Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 202

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that you are

00:00:05.880 looking forward to the new year. Can you believe, can you believe that it is almost 2020, like it's

00:00:12.040 the end of the decade? Why do I feel like the beginning of the 2000s until now is just like

00:00:18.440 not a time period? I don't, you know, like I don't know what to call it. Early 2000s, the teens,

00:00:24.940 what do you call the beginning of the 20th century? The teens, I guess, the turn of the

00:00:30.260 century. It's crazy. It's crazy that we are here. I was talking to someone the other day

00:00:36.740 and I was like, do you remember 20 years ago, the beginning of Y2K and all the stuff that we

00:00:42.760 thought was going to happen? I was seven, I was almost eight. So I was kind of like mini,

00:00:49.740 in a mini way, M-I-N-I, not M-A-N-Y, freaking out about what was going to happen. Was the world

00:00:55.840 really going to end? We thought the computers were going to shut down. And I remember because

00:01:01.040 New Year's Eve when I was little, when I was growing up, was always a really big deal to only me.

00:01:06.440 No one in my family cared about New Year's Eve except for me. And I would like really want my

00:01:11.140 parents to like throw some kind of like celebration or something. So I would make these like paper bags

00:01:17.020 for everyone that they were supposed to like blow up or, you know, blow into or something like that

00:01:22.940 when the ball dropped. I'm pretty sure my parents for a really long time before I wised up would just

00:01:31.020 let me watch the ball that actually happened at 11 p.m. Central Time in New York rather than allowing

00:01:38.620 me to actually stay up until midnight. But I do remember on, uh, in 2000, I do remember New Year's

00:01:47.780 Eve watching the TV and watching the news in our game room and the guy, the reporter, like picking

00:01:54.880 up a payphone to see if the payphone still worked because we thought that Y2K, everything was going

00:02:00.900 to stop working, I guess, including the payphones. And I remember him being like, oh, the payphone still

00:02:04.720 works. Oh, we still had electricity. Yes, our computer and our internet and all of that stuff,

00:02:09.800 uh, was still, was still working. It's so funny. It's so funny to think how we thought that,

00:02:16.580 how we believed that back then. And we would never believe that. Now we look back, it's just 20 years

00:02:21.300 ago. We look back and we're like, hearty, heart, heart. I can't believe that we once bought into that.

00:02:25.700 What are the things that we are buying into now that 20 years, 20 years from now, we're going to be

00:02:30.180 like, wow, I can't believe that we actually thought that was true. That's what I'm hoping

00:02:34.980 happens with all of the craziness that's going on in our world right now. Like I hope in 20 years,

00:02:39.240 we'll be like, wow, I can't believe some people tried to pretend that you could just change sexes

00:02:44.360 by identifying as something else. I can't believe that back then we believed in a million different

00:02:48.580 genders. I can't believe back then that we thought that abortion was acceptable and now technology

00:02:53.980 has advanced so much that we just can't even stomach the idea of abortion happening. Gosh,

00:02:58.720 I hope that's my prayer that in 20 years, we'll be able to look back and say,

00:03:03.200 I cannot believe some of the things that we believe just two decades ago, as I am doing right

00:03:09.540 now, thinking back to the craziness of Y2K 20 years. It makes me feel old that I can remember

00:03:18.420 something that happened 20 years ago. If you can do the math, I'm 27 now. So for me to be able to

00:03:25.580 think back two decades and have actual, tangible, like clear, vivid memories of something that

00:03:33.200 happened, it makes me feel very aged. My hope and my prayer is that the next decade and the next

00:03:40.400 decade after that are wonderful times for the church, that they are wonderful times for our

00:03:45.640 country, that some kind of spiritual awakening, who knows, could happen within the church. That

00:03:53.300 doesn't mean that Christianity becomes mainstream in politics and culture, but it does mean that the

00:03:58.100 gospel is taking root and is bearing fruit. The gospel always bears fruit, by the way. It never

00:04:04.400 returns void, but, uh, or you know what I mean? That the word of God never returns void and the gospel

00:04:10.580 always accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. That doesn't mean that everyone hears that accepts

00:04:15.120 it, of course. Uh, but maybe, maybe over the next 10 to 20 years, that will be something that

00:04:20.500 happens, at least within the church. That could mean that the church is still on the margins of

00:04:24.120 society, but the church thrives in the margins. If Christianity continues to be persecuted, at least

00:04:31.160 in the American way that it's persecuted here in the United States, that's going to be okay. The church

00:04:36.560 is still going to thrive. Of course, we should take advantage of, and we should thank God for free speech

00:04:42.280 and freedom of religion while it lasts. But even if those things go away, the church is going to thrive.

