Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #82： Five Questions with Dale

00:00:00.000 welcome to real christianity today we are talking about q a with dale q and a with dale and the only

00:00:10.320 reason it's not q a with dale and veronica is because next week is going to be q a with veronica

00:00:16.600 and so uh we're gonna do some questions with me today and then you guys get to stay tuned for

00:00:23.360 questions with veronica um welcome to the show if it's your first time listening to our podcast

00:00:30.420 We do this as a video on YouTube and also, obviously, on audio, pretty much wherever podcasts can be listened to, including Spotify.

00:00:40.600 A lot of people don't know that.

00:00:42.940 But welcome.

00:00:43.700 If you haven't left a review and you're a regular listener, love to ask you to do that.

00:00:47.380 Just go to iTunes.

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00:00:49.860 You just tap the stars.

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00:00:59.840 A couple things before we start the show is two things.

00:01:06.700 Ultimate marriage.

00:01:07.940 We talk about it just about every episode.

00:01:11.020 The reason is because it's one of the main products that we offer as a ministry.

00:01:17.400 And the revenue from those products supports our ministry.

00:01:21.720 So it's kind of a cool way for you to get something in return.

00:01:26.820 Say if you're thinking about making a donation to our ministry,

00:01:29.400 you can just buy this product that helps your marriage and it goes to the same spot it really

00:01:34.480 does help our ministry and so it's a six-week marriage mentor program you can go at ultimate

00:01:40.440 marriage.com check it out we do six awesome videos on how to build a biblical marriage

00:01:45.580 we do q a stuff with veronica and i we do marriage challenge checklists yes you can do them

00:01:54.340 with just you and your spouse you could also do them in a small group type setting

00:01:57.660 yeah the program set up we actually have several people doing this small group so they have

00:02:02.680 one leader and then there's like three or four couples doing it together and they meet for six

00:02:07.220 weeks and so that's a thing too um just want to let you guys know that that exists at ultimate

00:02:11.800 marriage.com yeah and also valentine's day is coming up so it would make a great valentine's

00:02:15.180 day gift it would husbands that'd be a great i i just don't see a wife going are you serious

00:02:21.320 honey you got me a biblical marriage training program no they would love that they would love

00:02:25.780 that a husband that wants to invest into their marriage um yeah we'll just move on from there

00:02:32.740 i was going to say something else but we're not going to um jumping right in yeah i i think the

00:02:38.780 purpose of this guys is that i think people need to realize that we're just regular people

00:02:42.440 yeah this q a isn't like a some of the q a's that we've done in the past where it's on theology

00:02:47.680 or certain circumstantial type situations um and how the bible applies to it this is a q a

00:02:53.700 basically just learning to get to know

00:02:55.880 Dale a little bit better and his history and

00:02:57.860 how he has

00:02:59.720 become the person he is today and then next

00:03:01.780 week will be basically the same thing

00:03:03.560 getting to know me a little bit better

00:03:05.420 yeah and we just want people to understand that yeah

00:03:07.700 we're just like you and anybody else

00:03:09.880 we just happen to be in a different

00:03:11.920 spot on a different part of the journey that the Lord

00:03:13.760 has for us and so hopefully

00:03:15.680 these help you guys feel closer to us

00:03:17.760 and not just knowing us as

00:03:19.620 you know Pastor Dale

00:03:21.740 or Theological Guy Dale

00:03:23.480 but also Dale just the Christian man so go for it okay let's start off with how old you are and 0.79

00:03:30.360 where did you grow up I'm 53 no I'm kidding I'm 34 I was born April 10th 1985 so I'm an 80s baby

00:03:41.140 and I actually remember writing down 1989 on some things and I think it was kindergarten I guess or

00:03:51.380 preschool but i just remember writing the year 89 down i don't remember writing the year 89 down

00:03:56.420 well because you were just a baby i was born in 89 yeah i was raised in southern california

00:04:01.080 so i haven't lived my whole life here in oregon in the woods people sometimes think oh dale you're

00:04:07.620 weird theology you don't know the real world because you live in the middle of nowhere in

00:04:12.760 the middle of the woods on a farm in oregon um yeah i i do live in the middle of a farmland in

00:04:19.920 Oregon and in the middle of the state now, which actually is kind of a big town. There's about 80

00:04:25.460 to 100,000 people to live here. So it's not that small, but we spent 29 years, 28, 29 years in

