"Speech and Patterns of Life" by Delbert Weaver

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Well, good morning and welcome everyone here to the call this morning. It's a blessing to be here with you again on Strength to Strength.

Our vision with this platform is to see topics engaged and where we can have candid conversation and where, most importantly, through this interaction, through this fellowship, this teaching, this engaging, God's kingdom can be advanced. And our prayer is that God's kingdom would come and that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. So if that's your heartbeat, welcome here with us.

There's two announcements that I wanted to make here this morning. One of those is that there's a—and both of those are about upcoming events. The first one is the Church Planters Forum that's happening here in about a week and a half. I believe it begins Wednesday, June 14th, and it's at Penn Valley Retreat.

So it's a forum or a conference that's been happening since 2014. And people who are church planters or are interested in church planting, whether North America or globally, are welcome to that. And so you can get more information at Penn Valley's website or at churchplantersforum.org. And I think there's more room for attendees. So that's one of the reasons I thought I would announce that. And then also, at the end of August, we have an event called Kingdom Fellowship Weekend that happens.

I've been going to that since 2014. And so it's always a weekend with many Christians from all around the world that gather for that weekend. So a wonderful time of fellowship. And so if you find it in your interest to gather with a lot of different believers, join us there. And again, you can get information there on our website at kingdomfellowshipweekend.org.

So again, welcome here to the call. We're looking forward to Brother Delbert speaking this morning on speech and patterns of life. The description of his talk goes like this: "No one disputes that our words are a window to our heart.

Yet few recognize how our words steer our lives and ultimately our destiny. With amazing accuracy, the measure we use will be measured back to us." Matthew 7:1-2. In this talk, Delbert encourages care in our critiques of those around us and ponders what impact that could have on the fragmentation of our fellowships.

So Brother Delbert is a brother here, part of our congregation. I've heard him talk about these topics before. Delbert loves to, yeah, study history. He's a history buff. I think he would probably deny that, but I'll say that. He loves studying history, biblical history. Also, the intersection of economics and the kingdom of God and what that should look like.

And also, Delbert loves the outdoors, loves hunting. I think before he was saved, he was leading tours or hunting excursions in Alaska and things like that. So he's somebody with a lot of different unique experiences. And I consider it a blessing to be part of the same fellowship as him. So welcome here, Delbert. It's good to have you here on the call with us. And why don't we just bow our heads for prayer, and then we'll let you share what's on your heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this opportunity to be gathered here as brothers and sisters from a lot of different parts of your world, of your good world. Father, we know that the earth is yours and the fullness thereof.

And this time of the year, it's just this part of the world, anyhow, is just bursting with life. The plants are coming up. The birds are singing. The forests are just such a rich green. And Father, it just calls our hearts to just worship you.

And Father, you're worthy of our worship. You're worthy of our love. You're worthy of our allegiance. And Father, we want to grow in all these areas. And Father, as we think about how you have formed us and specifically how you have taught us to interact with each other as fellow humans and as we also think about in our church fellowships, healthy church life, what that looks like, Father, we know that we need much grace from you as we work together shoulder to shoulder with others in the body of Christ. And Father, I pray that you'll bless Delbert in a special way as he shares this message on speech and patterns of life. Give him wisdom, Father.

Give him a clear mind. And we ask a special blessing on him. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, blessings, brother. Go ahead. And then, of course, when you're done there, we'll open it up for some questions and responses here. So go ahead.

All right. Well, good morning, everyone.

I want to say thanks for having me on this program. Sort of a new experience to me. I don't generally speak to my smartphone very much. Or at least get to do it.

So what I want to talk about is speech, logos, prayer, and the way it patterns out our lives. And I want to say at the outset that I'm not an authority on these things. Take it. See what is of value to you and use discernment. And if it's good, apply it to your life. If it's not, you can just discard it. I read most of books this way. And take what's true and do your best to not pay attention to the rest. So I'm no different than anybody else. I have my shortcomings as well and my interpretation of reality.

