Walking by Faith (and Feeling Things Too!)

- Hi, I'm Dr. Andrew Farley, host of The Grace Message. Got a Bible question struggling with a personal issue? Wondering about a tricky verse? At BibleQuestions.com, you'll get clear, grace-based answers in 10 seconds or less. No fluff, no confusion. Just practical, biblical truth. Ask anything, anytime, and experience the power of God's love. Visit BibleQuestions.com. That's BibleQuestions.com. You're go too for biblical clarity. - Jesus plus nothing. 100% natural, no additives. Andrew Farley is celebrating your freedom in Christ. Call in and ask your questions at 877-655-6755. That's toll-free at 877-655-6755. By a satellite from Texas, it's The Grace Message with Dr. Andrew Farley. - Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Grace Message. I'm Andrew Farley. So glad you're joining us tonight, that number to call 877-655-6755. We do have four open lines here at the top of the hour. That means plenty of room for you to get in with your question tonight. Maybe you've got a question about a scripture passage. Perhaps you heard something in church this past weekend. You're not sure about it. You wanna put it to the test.

That is exactly why we're here for you right now. We are live across the United States and Canada on SiriusXM, all kinds of FM and AM stations. And of course, yes, we're live streaming on social media as well. It doesn't matter how you're listening or watching right now along with us. You can simply call in and be a part of tonight's conversation. We'd love to have you. 877-655-6755. Maybe it's a personal issue going on in your life right now and your marriage with your kids and your church. You're looking for that grace perspective. That's a great reason to call. Maybe it's something you're learning that is not even a question. It's more of a comment, a celebration or an observation, something you've learned from the grace message broadcast or elsewhere, and you just kinda wanna share it. That's a great reason to call. Maybe it's just that you need some assurance, some assurance in your relationship with God. You're not exactly certain where you stand and you need a little encouragement, a little clarity. Well, we have four lines open. Whatever's on your heart, whatever's on your mind, tonight's your night. You're gonna be the first caller if you call right away. I will give you that number again, 877-655-6755. Well, while we're waiting for those first calls to come in,

I wanna remind you of a new resource we have. In the month of September, it's called predestination. It's not what you think. And here's just a little bit about it. Heaven, hell, heaven, hell. Does God go down the city street choosing some for salvation and others for damnation? Is that the gospel that Jesus died for some people and others have no chance? Thank God, that is not the truth of the gospel. And in this new series called predestination, it's not what you think. We're gonna talk all about it. If you've ever wondered about the heart of God, does God really love the whole world? Did Jesus really die for everyone? Whoever calls on Him will be saved? Is that true or is that true? Let's talk about it. In this new series called predestination, make sure to request your copy when you give your gift this month to the grace message. And we are so grateful for your support. - Yes, we are. We're grateful for your support. We can't do it without you. And we love doing it alongside of you. Thank you so much for helping us reach the planet. And I do mean the planet, North America, whether it's Canada or the United States,

we're reaching all of North America through SiriusXM and other stations as well. We're reaching the world through TBN television and also many of our platforms reach the world. I'm thinking of pray.com where our teaching is featured there. We reach the planet through pray.com. We reach the whole world through TBN television as well. And through biblequestions.com, we're reaching 190, more than 190. And I say all that to brag on Jesus and say, "Look at all the creative ways that, wow, just that God is reaching everybody with His message of love and grace and forgiveness found only in Jesus." And to say thank you for making that possible through your gifts. And don't forget, I mean, this is our way of saying thank you to you in a tangible way. Just click the box, check the box, make sure you indicate your desire to receive your free copy of predestination. When you give your gift this month at andrewfarley.org. Again, that's andrewfarley.org. Of course, your gift is tax deductible. And the main reason, though, to give is to help us reach all these folks around the planet Christians who we are encouraging. And then unbelievers, many people are getting saved. We have reports on that even from our jail and prison ministry. You know, where more than a dozen people have prayed to receive Christ just recently through our resources. So we're always checking on those things because it's fun to see what God is doing in jails and prisons and online and all of that. So thank you. Thank you so, so much for your support. We're going to start out tonight in Oklahoma for our first call. We'll talk with Betty. Hi, Betty. What's on your heart tonight, my friend? Yes, I just want to be assured that it's not okay for Christians to break the 10 commandments.

