Just a free-form episode talking about life updates, football, and politics.

1. Background
   1. The phrase, “whole heart” stood out to me during my morning quiet time.  With the same phrase being a key component to the podcast’s mission statement, I thought it appropriate to explore this phrase further.
   2. Probably the most famous use of this phrase is in Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, or Luke 10:27 where Jesus reiterates Deuteronomy 6:5 when asked which is the greatest commandment of the Law. 
   3. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
   4. Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
2. Isaiah 38:3 “Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.”
3. Translation
   1. Hebrew - Shalem
   2. Proverbs 11:1 “A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight.”
   3. This isn’t just saying a broken balance...but rather a deceitful one!
   4. 2 Chronicles 25:2 “And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, yet not with a whole heart.”
   5. Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
4. Deceit vs. Truth | Good Fruit vs. Bad Fruit

True Face Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfy03PEVUhQ

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1. Satisfaction/Contentment is the word of the day!

2. Can we first point out how ridiculous these marketing/advertising statements are!?
    a. “Your satisfaction guaranteed”

3. Being content, in my observation, is something that the world does not really talk too much about.
    a. If anything, it is the notion that discontentment fuels success and forward motion.  While I agree with a portion of this notion, this idea of satisfaction/contentment has been pressing on my heart for a few weeks.
    b. Story.

4. 1 Timothy 6:6

5. Ezekiel 16:28

6. Hosea 2:19-20

7. Philippians 4:13

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Wait for the Lord: Trust & Be Still

1. What does it mean to wait for the Lord?  

  a.We, as believers, are commanded to trust, wait, and be still.

  b.“Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness…Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act…Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him…” (Psalm 37:3,5,7).

  c.I feel like this message can be perpetuated in a variety of ways.  The passive and insensitive response to another person’s sorrows and calamity, “Just trust in the Lord and everything will be fine.  Be still and know that God is God”.  Or false promises are spoken in these “seasons” that make it seem like we are guaranteed something because of trusting, waiting, and being still.  “The best is yet to come…God wants you to prosper…God wants you to be successful etc” which perpetuate this prosperity narrative and does not exactly line up with the Gospel.

  d.I wanted to take a fresh look and dive deeper than the Christianese we have all heard.

  e.Current situation.

2. I would argue that these commands of trusting, waiting, and being still are not words of encouragement to hold you over until a coming blessing arrives.  But rather to focus on the eternal promises of God made in Christ.

  a.“Be still and know that I am God.  I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10).
    i.I would argue that the commands of trust, waiting, and being still are provocations to shed one’s self and know God.  Not putting hope in your immediate or even distant situation in this world but rather trusting, being still, and clinging to the hope found in Jesus Christ.
    ii.“Look among the nations and see; wonder and be astounded.  For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told” (Habakkuk 1:5).
    iii.“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.  For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end – it will not lie.  If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:2-3).
    iv.“But the LORD in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (Habakkuk 2:20).
    v.“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.  GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my fee like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

  b.Dietrich Bonhoeffer says “The question of trust, which is so closely related to that of authority, is determined by the faithfulness with which a man serves Jesus Christ, never by the extraordinary talents he or she possesses” (Life Together).

  c.Am I trying to trust in Christ without acknowledging the authority he has?  

  d.It is fun to re-examine trust through the lens of authority.  I so often think of it like some lottery, hoping for some blessing to hold me over until I get tired of it and want another.

  e.“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 24:7)

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Unity in Christ

1. This episode, in some way, is a continuation and further explanation to my most recent episode, “Do Justice”.  If you have not listened to it go check it out!  But I explain why believers should be weary of being swept up in these various ideological movements that are beginning to drip their influence into the church.

2. Why is this important?  Jesus and the NT writers makes it abundantly clear that false doctrines and the ways of the world are going to deceive and distract from the truth. 

3. I do not necessarily believe that Christians can never disagree or adopt a variety of techniques and strategies to present the Gospel, but it seems more and more each day the church is forsaking foundational theology for worldly wisdom and inclusion.  Those in Christ should be more united then divided.  If you are in Christ, someone saying they do not support a LGBTQ affirming, family dismantling organization should not offend you in the least bit!

4. Peter says in 1 Peter 3:8 we are to have unity of mind.  That word unity is translated exactly as it reads when it is used (harmonious, union, of one mind).

a.  One Gospel, One Spirit, One Mind.

     i.      Philippians 1:27 

b.      One Gospel.

     i.      2 Corinthians 11:2-4 

    ii.      2 Corinthians 11:12-15 

   iii.      Acts 17:10-12 

c.  One Spirit.

     i.      1 Corinthians 12:12-13 

d. One Mind.

     i.      Philippians 2:2 

    ii.      1 Corinthians 1:10 

5.  Division

a.  Romans 16:17-18 

6. Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

a. Spiritual community vs. Human community

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1. Psalm 89:14 | Micah 6:8 | Deuteronomy 27:19
  a. Is what we are seeing a true exemplification or pursuit of justice?
2. When there is a marginalized community, is seeking change through a counter-biblical political movement the answer?
  a. As believers if we look to anything outside of the scriptures to help us understand justice then we have already lost.
3. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
  a. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed, in his speech during the March on Washington, that “today will go down in history as the greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of our nation” (I Have a Dream transcript).
    i. “The discipleship advocated respectively by Bonhoeffer and King was very similar; they championed an interpretation of the way of Jesus that can be described by Glen Stassen’s description of the connection between love and justice in his interpretation of agape as “delivering love” (Williams, 2014).
  b. “For King, the means we employ to resist injustice must be the same means that will guide our social relations once the injustice is removed. Christ provided the means: love, mutual concern, and peace-making are what he understood as the means and the goals of the beloved community” (Williams, 2014).
  c. “We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again, and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.  The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny” (I Have a Dream transcript).
  d. “In a sense we’ve come to our nations capital to cash a check.  When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.  This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note” (I Have a Dream transcript).
  e. Isaiah 40:5 | Amos 5:24

