And this is the one that we scheduled to be a question and answer session, and we appreciate the questions that have been submitted and also appreciate the fact that you are looking to God and his word and to his ministers to answer some of these very important questions. We probably won't have time to get to all of them. We're going to do about 30 minutes of this. And so if there's one that you asked that didn't get answered and it's really pressing upon your mind, you just come get us in private and we'll talk about it, OK? Who's going first? All right. Yeah, well, listen, I appreciate the questions that come back from that. I know I come across, I don't think I come across as too harsh to anybody because most of you are smiling and laughing, but I know I'm, well, just kind of bold in the sense of just not trying to fluff anything for you. But I appreciate these questions, and I do want to say that as I answer these, I want to answer them with respect. to the question, there's good questions here, there's legitimate questions here, and I'm going to do my best to answer these for you. So here's the first one. It says, is it still wrong, and some of these we're going to get categorically, like there's two at the end, I'll do the same because they're kind of the same question. Is it still wrong to be best friends with the opposite gender if you grew up with them, look at them like a sibling, and both know that there would never be any feelings between them Please elaborate. OK, well, there's two questions here, so let me answer the first one. Is it still wrong if you know all these things? The answer is yes, still wrong. Now, let me tell you why it's still wrong, because it is impossible for you to know that you would never look at them like anything besides the way you look at them now. Whenever I was young, I hated, absolutely hated onions. I never would eat them. Never in my life did I ever think I would ever desire to put an onion on my hamburger. It was the nastiest thing I'd ever tasted. But as I got older, my appetites began to change, and what I liked began to change, and I eat onions now. That may seem kind of silly to you, but I'll also say that as guys and girls grow up, I can't tell you how many stories I've heard about Guys and girls that grew up together hated each other's guts through grade school began to grow up. By the time they got into college, their affections changed toward one another and they ended up being married. So again, I want to be respectful, but I also just want to say that it is impossible for anybody to know that there would never be any feelings between them and someone of the opposite sex. And so is it wrong to assume that? I would say yes. And then I guess I've elaborated on that. If I have not answered that to your satisfaction, if you would just come up to me afterwards and ask, I'd be happy. Yes. Let me add what my brother Noah always says about that. I think it's a pretty practical answer, and that is this. If you grow up best friends with somebody of the opposite gender, and then you're a guy, say you end up marrying their sister. How is your wife going to feel about the fact that you're best friends with her sister? That's a strange dynamic that'll have to change, right? And so, just from a practical standpoint, it's certainly not a good idea. Yeah, and that reminds me of one other thing I wanted to say. How many people in here have best friends? Okay, hands down. How many people in here have more than one best friend? And you see, this is the problem when we talk about best friends, because best assumes one. I have a best friend. But we think about having best friends in terms of I can have 40 best friends, but which one do you like best? Those two. It doesn't work. And so when you're talking about best friends and we're talking about marriage being best friends, and I know you're thinking, well, this is just a play on words and he's trying to trying to twist them up. I want to point out the fact that when we're talking about a marriage relationship and we're talking about best friends in the sense of a marriage relationship, we're not talking about the best friends to where you could pick one out of ten and they would all be just as close to you as the rest. We're talking about a special relationship. We're talking about an intimate relationship as far as the knowledge that you have in the other person and you do not want to. Just give that information and give that kind of a relationship to anybody that comes along. The only person that should know you in the way that a husband knows his wife, and I'm not talking about physically, I'm talking about intimately in the sense of what you know about each other, how vulnerable you've made yourself to somebody, how much you've been able to expose as far as who you are to somebody, ought to be your husband and your wife. And you don't want to just give that away to four or five folks while you try to figure out who that is. All right, next one, if you're in a long distance friendship, how are you supposed to communicate what phones or I'm sorry, how are you supposed to communicate without phones or Facebook? How can you tell if he's the right one for you to marry if you don't talk to them when it's long distance? OK, now here's that's a good question. And here's one thing that I did not say, or at least I did not mean to convey. If you are. in a relationship with someone and you can turn it what you want. If you're in a courtship with someone, if you're in a relationship with someone and the intention is I'm looking to be married and this person could be a candidate. Get on the phone and