Speaker 23:11
Yeah, and it really does set the tone. And I just think about proverbs 1624. And I’ve got to say it, okay, gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. So Zack, we need those gracious words in our marriage. And it’s like the honey cow. It’s so good. Exactly. Who doesn’t like honey? Absolutely. Everybody loves Honey, don’t they? Yes. Well, thanks so much for joining us and chatting with us until the next time. And I hope this message spoke to you guys. We’d love to hear from you. And if you benefited from this, please write us a review, Subscribe Share, Like this podcast to Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or you can go to the Christian point.com. And we really appreciate you listening to the Christian point was ACA, Linda, and let us know your thoughts by leaving us a review. And be sure to subscribe and share these episodes. That’s how this ministry is growing. And we’d love for you to check out our website, Christian family,

_Speaker 24:08
Christian point.com And subscribe or give us a lot.

_Speaker 24:12
Absolutely you can even make a donation there. And that’ll help us spread the message even farther. We encourage you to leave a testimony. We would love to pray over you. Yes and God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember until next time, Christ is the point.

Intro 24:28
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcript

 

TCP Episode 018

Thursday, March 9th, 2023 

SPEAKERS

Linda McConnell and  Zack McConnell

00:00
Hi, welcome to the Christian point was Zack and Linda. And today we will talk about when you’re angry at your spouse, guys, can you relate to this topic? So that as a seasoned married couple of 37 years, we have certainly been angry with each other more times that either of us would like to admit, yeah, more than we’d like to say. Yes, absolutely. And there are some things that come up in our marriage when I am searching my mind for what to say. And my words don’t flow in a positive direction and an explosion occurs. And sometimes it’s true. Sometimes a couple does need to argue that how do you argue productively without toxic communication going on? So what do we do? And in those scenarios, that’s the topic for today, we want to discuss some steps to take when you’re angry at your spouse. And yeah, marriage is hard, right? And guys, we’re serial entrepreneurs, and we have worked together for 37 years to and that’s even more challenging challenge with a capital C. Absolutely. Well, I’m here with my husband, Zack McConnell, and we’re here in Texas with spring like temperatures, some kids are out on spring break, and some of our trees are starting to bloom, the sun is shining, and I just can’t wait to go on my walk. And it’s just really, it’s cool outside. But that having a walk, that’s always a good thing to do if you need to cool down when you’re angry at your spouse. And anyway, it’s really wet outside. So there’s a lot of standing water out there and your feet are gonna get all muddy, it gets dirty. So guys, stay with us as we’re gonna have this discussion on being angry at your spouse on the Christian point.

Intro 01:52
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your host, Zack and Linda McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Belinda.

02:28
Hi, everyone, welcome today. This is our discussion of marriage and the family here in Christian life on the Christian point. And today, we’re talking about anger specifically, what do we do when you’re angry at your spouse? And I hate to say it, but it’s not a question, if it’s going to happen is more of a question when. So when you’re angry at your spouse, what do you do? How do you handle it? What’s a wise way forward from this? What are some good principles and techniques? And Linden? I, since I supply you with so many opportunities to practice this, Linda, why don’t you hit us with some of your ideas on things that you’ve done to handle anger toward me?

03:15
Well, I tried to yell out, you know, just scream it out, though, I really don’t try to do that. It just happens kind of naturally. And those are the things I’m trying to refrain from a passionate person, I feel my emotions, I’m super easily readable. So you probably know what I’m angry. And you just see my eyes with that glimmer. And every time I just can’t hide it. And so recently, angry moments have come and as a result of you having so much work going on, and sometimes that just like pops up anger in me where I feel like neglected, or my time I don’t get attention everybody else does. The phone’s constantly ringing. And it’s really silly, because it’s not like something that you’re trying to make happen toward me. And it’s not something that you want. And it’s not something you’re happy about. It’s just a circumstance that we’re walking through. But I unfortunately, there have been a few times when I’ve gotten angry, I’ve gotten mad, I’ve gotten frustrated that you were wearing so many hats. And that’s just, you know, kind of, I can’t process all that. So I have to take a pause. And you know, but I also in talking with friends, like sometimes some friends will they can be mad and frustrated because their husband is injured themselves. Like maybe they fell off their bike, and now they can’t do house chores, and can’t help around there with the kids. And so there’s a lot of times that this can happen around the house.

04:56
Yeah, you know, sometimes it’s just maybe if you’ve had An accent, it’s hard to stand and do do the dishes. But you know, the guy is shocked, he’s had so much pain, and feels like, wow, this can’t be true. So he really needs an empathetic listener. So you should have been immediately thankful for all the times that I did the dishes with that degeneration of my lower back, can you just imagine my pain later?

05:22
Well, you are absolutely amazing, I am thankful, absolutely thankful, and you cook some really good meals too. So I’m grateful for that, too. But you know, there’s other times in life where the, you know, bad things happen. And, you know, you’re just not in charge of the circumstance. And there have been times where maybe you’ve done something that bothered me, or you haven’t done something that I wish you would have. And I can think back after years of marriage, and there’s been instances when I’ve been frustrated with you, and kind of in my old brain going back and forth, like, you know, thinking about my heart, you know, and you get that kind of grumbling anger in your mind that you’re trying to deal with.

06:06
Yeah, you know, there’s probably daily opportunities, you know, to one degree or another, to be angry. If it’s some days, there’s something that’s really frustrating or abrogating, and you really have to battle that guys, then there’s other days might just be a small thing, you know, but it’s, it’s a regular temptation for couples to find something they focus on and get angry back. So what I want to do is try to identify some principles, some biblical principles, and some wisdom principles for navigating this. And, you know, I think when we face this, the number one thing I like to do is take a check of where is my emotional state was emotional state. When I faced this, and I have to think for myself, sometime, I need a pause, you know, I’m feeling angry, I feel my face getting hotter, my brain starts to melt about something. And I have to think, where am I at? In my emotions right now? Am I already at the end of the day, and it’s, you know, just things that bugged me throughout the day in life. Kids just did something was really frustrated. And so I’m coming off the heels of all that. It’s just exhausting. I just want to look, where am I emotionally? And where are my feelings, and I have to deal honestly, with those feelings. And sometimes I’m just mad because of, you know, I’m emotionally out of whack. And I’m just allowing myself to respond, like respond, really passionate about something or, you know, I’m in that zone of being frustrated, upset, or, you know, overworked whatever. And so, you know, I feel myself getting that way right now just talking about

07:49
it. So you do get really passionate,

07:51
I have very animated on things, I just need to dial it down. And so sometimes it’s a small things, just small little words in like, oh, it’s because I’m already there. And you trigger those little triggers get you. And sometimes you’re just looking at, like, what’s going on here, you’re just being emotional, you’re responding with your feelings are easily being armed. And right now those emotions are coming up. So you guys, I just need to take a step back. I need to take a breath. Like, let’s get back to where do I need to be emotionally? How do I handle this? Absolutely. When you feel overwhelmed like that? Yeah. Yeah, take a pause, you know, yeah, I think it’s key for couples to reconcile, and forgive each other at the end of the conflict. Get, you know, if you get things resolved, it means the marriage can be stronger. Absolutely. Now, resolving conflict can also build confidence that, you know, in the next time, this happens, you know, you can resolve it. And so if you go through these in, you know, you can work through them in your marriage, you can work through the anger, you can ask each other forgiveness. So, you know, the first step is you need to see, listen, listening, that you just need to say, what are what’s going on, and then exercise empathy, and then approach the conflict with a problem solving mindset. And here’s the key while staying clear, you got to stay clear guys of criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling. Remember, you’re on the same team? Absolutely. This is the spouse This is the person you love, and it’s gonna devote your life to each other. So don’t use threats. And stay at this is a big one to stay away from blanket statements or judgment saying like, always, are you never right? That’s really hurtful it is. You just kind of stay away from those kind of words. So avoid acquisition acquisitions. And if that still didn’t work out and you just don’t see this getting resolved over time, and you’ve tried working on it Go seek Christian marriage counseling.

10:02
Absolutely. I know when we were in marriage counseling, that was one of the things that the counselor said is, your marriage is your most important asset that you will ever have your entire life. And you really need to take pause and think that through and what effect are you having on your spouse, and all of those, those are really great points, you know, just stopping and listening, and then showing empathy. And, you know, the main thing that I do, and I kind of play off of this, and I’m not necessarily evaluating my emotional state, but when I’m really angry, which that has happened repeatedly, it does. And I will write it down in a note or an email to myself, and I just write down something and I say, you know, what I’d like to address and why I’m angry about and kind of the whole scenario, and then I don’t necessarily say it right, then I give it pause, I think it through. And then I go and look at the email, or the note the next day. And sure enough, nine times out of 10. I just delete it. Because it’s not even we’re saying the time has passed. I’ve gotten over it, I was caught up in the emotions. And it was something that I was a mad about that once I got some perspective, and I understand your point of view better. And my head cleared a little bit, I went for a walk, I prayed. That’s the number one thing to do is to pray. And I was able to see it as just something to overlook and to move on. And so that’s been a tactic for me that has helped me to wisely respond or not respond to my anger for you for something that didn’t go my way. But to deal with the anger, or let it subside a little before I actually say something.

11:50
Yeah, I gotta know, when you’re on the phone, and you’re emailing so yourself, you’re just ferociously over there typing away. I know the secret. Oh, no, now, you know. But you know, there’s a passage that always refer to when it comes to dealing with anger in your marriage. And it’s Ephesians chapter four, verse 26. And it says, In your anger, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger. And you know, of course, this passage has not been written to married couples, necessarily, but it’s to provide them with marriage counseling, per se, this is written to the church and emphasis encouraging people to live the new Christian life. And that includes not being angry to the extent of sin toward each other, you know, toward court, your spouse, and to have a pattern of that, where they’re dealing with sin before it escalates into too and too much time goes by,

12:43
yeah. And I can actually think that too. And if I’m being honest here, being in bed at times, and I’m having, you know, you’re sleeping away, heavy snoring going on, and I’m over there crying. And I can’t say it happens a lot. But over the years of marriage, there have been certain times where either I’ve been so upset, or frustrated, and I just have no idea. And I’m just really upset. And I’m kind of softly sobbing next to you, which is so sad, that basically, what I ended up doing there is it helps me take the first step is dealing with it with the Lord, and I don’t need to wake you up, I don’t need to talk to you about it. That wouldn’t work out well. And usually, these things are small, and I should have been able to just get past them. But for whatever reason, I’m worked up about it. And I just ended up sitting there, I get up, I’ll go read my Bible, I’ll pray, I’ll read my devotions. And just really get into my heart and talk to the Lord about it and get right with the Lord and talk with him about it and confess what I’m thinking and feeling and just get it all out there. And honestly, by the end of that time, I can lay that down, and I can go to bed. And I don’t have to wake you up. I don’t have to talk for 20 or 30 minutes about this little thing that happened. And I think that’s maybe some of the best ways to handle your anger is to go to the Lord. Talk to him, bring it to the Lord, before ever even bringing it up in person.

14:15
Yeah, you know, and I think it’s really step one. If you’re angry to the point of being sinful, then you need to confess that to the Lord, right, and seek God’s forgiveness, right. And then it could be the case that you need to seek forgiveness from your spouse, because you’re angry at them. You should have a conversation, where you confess to them and say, hey, hey, Linda, I’m sorry, I was angry with you. I’m sorry, will you forgive me? And you know, that’s the conversation that needs to happen, guys, right? And unfortunately, when we’re angry, it’s really hard to confess our anger and to be done with it. The last thing we want to do when we start talking and I’m sure a lot of couples can resonate with this, but when we start talking about what We’re actually mad about, then we’re not only mad about the the thing that made the disagreement start, but now we’re mad about how we are handling it, how we’re talking to each other. And the way we’re talking about it and the way we’re responding, and the way we’re arguing. We’re arguing about the argument, right? Absolutely. And it’s not the thing. So it just gets piled on. And so this is a really tricky thing to deal with.

15:27
Oh, totally. What can I move on to another thing that I do?

15:31
Yes. I know, you’ve got multiple tools in your arsenal to deal with me. You have to?

15:36
It’s not really like, it’s not that I’m mad at you a lot.

15:40
Okay, so go on. How much do you have about this? Okay.

15:44
It’s just because it’s one of my favorite verses. And it’s worth saying it’s proverbs 19, verse 11. And it says, Good sense makes one slower to anger. And it is His glory to overlook an offense. Yeah, that is, that’s a good verse, that if I’m mad at you, I try to ask myself, Is this something I can overlook? Does this need to be dealt with right now? Do I have to bring it up? And I think oftentimes I don’t, it’s really more me. I need to deal with me kind of like that hula hoop principle, deal with yourself the sort before you start blaming others.

16:21
Yeah, guys, the hula hoop. I love that there was a thing, we went through a marriage counseling retreat one time and what the hula hoop means if you’re standing in that middle of the hula hoop, you can’t talk about things beyond yourself. What’s wrong with my spouse or the situation, you can only deal with things inside of your own life, things that are inside your hula hoop, right? You’re the only thing in there.

16:45
And if one person changes in that relationship, focusing solely on themselves and their own hula hoop, the entire dynamic of the relationship changes and positive things start to happen in that relationship. And that person that you’re dealing with, will see that you’re handling things differently, and they will change. And I need to think about how much you do for us and for the entire family. And I need to just get over it. And I need to move on. And something that helps me do this is I think about who you are. I think about the ways you love me the words. You said to me that the ways that you serve me and something like if you said something that begged me, well, I need to look back to your lifetime of love toward me, that can gloss over some of these little things that maybe have rubbed me wrong. Because often sometimes this little things, they can be left set or left undone that bothered me and it’s like, okay, well, he loves me. He works hard. He is serving me. He talks to me, he encourages me. And I can just go on and on. And then when I think at all through usually the thing that was making me mad, I’m like, Oh, I’m done with

17:59
that. Moving on. That’s great. That’s really good. I love that part.

18:04
Rather than sending the email, but you know, you got to be careful. You don’t want to send it to the wrong person. Oh, but

18:10
if I got the email, I might really be passive aggressive there. Okay, go on.

18:17
Well, we’ll say yeah, I think that something like there was an instance when, like, you’d left the hose on in the backyard. Oh, yeah. I remember as you’re trying to get water in the pool. And now water is overflowing the pool, and we live out in the country. So the water costs a lot. And then I become angry. And I am thinking about, Okay, that was a jerk move. Why did he put his alarm on his phone? And I know, he didn’t mean to, but I’m thinking about all of the money of that water bill. And maybe it was just for an hour. I’m not sure how long that water was going. But I think it’s gonna be a big bill. Oh, you

18:55
know, I don’t think it was that long. You know, like, six hours or something? Well, it felt like six hours. Okay, but I was definitely gone. When you found out that I think that wasn’t cool. For sure.

19:09
And and see, isn’t that nice? Here, you were serving the family. So I Emad in response to something. But then you go and serve the family. And a lot of words came to mind. And I didn’t say them because I was filtering them through the lens of Scripture. I’m glad you didn’t say those words on Yeah. And what God would be pleased with this with me saying, and I needed to process what was going to be a helpful thing in the response to that situation. So I would just refrain from saying unnecessarily harmful or even did I really need to give him tips about what he should or shouldn’t do the next time like put the alarm on your phone, or that probably wouldn’t have been very helpful. And, you know, I think that that would just be egging on the situation. So, yeah, you know,

20:03
I get these things in my mind. And it’s like, none of those things are going to be helpful. And he feels bad. And yeah, it’s a bummer that I don’t dwell on it. Yeah, well, those things probably would have made me mad. So we would have, you know, that would have provoked me to anger or I’ve been tempted to be angry. But that brings up a really helpful thing from my perspective. And this works both ways, guys. It’s just a principle is to not talk when you can visibly see, or you know, that your spouse is upset. Because I knew in that instance, that you were upset and you weren’t saying words. So you were practicing, you know what you were just telling me, right? And what I should have been doing is not prodding, not asking, Are you? What are you thinking about right now? What are you mad about? Because now I’m trying to draw out those words that you’re trying to suppress? Right? Absolutely. I mean, there’s a genuine curiosity. Um, I’m wondering, but still, it can be frustrating for me that you’re mad. And I’m like, sorry, I left the, you know, the hose on who cares? It was an accident, whatever, whatever is not a good word to use, either. But why are you mad about it, and I can really press you about it. And then I can provoke you to anger to give into the very thing that you’re working so hard to suppress? Absolutely. And I can see that, you know, you’re working hard.

21:33
I’m working hard, I can see the wheels turning in your brain. And I think you look and I really don’t know, but are you mad at me? Why? What are you mad about? What did I do you know, all of these things. And if you just push and push and push, and you know that they’re upset, it’s really unwise. And that it’s not helpful. It’s not working things out, give yourself some time. And you don’t need to be adding and giving more fuel to the fire at that type of moment.

22:07
Exactly. You’re gonna be able to talk about this and work through it. It’s not like we’re trying to avoid it. We’re just not trying to, you know, flame the fire while we’re in that emotional heated state. And I guess that gets people guessing people’s motivations, and what you’re imagining or dreaming up what they’re thinking or feeling or what they’re mad about what’s potentially creating a whole new series, a scenario in your own head. And that’s not even real, right? So we just need to be disciplined in our thinking about our spouse, and give them the benefit of the doubt. Just listen to the words they’re saying, and believe them and move on from there.

22:48
Yeah, and I think we’ve said this, but pray definitely yes,

22:53
I’m gonna say is to pray. And I think we’ve said to pray, and it is such a go to thing when you’re feeling those emotions and those angers to get over it.

23:04
Right. But I think it’s the best thing to pray. And I mean, not only have we talked about this, and and at worse, we’re refraining from saying things we’re talking, we’re taking time away. We’re thinking through our words, that I’m having a running conversation with God here. I’m asking him for help when I’m mad, and I’m asking him to get me onto the right path. And help me refrain from saying anything I shouldn’t say. And if I’m mentally going, Dale, or I’m upset, and I’m frustrated, I’m praying that God can help me through this. And I just want to go back to Highline, it’s because the Spirit is working in our lives. And this thing that gets me back on task is not being angry, or yelling, or getting frustrated, or walking out the door or something. You just got to turn to the Lord and let the Lord give you the ability to deal with your anger, right? And help me love my husband well, and help me move past this and give me peace and contentment and help me find joy. And that I don’t have to this to be an ongoing issue.

24:14
Yes, you know, there’s so many things. I’m just trying to think about how do we wrap this up and put a bow on this for our listeners, Linda, because I’m thinking about forgiveness and patience, and then talking to friends and getting help and accountability. There are so many other aspects of this. But you know, maybe we need to draw out some of those things in a future episode. But for now, and for today, I think what we need to do is just in with a question that couples can talk about, because communication, obviously is fundamental to these things that we’re talking about here. Just gotta be able to get to a place where you can communicate, where you can work through an issue with your spouse, and really deal with your anger, confessing if you need To find salutely forgive each other, and move on, love each other and move on.

25:08
Exactly. You just got to get through these kinds of things in your marriage. So, so why do you have more?

25:15
Yep? How do you deal with your anger in a bad way? You know, what are your ungodly responses to anger? You’re in your, in your marriage? What is a toxic response that you have done? And how are you going to grow and improve? These are things that you should be talking about with your spouse, and working through and exploring? It’s going to help make a stronger marriage? And it’s going to help you to work through issues in the future? Yes. Okay.

25:44
And what are ungodly responses to anger in your marriage? Can you identify the ways that you go about dealing with your anger inappropriately with your spouse, and just have a conversation with your spouse about that, or your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, and about really identifying some of the ways that you can improve? If you do point out some toxic things, or you’re not satisfied with, with how you’re reacting?

26:13
Exactly. Linda, start dealing with the issues and working toward a goal. Yes, you know, how are we going to deal with things well, in our anger? In how are we going to use those techniques and, and strategies to build a stronger marriage? And basically just talked about this episode with your spouse? That’s our question. All right. Well, hey, guys, thank you so much for joining us today. And we’ll see you next time. Right here on the Christian point?

26:43
Absolutely. That’s really good. Well, I do think there’s a lot to this, there’s a common challenge that people have, and some really important stuff here that we need to wade through. And we do want you to have our listeners, have y’all think about what you can do to response the next time that, you know, you’re in an angry situation? What was your challenge? And of those challenges? Which are the steps that you’d like to talk about? Would you like to, you know, what do you really need to work on in your marriage? And are you willing to listen? Do you need to concede, and where are you at, and really what needs to grow? And I think that’s all good. So we leg down several steps to take and which step for you, maybe needs some attention. And guys, we really thank you for joining us. And I hope these messages spoke to you guys. We’d love to hear from you. Please write a review. Subscribe, share this podcast through Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or go to the Christian point.com. And thank you so much for listening to the Christian point was ACA Linda, we’d love to hear your thoughts. And we’d love for you to check out our website, Christian point.com. You can even make a donation there to help us spread this message. If this message helped to you, we’d like to hear your testimony. And we would love to pray over you too. So God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember, until next time, Christ.

