Beyond Sunday

Not Alone - Week 5

• King of Kings Church

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In this Beyond Sunday episode, Peter, Kate, and Pastor Seth talk about spiritual drift through the story of King Josiah. They dive into being practical about resisting drift with a three-part anchor from Pastor Greg's sermon.  Word, worship, and walking together. They also speak candidly about counseling, shedding the stigma that keeps people stuck and embracing a shalom mentality that gathers broken pieces and makes whole again. 

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Thanks for listening!

Meet The Guest Hosts

SPEAKER_01

And welcome back to Beyond Sunday. Today, stepping in as the guest hosts, I'm Peter Bay, uh campus director for King of Kings Northwest. And with me, two of the best.

SPEAKER_00

Go ahead, introduce yourselves. Well, first of all, I would like to introduce my favorite associate campus director of Northwest Campus. Wow. Yes. So would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_02

Kate Zulberg.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And what do you have to say about the other guest?

SPEAKER_02

Seth Flick.

SPEAKER_01

Also bald.

SPEAKER_00

No, that's one important, but yes.

SPEAKER_02

A fabulous family of seven with a large grocery bill every month.

SPEAKER_00

Month. Weekly. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01

100%. All of this is true. If the Flicks go to like what's fast food, what's the Flicks top fast food joint?

SPEAKER_00

All right. So go to, like when you just need to feed the family and you totally forgot to set out any meat. Yes. Jimmy Johns. It's close to the house. It's freaky fast. Yep. And all the alliteration with like the freaky fast flick kind of order. It just all goes. 80 bones? At least.

unknown

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00

Wow. Wow.

Family, Formation, And Sons Day

SPEAKER_02

Well growing young men. There's a price tag.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But my favorite part is that now that they're growing, if you ever watch them walk into worship on Sunday morning, I kid you not, they flank Melinda on all sides. They will make sure that she's walking, not in the area where cars are going. Like they will shepherd her onto the sidewalk and they'll take the outer sidewalk so that she's not like in any harm or danger. Because they've been taught that. That's that's a part of their formation as young men. What else? Give us the other top three parts of their formation. Gotta open the door. Gotta okay. Gotta pray. If you have a girlfriend, you gotta pray with her. She's gotta come to Bible study. You court first, and like that's something I had to do. Uh, not because of like chivalry, but because I had no money. And usually if you're not courting, you're dating, and dating costs costs money to go out to eat. And both of us were so poor, we're like, we we mutually decided like due to constraints, we're gonna court first, or we're just gonna like do devotions and pray, walk around Concordia University Wisconsin campus, and that was it. No holding hands or nothing for a while. Wow, that's great. That wasn't strict. I like the boys actually have enjoyed some of that. Like uh they like to protect mom and it I love nice work, nice work.

SPEAKER_01

Well, according to the photo we saw a few weeks ago of Melinda kicking you down the hole in 300 style. Oh, yeah. Um, I'm not sure how much protection she needs, but I'm glad your boys are there to take care. Yeah, it looks like I'm the one that needs protection. Yeah, that might be true. Yeah, but uh oh, Melinda's awesome. Hey, um, so speaking of your sons flanking Melinda and um being awesome dudes, uh, it is National Sons Day. It is not. It is. So, uh, what's something else about your tell anything else that you want to tell us about your sons?

SPEAKER_02

I only have one son, and he is newly 21, and he is contemplating moving back home this summer for the first time since he moved out to start his freshman year of college. And that might have kept me up last night worrying about it. As much as I miss him, my daughter and I have created this little system of life, just the two of us. So it'll be an adjustment to have a fraternity man move back into our all-female household. I absolutely adore him. He is studying cybersecurity and he's loved it.

SPEAKER_00

So I can only imagine he is gonna have job security like no other. My goodness. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

Whenever I hear about something, I'm like, Ben, have you heard about this? He's like, Yes, mom, it's what I'm studying. I'm like, okay, just checking.

SPEAKER_01

Does he like to teach you about it, or is it kind of mum's a word?

