This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 571: Give God a Shot with Bob Carden This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 571 Bob Carden - Holy Spirit2.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to restitutio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan This is Part 2 of my conversation with Bob Cardin, who served as the lead pastor of Grace Christian Fellowship for decades before retiring. 00:20 Sean Finnegan In the church is now called aligned ministries, led by Garrett Bova. Continuing on the topic of healing and deliverance from last week, we began by talking about evil spirits and *********** addiction. Next, we spend a good deal of time discussing how aligned ministries enables Holy Spirit activity during their weekly services. 00:40 Sean Finnegan Garden ends with a challenge saying put yourself out there for God. Don't be afraid to attempt something the Bible says you should be able to do here. Now is episode 571. Give God a shot with Bob Cardin. 01:03 Bob Carden A lot of times Christians are ashamed when they feel there is a spiritual component to their problem. 01:09 Sean Finnegan How would somebody know? 01:11 Bob Carden Well, if they've been a Christian for a while and they've been exposed to this concept of the spiritual battle that we're in and they have obsessive thoughts that, you know, often that will be a clue that, like, I just, I just couldn't stop my. 01:20 Sean Finnegan OK. 01:25 Bob Carden You see this pretty regularly with people who are they call it addicted to ****. You know, that's like I just couldn't stop myself. That's why they call it addicted. But a lot of that is spirit driven. 01:37 Bob Carden But you know it wasn't spirit driven the first time they looked at ***********. The first time they got seduced to it, it became that later. And people recognize they have an unstoppable problem, but they often. 01:50 Bob Carden Today describe that problem in psychological terms and and the the the the issue with doing it that way. Sean is when you label something, then you've given the person an identity. When you give people an identity. Well, if you if if your identity is Sinner, well, you're not real surprised. 02:10 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you'll live into your identity. 02:11 Bob Carden When you sin. 02:12 Bob Carden You'll live into it, but I'm a St. man. I'm a holy one. Yeah. I want to live that identity. I want my father to be proud. 02:16 Yeah. 02:18 Bob Carden You know, these are things that we have to address. 02:20 Sean Finnegan Obsessive thoughts and addictive behaviors. You mentioned ***********. This is something that's so prevalent, especially with young men, but really touching so many lives at this point inside and outside the church. And I've struggled with it in the past and God has helped me. 02:41 Sean Finnegan To overcome it, I know plenty of others who have struggled with it and have had to overcome it. I think that the *********** that your generation had available and my generation had available. 02:54 Sean Finnegan Is kind of like child's play compared to the *********** that's available today. As far as its accessibility and its intensity. And, you know, catering to all these different. 03:06 Sean Finnegan Fetishes and whatnot. So which have been normalized, yeah. 03:09 Bob Carden Have been normalized. The devil has normalized every kind of. 03:14 Bob Carden Things that God calls sin in his word have been normalized in our culture and monogamous heterosexual marriage is considered an outlier and restrictive. 03:19 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 03:26 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Well, I I I have a lot of thoughts. 03:29 Sean Finnegan On that, but I want. 03:30 Sean Finnegan To go down that that rabbit hole right now, let's let's stay with the **** for a second so. 03:35 Sean Finnegan You're not saying that everyone who looks at *********** is being influenced by an evil spirit. You already said that, but some. 03:46 Bob Carden Are certainly some are and when more than you would like to be comfortable thinking about. 03:51 Sean Finnegan And I think when we're talking about Christians, in particular, Christians. 03:56 Sean Finnegan Will also hopefully feel guilty. 04:00 Sean Finnegan After they, you know, expose themselves to this right, whereas people in the world, maybe they will, maybe they won't depending on where they're coming. 04:06 Bob Carden If they get caught, they feel guilt. 04:07 Sean Finnegan From. 04:08 Sean Finnegan If they get caught, yeah, then they'll feel guilty and ashamed. So for Christians, this is this is an important topic and I haven't talked about it much on the show, though I did do a show on restitutio years back with a with a courageous young man that was not afraid to say, look, I struggled with this and God help me through it. And this is how. 04:25 Sean Finnegan So it have addressed it a little bit, but I've never thought about the intersection of of **** use and. 04:33 Sean Finnegan Demons. You know what I mean? And. And that's like, as soon as you said it, my mind was just like. 04:38 Sean Finnegan This is so. 04:38 Sean Finnegan Obvious. Why didn't I think of that before, but I wonder if you could just talk a little bit. 04:44 Sean Finnegan More about getting. 04:45 Sean Finnegan Freedom from from that kind of sexual stuff. 04:48 Bob Carden The first step is to recognize that there is a problem that this is not good, and as you said, if there are Christian who wants to live for Christ, live for God, they will feel shame over sin. 05:00 Bob Carden God allows us to feel that so that we recognize something is wrong. God designed our bodies to be able to feel physical pain. If they couldn't, you would have died before you hit 5. So physical pain is necessary for life. God also allows us to feel emotional pain, and that emotional pain tells us, OK, something needs to be addressed. 05:21 Bob Carden If my arm is, I can't move my arm. OK, now I know something needs to be addressed here. If I'm feeling shame or other emotion bad at what would I would consider bad emotions. That's. 05:33 Bob Carden A clue that something needs to be addressed in my life and the church has not done a good job addressing the emotional component of our needs, and it is often through the emotional side of life that the devil is able to kind of get a hook into people. And, you know, with ***********. 05:53 Bob Carden So you have God's designed for sex, which was given for marriage as part of the Covenant of Marriage and to solidify marriage. There's nothing that God does that the devil can't distort and corrupt. 06:06 Bob Carden So the very idea that they are promoting something that is antithetical to what the Scriptures say tells you who's behind it, and the devil doesn't promote something out of goodwill. He promotes something because it will give him an opportunity to get a hook in them, and sometimes. 06:25 Bob Carden The opportunity it provides him with is to ruin a marriage. 06:29 Bob Carden You know that the husband's love is no longer towards his wife. It's it's a lust toward this. Make believe that he's seen in *********** so it can destroy marriages. But I really feel even beyond that it devalues humans. 06:45 Sean Finnegan Yeah, it it objectifies for sure. 06:47 Bob Carden It objectifies humans that who are created in the image of God, and I like to, you know, I've asked people, I said, would you like your daughter to grow up and do that? Is that how you want her to make her living when she gets older? Oh, man. And you see. 06:48 No. 06:57 Sean Finnegan Well. 06:58 Bob Carden The color drain out of somebody's face. 07:00 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. What? What would you say to somebody that is really trying to quit? 07:07 Sean Finnegan And they just can't. 07:09 Bob Carden Then I would need to sit with them and and understand what what lies are they believing that are preventing them from receiving God's deliverance? 07:16 Yeah. 07:19 Sean Finnegan So that's more of like an inner healing type thing. 07:21 Bob Carden Yeah, there's something. There's probably something else going on here. Rejection or not, happy in their marriage. You know, when the devil's always there with temptation, I mean, I'm not real happy in my marriage. So it's OK if I go commit adultery. 07:23 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 07:25 Yeah. 07:37 Sean Finnegan I have heard. 07:38 Sean Finnegan About your working with a number of folks who have had trauma in their lives and you have a live experience in in doing that and the the fact is when it comes to sexual sin. 07:51 Sean Finnegan For whatever reason, it wounds us more deeply then you know, if somebody tells you a lie, you know if they rape you, it's worse obvious. 07:58 Hmm. 07:59 Sean Finnegan Or being molested as a child or just. 08:03 Bob Carden Being promiscuous. 08:05 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Promise. OK. Yeah, that's another one. Promiscuity in college, we see that a lot sexually transmitted diseases and infections that people live with for the rest of their lives. I mean, there's a lot of this. You know, as soon as you take sex outside of marriage. 