Do Psychedelics Bring You Closer to God? - podcast episode cover

Do Psychedelics Bring You Closer to God?

Jun 17, 202443 minEp. 243
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Episode description

Today we're exploring some profound and controversial topics: Should psychedelics be legalized? Can psychedelics bring you closer to God? Could they help with PTSD? We'll also delve into the journey of Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS Shoes, who has dedicated his life to giving back but still struggles with finding a deeper connection with God despite his successes and good deeds.

In addition to this main discussion, we'll be answering your questions and offering advice on various subjects. Topics include reasons you might reconsider officiating your friend's wedding, tips for hosting a successful Bible study, how to prepare for marriage, and more. Join us for an insightful and engaging conversation that spans faith, mental health, and personal growth.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the podcast, So glad you're with me. The format of this what I do is I answer your questions. If you have anything about any subject, email podcast at drangersmith dot com. We'll put it in the cube and man, we'll arrange this and try to put together the best questions we canswer that I could answer them like we're just sitting in the cab of a truck or sitting around a campfire, and

they really could be about any subject. Just ask that you keep it about a phone link long so that it doesn't get overwhelming. But what I want to do first is I want to answer a question that I got in person about a guy named Blake Mikoski. Blake is the founder of Tom's Shoes, and you might you might remember Tom's. It started two thousand and six ish mid two thousands, something like that, and ended up being

wildly successful. He sold shoes, and he was inspired by going to Argentina and seeing all the kids there without shoes, and he decided to start a shoe company that when you bought a pair of shoes Tom's is the name of the shoes, he would donate one pair of shoes to children that didn't have any, and it took off. I mean, people loved to buy a product and knowing they were helping kids and they were putting shoes on kids. I mean, who wouldn't. It is and still is a

great cause. As time goes on, Blake ends up having a lot of competition with a lot of other companies that bigger companies that try to push them out and are taking the idea and saying, hey, this is we could do this too, We could do philanthropy and give back, and people buy into that. Customers go, hey, I want my dollar to matter, and if I'm going to buy shoes anyway, I want it to matter. Well, a lot

of other companies decided to compete. Some of them even came in and said, well, we'll give two pairs of shoes for everyone. You know. So through all this Blake uh making hundreds of millions of dollars on Tom's. He begins to struggle over time, and this is where the question came to me from a lady the other day who asked me thoughts on this. She talked about possibly sending her boyfriend, who was struggling a little bit with life.

Evidently to this retreat that Blake put on, evidently, and the reason for this retreat is because Blake began to struggle and this is what I kind of want to think about today. He began to struggle with the idea of if I'm going and I'm doing I'm helping people out, and I'm helping all these kids, thousands and thousands of kids, and I'm doing good for all this all these worldly things, and I'm helping poverty. But I'm not feeling any better

about myself. I'm not feeling fulfilled myself through all of this good stuff. I'm doing all this philanthropy. So what do you do? So he starts searching, like, well, maybe there's more to life than helping kids, because on the onset, you look at it and you gobdude, the goal of

life is to help kids impoverished countries have shoes. And so if I could start a business and be a capitalist entrepreneur, live the American dream, make money, design cool apparel, and at the same time help kids around the world, that's my purpose in life, right, So then my purpose is fulfilled and my job and then this becomes my identity, and that's a really good identity. I get to live out this dream of helping kids and around the world.

And then suddenly he realizes there's more to it. He feels empty, and so he feels unfulfilled, he feels he feels depressed, he feels like he doesn't have a purpose,

which is very strange. And the reason it's strange is because you would expect that kind of story from a guy, a movie star or a big you know, pop such star, or or a professional athlete that's done at all and and feels like they still haven't done it, they haven't accomplished the purpose yet, And you don't expect to hear that kind of thing from someone that's actually trying to help out the world. So what do we do with this?

What do we do with this? Well? I looked him up and I started to see what he's doing today and how he is fulfilling himself, and how he is this guy Blake, how he's trying to fix this whole problem, and this is how he's trying to fix it. I'm gonna pull up this video. I'm gonna screen record it so you could see what I'm what I'm looking at. Here you go, I'll shut up.