And for the most part, I just work for a living. I'm not an academic guru. So in thinking about these things, there's probably been a lot of influence in the people I've listened to, prominent figures in the media world, that tend to think that the freedom of speech is under attack in America. People like Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, others that are on the right that are quite concerned about where freedom of speech is going in the light of some of the left-wing global ideology that's overtaking us. And I got to thinking, what does Jesus think about the freedom of speech?

And so some of this comes from sort of pondering that paradigm. So I want to look at this primarily from the Gospels, but the New Testament as a whole. Recently, I got to spend some time in Philadelphia, which is the founding of the nation. A lot of it happened there. And it's sort of an interesting place to walk around, see the museums and the historical sites. It well reflects the interface between faith and politics in America and the way the country was founded.

And this First Amendment, the first principle of what it means to be American is freedom of speech, freedom of expression. And there were sort of two Bible verses that were kind of all over the place down there. And the one was, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And the other one, I think, was from Galatians where Paul says that if Christ has set us free, don't get snared again in the yoke of bondage.

And these were the two principal verses that were used by the founders to build the freedom of speech and freedom of expression into the Constitution of the United States and make it sort of the first principle of what it means to be American. And it's interesting to look at that. What are we somewhere close to 300 years after that happened? We're not quite there yet. But a lot of the churches and so forth that espoused to this that gave us this principle have rainbow flags hanging on them, which is a demonstration of their alliance with the LGBTQ movement. So we have a movement, a country that has gone from freedom of expression to identifying sort of however we wish.

And I think there's a connection between these things. And that's what I want to look into this morning is how does speech actually impact our lives and the sociocultural dynamics in the long run.

So I want to start off in the Gospel of John, chapter one, and then go to Matthew. And so I want to read a couple of verses here out of John. "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made." So the Word, it's a logos. It's the Greek word for it. You can call it speech. There's probably some more meaning to it. Perhaps the imagination, the reasoning of God that comes forth created the universe.

And speech is at the very core of what creates and orders our universe. And we are created in the image of the person, Jesus Christ, that this is talking about. So as we think of just expressing ourselves however we wish, we want to keep that in mind that speech has a profound impact in who we are and then what we are and how things get governed in our universe.

Now, flipping over to Matthew 12, Jesus here speaks on speech. Matthew 12:36 and 37. "But I say to you that for every idle word man may speak, they will give account for in the day of judgment. For by your words, you will be justified, and by your words, you will be condemned."

So does that sound to you as if Jesus is elevating the importance of having freedom of speech or freedom of expression? It's actually sort of a scary verse that by our very idle speech, we will either be justified or condemned. And if so much by the idle words, how much more by the words that we speak seriously, the words that we speak in doctrinal ways or in dogmatic ways.

The Apostle James says that the tongue sets nature on fire with the fire of hell. And it appears to me sometimes when I look around that that is sort of what we're burning with at the moment on a broader cultural level.

And so it's good to keep that in mind when we're discussing these ideas of freedom of speech. Flipping over to Matthew 21:22, Jesus again says something pretty interesting. This is in the context of the fig tree that Jesus cursed.

And he ends this by saying, "Whatsoever things you ask in prayer, believing you will receive." And that, to me, is a very curious statement. He says that also in John 16:23 and 24, a little bit of a different context, he says, "Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full." So we have sort of two different end results here. This passage here in Matthew, there's a curse going forth on something.

And in John, it is receiving that you may have fullness of joy. And I think that as we think of these things in light of prayer and making petitions, that we have to be very careful because we can invoke these sorts of curses and things that can have long-ranging effects that we sometimes don't 100% think about when we are making petitions because prayer can be seen in numerous different ways. But one of the main ways is petition. And if we look at things like political talk, political statements, things like voting, giving alliance with certain particular political agendas and parties, we're really making petitions. And even if we're only idly sort of talking about it or having conversations with people, these things that we speak about can come across perhaps more like prayer than we think, especially when it involves the Pledge of Allegiance and the political rallies that almost reach a fervor and zeal to a traditional religious festival.

So

there is an ancient law of prayer that I find very interesting. I think it dates into the 400s, if not earlier, 400s AD, called Lex Orande, Lex Credende, Lex Vivende. It's a Latin phrase that is used a lot in the high churches, sort of like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism.

