so Does that get you excited? Does that get you pumped up and ready to open up your Bible and study? It probably doesn't. But it's supposed to be a little bit over the top. It's supposed to be a little like, you know, tongue in cheek, giving a wink, like, yeah, this is so over the top that there's no way that anything I do is going to live up to it. But we're trying something very important here, and we're trying to have a little bit of fun with it at the same time. So if you've been with us in our journey, well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen, if you've been with us in our journey, then you know that today we arrive at day eight. day eight and our 30 days through 30 scriptures. So day eight, scripture number eight, hopefully the previous seven. I think the previous seven has been far more successful than I thought. So there's a little bit of me that wants to go, I can do this. We're going to make it to day 30, scripture number 30, and this is going to be a resounding success. But as soon as I start thinking that, I'm like, as soon as I think that, boom, I'm gonna stumble and fall, and it's all going to fall apart. So we'll have to wait and see. But how rude of me. I haven't given a proper introduction. Welcome, everyone. This is the Theology Central podcast, and I am broadcasting to you live from Abilene, Texas, on this Monday, June the 20th, 2022, at 11.50 a.m., and also, If you have the YouVersion Bible app, the YouVersion Bible app, and if you go to the events tab, now, I think the events tab is really based on your location. So I don't know what's going to show up in your location, but if you're anywhere near Abilene, Texas, and you go to the YouVersion Bible app and click on events, you're going to see this live broadcast listed. It's going to show us that we're live. And guess what? you can hit the link and listen to us live via the YouVersion Bible app, which is used by millions of people around the world. We're trying to utilize that technology. We don't know how successful it will be. We don't know how many people may discover us through that app, but we're utilizing it. Because if I can fix it where someone can find our live broadcast on the YouVersion Bible app, Someone can find our live broadcast on the Sermons 2.0 app. Someone can find our live broadcast. on the Spreaker app, someone can find our live broadcast on the Theology Central pod page, someone can find our live broadcast on the Victory Baptist Church webpage, then, hey, that's wonderful, if I can come up with about 50 more places, I'll try that as well, because all you can do is just make sure that your content is available anywhere and everywhere, do your best to produce as much content as you can, and just let whatever happens, happens. Some people will like it. Some people will, some people will like it. Some people will love it. Some people will hate it. Some people will despise it. Some people won't appreciate it. Whatever the case may be, you can't worry about the reactions. All you can do is say, here it is. So are you ready? All right. If you haven't been with us briefly, just so that you know, many, many, many years ago, Charles Stanley wrote a book called 30 Life Principles. That 30 Life Principles book became a 30 Life Principles study guide. It became a 30 Life Principles DVD set. It became a 30 Life, it became the Life Principles Bible. It became all kinds of different things. It was used by churches, small groups, Sunday school classes. And it was, I stumbled across the book and I thought, oh, well, I don't agree with Charles Stanley's theology on many things, but This looks interesting. He's been preaching for 50 plus years. He's come up with 30 life principles. Let me write down these life principles. I'll meditate on these life principles. I'll look at the scriptures from which these life principles supposedly came from, and then hopefully I will benefit greatly from it, learn something from it, and maybe it will help me moving forward in my own spiritual journey and in my spiritual life. about the books, the study guide, and I was like, what in the world is this? I could, there was always a disconnect in my mind. Here's the principle, here's the supposed scripture, and it, I could not see how he got that principle from that scripture. It's almost in my mind, he came up with the principle and tried to impose it on the scripture. And so it really frustrated me because I'm like, well, then why even try to add scripture to it? This should just be your own life principles that you came up with, loosely based off scripture. It's like when you see a movie, this is loosely based off a true story, and then you read the actual true story, and you're like, loosely is an understatement. Well, in some of these cases, I think these principles are not even loosely based off the scripture he offers. In some cases, it's almost like the principle exists irregardless of the scripture, it's so weird. So what I decided to do, I've had these books, I've gotta do something with them, right? I hate having books on a shelf or anywhere and just look at it and go, what have I really done with that book? What did I really get out of that book? I wanna get as much out of it as possible because that book represents, well, money spent. So I've gotta do something with it. So I'm like, so we tried kind of a little mini series on the 30 life principles. that wasn't successful and I'm like, I know what we'll do. I'll just take each scripture he gives for the principle and we'll just do kind of a, what we'll do is I'll just turn on the microphone. look at the scripture real time, not do any advanced study, and then just see in real time me struggle to find what I think the actual principle is found in that scripture. And then hopefully that will challenge