00:04:33.280 Southern California, about 45 minutes outside of LA, maybe an hour outside of LA. Yeah. We were

00:04:38.420 both born and raised there. Yeah. And so that's my life there. I played baseball as a kid. I did

00:04:44.240 boy scouts as a kid before boy scouts compromised on their values um but i did that you know all the

00:04:51.040 way up from like tiger cubs to cub scouts boy scouts and that was a really big part of i think

00:04:57.300 developing who i am a love for the outdoors that's probably why i enjoy being in oregon

00:05:01.920 so much camping as a kid uh so much outdoor uh lifestyle as a kid um i was a river rat and if

00:05:08.940 you're from southern california you know that there's what everybody in southern california

00:05:12.940 calls the river is actually the colorado river that runs through arizona and nevada um and so

00:05:20.220 i would go there boating like wakeboarding boating all from when i was like a little child

00:05:26.240 like four years old until i was probably in my 20s um every summer it's like 120 degrees there

00:05:33.000 it is it's like legitimately that hot and i just lived there all summer it was a really great

00:05:38.600 experience as a kid and skateboarding. So I was another just total Southern California skateboard

00:05:43.500 kid, um, listened to punk rock music. And that was, you know, like as, as deep as you can get

00:05:51.460 into skateboarding. I was, I was, um, sponsored by a few different companies. I was competing

00:05:57.480 in skateboarding. I still love skateboarding. Um, if I could get over to a skate park, I have a

00:06:03.320 skateboard recently like within the last year i've done a 360 flip just letting you guys know

00:06:09.320 for those that know at 34 at 34 years old yeah and a and a crooked grind down a rail so just

00:06:15.540 letting you know that's that's still possible dale side note well not side note but how do the uh

00:06:20.100 central oregon skate parks compared to the southern california skate parks okay yeah so i don't know

00:06:24.580 very big reason why you don't skate as much yeah who designs these skate parks here i don't know

00:06:28.600 um but southern california i mean it's it's where like the birth of skateboarding happened

00:06:33.440 so there is just incredible skate parks in southern california but oregon it's just

00:06:39.200 yeah they're like designed for the razor scooters or something like that that's what's happened is

00:06:44.700 that the skate parks are really razor scooter parks or for like rollerbladers and true i see

00:06:50.140 a lot of homeschool moms are their kids on scooters gosh yeah so yeah that's a an issue

00:06:55.500 of contention um okay moving on uh were you raised in a christian home and how did you learn so much

00:07:02.160 about the bible um yeah so no i wasn't raised in a christian home um if there was a god uh it was

00:07:09.940 jesus and so you know did we believe in jesus yeah like there was some praying that happened

00:07:17.060 you know occasionally occasionally um like i remember my mom having like a john 3 16 like

00:07:23.740 uh what do they call like the when you like um weave in a like a picture onto a little

00:07:30.760 like a little tapestry there you go like a little tapestry but it has like the circle

00:07:34.960 you know i'm talking about like embroidered yeah like that you like i forgot what they're called

00:07:39.340 needle point kind of thing i don't know anyways so like a tapestry with like john 316 on it in

00:07:45.140 the bathroom i remember those kind of things um you know we went to church maybe once or twice a

00:07:50.540 year holidays holidays yeah and so i wouldn't say that i was raised in a christian home um we were

00:07:56.660 raised in a like an american home um that believed in jesus and i think most people believed in jesus

00:08:02.720 at least especially when i was a kid um i i kind of ran with a hard crowd um even as early as junior

00:08:10.920 high and high school um and was kind of into the the wrong things and you know that in my in my

00:08:18.820 younger years, and I actually had several friends die by the time I was 20 years old, 21 years old,

00:08:27.480 you know, that I think took the lifestyle that we were living as teenagers more extreme,

00:08:33.920 overdosing in drugs, drunk driving, suicide, car accidents, just, it was a really crazy,

00:08:43.400 you know period of my life and and something that was the lord has definitely protected me and and

00:08:49.900 and rescued me from and so my parents divorced when i was 17 um so i don't come from a real

00:08:57.220 put together situation i have a brother who's um who's seven years younger than me and so that was

00:09:03.280 a big deal for him um it was a big deal for me too but it was it was a much bigger deal for him

00:09:07.660 I became a Christian out of a night of sleeplessness at age of 20, and that was in 2005 that I became

00:09:17.220 a Christian, and I'm not going to necessarily share the whole details of my testimony, but

00:09:21.800 basically, I couldn't sleep, and I was away on a trip, and I couldn't get to bed. I just

00:09:31.060 couldn't, so I waited the entire next day. I went to this conference that I was at, out of town,

00:09:37.660 And, um, and then I, I, uh, later that evening tried to go back to bed again and it was going

00:09:43.960 on, you know, I don't know, 40, some 50 hours or something like that, no sleep.