Speaker 2

Here, that's the path of that's the Hoffin process. That's you know iiO energetic therapy, and that is working with a plant like ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is no fun. I mean it can be euphoric in some moments that it can be a really really difficult teacher. And for me, it's had me really look hard to myself that I didn't really want to look at. I mean, one of them is is just you know, my need to be in control.

I mean, just showed me this like the darkness and the shadow side of me thinking I'm helping people by trying to control them or I know what's better for them, whether it's my wife or my kids or my brother. This need to think that I know what is right for someone else, So I know that kind of incredible egotism. Ayahuasca's just like throwing it right in my face and then like you silly, silly man. Life is not to

be controlled, just to be lived. And when you're constantly trying to control life, you don't give God or your spirit or whatever ayahuasca is bringing up in you the opportunity to actually give you what you really need. Because you're fighting and you're resisting it by trying to control it so much. That's the path of love.

Speaker 1

Okay, So what he's promoting now is essentially psychedelics. He's talking about ayahuasca here in this video, and he's going around and he's speaking to a lot of people. Briefly, I spent probably ten minutes this morning kind of researching

what Blake is up to now. A guy that has lost his purpose and yet had a purpose that most people would think, most people in the world would think is really noble, and yet we learn that he's now depressed and looking and searching, so he turns to psychedelics. Ayahuasca is made famous through the Native Americans who used ayahuasca to get in connection with the Great Spirit. And so now he's experiencing these psychedelic trips and he's wanting

to promote this so that it becomes legal. And there are several states I looked at up at one point. There are several states that are completely legal now with psychedelics, and there are a lot of them that aren't psychedelics. Let me look this up real quick for serious serious reading me. Psychedelics legal in the US. Let's see what Let me just type in map, see what that does. Oh, perfect,

this is exactly what I need. So, psychedelics are legal in of course, California, Oregon, excuse me, Washington, Oregon is legal for recreational use. California is completely decriminalized. In California, excuse me. Colorado is legal for recreational use. It looks like Missian and the up is decriminalized completely. Uh, New York, maybe a few others, all the ones that you would expect,

except Michigan. That's kind of strange, right. So, so what Blake is doing is he's trying to push this, the legalization of this, because he's pushing for this for PTSD. He's pushing he's pushing for veterans that suffer with horrific experiences. And like he said in that video, it's not always easy to go through the psychedelic trip because it's digging

up things. It's connecting you with God. It's definitely a lowercase G God that he's referring to, or great Spirit or spirit of yourself or whatever it might be, the universe. The karma. Psychedelics are connecting you with that, He's saying, So what do we do with this? As Christians? What do we what do we say to these things, Well, one go to the Bible. We always go to the Bible for any kind of questions like this, and we need to be prepared to have an answer or to

have some kind of basic understanding. And really the purpose of this podcast in so many ways is not ever for me to just feed you the answers, but more so that we could learn how to think on our own and learn how to answer questions on our own. And so maybe my encouragement would be to just kind of model my thought process as I hear from this lady. She's talking about Blake Mycoski's I look him up. He's

talking about psychedelics. He's a guy that is given back to the world for decades and yet still feels unfulfilled. What's missing here? He thinks it's psychedelics. So what is my process? As I'm kind of working through this, I go to the Bible. First. Peter five eight says be sober minded, be watchful your adversary. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. You'll see many times of the Bible it talks about the mind and the clarity of the mind, and so anything that

goes against the clarity of the mind. And anything that dulls the mind, that smokes the mind, that numbs the mind, is something we have to stay away from because why Because the Bible says that the adversary, the devil, uses these numbed minds to make his attack so that he could devour. That's really scary stuff. The spiritual warfare is terrifying stuff. First, Thessalonians five to six says, then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. Be sober, be awake, clear mind,

be awake, be sober. Don't go to sleep. This is obviously not talking about a physical sleep, but an awareness. Don't go unconscious spiritually, stay awake. Feed your feed your mind with clarity, take captive every thought. Understand the gospel that God, a holy God, is separated from people that have become rejecters of Him. And to that separation that we have caused through our own sin. All of us,