people to listen and participate as well. Now, I'm a little bit disappointed. I'm a little bit disappointed. I've got to be honest with you. Because I thought by this point, I'd be receiving emails from people all over the world going, look at my notebook. See, I've got all 18 of the principles you've come up with written down. And I think these principles are great. So far, nobody's out there writing down the principles I've come up with. I'm so disappointed. I thought everyone was going to record all of these principles, and then we would have the 60 principles of Theology Central. We could publish a book, The 60 Life Principles of the Theology Central Podcast, and we would all become rich. Okay, well, no. So obviously I don't know if anyone's actually writing down the principles I'm coming up with, but we're working really hard and I'm trying to have a little bit of fun and doing this as well. So are you ready? Are you ready? Okay. I've got my Kindle app right here on my iPad. I never know what to expect. All right, here we go. We're going to open up the, uh, the iPad app or the Kindle iPad app. and it will immediately open up to the book, 30 Life Principles by Charles Stanley, and we are met with life principle number eight. So this is day eight, scripture number eight. We could call it principle number eight, but remember, we're just looking at his principle just briefly and setting it aside, and then we're working on the text ourself. Here we go. Here is the principle supposedly for today. Fight all your battles on your knees, and you win every time. Fight all your battles on your knees, and you will win every time. The idea is, obviously, fight every battle by prayer, and you will win. Now, the thing is, when you hear a principle like that, I mean, like, what do you mean, I will win? Are you saying that if I... If I'm fighting a battle with cancer, if I pray I'm going to be victorious over cancer, we know that doesn't always work that way. So what do you mean I'm going to win every time? So I would need some clarification here. But that's his principle. And he supposedly derived this principle from... What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? What would you choose? Because what I'm fascinated about the life principles book is the scriptures he chooses every single time. I'm like, that's not the one. Sometimes he almost bypasses what I think would be the obvious choice for the principle that he gives. And he goes to almost something that I think is obscure. And I'm like, I don't, does that really work? I don't, that's another thing that's fascinated me about the book, but here we go. principle fight all your battles on your knees and you win every time let's set that aside and the scripture is 2nd Samuel chapter 15 verse 31 2nd Samuel chapter 15 verse 31 I know, remember, we're not trying to look at the context of everything. We may, I think I'm gonna need some help. I think, I just, just right, just as soon as I hear this, I'm like, oh boy, what am I going to do with this? I say, because I don't know what I'm going to do with this. I haven't, you know, I don't have the principle written down. I haven't done any advanced study. So this, I have to try to work this out in real time, which hopefully is fun. It's nerve wracking for me, but hopefully it's a little bit fun. But the goal is, while I'm trying to work it out, There's a method to my madness. I'm trying to get you to do the same thing. Instead of you just listening to me going, look, here's all the points I've already made. No, no, no, no. I want you to go, well, he's trying to figure out, maybe I should try to figure it out. Or as you listen to me stumble through it, you're like, well, no, no, no. I would do it this way. It's trying to get you more engaged than just sitting there as a passive listener. Because if you know anything about this podcast, I can't stand passive listeners. All right. So here we go. I like you participating. So here we go. All right. Okay. All right. Someone said, I'm not sure how helpful I, someone just said, I'm a live listener, but I'm not sure how helpful I could be. I don't know. I think, I think in some cases people out there could come up with better ones than I do, or at least they could word them better than I do because I, because yeah, if I was doing this in front of the church, it would be easy, right? Because I'm like, okay, guys, come up with it. And they would sit there, kind of silence. I'm like, talk amongst yourselves, right? And while I'm letting them do that, I could be sitting there going, okay, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And it'd give me about five, maybe 10 minutes. But here I'm just, if I do that, this is what you hear. Dead air, which is a no-no in broadcasting. Dead air is a no-no. You're never supposed to have dead air. Never, never. That's like, no, bad. Go back to broadcasting school. You're never supposed to have dead air. So I have to be like, sitting there trying to talk to you while I'm sitting there going, what am I gonna do? And right now, that's what I'm doing. I'm just talking, because I'm going, 2 Samuel 15, 31. I'm trying, what is in 2 Samuel 15, 31? What is in 2 Samuel 15, 31? I know we're gonna have David. I know David's gonna show up, right? So, it has probably something to do with David. And then, see, 2 Samuel 15. Are we past Saul, and now are we to Absalom? I think we're... Yeah, so is this going to be how David fought a battle with Saul or Absalom, and he did so by prayer, and this is going to be now taken, this historical story is gonna be taken, and now we're gonna apply it to our supposed battles? Okay, am I getting ready to have some, what's getting ready to happen here? Well, here we go, let's grab a Bible. And if I say 2 Corinthians, I don't know why 2 