#205 Dating Apps, Our Purpose, & Stuck in the Past

and we'll walk through them just like we're friends. We have amber and I don't have any notes or we're not prepared. In fact, I don't know at all what's coming at me, so we'll just read these as we go. Once again, Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com. First quest since says subject line dating apps. Hey, mister Smith, vague question. I was just wondering what is your opinion on dating apps,

specifically Christian dating apps. And I've talked about this quite a bit and then I've gotten pushedback on it, for sure, but dating apps listen. I did a whole segment on After Midnight, my radio show about this, and I don't think that they are healthy. But I'm also not denying that a lot of people have met on traditional dating apps. And there will be people that would comment on this and say I met my husband on a dating app. And we've been married for seventeen years, and hey, I

get it, and that's amazing. I think the problem is when it becomes the only option of choice, when you do have another choice.

always trying to talk yourself up. You're always trying to make yourself look better, and I think they show maybe the best version of themselves, and a lot of times they lie or they withhold things, and I think that's where you can get into trouble too.

I don't think it was ever a guy that did it, but specifically girls that we're saying because here's the deal, I said, instead of a dating app, I would for recommendation of a friend or a family member or someone at work that says, hey, there's a girl or there's a guy that I know that I would like to set you up on a date, and that This person just went off on me saying, I don't have any friends, no one works with me that's compatible, and my family

doesn't know anybody, or I'm a strange from my family and I don't trust my family. And so she was like doing a duet on TikTok, you know where it's like split screen, and she was watching me talk and she was like throwing up her hands saying, I don't have any of that stuff.

outward appearance. You're looking at what looks good on paper and you're not truly seeing the person that they are. And I would I would almost say like it would be better to do like one of those speed dating things where you're actually in a room and you just jump from table to table, because you actually have a conversation with each person and get to know them and get to see them, rather than just like swiping through and going, oh, she's cute.

is Zachary saying this Christian dating apps? Does that help or is that still opening up for catfishing?

online because you could be completely wasting your time. The other thing I would say, too, just in general for people, is this is going to come as a shock probably, but you know, you might need to lower your standards a little bit on what you think you deserve and work more on who you would want to be for someone that would who is the person that would want

to date you? And then I just still didn't say that, right, be the person that you would want someone to be attracted to, Yeah, Right, so that you will attract that kind of person if you consistently try to become the person that you want to attract. Yeah, And if we work on that and stop stop thinking that we have to have this the ultimate standard at day one. Because

the ultimate standard and someone that's that's very compatible. I'll never say the word soulmate, but someone that's very compatible. You might not know that from a profile picture, or from a bio, or from a chat, or even from one coffee. But seven, eight, nine years down the road, you might say this person is so compatible. I'm so

in love with this person. And I would have missed it at day one because I had some supermodel standard or some Harvard grad standard, or somebody that has this kind of job or that maybe doesn't have a kid, and I found this guy who does have a kid, And you start eliminating what could be someone very compatible to you.

encouraged me. Here's my question. Bible verses like Romans eleven thirty six and Isaiah forty three seven talk about how our purpose as humans is to bring God glory and this is why he created us. Romans eight twenty eight also talks about how God works out everything for good in the lives of believers. In light of this, well, everything I experience in my life, even the hard things, ultimately lead up to something I like and feel good about, or just that they will lead up to something that

brings God glory. In other words, do any of the difficult things that happen in my life have no other person purpose than to bring God glory? Or am I guaranteed to feel happy about them all someday and feel like experiencing them was worth it in the end. I don't know if any of this makes sense by the way it does, but that's something that I've been wondering about for a long time, and nobody I talk to seems to have an answer. I do. Thanks again for all the things you do to bring us the word

of God in a humblin on his way. Thanks for your amazing testimony. I praise God for all He's done in your life. Sincerely, Naomi. It's a great question. Yeah, I love the question, and it's a legitimate question, and so let me I read it pretty roughly, So let me just kind of say what Naomi's saying. She's saying that as she reads the Bible. She's seeing that correctly.