And the Latin phrase that means the law of what is prayed is the law of what is believed, is the law of what is lived.

And it is one of the reasons why the high churches use liturgy in their prayers is because they consider it a little maybe dangerous to just ask for anything and just pray spontaneously the way that Protestant, Revivalist type of religions promote.

And the idea that when you pray, it frames the way you believe. And the way you believe very, very much frames the way you then live out. And there's some debate around whether or not the law of what is believed becomes before the law of what is prayed or whether the law of what is prayed comes before the law of what is believed. But you can decide for yourself what you want to think about it. But this system of praying and believing is something that very much, according to the tradition of Christianity, brings forth patterns of life. And it creates systems around us in our culture, in our churches.

And I think it's especially important to see these things in light of things like systematic sins and stuff like that. Like if there's a systematized area in life where there's just a sin that is very, very hard, like say if an entire church is involved in this thing, that that probably has its source in the way we are speaking about certain issues.

The best example of this that I ever came across is the war prayer of Mark Twain. I don't know how many of you have heard of that, where there's a church and they're praying for their patriot soldiers that have gone overseas.

And there's some kind of prophet that rides in, and he demonstrates to them the flip side of their prayer. So they're praying for the success of their country, of their nation, of their soldiers, and not thinking at all of the consequences that it will have on the other side, on their patriot dead, their families, and what their life will look like. There's a couple of good videos on YouTube of it. Excellent stuff that I would encourage each one of you to go and look at to kind of understand that the way that we talk about things really, really has much unforeseen consequences that we just can very easily get all worked up and completely not think about.

So there's numerous different aspects that I think that this happens in life. And one of them being, if you look back at, say, the reformers, especially Martin Luther, in the way he talks about Paul's use of the term works, I will be surprised if I get to Judgment Day. And the way that he made works irrelevant to our salvation, to our relationship with God, and so on and so forth, if that isn't the seedbed for Western nihilism and lawlessness, I would be very surprised.

But you can think about that as you want. But it's an interesting way that something like that, like he takes this Catholicism and their views on works, reacts towards it. And the culture in the West has tracked to complete lawlessness and nihilism ever since.

There's other ways of making a petition. If you think of, say, something like the system of Planned Parenthood and using those means in our lives, what are we actually asking for? If we endorse some of their things, use some of their mechanisms, it's really a—well, we might not even be speaking, but it's a petition against fruit of the womb that's a blessing to the Lord. And those sorts of things have massive consequences in the long run on how a society unfolds, how we see humans, how we see marriage, all that sort of thing.

And these things, lots of these things, they all stem from this idea that we are free to express ourselves however we wish to express ourselves.

So

I'm not advocating for, say, medieval blasphemy laws or something like that where the heretics get burned at the stake for uttering anything that's half heretical. I think this is the ideas that they had when they were doing those sorts of things. But it's just important for us to recognize that these patterns, the way we speak, we're not just here to freely chatter about whatever we feel and whatever we want.

Those have massive consequences on the way that people's lives shake out around us and what they do and how that our churches, how that our society becomes, like manifests itself into the future. So the idea of being able to frame the world like this with our prayers, I think it can get taken in a wrong way.

The Lex Orande, Lex Credende thing can get taken as sort of a magic incantation sort of thing where if you just chant the prayers of the church, your life will automatically just formulate in accordance with the prayers. And I think that's a little short-sighted maybe. It doesn't take into account for the principle of hypocrisy.

And. But I do think there's a very real thing there with the law of what is prayed is the law of what is believed and then lived. Is that if we're praying very, very true things, but we're not really into it, we become sort of a hypocrite and a fake. And then our entire life sort of becomes fake. And it sort of unfolds into this lifestyle of fakeness and hypocrisy, which is one of the main things I think that has destroyed the credibility of Christianity through the last 2,000 years.

So I just want to throw that out there. I'm not advocating that we can necessarily just chant prayers and have our life automatically become what those prayers say. We have to be sincere about it. We have to be heartfelt and things like that.