Corinthians is on my mind today, but 2 Samuel chapter 15, verse 31. And one told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. And David said, O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Someone just said, what will we do with this? I peaked. Okay. Yeah. What will we do with this? Okay. So, and one told David saying Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. And David said, Oh Lord, I pray thee turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. All right, so David is told. Now, if I remember correctly, I think there's a major textual variant issue here. I think in the original, it doesn't say, I don't think it says in the original, and one told David. If you notice in the King James, one is in italics, so that means that's not in the original. So, and told David. I think there's a textual issue here, but I'm trying to just remember from school. I could be wrong. I could be completely wrong. We'll have to look. I'm going to require some help here. We're going to have to go to some commentaries and some cross-references. But, and one told David, saying Ahithophel is among the conspirators. So, David finds out some information. Ahithophel. Now, who is Ahithophel? We're going to have to do a little bit of work here, but that he's told that Ahithophel is now among the conspirators with Absalom. Now, Absalom has rebelled against David. He's going against David. David is, at times, under threat from Absalom. So, it's already a tense situation that would be one that would be extremely emotional for David, right? So, this would be a very stressful situation, and he finds out that Ahithophel is among the conspirators. I'm guessing that Ahithophel is just not some nobody. You're like, well, who cares if he is, in a sense, counseling or working with Absalom? Who cares? But if it's someone close to David, someone trusted by David, this would really add to the emotional element of this story. And David said, so then immediately when David hears the news, he immediately turns to prayer, and he says, O Lord, I pray Thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. So David is given some what appears to be maybe very Bad news, it could also be very emotional news, and David responds to this very bad news by immediately turning to God and saying, God, turn this, his counsel, turn his advice into foolishness. All right, well, I have a principle forming, but let's, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna close out Charles Stanley's book. I'm gonna go to Google, and I'm just gonna type in 2 Samuel 15 31, and I'm going to wait for, I see the entry for biblehub.com, because I think this will be very helpful here. 2 Samuel 1531. First thing we're going to do is just see how this is translated in a number of translations, all right? 2 Samuel 1531, the New International Version. Now, David had been told Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom, so David prayed, Lord, turn Ahithophel's counsel into foolishness. New Living Translation. When someone told David that his advisor Ahithophel was now backing Absalom, David prayed, O Lord, let Ahithophel give Absalom foolish advice. I think we can see what's happening here. So most of the translations, everything is pretty straightforward here. Now, I'm going to go down to All right, I'm gonna go to some commentaries. Immediately, the first one says, this is no doubt, one told David, this is no doubt the meaning, but the preposition has dropped out of the Hebrew text, leaving it unintelligible, and reading literally, and David told. All right, so there is a textual, if you go back to the manuscripts, there's one of those things you're like, wait, some of this is missing, and then the translators have to try to add some words there to try to make it make some kind of sense, right? Because you've got, wait, and David told, like, and David told who? That doesn't make, it sounds like David is being told, not that David is telling. And so you can see why they had to do some things here. The pulpit commentary, the Hebrew literally is, and David told. But we cannot suppose that David had previously known of Hithophel's defection. The text is evidently corrupt and the authorized version gives the right sense. On hearing of the defection of a man so famous for practical sound judgment, David prays to God to frustrate his counsel and the opportunity for devising means for his end quickly follows. So, I know when sometimes when people hear the text is corrupt, everyone loses their minds, and like, oh no, what are you saying? This gets to textual—this is something that I don't know why people in church don't learn from their pastors. But just remember, in the manuscripts, there's textual variance, and sometimes there's words that are just missing. When you try to read it, you're like, That's not even a complete thought. And sometimes it's just small words that are missing, right? Well, the translators have to look at it and go, okay, based off the information before and after and all the words here, we may have to place some words in it to smooth it out so that it makes some kind of sense, so that we can figure it out. And that's one of the things I love about the King James. is whenever a word has been added, it'll be in italic so you know that, hey, that wasn't in the original. And that's good. And in most cases, you're just like, OK. It adds, you know, and, or he, or they, it'll add just some basic words just to smooth the verse out. The reason I think every Christian needs to know about this type of thing is they don't hear it, and then some atheist, some skeptic, someone out there trying to destroy people's faith will bring this up, and then the person will be like, I never heard this. Some kid goes off to college, I've never heard anything like