Like it's still a sin to commit adultery, right? Yeah, so let's talk about that. Yeah, it's a sin to commit adultery. No question. But what about the Sabbath? Are you that's one of the 10, right? So are you doing the Friday night Sabbath? Of course. Okay. So you don't do any your household doesn't do any work Friday night or Saturday through sundown. Correct. Okay. So are you part of a denomination that practices that the Sabbath? Nope. So you just a little something between Jesus and me. I see. Okay. Well, I don't know if that's very, very recent. Or if that's part of your history there, observing the Sabbath, but that's interesting. I don't meet many people that independently just decide to keep a Friday night Sabbath and do no work of Friday evening and Saturday. But, you know, if that's the case, here's the bottom line. If it were 10, if the law were 10 commandments, well, then I guess you'd be a pretty good law keeper there. Maybe as good as Paul, but Paul then admitted that he could not avoid coveting. Thou shalt not covet was his big struggle. So then we have a bigger problem, though, and it's staring us in the face. And here it is. Nobody told us it was just 10. Nobody told us it was just 10 commandments.

The law is actually 613 commands. So by the time, you know, if I interviewed you and you interviewed me about whether you eat pork, whether you eat shellfish, whether you wear polyester in your shoes or clothing, I mean, basically we would all end up pretty embarrassed. And that's what the law does. I mean, the law really embarrasses everybody to the point where we just got to admit that we're not really doing it. So I think your question, first of all, is about how do we define sin and see defining sin by the law is scary. I want to take you down that road for just a minute, the garden path of what it means to define sin with the law because your concern was, say, adultery, well, there's plenty of passages in the New Testament that tell us adultery is not of God. So I don't have to rummage through Leviticus to figure out if adultery is okay or not. I don't need the law to define that sin for me. So here's the problem with using the law to define sin. There's 613 definitions. So eating pork is sin. is sin. So if we were defining sin by the law, we would have 613 definitions of sin. And so that's why we really need to settle into the New Testament definition of sin, that anything that is not of faith in Jesus is sin. Now that might sound nebulous to some people, except wait a minute, here's what faith in Jesus produces. It produces the fruit of the Spirit, which involves self-control, love, joy, peace, patience. So how could I love my wife and cheat on her at the same time? How could I exude self-control and commit adultery at the same time? So see now, not only are there New Testament letters that say adultery is not of God, honor the marriage bed, keep it pure, but also the fruit of the Spirit tells me, you know, Jesus is not producing adultery in me. So now look at the difference. What I've done there, it's going to be the same result. Are we going to commit adultery? No, we're not. But the source is different. The rationale is different. Is it a law-based rationale? Did I go to Leviticus and cherry pick a verse? No, I didn't. Because that's not wise. Right next to that verse about adultery is don't have a tattoo and don't leave the house a certain time of the month. Stay in. And on and