References

Williams, R. L. (2014). Christ‐Centered concreteness: The christian activism of dietrich   bonhoeffer and martin luther king jr. Dialog, 53(3), 185-194. doi:10.1111/dial.12115

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr

“I Have a Dream” Speech Transcript
https://www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf

Black Lives Matter: What We Believe
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

Inner City Impact
https://www.icichicago.org/

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1. I figured if I cowered away from this topic then I would be feeding into the taboo nature this topic has become.

  a. My heart goes out to all in the LGBTQ community for how the Church has forsaken love for self-righteous judgement.

  b. I do not claim to have all the answers or understand completely what it means to be attracted to the same sex, but what we have is God’s Word and what he has/is intending for his people.

2. Context

  a. Leviticus 18:22 & Leviticus 20:13 

     i. Sounds harsh but God was setting his people apart from the surrounding nations.

  b. There is a great contemporary linguistic debate going on over the origins and proper meaning of arsenokoitai, the Greek word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10.

     i. Most scholars believe Paul, an educated Jew writing to Gentiles, was reinforcing what was instructed in Leviticus.

  c. Both Jesus and Paul make no attempt to nullify ‘man lying with man’.  In fact, Christ would take the law even further to express humanity’s need for a savior and the grace that was coming from his death/resurrection (Matthew 5:28).

3. My issues with the argument

  a. Christians think it is a sin set apart from other sins 

  b. LGBTQ community argues that because it is how they were born or wired, and its true love how can it be a sin?
    i. Born with certain inclinations does not justify the action

    ii. Using “love” as justification 

    iii. Mark 8:34-38

4. Not to glorify God as God is in effect, not to glorify him at all…

  a. Jeremiah 29:13

  b. Psalm 119:97-104

  c. 1 John 5:3

5. Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been

  a. “The deception was in believing that the tree was more satisfying to the body and more pleasurable to the sight than God” – Jackie Hill Perry

 

References

Advancing LGBTQ Inclusion in the Church: https://reformationproject.org/

Francis Chan on Homosexuality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ82wVfO5qs

Sheep Among Wolves Volume II: https://sheepamongwolvesfilm.com/

Iraq: A Forgotten Hope: https://nationsmedia.org/iraq/

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1.      What comes to mind when I hear the word meditate/meditation.

a.       Legs crossed, hands folded, diffuser up and running, complete silence, and absence from all distraction.  Pursuing inner peace through the clearing of the mind.

2.      Preface

a.       Meditation should be done with your Bible open!

b.      For biblical meditation, one must believe the Bible is in fact the inerrant Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17, John 17:17, 1 Thessalonians 2:13). 

3.      Psalm 104:34 (English Standard Version).

a.       Siyach – meditation, complaining, musing.

b.      Littered throughout the book of Job and Psalms

         i.  Most use complaint.

4.      Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Readingby Eugene H. Peterson.

5.      Isaiah 31:4 

a.       Hagah – to moan, growl, utter, muse, mutter, meditate.

b.      Joshua 1:8 and littered throughout the Psalms (Psalm 34:8, “Oh taste and see..”)

6.      When you take a holistic look at the usage of Hagah/Siyach in the Scriptures, its not pretty.  It is rough, its passionate, its in the words of Eugene H. Peterson, “a dog-with-a bone” kind of act.

7.      Questions & So What…

a.       How does this shift the believer’s perception toward meditation/meditating?

b.      Is there too much pressure we as Christians put on ourselves in hopes of cultivating the “perfect” environment to “feel the presence of God”?

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Mark 2: (1-12)
Do I have a community around me, that in my suffering/sin/anguish/etc., will literally tear a roof off a house so they can LET A FRIEND DOWN into the presence of Christ?

Am I willing to do that for others?

Sheep Among Wolves Volume II

https://sheepamongwolvesfilm.com/

The Chosen

https://studios.vidangel.com/the-chosen

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The Lowder PodcastCommunication Breakdown1.Spiritual Giftsa.1 Corinthians 12: (4-11).b.Looking at the spiritual gifts and expanding to what we are commanded to do, communication is vital. Effective communication is advantageous. 2.Logos a.http://www.blbclassic.org/lang/lexiconPh/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G3056&t=ESVb.The spoken Word of God | Oral Tradition: effective communication which conveyed ideas and truths.c.Key to remember that we are not all called to pastor or teach in some formal setting. But we are all called to make disciples, loving one another, and sharing our testimony.3.Know your Audience!a.If secular business and organizations spend billions collectively to understand and know their existing/potential customers and create products to fit specific needs, could believers take anything away from that?b.1 Corinthians 9: (20-22).c.Obviously we aren’t becoming super Christian sales people. d.Philippians 2: (3-4).4.My Novice Tips (Satirical Tone).a.Assume you talk too much.i.When you understand that you, as a person, suck…it makes you naturally want to talk less. People will thank you for it!ii.Your responses/points being made will be more succinct and actually paid attention to.b.Assume you can learn something from the other person.i.You are not as smart as you think. There is always someone else who is bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than you. Talk with a tone of humility…even when you are in a position of teaching, explaining, or correcting.c.Contribute with questions.i.People enjoy having an interest taken in them.ii.Don’t interviewiii.Follow your responses/points with a well-meaning question.

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