Exploring the Intricacies of Developing a Deeper Relationship with God

Episode 49,. How can I develop a closer relationship with God?

Hey everybody, this is Deborah and Wendy. Hello, you are listening to Grace in Real Life, the podcast for Christian women who desire to live out their faith in real life. This week, we are talking about how to develop a colluser relationship with God. So, wendy, I have a question for you as we kick off today. Sure, when you think of relationships, what is a word or a phrase that describes your view of a relationship Work?

Oh, I love that so much I'm not going to lie Work is the word that comes to mind.

Yes, actually I think it's the best word. I love that. It just makes me so happy that you said that. I just love it because it's true. So, guys, I've been married for I'm a butcher. This he's going to kill me 22 years.

It's 2023.

Yeah, 22 years, 22 because I got married in 21. Oh, 2001, not 21. 2001, 22 years and we have been together for 23. We were engaged for a whole year, so I guess a little bit longer than 23 years. But I tell you what every single moment in time is not sunshine and roses. Everyone, like we've each had to give and take. I've had times like when I was pregnant. I am not a good pregnant person. I get violently ill, and medically violently ill, like 25 weeks of medical intervention. I have hyperemesis Gravidarum. If anyone's wondering, we'll talk about that another time because it's actually a worthy topic and the strain that that can cause on your relationship is huge. So I love that you said work, because that's the here's the thing. It was work and it's unequal work and I think people need to remember that. Like there was, I had nothing to give and I was lucky if I could crawl across the floor to use the toilet. Like my give was like surviving my husband it was all him with two children. The third one definitely tried to kill me. The other two were significant, but nowhere here is bad. So yeah, and I think when let's ask this other question, review too before I go jumping down to that rabbit hole. When you first meet someone, what do you do to develop a relationship?

Ask questions, get to know them.

Call it mom dating, mom dating. You know like you go and you're trying to find your like, you're trying to find your people. Do they believe the same things? Do they parent similarly? They don't have to parent the same, they just need to have similar values. Right, you know, if, like I breastfed my children for a really long time, I know there are people that are that think that like that's not a thing, and you know we don't, that didn't go over. Well, the comments on both ends, unintentional comments on both ends, but you know we're both trying to feel out how we felt and you know you try to. You're basically dating somebody. You're investigating who they are, what they're like, how they feel, how they think. You know, right on down to, do you swatch your children or not swatch your children? That's a whole thing and nuances that I never knew existed. Like there is some stuff out there, my friend. Anyways, when I think about relationships, I always think about the different types of relationships that I have in my life, and the reason for that is because there's lots of different relationships. I have a relationship with my husband and we've cultivated that over the last 23 years. I have a relationship with each of my children. They are individual relationships with each of my children. I have relationships with my parents and even those relationships are unique. How I converse with my father and my mother's respectful, obviously, but like some of our another my head I was like maybe they're going to take that disrespectfully. It's just different. Like my dad loves jokes, he's like a prankster, he's a huge storyteller. So you always know you're going to get something fun when you work with my, when chat with my dad and chat with my mom. I'm going to get like research and thoughts about health and wellness in teaching and you know we're just going to go down a whole different, whole different rabbit hole. And so these are just facets of each individual person that you develop, right. And then I think about external relationships as well, and I think this is an important one. Everything I've described so far has been a familial relationship husband, children, parents, etc. But we also have relationships outside of us such as acquaintances, friends, work, friends, and each of these relationships they also develop in their own manner and at their own pace. And that said, relationships have two sides. Can you be friends with someone if they're not open to friendship? No, you really can't. It takes both parties to grow into something that is close. Right, everybody has to do as Wendy's word earlier, which was so perfect work, right, it's no fun if you have that friend or you're the only one who calls.

Yeah.

And you're like doesn't your phone works right? Yeah, I had a conversation with someone who was like you can call me, and I was like, if you want me to, if you want to call me, just call me.

Don't tell me to call you Right. There is a flip side of that and you'll probably get into this later, but I just wanted to bring it up now is that I've heard people who are upset with someone or bitter about something that someone did and they'll withhold contacting them. They'll say, oh, if they want to talk to me, they'll pick up the phone, but deep down inside you want to talk to that person. Pick up the phone. If that's you listening, pick up the phone, make the first contact. Then, if they don't want to talk to you, that's fine. But don't withhold and be petty as though you have some power here and it's a power play. It's not. It's just immature.