08:20 Sean Finnegan To win a man and a woman. 08:22 Sean Finnegan That love each other? OK, then it's just like that. The hurt it can cause. Is there. There's no bounds to it. It's so powerful. But like you take it outside of its container where it gives power and life to the marriage. And now instead, it's it's doing all this other weird stuff and it burning us, you know. 08:42 Sean Finnegan Talk. Talk about that a little bit and working with people who have had sex outside of marriage or you know, whether it's adultery or they've been raped or some other kind of thing like that. How do. 08:53 Sean Finnegan You get over. 08:54 Sean Finnegan That how do you get healed from that? 08:54 Bob Carden You know. 08:57 Bob Carden The problem with trauma is not so much the traumatic event itself as to how you view yourself, God and life. Because of that traumatic event. That's really where you get the greatest damage long term with people you know. Now obviously a traumatic rape experience at that moment. Obviously it's bad, but. 09:17 Bob Carden I'm talking about 10-15 years down the road where that has damaged a person's soul in such to such an extent that they maybe go off the rails with their sexual. 09:31 Bob Carden There's not A1 size. If it's trauma, you have to deal with it a certain way, but sometimes people have just, especially men they've they've simply stoked their sexual meter so high that that's just they're just drawn to this. So now they have to pull themselves out. And the first step with any sin is repentance. 09:51 Bob Carden You know to to call it what God calls it, you know, to call it an addiction. 09:56 Bob Carden Belittle is what God calls it. He didn't call it. He calls things sin. 10:00 Bob Carden And our culture doesn't like to use that word, right. We we much prefer labels. And when you label something you take away hope because it's not who you are. You're a sex addict. So maybe I can control my behavior. Maybe I can not. A sex addict. Right. That's my big beef with the way Alcoholics Anonymous. 10:15 Sean Finnegan But I'm always going to still be a. 10:16 Sean Finnegan Second, yeah, well. 10:21 Bob Carden Approaches things. Not that they haven't done a lot of good for people, but they did more good when they were more heavily Christian influenced. 10:28 Bob Carden But to introduce yourself, you know I am Bob Carden and I'm an alcoholic, and I haven't had a drink in 10 years. I don't want to identify as that. 10:38 Bob Carden I want to bring people up to a higher level. 10:40 Sean Finnegan I think they've started to improve and be a little more positive where you where you hear people say I'm mid recovery. 10:44 Bob Carden That would be good. 10:50 Sean Finnegan From alcoholism, you know what I mean? So it has more of a positive spin on it. I'm a recovering alcoholic. But you know, it is still. 10:52 Bob Carden Next, that will be an input. 11:00 Sean Finnegan You know, I I think I understand why they do it because there's so much power. 11:03 Sean Finnegan And confession. 11:04 Bob Carden There is. 11:05 Sean Finnegan That, you know, even just like coming to a meeting showing up and say I have this problem and I am not able to fix it. 11:11 Health. 11:12 Sean Finnegan There's so much freedom and healing that can start happening there, but like eventually. 11:18 Sean Finnegan This this thing that you said. It's not so much the experience in the moment. 11:25 Sean Finnegan It's what you think about yourself as a result of it and how you think about God and how you think about life. 11:31 Sean Finnegan That interpretation that you come away with. 11:35 Sean Finnegan How does somebody change that? 11:37 Bob Carden Well, God can deliver that God can heal the soul, just as he can heal the body. But and this is where, when you're speaking with someone and say they were rejected by their parents when they were young, well, we can introduce them to a father who will never. 11:52 Bob Carden Reject. 11:52 Bob Carden Them I mean, God, not even God will change the past, but he will set us free. 11:57 Bob Carden You know, and in that case, yes, your parents rejected you, and that was sinfully wrong. 12:03 Bob Carden You can forgive them, which means you can cancel the debt and let it go so that you're no longer hooked to that belief. And now here's a life you're now part of a church family that loves you. We will not reject you, and you have a father who loves you and will never reject you. He will never, never leave you and never, never forsake. 12:24 Bob Carden And so you have to rebuild an. 12:25 Bob Carden Identity. 12:26 Bob Carden With someone. 12:28 Bob Carden That's really a lot of what we do, Sean is help people rebuild or build for the first time in identity in Christ. 12:35 Sean Finnegan And what? What about the person that says I don't. 12:41 Sean Finnegan I don't have any trust in God because God let this bad thing happen to me. How do you deal with that? 12:47 Bob Carden That is bad theology. You know that? And that comes out of the idea that God controls everything you know and and you taught this morning on God is sovereign, but you also added that God has given us free will. 13:02 Sean Finnegan Yes, I did. Yeah. 13:04 Bob Carden But if you believe, and this is widely held in Christianity, that God controls everything, then eventually you will come to the place where. 13:15 Bob Carden God screwed you. 13:17 Bob Carden Yet where you have to pin this terrible thing that happened to you on God, and that's going to crush your faith. So we need to teach people the truth. 13:25 Bob Carden If God had no part. 13:28 Bob Carden In causing your trauma, but I will tell you he never left your side during it. 13:34 Bob Carden And he is right here. Now to help you heal. 13:39 Bob Carden Now, what do they have to do to heal? There's a lot of different things that might come up that people have to do, but I will say forgiveness is something that comes up almost all the time. 13:48 Sean Finnegan You mentioned forgiveness and bitterness as being two things that people really hold on to like poison that we drink. Thinking is going to harm someone else. How does somebody overcome bitterness where they're just like, so bitter about a situation or a person after so many years? You get this with like, some older people sometimes where they're just like, bitter. And how do you get free from that? 14:09 Sean Finnegan How do you become sweet? 14:12 Bob Carden Well. 14:13 Bob Carden You have to. 14:14 Bob Carden Want to pursue life God's way? Yeah. You're miserable. Being bitter, so would you. Would you consider that God might have an alternative to that? Well, I'll never forgive them. They don't deserve to be forgiven. You don't know what they did to me. And that's true. I don't know what they did to them. I never pretend I don't pander to people by saying. Yeah, I understand. 14:35 Bob Carden There's a lot of things I Bob has no experience in understanding, but Jesus does. 14:38 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 14:40 Bob Carden And he can help us through anything. But you have to, you have to want to pursue God's way. Some people just want to hold on to their bitterness. They they want the perceived satisfaction of hating the Wretch that hurt them. Like that's going to help your life. It doesn't help your life because you know what? That wrench doesn't give. 14:59 Bob Carden A hoot? What you think about them? They might not even know that you were offended. 15:02 Sean Finnegan Right, right. They might just be living their best life. 15:05 Bob Carden Yeah. 15:06 Bob Carden And as a matter of fact, what you've been so offended about might never have happened the way you thought it happened, because one of the biggest dangers that causes bitterness is attaching motives to somebody else's actions. That's very dangerous, because I might know what you did, Sean, but I don't know what was behind that. 15:25 Bob Carden Nothing might have been behind it, but I didn't think anything about that. Wouldn't even think you didn't. 15:28 Bob Carden Even know I was there? 15:29 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. Or it could be good intentions, but it just came out badly, right. I've definitely done that in the past where I, hey, good intentions and just didn't say it the right way or effectively handle this situation. 15:42 Bob Carden So attaching motives is one of the easiest paths to bitterness. But when you when you lay out the case that Jesus Christ made about forgiveness and how important it is and people don't think that justice is served, when I forgive because they, they don't really understand what God is. 15:43 No. 16:03 Bob Carden Asking of them so forgiveness is not saying no big deal. That's not what forgiveness is. God is not telling us to say it. 16:10 Bob Carden Was no big. 16:11 Bob Carden Deal if it was, no. If it was truly no big deal, you don't even have anything to forgive. 16:16 Bob Carden So when when you need to forgive, it was a big deal, at least it was a big deal to you. God is asking you to offer grace to that person. 