She's seeing correctly that our purpose, the reason we were created and our purpose here on earth is to bring God glory and all that we do to glorify Him. And so she's saying, cool, good, thank you God, thanks for that. Where do I fit in this picture? Like, I'm happy that I'm created for a purpose and that purpose is to give you glory. Mister narcissist, right, But do I get anything out of this? I get it? Okay. First of all, God is not a narcissist. That's not

what you said. But this is what we start to figure out as we continue to read through the entire whole canon of the Scripture. And that's why, and I'm by no means accusing you of this at all, but as we read cover to cover of our Bibles, Genesis all the way to Revelation, and continue to read through it year by year, and the purpose of that, and I've said on this podcast before, is to learn who God is. That's that's first and foremost. Who is God?

And we find him, as revealed in the Scripture. When we begin to find him, we begin to know him. When we begin to know him, we and can anticipate what he likes and dislikes, hates and loves throughout the course of our own lives as we apply it to ourselves. What am I talking about. I'm talking about in the case of my dad, who's been passed away since twenty fourteen. Still I knew my Dad so well from living with him and listening to him and watching him and observing

him that I know to this day. If I go to a restaurant, when I open up a menu, I know what Dad would like, and then I know what Dad would not like. When I'm talking to someone and they have an opinion about something, I know if Dad would agree with that opinion or disagree with that opinion, and that goes on and on and on in the same way. That's really what our purposes in reading the Bible is to learn our heavenly Father in the same way, so that we don't need specific thick answers to specific

things in life. Instead, just like I don't need a specific answer to what Dad would say about a certain person in a certain situation in their life, I go, I know, in a general sense, in a broad sense, exactly how Dad would feel like it feel about with anything in this region. And that's how we learn God, and we could walk through life with confidence the more we read the Bible, of knowing what God would be

pleased about or displeased about our need or want from us. Okay, So to your question about bringing God glory, what we do know as we begin to know Him and as we begin to read the Bible, is that bringing God glory, which is our purpose, is not at odds with our happiness or our joy. In fact, I said this in the sermon recently. In fact, it is the source of it. When we bring God glory, which is why we're created.

When we do that, we find that the source of that glory that we bring him, whether it's the way we act or walk, or say, or worship or enjoy sunrise and sunset and the beautiful stars and the moon and the trees and the rain, and when we see this and little babies and little puppies and the grand canyon. When we bring him glory and see his glory and absorb his glory and feel his glory, that becomes the source of our joy and our happiness. And the more we do it, the more we worship, and the closer

we get to that purpose of glorifying Him. The more we feel it, and the more we need less of this earth, and the less of all the things that are false joys, fake joys, counterfeit joys. You know, you get so many things in this life for a counterfeit joy. It's a counterfeit happiness. It fades, it's gone. Texas Aggies. You know, I'm excited about watching them play this weekend, and if they win, I'll be happy. But it's a it's a counterfeit joy because it goes away in an instant.

When they lose the next week, right, and they could win the national championship, it's gone the next year. Its counterfeit. But when we glorify God, when we worship him like we would worship Aggie football, we worship God in that way. He never lets us down. In that way, it never comes back as counterfeit. It just grows and stacks joy

upon joy upon joy. But been using this parable so much lately, the Matthew thirteen forty four parable of the hidden treasure when it says the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus talking, the Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure in a field which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he owns to buy that field. There is that keyword right there. Joy. He finds this treasure, and in his joy he gives up the pleasures, the counterfeit pleasures, the counterfeit joys, and

goes all in on God. That is what we get when we glorify him. Your glorifying God is not at odds with your.

be worth it. Everything that you've faced, every horrible every horrible thing that you went through, every trauma, every little amount of suffering is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. And it will so be worth it. And this life is a vapor and I can't promise you happiness. Like Granger said, this side of heaven, you can have joy, but joys a person, and it's Jesus.

But you might not be eternally happy and joyful until we get to the other side, until we get home to heaven.

whole world in his hands. So through that there's the rest. There's the peace, there's the joy, there's the hope. And with those things equipped in you peace, hope, rest, love, joy. When you have those, you have the strength to overcome through the suffering, because you're going to suffer whether or not you have those things or not as a human, whether or not you have Jesus or not, you're going

to suffer. That's just part of being a human. But you could be equipped with those those powerful things, those fruits of the spirit, with your faith in Jesus. Let's hit one more and let's take a break. Let me making these questions. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if someone tuned in to figure out how to get a girlfriend or not. Here's another subject, says, is there a right religion? Hey, Granger, I have been raised Catholic, but now that I'm in my thirties and I have a family in my own I

have seemed to stray away from the Catholic faith. I have not lost my faith in God, but just how I practice my religion, I feel that I'm drawn closer to God and feel better as a human being listening to sermons from either non denominational pastors, Baptist pastors, and even your sermons that you have been doing, which by the way, are Baptist. My question is is there a right religion? Am I turning my back on God if I think about converting to another religion? Thank you for

your music over the years. My family and I enjoy your concerts and I absolutely looking forward to what the future holds for you. Mark. All right, So Mark this this is one of the problems with just reading an email and not being enough on the podcast, because we would want to dig in a little bit and say, well, what are you defining as religion? Because so far everything that you've listed here is denomination denomination based on trusting Christ,

Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior. So if you're talking about religion as far as Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam, we're talking about fundamentally different kinds of religion. If you're just talking about denominations, Man, I've been doing this deep, deep dive on C. S. Lewis as you know, like a I've got like literally twenty books right now, that I'm having to go through with C. S. Lewis based on I'm writing a research paper on C. S. Lewis and his apologetic method it in one of his books

called Mere Christianity Anyway. In the book Mere Christianity, he's it was originally a radio broadcast for World War Two in Great Britain, and he was making a case for Christianity without even really talking about Christianity in that term. He was talking about it in a broad sense to anyone that was searching for who is God? And has God revealed himself to us? And when it comes to certain third, second, third, fourth tier doctrines and denominations, he

said it this way. Look, my book Mere Christianity is trying to get you into the hallway. I want to get you into the hallway. And once you're in there, there are doors all down the hallway, and within those doors are rooms with food and fireplaces. That's what he said, something like that, with nice fireplaces and tables set and food and you can go according to what food you like, right, so you can go and sit down like I like

this room. I like the way the chairs are, I like the way the place mats are, and the tablecloth, and I really like eating roast beef. And then a vegetarian gets in there and goes, you know, I'm not really into eating beef, but I love a good What does the vegetarian need? A salad? Like a salad? And I like this room a little bit better. It's more

vibe for me. And so basically C. S. Lewis is saying, these denominations, really they're not disagreeing on a major doctrine, which is who is God has revealed in Jesus Christ. How are we redeemed, restored, forgiven, renewed, reborn through the cross and the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross, which is called penal substitution, which is Christ took on the wrath of God himself and bore our sins on the cross so that we could be set free if we believe in him. So that's a first here doctrine.

You cannot disagree on that or you are not a Christian. Everything else after that it's just a place matt and a nice fire and a meal. And so I and I think it's really neat. C. S. Lewis. Now I have strong opinions about second third tier, fourth year doctrines. I have those opinions, and I'd be willing to talk about it, but that's they're not selvific. They don't save you or not. Only faith in Jesus does that in realizing the the power of the Cross and what it

means for humanity. Who God is as revealed in his son. Okay, So everything else that you're asking really is Halloway questions. And so I think that's what you mean about religion. Yeah. I don't think you mean is there a right religion when it comes to Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, is it all the same? That's not what you're asking.

has nothing to do with conversion. Conversion happens when you're dead in your trespasses and you're reborn, your eyes are now opened, and you are a Christian. That is conversion. You can't do that. You can't decide to do that. God does that, And Jesus said in John three, no one enters the Kingdom of Heaven without being reborn. You must be born again, is what Jesus said. A baby can't be born, It can't make himself be born, right, you just are. It happens outside of yourself. Nothing bores

itself when he was the word nothing births itself. You know, something cannot birth itself. So I don't think that's what you mean. And I hope this clears it up. Let's take a break and be right back. Go ahead.

book out. If you're not much of a book person, well, the audio book is something that I read and it has some bonus features in it, some added commentary, plus Amber and I do about an hour long interview with each other, just us too at the end of the audio book. And so it's got a bunch of extras. And maybe even if you have read the book and you have the hard copy, maybe you could check out the audiobook as well. It's something I was really excited to record it and to bring it to life really

with my words as I've read it. If you've never had an audiobook before, you could use Audible or the books app. Android users. I'm sorry I've never known your language, but there's a way to do it for sure. Also, if you want to get a hold of me, if you want me to send you a message for any reason or to anyone, check me out on cameo dot com slash Granger Smith. You could also download the cameo

app and search for me Granger Smith. This is a great way for a last minute gift or a gift for someone who has everything, or some special pick me up for someone a happy birthday, happy anniversary, congratulations. It could be just a word of encouragement. It's super easy. You go to cameo dot com slash Granger Smith and you tell me what you want me to say that message comes to me, I pull up my phone and I read or ad lib whatever general message you want me to say here on my phone on my video,

and then I send it to you super easy. And then lastly, the EEE Apparel fall launch is this Friday, September fifteenth. All kinds of new items. Very excited about this fall launch. Go to ye ye dot com and that launch will go live at ten am Central Friday, September fifteenth, So you're gonna want to show up a little bit early to yeye dot com to make sure that you get your favorite sizes before they sell out. Back to the podcast. All right, guys, back here on

the podcast. Got my wife Amber join in.