So yeah, I like to sort of ponder and meditate on some of these patterns of life. And the way that things unfold throughout history, there's probably numerous more things that could be said about it, like looking across the scope of human history.

But I would like to sort of shift maybe from the more sociocultural, political thing to maybe looking a little bit at our churches and the way that it affects us within our brotherhoods. So I want to read from Matthew 7.

My reason for going here is that

in our—well, I don't know what churches things are all from, but we have a fair amount of struggles in our churches today. Disunity and faction strife. And my life has been—it's been quite a source of grief in my life and done a fair amount of pondering as to what could be done to mitigate some of these things or what is the cause of these things and then how do we turn away from them. So I want to read Matthew 7 from 1 to 11. "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye and look?' The plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite. First remove the plank from your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Do not give that which is holy unto the dogs.

Nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and then turn and venge you to pieces.

Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened unto you. For anyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks, finds. To him who knocks, it will be opened unto him.

For what man is there among you who if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, which is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?"

And so we have again here the idea that we can ask and we will receive. Whatever we ask for, God gives us. He's a good Father, all those sorts of things, which is to me somewhat troubling at times when I feel I'm not exactly getting what I want to see.

So I think it behooves us to think about sometimes unanswered prayers or things where we want that we're not getting is the first part of this passage. Judge not. What measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

And the pressure you put on others to perform in certain ways will be put back on you. And that our criticisms and our judgments of others have sort of a boomerang effect and come back and haunt our own lives, so to speak. And I want to say this as a confession.

I think this has been an issue in my own life. I've said probably too strong of critical things towards other people, towards certain systems. And then when it's my turn to come under the scrutiny, sometimes things have not gone as well.

So I think there's a pattern we can see in the life of Christ or the death of Christ maybe, where this is actually similar in his life. I'm not saying you shouldn't criticize. Christ criticized a lot of things too. One of his most antagonistic relationships he had was towards the temple.

He prophesied doom on the temple. He said, "Not one stone to be left on another. We're going to destroy this thing. Build it up in three days." His prophecy against the temple is then the very same thing that happened to him in his body.

The very people that he hit with that prophecy destroyed his body on the cross, or at least gave him over to the Romans so they could do it. But when Christ did this, he was accurate and he was right.

And he was prepared for it. He handled it well. And God resurrected his body from the dead. But there is a pattern here where criticism will return to hit you if you throw it out. And we need to be aware of that when we make those kinds of judgment calls, I believe.

And the area that bothers me, has bothered me a lot for a long time is in looking at the Pharisees. A lot of people take the Pharisees for being legalistic. They probably were to a certain extent. But if you look at Jesus' relationship to them, it's primarily—he doesn't accuse them of legalism. He accuses them of neglecting the weightier matters of the law.

And so I think, in my opinion, running theory, you can think of it as whatever you want, is what the Pharisees were more or less doing was revaluing the structure of the law. They were elevating unimportant things and neglecting important things.

And I wonder sometimes how much we do that today.

Jesus said once, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an American soldier to get into the kingdom of God."

So we tend as Anabaptists to have very, very strong stances against some of those things. And then it comes down to riches and things like that. Do we put the weight on, say, not being rich, investing our money in the right places that we do, in not being participants in war and some of the things that we come against evangelicals for? I wonder sometimes if we hold ourselves to the own rigorousness in economic issues and some other issues and the same way that we hold some of these other issues. I kind of wonder what it would look like.

But that could be just my erroneous way of interpreting reality. But I do worry about some of the, what are in my opinion, rather scrupulous issues of dress and things like that that we kind of look at sometimes and leaps over.

And then maybe at the same time, eating too much all the time. These kinds of judgments and criticisms on one issue can return on another issue. And if we are held into account on that issue by the same rigorousness that we're holding others into account, other issues, what's that look like? What's that effect in our lives? So I just want to challenge each one of us, myself, that when we do these things of critiquing and criticizing,

just think about the broader spectrum of life and our own blind spots, whether that is on an individual level or on the collective level of church and the way it affects our unity and the fruitfulness of our churches.