SPEAKER_02

Um, if I ask, he will. Yeah. Unfortunately, he's learning about the very dark side of humanity. And so luckily, my son loves Jesus. And so no matter how dark the conversation gets, we always end it with Jesus is on the throne. He knows the end of the story. Praise God, we worship him.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What else to add about your son, Seth? They're good young men. I love sharing life with them. And uh every day that they get a little bit older is a day they get closer to moving out. And I actually love hanging out with them. So I'm kind of not looking forward to that. But if I've done my job and Melinda's done her job and we've been godly parents, uh hopefully they'll be able to get out and go to college and do what they need to do. Yeah. And if they ever need to come back, we'll charge them rent. There you go.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, this is actually a bit of a shout out to another podcast that we have on uh the King of Kings list, and that's uh first the broccoli, then the ice cream with Dr. Tim Riley, who talks about that and and the goal of a parent is to get your kids out the door as productive members of society. Fantastic dude. He's actually teaching a class called Above Average Parenting at the Northwest campus. So uh shout out to you, Dr. Tim Riley, real men of genius. So nice old commercial show. There you go. Benton, uh, it's cool. He's 11 and he still wants us to lay with him at night and talk with him. He doesn't want us to leave, and that day won't last forever.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

Not Alone Series Recap

SPEAKER_01

So I'm I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_00

I'm grateful for that. He's a good dude. We had him over for dinner last night. He joined us in praying over a meal, and we've got a gratitude that you can like roll and just say, This is what I'm thankful to God for today. So he he rolled it and he had something he was thankful to God for. And we do flick high, flick low, and so he was able to do like a Benton high, Benton Low. Nice good having your son over at our house. Yeah, it's a good influence. Is he?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. Well, thanks for adopting him for the night. He he is convinced when he prays before meals that if he doesn't say and may the food taste good, that it won't. Or help the food to taste good, whatever his phrase is, cracks me up. So whenever you prayed that at our house. Yeah, whenever he prays, he's and help the food to taste good. And if I don't pray it, he'll jump in and say it. So uh this last Sunday, we've continued the Not Alone Message series. Uh Pastor Seth, you launched it with uh Elijah after he had these incredible victories, and then he's all mopey and sad and and uh God's with him. And then week two was David and Jonathan, uh, and having uh the that was the dope book. Yep. And then week three was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo. What were the real names? Oh man. He doesn't have the truth.

SPEAKER_00

I'll have to look back at it, the third name again. Because I always call him like either Shadrach, Meshach, and Benny. Uh Shadrach and Benny's or their Babylonian names, how they're referred to in most of the scriptures.

Josiah’s Early Reign And Lost Scripture

SPEAKER_01

And then week four was Ray of Boam and what happens when you listen to the wrong people. And this was week five, and we're talking about drift. Uh, but before we get into that, just anything that kind of stood out to you from this series and or from this message in Not Alone, and then we'll launch into some specific points.

SPEAKER_00

One thing that Greg like touched on very briefly, he talked about how old Josiah was when he began to reign as king. Yeah, what what it was like eight? What did he say? Yes. He was given the throne at the age of eight. But interestingly enough, the more you read about Josiah's life, you find that like he didn't even begin to seek after the Lord. Keep in mind, this is supposed to be the king of God's people in the southern kingdom, which contains Jerusalem and the temple and the ark. Like it it's all supposed to be there, right? He's eight years old. It takes him eight years, according to the scriptures, for him to start to seek after the God of David. So he's 16 years old. So, first of all, the fact that he's seeking after the Lord when he's 16 is amazing. But the downside is he was the leader of God's people. And apparently, like, who is this Yahweh?

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah. What? Yeah, because he was too busy doing Legos for copscotch. Well, what is why is why is there an eight-year-old king?

