Ep 893 ｜ Are Missionaries Colonizers？ ｜ Q&A
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Summary
Why does the Bible mention unicorns? Is sharing the gospel some form of evil colonization? Is it smart to move out of blue states and into red states? We will answer all of these questions and more on today's episode of Relatable.
Transcript
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Is it selfish or smart to move out of blue states and into red states?
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Is sharing the gospel some form of evil colonization?
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We will answer all of these questions and more on today's episode of Relatable,
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which is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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That's American meat delivered right to your front door.
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We're going to get into some of your questions today.
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Most of them have to do with theology, the Bible, but some of them are just fun.
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I like to try to switch it up as much as I can.
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Okay, this was one I had to look up because I had never heard this before.
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But this is a question of why does the Bible include unicorns?
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Thoughts on unicorns in scripture, just rhinos.
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Obviously, unicorns are typically seen as these fantastical animals that don't exist in real
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One of my favorite resources is gotquestions.org.
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They've answered almost like a million questions.
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And so I'm like always asking questions to Got Questions.
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And even if it's not an infallible resource, obviously, but it does have all the references.
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It has books that they recommend, but it also has scripture references to back up what they're saying.
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In several passages, list passages in Numbers, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalm, Isaiah, the King James
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The original Hebrew is the word reyam, which was translated monokeros in the Septuagint and unicornis in the Latin Vulgate.
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The original Hebrew word basically means beast with a horn.
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But since the Hebrew tau alpha in Numbers refers to more than one horn, it's likely the translators use creative license to infer a wild and powerful, but recognizable animal for their versions.
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So the ram is believed to refer to our rocks or urus, large cattle, which roamed Europe and Asian ancient times.
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They stood over six feet tall and were ancestors of domestic cattle.
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In the Bible, the wild ox usually refers to someone with great power.
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In Numbers 20 through 22 and 24, 8, God compares his own strength to that of a wild ox.
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In Psalm 22, 21, David imagines his enemies as wild oxen.
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The bull represented several different deities, including Baal, Malak, Egyptian, Apis.
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The Israelites tried to adopt these beliefs when they made the golden calf.
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So we don't know exactly if it's a unicorn, if it's some kind of cattle that went extinct.
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So I don't really have any necessarily deep or theological thoughts on that.
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It reminds me of the debate about the dinosaurs.
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Were they just really big beasts that have since gone extinct that weren't like the dinosaurs that we see paleontologists come up with today?
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Is sending missionaries around the world colonizing?
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Now, there's an assumption in this question, and I'm not sure if the questioner realizes the assumption that is clear to me in this question.
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And so therefore, I guess the person who is saying that sharing the gospel is colonizing is saying that we shouldn't.
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We shouldn't go and share the gospel because that is a form of colonization, which is always evil.
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First of all, while colonialism does have some violent and bad parts of it, that doesn't mean that going and conquering a nation and changing the culture there is necessarily always unbiblical or wrong.
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Obviously, we see God-ordained conquest several times in the Old Testament.
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I'm not saying that that is the basis for all conquest in the modern world or in the modern West.
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But look, all major nations, all developed nations have engaged in some kind of imperialism and some kind of colonialism.
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I think that there probably have been good historical examples and bad historical examples of both.
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But this idea that it's always objectively evil and unbiblical, I don't think that there's a good basis for that.
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It was pointed out to me in a sermon at church, actually, and I hadn't thought about it like this.
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Really, if you look at the original text, all people groups, all ethnos, all ethnic groups,
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baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
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teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.
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And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
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So in that, we read a few things, but two of the things that we see is that we have both
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the right and responsibility, the right and responsibility to share the gospel to people
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Colonization, again, includes not just sharing of the gospel and the conversion through the
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Holy Spirit of Christians, but also changing the culture, changing the country in general,
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trying to conform it to that of those who are doing the conquering.
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Obviously, like we had the 13 colonies in the United States, and so that's a form of
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That's not the only characteristic of colonizing.
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And there are many missionaries who go share the gospel that are not colonizing these nations.
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And I would say that that is part of the Christian tradition, actually, that when you go into
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China and share the gospel, or you go into wherever it is and share the gospel, you are
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actually not trying to make those people more American or more Western or more European.
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You're not trying to tell them to abandon all of their food and all of their cultural preferences
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and all of their traditions and familial, you know, cultural familial ties or things like
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You are not trying to conform them to the likeness of the Western American man.
