The Emotional Christian | Staying Grounded in Truth | Bible, Bros, & Brew

Emotions are a God-given element of the human experience. It's unrealistic to think that you can go through life without feeling anything, but at the same time, being governed by your feelings is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. So what should we do instead? This is where God's Word comes into play. We must strive to develop the habit of consistently deferring to what God says--instead of what we feel--about the situations and circumstances of life. In this episode, David, Jon, and Phil explore some of the practical adjustments we as believers can make to transition from being emotionally driven to being directed by the truth of God's Word. While it's not an easy task, it will pay great dividends in terms of helping you develop spiritual maturity, which leads to a much more stable and resilient life. So grab your coffee (or tea), get your Bible and a notebook, and dig into the Word with us as we explore this vital topic!

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Transcript

From Emotional To Stable Faith

David McIntyre 0:00

Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about the emotional Christian. Tonight, we're going to talk about what Christians should actually do in order to move away from emotional to stable. Up next on Bible Bros and Bruce Well, hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of Bible Bros and Brew. I'm David and Long with me here. I've got John D and I've got Philip R. And we are all really, really ready to get this thing going tonight and to chat with you about this topic as we talk more about the emotional Christian. Um, you know, Philip, over the last couple of weeks, we've talked about a lot of stuff. Is there something that stands out to you about what we've talked about and what we're going to talk about tonight? Join the emoji.

Phillip Rich 1:13

Yeah, one of the things that I think what I hope that people get from the series we've been doing is that it's not wrong to have feelings. That would be completely unrealistic. We know God gave us feelings and gave us emotions, but the important thing is that you don't allow feelings to govern you to the point where they're dictating your actions because let me tell you something. If you lack impulse control, uh you're gonna end up in some bad places in life. Uh, there's a lot of people in prison right now who wish they would not have been governed by their feelings in a given moment.

David McIntyre 1:51

Oh gosh, can we talk about that for a minute?

Phillip Rich 1:54

Serious. You know, it's it's one of those things where, you know, not, you know, if you're not exercising self-control, it's it like I think it's in Proverbs 17, maybe at the end of the chapter, it says, he that does not have any rule over his own spirit is like a broke a city with broken down walls. So it's like you're you have no defense, dude. If you don't have rule over yourself, if you don't have self-control, which a lot of times emotions can really put pressure on you to lose self-control. And if you don't have self-control, though, the Bible says you're like a city that does not have walls, meaning you are open to attack. And that's what you don't want, man. Um, back in the ancient times when that that proverb was written, if you were a city, it was it was a given that you had walls around the city. Like that was, I mean, no idiot would make a city without building a nice wall around it back then, because invasions were common. You know, you just get a random army from some other country coming in, and next thing you know, they're rolling on your whole city. And if you didn't have a wall set up, it was over. So um, I thought it was a great analogy for you know how we have to defend our lives, quite literally, defend our lives with God's word helping us to exercise that spirit of self-control um through his word and through the Holy Spirit living in us, so that we don't make dumb decisions at a moment that can end up causing us long-term pain. So that's probably probably more than what you asked for, David, but but that's my takeaway.

David McIntyre 3:34

No, that's good. And you're you're right. You the prisons are filled with people who are living with regrets, regrets of allowing their emotions to get the best of them. And we live in a world now where you can literally go on YouTube and watch it happen all day long, uh, just being able to make one bad decision after another in the heat of the moment, you know, that emotional decision that takes them somewhere that they never intended to be. And you know, even in a Christian life, we can make emotional decisions that don't put us in a federal prison or a local or state prison, but they put us in a uh in a perceived prison within ourselves that limits us from moving the way that God would have us. And so just you know, if there's something to remember, one of the things we'll say tonight to remember is to not allow your emotions to imprison you. And though you're free in this world, you're captive internally because of those emotions. So we're gonna dig into that some more, and tonight we're gonna talk very specifically about the practical things you can do to deal with emotionalism in your life.

What’s In The Cup

David McIntyre 5:04

But before we do that, of course, we're gonna talk about what's in the cup.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

All right, all right, let's talk about what's in the cup. That's the glow, that's the glory.

Phillip Rich 5:35

You know what's the glory of the echo, man. All right, all right. Somebody said, tell me, brothers, what's in the cup?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah, so let's talk about uh what's in the cup.

David McIntyre 5:51

Uh John, why don't you start off since you're usually the first one to finish your coffee?

Jon Dzyuba 5:55

What well you're like three hours too late because I already finished my cup of coffee. But I'm just kidding, there's a little bit left in there. Uh you know, you ever have like a thank you, John.

Phillip Rich 6:15

It's become it's kind of slow, so that was meant for like five seconds earlier than now.

Jon Dzyuba 6:22

So hey man, I heard I heard the ticking, and I knew I feel like I already got the timing down memorized.

Phillip Rich 6:28

Yeah, yeah, great.

Jon Dzyuba 6:29

You know how you have like a comfort TV show, a comfort thing that you do, and I'm finding out, I'm not finding out, I already knew this, but um it's becoming apparent to me that today is one of those days where I just eat in my comfort coffee, and this is a this consists of mostly a salted caramel, either salted caramel mocha, which is what I'm drinking tonight. Uh, oftentimes it'll be the idea of a mocha or a latte, but it's salted caramel. That's that's that's my comfort flavor, and that's what we're drinking tonight. Um, I had a lot. This is a huge mug. I had a lot today, and it was all great. Come on. Um I know we all have it, and and honestly, for your guys' sake, I'd love to hear it from you. What is your comfort coffee or your comfort, you know, drink tea lemonade, you know, for those we don't judge. We listen and we won't judge like immediately. But uh yeah, that's for me personally, it's salted caramel mocha. Um, and it's just it's keeping it mellow right now, it's keeping it things in check today. Come on, we'll see.

Phillip Rich 7:47

Oh, sorry, John. Go ahead, buddy.

Jon Dzyuba 7:49

No, I was just gonna ask you what what you got in your cup, Uncle Phil.