none of us are good. None of us could go to Argentina enough times and give shoes to kids, but enough of us, all of us have created the separation individually between us and our God and God. Knowing that knowing that there was no hope to ever reconcile us or to bring us back to him, knowing that there was no hope for us to do this on our

own sins his only son into the world. Jesus, who goes to the cross, dies the death that we deserve, takes the punishment on the cross of all the sin that we deserve from rejecting God, from being reject doors of God. Jesus comes to reconcile God's people back to himself. That's the gospel. So we look to that, we looked at the cross. We remember our depravity. We remember we

can't be good enough. We remember that we can't buy enough shoes for kids, even though it's a great thing to love kids, and we should do that, but not because we're earning anything or trying to figure out an identity, but instead as an overflow for the fact that God loved us enough to sind his only son into the world so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. The overflow from that kind of love then makes us go into the world and want

to give shoes to kids, but not the other way around. Right. Galatians five nineteen says, now the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, inimity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warn you before. Paul says that those who do such things will not

inherit the Kingdom of God. That's interesting, right, I mean you could say that that term sorcery can refer to the use of drugs for magical or hallucinogenic purposes, which align very closely to psychedelics.

Speaker 2

On p.

Speaker 1

Four seven, the end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded. For the sake of your prayers, Jesus says in Matthew six thirty three, seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. We're encouraged to seek Him,

not some other way to get to him. See, there's so many ideas that that psychedelics, for instance, allows us to channel God, or to channel the Great Spirit, or to bridge us from this world to His from earth to Heaven, from the present to the spirit world, whatever you want to call it. And so psychedelics provides, as

it said, is it's thought to provide that bridge. In fact, God says I made a bridge his name is Jesus, to fill the gap of separation between you and your sin, the separation that you cause, that your sin has caused. I made the bridge for that. And he is Jesus, the Son of God, came in the place of us and dies on the cross. Right. That's the gospel. So that the bridge to the spirit world or whatever you want to call it, is already built. We look to

him with a clear mind. Romans twelve two. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. The transformation and renewal of the mind should come through God's word and the Holy Spirit, the acknowledgment of the Sun, and not through some kind of mind altering substance like a mushroom or a psychedelic in any way. We have to remember this. We have to

remember that ayahuasca or whatever. Blake, what's his name, Mi Coskey is promoting here, and it's easy to see on the outside looking in and go, Yeah. The guy is searching for his identity, not knowing that he has made in the image of God in need of a savior that has been provided to him. Should he look to him and by faith, by then he would be saved. If he believed in the Son, he would be saved.

He would his identity would be fulfilled. God would say to him, Jesus would say to him through the gospel, like I heard through my guilt with losing riv you hear through the gospel. You can't be good enough. You can't give enough enough shoes to kids in Argentina. You can't be a sufficient father on your own. I give you my identity. Through belief in Me, you are inheriting.

You gain an inheritance of the Kingdom of God. You yourself become adopted as sons of the Kingdom, not from anything you do, but by faith through Me, from my divine right. So we look to Jesus as the substitute, and our identity flows from that. Our identity flows from Christ. How could you know anybody? How could anyone know themselves without knowing the one that made them, and that that

would go for anything. How would you know? How would you possibly know anything without first knowing the maker of the thing. How would you understand your own heart or your own identity without knowing the maker of your heart? Who is your identity? You're a child of God, you were you were saved by grace through faith if you're a believer, so we look to him and then your purpose from then on ising glory to God, which may be bringing shoes to Argentina, Lord willing, or it might

be faithfully working in whatever job you have. This podcast has brought to you, guys by better help you know. Amber and I benefited a lot from therapy. You might have read that in my book Like a River, and Amber and I could both say that as we went in for grief during counseling, during therapy, we ended up coming out knowing a lot more about our marriage and our life. In addition to all of that, because we really opened up with a therapist. It helped us a lot.