SPEAKER_00

What's the history behind that, Seth? Well, you know, just back in that time, a king would die and he would have X amount of people that could actually take up the throne based off of like regnal law. So, like how you would inherit, you know, being a king, or a queen for that matter, but in this case, being a king. And he was just that age when that position came to him. And there was no other way around it. Now, sometimes like you can look in history, and there are times where they'll have like a uh regnal queen. So like the mother. What do you say? Regnal? Reign, regnal, king, like that. So what they or like regnal years, you'll hear sometimes in the old testament, we're talking about like how many years did this person reign? It's a regnal year, and it's really hard to calculate time because some of the regnal years don't line up. But in any event, so sometimes what they would do to accommodate for that is they would either put like a viceroy uh as like the leader, you know, like you'll you'll hear about these stories when you're reading like Robin Hood and you know, ancient medieval Europe kind of stuff. Uh, but other times what they would do is they would allow the mother of the king to reign in his stead as like the regnal queen. Uh but in this case, Josiah was like, he was just the man, the man at eight years old, 16 years old, starts following after the Lord. And what blows my mind is, you know, like the pre-story to all of this and the pre-story is that the word of the Lord was not found in the kingdom of God. They lost God's word. Just like Greg was talking about, what I'm taking beyond Sunday is God's people had God's word in a holy place and forgot that it was there because it wasn't used. So if you don't use it, you will lose it. That's not just Spanish from high school or like geography or algebra from high school. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. And you find that that actually happened with the people of God. And I have a fear for the Western church. So, like all of us, you know, Protestants, Catholic, whatever, that uh we have access to the Word of God as much as we want it. You know, there's a billion downloads of the Bible app, but it does absolutely nothing for you if it just sits on a shelf, on a desk, in your pocket, whatever it is. And that was the very point that Greg was making about the family Bible that just sat there throughout all these huge moments in world history and their personal family history, and was not cracked open at all. So, what good did did that book do? And what good did that book do for the people of God?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there's so many stories about that. My dad said that, like, yeah, we had a Bible growing up, it sat in the living room. When did you guys read it? Oh, no, no, you didn't touch it. You didn't touch the family Bible, and uh, there's so many of those stories. Now, Kate, you taught for how many years in public school? 23. And uh what grades?

SPEAKER_02

Fifth, fourth, third, second.

SPEAKER_01

And so third grade's uh eight-year-olds. Can you recall an eight-year-old that could have been king?

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01

But if you had to pick one, who would have been? Go back in the memory bank. My my daughter Remy is seven. Yeah, she's very mischievous after Benton's like and Jada's basketball games. I'll be like, Remy, what'd you do all day? And she'll be like, mischief. I'll be like, what does that mean? And she'll say, Oh, you'll find out. She said that to me. She is so I still haven't found out. You will. Yeah, I will. So there no one that you would be was qualified to be a king at eight. What stood out to you, Kate?

SPEAKER_02

Um, I loved like it was probably the main point um of what we're called to use as a course correction, which is the word worship and walking with God. Like that was just excellent. And I loved that Pastor Greg talked about when he talks with people who are struggling, he kind of goes through those three things and asks them, how are those things going in your life?

SPEAKER_01

Yep. And really remind us of three things.

SPEAKER_02

Um, word, worship, walking with God. And having one of them is great, but having three is optimal. And that's what the Lord wants us to do. He wants us consistently in the word. He wants us regularly worshiping, and he wants us to have people around us to spur us on. And if you're missing a part, it's gonna be like a chair missing a leg. You know, it's not gonna be stable. You're gonna have difficulty, and it's life isn't gonna be how God intended it. Now, life isn't how God intended it because we mess up all the time. But these are the things that bring us back to Cod and sets us on course in the way he wants us to go.

Word, Worship, And Walking With God

SPEAKER_01

Right. And that's what the message was was about drift. So we told the story of a man sailing, and uh it's not like he was totally off in the wrong direction. He was off by a half a degree, but a half degree over many, many miles all of a sudden puts you way off target. And now he's trying to, he's trying, it wasn't swimming, he was uh sailing, and now he's trying to sail against the current, and he's like it's terrible. And so how what is the similarity to that in comparison to how we drift spiritually?