Intro 28:17
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point!

 

Transcript

 

TCP Episode 017

Mon, Feb 1, 2023 PM 

SPEAKERS

Linda McConnell and  Zack McConnell

 

Hi, welcome to the Christian Point with Zack and Linda, today we’re going to be talking about how to get on the same page when you both feel like you’re 100%. Right? So that is something to think about. And we know we’ve anybody who’s been married for any amount of time. And we of course, have been married for 37 years. So that’s a long time. And so we would consider ourselves more in the season category. I
like that word season, that’s
a good way to put it as a married couple, I are mature, whichever way you want to look at it. And there are some things that come up in our marriage where I feel like I’m totally right. And also you feel like you’re totally right. And our answers are very different, just polar opposites. So what do we do? And in those scenarios, that’s the topic for today. And we want to discuss some of the steps to take to sync up to make a decision when you’re both 100%. Right, that you’re on opposite pages. And yeah, so it may be hard to be married to me sometimes, because I’m 100%. Right.
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linda McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zach and Linda.
Hi, guys. I’m here with my husband, Zack McConnell. And we are here in Texas, with freezing temperatures outside. It’s cold outside the snow and the ice, and I have my space heater going next to me. And that’s one thing, Zack, and I do not agree on what the inside temperature should be. Yes, I’m
pretty sure she’s 100% wrong on this. And I’m 100%, right? Because she likes to warm and I like it just right.
Yep, you can hear that. So my husband, he has control of the app on his phone. And I like cold nights where I have the heater and a fireplace going. Set. Exactly. And I am so grateful for that. And these cold winter days, I have to convince myself to go on my daily walk because the wind is so cold outside, I have no desire to be out there. I need to clearly get over that though. Well, stay with us, as we have this discussion on the conflict of being 100%. Right. On the Christian point?
Well, I think it’s true. You know, for most people, it’s like you have an answer or an idea of how something should be right. And it’s like, in my soul in my gut. I know, this is right. And this is how it should go that I’ve got the right answer. You know, in early in marriage, I was like, the man of the house, and you should see it my way. Yes, he was. Unfortunately, that does not work out work. Marriage is a team concept. We got to get a big capital T on team. And you know, it’s funny, because I think there are people that are maybe kind of laid back, you know, just go with the flow. Unfortunately, that’s not Linda and I Oh, now we know people like that. They’re good friends. Yes. But when you get married, you realize like, well, maybe you’re more particular about certain things than you thought you were, or more strong willed or more determined to get your way. Yeah, I found myself surprised that we didn’t agree always. I didn’t even know that you’d care about some of the things you care about or have an opinion. But you know, some couples have little conflict, because they’re so laid back. But then you realize you do have an opinion, and it differs from your spouse,
right? And some couples, you know, it’s opposites that are trapped. So how do they manage conflict when they react completely different to each other? And yeah, every couple is going to have these instances when they both feel like they’re right. So what do we really do? Well, for instance, like mom see packing up the kids in the car very differently than dads do tip very differently. Well, as a female, I want to prep I want to have waters, I want to bring snacks. I want to pack a large bag, maybe with a change of clothes, maybe a sweater too. And we differ on getting out the door on even the small things. But for me as a mom, I feel that we can’t go anywhere without snacks and water cups and maybe a bag with sweaters. And you know, we’ve had this conversation before for years in our marriage. And now that we’re empty nesters, it’s traveling in our RV and I’m prepping the counter not countertop the day before we leave with food and snacks and drinks and take it all the time to do that to make sure we’re prepped. I have a whole list of things that need to go at this checkoff list I go line by line. Do I have this? And well, Zack feels like that’s too much weight. He’s like, Well, you’re really struggling with the weight limit of the RV. And we don’t need to bring all that stuff. But I see all that stuff is just essentials. Yes, she
does. Every bit of it isn’t essential. But you know, if you go on an outing in, you’re just going to go out and come back. Just load up. And I’m 100%, right? I know I am. And I’m thinking, you don’t need all these outfits, shoes, snacks when you’re going. So just a little short trip. So I’m 100%. Right, guys, but I don’t know about that. You may need them when you go out for a longer period of time. And I don’t know what the length is exactly where the cut off is. But it takes more time to get off when you pack a bunch of stuff that we may not even use. But so yeah, so what’s funny here is I really do love the snacks she
packs. Does he eats the snacks. Yeah, I
hate the fact that I’m on the other side of the argument here about snacks. So let me just go in for the record. It make it clear. I love snacks. I have nothing to get snacks. In fact, I’m a huge fan of snacks. All right? Yes, he is. I
100% agree with that. Well,
that being said, You do not need snacks when you go out on a short visit or short time or trip. So if you’re going to the park, or any sort of outing our kids or grandkids would do, we can stop at a store along the way if we need to, we can actually survive for days with no prep zero.
Well, it might be easier if we just bring a bag with water and a bag of nuts for snacks. But I’m not leaving without my water bottle. And you know what? When times get tense or when someone’s hungry, or you have a toddler who thinks they’re hungry. You just have to have the snacks. Here you go, buddy. Here’s a little snack, have a little mixed bag of nuts. You’ll love it.
Well, yeah. Or you could just say I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to wait until we eat. But I can see your point. I understand your maternal instinct is to be prepared. And I do say yes to snacks a lot.
Well, there you go. And that also makes me think back to when we had young kids. And that comes back to haunt me. And okay, think about the diaper situation, right mom’s. And somehow you forgot to prep and you don’t have that extra diaper. And that dreaded explosion, it happens and it’s everywhere. And then you also run out of wipes because you weren’t prepared. I mean, that’s a horrible situation. And I know it’s happened to many of us. Or we have, we have three kids, and they’re just dying of thirst. So my fault, I didn’t pack the waters. So sometimes it comes back to bite me. But other times, I think it’s good. And it’s a helpful lesson for our kids where it’s like, Hey, you’re just gonna have to wait. And also it doesn’t take them 30 minutes to assemble all of my things if we’re just trying to get out the door.
Yeah, you know, I’m fast i basket, eat out the door. Maybe I’ll leave some things behind. But I’m watching the clock to get out that door. And I have to remind you what time it is because you’re still in a gathering mode when it’s time to go. Absolutely. Well,
I have three kids and three grandkids. And I personally only have to grab my glasses, my wallet, my cell phone and my coat. But for them, I have to grab more stuff. So I’m moving fast trying to grab it all. And that’s very true. You’re 100%, right, that you can make it out the door faster than I did.
Okay, guys. So the point is these things happen, right? And it’s funny because we understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses in we allow it to make it out the door with smiles on our faces. It’s sort of an argument. But that took us a while to get to that point, you know, trying to get things out at the door with the kids and managing that stress. But now it’ll come up every once in a while and worth the point. You know, we’re we just laugh about it. So it’s no big deal.
Absolutely. But when they’re bigger deals, maybe bigger problems, or, you know, both people are really on opposite sides. What are some steps that they can take?
Now, in a marriage, the first step that we want to suggest is about a mentality. And that is to have a mentality where you’re willing to be convinced or willing to concede. So don’t be stubborn and get set in your ways that regardless of the facts, regardless of the arguments, regardless of the opinions and preferences of your spouse, that you’re unwilling to yield just can’t be that way. Just don’t be that guy or that girl who’s so stubborn, that it’s just not even a conversation. Right?
Right. You know,
it’s funny because sometimes when we enter into a conversation, or as an observer when you see other people having conversations like this, you can tell when there’s somebody who’s just said they’re not budging. It’s like their fists are kind balled up, their shoulders are squared. They are in this conversation, but they’re not moving. There’s no way. And that doesn’t work out in our marriages, guys. I mean, if, if and when you and I disagree, Linda, I want to be able to listen and understand your perspective. And it’s okay to be wrong. Oh, I’m wrong. I don’t just say it with an attitude that doesn’t do any good. And it leaves more conflict and frustration. And you have more rights than I have?
Well, right, absolutely. You just have to switch. Sometimes it’s not even about being right or being wrong. So for example, with snacks, it’s not like one is right, and one is wrong. It’s which is the better one to go. What direction? Do you have to get out? Really quickly out of the house? Which one is better for this situation?
Yeah, you know, and I should be willing to say that you should get to have snacks, right? Absolutely. Let’s take five minutes and gather our things and symbol a bag, right? And that’s fine. So there should be also instances where you say, Okay, let’s just go. Let’s just go and grab something along the way, if we need it, roll the dice. You know, let’s go. But it takes humility, to in humbleness, to just say to yourself, Wow, I’m being stubborn, being prideful. And I think I’m always right, in this other person isn’t right. They don’t know. And so I think it misstep, that humbleness needs to be entering this conversation with attitude that yeah, I need to see what I can be open to, I want to examine things here. I want to be tried to be flexible, if I can be flexible. So we want to suggest for number two, here is to talk and to really listen to each other. I mean, really, listen, we’re really getting into some rocket science here, guys, really complex stuff, right?
Absolutely. Yes, we need to talk and listen to each other. And you know, if we are, if one person moves a certain direction in a marriage, and a troubled marriage, that can just bring an enormous amount of change, positive change, it only takes one person to move. So seriously, when you’re in those instances where you are 100% in disagreement with each other, we more than ever need to talk and listen to what this other person is saying. And give them a fair chance to explain themselves, and to listen to the extent that you understand not only the facts of what they’re saying, but also the feelings behind what they’re saying, at the very best you can and just really understand where they’re coming from.
Yeah, you know, I think that you do that? Well, because you ask questions. Why don’t you? Why do you think you’re right? And you follow up with another question. We just can’t have a mentality guys that I’m going to be right, I’m going to win because I want to win, or because I want to be right. And we have to just show flexibility with our spouses, be open, have a conversation. Be very respectful, not with an attitude, not with fakeness. Just be real with it.
Absolutely. And asking, Hey, is that something? Is that the way you’ve always done it? Or did you try to do this maybe the last time or didn’t this work last? And I know you want to know, whatever direction you want to understand their perspective. And that’s great. And then you can explain it, you can get it all out and ask why. Because you know, maybe you’re not convinced right then, and you have your reasons. So you want to be able to share that and get that out in the open and communicate. And it helps when you’re listening and listening quietly and being respectful. And you’re not just like oh, yeah, okay, whatever, whatever you think, yeah, no big deal. It’s, you know, you’re really in the moment with them, paying attention to them, and trying to understand their perspective.
Well, I’ve seen this in counseling, sometimes, all the other person wants is just to have their opinion in this scenario that they’re dealing with, validated and heard, really heard, and they just can’t be heard. In ways that doesn’t help you have to show a willingness to absorb what their point is, and do it in a kind and real fashion. So this first point really can’t be overstated. This is really important, guys. This is just the bread and butter of communicating and talking, but it’s actually listening to each other and that nonverbal and the verbals everything in between, right? And I think if it’s really a heated discussion, if it’s a deep issue, and this is a big conversation, you may need to table it and just come back to it later. Sometimes motions get carried away. And as you’re talking about it, and you’re trying to understand the other person’s perspective, sometimes it’s just not a really good moment for the conversation to happen.
Absolutely, I agree. And it’s really, if it’s not good timing, maybe someone’s distracted, or maybe they’re already upset, and they’re trying to accomplish something else that they need to get done, they have a deadline, or maybe they’re just absolutely exhausted. And you know, what, it’s just needs to be something that at that time, it’s tabled. And then you can come back to it, maybe you can talk about it tonight, or whatever it might be. And that way you can change the circumstance, you can give yourself a little bit of space, you also, the next thing you need to do is pray about it and pray to God for wisdom. And as we see in Galatians, 522, to 23, we want to be full of the fruits of the Spirit, we want to be full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness and self control. And the Holy Spirit’s fruits will go far when there’s a conflict. And I mean, not only helps to create for a better context, when you talk the next time, that also helps to just give a little bit more time, give a little breather, let things simmer down if things have gotten heated, or you know, you’re fired up with your emotions are really invested. And you just need a little bit of time and space. And that’s going to help settle both y’all down. And another thing about that there’s been there’s some points here that you can be talking and you can be listening. And I think it’d be helpful to do a pro and con chart. And actually a lot of pro and con charts, because it just lays it all out there. And I think you’re the first one who brought that into our marriage that.
Yeah, you know, I think you made two great points there. Linda, let me go back to that first one of stopping and praying. And I know this is really difficult, guys, it is hard in the middle of a heated argument or conflict to say, hey, let’s stop and pray for a second. But if you can do that, I mean, if you can really pull that off, you’re gonna have just a moment of cleansing and clarity. And when that’s over so much of that that emotional anchor will be gone. You might not have changed your mind yet. But that that he did emotional anger, you know, after you stop and pray, it’s hard to have that on the end of a prayer. And so I think it’s good. So your other your second point is like, Yeah, wow, I think pros and cons really help in decision making. And it’s been used everywhere, it’s super helpful, when you can see it in black and white on paper. Okay, these are good. And these are the bad points, write down the good points on one side of the sheet, the pros rather not the good, the pros on one side, the cons on the other. And let let both you and your spouse have a go with this. And then review that and see what if you can take something away from it, if it creates some space for you, in this discussion,
absolutely, like do it together. That way, when you write down the facts, that helps you as someone like me, I’m more of emotional about some of these things. And sometimes those emotions can weigh a lot. And when there’s factual information behind it, then it makes me kind of think about, okay, I’m also a factual decision maker. And sometimes that’s the case that when I see it more black and white, and I’m like, okay, I can kind of chill out a little, I can move to your side quicker. And you know, when we do that pro and con chart, and we’re making big decisions, and when maybe we’re disagreeing about the things, but when you do that chart together, and you sit down, and together, you come up with those pros for a given position, and mine, for example, and then we’ll come up with the cons of another position, and then you’ll go on back and forth with the pros. And then hey, Zack, take a look at the cons. And let’s work all this out. And so this isn’t like something that I just go do. And I drop it off on the table and I say, Hey, look at all these facts, they all line up for my side. So this is what we’re going to do. So I’m right, yeah, it’s really an exercise that you have to do together. Just the process of communicating through the pros and cons chart and you start seeing the objective facts on paper. It’s really a helpful process for us to do together. And the last I think sub point of this is potentially just to be praying about it. And you’ve got to be talking and listening and hearing another perspective and reviewing that pro and con chart. And oftentimes, when you’ve laid out your position I’ve laid out mine, then I need to go pray for God to soften my heart or to call me down or to see a better vision of what your perspective is and under We’re standing. And I really need to talk to the Lord about this decision and ask him, just, you know, what direction should we be going, and help me be willing to be flexible, and help me change my mind. If that is a better blessing for our family, whatever is God’s will. That’s the point. God knows best. And it’s my desire to follow as God’s path for my life.
Yeah, though. So what we have to go with, we have to go out with the path that God has laid out for us. I mean, that’s good. It shouldn’t be the last thing on our list, that’s for sure. It’s one of those things that we really need to do in good decision making as a husband and wife communicating with each other. So let’s pray. I look to First Timothy, to first and second first, our urge, then, first of all that petitions, prayers, and intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings, and for all of those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness, and holiness. So we will pray together. Sometimes when we make it assistant we need to be keep things moving, as we look to our God and our Lord for wisdom and guidance.
Absolutely. And that’s a third step that we really want to challenge everybody with, is if you still disagree, then what do you do? Let’s just say, I’m willing to be convinced, I’ve talked to you, and I’ve listened, we still have this fundamental disagreement. And the Bible says in First Peter three, verse nine, Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult, but on the cron contrary, repay evil with a blessing that you may obtain a blessing. So we’re still disagreeing with that advice. So what do we do then Zack,
well, before the final straw, talk to a friend, talk to your pastor to a small group leader accounts or just bring a third party in. And I’m going to talk in about your buddy that you try to give everything to one sided, like, I’m talking about a real honest conversation with another person, or even together that you’re talking to another person, if you’re really talking to your spouse, and you really can’t work through something, it might be time to bring in someone else, just for another perspective, and seek advice. And it can be super helpful to have a mediator, the godly person who can listen and help you with compromise. And who can help you both as a couple to make that decision. And to see an outside perspective at times. You know, sometimes you just need a counselor or a friend, maybe a you know, in the super large discussions, especially, you might need your pastor to step in, and getting advice can be really helpful. And I’m just thinking of a marriage counseling scenarios where they’re kind of things that people end up seeking advice and talking about, you know, here’s a couple examples. I’ve talked to things with people about this in Do you have a Do you have another child? Does the wife go back to work? You know, do we move out of state for another job? And in each of those scenarios, I’m picturing the faces of people that I’ve talked to about these things. And, you know, often one person says, Nope, no, I want to stay and live right here. And one person says, No, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to move somewhere else. And you know, and I want to have a kid. No, I don’t. These are issues that are not quickly, easily solved. They’re big decisions. So it’s good to seek guidance. And just having someone else to help you think those things through add another perspective. And hopefully, sharing with a counselor can be a helpful thing. So we need to look and see. And what does the Bible have to say on this topic? Well, it says the husband’s The Family Leader, and he’s called in charged with a challenge to make decisions. And the wife is called to help her husband in that process. And, guys, we’re not suggesting that one role is more important than the other. Both are equally important, right. And they’re equal terms in our essences, and our people in our values, but they’re different in terms of our function, and the jobs that we have in our marriage.
Absolutely. And it’s helpful to know that and to embrace it. And, you know, we both are under God’s authority. And you know, Zack, you’re someone who’s leading our family. And the more that I go with you, and I’m coming alongside you to help you, and I’m on your team. And that can be easy, some days and hard some days, right? Based on all these decisions. Well, how big is this decision? It’s still ultimately when I come to understand, I am called to be a peacemaker. We all are called to be peacemakers. And I’m going to be held accountable for that before God was was I try and bring peace to the family. And if I can keep that Out of Mind, that you’re going to be held accountable for the way, Zach also leads our family, and I’m gonna be held accountable for how do I bring peace and show respect. And it’s not helpful to, you know, Buck or fight against him or drag my heels demand my way. And I’m going to respect that what you have to say, and we will work towards a compromise. And the husband needs to remember at the end of the day, he’s going to be held accountable the same way for his leadership for the family. And that’s really a heavy responsibility on husbands.
Now, you know, in guys, keep in mind, the husband’s burden for this responsibility to make the decisions and lead the family, he just doesn’t want to go with whatever he feels, and whatever he says. So guys, this is important. Realize, just because the husband is the head of the household does not mean that it does not mean this is a dictatorship, okay, you’ve got to take all of your family council in and you’ve got to do what’s not only best, maybe in your opinion, but all of your family members in how this affects them. So you have to be willing to compromise, where I see this really abused is where people will go in and say, Nope, I’ve made up my mind, this is what we’re doing, here’s how we’re doing it. You know, and that is not the intention, intentional way we need to be as, as fathers in as husbands, we need to lead with compassion, with caring, with gentleness, with humbleness. And we should not get ourselves into a situation where we have to make a authoritarian type decision. We need to be better husbands than that, better spouses than that. And sometimes that’s difficult to do. But that’s the way we need to to lead is to create consensus among the family and a family that as a whole have to use in one direction. So yeah, at the end of the day, the other the husband gets to prefer others in that process. And so I want to make the decisions that are good for the family. I want to make decisions that are going to keep my team liking my leadership. So compromise is the solution, when necessary in good for the family as a whole.
Yeah, exact like, really, the husband’s role is sacrificial leadership. And one side does not always get to when it doesn’t work that way. And there are more than one solution to a decision. And maybe you just haven’t thought it all through yet. So I want to bear in mind a lot of different factors in the process of making good decisions. And I remember one day you bought a house, that was before there was even cell phones. It was early marriage, and I was out grocery shopping, and I got home and you call me on the house phone and told me honey, I just bought a house that was like, Oh, which one?
You know, it’s funny, guys, I remember this a little differently than Linda does.
Oh, now because I really was shocked. I was like, I don’t I don’t even know which one you bought. But the realtor called him up that morning while I was at Walmart shopping, and said, Oh, the owner has to sell quickly. They’ve reduced the price by this huge amount. And do you want to make an offer? So he jumped on it? And oh, boy, there’s a lot of stories about that house. That’s, that’s for a whole nother podcast. But okay, it was really cool. And looking back into our marriage, I could see that, you know, he stood up and he made that decision. And he put that decision up front. And we all complied like Yeah, absolutely. We need a house. And you didn’t get into who was right who was wrong, that sort of thing. You don’t you don’t take sides you don’t keep a score core card, and you don’t sit there and come back to it a day or two and, and, and still be mad about it wasn’t your way or what have you, you need to basically both come to the table with a sacrificial attitude and make the decision and it was really great. I know that he wanted to provide a house for us and provide for our family and I totally get that and so that was what the goal was that day and I really appreciate his leadership that he took advantage of you guys
let me also make the point here. I do not in any manner suggest you go out and buy a house without
it’s really probably not a good idea. No, it’s an extreme example. It’s probably our most extreme example in our entire marriage. In
fact, I hate we’re kind of using this example because we will it be real wrong tone a little bit because there were a lot of extenuating circumstances we had seen the house we’d already talked about by Ain’t it? Well, anyway, it goes on and on. But yeah, guys, don’t go do that it doesn’t play well, if you have to talk about it down the road someday. But on a better note, Linda, okay, fine, I guess you can bring all the snacks you want. The snacks are delicious. We do eat them. And that’s what I’m gonna say. Let’s bring this back to the snacks. Okay,
absolutely. Well, I do think there’s a lot to this, there’s a common challenge that people have. And so this is really important stuff. And we want to leave our listeners with something to think about that they can do a response. So what’s your challenge? What’s what is the challenges facing your marriage? What steps have you talked about? What do you need to work on in your marriage? Are you willing to listen? Do you need to concede, where are you at? What needs to grow? And I think it’s good. We need to you lay down these several steps to take and which step steps do you need to take, and maybe something needs attention. And we really appreciate you joining us. And we want to make sure that you’re also praying for your marriage. And we hope that this message has spoke to you guys. So we’d love to hear from you. And please write a review, subscribe and share this podcast to Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or go to the Christian point.com. Thank you so much for listening. And with Sakon. Linda, the Christian point and do let us know your thoughts. And we would love to hear from you and maybe even be able to talk about the next episode was something that you had in mind. In fact, guys,
go to our website, the Christian point.com. And leave your comments there. Tell us what you’ve ran into your unmanned marriage and maybe some of the ways that you were creative to solve those issues, and to move your marriage forward in a positive way, rather than take a real hit on your marriage in a negative way.
Absolutely. We encourage you to leave your testimony and give us a review. And we would love to pray for you as well. So God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember, until next time, Christ is the point.
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at Deep Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

 

Transcript

 

TCP Episode 016

Mon, Jan 16, 2023 4:16PM • 22:14

SPEAKERS

Linda McConnell and  Zack McConnell

 

Linda  00:00

Hey guys, we’re looking at new year’s resolutions. Does the Bible really matter for your growth in your life? Hey, welcome to today’s episode. And this is Linda and Zack McConnell with a Christian point. And we’re so happy you’re joining with us today and discussing how we can change your life by reading your Bible daily. And absolutely, the Bible is the living word. And Zach as we start the new year, we reflect we reevaluate, we look at ways to start new, and we think about how to grow in Christ as we look for new habits to form. So join us for this discussion on how God wants us to read the Bible daily on our Oh, at the Christian point.