00:09:48.180 And I still couldn't sleep.

00:09:50.120 I started to get a little bit scared and it, it led me to kind of a terror and putting

00:09:56.380 me on my knees, begging God to let me sleep.

00:09:59.020 And if he'd let me sleep that I would follow him.

00:10:01.140 I literally made this bargain with God.

00:10:03.620 And I ended up having someone drive me home that evening.

00:10:08.700 It was about a two-hour drive home.

00:10:10.640 And I fell asleep for 12 or something hours.

00:10:14.360 I woke up, and I've been a Christian ever since.

00:10:16.740 And so I didn't have the classic gospel preached to me in certain circumstances.

00:10:24.060 I basically said this prayer.

00:10:26.060 The Lord kind of revealed himself to me.

00:10:27.620 And I really do remember a renewal, like a regeneration the next day.

00:10:33.440 It was a very—

00:10:34.720 And that's when you first started going to church.

00:10:36.200 Yeah, first started going to church, and that was a big part of that journey.

00:10:43.660 And so I built my foundation of my faith through Sunday sermons.

00:10:50.600 I mean, that's kind of how I really heard the gospel originally, kind of had a better grasp on what was going on.

00:10:55.020 at 29 i started reading the bible more intentionally and we had lived we had lived in

00:11:01.100 we moved to oregon that year or was it yeah that year earlier that year yeah so i i started reading

00:11:07.420 the bible more intentionally when we got here um maybe it was even 28 anyways by age 30 i was

00:11:13.980 reading theology and i was being discipled intentionally discipled by um a gentleman

00:11:19.340 who was much older than me and much more mature than me that was a game changer for both veronica

00:11:24.640 and I at 32 I was preaching regularly and I was bringing sermons and preparing sermons and I

00:11:31.900 enrolled at the end of that year in seminary and then at 33 we planted a church and I started

00:11:39.080 pastoring so I've been pastoring now for almost two years and then now today I'm still in that

00:11:46.380 seminary graduate studies program and I'm I have this semester and one more semester and then I

00:11:52.160 will finish the graduate studies program for Western Theological Seminary. And so that'll be

00:11:57.560 a big deal. So that's kind of my background of how I know the Bible. It's, you know, I wasn't

00:12:02.920 raised in a Christian home and raised by a pastor and knew all this stuff as a child. It's very

00:12:08.080 fresh to me, actually. Yeah, cool. Okay, so a lot of people know about the several books that you

00:12:14.500 have written in the past, but can you tell us about the books that you want to write in the

00:12:19.940 future yeah so there's you know I've written my first book was when I was in the business world

00:12:25.660 because again a lot of people don't realize that you know for the last up until what three years

00:12:31.620 ago or two and a half years ago we were in the business world and so I was an entrepreneur

00:12:36.940 well known in the entrepreneurial space that's actually where most of our following came

00:12:41.280 and I wrote a book called people over profit that became a Wall Street Journal bestseller

00:12:46.820 and was a still a very successful book on my philosophy on business it's definitely christian

00:12:54.200 founded on christian core values for sure and then launch your dream and then save from success

00:12:59.920 which is my first i would say christian book save from success was and then my most recent book

00:13:04.500 which is real christianity it's like gone from business business half business half christianity

00:13:11.420 to full christianity yeah exactly making that transition was was a part of that so yeah i want

00:13:18.360 to write a bunch of books i think i'm going to probably be the guy that maybe writes you know

00:13:22.360 lord willing 50 60 books um i i need to write it's a part of what i do and um i read so much

00:13:32.120 that i need to write because it's kind of this it's how you process it is how i process and you

00:13:38.020 think about it is that writing is a form of giving and so you need to when you fill yourself up with

00:13:44.780 reading you you basically give it out through writing and so you start you know forming your

00:13:51.540 who you are what you say you start regurgitating basically these ideas in your words and and so

00:13:57.480 that's a big part of who i am if you don't read you you actually run out of material to write on

00:14:03.340 and because it's like giving and giving and giving without having anything to give

00:14:07.720 And a lot of people I know only write one or two books because they just blow all of their knowledge and wisdom on these two books because that's all they have.