So with that, I'd like to bring up maybe one more aspect to this. And that is on the church and what the new humanity is supposed to look like. And when we think about getting judged by every idle word we speak, that is not just—well, we think about it a lot in the context of judgment in the afterlife. And I think that's just probably correct.

But the way that the new humanity is unfolding in our lives is probably very much affected by the way we choose to kind of say all along here. And then what we pray for and how we pray in these for our churches.

So I was reading a book recently on revivalism and its Protestant religion and its relationship to capitalism. And the idea in capitalism is that you just start new businesses. If one business fails or it's not quite what we want, we go down the street. We start a new one. Competition is good. It's better.

And that in that, the Protestant religion has largely, with their churches, emulated their businesses. We just start new churches. We sort of have this competition amongst churches. And it has often wondered me where that comes from and if that's really the ideal that God has for us in wanting to do church.

So when we think about what we pray for, I've heard a lot of people pray for revivals already. And there's sort of an interesting phenomenon to look at in history. There's probably some good things that came out of them, but it's sort of a flash and a bang and a lot of things going on. And then after that, almost always is fragmentation of churches.

And the zeal that is there oftentimes is not very conducive of unity. And I'm talking—I'm not a blanket statement about all revival, but first, second, third, great awakening, fourth great awakenings have almost all been followed by fragmentation in churches. And there is a lot of historians that are not entirely convinced that the church was better off afterwards than it was before. And so it probably isn't. At least that's my opinion at the moment. You're welcome to critique that and enlighten me if I'm off my charts there. But as we think of this, there is a principle in the Gospels that Jesus talks about five or six times called the Matthew principle. It goes something like, "To he who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance.

And to he who doesn't have, even that which he has gets taken away, and he won't have anything." Jesus repeats this quite a lot. I never have heard it explained a lot. But it's this idea that when we have something and we steward it rightly, it increases and we will have more and vice versa the other way.

So as our churches head in certain directions and if strife multiplies, think about these principles. Where are we stewarding these sorts of things? Where are we stewarding the negative versus stewarding positive? Does it begin with speech? Does it begin with prayer? What we're asking for? What our idle chatter is reflecting? Our tendencies to gossip and so forth.

So I want to turn to Philippians.

Philippians. We look at some of Paul's principles for the church in Philippi.

Two things, two particular passages.

Chapter 4, verse 8. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are good reported, if there be any virtue, and if there be anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. He says meditate. That's a good place to start. I think it can be applied to speech as well. I think Brother David Rousseau has brought this up already in light of some of the gossip issues in the church that it's a good way to look at the way we speak at churches.

Just focus on the positive is something I'm not particularly very good at. I'm more of a critic than a negative thinker. Sometimes I'm a positive thinker. But that way of speaking about issues around us and addressing things is, I think, good to do. At least to predominantly think on the more positive things and not always let ourselves get bogged down in our negativeness. But I do recognize that there's negative things that need to be addressed.

And then Paul has a prayer here at the beginning of the in chapter 1 that I want to look at in conclusion. And I think this prayer very much reflects some of the other prayers in his epistles and the way he prayed for the church in Philippi.

In this, I pray that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and in all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere without offense to the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

So I think that this prayer reflects very much the base principles of Christianity, that the goal of the church is to be a collective that is fruitful and ever-growing in the fruits of righteousness. And I just want to encourage each one of us as we think, ponder, pray, speak, that this is our goal to see those things. It's easy to sort of think that, well, if Brother so-and-so would just get his act together, then everything would be good and all this sort of negative focus.

But Paul, it doesn't so much see things through that lens. He's more thinking that we need to give love and grow in these spiritual fruits more so than just

yeah. That's just when we think about other people and think about things, meditate on things in our churches. Just make sure that these requests of Paul are at the height of at the apex of what our desire and will is for our churches.

As we think about evangelism, outreach, all the different ideas and ideals and vision that the churches have that are sometimes not seen eye to eye and agreed on, all those sorts of things, just keep these kinds of prayers in remembrance that it is most important that we as believers have this knowledge, wisdom, and discernment growing in our midst and going from ourselves as individuals as collectives out to those that are around us.