on it goes, whether it's polyester or certain animals you can't eat or whatever, there's laws about your sideburns for men, there's laws about your beard. And so with 613 laws, I don't get to be God and go in there and chop up Leviticus and say, well, you know, 613, no, no, no, no, I'm going to go with 10. I'll just go with the 10 commitment. No, no, no, wait, I'll throw in tithing so it'll be 11. So yeah, I'm going to make it 11, 11 out of 613. Well, that still leaves you with more than 600, 602 remaining. And who are we to cherry pick? So what's better to do here is to say, you know, Betty, I'm, I'm a Gentile. I'm not a Jewish person. I came to Christ as a Gentile. The law was never given to the Gentile. Gentiles were not invited to the law. If we're not part of Israel, we weren't under the law to begin with. Ephesians says that we had no law, no covenant. We were strangers. We were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel. And now we have one covenant, one invitation. We're invited to Jesus, the fruit of the spirit. We're invited to him. And so that's the reality. And then when it comes to what is he going to produce? Well, again, we see what he's going to produce. There's no mystery about it. I can trust him for love and self control and patience and all kinds of things. And he's never going to lead me to sin ever. And so, in fact, I could give a billion dollars to charity and it could be sin if it's not of faith in Jesus. So there's good looking sin and bad looking sin. The definition changes because our source changes. I'm not looking to Moses. I'm looking to Jesus. So I'll put you back on and see. Does that make sense, Betty? Yes. Whatever is not a face is sin. Okay. That does make sense. But I want to know that a person like culture is created by law. Is it not? Is my goal culture? Well, I don't want to live in a culture where child marriage is okay. And pedophilia is okay. Right. I don't want to live in that culture. Well, and I want laws against that. Okay. So you're talking now you've changed the topic. You're talking about what you want your government to do. See, this is not about what you want your government to do. That's a nice thought. I mean, I don't want that in my country. Many, I hope most countries, all countries don't want that. That's great. But we're talking about the Christian life and you are not going to be motivated in your Christian life because of Washington. You are going to be motivated in your Christian life because Jesus lives in you. So you can want all kinds of things and bravo. Vote for those things. Fight against those who oppose you on those matters. Debate it. Cast your ballot. Have a voice. Be an American. You're free to do so as we all are. And bravo. But you know what? This gospel, this message of grace is older than the United States.

I'm not answering your question about Washington. I'm answering your original question about Jesus. And you know Galatians says the law is not a faith. And so it doesn't take any faith at all to obey the government. You can do it out of fear. You can do it because you don't want to go to jail. You can obey the laws of the land for 10 good reasons but none of them being faith in Jesus. And so yes I get it. You're angry with with with society. You're angry with the agenda of culture out there. Well okay I accept that. I mean I understand it but that's not our topic. Our topic is when Betty goes to sleep at night and wakes up in the morning. What inspires her at a heart level. You know if I were to ask you to recite all 10 commands from the 10 commandments you might you might be able to do it off the cuff. The average Christian can't. I mean we get six or seven of them eight if we're lucky. The truth is we don't even hardly remember all of them. We don't have them all memorized to use them in the moment for our inspiration. What is keeping you from sin? It is not tablets of stone. It is Jesus Christ living in you. And I get that. You cannot force unbelievers to have Jesus Christ living in them. So yeah I mean you know resisting evil having great laws in your country I would recommend that for the United States. I'd recommend it for England and Ireland and Canada. As far as we can push great laws across the planet let's do it. But that's not what Paul Peter James and John did. They didn't merely look to the laws of the land. They taught a miraculous transformation at the core of your being where Jesus lives to inspire you. And that's what we're talking about here. That's why we shouldn't be looking to Moses as a source for our lives. Our daily lives in Christ. We have Christ living in us. The fruit of the spirit is the result of that. And you know what it says at the end of the list of the fruit of the spirit. I love it. As soon as the fruit of the spirit are finished being quoted it says against such things there is no law. There's no law condemning love. There's no law condemning self-control. There's no law condemning gentleness. So you're going to be in great shape if you trust Jesus. And as far as the world goes sure take five minutes to vote your heart out at that ballot box. Great and I hope it works