Ooh, spicy throwdown right there. It's actually true, though, right? And then if you find, the flip side of that is if you're the one who's calling and calling, and calling, and calling, and calling and calling and then you're not getting anything in return?

Yeah, warning flag.

Yeah, I always like that phrase and I think we see it a lot in the military, especially among spouses, like friends are here for a reason, a season, and for life. I've never heard that. You've never heard that. No, no, yeah, that's actually used. I think that's used a lot among military spouses, specifically male or female doesn't matter. And the reality is, I think that's because you might have a really good friend at a very specific duty station oh, okay, yeah, and they may not be your friend anymore when you leave. And I will say that's very hurtful. Just an FYI, it hurts a lot, especially if you're someone like me. I don't pick my friends loosely. I take the time and I invest in them and then, like, I expect to keep most of my friends, if not all of them, but that's not how everybody works. So that's a reminder that sometimes they're for a season. Some people are there for a reason. Maybe they're only there for a moment in which you're hurt and they're able to basically come alongside you because they've walked that path before. But they're not there for life, they're not there for everything else. They're just there because you're in that particular season and you needed that and they needed to be the one who helped you or vice versa. You're mutually helping each other and then that friendship runs its course. So, that said, we've talked about friendship quite a bit, and what does this have to do with a relationship with God? Pardon me, it is important to understand. You cannot just know who God is. I liken this to celebrity. We've had this conversation a lot this past week. There have been a few celebrities who have passed away and people are like, oh, it's such a tragic thing, they were so amazing. And then there's other people like did you really know about this person? or did you just like them in a TV show.

Right.

And the reality is many of us have celebrity style relationships with God. We like or dislike God based on what we may have experienced or seen around us, and we can have a relationship with God. We actually have no idea who he really is. And I think this is really important because just because you see someone in the news doesn't mean you know them, right? Like, there's all kinds of famous people in the news we could pick, like, pick anybody. Right now You're not friends with them. You know of them, you know of the things that they share, but you don't actually know them intimately, right? What's your favorite color? Oh, you know, you were in this interview and you said your favorite color was purple. I may have just been like a spur of the moment, I don't know. That was a dumb question. That was the answer, right? Like, if and if people who knew them were like, why did you pick that? I don't know, it was the color I was wearing on my shoes today. You know what I mean. Like, we have these gut responses and we think we know people. This goes the same for God. You can't just read literature on the attributes of God or other books that describe who God is. You actually have to build and nurture a personal relationship, and this I love likening it to a friendship, and we see amazing examples all through the Bible. Okay so, but we have to do. We have to be active in our faith, which means relationship building, and it is absolutely unequivocally hard to have trust in someone you have not spent time with or developed a relationship with. For those of you who have kids, think about the people you would leave your children with. I'm going to guess that your list of people fits, on one hand, because I know my list does, and they are the people that I have spent the most time cultivating a relationship with. You have to know who they are to trust your most valued possession, which, for me my kids is my most valued possession, when that we're talking about childcare. When it comes to my heart, though, I have to learn how to trust God with my heart by spending time with him. We have this like reticence to share because we don't know. Also, because humans around us are fallible, and guess what? Because they're fallible, trust is hard.

You know. It reminds me of a story John Bavir told. John Bavir, the husband of Lisa Bavir, so many of our listeners will be familiar with Lisa Bavir. She is a Christian author and speaker, and so I saw her husband speak last year at Grow With Video Live, and he told us a story about how he was talking to a woman about Jesus and she proceeds to describe Jesus, or at least her understanding of Jesus, and he realizes that her description of Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible, it's not the Jesus he knows. He says she described a person that she was clearly not intimately familiar with, that she didn't really know, she just knew of, and that when they talked about Jesus they were talking about two different people, because he had been spending time with Jesus and it was clear that she had not, because she really didn't know him.