It honestly did. And I could also say that it's also a little bit uncomfortable to pack up everything and to go somewhere or to have a scheduled appointment with a therapist and sit on the proverbial green couch and talk about your problems. That just sounds weird, and that's where better Help comes in. It's entirely online, So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give Better Help a try to be online designed to be convenient, flexible, and studed

to your schedule. Just works out really nice. Just fill out this brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and then switch therapist at any time for no additional charge. Take a moment visit better Help dot com slash granger today to get ten percent off your first month. Again, that's Better Help. Hlp dot com slash Granger podcast is sponsored by the Wellness Company. So here's the scenario. You wake up with a scratchy throat, congestion, running nose, and cough. Hey,

you know your body. You know you're getting sick, so your choices are tough it out, get sick and take time off work, hope that the doctor could see you this month, Wait two hours at urgent care and sit in a room full of sick people. You don't want any of those options, Or you open up your medical emergency kit, match your symptoms to the doctor recommended prescription, and then you start on the right meds and nip this in the bud right now now. Your medical emergency

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your kit will be rushed to your door. Get fifteen percent off at TWC dot health slash granger and use promo code Granger. That's promo code Granger at TWC dot health slash Granger. Also, if you ever want to get a hold of me, remember cameo dot com slash granger Smith, or download the cameo app and search for me Granger Smith. I could do a quick video message saying happy birthday,

happy anniversary, congratulations, I'm sorry, whatever it might be. I record a video on my phone and send it straight to you saying whatever you need me to say to whoever you want me to send it to. Again, that is cameo cimeo dot com slash Ranger Smith, and I'll send you a message today. All right, let's answer some of these questions. If you have a question for me, email podcast at grangersmith dot com will put it in the queue here. Could be about any subject, and we're

gonna start with Peyton. It says, good morning, Granger. My name is Peyton. I'm twenty years old and a college student studying accounting. Recently studying accounting. Recently, one of my best buddies from high school asked me to not only be in his wedding, but to officiate it. This is a huge ask of me because I want his wedding to be what he wants, and I'm a bit nervous about doing this part for him. I have been growing in my faith a lot in the last year and

I think I could do the job. But is there any advice or wisdom you could lend to me? And how do I go about doing this the right way? Thank you, Peyton? All right, Peyton, thanks for the email. I think it's a great question and I have personally struggled with this, so I think it's probably good too to bring it up. I personally have officiated, probably not

a lot. I'd say no most of the time, but I've probably officiate officiated six to ten weddings, and each time I've done it, I have said to myself, I'm not going to do this anymore with increasing intensity. And the reason I've said that is not because it's not because I don't like to do it. It's not because it's not because I don't know how to do it. It's not because I think I'm doing a bad job for the family. It's different. It's a spiritual thing, and I get a little bit and I get a little

bit worried for this. This is the reason I believe, as we know, weddings are the most important decision that you could you will make in your life outside of Christ and picking your spouse and making the decision to love them, which is what marriage is really. It's it's making a decision to love someone through sickness and in health, through riches and poor So to to make that kind of decision should be celebrated and it should be supported

and encouraged by your community. Now as Christians, we believe that the marriage is ordained by God, and it's an institution reflecting the covenant that God makes with his people. And so because of that kind of reflection of that covenant, which is essentially a promise, there should be marriage counseling that happens before it, and there should be there should be a wise counsel that walks with you after it.

So I believe that the person officiating should be able to do all of those things the counsel before walking into the day of the actual exchanging of the vows, and then walking for years, perhaps decades after the wedding itself. Those are roles that I'm saying that should be in my mind fulfilled by the pastor of the local church, in the local body that you and this guy and

his wife are members of. You coming in and kind of swooping in or me doing the same thing on the day of the wedding and saying all the right things and getting them to say their vows and telling who puts the ring on wet finger, and then telling

them to kiss the bride. You doing that is such a tiny, tiny fraction of what it means to be married for them, and so even though it's an honor for him to ask you to officiate it, and you might think that you're making him happy by saying yes, I think it would be more encouraging and you would be a better friend to tell him no. This should go to the local pastor who holds the position of walking you and your wife and Lord Willing your future

kids through life together. So you go to him, and he goes to you and says, I was there the day. I stood before you too, and I oversaw before God the vows that you said. And we were there, us three in counseling for months before the wedding, and we walked through this. So now that we've arrived at this problem that we're having, I want to tell you I was there, and I want to walk you through because