Phillip Rich 7:54

Well, you know, before I get to mine, I wanted to give a quick shout out to some of the nice folks in the chat telling us their favorite drinks here. One said, uh, I also in fact have water. Shout out to Key of M on that. Um, we got another one that said they have chai tea. Oh that's pretty good. Can we talk about chai tea for a second? Dude, let's talk about chai tea.

Jon Dzyuba 8:18

Chai means tea.

Phillip Rich 8:20

Uh-oh, Spider-Man, right?

Jon Dzyuba 8:23

Well, yeah, they pointed it out in that movie too, but also it's true. Chai means tea. It's like saying the ATM machine, right? And an ATM stands for machine. Machine. So if you're drinking chai, drink chai. If you're drinking tea, drink tea. Come on now. Otherwise, I don't mean to the the fact that you're drinking chai tea. I'm I'm happy for your name. You keep doing what you gotta do.

Phillip Rich 8:52

Yeah, department of redundancy department. Okay. Um, all right. Now we have this here from Henry. He says it's milk. That's what I'm talking about, man. Does the body good as we learned back in the 80s? So um that's great too. Good stuff. But speaking of speaking of milk, I wanted to just do something special tonight. Now I have um my Guatemala decaf from Peregrine, which is a fantastic coffee, um, especially when you've had far too much and you can no longer uh tolerate any more caffeine for the day. So just kidding, um, that never happens with me. Just kidding. But uh, but I've got my cup here, and I wanted to show you one of the reasons why I got a clear mug. So I brought with me a small container of heavy whipping cream. And tonight on Bible Bros and Brew, for the first time ever, you're gonna see a live demonstration of my pouring in the brewery right now.

David McIntyre 9:57

You better not pour that on the bed, or Stephanie's gonna have you.

Jon Dzyuba 10:00

All right, brew chemistry 101 right here, dude.

Phillip Rich 10:05

I'm sticking with descriptors in these last days, so I should be all right. But uh, here we go. Are you ready? Three, two, one. Oh dude, if that don't get your goat, and if that don't scratch your itch, and if that don't float your boat, and all the other phrases, I don't know what will because we don't have a goat. Oh well, maybe your pet cat, uh something, something along those lines, but yeah, you know, I just wanted to do that, you know, just to show you a demo of why uh I love using this cup first thing in the morning. It's just the cream action, man. It's fluid motion.

David McIntyre 10:47

So Kia V that's funny. You are your father's child. Oh my trouble has suddenly dissipated.

Phillip Rich 10:58

Yes, yes. Henry said he didn't know that we had lessons on how to make coffee on this podcast. That's what I'm talking about, man.

David McIntyre 11:07

Yeah, something, something new we're trying. We're workshopping it.

Phillip Rich 11:14

We're gonna table this for the time being, right? Um, we'll we'll uh circle the wagons, run it up the flagpole, see who salutes it. Um, but David, how about you, man? What do you have for uh your coffee?

David McIntyre 11:27

I'm just drinking boring coffee tonight. I'm drinking a Burisimo bourbon pecan.

Phillip Rich 11:34

Oh snap.

David McIntyre 11:35

Um, I don't know where it's from. My wife found it and she made my coffee tonight. Okay, apparently it's an Aldi brand. Oh, so um it definitely tastes like bourbon, Mr.

Jon Dzyuba 11:53

David. How do you know what bourbon tastes like?

David McIntyre 11:56

Because back in the day before I was in the light, I ran with darkness.

Phillip Rich 12:03

He ran hard too.

David McIntyre 12:05

Therefore, I am like Paul. I've I do remember a time when I was once in darkness, but now I'm in the light.

Phillip Rich 12:18

Here's the thing, guys. You know, Paul told the Corinthians in First Corinthians, he said, you know what, man? Uh neither whoremongers nor idolaters nor users of themselves. He went down this whole list. He said, None of y'all are gonna inherit the kingdom of God, but then he said, and such were some of you. So he's he was telling you, man, I know I got a church full of ex-thugs, ex-hoodlums, ex-n'er do wells, if you will. And now, sorry, now you're saved, you know, and so Jesus came into your life and helped you. But I just wanted to point something out. Um, Henry said something amazing here. He said, This is probably the best podcast ever, and I just want to say I appreciate that. I appreciate that, yeah.

David McIntyre 13:10

Especially when Philip jumps on and he starts with whores and ends with dandy well.

Jon Dzyuba 13:20

Join us next week, Rock. Dude, that ferrogrim got you on something else, dude.

David McIntyre 13:26

We might need to switch over to that because uh yes. All right, that's what's in the

Joy And A Grounded Walk

David McIntyre 13:32

cup. Let's dig into the word tonight. Um, you know, we do laugh a lot, and it's just proof if you needed some in your life, that you know, the word and loving God and loving the things of God and his word is not a stuffy and tight thing. It's okay to laugh. Yeah, it's it's uh it's actually pertinent that you do laugh and that you live with joy because it's that joy that is um it's attractive to people. We often, you know, I'm working with a group of young men right now, and you know, one of the things I noticed about this group is whenever we start talking, everybody puts their heads down, like we're about to go into these deep waters, and you know, we're gonna talk about the bad parts of my life, and you know, that's not what Christianity is. Christianity is while working through some of the tougher areas, God still gives us joy, and our joy comes from as of an old preacher used to say, joy comes from what you know, and what we know is Christ crucified. And so we can have joy when we know that he's paid the price. Praise God. Speaking of which, joy being kind of an emotion, we've been talking about the emotional Christian. And over the last couple of weeks, we've talked about various and sundry situations from being connected with emotional churches, uh, to actually last week uh Philip did a great job of helping us walk through this concept of why Christians are uh led by their emotions rather than their faith. And we talked about, you know, the four things within that category, and we talked about um we allow our feelings or our feelings are easier than discipline, as one of the reasons. We talked about how the culture has shifted Christianity towards an experience versus an actual walk and a journey with God. We talked about how people confuse God's presence with a feeling, and sometimes I don't well, no, never mind, don't say that. But people confuse God's presence with a feeling, and the fourth one is that they have a lack of grounding in the scripture, and for so many problems that we deal with in our world today, so many of them come back to number four that lack of grounding in the scripture. And uh you'd be surprised how much your knowledge of the scripture helps to dictate and understand how so many other things that are coming at you and happening, what they look like and how they should be addressed. So this week we want to look a little bit deeper into the mix and talk about what Christians should actually do. We've talked about all of the emotional stuff or a good chunk of it, and we're gonna come back and deal with it because a cousin to being emotional is being immature, and so I think we're gonna talk a little bit about the immature Christian and some of the challenges that are there, and some of them are the same. So um, but let's start looking at, and we hope this is practical knowledge for you, practical information that will help you to move from point A to point B. It doesn't matter if you've identified yourself as like, okay, I'm a completely emotional Christian and I need help to the person that says, Well, I got a few issues I need to deal with. These practical steps should help everyone.

