Coming to you from the Morning Star Mission sponsored studio. This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
We are broadcasting live from NRP Hebrews one. My goodness, guys, listen to this. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God in thee. Get this he is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the
universe by the word of his power. Goes on to say, in comparing two angels of the angels, God said, he makes his angels winds. Excuse me? He makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire. But the son, he says of this, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness. In the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you. With the oil of gladness
beyond your companions. Wow! We've already won because of Jesus. He's the exact imprint of the character of God. What you see Jesus doing in the pages of the gospels is God. Yeah, not a little bit of a facsimile. An exact imprint. I don't know what you need this morning, but you need encouragement that as you follow Jesus Christ, who King of kings, radiance of God, exact imprint above angels carrying scepters royalty. Oh my goodness.
You're on the winning team today.
Big time.
What a great thought. It's a great way to start your day. Yeah. Good way. You got to remember that.
You've already won. You know what? Uh, I want to call out 20 of you right now. 20 of you. We need 20 people to come be prayer warriors during share. We got half hour slots. It starts, what, a week and a half? Something like that. About that. And we need you to jump in. And I'm asking you to do this right now. Ali, we're going to really perk these folks that jump in, aren't we? Yeah, we would appreciate it.
We've done this now for a couple of years and the response has been incredible. We've heard cool stories back from you after you committed 30 minutes to pray. You do not have to come to us. You stay where you are. You can drive. You can prayer walk. You can be in your house. Whatever works for you. You grab that 30 minute slot, you commit to it. We'll send you some prayer points, some just some quick kind of behind the scenes updates so you know how to pray.
But if you're willing to check this out, grab a slot. Just text crew to 800 555 7898. If you want to be on our prayer crew, text that word crew to (800) 555-7898.
Yeah, and we're grateful, man, I want to thank you ahead of time. If we get 20 folks right now stepping up, going, all right, I'm going to be a part of this. That would be dynamite 800 555 7898 text the word crew. And we're going to we're going to roll on broadcasting live from NB here in Texas. And we are grateful we got a lineup today.
We do. We've had the most incredible guests pop by our table. And coming up we've got Jonathan Griffiths from Encounter the Truth.
Yeah. We're going to talk about how in the world are we going to reach this world and equip saints in this digital age? We're going to be a sweet time this morning. Hang on.
She was trying to earn her way to God, but God showed her she didn't have to. Ali is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
And crew broadcasting live from NB. Looks like everybody's tucked in. Where's everybody at? Where's everybody at? Yeah. That's you guys faking it? Like we got a big studio audience here today.
Yeah, they're all sleeping right now.
Man, that was pretty weak. Two young thunder. You can give us a little more mustard than that last time around. Hey, that was spontaneous.
Trying to be honest and just letting people know how many people are in the room.
The room's a little empty in this early hour, but it'll fill up.
It's great. We've got a great guest with us here. Here's the topic we want to tackle. This is so important. My goodness, we live in this digital age. And how are we going to reach people. And the the sky's the limit. When you got an uptick of Bible sales 2024. We've been saying this a lot only because it's such great news. 22% uptick of Bible sales.
Incredible.
Come on. All right, Jonathan Griffiths, let's go. How are we going to reach people? I want answers, I want them now.
Well, I don't know that I got all the answers, but we got huge opportunities before us, don't we? Because the digital age opens up so many doors of opportunity to get good Bible content into people's hearts and minds. And that's that's a wonderful thing. But it's also a jungle out there. And as as those who are receiving and imbibing Bible content, we need to learn some discernment. And we need to be really careful, don't we? Because we can access so much, but we can access the
good and the bad. Yeah, and there's just a huge need for all of us who are hungry for the Word of God to be learning that discernment between the good and the bad. And I think we learned that, first of all, in the local church, you know, each of us, as we grow in Christ, we need to be really well grounded in a local church.
Boom, brother, don't we?
I mean, yes, yes, where we are, where we are being taught to understand the scriptures and to discern between true and false and good and evil. And if we are only independent consumers of content, and we're not embedded in the life of the local church, we're going to we're going to go astray and we're going to be led astray. So I think that's I think that's number one. I think that's absolutely crucial. And I'd love to give
that encouragement to anyone listening today. If you don't have a local church where you are grounded, where you are involved, where you have accountability, where you have people feeding into your life and you're feeding into other lives, you're going to be impoverished.
Find it. Yeah.
Jonathan Griffiths, our guest this morning. He serves as lead pastor of the Metropolitan Bible Church in Ottawa, Canada. He sits on the Council of the Gospel Coalition. Canada gives leadership to the Timothy trust exists to promote expository Bible ministry. There is no shortage of, as you mentioned, biblical content available. You can go on TikTok or Instagram, and you can get in 15 seconds of somebody telling you something about
the Bible. But I imagine you have a thought or two as to why that can be good and bad.
Well, it can be good and bad, and there's good, bad and everything else in between out there in the Christian media marketplace. I mean, one of my great passions is training up the next generation of gospel workers. Right on. And, you know, for for those, um, to lead in the church, to do that well and faithfully, they need to be grounded in the truth themselves. And and that takes some
time of study and that takes some education. And I know in the world of Moody Global Media, I'm talking to the choir here because there's there's a commitment here to training up gospel workers for the global church. But
we really need that. And and one of the things that's really changed, even post-Covid, just in the last five years or so, is that the whole world of seminary education has been just turned on its head because we're we're wanting to be able to access education and substance, you know, from our living room without having to go anywhere.
And so there's been a huge movement away from people, you know, saying, I'm going to take 3 or 4 years, I'm going to go to seminary, I'm going to move my family there, and I'm going to have a time
of study and get really grounded. That's all changed, and I think all of us involved in Christian education and Christian leadership need to really be thinking about how we enable people to access good education so they can step into Christian leadership and do that in some flexible ways, because the world's really changed and models of education have been transformed.
You know, I got a passion for something because I'm a churchman at heart. That's my first and primary passion. What would it look like if Bible College seminaries got way more proactive, partnering with the local church, almost making those extensions? So here's what I want to do coming up in a few minutes. Let's explore that a little bit. I'd love to. Um, and just what would it look like if fill in the blank? We began to partner with churches in a way that puts the almost the onus.
Responsibility and authority puts the big hat back on the local church, so to speak. It's let's kick that around. That's coming up in just a couple of minutes. Jonathan Griffiths here. He's from way up there. Cold country. Ottawa, Canada.
Ottawa, Canada.
Hang on.
It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Equip the Saints to do the work of ministry. How do we do it? Got some crazy thoughts on this one this morning.
Jonathan Griffiths with us right now. He's from Encounter the Truth. Also the lead pastor of the Metropolitan Bible Church in Ottawa, Canada. You have a keen interest in this, Carl set up just before the break. The seminary, the role of seminary has changed the local church. We want to bring those two together more so that we're not losing people for four years as they disappear and go get trained and are away from the local church. How can we bridge that gap a little bit more?
Well, I think there's been a really positive move. And somehow I think Covid sparked this for local churches to say, you know, we really want to get back involved in the in the training of our next generation of leaders. And I think as some people maybe, you know, weren't able to go away to seminary and have in-person training in the depths of Covid, the churches started to notice, hey, we love having our young people around, the people who
are in training. We love having them here within the local church, serving within the local church while they're studying, and some of them doing that online and so on.
And I think that's sparking some really big conversations between churches and denominations and seminaries about how we maybe re envisage theological education keeping our our promising young people involved in the life of the local church while they're training, while they're studying so that they can be mentored by their pastors and their elders within their fellowship so they can actually be engaging in ministry, not not just having an ivory tower experience, but engaging in ministry all the
time while they're training. And I think these conversations are great. I don't think we know where the dust is going to settle on seminary education for the next generation. But but the world is changing.
Yeah, it's changing quickly. Um, worldview. 4% of Americans have a biblical worldview. I'm sure that's not much different in Canada.
It's probably lower.