this. Yeah, because you spent your youth in church at pizza parties, you know, playing games and not actually engaged in any meaningful Bible study. But anyone involved in any meaningful Bible study, even if you've just read commentaries, you know that, oh, hey, in the original it says this, or in some manuscripts that phrase is missing. You read those things in commentaries all the time. So I think any actual Bible students, they know it. The average person who goes to church, who for some weird reason doesn't want to engage in any meaningful Bible study, the first time they hear it, they're like, wait, what are you saying? And then they lose their minds and then they get all mad and then they want to argue. And it's like, you know, maybe instead of arguing, you should actually, I don't know, do some actual study. And then maybe we wouldn't be having this disagreement. but you need to be aware of it. I know that's not the point of this, but it shows up here. I almost knew that all the commentaries was going to say something and immediately they did. So here's what I want to do though. The main reason I wanted to go to biblehub.com is I knew it would provide cross-references. Look, when you're live on the air and you don't have time to start running your own cross-references, biblehub.com is a great place to go. Now, I still think you should try always doing your own cross-referencing first, but here we're doing this in real time. I want to see, well, the main thing, I want to see Ahithophel where he shows up. I want to see what BibleHub.com does with the cross-referencing of Ahithophel. We could grab a Bible dictionary and read about Ahithophel, but again, I've got to be careful. I'm trying to limit myself that we're only going to do one broadcast for the Scripture, that this is not going to turn into a six-month series. By all means, if we find things that we need to come back to, we can circle back around and then I can do a separate broadcast on it. Because obviously I've got a microphone, I got a computer, I got a live internet connection. We can talk about these things as much as you want to talk about them. So. Let's do this. You ready? So, I would challenge you, go to Google, just type in 2 Samuel 1531. Why do I want to say Corinthians today? 2 Samuel 1531, find the Bible Hub reference, and then when you scroll down, you're going to see context, right? You're going to see context, and then underneath that, you're going to see cross-references. That's what I want you to look at. The first one they have is 2 Samuel 15, verse 12. 2 Samuel 15, verse 12. While Absalom was offering the sacrifices, he sent for Ahithophel, the Gilanite, David's counselor, to come from his hometown of Gila so the conspiracy gained strength and Absalom's following kept increasing. A part of Absalom's rebellion and revolt against David, Absalom turning against David, involved that he sent for Ahithophel, David's counselor. The person who was giving David counsel, he's like, that guy gives some very good counsel. That guy gives great counsel. Come here. Let's bring him to our side. So there's a little bit of Well, how can we say hurting someone, messing someone over, a little bit of deception here, a little bit of betrayal here. So it really can make David extremely emotional when he finds this out. 2 Samuel 16, 20. So we have 2 Samuel 15, 12, where Absalom does this. 2 Samuel 15, 31, David appears to be told that Ahithophel is among the conspirators. He finds it out. So Absalom plans it, starts the plan. Ahithophel obviously comes to him. David finds out. As soon as David finds out, basically, he's been betrayed, that Absalom is now working against him. He's got now his maybe trusted counselor. David immediately goes to pray, and we'll talk about that more in a minute. Now, let's go to 2 Samuel 16, 23. Now, in those days, the advice of Ahithophel was like the consolation of the word of God. Such was the regard that both David and Absalom had for Ahithophel's advice. That really adds some context, doesn't it, right? Hethophel was like the consolation of the word of God. I'm gonna do something here. I'm gonna go 2 Samuel, that's 1623, I believe. I just did that incorrectly, 23. All right, let me try this again. 2 Samuel 16.23. I'm looking for biblehub.com. Where is it? There it is. I'm going to read this from a number of translations so you can really get the power of this. Now, in those days, the advice Ahithophel gave was like that of one who inquires of God. New Living Translation. Absalom followed Ahithophel's advice just as David had done. For every word Ahithophel spoke seemed as wise as though it had come directly from the mouth of God." Ahithophel, when he gave counsel, people were like, that sounds like it came directly from the mouth of God. It seemed spiritual. It seemed wise. It seemed godly. You wanted that advice. It came from the all-knowing, all-wise God. That's how trusted this person was. So for him to now basically switch sides gone over with Absalom, you can see why David would be very emotional in this, very betrayed here, maybe very worried. 2 Samuel 17, verse 14, Then Absalom and all the men of Israel said, The advice of Hushai, the archite, is better than that of Ahithophel. Right? Okay, well, that's a good principle. Someone just gave a principle. We'll get to that principle in a minute. Now, please, I think this is important. So, 2 Samuel 16, 23, Ahithophel, when he talks, it's like the words of God. And look what happened. There's a change. 