Let Truth Lead Your Emotions

David McIntyre 17:28

So I'm gonna throw the first one out there on the table and let uh the team knock some lug knock it out. Uh the first step in practical correction is to allow the truth to lead and let emotions to follow. You're not supposed to sub, you're not supposed to suppress emotion, but don't let it drive either. Right? We have to have this fine balance in our lives where we know that God gives us emotions. Sometimes our uh sometimes our feelings and emotions could be pointing us towards something, right? So we don't want to we don't ignore those things per se. Um sometimes we do need to, but we need to allow the truth to take the to take the wheel, as they say, and allow the other feelings and emotions to drive shotgun. What do you got on that, Phillips?

Phillip Rich 18:31

Yeah, well, you you you nailed it in terms of the feelings that we all feel at times. I mean, it you know, if you've lived on the planet for more than you know a year, you've already gone through a range of emotions and feelings that uh are common to everyone to some degree. And uh it's it's not what we don't want to uh bring across is the idea that you're supposed to go through life being this uh what do you call it, like a um like a stoic to the point of you don't even know how to feel, you know. It's like um that movie My Girls Love So Much, the Spider-Man movie, where there's like the Spider-Man noir version, and he's like, I want to put my hand over a flame just so I can feel something again, you know. So something like that. You don't want to um be in that kind of space in your life where you you walk through life numb necessarily, because you know, God gave us, like we talked about before, many, many times, God gave us emotions, and a lot of times emotions are signals uh that are it's kind of like the things that I'm perceiving about life right now, about my environment, about uh my relationship, whatever the case might be. Um those sit those things that I'm perceiving, and many times it's things coming through my senses, uh, the emotions can be signals as to they're they're basically responses to what I'm perceiving a lot of times. And so this can also mean that they are sometimes unreliable because there's times when you may not perceive a situation properly. Like you might walk into a room and there's two people in the room, and all of a sudden, as soon as you walk in, they start laughing. And you might think in your mind, oh man, they're laughing at me. They don't like what I got on, you know, they think my shoes look stupid. You know, whatever. You could be going through all kinds of stuff, but next thing you know, you find out later they were laughing about something totally different that had nothing to do with you, you know. Um, things like that. So emotions can be a terrible uh guide. You don't want to make them the the leader or the compass that you're walking and living your life by. Um, but what should then be the compass if emotions should not be? And that's where we go back to the word of God. And when we say the word of God, I know that's a very general kind of a thing. Like, what do you mean the word of God? There's 66 books in the Bible, that thing's about a thousand plus pages long. What do you what what parts of the word? Well, this is where study comes into play. And I'll say this because we know that the New Testament in particular, the the letters of Paul, uh, Peter and John and James, as a matter of fact, uh, the ones that comprise letters to the New Testament church, they also contain all kinds of instructions as to how to walk this walk as a believer. And so I think if you want to start anywhere, I'd start there. Start with the things that like Paul talked about, maybe in Romans 12, when he says, you know, don't let your love be without hypocrisy, hate what's evil, cling to what's good, be kindly affectionate to one another. You could go to Ephesians where it says, uh, don't lie to each other because we're members of the same body, but be kind and compassionate towards one another, forgiving each other, just like God in Christ forgave us. You know, those things are our instruction manual. You know, those are the things that were written directly to New Testament believers. I wouldn't suggest starting in places in the old covenant where stuff was kind of wacky and did not directly address New Testament believers. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's like in Ezekiel when he told Ezekiel to lay on his side for however many many days that was, or when he told another prophet to shave his head and do this, that, and the other. You know, you don't want to say, well, I'm gonna do what the word says and go off and shave your head. We're not saying to go, you can't take everything written in the Bible as a prescriptive action. You know, you gotta use your discernment in those things.

David McIntyre 22:34

Um, and you also gotta you also gotta know that you are we use the whole of the Bible to teach us. Uh, the Bible, the New Testament tells us that the old was written for our learning.

Phillip Rich 22:48

Yeah.

David McIntyre 22:48

And so we want to use it for that, but we have to realize that we are under a new covenant. So what drives our behavior, our choices, and our decisions is the stuff that we find inside of the new covenant, but that can also be somewhat informed by things that happen in the old covenant to help you to understand either why that exists or to show it in action so that you have an idea of what it means. You know, it's important that you understand the story of Abraham from Genesis 15 to Genesis 25. Right. Because that story informs so much, in fact, it fully informs what faith is for the New Testament believer. And if you don't appreciate that story and understand how Abraham believed, then you will come up short in your New Testament faith.

Phillip Rich 23:49

Yep, that's good, David. And um, that's what we have to learn how to develop is that discernment to focus on the things that we know are directly addressing New Testament believers, um, things that are plainly laid out in scripture as you know, here's what you should do, and here's what you should not do. Um but you know, beyond all that, we have to value the word of God itself. And what I mean by that is, you know, taking time to study it, taking time to learn it, taking time to really get well versed in what the word says, because that is your foundation.