Probably a little bit lower. Thanks for saying that. Um, it's so the worldview, though, there's four huge anchors of a worldview. Sovereignty of God, lostness of man. Regenerating power of Christ through the Holy Spirit and the sanctification process. When you get those four anchors in your soul, you can go somewhere. Yeah, it seems to me wondering if I'm under leveraging. So, I mean, I got a moody prof, one of our elders, and I've got one of the
greatest Greek minds is my right hand man. But the weird thing about even getting worldview, it seems it feels like it's taking us away from reaching people. But really, it's almost a delayed gratification. If we can get embedded in our leaders a biblical worldview and that gets a boiler going in. What do you think about that?
Oh, absolutely. But the way in which we shape biblical worldview is through just immersing ourselves in the word, in the Word of God, and being really grounded in the word. Yes. And I think one of the things we need to do unashamedly and come back to this in an unashamed way is, is to focus our education of young people who are preparing for ministry, to focus their education in the Word of God, to get them really grounded in Scripture. Because, you know, the Word of God is is is the
power of God for life transformation. And we need people whose minds are so shaped by Scripture that their whole view of reality is shaped by Scripture. Yes. And and I think we need to come back to a real focus of get people into the word, get them grounded in the word so that they are mighty in the scriptures and able to teach the scriptures. Yeah. And I want that simplicity to shape our Christian education. Really, at every level.
You pastor in Canada, you are part of the Timothy Trust, which is all about the revitalization of the church in Canada. You mentioned you think in Canada, biblical worldview might even be lower than here in the States. What would you say are the unique challenges that you're seeing from your vantage point? Maybe that we're not even seeing.
Well, you know, Canada and the United States share a lot in common historically and culturally, of course, but there there has been a faster movement away from our biblical moorings in Canada overall than there has in the United States. I mean, we're on the same trajectory, but I think it's been a little bit, a little bit quicker.
You're little European.
We're a little European. We're a few years ahead. I mean, you're the United States is heading in the same direction, but we tend to get to some of the key markers a little bit quicker. That's been true historically with massive social change over the last 50 years. Each each negative step. Canada's been a few steps ahead of the United States. There are various reasons for that. You know, our church where I serve is on the border of Ontario and Quebec. So Quebec being French Canada, Quebec is
the least reached region in the Americas. North south central Caribbean. Wow. With, you know, 2 or 3% evangelical Christian in Quebec. That's the that's the lowest you'll find anywhere in the Americas. And part of the history of that actually has been a very negative reaction in Quebec against a historically very repressive Roman Catholicism. That's just Quebec French history, but that
has shaped our our region of Canada. There's a very strong, anti-Christian, very strong secularizing cultural move in that part of the world. And and you see that then represented in, in our politics and in the social direction of the country. So that's been a little bit of a unique factor in Canada that I think has moved things on a little bit more quickly. But but what I want to say is, despite all that, the reality on the ground in the churches is we're seeing people coming to Christ.
That's what I was wondering.
We're seeing young people. We're seeing young men come to Christ. It's really fascinating and loving expository Bible teaching, like teaching through books of the Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. They're hungry for that. Our young adults group seem to be the hungriest for it. So we've got. We've got hundreds of, you know, college age students and young professionals coming.
To our church. And I tell you, if I gave up doing expository Bible teaching on a Sunday morning and I went all kind of light and fluffy and, and did kind of randomized topical teaching that wasn't grounded in the text, they would first complain and then they would leave. Wow. My my my my young adults.
That is.
That's encouraging. Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
You know, we've we've seen that. Um, we're seeing that in Chicago. Are you. Yeah, we're seeing that. It's really a bizarre thing, but I'm seeing the greatest hunger for the word of God in our downtown campus, 30, 40 of these young professionals. And they just they want the word. They're filling small groups. It's wonderful. They're busting open the word. They've got the word of God open constantly. Yeah. So We better make hay while the sun is shining, baby. You know what I mean?
I think so. I think the Spirit of God is doing something. I think that there is a reaction against just the ridiculousness of what's going on in culture, I think. I think young people are looking out at the cultural landscape and saying, this.
Ain't working, this.
Ain't working, this is empty. What is something solid upon which I can build my life? Yeah. And and there's a hunger for the word of God. And people are coming to Christ. So we rejoice in that. Yeah.
Guys, can we just stop for a moment and say, Praise God?
Praise the Lord. Yeah.
Praise God. And what's wild about this is there seems to be this threshold. So things devolve, devolve, devolve. And then there's this little group that goes, this is crazy. Where's truth? Yeah. Where's absolute truth? Here? Exactly. And then that could be the beginnings of a bit of an awakening. And how cool would that be? That always comes through the students. It always comes through a youth movement often.
And through the preaching of the word of God. I mean, historically in church history. Revival is sparked through the open proclamation of the Word of God, and the Lord uses that. And I mean, I'm daring to hope that we might see something of a revival in our generation. I mean, wouldn't that be wonderful?
Oh, are you kidding me, man? God, please bring it on. All right, listen, you're listening to a guy going, who is this guy? We got a link for you.
Just text local. Jonathan Griffiths, our guest. He is all about the local church. As you heard his heart. Text local to 800555 7898. Local to 805 five five 7898.
Jonathan, I love you, man. Your heart for the Lord. Your clarity of communication. It's inspiring. Thank you for being with us.
So great to be with you both. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. What a joy. Grateful. Aren't we guys? Yes.
Very much.
Goodness, man. This will put fuel in your belly. What a way.
To start the morning. What a way.
Good morning. Boom! Crew helping you take your next step with Jesus.
She's a choreographer extraordinaire and everything is Greek to her. Super D is in the crew. It's Karl and crew on Moody Radio.
Lay down your life as a living sacrifice. Holy and acceptable to God. Let's do it today. Well, we get the call of God on our life is to go and reach. But Jesus did something really practical. He cared for the practical needs of people. You know, when I turn on my water system at home, it's great water got one of those home filtration systems. But the amount of people around the globe today that are just walking great distances, just to get a drink of water that
isn't going to infect them with something staggering. The numbers are off the chart. What are those numbers, Chris? Do you have any idea what in the world is going on with water around the world?
Yeah, there's 785 million people around the world that don't have access to something that most of us have taken for granted for most of our lives. So there's 331 million people in the US, so more than twice the population of the United States doesn't have access to clean, safe drinking water.
You've got Christopher Bethe, founder of the Bucket Ministry, joining us right now. You got to tell this story, though. You this started for you. This was not something you were interested in. You were not interested in missions. You weren't even particularly strong in your faith. I've heard your story. So I know that you've told this before. But tell us about how this whole thing got started. You got roped into chaperoning a mission trip with your daughter. Went reluctantly.
Oh, this is good.
In 2012, my daughter came home from high school and said she wanted to go on this mission trip to the Brazilian Amazon. And, I mean, she'd been to South Texas before, but we thought it was a little bit further. So my wife and I said, hey, listen, if you're going to go on this trip, you got to raise all the money. So this was a reverse psychology move at this point. So a couple weeks went by and sure enough, she raised 3500 bucks. So then we decided if she's going to go, one of us has to
go with her. Yeah. And that became my job. And my only job, though, was to bring her home. I didn't go there because I had a love or compassion for the Brazilian people. I didn't go there because I thought I wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus. I just went there to bring my kid home, and the things that I saw changed me at a core level. And really, um, God showed me why he had created me.
What did he do in your heart?