2 Samuel 17, 14. Then Absalom and all the men of Israel said, the advice of Hushai, the archite, is better than that of Ahithophel. For the Lord had purpose to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel in order to bring disaster on Absalom. So, as something changes, and now, like, forget Ahithophel, we're gonna go to the advice of Hushai. That's who we're going to go to. Forget Ahithophel. He's like, at one point, Ahithophel's the guy, and next, nope, nope, forget him. And why? Because the Lord had purpose to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel. God started working against Ahithophel's advice. So now Ahithophel's giving advice and God is thwarting it, going against it. 2 Samuel 17, 23. When Ahithophel saw that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey, set out for his house and his hometown, put his affairs in order, and hanged himself. So he died and was buried in his father's tomb. Wow. That's a dramatic change in the story. Ahithophel, when he speaks, it's like God is speaking. Ahithophel, well, we're kind of done with him, right? We're done with him because clearly God is thwarting his advice to try to destroy me. I'm done with him. And the next thing you know, Ahithophel realizes, that his advice had not been followed. He saddled his donkey, set his house, and went for his house, put his affairs in order, and hanged himself." Wow, the story, are you intrigued? I'm intrigued now. I want to go, I want to start, turn this into an entire study on Ahithophel. This looks interesting. What happened? What led him to hang himself? Why? Did he realize, uh-oh, I've betrayed David, Absalom is done with me. Did he kill himself because he feels like, I'm done. I've betrayed David. Absalom is no longer following my advice. They're going to kill me. Is that, I mean, why does he kill himself? That's a question that you can go, you can do your own study on because it's pretty interesting. Then, interesting enough, BibleHub has this as a cross-reference. Isaiah 44-25, who foils signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners who confound the wise and turns their knowledge into nonsense. There's times God steps in and makes the false prophets, makes The fool makes fools of the diviners. He makes a fool out of those people, supposedly giving biblical advice. Now, obviously, it doesn't always work that way. We know that very much in 2022. There's many a false prophets and false teachers that he does not make a fool out of. But in these particular cases, these historical situations, he does. So what can we learn from this? What can we learn from this? Now, I'm just going to throw out a thought and see if you think it's interesting. When David hears the news that Ahithophel has basically switched sides, has abandoned him, has betrayed him, however you want to phrase it, and goes join team Absalom against David, It's interesting to me, at least this jumps out to me, he doesn't pray against Ahithophel the man, he prays against his advice. Now, I'm very aware that there are imprecatory psalms where David and others pray for the destruction of their enemy. And again, I think the best way to understand that is the imprecatory, The Precatory Psalms and Lament Psalms are screams of spiritual pain where you're filled with anger and righteous indignation, and you scream out to God, you know, that, where are you, God? Or, these enemies should be destroyed, whatever the case may be. But I think overall, the biblical concept, especially when you get to the New Testament, is to love your enemy. Turn the other cheek, right? Pray for them, which would despitefully use you and hurt you. So yes, you wanna pray for their salvation, but the New Testament doesn't have so much any idea of praying against them, it's praying for them. Well, in this particular case, what David does, he doesn't pray against the man, he prays against his advice, against his counsel, which is just kind of interesting, or at least that jumps out to me, because you would think, Lord, destroy Ahithophel, destroy him, but no, no, no, no, no. turn his counsel into foolishness. That kind of just jumps out at me that he that the way he prayed against the situation was not one of calling destruction or a curse, but I do know that there are Psalms where that occurs, again, in Precatory Psalms and Lament Psalms. I think that that's a different situation. We've talked about that. But I think it is interesting. He prays against the man's counsel, not against the man. Now, you may not – you may – I don't know what you want to do with that, but I – we're going to look at it here, and maybe we can formulate a principle. So, let's go back to 2 Samuel, chapter 15, verse 31. All right. I'm going to break these down, I think, into some basic ones, all right? Number 19, or number one for today, if you've been following us, this is number 19. I'm going to say, when we receive, how can we say this, painful news, hurtful news, And when we receive painful news, hurtful news, and bad news, our response should first be that of prayer. Now, I want you to hear what I'm about to say, because this is very important. I just wrote that principle down because I see it in the text. David is confronted with horrible news. You could say that he is confronted with painful news, hurtful news, and bad news. I think all of that would apply, right? It's painful because, well, he's just been betrayed. It's hurtful because, well, the conspiracy is continuing and he's still trying to be destroyed. And it's bad news because if this man's counsel is so good, well, your enemy is now getting this wonderful counsel. That could be bad news. So I think it's painful. It's hurtful. It's bad. You could add in more adjectives if you want. He is confronted that and immediately David turns to prayer. So the principle is found right there in the text. But I want to make it very clear. I may see the principle in the text, but it is the last thing I probably would do. You can be disappointed in me. You can say, you're not very spiritual. I'm going to find a more spiritual person to listen