16:25 Bob Carden And. 16:27 Bob Carden You can explain it to people God offered Grace to you. I mean, did you personally deserve Jesus to die in a cross for you? Were you that good that you actually deserve to have him go through that? And most people, when you stayed it that way, they go. OK, yeah. No. So you have to help people to see God's. 16:38 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 16:42 Sean Finnegan You have your point there. Definitely not, yeah. 16:47 Bob Carden Way on this that it's good to offer grace that you can cancel the debt. Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Depends on your translation. I mean, we use the language of debt to describe bitterness and unforgiveness. You owe me an apology. That's the language of debt. 17:07 Bob Carden And people, they nurse a grudge. Good little grudge. Oh, what a cute little grudge. 17:12 Bob Carden Nursing a grudge? How about nursing some agape? 17:16 Sean Finnegan Yeah, something good in your life. 17:18 Bob Carden I have seen so many excuses, Sean, for not forgiving. 17:23 Bob Carden What makes forgiveness just is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, it is just. 17:34 Bob Carden It is right and righteous for God to forgive us our sins. 17:37 Bob Carden Not because I apologized, but because Christ died for them. 17:42 Bob Carden I mean, God doesn't save us just because he's a nice guy. 17:47 Bob Carden He saves us because he has dealt legally and justly with the problem of sin through Jesus Christ. 17:54 Sean Finnegan You remind me of a parable that Jesus told about the guy who was forgiven much and he went and found somebody that owed him and treated him harshly and exacted. 17:54 Yeah. 18:07 Sean Finnegan Payment, even though it was just a little bit that he was owed and that's what we're doing when we. 18:16 Sean Finnegan Cultivate and hold on to bitterness and unforgiveness in our souls towards other people. Is is we're we're being that petty servant who says I know I've been forgiven of so many bazillion dollars. I'll never be able to. I would never have been able to pay it back, but this guy owes me 20 bucks, and I'm going to get that 20 bucks. 18:36 Sean Finnegan Most interest, I don't care what it takes. You know, I'm if I have to throw him in prison if. 18:41 Sean Finnegan He has to make license plates by hand for years at a nickel an hour or whatever, you know, absurd situation. You know, we're gonna grind him to he. Nobody does that to me. And you know that's that's who we're being in that scenario where we hold on to it and we think it's going to hurt them. But it's hurting us. 19:02 Sean Finnegan Yeah, we're not made for that. We're literally not designed to hold grudges, hold unforgiveness hold bitterness in our heart. 19:11 Bob Carden And when we do that is willful sin. 19:15 Bob Carden And that doesn't help our walk with God. 19:18 Yeah. 19:19 Sean Finnegan Let's move to the subject of practical theology. While we've been talking about practical theology, but just in in the sense of how it's practiced at Align Ministries, where you where you serve, you still serve there, right, even though you're not. 19:33 Bob Carden Yes, I'm not the lead pastor, but I am. I am on the board and I'm one of the pastors there and I have the opportunity to teach on a regular basis. And I also have the opportunity to do counseling, which is something that I really enjoy and counseling is really just healing. 19:36 Sean Finnegan The lead. 19:37 Sean Finnegan Anymore. 19:54 Bob Carden Sitting down and talking through how God is going to touch your life with healing, so I still get to do that. 20:01 Sean Finnegan Very good. So I've heard a little bit about how your services function and I'm really interested in you describing for the audience that first half hour or hour. 20:14 Sean Finnegan However long it is before. 20:16 Sean Finnegan What the main service starts and and just going through that a little bit because I think that kind of relates to this Holy Spirit subject. 20:22 Bob Carden It it is different and when Garrett first was taking over the church, we were first talking about it and this is that's another story. But one of the things Garrett asked me is he felt that God wanted him to lead. At the time it was called Grace Christian Fellowship, that he God wanted him to lead that with his wife Danny. But he asked me. 20:43 Bob Carden Do I have to lead it the way you're leading it and I? 20:46 Bob Carden No. 20:47 Bob Carden You don't. If God wanted, it led the way Bob leaves it. He'd probably have Bob still lead it, but God had clearly told me that I should step aside and Garrett really went to God in terms of what is our Sunday supposed to look like and we prefer to call it a gathering. And it's two hours long, so it's not a short gathering. 20:52 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 21:07 Bob Carden It has several different components to it and we start off with corporate prayer. We praying as a family. 21:13 Sean Finnegan At what time is? 21:14 Sean Finnegan That. 21:14 Bob Carden That's at 9:00. 21:15 Bob Carden 30. 21:15 Bob Carden OK. And that'll go, it depends on the Sunday, because we're fluid, it's that we don't have set time, so maybe the. 21:21 Bob Carden The prayer could go from 9:30 to 10:00 or it could go from 9:30 to 9:50. Depends on how long what else we have going that Sunday. How much worship we we want or how long the teacher is going to be. But that first half hour, say, is corporate prayer. Anybody can come and we pray. That is when we hear messages from God. 21:41 Bob Carden By way of the interpretation of tongues and prophecy during that part of the service and we started off when when when we first introduced this, it was very hard to get people away from the, we start at 10:30. 21:53 Bob Carden Because that's when the music starts, so that must be when we're starting. But so we would have maybe a dozen people show up to the 930 part, but people began to realize and we kept announcing that that our our gathering starts at 9:30 with prayer come and join us. So. And people started having their lives touched and blessed. 22:13 Bob Carden In prayer. And so now I would say maybe 75 to 80% of the people. 22:20 Bob Carden That are there at 10:30. We're there at 9:30, which is a huge, huge growth. So that goes to say 10:00 and then we have what we call a time of connection and that's. 22:22 Sean Finnegan Wow. 22:30 Sean Finnegan Well, let me pause you there. So going back to the corporate prayer time. 22:31 Bob Carden Sure. 22:34 Sean Finnegan The way this works is you have one person in the front who calls on people to. 22:40 Bob Carden Pray no, we have one person in the front who is the lead for that Sunday and they'll open with maybe a two or three minute introduction because we always want to explain what this is all about. 22:44 Sean Finnegan OK. 22:50 Sean Finnegan In case anybody's there for the first time. 22:51 Bob Carden Yeah, because we have new people who come in and to explain it, we'll also be hearing messages from God during this period of time. 22:58 Bob Carden Then he or she will usually open a prayer, and then it's the floor is just open. You can either pray. 23:03 Sean Finnegan So anybody can. 23:05 Bob Carden Anybody can pray, anybody can bring forth a message from God if they're so inspired. And that goes on for about 1/2 an hour, and then the person who's leading it would then close us up with prayer again, just to kind of tie everything together. But it's pretty free form. 23:20 Sean Finnegan Yeah, and that that doesn't seem too risky to you. 23:24 Uh. 23:27 Bob Carden In what sense? Risky, I don't. 23:28 Sean Finnegan You get somebody get stands up and says something crazy or gets all political with vote for my candidate or. 23:37 Sean Finnegan Just goes into La La land. I mean, what? 23:41 Bob Carden Yeah, I suppose they. 23:42 Sean Finnegan It seems like an incredibly risky thing. I mean, we do it here too, and I I feel sometimes like ohh boy. 23:48 Sean Finnegan Anything could happen. We're letting the spirit roam, you know. 23:49 Bob Carden Because we're we're, we're open. 23:53 Bob Carden And it has happened on a couple of occasions. 23:57 Sean Finnegan So talk about how you deal with. 23:58 Sean Finnegan That when that happens. 23:59 Bob Carden Well, there's there's one occasion where it happened because you mentioned political. This was like 3 or 4 years ago where the person was, you know, was supposed to pray for our leaders. Well, this person was branded about how rotten such leaders are. And you know how they're all terrible. And. And I just interrupted her. 24:15 Bob Carden Good for you. I I wasn't the lead that Sunday, but. 24:19 Bob Carden I have enough longevity in the church that I have credibility. People, you know, don't mind. And most people who were in the. 24:23 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 24:26 Sean Finnegan What? What did you say? 24:28 Bob Carden I spoke to the person my name is can we talk for a moment? Because that's not really appropriate for this kind of. 24:33 Bob Carden A. 24:34 Bob Carden Prayer. So I I brought the person outside and and we chatted and we don't bring politics to to the family, to the church. And then I had somebody a couple of years ago and they said to me well, you know I know Bob that you're not a political person. 