talk. Get on the phone and talk. There's nothing wrong with that. Listen, whenever I met Abigail, I met her at camp and I live five hours away. And you know how we got to know each other on the phone. But you know how we got to know each other with Brother Claude's permission. I didn't just start calling Abigail. I didn't do it. It was with Brother Claude's permission. And Brother Claude understood, I understood, Abigail understood that as we began to know each other and began to communicate with each other, we had intentions that if the Lord would lead in this thing, we would be married. Now, what about Facebook? Listen, and somebody might be able to do it better than I can on this, but If you're spending all day on Facebook and your status continues to change with the different chore that you do, there's something wrong with that. Moderation. moderation. There's nothing there's nothing evil about Facebook just because it's Facebook. It's the distraction that it can be. And it's the false sense of reality that can be as you get on there and you're just kind of typing and you open up and you probably go further than you want to go on that. So how are you supposed to communicate with folks in a long distance relationship? Pick up the phone and talk is what I would say. But do that in the right way. Go see the other person's parent. Now, what if you're in middle school, high school kind of age, and you like someone and there's a long-distance relationship? How should you handle that? Well, the only question I have for you is, are you ready to commit yourself to be married to that person? You may think you are, but I'm asking in a real way. Are you financially ready for that? Are their parents willing to let you do that? Can you really provide? Are you really spiritually mature enough to do that? And for most people, the answer to that is going to be a no. I don't discourage men and women from being friends with each other. You get together in a group like this. Look, you guys are girl, boy, girl, boy in the table because you chose to be that way. We don't mind boys and girls being friends here and talking to each other. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about you getting so uncomfortable that the line of friendship begins to blur and you can't handle that. And so that's what I'm talking about whenever I say that. And somebody else may be able to express it a little better. And then the last one, if we're supposed to be best friends with the one we're to marry, then how can we not have best friends of the opposite sex. And I think I answered that earlier when I said we're talking about a different kind of best friend, not the kind of best friend where you could have 10 guys that might be your best friend and be eligible to be your husband. And they know just as much as your future husband's going to know. That'd be kind of cheap, wouldn't it? Yes, is the answer to that question. It would be kind of cheating. So we're talking about a special kind of friendship, a special kind of vulnerability that you have with someone, and that's the reason. Again, if you're in a place where you're courtship, you've met somebody, your intentions are that you're working toward marriage, become best friends. But if you're just hanging out and just kind of seeing where things go, but you're constantly communicating with somebody on a daily basis and you just can't That's just all you're doing. It's not good. If there's not a purpose in it, it's not good. If I didn't answer your questions on that, feel free to come up to me after this and ask me. The questions I have, number one is when faced with problems, how are we to know What God wants us to do. Well, since we don't know the specific problems, we can't answer specifically to what you may be referring to, whoever asked the question, but just some general things to know what God wants you to do is, first of all, to remember that Christ is ruling over your problem. He's ruling over it. In Ephesians 1, 20 through 22, it speaks of Christ being exalted, resurrected, By the power of God, he's at the right hand of God, angels, principalities, powers, dominions, all being made subject to him. God has placed him at his own right hand. He's put all things under his feet for or on behalf of the church. So everything that Christ rules over, he's ruling over it on behalf And for the good of his people, which means he's ruling over your relationships. If you're having a problem in any kind of relationship, I mean, family, friends, Jesus Christ is ruling over that for the good of his people. And so he is sanctifying the believer as. that Isaac pointed out, he's renovating the believer through the relationships. And so to acknowledge Christ over the problem is then to acknowledge he's working towards a good. He may want you to see a weakness that you're having. He may want you to see something in your life that needs changing. He may want to use you for the benefit of someone else. So that's just the starting place. Christ is ruling over all relationships for the good of the church. And then secondly, Christ is the solution to the problem, which is his word. So we go to the word of God and we search to try to find what God speaks to us specifically about the nature of the problem you're facing. The two things I want to finish with to answer the question and the last one will be something from my own experience that's in the word of God to do is, first of all, you need to count it all joy. When you fall into diverse temptations, temptations, another way of saying their struggles and problems and trials going on in your life. I don't say that