SPEAKER_00

Like one of the most important points that he made was not like it's not that that one gigantic thing that takes you off course. It's usually like a series of very small decisions over a long period of time that led to that really big thing. So you're already off course, which is why you didn't have friends like Kate was saying, that you're walking with that kind of encourage you or correct you if you need to be corrected. And you decided not to be in worship or you decided not to be in the word for a while. You know, like none of those accountability pieces that God naturally puts in your life are gonna bring you back on track. And you're right, like over a long period of time, just a little bit of deviation causes a ton of drift. Oh man, well, like Apollo 13, like when they were doing and hidden figures, the movie about uh the young African-American ladies that actually helped do the supporting math to get them, you know, to get to astronauts on the moon. If their math would have been incorrect and the other people's math was incorrect. So if they would have relied on the other people, like that would have been a story of tragedy. But instead, they gave them the right math, they kept them on the right path and the right trajectory, and they were able to get to the moon and back because they stayed on course based off of the best information possible. And I think that's what the word is for all of us today. And that's what the word was for Josiah, that's what it was for the kingdom. For his reign, for the entirety of his reign, at least the people of God had the festivals re-established again, so they're walking together. They had regular worship and Sabbath reclaimed again. And uh, he actually had the word read so that everybody could hear it as well. So, like they had the word, they had worship and they had walking together. And that changed things, at least for his reign. Uh after that, not so great.

SPEAKER_01

But and at that time, Seth, um, did anyone like a commoner, did they have access to reading the word on their own or did it have to be read to them?

SPEAKER_00

Such a good question. Because we take for granted, since we have access to the Bible, it wasn't until like Gutenberg's printing press in Germany in like the 1500s where more people had access to read the Bible. But even then, like they would print Bibles and put them in churches, and the churches would chain the Bibles to their altars because Bibles, any printed word was incredibly valuable because not everybody could afford it. So can you imagine? Like, I have this question about the book of Jude. You would have to go, first of all, you'd have to know how to read, which was like across the world. Doesn't matter if you're in Israel and you know, uh the BC era, doesn't matter if you're in Germany in the 1500s, like literacy is not widespread by any means. Uh but then you'd actually have to go to the place. Like in this case, there's no way that a commoner would have any access to the scrolls of the Torah. You had to have them read to you audibly, which is a total different shift because I mean, we might listen to it like an audiobook or whatever. That's a lot more close to what this era of people during Josiah's time, what their experience with the word have been like. And they would have to remember what was read to them.

SPEAKER_01

You know what? I'm going to use that forever now because I prefer audible to actually reading. Uh so I'm just going back old school. That's right. So, Kate, you mentioned the word, worship, and walking with God. How do you personally incorporate those to help you fight against drift?

Drift: Half-Degree Choices Over Time

SPEAKER_02

Well, as good as my intentions are in studying the word, I do not do it consistently unless I am in a group in a study with other people that hold me accountable. And in the study I do, there's questions and study for each day of the week. And when I do it each day of the week, that's when I get the most out of it. Are there weeks that I cram the night before? Yes, there are. But when I do it the way it's intended, that feels really good to me. And this is not a the Bible is not a normal book where, oh yeah, I've read it. It's God's living word, and we're meant to study it till the last day we're here on earth because it's alive and active. And, you know, I've studied Genesis, for instance, you know, 10 years ago. But when I study it again, I'm in a different stage of life. I've grown in my faith. I know more, I'm more biblically literate. So we're meant to keep studying the scripture over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And God puts people around us to help in this drift as we walk with each other. One of the things uh GG Gryffindor talked about was counseling and the value of it. Do either of you have um, and just share what you're willing to, but any counseling that you've done over the years and how's it helped you?

SPEAKER_00

So I would say one thing that helped me uh was that in seminary, we had to take a pastor's counselor class, which on the one hand, like the professor was phenomenal, but we really only had like out of a 10-week course, maybe five weeks worth of class. So like you met twice a week. So it's like maybe 10 times you talked about actual counseling, like techniques and skills and everything else. But the rest of the time, you utilized that class to go actually get counseling so that you would know what it would feel like to be on the other side and what steps towards health would be. And I think that was one of the best things that could be done because I think in the era of Christianity when I was growing up, if you got counseling, you were you were not a good Christian. Because, like, if you believed in Jesus, you shouldn't have anxiety. If you believed in Jesus, you shouldn't be depressed because you should be filled with hope. And, you know, I I wonder how many generations of Christians bought that lie.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and instead, the scriptures are full of emotions, and they're full of a God who can handle those emotions, and they're full of a God that diagnoses like some of these emotions that you're feeling are okay. Like anger is okay. So, what you do with anger, like are you gonna sin in anger that the scriptures talk about? Some of these you can live with and it's healthy. Others, you got to process with it through somebody else because either like you don't have the skills or the experiences to like actually get some meaningful time in there, or we're so easy to avoid all the problems and the brokenness in our own lives and our own hearts. It's easier to say, well, if I go do this, I'll be a bad Christian. So I'm not gonna do that. I want to show how good I am. When in all honesty, the more open and vulnerable you can be, the healthier and the more whole God willing you'll become as you continue to work through there. Like that's what peace means. And like when we say shalom, you know, you you hear people say shalom all the time. Shalom isn't just the word peace, it means taking up all of the broken pieces and binding them back together as one whole. And so, like if we want peace, one of the best ways you can do that is like you could find somebody who's a trusted person, um, because there are some really wise, godly people that can give you counsel, but there's also people that are trained for that. So you might have some really deep brokenness and you're looking for peace. And maybe there's a great Christian counselor like here at the core gathering that's able to help the spirit. Like, spirit doesn't need help, but sometimes what needs to happen is you need to put those pieces down because you're so used to picking them up. The counselors here are really good at making sure that you have peace in Christ.