00:04:47.460 The church is going to survive. The gospel is going to continue to be spread as it is in countries who

00:04:53.720 don't have the same liberties that we do. But maybe over the next 10 to 20 years, we can see that kind

00:05:01.080 of awakening as the gospel just continues to spread like wildfire. Before we get into that, I do want to

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00:05:28.300 home security. I don't know if your home does, but you should definitely be getting some. Because this is the

00:05:34.380 reason why most people don't have it. Maybe it's the reason for you. Because most security companies don't make

00:05:40.280 it easy. There's complicated installation salespeople and salespeople. There's long-term

00:05:46.660 contracts full of hidden fees. There's monthly fees and all that. So you just don't want to deal with

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00:06:29.360 in the event of a break-in. So police respond up to 3.5 times faster. That's amazing. That could be

00:06:34.320 literally a matter of life and death. So Simply Safe really very rarely, very rarely. And I mean

00:06:40.980 that honestly does something this big. This is such a huge sale for them. It's like maybe not once in a

00:06:46.460 lifetime, but pretty close to that. So make sure that you go to simplysafe.com slash Allie to get that 25%

00:06:52.800 off plus a free HD security camera. That is simplysafe.com slash Allie. It ends January

00:06:59.060 7th. So go there now. Now I would love for the gospel and Christianity to affect a society, to

00:07:06.780 affect the laws here. And of course, when people hear that, they're like separation of church and

00:07:11.640 state. Separation of church and state, as Jeff Durbin has said on this podcast, is not the same

00:07:17.920 thing as separation of God and law. There is no foundation for right and wrong or what should be a

00:07:23.680 law or what morality is without God as our moral authority. There's just not. That doesn't mean

00:07:30.400 that you believe that the church should actually be dictating what every law is. But it also doesn't

00:07:37.060 mean that you have to separate the idea of biblical morality from law. It wouldn't even make any sense

00:07:44.660 to do that. The only reason we have the laws that we do that protect the dignity of a human being is

00:07:50.100 because the founders believed in a creator who gave us inalienable rights. So I would love the

00:07:54.920 recognition of people as image bearers of God to be reflected in our laws more and more over the next

00:08:00.840 20 years. All of this kind of also can maybe possibly depend on your eschatological views as well. But no

00:08:08.920 matter what you believe, whether you're post-mail, pre-mail, all of that, I've actually addressed it on the

00:08:14.360 podcast before. You can still hope and pray for not just good things for the church, but also good

00:08:22.020 things for our country. We're supposed to be praying for whoever is in power, whether they're

00:08:25.640 Democrat or Republican anyway. And so we should absolutely be praying for those things and praying

00:08:30.460 for their wisdom and praying that they would be obedient to God and that they would fulfill their

00:08:35.200 Romans 13 responsibilities of carrying out justice against the wrongdoer. So that's my hope

00:08:42.660 for the next decade and two decades. Kind of hard to even imagine what a 2040 would look like. I just

00:08:50.700 all I'm hoping is that we don't continue down this crazy train of far leftism. And I don't think that

00:08:57.040 we will. Someone asked me the other day, they said they had someone come to their, I think it was a

00:09:01.200 college classroom and ask or tell them that one day we won't have any gender and everyone will be

00:09:07.240 who they just want to be. And this person asked me, do I think that that will happen? And my answer is no.

