Call-ins Radio Broadcast Thursday 09/24/2020

Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P573 (09-24-20)

Synopsis

Believers, of all walks of life, ages and various circumstances of life, problems common to all, call in to get advice and answers and clarity of understanding. You grow up hearing things all your life and you begin to hear different things from various people, denominations of churches or people, and something just does not seem right to you, but you are not sure where to look or find the answers to life you are looking for. Sometimes you hear a teacher explain things, and that can help, if he has grown in the Lord himself for some time and has learned from the Holy Spirit so he can pass onto you what can be of help to you. But ultimately, you have to get into the scriptures yourself for the Lord to teach you, so you can test and affirm what anyone says is true. The Holy Spirit will do so, if you are in Christ, because He has promised to guide you into all truth.

So listen now, as Bob shares truth from the scriptures with various callers. If you are wondering if you have backslidden to the point that you think you can lose your salvation, then you have not grown in your understanding of the grace of God. If you have eternal life, you cannot lose what is eternal, that has been placed in you. If you have temporarily lost your way and gone back to the faulty thinking of the world, and none of us are immune from that, then get back to where you belong, forever a child of God. Thank Him for what He has already done for you, before you were ever born, that all your sins you committed and ever will commit have been forever placed on the back of God never to be seen again. Run to the open arms of Jesus, who has never left you, and is there willing and longing to provide that help, that counsel that you need, to walk in the new life He has given you. Realize that you are under the grace of God, as a child of God, and that He, being in you, has given you everything you need for life and godliness. Boldly go to the throne of grace for help in time of need.

If you are on the verge of a divorce, there is always hope. You and your spouse may be having discussions about divorce, but if you two can get together, and are both believers, then your mind needs to be on Christ, relying on His understanding and wisdom, and not your own. Seek to have an open discussion without getting angry with one another, but relying on that which God supplies, His wisdom, His patience and His peace, to guide you in your discussion. Look not to get from your spouse but to serve one another in love.

Yes, there are certain practical aspects that can play a part in a strained marriage, a man working several jobs, post-mortem, hormonal changes in a wife, having a new child, or a spouse feeling she is not getting the attention she needs. But another key point of advice Bob shared was that oftentimes in marriage, and in life, we have unrealistic expectations. We long for unconditional love and acceptance from our spouse. That is a spiritual need that no person alive can give. That is a spiritual need that only God can meet. If we do not understand that, then that sets up a frame of mind that pulls you apart. So listen as Bob shares with a man who calls for help in trying to deal with a strained marriage headed for divorce.

Others can be quite old in age, but have grown up with legalism all their life. So, they just need to be told how their assumptions were off in regard to scripture or how they read scripture out of its context. If people are not confronted with truth, then it is very probable that they may never come out of that bondage, whether they realize they are in bondage or not. And if you are confronted with truth, be of humble spirit, try to listen and learn and make those necessary corrections in your thinking. When you do, then you are on a starting point of a new path to freedom. For Christ Himself told us that the truth shall set you free.

And realize this, that we are all on a different walk in Christ Jesus, and all us, while living in this flesh of ours, are in the process of needing and having our minds renewed. When we realize that, then we ourselves are so much more patient, understanding, and long-suffering with those who just do not quite grasp the truth. One man sews the seed of truth, another man waters, but God causes the growth. So realize this grace we have in Christ Jesus, the freedom to grow.

Transcript

Torey from Washington, MD

Tori: I had a question. If you are saved and you backslide and you die in the middle of your backsliding, what happens to your soul, and where in scripture can I find that?

Bob: There is nothing in the New Testament talking about backsliding. The issue is what people can do is stop temporarily from walking by faith and getting back into the world. That is explained in scripture. If you are getting back into the world and God is convicting you on that, then you get back where you belong. The terminology is how were you saved, temporarily or eternally? What kind of life did God give you? Temporal or eternal?

Torey: Eternal.

Bob: Then how could you lose eternal life?

Torey: Right.

See, Torey, when you are in Christ, what salvation is, is being saved from the consequence of sin, which is death, by the gift of God, which is life and the only life available to us is the resurrected life of Jesus. So when you come to Christ, you are coming to Him to give you life, to be saved from the spiritual death that you are in, and to be made alive in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 1:7
⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace

Bob: In other words, the forgiveness that was provided for the entire world, and for you, was received in the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. That is why it says in scripture.