I know you and I stood there. Right. That's something of the pastor gets to say, gets the privilege in the honor of saying because he's walked the path with you. So I think in a wedding, you choose someone who will be there for you decades Lord Willing after and a friend is not that. An Elvis impersonator is not that. And a washed up country singer is not that I want to. I think I feel strongly about that, and I think Peyton, it would take a lot of courage

and you might risk offending him. But I think instead maybe the question would come up at that point, what if I don't have a pastor. I think it's a really good time to find one for a wedding. Yeah, finding the local church, finding the pastor, and if you go to a local church where the pastor doesn't have time to marry you, that's another story and probably an indication of a church that is not very healthy. Next question says it's comes from Ira. It says, Hey Granger,

my name is Ira Massed. I live in Washington State. Thank you for all the encouragement that you give through your podcast. The question I have is how to have a good Bible study. My wife and I recently started one in our living room, and I've never attempted anything like this before, so I'm a little bit nervous, and I know that you have a lot of experience in public events, in public speaking. There are three things I could think of that I would like advice on how

to avoid. Number one, I don't want to create a cliche where new people avoid joining if interested. Number two, I don't want to have a gossip center. Number three, I want to avoid creating a Bible thumping crowd where discussions are geared towards us being the only right people. Three things I want to advice on how to achieve is number one, where we just studied the Bible for what it is and what it says. Number two, I want to I would like to have a good Christian

and family atmosphere. Okay. Number three, I'd like to have the gospel preached to where if someone comes once or many times, they would hear it. Thank you so much for advice. To look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks Ira. I'm trying to follow this, Arah, and I'm encouraged by your willingness to do all this stuff. You are asking for advice, and you're very specific in your question. I'll give you that three things that you want to avoid and three things you want to achieve in a

Bible study with your wife in your living room. So I think the way to kind of avoid these three things and the way to achieve your three things would be kind of the same answer, and that is probably there might be a misunderstanding on what a Bible study is, and believe it or not. As crazy as it might sound, a Bible study essentially means study the Bible. And it's interesting that that really has been lost. It seems so simple. What's a Bible study. It's a study of the Bible.

And instead, what I think we see is groups get together and they instead study how to navigate life life. And what I mean is you say, hey, we're having a Bible study. What's it on And you say, well, it's on marriage, or it's on parenting, or it's on grief, or it's on managing money. And they say, great, I'm in. But you called it a Bible study because none of those things should matter. Instead, it's studying the Bible. Otherwise you'd say, hey, we're having a Christian get together to

discuss managing money. And that's fine and that's encouraging, but that's not a Bible study. The Bible study, in its essence would be you pick up the Bible and you say, we're gonna have a Bible study on the Book of Romans, or on Galatians, or on First Corinthians, or on the Four Gospels, or on the Book of Ruth, or on Genesis or on half of Revelation. It doesn't really matter. But as long as the Bible is the study, then

you would rightly call it a Bible study. So I would encourage you, Ira, to let's start with, you know, something basic like Romans, and say we're going to do a Bible study on Romans. And what do you do with that? You literally walk through Romans every week. So you meet, say Mondays in your living room and you go, hey, hey, welcome everybody to the Bible Study. Thanks for being here. If you're new, We've got some you know, some food, We've got a few drinks, We've got you know, whatever

you want. And we are reading, in case you didn't know it, reading through the Bible, because this is a Bible study, and we're going to walk through the Book of Romans. And we're going to start with guess what Romans won. That's where you start. And we're gonna today, on this Monday, we're just going to talk about either you could say, Ira, chapter one, or the first five verses, or the first ten verses, or the first two chapters.

It doesn't really matter. You can make it nice and round and neat and just say today we're going to study chapter one, and next Monday, if you come back, we're going to study chapter two. And so the gospel that you want is going to be in there and you'll be able to discuss that. And as you walk through chapter one, you read it, you study it line by line, you think about it. You have an exegesis

which you're reading into. You're taking out, excuse me, the implications of what's inside the text, meaning who wrote it, why he wrote it, where he was when he wrote it, about the time he wrote it, to whom he was writing it to. These are all things that you talk about and discuss as you're walking through Romans chapter one.