I think that's honestly. I think that that's a really common thing. I actually saw a lovely lady the other day asking for some faith help and she got some beautiful answers, guys. So I'm not worried about her faith walk, but she had this list of things that she wasn't really that she wasn't willing to talk to God about, because clearly, in her eyes, these pieces were not important to God. He had more important things to deal with and I'm excited for her, especially following all of the answers that she got is she's going to realize just how much he cares and just how wrong her view was or is. Currently. He's too busy to deal with any of my whininess, too busy to hear me when I'm having a hard day. Clearly, there are bigger and more important things to take care of and what I love about my relationship with the Lord and any friendship. They're never too busy to hear the petty things. That's what they're. They, your friends, are there for. I mean, you know we don't want to whine all the time to a friend, but that's what Jesus is there for. He wants to hear us, he wants to have this incredible relationship. He wants to know about your good days and your bad days and your worries and your happiness and your sadness and everything in between. He wants to have a relationship and we have to be an active participant, which actually means we need to communicate with all of you know we need to communicate all of this. I mean, I know that the Lord knows, but he seeks an active relationship and again, we have this good examples of this in the Bible Abraham's, actually one of my favorite ones. He's actually called a friend of God and I love that. Like he's a friend, like, if that's like. My major crowning achievement in my relationship with the Lord is that he calls me a friend like. I feel like I've done a really good job of having this. I'm working to have a relationship with him, because I don't think many people would turn around and say, yes, yes, I was friends with him. But even those disciples, like Judas Iscariot, when he's talking, he like, yeah, I know that Jesus guy. He didn't say, yeah, I'm his disciple or yeah, I'm his friend, like he's like, but I know all his details and he did. He knew of Jesus. He just didn't know him as intimately as he thought he did. Anyways, that said, we're gonna talk about this a little bit here. Can you have a personal relationship with somebody that you just read about, and you know we touched on this a little bit already, but we have the answer, which is no. No, you have to know them personally. It's very different to know about someone, to know about someone, versus knowing them.

And.

I sometimes in the English language it is quite powerful with its descriptors and other times not so much, and I think parsing the words no versus no sometimes isn't helpful, but I like to think in this case that it is. Some of us have book knowledge, and so this is my example of why of knowing versus no. So some of us have book knowledge and others of us have experience knowledge. Now, both are good. Please don't get me wrong. Book knowledge is amazing and I'm a huge fan, as Wendy knows. I spend half my time with my nose in a book. Love, love it. I love data, I love research points. That's phenomenal. However, if you haven't experienced the thing in which you have detail about, all you have is an overview, and there's a phrase out there and not many of you've heard this. I don't know if other people have, but the phrase is you can't know, know, and that's not the, and not n? O n o, but k n o w. Like you cannot know, know until you've experienced something, and I love to say, having been a doua, that childbirth is the perfect example of this.

I was going to say swimming, but okay.

Swimming. You know what I could give swimming. I'm going to be honest, I've been swimming so long that one never came to mind. So you know, that's one of those ones I've been swimming since I've been basically just pitched in a pool. I can't even remember a time in which I haven't swam I can. So I think this is a good. This is good. I like that because you know what. It doesn't really matter as long if you've read about a skill but you've never done it. I think this all fits. And recent childbirth is the one that came to mind. Well, because I spent a lot of time researching childbirth and asking questions. And I will say this I didn't know questions to ask until I had gone through it.

Right.

So you don't, someone can tell you how something is, something felt for them, or in that moment, or, in your case, swimming, the mechanics of swimming, but until you've attempted to apply it you're in a wildly different place. That knowledge of, like that external book knowledge, is not useful until you've done something with it.

Yeah, it's. It's like that Also with diabetes. Like because I have type two diabetes and there's a lot of people out there who are talking about diabetes, who have limited experience, shall we say. So they're trying to help a type two diabetic, but all their knowledge about diabetes comes from a book or from a study or something like that. And I'm like, but you're not listening to me, I'm the one with the condition, I'm the one telling you how it's like to live every day with this thing and you're telling me what you read in the book. Sorry, that's not helpful.

That's actually really not helpful, and until you've locked with somebody through a situation, it's really hard to put your feet in their shoes.

Yeah, and that's that's also what we say about multicultural and diversity and counseling the diverse populations. It's it's like you can't. I don't know what it's like to be Latina. I can talk to Latinas and I can benefit from their experience, but I don't know what I don't know until I start talking to in counseling Latinas.