Train Discernment Through Scripture

Phillip Rich 24:32

Um, there's a scripture I wanted to go to in Hebrews 5, and it talks about this stuff. Uh, John, if you have a second to pull Hebrews 5 up for me. Ah, this is good too. We just had something pop into the chat from our best bro. It says, Hi, you are a child of God. If you feel alone, Jesus has felt your pains. Love that. Um, there's a scripture in Hebrews 4, actually, right before the one I was gonna go to. Uh, John, if you don't mind, back out to Hebrews 4 in the last couple of verses in that chapter. This just kind of back up what our best bro said here. He said, uh, in verse 15, we do not have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who is in every respect, he has been tempted like as we are, yet without sin. So it says right there, Jesus, our high priest, was tempted like we are. He's experienced the same struggles, the same temptations, the same pressure in life and stress that we deal with, yet he did not sin. That's where that's where we part ways with him. Um, and then in verse 16 it says, So then let us come boldly unto the throne of grace. Uh in this translation it says, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace. That means go straight to God, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help. Because that's what we really need. We need help, you know. Um, grace to help in time of need. Um, I just wanted to throw that in there because just kind of uh piggybacking off of what uh our best bro said. But then in Hebrews 5, if you don't mind John flipping to that one, um near the end of Hebrews 5, probably might be verse 12. Yeah, it says, though by this time you ought to be teachers. Uh-oh. He said, You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. Uh, you need milk, not solid food, he said. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he's a child. He's talking about an immature Christian. But solid food, and the King James says strong meat, solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by, look at these two next next two words, by constant practice. By constant practice. That is important. Become a doer of what this word says by constant practice. Your discernment is trained to distinguish good from evil. And that's when you really do begin to become a more mature believer, is you start practicing what God's word says, the very things we talked about earlier from Romans 12 or Ephesians 4. Be kindly affectionate to one another, uh uh hate what's evil, cleave to what's good, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, um, put away lying, putting away jealousy, all that mess. All of that's important. And that helps you to develop into the image of uh into the image of Christ Himself. And that is when you begin to mature in the things of God. I know I'm kind of kind of all over the place, but I think um the point being you have to have something beyond your feelings to be a north star for you, to be a guiding uh accompass for you. And that will be God's word. You can always go back to it, even when your feelings are leading you astray, for sure.

David McIntyre 28:12

Yeah, that's good, Philip. And I'll add to that, you know, we were um I was hoping we'd um we'd get to it, but first Peter chapter two, if you look at verses one through three, again, it gives us that prescription of what to get rid of. So get rid of all evil behavior. I'm reading out the new living translation. The ESV would be better because I will it talks about get rid of all malice, yes, envy and all of that good stuff. But the new living says, so get rid of all behavior, of all evil behavior, be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and unkind speech. Yeah, and then check this out like newborn babies, come on, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment now that you have had a taste of the Lord's kindness. So now we even see that what we're talking about when we're talking about spiritual maturity is we're talking about growing in the full experience of your salvation. Yep, and that spiritual milk is the word of God. I I can't understand the fullness of my salvation without partaking of the word, because it's the word that teaches me what my salvation is, how to walk in it, the things I can do because of it, and if I am participating little in it, then I'm experiencing little salvation. Yeah, if I'm experiencing great or expending great time in it and understanding and growing in it, I grow under my salvation more and more and more and experience what God had intended for me.

Phillip Rich 30:12

That's good, David. That's good. And I wanted to point out too, in the King James version of that same passage, it does say desire the sincere milk of the word. Correct. So it's actually in that, um, which is interesting because when Peter said this, this is chapter two of First Peter. He ended chapter one, maybe a few sentences earlier, he ended chapter one talking about how we are born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed, which is the word of God. And so, right there, uh, I honestly I feel like he was kind of continuing his thought into chapter two. He was saying, you know, hey, look, you were born again by this very word. And now, as a newborn babe, since you've been born again, desire the sincere milk of the word. You know, desire, uh, and I think that that phrase sincere, it means like unadulterated, like hasn't been contaminated with anything. And that's that's a very, very tall order in today's time, guys, is to stick with God's word and God's word only. Because we have, you know, sadly, pulpits are full of people who have added all kinds of mixture to the word that is not even found in the Bible. Stuff that's just sounds good, stuff that sounds deep and philosophical, but is not based in any scripture anywhere, has no scriptural backing. You can't uh find witnesses of it in the word anywhere. You've got to be careful about that stuff. Just because something sounds good, y'all, doesn't mean that it's coming from the Bible, number one, doesn't mean God said it number two, and doesn't mean that it's uh, you know, anything we should be living our life by. You've got to make sure that the word that you're getting, especially if you're in a church somewhere, um, make sure that those sermons line up with what the word of God says. Don't take the preacher's word for it. Just because he's standing up there saying something that sounds awesome. Take the time to look at search the scriptures, be like the Bereans uh in the book of Acts. It says the Bereans were more noble than the Christians in Thessalonica because they searched the scriptures to find out if these things were so. And I I think it's important to do that as a believer for sure.

David McIntyre 32:28

And you know, Philip, and I I don't say this to cast aspersions on anyone, but I think you even ask Christians, um, I don't read a whole lot of Christian books.

Phillip Rich 32:40

Amen. Me neither, brother.

David McIntyre 32:42

Um I know that might sound strange, um but I am careful of what I ingest because I recognize that all a book is, particularly Christian books, Christian books are people who are taking something we found in the Word and expounding on it. Hopefully they've done good research and good study, and they're expounding upon it in a good way. And I've read some good Christian books. I've found a very good Christian devotional. I'm walking through it right now, and I'm enjoying it from top to bottom. Um, but you have to be careful because, like the last Christian devotion I had, I had to spit out the meat and chew them or chew the meat and spit out the bones uh in that one because there were some things that were a little that were were off. And if I were a younger Christian, I don't know that that might not have thrown me a little bit. Right. So you just have to be, you have to be cautious about what you intake outside of the word. If I were to say that what your study time should include, it should include a great deal of the word, a little bit of extra stuff, and then as you're growing and maturing in the word, and you can um you can take in some more outside stuff and rightly judge whether it's agreeing with the word or not for yourself and determining whether you're gonna go into that. So, okay, that was just point number one, and we got five. So let's jump to the next one, the next practical bit of advice that we could give to

Build Daily Consistency

David McIntyre 34:29

you. Um, and it is to build daily consistency, not just have moments of consistency, but to build daily consistency. That means time in the word, daily consistency in your prayer. That means you do it even when you don't feel like it. And then daily consistency and obedience to the things that the Lord is guiding and leading you to do, even the small things, pick that up off of the floor. Don't let that stay there like that. There's so many small things that you'd be surprised that God is actually speaking to you about, and by practicing the little things, it's easier to hear them in the bigger things.