was removed. I just wanted to ask you what you think of about this book and if or not it is scripture. Ps. Your book is amazing. It brought a tear to my eye. Thank you for being so vulnerable. Your words mean a lot, Joshua, Thank you, Joshua, appreciate you man. Thanks for also thanks for reading like a river. And yeah, so let's talk about the Book of Enoch. But maybe not just that book. There's a lot of books that were that were in dispute and still are

maybe to this day. The Book of Enoch is one of the newer ones that has been in dispute because I believe it was discovered more recent than most and so then it's been in like scholar debates as of lately. I believe it came up recently, like within the last fifty years, there was a there was a lot of books and about the discovery of the Book of Enoch and why it was purposely left out of the canon. So yeah, happy to discuss. And I love love this stuff.

I love history of the Bible. I love the canon, the formation of the Canon. I love the formation of the Four Gospels. It's really fascinating to think about the four Gospels themselves, like let let alone the Old Testament and the Book of Enoch and stuff like that. But why are there four? Matthew Mark Luke and John Man. That is such a such a crazy, deep deep well just about.

a lot. And I'm talking about if you know ancient documents like Homer or Aristotle or Plato or those kind of ancient documents that we'll read in school, and you look at it like this is a fact, like Homer wrote this. Wow, the odds that Homer wrote what we think he wrote are so so much more obscure than if Moses wrote Deuteronomy, or if the apostle John wrote Revelation, or if if if Isaiah wrote the Great Isaiah Scroll. I'd try to do the biggest sweep of fifteen hundred years.

I could right there And what I mean is, we don't even have that much evidence that Homer actually wrote that, but people believe, but people believe it. Maybe he did, he probably did. But the fact is that the I don't know much about Homer, but the I do know that the evidence the fragments of the ancient documents are so few and so far few in between, or whatever

the phrase is. And the timeframe of when we have found fragments of Homer, it's so long after it was supposedly originally written that you could easily say, well, I don't think he actually wrote that. But when it comes to the Bible, we have so much more mounting evidence and it's pretty incredible, and it's the most researched book in the planet, and we have the most evidence, more than any other ancient document. I read that it would be if you stacked all of our fragments up, it

would be miles high as much as we found. So how do you know what is included and what's not? And was there some one council or maybe some constantine or one emperor that decided I'm going to decide this is what goes in here, and I'm going to do it because I want to get I want to gain power, or I want to gain control over people. So I'm going to make sure that these books aren't included, and these are because these make me look better in my kingdom.

Is that what happened or was it a council of people that came together in Nicea in the fourth century that said, Okay, let's randomly look at Israel and look at all the pieces of literature, and let's pull together the ones that we want, and we'll call it the b I, B L E. And we'll make it. You know, they no, none of that is true. That's what people

want to think it's true. But we have writings that go way before the fourth century of people reading scripture, and starting with the Gospels, you have them as Jesus is quoting Psalms, He's crediting Psalms to David, he is crediting Isaiah to his writings, and Jeremiah and Moses writing Genesis, and so we have connections. The Bible is self testifying, It testifies to itself through its own its own authors.

