Call-ins Radio Broadcast Friday 03/12/2021

Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P616 (03-12-21)

Synopsis

So many people wish their dad would at least compliment them for once. It is so common for people to say, “I never once heard my dad ever compliment me.” It is in the heart of a son to want the approval and acceptance of their father. Sadly that does not happen, and as believers in Christ, you have to acknowledge the fact that may never happen, but instead realize the perfect love and acceptance of God, and that is sufficient for you. Perfect love casts out fear, and the person who fears is not made perfect in love. So we think of God’s love, agape love for mankind, and for us personally, we hear His words, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” So we learn to develop a heart of pity for those who have hurt us so deeply.

In any kind of rejection, you have to turn that over to God and allow Him to comfort you with His love. His perfect love is sufficient for you and realize that if God is for you, who can be against you. You have to become convinced of His love for you, as the apostle Paul was, that nothing will ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

There are also people who get all the affirmation they could possibly have from their earthly father, but they are still miserable inside. All their life has been approved and they are still not happy if they are not deriving their approval from God. We are created with a vacuum that longs to be filled. There is that emptiness, the nagging question that there has got to be more to life than what you are currently experiencing, when Christ is not in your life. That is, until you are born again, you are not on the starting line in which to experience all that God has for you, the abundant life He promised.

So when we do not get the affirmation, love or acceptance desired from an earthly father, or receive rejection in life in all kinds of ways from different people, there is a natural response in the flesh to turn to anger. This anger is often a secondary response to fear, fear of not ever going to be loved, of not getting what you need or long for in someone else. Indeed, no human being can fulfill what ultimately can only come from Christ Jesus, that unconditional love and acceptance, a spiritual need that no man can meet, and can only be met by God. The two main things associated with fear and anger are unrealistic expectations and misplaced dependencies. Bob George addresses many of these issues associated with anger in his book, Anger: Fear in Disguise.

Transcript

Rick from Abbotsford, British Columbia

Rick: Bob, you correctly pointed out in a previous broadcast that I tend to be somewhat glib and to overreact. I describe myself as a bit ornery too. Given that background of my flesh, I think we can all identify with that.

Bob: An ornery good talker.

Rick: I went through your series on Battle for Control. I agree very strongly with a concept put on by you. The opposite of agape love, God’s love, is probably pride, for lack of a better description. And pride manifests itself through control and condemnation. I find that in that particular type of thing, when I experience it, it really enrages me. I have a real anger problem with this. The person I am talking about is not in my household, but is my dad. Years ago I told you have had cancer, which he recovered from.

Rick: He has become far more oppositional and controlling to me since then. This has put me in a state of anger at times. He would very often put curses upon me. “Well, you did not do anything good in your life and now you are doing that bible stuff. What a bunch of nonsense.” That sort of line. He just makes me so upset. In Ephesians 4:26, the sun goes down on my wrath, just full of rage and anger. Verse 27 following it warns to not give a place to the devil.

Ephesians 4:26-27
²⁶ “In your anger do not sin”[Psalm 4:4]: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold.

Rick: My wife says that I get so enraged that I get associated with darkness at times because I cannot let it go. I do not know how to deal with this. I interact with my dad and argue once in a while, and he likes to see his grandchildren. He is a business type of person, where money is his God. He sees no reason for studying the bible at any time. He rejects and mocks me and thinks I am out of my mind for doing what I do. Should I count to ten or something? Is there something I can do to deal with this?

Bob: Maybe twenty or thirty would be better?

Rick: I think so.

Bob: You know, Rick, when I first went into full time Christian work, nobody understood me at all. My parents did not fully understand. My brother and sister did not understand. Nobody understood. One of them used to say that I was probably on the corner with my tambourine playing. That kind of stuff. You know. My mother was angry when I said I wanted to get baptized. “What do you mean you want to get baptized? We had you baptized as a child.” All of that took place. But I did not feel anger at that. I experienced pity. I do not know why I did not get angry at that. I was more hurt by the fact the people I loved the most were rejecting. But in the final analysis all of them came to Christ sooner or later. But during that period of time it was a hurt in my heart and it was a pity for them. Jesus looked down from the cross and said this.