24:49 Bob Carden And I'm thinking to myself, you have absolutely no idea what my politics are. 24:53 Bob Carden Because I don't bring them to church, because that's not what's important about being here. I mean, as a matter of course, I've voted in every election primary and regular election since 1972, when I turned 18. But that's not the biggest deal in my life. 24:54 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 25:08 Sean Finnegan Right. 25:09 Bob Carden And I think that it is more divisive than helpful. 25:13 Sean Finnegan Have you had somebody speaking tongues and not interpret? 25:17 Bob Carden No, we have not. 25:18 Sean Finnegan What would you do if that happened? 25:21 Bob Carden I would probably follow up with the word of prophecy for have call on somebody at that point to prophecy, but because. 25:30 Sean Finnegan Ma'am, speak to them afterwards also, yeah. 25:32 Bob Carden Yeah, I would definitely speak to them afterwards, but you know, within our church, and most people would not put themselves forward to bring a message from God unless they'd had some instruction on it. Now they could be coming from a church that does it very differently. And, you know, this is how they do it. But we have not. I don't think that I recall we've ever had that problem. 25:45 Sean Finnegan Right, yeah. 25:52 Bob Carden That we would add. 25:52 Bob Carden That in teaching, but of course most of the people there, if they've been if they've been taught like they've had our introductory class or our class on building up the church, they they know what we believe and they would recognize that this person just didn't know that and. 26:08 Bob Carden It wouldn't be a big problem with that, I. 26:09 Sean Finnegan Don't think. All right, so that's your first first section. First half hour and then you said after that you have the connecting. 26:12 Bob Carden This first half hour. 26:16 Bob Carden We call it the we call it a period of connection, and that's time you can. There's a variety of things that we make available or that you could do if you would like to receive prayer. We always have a few people who wear lanyards. If you would like somebody to pray for. 26:19 Sean Finnegan OK connection. 26:30 Bob Carden You go see one of these people. They'd be happy to pray for you. And we also make communion available. We have a station in the back and at 10:10 somebody will be back there to lead communion. Or if you just want to grab a cup and go off and have communion by yourself in another corner, that's fine too. That is a pretty fluid time. 26:50 Bob Carden And that goes 20 to 25 minutes usually. No, no more than 25 minutes, because certainly by 1025 we start in with worship music, but often worship music will start by 10:20. 27:03 Bob Carden And then when people hear that and they announce, when you hear the worship music start, well then you can take a seat because the time of connection, everybody's up and walking around it's not. 27:14 Bob Carden Sitting down. 27:14 Sean Finnegan So is that. I'm just trying to imagine it here and describe it for the listeners. So you've got some people that are just chitchatting about the football game later today or, I mean, is everyone being spiritual? Is it very quiet like? 27:31 Bob Carden What I don't know that there's. I'm sure there are some people that are talking about. 27:36 Sean Finnegan Whatever. 27:36 Bob Carden Lamenting the Bears next football game? Well, I'm from Chicago. If your audience didn't know that. But no, for the most part, people are having more spiritual conversations. 27:41 Yeah. 27:47 Sean Finnegan Because they've just been through the. 27:48 Sean Finnegan Prayer time. 27:49 Bob Carden They've just been through the prayer time and that's the example that our leadership team gives of what we're doing at that time. You have so much of Christian leadership is not what you tell people, but how they see you living. 27:50 Yeah. 28:04 Bob Carden Yeah, they don't see us sitting here talking politics, talking trash about somebody. And so they understand that this is a different way of living life and. 28:13 Bob Carden Christianity is radically different than life should be radically different than life in the world. If it doesn't look radically different, we haven't restored it to the 1st century. 28:23 Sean Finnegan I've got a couple more questions on this. Where are the kids? 28:27 Bob Carden We have our children's program starts at 9:30, so we have 3 children's programs that run on a Sunday. The Kingdom kids are three to six year olds. My wife's in charge of them and then we have elementary which goes through 5th grade in Illinois and they have their own separate program starting at 9:30 going to 11:30. 28:48 Bob Carden Sometimes the older kids will come in for worship, but not always. 28:52 Bob Carden And then we also have the youth and they at 9:30 do their own time of prayer and connection, but then they rejoin everybody at 10:30. When we do worship and the teaching part of the service. 29:07 OK. 29:07 Sean Finnegan So you don't have the kids in the room of the lights down. 29:12 Sean Finnegan Is there music playing during the connection time? 29:15 Bob Carden Yes, the lights are down lower for the prayer. 29:18 Bob Carden Time. 29:19 Bob Carden They're up a little during the connection time. Yeah. And the there's music playing. 29:22 Sean Finnegan People are wondering. 29:26 Sean Finnegan And so people are taking communion and other people are just talking to each other and then other people maybe are just sitting and reading their Bible or praying, doing something solo. I'm just trying to get a. 29:28 Bob Carden MHM. 29:39 Bob Carden Yeah. No, it's it's it's an. 29:39 Sean Finnegan Picture of it. 29:41 Bob Carden Array. Yeah, things OK. 29:43 Bob Carden And sometimes, you know, they might go out and get coffee because we have coffee. 29:46 Sean Finnegan And and some people are going forward to those with lanyards to receive prayer for healing. 29:52 Bob Carden Correct. 29:53 Sean Finnegan And that's where. 29:54 Sean Finnegan You have this built in to your weekly worship service. This whole healing area. 29:58 Bob Carden Right. 30:01 Bob Carden It's yes, and not just healing. You want to be a. 30:03 Bob Carden Prayer for anything. 30:04 Sean Finnegan OK, might need some financial healing or some relationship healing or yeah. 30:08 Bob Carden Yes, it it doesn't. But if you if you want someone to stand with you personally in prayer, they know we make that available and people can do that. And also one of the things that we've inculcated in our leadership team and we we have about 40 people who are. 30:10 Sean Finnegan Feeling. 30:24 Bob Carden On what Garrett calls our All team, which are they serve in any capacity within the church, some of them are leaders within that capacity. Most of them are served within that capacity and we all are keenly aware of talking to people and looking for opportunities to Minister to them. 30:44 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 30:44 Bob Carden I mean, I asked people, is there anything I can pray for? If you didn't come to me for prayer, there's something you'd like me to pray for, Sean. And you'd be surprised that people, well, people will then say and you kind of wonder, wonder why they didn't ask to be prayed for when they have this going on in their life. But sometimes people need to be prodded. 31:02 Sean Finnegan Yeah, it's funny. I think so many of us are so encumbered. And so we're. We're two things at the same time. 1 is isolated. 31:13 Sean Finnegan You know, we have our own problems. We don't talk about them. 31:16 Sean Finnegan We put on a smile on Sunday when we see people. 31:20 Sean Finnegan Or whatever day you worship. And then at the same time we. 31:26 Sean Finnegan A desperately longing for connection. We're desperately want others to know, but we also don't tell them. And so we're kind of like frustrated. It's just kind of funny. 31:37 Sean Finnegan I can definitely attest to. 31:38 Sean Finnegan That. 31:39 Bob Carden And you know people, when they come to church, that might be the only time all week they get a. 31:45 Bob Carden Hug. 31:47 Bob Carden When they know that somebody actually values them, that we are, we are glad to see you. 31:50 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 31:52 Bob Carden And it shows on our faces. It shows in our actions and you'll learn the Bible as you go along. 31:59 Bob Carden And but we we hug a lot of. 32:01 Bob Carden People, yeah. 32:02 Bob Carden No, I I will if I don't know them. And they're female, I will. 32:06 Sean Finnegan Ask do you hug guys? 32:08 Bob Carden I will. 32:10 Bob Carden For the most part, unless I feel that they would be uncomfortable, you don't want to make people uncomfortable, but we are very loving and what they'll see if they walk in our churches, they'll see everybody hugging, you know, all over the place. So they'll get the idea that this is part of our culture, but. 32:14 Yeah. 32:22 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 32:25 Bob Carden You know we. 32:27 Bob Carden We honestly love people and we're not the only church that loves people. 32:30 Right, right. Yeah. 32:31 Bob Carden But we don't mind being demonstrative about. 