Phillip Rich 35:14

That's good, David.

David McIntyre 35:16

And when you I'd say one other thing, real quick, Philip, is that when you do this when you when you are consistent in your daily life, you begin to stabilize your faith.

Phillip Rich 35:28

Oh, that's good, man. That's good. That's so true, David. It's the small incremental steps. And I think that a lot of Christians overlook that, honestly. I know I did for years, because something about us, we get tied to performance. We we love the idea of doing something grand and extravagant to make ourselves feel more spiritual or make ourselves feel more connected to God or something like that. You know, um, David and I have story after story of this kind of stuff. When we were first, you know, coming into the things of God, we we, you know, my the big thing was my prayer time, you know, like, oh man, I've I've spent an hour praying, you know, in the spirit, and uh I went into the third and fourth heaven or whatever we might be doing at the time, you know. Um and you you start realizing that you don't want to try to set a standard for yourself that over the long term you can't sustain. Don't start that way. Start with small incremental goals for your your daily time with the Lord, your time in the word, your time in prayer. Instead of sitting here trying to make a grandiose, you know, get goal or whatever. You know, I'm gonna pray for an hour every day, God. No, man, start with five minutes. Be consistent and faithful over that five minutes. Just go for a week with a five-minute prayer time. Uh just make sure to commit to it every single day. Go through the go through the process of waking up on those days when you don't feel like doing it and still do it. Yeah, that's what you're learning during those times. You're learning the consistency. It's gonna take time, guys, to develop consistency. This, this, this step that David's talking about, it's nothing that anybody's, including God, is gonna wave a magic wand and all of a sudden you're consistent. No, you're gonna have times when you slip up, times when you miss it, times when you wake up late because you're alarmed, you forgot to set your alarm. Other stuff like that happens, man. And over time, what happens is, and it's a very interesting thing, y'all. What happens is you begin to trust yourself. You know what I mean? You you develop these uh habits spiritually to where now you know I'm at the point now where I know I can maybe go further because I know I'm gonna at least do this baseline of I got my prayer time going, I'm gonna read my chapter of whatever per day, um, that type of thing. But try not to blow yourself out of the water with a bunch of extravagant stuff right off the bat. Start small, nothing wrong with starting small, man. And then you expand from there because once you become faithful over the little things, that's gonna determine your faithfulness in the things that are greater.

David McIntyre 38:18

You know, one of the things that I would encourage you all to do, um, you know, you've just even about your prayer time, right? Um, first of all, um use your prayer time deeply. Use it to spend time reading the word. Yeah, use it to pray about what you just read, and ask God to give you an understanding of what you just read and how to apply it in your life. Um, even the book of numbers. Ask God to reveal that information to you. But the other thing is that you'll come to scriptures and you know, this is where we all got in trouble.

The Myth Of One Hour Prayer

David McIntyre 39:01

Well, when I say we all, I'm talking about Philip, myself, and others, you know, in church, you know, the whole thing was you gotta pray for an hour. Yes, and where'd that hour come from? You know, Jesus came to Peter and uh Peter and John and those guys, and after you know, on the uh on I forget the mount or the hill, but where he had just seen Elijah and and Moses, and oh yeah, um okay, go ahead. What was that hill called, Phil? What was that? The Mount Um Transfiguration. Sorry, and he comes down, sees the disciples sleeping. You know, they were supposed to be praying and they were sleeping, and Jesus says, Could you not tarry with me for one hour? And so now here's the here's the word out to the church, pray for one hour. And you know, they send out all the men, and everybody knows now you have to pray for one hour. Man, do you know what it's like trying to pay for one pray for one hour when you're not there yet? And you're on the bathroom floor crying, wishing this hour could go by when you're when you're watching your watch, thinking, gosh, I've been in here such a long time, and it's been five minutes. You don't even know why you don't even know why you're in that bathroom praying for an hour, except for people said you're supposed to pray for an hour. We have had I know Philip and I have talked about it, but we we have just had some horrible experiences trying to pray for an hour, you know, and then we we get into the you know, just pray in tongues, okay? And you knocked out sleep, and you wake up again, and then you feel bad because you fell asleep and that you weren't worthy, and all this other stuff, and you get all these feelings, and then you're like, Man, I gotta, I gotta get up early in the morning tomorrow, you know, and pray for an hour, and then you go and you don't you go to work, you don't feel good because you feel like you've let God down, the whole thing is falling apart around your feet, and God's like, chill, dude. It's it's okay. You gotta you just gotta realize just because Jesus came down and said, Could you not tarry with me for one hour, doesn't mean that the new rule now is to pray for an hour. It's fine if you do, but between digging, and I don't say this to brag or boast or anything, but between studying my word, praying, and trying to sit and be still and listen, or do some doing something else that's spiritual, you know, I might find myself an hour and a half, two hours in. Right, right, you know, or and there have been times where it's been longer because I was like, man, this word is good right now. I gotta finish this. And you dig in you dig in a little bit more, but you know, instead of setting a time, set an intent. Set up a purpose behind that. At least uh today I'm gonna read a chapter, I'm gonna pray over that, pray over some things that are concerning me, and that's gonna be my time for today. And let that be whatever it's going to be, just give yourself the time to do it. And but pray with intent, not pray with uh not pray with a timer on to make sure you hit a certain amount of time so you can be deemed worthy that day. Because if you if you don't feel worthy that day, then what have you got? Right, right. You got a bad situation, so excuse me.