00:14:18.080 If they're not continuing to learn and to read, you'll run out of material.

00:14:22.740 So I read a lot and I really enjoy writing.

00:14:27.400 So I want to write a book on manhood really bad.

00:14:31.620 and kind of something about the seven crowns of a man

00:14:36.380 or the five crowns of a man.

00:14:37.420 There's an idea in Proverbs

00:14:38.800 about the different crowns of a wise man.

00:14:43.340 Wisdom is one of them.

00:14:44.400 A gray hair is one of them.

00:14:46.580 Children is another one of them.

00:14:49.440 I want to write one on marriage.

00:14:51.680 That's coming at some point.

00:14:53.100 We've been married for 10 years,

00:14:54.920 coming up here in less than a month or about a month.

00:14:57.840 um and so marriage that would be something that we maybe we tackle like after we've been married

00:15:06.080 for another 10 years who knows but but eventually um the church i i do have a book that's coming out

00:15:12.320 here real soon uh that's more like a doctrinal statement but it's also kind of a book it's

00:15:18.420 called biblical church uh understanding the doctrines convictions and liturgy of a biblical

00:15:24.480 house church and so that's coming out this year and i do want to write a book a bigger book around

00:15:30.440 the topic of the church and what does biblical church look like uh lord willing i'll write a

00:15:35.760 365 day devotional i do these like short snippets of writing um on instagram and i have so many of

00:15:42.760 them i have like six or seven hundred of them and they're i need to collect them edit them and put

00:15:48.000 them into something at some point but i i love devotionals i read one which we'll talk about

00:15:55.560 later here in a second so i just would love to do that and i already have names for some of these

00:15:59.680 books too but i'm not going to share them um suffering and trials um us going through which

00:16:06.080 we'll hear about next week veronica and i's suffering through lyme disease and its co-infections

00:16:12.780 which are, in many cases, worse than the Lyme disease.

00:16:17.100 We had a really heavy season of trials,

00:16:19.960 and that taught us a lot about the Lord.

00:16:22.680 And so I feel like I'd love to take a stab at,

00:16:26.660 I spent a lot of time reading about theology, remember that,

00:16:30.640 during that season about suffering.

00:16:32.700 And I just learned a lot.

00:16:34.020 I went to places that you don't go until you're hurting.

00:16:36.260 And so it was really helpful for me,

00:16:37.900 those resources that existed when I was suffering.

00:16:40.220 And so I'd love to have something there.

00:16:41.860 And then another book that I'm working on right now is called, well, we don't know if we'll call it, but the idea is simplifying some sort of, it's a theological book, but simplifying it.

00:16:52.360 I found that so many people in the church, they've been Christians for 10, 15 years, and they don't know like a lick of theology.

00:17:00.740 They know like some of the basics.

00:17:02.240 They could put some of the things together.

00:17:03.700 They probably never read the entire Bible.

00:17:05.480 They don't know that there's 66 books in the Bible.

00:17:07.240 if i asked them the question why does jesus have to be fully man and fully god they probably

00:17:13.280 wouldn't have an answer for that if i asked them what is sin like a biblical definition of sin

00:17:18.540 they might not have an answer for that and it's because we've lacked this catechism culture and

00:17:25.720 you know we're not raising our kids to really know the doctrinal truths of scripture and um and so

00:17:32.380 we have all these adults that are actually in the situation and so i want to write a book that

00:17:35.560 simplifies that maybe, you know, uh, some sort of a catechism of, of, you know, maybe 50, 60

00:17:42.160 questions that you can ask and learn. And so, um, there's this weird thing that's happening right

00:17:47.920 now where you're either a churchgoer, um, and then the next step is, uh, seminary. There's like

00:17:55.680 nothing in between. It's like, I want to read my Bible more. There are some churches out there

00:18:00.760 to offer classes and stuff on certain topics or yeah books of the bible for seasons but it's like

00:18:06.860 i want to go deeper but i don't want to go to seminary um you know there's not much in that

00:18:11.940 middle space and that's where i'm hoping to to put that that uh that book so yeah those are the

00:18:17.220 books that at least that i know right now on my heart and uh hopefully i'll listen to this 10