to. You can, by all means. I'm just going to be honest with you. It's probably the last thing I'm going to do. it's probably the last thing I'm going to do. I'm not saying it's right, I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying that my first reaction isn't, ooh, horrible news, let's pray. No, my first reaction is, wait, what? I may complain, I may grumble, I may rant, I may run up here and turn on the microphone to express my frustration and my irritation. Rarely is it to say, find the prayer closet, Lord, I come to you. I come to you. Because typically what we need more than... And this is very important. Well, okay. Well, I think that would leave the text. I was gonna go to a different principle, but I don't think the text supports it. So I've got to, maybe we'll save that for a different thing. But I think that's what we see here. He's confronted with this horrible news. He immediately goes to prayer. That wouldn't even be on my probably top 10 list. I'm telling you, it wouldn't be. You can say, well, man, you are garbage. You're right, I am. I'll be the first to admit that I'm garbage, and I'm glad that you're not, but I am, okay? That's not where I'm going to turn to. And you can say, you can be asking, why not? All right, well, I don't have good answers. I have probably fleshly answers, but let me just tell you, all right? I cannot stress to you how profound two events were. in my life, two extreme, I can say three profound events in my life. And I'm not, I know this is fleshly. There is no justification to this. I'm just trying to be very real here, right? I read that and I'm like, oh, it sounds, that preach is so good. When you're confronted with bad news, you turn to prayer before you do anything. David immediately turns to prayer. He doesn't do anything else in the text. He hears, he prays. And you're like, wow, wonderful. I can preach that. I can teach that. But let me make it clear. Preaching and teaching is far different than living. Preaching and teaching, writing principles down in a book is far different than living them. I've got notebooks filled with principles, thousands of notebooks all over the place. All kinds of wonderful things, great spiritual insight, great spiritual truth. But a lot of times it never seemed to get out of the notebook into me. But three things have had a profound, profound impact. on my life. Number one, I had not been saved. Now, most of you know this story. I had not been saved that long, have not been saved that long. And I'm eating lunch in the cafeteria at Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, Texas. And the overhead speaker, the overhead intercom system says, Would me and my brother, would we come to the principal's office? Now, at first we start looking at, what did you do? I didn't do anything. I bet you did something. No, you did something. No, I bet you did something. Well, we better go to the principal's office and find out who did what, and let's just deny whatever we did. And we're thinking, what did we do? I don't know. and you get called to the principal's office where you're sitting in the cafeteria, that's probably bad news. We walk into the principal's office, he tells us to close the door, and he says, you need to get to the hospital immediately. Your mother's in the hospital and it's not good. Wait, what's going on? So I get to the hospital. My pastor was there eating lunch with the teenagers from the church in the cafeteria, so he drove me to, he drove me to, I was gonna say to the church, to the hospital, and then I walked in, Basically, one side of my mom was not moving. The other side was kind of almost like a seizure, and she'd had an aneurysm. and it basically ruptured and it was not good. It was not good. It looked really, really bad. I had not been living at home on that Wednesday. This was a Friday. On Wednesday, my mother had called me and said, hey, why don't you come to the house on Sunday? I don't know if it was going to be reconciliation. I don't know what it was going to be, but we were going to at least meet because I had not been living at home because of all the problems at home. That's Friday. So, I leave the hospital and immediately I just go to the church. First Baptist Church, Susquehanna, Texas, and I stay there all night. All night. Praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, begging, pleading, please, please, please, let me at least talk to her. Let me at least have words with her. Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray. Monday morning, she was dead. Never spoke to her again. Never reconciled, never spoke any words. She's gone. No more. I prayed. She died. Oh, I can think of enough. Oh, my father got cancer. Prayed, prayed, he died. Oh, in 2003, I was told that I was going to be deployed to an undisclosed location somewhere in the country of Iraq, because while we were getting ready to invade Iraq, and I was going to be setting up a decontamination center, because there was fear that they would use chemical weapons. And so I was to go in, set up a center, so if anyone was contaminated with a biological or chemical agent, that we could provide some form of care and try to help them. So that's what I was going to do. But to go, I had to receive an anthrax vaccine. So I received an anthrax vaccine in my arm at about four o'clock in the afternoon. By eight o'clock that night, something wasn't going right. Something had gone horribly wrong. By Saturday, things had gone from bad to worse. And by Sunday, I was having a hard time even being able to speak complete sentences. Monday morning, I woke up and was in the shower and thought, I'm going to die. This is the end of my life. I am not going to make it. I got in my car, made it to the front of the hospital and thought, I'm going to walk in. I'm