Coming to you from the Morning Star Mission sponsored studio. This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
What God says about you getting embedded in your heart, mind, soul and becoming part of the warp and woof of who you are can lighten a load from you that you underestimate how much you're carrying. And I I've experienced that. Now we're going to be talking about fasting today. Nehemiah the prophet carried a load man. And when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem had come down, broke his heart, he wept. He wasn't even in the hoop and wharf
of everything going on in Jerusalem. You second generation Babylonian captivity. I mean, he was born in Susa. He wasn't exiled. A lot of people don't know that Nehemiah was second generation Susan, which is 200 miles east, due east as the bird flies from Baghdad, modern day Baghdad. And it's the modern city of shush. Susa and Shush are right there. All the ruins are right there. Fascinating stuff. I mean, this is real places, real time, guys. I mean, that's what's cool about it.
Hard to remember that when you. I love when you're able to say, well, this town is near modern day this because it helps me get that little picture in my brain. It's not.
It's more.
Than.
Me. Yeah, it helps me too. It's not like Narnia or something. Yeah. Yeah. So here's an interesting thing, and I want to give you a good word on this. There's some things that you might be carrying that God wants to lighten the load on, and some things you carry because you just feel it. And I've got some good news I want to report. I hadn't planned on sharing this, but sometimes good news is important to share. I slept better last night than I've slept in two months.
Oh. that's good.
And I woke up four minutes before an alarm was going to go off. I do set an alarm only for the crazy rare occasion that I might conk out. It hasn't happened, but this was four minutes from happening and I'm like, whoa, do I feel good? I slept 7.5 hours, and that's a long go for Carl. And I know what it's related to. I think I was carrying something for my bride that I didn't even know. And yesterday we had a whole bunch of scheduled tests
for my bride. It was three and a half years ago that we found out that she was battling some cancer. Came out of the blue for us. Both of us were shocked. We'd been away on a trip and she was training again for another marathon, and she was finding herself with some symptoms popping up, and she's like, what in the world is going on? Hit us out of the blue, man. Like like a bolt of lightning. But
yesterday to sit in that room. And as you can probably imagine, your friend Carl barely able to contain himself. That was there. The doc walks in. He says, hey, after some scans after checkup, you are cancer free still.
Wow.
Amazing.
And we went out and we had a celebration dinner. Just me and my bride. And I kept looking at her and I said, did you hear that? Did you hear that? She goes, yeah, it's sinking in, bub. So I don't know what you're carrying today, but I want you to know that our God sees. And I'm praying that that day of rejoicing will come for you. It's not always rejoicing, but God can get us through those difficult times where it's not resolved yet. We haven't seen
the hand of God, but God and He's faithful. And on occasion we get that good news that says freedom in the physical body. And that's an awesome thing. So I just wanted to share that with you. I hadn't planned on doing that, but I thought, you know what? Sometimes you got to let people rejoice with those who are rejoicing around here. And isn't it funny that it changed my sleep like that?
Oh, man. That's. That's amazing. That's amazing. We praise God with you for the great report. And then to be able to sleep with that lifted off of your heart, off of your mind.
I didn't know how much it was carrying it, apparently. You know, you don't know. You think, ah, it must be something else. But I was carrying that. God is good, guys. God is good. Well, coming up here in a minute, um, we're totally equal men and women. But what in the world does that mean? Ali, could you please answer that for me right now?
How long do we have? I don't have an answer to that question fully, but coming up, we do have a guest who's going to give us a preview of an event that's just for women, particularly women who feel called to lead and called to ministry.
You're listening to Curl and Crew on Moody Radio.
I think we've established.
In the church today that men and women are totally equal, at least in theory, and yet unique and different. But the question is really.
What does that mean? You could say we're totally equal, right? But what is unique and different?
And it's got to be more than just the girls who like princesses and pink, and the guys who like to grunt and eat bacon.
Yeah. Because I don't. I eat turkey bacon.
And I don't care for pink.
Well, there you go. See, we got that ironed out.
We've got Doctor Sandra Glon joining us right now. She is the keynote speaker for the opening session of the women's called conference happening at the Moody Bible Institute campus, and a virtual attendance as well. Uh, Doctor Glenn, tell us about your keynote. What's the big idea?