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You are trying to conform them through the Holy Spirit to the image and the likeness of
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And so it is godly for a person to embrace his culture, to love his country, to be fully
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whatever it is, Indian or French or Zimbabwean and be a Zimbabwean Christian or be a Christian
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Zimbabwean rather, be a Christian Kenyan, be a Christian Chinese person, be a Christian Indian,
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a Christian South Korean, like all of those things are good.
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Retaining the ethnicity or retaining some of the traditions, some of them, some of them
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are probably, you know, in some cases simple when they're tied to a religion that is not
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Christian, but retaining those things while fully submitting yourself to Christ, dying to
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your former self, becoming your new self in the image and likeness of Christ that is good
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So it is not, you're not always trying to colonize a place when you're going and sharing
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Like there are plenty of accounts now, the so-called anti-racist Christian accounts that
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That's Christian white supremacy or whatever it is to go share the gospel.
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And they're not Christians because they don't believe in Jesus's authority.
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They don't believe in the Great Commission, which is the crux of Christianity.
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One of the co-intendents, one of the calls of Christianity going and making disciples of
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all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity.
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Jesus, who has all the authority, he says, in heaven and on earth, tells us to do that.
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So his authority supersedes, transcends any authority of any Black Coffee with White Friends Instagram
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account or whatever it is, or any progressive so-called Christian influencer that tells you
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He has more authority than any government, than any constitution, than any law, than any policy,
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He has more authority than all of those things, and we ultimately answer to him above all things.
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And he tells us, this God with all the authority in the universe, he tells us to go, therefore,
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and make disciples of all nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and
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Would I rather spend a week with Klaus Schwab on a beach, or live in Antarctica for one year?
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If you don't know who Klaus Schwab is, he is the villainous head of the World Economic Forum.
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He has terrible, deleterious, destructive ideas about how we should reorder the world
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to become basically an oligarchy under the thumb of the elite.
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He would be a part of that elite ruling class in the name of saving the climate, in the name
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And so, I mean, he's literally suggested things like blocking out the sun for a period of time.
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And all of these people are very intent on depopulation.
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So would I rather, would I spend a week with Klaus Schwab on a beach, or live in Antarctica
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If he's not going to kill me, I mean, we'd probably get some good digs.
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Like, I doubt that he stays at some, like, hut that he found on Vrbo.
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And I could just do what I want to do just for a week.
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And, you know, if we got stranded or something, I feel like people will come looking for Klaus Schwab.
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So there's some safety there, but he has some good security.
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So if he's not going to kill me, if I don't need to spend time, like, spend a whole lot
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of time with him, if I can share the gospel with Klaus Schwab, try to change his mind,
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Live in Antarctica for an entire year, like a year away from my family in the freezing
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So I'm going to say a week with Klaus Schwab on a beach, as long as it's not, like,
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weird, you know, um, let's see, is moving out of blue states into red states selfish
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I think this is a great, great, insightful question.
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So I have advocated in the past for moving your family to a red state, like, don't deal
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I can't say, though, that that is a rule for everyone.
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I can't prescribe that to every person, every family in every situation.
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There is the belief that, look, there needs to be light and darkness.
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There needs to be some modicum of sanity on places like Washington and Oregon and California.
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And so some people have to stay to hold down the fort.
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I don't think it's working very well right now.
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And that's not because of the lack of effort on the side of sanity.
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It's just because the other side is so insanely powerful, has so much corporate backing, institutional
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backing, federal government backing, so much money behind them.
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I mean, especially in a state like California, you have the whole entertainment industry hoisting
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And so I do also believe that you, while I understand the light and the darkness side,
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and like the people there, gosh, the conservative Christians I know in those states are just so
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But also, I do think for some families, you have to be realistic.
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You have to be realistic about what your role is.
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Or is it to steward your resources well and your parenting responsibility well?
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Some people have been able to homeschool and send their kids to a solid, you know, church-based
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biblical Christian school in some of these blue states, but some people don't have that
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And so if you have the option of going to a school in Oregon or Washington or Massachusetts
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or something like that, where they are literally telling your kindergartner that they can be any
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gender they want to be, where you can't even defend yourself in places like New York for
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fear of going to prison over that, and you feel like you really have to protect your family,
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do what is best for your family, especially you men, you husbands out there, thinking about
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How do you love your wife as Christ loved the church?
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How do you make sure that you are caring for your children in the most responsible and
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Like, I understand also why you would want to leave, because your primary responsibility
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Your primary responsibility is to be a godly and strong husband and dad.
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So I can't tell you that it looks one way, as in that means leaving, or that means staying.
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If it were up to me, like if my husband and I were in that situation, we would move.
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We would move, because it's just not an environment I want to be around.