Well, uh, I saw things that I could not reconcile. I saw things that I never thought was possible prior to this. I didn't even know there was a world water crisis. I mean, I lived, like most of us live if I was thirsty, I went to my refrigerator, put a cup underneath the filter and got a glass of water, or I bought a bottle of water. I never even thought people had to drink out of a lake, river,
stream or anything like that. So when I saw that for the first time, I was crushed and I thought, with everything we have in the world, how is it even possible that people are drinking out of a river today and thinking that's normal? That was probably the biggest tragedy for me, is they thought that was normal. They thought that being sick all the time was normal. They thought that not naming their children for the first two years of the child's life, because they weren't sure the
child was going to survive, was normal. So while I was in a house in the Amazon, a Brazilian woman asked me, are you thirsty? And I'm just this giant, sweaty American, right? And she she looks at me, she sees I'm sweaty. She says, are you thirsty? And I'm like, yeah, I'm thirsty. But I'm looking around her home and there's no refrigerator, there's no water cooler. So I'm thinking, where's she going to get this water from? She takes two
cups from her kitchen. They were mismatched and they were cracked. And she goes out into this little dock area on the side of the river, bends down in the river and grabs two cups of water. And I'm standing in the doorway thinking, what is this crazy woman doing? I am not going to drink that. But sure enough, she comes and hands one cup to me.
Oh boy.
One cup to my interpreter. So now I have this decision. Yeah. Do I drink this because I just told her how thirsty I was. But if I don't, she's going to think I'm rude. So as I'm pondering this decision, my interpreter is wagging his finger. Don't do that. Do it. But now I realize the gravity of this. She thinks this is normal. Then, as I'm holding this, I heard something I'd never heard before, and I had at this point. I had only been walking with Jesus for about 3
or 4 years. Didn't even really fully understand my own relationship with Christ yet. But as I'm holding this glass of water and there's things swimming in it, I heard something I'd never heard before. And prior to this day, if someone would have told me, hey, I got a word from God today, or God gave me some instruction today, you would.
Have thought, that's kind of loopy.
Yeah, I was skeptical. And if I'm just being completely honest, I would have thought really? He stopped his day to have a conversation with you. But as I'm holding this glass of dirty water, I heard two words and he said, help them. But it came with no other instruction. I didn't know what help them meant. Am I supposed to give these people 20 bucks? Am I supposed to repair their boat? Am I supposed to cook them dinner? I
don't know what help them means. So that trip in the Amazon is where God showed me why he had created me.
Wow, you're a storyteller. You know what you are? You're a guy that got hit deeply at a heart level by the Spirit of God. Amen. And you got a story to tell.
Amen.
Coming up. Where did it go from there? And what's happening today? Chris is with us. Just another follower of Jesus, dude, who God's working in his life. Hang on.
Your shot of hope to help you through the day. This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
He was somewhere in the middle of the Amazon and he heard the words help them. That was the heart behind this ministry, the bucket ministry. What do you do with that? You said you didn't didn't come with instructions. The Lord didn't say how you were going to help them. So the first step was to discern what do I do? They don't have access to clean water, but how could I possibly be involved in helping solve this?
Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, I'm just an ordinary guy. I was a business guy. I really had no training in ministry. I had very little relationship, even with the church. At that point, I hadn't even been discipled. So we got home from that trip and just started researching the world water crisis. Tried to find out just how big the problem really is. At the end of the day, everywhere I searched, water was just such a major issue. And there's really two spaces within water.
There's access to water and then there's access to clean, safe drinking water. And, um, two really different issues. So I started looking at what could be a solution in the Amazon basin, and we researched a variety of filters. We bought a variety of filters, tried to find a tool that would work, and finally my family and I
were at Rei. It's a camping supply store here in Dallas, and I was in the water filter aisle for camping, and I stumbled across this filter by a company out of Tampa called Sawyer Products that attaches to a bucket and uses the gravity of water in the bucket to force that water through the filter. The filter captures all the debris, all the contaminants, and then yields 350 to 500 gallons per day of clean, safe drinking water. So I thought, man, this is portable. This is simple. It
doesn't require an engineer to operate it. And I think I could teach a seven year old or a 97 year old how to use this tool. So we we bought about 80 of these filters and went back to the Amazon the next year. But again, in the beginning I only thought this was water. I didn't even understand the connection to the gospel. So we're in the Amazon, we're distributing 80 filters, and I get done. I feel really good about myself and I thought this is what
helped them meant. Then this Brazilian man comes up to me and he says, can you tell me how you got here? And I made a joke. And I said, well, that boat, that's how I got here. He's like, no, no, no. Of all the villages in the Amazon, how did you come to ours? I'm thinking, wow, that's a deep question. Uh, and I said, well, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. And we thought that we should bring you this gift. And the next thing he said changed everything for us
and me personally. And this man says, who is this Jesus? So at this point, you're like.
Whoa.
Yeah. And again, at this point, I had only been walking with Christ about four years, so I'm looking around. Hey, where's the pastor? Somebody find the pastor. Get a pastor over here so they can tell this guy about Jesus. So there was nobody except for my interpreter. So now
I'm like, oh, what do I do? So I just start sharing my testimony with this man, and I tell him about how my daughter and I were in a car crash, and I came to faith in a hospital and turned my life over and repented of my sins. And the next thing he said changed me at a wholesale level. He said, how can I?
Oh my word.
Have a friend that will never leave me. And I was like, oh my goodness, what just happened here?
Changed everything.
And then there's 30 people behind him. Brazilians, they're raising their hand and say, hey, we want that same gift too. Oh my word. So that's where we realized that the filter will save lives physically, but more importantly, it introduced introduces people to a relationship with Jesus.
We just got a moment. Give us some facts and figures of where you are now. Yeah, we're.
Working in about 20 different countries right now with most of our work happening, about 60% of our work happening in Kenya right now. We have probably served nearly 300,000 families in just the last ten years. And with the last year alone in 2024, we served 41,000 families. We had about 22,000 salvations and, um, just significant work all around the world.
This has God tracks all over it. Chris. Amen. You can't claim a stick of this, can you?
No, no, this is this is so far beyond me I really don't even recognize myself anymore.
You know, here's here's a question. We're going to do this quick because I want to give a link out here in just a moment. What do you say to the person who's just going through the grind, listening to you right now? What, you got to get on a ragged edge somewhere. Yeah. Got to get on a ragged edge, right?
Man, I just hope that this story of an ordinary business guy, uneducated, untrained, just like the Sanhedrin, saw Peter and John.
In the same way.
For 13. I just hope that somebody hears this and says, well, if this ordinary, uneducated guy can be part of that solution, maybe I can do something. I hope this becomes an anthem for a person sitting on the couch at home, driving in their car, knowing that there's more so compelling.
Ally. Just got to take a risk that's walking by faith. Amen. You just got to step out there. Oh my goodness. Boom crew. I want you to find out more. I think whether you give or just it fuels your soul and ignites something in you. Whatever the case, some of you are going to want to give some shekels, some a ton of shekels getting behind ministries like this. What a powerful thing, ally it is.
This is called the Bucket Ministry. Christopher Beth, the founder and director with us this morning. Text bucket. If you want more information, text bucket to 800 555 7898. Bucket to 800 555 7898.
I kicked a song out because you're too compelling. So I want a one minute story. One minute.
One minute. Uh, we have a member of our team in Kenya. Her name is Linda Okumu. Linda was orphaned at the age of 11, and she was without any family to care for her. And from the age of 11 until her 30s, the only way she could survive was by selling her body. And we met her in her 30s. We delivered a water filter to her home, and she heard the gospel in her home. And after that day, she decided to follow Jesus. She was baptized and she's now on our team of missionaries. Come on.
Working in Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Come on. And she's our one of our most prolific missionaries and just bragging on her a little bit. She tends to spend so much time with her recipients that she's just reproducing what she's heard.
Unbelievable. You want more text bucket to 800 555 7898. More on the bucket Ministry. Incredible. Incredible work done around the world. Text bucket to 800 555 7898.
Yeah. This is this is extraordinary, to say the least. I want to thank you for your heart, Chris. Thank you. Christopher Beth, founder, chief storyteller. You kidding me? Chief poobah? Storyteller. Let me tell you what. Text bucket to 805 five five 7898. Let this fuel the fire inside you. God wants to do this in you today. There's no question about it. Amen.
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.
Carl and crew broadcasting live from NB here in Dallas, Texas. And we're watching God do some amazing things. You know, when you think about the the Word of God, our heart is for people to not only know Jesus, but then to grow up. Central to this is the Word of God. I mean, I mentioned man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word. That word is the spoken word of God. The word is rhema that proceeds from the mouth of God. It's vital, isn't it, Ali?