The big idea is freely you've received, freely give. And so we will explore what is it that we have received from God, which is a lot. And then what is the vision for what it looks like to turn around and distribute those goods, those benefits to share in the assets that we've been given, not as an act of performance or because it's required, but because we're thrilled to be so blessed and ready to share with others what we've been blessed with.
Yeah. Since you're trained and worked there, I, you know, just just popped into my head. James, one first chapter there seems to be a condition about some kind of receiving from God if you're double souled or double faced. Where is that condition of God? Where does it come into play, and why would God have that?
Well, I can certainly say that the list of things that we've received and it's a very long list and forget not all his benefits, but the list I'll be focusing on is out of Romans, which, uh, keys in, especially on our adoption. I'm an adoptive parent after years of infertility and pregnancy loss. And we'll look at how does our American adoption differ significantly from how the listeners in the first century would have thought of it? They
would have connected it much more with inheritance. And you could even have a grown adult child, male, typically, uh, that you would leave everything to if you didn't have any children. And so we are not only adopted into God's family, but what do we inherit? What does Jesus say The meek will inherit the earth. So the physicality that we celebrate in that of just not just that we have spiritual blessings which we will explore, but also
we have massive physical blessings. And we are we are encouraged to enjoy all things that God has given us richly.
So you would say, yes, there are some blessings that God withholds until we get a line. But there are innumerable blessings by virtue of the fact that we're God's kids.
Well said. I won't actually focusing much on the God withholding blessing, although that is certainly part of what the Scripture says. But I feel like especially for women, we are often so warned. Don't overstep your bounds. Be careful that we can get in our. I'll just say, as a seminary professor who deals with women in leadership, their issue is really not that they're going to become radical feminists. I've never met one. Their issue to a person, if
there is one, has been. Am I really called? Do I? Do I really have a message? Is, you know, can I really share it? Can I use my gifts freely? And so we will focus on. Yes. What are the things you've been blessed with and what are some ways that you can share that freely?
Doctor Sandra Glaun, our guest right now. Now you. This is a real passion for you, helping women to really identify their spiritual gift, their place in leadership. Tell me a little bit about your own journey of kind of finding your place where God has, has gifted you and equipped you.
I can speak with expertise on this. What is my journey? It definitely informs all of this because I don't know if you if your listeners have seen shiny happy people, but the whole mentality of a woman was made for one thing, and that's baby making. I bought into that.
I thought it was a beautiful vision, and the challenge of that came with infertility and pregnancy loss that spanned a decade, and that for me, as much as infertility is a heartbreak, it's a marital, emotional, financial, ethical crisis. For me, it was a spiritual crisis because in my paradigm of what I thought God had for women, there was nowhere, no place for a woman either who wasn't married or who didn't have children. And I had to go back to the beginning and, you know, Genesis and
relook at, okay, what was woman really made for? Yes. Be fruitful and multiply. But that takes two. And so does rule, right? Rule. Together we have a complementary relationship with men that we are supposed to be partnering up. And so yes, it's deeply rooted in my journey to relook at where did I get this messaging. Is it was it American subculture? I'm in the South. Was it southern subculture? There's some of that. Was it Christian subculture?
There's some of that. But also, you know, not only where did I get this idea, but what actually is the truth.
You know, it's interesting because we live in a world today and I don't disagree. I think that Christian subculture can create a lot of misconceptions that God never taught in his word. And yet we've got it's almost like you fall off this high ridge. We talk about high Ridge around here. Often the high ridge is this pinnacle point of the glorification of God and the way he sees us. And then off one side, we fall off with distortions about what is woman and what is womanhood
and what's it look like. And then the world has its own kind of mantra, and there's some pretty crass language used to women that are in leadership out in the marketplace that's, you know, become really kind of, you know, hip to say. But boy, there's no solutions in that either. How do you keep climbing up to the high ridge? Sandra.
Yeah, one of the first things I had to discover was that God's vision for biblical manhood and womanhood is not to pick a stereotype and then try to live into it. It is the fruit of the spirit. And if I pursue Jesus Christ, rather than an ideal of what I think manhood or womanhood should look like, if I am becoming full of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, those good qualities in a female body embodied as a woman that is biblical womanhood. And the same is true
of biblical manhood. Our goal is not to pursue what it means to be a man or woman. It's to pursue Jesus Christ. And the ramification of that is I become the woman I'm supposed to be. We become the men and women we're supposed to be.