Luke 23:34
³⁴ Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Bob: Jesus felt sorry for the people, so stupid that they could not understand and see and look in the face of the one who came to save them. I think that when you are angry it is because, Rick, you want so badly and especially this is true of sons with their fathers. They want acceptance with their fathers. For some reason, we dumb dads do not realize that with our sons. The main thing we are looking at in life is our acceptance and to honor them as a son. Many times, we want to live what we would like to have done through our children. I see people who were total nerds in high school but when they get boys they want them to become baseball stars even though they could not pick up a bat themselves. But like to live what they would like to live through their children. And end up never getting acceptance.

Bob: A welterweight boxer who is now in the movies, he was a phenomenal boxer. Never one time did he ever hear his dad compliment him, even when he won the championship. I have heard that over and over again in the position I have of counseling with people. “I never heard my dad ever give me a compliment.” We want that. When we do not get it, it angers us. Again, I think that anger has to turn into pity. To pity the person because it is very sad for a father to be belittling a son, regardless of his age, to be saying he loves God, that he has a relationship with Jesus.

Bob: I remember hearing things like that in the army. I remember the guy next to me in the bunk. At that time I had no idea what a Christian was, Rick. But a guy named Guy Shoan, a farm boy, He was for sure a born again believer. That guy would get up in the morning before anybody else and go down with a buffer and buff everybody’s space and everything that could be buffed. He just did that. He never said a word about it. I remember our drill sergeant. He had problems. He had been in the Bataan death march. I was in my bed, and Shoan was reading his bible. This sergeant came up and threw the soldier’s guide down, and said you would be a lot better off if you would put down that bible and pick up your soldiers’s manual. I leaped out of that bed and leapt for that man’s throat. I was far from being a Christian. That irritated me so badly. But today I look back and pity those kinds of people. Just look at it like Jesus. “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

Bob: That acceptance you so desire from your dad, you can get from your real dad, and that is God.

Romans 8:31
³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Bob: I think you have to put that to bed in order to realize the kind of acceptance that you would really like to get from your dad but probably never will.

Rick: First of all, we are what we think. If I am going to think hate-filled murderous thoughts, then what am I going to be? A hate-filled murderer. His background. He was an illegitimate son, and even illegitimate children through adultery in his household. There has been a number of suicides in his family line as well as my mothers. The spirit of murder had made itself known. There is certainly a chance he is living out what his dad did to him with me.

Bob: Certainly. But to get back to what you are talking about. You do not want the devil to get a foothold in your life. The foothold is the ability to bring up anger any time you want to. One of the books I put out is called Anger: Fear in Disguise. Anger is a secondary response to fear. We have fears. Men do not like to admit that we are fearful but we do not mind admitting we are angry. Women do not have the same problem we do. Basically there are fears. You have fears of rejection, of that continual rejection, fears that your dad is never going to accept you, approve of you. All of that is what is producing that anger. Again, the only solution to that fear, which is the root of the anger, is the perfect love of God. There is no other solution to that.

1 John 4:18
¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Bob: Perfect love is what casts away all fear. Fear is what casts away perfect love. So when you are abiding in the perfect love of God, and again that ties in the same book you are talking about in the third chapter of Ephesians. That is where Paul is praying that you be rooted and established in love.

Ephesians 3:16-19
¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Bob: There is one desire from God’s vantage for you, Rick, and that is for you to be controlled by the love of God. If God is for you, who can be against you? Granted you would love to get the approval from your parents, but even if you got all of the approval of the world, I also had these kinds of people, who all their life has been with approval and they are still not happy if they are not deriving their approval from God. So if God is for you, who can be against you? Therefore, put aside those attitudes. Put aside the attitudes that I have to respond in anger. My dad needs help. He is in a pitiful situation. He is obviously unhappy in his own life and his own being and I am not going to allow that to splash over into me.