32:33 Bob Carden It. 32:33 Sean Finnegan Yeah. And do you do the kiss of peace? 32:35 Bob Carden We don't call it that. No, I don't. 32:36 Sean Finnegan Or the holy kiss or whatever. 32:38 Sean Finnegan But if it's in the New Testament. 32:41 Bob Carden I don't kiss guys just. 32:44 Bob Carden Just to be clear, but yes, I mean, we'll give a Peck on the cheek or something. 32:48 Yeah. 32:50 Sean Finnegan Yeah, we had that here at living hope for many years. I don't want to speak for everyone else, but just my own experience was like. 32:58 Sean Finnegan I would never do it for like somebody that's with a lady that's my age or younger. And those people didn't want it either. 33:06 Sean Finnegan And so like it was basically just ladies that are older than me. You you go in for the hug and then they kiss you on the cheek and you're like, oh, shoot. I was supposed to do that, you know? And you, you missed it. And so then next time you correct, you're like, alright, I'm gonna kiss this lady on the cheek because she wants it. She's already given it to me. But then those people have died. 33:23 Sean Finnegan Over the years and like we have fewer and fewer. 33:26 Sean Finnegan Cheek kissers in our church. 33:29 Bob Carden You know, just as a matter of how I approach hugging a woman, what you I would usually ask, but I you can give a very chased hug and a frame hug. You just want to show somebody that they're valuable. That's really that's its whole point and touch can be healing, especially when it's coming from someone who has love. 33:29 Sean Finnegan So. 33:43 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 33:45 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 33:50 Bob Carden And people realize they're recognized pretty early on, that they're in a safe place in our church. 33:58 Bob Carden This is this is not a place of ulterior motives. We we genuinely want to serve you. You know, obviously you when I'm praying for somebody, if I'm praying for the sick, I never put my hand on a woman unless I ask her permission. 34:12 Bob Carden Absolutely. I don't. And sometimes and I've had this happen, I had this happen out in Redding, CA where I was praying for a woman. 34:19 Bob Carden And she was with another girl. They're from Brazil. There were three of them. And I was praying for her. And her problem was she had a tumor under her breast. Bob's not going to touch that. So what I did was I said, once you put your hand on that, and then I had her friend who was also a girl. Why don't you put your hand out over her hands and then can I put my hand on your shoulder? And that's how I handle. 34:39 Sean Finnegan Yeah. OK. 34:39 Bob Carden Praying for her. 34:42 Bob Carden Because you don't want people to be uncomfortable, right? It's the last thing I want. 34:45 Bob Carden Somebody to be at church. 34:46 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Yeah. So then after that, you have the music and the sermon. 34:51 Bob Carden Yes. 34:53 Bob Carden And our work. 34:54 Bob Carden Ship. 34:55 Bob Carden Flows in and out. You know, there'll be times of prayer during worship, Jessica or another worshipper leader will pray during that time. They might share some scripture during that time between songs, but it really is focused and the song selection that they do is very much focused on praising God. 35:14 Bob Carden Directing our songs to God because that's what worship is. Otherwise it's just. 35:18 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 35:19 Bob Carden Singing. 35:21 Sean Finnegan Which is great too. 35:21 Bob Carden It's OK. It's OK too. 35:25 Bob Carden But if we're going to call it worship, we want to. 35:27 Bob Carden Make. 35:27 Bob Carden Sure that it's, it's directed to God. 35:27 Sean Finnegan Is directed to God, yeah, yeah. 35:30 Sean Finnegan OK. Well, what, what else should we talk about? We've talked about demons and speaking in tongues and prophecy and physical healing and emotional healing. 35:42 Sean Finnegan What else should we talk about? 35:43 Bob Carden How about the underlayment of all of that? Which is good biblical theology? You have to you have to start with the Bible. 35:49 Sean Finnegan Yeah, please, let's see. 35:55 Bob Carden And of course, it is the Bible that tells us that we're to love one another so that we get that concept, not because we're just naturally loving, but because we understand Christ's commandment about this. So the people coming to church, they might not have much understanding of what we believe. Yet when they're when they're a new person, they don't understand. 36:15 Bob Carden Christianity, yet they've heard of Jesus. But you know they don't really know much. 36:19 Bob Carden But we, as leaders and servants within the church, we need to have a good understanding of what the scriptures teach, and there needs to be at least a core within every church that not only knows the correct answers, but understands how to explain them. 36:39 Bob Carden The scripturally, because far too many people, they know what they can give you the right answer. 36:45 Bob Carden Why? 36:47 Bob Carden Why is that true? Can you? We need people who can do in-depth, biblical studies in each, in every church. We don't need everybody, but we need a body of people that can do that. You're you have an embarrassment of riches at living hope. 37:03 Sean Finnegan Thank you. 37:04 Bob Carden And you know and and we're developing that and we have you know we need people to develop language skills. We need people who understand a solid approach to biblical interpretation. 37:15 Bob Carden When I teach my introductory class, I'm not trying to make somebody a biblical researcher. I'm looking for him to be comfortable reading the Bible in his living room in the morning. That's my goal, but there is more to that if you want to move up and lead to and there's resources that can help people to understand. 37:26 Yeah. 37:35 Bob Carden How to approach the Bible? 37:38 Bob Carden Your class is one of them. How to read the Bible. 37:41 Bob Carden For. 37:41 Bob Carden Yourself. 37:41 Sean Finnegan Thank you. Yeah. 37:43 Bob Carden But there are books also on that grasping God's word is one good one. Who's the guy? Rob Plummer does? Plumber does 40 questions on biblical interpretation. Excellent book. Each question is like two or three pages. 37:50 Sean Finnegan Yeah, plumber is good. 37:57 Bob Carden 1. 37:59 Bob Carden And it's a great next step introduction because we need to have a solid biblical base or we will fall apart. 38:08 Sean Finnegan So the practice needs to be formed by or shaped by the scripture. The biblical understanding when it comes to. 38:19 Sean Finnegan Holy Spirit activity, there's a lot of times when. 38:24 Sean Finnegan Experience is all that matters to people. 38:27 Sean Finnegan And you can get into what some would call charismania. And it's it's like a zoo and you've got this one rolling around on the ground and that one singing in tongues. And this one over here. 38:40 Sean Finnegan What do you do with that kind of thing? 38:42 Bob Carden You know, we have not. 38:45 Bob Carden Had to deal with that much because as people come into our church, they understand they can observe how we're doing things that that would be most and we we have had a couple of people who've come to our church from other churches who were, say, a highly charismatic church, but without perhaps the same biblical understanding that we have. 39:04 Bob Carden Not to say that our biblical understanding is 100%. 39:08 Bob Carden Bulletproof, but we have a way that we understand the scriptures and this is what we teach and this is how we operate and we'll talk to people if if they come from a different faith stream than the one that we're in. But it it is true that that's why it has to be grounded in the scriptures and some of them are easy. Like if somebody wants to just like they'll do in Pentecostal churches. 39:13 Yeah. 39:19 Yeah. 39:28 Bob Carden Stand up and start speaking in tongues out loud and that's it. 39:31 Bob Carden Well, the scriptures clearly say you don't do that. That might. That's a practice that your church has okayed. But the scriptures don't, OK, that that's a pretty easy one to develop. The harder ones are the ones that you really have to work with people is when they think they're prophesying, but they're really just speaking out of their own souls. 39:52 Bob Carden Either blessing or disorder, but either way it's not. 39:55 Bob Carden Necessarily from God, but we also work with people on that we have within our church prophetic meetings. In fact, class align with the prophetic where we teach people what are the scriptures say about the use and the limits and the approach to bringing a message from God, whether it's a corporate message as interpretation of prophecy. 40:16 Bob Carden Or whether it's an individual message where God has directed me to say something to you, say, how do the scriptures say we should handle? 40:24 Bob Carden That and so we helped walk people through that and then we have those who are more trained in that and have more experience in it to help people, but we can't be afraid of it. You see that too many churches are afraid that you let the genie out of the bottle and you're going to get somebody whacking doodle show up. You will. OK. You know, the devil sends people to church too. 40:33 Sean Finnegan I think. 