SPEAKER_01

That's such a beautiful picture you said of taking the broken pieces and making them whole. That's the piece of shalom. Uh, if you have never looked up Kinsugi art, check that out. Ooh, that's good stuff. That's good stuff. We won't get into it now. I'll leave that a nugget for y'all to check out. But Kate, how about you, World of Counseling?

Access To Scripture Then And Now

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, there's been lots of stages in life where I've where I've spoken to a counselor and it's been so beneficial. And I have some good Christian friends in my life, and I appreciate that. But there's something about a counselor who has been professionally trained in how to best counsel people in different situations. When I was going through treatment for breast cancer, I was actually referred to a psychiatrist who only saw oncology. Patients. And I was like, eh, I don't know if I need that. Man, that was, that was so valuable. And, you know, especially she, her focus was just people going through treatment for cancer. And, you know, once I finished treatment, I was like, am I done? She's like, nope. You know, she, and I still periodically talk to her. She went through a hard part of life with me. And she was knowledgeable. She was wise. She was outside the situation. She'd been, since she's a psychiatrist, she's been through medical training. So yeah, it was very valuable.

SPEAKER_01

I think having these conversations is helpful to not avoid our areas when we've struggled or when we said, I need someone else be beyond me to talk to. The more we're able to talk about that, the more the more people around us can hear that and say, I need that too. I think there's going to come a time where we all need that. And uh having the courage to bring it up to a spouse, to a friend, to a counselor, it really matters. For me, it's uh I usually realize it too late and I'm real stressed or I'm real anxious. And uh and then that's when I go meet with my counselor and he walks me through like the diagnostic, and there's undoubtedly something in my life that's shifted or drifted, and um, he helps diagnose it. Uh, and it and then we're able to get back on track. Um, so it's yeah, talking about it being open about that, that authenticity, one of our values at King of Kings is important. We heard about Josiah the king, and you mentioned him earlier, the eight-year-old king who doesn't find God until 16, um, but really helps like lead a nation, point them back to God. What can we learn about Josiah's leadership?

SPEAKER_00

Josiah was a baller. So, like, not only does he become king at eight and start following after the Lord at 16, when he's 20, he starts like rampantly running around southern Israel, which was called Judah at the point, and just bashing idolatrous like poles down and like idle altars. So, like, he does that without having the word of the Lord because he gets he finds the word of the Lord when he's like 26. So it's just God's spirit working through this guy. So Josiah is one of the few bright spots in the kingdom, uh, in that area. Like by this time, the whole northern kingdom, every king is bad. So, like, whenever I go through teaching the kings, I always talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because there's some really bad kings, and there's some kings that are just like, man, he was the same as the one who went before him.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, uh, so many of them are that. Like, he ran like his father and pursued other gods. Uh, who is the worst of all the kings?

Fighting Drift With Community Rhythms

SPEAKER_00

Ahab. Ahab, I I would probably put Ahab as one of the worst. Uh if we're yeah, I might go with that. There's some really bad ones, though, like sacrificing their children uh for the sake of putting up gates and things like that. I mean, it kind of just depends on how you would how are you gonna define worse? Because the depravity of humankind is shown all throughout the Old Testament, and we do it too.