00:18:22.600 years from now oh look those are already all written now yeah hopefully that'd be awesome

00:18:26.100 um okay how do you maintain your spiritual health and what disciplines are a part of your daily and

00:18:33.060 weekly routine lots of people ask that question and i'm sure you've probably heard us answer this

00:18:38.120 before on the podcast but we still get that question all the time frequently yeah so three

00:18:43.300 principles that i take into my daily quiet times uh second timothy 2 15 which is be diligent to

00:18:50.740 show yourself approved to god a worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word

00:18:54.880 truth and so first it's a diligence make sure that you're you're diligent to do this in your time

00:19:01.880 you're not just like checking something off like you're really trying to study and show yourself

00:19:07.900 approved that you actually reading and understanding what you're reading and that you're diligent about

00:19:13.900 it and the second thing is the first and what jesus says the first is the greatest commandment

00:19:18.900 first and greatest commandment to love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul

00:19:22.320 and with all your mind and so there's that third part i think that a lot of us forget about and so

00:19:27.740 you have the heart uh which i think the culture is really good because that kind of aligns with

00:19:31.780 emotionalism like i love god with my heart like that's worship music and that you know that's

00:19:36.480 that's true and that that's an important part of it um with your soul and this i would say is just

00:19:41.920 could be kind of blended in with that uh but also i would say you know has some truth more truth

00:19:47.500 connected to it. But then with your mind, it's really the mental state of understanding who God

00:19:54.080 is. And so I want to make sure that I understand God intellectually. And that's another part that

00:19:59.480 I'm not afraid of deep thinking books. I'm not afraid of studying theology and having deep

00:20:07.560 thoughts about God. And then the last one is from, I think it's first Timothy, but it's the idea of

00:20:14.180 paying attention to the doctrine or paying attention to the public reading of scripture

00:20:17.560 and to the doctrine. And so I don't just want to read the Bible. I don't just want to study the

00:20:24.040 Bible, but I actually want to understand the doctrine. And meaning that what I would say

00:20:29.800 even is called systematic theologies. I want to actually understand the systems of God's

00:20:36.460 truths that have already been defined for the most part through church history. And so there's

00:20:43.560 already a doctrine on the Trinity. There's already a doctrine on who Christ is. It's called

00:20:48.160 Christology. And I want to understand those things. And those are really important. In terms of a

00:20:54.580 practicality of what I do in the morning, I guess one thing that's kind of fun is that I wake up in

00:21:01.380 the morning, I get up with the kids, and I give Veronica about an hour so she can do her quiet

00:21:09.280 time and, and then, and get ready and things like that. But, um, I want her to have that time. And

00:21:16.740 then she comes out and then I go up and do my quiet time and she takes on for the rest of the

00:21:22.020 day. Um, and so my quiet time usually lasts about 60 minutes. Um, it starts with a variety of

00:21:28.500 different books and tools. Um, I, I first try to start with prayer. It says, um, Psalm 100 verse

00:21:35.640 four says enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise be thankful to him

00:21:41.300 and bless his name and so um i start with prayer and gratitude and thanking god hey lord i'm here

00:21:50.260 i'm living um i bring my my requests my my gratitude my my frustrations the things my

00:21:57.620 needs to him in that day and my prayer requests for our church for our family um i i really want

00:22:04.280 to be a pastor that can say, I pray about our church and I pray for the members in our church

00:22:07.860 and I pray for the unity in our church. That's another priority for me. Um, and I, uh, I, I read

00:22:14.720 a couple books. So one of them is the Valley of vision. It's a, you can get in a little leather

00:22:18.600 back, leather, leather back, I guess, leather bound. There you go. Um, version it's, it's old

00:22:24.420 Puritan prayers. Um, and you know, it's a really great little prayer book because sometimes we

00:22:31.400 don't know how to pray, or we don't realize how elementary our prayers are until we read

00:22:37.500 prayers of these really mature saints. And you go, wow, this guy's thinking way deeper than I'm

00:22:43.180 thinking. And it helps me grow in my prayer life, thinking about those things. And I read a lot of

00:22:52.940 Puritan work. And the Puritans are awesome group of people, basically from, you know, the 1500s to

00:23:00.540 the early 1800s and um most of them are calvinists you guys know if you guys listen to my show i'm

00:23:06.880 not a calvinist but i still really appreciate the puritan work um and i read a devotional um