Romans 5:10
¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son

That means you were reconciled to God, as far as sins are concerned, when you were born.

Romans 5:10
how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

Bob: You are not saved by the death of Christ. You are saved by the life of Christ. The cross is what prepared you for that salvation, taking away permanently the cause of spiritual death, which is sin, and taking it away so sin can no longer cause spiritual death. That is why you have eternal life, when you come to Christ, because the thing that could cause you to lose that life is sin, and the reason that is an impossibility is because of the cross, where he took away the sins of the world. If you fall away, and what falling away means is you have been suckered back into the world with different things. The solution to that is to get back where you belong. That could happen to anybody. Quite frankly, if anyone thinks they have totally escaped from the totality of the world they are crazy. We all have things that the world tugs us in. It may not be as obvious but in our thinking it could even be that way. When the Spirit of God, who lives in you, and explains things to you and convicts you of the fact that you are walking in a way that is inconsistent with who you are as a child of God, with your identity, and you agree with Him that He is 100 percent right. I thank Him that He took away those sins at the cross and now I ask Him to lead me and guide me into all truth.

John 16:13
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

Torey: Okay. Thank you.

Bob: Does that help, Torey?

Torey: Yes, that does help, thank you.

Bob: God bless you, Torey.

Torey: God bless you.

Jay from Belton, TX

Jay: I was listening to the unfortunate things going on in Virginia. I pray for them. My question is I do not want to think of it lightly but if those people in their own terms did not come to terms with Jesus Christ and been saved, are they unfortunately not going to be in the hands of God?

Bob: Jay, that is the case of anyone on the face of the earth, whether they die in an accident like that or die on the highway or wherever it might be. That is just the case with anyone. So, it really is not a subject that is exactly beneficial to discuss in the times of the trials and tribulation, but the fact of the matter is, if you have accepted Christ Jesus to accomplish for you that you had no ability of accomplishing for yourself. If you are dead, you are dead. You are born that way. If you are dead, you need life and if you refuse Him for life then you will remain dead. That is the way it is, regardless of how you happen to get taken out of this earth.

Bob: In any case, we certainly want to pray for people’s families who have gone through that. It is a tragedy of all tragedies. It is a shame that your institutions of learning should really be a place of learning and a place of joy. To think those types of things are taking place on college campuses is unthinkable. There are a lot of nutcases around. Again, we have to be more. I think the administration should be more cautious about people who are in that kind of a situation. But whether that would stop it or not, we just do not know. At any rate, they certainly need our prayers. I appreciate your call on it, Jay.

Jay: I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I did not want to bring that example. But no matter what the situation is, even if you are victims of a hate crime or war or whatever. It does not make any difference?

Bob: Yes, it makes no difference. Today is the day of salvation.

John from Escondido, CA

John: This is a very easy question and not very deep at all compared to those you had. I have a curiosity. I am in my 70s now. When I was a child, my mother and all of us, we wore hats in church. It was just done. The church was probably the same in others. All of a sudden in the late 60s or early 70s women did not wear them. What happened? Since that time, I have read the bible. I am in the car now. But it is quite clear in my memory that Paul, and at least one in the other of his books, told women they should be covered in church. What happened? What changed? Just for example, if you are married, did your wife wear a hat in church and did she ever?

Bob: Quite frankly, it is nobody’s business if my wife wore a hat in church or if I wore hat in church. The issue is where in the world does it say in the bible that you should go to church. It tells Church to go to people but it does not tell anybody to go to church. Just merely the fact that you are talking about being in church is ludicrous. The issue is what you are saying is an unbelievably legalistic statement. As a matter of fact, 1 Corinthians 11 is not talking about wearing a handkerchief on your head. It is talking about your growing hair. He does not want you to be shorn like women in Corinthians that the prostitutes would shave their heads. If you came to Christ as one of those prostitutes and were in the Lord, he was merely instructing women to grow your hair so you are not identified with the shorn women, with people who are prostitutes. If you look at where it says there that everyone who prays and prophesies with long hair, dishonors his head and every woman who prays and prophesies with no covering on her head dishonors her head is just like one of the shorn women. If women have no covering, otherwise no hair, then for now, with short hair, but since it is disgrace to have hair shorn and shaved, she should grow it again. And men should not have long hair. It is not a legalistic God who zaps you if a man has long hair or zaps you if you have short hair. I do not think he is looking around to see how long your hair is. Basically it was because of the Corinth church, where the prostitutes were prevalent in Corinth, and they were ladies of shorn heads. That is what the context is. It is not there to try to tell everybody to put handkerchiefs on the head or for men to get rid of long hair necessarily. But it was that in context. So you are taking stuff totally out of context there.