So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Brad. Thank you, brother. Thank you for sharing that. I know this is something that's deep in your heart, looking at the root causes for some of the division in our churches and just the explosion of different stripes in churches over the last 100 years and what are the causes of that.

And I find it interesting how you tied it into the First Amendment, really the founding of this nation, this idea of freedom.

And I thought about a recent book I've read, a Protestant brother, but he's really critiquing the secularism of our age and even just the lack of discipleship within the church. And I know that you would have read the book too, Delbert, John Mark Comer's book, Live No Lies. And he says this, "In an age which values freedom almost more than anything else, Jesus confronts us as the most liberated person who ever lived."

So yeah, freedom has become a slave, as you're pointing out. And instead of leading us into flourishing and fullness of life, it has instead become an enemy.

So looking at the broader culture, as you did, tying it back to Luther, just this idea of within Christianity of, say a prayer, get your ticket, and live like you want, this lawlessness, kind of being at the root of this is a fascinating idea and conclusions that you come to there.

But then, yeah, looking at the church, and that's where it comes close home. So I know that you do these critiques carefully, really, because, well, you're talking about it, right? You're talking about this reality of our speech, our words, our pattern of life will be turned back on us.

And I thought of this verse here in Proverbs 18:21, which you could have went to Proverbs and read 30 verses this morning if you wanted to about these ideas. I know I've heard you reference that before. But yeah, Amplified Bible there on Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

And those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words." So yeah, whether it's in my local brotherhood or whether it's in my family or my marriage to my neighbor, there's incredible power.

I've seen it in my life work where I, by God's grace, stewarded it well. And then also in the life where I did not steward these things well.

Yeah. So there's many different ways we can go here, but I'm anticipating questions and some feedback here from the group. So I'm going to open it up here. Who would like to share or ask questions or give feedback?

So wow, while people are thinking there, I agree with you on the Mark Twain prayer, which he himself was a big critic of the church and not a Christian himself, right, Delbert? No, I think it was atheist. Yeah.

So wow, really, in many ways, incredible judgment on the church in that prayer. But

you did say that as Anabaptist Christians or Kingdom Christians, the idea of the two kingdoms or non-resistance is something that we really make a big deal about. But what about other areas that we're struggling in? So you brought that in other ways, whether it be gluttony or whether it be economics, some of those things. And then you talked about the Latin term there and basically a prayer, what we pray for is what we get, or prayer frames the way you believe, and then belief frames the way you live.

So you touched on this a little bit, but do you mind digging that a little bit of ways as Anabaptist, as you observe present-day contemporary Anabaptism, me, whatever, our church, other churches, what are some ways that we are praying that's sobering that we need to grow in or need to stop? I don't know if I want to point things out like that.

But the first thing that comes to mind is the prayer for revival and wanting to return to the great awakening style of Christianity and some of the strife that has gone with most revival movements is a quest that I really wonder about. And as I watch church strife and as I read history books, it seems sometimes like, yeah, well, this is what we're living all the time. So maybe we should be a little careful what we ask for and look maybe a little bit more, I'd say, at the patristics and their mechanisms of church growth and their patterns of prayer, the way they viewed prayer, and less just getting completely excited and desiring these bouts of religious ecstasy and that being sort of this return to apostolic Christianity of some sort.

I'm not sure what to think about all those things, but it does seem like it's sort of a post-Reformation phenomena that hasn't necessarily led to the growth of the body into the fullness of the statue of Christ, whereas the way the early church prayed was maybe a little bit more effective, I think, in that kind of a way, looking at history. And if I put a plug in for this book, The Patient for Amending the Early Church, there's a whole section in on worship and prayer and some interesting stuff. I'd recommend that you read it and think about it, which I know you did.

Maybe we can link that book as a resource here on the page. Yeah. So thank you.

Any questions for our brother here?

Mr. Weaver, my name is Joel. Thank you very much for the great words.