And so all of the different creative ways of getting people engaged with the Word of God. We've got one for you today. Mark Harper joins us at the table. He's director of special projects at Revelation Media. You guys are all about getting people connected to the Word of God. First, just give us the vision for this new project.
Sure. So this is, um, I Bible has always been a it's.
Been an eight year journey so far to get the Word of God to the world in a way that they can see it, they can hear it and read it. Um, um, a little backstory. Steve Cleary, the founder of Revelation Media. I met him when I was working on the movie The End of the spear, and the end of the spear was about the missionaries that were killed in Ecuador
in 1956. And it was actually at Moody sharing that film, and was pretty overwhelmed that the student sitting in that room could be the ones that are taking the Word of God to the farthest reaches of the world to share it, laying down their lives. And I don't know why I'm getting emotional this morning.
No, that's all right, man. You're in good company.
So, um, you know, we we I say we live in a sight and sound generation. Steve would say we've always lived in a sight and sound generation. But when I was working for Mark green, who founded the end of the spear movie and the ministry called Bearing Fruit Communications at the time, Mark green says this book is alive. And that's that's the four words he lives for. This book is alive. And so it is the the Word
of God that's alive. And I think there is a huge adventure for more people that can get involved in sharing God's Word. There's some people that get nervous. What's someone going to think? Um, you know, are they going to think I'm being pushy? Um, but there's so much that can be life and death, power of the tongue that can be given to people by sharing God's word.
What in the world is the I Bible? Obviously, it's got digital included here. What is it? Sight. Sound? Yeah.
So I Bible. It's a free app. I Bible app. Com. Um, it is a it's it's literally a book that has come alive. It's an illustrated animated Bible. Interactive free to the entire world. Oh my goodness. And, um, uh, it
originally it was, um, envisioned as DVDs. And when we were putting out the animated movie The Pilgrim's Progress that came out in theaters in 2019, we came up with a format where you could literally, like, just turn the page with your finger, and just as it would turn the page, the animation would just come alive on the screen. And it was very engaging. But unfortunately, to have that
kind of technology, it's expensive. It's hard. So what you do see when you see each video, it's a chapter by chapter, um, Genesis, for example, is 42 episodes because there's 42 different stories in Genesis, but it's I Bible is one story. It's it's God's story. Um, it's coherent. It's the we were created. The divine narrative is creation, the fall redemption through Christ and restoration for eternity.
Biblical worldview, biblical.
Worldview and make it easy. You know, when you when you present the story only with our own testimony, we're in the middle of the story. There's a much bigger story, and it's God's story, and it's easy. He loves us. He made us. We fell away. He saved us through his son. And you know, there's an abundant life. We've had over 359,000, Actually 360,000. This morning we just looked Salvation's Through the real story of Jesus, which is a
9.5 minute short film version of the Bible. It's in 118 languages and you can get it online or on the app. The real story of Jesus.
Com wow. Leveraging media, leveraging digital resources coming up. How can we get this? More people spend time on their phone three hours a day, five hours for our young people, and maybe for you, it's even more, how can we introduce this to a world that already has their phone in their hand? More with our guest, Mark Harper, coming up.
You're listening to Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Wow. What God is doing around the globe. We are here broadcasting live from Dallas, Texas at NRB National Religious Broadcasters and pick it up Ali. Let's go. Well, when you think.
About getting Bibles to the world, a lot of times we think about the old fashioned way, the printed material, but now leveraging digital resources. The AI Bible is what we're featuring this morning. This is the first of its kind visual, interactive Bible for a visual and connected world. People already have a smartphone around the world. Majority of
people are holding a phone. Tell us about this. When someone goes to this, the app or the website, how are they going to interact with the Bible in a way that maybe they've never done before?
Yeah. Great question. And you're right. We hold phones in our hands. Anyone, any of your listeners who have kids and they're watching TV or movies, you know, it's like, are they watching TV or are they watching their phone? Are they really soaking in what they're getting? Our desire was to give families something they could do together. And so when you look at the AI Bible app, you
have immediately the option to jump into Genesis. We have 42 episodes of Genesis in five languages Spanish, Farsi, Hindi, English, of course, and then Bulgarian, because my wife is Bulgarian and we took I Bible over to Bulgaria. And then there is also I mentioned the real story of Jesus. There's the prayer of Jabez, you know, and all of this is visual. So you tap it, you watch it. Each chapter is about eight minutes. There's quizzes, there's scripture memory.
You know, it's just the desire is to get young people and their parents into the word together, talk about it, see it. And when you see it, you just think of things you might not have thought before. I mean, that's what the popularity of The Chosen is. Wow. I never thought about the disciples in this way. So just seeing God's Word, you know, hearing God's Word, reading God's Word, all multi-sensory experience, it's just it's exciting. I hope everybody gets it.
Yeah. So what gets you fired up? What's what's God doing right now that has you going? This man, this is costing me sleep. It's so good. Yeah.
You know, it really is, um, understanding that this is going out all over the world. It's impacting lives. Um, when we were in Bulgaria, we did a couple of red carpet events with church leaders to introduce I Bible to them, and there was a group of kids that came in that are from an orphanage, and they were performing a song and, um, you know, just seeing people come alive with the excitement of God's Word, you know, um, that's what drives us. And just seeing it get to
more places. Um, Steve has been to Kenya. We've distributed almost a million QR codes where they can instantly access God's word. Wow. Just it's amazing the connectedness that's available now.
There's stunning animation, the the dramatic audio and then the scripts for this talk about the process to get a script like this. I mean, there there are a lot of people involved in making sure that this is biblically accurate. Yeah.
Great question. Because one of the interesting things that's a distinction for AI Bible is we don't add any characters or dialogue that's not in Scripture. So it comes straight from the Bible, but it's not word for word. It's the narrative. It's the storytelling part. And when you tell people a story, you know, everyone leans in, they want to hear a great story. So it is in our in our in our estimation, it's the only visual narrative.
And so which is one of the Bible translation, you know, certification organizations, they gave it the gold seal of approval for our Genesis script. So we're literally a translation of the Bible. And we'll keep doing that with each chapter. There's a lot of process and people that go into that. Steve writes those. We get feedback from all over the world. So, um, yeah, it's going to take us a little while to get
it done. We're changing up the animation format. If they look at the real story of Jesus, they're going to see like a comic book looking style, which is very effective. And people love it, but it's also very time consuming. It takes a, you know, it's very expensive, a lot of labor hours. So we're switching it up to an Unreal Engine, which is the same style that video game players see when they're playing video games and video game industry dwarfs the film industry, and so you might.
As well jump.
In. Yeah, we're jumping in. And it is. I mean, just the stunning visuals and just a way to get it done quicker and more affordable.
What's the spiritual battle you fight?
Distraction. You know, we're on our phones. And so while you're on your your Bible app, even on YouVersion, you get a text notification. You get, you know, I mean, the the way that all technology just seeps into our lives, I definitely think it's a, it's a tool of the enemy to distract us. Yeah. And so yeah, that's a great question, Carl.
Yeah. Mark, I want to thank you for this. What a great effort. And I, on behalf of all the boom crew who are listening right now. Thank you. What a joy that we get to feature what you're doing here. The work that you're doing. And there's a lot of you that want to learn more. And we've got a link for you. Every one of our guests, we've got a link for today.
Yeah. Text media to 800 555 7898. If you want to check out the website and kind of follow along as this is continuing to be developed. Text media to 800 555 7898.
Yeah. I'm going to pray right now for you. Thank you father. I thank you for Mark. I thank you for I Bible and we ask, by the power of your spirit, would you proliferate this message far and wide? Would you grant him wisdom? And I'm praying this over you right now. Mark, would you grant him wisdom to
see what you want him to see? Would you give him such promptings of your spirit that remind him of the truth of your word, that it would be supernaturally teleprompting him as he leads this effort to reach so many? And Lord, as he was sharing, I don't know, putting a comma here, you can talk to people and talk
to God. By the way, guys, um, before I pray a little bit more here, Mark, you, you had mentioned that there's there's a great you think that there's something happening with the proliferation of the message of hope around the globe. Something extraordinary is happening now via sight and sound, right? Sure.