40:44 Bob Carden So yes, you you risk things happening outside of the way you would like them to happen, but it's worth the risk. The greater risk is not allowing anything to. 40:56 Bob Carden Happen and then then we get to be, you know, a very dry, doctrinally pure, emotionally disconnected group of people. 41:06 Yeah. 41:07 Sean Finnegan Yeah, there are three statements that come to mind. One is, don't quench the spirit. Another is don't forbid speaking in tongues. And then the third is don't despise prophetic utterances. And I think your average church that maybe believes that the gifts of the spirit are possible, that they're available. 41:28 Sean Finnegan But don't make room for them in their Sunday service. 41:31 Sean Finnegan Would have a maybe that I'm not saying it has to be Sunday. 41:35 Sean Finnegan But. 41:35 Sean Finnegan Like there's there needs to be some room for these manifestations to occur. Otherwise what's the difference between you and a cessationist between you and somebody who says I don't believe this is available today. 41:50 Sean Finnegan I love how you guys are doing this. I love how risky and free it is that anybody can come but that but that there is, there's also a possibility of correction because. 42:01 Sean Finnegan People do get out of bounds. They do. It just happens, you know, and and to to to think that. OK, well, at least Bob can say, hey, that's enough or hey, let's go talk in the other room if somebody, you know, got into something that was just, you know, obviously that wasn't a Holy Spirit thing. That was just a prayer thing. But same idea, you know, I think that's really a good way of handling it. 42:23 Sean Finnegan Pastors do need to ask themselves this question. If you have no room in your Sunday service or your weekly get together for the manifestations of the Spirit. 42:36 Sean Finnegan How was that not quenching the spirit? 42:38 Sean Finnegan How was it? 42:40 Sean Finnegan The scripture says don't quench the spirit, so you don't want to be fighting against Scripture. And on the other side, if you are super Pro spirit and you're going with all the different prophetic things that come out of this in that ministry and you're not holding people to the boundaries that Scripture provides. 43:00 Sean Finnegan Then you're you're going in the opposite direction too far. So there's two ditches on the either side of this road that you're on, Bob. You know, one side says, well, anything goes. The other side says nothing goes. 43:11 Bob Carden And and this and the solution that too many churches have taken is to have a stale, powerless Christianity. 43:17 Yeah. 43:18 Bob Carden And apart from the power of God, Christianity is just another philosophy just happens to be the one you and I like. But it's the power of God, starting with the resurrection of Jesus Christ that makes it different. And if we don't allow for that, then we are doing a disservice to what? 43:31 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 43:37 Bob Carden Jesus accomplished. 43:39 Sean Finnegan Well, and we're doing something different than what Jesus did and different than what the apostles did, because when we look at Jesus, he was filled with the spirit. 43:50 Sean Finnegan And he healed people. He cast out demons. He engaged with people's lives and with the apostles in the book of Acts. What do we see? You know? So if we want to call ourselves Restorationist, we want to restore authentic Christianity. But we want to leave the prophetic and we want to leave the the Holy Spirit stuff to the side. That's the problem. 44:10 Bob Carden And and as leaders, it's hard. 44:14 Bob Carden To let go of. 44:15 Sean Finnegan Control. Yes. Yeah, yeah, it it. It's it is. I totally agree with that. 44:16 Bob Carden And and. 44:20 Bob Carden And you have to be willing to, OK. God, you're directing us to do this. We're going to give it a shot. And if we need to make course corrections as we go along, we will do that. But we're at least going to put ourselves forward, as I said, with prayer, we we put ourselves forward to pray for the sick. We don't see miraculous healings with everybody we pray for, but we see a whole lot more than we've ever seen before. 44:42 Bob Carden Because we're making it available more right and and the more you pray for people, the more comfortable you will be. 44:51 Bob Carden And God working within you to bring his healing deliverance to somebody. But you got to put yourself out there. 44:54 Yeah. 44:57 Sean Finnegan When you were talking a minute ago, I was thinking of First Corinthians 14, which I've been. I've been reading through first Corinthians in the mornings. 45:05 Sean Finnegan In Greek, because I am going to be teaching a class on it in a few months here, and when you read it in Greek, as you know, Bob, you'd like to read the New Testament as. 45:15 Sean Finnegan It just makes you read slow. Maybe Jerry reads is great fast, but you know, it just I I don't care how good your Greek is. You're reading it slower than you're reading your English, and when you read slowly, you process differently and see different things. And I like to read my Greek with. 45:17 Bob Carden Yes, it does. At least it makes maybe Jerry can read faster than I can. 45:35 Sean Finnegan 10 be able to circle things and underline things and make connections. So I was reading 1st Corinthians 14 and I was just amazed by how frequently this word, this principle of edification, of the assembly, you know that this is really the the principle, the guiding principle that Paul gives us in First Corinthians 14. 45:55 Sean Finnegan Whatever the spirit manifestation is, and you know he listed 9 things there, I don't think the spirit only does 9. 46:00 Sean Finnegan Things I think it could be 27, I don't know, but what? Whatever it is, you run it through that filter. OK, speaking in tongues and and there's no interpretation. 46:12 Sean Finnegan He specifically handles that, he says. Well, that's that doesn't edify the people that are there. They think they don't know what you. They think you're crazy if they're unbelievers and if they're believers, they think. 46:24 Sean Finnegan You're a barbarian because you're speaking a language they don't understand, right? So this this whole idea of edification is, I think, a really helpful, easy way to judge spiritual activity in the assembly. And you know that that was really driven home to me recently reading that I think it's really cool to see what you guys are doing. 46:45 Sean Finnegan Align ministries. 46:47 Sean Finnegan And. 46:48 Sean Finnegan Something else I really appreciate with what you shared, Bob, is that you're not afraid to go to other ministries that believe other things and learn from them what you can. 46:59 Sean Finnegan And so many of us in the biblical Unitarian world are shy about doing that. You know, we we don't want to get found out or we don't want to expose ourselves. Uh, some some of us are. Some of us aren't. But, you know, I. 47:13 Sean Finnegan Think a lot. 47:14 Sean Finnegan Of us are just like, oh, that would be so cringey to like, sit there and listen to these people. But. 47:19 Sean Finnegan You were able to do it in a way that. 47:23 Sean Finnegan Empowered you to gain without compromising what you believe or anything like that. So a couple of great takeaways, any any concluding thoughts? 47:33 Bob Carden The greatest exhortation I could give is put yourself out there for God. 47:39 Bob Carden Don't be afraid to attempt something the Bible says you should be. 47:42 Bob Carden Able to do. 47:44 Bob Carden And this is what I share when I'm helping to lead people into speaking in tongues. I said God's job is to fill you with the spirit. God's job is to give you the words to speak. Your job is to give God a shot. 47:58 Bob Carden And I believe that with healing and miracles and revelation, if people are taught the scriptures and then put yourself forward, ask God to show you things you want to hear more from God sit quietly before him and ask him questions. 48:14 Bob Carden That will be uncomfortable for a person the 1st 20 times they do it. But if we've taught them how to the least the foundations of recognizing God's voice, it'll change their lives. 48:27 Bob Carden Now I I journal every morning, let's say 6 mornings a week where it's a two way journal. 48:33 Bob Carden I'll just ask out a question and what does he have to say on a subject? And I've never had God not want to say something to me. 48:42 Yeah. 48:43 Bob Carden That's exciting to start your day where you know God said something and it's not earth shattering. It's not giving me new revelation. I mean the Bible. 48:50 Bob Carden Is a finished book. 48:52 Bob Carden But he's just weighing down on your life, encouraging you personally, giving you direction for your day. That's pretty cool. Give God a shot. 49:02 Right. 49:02 Sean Finnegan You've got a shot. All right, awesome. Thanks, Bob, for talking with me today. Appreciate your time and wish you the best in your ministry, even though you're allegedly retired. But you're. 49:13 Sean Finnegan Not. 49:17 Sean Finnegan So thanks for talking with me today. 