Doctor Sandra Glenn is going to be one of the keynote speakers at an upcoming conference that's just for equipping women in ministry. It's called the Women's Called Conference. Saturday, April 12th. It's going to be here at the campus of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. But also you can participate online as well. If you want the details, just text called to 800 555 7898. Text called to (800) 555-7898.
This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Well, boy, have we got something for you. One of the most powerful spiritual segments of the entire week happens every Wednesday here at the bottom of the hour.
How do you sell it like that?
Because laughter and humor God made. And it is good. By the way, do you know that babies or children are going to get the wrong stat? Now there's a stat I ran into yesterday. Somebody's got something for me real quick. What percentage of laughter do children have that adults don't have? Higher percentage of laughter.
Like there's more time spent laughing.
Yeah. More time spent laughing. Yeah. It's. And I thought about this and I thought, oh, my goodness, this is crazy. As a matter of fact, you know what? Laughter. When you interact with someone, if you find them being funny about something, emote a little bit. Don't hold it in. The studies have proven that you actually connect with people more if you react to them, especially when they say something somewhat humorous if you actually chuckle.
Are you listening, Jonathan?
I. Okay.
So actually.
I didn't even think about that, but this is so good.
See that? See, this is how you can love your sister in Christ a lot better, young thunder.
Now I know.
Laugh at my jokes.
Well, what's the stats? You get it for me, stat, man?
So, children studies have shown children laugh around 300 times per day on average. Adults, in contrast, typically laugh around 15 to 20 times per day. So 300 300 times a day. So if you look at that in percentages, children spend a larger time roughly around 2 to 3% of their waking hours. For adults, it's 0.1 to 0.3% of their waking hours.
We need to learn a lot.
That we need to.
Laugh more. That's an interesting statistic.
Yeah.
What a gap. Yeah, man.
And I'm not sure it's all good.
No, no, no, it's a bad gap.
This is a great setup for me. Carl.
Thank you.
I'm here to help you. Ali and Young Thunder. You better start laughing.
I'll work on it.
Well.
Okay. Go ahead. Oh, no. No, we got to set this up.
Yeah.
Making herself laugh no matter who joins her. It's time for Ali thinks it's funny.
So let's.
Increase that. What was it? 0.1%?
Yeah, point one to point three.
Let's bring that up to like 0.5.
Okay.
Got a couple dad jokes for you. What do you call a bicycle that can't stand up on its own? You ever tried to stand a bicycle up?
Yeah, they all fall over. Unless you got a kickstand.
Yeah. No kickstand, but a bicycle that cannot stand up on its own is called too Tired.
Jonathan, that is outstanding.
I'm trying.
Do you care about your health? Laugh. There you go. Okay, that was funny. I got him another help. Okay.
He guilted him into it.
She said, do you wanna die?
I wanna die.
I feel like I saved the best for last on this one, and I don't want to oversell it, but this one. I laughed, reading, crying. So I read this joke and I laughed out loud. We've lost her already. Okay, so deer have hooves. Is that hooves? Hooves?
Yes. Yeah. Whoof whoof whoof whoof whoof whoof! Hooves.
Hooves. How would.
You say.
I say it? Hooves.
Hooves. Okay, so what do you call a deer that can use both hooves?
Well, there's four, but anyway.
Both. Both. Okay, let's say they can use all four.
Okay.
They're Bambi dexterous.
What?
What?
Okay, that is outstanding.
That's funny.
If you don't think that one's funny, you got wet wood. That was my best.
One of the day.
I like.
It. Bambi.
Dexterous. I mean.
That.
Was good. That was good. I liked that.
One.
Wow, that one made me cry.
Oh, yeah. Come on.
You two can.
Torment.
Or bring health and vitality to your friends.
By texting jokes.
805, 55, 7898. Jokes to 800 555 7898.
Our dear friend Catherine just texted me Greek proverb super. Now are you ready for this?
Okay.
Greek proverb.
Okay.
Laughter. Laughter. Oh, it went away. Hold on. Greek proverb. Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
Ooh, I like that. Nice.