I mean, when you think about the the road of the Roman Empire to get the message out, then for the gospel, and now we have just such an incredible reach to the globe. I mean, there still are a lot of languages that don't have scripture. Yeah. Um, and their oral languages. Yeah. So. But there's an outpouring. I'm just getting bumps right now. Just an outpouring of the message going out and the church being equipped to be
able to carry the message. So it's like, how many how much time will the Lord give us before he returns?
Could be close. So I back go back to talking with you, father. And I just thank you for Mark and it is exciting to see what you're doing. Um, around the globe, to reach vast swaths of people that were unreachable in the past. But through digital and through what Ali was saying, everybody's got a phone in their hand. I've seen that in the poorest country in the world. Okay. And Lord, you're working and we give you praise. Pray for Mark. Pray for his team. God, give him the
unction of your spirit. I pray in Jesus name. His name. Amen. Amen. Again, you want to get a link here, guys? You want to do this? You want to pass this stuff around. You don't have to be passive. Little things create huge groundswells of movement text.
Media to 800 555 7898 media to 800 555 7898.
You can take him out of Alaska, but you can't take Alaska out of him. Curl is in the crew. It's curl and crew on Moody Radio.
Uh, open up grok o grok. What a friend he is. Grok doesn't talk back to me. He just talks to me. Who?
What are you talking about?
Yeah. Grok, man.
Grok.
Groks. Uh, I think Elon came up with that. Or some who came up with grok.
Ellen.
Ellen. Ellen. It's. It's. I. And it's embedded now in Twitter. I can't call it X, but you can go find out anything. And I've also got ChatGPT plus or the latest 2.4.0 whatever I've got. It's it's the amount of information and frankly, I've checked this out. So I did a question about Wayne Grudem from Systematic Theology. I said give me his top five arguments for and against Cessationism. Now forget what that's all about, but it's a deep dive into something that I put it to the test.
Very theological.
In a nanosecond it spit out the correct information. I use it all the time. I don't Google dip nothing. Google's dead in my life. It's gone. I buried Google about two months ago. So what do we do with AI? Because you hear all the stories, right? Yeah.
And some of it can be a little intimidating and that's putting it mildly. We've got Doctor Drew Dickens with us right now. Visionary leader, author, AI expert. You are in this field and that's all anybody wants to talk about right now is AI, right?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The joke was, I when I started working on my doctorate in this six years ago, I couldn't get a return phone call. And now it's like everybody wants me on their podcast. And so isn't that something? I'm an expert because I read up on it last week. So it's it's that.
But you did a dissertation.
With 300 pages worth of. Yeah.
Yapping about what did you learn.
About all of this? What did I learn? So so the the big takeaway for me is this really isn't anything new. I mean, we've always had this within the church. We've always had this fascinating relationship, this tension between technology and theology. Uh, we can go back further. But Gutenberg, I mean, just look at the effects of the technology of the printing press and and what they was able to put into the hands of common people.
And many were freaked out by it. That's.
Yeah, we always think of the advantages of that, but no doubt there were church deacon meetings where they were like freaking out about hold on now. Now we've got a Bible on a bedside table. What does that have to do with, you know, how is that going to affect? I'm supposed to go to church to read this, and now I can do it at home. So it had a lot of negative effects on on a lot of people. So we've had this tension resolve over technology for a
long time. So part of it is nothing new. I think what's different about AI this time, and no doubt at every stage they say what's different about this? But I think what's fundamentally different about AI generative AI is it has embedded within it an opportunity for a live radio. But I'll air quote here relationship. Um, you you mentioned during the break about the joy of encountering your listeners and what it's like to hear back from them and have this. That's what I love about radio is there's
that intimacy here. We're feeling that, I think with AI where over time it gets to know us to the point where we feel like we can engage with it on an intimate, personal level, and we don't. We haven't had that kind of interaction before. Yeah.
So you've got a podcast, I and spirituality. I'm looking at some of your episode titles. Fascinating. Let me go to your February 19th episode. AI and spirituality will a.g.i. Transcend humanity. AGI artificial general intelligence. Can we get there? I mean, there's this there's this whole kind of. Obviously, we know that anything that's artificially generated is not going to have a spiritual component. There's not a Holy Spirit speaking through AI or is there?
Yeah. I'm lighting up at your question because. Or is there. One of the examples I use with radio quite a bit. How many times do you have testimonies of your listeners getting in the car and kind of down? Today I really am slugging through my morning and all of a sudden a song came on that the Holy Spirit knew that I needed to hear. Yeah. So at some point, what's the involvement of the spirit with a program director who, a couple of weeks ago, chose to drop a song into that break?
You're right on about that.
But the spirit can work through that. So can the spirit work through a disembodied digital platform to to do that any different than it can with radio. So AGI artificial general intelligence will we know when we get there? There was books, book written 30 or so years ago, Ray Kurzweil, who pegged that at some point in the next, maybe 20 years, I don't think we're going to make it that long. I think it's going to be in
the next couple of years. We're going to cross some threshold where it becomes smarter than we are, where it's we're no longer the smartest kids in the pool, where it will surpass human cognition. Will we know when we cross that line? I'm not sure what that'll look like, but that's that's the race. That's what Elon is racing towards. That's what every, every AI company is racing towards. Is that AGI line when it when it becomes the smartest in the room.
How does the church respond to that? When you when you. It's the chance of sentient intelligence is far off. Or is it? I mean, and the crazy thing about AI, it's it's multiplied in factors that we can barely get our head around as we speak. Right now, grok is getting smarter 100 x by, I think per second or something crazy. What do we do with that?
Yeah, the line is I will never be any worse than it is today. So it gets better every day. It learns more, it learns to improve on itself every day. So how can the church get involved in that? Uh, humanity, um, is it's so tempting to look at opportunities to project more content, bring in more people, and, and sit down with a with an event on a Sunday morning. Uh, we can't forget humanity. We can't forget to reach out and embrace. To live life together.
That's what I can't do.
Can't do. It doesn't have a personal experiences. It can create them. It can make them up very convincingly. But it can't draw on experience like we can. So that's going to be how the church gets involved.
Doctor Drew Dickens with us. Right now we are talking AI and spirituality. Coming up, let's get a little history of artificial intelligence. How did we get here? Coming up.
This is Carolyn Crew on Moody Radio.
Well, you open ChatGPT and you say, where should I read in the Bible today? Or suggest five vacation destinations? I want to go somewhere sunny, somewhere that's family friendly. Suggest some hotels. That's where we're at. And that's the basics. Now, give us a brief history of how we got here with AI. We've got special guest Doctor Drew Dickens with us right now.
I tell you what what's spookier is we're getting to the point. And I'm talking days, not not months or years for you. Open it up and it says, hey, you seem a little down.
Oh, wow. Right.
Wow. Or I've noticed in your journaling or I've noticed this or that that you seem you need a break. By the way, I've booked a vacation for you. Here are some spots, that kind of thing. So it it's ability to anticipate because that's essentially what AI is, is a really massive autocomplete platform. Okay. So for it to anticipate your, your, your your needs is great. So the the history that's another segment we can go back to. Uh, you know 2000 BC. But let's start with World War two.
Alan Turing. If you've seen the movie The Imitation Game. Um, fantastic history of Alan Turing as a scientist in World War two. Broke the German Enigma machine, their code machine, and which was considered unbreakable. And so he came in and built essentially an AI platform for it to look for patterns within the German codes and that kind of thing. And so he's really the the grandfather, the great great grandfather. There's several grandfathers of AI. So it started really essentially
World War Two and built from there. There have been a lot of other incredible innovations since then, but that's really it goes back to World War two.
Discipleship in AI. Mhm. What did we do.