flippantly as if that's an easy thing to do, but God expects us to think of it. Joyfully, because of this, knowing this, that the trying of your faith work is patience. The testing of your faith that Jesus is doing by ruling over the problem which may include some very challenging, hard, difficult things. He wants you to count it joy knowing that he is doing something in it that it may not look like it to your human standpoint. It's going to work out for your spiritual good. And then this last thing is so important. Endurance. Don't jump out of the fire. Stay in the fire. They say, well, that doesn't sound good. I've always been told in the burning building, get out of the fire. There's two kinds of fire that Jesus is concerned with. Malachi says there's a consuming fire where the wicked will turn to stubble and there will be no recovery. Neither root nor branch will be left. But for God's people facing problems, he's got them in a refiner's fire. A refinery is something that Consumes only that bad part in the renovation process. And it cultivates and brings to the surface the good part called faith. If you quit, if you stop, if you don't have patience, if you don't endure it joyfully, Paul says in Colossians 111, you're going to lose out on something that God has for you in seeing his glory and knowing more about his mercy. So stay in the fire. I can't tell you how many times in my own experience I have thought to myself, I'm getting out of the fire. I don't want to be in the fire. And time and time, God has proven himself faithful just by staying in the fire. Isaiah 50 and about the 10th verse, he says, if anybody's walking in darkness and has no light, let him trust in God, let him stay upon God. You may be in a problem and say, I don't have any light here. I don't even know what to do. Stay in the darkness. And he says this, if you kindle your own fire, no, you'll have sorrow from the Lord. So you're in darkness, you're in a problem, it's hurting inside. I'm a light my own fire. I'm going to do it my way. God says you're going to lie down in sorrow, stay in the darkness, stay upon God, trust his word, obey him and stay trusting Christ. And he will show you through the problem and then secondly, If life in life we go, if in life we go through trials and decisions in life that made. That may determine or decide what we do for the rest of our life in those decisions, how do we know that it is what God wants us to do and not ourselves? That wants to do it and not God, what are ways we can know that that it is God telling us to do these things? Well, again, without knowing exactly the kind of decision you're talking about, again, we consult God's word. Secondly, I want to bring in with both of these, your parents are the first place to start. Your parents are your first source of counsel and guidance, even on route to the elders in the church and pastors. So they should be consulted with your problems. They should be consulted with decisions as you look to the word of God. But the word of God or deciding what God wants you to do in your life is not always just simply saying he wants me to work here and he wants me to marry this person. It is also becoming a certain kind of person that gives you discernment about things that God didn't necessarily say black and white. You should work here. You should work there. And that's the kind of decisions that you struggle with. Go to this school. Don't go to this school. Live here. Don't live there. It doesn't say exactly. So listen, this verse Romans 12 to. Where he says, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good, acceptable, perfect will of God. Proving is the result. of doing something that precedes that proving the word prove means test to discover the good, perfect, acceptable will of God. You're becoming a certain kind of person that helps you discern what is that good and perfect will of God. What kind of person you becoming the person who is being renewed day by day in the mind, have you ever had an experience where your parents didn't tell you not to do something? But you had spent so much time with your dad, so much time with your mom, you found yourself in a situation you thought, you know what, based on what I know about my parents, they probably don't want me to do this. I'm not going to do it. They didn't say not to do it, but you just had an idea that you maybe went and checked out and said, that's right, we didn't want you to do that because you know them, you're with them. And that part of what that verse is saying, don't be conformed to this world, be transformed day by day by the renewing of your mind. And then you'll have discernment as you're taking in and saturating your mind with God's word. It's not always go to point A, go to point B. But the ultimate answer, the word of God, and then there's safety in a multitude of counselors. This this next question is actually two questions here, and we're going to take them together. I'm going to pass the second one back to the preachers. They'll pass it around and you guys will take part of this question. The first part of the question is, how valid is my salvation if it was spawned out of fear of hell? Though now it has turned to a deep love of the Lord, at first it was fear, not love. Just Monday, Sunday, we had four people who were baptized here at Ripley. One of them was Luke Young, who's here with us today. And as part of his relating his testimony, he read a couple of verses from this song. I'm going to read these to you. When I was a youth in the broad path of folly and sin and rebellion and alien from God, I viewed not myself as a sinner unholy. I knew