 

Intro  00:41

Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linden McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Belinda.

 

Linda  01:17

Today, I’m here in Texas, and we have sunny skies outside and I’m a bit behind. I’m still putting away Christmas decorations. I’m organizing the house after having family staying over. And it was hectic, it was fun at times trying. And there’s precious times too. And it makes me pause and reflect. And creating this podcast makes me think of what are new ways to grow. And this coming year will stay with us as we have this discussion on this reading the Bible daily really matter? And what growth comes from reading your Bible. So as we are answering that question on how and why to read the Bible. But before we do, I want to remind you if you haven’t already, you can subscribe right at the show. And that actually really helps us get the message out, you can leave us a review. And ZACK I pray this podcast continues to reach more and more people throughout the world. And that by our listeners sharing this podcast, it is amazing. All of the countries our podcast has been listened to that. Can you tell us about that?

 

Zack  02:21

It’s amazing in this short amount of time how this podcast has been listened to across the US up and down the east and west coast and Alaska. And in addition to that, we’ve been downloaded and listened to in 27 countries. Wow, including the United Arab Emirates, and Russia. Wow, that’s amazing.

 

Linda  02:43

Praise the Lord.

 

Zack  02:44

So you know, Linda, we’re going to be talking about how something that I personally feel is so important, because it’s in all my travels. And I’m discovering more and more how many believers don’t read the Word of God.

 

Linda  02:58

Oh, wow. Absolutely. So you can see some really weird interpretations of the Bible on Instagram, right?

 

Zack  03:06

Yeah, it’s kind of scary that you say that for devotion. Some people go to blogs, they’ll go to articles, they’ll follow someone on Instagram, but they won’t sit down and read the Bible themselves. And to be honest with you, Linda, that should be the number one book that every single person turns to, let’s say you run a red light. And you look at the offers officer and say, Well, I thought red might go, he’ll laugh at you. And he’ll give you a ticket for not even knowing the rules of the road. So the point is, there was a lot of effort, and a lot of God’s miraculous intervention that got the Scripture into our hands. And guys, that alone was America. Absolutely. There was a time when people didn’t have the Scriptures. And they were seeing nations crying out for Bibles. For example, in Iran, a man was watched very carefully by the secret police. And he said that he felt so isolated, because he couldn’t read the scriptures. And then a look at America where we’ve got what four or five Bibles in our houses, multiple versions at our fingertips, and yet, we’re not reading them, right. It’s really important with our listeners that we talk about reading the scripture. If you look at Jesus, one thing they said about Jesus over and over is how can this man be so educated? And he never formerly studied the scriptures? So obviously, in those first 30 years of his life, Jesus must have immersed themselves in the Word of God. In that time, it would have been the Torah and the prophets and the Psalms and Proverbs, books like that.

 

Linda  04:37

Absolutely. And yeah, Jesus went to the temple and he learned and he asked questions, and he interacted with the scholars.

 

Zack  04:44

You know, if you look at the first major temptation, the Bible illustrates that in Matthew four and three, and it said during that time, the devil came down and said to him, if you’re the Son of God, tell the stones to become loaves of bread. Satan actually comes to Jesus and says, if you’re the Son of God Turn these stones into bread. And what’s Jesus’s response? In Matthew four for Jesus answered, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And that’s what, for my life that I’ve sat down to read the scriptures, in my daily walk, I’ll ask the Holy Spirit. So please teach me open my eyes and light my eyes so that I can see what the teacher is saying, you know, and it’s very important that we have the Holy Spirit’s involvement in Psalms 119 105. It says, it’s a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path. And yet without the power of the Holy Spirit, we can’t understand it. Otherwise, we’re just getting stories. We’re just getting roles, we’re getting regulations. And the Bible actually says, to read the word, with the spirits assistance, in First Corinthians 212, through 15, those without the Spirit can’t understand the word of God, Linda?

 

Linda  06:04

Absolutely. Well, then I also think of in Corinthians three, four through six. That leads me to the Apostle Paul’s statement in his letter to the church in Corinth, that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. So the Holy Spirit animates what we see written in the Word of God. And so you see, both. Before I read the Bible, I know I was taught at a young age in my Christian school growing up that every time I opened up my Bible, I would ask the Holy Spirit to give me the eyes to see what God would want to show me. And we read in Ephesians, 118, that the eyes of my heart that is my understanding, would be enlightened that I might know, not just study, but that I might know the hope to which he has called you.

 

Zack  06:51

Yeah, you know, knowledge, it puffs up knowledge can bring it to pride. So when you ask the Holy Spirit, it’s a way of actually humbling yourself to God, in under that mighty hand of God, you’ll understand what he is he is bringing forth to you. And you want humility, because because God teaches the humble, Scripture tells us that. And so that’s why I don’t understand, you know, don’t always trust myself to read the Bible without the help of this Holy Spirit. And when I asked him, I asked him in faith. Now, I want to get some statistics. I always love this part. Okay, guys, it’s this is actually crazy stats on Bible reading. So here’s the Center for Bible engagement. They did a poll of 40,000 Americas. And they found that when people engage with scripture four times a week, not every day, not even every day, we’re talking about just four times a week engage with scriptures. They were and here’s the numbers 74% less likely to gamble 74% number or the church, those that read the Scripture are 61% less likely to view nog Rafi Wow, yeah. 57% are less likely to get drunk. Wow. 68% less likely to have sex outside of marriage. 30% less likely to struggle with loneliness, wow, this is a big one. 228% more likely to share their faith with others. That’s huge. And double that 407% more likely to memorize Scripture. Oh, wow. You know, these are great benefits. And maybe people out there didn’t even know these benefits. But here’s the deal. I might not know all the benefits, but I need to know how to get started.

 

Linda  08:51

Absolutely. That is amazing. And I agree. I like to read my daily devotions. And a chapter in the Bible each morning in my quiet time that I put away. First thing I do in the morning, of course, I have coffee in hand. So I guess the first thing I do is really go get the coffee mate. She always has her coffee. Absolutely. And then by myself, I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me. And that gives me a real positive kickoff to my day, and it sets my priorities and my mind on God. And I pray for His blessings, to enlarge my territory and to let me do His will each and every day and to keep the evil forces away from me. And I pray for wisdom. And I pray for my family and our church and our state our nation. And I pray for God’s direction for that day. And Zach, can you share what your daily practice of getting into God’s word looks like for you?

 

Zack  09:44

Sure. You know, like I said before, I really like to get the Holy Spirit involved with my reading because of the level of understanding we can get when the Holy Spirit is leading us. So I’ll also use that same thing. I’ll just turn to the Holy Spirit and say where do you want me to go? Are you today? So I’ll hear him say in my heart, and I’ll be praying and I’ll just feel drawn to. Okay, let’s start in Genesis, or let’s read the book of Matthew, or one particular spot in the Bible comes open to. Okay. So aren’t you going through the whole Bible? Oh, yeah. But I do but but I like to ask the Holy Spirit, which book now, because I think it creates an anticipation to hear from him, as I’m reading. And I don’t like to be systematic, although I do highly recommend that. For young believers, it’s good to go from the beginning to the end. So when I read, I like to ask the Holy Spirit where you’re actually go, what book you really want to speak to me out of today. And right now I’m going through the book book of Psalms, and yesterday, I saw something. I’ve written the Bible for 50 years, and I saw something completely new. I saw something Saturday morning, I shared in Psalms 16, verse 11, because it spoke to me. And so the Holy Spirit spoke to spoke to me so clearly from that portion of Scripture. And so now I have this tremendous anticipation. And I get up in the morning, and I pray for singing I pray can be really connected to the Lord. And then I just can’t wait to get down and start reading the Bible. Now. This is a guy, you know, I’ve done this for a long time. And I remember one time hearing a preacher when I was a young man, and that preachers eventually went on to fall, you know, out of good standings and had some very big problems. But one of the biggest scandals that he had, I remember just before that, him saying that he found it very hard to read the Bible, because he’s been reading it over 40 years. And I thought to myself, Shouldn’t that be if the Holy Spirit’s our teacher, he’s not going to run out of insights. And we’re going to come to know God throughout all of eternity. And God is not so shallow that we read his book, and he gets into our hands. And this is how I know this book is inspired. Because I can read the same song, or the same chapter, the same verse so many times, but all of a sudden, I see something totally different in it, because it’s a living book in it applies to you each and every day. And so many times when you read it, it will give you a different lesson than you’ve got many times before, because it’s speaking to you with what you’re experiencing life in that very day and moment.

 

Linda  12:28

Absolutely. I totally agree. And maybe before we just didn’t see that, or we didn’t understand it, but it’s always been there. And the last time you read it, or maybe you just didn’t see it, because you just weren’t ready to see.

 

Zack  12:42

That’s right. And you might not have been ready to see what he was going to give to you later, right.

 

Linda  12:46

And I remember so many times saying, I don’t know how I’ve read this so many times, and I’ve missed this, like, this is so significant. And I didn’t even know how I missed it. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, Wait, how did I miss that? And then you go back and you look at it and you go, Wait, is that really? Yeah, that’s true. And it’s so alive is speaks something different, and it emphasizes something different?

 

Zack  13:13

Yeah. And I do have a goal, to get through as many chapters so I can but I never make that goal, the priority or the requirement. The priority for me is to connect with what God is saying in that book. And in that scripture, and I want to connect with the Holy Spirit. So I have literally had times into where I’ve spent 35 minutes on about five or six scriptures, I just couldn’t get off them. Because the Holy Spirit was speaking to me, illuminating things to me. You know, it’s almost like your mind starts going along into another tangent or another direction, and you start bringing in other scripture you’ve read, and you pull it all together. So it means something that is so much more to you than maybe when you’ve read it before.

 

Linda  13:55

Absolutely. So now we’ve talked about some of that practice. And now another question that comes to mind is, what does it mean to meditate on God’s Word? We have two different approaches on this. You know, one of the greatest, easiest ways for me to get to sleep at night is I just start thinking about a scripture and applying it to my life or to a situation that I’ve been thinking about, and then I bring it up that you’ve fallen asleep at EPS, I accidentally wake you up.

 

Zack  14:24

Yeah, she’s really good at waking me up. So that’s what it means to meditate.

 

Linda  14:30

It means to roll over it, you actually think about it’s like chewing food, you don’t swallow your food, food until you’ve chewed it. So when you meditate on the Scripture, you rehearse it to yourself, and you go over and over again and then you start opening in your heart and in your mind in your thinking about ways that you never did before. Okay, how does this apply to me? How does this apply to my family? How does this apply to those that are around me and close to me? How does this apply to making more effective reaching other people. And you start thinking about that scripture in a lot of these different questions. And you just roll it over and over speaking it to yourself thinking it to yourself. You just sit there and maybe two or three words, get you on that verse and just keep rolling it over and over in your mind. Well, what happens is, and I believe this goes to your head, and then it goes to your heart. And then I believe that when Jesus looks at Satan, and says that scripture was burning in his heart, now it’s the living word, right? But it’s burning in him so strong that it comes out of his heart, not out of his head. And they’ve got this in their head, but it’s really not part of them. And that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to make that scripture part of us part of our life. And so meditation is what it takes, become the word in the flesh, and you then live it go for it.

 

Linda  15:51

Absolutely. Well, at times, I do it a bit differently. I’d look at interactions. So if it’s an interaction, like Sarah and Abraham, for example, when the angels come and ask, where is your wife, Sarah? And he says, well, she’s in the tent, and she’s laughing inside at a promise to Abraham. But why did Sarah laugh? So it’s so fascinating to me that Sara is the one that laughed. But then if you go back to Genesis 17, and you see that God told Abraham that he was going to give Sarah a son. And so is this the first time she’s heard about this? So I’ll try to say, I’m going to pretend like I’m an observer in the tent with Sarah. And I’m listening into this conversation that’s happening outside the tent, and I’m watching a woman hide in a tent because she’s so connected with disappointment. And I meditate by being a part of it.

 

Zack  16:46

Okay, I love that. So let’s do another example. So you’re thinking, one of the 12, sitting on the boat, watching Peter in the water and thinking, Okay, look what he’s doing. And then all of a sudden, he starts thinking and thinking, and you witness his reaction?

 

Linda  17:04

Yeah. And it’s not just an observation. I’m there. I’m like, what would I be feeling? And what would it all look like? And so, with this great question, how do you make space for time with God on busy days?

 

Zack  17:18

Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s a really good question, Linda. You know, I’ve had times when I get up early, and packed the day that I’m going to be traveling, I’m not really sure how I’m going to get everything in. And it’s very important to carve out time, if possible. So if I’m getting up at 4am, to catch a flight, or to work on a project, I’m going to make sure the first thing I do is when I get on that flight, or get up in the morning, is to open up my Bible and just start reading on that flight, or in those moments before my workday begins.

 

Zack  17:49

Absolutely. Or you can listen to your Bible on CD in your car, or wherever you are. And I have the Bible app downloaded. And I can use it whenever it’s convenient. You know, I’ve got this great Bible app, it’s really amazing. And I’ll get in my car, and I’ll have the Bible app on and I’ll just pick one of the Gospels. And I listen to it for a while from driving. And I can listen to it while I’m walking through an airport, I can listen to it, when I’m outside. It’s when you know, when we’re younger, you and I would stay up later, and would end up in bed around 11 to 12 o’clock. And one day, I thought, you know, this is cutting into my time in the morning, and I can’t do this anymore. So now and you and I make a practice to make sure by 1030, we’re in bed, and that gives me the ability to have that time in the morning. So I’d say to some of you just make sure you go to bed 1530 minutes earlier. And then you can get up 15 or 30 minutes earlier to get in the Word of God. And in the apps. Now you have so many versions and translations available to you. And there’s a way to find one that speaks to you.

 

Linda  18:57

Absolutely. Or you can even listen to it as you’re going to bed at night. I mean, there’s so many ways to increase your Bible reading time.

 

Zack  19:05

You know, I’ll say this. I love reading the Bible in the morning because it sets my mind on the right course for the day.

 

Linda  19:12

Absolutely. So that’s really the point. The point is just do it right, just like Nike says do it. Absolutely. And we can stop and pause for a second about that point. And this is the person that God put the stars there every star in its orbit with his fingers and called everyone by name. And this is the one that measured the width of the universe with the span of his hand. And this is the one that weighed every drop of water on the planet in the palm of his hand. And this is the kingdom of our entire universe. I want to read that book. So what you’re saying is he has written a love letter to me. He has written a letter saying how much he desires me and how much he longs for me they are part of his family at I am like, what? What can be more fun? I mean, if you weren’t had the Queen of England or the President of the United States wrote you a letter and put it in the mail, which you go, Oh, this is not fun. But I’ll read this. And then you’ll just sit there for a few weeks and not read it. No. This is the king of the universe writing a letter to me. And I’m like, what could be more fun than that?

 

Linda  20:32

That’s super fun. So making it fun to me is making it as a conversation, and a solution. So I want to thank you for tuning in today, guys, and we just want to you to rate and review our podcast, subscribe, ask us questions. What do you want to talk about? We’d love that. When do y’all need all those things? It actually helps us to get the message app, and you can reach out to your friends and see who’s interested in a Bible study. You could start it with three friends as a start. You can text them, call them whatever to spread, and create a real hunger to read the Bible.

 

Linda  21:10

Absolutely. Well, guys, thanks for listening to the Christian point. And let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And you can subscribe and share these episodes, episodes on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, be sure to check out our other podcasts. A lot of people do that too. You can also connect with us by visiting our website, the Christian point.com. And until next time, remember Christ is the point and we hope for you to have blessings to you for this new year. And we hope you read your Bible.

 

Zack  21:41

Have a great day guys and remember, read your Bible. Absolutely.

 

Exit  21:45

Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Transcript

 

0:00

Hey guys, this is Linda and Zack McConnell with the Christian point. Join us today as we’re discussing how God can heal the brokenhearted. And because there’s things that come at sack and the holiday season, they don’t come up in any other time of the year. And for a lot of people, it’s either like the best of time or it’s the worst of time. And it’s really a time that tribesmen souls. And I know that some people, it’s their favorite time of year, and they have nothing but happy memories, and it’s just all good times. But other people, it’s a real trigger to a lot of pain that they have. And these traditions, they just kind of glaze over them. And they glaze over a lot of parts of their life. And so we want to talk about that. And you know, there’s a lot of people, they see the holidays a little bit different. And there’s a lot of people that maybe they’ve lost a job or they’ve lost stability, they’ve lost a loved one, or they’re walking through somebody, their family has addiction, and, gosh, this pandemic, it just doesn’t quit, we keep on getting these other COVID varieties. And that’s definitely touched everyone’s life in different ways. And no one has walked away unscathed by this. And so we want to talk about the healing of the brokenhearted and I think it’s just really important. We can look at Psalms 34, verse 18, and it says, The Lord is close to those who are brokenhearted, and he’s not mad at them. He’s not like, oh, gosh, why don’t you just put on a brave face on this, and he’s actually close to the brokenhearted and he’s closer to the brokenhearted than to others. So what does that say to you? Join us today for this discussion on how God heals the brokenhearted on the Christian point.

 

01:41

Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your host, Zack and Linden McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Belinda.

 

02:17

Today, we’re here in Texas, and we’ve had gray skies outside with all the leaves, I fallen off the trees. I hate that part, that we’re prepping for Christmas decorating. The lights are up, we’ve been shopping, going to parties, and we’re wrapping gifts. And before you know it, our family is going to arrive. So stay with us as we have this discussion on God walking with the brokenhearted on the Christian point. Hey, everybody,

 

02:43

Merry Christmas. Merry

 

02:44

Christmas, guys.

 

02:45

We’re approaching December 25. And Linda, the day that we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I’d love this season, I absolutely do. It’s family time, it’s time to be thankful for all that God has done for us. You know, Thanksgiving and Christmas are just the best holidays. But I know, it’s a very sad time for some people. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Right. So I just want to say that we appreciate all of you guys in our listening family. And I want to encourage you, if you do get ministered to by this podcast, to please rate, review and subscribe by you subscribing. This will help us to reach more people and get this program out to others. And that’s a blessing to share the Word of God anytime we can. And may we help others by you sharing and us sharing and grow God’s kingdom. Now, today’s topic reminds me of Philippians four, six through seven. Do not be anxious about anything but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your heart and in the minds of Jesus Christ.