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I don't want to pay tax dollars in a state that is becoming a refuge for kids who want
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I don't want to pay tax dollars to a state that is going to be a sanctuary for killing your
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So I will say that it is not wrong to be protective of your family, to put the priorities and needs
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and safety and security of your family and your family's well-being before the future
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I don't think that that's selfish in the bad sense.
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It is okay to love your family more than you love some other family.
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It's okay to love your family more than you love your state.
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It's I understand you've got a calling, you've got a responsibility to stay somewhere.
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But I don't think that you should feel guilty for moving your family where is best for them,
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where you can best steward your resources and best protect them and raise them in a godly
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We don't watch like a bunch of TV or a bunch of new TV.
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Sometimes we'll get into a new series or a series at least that's new for us.
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Because I've seen most of the classic TV series, we like TV, we like culture, we like the cinema,
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And so we do try to watch things that people are talking about as long as they're good.
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I won't like finish a series just to finish it.
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But just overall ranking, I would say The Office, it reminds us of a better time when humor was
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actually funny and you could make fun of things and make fun of people.
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And I think we actually all got along way better when we all didn't take ourselves and
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And it's just it literally as many times as I've seen every episode of The Office, it can
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I did not like Parks and Rec at first because it's so hokey and cheesy compared to The Office.
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But the storylines and the characters, I would say, are like more lovable and more, I don't
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And you can get into them a little bit more than The Office.
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We also went through like a big Curb Your Enthusiasm stage.
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Which I'm not like touting the morality of Larry David, but we also laughed out loud a
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lot at that series, watched all those episodes.
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But then also, and I would not recommend this, I would say I actually regret watching this
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series, but it is understandable why it is so incredibly popular, why it has gotten as
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many accolades as it has, why it like has the place in our culture that it does.
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And I regret it because it was so dark and so violent, kind of like House of Cards.
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We watched House of Cards when we first got married, too.
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Like, there's just nothing really redemptive about it.
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Now, I guess I'm glad that I like understand cultural references that include like The Sopranos
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But it's, it was so, I remember just being like fearful and sad during that time in my
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When I was watching it, like every night before I would go to bed and I was like, this
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So I wouldn't, this, there's nothing like lovely or pure about The Sopranos, but it's
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But I haven't watched anything dark and violent since then, since, I don't know, probably five
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Like, I always regret watching series that just make me sad and scared.
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And I think the Lord does want to protect us from that.
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So I should be more consistently disciplined on that kind of thing.
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I think I've got a promo code or something, Allie, that'll get you a discount.
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I'm not really, other than that, though, I'm not really a jewelry gal.
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I don't, like, I'm not really into big designers.
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Like, I love my wedding ring or my engagement ring and my wedding ring that I got, you know,
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however many years ago it was that I got engaged, I guess, eight years at this point.
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And I still love it because I just love classic stuff that you can love and wear forever.
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And so I'm just not really, not really a necklace or earring girl.
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I think these were, I got them at, like, a $10 gift exchange a few years ago at a Christmas party.
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So, sorry, I don't really have a whole lot of, a whole lot of help for you there.
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That's how I reeled in my husband because he's on the quieter side and I am on the more verbose
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And so to some people, and this is not me tooting my own horn because this is just me saying
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how it was when I met my husband and all of that.
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For some people, especially the, like, gregarious kind of people that are social and outgoing,
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I don't have to, like, I still don't have to think about, ooh, what do I talk about with
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I always, I, it's, I always just, I am genuinely curious about people.
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And if you are attracted to someone, like I was my husband, then that can turn into, like,
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I think we think of flirtation as like this, we're trying to get someone to lust after us
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or we're trying to get someone to look at us or think of us in, you know, some kind
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And while it can be that, that's not effective Christian flirting.
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I think the best way in my experience to flirt with someone in a way that is, you know, good
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and virtuous in all of these things is to express interest in their life.
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People love, everyone loves to talk about themselves.
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They like, usually, to talk about their family.
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Be genuinely curious about the things that they love, about the things that they're curious
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You don't have to pepper them with questions because I have also been in that experience
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where, not in a flirting way, but where the other person, it usually happens when the other
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person is in, like, ministry or counseling or something.
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You're trying to talk to them and they, like, don't even let you finish your answer before
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That can be annoying and it kind of feels like they're not even seeing you.
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So I'm not talking about an interrogation, the fifth degree or anything like that.
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But a conversation that starts with genuine curiosity and encouragement.
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So if he tells you, you know, I really like such and such book saying, wow, that's so cool
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Now, back in the day, I'm going to age myself here.
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I'm an old, an old millennial at the age of 31.
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When there was my husband, when I, so when he would say, like, what kind of music he likes
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and I would talk about what kind of music I like.