not to death by the pathway I tried. I trusted it alone in good works for salvation. I looked not to Jesus for life, light and peace. I thought by obeying, I'd shun condemnation and gain heavenly favors that never should cease. But when my dear Lord, in his sweet, loving kindness, Revealed unto me my condition and sin, I found I had always been dwelling in blindness, contrary to God had my steps ever been. I found I was left in a helpless condition. My sins all arose like a vast gloomy cloud. My heart sank within me in humble contrition. To God for assistance, I shouted aloud. I cried in despair, If thou canst, Lord, have mercy. A light shone within me. The tempest was calm. I arose singing praises to God for his mercy. I shouted, oh, glory to God and the Lamb. My burden was gone and my sorrow was ended. My spirit rejoiced in the love of the Lord. I felt that my heart with his people was blended and claimed the sweet promises found in his words. The question is about my salvation. It came, it began out of a fear of hell, though now it has turned into a deep love of the Lord. At first it was fear, not love. And this is I think this question is in regards to assurance of salvation. How do I know? If I'm really one of his, how do I know if I've truly trusted in Christ, how do I know if if God loves me? Well, with Luke, he came to see us and he expressed to us that he wanted to be baptized. And we said, well, why do you want to be baptized? And he was talking about the fact that he knew that he was a sinner and that he knew about hell and the torments of hell. And he was he was greatly it caused him great fear that caused him to not sleep at night. He had great fear about the prospect of hell. Let me say this, I think that God Uses fear. He uses fear in bringing us to a recognition of our great need of God, of our of our complete helplessness and ourselves. The apostle preached about righteousness and temperance and judgment. God. John the Baptist preached regarding repentance. Because they were people who had gone astray and were standing in danger of torment, everlasting torment. So the truth about hell is to be preached as part of the gospel. Not to scare someone into changing themselves to be acceptable to God. And that's where we got with Luke. Look, I'm not embarrassing you all to think, I think he's pretty open about this. Initially, Luke thought that if he would obey God by confessing his need of him and by being baptized, then that would remove the fear that he felt of hell. So we began to meet with Luke and we began to talk about the work of the work of Christ and the truth about us. and our simple condition and our complete inability to gain favor with God by any good works that we might do, including baptism. So the point is, look, even if you get baptized, though that might temporarily take away your fear of hell, that can't make you right with God. That doesn't bring righteousness because good works don't produce righteousness. There truly are no good works and works, if they were good, could not produce righteousness with God because we are by nature Condemned before God. So I like how this question ends, it started with fear, but it grew into a deep love for God, and that's what happened with Luke. OK, but started with fear. I believe that was God beginning to work in Luke's heart, beginning to show him the helplessness of his own condition and the reality of hell, the fact that he was condemned. The truth of the matter, the only thing that will bring. Peace, the only thing that will bring joy, the only thing that will bring rest to the soul is when we flee to Christ. And so when you see condemnation, what do you do? You flee to Christ. Christ is your only hope. Christ is the only righteousness that God will accept. Christ is the only sacrifice that will truly remove sins. So we flee to Christ. And so if fear by itself is not enough, But fear that drives us to Christ, that's what the law does, right? The law is our schoolmaster to drive us away from ourselves and it causes us to flee to Christ. And so God uses fear, but the end result is not to stay, is not to produce something, baptism or following Christ or professing faith to remove fear. The end result of God bringing that fear into your life is to cause you to flee to Christ, that you might find true rest and true peace and true joy and true salvation in Jesus Christ. And that's how I would answer that question. The next part goes along with that. And the question is, how do I know if I love the Lord? So you guys get shot at that. This is going to fit in with what I like to say a whole lot. You know, God's our father if we're his child. So let me ask you a question. How do you know you love your daddy? Do you obey your daddy because you think that he's going to beat you up if you don't obey him? I had a really good daddy. He was a real kind man. And he was with me when I didn't do what was right. But that's not really why I obeyed daddy. I obeyed my daddy because I loved him. I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want to make him sad. And that's the way it is with God. If we love God, really love Him, we want to keep His commandments. Let's read from John chapter 14. And Jesus Christ said to Himself, He said, let's see, I'll read verse 21 first of all. Get this. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he that loveth me. See, we may say we love God. I might say I love my daddy. If I say I love my daddy, but I'm constantly disobedient, I don't really love him. That's just a lot of mouth. but there's nothing behind it. He said, Dad, I love you, but I'm going to go ahead and do things that make you real sad. I'm going to go ahead and live an ungodly life, but I do love you. I just don't love you. But he that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he that loveth me, and he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. And then down in verse 23, just a couple of verses down, this is John 14 here still, Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word. Think about that. If a man love me, he will. So we love God, We're going to obey God. We're going to want to obey God. Now, something also that I said about this fear, there's several different kinds of fear. Let me look over Romans chapter 8. And there's a good fear and there's a bad fear. The devil wants to put you in a bad fear. The fear of God is a reverential fear. There's a love, but it's kind of like I had for daddy. It's a respect. That's really what fear of God is. It's more of a respect. It's a reverence. We respect him. We reverence him. It's not a fear that he's going to throw us in the hell and beat us up with a big stick or something like that. But the devil's fear, it's the wrong kind of fear. The devil just, he'll paralyze you. Because you know, let me tell you, I'm going to tell you a little secret, okay? Who knows what an Arminian is? What's an Arminian? What does he mean when I talk about Arminianism? Well, it's really something like, yeah. Okay, they think that Jesus, well, really, I'll tell you, I'm going to boil it down even simpler than that. They really believe in work salvation, if you get right down to it, work salvation. It's almost kind of like this, if my good works over-balance my bad work, I'm OK. If my bad works out-balance my good work, I'm not OK. And we're all that way by nature. We're all that way by nature. So everybody wants to serve God somewhere or another. That's why all these false religions, we've seen the Hindus over in India do terrible things to themselves. They torture themselves. They think that somehow if I just do enough stuff to myself, I'm going to get salvation. And you you're effective that I'm effective there. That's what the gospel presents that kind of thing. If we're from a slavish fear, we all obey God, we must obey God. But you're not going to be perfect. You know, you're going to send every day. I'm not telling you to send every day. You're just going to send every day. It looks like I'll be blunt too. You're going to send every day. But you shouldn't be doing it. You ought to try hard not to send. But you will. So what you do when you send, what do you do? You confess to God. You say, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me. And if you really mean that, he'll forgive you. So let me give you a verse here. I'm going to go to Romans 8 in a minute. Let me give you a verse. You ought to write this verse down. And you've memorized this verse. It's easy to memorize. This is one of the best verses you'll ever memorize in your whole life. It's 1 John 1, 9. Get this. If we confess our sins, and that confess, he means you really are confessing. You're not just saying, I'm sorry. You really mean you're sorry. That's a real strong word. If you confess, we confess our sins. See, here you are. You sinned, OK? You know you've sinned. So instead of trying to run from God, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, get this, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A lot of times when I take a shower, I think about that verse. You know, taking a shower just makes you feel good, doesn't it? Boy, here you are kind of grimy and dirty and sweaty, and you take a shower, and boy, you just feel so good. Well, that's where you say, if we confess our sins, I mean, you really mean business. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, that doesn't mean this. It does not mean this. It doesn't mean, OK, I'm going to use God kind of like a slot machine. I can just send all I want to it. Every time I confess it, he'll forgive me. That's not talking about sin, because you're not really confessing sin if you're doing that. If you're saying, well, I really enjoy this sinning, but I know I've got this mechanism. Whenever I do sin, I confess, and he'll be OK. That's not talking about that. You're the play of God, then, and you're mocking God. But if you really mean it, I really am sorry. I'm sorry I've done this, Lord. Very sorry. And you talk to God about it. And you confess it. If we confess our sins, his faithful and just to forgive us our sins and thank God has extended us from all unrighteousness. And then don't let the devil put a foot on your neck, because he'll try to do that. Now let's look at Romans chapter 8. This is not the kind of fear God was talking about. This is a bad kind of fear to talk about Romans 8. He said in Romans 8, 14, I'll read two verses here. For as many, let's see, yeah, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they're the sons of God, they're the children of God. That's boys and girls, not just talking about men, sons. for many who live in the spirit of God, those sons of God, for ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. That's the devil's kind of fear. See? Oh, I've just got to do enough for God to like me. I've just got to do enough for God to like me. I've just got to do enough for God. I'm in bondage. That's the way the devil works on people's lives sometimes. I've read lots of stories about people in the past like Wilson Thompson. They just try to live a perfect life for the wrong reasons. And they just, boy, I just got to get good. And they went through long periods of time, sometimes just torture. And they finally saw the gospel that God forgives