 

04:04

Absolutely. And I’m really thinking about that Thanksgiving part. And I’m glad that we’re diving into this topic. And I’m thinking about Joshua one, verse nine. It says, Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid and do not be discouraged. For the Lord, your God will be with you wherever you go. If you worry, well that comes from fear, and you’ll train your mind to focus instead on price and blessings. You will instead feel his peace. And God doesn’t want us to worry. He doesn’t want us to be in fear. And that all comes from the evil one. God wants us to rejoice and he wants us to give price even in the darkest valley. I know that so hard, but you will reap the benefits if you do that. So I’m really happy that we’re discussing how gret how God can really heal the brokenhearted

 

04:56

God is easily touched with our feelings and in our infirmities. And the Bible actually says that Jesus, because he did take home flesh and blood, that he was tempted in every point, in a see easily touched with our feelings and our infirmities. And I always want to encourage your faith, I think about Isaiah 41, and 10. So do not fear for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God, I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous, right hand. So, when a friend is hurting, you don’t want to just be empathetic, although we are empathetic, and that’s it, that’s good. We also want to encourage their faith. So when you’re coming into a season, where let’s say, you’ve lost a loved one, and you know, Linda, I know that you lost your dad, many years ago, very close to Christmas, right. And my mom was fighting cancer at Christmas. And I lost her in the early days of January, about a decade ago. And so even though it was a long time ago, this time of year makes us think of our losses, right. And that first Christmas without them, it’s very hard to celebrate, without your family without your dad there. And Christmas was tough, because of the memories. Christmas not having them around the table. It’s it’s difficult. So we’ve got a lot of people that are hurting either because it’s the first Christmas, or because they hate this time of year, because mom died on the day before Christmas, or you lost a loved one or something tragic happen. So this, this is where faith comes in. Right? This is what we should do. When you go through a situation like that, then offer what the Bible I believe calls the sacrifice of praise. And the sacrifice, praise means maybe you don’t feel like praising God. But because you know, he’s God, and He loves us, and he’s near to us. So you praise him, you praise him anyway. And I think that’s what it does, it brings you to this place that’s out of your mental depression. And it brings you into a place of life and have

 

07:07

Oh, absolutely. And I want to insert here that Jesus sits with us in our pain. And I know when we see human pain as humans, it can make us feel uncomfortable. And often we don’t know exactly what to say when our friends lose a family member. But what we can do is we can weep with them. We can sit with them, we can bring them food, we can talk to them. We don’t even have to say a thing, but just be present and show support. And when we sit with them in their pain, well, we really have forgotten all of this commercialism in our world. And that’s actually is the theme of Christmas. So we were lost, and we live in a broken world. And I remember, Oh, holy night. Yes, it’s such a declaration. Long lay the world in sin and error pining until he appeared. And you know, that’s the declaration. It’s not about what we’ve lost, but that we were lost. And God sent His Son, Emmanuel, God with us. And so I love that Jesus is with us. He is with us. He is he’s not disappointed in us. He doesn’t say, Well, I can’t believe you’re sad. Well, he sits with us, and he raises our spirit. And the Bible says that there is a time to grieve. And there’s also a time not to grieve, and there’s a time to rejoice. And so I think sometimes we have to actually understand the ebb and flow of both of these seasons. And the Bible says that Jesus said, The Holy Spirit as our comforter, because he knew we would need to be comforted. He was very clear on that. Sometimes we’re walking through a valley. And that’s what it says in John 1416. Jesus says, I will pray for the Father, and He shall give you another comforter, and that he may be with you forever. So Jesus, He has sent a comforter for each and every one of us. Yes. And so I love this idea that there’s a season when he’s our comfort. And there’s a season when he takes us by the hand and says, It’s time for you to leave this darkness and the tombs, the dark valley, and all of this despair, and I’m going to walk you into a season of resurrection and life and joy. But you can’t have resurrection when there isn’t darkness and death. So you know, I love that every year at Christmas. It’s just a festive time, but it’s also really a rescue time.

 

09:36

That’s really good. I mean, really good. And the thing is, I want to dwell on the fact that he’s near to those that are brokenhearted. You know, I’ve been in situations before where you came to me but get I was so overwhelmed by my frustration, my heart, my despair, my stress, whatever. I was battling at that time, and I wasn’t aware that you were there at Didn’t take advantage of your nearness to

 

10:02

1. Well, no, I can’t be as close to you as the Holy Spirit can

 

10:06

well true. But I want you to think about somebody who would physically come to your house and say, Hey, man, I just want to be with you. I want to comfort you, and we can’t ignore them. I think the decision we have to make is, do we want the comfort that comes? Or do we just want to continue in pain? Which one do we really want to do? And I think sometimes the flesh, our fallen nature, our human nature almost says, I want to stay in pain. And I want to live in this pain, and not getting near or not received the one who has come to help me. I just want to encourage everyone. If you just lift up your eyes, if you just lift your eyes to him, Behold the salvation that is near. He will come for you. Absolutely. Jesus said, If you open your eyes to His nearness, he will comfort you. And it’s hard sometimes because you’re like, I just want to be mad. I just want to be angry. I want to be disappointed, because right now, I just need to get this out. Okay. I’m asking you right now to turn your heart to Him. And just praise Him. I want you to share a time that Linda? Well, I’ll tell you a time that Linda and I fought. It was a long time ago. But still we fought and I was just so frustrated that I was so overwhelmed by the fact that how I felt Linda just wasn’t my needing meeting my needs. And I really thought I was right. I remember going outside and thinking she’ll never agree. And you know, this was years ago, and I go to talk to God and I say, God, please help me send me the Holy Spirit. So ready for him to take my side. And God said, I want you to thank me for one thing about Linda. And I remember saying, well, she’s a good mom. She’s a very good mom. Thank you, Lord. She’s a great mom. And then some other things started coming out. And then some other things started coming out. And within minutes, I’m just pouring out all these things I was thankful for in Linda, in Uganda. Now, I know this is a different situation. This was more of a disagreement. But it really happened with those who are really hurting. If you’re in a very tough time period. Just turn and start thinking thanking God for some of the things he’s done for you. He’ll forgive your sins. He gave you a new nature he gave you the other family members that are still with you. He gave you food he started making you think of him and all of a sudden you realize your perspective will come back into why? Why am I upset? I’m going to spend all of eternity with my lost loved ones. In this is tough. But when you’re reminded that you get all of eternity with your family, then you just got to keep reminding yourself, keep reminding yourself and draw nearer and nearer to God.

 

12:55

Oh, absolutely. And we have to give others space to heal. And at the time, you got to grieve and be heard. And you know, when my dad died, he died right before Christmas more than 20 years ago. And I still remember when he first died, working with my sisters and we were all caught up in the busyness of like his will planning the funeral, coordinating all the details and find the things that had been hidden and trying to discover some stuff. And then we came back to Dallas. And we had some office stuff to do and deadlines there. And we had a conference we’re supposed to go on with our recruiting company at the time. And I remember feeling like I just couldn’t function and I looked at you Zack and offset. I’m gonna have to grieve, I just can’t do that. It was so shocking. My dad died very quickly. He had pancreatic cancer within two weeks, he passed away once he was diagnosed. And you know, I understand from Messianic Rabbi friend that it’s supposed to be for seven days. And it’s supposed to be like on the seventh day you get up and you wash your face. But what I did in that season was I started to journal and I wrote out all of my regrets. And I also wrote out all the things I loved about my dad. And I think sometimes we try to push people because we’re uncomfortable with their pain and to go through that process too fast, that we need to stop and we need to listen and hear your pain. And we’re not those who grieve as though there’s no hope. When we look at Romans 15 Verse 13. It says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him. Not in the circumstances. He’s not having us deny that the circumstances aren’t painful, but we put our trust in Him so that we may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. So what I hear speaking to the grieving, let others know their grieving was heard and you acknowledge their pain, and then layer hope on top of that. And then you look at Psalm 62, verses five through six, and it says, yes, my soul I’m rests in God, my hope comes from Him. And truly, He’s my rock and my salvation. He’s my fortress, and I will not be shaken. So, you know, God has us put our hope in things that can never be taken, not in our marriage, not in our children, not in our finances, not in what we get in the holidays, or where parties you’re invited to, or whatever it might be. He always invites us to look higher, and to look into the internal realm, and to look at that place where the hope is anchored. And everything else in the world is drifting, that we anchor ourselves to that eternal realm. Correct. And I love that in Isaiah 40, verse 31, it says that those who hope in the Lord will renew their strike, and they will soar on wings like eagles. So we’ve got hope in the Lord. And God is is of hope. And my hope comes from Him. And we got help from him. And we put our hope in Him. And we’re talking earlier this month, about finishing strong in the end of the year, and wrapping set things up. So when we put our hope and people will we lose our strain, that will you put our hope in God, he doesn’t just give us strength, he renews our strike. And then you will soar on wings like angles, and they will run and not grow weary, and they will walk and not be thanked.

 

16:37

You know, Linda, I think this is the story of life at any moment, no matter the joy, or the sorrow that we’re facing, we have a choice, are we going to turn to God, because it’s only him that can satisfies, or we’re not. And as you know, Linda, I remember losing my mom after Christmas, basically saying goodbye. And you know, I cried. But I realized, okay, the grieving times got further and further apart. But the next Christmas, I had a choice to either really be sad about this, in the time that I had lost my mother last year, for I’m going to focus on the other people and family who are here. And I remember saying internally to myself, I’m going to draw nearer to God so that I have the strength to minister to people in my family. And I could actually see the way I was feeling coming into that Christmas, I could try to push through on my own, or I can choose to go with the hope that God has given me and I’m going to spend eternity with my mom, I loved her, and I had a great life with her, then you know what, I’ve got family members here right now that need me, you don’t want to miss that time you have. And so I would just encourage you to take the strength that comes from God and gives you and turn to him and let him comfort you, and then enter into the season with joy.

 

18:01

Absolutely. And guys, we really need to look for people to love and encourage because there’s a lot of people that are hurting right now that when we’re together, that pain gets minimized. And so go to church, Sunday morning, go to small group, go to the church, Christmas party, whatever it might be. And I think too many times people want to be isolated in their pain. And like, if you’ve had a really bad day, it really can change completely. After you go with your spiritual friends, they will lift your Spirit, and God wants us to actually heal in community. So if we can get out beyond ourselves, and begin to actually invite other people into our world, instead of thinking that, well, we’re lost in our world, you know, then there’s other people that have this loss as well. And that you can invite them into your world and actually bring a different experience, it’s not gonna be the same experience. Maybe you had with your husband or your wife, if you’ve lost a child. It’s not ever going to be the same. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be amazing as you move beyond and heal.

 

19:06

Yeah, I just want to encourage you that if you’re experiencing sadness in this time, that you really try to focus on the needs of others, and those around you. I mean, go to church, and help distribute Angel Tree gifts. Go to food pantries, and help distribute food. Go to the families in your church that need help or maybe bring clothes or groceries or sacks of food to people that you know are in need. Do something to reach out to someone else in their point of need. And on the flip side, if you need help, ask for it. Absolutely. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to say I’m having a really rough time. And I just need some help. Right?

 

19:49

Absolutely. We are there for each other. And this has really been a sobering topic but a needed conversation and I’m really glad we discussed it. I do realize there’s a lot of people that really need to hear this right now. Maybe they’ve lost a loved one and they’re grieving right now at Christmas time.

 

20:06

Well, maybe you could share this with someone that you know that is struggling. And maybe these words will help them come out of this situation and receive that comfort from the Holy Spirit, and share this message. And I want to thank you guys so much for tuning in. It’s, you know, it’s hard to believe, it seems like we just started 2022, right. But we want to, again, remind you to rate review, and subscribe to our podcast, that way other people will get a chance to hear it, which is what encourage you to continue to get the word of God in your heart, so that you can remain strong in this very troubled season that we’ve been in, in the last three years. And it’s been very interesting for all of us. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like it. And now more than ever, you need to be grounded in the Word of God. Paul, the Apostle said, that the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And the way it dwells in you richest is when you teach others. So find two friends, six friends, set up a Bible study, putting the word of Christ in you, through them. And so that when if anything crazier happens in 2023. You’re ready for it. You don’t build a house when a hurricane hits, you strengthen your house before the hurricane hits, so that you endure the storm that is

 

21:27

so true. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Christian point. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. We’d love to hear from you. You can subscribe and share these episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, be sure to check out our other podcasts too. You’ll probably find some other topics you really enjoy. And you can also connect with us by visiting our website at the Christian point.com. And until next time, remember, Christ is the point. Merry Christmas to you all.

 

21:57

Merry Christmas, everyone.

 

22:01

Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Outline

How to live life to the fullest.
0:00

What is the difference between the world’s view vs. God’s view and having a fulfilled life?
2:39

It’s not about having a living or making a living, but about living the life for Christ.
5:12

How we get trapped in the success of the world.
7:44

How to get unstuck from your regrets.
9:54

How to make amends with your accuser.
12:55

The importance of not having a victim mentality.
15:19

Don’t be a consumer in church, be a participant.
18:00

Embrace the journey, embrace the journey.
20:30

How do we live a fulfilled life without being different?
22:48

Transcript

 

0:00
Hi, this is Linda and Zack McConnell with The Christian point. Join us for a lively discussion today on the hot topic of living life to the fullest. So many of us we get stuck in a rut and maybe we get stuck in fear or depression or anxiety, or maybe just caught up in what people say about us. But Jesus said, I have come to give you life and live life to the fullest. Yet we have this enemy who wants to kill and steal and destroy. will join us for this discussion on living the life to the fullest. Here on The Christian point.

0:37
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linden McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember Christ Is The Point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Belinda.

1:13
Well, today I’m here in Texas, and who has gotten so cold outside. And we have gotten a lot of rain lately, too. We really needed rain badly. But because we were in such a drought, there’s just not a whole lot blooming going on. We’ve got some pansies, and they’re really making a show for it right now. Right now, our porch is decorated with harvest pumpkins and straw bales. And we’re awaiting the family arriving for Thanksgiving. Well, today’s hot topic is how to live life to the fullest. And how many of us want to live life to the fullest. So like I’m scrolling through the internet. And you see book after book or articles on how to live this fulfilled life. And then I’m also thinking about the whole part of television and keeping up with the Joneses are keeping up with the Kardashians. And we’ve just got all of this heaviness. And that does not lead to a fulfilled life. So many people are searching and they’re searching for this of well, how do I really do this fulfilled life thing? And I was talking to a friend and she’s like, well, Linda, there’s just really no quick fix. And there’s no six minute abs. You can’t get the best abs in six minutes. There’s no quick fix on how to get this fulfilled live, because it’s really a journey, right? But I think you know, we’re searching and researching. And then I look at scriptures. And John 10 Verse 10, says, God has come to give us life and have it abundantly. I mean, that is great news. But we’re still searching. So let’s talk about the difference between maybe the world view versus God’s view. And having this fulfilled life.

3:04
Well, obviously, Linda, there is a difference. And that’s the This podcast is all about letting people know what God’s view is versus our own view. Right. I think one of the interesting things is, is that the world’s view is like we’re successful. We’ve acquired success, we’ve lived a fulfilled life, based on what we’ve, we’ve achieved. It’s like, I did it. And I was able to get the big, nice house, and I got the fancy car. And you know, do we wear our money, our clothes, as opposed to you know, Armani versus Walmart?

3:38
Absolutely. Like Keeping Up With The Kardashians, right? That’s right.

3:41
And so it’s all based on what we have achieved on our own. Whereas God’s point, it’s really different. God’s point is that what he portrayed in Scripture, one of the best things is the story of King David. And it’s found in First Kings two and three. And it says, when King David was about to die, he gave his son Solomon, the following advice. And so here’s the advice for you. Do what the Lord your God, commend you, and follow his teachings, obey everything written in the Law of Moses, and then you’ll be a success. It’s not about earthly wealth. It’s really about our obedience, not through what we’ve achieved ourselves. But you know how we’ve obeyed you know, I mean, at the end of the day, when I’m finished here on Earth, I want to hear you’ve done well, you’re good and faithful servant.

4:38
Oh, absolutely. Me too. Well sat Do you think we have that fulfilled life as scripture says, and still you can have those nice cars are that nice house or that nice suit? Can we still have that stuff if we’re following scriptures?

4:54
Well, you know, King David said, obey his commandments, then you will have success. So if we obey His commandments, everything that we do here in life will be that of a successful man. And I think, what we’re waiting into joy, you know, this fulfilled life. They’re waiting until they get that new job. I’ve had someone call me the other day for prayers. And he’s like, if I could just get this new job now, then I could start living. But we need to start living in the here. And now. It’s not about having a living or making a living. It’s not about living the worldly life, it’s about living the life for Christ. Absolutely. Now, a lot of times, we want to wait till we get older, or to a certain age to say, Okay, I’m gonna live life after I finished college. And then it’s after I get married, I’ll start living life, and then it’s I’ll start living life after I’ll have kids. And then well, you know, I’ll start living life once the kids leave. Right? Right, we just keep on waiting. So when do you start living, you have to enjoy life during all those different chapters, those different moments in your life. And again, a lot of the world’s view is in terms of gaining materialistic things. Now, even in social media, the greater your following, well, that says you’re fulfilled, right? Because you have this large following, or whatever your law, Last Post said, that shows that the world’s following you, and they’re affirming this good life that you think that it should be like, all those posts on social media will still leave you very empty inside the Word, the Word tells us that what we see is temporary, and these things will pass away. Absolutely. But the word of God is here, and it’s everlasting. People need to remember that what we see is just temporary. And those things will be gone. But the word of God, he does not change. Right, right. It and that’s how it should be, he should be our first priority. Scripture says, If you want to live your life, you need to lose it. You need to take up the cross and follow Jesus. It’s not about me, me, me my stuff. What did I get? What have I gotten? It’s not about who, you know, it’s about who knows God, and are those things. Those are the ones that we’re supposed to get from him and through him. For me, chasing what I wanted, brought me into drinking too much. That was clearly not living a godly life. Even though I followed everyone, I should have been living God’s way. But we have to surrender ourselves to Him. Life’s not having the career that I thought I would, and not having a massive paycheck. That’s how America define success. That is not how God defined success.

7:50
I totally agree. And I think we really get trapped sack right. And we get trapped in the success of the world. And that what looks good, and how many likes we get, and that we forget, we forget what the Scripture says about righteousness, right? So God’s like, delight yourself in me. And I will give you the desires of your heart. And I see that in a number of ways. So it’s like the Lord will give you desires at that I didn’t even know that I would have. So the world is always lusting. It’s always coveting, it’s envious. It’s jealous. It’s backbiting and grabbing for things. Whereas the Lord is righteousness, and peace and joy and kindness. And that’s what my kingdom is made up of. And I think in the church, too, we get plagued by the spirit of religion so badly, that sometimes we’re a little afraid of success. Were afraid of finances, were afraid of prosperity, afraid to look too successful or flashy. So now you’re afraid of the prosperity or looking too flashy. And maybe that doesn’t look like our traditional Christian, is what you were thinking. Because let’s face it, when we start focusing on the Lord, the Lord starts blessing you. And yeah, envy and jealousy rises up all over the place. So it goes back to the scripture of John 10, verse 10, and the first part of that scripture, Christ came that we may have life and have it more abundantly. And that’s what he wants to give us. And that will look different. I think it’ll look different for everyone. But as long as we’re obedient to Christ, and stay steadfast, we’re going to have that fulfilled life. And there’s one thing people talk about the most, and that’s really their regrets. And Zack, I’m gonna be turning 60 and seven days. So these are my final days to be in my 50s And I look back on my life and I have some regrets. You know, I have some things that I wish I would have done, some things I probably shouldn’t have done. And I have those regrets. And but then I also think about my parents, I lost them a long time ago. And my parents, they were really looking forward to their golden years. But my dad passed away very suddenly at 69. And he never really had his golden years. And then my mom, when she was in her 70s, her body started kind of failing. And she had been waiting to do stuff. And so you can wait and wait. And then you just have a lot of regrets. But sometimes regrets can be good. But then also, regrets can get us stuck. And I can imagine, you’re at home thinking, Well, gosh, I got some regrets, too. So let’s talk about regrets. And how we can get unstuck from those regrets?