I guess to me, my criterion is, well, do I love? Do I love as Jesus loved? And are my words bringing that love since I'm the only one I can control? So instead of worrying about, again, all of society and everybody else on the planet, I appreciate your words very much and the soberness of your words. I really appreciate them.

So thank you.

Yeah, I agree with that. And yeah, Delbert, thank you for sharing. And those were good words that we heard this morning. So one thing that I wonder about is about the sectarianism, it's not unique to our churches, if you will. It seems like it's pretty common across the Protestant spectrum post-Reformation.

What did the Reformation lose from the Catholic system that maybe should not have been lost? If the question makes sense, sir.

Yeah, the question makes sense.

And it's a question that I've thought about and I've been asked before. I don't know if I have a good answer to it.

There was definitely, I think the Catholics could really promote a specific order to creation and an order to life that you're supposed to live, and you're not supposed to deviate from it. And I'm not sure that their representation of that was how Christ-centered it was. I mean, obviously, they were leading up to the Reformation. There were all sorts of things going on. But with the Protestant soteriology, especially with the Lutheran end of it, just seemed to kind of, well, if your behavior doesn't really relate to your salvation, that was a very big difference from what Catholicism was saying.

It seems to me to be a real fountainhead for sort of this free-for-all stuff that we're seeing manifest on the left today.

I don't know if that's the biggest issue, that the Catholics would still hold to a specific order. And I think to the credit of Calvin and Luther, I think they would too, but their soteriology did have a weird sort of meaninglessness to the way the works relate to salvation, I think. I would be suspicious that would be the bigger area, but there could be more to it.

I mean, if you have any thoughts on it, feel free to. Yeah, I think that seems very, very probable that that's a big contributor to why we are where we are today. But yeah, appreciate those thoughts. Thank you.

The idea of Delbert that I've never thought about a whole lot, but is rather fascinating, is, yeah, is the church really taking the responsibility for where we are here in the West?

There's just so many voices online, angry voices on the right, and it's easy to buy into that and really to think really in an ugly way of the left, but really that's hypocritical because we have created this seed bed, if you will, for that to grow in this idea of freedom of speech and do what you want.

And so many, as we know, even over the last couple of years with COVID and people not going to their churches, so many people have just walked away. And quickly, the United States is heading into a post-Christian world, which gives people a lot of fear. But as we know, the patristics or the early church and most of the world today lives is a minority. And when Christianity is a minority, you can actually point out that that's when it flourishes.

And it can be more of a healthy representation of what the church is to be. So thank you, brother, for sharing. I know that there's a lot of depth here and a lot of things to be plumbed and talked about and prayed about. So one of the sobering things that I took from your talk here this morning is that this idea of the Pharisees and those religious ones probably being the ones who were really behind Jesus being crucified.

Paul even talks about that, that these people were the ones who killed Jesus. But this idea that Pharisees were elevating unimportant things and devaluing the important things. And that's sobering. So may God give us, yeah, renew us, and may we dig into the scripture and into, yeah, the ways of Jesus and have our lives and our minds transformed by the power of the gospel so we can live this new humanity as you talked about. So thank you for stepping out of your comfort zone and coming on and sharing this morning. I really appreciate what you shared. So God bless you richly.

So we're going to just have I'll ask you, Delbert, to close this prayer here right shortly. And one other announcement is that in two weeks, we'll be back here again together on this call, Lord willing. And a brother from Massachusetts will be sharing on tips for reading the Bible.

So join us back here then. So Delbert, could you just lead us in prayer, please? Sure.

Father in heaven, we come before you confessing that we're sinners and we're needing your grace, your mercy in our lives. We pray for all wisdom and discernment in the challenges that we face today. We pray that our light would shine amongst us from our hearts as individuals and from amongst us as brothers and sisters that relate to each other and pray that we could love and grow in love and have a proper understanding of these things. Lord, we pray that we would be able to, as your people, hear your chastisements and your encouragements and find our way forward as a faithful people in our age. We ask that you be with each of us and that your blessings would be abundant in our lives.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. All right. Thank you for joining this morning. And grace and peace. As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.