Marcus from Benton, CA

Marcus: I do not always agree with you but you make a good point.

Bob: You know what Marcus, do you know what that means? I do not always agree with you. When you say I do not always agree with you. Do you know what I say about that, do you want to arm wrestle? One of us could be right but both of us could be wrong. If you do not agree with somebody, I think what people ought to do, if they do not agree with somebody, and are interested in what the person has to say on that, write to them and explain why you disagree. Both of us could be wrong but only one can be right if there is a disagreement.

Marcus: Okay, then, let me ask a question. The apostle and elders said they do not judge outside but we judge inside, as in 1 Corinthians 5. In fact, the letter was written to the anointed and saved Christians and threw the Christian out of the church when his conduct messed up.

Bob: There is a wrong assumption, that a man having intercourse with his father’s wife is a Christian. That is a bad assumption. They were not Christian. That is why scripture says to turn him over so Satan will have his way with him until he comes to his senses and repents.

Bob: In 2 Corinthians, it says to bring those people back into fellowship because they have repented and have suffered enough. The assumption is that they are Christian. What you are dealing with is the pride of sinning and proud of it and flaunting it in church. When that occurs you must remove the appendix because it is hurting the body. That is what they did here. It was not just sin but the flaunting of it. And this teaching that grace is marvelous, and boasting about intercourse with the dad’s mom. Sorry, we have to go off air but you call again.

Ronnie from Fayetteville, GA

Ronnie: I am calling once again for counseling. I am struggling lately with anger. My marriage is falling apart. No matter what attempt I make to hold it together it is just going to continue to fall up until it is gone. When I first met my wife, she had grudges against the church and grudges against God for things she experienced in her life. It took me a while to help her understand that God is a God of love and a God of mercy. There is nothing we can do to gain God’s love on our own. It is all through Jesus. She started out to understand that and things changed. She was told she could never have a baby because she had endometriosis. Before she had back surgery we prayed. We will thank God right now for our son He is going to give us. Caleb Joshua, my son was born. When he was born God spoke to me. When I first saw my son and said, “through your son I am going to show who you are mine and through you, your son is going to see me.” I have never forgotten that. But I got to tell you the way I feel now. I really do not want my son to see my mother-n-law. She has done nothing but hurt my wife’s feelings for as long as I have known her. The father-n-law and mother-n-law both. On mother’s day we had tried to get in touch with her and just couldn’t,. My brother made plans at his house for my mom. I tried to call my mother-n-law after mother’s day. “Sorry we could not see you. My wife told me you are upset. I just wanted to let you know it was not intentional. But we could not get in touch with you.” So I told my wife that we could make plans, maybe the day after mother’s day. She never returned my call. She just told my wife that she needed to get her priorities in order before my wife met me. That has caused me to become very angry and resentful to my mother-in-law, and I have not spoken to her since then. Now, my wife just stays upset about her parents. Here we have this beautiful son and God has done so much but the tension in our marriage. I work two jobs and fix to start a third, and what time we do spend together she is always depressed. Right now to the point I am losing sympathy on the whole situation and it is turning into frustration. I am saying what is wrong with you. I feel like telling her, “you can either stay tied up with issues with your parents or you can enjoy being with me and our son.” It is like a brick wall. I do not know what to do. I sit and talk to the Lord about it and He gives me peace. But when I come home from work and see her it is like hitting a brick wall all over again. I do not know, Bob. I do not know what to do about it. I really don’t.

Bob: Ronnie, you are in a situation that the only thing you can do about it is for the two of you to make a determination whether you are going to think with the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness to God, or whether you turn to God for His wisdom. If both of you are in Christ Jesus, then you certainly have His wisdom available to you. But obviously either both of you or one of you is not listening to Him. Again, I think marriage begins without full understanding. The only real instructions we have in marriage is from Genesis, to leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife and the two of them become one. That means you leave that relationship of parents and come under a brand new relationship with your spouse. That does not mean that you have broken the relationship with parents. It means you are under a new covenant, so to speak, that is with your mate.