10:57
Well, I think you have to first recognize you’re dealing with the spirit of shame, and guilt, and many times a righteous man, well, he falls seven times, and he gets back up, okay? And how many times do we forgive? What 77 times seven, the Lord is constant. Every morning, His mercies are new. And I will actually vocalize and say that, that he’s been nailed to the cross, and I’m covered by His blood. And I have to actually go to battle, I have to take those words of Christ with me and say, Let’s do this. And so I take all those little voices. And we’re marching right up to the throne of the Father, and actually do this. It’s not some religious monitor, this is what I do. So you have to resist the temptation to be stuck. Because the battle is in your mind. Some of those things people say to me is I wish I would have let myself be happier. You know, I wish I would have worked so hard. I wish I would have spent more time with loved ones. And you know, some of those things, you can’t get them back, you can’t get back time. And so to what do we have to do with those things, we have to take it to the throne, I think about a good friend who wasted a lot of his life, and he ended up in jail. Now he’s trying to frantically get back on his feet. So one thing we had to do is recognize that we do have some regrets. And it’s exactly what it is. And then how do we have to get past that. I also think of just different ways that you can overcome the feeling of the enemy. He’s an accuser, he’s a liar. So of course, he wants to keep you in a place of guilt, and shame. And they’re the things that we have done, of course, that lead to those regrets in those actions.

12:47
And then there are things we can do physically. So for example, one of my college girlfriends biggest regrets in life is sleeping with a married man. And that’s something that she will always know that she’s done. And she can’t make amends by going back to that family and say, Hey, I need to make amends as my 12 step says I should. So she finds a way to pay that forward. And whenever she has an opportunity to speak to a woman’s group, she admitted her shame and she apologizes to the women, the audience who’ve been cheated on and says on behalf of the other woman, I apologize. It was not about you and her sin that she committed. It was out of desperation. She’s sorry that whoever she hurt, and you know if that caused you to feel valuable or unloved, and she apologizes, and I really thought that was great. It was a way for her to pray and release that tension and that negativity that a lot of people are struggling with.

13:57
Well, you know, I’m 61. And there are some steps that we’ll have to take. I think that this will help us in here’s the first thing. You have to silence the accuser. You’ve been saved by Christ blood, and that’s it. Right? Your regrets are your sins had been washed away. You can find that in Revelations 1210 and 11. And you’ve got to remind yourself that there’s no condemnation in Christ. Romans one says, Therefore, no condemnation is to those that are in Christ Jesus, you have to forget what lies behind those things that may have done and begin to press towards the price Philippians three and 13. Then at 14 It says, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. Remember that it’s God’s will for you to be fruitful. Ephesians 210 talks about that in turn your grits into Thanksgiving. So even for your failures, say God, thank you. And then finally, let your failures keep you humble. So in other words, you won’t forget them. I remember all what you’ve done, and all I’ve done, but they make me humble, they made me realize, okay, but everyone, everyone can be restored by God.

15:19
Absolutely. Then I think another thing we need to remember is not to have that victim mentality, it happens, we’ve laid it at the cross, we’ve been forgiven, and we can move forward. And we don’t have to carry that victim mentality over the rest of our lives, right? Because we are overcomers and Christ and their resolve to change because it’s so easy to go back to those familiar thought patterns. We sit there and rehash it, and those familiar ways that we do things in life, you know, you drive to work the same way, you take a different way to work. Instead, you can change what you’re doing one day at a time. And I say, Let my latter half be greater than my first and learn from those mistakes. And it’s so important, we learn to forgive ourselves, right, and to forgive others too. And, you know, it’s just so important that, you know, we have to make a conscious effort to do that on a daily basis.

16:19
You know, we’ve talked a little bit about regrets. And we’ve discussed some great principles on how to overcome those regrets. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about practical tools. How do we put those things into practice? I mean, we’ve talked about John 1010, it says, Christ came, that would have an abundant life. But it’s that second part that says, we have an enemy that wants to rob us of that abundance of life, and that in Christ that He created that for us to have. So we understand we have an enemy. We know we’re supposed to pray. But let’s go a little deeper with some practical tools.

16:57
Well, absolutely, you have to find your purpose. And you can’t be someone sitting in the audience, as a consumer. And really finding your purpose and working toward that. We all have these gifts and talents that God has given us, there are God given gifts and talents, right. And we have to find our purpose, because our happiness and our fulfillment are those gifts and talents. And our purpose will lead to our passion. And it will ultimately lead to our destiny, whatever it is that God has for us. And just in terms of some tools, some of the things that I know, is you refer to John 1010. And it’s having a mind of abundance. And we have to think we want to live a life of abundancy. And that we deserve it. For one thing, because of a lot of us, we can just get so stuck in regret, we get stuck in the past. And we don’t feel like we deserve to live that life of abundance. We’ve got to move past your regrets. And just be grateful, grateful for where you are today. That’s a wonderful message, be grateful this week of Thanksgiving, just be disciplined, and your personal and professional life and have a personal life, that you build relationships with others, you need to lead by example, you know that in the church and at home and in your workplace, or wherever you are lead by example. And the first thing you can do is smile more, right? I mean, nobody wants to approach a grouchy, frowning type person, and smile more, and you’ll love yourself.

18:38
That’s right. You know, there’s a couple of things you said, Linda, that really stood out to me. And the first is not being a consumer. So many people in church want to be a consumer, it’s all about sitting in the pew and consuming what’s given to them, right? We’re not a consumer in God’s world, we are a participant. And if we’re just sitting on the pews, we’re far from what He has planned and has destined for us. Absolutely. And the other thing that you said that really stuck out to me is to develop relationships. Because so many people who have messed up, they isolate themselves, and they become afraid of oh my gosh, if they knew what I did, or what my past was like, then they’re not going to love me. They’re not going to accept me. And that’s one of the things that devil uses really uses against us to keep us down and isolated. And we need to be free to forgive ourselves. So let’s also be free to go out into the world. I

19:32
really love what you said, and all about the accountability too. And, you know, always talk about discipleship. So if regret is a struggle of yours, get with someone who can walk you through the valley of the shadow of death with you, and you’ll come out on the other side. You don’t need to be stuck there. And none of us really deserve anything at all. God gave it all to us. So it’s like okay, thanks. Que father. So whenever you can keep that humility, it also keeps the enemy at bay. And understanding that guilt will always drive you to do more things that cause you to be guilty because you’re dealing with a spiritual entity, right? And so a spirit of guilt wants to continue to convict you guilty? Because it keeps you bound exactly in prison. Right?

20:25
Right. So cut off the things that take that with you. Right? I think another thing to do is just embrace the journey, because life is a journey. And we need to be flexible, and use our past to help people overcome things to help ourselves overcome things, like you said, with discipleship and obedience to follow opportunities that God puts in front of us, like doing this podcast, and we took long break, because you know, it’s a lot of work. But you have to make the time you have to pray, and you have to get back on track.

20:58
Oh, absolutely. That’s the beauty of the Lord, right? You know, you want to be obedient. And let’s make it even more powerful, because you’re in a deeper place with him now. And I think that’s good for everyone to know, you may feel like you’ve missed it. Because of those regrets. God can completely turn that around for you.

21:18
You know, God does first and second chances in New Beginnings. And I think that when we let that regret, take a hold of us, it just builds up, and we succumb to the second part of John 1010, we let the devil come in and kill and steal and destroy, because you know, we can take it back, we have the authority to walk in that victory that God has given us through Christ.

21:42
Absolutely. And that’s something I use on a daily basis. That reminds me a lot of the things that we’ve already talked about. So it’s surrender as the first one. And that’s what we’re talking about David, he stopped, and he listened to God and said, Hey, what’s my purpose? And well, you tell me what I’m supposed to do next, what’s the next thing I’m supposed to do, and then look to obedience, and we just talked about that. And then we need to attend worship, we need to be there and fellowship with one another. Because that’s how we remember that he’s in charge, we’re not in charge. And we could always go to Him with all of these things daily. And it just reminds us that that beautiful relationship that we have with him, and then the enemy doesn’t have as much room to wiggle in all around us. And when you can always come to him, and surrender to God, and listen, and be obedient, and then worship,

22:41
you know, it’s okay to be fulfilled in life, but also think that we’re supposed to struggle. And it’s part of carrying your cross. And this is just the way life supposed to be. Jesus came to give us life, and give us more. He gets glorified in living helping us to live our life to the fulfilled life that he wants for us. And again, it looks different for everyone who does live that fulfilled life and completely different from yours, it might appear totally different. So we have to obey without being different. And that’s why we can’t watch what other people are doing out there. Especially on social media. I mean, my heart goes out to those millennials, that think that this is what fulfillment looks like, this is what you know, success looks like because they’re judging each other, and they’re comparing their own life. And then you can get depressed, you know, no pressure, because the enemy gets more likes than I got.

23:43
hopes? Absolutely. I really do think we need the Scripture. I think it’s very powerful as a society and how we live that fulfilled life. And you know, we know that God came to give us that life. But we also know that there is an enemy, and we need to be on guard. We don’t need to walk around constantly scared, because there should be no fear in us that we should walk around on guard, and it’s a daily thing. And I believe if you come from an abusive background, and you have felt like I just can’t, I just can’t do it. What will they think if I have this fulfilled life? You know, you’ve got to renew your mind each and every day and walk in that freedom. And my mom’s favorite Bible verse was, this is the day the Lord has made Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And absolutely lock in your purpose with opening up and washing away all the sin and just being in the word.

24:41
Yeah. And I found it when I’m surrendered. And when I’m walking and doing the things that he called me to do that regret. It won’t step into that. In when I move forward with him. I’m fine. I’m so much more fulfilled.

24:58
Absolutely. Well, guys Thank you so much for being part of this discussion just on how to have that truly blessed life, that God came for us to give us abundant life. And Stay on your guard against all the devil schemes, and stay connected to the word and just remember that God does love you, and He wants that relationship with you. Hey, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show today. I hope these messages spoke to you guys. And we would love to hear from you. Write a review, subscribe or share this podcast through Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or go to the Christian point.com. Thank you so much for listening to the Christian point with Zach and Linda and let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And be sure to subscribe and share these episodes. And we’d love for you to check out our website, the Christian point.com. You can even make a donation there to help us spread the message. And we encourage you to leave your testimony and we would love to pray over you. God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember, we hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Until next time, Christ.

26:08
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram Facebook or visit us on the web at Deep Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is The Point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcript

 

0:00
Hi, welcome to the Christian point with Zack and Linda. And today we’ll talk about digging a deep well for a stronger godly foundation for the years ahead. So sack is something to think about. What if someone asked you what do you need to tear down and build up new for a more fruitful, godly tomorrow? Well, today I’m with my husband, Zack McConnell, and we’re here in Texas. Hey, everybody, my jumbo day lilies are blooming next to the pool right now. I love them. And we’ve got some roses blooming too. And I still have that white cotton flying in the air with those annoying cottonwoods on our property. And we’re talking about building a better tomorrow makes me think about cutting those cottonwoods down and planting more mighty oak trees, and how that relates to our Christian walk. So stay with us as we had this discussion on the Christian point.

0:56
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we are all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linda McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together. They are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zach and Linda.

1:32
Welcome to the Christian point. Thanks for listening today, guys. Well, we look at God’s word, and we take today’s hot topics, and we’re going to be talking about a topic of what issues do you need to bury in order to grow stronger roots in Christ, and we all have room to grow. And we need to spend more time looking for the log in our own eye rather than judging the splinter and other people’s lives. And that’s really hard for some people, and they don’t want to give up a bad habit. Say they’re overeating or drunkenness, or pride and arrogance or giving up control. There’s anger issues, jealousy, judging others, cheating, greed, self indulgence, materialism line, are you just scrolling on social media?

2:23
That’s a really long list, Linda, it is.

2:24
And then you have to think about worrying. So often, so many of us worry. And that’s really not putting our faith in Christ. So the list just goes on. And like we can’t sit here and act like we don’t have issues. And these issues actually are stopping our journey to become more Christ like, and in Matthew seven, three, verse five, it says, Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? And how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, please take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. And God has so much more in store for your life. Christ wants to give you more but until you rid yourself of these roadblocks, your sin will just keep on popping up and causing problems. And God is up there patiently waiting for you to change. He wants to enlarge your territory. He wants to give you more blessings.

3:29
You know Linda, I’m excited about this lesson because we’re talking about self examination. What do I need to do to grow so when we’re going to talk about these deep wells in our lives we need to work on compared to the wishing wells you know wishing wells are just shallow, right? They are even a shallow well, if you dig a shallow well for water in the summertime, it’s probably going to run dry. Exactly. We’ve had that problem we have and but dig digging big deep wells, those stay and you have water and you have something that you can depend upon. So we have to compare this to our lives with God. There’s a quote by Charles Spurgeon Spurgeon writes, trials teach us what we are. They dig up the soil, they let us see what we’re made of. And you know, that’s excellent. In Matthew 724 through 27, Jesus states that those who hear his words and do them are wise builders, it but that’s a problem. A lot of people hear the words but they don’t do them. And they have built their homes on a rock solid foundation when you do that. So the winds can come in blow the rains come floods come, but the house stands firm, right? So God’s telling us that he puts us through these trials Absolutely. To build us up and make us stronger. You know, that foundation. It’ll get us through anything that comes our way. And sometimes in life, you just feel like things are overwhelming you and it just as to when you come out the other side, and you will, when you do, you will be stronger and have a better relationship and assure foundation that that we have built up, we’ve, we’ve dug up our soil, we rid ourselves of bad habits, and we’re bringing ourselves into a stronger future with Christ. And we can withstand whatever comes our way, a solid foundation, and a deep will, based upon God will for our lives produces a steadfast faith, and allows us then to be an example to others.

5:32
Absolutely. We’re all kind of a work in progress. But we really do need to look within ourselves and figure that out, what is it that we can really work on? To bring us a more Christ like, life? And so thinking about this, what trials are you thinking about sack that you would benefit from digging up?

5:52
I’ve got I’ve got one in mind, because there’s unfortunately, too many to choose from. But, you know, first, before I do that, I want to say that you know, life and I’ve used this example before Linda, life is like a roller coaster, it is up and down, you know, you’ll hit a high, you’ll plunge to a low, you’ll come back up to a high. And if you’re not expecting that it can make life really difficult. And guys, what I want you to hear is, life is not going to be perfect all the time, right? Not always going to be happy. It’s not always going to be that upside that we’re hoping for. There is downside. And if we get a mindset that life is a roller coaster, it’s going up and down. In and we know that it seems like it’s a lot easier to navigate.

6:38
And he said we’d have trials. It was very clear on that.

6:41
Absolutely. But you asked for an example, it makes me think back when you know, after college, we got married a few years after we get college. And we had a trial that happened. And we had gotten we were in the furniture business. And I was working with my dad. He was my business partner. He’s my mentor. My dad was my best friend. And we were in a high end furniture store with designer furniture in the economy just was going down and tanking. And no one was buying this real expensive furniture. And so we worked all the time. Oh, yeah. We were working, you know, six days a week. And then guess what, guys? We decided, oh, we need to be open seven days a week. That’s how we’ll make it. So we began to open on Sunday. And we were open on Sunday mornings are not Sunday morning, but Sunday right after lunch. But what that did, it created an excuse of why I can’t go to church. It was because well, I’ve got to go work at the store. Right? You know, and that’s what I’ve got to do to make this thing work. So, you know, I, we weren’t going to church. And it’s really easy to convince yourself if you’re not going to church, because work is getting in the way. And so the live chat challenging trial is that we turn to God and ask for wisdom and direction. And God. God heard me ask for that excavation of my life. And I’m like two weeks later, no, God, I changed my mind. I shouldn’t use the word excavate. I mean, to use the word, landscape, something a little easier. And, you know, once you to accessorize my life stopped digging up the yucky things that are in my life that I needed to get rid of, so that I could concentrate more fully on him.

8:26
Absolutely. And yeah, at that time, we were young, that we felt like God was closing those doors. And it really was no matter how hard we tried, we all were trying, we just couldn’t pull the business out of this downward spiral. And I remember talking about closing the store, and your dad had put up collateral for the business to start. Well then that brought on all these feelings of guilt from the rest of us. And the gallery rep of the furniture line was putting on pressure that the sales needed to increase and we needed to pay more in advertising. But we knew that we were in a recession. And it was so clear we were in a recession. So it just felt like God was allowing that door to be closed. And that is a really hard trial to walk through. For those of y’all who have gone through that it is not easy. And it was a really tough time in our life. We were just really turned with lots of prayers, asking God for wisdom, asking God to take away our sins so that we could do more for him. And, you know, we all went through this process together.

9:29
You know, it’s not very fun when you go through it, Linda, but it’s rewarding. After several years looking back on it. It’s actually a lot of our writings and teaching have come from some of the hardest moments in our lives. You know, James 1234, my brethren, count it all but joy, that’s a hard word to do. counted all but joy that you fall into various trials, knowing that testing of your faith produces patience, right, but let patients habbits perfect work, and that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. So, you know, we’re not supposed to react in a fit of rage and anger and walk through trials to help us develop patience and reliance on God’s will for our lives. You know, lately, let me kind of give you an old school illustration of this, I think about this is preparing a lot to build a house on. And if any of you guys see a big neighborhood getting ready to be put in, what happens is you’ll see the bulldozers come out, and they just wipe out everything. There’s all these trees and vines and ditches and humps and bumps. And what do they want to do, they want to get rid of it, so that they can go in and build a proper foundation. So the ground, you know, gets the water to run off properly pull those big boulders out, yeah, they have to get, you know, boulders and rocks and just all kinds of junk, they have to get out of the way, so that they can build a great house with a good foundation that will stand the test of time. And so as we’re building our relationship with God, somehow we kind of want to do it on our terms of, Well, God, I like all these things that I have in my life, I want to have a relationship with you. But I really don’t want to get rid of these things that I’m doing same thinking, that could be a stumbling block in having that close relationship where I’m reliant on you. And it could be getting rid of things that eat up your time, because you need to have more time with God. It could be thing, getting things that eat up your resources. It could be sinful things that you’re indulging in.

11:38
You’re just ignoring it, but just sure do see the other people sitting right. It’s obvious, like oh, look at that person. They’re angry. Oh, there’s road rage, whatever it might be. It’s very obvious when you witness things. But it’s hard to know what you’re doing. That’s right.

11:52
And you want to pull those things up. Right. And so that’s what we had to do. We have to clear it out. We have to come bulldoze those things out. So we have the proper foundation to build for a strong relationship with God.

12:04
Right? Well, if you think about it, in Jesus’s greatest moment, that was his most difficult moment. And here’s the situation. There’s a lot of people right now that and they’re out there, and they’re really discouraged right now. And can you imagine how discouraged the disciples were, when they saw Jesus hanging on that cross that had just been devastated to be awful to be there, that he was going to bring in a whole new kingdom, and they were just not processing what was going to happen. But the truth is, they’re actually seeing the answers to some of their prayers. And they’ve asked God to go into their life and create capacity to give them soil, that they can actually grow things that glorify God. And they kind of expected him to maybe leave some of the weeds for a while. So it kind of looked like maybe something was implies. But when God comes along, he usually kind of strips all of it down, and brings it down to a barren place. And he goes after the pestilence, and he goes after the things that are going to kill your future. So there’s a lot of people right now that are in such a trial. And in first Peter Oh, 416 through seven it says, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if you need the that you will then grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So I know you feel the same way. And while you’re in that trial, and you’re killing all those weeds, you can’t see the good yet. So up front, we don’t see anything right.