00:09:12.660 No, I don't think that that will happen because truth is a stubborn thing. Biology is a stubborn

00:09:19.900 thing. Science is a stubborn thing that no matter how our social trends or social news, social

00:09:29.000 preferences want to change scientific reality, we just can't do it. We cannot do it. And so I think

00:09:38.480 that there will be not just a cultural pushback from people like me, from people like us who know

00:09:46.640 that God has made male and female period. Yes, there are the very few people who unfortunately are born

00:09:54.180 intersex, but that is a, that's a problem. That is a disorder. That is not a rule for everyone who is

00:10:01.980 not intersex that they can just choose their gender however they want to. So there's not going to just be

00:10:06.480 a cultural pushback, not just going to be a churchwide pushback, but there's going to be a

00:10:10.880 scientific pushback, especially as we see the physical, the tangible repercussions of people

00:10:15.720 who are changing their sex, especially those who change their sex at a young age or, you know,

00:10:20.780 change their sex. You can't change your sex, but who are undergoing surgery in order to correspond

00:10:26.480 with what they believe is their gender identity. And so they're changing parts of their body,

00:10:30.860 mutilating parts of their body in order to be in line with what they perceive as their gender

00:10:36.300 identity. And you're going to see the negative effects that this is having, not just on children,

00:10:42.100 but also on adults years down the line. It really hasn't been long enough for us to be able to see

00:10:47.800 the widespread effects. We do already see people popping up. I had a conversation with Walt Heyer,

00:10:54.360 who transitioned from a man to a woman or, you know, I'm using their terms, but we all know that

00:11:00.320 that's biologically impossible, who transitioned from a man to a woman and then transitioned back

00:11:05.520 to a man and who now speaks out about these things and who helps people who are, uh, who have

00:11:11.580 transitioned and are still unsatisfied because this is not the treatment for gender dysphoria,

00:11:18.020 affirming their dysphoria. And sometimes as Walt Heyer has said, it's not actually gender dysphoria at

00:11:24.200 all. They have other things that are going on in their lives that are causing this kind of

00:11:28.100 psychological confusion. And it's very sad. These people are suffering, whether,

00:11:33.300 whether they are latching on to transgenderism because of the social phenomenon, uh, that has

00:11:40.580 surrounded it, or because they genuinely have some kind of psychological thing going on in their mind.

00:11:47.300 They obviously deserve our compassion and they deserve our attention, but the least compassionate

00:11:52.700 thing that we could do is to just say, here's some hormones, here's some surgery. We don't even want

00:11:58.100 to really listen to what's going on in your life or what could psychologically be wrong with you or

00:12:03.520 the trauma that maybe you endured or the factors that could be influencing you here. We don't want

00:12:08.660 to hear any of that. Here's some hormones. Here's some, uh, genitalia, mutilating surgery. Off you go.

00:12:15.200 Now we can use you as a pawn for our, uh, political gains. I just don't think that's going to last very

00:12:21.660 long. There is no historical evidence whatsoever that societies, that any societies, not just Western

00:12:26.660 societies can exist without some kind of understanding of male versus female. There's just not, this is

00:12:38.560 not like a, a Westernized Americanized thing that we just created this, uh, gender dichotomy,

00:12:46.340 this binary of male and female. This has been existing in civilizations throughout history. And

00:12:53.460 this does not mean, again, I've said this so many times, this does not mean that all men have to fit

00:12:59.740 one definition of masculinity. Yes, there is a range that men can, some men are more sensitive. Some men

00:13:06.180 like romantic movies. Some men like to dance. Some men like to go to museums and watch ballet. And some

00:13:13.400 men like fashion even like that's fine. That is one form of masculinity. There are other men who just want

00:13:20.320 to hunt and just want to form wheel and four wheel and they want to play football. There are some men

00:13:25.600 who like to do both. And then on the female side, there are some women who like all the sports and

00:13:31.680 the mud and the whatever. And then there are women who you would call traditionally female who are

00:13:38.480 extremely, uh, you know, they're into the traditionally female stuff, whatever that is, whether it's fashion

00:13:45.740 or dance or design or all of that. So yes, there is some crossover that does not mean that a man who

00:13:54.380 likes fashion or whatever it is, something that's traditionally female is in a woman or is even what

00:14:00.580 they would call gender queer or is somewhere in between. It just doesn't make any sense. These people

00:14:06.620 who say that there's no bite binary are constantly trying to categorize people as something they

00:14:11.720 biologically are not. Um, now I will say, like I did a video for PragerU about the importance of

00:14:20.200 masculinity and yes, it is important for men to be masculine. Of course it is. But masculine,

00:14:27.500 especially as the Bible defines it, does not mean necessarily playing football and hunting. It can,

00:14:33.740 but that's not what masculine means. A masculine man, according to the Bible, is one who is,