And at the end you don't have to spend much of it, could be fifteen minutes of that, and then you start talking about from there, what are the applications that we could take away in this study from reading this, What could we learn. Let's go around the room, who has some thoughts about this, who has some thoughts about what we can take from what Paul said in the first chapter of Romans. And then you could pray specifically for that. Let's pray with the first chapter of Romans

for our own lives. You can't go wrong doing this, and you're gonna fix all the all of these problems once you get the Romans too, You're not gonna have a problem with your gossip center or your Bible thumping crowd where you're geared at, you know, gossiping towards other people. All these things are just gonna go away. But it's a lot easier than you think. I would encourage against instead doing the Let's help us be better people. Let's

know more about ourselves. Let's know more about our marriage, our money, our grief, our happiness, our success. Instead, let's look to the Bible and look to see who God is. And as we learn who he is, the overflow of that has massive implications on what we do with our money and our marriage, and our grief and our success and everything else comes flowing from our knowledge of God.

It's a good question, Thank you. I next question, Ariana says, Hey, Granger, this isn't a super deep question like some of the ones to receive, but it's important to me, so I thought i'd ask. My fiance and I are getting married in August, and we're both twenty one. He'll be twenty two by then, So in this day and age's standards,

we're still pretty young to be getting married. My question is, how could we as young as a young Christian couple prepare for our marriage aside from taking pre premarital counseling which we are doing with our pastor. Good Additionally, what is some advice that you can give for having a Christ's centered marriage? Thank you so much, love the podcast.

Ye ye, Well, this is great that it ties in with that first question or one of the first ones about the guy officiating the wedding, because automatically here you're setting yourself up in a much better way by doing this counseling with your pastor. And I hope that you're

connected to a local church. And so if you're not connected to the local church with the pastor that's officiating, do that, pursue membership with that pastor and then walk with that pastor and the other pastors at that church and the other members of that church forward into your future with this marriage, and have them encourage you, keep you accountable, keep you from drifting away from each other,

from both each other and from God. And so the church body as you get involved and you serve them and you're encouraged by that you will hold each other accountable in a way that keeps the marriage so that you're not slipping into some kind of temptation or sin, or frustration or anger towards each other or distrust for each other. Instead, you hold you're held together by the unity of the community, which is a beautiful thing. As humans, we need community, So I would lean into that. Next

question says from Jack. Says, dear Granger, I'm twenty one from Fairfield, Montana. I have actually met you a few times, and I've struggled with marijuana useed and yet I want to give my life to christ. I do not want to be a cultural Christian. I spend time in the Word and pray constantly, but seem to but can't seem to conquer this sin. I have cut back, but still continue to fall. I love your advice. Thank you, Yeah, Jack,

Thanks for the question, buddy. This ties really good into the first segment that we did with with the Iowaston And it's interesting that you say it this way because marijuana is not addictive. It's not an addictive substance in itself, but what you're getting is you're getting the numbness that you're getting from it. Is the addicting part. Because there is something else in your life that is needing to be numb, then you want to live in the state

of numbness, if that makes sense. So it's not the chemical addiction, it's the it's the addiction to the numbing itself, which is a thing. And this is something I would love to walk in person with you, because you can't.

You can't tell me that you you can't tell me that you want to really quit this and then tell me that you can't seem to conquer it, because I would say, I wonder, I wonder why you can't conquer because you have to go and buy it, you have to store it in your house, you have to use it in whatever way you're using it in Montana, I don't know if it's an edible or you're smoking it or you're vaping it, and I don't know, but you have to go through a lot of trouble to actually

do it. And so the first thing with getting rid of a habit is getting it out of your sight, restricting the availability of it. So get rid of it, get out of your house, don't be around other people that do it, which is probably what's going on here. If you are struggling with a bad habit, then one of the things you need to do immediately is disunit yourself. Is that even a word, is to pull yourself away from the group that's doing it, because this peer pressure