It's true, it's very true, and, like childbirth, sometimes there's pains when you go through trying to experience and understand what people are going through and how to actually help them, and 99% of the time, I've learned that people don't really need help, they just need someone to hear them. Yeah, and that's a skill set that we don't do well as a culture. We are very hands-on, very healthy I love that about us but we don't listen well, mm-hmm, we listen with just enough to be like I shall drop all my book knowledge on you. So, that said, since we are a book knowledge culture, which is wonderful, how do we become a, a Active culture, physically having a relationship with the Lord In the absence of a physical person in front of us or the ability to call them and talk to God Directly, like literally picking up the phone and hearing his voice? How do we develop a relationship? We can clearly see that relationships are important and you know, in Abraham's case, he clearly had conversations With angels and other, like with God himself. Right, like they talked, they did things. You and I don't necessarily have that, so how do we develop a relationship in the absence of a person? So we have a few tips today, wendy and I always do, because tips are our jam, whether they whether you need all of them or you need one of them. We hope they help, okay, and if you guys have some comments or added ones, please share. We actually really love your feedback. So we are gonna talk about how to have a personal relationship with the Lord, but they require that you, the listener, show up and experience God. Okay, and Wendy's actually said this before in one of our other podcasts that if you're feeling not close to God, you really need to examine where you are, because he hasn't left you Right, which I find super spicy, because I have had those moments where I have felt very far away from God and Very frustrated about that fact and never once considered that I was the factor. I Never considered that, not at any moment. I literally was like Hello God, where are you? Look, clearly I was the not listening person.

Yeah, and and, honestly, all of the stuff that I'm getting, that we're getting, comes from. If you want a nice neat book to wrap it all in, read the pursuit of God by a w tozer. No, don't listen to it, actually read it. It's not a very long book.

But I take you 62 wax to finish it because it's slow and laborious.

Yeah, but if you read it I mean, we read it in the internship we read a chapter of week and I think there's like 10 chapters, but we really didn't need to go that slowly, it's just so we had other things to do. But it's not a thick book. It was published in 1948. So it's the wording is different, the language is different, but you'll come to understand within a short period of time what he's saying, the cadence with which he's saying it, and you'll see that, like we're saying, it's a great book.

It is it's. It really is very good. So I'm gonna start here. One of the things we need to know before we start is that God takes the initiative.

Mmm, I have a neat theological term for that. Oh, share it please. It's called prevenient grace. Say that again, pre, pre, like, before Prevenient grace, and it is the concept that refers to the grace of God in a person's life which proceeds or comes before and prepares to Convert me. Oh, there would be no conversion experience if you first didn't have the grace of God. If God didn't take the first step, there'd be nothing that would compel you or propel you to have that conversion experience. It's not something you come up with on your own as a human being, and not every Christian thought leader buys into the idea of prevenient grace. But that is what we're talking about here the grace that comes before the human decision to follow God.

Find that interesting that you say that not everybody buys into that. I've never heard the term, but I think the verses actually support this, like it does God. That was because, like we're loved, because God loved us first. Like Christ died for our sins while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. Like all the. All the verses actually show an Initiation from God, even in the Old Testament. All the relationships between the people in Old Testament also are initiated by God. Like that, you're not your receptive the.

The people who typically don't believe this are usually more on the reform side or the Calvinist side, and they usually Aligned with something called irresistible grace or effectual grace or kind of Cacious grace there's a lot of words for it and that Means that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save, which are the elect, and, in God's timing, overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel. So the difference here is what came first. Were you saved because God elected you to be saved or is it because of God's grace? Like? What came first? Is really the the issue here between Reformed or Calvinists and those who are a Minion or Wesleyan in their tradition? So they most up. Most people don't think of it like that and I think most people fall under the idea of prevenient grace because, like you said, they acknowledge that this is not something that they could have come to on their own, that it took the Holy Spirit to even acknowledge that they were a sinner in need of a Savior.