00:14:39.580 yes, uh, a warrior in many senses. They are providing for their family. They are persevering,

00:14:46.100 uh, in the midst of trial. They are protecting. They are, like I said, providers. They are at the

00:14:52.900 end of the day, the ones responsible for their families, for their communities. Uh, they are the

00:14:59.400 need meter. They are the hunters. They are the gathers. They are the ones who do not shirk responsibility,

00:15:06.020 but who are on the front lines, not just in a military sense, but also front lines for their

00:15:11.640 families, front lines for their town, their communities, whatever it is. That is what it

00:15:16.040 means to be a biblical man. You take spiritual responsibility. You take physical responsibility.

00:15:21.300 You take financial responsibility. That is on your shoulders. Uh, so, and that, within that,

00:15:29.560 of course, there are, uh, there is freedom for, uh, your personality and your preferences and things

00:15:36.320 like that in that, you know, David obviously was a poet. He obviously was a songwriter. He was

00:15:41.720 obviously an instrumentalist. He was extremely emotional in his conversations with God, extremely

00:15:47.520 passionate in his conversations with God. And, uh, he was every bit a man. He was a mighty man of God.

00:15:55.360 He was God. He was after God's own heart. So, um, I think it's important for Christians,

00:16:02.720 obviously to hold to this dichotomy of male versus female and understanding that the societal

00:16:10.880 expectation, the secular societal expectations of what it means to be a male and female are always

00:16:15.740 going to be contradictory and muddled and kind of weird. Um, but we can always go to the word of God

00:16:21.220 to say, okay, God did create the male and female. Here's what a male needs to be responsible for.

00:16:26.960 Here's what a female needs to be responsible for. And here's what that looks like. And there is a lot

00:16:31.320 of, there's a lot of freedom, uh, within that, within that boundary, within that dichotomy,

00:16:38.200 which is really beautiful as men and women fulfill their very unique and God given roles. So all that to

00:16:46.460 say, whether you believe in God or not, we are still created male and female, and that is biologically

00:16:52.040 true. And there are moral implications for that. And I think because that is always true and always

00:16:58.960 going to be true, no matter what that literally, like we have to have that dichotomy in order for

00:17:04.320 humanity to exist. I do not think there's going to be a day where one day we just don't have gender.

00:17:09.980 I mean, can you imagine, I can't, I can't even imagine that how that is going to affect the

00:17:16.360 medical community. I read some article the other day, I was looking up some symptom for something

00:17:21.480 and, uh, it said, I won't even say the genitalia, but it said person with a blank. I'm like, you mean

00:17:29.180 a man, you mean a man. Okay. So that's already happening. I just don't think it's going to happen

00:17:35.960 for long. And I don't think that we as Christians should give into that. We shouldn't give into that

00:17:40.380 by saying, um, by, you know, conceding their language. We speak the truth in love. Of course,

00:17:47.320 we're gentle and we are compassionate with all of that, but, uh, we don't need to cede any ground

00:17:54.080 on that craziness because it's not true. And as Christians, we are to be lovers of truth. That is

00:17:58.700 not at all what I planned on talking about today. I did not mean to spend any amount of time on that.

00:18:04.620 That's not what this episode is about. But before we actually get into that, I do want to tell you

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00:20:26.560 2020. Okay. So really the point of this episode, what I planned for this episode to be about was

00:20:32.560 about reflecting, like I said, and looking back at some of the things that you have learned from

00:20:39.060 this year or the things that you have experienced, maybe the things that you were worried about or that

00:20:44.020 you feared would not turn out well. And either you were right or you were wrong about that, but

00:20:49.200 you're still here and how God guided you through those things. I think it's so important for us to

00:20:53.820 reflect. Obviously the majority of this year for me, I guess not the majority, half the year was spent

00:21:00.100 with me pregnant. The second half was spent with me being a mom. There's a lot of fear and anxiety

00:21:05.180 that came along for me with motherhood and pregnancy, but God has been extremely faithful in

00:21:13.100 allowing me or empowering me to be disciplined in taking the thoughts of fear and anxiety that I have

00:21:21.020 and surrendering them to him so he can replace them with perfect peace. God does give us the peace that

00:21:27.080 passes all understanding. He is a God of order, not a God of chaos. He is a God of clarity, not

00:21:32.040 a God of confusion. That doesn't mean that we can always discern his will, but it does mean that these

00:21:37.480 constant thoughts that sometimes I battle of the worst case scenario and what if, what if, what if

00:21:43.720 they're not from him. They're not from him because they are not productive. They don't push me to

00:21:48.620 glorify him, to trust him, to worship him. They push me into really self-worship because I am thinking

00:21:56.080 that I'm in control of everything and I'm picturing the future without the grace and provision of God.