Phillip Rich 42:48

100% can I add one thought real quick?

Jon Dzyuba 42:53

I'll put I'll make it quick, I promise. But I this this concept helped me change my perspective and conquer that that pursuit of emotion in my walk with God. Um, and somebody told me that much like the first point you said, like it's you know, your emotions are a reaction to your experiences, and so if you chase a reaction, you're never gonna get it. And it kind of altered the way I had conversations because I've had those moments where I'm praying for an hour, and honestly, I'm waiting for God to just like reveal this light to me. God, tell me this is what I need to hear, and let me feel great about this, or we'd have like a night of worship, and everybody's like in tears, and and everyone's just having a great time. And I'm over here, like I just sang some songs for like an hour and a half, and I don't feel any different than the way I came in, and I felt and made me feel bad about you know, like you mentioned. But the concept was that your emotions were were designed to be a reaction to your experience. Um, oftentimes, I personally believe that. You know, often I think God has given us happiness as a response to certain things that happen. You can feel happy, you can feel good about certain things as a reward. And oftentimes, you know, your your reactions you can because you'll find stuff that happens at work or at school, and then you'll react in a certain way that you might not want to react. And so you have to hone in on getting that reaction toned in. But it's that's what it is. You're just your emotions are a reaction to what you're experiencing. Um and it became apparent to me uh last week. I was at work with somebody, and there was this whole altercation at work. He was this guy was having an issue with another co-worker, and he was like, dude, man, I don't understand. Like he he was he's one of those people like that believe in God for sure. Um have a lot of things to work on, but he's really trying, right? He's like, I don't I don't get it, dude. I prayed this morning, and now I'm having to deal with the feelings and frustrations with this person. I'm like, dude, well, well, you know, first of all, I'm glad that you prayed this morning. Good for you. Um that's not gonna change the fact that you're gonna feel gonna react to certain situations when people talk to you a certain way. Um, and so maybe I uh you know, my my advice would be to maybe you should just pray on lunch again and then pray on the way home just to feel safe about it. But I mean, the the reality was is that you know, just because you did pray, you're still gonna come across somebody at work that's gonna upset you or you're gonna have to deal with something, you're also gonna get excited about certain things. So that that thought process helped me conquer that pursuit and it saves so much time in regarding just like sitting there and waiting for a reaction in prayer or worship when you realize that your emotions are a reaction to your experiences.

David McIntyre 45:48

That's good, John. That's good, absolutely.

Test Feelings Against The Bible

David McIntyre 45:53

All right, let's jump to number three, which is check your feelings against scripture. And I know we've kind of touched on that a little bit, uh we started with you know, we we we didn't get a scripture that we had before, uh, and let the truth lead, let your emotions follow. You know, never forget Jeremiah 17, Isaac 17. Um the heart is deceitful above all things. So so you you cannot let uh not only is it deceitful, but as the scripture says on the screen, it's desperately sick. Who can understand it? Wow, and that that's the human heart. So um you have to be careful of that and not let your emotions lead you, but let the word let truth lead. Then we talked about building daily consistency, and so we want to add to that as you are having feelings, you gotta check those feelings against scripture, you know. Before you trust a feeling, ask, is this biblical? You know, does this align with truth? You know, for example, me having the feeling of wanting to slap somebody, you know, I might genuinely feel that. But the question is, what's the what might scriptures say about me slapping my neighbor? You know, and the the it says to love your neighbor as yourself. So would you slap yourself? No, you would not slap yourself, so don't go slapping your neighbor. Don't go slapping your neighbor, but you have to you have to measure these things, uh, because now when you get into deeper things, you know, for and and the place that it seems that I think of right now is I think of emotion uh relationships. We so desperately want to love and be loved, yeah. And love is an emotion, it's a feeling, and so we can allow our feelings to get the best of us, and we can try to make ourselves feel a certain way about an individual that we were never supposed to be connected with. Why is if we go scripturally by this and say, Lord, how might we ought to handle this? Uh, how might we ought to handle this? I'll get about right. How ought we to handle this? We know that God would tell us to slow down a little bit. We know that God would guide us and lead us into getting to know a person and understanding where they're coming from to ask questions and to better discern what their situation is around them before we steep ourselves deeply in relationships. But I know Christians who over and over and over again, the moment they feel a little twinge in their little heart, next thing you know, they're deeply invested in a relationship and don't even know that person, and then find out later, well, they're not really a Christian like they said they were. They were just at church looking for they for their grandpa told them that you know you can find a good woman at a church, so they just showed up long enough to try to find somebody. Now they've found you, they're less interested in going. Or like somebody close to me, I won't name his name, um, but I want to, you know, find a little girl who'll fall in love with him, and then the only reason she'll start going to church is so she can keep an eye on him, and make sure that there are no other little girls at the church staring around and trying to jack her man, and so now she's missing God too. She doesn't love the Lord any more than a man on the moon. She loves the boy. The boy's supposed to be loving God, but he's all tied up in the woman, and the woman has only got a web out, so she can capture the man, and once she's got him captured, she's not gonna go to church anymore, and she's gonna encourage him not to go to church anymore. And when men get caught up with those kind of women, they tend to leave behind their faith and go the way of the woman and lose sight of God altogether, which is why, over and over and over again in the old testament, God warned them about connecting with women from other tribes and other places that were not Israelites, that were not Jewish women. And one of the things he kept saying over and over again is that they're going to draw you away from me into their own stuff. And what do we see happening over and over again? They marry the Midianites, they marry the Canaanites, they marry this it, and they marry that it. And so now all of a sudden, all these ice have them out there worshiping trees, worshiping idols, and God is having none of it. Yeah, yeah. And it just turns into a bad situation. I don't even know why I went down that road. I don't know.