00:23:14.180 that's one i did last year it's called um voices from the past and that's a really great resource

00:23:20.820 it's puritan a variety of puritans one page every day a little devotional right now i'm actually

00:23:27.180 doing Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, and I'm enjoying it. I'm not enjoying it as much as

00:23:32.880 Voices from the Past, though. I read a theological book, like one chapter, and so meaning that some

00:23:42.820 sort of Christian book. I was reading a parenting book last week. This week, now I'm reading a book

00:23:47.380 on strategic evangelism. I read a sermon a week. And so I'm a big fan of John Wesley. So I'm reading

00:23:57.720 one of his 52 sermons every week. And then the last thing that I do is I read the Bible. And so

00:24:05.660 I read at least one chapter of the Bible and I really sit there and try to read it, understand

00:24:10.080 it, study it. It might only be a few verses. It might be the entire chapter. And this is outside

00:24:15.380 of my sermon prep time and outside of my seminary work. So this is really, and I get it, you know,

00:24:21.400 it sounds like a lot, but you, you know, you read the prayer book, it takes like three,

00:24:24.760 four minutes. You read your devotional, it takes like five minutes. You read your chapter of your

00:24:27.920 book, it takes, you know, 12 minutes, 15 minutes, you know, then you're jumping into, you know,

00:24:33.900 the Bible, you know, you have your prayer time. You can get this done in about an hour, but it

00:24:37.760 just gives me a really robust spiritual time with the Lord. And I'll even sometimes listen to worship

00:24:44.280 music and worship him and I go to a private place and do this and so that's that's my that's my

00:24:52.060 routine I do that usually five days a week very rare that I do it less than four days a week

00:24:58.780 Saturdays and Sundays I try to do it but it doesn't usually happen yeah Saturdays you're

00:25:05.840 like wrapping up sermon stuff and trying to get that yeah I'm already in the word at such an

00:25:10.640 extensive level for for sermon prep on friday and saturday that i usually you know will move

00:25:16.020 things around and sunday i'm preaching and resting and yeah okay so as you just shared you read a lot

00:25:23.060 can you share three of your favorite books i feel like you've already mentioned at least one of them

00:25:27.780 yeah so if you're watching this on video you can see my little library back here and this is

00:25:33.500 actually quite of it yeah some of this is quite new i've actually picked up a lot of these books

00:25:38.100 over the last year or so, and seminary does that, I think, to you. You have to read a lot,

00:25:44.940 and pastoring does that to you because you have to be able to have the answers

00:25:48.540 for a lot of people's questions. So I read about 25 to 30 books a year. I'm not the guy that can

00:25:55.360 pull off a book a week. I'm the guy that usually pulls off about a book every two weeks. I'm

00:26:00.680 reading like a short book right now. It's 100 pages, and I'll finish that in a week.

00:26:04.040 um and so uh my favorite authors i'm going to start with and then i'll say some books

00:26:10.680 um so i love aw tozer um aw tozer is probably yeah the way he thinks is most similar to me

00:26:21.880 and so if you want to understand a lot about who i am and how i think theologically i would say

00:26:29.240 tozer's the right person to represent me in that i've read a good chunk of his work um and i have

00:26:37.460 a few that i haven't read yet but i really appreciate his books the puritans as i said

00:26:42.820 um you know anybody in that you know um thomas watson is fantastic um some people would call

00:26:51.640 charles spurgeon in that sermon era um uh this guy from behind me on the quote you can't see

00:26:57.840 uh george swinock um he's he's awesome um and there's just there's so many there that you can

00:27:08.060 um that you can look at and uh so the puritans just looking them up doug wilson has become a

00:27:15.880 new favorite of mine we actually went and got a chance to spend some time with doug a couple

00:27:20.980 a month ago now and so i really appreciate doug's written a hundred and something books 104 books

00:27:26.720 maybe. And so I really like his style. And so I'm reading some of his stuff. And then John Wesley.