00:22:01.340 And I can know for sure that that is not of him. So as I look back at all the fears that I have

00:22:06.940 surrounding birth and my birth, the birth of my child, besides having her, which was awesome, wasn't

00:22:12.520 great. It did in a C-section, so just totally was not what I expected at all. So there were a lot of

00:22:20.380 fears that actually came true in that, but I can look back and I can see how God was with me in that, how

00:22:26.380 there was a peace and assurance even when things weren't going my way. And then afterwards, those days

00:22:31.960 when you're postpartum and you're so hormonal and you're like, oh my gosh, I just love this child

00:22:36.580 so much. I would do anything for her and I'm so scared. What if someone tries to hurt her and how

00:22:42.740 can I protect her from all of these things? God leads you through that too. And in the moment,

00:22:47.440 it seems like these fears are just going to consume and overwhelm you and you're never going to be able

00:22:51.580 to leave your house. And yet God is so gentle and so relentless in teaching us trust and teaching us

00:22:59.020 self-denial. I actually posted a few weeks ago that one thing that I just love about marriage and

00:23:06.320 motherhood is that it shows us the necessity and how to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses.

00:23:14.880 Obviously we do that in following Christ, no matter what stage of life that we're in,

00:23:19.280 but marriage has a way of revealing selfishness about ourselves that we didn't notice when we

00:23:24.520 were single, that we didn't notice when we were living by ourselves and going about our days,

00:23:28.760 how we want to go about them, are following our own schedules without consideration of really

00:23:34.840 anyone else except maybe a cursory thought towards our roommate or something like that.

00:23:39.200 But when you get married, everything you do is with consideration of the other person or it should

00:23:45.780 be. And there are many times when you lay down your pride, you lay down your own desires, your own needs,

00:23:51.320 even for the sake of someone else, you sacrifice your own wants and your own priorities for the comfort

00:23:56.780 and the happiness and the service of someone else, because that's what love is. And Ephesians 5

00:24:01.480 says that husbands are supposed to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Christ died for the

00:24:06.460 church and wives are supposed to love their husbands or respect their husbands, serve their

00:24:11.600 husbands, submit to their husbands as to the Lord, which is a pretty amazing statement. But in a godly

00:24:18.900 marriage, which every marriage, a Christian marriage or not, is imperfect and goes through difficult

00:24:25.080 seasons because you are two people who sin. And so, but a godly marriage, when it is resting on the

00:24:33.420 bedrock of Christ, the husband is gladly, is gladly serving his wife, laying his life and his preferences

00:24:41.080 down for his wife and his family. And the woman is gladly and happily respecting and submitting to the

00:24:48.020 authority of her husband. I know that sounds so crazy in this day and age. Like I hear it come out of my

00:24:53.860 mouth and I can just also hear the background, the feminist shrieking behind me. But that is, that is

00:25:01.080 what we were called to in that dynamic, which is so counter-cultural and so against both of our natural

00:25:08.880 tendencies, the husband and the wife to submit to one another in their own unique ways. Because of how

00:25:15.680 unique and different that dynamic is from the rest of the world, it reveals our selfishness

00:25:21.800 because we are naturally prideful. We are naturally looking out for what is best for us, for our own

00:25:28.720 interests. No matter how much you might struggle with self-loathing, you're always looking out for

00:25:33.460 your own best interests. That's just what we wake up doing. That's what we were born doing. And God

00:25:38.780 tells us something radical by telling us to deny ourselves. And especially in the context of marriage,

00:25:43.640 if you are going to make this marriage work, it requires not self-love, but it requires self-sacrifice.