SPEAKER_01

That's wild. Uh, but Josiah, one of the best. Um, Kate, any anything that came to mind on what what can we learn from Josiah's leadership?

SPEAKER_02

Well, willing to take ownership instead of deflect and play the blank game. I thought that was such a valuable trait of a true leader. It doesn't come naturally always. You know, we talked a little bit about that this morning as a staff. When receiving feedback, you're tempted to deflect and to make excuses. And Josiah gave that example of we're gonna repent. You know, this word has been in the temple, and we have not been obedient to what God has called us to do. And he led a repentance and how wise.

Counseling, Stigma, And True Shalom

SPEAKER_01

So in a meeting today, um, we had this feedback meeting and and we were talking about how like the feedback needs to be don't triangulate, talk to the person and uh be direct, be helpful, that kind of stuff is really is a really good training. But um, we were talking about how someone made they said, Well, what if it's funny? If it's funny, can we say things behind people's back? And and the the clear answer was no, you know. But that actually reminded me, and this is part of my testimony, is I mean, I've always grown up to be uh an entertainer. Like I love to entertain, I love to make people laugh, I love to have a good time, I love to try to help people feel comfortable and welcome, and and that's part of how God made me. Um, and when I was young, I did not have that superpower crafted at all. I was good at it, I'd make people laugh, but oftentimes hurt feelings and leave a wake. And uh it's an example of how I drifted and using a gift that God had given me and pointing it in the wrong direction. And it wasn't until my buddy Chad said to me in college, Peter, you're a jerk. I was like, What? And he was like, You say things to people that are not kind. And I said, No, they they know their jokes, and he said, Do they? And I went on the apology tour, and several of those people did not accept my apology, and that's a terrible feeling and a realization. One, thank you, Chad, for that feedback. Um, and two, like that was a true area in my life where I had drifted. And the James talks about how the the most powerful weapon is the tongue, and I had used it destructively. Um, can you guys it's but God redeemed that? Um, and and over the years, I was uh some of the people who originally didn't accept my apology, we were able to reconcile, and uh and I've really thought about that ever since. Can you think of personal stories, times where you've drifted and how God pointed that out to you?

SPEAKER_02

I've struggled at times with having a sharp tongue as well, not like in the same exact way as you described, Peter, but when I was younger, I was much more sarcastic. And if you come from like a sarcastic family, that's kind of the norm. But not everyone comes from a sarcastic family. And it can come across as rude and impolite. And um, so I've learned I need to watch that. Um and there have been people like in your life, Peter, where where they have said, you know, that came across harshly. And it is hard to accept at first. Um, I feel like as I've gotten older, I'm much better as accepting it and thinking about it and praying about it too, and responding in a way that is honoring to the Lord.

SPEAKER_00

That's beautiful. I mean, just like the taking it to prayer and bringing it to the Lord. I think if more folks did what Kate's talking about now, people would flock to Christian communities because they would know, like, yeah, if you need to tell the truth, you could tell the truth. And if somebody is hurting somebody else's feelings, you can talk about that. But like they will actually bring it to the Lord rather than just knee-jerk reacting and trying to get their two cents in or try to deflect it or defend themselves. So, man, if we could have more kates, then we'd be good.

SPEAKER_02

On a good day.

SPEAKER_00

I agree. I agree. Accepting all applications for kates. He must be named Kate. Kate, Catherine, Katie. Any derivative would be fine. Any personal stories for you? So Yeah, it's kind of actually recent. Um, I, you know, we just moved here back in June, and I used to be in a far closer contact with the members of my family because we were all close. I've got two younger sisters and a younger brother, and my dad and my mom. We would always text regularly. I'd send them pictures of the kids, whatever we're doing. I'd invite them, they'd show up, they'd have parties down in Racine. We'd go down there and hang out, and the whole families, everybody would be together. And uh, I just have dropped the ball and drifted in terms of just like keeping them involved in what's going on in the kids' lives and going on in our lives. And so it's probably like, I don't know, three weeks ago. My mom was like, hey, it would be great if like you could step up the communication a little bit better again, because I really don't appreciate finding out what's happening in your family's life through Facebook when everybody else finds out. And at the time I was like, but I'm so in my head, I'm so busy. And then I was like, you know what, Seth, just take it uh because it's true. And you need to do a better job of just like redirecting, getting off of this drift and keeping your family more, you know, even closer.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and and in that is a picture of repentance when you realize you've done something wrong and you turn away from it. And then as a Christian, you turn back to God. Um, and I think of the commandment honor your father and your mother. And so, in doing so, I'm worshiping God, or you're worshiping God by listening to your mom, even if you disagreed. Even if you're like, Mom, I'm calling you once every couple weeks. That's enough. Like, you obey and you worship God in that. Um, how does repentance what would you speak to on repentance and how it um what role does it play in ensuring that we're on that right course with God?