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I think most cars don't even come with CD players anymore, but I burned him a CD and
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we would listen to that and it had like third eye blind on there.
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It had like some nostalgic stuff, like a dashboard confessional and things.
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That's how my husband, my husband and I met working out at a gym, not like a lifetime fitness.
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It was like a smaller boutique kind of CrossFit type place.
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I'm sure that we thought that the other one was cute and we started chatting.
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And then we just spent like weeks chatting outside, like standing up outside, like in
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the parking lot until from like 630 when the workout class would end until like 1030 at
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I just clicked with him and what everyone always said, like when you know, you know,
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It didn't make any sense because I just I didn't understand that feeling that when I
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met my husband, I was like, oh, that's actually true.
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When you know, you know, I just feel it in my bones.
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Like we didn't even go on a date there for a little while.
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We would just talk at the gym and it was just expressing interest in one another.
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And if he liked something, I would, you know, go read that book or listen to that music or
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watch that show and then go back and talk to him about it.
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I remember my smoothest move was remembering his birthday when he had barely mentioned it.
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And I knew that I was going to see him that day at the gym.
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And I wished him happy 24th birthday on Monday, October 19th of 2014.
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And I was like, he's so impressed that I remembered his birthday.
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And he was and he was like, wow, I'm going to wife her up and she's going to have my
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Express interest in them, genuine interest, and then take out the interest that they have
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You shouldn't feel like you're the only one doing that.
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If you're the only one expressing curiosity, then he's probably got an ego problem.
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A prophet can be someone who just speaks the word of God and is able to decipher how the
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word of God uniquely applies to current circumstances or modernity.
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God has given him the gift of communication, of persuasiveness, of discernment, of insightfulness.
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So someone who understands the word of God in a very wise way and applicable way, they're basing
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everything that they say and see on the word of God.
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They have a gift of forth telling, of telling you what the word of God says as it pertains
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There are a lot of pastors and preachers like that today.
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And that is, I predict that this thing will happen.
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I think you have to be really careful about the foretelling prophets.
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Because look, if their prophecy does not come true, if they say this thing, which I saw this
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I remember there was this one that was going around.
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And I'm already, I'm just naturally skeptical of that kind of stuff.
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But I was like, oh, I could kind of see that happening.
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If that person then says, oh, sorry, sorry, I was wrong.
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But anyway, that person is not a prophet of God.
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Uh, first of all, they're basing their prophets or they're basing their prophecies on what
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And if their prophecy is from God, God is not going to be like September.
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A foretelling prophecy, if it is from God, will come true.
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There are cliques to be garnered from the so-called foretelling prophets that are telling
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you based on current events, not even based on scripture, what they think will happen.
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If part of their prophecy comes true, but the rest of it doesn't, it's not of God.
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So yeah, I do think that a lot of them are false prophets.
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And, um, I think that we have to be really, really careful about that as tempting as it
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Now there's a difference in predicting the future and saying, like, I probably do that
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I don't know what's going to happen, but I could see it going this direction, or I bet
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this is going to happen, or this is how I think the election is going to play out.
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It's, you know, discernment based on what you see now.
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But people who say this is from God, I had a vision.
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I had a word come to me that this is going to happen.
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Because like I said, there's a lot of money to be made from that.
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So here's what second Peter two says about false prophets, but false prophets also arose
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This is verse one, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring
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We have seen the frog in the kettle, and it slowly is boiling, and the frog doesn't
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That happens with the destructive heresies that enter into our churches, whether it's
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social justice or LGBTQ, whatever, or prosperity gospel.
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We'll secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who brought them.
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That master is capitalized, bringing upon themselves swift destruction, and many will follow their
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And because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed and in their greed.
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Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
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So false prophets, again, there is greed behind it.
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There is basically just doing the will of Satan behind it, too.
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And so we have this blessing, this immense privilege of having the Word of God in front
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So if you want to know what's going to happen, if you want to know whether something is true,
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And thankfully, ultimately, we know one thing, that God is going to win.
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There will be no more sickness, that Jesus will rule in totality and perfect peace.
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And so I think a lot of times these prophecies can just give us a lot of anxiety.
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There's nothing that we can do to save them or prevent them.
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People may even use them to try to get you to vote a certain way.
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And there's a reason to vote, you know, a particular way.
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But it shouldn't be based on these anxiety-inducing prophecies that basically call into question
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whether or not God is really in control and puts this false prophet in the place of authority.
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And then, of course, you give them your time, your money, and your clicks.
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Go to the Word of God if you want to know what His will is.
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If you could please leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to Relatable,
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