And then we see that play out as apologist and early Church fathers were writing in the same the same lifetime as others. So we have the apostle John was the last writer of the Bible. We have a lot of evidence to believe that one of John's students was Polycarp, and one of polycarp students was Irenaeus. And these guys are writing in the same lifetime of other eyewitnesses that were there with Jesus. And that goes back and back and back and back and back to David writing the

Psalms in the minor prophets and the major prophets. So we have so much testifying evidence to why we have authorship for certain books. And then we come to certain things like the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Enoch, where we go, oh, hang on, there's a major gap here. The Gospel of Thomas. We don't have any ancient fragments of that. We don't

have anybody talking Ironaeus, Polycarp, Apostle John. No one is talking about the Gospel of Thomas like they did everything else. No one is talking about the things that Thomas talks about that are the apparent Thomas talks about in the Gospel Thomas. And we go, hang on a second, this is introducing new ideas. The Greek literary style is different than the other four gospels. That wasn't the style of

conversation that the disciples had. We don't find as many of the fragments, and we have some people actually speaking out, like iron As speaking out against the Gospel Thomas, saying this is heresy, this is a fake. So then what happens is a couple hundred years go by, there's people going, hey, this is a fake. Of course, why there were humans,

why wouldn't there be fakes. You would imagine there would be fake books that people write and credit it to an author it's not themselves, right, and so of course that you would imagine in humanity that there would be books that are coming out that are plagiarizing somebody else for something. So we go back and we read these historians. Josephus is another one, and we can go, oh, we have a lot of evidence to say that Thomas did not write this book. So does everybody vote this this

Thomas book is fake? And everyone's like, yeah, I did my research here. This guy's like yeah, I did my research here. I talked to so and so he said Thomas didn't even write he talked to Thomas whatever, and so they go. Book of Thomas is out, the Gospel of Thomas is out. Mary, same thing, Peter, same thing, Book of Enoch, same thing. There, these books are not in the Bible today in twenty twenty three, not because of some conspiracy, not because of some old king or

some emperor or some secret council. It's literally because historians have come together and go, that's uh, that's a that's that's a false book. We can we can verify through multiple sources that that's not the right person that wrote that. And so we have to trust that the spirit that these books are in spirit motivated, and we can go, yeah, the spirit is also motivating these wise men saying men women saying no, we're not going to trust with these

books supposed to be here. And that was a long goodness s grangers, shut up, move on.

I've been on dates, but it just doesn't feel the same. Can you give me any advice. I have read your and it has helped me. I think he meant I've read your book. Sorry, there wasn't a lot of punctuation in that that, so I let me say it again. This guy's Jose and he's twenty three. He can't get over ax, his ax. It's been two years since the breakup. Can't move on. He has her on social media and she's the first one to see everything that he posts.

I'm assuming because she likes it or views it or something. He's been on dates didn't feel the same, Bro, Jose, blocker.

she says, I'm sorry, I'm moving on. Basically, saying it's it's not you, it's me, And the only evidence he has is it's postmarked Birmingham.

out with my buddies on the farm and work. And I know I'm still somewhat young, but I feel like I should start being around more people and open myself up to a future slash girlfriend slash wife. Thanks for what you do. Also, I saw you performing Goodhre. It was great. Lincoln was with me and Good Hu and he did the gritty on the stage.

Just keep doing that. Keep doing that for a while. Don't worry about how to interact with new girls. That might be hard to do because your brain is there's like things firing in your brain that's going you need to look at a girl, you need to talk to a girl. You need that's natural, that's your biology. It's coming out saying, hey, it's time to get going on this girl thing. You don't necessarily have to listen to

that at eighteen, though. I would much rather this email than an email of someone eighteen going this, I've been with this girl for six years, she's going off to college. I don't know what to do. I love her, she's of my life, she's pregnant, whatever. Like. The list goes on and on of emails I wouldn't want to see. But the one I do like is the one that says, I'm eighteen, I work on the farm, I hang out with my buddies. Should I start thinking about girls right now? Dude? I love that email.

you'll be with a girl. You'll be with your wife, and you'll be raising babies and grand babies, Lord Willing, you will spend the rest of your life and your roommate will be a girl. Right But the only time in your life when you're not going to have a girl and you're just gonna be with your buddies hanging out working on the farm is right now. And you're asking me how to throw all that away and go find a girl to worry about.

group of them together with your group of boys. So you got a group of girls with a group of boys. Nobody's singled out, and you guys make a bonfire. Somebody's got to pick up a guitar. You play some guitar, You pass the guitar around, you sing along. You then get a really unique chance to watch the girls how they interact, and they watch you and how you interact. But you don't get stuck needing to know what to

say or do in the moment. You learn from the outside, and you'll quickly learn things like, man, maybe next time I'll wash my shirt, like maybe next time I'll comb my hair or something. But those are really cool things that happen as these two opposite creatures get together and start socializing. You don't have to do that one on one. You could do it in groups.

at gmail dot com. Yi