is nearly impossible to beat. If you're hanging around people every day that do it, if they're doing it at work, you're going to need a new job. If all of your friends are doing it, you're gonna need new friends. That's just there's another way to say it lightly. You're gonna need new friends. You're gonna need new people. You're gonna need a new crew, a new community around you. If you really want this to happen, you're gonna get

rid of it out of your house. You're going to start hanging around people that keep you accountable, that say, hey, Jack, stay away, man. I see your eyes, I see your glazed over. See what's going on. And I already talked about all this stuff with psychedelics at the beginning of the podcast, So I've already told you kind of the reasons you shouldn't. But if you don't want to be a cultural Christian, it starts here, and it starts with the gospel that I've already said a couple of times

on this podcast. But if you if you trust that Jesus became the substitute for your sin to reconcile you back to God, if you trust that He did that, then it takes so much pressure off of you trying to be good enough because you're not. Jesus says, you're

not trust in him. And the overflow of that, that that effect of that knowing that you're loved UH will then overflow into into all of these problems and these addictions, and you'll you'll hate You'll begin to hate them enough that you'll put it down and you'll hang out, hang around with people to keep you accountable, including the local church.

Next question, it comes from Christina and says, Hey, Grangeer Leila, I've been struggling with whether or not whether or not enforcing my personal boundaries honors God and the plans he has from my life. I've learned a lot about forgiveness in the last couple of years, and I've been able to heal from a lot of past hurts. But I've chosen to maintain a boundary of no contact with my in laws in spite of forgiving them for things that

happened in the past. My boundary keeps myself and my children safe from the threat of them repeating past behaviors that they refuse to acknowledge or apologize for, and I have felt justified in doing so up until recently when I started wondering what God would want me to do. I know he calls us to forgive seventy times seven, and that He forgave and forgives all of those who have hurt him. That's an interesting way to say it.

Can I still live a life that honors God while holding onto personal boundaries that keep people, that keep people from me and my children's lives. I think that's what you meant to say. Thanks for your insight and your advice, Christina. There is a difference, and we say that. I've said this a lot on this podcast because I think it's important, and I'll keep saying it forever if that's what it takes.

But there is a difference between forgiveness and trust, and you don't trust these people, especially if you don't trust these people around your children, then you do all you can to protect you and your children. And that has absolutely nothing to do with forgive. If you don't trust somebody, you need to know that trust is earned. Forgiveness is freely given. We love and we forgive seventy times seven.

But that has nothing to do with saying. And so then I invite you back into my life, and I invite you to bring your toxicity back into me and my family and my kids and corrupt us from the inside out. I invite you to do that because that's what I'm called to do. I'm called to forgive, and that is those two things are not related at all. You need to be responsible as a mother, and that responsibility includes protecting your children against the toxicity of other

people and family members. And you're also called as a Christian to forgive, and so you forgive them and you create boundaries. And it doesn't have to be a problem with both of those things. Those two things don't have to be at odds with each other. So what God wants you to do is keep your children safe and love others as you love yourself, and forgive. And I believe you could. You could accomplish all of those things at the same time. And I don't think. I don't

think there's a problem. And then and then At the same time, since I don't know your story, I also have to be careful as I'm talking to you that maybe there's a grudge that's unnecessary here. And if we're talking about physical safety or you know, abuse of any kind, great, then separate, create boundaries. But if you're just talking about a grudge, like they they want to take my kids to do this, and and I want to take my kids to do this, and they don't believe that they

should be they should play soccer. They believe they should play baseball, and I love soccer and I don't like baseball. If it's something trivial like that, then this is a different conversation. That's a weird grudge, and you gotta let it go, and you gotta you gotta love them, and you gotta love them as you love yourself and bring them into the family. But I don't know if that's

what you're talking about or not. But if it has anything to do with safety or these kind of threats that you're saying, then no, this has nothing to do with forgiveness. Okay, So I hope that there's a distinction made between trusting someone and forgiving someone. And I still think It's a great question and I'm glad you asked it. Y'all. That's all the time we have today, and I appreciate the vulnerability in these questions and I want to encourage

you guys to keep on sending them. Podcast at grangersmith dot com. It's my email and Levy. We'll see you guys next Monday. Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel, hit that little like button and notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video. Yigi

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