going to go directly to the bathroom. I'm going to pull the alarm because something is not right. But I decide not to. I make it to the records section, the medical records section where we're supposed to have a morning meeting. I sit up on a stool. And the last thing I remember, someone trying to talk to me and it sounded like, and all of a sudden this black cloud hit me, boom, I went down, started seizing, coded, they called a code blue, they thought I was dead, got sent to the hospital, and well, from that point on, I've had a seizure disorder where I've had seizure after seizure after seizure, ended my military career, declared 100% disabled, and guess what, I prayed so many times that all of that, and it did not go away. So I'm gonna be very honest with you. Because of those experiences, not, and by no means am I, I'm not saying God does not answer prayer. I am not saying that. I'm saying those experiences profoundly impacted me to go, hmm, so the first thing I should do is pray. No, the first thing I need to do is come up with a solution. The first thing I need to do is figure out what to do. In fact, the way I think, hmm, so here's what's going to happen. You see, Ahithophel's now joined Absalom. He's going to get good advice, and he's probably going to come and kill me. I'm going to just start preparing for the worst. In my mind, I'm going to start thinking, we're all going to die. It's over. The war is lost. I'm probably just going to start going, it's over, we're all going to die. I'm just going to probably start looking at it from the very worst possible situation possible. I know what you're saying. That's not very spiritual. There is no pretending here. There's no putting forth any... I just hope that there are other people who go, you know what, I'm with you there. Now, what I'm saying is that's where I am, that's not where I should be. That's not where I should be. Where I should be is this. I guess I'm gonna go ahead and throw this concept out there. I may not write it down as a principle, but here's where we should be. Whenever things go horribly wrong, my first place I should go is prayer, not so that my circumstances will change, not that what I want to happen will happen, but I go to prayer in order for me to maintain a spiritual God-focused perspective in the situation, and so that I can be changed spiritually to handle whatever I'm about to handle correctly. All right? I think that's where I have to go. I need to run to prayer first, because I think that's the biblical model. But I don't run to prayer to say, God, change this, change that, change this, change that. I may pray that, but the goal is, Lord, change me. Let me maintain a God-centered focus through this difficulty. through this tragedy. Oh, I pray that death won't occur. I pray the disease will go away. I pray the war will end. I pray these horrible things will stop happening. But if they don't, let me maintain a God-centered focus first in the midst of it. I think that the reason... I don't go to prayer because in some cases, I hate to say it, I feel like I will become more discouraged or disillusioned or maybe even bitter if I pray and it doesn't work out. So now what I've realized is I got to go to prayer. Look, I can still bring my petition before God and say, please change this, please fix it. But I must go there to say, change me, keep my focus on you through this, no matter what happens, no matter what you do, whether you, in a sense, not my will, but your will, whatever your will is, let me be willing to accept it. Let me be willing to look at it the correct way. So I put myself in the prayer closet to be transformed and changed into a right way of thinking. no matter if it works out or not. So, if it doesn't work out the way I want, I can't be disillusioned or discouraged because my focus was changing me and that accepting God's will, even in a sense, using the language of Scripture, even if the cup is not removed. Now, I know that cup is the wrath of God that Jesus was about to drink. I know that's specific, but I'm saying whatever this situation is, Now, David prayed, and it worked out great. Ahithophel's advice did not work, and then, ultimately, Ahithophel is killing himself. Not that David prayed for his death, but he definitely prayed that his counsel would be turned into foolishness. All right? So, I think that that's important. And then, I'm going to put this. because we're running out of time. Number 19, or number one for today. When we receive painful news, hurtful news, and bad news, our response should first be that of prayer. All right? And again, we do that, not necessarily that the circumstances will change. Oh, we can pray for that, but we do so to maintain a God-focused perspective through it. In it. Because, look, whenever bad news happens, hurtful news happens, our focus always becomes self-focused, self-centered, self-preservation. It becomes about us, not about God. It always becomes that. Prayer focuses, no, keep my attention on God, keep my attention on God. That's the goal there, that's the goal. If you wanna write that down, that's okay. All right, then I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say this. The New Testament, calls us to love our enemies and pray for them. However, however, if I can spell correctly, however, we can pray our enemies Our enemy's plans don't succeed. I hope that makes sense. In other words, the New Testament tells you to love your enemy, turn the other cheek, pray for them. However, you can pray that their evil schemes and plans do not succeed. And I think we see that kind of a balance here. Now, David is in the Old Testament. Clearly, in the Old Testament, the imprecatory psalm and the lament, that's very common. Praying for destruction upon the enemy, that was a common