49:19 Bob Carden Thank you, Sean. God bless you. 49:28 Sean Finnegan Well, that brings this conversation to an end. What did you think? Come on over to episode 571. Give God a shot with Bob Carden and leave your questions and comments there. Speaking of which, we got a couple of comments in from the interview last week, which was called my Journey into Healing Ministry with Bob Garden. Mike. 49:48 Sean Finnegan Jordan, saying enjoyed the podcast as always and Bob seems like an outstanding man. But on the subject of healing a deviated septum, some shoulder injuries, spiritual healings of emotion. 50:00 Sean Finnegan Trauma seem inadequate to demonstrate the power of God to me from someone that has seen 1000 people prayed for at our church without any results. 50:11 Sean Finnegan It's frustrating to say the least from the lack of power release from the spirit, if that's all the examples Bob has, I still remain confused on the miraculous. I am not diminishing the accomplishments he has with the people he helped, but as far as the miraculous seems to come up short, I come from a background of Pentecostal. 50:31 Sean Finnegan Influence, who proclaim a lot of stuff that never seems to materialize and God knows I wanted it to. But over and over, no results. 50:40 Sean Finnegan What are we missing? I wish I knew when the sick leave sick with Ms. Lupus, diabetes, ALS, cancer and so on, it is hard to believe in the miraculous, wonderful people, wonderful preachers that believe in it and love enough to seek God on our behalf, but no results. I see why people are cessationists. 51:01 Sean Finnegan And develop hard hearts toward healing ministries. 51:05 Sean Finnegan Well, thanks for sharing your experience, Mike. That sounds honestly devastating to experience or observe 1000 people prayed for with no results, which I would think would make you even more impressed with Bobby's results because he did mention, as you said here 3. 51:24 Sean Finnegan Specific concrete examples of significant healing. 51:29 Sean Finnegan And he also said that there were others, but he did not have people's permission to share in depth what he has seen. But I do hear what you're saying. It is absolutely terrible to watch somebody get their hopes up, go forward to receive prayer for healing and then leave in the same condition they had when they got there. 51:51 Sean Finnegan Well, I guess Carter's point on that is that that's not a good reason to not try. That's not a good reason to say, Oh well. 52:01 Sean Finnegan We're having more misses than hits. Way more misses than hits, so therefore we shouldn't believe this is possible anymore. I mean, look, we're all reading the book. 52:13 Sean Finnegan And although the Bible is not full of miracles like a fairy tale where pigs fly or whatever it does, it does contain lots of miracles. Now these miracles tend to be separated by time, and but they do also cluster together in certain ways, like Elijah and Alicia. And then of course with Moses before that. 52:33 Sean Finnegan And then Jesus and the apostles after that. 52:36 Sean Finnegan But these miracles are available and I don't know what your church is doing wrong. Mike. If you're praying for 1000 people and nobody's getting healed, I would say it seems like there's something there's something amiss going on because that is not even a 1% rate. I think I had actually asked Bob about his. 52:56 Sean Finnegan Right. 52:56 Sean Finnegan And I I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was a lot higher than 1% or even 10%, much higher than that. So I don't know what to really say because I don't know enough about your situation there, Mike, but it seems like something is something is missing and one of the things that Cardin really brings forward that I appreciate it so much is how he looks at the whole person. 53:18 Sean Finnegan Not just the physical malady, and I think he illustrated that well last week when he talked. 53:22 Sean Finnegan About the lady that had received shoulder healing only after she had the counseling and care that helped her to make the connection to the physical abuse she had received from her previous husband. So maybe that's what's going on that there there's some sort of blockage. 53:39 Hello. 53:42 Sean Finnegan Going on with people, but honestly, I don't even want to guess because I don't know even what your church is or anything about it. But I do appreciate what you have to say. I think Cessationism is just way too hard of a line to maintain. 53:57 Sean Finnegan In light of the many miracle, I mean, even just cartoons mentioned miracles here. Hey, that disproves cessationism. He already disproved. It's just you have to. You have to disprove literally every miracle. And that's really kind of a burden of atheists, not Christians in my opinion. Another couple of sources to mention is Craig. 54:18 Sean Finnegan Inner has a recent book out on miracles called Miracles. Today the supernatural work of God in the modern world. If you're not familiar with keener, he is a New Testament scholar. 54:31 Sean Finnegan Very well respected by many different traditions and in the Academy at large. 54:38 Sean Finnegan And he had written A2 volume really in depth, scholarly work on miracles. And I think this one called miracles today came out in 2021 is more just looking at the evidence. The description is, do miracles still happen today? The book demonstrates that miraculous works of God, which have been part of the experience of the church around the world since Christianity. 54:58 Sean Finnegan Began continue into the present. 55:01 Sean Finnegan So hey, take a look at that. Eric Metaxas has a book out on miracles that I thought was pretty good. Although there were a couple where I was like, come on, that's ridiculous. Or it just seemed out there. Keener, I think, is much more careful scholar. And then there are also other books out on the same subjects. Actually, there's a lot of. 55:22 Sean Finnegan Looks out on the same subject. 55:24 Sean Finnegan I know multiple people who have had miracles. I've myself been the recipient of a healing miracle. It wasn't instantaneous, but it was. 55:32 Sean Finnegan Less than 24 hours from prayer to restoration in my case. So you know, we we've seen this stuff. It doesn't happen as frequently as we'd like. 55:43 Sean Finnegan So where does that leave us? Just give up. 55:46 Sean Finnegan Or just continue with the understanding that, hey, this is not the end of the world. We're going to pray in faith, we're going to see what happens and we're going to look at the person holistically and give God a shot. And I I think that's really where Bob's coming from. And I appreciate that, mind. 56:01 Sean Finnegan Set. 56:02 Sean Finnegan The next commenter, mark is not so open minded subject as as Mike was. Mark writes in Oh Boy, the Healing ministries. I agree with you, Sean Bob sounds like a cool guy, but as far as the topic of the conversation itself, I must say it makes me feel quite. 56:22 Sean Finnegan Uncomfortable. 56:24 Sean Finnegan Let me pause it here. Honestly, that's probably a good thing. I think we should be a little uncomfortable when we try to step out in faith. If we're entirely comfortable all the time, then we're just going to stay exactly as we are anyhow, Mark continues. Now I am not someone who was repelled by anything to do with miracles. It's how I came to faith myself actually. 56:45 Sean Finnegan And I will occasionally find myself in some churches that have a more charismatic bent. But to go to Bill Johnson and Todd White, of all people, to learn about God's miraculous gifts, that's just unfathomable to me. 57:01 Sean Finnegan And then Mark goes on to talk about the problems with Bill Johnson and Todd White and their various mentors. And it's one point he mentions the KKK. You know, I'm not really sure about a lot of this stuff in all these different names that he mentions. But if you want to see Mark's case against. 57:21 Sean Finnegan Phil Johnson and Todd White take a look at rest of studio.org find Episode 570 My journey into Healing Ministry and you'll be able to see his fairly lengthy comma. 57:32 Sean Finnegan There which which I can't read all of it out here it would. It probably just take too long, but he does continue. How is it that they are seemingly able to quote UN quote, miraculously lengthened and unending amount of legs by half an inch, but never anything truly substantial? Let me pause on this. I actually did attend a healing. 57:53 Sean Finnegan Service nothing to do with my group here, just in the local. 57:56 Sean Finnegan Area a lady healer came to town and my dad and I went to go check it out. Not really having big expectations, but just kind of curious, like, hey, this person builds herself as a healer, so let's go watch some people get healed or not. Whatever, you know, like, let's just go and see what happens. 