So it's easy to go dystopian but but let's look at some of the positives. And so being able to to to meet with someone for the first time in a, in a discipleship relationship. And I'm able to to put some basic personality indicators on who I'm talking to, age a little bit of their background and that kind of thing. And based upon that can give me a profile of that. Sounds like someone who might benefit from this type of program.
And so here is a 12 week customized discipleship agenda for them to to meet with someone and go through that. And you can.
Customize it because you could say this person's struggled with depression, right? Or this person is overcoming an addiction, or this person is struggling with gossip. And all of a sudden you've got a customized Bible study.
Well, and you can even go further than that, because maybe as a church leader, I'm looking at someone who has those needs, but who do I connect them with? And so now I can put in a profile of who in my church might I connect them with. And so now you've got those two people, you know, ideally having that, that, that foundational relationship, because I've got a male 35 plus talking to a male 65 plus they
have this in common and that in common. And so again, as you mentioned in the beginning of this of the set is instantaneously it draws those two together. So the efficiencies are massive.
So it sounds like opportunity here. I mean, when you start talking about AI and spirituality, I think there's a lot of inherent fear of this is something we need to steer clear of. This could clearly go a lot of ways that we don't want it to go, but there's opportunity and that seems to be where you lean towards. Let's let's see what we can do to make it work for us.
Yeah, I love the word. I think discernment is another good is let's go into this with eyes wide open. There are clearly some negatives that we need to be. There's some there's some touch points that we need to be cautious about. But if we go into this eyes wide open, there's immense good that the Holy Spirit again, we talked about earlier, the Holy Spirit can definitely leverage and use this incredible platform.
I'm glad you mentioned that, because the Holy Spirit was my lost God for many years, and now I'm understanding fully, especially the body of teaching of Jesus in John 14 and John 16. The power, the advantage to the disciple of Christ and so on top of I. Our brother here has a has a devo coming out. Whispers of the spirit of 40 day Guide to Intimate Prayer. We're going to have a link for you here in just right now that's going to put you on to from I to a good old fashioned 40 day devo. How
cool is that? It's the old and the new combining together here.
If you want it, just text peace to 800 555 7898. The devo is called whispers of the spirit of 40. Day Guide to Intimate Prayer. Uh, just text peace to 800 555 7898.
Doctor Jude Dickens, I want to thank you for bringing your intellect and octane to the table here today, and also your heart for the Lord. It's radiant and you are quite a guy. You're a piece of work, but you're quite a guy.
It was an honor and a privilege this morning. Thank you very, very much.
Okay. How do they get it?
Text peace to 800 555 7898. Peace. Peace to 800 555 7898.
What an extraordinary world we live in.
Excited?
It's thrilling, isn't it? It really is. It's. It's really thrilling. Especially the customization. Got my wheels cooking just on discipleship.
That alone.
Yeah. It's it's huge. Where might God take us? Hang on, buckle up. We're in for a ride, guys. Text the word peace. You get both ends of the spectrum. You get I now and a devo on peace links for both of them right there. Text peace to our number right here. Godspeed. Boom crew.
A basketball mom who's mastered the dad joke. Ali is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
You know, this whole issue of. Are you known by God? And do you know that you're known by God? It's that connection where we are not driven by the whims and opinions of this world, not by the reckless words of parents that were spoken over us years ago by those peers in high school that said something that, oh, Doug. And it stuck. Yeah, man, if we can get free.
Look out! We've got a guest with us right now who's going to help us lean into being fully known? The joyful satisfaction of beholding, becoming and belonging. Doctor Sandra Dalton Smith, board certified internal medicine physician, international speaker. You know, I remember an exchange I had actually at church where I was a stay at home mom with two little kids, and someone asked me a question that stopped me cold. She said, so what do you do during the day?
And I stammered a little bit to try to explain the tasks that filled my day. But in that moment, I felt a sense of needing to come up with more because I felt a strong link between what I did in the course of a day and kind of my worth as a person I don't think she meant meant it like that. But boy, when you get asked that question. So what do you do? All of us feel that pressure to kind of qualify or justify based on what we do. You relate.
Absolutely. And I think that's part of the reason so many people feel exhausted because we are constantly trying to come up with more stuff to do so that we can prove our worth, prove our significance, prove that we have reasons to rest. And I feel like one of the ways to begin to change that process is to change the conversation. Oftentimes when we're in networking situations, that is the question what do you do?
So what do you do?
What I like to ask is, how is if it's a place where there are other believers? How is God moving in your life right now? And if it's in a place, let's say if it's in a business situation, what's bringing you joy right now? Because sometimes what we're doing is just scratching the surface of actually what God's placed inside of us. And so if we start asking deeper questions, we can actually open up the conversation to help people begin to see the areas where they may feel bound.
Because asking someone what you do, that's shallow water.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's shallow water. How do we get below the water line? Because we live out of valleys, right? We live out of the what are you doing and what have you done lately? How do we get below?
Well, part of that is we have to get to a place where we want to or we allow ourselves to, I should probably say, be more open and vulnerable and recognize that you have control at the vulnerability valve. You get to choose how much you disclose. But we have to be willing to get beyond transactional relationships. A lot of our conversations are very transactional. It's just surface level, not trying to get beyond that to the heart of the person, because sometimes we don't really feel as if
we are able to express ourselves openly. Yeah. And so when we do allow those moments, you get into a level of what we call emotional rest. Where you go beyond your fears.
Emotional rest.
Yes, beyond your fears. Into the place where you are actually resting in the truth of who you are and how you're showing up in the world.
You know, everybody is so busy and there's so many things, and we're burnt out and we're exhausted. I know that that's part of the heart behind a lot of what you do is helping people reclaim and find rest in Christ. Tell us a little bit of your own story of getting to that place of just that soul exhaustion.
Yes. Like my first book on the topic of rest is called Sacred Rest. And when it when it came about was when I was burned out. As a physician, I'm an internal medicine physician. I had two kids very close together in age. And I remember coming home one day from work and I thought, God, this is everything. I've been praying for the kids, the husband, all the things I'm too exhausted to even enjoy the blessings you've
placed in my life right now. And I remember laying out on that floor, just weeping and Sikh and let left that floor, seeking a way to be sustainable in the things that I love. Wow. And that led me on my journey of research that led to the seven types of rest. And and honestly, as an introvert, I'm thinking, okay, I can write a book. That's great. I don't have to talk to anybody. We're good. But that's not how it turned out. What? I started getting a lot of opportunities.
I was asked to do a Ted talk. I was asked to do all of these different things. And I'm like, God, I'm not a speaker. And I remember, you know, in that moment, I felt like in my heart, God spoke to me and says, you don't know who you are. Let me show you.
Whoa. Okay. There's a lot of people listening right now that they don't even know anymore who they are. They might have known it at one point, but then you get on the hamster wheel and you forget again. The question is, how do we discover that we're going to break that down? Coming up with our guest, doctor Sandra Dalton Smith. She's got a work out. We're going to give you a link here in a moment. But how in the world do we get there? Some of you I know right now you're saying, oh, Carl, if I
could find that. How did you capture that rest? What was that? What was that term that we. Emotional rest. Emotional rest. If I could get that emotional rest. Oh, and what you're proposing is you don't have to necessarily get off the wheel. It's just how you're running that thing. Even sometimes.
Exactly. Hang on.
This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Life is busy. We all have work. Work is a good thing. The sluggard is warned. You don't work, you don't eat. But pretty quick. We're out there on that treadmill and we forgot the deeper meaning of life. And peace seems elusive. We got a guest with us. Doctor Sandra Dalton Smith, internal medicine physician, got burned out. Fried wondered who in the world am I? What are the questions we've got to ask that are the right questions?
We don't ask the right questions sometimes. What have we got to ask?