sinners and they can find relief. So, as many that are led by the Spirit of God, they're the son of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. This is not the kind of fear I like talking about. You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption. Get this, whereby you cry, Abba, Father. Now that's pretty, that's beautiful. Let me tell you about this. You know how I love kids. I know y'all love children. We just love these kids around here. And I always loved it when Monty called me Papa. Papa. Supposed to be Papa, but she can't say Papa. She said Papa. I love that. She called me Papa, see. Well, every language has those kind of, every language has what they call monosyllabic words. Monosyllabic. Can y'all say, let's all say monosyllabic. Monosyllabic. Three times. Monosyllabic. Monosyllabic. It's like, Mama or in the Hebrew it's a Amma for mother Abba for father Abba. What you're really saying is you sent Dada to God. Isn't that wonderful? See, that's what happened to you in your heart. The spirit of adoption, you're an adopted child of God. So you don't receive the spirit of bondage, you get the fear. You have received the spirit of the doctrine where you've got Abba, Papa, then Father. And let me read you something about that over. I got this out of Vines. It's a positive dictionary. You just word. See, there are two words there in Romans 8. Think about that. You call Abba, Father. Why would he say Abba and Father both? One of those words is Pater, that's Father. Then Abba is this Papa type thing. Well, let me read you what Vines says. I love this. Abba is the word framed on the lips of infants. and be talking unravelling. In other words, when money says papa or mama to her mother, she's not even thinking about it. She just loves her mother. She knows she'll take care of her. She just loves her papa. She knows I'll always take her up in my arms. That's the way you are about God. Somehow, even though you've done wrong, you love him. If you're really born again, you run to him first. God, I've got to have some help. Don't feel afraid to do that. But if you grow, though, it ought to become a more intelligent love, as you read the Bible. So he says this, Abba, if you weren't framed by the lips of infants, and betoken unreadening trust, father, pater, expresses an intelligent apprehension of the relationship. The two together, that is Abba and pater, express the love and intelligent confidence of the child of God. You ought to have a love and intelligent confidence. As you hear the gospel preach with these men, see you learn more about God, don't you? You learn more about God. You can go to God, and He will forgive you. You can repent of your sins. You can straighten up and do what's right. You can get up when you're down, see? God will receive you, because He put that in your heart to begin with. So let me read you maybe one more over here. Well, I said the same thing. It's on 1 John. Here it is, we love God, we want to obey Him. So I'm saying again, the way we know we love God, if we want to obey Him. We're not serving Him because He's a tyrant. See, that's the devil. That's what Muslims do. Muslims, they don't love Allah, which is a false god anyway. But Christians, they're God's, He's a God we're all by God, but He's a loving Father also. So, let me tell you this, if you really love God, you're going to try to follow His commandments. You'll mess up some, you'll fall, but if you don't care whether you keep His commandments or not, And you think God is just some old mean ogre. And sorry, God is not fun at all. You need to question your salvation, really. Because if we love, we want to obey God, the mouth is not enough. What do you think? If she loves her daddy Mark, I know she does. If she says, Daddy, I love you, then go out and do something she knows he hates. Some kind of just disgrace him. Does she really love him? Of course she does not love him. She loves herself. You're the same way. You just do what you want to do. I'm going to do this bad sin over here. I'm going to do these bad things that disgrace the church and disgrace my life. But oh, I love God. You don't love God. Not one bit you don't love God. Because you love God. You respect him. You want to live in a way that will bring him some honor and glory. All right. The next question is, what are some of the best ways to deal with peer pressure? Some of the best ways to deal with peer pressure. Well, this is going to depend on really what kind of peer pressure we're talking about and where it's coming from. I've talked. In the accountability talk, I quoted the verse that. He who walks with wise men will be wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed. And so if we're talking about peer pressure that's coming from your inner circle of friends, The people that you spend most of your time with and they're influencing you or they're pressuring you in an ungodly way. I had a meeting with a young man about a year ago and we were talking, he had a group of friends that he would hang out with and the more he hung out with them, the more pressure he felt that he needed to partake in some of the ungodly things that they were doing. And so we would meet and talk and he would ask me things, and he didn't even have to ask me about this one. He said, you know what, I just can't really control myself, resist the pressures to do a lot of these things that my friends are doing, so I'm just not going to hang out with them anymore. I don't go out with them anymore. I don't put myself in that situation to where I'm pressured to do what I know I don't want to do. But I know I'm not strong enough to resist