00:25:50.120 And you realize how hard that is because of how selfish you are. And then motherhood does the same

00:25:56.160 thing and it takes it to a whole other level. And you are poured out more than you ever thought

00:26:02.240 possible. You thought that you lay your preferences down and your priorities down and your self-interest

00:26:09.080 down when you got married and then you become a mom. And you're like, okay, so everything, everything in

00:26:14.320 my life is secondary to this child. And you gladly do it because you love them. You love them so much,

00:26:19.640 but that doesn't mean it's not difficult. It doesn't mean it's not tiring. As I'm doing this

00:26:23.120 podcast right now, I have a raging headache and I'm so tired and I've drank like probably three cups

00:26:29.780 of coffee and I am still, I just want to take a nap so badly. That doesn't mean that I'm not joyful

00:26:35.760 and so grateful for the privilege of being a mom. But of course it requires, it requires more than I

00:26:42.500 am able to give, which is why I'm so thankful for the strength of the Holy Spirit. As we say a lot on

00:26:48.240 this podcast, contrary to what the world tells us, you are not enough. You will never be enough. And

00:26:55.420 that's okay because God is, God made you not enough. If you were enough, you wouldn't need him.

00:27:02.460 If you were enough, you wouldn't need Jesus to die on the cross for you. You wouldn't need Jesus to

00:27:07.580 fight for you. But the entire Bible is a narrative of man's inadequacy and man's insufficiency, man's

00:27:13.840 not enoughness and God's glorious enoughness, insufficiency, inadequacy, and his willingness and

00:27:21.520 his eagerness to be our everything. And so marriage and motherhood, especially motherhood,

00:27:27.520 I would say have taught me to, um, be okay with my insufficiency and be okay with my not enoughness

00:27:35.840 to embrace it, realizing that God's power is perfected in my weakness. And so that's one thing

00:27:43.420 that I've learned this year and I'm thankful for it as hard as it can be. I'm so thankful for it. And

00:27:49.340 so I also encourage you to reflect back on this year. What has God taught you? What are the things

00:27:56.100 that you were scared of? What are the things that you worried about that maybe turned out to be

00:28:00.100 absolutely nothing? And that can serve as a lesson in this year to come that are going to be filled

00:28:04.500 with worries. No doubt. Jesus says that tomorrow is sufficient for its own trouble. Just worry about

00:28:09.260 today. Um, what can you, what can you look at in your own life where, wow, that thing that you thought

00:28:15.860 was going to be such a big deal ended up not being a big deal at all. It actually ended up turning

00:28:21.040 into nothing and you allowed this anxiety to snowball in your mind and it turned out to be

00:28:25.740 not important or something that did happen that was even worse than you expected or bigger than

00:28:31.520 you expected. And you thought that you were never going to be able to recover, never be able to get

00:28:36.100 out of it. And yet God gave you a way as the Bible says to stand up under it. That has to do with

00:28:40.840 temptation in that particular verse, but, um, maybe it was a temptation or God just strengthened you

00:28:47.120 and bolstered you in the midst of a trial or a tribulation or whatever, whatever it was. Um,

00:28:55.780 what are those things that happened this year that you can praise God for? And there are always

00:29:00.820 things that we can praise God for because he sent his son to die for us. And even if nothing else in

00:29:07.480 our life seems to be going right, that is absolutely sufficient for us to praise him for. I also want us

00:29:13.820 to consider, like, I've, I've been thinking about things that I've kind of changed my mind on over

00:29:19.020 the past year in the past couple of years, as I have, um, read my Bible more, as I've studied more,

00:29:25.500 as I've listened to more voices. I, there are a lot of things that I have learned theologically over

00:29:32.160 the past few years of my life that I just didn't know or didn't understand. And it's made me realize

00:29:37.400 how I need to do a much, much better job of giving people grace for the theological views that maybe

00:29:45.900 I disagree with, or the moral or whatever views that they have right now that I disagree with,

00:29:51.580 because I don't know where they are in their life. Like, I don't know what point of sanctification,

00:29:57.980 um, that they are in right now. I, I don't know. I, and so I think back to things that I once

00:30:06.320 believed, like, I think I've said this on the podcast before that I used to say, well, God can't

00:30:10.760 drive a parked car. So you have to be moving in order for God to use you. Anytime you start a phrase

00:30:16.720 with God can't, you need to check yourself because God obviously can do anything. And that kind of

00:30:23.140 falls in line with the unbiblical belief that God only helps those who help themselves. And, uh,

00:30:28.560 we know that's not true. God helps those who can't help themselves and who won't help themselves,

00:30:32.820 but who, as I said, rely on his sufficiency and his strength. Um, so I believe things like that.

00:30:39.780 I used to believe at one point that it was that I supported abortion in not supported,

00:30:46.680 but I thought abortion was okay. And instances of rape and incest. I believe that a few years ago.

00:30:52.480 Why? Because I hadn't thought about it. And so before I judge someone for believing that now,

00:30:58.040 maybe I need to consider that they are where I was a few years ago, that maybe they hadn't thought

00:31:03.920 about it yet, that they really are pro-life, but they just haven't thought all the way through that.

00:31:08.900 I want to do a better job of giving people the benefit of the doubt when we disagree,

00:31:13.180 or when it maybe seems like their beliefs are immature, rather than jumping the gun and thinking,

00:31:18.040 well, they're just wrong because they don't read their Bible or they don't, you know, whatever it is,

00:31:22.540 whatever judgmental thought might pop into our prideful minds. Um, because I can think back to

00:31:28.700 the things that I've believed while I've been a Christian, while I've been a conservative that are

00:31:32.940 unbiblical, that are, uh, illogical, that are immoral in a lot of ways. And, uh, I think that we can

00:31:43.880 all do a better job of giving each other grace in that. And there are times I'm sure, well, I know

00:31:50.600 throughout this year where I've been too harsh, where I've been too judgmental. Um, there are

00:31:56.200 probably times when I've been the opposite end of that, maybe where I haven't cared about truth

00:32:00.200 enough, where I haven't been, um, direct enough about things. And my desire is always to pursue

00:32:07.360 truth. And there are many times that I don't do that or don't do that correctly. But I was just

00:32:12.760 thinking the other day about some things that I used to believe that I just don't believe anymore.

00:32:19.980 Like there's just been a lot of things that I've dug into this year, theologically about whether

00:32:24.920 it's predestination or spiritual gifts or things that I've really just learned recently. And I've

00:32:32.180 only pretty recently, like in the past few years, been able to use the Bible to, uh, really strongly

00:32:39.940 support my political views. Not that I use the Bible in order to do that, but allow the Bible to

00:32:47.120 inform my political views and to say, okay, I believe this. Is it in line with scripture? And

00:32:52.100 to be able to really work through that, that's been a pretty recent in the past few years, at least

00:32:57.380 development in my life. Whereas before I probably, you know, I held spiritual beliefs, I held, uh,

00:33:03.380 some political beliefs, but I didn't really know how to, to link those. And that's part of why I started

00:33:08.180 this podcast. So we could be doing those things together. Cause I think it's so important for a

00:33:12.860 cohesive worldview, but when we meet people that aren't there yet, that maybe have some inherently

00:33:19.000 contradictory views, um, may we, may I, may I be more gracious. Now that does not mean that I don't

00:33:26.680 speak truth because obviously I'm very direct on this podcast that I don't believe that progressivism

00:33:31.420 aligns with, aligns with biblical Christianity. And I don't at all because progressivism is a religion

00:33:36.520 in and of itself and a religion that contradicts biblical Christianity. Uh, so I'm not afraid to

00:33:42.780 say that and I'm not going to stop saying that, but that doesn't mean that I should, um, shouldn't

00:33:48.860 give those people grace and understand that I don't know where they are in sanctification and in

00:33:54.060 gaining wisdom. And thankfully, thankfully God does. Thankfully he judges the heart and, um,

00:34:01.340 we can trust him to be just. So that was just my encouragement to you. I know that this episode was a

00:34:05.880 little bit all over the place. Uh, but I appreciate you guys listening. Thank you so much that we are

00:34:11.920 over 200 episodes now. Thank you so much for listening to relatable in 2020 or in 2019. You

00:34:17.920 will be listening in 2020. I'm just directing you to listen in 2020. Uh, but thank you so much for

00:34:24.620 everything, for listening, for messaging, for emailing, for being a part of this, um, for being a part of

00:34:30.240 this podcast. I am so thankful for it. And I will see you back next year. Ha ha ha.

00:34:35.880 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 30, 2019

Ep 202 ｜ Hello, 2020!

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