13:51
You know, they’re not seeing anything. It looks like everybody else is prospering. Isn’t that how it feels right? When you’re going through your trials, you feel like everybody else is living the great life except for you. Right? Everyone else is fruitful. Everybody else is growing right now. And they’re like, I’m just a pile of dirt. Maybe, maybe I’m smoothed out dirt, but I’m still just a pile of dirt. And you know, I’ve got to go through some progress. I’ve got to get some rocks cleared up. But if I’m not seeing any fruit, and there’s a lot of people that are really discouraged about that, will their seasons in life, kind of like that roller coaster I was talking to you about earlier, and their seasons to plant and seasons to reap. So before you plant, I should say you have to excavate. And like we said, We’ve got to get rid of the rocks, the stumps. And so that’s an easy metaphor, but we have to look what are those rocks and stumps in our lives? Right, you know, is it is it greed? Is it sinfulness is it just, you know, I like to watch TV too much. You know, sometime I’ve just got to stop doing that in Spend more time with an on my relationship with God. You know, I remembered when I turned 50, I prayed a prayer that while I said, God, I feel like I’m at halftime, you know, 50 years old now. And, and when you go in the locker room in most games, you know, they’re one and the second half. And that’s more important than the first. And I said, God, it means in the next several years are the important, most important part years of my life. And so I said, if there’s anything in my life, I said, I need to root it out, cut it out, shake it out, burn it out. And I pray that prayer each night, but it’s a challenge to grow. And it’s a challenge to self X excavate things. And it’s hard to do that process. And in this past year, I’ve had several health issues. I ended up in the hospital. Yeah. And COVID affected our senior homecare business and our church, he was going through some trials, and as well, so yeah, the last couple of years, it’s been walking through some trials, right. And I remember, it’s almost like the Holy Spirit brought up to me to remember what you asked me to do to enlarge your territory, let God remove whatever sin I needed to be removed, to do more for God. I was like, Yeah, but, you know, I didn’t think I was gonna go through all that. And it was very scary in difficult during this past year. And now I’m reaping from those trials that I went through from those prayers that I prayed. So it’s not fun when you’re going through it at the least. Even the anger that I had, for some people, I had to forgive them. And the really tough one is to start praying for them. And the really tough one is to start asking for God’s blessings, to come on those people that I was angry with, in hurt with, absolutely, with all the hurt and destruction they brought. And you know, that was a tough one for me to do to pray for God’s blessings on them, and for them to have a great and fruitful life. But you know, what I know, it’s what God wanted me to do. In now, almost a year later, after all this started, I feel much better. And this pruning was just what we need for me and in the other people around me,

17:19
right? It’s so hard to walk through these trials. And, you know, we have a lot of people right now. And they’re in a position where they want results. But they really don’t want that process. That process is hard, right? And the truth is, you just can’t avoid the process. And we’re in a time when people need to go back to church, and they need to go back to their foundations, they need to go back to their roots, they need to go back to what is spiritual, and you really need to read your Bible daily. And if you’re not doing that, that’s something that can really benefit you. Yes, it is. And there are some tough questions that the world needs to face and you know, things like, Okay, someone says, What do I do my 17 year old daughter’s having sex with her boyfriend, you know, and what do you think I should do? Should I get her on birth control? Should I get her tested? What should I do? And then there’s other questions like a wife is lusting after another guy? And how about a friend who loves to gossip, and every time you’re around them, all they want to do is talk trash about other people. And what’s so interesting, all these stories are in the Bible. And just go back to what is the Bible say about this, and you don’t facilitate fornication, you flee fornication, and you refrain from gossip. And it’s so clear in the Bible, of what we’re supposed to do with our lives. And sometimes, our friends really don’t want to

18:46
listen to the Bible makes things more difficult.

18:49
Exactly. They’re not ready for that pruning. And they may come to you, and they want you to be spiritual. They might say, Pray for me, but they’re just going to twist the words of the Bible to suit the struggles that they’re ignoring. And with these difficult life questions, you need to be kind, do not be judgmental. But when they ask you reply, scripturally, right, and really our culture right now they want us to wish people well, rather than have a deep foundation based on God’s will. And if you look at the word of God, all the scriptures are inspired by God.

19:26
That’s right. That’s correct. You know, Linda, you said something I thought was really important. You said don’t be judgmental. That’s a problem that we can we really have to face. If somebody is going through a problem and they’re having problems with their kids or their spouse or, or whatever it might be, and something’s happening wrong with them or their lives. You can’t be judgmental, you’ve got to love on those people. And we don’t want to have that, you know, church lady, or church man, you know, type attitude. We’re we’re better than you are. We have you know, we handle our thing so much better. That’s just we all sin, absolutely single one of us. And we’ve

20:05
done a Bible to that we all said, Yes, it is. And we don’t

20:09
want to, we don’t want to judge people, we just need to love on them, help them. And, you know, help them work through this. So Okay, back to where we were you were talking about All Scripture is inspired by God. In fact, Second Timothy 316, through 17. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped in every good work. That’s right. So the Bible is useful to us, teaching us what’s true, teaching us what’s right. It’s teaching us what’s correct. And that’s what we do to help others. We help bring them along. We don’t judge them, we help them. And I just really believe Linda as the as I’m getting older, how important it is to be grounded in the Word of God. If you look at Hebrews two, one, it says, we must pay very close attention to the things we heard, lest we drift away, absolutely drifting, never happens knowingly, right? It happens unknowingly, right? We don’t realize it’s going on. You know, I remember as a kid fishing, we’d be on a boat. And I was so excited about the fish, or what’s going on at one time, I remember the boat. 30 minutes later, I looked up, and I didn’t even recognize where we were, because we had drifted during that entire time. Right. And I had no knowledge in didn’t even see it. And that happens in our lives will drift away from from God, and His plan for us, and we don’t even see it. So that’s why we have to have something that we look at that it’s a fixed foundation for us on God so we can help ourselves to stay on course,

21:54
right. And it’s be so easy with the bombardment of information that the world is spewing at us constantly. And I think I heard something like in the 70s, you got 250 bits of information thrown at you per day. And now it’s like 6000 bits of information thrown at you a day. So what the what the world is throwing at us, we’ve got to go to that place where we have the word of God speaking into our hearts, or otherwise our hearts can become corrupted.

22:23
I think it’s a great point. We’re just being bombarded by the world in negative things all the time. We have no clue. We have no knowledge of it. So it’s very important that we make conscious decisions of surrounding our things that keep our minds on God, if you’re driving down the road in your car, have it on a Christian radio station. Oh, absolutely.

22:41
I love that that really uplifts me and Christian music. I love that too.

22:45
It makes a difference tournament Christian podcast. Absolutely. If it’s ours, hey, the Christian point, there you go or somebody else’s. Just keep yourself immersed. Talk to your friends that are Christians, during your day, anything to keep that focus. And you know, I think there’s so much pressure right now for Christian leaders, just to wish people well and say, I’m not going to preach the hard truth, I’m not going to do something might dig up some things that you don’t want me to dig up. So I don’t want to annoy someone. And you know, earlier this week, I had a conversation with our friends about Christ culture. And they said to me that Jesus always made it easy to come to him, but hard to stay. And Jesus said, Come, everybody come. But then he said, living by the scriptures, it’s going to bring a sower, between you and your children, and you and your parents. And like you went through all of these dynamics, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood and continually ask for repentance. And in we’ve made that easy. Well, it’s if we’re not careful, as leaders, when to this is what I keep hearing in my spirit. They’ve healed the wounds of my people, superficially, you know, right. And how they did that is to heal them superficially by saying peace, peace, everything’s great. And God loves you don’t worry about a thing, when in reality, God does love you. But there’s some very dangerous points right now in our lives, that we need to be corrected or altered on where we’re going to end up at a decimal destination that we don’t want to find ourselves in,

24:24
right? I mean, Christ said, You need to put on your cross every day and bear this. He didn’t say, you’re going to have this plush life, or everything’s going to go your way. That’s not what he said at all. We did a bear our cross for Him each and every day. And it is a daily mission that we all have to when we wake up. How are we going to be more Christ like and I love that you said that because I feel like the same scripture in my heart and it’s also about building lives with untempered mortar and in a steel 30 Tene 10 through 15, the prophet Ezekiel use those words symbolically to describe the flimsy spiritual work of the false prophets of Israel. And Ezekiel declares that the false prophets are like foxes in the desert who obtain their prey with great subtlety and prevent repentance by flattering promises, and false predictions much like the false prophets of today. And yeah, building lies with untempered mortar, that when the pressures of life come down on people, everything they’ve invested in everything they’ve had given their strength to their energy to their time, their attention to, well, it’s all going to come crashing down. And most Christians, right now they’re willing to settle with being well wished, right? Instead of doing what they need to do.

25:50
Yeah, if you look at what Jesus said, this goes right along with what you’re saying, Linda, he said that the man hears my words, and we have to dig deep, and lay the foundation, foundation laying, it’s not very attractive. I remember watching high rise, high rise crews in Dallas, they were excavating down there digging this huge deep hole in the ground to lay a proper foundation that knew that for maybe nine months, and you’d see nothing other than this deep hole, then all of a sudden, in two months, this massive high rise would be shooting up. And we’re like, well, they spent nine months on the foundation two months and getting the structure up in the air. And that’s because the foundation is what holds the building up. And when you look at those storms, it’ll hit you during your life. And they will that roller coaster again, God says, Where Where will your building be? How strong will it be? What can you endure, if a strong hits or little a strong storm hits our little shack that’s built on the rock or on a good foundation that checks stands in if the same storm hits a big, gorgeous, beautiful house and it falls? So the thing is, it’s not what we look like in the good times. It’s what we look like in the bad times. How do we look? And how do we stand with God after the bad times? That’s what really matters,

27:15
right? And how do we grow with it? And do you think it’s fair to say that a lot of Christians are settling with being well wished rather than getting what they actually need to become deep wells. And that’s why I’m so thankful for this message, because I really believe it’s going to cause some people’s roots to go down deep and need to be and need to be the wells of living water to serve other people. And right now we have a whole generation that really needs us to be that. Hey, guys, we really thank you for listening to the show today. And Zach, I’m gonna thank everybody for joining us. We are so grateful for all of y’all. And we hope this message spoke to your heart. We’d love to hear from you. You can write a review, subscribe or share this podcast through Apple podcast, Google podcasts. Or you can go to the Christian point.com. And thank you so much for listening to the Christian point with Zack and Linda, and let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And you could subscribe, you can share these episodes.

28:12
That’s right guys, go out and share these with a friend. Send them over to a friend help us get the word about this podcast to others,

28:20
right. We would love that that helps us grow. You can check out our website, the Christian point.com You can make a donation that helps spread the message as well. And we encourage you to leave your testimony and give us a review and we would love to pray over you. So let us know your prayer requests and God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember until next time, Christ is the point.

28:42
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram Facebook, or visit us on the web at Deep Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcript

 

0:00
Hi, welcome to the Christian point was Zack and Linda, and today we’re going to be talking about what do you need to let go? So we’re gonna be talking about letting go of your worries, fears, anxieties, past hurts, struggles. Forgiveness, says that something to think about. What if someone asked you? What do you need to let go? So today I’m with my husband, Zack McConnell. Hi, everybody. Hello, and we’re here in Texas. And my day lilies are in full yellow blooms, and I have white, cotton flying in the air, and those annoying cottonwoods are all over our property. And I clearly need to get over my angst toward these cottonwoods. So stay with us, as we have this discussion on letting go on the Christian point. Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we are all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linden McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zach and Linda, welcome to the Christian point. Thank you for listening today. We look at God’s word, and we take today’s hot topics. And we’re going to be talking about a topic of forgiveness and renewal and letting go. And that’s really hard for some people. And they’re either like they could be stuck in trauma. Maybe they’re just stuck, and they’re not moving forward. Maybe they don’t even know why they’re stuck. And maybe they haven’t really even forgiven themselves for something they’ve done in the past. And God has so much more in store for your life if you just trust Him and let go. That’s right, Linda, we we can be like small children. We want to do it ourselves, right? So we’ve got to get the Let It Go mindset. And that can be a great opportunity to share ways to just let go of issues, right, that those issues are beyond our control anyway. And it can help you forgive yourself and others for past mistakes. Right. It can also equip us to move forward in faith into God’s promised plan. So we can all benefit of just letting go of the past. Right? Absolutely. In Philippians 313 through 14, Theo writes, brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind in reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Jesus Christ. So the Bible tells us just forgive the past and look forward to the future. Absolutely. But it’s impossible to move forward. If we’re still holding on to in worrying over yesterday’s mistakes. We all need to think of this pack passage to be reminded that your goal ahead is ahead of we shouldn’t waste valuable time staring back with regret it moments that have already passed us learn from merge stakes and move on. Absolutely, yeah, there’s times when I would sit there. And I’ll think about that. And that fall would get stuck in my head and you probably to Zach, right. And you’re like, Yeah, half aggravate. And you’re like I just have to let go of that. It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. The past is the past, we have to move on. So get those angry things and you just want to squeeze them and hold on to them and make them tight. Maybe you wish you hadn’t said some words or something. You know, like, oh, wow, that wasn’t very smart. That was a very godly have made those words. I wish I hadn’t said Yeah, exactly. So absolutely. We have to let go of bitterness, we have to let go of unforgiveness and Ephesians 431 And 32 says, all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice And be kind to one another, tender hearted forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. And there is a wise quote that states bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Wow. bitterness and resentment in the heart of the believer can fester. And it can leave that person spiritually sick and depressed. You know, it’s kind of we hold on to bitterness and we think well, it’s okay. I’m just mad at that person. You know, but we think we’re good Christians because we’re saying no, I’m not murdering anyone. I’m not stealing from anyone. But we overlook bitterness or anger or holding a grudge of just our humanity. Right. God’s clearly saying you’re not supposed to do that. Try

5:00
You’re supposed to let it go. And forgiving is sometimes so hard it especially depending on how traumatic this was that this person did to you. But it is what is commanded by God for us to do. So the good news is you can ask God for help to forgive others and to forgive yourself. And that will help you move forward in your life. I try, you know, pretty much I’ve always been an entrepreneur, so I have to let go of worry a lot. Yeah. You know, in Matthew 633 34, it says, But seek first the kingdom of God in His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore, don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Absolutely. Each day has enough trouble of its own. And I’m bad about that. I will worry, you know, what’s going to happen? How are we going to manage this? What are we going to do in this situation? And it’s kind of part of the road for an entrepreneur. But clearly God’s saying here and Matthew, don’t do that. Right. You know, we can argue that this is just human nature to worry. But God clearly tells us not to do it. He wants his children to live in faithful obedience, knowing that He will take care of us, we can do what we can to avoid trouble, but when it comes, and it will dry welcome, we should take our concerns to God and leave them in his very capable hands. Exactly. Well, I’ve seen it a church event in the past, uh, let it burn event. And this was done around a bonfire. And gosh, we can do a bonfire here at our house, we have plenty of old wood that needs to be burnt. And you can make it a family thing around a fireplace or a burn barrel. And you write down a list of things that you have been holding on to and stressing over on a piece of paper, and you pray over them. And then you throw your list into the fire as a symbol of letting it go and giving these issues to God. He knows how to handle it. And I’ve also seen the dissolving paper trick where you write down a list of everything you need to let go of and pray over it and then drop it in the water and the entire piece of paper dissolves in the bowl. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not. But it’s really cool, it would be cool. So we need to look to the Lord’s Prayer which sets the agenda for our prayers. And it puts First things first. And first of all, it’s the father’s name, the kingdom and His will will take priority. And God’s name is holy. And when we His Word is taught and truth without distortion, and we live lives and conformity to His truth. And his kingdom comes without our effort. Or yeah, we’re surprised without our effort, his kingdom comes and aids as He gives us His Holy Spirit, so that we can trust His promise promises in this life and inherit the life to come and His will is done. And he breaks the grip of the devil and of the world and of our flesh. And we pray these three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray dangerously, we pray against the old Adam and each of us who puts himself in the position of the Pharisee. And the price not to God but to himself. Were in contrast the tax collector prize rightly and he recognizes himself as a sinner and he crawls out to God for only one thing and that is mercy. And when sinners pray like that, God’s name is honored, and his kingdom comes and his willbe will be done. Amen. And then the pur ends and Amen. And did you know that means truth? Its truth to all that has been prayed. And we can only pray thee Amen when our prayers are in line with God’s commands and promises. And when we pray Jesus words, we can be sure our Father in Heaven hears us, just as Jesus himself entered his Amen and his truth to the request of the dying thief who pray Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom, when you come into paradise that’s in Luke 2342. So he gives us truth and certainty to our prayers. You know, that’s great. The only way we can get better at this is praying over our list, blessing our enemies as God says to do, there’s no way around it. As Christians. We’re called to love our enemies. The one way to show that love is by praying for those that persecute you, right? You know, in Matthew five, you’ve heard it said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. You know, we’re retold repeatedly in the Bible of letting go of our issues and trusting God in faith. And in Proverbs 16 seven it says, when a man’s ways pleases

10:00
The Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Were called to be peacemakers, right? And I know that’s, that’s really hard. But when you pray blessings over your enemies, it helps me to release the anger and that hurt and it heals your own heart, and moves things forward in peace. And it’s not always easy to let go. Even when we want to stop agonizing over the issue.

10:25
We need to relinquish that control to the God in we’re reluctant to do that, and we shouldn’t be. So you have to keep your concerns to God. It can be the first step in finally moving beyond past mistakes, unforgiveness, and crushing anxiety that will propel you into the peace of knowing that God can and will take care of you. Absolutely. I think of past hurts by people. And maybe you thought they were a friend, and they went off the rails and they really hurt you. They could have hurt you physically or emotionally, it doesn’t matter. But that’s a lot of trauma to recover from. And that can take time. And I think a proverbs 2417. And it says, Do not rejoice when your enemy falls. And let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. And then in first Peter three, verse nine, it says, Do not repay evil for evil, or insult for insult. But on the contrary, were pret repay evil with a blessing that you may obtain also a blessing. Hey, I want as many godly blessings as I can get me to sign me up for that. Exactly. So when we forgive and let go, the Bible says we will be blessed. Oh, that’s amazing. So it’s good for us to recover and get better to carry out His will. Yeah, Linda, you know, my, my favorite go to verse For letting go makes me think of Romans 12. And it says, Bless it. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Do not repay any one evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. And if it’s possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath for it is written. It’s mine to avenge. I will repay says the Lord. And, you know, how are we going to do this? How are we going to make that happen? So I look to First Timothy, a second chapter. And it says I urge then first of all the petitions and prayers, and the intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and for all of those in the authority that we may leave peaceful and quiet lives in all goodness and holiness. And here, here’s a current real life example. It’s natural for us to pray for those in Ukraine. Right, right, or any place dealing with a natural diskette disaster or mass shooting in the aftermath of all that. But if we’re to truly love our enemies, that means loving our boss, loving our co workers, loving those who take advantage of you. And yes, even religious extremist, like the Taliban, we had to pray for them or the attacks that Russia is making on Ukraine. And here’s a harder one, even Putin that he turns from his evil ways we need to. Absolutely, that’s harder to do. Right. Right. We do it every night. Just whatever can change to change his heart and his soul, his mind, the Holy Spirit can intervene. Absolutely. Whenever we’ve wronged or observed injustice, whether we’re being slandered against or watching in horror, the attacks on Ukraine, we need to refrain from giving ourselves over to hatred and contempt. And that’s hard, but that’s what we’re called to do. And so I have to meditate on these Bible verses and spend my morning reading my Bible and praying since the Bible commands us to pray for our enemies. And Jesus was persecuted repeatedly, while he walked on this earth. I mean, when you just think about it, it just kept on happening. And in his final moments on the cross and Luke 23, verse 34, Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Wow, what an amazing Lord, we serve. It really is amazing. You know, it also makes me think in job 30 a 31. It says, If I’ve rejoiced in the ruin of him who hated me, or is exalted even when evilness overtook him,

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I’ve not let my mouth sin, asking for his life with a curse. You know, he’s saying even those people that that are trying to tear you down, you need to not tear them down. You need to build them up in prayer. And in Proverbs 24 Do not rejoice when

15:00
Your enemy fails, and let your heart be glad. And when he stumbles,

15:06
so, you know, again, it’s, we need to, we need to build those people up, even though there’s someone that’s trying to tear us down. And that makes me think about that we’re to love our neighbors as ourselves, and make peace with all men. We have to stop being critical and complaining when our agenda is not met. Then stop and pause and try to put yourself in their shoes. And think through why is this person acting badly, and be quick to listen and slow to act? That’s hard. But that’s God’s best strategy for our lives. Sometimes you hear a conversation or a social media post about politics or growing violence, moral decay, corrupt greed, world crisis, a dark future, but after listening to all this, the star still shine. Moral blackness may cover the earth, but it cannot snuff out the stars. And Christ is like that people may lie, cheat, robbing kill. They may ban the Bible and despise the church but Christ still shines. His message and power continue unchanged forever. spiritual darkness may cover human life, but Christ’s perfection and atoning death and resurrection continue to illuminate our darkness. Christ comes to light in our secret corners, in brighten our darkest moments. He forgives our blackest sins and gives eternal life. He promises to live with us forever. We do not despair. Christ, the light of the world cannot be snuffed out. So I read in John 1246. I have come into this world as like that. So whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. Oh, absolutely. I love that. Moral blackness cannot snuff out the stars. Wow, that’s just so vivid in my mind. And I pray that our Almighty God will fill us with His light of salvation. And help us to forgive all and strengthen and encourage us that Christ may enlighten our world through us a man a man. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the show today. So Zack, I’m going to thank everybody for joining us and I hope this message spoke to your heart. And we’d love to hear from you. Write a review, subscribe or share this podcast through Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or go to the Christian point.com. And thanks so much for listening to the Christian point with Zach and Linda, and let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And be sure to subscribe and share these episodes. And we’d love for you to check out our website, the Christian point.com You can make a donation you can help spread the message. And we encourage you to leave your testimony and give us a review. And we would love to pray over you. God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember until next time, Christ is the point. Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcript

0:00
Hi, welcome to the Christian point with Zack and Linda McConnell. And today what we’re gonna be talking about is, is the church made up of perfect people? And so we’re gonna be talking about the church. And is the church just full of perfect people? Over my life? I’ve been a member of a few different churches, and I’ve had a lot of people say at different times, well, your church is full of hypocrites. And I’m normally like, Yeah, I mean, there’s been a time when I’ve been a hypocrite in my life right? Now, that’s certainly not the goal. The goal is to not be a hypocrite. But let’s just talk about the church. And is the church made of perfect people? Or is it made up of hypocrites? And let’s just start talking about what is the church? So is that something to think about? What if someone asked you what is the church? And today I’m here with my husband, Zack McConnell.