I 100%.
Agree with.
That. That's great.
Oh.
Yes.
Ambidextrous.
Ambidextrous. Oh, ambidextrous. Okay.
Come on.
Man, super die. Still quietly doesn't laugh.
Come on. You gotta admit. Dexterous.
That was good.
We've lost Carl.
That was.
Good. Oh, I went.
On a deer hunt with my son way back in the day. We took my buddy, Phil Fogle. He's got a crab boat called the invincible. Was it the invincible? He's got two crab boats that were on Deadliest Catch back in the day. Oh, cool. I don't think they're on there anymore. Uh, but we took one from Kodiak Island over to another nearby island of Fog Neck, and we went deer hunting. I wish I had had that joke. They're ambidextrous.
Man.
That's why they can move away from you so quickly.
Yeah.
Bambi. Dexterity trip. A little Bambi dexterity. Alrighty.
Oh, that's so good. Oh.
All right.
Carl, Carl's still laughing.
I know. Well, you gotta know, man.
Especially for Alaskan men that grunt and spit and say few words. You pop that one on them.
You're going to get a laugh.
You're going to get a laugh.
Improve your health.
And improve your.
Health.
And others around you see young Thunder. If you don't laugh, your muscles are just going to atrophy, dude. And we're going to be in here propping you up on a stretcher to get you in front of the microphone one day.
I don't know why we're not talking to Super Di more about this than me.
I laugh.
We give her a pass.
We give her a pass because we like her more. What?
Because we like her more. You know what? Fair.
I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I love all my kids. Equal. I don't have any.
Favorite.
Kids. You kids are all.
My kids.
Love.
You.
All the same. Thanks. That's pretty good.
All right.
That was funny.
Takes jokes to 855, five, 78, 98. And, uh, whip that by someone in Wisconsin.
Yep.
It's going out there hunting. Okay. Uh, coming up here in a moment. Boy, have we got some encouragement for you. If you feel like somebody has sent you some news and it's like, oh, no, I got some bad news today, there's something you can do with that coming right from the pages of Scripture. Nehemiah specifically, hang on.
Your shot of hope to help you through the day. This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Sometimes when you're reading the word, you can make observations that aren't normally kind of highlighted as exegetical points. Okay. So if you're exegeting, let's just say the book of Philippians, uh, we're going to do a nine part series in the book of Philippians. And it's joy in so many different aspects. Oh, it's so beautiful. Book of Philippians. Oh my.
Goodness. Come on.
Prison epistle. I mean, I think the underlying observation is if Paul can write to the Philippian church while he's in chains, witnessing to the guards, that's motivation enough. Hey, maybe I can have joy in this too. But that's all he talks about the book of Philippians. Consider it joy. So here's a really cool discipline as you go to the word.
Look for things.
As you're in the word go, oh, I got one for you because some of you need this one. You got some word from someone, and it's often linked to someone that's already got our heart rate. It's got our heart. Could be a church. It could be an organization of the season. It could be a kid that you have this way where need is a word can tear my robes. God, I'm dying over here.
The question is, what do.
You do with that?
Well, in Nehemiah chapter.
One.
The context.
Here.
Is Nehemiah is the cupbearer for.
Artaxerxes.
Now he's won a lot.
Of favor with Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes also gave him the privilege to go back and rebuild the walls, which, by the way, was a miracle of God. Don't think that he can't get favor from lost people, because this proves we can.
So what we've got going on here.
And we're going to get this coming up in a moment, we're going to break it down for you, is We've got you. That is so profound. It's words about the walls of Jerusalem coming down. Now he's a second generation kid in Susa, ancient city of Susa. Now that's the modern day city of shush. And it's 200 miles east of.
Baghdad, modern day.
Baghdad.
As the crow.
Flies, which is super cool. So he gets this word that it's breaking down and look at what he does. This is a great, great force.
As soon as he heard these words about Jerusalem, he sat down and wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And he went on to get a download in this fasting and praying of what he's to do. So oftentimes we rush into situations. But what if you just pause and hold for a second and just say, God, what? What is it you want me to do coming up here in a moment? We're going to break this down a
little bit further. But I want you to bring to mind right now something in your life that you've gotten some news recently, or maybe yesterday, or maybe this morning. News from a a sister, a brother, spiritually, biologically, a wayward kid. You got something just break in your heart. And the question is, how do you process that? How do you gain wisdom for knowing what to do? We're going to break that down in three minutes.