58:17 Sean Finnegan And she. 58:17 Sean Finnegan Doing the leg thing, I was like, what I don't like heard about this, but it's like a parlor trick where you have somebody put their legs up. 58:26 Sean Finnegan And one appears to be longer than the other, and then you just kind of you pray and you pull one of the legs and you know, it straightens out or whatever. It's just it's honestly, it is hysterical and it's I shouldn't say hysterically shameful. It is shameful because instead of actually healing people, you're giving them a trick. And I don't even think this trick would. 58:47 Sean Finnegan Pass muster on America's Got Talent. So I think if you're doing that. 58:52 Sean Finnegan Yeah, unless God's directly telling you to do it and there's something very specific going on with that person where, like they have a limp or something, then otherwise it really just has no place in my opinion. 59:05 Sean Finnegan That's my thought, Mark continues. They should do something that would actually help someone maybe grow back a whole leg, maybe heal a paralyzed person, or even something smaller. It sure would be convenient if Bill could get rid of his glasses, wouldn't it? No, there are, of course, lots of fantastical stories to share, but will we? 59:25 Sean Finnegan Ever get to truly see any of it? 59:27 Sean Finnegan Of course we know the answer to that already. God only lengthens legs anymore these days, it seems if you were to believe and and if you were to believe in that dot dot dot, he trails off. 59:39 Sean Finnegan Then he says I'm not really sure what to make of healing these days, along with some of the other spiritual gifts I will pray for people. Sure. And I even believe God can and occasionally will heal people. Alright, man. So it looks like Mark's on the team. He doesn't like Bill Johnson and Todd White. And a number of these other folks. But he does actually believe in healing. This is interesting. 59:58 Sean Finnegan Goes on, but at the same time I never seem to come across anyone experiencing miracles like the ones Jesus performs. 1:00:05 Sean Finnegan Raising people from the dead, giving sight to the blind, that kind of thing. What am I to conclude? I don't know. But surely, and despite all their fanciful stories, will I never look to the likes of Bill Johnson and Todd White to find the answers? Have I been too harsh here, too? Worked up? I am sorry. I have to admit, it makes me feel, perhaps somewhat irrationally, frustrated. 1:00:26 Sean Finnegan It is somewhat personal too. I have friends like Bob who have traveled all the way to reading to be inspired and to learn. I've seen churches change because of it. It's just I am not comfortable at all with what it ended up looking like. 1:00:38 Sean Finnegan Well, hey, I'm going to repeat what I said before. Mark, being comfortable is not necessarily the goal of Christianity. Serving God is, and if people are getting results and they're doing it through prayer, then I think that is that is something to seriously consider, well, some interesting thoughts. 1:00:58 Sean Finnegan On that subject, be curious to hear what people think about this idea of building healing into the weekly Sunday service. I would say that, other than way international ex way and Assemblies of God and some other charismatic groups, I. 1:01:18 Sean Finnegan Haven't seen really open prayer or time for speaking in tongues, interpretation and prophecy in worship services. Most American services are highly restrictive, highly limited. They do not allow the spirit to move in any way. 1:01:39 Sean Finnegan That would disrupt the previously planned liturgy for that particular. 1:01:44 Sean Finnegan Monday. 1:01:45 Sean Finnegan And I think that's tragic. Honestly, I do. I mean we we have open prayer every Sunday and yet it is risky and especially this time of year where when people are going bananas about their politics and stuff and we do have to be cognizant of that and we may have to interrupt somebody from time to time. But at the same time. 1:02:05 Sean Finnegan I hate to throw out the baby with the bathwater and just have one or two elders offer prayers and then that's it and not really actually allow people to pray about the true issues on their hearts and to hear from God through the gifts of the Spirit. So anyhow, that's my $0.02 on it, but. 1:02:26 Sean Finnegan As with everything else, test this against the scripture to see whether see whether it's true. 1:02:31 Sean Finnegan Am I just a crazy charismatic or am I just trying to be a Restorationist who authentically lives out the sort of Christianity I read in the New Testament today as best as I can? And you know, I understand we're flawed and we're limited and we don't have Jesus physically with us in person like the disciples. 1:02:51 Sean Finnegan But he is with us in spirit, so that's enough of this topic for today. I did want to mention that last weekend I was at the Unitarian Christian Alliance in Arkansas. 1:03:04 Sean Finnegan The I believe is the 4th UCLA USA Conference now that there's been the First England or UK as they prefer to call it conference. And then there's going to be the first New Zealand Conference next month. So anyhow, going to this conference in Arkansas was a great experience. It was really cool to meet. 1:03:25 Sean Finnegan A number of folks who were listeners of the podcast whom I had not met yet. 1:03:30 Sean Finnegan And so that's exciting. Always to see the reach and how people will then take that and then go on to research the subject of Christology in particular. But other subjects too like the Kingdom of God for example. And then they will come to see a greater understanding of the truths. 1:03:51 Sean Finnegan That the Bible contains. 1:03:53 Sean Finnegan So yeah, it was a great time to meet people. We had over 51st timers, many from Texas, because Arkansas is right next to Texas and people could drive there pretty easily, did not have so many folks from Ohio and Michigan and Indiana this year because, well, the conference wasn't in the Midwest, it was in the South. 1:04:13 Sean Finnegan I don't know what you call Arkansas. South Central? I don't know, but yeah, so. 1:04:20 Sean Finnegan Stay tuned for future release of My Isaiah 96 presentation. I may be able to have that out for you next week. I'm not really sure. I'm kind of dependent on the UCA release. I don't want to steal anybody slender, but I am eager to get that out. I think it handles the scripture in a way that is very easy. 1:04:41 Sean Finnegan Really, for everyone. I don't care what. 1:04:44 Sean Finnegan Approaches to theology, whether you're Trinitarian modalist biblical, Unitarian, Arian, whatever, I think everyone can agree that the theophoric approach as a 96 just works. So, and that's a very rare explanation that makes everybody happy. And yet I think that's what's going on. 1:05:04 Sean Finnegan I say at 96 and I and I really think that I'm not just saying it because it agrees with my beliefs. I think just based on the grammar and the syntax and the context, it just is the best explanation so. 1:05:16 So. 1:05:16 Sean Finnegan Stay tuned for that hopefully next week, if not shortly thereafter. Want to give a shout out to the folks I met at the conference? It was so great to see all of you and also wanted to mention for those listeners, especially young adults, there was, there were dozens of young adults at this event. 1:05:36 Sean Finnegan And they really did have a great time together. I I'm told I am not a young adult. Bless my heart. 1:05:42 Sean Finnegan At 45, I am either. I mean, let's be honest, I'm on the way down the hill. I'm on the other side of it. Ohh boy. Anyhow, I am very happy to spend time with young adults and we do have an event coming up that I want to invite them to in January. So it's January 3rd. 1:06:01 Sean Finnegan To the fifth, and if you are from out of town, you could just fly into the Albany International Airport of. 1:06:07 Sean Finnegan New York and we'll be able to arrange transportation for you to get to the venue. It's less than an hour away from the airport, and it's called revive. We do it every year. It's a great time. In fact, I'm probably going to be playing out some of the messages from last year's revive, either next week, depending on when the conference stuff becomes available or. 1:06:27 Sean Finnegan Shortly thereafter. So. 1:06:29 Sean Finnegan If you are especially in your 20s and 30s, if you're in college, if you're young, professional uh, come on over to revive. It's a great weekend. I do it every year with Victor Gluckin, the pastor of Living Faith Christian Church in Rhode Island and uh. We just have such powerful music and time of. 1:06:49 Sean Finnegan Preaching and sports and crafting and hanging out. I mean, it's a really great time so. 1:06:55 Sean Finnegan If you are interested or, you know, young adults, that would be interested in this, please have them check out the information at lhim.org that stands for living. Hope internationalministries.org and that's the ministry that is sponsoring revive. It would be great to see some new folks there. We usually do have people come in from other states each year, which is, let's face it, it's pretty exciting. 1:07:17 Sean Finnegan Hope to see some of you folks there at that next event. Well, that's it for me for today. If you'd like to support rest of studio, you can do that on the website restitutio.org. I'll catch you next week and remember the truth. 1:07:31 Sean Finnegan Has nothing to fear.