0:53
Hi, everyone. Yeah,

0:55

We’re here in Texas. And I have new rose bushes that have started blooming and they are gorgeous. I have these double pink rose bushes, and they are really showing off right now. So stay with us. And we’ll have this discussion on perfect people in the church. On the Christian point.

1:11
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts, Zack and Linda McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Linda,

1:46
welcome to the Christian point. Thank you so much for listening today. And we look at God’s word, and we take today’s hot topics, and we’re going to be talking about a topic of perfection in the church and hypocrisy.

1:59
Yelena, the word Greek word Ecclesia means people who have been called out from a life of worldliness in into a real life of a relationship with God. Additionally, it’s used in the New Testament. And it really means an assembly, a group of people that are called out like in Acts 19, the word is used as an assembly, it’s a group of people that are assembled together, people are called out of a sinful world, in their transformed into God’s kingdom on earth. In Colossians, 113, it says, For he has rescued us from the domination of darkness, and brought us into the Kingdom of the Sun he loves. So it is a group of people call it out. But those people are called out from the world because they are Christians. And then they’re added to the church, and those that were added were saved. So, you know, we need to realize that church is not a building, it’s not a place you go to just on Sunday mornings at a prescribed time at a certain hour. The churches people in we need to always realize that we the people are the church, and you go from being a loss person to be an added to the church. And when that happens, you automatically become perfect. Right? You have no. Right? You know, exactly, of course, not.

3:24
Exactly. Now, just like that, you’re perfect, right? And then everyone’s just striving every day to do the very best that they can, is the reality of it. And when you look at the book first, it reminds us when you’re Christians, you’re gonna mess up, you know, but you strive to be as seamless as possible and do the right thing as best as possible. But there’s just times when you’re gonna mess up.

3:49
Yeah, I think the real problem comes in when people feel they’re perfect. And when they feel like they look down on others, right, or they begin to judge people, right? And no one wants to go to a place in associate where they feel like they’re being judged all the time. And we have to get out of the judging business. That’s not our place. That’s God’s place. And you know, you when you become a Christian, you do not automatically come up out of the water. And for the rest of your life, you’re perfect. That hadn’t happened. It we still have temptation, you know, and and so, when you come up out of that water, you’re gonna be fighting temptation each day. You’re not a perfect person, but you’re made perfect in Christ, but we have to always work at it. We have to strive against those negative and evil things. I mean, we’ve talked about this even earlier episode about people aren’t perfect, right? You know, every person that is a Christian, you think about it. What Peter? Peter, what he did was he denied Jesus. Exactly. And he said Lord, no, not you. In Matthew 16, and Jesus toe, Peter, Get behind Me, Satan. That’s right. So through all the New Testament, there’s times and even in the Old Testament where you’ll see examples of people who weren’t God’s children, yet they still struggle with a lot of different stuff.

5:19
Yes, absolutely. And I heard it from someone say, literally, the Bible is like this collection of different people from different lifestyles and different backgrounds, who’ve all messed up, and they all needed God. Like throughout the whole thing. It’s not like there’s stories in the Bible that are of these perfect people. The good stories are the people who aren’t perfect. Like some people had a speech problem. And some people were nervous, some people were afraid. They messed up in their sins. Some of them had sexual sins that were ongoing. And there’s all kinds of different sins, but yet God was so patient with them.

5:58
Yeah, like in First Corinthians, the in enrollments just about all the epistles, right? They’re addressing problems or issues or some something, some kind of shortcoming. Right, you know, especially in First Corinthians. Well, there was a lot of problems that were addressed in that book. Those are members of God’s church. But they’re imperfect people. You mentioned Peter, and later on his life, he still made mistakes. And Paul had to confront him face to face because he was taking part in something that call Well, that’s something like racism. You know, in Galatians, chapter two, you have Peter who is eating with the Gentiles. And then some of the guys come in, and some of the other Jewish people in Jewish Christian show up, and they try to show up the GDSs. And Peter withdraws himself. He’s like, Whoa, no, no, no, no. I mean, Paul says, In what Paul said to his face, can you imagine that being Peter and can you imagine others like Barnabas, who was there? And you have Peter doing this? And Paul, standing up to Peter, being there with two apostles are in it’s a confrontation confrontation. And it’s things about it, too, that you see how Peter, like Paul rebukes him. And Peter took it. From what we understand he didn’t fight, he just basically recognized what was going on. It was like, Wow, I’m being a hypocrite. In Galatians, two, Peter was being a hypocrite. He was playing the role, right? And that’s what Greeks used the word hypocrite for, and they used it for actors.

7:36
And that’s exactly right. They put on a face. So basically, that’s the word they used for stage actors who were wearing a mask. And yeah, that’s really what it was. And that’s what great culture use this word for. So with Peter Paul rebukes him, what he’s basically saying is, look, you’re acting like you’re a Christian, but you’re actually underneath the mask something else. You’re playing an actor, because you’re not really acting like what you’re saying, you’re a Christian, but you’re not really acting like it. So Paul rebukes him. And what does Peter do? Well, he repents, right? Yeah. And later, you’ve got him calling Paul, his beloved brother, you know, he didn’t say, Well, Paul, You embarrassed me. And I’m now angry. So that’s the takeaway from this is, even though sometimes our most trusted leaders will do things that they need to change, and the way we handle them, and the way we handle ourselves and treat each other needs to be based upon what this person does, once they see what they’ve done wrong. And once they recognize that, and how do we react to that? Do they actually change? Or do they continue doing the same thing? So it’s not that you’re going to be looking at an institution full of perfect people? You said, Well, what happens when you first become a Christian? Well, one of the things that first happened to me when I first became a Christian, I wasn’t instantly perfect. And I’m still not perfect. But I became a lot more aware of my imperfections. And I suppose that was the biggest change. And then I knew what I was doing wrong. I knew that those thoughts I were having and how they were not appropriate. And like maybe I felt more anger about some things than I should have felt. So becoming a Christian is about recognizing those imperfections and then starting to work on them. And it’s not that you’re instantly different.

9:38
You know, I mean, that’s brilliant. You’re exactly right, Linda, and you think about it, humans who wrote the Bible, right, right. Do you think that they would have included all of these character flaws? I mean, let’s be honest. Okay. If I was writing a book about myself, maybe I’d include a lot of dumb things and dumb stuff that I’ve done, but it’s kind of embarrassing. Most you months when they write a book, they talk about the great things in their life. And kind of gloss over that. Yeah, you know, the things that we don’t want to always remember, or we want to remember better than they were. And when you look at the Bible, you mentioned the Old Testament, New Testament people made a lot of mistakes. There’s going to be people that maybe have their nose up in the air, and they might think that they’re better. But at the end of the day, no one deserves Jesus, not at all right? I didn’t deserve Jesus, no more than you deserve him. And so I couldn’t, we messed up there in the church, and the one church that Jesus built, we still struggle. And it gives us hope that God is patient with us, that Jesus is there for us in we we read this, that the inspiration from the Holy Spirit, but the message of Jesus was written, and just hang on to that. I mean, you’ve heard this quote many times, and I remember saying it, if there was a perfect church, either they wouldn’t let me in, or I’d ruin it. Yeah. And I mean, it’s true. If we want a perfect church, I think would have some way to find a ruin it.

11:12
Well, absolutely. So in the New Testament Church, that’s what we’re talking about. It wasn’t perfect. So now, that doesn’t mean that we have this attitude of oh, well, we’re going to sin. So we might as well just not even try now. We’re supposed to always grow and perfect ourselves. So I said, the reason I’m a member of this church is not because of the other members, right? I’m not a member of the church, because I think I’m going to never be hurt, right? I might as well be at this church. And there might be some hypocrites in it. But I’m not going to leave the church because this guy over here is a hypocrite. And let’s just say I’m at church, and some guy does something really awful. I mean, to me, Well, I’m not going to leave the church because of that guy. I am there to worship Jesus, right. And it is the Church that Jesus shed his blood for in Acts 20, verse 28, and to care for the Church of God, which He purchased with His own blood. And yeah, church is more like a place we come together for that spiritual healing, right? Yeah, it is full of people who are trying to fight against their temptations and their shortcomings. And they’re trying to find ways to overcome them. And for the most part, everybody that comes there, in some sense, wants to be more like Jesus. And there are some people that come in, who are intentionally plotting and planning to try to take advantage of people, you know, there’s charltons and whatnot, and people that are trying to make gain off of others, because they see an opportunity through religion to create some kind of scheme or to con people. You know, that happens, that’s real. But for the most part, your average congregation every day, there’s just going to be people there that have flaws. And they know they have flaws. And we all know each other’s flaws. We get to know each other well, especially if you’re involved in small group and, and volunteer at the church, you find these things out. But that’s why we’re all there. We’re not there, because we’re perfect people. We’re there because we have the things that we know that we need help with. And you know, that’s the point you have to remember to keep that perspective. And the church is not supposed to be for perfect people. It’s for people to come seeking perfection, so they can try to learn how to be better in Christ.

13:36
You look throughout the New Testament, in the passage I have pulled up here is Mark chapter two, and a look at Mark in chapter two, verse 16, through 17. And listen to what Jesus says. Because when the scribes and the Pharisees saw him eating, with the tax collectors in the centers, they said to the disciples, how is it that he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners? They’re like, why is he hanging out with those people, right? To listen to Jesus’s response. And then we can apply this in the church, verse 17, When Jesus heard it, he said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I didn’t come here to call the righteous, no, no one is righteous, no, not one. All right now, Romans three and 23, we’ve all sinned, and fallen short, continually. It doesn’t say that we’ve seen in fallen short in the past. It says, we’ve all sinned and fallen short. So Jesus says, Look, I didn’t here come here to call the righteous, those self righteous people. I came to call sinners to repentance. John the Baptist whenever people came to him and basically said, they had no sin. John was like, Well, I’m not baptizing you because you don’t think you have any problems. And that’s the hardest thing. Life is getting us as Christians and non Christians to realize you need a savior.

15:06
Absolutely. I mean, we’re all one in Christ, we’re now buried with him. And you know, we’re not on different levels, like we’re all one together with Jesus as the head. And we’re going through the Book of Revelations. And whenever they pointed out all the good and the bad things about the seven churches, you know, it’s just really interesting, because everyone had some good stuff, and some bad stuff. And some lost their first love. And we talked about that could be even evangelizing. And they’ve loved God so much. But then they just stopped maybe sharing Jesus with people. And that reminds me in Ephesians, I talked about the idea of a body and how we all are to grow together in that to be the purpose of we become this functional working together in unity Bodhi, that becomes mature. And then it takes on that fullness, and in Ephesians, 413, the idea of growing up into him and all things. And then in Ephesians, 415, yeah, that goes right along into what we’re all little pieces as something that’s coming together and learning how to work together, and how to grow together. And to what point to represent Christ. Right. Well, to take on that image of him in our lives. And then to spread that to others. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s exactly right. It’s a family.

16:30
Well, that is a real family. And being in a church. It’s like that real spiritual family, maybe your friends or family leave you, but God’s there for you. And I love what you said. And like, at the end of the day, you know, if you did me wrong, I’m not there, worshiping God, because of all of y’all like me, I’m there because of Jesus, and how much he first loved me. So I’m able to go to love and love him back. And I’m there for him. So we’re going to run into those people that are bad or make mistakes. I just had a bad day. And maybe they need. And they talked about one of the reasons we go to church. And Hebrews 10 talks about it. What’s the purpose, purpose of us going to church? Okay, when we say church, it’s the people, I was thinking about Hebrews 1024, and 25. Specifically, let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up in meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing but encouraging one another. So we’re coming together, because we need to be encouraged and exhorted toward love and good works. It’s not an automatic thing that just happens, we have to digest the scriptures ourselves, we have to read them, or study them or hear them preach, to take them to heart. And we also need to have other people that are going to be there, nudging us along and constantly saying, Hey, we should go do this good work, or we should go serve. Right? This is somebody that you can do, to serve the community, and to the church.

18:19
Exactly. And we did attend on the Lord’s day, on Sunday morning, the first day of the week, when we’re commanded in First Corinthians 16, to come together. And there may be some mornings when I know in the past, I’ve been like, Man, I feel like I’m on cloud nine right now, I feel spiritually healthy. But then there’s others who are at that congregation. And they really need you to encourage them. And they need you there. Because like you have some people on cloud nine. But then there’s other times when you might be going through a really rough spot in your life. And sometimes you’ll hear sermons on that they’ll talk about singing and prayer and giving back and taking the Lord’s Supper and preaching. And maybe we don’t emphasize that enough. The fact that we need to fellowship is just as important. And we need to emphasize that and these verses, and the others like it speak to that fact. And that we have to have it if we’re going to be healthy as an individual, then as a body of believers, we must do that one for another, kind of like an immune system, you know, you have parts of the body that help to strengthen other parts of the body and protect and defend other parts of the body, that might be going through something that you’re not able to deal with all by yourself. But that’s what the whole church does. And it’s designed to do and it’s to function as a body. And so I may have something that I’m able to do and provide as a service towards you. And that’s going to help you to overcome that issue that you’re dealing with. But you wouldn’t have that if you didn’t have that fellow share price. So it’s really important for us to come together to stay spiritually healthy.

20:05
And you’re exactly right. I mean, there are times when you need to be encouraged by others. And I love that we’re not supposed to be an island. And I remember back in my teens, and I was about to be baptized, and I just remembered things like, I’m just doing this because I want to be in Jesus’s church, and God will add me to it and wash away my sins. I wasn’t perfect after that moment, just like you said, it’s an everyday challenge. I’m going to try to do better. And I’m going to let go of that sin and work at being better each and every day each and every moment.

20:43
Exactly. Well look at Galatians, six, one to two, right? If someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person, but do it gently. And whether that’s a temptation that they’re struggling with, or whether that’s just, they’re going through some kind of depression, because maybe they’ve lost a loved one. And they just need encouragement, and you need someone to help push you through. And that’s what we’re all here for. And that’s why we come together. And we’re part of that body. And anyway, the point, and six is to bear one another’s burdens, right? We’re here to help one another on that path. And who wouldn’t need that help? If we were all perfect people, then we would need that. So the fact is that we are imperfect people, and God has designed an institution for you. And yeah, that’s the church.

21:37
Yeah, you know, I also think it’s important to mention that this is Jesus’s church, in his church belongs to all people. So it’s important just to stick with him stick with what he designed, because there’s nothing better than that, what he made the church to be. And even though people will like to confuse stuff, God made things simple. You just look back, you see this beautiful thing that he prophesied, that’s coming, which is the church, it makes me comforted inside. And he did that, to know that I have a support team, and that we’re not perfect people. But we all need spiritual doctrine of some sort, right? Absolutely. Jesus talked about that. He said, he came here to seek after those who are sick, the healthy don’t need a doctor. But he can receive those who are sick in Matthew 920 13.

22:31
Right? Well, I think thanks when we talk about God’s will, and God’s desire. And I also think about the devil too, because the devil is so sly and sneaky, the way he works. And there’s a lot of people out there who’d say, Well, you don’t really need to have a church community, right. And there’s that idea of joining a church, but you know, you’re added to the church. And whenever you’re saved, you’re added to that church. So whatever your attitude, the church, you’re saved. You can’t have one without the other. And there’s a lot of people there that this idea in modern religion and Christianity that sometimes it’s, it’s like, oh, yeah, that’s Christianity, but it’s not biblical. And where they say, Well, I just want Jesus, I want to be saved, but I really don’t want to be a member of a church. Well, you can’t do that. They’re interconnected. And God says, when you’re saved, you are added to the church. Now think about this. The devil doesn’t want you to understand that because he wants you to think I can be saved, and I don’t need to go to an assembly with the Lord’s church. I don’t get to know other people. And yeah, look at Hebrews 1024 and 25. And it says, you’re supposed to encourage one another and exhort one another, right? Well, if I’m the devil, I don’t want you doing all that. I want you to skip the service. I don’t want the church staff to give you a call. Hey, man, are you doing okay? What’s going on? Well, I don’t want that. If I’m the devil, I want you to be on an island. I want you to say, You know what, I’m just going to stay home and I’m not going to worry about it. Do you think you can do that all by yourself? Yeah, well, what then what happens? Well, if you look at Hebrews chapter 10, these people in verse 25, are forsaking the assembly. And that means they were willfully abandoning Christianity. And there are people there were Jews, they had become Christians, and they were leaving Christianity because of persecution and other things. But they were leaving and look at what happens.

24:42
They go to verse 26, and 29. These people abandon Christianity. And this can be the same thing today for anybody. If you’re a Christian, and you abandon Christianity, abandoning Jesus, you can fall away, right? Listen to this passage verses 26 For if we the church of Christians, if we sin willfully, after we’ve received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for your sins. You had salvation from your sins. You abandon Christianity in sin willfully and don’t repent, you don’t have that anymore. Keep reading, go to verse 29. Of how much worse punishment? What’s worse than death? What’s worse than physical death? Spiritual death? And here’s how much worse the punishment of spiritual death do you suppose can be? Here’s what you do. When you leave Christian Christianity, here’s what you do. You trample the Son of God underfoot, and you stomp on Jesus. That’s what he’s saying, You’re trampling the Son of God underfoot, count the blood of the covenant, and whose blood is that? It’s Jesus’s blood by which we had been sanctified. And it also says, and insulted the Spirit of Christ. This guy is not a person who’s never been saved. He was saved in he had a sacrifice for sins. He’s been sanctified by the blood of the covenant, by Jesus’s blood, and he tramples all over it. That’s what leaving Christianity is. And if I’m the evil one, you’ll Satan, I want you to think, can’t do that. And you can never fall away. But the fact is, you can fall away.

26:28
Absolutely. And we’re talking about this idea of separating, and think that you can do it all by yourself. And that’s really a divide and conquer from the standpoint of the devil’s tactics. And it’s just really boils down to an attitude of pride. And it’s the opposite of what we really should be doing. We have to have humility. And we see that over and over in the parable where Jesus is speaking about the to man, and there was a Pharisee. And he was sitting there feeling he was superior and bragging about himself. And his prayers, were showing his superiority. And he comes to the temple and prays, while the other one is a tax collector, and that’s in Luke 1810 to 14. And what was so interesting, this was my daily devotion today, and I just thought that was great. That all landed the day we’re doing the podcast, God’s great. Well, there’s this tax collector, and he says, Have mercy on me. And I know that I’m a sinner, that God gives more grace. And you say, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble, and Submit yourselves therefore to God, and resist the devil, and he will flee from you

27:36
know, Luke 18. And that’s a good story. Those guys are both in the temple. They’re both children of God. One is a hypocrite, and he thinks he’s better. Lord, thank you for not making me like other men, right? We need to be careful that we don’t pray like that. Thank you for making me not like other men, in a way he’s judging. And you know, I’m not in the judging business. That’s why it’s domain. Yeah. And then you have the tax collector, who the Jewish people would look down upon he and he’s a traitor to Rome, and he’s like, Lord, have mercy on me because I’m a sinner. guy beats his breast, and he doesn’t even look up. He knows he’s not worthy. In which man is blessed by God, right? The humble one, right? That’s right. So don’t let a hypocritical person drive you away from God, because you’re not there for them. You’re there for Jesus. Jesus added you to His church. Ephesians says the church is the word of Christ. Ephesians five, the bride? Yeah, the bride of Christ. Can you imagine saying that you love Jesus, and you hate the church? You know how many times I’ve heard that people say they love Jesus, but hate the church. No, Jesus shed his blood. That’s how much he loves the church. He died for it. Right? You died for you and I? And sometimes, well, I really don’t like the church. Well, you might not like the people who treat you in specific actions that way. But you can’t not like the church because that is Jesus. Right? You can’t, you might not like how someone looks down on you or judge, you know, and again, we can’t let those people keep us from being a member of Jesus’s church,

29:19
right? Or pointing out the fact that hypocrisy does exist. And sometimes it exists. And intentionally because people are trying to work on themselves. They’re not perfect people. They’re trying to let the scriptures work on them. And we’re not saying that hypocrisy is a good thing itself. But we are saying sometimes you need to understand when you’re coming into a place to find healing. And there are some people that are trying to get better.