it if I'm there. So if your peer pressure is coming from a circle of friends, a group, this is not the easy answer, but it is the answer to the question. You need to find yourself a new group of friends. Because if they're pressuring you to do ungodly things, they're not really friends anyway. Yeah. Psalm 1 says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law that he meditate day and night and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither and whithersoever he doeth shall prosper. And so this is the picture here in verse one. This man, this godly man, the man that's that's making the law of God, the word of God, his delight. He's not putting himself under unnecessary pressures. It says he's not walking in the council of the ungodly. He's not standing in the way of sinners and he's not sitting in the seat of the scornful. So your inner circle, then if you can do something about it, do something about it. And you can do something about the people that you hang out with. But what about whenever you're at school or what about whenever you're at work? What about whenever it's other outside influences that you really can't control? It's not like you can go to the boss and say, can you fire all these guys and hire Christians so I'll stop having such a hard time. That will never happen. But what you can do is the second part of Psalm 1. Look what he says here. His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth his fruit, and his season and his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. What's one of the best ways to deal with peer pressure that's coming from the workplace? Getting the Word of God is number one. Make sure you're in the Word of God. Make sure you're filling your mind with wisdom and make sure that you are spending time in God's Word and in prayer with God. Second thing is, if you can find somebody, if there's at least one other person there that's a Christian that you can find some encouragement in, then you latch on to that person and you guys encourage each other while you're there. If you can't, if you can't do that, if there is no one else there, Then you may just have to change locations, might be depending on how weak you are or you know what you may do. You may be that person, maybe even the only person that these people have ever seen that actually lives like Jesus Christ. And he doesn't just run around telling everybody what to do and trying to fix everybody else's attitudes and everything else. But he actually loves people like he says, Christ loves people. And he actually does what he what he what he what he claims that he does. And so another one of the ways that you could overcome peer pressure is by living the life that you claim to endorse, to go and to follow Christ and to love like Christ. But you're not going to do that if you're not in God's Word. If you don't have to stand alone, don't stand alone. There's always strength in numbers, but if you have to, then you're going to have to come to grips with some convictions and then you're just going to have to stand firm on those. And somebody else may have something better to say on that, but that's what I have. OK, we're entering the rapid-fire round. We've got about five minutes left. We have two questions we want to go over. My son Nathan is a good example of that. Nathan's not here. Nathan plays on Victor University's basketball team. All the other guys, most of them are Afro-Americans. They're raised in homes with no fathers, and all of them live immoral lives. I'm talking about really gross immoral lives. Nathan does not. He lives a pure, godly, moral life by God's grace. But he's not self-righteous, and those guys love him. Even though they try to get him to go out and do stuff, he won't do it. And they couldn't believe he was a virgin. They used to laugh at him about that. But now, a couple of them come and say, Nate, I wish I lived like you live. Now, the key is don't be self-righteous, but be firm. Let me tell you something else, though. Sometimes you may have to be unpopular. You can't help it. We all want to be unpopular. People may hate you. You can't help it. Sometimes when they come to that, you've just got to be unpopular. You can't help that. But if you've got the right attitude, it could be, you might like Nate, and they love the guy, but they know he doesn't live the way they want him to live. It can be done. But he might have some bitchy guy that hates him. You've got to take that. So sometimes you've got to risk being unpopular. OK. Thank you. Real quickly, we've got two more we're going to do. That'll be enough for now. What would you say is the first step in a mine renovation? Let's go back to yesterday about renovating our mines as God is working sanctification in our lives. What is the first step in a mine renovation? And what are some scriptures for that? And let me say, you tell me a broken record. But really, the answer to this is the word of God, the word of God. Lewis said the answer to peer pressure is getting the word of God. Well, the first step in renovating your mind, changing the way you think is the word of God. And let me just say our goal when we started off yesterday, we shared with you is that our first goal is to make you think. And I am thankful to see that happening through these last two days. I'll pick on Annabelle for a minute, but she came up after the straight talk session, wanted to talk about what about what about movies? What about movies that have, you know, one scene here, one bad scene here, a few words here or there. And and. James chapter one talks about using the word of God as a mirror, right? Using the