He was sharing the gospel on the radio and then he got saved. Young thunders in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
So Nehemiah gets words about the walls that have come down in Jerusalem, and he's absolutely heartsick. Interestingly enough, he hadn't seen those walls. He'd never seen them erected. He's second generation Susa born Jewish kid. Isn't this fascinating?
It is fascinating because, you know, I think especially here in like America, here we have some ties to kind of where we're from. But after the generations go by, it's like, yeah, I know my, my great great grandparents were from Germany and Russia, but I don't I don't have any ties to Germany or Russia. So I don't have a lot of a specific emotion directly towards Germany or Russia. It's surprising how tied in Nehemiah is to his people back home, even though he wasn't there.
Yeah. He wasn't there wasn't born there.
He wasn't born.
There.
So it's fascinating. It's I probably akin to what my grandpa Axel Johnson would have felt before he came stateside, when he got word from Sweden about relatives.
Here.
You.
Know.
You know, he had never been here, but he could.
Emote.
You know, and feel things for people that were.
Here.
And both heartache and joy. So Nehemiah gets this word. He goes into a time of fasting. Now, why do I mention this? Because fasting has great rewards. Now, what did Nehemiah get? He got to go talk to Artaxerxes. It didn't just come to him out of the blue. It came to him through fasting.
Ali, there are so many times that we're confronted with something even second hand. You hear from a loved one about something that they're going through, and we feel so powerless to. What do I do? How do I help them? And I don't know that we think of fasting as something that we can do to help them.
Why is it that. Why do you believe it's the case? I got my own opinion, but I want to hear from you. Why? And the rest of you chime in. Why is that the case? That we don't go to fasting?
Yeah, I don't, I just don't know that we have the framework for thinking about it being utilized that way, that that when I don't know what else to do, I think people will will quickly go to to thinking, I'm going to pray, right. I don't know what else to do here. I'm going to pray. But I don't know that we think about prayer and fasting as a response.
What does fasting do that sometimes prayer alone can't do. Let's just get real practical here.
I think fasting can can do something very specific, which is to say you're withholding something to not prove something to God, but to symbolize your utter dependence on him. I can pray and I can thank God for the amazing blessings, but I can. Sometimes I can say a prayer without symbolizing my utter dependence on him, even though I should.
Yeah, it's.
The old shoot one up prayer.
Yeah, absolutely. But with fasting, it's saying I'm withholding this because I know that all of my sustenance, my help, my everything comes from God, not from anything on this earth. And so when we seek God in that way. Yeah, it's a whole different thing.
Yeah. My bride says it this way. She thinks that prayer and fasting is prayer does one thing. You combine fasting with it, she says. It's like a laser beam focused on that issue.
Absolutely.
And then that laser beam communication comes back. There's a level of intent that goes there that's really beautiful. And the evidence is replete. I don't care if we're in Joel two. I don't care if we're in Nehemiah one as we're going to see tomorrow. Nehemiah nine, you you've got this. Let's just take it for what it is. The greats of faith, including Jesus, prayed and fasted when they were up against stuff.
And you mentioned that your wife talked about the intent, the focused intent, and I think also the intensity. I mean, part of the call, I never thought about it until you just were talking about it right now. But our call to help bear one another's burdens. Maybe fasting is part of the way we help bear the burdens of other people.
Boom!
And there's something beautiful about this, because in In Prayer at the end of the day is not so much about what it does in the spiritual realm as much as what it does in the spiritual realm inside of me. And it tunes our hearts and ears to things that we otherwise might not hear. So just a quick word here today. One of the huge rewards of fasting is we hear from God. Counsel from him about what to
go do. And the beautiful thing with that is that I don't know if anyone's like me, but we sometimes head out doing a lot of stuff, looking back, going, that wasn't the doing that God had me do. Yeah, that was the doing that I had me do. And fasting can be that you're right. Laser intensity with God that allows us to hear his voice. So I don't know where your heart is broken for someone else, but skip a meal and pray today.