Phillip Rich 51:19

No, but David, for real, man, emotions, the area of relationships, that's one of the places where emotions rear their ugly head the worst. They run wild. I mean, I so many people get caught up in bad relationships because of emotions, you know, because they I mean, it could be something where you know some deeper underlying issues, like maybe they they feel desperate now because it's they feel like they're getting too old to be married at some point, or whatever it is, and they they want to kind of rush that process, or you mean my clock is ticking, so I gotta beat the runner? Yeah, the clock is ticking, kind of thing, you know. It's like, okay, we get that. I mean, I I know that you know sometimes people can look at their situation and go, man, when's when's my you know soulmate ever going to arrive, or whatever the case is? But this is where you know trusting in God is a big thing, yeah. Because let's just put it this way the Lord is not interested in giving you something that's gonna take his place.

David McIntyre 52:21

Uh oh, you preach it now, Philip. You're preaching.

unknown 52:24

You gotta remember that.

Phillip Rich 52:26

I'm telling you, man, I you know, Pete, we we talk all the time about the goodness of God and how God loves us and wants to give us great things. And I believed all that because he said in 1 Timothy 6, he gives us richly all things to enjoy. And he also said in John 10 that he wants us to have life and have it more abundantly, there's plenty of scriptures that talk about God's intention to bless our lives with so many different in so many different ways, but don't get it confused, dude. Because if God sees that you getting this certain thing or connecting with this certain person is gonna lead you down the road to absolute disaster, yeah. I promise you there's gonna be barriers, and those barriers are not his punishment, those barriers are his mercy, yeah, and you've got to understand that. And so there's some times when you don't get what you want, and it feels like punishment, but I promise you, give it a few months, a few years, whatever, look back in hindsight, and you'll be like, Thank god I didn't end up with that person.

David McIntyre 53:41

Let me

Relationships And Unequal Yokes

David McIntyre 53:42

just tell you something for you young ladies out there. There is nothing, there's nothing worse. You know, the Bible says to us, see that you be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Oh boy, and as you dig, you begin to realize unequally yoked doesn't just mean you're both Christians, but that there's also some proximity to where you are as Christians, and there's nothing like oh gosh, I'm about to get in trouble. Don't say it. Uh there's young ladies, hear me when I tell you when you are established Christian women, established Christian young ladies, and you know the Lord and you've been walking with the Lord, don't roll up on some buster who just met him. Come on now, bro, because you guys are still not necessarily equally yoked, you are established in the faith, and you're gonna end up trying to teach that man the word of God all the days of his life to get him to a place because you're not gonna stop growing, but he'll interfere with your ability to grow. Yep, and he's gonna make it about him. And men are a certain kind of creature where they can become jealous, they can become possessive, and not like the way certain things are set up, and he'll see God blessing you and doesn't necessarily see that as blessing him or as a part of his life, he'll feel some kind of way about it, he'll react. You want to make sure that you find somebody that is on equal footing with you, or maybe somebody that's a little for a little more mature in the word than you are, but don't you pair your life together with a man who is a spiritual newborn and you've been walking with the Lord for 10, 15, 20 years, all of your life, and he's just met Jesus. That is not a good pairing, and there are things that could potentially go wrong in that relationship that you have to be mindful of. Now, that's a word for somebody. You be mindful, you'd be extremely mindful.

Phillip Rich 55:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David McIntyre 55:55

Okay, Dave, that's oh, go ahead, Philip.

Phillip Rich 55:58

Um, just real quick, I just wanted to say uh, you know, that's so true because we we look at that scripture and we go, okay, it says don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers, but there is an unequal yoking uh within the the faith. You know, you can be a mature Christian, pretty far along in your walk with the Lord, it's not a great idea to to connect with somebody who's just coming into the faith, just came out of a horrendous worldly lifestyle and hasn't even gone through four seasons with God yet. You don't want to do that, man.

David McIntyre 56:33

So and and even if they even if you've had 62 seasons with God, and they've had they've had eight. Right, that's still that's still a problem because then you're going you're being asked by the word to allow that man to lead, and you're gonna be trying to let a man lead you because he's your husband, while you recognize all of the spiritual pitfalls he's headed towards, and then you want him to lead listen to you, and he'll say, Woman, I'm the leader of this house. Oh boy, you have to follow. Yep. That I mean, it's um uh look, okay. Okay, I'm not teaching a man how to read. You are so right. That's that's really what we're saying, and it's there's nothing wrong with being newly born again. We've all been newly born again at some point, yeah, and there's nothing wrong with being established in the faith, and there's nothing wrong with those two people having fellowship together and growing together and worshiping the Lord in the same place and all that. When you go to church every week, you literally have the full spectrum of believers from the greatest to least. But be mindful that even though you have fellowship with the person doesn't mean that you have um intimacy with that person, yeah, because all intimacy isn't necessarily good intimacy. God will honor it because it's within the faith and because it is within the confines of the word, but you're gonna have some hard time in that relationship. Let me let me throw this last one out to you, and the last one is a good one.

Stay Faithful When You Feel Nothing

David McIntyre 58:21

Stay committed when you feel nothing. Yeah, this is where people fall off, right? Especially if you're an emotional Christian when you don't feel anything. Remember what we told you. Don't let your feelings lead the way. Check those feelings to see if it's biblical, check those feelings to see if it aligns with the truth. And by the way, um, you shall know the truth, thy word is truth. Yes, yes, so we still know we're going back to the word. Um, but this is where your real faith is built when you're not cast by the wind one way or the way, other way. I think James 1 talks about being cast to and fro by the wind, that we're not supposed to be that way, you know. And um, yeah, don't just I'm thinking about 17 things at one time. Don't be that way. We're supposed to be stable, and none of our stability is dependent upon whether or not we feel something. Our stability is dependent upon what the word says. So even if I mess up right here, right now, tonight, and I say it, sit here and cuss you guys out all of a sudden. Um, has God left me? No. Is he disappointed in what I just did? I'm sure I've just grieved the Holy Spirit, and I know the Lord's gonna want to deal with me about that and do what it takes to not only make it right, but find out what in my character is problematic that allowed that to happen in the first place and deal with me. But the scripture says that he will never leave me nor forsake me. So because I know he will never leave me nor forsake me, even when I make a mistake, even when I sin, even when I fall short, I still know that God is present, even when you sin against God. Um, God is present with you in that sin. That's part of what's grieving the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't just say, Okay, me, God, and Jesus are packing up. We're out of this body until you stop and sin. And so they pack up all their bags, they leave your heart, they wait for you to finish sinning. They're all just sitting on the side of the road waiting for you to come back and say, I'm done now, and I want to accept y'all back in my heart again. And they're like, Okay, we're moving in. And then they come back into your life, they grab their bags and they move back into your life again. That's not how this works. Once you accept them as Lord and Savior and invite them to indwell your life, they are present and they're present for your every sin and they're present for your every success.