word of God as a glass. Don't use the word of God as something that you quickly pass through and don't take notice, but use the word of God as a glass, a mirror that you look into and you behold yourself and then you begin to change yourself based on what the word of God says in there. So I'm thankful to know that you're thinking. That's the first step is to think about who am I and what am I doing and how am I spending my time and what am I bringing into my mind? And it is what I currently am doing, honoring and pleasing to God. And you have to let not your heart decide what the answer is. Annabelle, you take this and you pray over it with the Word of God and you figure out the answer to your own question. So your heart cannot be the determining factor in how you renovate your mind. You take your mind and your heart and your activities and your life to the Word of God. And if you want to renovate your mind, you let the Word of God Be the guide to renovation. Ephesians 4 is a great place to read that. It's about putting off the old man, renewing our minds, and then putting on the new man. And then Ephesians 4 and 5 begin to tell us some specific ways and things that we need to renovate our minds about. The first thing he says is put away lying. We have the idea sometimes that lying is advantageous to us or lying is beneficial to us for these reasons. He says, you need to change your mind about lying and you need to start speaking the truth every time. And he moves on through more specifics of things that we typically have, we typically are wrong minded about and says, change your mind about this. So respect. Let me say this, if you will. Have an open mind to the Word of God, saying, Lord, I know I am not who I should be, and I want your word to determine who I should be. Have an open mind to the Word of God, have a respect for the Word of God, believe the Word of God, and then obey the Word of God. Your mind will be renovated. Question is, why does God want us to make requests in our prayers instead of just thanking him and praising him if we can't change his will or what is already going to happen? Of course, the will of God spoken there is about his sovereign will, not what he reveals in scripture, but what he himself is going to do. So I don't know what the presupposition of the question is, but let me assume something. If we've already stated today that God's will is holy, it's just, it's righteous, and he's always working toward our good. Why would you want to change it? If you were thinking, well, the reason I wanted to change his will is because I may want to do something or ask for something that I think is good for me, that he may not think is good for me, but. Maybe I have a little better idea of what I should have and what would make me joyful. You see, so again, I don't know what the presupposition is, but if I knew that God would bend his will to my will, I would never say another word to him again. Now, you think about that, but look at first John five just for a moment about prayer. Verse 14, and this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us anything according to his will. Now, that sort of is what the question is about. Well, God's only going to answer what his will is. And so we can ask anything, but this is our confidence. We'll receive whatever he wills. But then verse 15 says, and if we know that he hear us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. That's pretty interesting. So our confidence is whatever he wills, we ask it, we get it. And then secondly, whatever we desire, we ask it, we get it. One of two explanations here, either God is bending to my desires. Or my desires should be shaped in such a way that they're being conformed to God's will. And of course, the second is the accurate one, right? See, God did not hire me as his consultant to rule the universe. So God, this is what I think you ought to do. Here comes my prayer. Just do whatever I ask you. But as so far as my desires are conforming. To his will and to the image of his son, then I'm participating. in ruling the universe with God, because he, in fact, has already determined the end from the beginning. He's known his works from the foundation of the world. So we have the joy of participating with God. And what is the threefold umbrella of every prayer we should make? Jesus said in the model prayer, Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. That should be our desire. But mine are not always there. And so we say with Jesus, I will be done because we know I may not be asking what is best for me. So, Father, whatever glorifies your name and brings me the greatest spiritual fulfillment, if it's what what if it's crucifixion was for Jesus? What shall I say? Father, save me this hour. No, Father, glorify thy name. And what was the answer to that prayer? Execution of Jesus Christ. The father got glory. But there was joy set before Christ, so our confidence in God, hearing our prayers, it's not that we're going to get him to bend to us. It's that we keep having our wills shaped, our desire shaped after his. Now, how would you do that? John 15, seven and eight. If his word abides in us and he and us. We shall ask what we want. And it'll be given to us. Here is my father glorified that we bear much fruit. If his words are abiding in us, his words are starting to shape us into the image of Christ, and then we start asking for more of what God wants us to ask, which conforms to his will. And it's always for the glory of his name and the spiritual good of his people. Brother Mike, thank you, Danny and Lewis, and thank you all for your patience today. You're dismissed.