I mean, that's certainly where I come down on this, and I'm gonna add one more piece to that, which is when God comes to his people, all of us. He reveals something about himself through that interaction. I like this because we're not actually asked to be vulnerable first. Right, jesus is vulnerable first. Then he invites us in to share who he is. And you might be like how on earth is this done, deb? Well, through scripture, I mean that sounds. Sometimes when I say this, I'm like, oh my gosh, they're gonna think it's so trite. It's not trite, though. Like the scripture has so much in there and I think not enough of us spend actual time, and I know most of you have not spent a lot of time in there, and I know you're reading books, because I see what you're talking about and I know I'm guilty of talking about some things and realizing, oh, you know what, this thing was not in my Bible. So, first things first. Wendy and I have talked about this. I feel like it's a dead horse, but it's not a dead horse. Spend some time in the word. We say it all the time, but it's the truth, guys. This is the foundation of knowledge. The foundation of knowledge. This is gonna put you into the knowing portion of God. So remember when I talked about earlier about no, no versus no ink. This first part here is the revealing of who God is. So he reveals himself in his word. He is showing you who he is. He is showing you who he's consistent, and there's a few things that we can learn and I'm gonna share a couple ones really quick. Okay, god says he is the bread of life John 6, 35. I am the light of the world John 8, 12. I am the good shepherd John 10, 11. I am the resurrection and the life John 11, 25. I'm the way, the truth in the life. No man comes to the father except through me. John 14, 6 and some and I love this one I am the true vine. John 15, 1. This is a long set of verses. I actually spent some time in these this week. Really love them. He has revealed who he is through these things and you start to see the consistency in which he talks about this. It's not like I'm temperamental and do all this over here and I'm inconsistent and I only like you, so I do this Note these truths are universal for all of his creation. The second part of knowing God and experiencing God is prayer, and that foundation, that's the foundation of our relationship with the Lord. It's how we communicate. I used to believe that prayer was a specific action in a specific time. That changed when I had kids and I found myself praying at stoplights between diaper changes and praying as I ran out the door, stand and like the line, whichever line it was, and what I learned and I this is how I view it now that prayer is like leaving small voice messages and I that that really changed. Probably when I had my first kiddo I felt like I was just, I didn't have time for this big, lengthy conversation. All I had was like quick voice memos I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna talk to you like I've got a moment, I'm gonna share something with you. That'd be like me leaving a voice message on my favorite girlfriend's you know phone, knowing she can't answer the phone because she's at work. Or leaving a Facebook message like a verbal one, because I was thinking of someone and I found a story and I just wanted to share it. Like these are no different, it's the same thing. That relationship is given back because God begins to speak to us by showing us things in the world around us and he reveals things actually in his Bible, in in our Bible. It's his, too Like he reveals things based on our conversations through the scripture that we read. Right, and the next thing that we need to do is we need to develop relationships with other believers. We were definitely not before we go on to that. Yeah, go ahead Sorry.

I got excited. No, I just thought of something about prayer that I felt like needed to be said, and that is it's not about using special flowery prose when you pray. I know if you're coming from a more liturgical tradition Catholic, episcopal, lutheran then you are used to very formal prayer language. But that does not have to dictate how you speak to God, because God is your friend and your father. He wants to just hear what's on your heart. So it doesn't matter if you're angry or you're sad or you're happy or whatever. Come to God as you are in prayer and don't think that you're praying well or not praying well because you didn't say certain words or you didn't say it in a certain way. Just come as you are.