I think it begins by looking at some of our even past traumas, and how those traumas are affecting the way that we are approaching the world, the way that we engage with challenge, the way that we seek after or not adventure. I think sometimes people, particularly if you start feeling as if you're stuck within a career or you're unhappy at your job, you know, that's one of the key areas for burnout. People no longer find joy
in the things that they used to do. And so when you get to that place, I think you have to start asking yourself, are there areas that I have put on the back burner because I didn't think that they would be fruitful? Yeah. Maybe you had a gift for art or music and you thought, well, it's safer to go down this route because I know I can get a paycheck there. But we have to realize that when we have gifts that we suppress, that becomes its own stressor. Because a part of you, especially parts of
the gifts that are all gifts, are from God. So gifts that are given to us by God want a level of expression, and when we try to prevent that, we feel the unrest associated with it.
So let's talk about this book being fully known, the joyful satisfaction of beholding, becoming and belonging. That's a worthy aim. We want to be fully known. Obviously we are fully known by God, but sometimes we live in an identity that suggests we have to do more. What did you discover as you were writing this book?
Well, the number one thing is that it's a process, and for most people, that process has to begin with the beholding looking for God in all things, seeing him in all things. Actually, going back to the Scripture, allowing ourselves to view the Scripture as a living word. And so when you're reading it each time asking yourself, what am I seeing new? Because when you're seeing something new in him, new in his character, in his gifting, then
you're actually seeing a mirror of yourself. Every person reads the scripture and gets something different from it, because what jumps out to you is your mirror. And if that if we allow that to take us into our becoming, not trying to becoming more of something, but becoming actually more aware of his character inside of us, it opens the door for stepping into a place of belonging. And that's the journey and belonging, not being trying to fit in. I think we have too many people trying to be
like everyone else, kind of fit into something specific. But I look at it like this my husband loves doing puzzles. I'm horrible at it. And so I find a piece. I'm like, this looks right. I try to shove it into the spot and it doesn't go a lot of friction. Nothing happens. But he comes along with the one piece and it just plops into place. And that's what belonging really looks like. There are places that we fit, but
we may not fit in. We complete the part of God's expression in that area and that could be your church, your home, your, your business, whatever. We have to realize that that's the journey each of us is on, and it's a continuous process. David was a shepherd. He was a king. We go into life as if we're looking for the one thing that we are. Everyone is on that same process where you're going to evolve and have different seasons, and we have to be willing to let go of seasons when they're over.
This issue of fit is so huge, I would venture to say, I'm going to throw a guess out here. I would I would venture to say 60, 70, 80% of people that you're speaking to right now wonder, where do I really fit? Leaders can feel that way. Anyone can feel that way. The Word of God has to be central in this discovery. You got to know you fit with him first, right, doc?
Yes, absolutely. And then we have to realize that in culture, we fit with him perfectly. In culture, we're going to not necessarily Fit in all the time. We're not going to look like everybody else. We're actually not supposed to. So if we're set apart, then that means we have to get comfortable not necessarily looking, sounding, being exactly like everyone else, and be as authentic as we can be
for the expression of heaven that we have. I oftentimes say this each of us has a unique expression of heaven, and if we all release that, we complete his picture.
Beautiful.
Doctor Sandra Dalton Smith with us right now, the book is called Being Fully Known The Joyful Satisfaction of beholding, becoming and Belonging. If you want more text, rest to 800 555 7898. We will get you linked up to her website. More on the book. Text rest to 800 555 7898.
Doctor, I love your humility. I love your vulnerability because that is the pathway for people to discover this, and I appreciate you being that vulnerable today.
My pleasure. Thank you for having me. All right.
Let's get this link out.
Text rest to 800 555 7898. Rest 800 555 7898.
He's a sports fanatic with a stat for anything you can think of. Young Thunder is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
We're broadcasting live from NB here in Texas.
National religious broadcasters, this is the International Christian Media Convention, and we've had so many incredible guests this week.
Yeah, and stories galore. In fact, we heard a story that kind of relates to something I want to I want I want to see you on Saturday if you're in striking distance. But the story sets it up.
You know, we're here at this convention. There's a lot going on. We've got folks from our publisher, Moody Publishers team, and they were setting up some books, including Karl's book Killing Sin. And they had a young man who walked up to the table and they were still getting set up, but he said, are you are you selling books or are you giving books away? And the Janis, she said, we're not selling them. But what book are you interested in? He pointed out this one with the bright red cover
called Killing Sin. He goes, I'm interested in that one. She goes, well, I'd be happy to give it to you, but you have to make me a promise. You have to promise that you're. If I give it to you, you're actually going to read the entire thing. Because I want to make sure this gets into the hands of someone who can use it. And he gave the assurance. Yes, I actually intend to read it. So she handed him a copy of this bright red book, and he walked away.
And that was the extent of the exchange. He just he was I don't think he was here for the convention. Convention? I think he was working in the hotel and just saw this book and thought, I need that.
What a sweet thing. You know, we don't do this very often. I've never done this for some have done this. Yeah. Book signing. Yeah. First time. Yeah. And Ali. I want people that are in Chicagoland. If they've got a minute to show up on Saturday morning, we get to shake hands. We're going to have a whole team from Moody there.
We've got the details. This event is going to be this Saturday morning, 9 to 12 out in Villa Park. That's in the Chicago suburbs. Realize that's out way out of the way for a lot of you. But for those of you who are in the area, get the details. Just text book to 800 555 7898. Get the details on this upcoming book signing text book to 800 555 7898.
Yeah, and I am fired up to greet you, give you a hug, and let you know how important you are to us. And we mean that from the bottom of our heart. We value each and every one of you. And I can't wait to say hi. Text book to 800 555 7898. It's that simple. Book to 805 five five 7898. And you might want to look down in the details of additional details. There's a cool little couple lines in there that might pique your interest. That's all I'll say about that. It's kind of radio TV land
right there. That's what that is, right? Text book to 800 555 7898. And we'll see you with bells on Saturday morning. Okay. Uh, boy, this has been a day. My goodness. Has this been a day, Ali? And I'm afraid some people might not have been here for the whole day. If you miss.
Anything or want to hear it again, just text show to 800 555, 7898. The show cast will be updated with the interviews that we've featured. Text show to 800 555 7898. Yeah.
Buckle up. We're not done yet. We're still rolling here right to the top of the hour, and we're grateful that you're with us.
Romans eight brought her to Jesus while broadcasting traffic overnight. Super die is in the crew. It's Carol and crew on Moody Radio.
Carl and crew broadcasting live from NB here in Dallas, Texas. National religious broadcasters. You know, oftentimes we look at we fall off two sides of the high ridge of the laws of the land that we live in, and we're freedom fighters for Christ. And the question is, oh, where do we go here? And some people want to go, we're a Christian nation. We gotta get laws that reflect that. And I get that, and then we fall off the
other side and go, well, we're disciples of Christ. We can't open our mouth, can't do anything, but we've been given freedoms in our country to speak.
Up and navigating the cultural landscape. I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. So I hesitate to say it's more difficult than it's ever been, because I don't think that's the case. But certainly we are living in a time where discernment is needed. Yeah.
How do we how do we slice this baby right down the middle and make sure that we're not falling off either side of this high ridge? How do we do that? You know, we're going to have a special guest with us. Keisha Tony Russell. She's a constitutional lawyer with First Liberty Institute. It's the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated to defending religious liberty. Interesting. Just that alone kind of gets you going, huh?
You got some questions for her?
Yeah. Yeah, I got a lot of questions for her. We aren't going to be able to cover them all, but we're going to get the basics here, and then we're going to be able to give you a link that's going to equip you with all that you need to really tackle these topics. Living on that high ridge is a dance sometimes, but by the power of the spirit, we can do it. Hang on guys, we're going to get to our special guest. Coming up.
Your shot of hope to help you through the day. This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio. How do we.
Live in this world? Ali?
That's a big question.
How do we do it? Come on, give me a quick answer here.
With discernment and lots of prayer.
Yeah. So we live in this world where? And we were in the storm of it right now. It's like, oh, we got some that are saying we want laws, we want our Christian nation. I don't even know if we were ever. When we define Christian, really discipleship followers of Jesus, that's a different thing. And then some would say, well, throw up our hands. You know, maybe we're in decline as a nation. What can we do about it anyway? Boy, have we got a guest who's got an opinion on this matter.