Phillip Rich 1:01:08

Come on, man. Philip, dude. Uh I can't really add to that, man. You you nailed it, man. Um, just wanted to say it's true. You know, he he said in Matthew 28, the very last verse, he said, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And if that, if if we want to, you know, I don't want to call Jesus a liar. If he said he's with me always, then that means always. Yeah, there's never a time when he's not with me. And so that's true for everybody who's a believer. It's true for everyone who is named the name of Christ. So when when David talked about, you know, going ahead, even when you feel nothing, I'll go ahead and give you a spoiler alert. In your walk with God, there will be times when you don't feel a doggone thing, and you still got to believe he's there. You still got to know that he's there because he said he is. We're trying to learn how to walk by what he said, not by what we feel. And that's gonna be honestly, it's it's a lesson that you keep learning throughout your walk with the Lord over and over again. After a while, you get more proficient at it, but then maybe you hit another level where a little bit more is required of you to understand that, you know, and then you keep going along and things are cool, and then all of a sudden a different level hits, and it's like, man, you you start realizing God has has had these plans all along to address certain things in your life based on what he knows you can handle at the times. You know, he knows he's gotta peel that onion uh layer by layer. He can't blow you away with all the stuff that you need to fix about your character on day one or even day 100.

David McIntyre 1:02:53

Nope.

Phillip Rich 1:02:54

He knows he's gotta work with you. Um, and there was a scripture that came back to my um it was something I was listening to, and I for totally forgot about the scripture, but it's in Exodus. He was talking to the Israelites about what he was gonna do when they come into the land, and he said, I'm gonna bring you into the land little by little. I'm gonna bring you into the land little by little. It's not gonna be all at once because you'll get consumed by it if that would be the case. So he had he knew he had to bring them in in incremental steps, and that's what we're talking about uh with with this uh list we went over tonight. Um, it's about learning how to trust that God is there, even when you don't feel anything, uh, and taking those incremental steps to keep going forward, to keep walking and not fainting, as the Bible says, and like in Hebrews 12, it says, put aside every weight and every sin that so easily distracts us and entangles us, and let's run with patience the race that's been set before us. That is a very important thing. So um, yeah.

Trust God’s Incremental Timing

David McIntyre 1:04:01

You know, I'll give you guys this last little bit of advice. As an older man now, I am uh in my early 50s. Um, and I've been born again since my early 20s. So that's some 30 odd years now. One of the mistakes that I made was not appreciating God's incremental movement. Everything was always, I gotta be fast, I gotta grab, I gotta get, I gotta get. And you know, I would say, I'm gonna learn this, you know, I'm gonna learn this, I'm gonna get back to that, I'm gonna get back to this, I'm gonna get back to that. And I never felt like I had time for it because I did not appreciate God's timing. And now that I'm here at this point that I am, I look back over the last 30 years and said, I should have done that, I should have done that, and I should have studied that, and I should have gone to school here back so many years ago, and it's because I didn't appreciate God's timing. The reality is God's given to us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. And I believe that we're all here to have God ordained long good lives in the earth, long good lives in the earth, and one of the mistakes we make is we put aside important things for other quick things, and then we wake up one day and realize 30 years has passed, and what they now are are a bunch of missed opportunities that you should have taken advantage of. So it's okay to slow down and study. Yes, it's it's okay to parse it out and take it in. It will only make you a stronger Christian by slowing down. It's okay to potentially consider going to you know Bible college or whatever. Whatever it may be, or your church's growth program to help you grow in the Lord. It's okay to do those things because you've got a full life ahead of you, and you want to fill that life with learning and knowledge and information and not be in such an all-fired hurry all the time that you're always hitting the highlights and missing the details sometimes because you got so fast, you got so caught up in a hurry. So you want to be mindful of that. Here's a last thought I want to leave you with for tonight, and it's this emotional Christianity says, I feel, therefore, God is near. But biblical Christianity says, God is near whether I feel it or not.

Phillip Rich 1:06:49

Amen.

David McIntyre 1:06:50

Again, emotional Christianity, I feel, therefore, God is, is near. Biblical Christianity, God is near whether I feel it or not. Don't allow your feelings to steal from you the richness that God has in store for you. Amen. Philip, any quick last thoughts?

Phillip Rich 1:07:16

Uh well said, man. I don't know that I can add anything to it. It's just well said. Good stuff.

David McIntyre 1:07:23

All right.

Final Takeaway And How To Connect

David McIntyre 1:07:24

Well, we're glad that you have joined us for this episode of Bible Bros and Brew. Um, we've enjoyed talking about this. Make sure you listen to this whole series. It's just four sessions. Um, and of course, you'll find it both here on YouTube. It's also available on Rumble, and you'll find it on your favorite podcast platform. Would you do us a favor? Would you take a moment, moment, and subscribe to this channel? Get connected with us. We would love to be connected with you and to be able to share the word with you, engage with you through the chat of these live sessions, and also hear from you through the comment sections, or you can drop us an email at gotbrew at Bible Bros.net. Um, we would just be so happy for you to join our tribe and uh be a part of the story that God is building through Bible Bros and Brew and you. Until next time, I'm David, he's Philip, that's John, and we're out of the way.