out. But I can't put my confidence in Washington. Five minutes of a vote or three hours at a picket line or or whatever anger and frustration at politicians that's going to go only so far. You have a lifetime a lifetime decades to share the message of Jesus Christ with unbelievers around you no matter what country they're from. So that's what's most important and Jesus is our source for daily living. Thanks for your call. Reach out again anytime great to hear from you. Alright let's go to Connecticut next. We'll talk with Shelly. Hi Shelly what you got for us tonight. Hello thank you for taking my call. I just have a quick question. I know that you know you hear in sermons often of you know you you really have in trusting Jesus and everything about you can't base things on just a feeling. You know what I mean? But it's kind of I guess the differentiation I'm looking for is I get emotional in church all the time. Like I have a feeling of a certain sermon or I hear a certain song and I start crying or or things like that so yeah I you know it's kind of I have all these emotions and I'm like wait is it okay that I have these emotions is this a fault feeling that I'm I have or you know I mean I I feel very secure in my salvation but it is something where you hear often of oh you can't base things on a feeling so I just I wanted to hear your take on it. Yeah yeah absolutely. Well I mean first of all God created every person differently so some people are super hyped and jazzed and emotional and that's the way God created us and so we're just that sort of creature and then other people I mean you know as a good look around the church there are people that are very reserved they they don't feel on that same level as we do or if they do it's not verbal. So I would say embrace who you are, embrace who you are in Christ, and also embrace your uniqueness that you're created to feel and to think and to choose. And I think when we talk in church circles about not living by your emotions or whatever,

we're talking in the context of hey, what if you really just feel dirty and distant from God because of the programming you grew up with, because of the legalism you're in, should you just fall at the feet of those feelings and say, well, I feel distant, so I guess I am, I feel dirty, so I guess I am. No, you can go deeper than your feelings and say, wait a minute, I know the truth. And the truth is outside my feelings. The truth is the truth. I mean, God exists outside of my emotions. He has a message for me that my emotions may or may not confirm in a given moment. So I can feel dirty and yet I'm not dirty. I'm holy, righteous, blameless, I'm redeemed, I'm bought back, I belong to him. I can feel distant and yet the truth is, I'm one with Christ, I'm united with Jesus. So there is a truth that is independent of my feelings. Now, does that mean then that I should just rain on the parade of feelings and feel nothing? Well, that sounds like a meager existence where I'm just stuffing everything down. No, feel what you're gonna feel, tell God what you feel. God, right now, I feel fantastic, Lord. Thank you for this amazing joy and happiness that I am feeling. The problem is I can't worship that and I can't hold tight to that

because 16 minutes later, I'm in the parking lot and something happens and I feel rage or maybe two weeks later, I feel depressed. And so as I'm working through those feelings and sharing them with God and communicating them and even feeling, expressing them, I'm not trying to get rid of them, but I'm recognizing there is truth that may or may not, may or may not agree with them. So when, in a healthy church environment, when people are talking about don't live by your feelings or don't trust your feelings, they're not saying, hey, would you calm down? You're too happy or hey, would you calm down? You're too passionate or would you calm down? You're too expressive, that's not what they mean. In a healthy environment, what they're really saying is, let's walk by faith. Let's remember that there is gospel truth about how clean you are, how close you are, your oneness with Jesus, that you're in Christ and he's in you, that you're righteous, wholly blameless, and yet you might feel like a seven out of 10 with him. And it's not the truth, you're a 10 out of 10. So that's what they intend to say when they're saying, let's walk by faith, not walk by our feelings. Let's not put our confidence in our feelings. They're talking about when feelings don't agree with truth, let's go ahead and believe the best about who we are.

Let's believe our heavenly Father. Let's believe the gospel. So you keep being you and if you're more expressive than some people around you, wonderful, thank God for your makeup, for who you are, for your uniqueness, 'cause everybody is special to him. - For more information on the broadcast ministry of Dr. Andrew Farley, please visit AndrewFarley.org. That's AndrewFarley.org. Join us next time as we invite you to celebrate the grace message with Dr. Andrew Farley. This program is sponsored by your generous financial support. (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Andrew Farley. I hope you enjoyed today's program. And if you have more questions, whether it's about a Bible Versa, personal struggle or anything on your heart, biblequestions.com is here for you. You'll get clear, grace-based answers in 10 seconds or less, no confusion, no judgment, just practical truth that meets you right where you are. Whatever's on your mind, you'll find real answers rooted in God's love. Visit biblequestions.com. That's biblequestions.com. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO] you