Romans 8:38-39
³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Bob: Nothing can separate me from the love of God. I can be separated from other people’s love, my parents or children, but nothing can separate me from the love of God. I have to stand on that, Rick. Being in the ministry for all these years, rejection is a part of the ministry. You cannot believe the letters we have received telling us we are going to hell. Men putting curses on you and all this kind of thing. I just take it and dump it in the wastebasket and say if God is for me who can be against me. I learned to pay not much attention. It does not mean that it might not hurt temporarily. Remember, first comes the natural then the spiritual. Your first response is always natural. But let go. Do not let it get a hold of you. No, Rick, if God is for you who can be against you?

Rick: Not to put too much time on secular psychology. In psychology they identify that anger as being there, which also leads to self pity. Then they medicate that with Zoloft or Prozac to alter your mind. What my dad does is he definitely gets into self pity with his anger against his dad and basically the world. He blames the world for everything.

Bob: Sure.

Rick: They made this deal not so good. It is the pursuit of wealth that he has substituted for his enjoyment. I think he is past some $10 million dollars now and we are far in the hole and yet he would not give us a cent. That first million was surpassed by a couple million and that need of four or five million then $8 million. That is proof of what you are saying. There are all kinds of ways fear and anger manifests itself in me. I got into a pity party myself. My poor children do not get to go anywhere and my poor wife washes dishes day and night and anger comes back again, and I go to bed fuming and steaming. You are right if I turn to my own power I will never overcome this. It is like a merry-go-round. It is like the demons saying, “Let us poke him and there. I know how to turn his crank.” Yes, absolutely. What is your first reaction when someone calls you on the phone calling you this, that and other things? Of course you naturally feel anger and you have to put that away. I know it is not easy to do. We have to stand our ground. I hate to use that term because it sounds like a confrontation. In my opinion, I do not think a redeemed person is someone who rolls over, who takes abuse either. We certainly have to stand in the word. That means we have to confront sometimes.

Bob: I guarantee you what I would say if it was my dad. “Look dad, I do not know what problems you went through in life. I really do not know. I wish I could so I could be sympathetic. But I do know that as a child of God, to sit here and listen to someone who is led by Satan trying to beat the daylights out of me, if that is what you want to do when you are calling, you call someone else because I am not interested in your phone call. If you want to call and be nice, kind and loving, then I would love to listen to you, dad. But if you want to sit there and insult me, then sorry, I do not want to hear from you. That is what I would say to him.

Rick: I came up with that confrontation the other day. He began laughing like a lunatic really. A very abnormal response. He started laughing. His words to me were, “Well, I have been religious all my life. Would you like to read the bible? I am too busy running company A, B and C. I do not have time.” It does not take discernment. Satan has him blinded that the most important thing is he accomplishes something in life, that good outweighs the bad, and he is pretty nice. It just really upsets me telling him.

Bob: Rick, we have to move on. I would quit telling him. He has heard all he is going to hear. You have to leave that in the hands of God. If he dies without Jesus you are not going to see him in heaven. Just leave it alone. You have said all you can say to him, and just leave it there. Let God do His work.

Rick: That is why I got your advice. I knew I would get strong advice. Just pray God’s will is worked out.

Bob: You are sure welcome, Rick. I appreciate your call, pal. Bye bye now.

Jill from Dallas, TX

She has been to Bob George ministry for over 13 years and gets encouragement from that. She shared many personal struggles that Bob had a hard time sorting out on the air for she discussed so many things, and was quite emotional about it. She was definitely feeling rejection from family and church. I am not sure how she got into the situation where she is a single parent for she did not explain that on the air but that seemed to be the source of the rejection from others from what she shared in regards to their reaction to her situation. She says she is hearing gossip about her and has struggles with own family members accepting her. She says everything she has tried to get help has back-fired on her and no longer believes she can get help from church either, for she said the counseling she received was not helpful. She obviously needed counseling so Bob referred her to Bob Heck, a counselor with what was known as People to People ministries in those days.