I like that. Thank you, that is perfect. So next point here is we need to develop relationships with other believers, and we were not meant to walk this world alone. Your experience and God's guidance through this experience can develop you into someone who helps others. So every situation that you're in, whether another believer is sharing with you or you're sharing with another believer your way of walking through something that is what we are designed to do and we bolster each other when one of us is weak and one of us can carry the other. Community is here. That's what the Bible community and I'm specifically talking about the early church community that we find in the New Testament Like that community was. Yes, they had some fighting, yes, they had some naughty things that they were doing, but they were a strong community. They served their widows, they served each other. In fact, if someone had a need, they would come together and they would sell a belonging to help another believer. Like this is how we strengthen and grow ourselves in support and time and need. Okay, and I know personally that when I'm fellow shipping with people, the stories that are told about how God showed up for them helped strengthen my faith and know that God is gonna show up for me in just the way they did for someone else. It's not gonna look the same, it's just that God is there for us. The same he's always there, and I think it's really important. We sometimes really struggle when we're looking around and feeling very lonely and very lost and we don't know what to do. And when we are able to see what he has done for other people, that just gives us. It's like a light, it's like a little beacon and knowing that there's something okay. And then Preverbs 27, 17, says "'As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another". This is also very important. Sometimes we have a misconception of what a verse means or says or who it's designed for. Even myself, sometimes I get lazy and I'm like Googling for a verse and I'm like, yeah, that works for me. And then I start looking at the verse and I'm like, oh well, that was a promise very specifically to one individual or to Israel itself. That actually doesn't apply to me. So when we're in relationship with other fellow believers, we're able to actually help sharpen the understanding of what the person is reading and learning and applying to their life. The vice versa. People do that for you. Okay, the next section here we're gonna talk about is a little rough and it's called a crisis of belief, and I think it's important to note that when you are growing in your relationship, it's not always easy. Many, many times we are gonna come upon knowledge that is counter to our current understanding and, guys, this can bring us to a crisis. It can make us feel like the wind has been sucked out of our sails. This again goes back to why we need to be with other believers. We can go to them and be like I had this belief and I didn't know it was wrong, and sometimes that can bolster your faith. And sometimes that can make it feel like you're alone on an island and you don't know what to do. And because of that because you don't know what to do being around other believers they will help guide you in what to do. Maybe, even if it's that's just to say I'm gonna pray with you and give you a hug. All right, sometimes that's all we need. But the crisis is there because when God changes your heart to align more like his and less like the world, it is going to leave you going. Which one do I pick? And that is a hard place to be. What do you do with this new information? We aren't not people who love change. Like my husband says, I love change for change sake. He's not wrong there. I actually love change a lot, but culturally speaking, we are not groups of people who love change all the time. We don't even like change in our ideologies. We get very cemented in what we think and feel and believe, especially at certain ages as we get older. So this can really be a challenging thing. Don't walk this belief life alone. We have to have other believers so that when we come up against this crisis of belief, we have someone to talk to and a way and means forward of communicating with God. And I'm not saying your friend's gonna tell you how to communicate with God, but you're going to have maybe some words or maybe a way to process that thought verbally. Some of us are verbal processors, so this is an important thing. I think that it's important to understand that this is not all hunky-dory and rainbows and butterflies. This is gonna be a challenge.

And it's not sunshine and rainbows.

