From Skeptic to Believer: Faith, Theology, and Politics in Today's World

So I don't know where you're getting your theology , or actually , yes , I do . Let me explain this . Just a way to open up . First of all , welcome everybody to the Faith and Failure Podcast and live stream . I knew probably some of the title that some of you saw would get somebody heated pretty quick and guess what ?

That's okay , because I am a person , I am a pastor , who desires to have open dialogue and to show you up against Scripture . Now , we have two different ways of reading text and reading the Word , and I appreciate , elijah , for you know your comment , even though I think you are 100% , completely wrong . Now , how can I do that and still love you ?

Well , I understand , as all of us have , at some point we can read a text or a passage from Scripture and we read into what we want the text to say from our perspective and how we see life . That's called Isa Jesus . A way to remember . That is I . You're putting I in the text .

Now , exegesis is you are bringing out what is actually in the text and what God had to say in the text . You're not putting in what your two cents is . You're not adding what you want the Scripture to say or what you believe . What you're doing when you really study the Scripture and you want to hear from God .

You set what you believe and what you think aside and say Lord , what does your Spirit say ? What does your Scripture say ? And that is called exegesis . You are studying the Scripture according to the original text , the intent of the text , and looking at it in context , instead of coming from where you are and reading Scripture . So that's okay .

The fact that you actually are citing Scripture means you are reading it . I hope you continue to read it and I hope the Spirit of God begins to pour out on you in such a real way that you cannot in any fashion or way say what you're saying now , because the Spirit of God will convict you . I believe that's how it works .

At one point in time , I was a person who didn't believe . I was a person who was on drugs . I was a person who womanized and people try to dissect transgender and homosexuality . But the Bible says that sexual immorality if you are guilty of that , no matter what little branch you are part of , you will not enter the kingdom .

It's not just one little part , one little thing . If you do this , I as a pastor can't have someone to come in and counsel and say well , you're sleeping together and that's okay , to follow your feelings and do what you want to do . No , I'm not going to say that . So why would I bend and conform ? If someone chooses homosexuality , it's sin .

It's against God's design , it's against God's nature of how he designed us to be . So that's what that is on the front end of that . Now that we got that out of the way , how y'all doing today ? Y'all doing okay , everybody excited for the show . So I wanted to start the show off today with something .

So my wife , y'all know if you're watching right now live . It is the holiday , christmas season , and one of the I don't know the stats on it , but one of the most overrated not overrated , that may be a little strong one of the most overplayed songs . I think . It was written by a guy named Mark Lowry and he's also a standup comedian , christian comedian .

He wrote a song called Mary , did you Know ? My wife does not like that song , not because of the context , not because of the words . It is a little dumb because , yes , she knew she was told by an angel . But anyways , mary Did you Know ? Okay , so I am going to next week . So the week of the 20th , on the 21st , we leave to go up north .

We go every year for Christmas break to see my side of the family , because Jesse's side of my wife's side of the family is around here . And so we go and we look , we visit my side of the family . So my parents hold on just a second , let me check my levels just to make sure and so we go and we perfect , all right . So we go and we visit family .

We actually have a new baby . She's just over a couple of months old and some side of my dad's side of the family hasn't seen her yet , and then some side of my mom's side of the family hasn't seen her either . So we're gonna go make our rounds . It's our first Christmas .

We're gonna go kind of just show her off to everybody , because everybody needs to see her . She's amazing and beautiful . So , that being said . Speaking of Elijah , if you're still watching , I don't know if you checked out or not but you tell them my transgender and Jesus was transgender .

Okay , before we ever saw a baby , the doctors were able to tell by blood what the gender of the baby was . Okay , I'm no biologist , but that should tell you something . Not bashing anybody , but we're gonna watch it . Later down the road we're gonna watch a video and it's a victim mentality and it's trans-abled is what they call themselves .

So stick around for that . At the end of this , end of this live stream today , because it gets weird and so because it's a holiday season , it's Christmas time , I wanted to watch this . So if you've ever heard of the Babylon Bee , I highly recommend . They're extremely funny . They're Christians .

As far as their theology , we're not gonna get all into what exactly they believe , because I think they are a multiple or a mix of , I think , presbyterian , you know whatever they got a bunch of different genres of belief , but they all believe that Jesus is the one true son of God . So it's not really a salvation issue , it's more of a preference .

So I wanted to start today's live stream off . You know I like comedy . You know , like we've actually watched some of the videos before . This is extremely hilarious and it fits both the Christmas holiday spirit and the 2024 election spirit , which we're gonna touch on some of that today .

Some of y'all have asked me specifically in person , face to face of people that I know , and you've also . Some of you have emailed me and you've asked hey , what do you think about Trump , what do you think about the election , what is your opinion and how do you see things ?

So today I'm gonna kind of dive in deeper on that From my church and my perspective . I don't teach politics . I actually instruct my leaders to not get they can have a political opinion , obviously but to demonize a certain political views and it makes the body become very messy very quickly . So I don't really endorse

that . There's a special condemnation from God to all who deny the foulest creative purpose for men and women . They're .

You know it's sad , but there is several verses in the Bible where it talks about God gave them over to their lustful desires and I feel like in these last days we're seeing more and more and more of things that are pointing to Jesus is coming soon and that's , I believe , that's why there's such a perversion on truth , because truth will have to be so perverted

and so twisted for the antichrist to actually take over . Because if we're all believing good , we're all believing right , we're all living right , we believe we're a godly nation . You know , everybody's on the side of God and everybody believes the Bible .

There's no room for the antichrist because people would recognize that evil and I really think a lot of the churches down South are plagued by not recognizing actually what evil is which will be on another live stream I got that one cooking , anyway so I wanted to scary how perverted the truth has become .

Yeah , like it's seriously , truth has become something that's more subjective instead of something that is a constant standard . That's why it's so important , as Christians , to know the word of God , so that you can measure up what you're hearing and measure it up to the word of God .

I've actually been doing a series on the gifts of the Spirit and prophecy is one of those , and the Bible tells us that when we hear prophecy because you're gonna be made a post the other day on my Facebook , feel free to go follow All the links are down in the description that there's gonna be a lot of profits in 2020 , at the end of 2023 , in the new

year of 2024 , saying this and that , and a lot of them are false prophets that just are just trying to be in the limelight , trying to be on social media , trying to get likes , trying to get money . Anyways , we're not diving into that .

So , for the holiday season , I thought this video was very fitting and it made me laugh , and so I wanted to give that to you . Let me get my camera right . Let's play this .

The law will cease , the debt increase and the debt will vote again , and yet the money will be right . I split up . Well , it's been a police day . Come on , I'll learn you better , know what I am .