SPEAKER_02

It has to be a part of your routine continually. Now you talked about going on their repentance tour where you apologize to people, which there is times when we have to apologize to people. But daily we need to be in repentance to the Lord and going before him and laying our sin down before him. And when you have the courage to ask the Lord, reveal the sin I'm not aware of, it can be a dangerous prayer, but I feel it's one that God answers because there are times when we're sinning and we don't even realize it. Um a lot of times in church when we pray before communion, I just kind of visualize the blood of Jesus just coming over me, washing over all the places and crevices and cracks and you know, places that I'm not aware of. And it just makes taking communion that much more special. And and hearing you are forgiven. Like that is a gift. It's almost like a fresh start every time you do that. And I think that's how God wants us to live. His mercies are new every morning. He wants us to remember his gifts continually, and that comes through repenting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's kind of I I don't know. I kind of look at it too in terms of like the less that you're willing to repent, the more that you want to hold on to your own sin. Yeah. And so if you're gonna hold on to your own sin, like you know, you were talking about that there are parts of me when I'm confessing before, you know, communion, uh like there's there's a part of us that's not even like they I don't know about those parts.

unknown

Yeah.

Leadership Lessons From Josiah

SPEAKER_00

There are parts of us that we know about and we don't want to like lay down before him because we're embarrassed, we're ashamed, uh, we knew better and we still did whatever it was anyways. And there's a part of us that thinks that we can hide some aspect of our character or our person from the Lord. And the great blessing of Jesus is that his grace is so overwhelming that it will come over the entirety of us and make the entirety of us clean, whether we recounted that, you know, like specifically or not, he overpowers our shame and our guilt that we want to hold on to. And it it's not very grace-sounding, but sometimes he has to rip our own shame out of our own hands. And I think repentance is our way of getting used to him by removing sin from our lives. And it's not like if we h hold on to it, he can't forgive it. That's not what I'm saying. It's like a muscle that the more that you repent, uh, it doesn't mean that repenting is easier, but it's less hard when when you're turning regularly. And so that's really what repentance is. The word is, you know, in the Greek that we talk about is metanoio, and that is like to constantly turn your mind from that thing that you were focused on or that shame that you're holding on to, whatever it was that you didn't want to give up, the spirit of God moves you from that, even though you don't necessarily want to. And the more you repent, uh the more hopefully other people don't see that as performative, but they see it as well. And you have a whole community then that's living in truth and humility. And that's actually what you see happens in Josiah's kingdom. Like he says, like, this is this is my fault. We are all going to repent. And so they do. And what happens as a result is community, it flourishes. So I'm not saying this is like a one-to-one formula. The more you repent, the more the community is healthy, but it's really not going to hurt.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

If you like have a very common practice, like to just lay sin before the Lord and just like be very open and honest with your sin with your fellow brothers and sisters, too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the I think the uh the best road between healing, brokenness, and healing is repentance, confession and repentance. Um, to say, I did this and I'm sorry, and I need your forgiveness. And when when we say that to God, I mean his forgiveness is perfect through Christ. And it's like he opens up this incredible storehouse bigger than we can ever imagine, and that grace just flows over you, and he takes like that your burden because it was never ours to carry. And then it actually frees us to live for him, to have that sanctified life where we can go out and make a difference, untethered, unchained, um, and and getting back on course after drift. So before we wrap this up, final takeaways.