No, and I'm gonna tell you, when I went through my crisis of belief and I definitely have been here, guys I have never felt more alone, Never felt more alone. But can I tell you, hindsight, 2020, it pretty much rocks. The flip side of that is I can't even begin to tell you how much I can see that God was there for me, the path that he put me on, the people that showed up in my life, the way things have changed. I'm literally not the same person as I was five years ago and I know you're all like well, nobody's the same person as they were five years ago. Guys, I'm telling you, like huge 90 degree shift. These are not like little incremental things and we all grow Like when God moves, he like whips, he totally takes the wind out of your sails. He literally just shifts you 90 degrees and you're like, oh my gosh, that was a lot and it's hard, but you can see where he had his hand in it. I will say, at the time it feels like you're wearing blinders and you don't know what the heck's going on. But if you're diligent about writing things down and communicating, you'll actually be able to see where he was able to move things and, boy golly, it's sometimes not where you think that it was. In fact, it may not be the moment in which you started to feel like you came out of it. It may have been a whole lot sooner, and that's how it was for me, I'm actually. When I went back and really dug into this, that's what I was able to see. But let's hit our next point here, because I don't want to be long-winded. So this next point here, besides the crisis, is going to be a little bit of a challenge. One of the ways that we can develop a relationship with the Lord is through obedience. Our outward expression of our love for God is obedience. It is the reason we have believers' baptism right. That is an obedience. We have chosen to follow the Lord. He said okay, go get baptized. And you have decided and choose. This is an obedience thing to step in faith and proclaim your faith, okay. John 14, 23 says this. And Jesus replied all who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them and we will come and make our home with each of them. That verse right, there is spicy. All who love me will do what I say, not some of it, not occasionally, when it's convenient. All it says you will do it. Just what he says Additionally. First, john 2, 3, 3, 6 says this and we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. If someone claims I know God but doesn't obey God's commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth. But those who obey God's word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know we are living in him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did. Now I do wanna throw a little caveat on this, because this is a really, really, really easy way to slide down into some legalism. Man made rules are not a thing. Yeah, okay, man made rules are not a thing. So if someone says you need to hop on one foot to be closer to God, no, you don't. There's nothing in the Bible that says hop on one foot to be closer to God. And if you guys are laughing at that statement, I've actually been to a church where we were asked to get on our chairs to get closer to God. So Wendy's face right now is like wait what? Yes, my parents collected all of us. It was when I was a child. We were looking for a new church. My parents literally collected all of us and left. But it is the whole church got up on their chairs. They took their shoes off and stood on their chairs to get closer to God, as if God was somewhere above their head. That they needed to reach higher. Oh, okay, this is a really. When we get into these verses, not only is it a challenge because we have to obey, we also have to be so close with the Lord that we understand that we're not obeying things that some human decided was fun or needed in order to be saved. Standing on my chair is not a salvation issue. That is not an issue that is even gonna bring anything closer to God, because that's not obedience to God. That's just standing on my chair. That could apply for a lot of things, and you'll see different pieces of culture in different churches. I think there was a church we attended in Okinawa and everybody wore kekis skirts, floor length kekis skirts or jeans skirts, jeans skirts. It was jeans skirts, because I thought it was weird, because it's, I think, pensacola Christian. Back when I was a kid, they wore kekis skirts, floor length, and I was like, well, jeans seem a little out there. But apparently that was the thing. Everybody did it and I was like, yeah, that's, I'm not gonna buy a floor length jeans skirt to go to church. I don't like them. Plus, that material has to touch me then and I don't like that either. But again, there's not a salvation issue wrapped up in a floor length skirt to attend church. That's a man made obedience. Your obedience has to be walking with what the Lord says. So I think you guys need to make sure in this particular one. When it comes to this last step, you guys are really, really cautious about what's being shared and you run everything you hear past your Bible. I use my Bible as a litmus test and if you guys do, you guys know what a litmus test is. I don't know if any of our listeners. I love litmus tests, so I do litmus tests. People, this is how you do your water stuff. I'm gonna just we're gonna talk a little science real quick. Litmus tests are like this you get a little piece of paper. It's an indicator paper. Now what it indicates is it's based on the paper itself. So it can indicate an acid, it can indicate a base, it could indicate chlorine in your pool, it could indicate like an excess sodium level in your water. It doesn't really matter. Each litmus test is an indicator for the thing you're looking for. So in this case, the Bible is our litmus test for truth. So when you take a litmus test, you dip it into whatever it is you're testing. Maybe it's lemon juice or water or your pasta water. Whatever it is. You're dipping it into there to find the thing that you're looking for and in this case, again, it's truth. When I say that the Bible is the litmus test, you're dipping the information that you had into your Bible and the Bible is indicating whether or not that information is true or not. So if it is in counter or opposition to what your Bible says, it's not truth. And this is when I say you've got to do this as a litmus test. You have got to test every piece of information past your Bible, because you're gonna hear lots of things. I know I have, we even have a whole lecture on things Jesus didn't say. It's not a lecture, it's totally just a podcast. I mean a whole podcast on that. Okay, guys, like you have to know, you're hearing things today and I don't mean in my podcast where, hopefully, everything we have is Biblical sound. You're all welcome to check it. Check it for us and don't follow a human but you're hearing things from other believers and from well-meaning people who say things and then it's not grounded in truth. Okay, it's not. So I think that's all I have. I think I'm just gonna re-run through those points real fast again so we can close out. But number one you have to spend time in the Word. Number two prayer is your foundation. Number three we need to develop a relationship with other believers. Four you're gonna have your belief challenged. You're gonna have a crisis of belief. And then five is obedience Making sure that you're obedient to what your Bible is saying.

Yes, so with that, that's all we have for you today. Thank you so much for tuning in to Grace and Real Life. If you enjoyed today's episode, we would love to hear from you. You can leave us a message at graceinreallifecom, which is our new website, or you can message us on Instagram at GraceInRealLifeMedia. And if you're looking for a dynamic speaker for your next event, we are here to help. With our unique backgrounds, we can deliver informative and entertaining presentations. So if you're ready to take your event to the next level, head to our Instagram to book us, or email us at helloatgraceinreallifecom. Don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with your friends and family. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and the like button and leave us a review, because that helps others find our show and allows us to serve more listeners. And with that, deborah, will you close this out in prayer?

Absolutely. Dear Lord, thank you so much for all of the information that your Bible has that you are able to have this relationship with us. And, lord, I just pray for each of us. So we're beginning to cultivate a relationship. Lord, I pray that you help place people in the path, that help teach each of the listeners how to move forward and have a deep relationship with you. And, lord, I just pray that your word reveals the truth to them and that they are able to follow in obedience, doing your will and asking what you want. In your name, I pray, lord.

Amen, amen. That's all for today, bye, bye.