29:47
Yeah. So people say churches was a plan B It was an accident. And that’s nonsense. Listen to Ephesians 310 and 11 Ephesians chapter three, if you have your Bibles, verse 10. This is what God thinks about the church, to the intent of how the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the church, to the principalities and the powers, and in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose that He accomplished in Jesus Christ, our Lord’s Church is the tool by which the wisdom is going to be known. Absolutely. And I want you to listen closely, because this is important. We also must realize the church is not a building. It’s not an event that happens for an hour on Sunday morning. The church is much bigger than that. God says, to go teach and show my eternal purpose of what Jesus came to do to make the salvation of mankind possible. And when people come together to do that, that’s church.

30:51
Right? Absolutely. Well, we’re here we are in Ephesians, 415 16. Instead, speaking, the truth and love, we will grow to become at every respect the mature body of him, who is the head, that is Christ. For him, the whole body, the church joined and knit together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does. Its work.

31:17
That’s right, whether it’s the church itself as an institution, or whether it’s the individual members teaching, because God has given us orders to do so. God has chosen the church to be a way to give glory to himself, and to make known his wisdom and God Jesus to make known his wisdom, then we should support that. And we should want to be the members of it. Remember, if you go to a church, that’s a hypocritical people, than welcome to The Club. Absolutely. Because we should always be working, growing and improving. And remember, we are the church.

31:56
Right? Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the show today. So Zack, I’m going to thank everybody for joining us. We love you all. And we hope this message has spoke to you guys, and we’d love to hear from you. Please write a review, subscribe or share this podcast through Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or you can go to the Christian point.com.

32:14
And that’s the Christian point.com. Absolutely, thanks

32:19
so much to listening to the Christian point was asking Linda, and let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And be sure to subscribe and share these episodes. And we’d love for you to check out our website, the Christian point.com You can make a donation, you can help spread this message all throughout the world. And we encourage you to leave your testimony and give us a review.

32:40
And guys, those reviews and likes are very important. It helps us to reach a lot more people. So yeah, but unlike us, give us five stars. Most importantly, share this podcast with someone that you love or someone you want to help grow their life in Christ.

32:55
Absolutely. And let us know if we can pray for you. God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember, until next time, Christ is the point.

33:05
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcript

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Hi, welcome to the Christian point with Zack and Linda, and today’s hot topic is on managing fear and anxiety. And today I’m here with my husband Zack McConnell and we’re here in Texas. And have you ever been paralyzed by fear? Well, who hasn’t? We’re going to talk about that today. Plus, we’re going to talk about how the enemy uses fear and anxiety to keep us from reaching our destiny. And we’re also going to talk about faith over fear and how to walk in our faith in our daily walk with the Lord. And fear is really a liar. And we’re going to talk about that today. Okay, so something that gets me so fearful is walking on our country drive, and I run into a six-foot-long snake, and it just totally that just paralyzes me. Over the years, I have learned to stay calm, but it does get made. So stay with us as we’ve just had this discussion on managing fear here on the Christian point. Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linda McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins, and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools to provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember, Christ is the point. Now here are your hosts, Zach and Linda. Welcome to the Christian point. And thank you for listening today. We look at God’s word, and we take today’s hot topics, and we’re going to talk about a topic really, that a lot of people deal with. So today’s hot topic is on fear and anxiety, which is at an all-time high. Do you know what the number one fear is? And by the way, it’s not zombies? Well, and if it’s not zombies, then I’ll have to go with the research and the number say that fear number one is public speaking. Okay, so I’ve got a funny joke. And then I’m going to tell you that their top seven fears, so they say that more people are afraid of public speaking than they are if steaks like you were talking about, but that’s kind of hard to be true, right? Because you don’t see people walking around the jungle and say, Oh, my gosh, it’s a podium, you know, in Romina lately, you know, a snakes pretty scary when you find one on your path. But most people fear of public speaking, it’s a very scary thing. If I begin to understand that one, number two is also there. And this one relates to me a little bit. And that’s a fear of heights, right. And, you know, high ticket may not my wife, Linda, it doesn’t, but it does meet. And then we have number three, which is bugs, and then followed by drowning, flying death and loneliness. And those are the top seven fears in the US, right. And I remember going on zipline with friends, and one of our friends had a real fear of heights like USAC. And he really struggled to take that first step. When we got on the ropes course in the zipline. He just did not want to move forward. Yeah, that’s very true. I get it. But anyway, you know, in fears, there are good fears. And there are bad fears and anxiety. And I mean, fear can be a friend or it can be a foe. So how do we know the difference? And what do we do? I think the number one thing in weight to differentiate between the two is that feared debilitating? You know, is the fear tormenting you? Is the fear destructive, right? So, if it has any of those impacts on your life, you know, that’s not from God, right? God doesn’t sin, those kinds of emotions to us. And keep in mind, it’s the number one way the enemy holds us back. It’s through fear into anxiety. So absolutely these fears and anxiety, they’re not from God, they’re from the enemy. And so that’s how you can know when you’re facing that kind of fear in that situation. And you’ll know if it’s from God, not from God, it’s from the enemy. But a lot of times that fear, it really holds on to us, it holds us back from living our best lives. Because God He’s calling us to be strong, courageous, and we need to know that he will hold us by His righteousness hand, and take us through anything. So as Christians, I think the most important thing we have to tell ourselves is not to fear and be anxious. And God didn’t give us a spirit of fear. He gave us enough power and love and in a sound mind and you know, I love that fear. It’s a liar, because it can debilitate us. It’s because that’s what the enemy wants to do, to get us off crack and to steal our destiny away from us in our path along with God. He wants to keep us

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isolated, he wants to keep us stuck. And you know, that’s why depression leads so many to staying in bed not going out and engaging in life. It not engaging in what God has called you to do. Right? Right. So we’ve got to think about this in terms of what about faith? Where does that faith play in? How do you think that faith comes in with fear and your battles, and it’s kind of like, you know, our friend when he’s stepping out, stepping off that zipline platform. So we know the Lord is our rock, and the word is the rock. So when you’re standing there with your knees shaking, you know, it’s like, okay, you’re about to have to step off in trust in Him, you know, and whether that’s a new job, or getting married, or whatever is happening in your life, or Absolutely, or having a child, it’s any number of moments in our lives. And you know, for me, I have to resist, I don’t fight fear, right? I resist fear. However, I really don’t like it when the church kinda condemns us for falling over into fear as opposed to faith. Because I also think of Gideon and judges, and it’s just so interesting, and God had so much mercy and patience for his fear. And he says, I need another morning, I need you God, I need to see it another morning, because I’m still not sure it’s you. And I always go back to that. And Gideon, he was such a fearful warrior, because God saw him from the end back to his beginning. And so I like to that to be an encouragement to people. And if you have a personality of fear, you know, that’s when you have to start resisting, and you have to stand upon that rock. And I like the word resistant. I mean, resist, it takes a lot. It takes a lot to resist, and you’re constantly renewing your mind to when I was standing next to that approaching large snake. And my mind was racing. Well, what if this happens, it really was a big snake.

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So I’ve got to find the scripture to renew my mind. So that those what ifs don’t take power over the real truth. And well, they can’t be double minded, and God is a stronghold, when we can’t let our fear be the stronghold. Right? And it can’t be what we see with our eyes, but what we know in our spirit, and we know God’s track record, and he’s not going to let us go unless it’s for something we’re learning. It is that relationship with God that we really need on a daily basis, because there are times when he calls us into things that scare us. And you know, people don’t like public speaking. And I was I was one of those people at one point. But clearly, God has taken that away from me. And part of that was stepping out into faith, right? Yes, exactly. And God called me to do it. So I’m going to do it. And I can have strength and the courage to move forward. And I am not going to let the enemy put me in that place of restriction. Yeah, now with heights, you know, I still don’t like heights lit up. But in real life, I know that the Holy Spirit will be with me no matter what, as long as I’m listening to him. If I’m stepping out in faith and stepping out into his safety, I know he’s going to catch me. And it’s that kind of, it’s that kind of game like that game, you play with your kids where they are falling backwards, and you catch them. And they know that they’re, that you’re there for them in you’re going to catch them and you’re that safety net. And when we’re talking about rational fears, again, a friend or foe, God wouldn’t call you to do something that you’re not capable of doing. So you know, that’s not from God, right? Both friend and foe, motivate us to get out there. And step out. We just need to know the difference. Just like this podcast, we felt God was calling us to do this. But there was an element of fear, right? Can we do this right now? Just 10 weeks in, we’ve got 1000s of listeners in the United States and regular listeners in Sweden, New Zealand, even the Russian Federation, that’s wonderful. Praise the Lord. Exactly. God makes this happen. God was Overcoming our fears, because we put our faith in Him. God put this on our hearts. And we didn’t know if we could do it or not. But God knew exactly. We just need to listen to him and not our fears, doubts and anxiety, right? Well, we’re talking about fear and managing anxiety and fear, and then healthy fear. And I know fear can be a friend or fear can be a foe. And we talked a little bit about gaining that mindset back of overcoming fear. And so let’s talk a little bit about the healthy fear because you know, people have all kinds of fear all bottled up. And so how do you advise fearful people and make this into a healthy fear versus a paralyzing fear?

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You’re, well, you really have to know the difference of where the fear is coming from. And I want people to identify first, is it coming from the enemy? Is it a lie that the enemy is telling you? Where it’s debilitating? Is it tormenting you. And I’ve seen one of my children personally was diagnosed with panic disorder earlier on in life. And through working through some of the issues of the past, through counseling and therapy. And through recovery, I was able to trust God and really understand what was what was coming from the enemy, and what was coming from God. And the Old Testament talks a lot about the fear of the Lord. And this is really a translation issue. And I think that comes up a lot, where people are confused that God was not given me a spirit of fear. And yet, I feel it means reverence. It’s honor. It’s everything I need you to tell me what to do. And I’m telling God, I’m broken here. So if I am in fear of the Lord, then I’m giving him reverence. And I am saying, God, I need you to lead me, I need you to tell me where to go next. And again, like I said, stepping out into that faith. And you know, this is a healthy fear we’re talking about. And it’s really wisdom, because you know, the Bible doesn’t mention any kind of healthy fear. The only fear the Bible mentions is reverential fear of God. But every other verse about fear is God commanding us not to fear that right. So anyway, the point is, we know, he tells us not to fear. So I think the things that we say are healthy fears are just wisdom. And just having that discerning, and honestly, you know, because, again, just think back to that platform. And next month, I’ll be stepping off on a huge platform, and I have to know that I’m going to step off, and God’s gonna protect me. And the fear, it’s the fear of the unknown, but knowing God’s track record in my life, and when I step off, I can step off a 40 foot plank, a 50 foot plank, I can step off 100 foot plank. So when I step off, and once it’s right, I’ll do it again. And again. Yeah. And that’s just wisdom, and discernment. And that’s what we want that relationship with the Lord, as we know, he’s not going to fail us. But the enemy wants to come in, like you said earlier, and keep us paralyzed and bound with fear, so that we cannot take that leap of faith, that acquisition is always against the father, that he’s not trustworthy. That’s what the evil winner wants us to think. So I think that safety, you know, is it’s God commanding us to do a lot of things. And so if you don’t have a relational trust with God, in in God, and in maybe it’s because it’s from your past, maybe you have an obstructed, obstructed by horrible events from a horrible upbringing or difficult situations later in life. I think it’s where Mercy comes in. When God looks you and says, okay, just like with Gideon, I know you think you’re small. And I know you think you’re incapable. And I actually love that about you, because you need to depend on me for this, right? We need to depend on God. And you’re going to lean in, and you’re going to listen. And so I think it has to be rooted in your relationship with God. Right. And I also think that fear really penetrates. And sometimes women have a history of abuse. And we have situations where we feel like we’re not strong enough, or we’re not smart enough, or whatever, enough to do it. But we need to see God as our protector, and we can already trust him. And he’s already worked it out. And if we can hold the, if he can hold that whole world in his hands, he can certainly protect us. And we’ll let him amen, amen. And since 2016, the use of anti depressants is just at an all time high, and it has jumped 65%. But the fear, needing help with drugs to help cope with it really that fear, it’s a learned behavior. And some people are born more fearful. And we just need to trust it. It’s a learned behavior, and we need to step out into what God has called me to do. And the littlest thing from the littlest thing have to go off to go talk to a person or maybe it can be a larger thing like this. We’re doing a weekly podcast. And you know, it’s that track record that God has met me on and continues to not always as I thought he would, but he promises that they’ve always had been true. And he’s always supplied that which he’s promised that he would supply and that increases my faith daily and it lowers that fear. And because we can say to Satan, no

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Today, Satan, I have a bigger God. Yes, amen to that. We do have a bigger God. And it is if we choose to accept and to think about God instead of the enemy. So with that said, you know, there’s always those two conversations going on in our head. And so we have to choose to think about what we’re thinking about, you know, stay happy. And don’t be double minded. That’s right, because we bring about what we think about, you know, a lot of people call that in the secular world world, the law of attraction, but it actually started with God, you know, he said, In Job, the thing I feared has come up, come upon me. So the goal is to think on God’s promises, God gave us fear, and flight, or fight. So we’re able to take ourselves out of dangerous situations. But it’s a good tool, if you don’t know how to use it and address it correctly. But it’s also a very negative because it has an effect on our bodies, because of the stress and anxiety. You know, it’ll take a toll on our health. It releases adrenaline and cortisol, which tends to make us gain weight. So we want to really keep healthy mindset, and go to the promises and go to God’s words, to stay grounded, and say, okay, the enemy is trying to speak in this ear. But I want to hear what God has to say, in when it says yes, and a lot of times, it’s hard, if you’re being double minded. Another thing I love is Romans 828. So we all know that all things, you know, work for good for those who are called, and who love the Lord. Absolutely. And in the morning, we have a choice. We can get up in the morning, and we can walk by faith, or we can walk by fear. And we’re talking about God’s mercies are new every morning. And sometimes we’re afraid to go back because of the fear. And we’re afraid because we’ve messed up right and makes me think about Adam. And the first thing he did was head for the fig leaf, right? He felt guilty of that, because of the past, because of things that I’m still working through. And so God faithfully comes to find me and to sit today say, basically, where are you now? And he knows where you are, and you’re hiding unnecessarily. But there are many times that we feel like God’s not going to specialize in fixing our mistakes, right? But he does. And so I think it’s important again, it’s his mercy that he just sheds upon us. And certainly you don’t, as a Christian, we’re not speaking to make mistakes to test God’s faithfulness. But as a father, he says, I know your inner parts, like I love them together, right? So I know what you need when you need it. And again, like you said, if you just will step out, and fear is really a poverty mindset. And yeah, it tells us we can’t trust God. And it kind of makes us the Lord and the God instead of saying, Your to God, God, I’m trying to be in control, right. And then it says, In Galatians, five, verse one, it says, Stand firm, and do not let yourself be burdened. And I just love that the Lord died to set us free, and we are free, amen. So for those out there struggling with fear, let’s just give this to them. So Allah, this first John for verse 18, it says, For there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear. And another version says, it drives out all fear. So let’s, let’s give our listeners some steps. And you can chime in or how to walk it out or so we’re not walking in fear on a daily basis, but we’re walking in faith, and we’re walking in power, and we’re anointed and Jesus. And I do believe the devil has had women bound and chains for years. And God’s getting ready to set women free and empower them to heal, and let go of the shame that might have been from the past. And so we need to decree the Word of God daily. And we need to use affirmations that are important to you, that makes sense to you, that focus on what God’s Word says and take baby steps. And maybe you’re afraid to walk outside. So sometimes somebody’s afraid to go to the gym. So what I do is I just tell them, Go get their gym clothes on. Now get in the car, now head to the gym and buy before you realize that you’re on your way and you’re taking these baby steps one by one, and you’re trying to face your fears. Like you can also face your fears of heights. So do it in small steps, steps and we face our fears knowing that God is holding our hands and he’s okay to say take a step and I’ll take it with you. And he’ll hold our hand. And so you realize that it’s our mind playing games because the enemy is trying to

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come up against us. And all we have to we just have to have the mind of Christ, right? So just take these baby steps with Christ in hand. Yeah, you know, what, what I would say to you is spin as much time focusing on the word as you can, you know, only 3% of the church reads their Bibles daily, right? So you don’t have a rock to stand on if you’re not in the Word. And if you don’t know what he says about a particular issue, we’ll read, right. So there’s very practical steps, like he said, baby steps that you can take. But I think it has to begin in that relationship of getting honest. Take off the mask. I’m not supposed to be afraid, because the Bible says I’m not supposed to be. And you showed up in you’re just like, I’m here, and I’m scared, is all get out. Just help me Lord, and direct me in the word where I can count on you. And do it with a friend sometimes, just what you want to get back from God, by reading into his word, because he didn’t dry up the river until Joshua walked into it. He didn’t part the Red Seas. When Moses went to the edge. Sometimes Lord gives us some big challenges. It just like Nike says, Just do it. And even it’s if it’s with some fear. But it’s not that kind of fear. It’s the good fear, the fear that says it might be big and scary. But I’m right here with you. And I’m not saying don’t take that step, the Lord is saying, push forward in his word, and building his kingdom. I think renewing your mind is also big and foremost, it also knows that you are against the enemy. The in that fact is absolutely real. The enemy, the enemy is against us. Your feelings are here, they’re attached to a lie. And if they’re tormenting you, they are attached to that lie. And that enemy has told you over and over again. So you’ve just heard it too many times, we have to break that chain in that pattern. So fear is just like a warning light on your dashboard, saying, hey, there’s a lie that you can get, get rid of. If you go into the word in, renew that lie with the truth and replace it, so that you can be saying, Oh, this feeling is happening. But it doesn’t have to be the truth. It’s just a feeling possibly a lie. Right? Right. And feelings will lie to us. The enemy will lie to us our emotions every day can lie. So thoughts will lie. So we have to go back to the Word of God, and have a scripture for everything that you’re fearful of that day. So I have this daily routine idea for you. And it’s,

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it’s to not fear in start your morning. So that fear could come from a childhood trauma, it could be a big part of your life. So you don’t know it, you, you hear it, you don’t understand why it’s there. And so I found this technique, this idea, we’re we’re in front of the coffee pot in the morning, seven o’clock in the morning, nothing else is really going on in my mind, I take a sheet that’s up on the coffee pot. And it’s mantras say, I will not fear I’m courageous, I’m strong. I respect myself, and I’m respected by others. So start off the day with saying this and it ends with a verse. One of them being that God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but a power of love and of a sound mind. So you know, with that in your mind, from the get go, it just be very practical. Because then during the day, you start to encounter those situations that could make you doubt those things, they come back to you instantly. And this has really worked for my life. And that is I will not fear. So for me, that ends it. Because there’s just so much power in God’s word. And when you decree it, the angels have to respond. Right, right. In what you said about childhood. I just want to remind people that fear usually comes from a trauma that’s not been healed, and the loop of that trauma continues to play in our mind. So it’s a good time to seek out a coach a counselor in to address those things once and for all right? Yeah. And again, I I think fear can be a foe or friend and you have to know who Jesus Christ is because he’s never going to tell you he’s never going to forsake you. And never, he’s never gonna lie to you. And I know people who grew up with a lot of fear to the point that they would put chairs behind the doors when home alone, because they were so fearful someone was going to break in. And thankfully through counseling and through coaching, that fear and through the grace of God, that fears gone, but I mean, fear can be real, it seems so real. And we’re not here, up here saying it’s not real. We’re saying that God can help you overcome everything.

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fear you have, because that’s how much he loves us right, and to find us resting in Him and in His safety, because fear generally sprouts from a trauma, somebody’s had encroached upon their boundaries, maybe, again, sexual abuse, childhood abuse, whatever it could be. And so we have to say that if we’re ever going to be as safe again, and the enemy wants us to believe we’re not going to be safe, but the truth is, we are safe in the arms of Jesus. Yeah. And the younger it happens instinctually it takes more time, and it takes God coming in, and the Holy Spirit healing that in paying attention to it and counseling. Right, right. But there’s a hope that we just need to pray that the Lord will enlighten us so that we’ll know the truth. And the truth will set us free. Oh, absolutely. Well, we’ve had a great discussion on this topic of fear and anxiety today. And it does say in the Bible, do not fear that God is with you, and He will keep you safe, and He will protect you. And it’s a great verse on a great scripture on fear. And that’s Psalms 91. So I’d encourage you to go read Psalms 91. And just know that God loves you, and he wants a relationship with you. And he doesn’t want you to fear but he wants you to walk out in faith with him. So hey, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show today. So Zack and I are going to thank everyone for joining us. And I hope these messages spoke to you guys. We’d love to hear from you write a review, subscribe or share this podcast through Apple podcast, Google podcast, or go to the Christian point.com. And thanks so much for listening to the Christian point with Zach and Linda. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And be sure to subscribe and share these episodes. We’d love for you to check out our website, the Christian point.com You can make a donation to help us spread this message even to more countries. And we encourage you to leave your testimony and give us a review. And we would love to pray over you. God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember, until next time, Christ is the point. Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or visit us on the web at the Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is the point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai