Ep 422 ｜ Should Christians Follow Old Testament Law？ ｜ Q&A
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.90887
Summary
In this episode, I answer a question from a listener about what is my must have as a mom and which products I think are worth the splurge. I also talk about what I think is worth the price of admission to the hospital.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we've got another Q&A episode. We've got some fun
00:00:14.040
questions today that I'm excited to get through. The first question that I was asked, what
00:00:19.820
is my must have as a mom? That's a really, that's a really good question. And there are
00:00:26.100
a lot of things that I could say. All right. I'll, I'll just pretend like I'm only talking
00:00:31.560
to women. I know that there are some men who listen to it and watch the show, but I'm a
00:00:36.320
woman. Most, the vast majority of my audience is a woman. So I think that I can say these
00:00:41.080
things and be comfortable. So I think that the Spectra pump is the best pump that's out
00:00:47.580
there. Like if you're looking for a pump before you, before you give birth, if you're a first
00:00:53.040
time mom, you need to know that your insurance is probably going to cover it. You got to
00:00:56.860
call your insurance. You got to go through that whole process. They'll cover it or at
00:01:00.300
least most of it. You order your pump and all that good stuff. I think you have to have
00:01:03.920
like a note from your doctor or your midwife or something like that. But I think that you
00:01:07.960
go for, and it might be a little bit more money, the Spectra pump. People like the Medela.
00:01:13.020
I think that the Spectra is the most powerful. It's the best. However, it's kind of difficult
00:01:17.980
if you're traveling. I've tried the Willow before. It just didn't really, it didn't work
00:01:23.040
for me. I don't think it was worth all of the money that I spent on it. Sorry, Willow.
00:01:27.220
I'm sure you don't listen to my podcast, but if you do, I just had a hard time with it.
00:01:30.660
So if you're wondering if you should get like the Willow or the Evie or whatever it's called,
00:01:35.160
my personal experience wasn't great with those things, but that doesn't mean that that's the
00:01:39.520
experience of everyone. Spectra pump is the way to go if you are looking for pumps.
00:01:44.260
Here's another one that I think is worth the splurge. Now it's not worth the splurge if you
00:01:49.220
cannot swing it. Like if your budget is just not there, or if you can't get it as a gift,
00:01:54.420
maybe you can get people to chip in for this. If you can't, it's totally fine. There are other
00:01:58.460
awesome products like this out there, but I really like the Up A Baby stroller. Like I think that you
00:02:04.840
get a lot of bang for your buck and it has all of just like the little tools that come with it are so
00:02:11.740
helpful, especially if you get like the full Vista. You can get like the bassinet that comes
00:02:17.920
with it. The car seat just automatically clicks into it. So that's really easy if you're just
00:02:22.440
transferring in and out of your car. The car seat also that comes with this whole Vista package
00:02:27.700
is extremely safe. It's good. It's comfortable. Like we really liked the car seat. And then it also
00:02:38.400
comes with like the toddler, I think it's called like the rumble seat or something that it just
00:02:43.380
kind of sits straight up. I think an infant can also sit in it too if you get one of those pillows
00:02:47.600
that you put behind their head. But it just comes with all of these things. And then if you have
00:02:51.400
another child, you can actually just get like these adapters that allow you to put two kinds of seats
00:02:58.380
in it. So you could put your toddler up front in the little just regular toddler seat. You could put
00:03:03.920
your baby either in the bassinet or in the car seat up on top. And it just has everything that you could
00:03:09.800
possibly need. And the basket underneath the Vista is super, super, super helpful. When we've been
00:03:18.040
traveling and we've had to take the stroller with us, having that huge basket underneath to put suitcases
00:03:25.260
and put bags in has been really, really helpful. And it's really easy to tear down or to not, you know,
00:03:32.220
not to tear down, but to take down and then to put back up. And so if you're traveling or if you
00:03:36.500
needed to put it in the back of your car, it's really easy to put together. It's light. This is
00:03:40.220
not a sponsored ad, by the way. I'm just telling you what has worked for us. So the Spectra is number
00:03:46.560
one. The Up-A-Baby is number two. And then also, again, not sponsored, but I really like this company
00:03:53.340
and that is Pink Stork. So Pink Stork, they make all different kinds of stuff, but I've really liked
00:03:59.680
their prenatal vitamins. I liked their postnatal vitamins a lot, their postpartum kind of recovery
00:04:06.440
vitamins. I'm not sure if this is why, but a lot of women, after they have their baby, they go through
00:04:12.080
postpartum hair loss. And I did not go through postpartum hair loss. And I'm wondering if it's
00:04:17.440
because of these awesome vitamins that I took. And some prenatal vitamins make your stomach hurt.
00:04:22.580
And I've taken, oh my gosh, I remember I ran out of my typical Pink Stork prenatal vitamins one day,
00:04:28.140
and then I, um, and then I, I just went out to, you know, the health food store or something and
00:04:34.500
got some like organic vegetable, uh, prenatal vitamins. I was immediately sick. I've never had
00:04:41.380
any problem like that when it comes to, um, these, uh, Pink Stork prenatal vitamins, postnatal vitamins,
00:04:47.840
really like them. They also have like labor prep tea. They have morning sickness tea,
00:04:53.140
morning sickness tap, like, um, lozenges that you can use like in the first trimester,
00:04:57.720
which I did. And I just really liked them. Like it's, uh, they are obviously an American
00:05:02.840
owned company. Um, they're a women owned company. She's also a Christian, the girl who owns it. So
00:05:08.760
I really liked that. Also, if you're into sleep training, another thing that I recommend, um,
00:05:14.980
you know, I've kind of taken from a lot of different sleep programs, but taking care of
00:05:19.920
taking care of babies, her name is Kara. Um, you might remember, she was the subject of a cancel
00:05:26.200
campaign because it was found out that she and her husband had voted for Donald Trump and donated
00:05:30.920
like maybe a thousand dollars over the course of three years, uh, to the Trump campaign.
00:05:36.420
The whole baby world on the internet just unleashed their anger and their rage at her. All of these
00:05:42.480
people who claimed to have one time be her friends through under the, through her under the bus. We of
00:05:47.600
course supported her on this show. And I know for a fact that she appreciated that all of you who ended
00:05:52.420
up reaching out to her and just giving her support and following her. She, I know that she appreciated
00:05:58.360
so much, but she's great. Like she is so kind. I think she's so balanced in the resources that she
00:06:04.360
offers for her sleep training. I mean, people swear by it for us by six months, we had a sleeper 12
00:06:11.760
hours through the night that hasn't stopped. And I am so very thankful for that, that she is a great
00:06:18.160
sleeper at night and that we have been able to do that through a lot of it has been because of
00:06:24.460
Cara's program. So taking care of babies, I would recommend to you. Some people are against sleep
00:06:29.380
training and I know there are different opinions on that. And I'm not trying to have any kind of
00:06:33.180
argument about that. People do what works best for you. And you know, I, I think that you have to do
00:06:39.140
what is best for your baby and what is healthiest for you guys. And so that's just my personal
00:06:45.740
recommendation. So I hope that that was, I hope that that was helpful for you as a mom, especially
00:06:50.340
if you're a first time mom, there are a lot of people out there who have a lot more experience
00:06:54.340
with motherhood than I do. So I don't pretend to be an expert in anything that I'm not, but I'll just
00:06:58.820
give you some encouragement that you can do it. You can do it. All right. Next question is about study
00:07:04.880
Bibles. So someone asked me what I think about study Bibles in general, which study Bibles I like.
00:07:10.440
I really liked the ESV study Bible. That's the first ESV Bible that I had the first, probably the
00:07:17.480
first real study Bible that I had too. I think I probably grew up reading the NIV. A lot of us that
00:07:23.820
went to Christian school, we were given these like NIV adventures, adventure Bibles, which I think are
00:07:31.040
great for youth. The NIV is very readable and the 1980s version of the NIV, I would say is better than,
00:07:37.560
I think it's the 2011 version of the NIV. But as far as translations go, I like the ESV. People ask
00:07:45.600
me about this all the time. NIV as a translation is thought for thought from the original Greek and
00:07:51.620
Hebrew. And so they take what the original language says, and then they kind of paraphrase it into a
00:07:58.340
thought that is more readable. Whereas the ESV, the NASB, the KJV is word for word. And so rather than
00:08:06.780
kind of paraphrasing and saying, okay, this is the thought that the original language is trying to
00:08:11.580
bring across, the ESV and other versions say, no, we're going to translate it word for word.
00:08:20.680
And so of course, something like the message is even more in the direction of thought for thought.
00:08:25.620
It takes like the thought of an entire passage or the entire few verses and summarizes and says,
00:08:33.800
this is what this is trying to say. I even think that the message can be useful for some people in
00:08:39.520
some ways, but I do not recommend it as the primary version of the Bible that you read from,
00:08:44.180
because you're going to be missing a lot that existed in the original text that I think is
00:08:49.880
important for us to be able to read as far as interpretation and application goes. So I'm an
00:08:55.420
ESV girl. I like NASB. I like NKJV. We'll do an entire episode. And by the time this is coming out,
00:09:04.720
I'm actually recording this in March. This will come out later. So I don't know if the KJV only
00:09:09.060
episode has already come out by the time that this is coming out. It might be out. It might be coming
00:09:14.280
out in the future. Anyway, we'll talk, we'll have already, or we will talk about KJV only-ism and why
00:09:21.120
I do not think that's a legitimate movement. But the KJV translation is good. The ESV translation
00:09:28.120
is very good. I like the ESV. I love the ESV study Bible. I currently use the John MacArthur study
00:09:34.840
Bible. The reason why it's a little bit difficult for me to read the John MacArthur study Bible as
00:09:40.460
much as I love and appreciate John MacArthur is because we have a difference in opinion when it
00:09:45.320
comes to eschatology. He is pre-trib, and so he believes that Christians are going to be raptured
00:09:52.860
before the tribulation. I do not believe that. And I've talked about that on this podcast before. I
00:09:58.820
have an episode titled End Times. And I also have two episodes with Jeff Durbin about post-millennialism
00:10:06.120
versus pre-millennialism, which is what I am and the scriptural foundations for why we believe what
00:10:13.320
we believe. But John MacArthur's eschatology definitely is in his commentary. And that's
00:10:20.600
the thing about study Bibles that I want to say is that the commentary can be very good. I think it
00:10:24.740
can be very helpful, but it's written by a fallible human being, which means that you might disagree
00:10:29.020
with it, which means there may be more than one interpretation of it. Now, that does not negate
00:10:37.800
the absolute truth and the singular meaning of a particular passage, but as fallible human beings
00:10:44.500
who don't know everything and who do have different opinions, you might have two commentaries from two
00:10:50.160
very solid teachers that say two different things. And we have to use our own discernment and rely on
00:10:55.360
the Holy Spirit to reveal to us as much truth as we possibly can. Not all of our questions will be
00:10:59.940
answered, but just understand that commentary itself is not infallible. It's not inerrant,
00:11:06.180
and it can't be 100% relied on. Any kind of human word or human wisdom is always subject
00:11:13.540
to disagreement, whereas God's word is inerrant. Whether or not we know the perfect meaning of it,
00:11:21.620
it does have a perfect and absolute and singular meaning. And so I do encourage you to get a study
00:11:28.440
Bible. It adds a lot of richness, I think, to our study and our understanding of Scripture.
00:11:32.480
But just understand that the commentary, even if it comes from people who are brilliant and who know
00:11:39.460
so much about the Bible, which it almost always does, it's not infallible, and it has to be weighed
00:11:44.220
against the word of God. All right, next question. If I were to interview one U.S. president, who would
00:11:54.460
it be? I think I would want to interview one of the first presidents that we had, probably one of the
00:12:02.140
founding presidents, or maybe Abraham Lincoln. I'd want to go back to the beginning and to try to
00:12:08.500
explain everything that's going on and just try to hear, like, okay, like, what was your vision here?
00:12:14.620
And hear kind of what their fears were about America that they didn't record, that we can't
00:12:20.140
already read, what their thoughts about the trajectory of a republic could possibly be.
00:12:27.660
It'd be really interesting to go that far back, or even maybe if it's just back a century. I think I
00:12:34.240
would like to get some predictions from some older presidents on where America is going and see how
00:12:40.360
accurate they are, and just get some wisdom that we've forgotten about liberty, that we've forgotten
00:12:46.540
about the government and how the government is supposed to work and serve people. I think that
00:12:50.860
that would probably be fascinating. Honestly, though, it would be really interesting to interview Barack
00:12:57.360
Obama. If I could just, like, really grill him on some things, or, like, really question some things
00:13:04.240
that he chose to do and his stances on things, that would be really fun, because I think a lot
00:13:09.400
changed in America under Barack Obama. It'd obviously be interesting to interview Donald Trump.
00:13:16.540
I would love to interview Donald Trump. I would have loved to before the election, but I also think
00:13:22.660
it would be very difficult, because I personally think that he's hard to understand when it comes
00:13:27.380
to interviews, that he doesn't just, like, answer things directly, and I feel like I'd be frustrated
00:13:33.400
by what I am unable to get out of him as far as an answer to a specific question. And so I think he
00:13:40.220
would be very entertaining to interview, but also he gets ruffled very easily when you kind of push
00:13:46.900
back against him, and I think I would be kind of worried about that. I know I didn't say Ronald
00:13:51.960
Reagan as much as I love Ronald Reagan. I just feel like I kind of, well, there'd be questions I wanted
00:13:57.180
to ask Ronald Reagan. Like, you know you were wrong about China, right? You know you were wrong that if we
00:14:02.380
exported capitalism, they would then import, or that we could export capitalism and that they would
00:14:10.560
take on freedom and that they would take on liberty and individualism. That just didn't happen. They took
00:14:17.220
the spoils of capitalism and kept communism and totalitarianism, and I certainly think that
00:14:22.800
Republican presidents are just as much to blame as Democratic presidents when it comes to that, even
00:14:27.120
my beloved Ronald Reagan. So I think that's my answer to that. Lots of people that I would want
00:14:34.200
to talk to. Advice for a young podcaster. A young podcaster. Let's see. So I started a podcast when I
00:14:45.080
had already been in this industry for a little bit. So I didn't start a podcast from scratch, and that
00:14:51.320
doesn't mean that you can't do that. I think it's much harder to do that. If you don't have any sort of
00:14:55.660
following on social media, it is very, very difficult to build an audience. It's difficult
00:15:02.700
to build a listening audience, because if you have not proven yet that people want to follow you on
00:15:11.520
social media, it's hard to convince people that they want to take even more time and take even more
00:15:17.200
efforts to listen to you. Because it's not very much effort at all to follow someone on Instagram,
00:15:22.800
but it's a lot of effort and a lot of time to listen to someone's podcast. People need to know
00:15:30.020
that your thoughts are valuable, which I totally believe your thoughts are valuable, but you kind
00:15:33.940
of have to prove it in a way that is easily consumable for people before you can really
00:15:39.460
convince them, I think, for the most part, to listen to you on a podcast. That's not always true.
00:15:44.840
It depends on your demographics. It depends on the people that listen to you, the people that follow
00:15:49.780
you, the subjects that you're talking about. And so not everyone has to have a social media following
00:15:53.920
before they start a podcast, but I think it's helpful. Like I had been writing, I had been
00:15:59.640
posting videos, I had been posting on social media, I had been a part of the blaze, I had been on Fox
00:16:05.100
News for a couple years before I started my podcast. And so when I started a podcast, it was just kind of
00:16:11.440
like a natural step into the next realm of my career. I already had that built in audience that I had been
00:16:18.340
working on from scratch, by the way, from 2015 to 2017. And I did start from scratch by starting
00:16:26.440
a Facebook page. I'm not even sure if that's necessarily possible today. I think that the
00:16:31.360
environment, that the climate has already changed a lot when it comes to like how influencers gain
00:16:39.960
influence. But I just started by posting things, by posting videos, and they eventually took off.
00:16:45.940
Um, and then I, uh, was then later hired by the blaze in a very small way and actually a behind
00:16:52.740
the scenes way, like a social media manager. Um, and then I just kind of kept on working up and
00:17:00.280
getting more opportunities and getting in front of the camera more. And then Fox News asked me to
00:17:05.460
come on as a guest and that kind of led to more things. And this whole, actually how I started
00:17:09.140
before the Facebook page was I was speaking to organizations and to college students for free about the
00:17:15.180
importance of voting in the 2015 primaries in the 2016 election. Um, so I started from nothing. I
00:17:21.220
started by not getting paid. I started by asking for opportunities, reaching out to people as a way
00:17:28.960
to get in front of people in a way to talk about the things that I cared about. And I was working full
00:17:34.800
time while doing that. I was, I had a full time job while I was reaching out to sororities and asking
00:17:40.380
if I could speak to their chapter about the importance of voting. And I was getting nothing
00:17:44.100
out of it except for exposure and except for experience and except for doing something that
00:17:48.780
gave me a lot of energy. And so I kept on doing that. And then, um, you know, by the grace of God
00:17:54.140
was able to continue in my career and then do it full time starting in 2017 and then in 2018 starting
00:18:00.800
the podcast. And so it had actually been about three years before I started the podcast of doing what I
00:18:06.200
had been doing. Um, and then it's been, I guess, three years now. Yeah. So it's been six years total
00:18:13.740
of doing this and three years this month of doing the podcast. And so it takes a long, it takes a long
00:18:20.340
time. That's, I mean, that's a relatively quick amount of time, but six years to doing what I'm doing
00:18:27.440
now, three years to actually starting the podcast, but it's taken six years to grow to what I'm doing
00:18:33.020
now. And I haven't been nearly as aggressive or ambitious as a lot of people in this industry
00:18:38.100
are because I have other priorities in my life. There are other things that are more important to
00:18:42.800
me. Um, and this is not my entire life. My career is not my entire focus or even most of my focus,
00:18:50.340
my family is. And so, um, it depends on how much time also you're willing to put into it. So anyway,
00:18:56.520
advice, I would say, um, I would say, try to build an audience, like build a rapport, start asking,
00:19:04.960
um, even small publications. If you can write for them, if you can write opinion pieces, um,
00:19:11.600
start a blog, just get your voice out there. Uh, start sharing things. Um, it's probably,
00:19:18.500
you're probably not going to get any big names to get on your podcast. If that's what you're
00:19:23.400
hoping, not right away. Uh, but over time you will like, just keep on putting your thoughts
00:19:28.960
out there, be a good writer, be a good communicator, start a blog, start submitting op-eds,
00:19:36.520
start having some kind of social media presence. If you want to do those things. And then in a little
00:19:42.740
while, start your podcast, or if you want to start your podcast now you can, but it's probably,
00:19:47.740
if that's the only thing you do, it's going to be very difficult to build an audience. You have to
00:19:51.760
have multiple avenues, um, to build that audience. And it just depends on how much time you want to
00:19:56.640
put into it and then ask yourself. Um, and this is still something that I don't do perfectly that I,
00:20:02.580
that we're constantly trying to hone, but ask yourself, um, what you are contributing to the
00:20:11.760
dialogue that other people aren't like, what is your special insight that you are giving that people
00:20:18.420
want to hear that you don't see a bunch of other people doing? Like we were, this podcast was one
00:20:23.940
of the first female conservative Christian podcasts, one of, one of the first. And now in the past few
00:20:30.820
years, there have been quite a few that have cropped up, but there weren't before, which is awesome.
00:20:36.200
Like, I'm so excited about that, that there are more conservative Christian women now out there who
00:20:41.280
have a podcast, but we were one of the first three years ago. We're one of the only female
00:20:46.840
podcasts who talks about the things that we do, who talks about things like critical theory,
00:20:51.540
like critical race theory, like reformed Christianity. Like there just aren't very many
00:20:56.920
women who talk about the kinds of theological and political and cultural things that we do
00:21:03.320
on this podcast. Um, and who find kind of the niche that we have found in young Christian,
00:21:12.180
or I would just say young as relative, but Christian women and moms who are trying to
00:21:18.960
navigate the craziness of culture and parenthood and politics from a conservative and Christian
00:21:25.160
perspective. Um, that is what this podcast is and it's different than any other podcast or most
00:21:32.340
podcasts in that way. Um, and so ask yourself what you can bring to the table that other people
00:21:38.560
aren't. Don't try to reiterate or regurgitate other people's, um, ideas or other people's
00:21:44.540
formats, like create your own, create something different, create something good, create something
00:21:50.000
of value. It doesn't have to be so unique that no one else has done it. Obviously there are other
00:21:54.640
people who do things like relatable and that's fine, but what can you bring to the table that, um,
00:22:00.440
you don't see a lot of other people doing and how can you do it as genuinely as, um, and as effectively
00:22:09.220
as possible? All right. Another question that I got is about biblical counseling. Is biblical
00:22:15.300
counseling biblical? Is therapy biblical? Is it something that Christians, uh, should, uh, should
00:22:21.600
engage in? Should we care about what's the difference between biblical counseling and secular counseling? So
00:22:25.740
I think counseling can be extremely beneficial for the Christian. I don't think that it
00:22:30.340
should be idolized. I do think that we live in a time of the self-love and self-care movement
00:22:34.500
that idolizes therapy, that like everyone has to go to therapy in order to be a healthy person. I don't
00:22:40.280
think that's true. I do not think that everyone has to go to therapy to be a healthy person. I don't
00:22:44.440
think that every single person has mental health issues. I don't think every single person has dealt
00:22:48.480
with trauma, but a lot of people have, and a lot of people do have those issues. I did. And so in college,
00:22:54.380
or right after college, I saw a counselor, a biblical counselor, and she was wonderful. And she helped me,
00:22:59.520
um, through the power of the Holy Spirit, overcome an eating disorder and all kinds of other bad
00:23:04.180
things and habits that were going on in my life. I write about this, um, in my book. And, uh, and so
00:23:11.720
yes, I absolutely think that biblical counseling can be important. Now that's different than just a
00:23:17.060
Christian counselor. You want someone who is a licensed biblical counselor because a Christian
00:23:21.740
counselor can kind of, um, it's kind of like organic versus natural. Like anyone can say that they're
00:23:26.900
natural, but in order to truly be organic, you have to be certified organic. Well, anyone can say
00:23:32.020
that they are a Christian, that they were coming from a Christian worldview, but they could be totally
00:23:37.720
opposite from what you believe. They could believe that the Bible is mostly hogwash, except for a few
00:23:43.640
words that they tend to like, and they're not going to lead you in the right direction. You want a
00:23:47.360
biblical counselor that is using scripture as their guide to help you break strongholds, to help you
00:23:52.980
break bad habits, to help you work through sin, to help you work through relationships, whatever it
00:23:58.280
is. Now, I don't think that therapy is necessary for everyone. And I don't think we need to be
00:24:03.580
convinced that it's necessary for everyone. I think the church in a, in a big way has dropped the ball
00:24:09.420
when it comes to providing opportunities and ways to cultivate intimate friendships and mentorship
00:24:15.680
between believers in the church. Um, I think that we have replaced, um, other kinds of relationships
00:24:23.800
and the importance of other kinds of relationships like friendship and mentorship with marriage, which
00:24:28.740
of course I love marriage. And I think that it's so important if, if God calls you to be married, to
00:24:33.940
get married and to have kids and all of those wonderful things, but God doesn't call everyone to be
00:24:38.560
married. And we can't regard people who are single in the church as missing out or just someone that we put
00:24:43.320
off on the margins or stick in a waiting room and hope that they get married one day so they can
00:24:48.820
finally reach full happiness and really start their lives. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible
00:24:53.660
says that it is a gift to be single, that it's better to be single than to be married, because then you
00:24:57.720
can devote all of your time and all of your efforts to the Lord. They don't have to be split between your
00:25:03.480
family and God and ministry. Um, so if that's the case, then we need to be treating single people as
00:25:11.020
that. We need to be providing single people in the church. And I would say even married people
00:25:16.500
in the church with ample opportunity to cultivate, um, very deep and profound and fulfilling platonic
00:25:23.920
friendships and those kinds of relationships outside of marriage and mentorship. Because I think a lot of
00:25:30.140
what our culture, our highly, highly individualized culture is looking for today is actually community.
00:25:36.040
Like, I think we're actually looking for fellow Christians to confess our sins to, and we're
00:25:40.380
actually looking for advice. We're actually looking for mentorship, which has historically,
00:25:44.800
traditionally been found just for free in fellow believers inside the church. And now we actually
00:25:50.120
feel like we have to pay $500 an hour to get it. Again, I'm not saying that you might not need
00:25:56.300
counseling. I think that I did need counseling and I might need counseling to get in the future.
00:26:00.800
I know a lot of wonderful people who have needed counseling. I know a lot of wonderful
00:26:04.460
biblical counselors. I am so thankful for biblical counseling. It's different than just getting
00:26:08.440
advice from a friend. You might absolutely need that. But I also wonder, I also wonder if the kind
00:26:16.240
of psychotherapy that has become so pervasive, both in and outside of the church, could at least be
00:26:23.180
supplemented by or reduced by really good and faithful and intimate and profound friendships and
00:26:31.700
mentorship within the church. I think that's something that the church really needs to focus
00:26:35.840
on and think about and get better at. And I don't know all the answers to the how of that, but I do
00:26:42.040
feel, and if you're single, you might feel this too, like single people are just put in this waiting
00:26:46.800
room and that in the hopes that they'll meet someone else who is waiting too, and that they'll get
00:26:52.620
married and that like life doesn't start until you get married or you have kids. But that's not true.
00:26:58.180
Our goal in life is not to get married and have kids. Those are wonderful things, and I think
00:27:02.660
they're gifts of God, and I'm so thankful for them myself. But your goal in life is to glorify God.
00:27:09.620
And if that's single, if that's being single, praise God. If that's being married, praise God. If
00:27:14.000
that's having kids, praise God for that. But He might be calling you to be single. And if that's true,
00:27:20.060
like I said, the church needs to regard that as the gift that it is, not put single people off in a
00:27:24.840
waiting room, but use them as the gifts that they are to the body of Christ and to help them cultivate
00:27:31.740
their relationships, the friendships that we all need in addition to or even instead of marriage.
00:27:38.920
All right. Last question that I have is ceremonial law versus moral law. So you may have seen there's
00:27:50.620
like a heap—well, I don't know. What is it even called? Is it? No, I don't remember what it's called.
00:27:56.100
But there is a movement that's going on within evangelicalism, I would say, is mostly where it
00:28:02.400
presides, where Christians are saying that you now have to abide by Jewish ceremonial law in order to
00:28:15.720
really be clean because Jesus did. And that's what we're called to do. We are also called to keep
00:28:20.380
the law of the Old Testament. That is not true. So there is a difference between ceremonial law,
00:28:29.180
which Christians are not expected to keep, and the moral law, which Christians are expected to keep.
00:28:39.220
And so the moral law, the Ten Commandments, for example, are the moral law. Like we believe in
00:28:44.600
God's law to not create idols, to honor our father and mother, to love the Lord our God with all of
00:28:51.040
our heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love our neighbor as ourself, to not covet, to not lie,
00:28:56.280
to not murder. All of these moral laws are fulfilled in Christ. He actually doubles down on all of these
00:29:03.640
moral laws in the New Testament. He says, it's not enough that you don't kill someone. You also are not
00:29:09.880
supposed to hate someone in your heart. That is akin to murder. He said, it's not enough that you
00:29:15.780
don't lash out at your brother. It's not enough that you don't manifest these sins. Also, if these
00:29:21.660
sins start in your heart, you've already committed the sin. Like it's not enough that you don't,
00:29:26.000
that you don't commit adultery. You actually, if you are lusting after a woman in your mind and in
00:29:31.740
your heart, you've already committed adultery. So Jesus brings those moral laws into focus and he
00:29:38.320
doesn't get rid of them. He says, he reemphasizes them and he doubles down on them and he brings them
00:29:44.380
to the heart of the matter. And he says, that's where sin starts. And that's where repentance
00:29:50.040
has to start too. Of course, Pharisees were whitewashed tombs. They look really good on the
00:29:55.380
outside. They've got all the piety in the world. And yet on the inside, they were rotten. They were full
00:30:01.240
of corpses. And so that's what Jesus is calling out. He emphasizes the importance of us keeping the moral
00:30:06.380
law, not just in a legalistic external way, but also internally by regeneration of the Holy Spirit.
00:30:13.360
As far as ceremonial law goes, the book of Galatians speaks to this, that if you are trying to keep
00:30:19.000
one law, then you've got to keep them all. You're putting yourself back under the authority of the
00:30:23.960
law, which means you are subjecting yourself to the punishment of the law. And so if you are trying to
00:30:28.700
put the burden on someone or on yourself of keeping the law in order to maintain your holiness,
00:30:33.080
then you've got to keep the entire law. And it is your perfect maintenance of that keeping with the law
00:30:41.180
that you are trusting will make you holy before God. The problem is, is that that's impossible. That's
00:30:48.200
why in the Old Testament, they had to offer sacrifices. And that's why in the New Testament, Jesus serves as
00:30:54.560
our perfect sacrifice. And so because Jesus serves as our perfect sacrifice, he serves as that
00:31:03.060
propitiation that the sacrifices in the Old Testament did. And so he is our cleansing. Like we don't have
00:31:09.840
to follow the ceremonial laws that the Jewish people did to be cleansed or to be pure, because we have
00:31:15.400
Jesus who became our purity. He became our ceremonial covering. Like he became that intercessor on our
00:31:23.260
behalf. He became our blood sacrifice. And unlike other, the blood sacrifices, the animal sacrifices
00:31:29.480
in the Old Testament, Jesus's blood sacrifice lasts forever and ever. And so while there was temporary
00:31:35.980
righteousness after a sacrifice, as long as they kept the law in the Old Testament, we have eternal
00:31:41.840
righteousness that's given to us by the sacrifice of Christ that we get to cling to forever and ever.
00:31:47.380
It's done. It is finished, Jesus said. And so we do not have to abide by ceremonial law to be clean
00:31:55.640
as Christians, because Jesus has already made us clean. But because of his sacrifice and because we
00:32:04.020
follow him and because we love him, we do keep those moral laws that Jesus, again, emphasizes throughout
00:32:10.220
his ministry down to our hearts. So I hope that makes some sort of sense to you. That's all the
00:32:16.260
questions that I have for today. We will see you guys back here soon.