Bob: And when people get married without that understanding, they are going to have problems all through their marriage. I do not parent my children anymore. I am through being their parent. I will always be their father but I am not their parent. I refuse to be their parent. I am their Father and I will deal with them on the basis of a father and a son and as a father and a daughter but I am not going to parent them. They got new relationships. They got their new entity called their own family and that has to be built and strengthened. If I can do anything to strengthen that I will do so, but I will not parent them.

Ronnie: That is what makes me so frustrated. My wife told me that if I ever have a child, then I am going to leave all these issues with my family behind. That is when my family begins.

Bob: Well, she has gotten off some place down the line. It is like Amy says, you are pulling some underwear out of the top of the basket and the real issue is way down in the basket. It does not even think you are hitting with the real issue. The real issue you have is something with you and your wife, a problem between the two of you. That has to be sat down and discussed. “Honey, this is not an in-law problem. This is our problem. We are not thinking with the mind of Christ. We are thinking very humanistically and we are not thinking with the mind of Christ. For the sake of our son and for the sake of our marriage, because we have become one in Christ Jesus. We did leave in order to cleave to one another but something that has happened here where we have forgotten that. We are not cleaving to one another. There is dissension and turmoil with parents and God never intended that turmoil to be. Can we sit down and forget about in-laws. You forget about yours and I forget about mine and we discuss what is wrong with our marriage. What is going on with us? See if we can get back into the department of loving one another, of being patient and kind with one another and sitting down without exploding and getting angry and try to discuss what the root problem is. There is something going on here.”

Bob: How old is your son?

Ronnie: He is 18 months old.

Bob: A lot of women go through some real problems following birth. They are exhausted. They are tired. If you are working three jobs and they are looking for attention and you are not giving them proper attention. “Honey, I do not feel like you give me any attention.” So, if that is the way she feels, then some way you guys have to solve that problem. You have a child there that is more important than your little differences.

Ronnie: Let me ask you this. I have heard people call you before and ask if there are any small groups that get together that are along the same lines as your ministry. I live in Locust Grove, GA. If we can get involved in a small group, I think that would greatly benefit us.

Bob: Ronnie, I do not think we have a resource there but we will check. But, I really think that what the two of you need to do is sit down and say, “Look, if we continue on this basis, and we start thinking about divorce.” When you are thinking about divorce then you are into divorce.

Ronnie: She has already mentioned that on more than one occasion. I said to her, “I do not want to get a divorce. We are obviously married for a reason.”

Bob: Do you assure her that you love her. And does she assure you she loves you? But is it just talk or is it for real?

Ronnie: It will get real bad, then everything will be fine. Then in a matter of days it is all bad again. It is the constant fluctuation.

Bob: That she is going through?

Ronnie: Right.

Bob: Well, again, that could be just emotional. Again, some of that could be some of the postpartum depression women go through. And they do go through those problems. They go through a whole change in her body, going through that pregnancy. This is her first child?

Ronnie: Yes.

Bob: I tell men, how do you think you would go through that? If it were men, we would never have a second one. All of a sudden marriage was you and her, and now the baby is there. There is tension when a child comes into a marriage. You are not getting all the attention you used to. And she is not either.

Ronnie: We went through marriage counseling and that was her main thing. “He does not show me enough attention.” I show her all the attention I possibly can. But I have to work.

Bob: You need to sit down and continue talking about that. It is true. “Look, honey, I give you all the attention I can. I love you more than life itself, but I want to tell you something. That need that you have for unconditional love and unconditional acceptance that you have been looking for me to give you, I cannot give it to you. That is a need that is spiritual, a need that can only be met by Christ Jesus. We are made up of body, soul and spirit. And that spiritual need of unconditional love and acceptance cannot be met by another human being. It can only be met by Jesus. So I can give you all the attention in the world, come home and spend every moment of the day and it would not be enough because that is a spiritual need that has to be met spiritually. I cannot love you unconditionally and accept you any more than you can me. So we have to quit trying on that and get that need met in Christ. Then on the level on soul and body where we live in marriage and we can start thinking about serving one another instead of getting from one another.

Ronnie: Bob, I sure appreciate it. I will continue to try to get her to understand that need.

Bob: If we can get any help to you, then please call us.

Ronnie: I appreciate it, Bob.