SPEAKER_00

All right, so I'll do a final takeaway. It's just like generally for this part of the Bible. A lot of people get really confused when they read through this portion of the Bible because the kingdom is split in two, and sometimes they talk about one king in relationship to the other king. So it's really difficult sometimes. But what I will say is that the the more you expose like that teaching into your heart, the more clear it becomes. So if you just do it once, yes, it will be confusing. But you go back to it again and you're like, oh, and you learn a little bit. And then you go back to it again later. Oh, you learn a little bit. And when you're reading the New Testament, sometimes it'll refer to certain things that happened in the Old Testament. So you're going to go back in there and you read it again, you'll get a little bit more. So every time you go back to the word, you're going to understand like the story of it more and more. But the other cool thing is, it doesn't matter how many times you read the same section of the scripture, if you're actually reading it and studying it and your heart is open to the Lord, you're going to see something different. Not because the word is different, but because you are every time you come back to it. So, for instance, I was reading my devotions this morning, uh, and uh I was in Numbers, and it said, and if you want to know more about this, read more in the book of the wars of Yahweh. And I was like, Wars of Yahweh? I want that book. What's that book? Nowhere else is it referred to in the entirety of the scriptures, but it's another book that would have been used, and it's like quoted, and so it's probably like some poetry or something, all about the wars of Yahweh. So, like when God's people are still wandering in the wilderness, but they're like mowing down the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Emirates, and all they're just taking all these guys down. It's supposedly in a book somewhere that we don't have access to. So when I die, I'm gonna be like, Moses, show me the book. Show me the book. Because there's other ones. There's like um the annals of the kings. So there's even more detailed reports about what happened during the reigns of the kings, and it's referred to in the scriptures many times. Uh it'll say, like, hey, if you want to know more, just go ahead and read that book. And I'm like, I want to read that book.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So in any event, there's always going to be something new that you're going to read when you're looking at the scriptures.

SPEAKER_02

And I love when they have archaeological discoveries and they're like, oh, this points to this that was said in the Bible.

Honest Feedback, Tongues, And Repair

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Like all of history, you know, will only confirm the word of God.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

So I think what I'm taking away is when Pastor Greg kind of ended with saying, what needs to be cleansed from my temple? Um, because that Josiah wanted he, his goal was to cleanse the temple. And um, we all have something, you know. And again, if you're not sure, that's when you ask the Lord, you know, Lord, what do you want to remove? You know, for me, for me, it's a struggle sometimes. Before bed, I'm tired, the day's over, and I'm tempted sometimes just to scroll on my phone mindlessly. Those nights, I feel like I don't sleep as well. I don't wake up feeling as refreshed. I feel like the Lord has showed me before bed, I want you to read, whether it's scripture or a devotion, I want you to end the day in my word somehow. And when I do that, dang, it feels like that. That's what I was meant to do. So that's something that I know that recently the Lord has showed me. You need to clean this out. The scrolling on your phone, nah, we don't need it. So that's what I'm working on.

SPEAKER_00

How about you, Peter? Final takeaways.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there was a lot of conviction uh in the message that uh, I mean, because the drift happens in so many different areas. Uh, it can be parenting, it can be uh my own spiritual walk, um, not leading my kids into anger, those type of things. I think I think for me, um, and I uh a big blessing yesterday, I I drove for the first time ever to Auburn, Nebraska. And I went to a basketball game, saw the Concordia Boys, they they lost, but they played valiantly. And uh I drove with a buddy who's a strong spiritual friend of mine, and we were talking about this, like all this kind of stuff on the way there and on the way back, and we talked about like how we both agreed that we parent more with law than we parent with gospel. And that was uh an important takeaway for us because like as a parent, it's easy for me to to be like, like what you did was wrong, and this and that, and this and that, and it's true, but how often do I just speak those words to my kid? You are God's child, redeemed by Christ. Like it if if I spoke that routinely, it's going to sink in to my kids. Um, and so with parenting, I think that was uh uh a five my final takeaway is where can I one repent, turn to God and say, I need your help, and then redirect and uh resist the drift. Ooh, I like that. Resist the drift.

SPEAKER_02

Amen.

Repentance As Daily Realignment

SPEAKER_01

Well, very good, y'all. Uh, thank you for joining us on this. I hope your journeys are uh more driftless as you repent, uh, as you are in the word, you worship and you walk together with other Christians. Make it happen and keep living beyond Sunday.

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