00:27:37.100 And so I'm a big Wesley fan. In terms of the books that I love, The Pursuit of God is probably my

00:27:43.260 favorite book. It's 100 pages. It's A.W. Tozer's, I would say, his crown jewel in terms of his work

00:27:50.580 that he's done and the concept is that true love is basically pursuing god even though you've

00:27:57.500 already found him and so the pursuit of god is this it's for christians who already found god

00:28:03.220 but you're still pursuing him and he he hits such a variety of topics in that book but really lays

00:28:09.800 a deep um heart for for for devotion to god voices from the past which i mentioned before

00:28:16.960 there's a volume one and volume two and that's a devotional set those are produced by banner of

00:28:22.380 truth and then doug's doug wilson's uh why children matter i just read that i added it there

00:28:29.760 not because i don't have other great books but i really appreciated that book it was just really

00:28:34.980 good especially for fathers and so if you're looking for a children's book not a children's

00:28:40.480 book a book on children and you're a parent that's a great one um i'm going to close with

00:28:45.960 a quote from Tozer

00:28:49.060 on the topic of reading

00:28:51.040 and

00:28:52.780 and then we'll

00:28:54.740 wrap up the show

00:28:55.600 he says 1.00

00:28:57.160 why does today's Christians 1.00

00:28:59.160 find the reading of great books 1.00

00:29:02.060 always beyond him

00:29:03.440 certainly intellectual powers

00:29:05.980 do not wane from one generation

00:29:07.900 to another we are as smart

00:29:10.000 as our fathers and any thought

00:29:11.920 that they could entertain we can entertain

00:29:13.700 if we are sufficiently interested to make the effort.

00:29:17.020 The major cause of the decline in the quality of current Christian literature

00:29:21.440 is not intellectual, but spiritual.

00:29:25.260 To enjoy a great religious book requires a degree of consecration,

00:29:29.680 meaning like you're giving up your life,

00:29:32.080 consecration to God and detachment from the world 0.86

00:29:35.400 that few modern Christians have. 0.74

00:29:38.460 The early Christian fathers, the mystics, the Puritans,

00:29:41.620 are not hard to understand.

00:29:43.700 but they inhabit the highlands where air is crisp and rare field and none but the god enamored can

00:29:51.820 come there and so that's the perspective that i have is that you go a book that's really hard to

00:29:58.680 read you might be intimidated by it um you're capable of reading it you know and i think

00:30:06.960 veronica has been on this journey of like learning her capability you know you've been tackling some

00:30:12.840 harder books lately and and you know I would say maybe share your story real quick on just like

00:30:22.280 being intimidated on learning and being intimidated on certain books and what you've done kind of

00:30:28.200 breaking through that yeah since it's the end of the show I'll just be very long what could be a

00:30:34.120 very long story I'll make it quick long story short I had a terrible education and because

00:30:41.160 you know kindergarten through high school I skipped school I was around not skip school but

00:30:46.780 like went from school to school different schools always having to start fresh new friends I was

00:30:52.640 probably a little bit delayed in the way that I learned I just didn't fit into the typical system

00:30:57.480 and so it made me hate learning I hated learning I hated reading I wanted nothing to do with it

00:31:03.140 and so I didn't really start reading until pretty much I got pregnant with Aria because I was like

00:31:08.180 okay well um I'm gonna have this baby and I don't know what I'm doing um what is childbirth about

00:31:13.400 what is raising children about so that's kind of when I started reading um and I was like well

00:31:19.740 there's actually like some really good information out there as I started reading and then um yeah

00:31:25.400 the more kids I've had and the longer I've been married and things like that I've just picked up

00:31:29.180 books here and there that I've thought look interesting um and so I've I've I read way

00:31:36.100 more now than i ever have um but i still definitely i wouldn't say like i you know

00:31:41.240 read tons and tons of books but it's yeah it's just as she's been able to come up to this higher

00:31:47.660 level of of education that intimidated her before yeah i wouldn't want to read a book just based off

00:31:55.160 of how thick it was or what the cover looked like because i was like oh that looks hard yeah um and

00:32:00.320 now that's changed. Yeah. And I mean, I, I even still, I might be intimidated by a book,

00:32:04.840 but I want to learn. Yeah. Or I have the, I have the desire to learn now where I didn't before.

00:32:09.900 Amen. Amen. So, um, thanks for joining. Hopefully that was helpful that you guys got a chance to

00:32:15.480 know a little bit about me and my past. And, um, next episode that's coming out next week will be

00:32:21.100 on Veronica and we're going to ask her similar questions, but a little bit different. And a few

00:32:25.260 questions that that weren't asked to me and um so again thanks for joining this episode guys

00:32:31.120 and we will see you next week see ya

Dale Partridge - January 29, 2020

Real Christianity #82： Five Questions with Dale

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