thing. So, and again, I believe we can pray the imprecatory psalms, but we do so more as a cry of pain to work through the pain. so we can be honest with our feelings, so that we can move towards a more spiritual perspective, which I think is love your enemy, turn the other cheek, pray for them that would despitefully use you and persecute you. We are to pray for them, right? We are to pray for their salvation, but at the same time, we can pray that their plans and strategies and schemes do not succeed. I think that that's, I think that that makes, I think that's the best way to put it. So I don't know if, let me see if I'm gonna, I'm gonna read my principle that I wrote down. The New Testament calls us to love our enemies and pray for them. However, we can pray our enemy's plans don't succeed. I can plan that, hey, there's people out there conspiring against me, talking about me, gossiping about me, slandering me. Lord, I pray for them. that they would be saved, that they would repent, that they would see the error of their ways. But Lord, I pray that their gossip, their slander doesn't succeed. I pray that you silence them, however you want to do so, in a sense that you're praying that it doesn't succeed and that their efforts fail in trying to destroy you, slander you, hurt you, whatever the case may be. Now, if God doesn't answer that prayer, you go back to the thing. We turn to prayer, ultimately, that we are changed. See, it's so easy to say, hey, pray, I want you to do this against my enemies, but what we ultimately—change my enemies, but we ultimately should be praying that we are changed, that we maintain a theological focus in prayer. I want to put that down as a principle. The only thing is, I don't think the text Really, the text doesn't say that. So, I don't want to do what Charles Stanley did and just start making things up here. I don't want to start making things up here. Charles Stanley gives you the idea that, hey, if you're facing a bad situation, just pray and you're going to be victorious. Lucy, David was victorious. Oh, come on now. It doesn't always work that way. You know how many people probably prayed in Ukraine that Russia would go away and then they died? You know how many times that a child being molested has prayed that the molester would stop, and he doesn't? I mean, so, we've got to be honest with reality, okay? Theology is not the attempt to create an alternative reality. Theology is where we bring God into reality. It's not an escape from reality, it's an acknowledgment of reality. Christianity almost becomes like an alternate reality where we pretend that the things happening in the world are not really happening, that children are not really starving to death, that people are dying. And sometimes we create a theological perspective to almost act like it's really not going on. No, no, no. Theology is not to escape reality. It's to say, God, here's this mess, this reality, the pain, the confusion I don't understand. I need you in it so that I can have a God central, a theological central, theology being central, a God central, God focused perspective on reality. not to deny reality, not to claim that somehow God's just gonna make it all right, but to see God in the midst of the reality. Because look, the reality is there. You can either look at it from an atheistic perspective, and the pain and the suffering and the death is still going to be there, or I can try to understand it from a theological perspective, and God is in the midst of it. All right? So I know it's not the principle that I think comes from this verse, but I just want you to see that whenever it all falls apart, do go to prayer. Don't be like me. Do go to prayer. And yes, bring your petition. God, please fix this. Please change this. Please fix this. Please change this. But somewhere in that prayer is, Lord, ultimately change me. Help me maintain Your perspective, let me maintain a God-focused perspective in the midst of this, even if you don't change anything, even if you don't remove the cup, even if you don't change Ahithophel's counsel into foolishness, even if Absalom kills everyone, let me maintain your focus. You can ask, but you can say, here's what I need no matter what occurs, right? So let's do this. Let's go to 2 Samuel 15 31. And one told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. And David said, O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Here's what we have. When we receive painful news, hurtful news, and bad news, our response should first be that of prayer. Number 20, or number two, the New Testament calls us to love our enemies and pray for them. However we can pray, our enemies' plans don't succeed. That concludes our look at, this is day eight, right? Day eight, or scripture number eight for day number eight. Let me go back to my Kindle. Yes, day eight, scripture number eight. I hope that was beneficial, I hope. I know it was a little, that didn't, the epic music didn't quite, doesn't quite fit that, does it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The epic music doesn't fit. It doesn't fit that, because that's painful. That's some hard stuff. That's me confessing, not being very spiritual. That's me being honest with my struggle. But I just know that I've got to, that Theology Central, the whole goal of this podcast, is to make theology central to every part of our life. We have God as central to our thinking in reality, not to escape it or deny it, but to see God in it. So, instead of going out with the epic music, I'm going to go out with a reminder of what this podcast is all about. It's about making God central to the reality we experience. Thanks for listening. Looking at our world from a theological perspective, this is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central.