Her name is Keisha Tony Russell. She's a constitutional lawyer with First Liberty Institute, the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated to defending religious liberty. You know, is it correct to feel like religious liberty is under assault? Is that something that we just feel, or is that accurate?
Oh, it's very accurate. I can tell you in my, I guess, eight years now, at first Liberty Institute, where we defend religious liberty, it's religion is definitely under attack. And while things are a little better because during Trump's first administration, he appointed a lot of great judges who
believe in defending and protecting the Constitution. Um, you know, our wins in the courts have been pretty great, but unfortunately, the culture and sort of the conflict that we're still in between religion and the culture that still exists and it's still pretty strong.
How do we approach this without getting political?
So that's a great question. And it's one of the reasons why I wrote my book in the first place. The I think the real method is to understand what what basis you're coming from. So what's the standard. Right. And when I say that, I mean for us as Christians, the standard is the Bible. The standard is God's standards, not necessarily our feelings or what we want. So we always have something to point to, a foundation. And the Constitution is the same for every American. That's supposed to
be our foundation. We don't infringe on freedom of religion, we don't infringe on freedom of speech. But unfortunately, I think the culture has started to divert from those understanding. From that understanding. And instead they're interested in freedom of expression, which really means I get to have whatever I want, whenever I want it, and no one can stand in my way.
Quick thought on that. I think when when some people in the general population hear the Bible, it's grounded. It's in the Constitution. The thing that we often miss in our messaging is that this is good for people. This is good. Absolutely. Our founders had a good idea. It was imperfect, but it was a good idea. What's your thought on that?
Yeah. So let's let's think about it. Right. So the forefathers, I think now most of them were Christian and even the ones that weren't, they were all educated in the Bible. And they all believed in this foundational belief that man is corrupt, that if you give man too much power, he's going to try to usurp the power of God. And we've seen that happen over and over again in history. Right. And so that foundation is the basis for the structure of our government, the separation of powers. Why do we
separate powers? Because we don't want one person to be judge, jury and executioner. And when people start thinking about that foundation, I think they start to have a lot more respect for the fact that Christianity was the basis for that structure of the government. It's so important and so instrumental to all the freedoms that we have. And if we get away from it, we can't keep the freedom. We've seen it happen over and over and over across the world.
You have a book, Uncommon Courage Empowering Christians to Defend God's Truth amid the changing and challenging political climate. How do you advise people to prepare themselves for the potential infringement upon their religious liberty, whether it's in the workplace or in schools or in the marketplace? We want to be winsome when we present the case for Christ. We don't want to be, as we often talk about on this show, angry Evangelicals. We don't want to be Misunderstood
or labeled in some way. But how do we prepare ourselves to make the case for religious liberty as Christ followers?
So I think the main thing is remembering that, number one, the righteous are as bold as a lion, and you can do that without being angry and rude and nasty. But at the same time, you don't want to be so meek and timid that you're being shouted down from your own opinions, and you're being sort of, um, you know,
intimidated into even expressing the truth of your beliefs. And so one of the things I think is important is knowing when to even engage in this conversation, you know, and talking to people who are really hungry and thirsty for truth or even just your perspective. They're not looking to destroy you and shout you down and just make a fool out of you. And that is the wisdom that comes with knowing when to engage in conversation and when not to.
Okay, yeah, you intrigue me to no end, young lady. What are you battling right now in a in a real healthy spiritual sense. What do you find on the front lines of this freedom of religion? Freedom of speech? What's what's going on that we don't know.
So let me give you an example. I am currently representing a 32 year veteran teacher named Marisol Castro in Connecticut. She's been teaching for 32 years, and she has has always kept a small crucifix by her desk in her personal workspace. Now she has been disciplined and is on paid administrative leave until she agrees to take that crucifix down.
I mean, it's a tiny little thing, and one of the things we're starting to see over and over again is the fact that people think the government is supposed to be completely removed from religion, that you're supposed to banish religion, that you're supposed to be in the closet if you're religious, right?
That's right. Church and state has been transposed into don't let the church have any kind of notion in the culture.
That's right. So that means you if even if you are religious, you better keep that in your house or in your church, but you better not bring it in the public square, which we know is completely not biblical, right? And so, Marisol and the most respectful way has approached her leadership and said, look, this is part of my religious belief. I don't believe that there's anything wrong with what I'm doing. And so we approach the school, you know, in the district with a letter saying, hey, this is
not right what you're doing. Um, we actually had a huge law firm partnering with us, WilmerHale, which is one of the largest and most powerful law firms in the country. And even with that letter, even with us coming and saying, here is all the laws that you're violating right now, including the Connecticut Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It's not even just the Constitution. They still refuse to comply. And so we were forced to sue. So it's always it's always interesting.
People ask me, what's the line? You know, how do we know when to engage? And you just have to keep kind of dialing up the pressure and the temperature. And one of the ways we do that is by trying to first work with someone without going into litigation, without engaging in this like, you know, heavy conflict. And when that doesn't work, we have to keep going. And the reason we do that is because if they're going to censor marisol's, you know, passive crucifix in a corner,
then who knows what else is coming. And if you guys, I'm sure, have heard of Coach Kennedy and his situation, all of that really impacts every person who works for the government and who works in general. Right. How much
control does your employer really have over you? And so for us, it's about a larger mission, too, and also about educating the public about what they can and cannot do and what the government is supposed and what the government is required to do and respect in your religious freedom.
Uncommon courage is the title of your book. What does it take to have uncommon courage? No. As the believer, we know that this doesn't happen. Apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, we can't muster up enough courage in our own strength to be able to face whatever is coming, but speak to that. What does it take to have uncommon courage? Well, I.
Think starting with the knowledge that what you are doing is grounded in the truth of God. So having that confidence to know, okay, what I'm doing is biblical, but also I know what I'm talking about, right? So, Marisol, for example, I don't know if she knew in the beginning whether the Constitution really protected that. Right. She had to ask. She asked us, you know, is this okay? You know what's going on? This doesn't feel right. And we were able to confirm with the law that she
is right. So having the knowledge right is the first thing, because that will give you the confidence to proclaim the truth and to stand up for yourself. But what does the Bible say? It's the truth, you know, that sets you free. It's not enough that the truth is just hanging out there if you don't know it. And so once you do know it, then you have the conviction to stand up for yourself. And so that I think
is the main. The main part is just knowing, having that knowledge and then using it in your everyday life.
When does freedom of religion encroach upon general freedoms of the populace. Because I'm thinking you almost want to pressure test this. What about a prayer rug for someone who's Islamic?
So the the boundary is once you're coercing someone to worship, right? When they don't believe something and you're making them worship or tithe or whatever, that's what the Establishment Clause was really meant to prevent, right? You being forced to pray to a God that you don't believe in or to worship a person, um, or whatever it is. The government can't force you to worship anyone, and they can't tell you who and how to worship. And that's the line, right?
So someone else can have their prayer rug and do their thing, but they can't then come and make you do the same.
So the willingness to be freedom of religion is incumbent on all of us. What's the hope that you're seeing in your work right now? Come on, give us a we just got 30s, so we're running out of time here, but give it to us.
My hope is that thankfully, we're in a climate where, you know, we have an administration that's a little bit more friendly, but and we have a lot of people who've woken up. You know, they're really hungry for truth and to understand now the things that they've been deceived about,
about our Constitution, about our country. And I see a great opportunity for people like you to spread education and the gospel and to really empower people to take charge and to want to advance the kingdom of God in a healthy, compassionate, but truthful way.
Well said, well said.
We've got a key word for you. Just text defend to 800 555 7898. For more on our guest, Keisha Tony Russell, just text defend to 805 five five 7898.
Wow, young lady, I am so proud of you and I know you are highly educated and you are in the mix. Thanks for being in the marketplace.
Such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Text defend to 800 555 7898. Defend to 805 557898.