It’s Time for Christians to Get Serious

Welcome back to this episode of, uh, of Ignite. Uh, we like having this guy next to me, Eric Batactus. We get the other ones in a while. And it's always profound. And it's always, I mean, I, I always end up having rib sourced from laughing so hard when we're off camera. You are the silliest guys I know. Thank you. And you know, that's true. Yeah. You enjoy having fun. Guilty. Yeah. And Jesus enjoyed having fun. Well, listen. You know, can I, let's, let's, here's a little secret. God invented fun. He invented humor. This is not like some side thing. Like the most wonderful things in the world. He, he didn't just create them. He invented them. And so let's stop kidding ourselves. If there's something that's wonderful, like, like humor, uh, it's from God. He was attractive and parenthetically God, we're, we can't beat people into heaven, folks. We just can't do that. Are they still trying? Religious. They were so holy and, uh, when you just, he said, they'll know you're my disciple by your love. And when you love on people and you experience God flowing through you, it's going back to the description. You've heard me mention many times, but Isaiah 4 to 3, 10, most Christians don't have faith today. They're worrying over 80% of all Christians are worried today. If you're worried, you don't have faith. And if you don't have faith, you can't share your faith. So how do you have faith? You know what he said? He said, I appoint you and Isaiah 43, 10. He said, you've heard this many times. I can't say enough. He actually defines why we're supposed to share our faith. And Isaiah 43, 10, look it up. He says, I appoint you as my witness so that you will believe. Because when you share, when you love on people, you can't orchestrate those conversations. You can't pull off recitations or three points or whatever. Every conversation is different. So when you rely on Luke 12, which says, my whole spirit will give you the words to say, when you need them. And you fight yourself these conversations all sudden a scripture comes to mind that you haven't thought of for years or a life experience or something. And he's usually what's in your database. If you wouldn't normally remember, but God supernaturally brings it and gives you the right word at the right time, you walk away, say, wow, God, just orchestrated that conversation. You just use me. You spoke through me. There, I don't think there's any other way in the human existence to have that kind of fellowship, an intimacy with God. And when you have those experience, you can have on a daily basis. That's what you have real faith and joy. If your faith is not flowing out of you, you don't have much faith. I mean, we can't lay it down, right? There's a scripture. Many people know this. And think of the gift that God gives us in this scripture. He says, be anxious for nothing. But in all things, by prayer and supplication, we think, if you make your question, okay, what God is saying to us is that if you're worried, if you have anxiety, you're sinning, you're out of my will, period. He says the moment, and you'll have many reasons to worry, and to be anxious. He says, that's fine. But the moment you experience that worry, that anxiety, take it to me immediately. Do not allow yourself to worry, to be anxious. As soon as you are anxious, or as soon as you worry, take it to me immediately, knowing that I love you, knowing that I want you, as my beloved child, to bring it to me, bring it to daddy, don't worry about it yourself. I think we have to remind ourselves of that constantly, because the temptation to have fear, and people say there are all these reasons, there may be reasons, but God still says it's a sin. He still says, I don't want you to do that. If you care about what I want, and I'm God, and I love you, then I'm telling you, be anxious for nothing. So the moment you have your good reasons to be anxious, it's like, fine, take them, bring them to me in prayer, and say, Father, this is killing me, help me with this. But do not be filled with anxiety, or worry, or fear. The moment you allow yourself to do that, you're out of God's will, you know, we break his heart, we forget. He loves us so much, that we can break his heart by completely ignoring what he says. And so he gives us that scripture. I mean, it's kind of funny, very, because this ties into what you wanted to talk about right now in our country, we're going through a tough time. And I think a lot of people, including Christians, they don't know how to respond to it, they don't know what's going on. And because I wrote a book about Germany in the 1930s, and what happened to the church in Germany in 1930s, I feel like I have a perspective on it. You really do. And I believe that, let's be honest, God wants us to learn from the past. Can I, can I jump in? Can you hold that thought just for a second? Yeah. Fear. Fear. Over 80% of Christians are in fear. Okay. I think that's Satan's number one tool against the church. It is. Because if you have fear, you don't have faith. And if you, if you don't have faith, you can't share your faith. So it occurred to me a little while back that it's really his way of sterilizing us so we can't reproduce. The church is not reproducing itself. We're drooling in numbers. And we've gone silent. And why is the church on silent? I'm talking about us. I'm not talking about the organized church about us. We've gone silent. Why? Because we're in fear. If you're in fear, you don't have borders. You can't, you don't have faith. And without faith, it's impossible. Please, God. And that is where people, like back in, I think there's a relationship between what was going going on in World War II Germany, what's going on now. So I think you're going there just about this term sterilization. Does that make sense? Well, I think, I think that it's what you're saying earlier is that if you really believe in Jesus, you will not really be able to shut up about it. It will come out of you. It's okay. So you can't fake it. You can't say, well, I believe it up here. If you really do believe it, you will behave as though you believe it. You won't just say, well, I believe it up here, but I'm having a hard time. If you, if you know, he defeated death on the cross. If you know, he loves you. If you know that what he writes to us in the Bible is true, if you really do know those things, you're going to live differently. Doesn't mean you won't have hard times, but when you have hard times, you'll respond differently. I think right now, we're going through unprecedented strangeness in our culture, unprecedented difficulty. Unprecedented madness has been unleashed in America. And I think most people don't know quite where to turn. And so I think the first thing we have to say is, listen, folks, God is not caught by surprise. God is even allowing craziness. No, he's allowing this to drive us to him. Yeah, absolutely. This scripture says, and again, when you say this scripture says, this is like math. This is like, you know, this is not optional. This is fact. The Bible says, all things work together for good, for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. Now, why does God say that? It's the same thing where why does he say, be anxious for nothing, but nothing? Why he says that for us to say, no matter what is happening, I'm here to tell you to promise you that no matter how bad it is, and you can take this to the bank, I will use it for good for you. And if you're walking with me and you are looking to me in the midst of the difficulty, I will use the ugliest thing you can imagine to bless you, to bless people through you. Now, we need to know that's true. We can't say, well, that's an idea. No, that's actually blasphemous. You need to know that's what God says. And what is it? Romans 8, 28, right? Romans 8, 28. And if anybody's saying, if you live for my purpose, everybody knows there's no there's no disagreement by any of the audience about what God's purpose was. He came to see He could save the lost. And so when we live our lives to seek and save the lost, we live our lives to move everybody, every day closer to Jesus. That's just a way of life. And when you really love the Lord, you do it automatically. It's just like breathing. When you're in that zone, you're living in the fog, you're living in the favor of God. And it's so simple, but when you do that, when you're on it, everything is a cycle, isn't it? I mean, you do that. You share your faith that you have more faith. And he busted you more. And you're more excited. You can't keep it just helping. It gets bigger and bigger. And that's scripture. Again, I think I think how God must love us. It's overwhelming that He gives us these scriptures to say no matter how bad things get. He says, look, all things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are calling to His purpose. So if you're walking with God and sharing your love of God with others, and if you're doing all those things, no matter what happens, God will use it to bless you, to bless people through you. But the thing is very, we need to know this. We can't say that it's a nice idea. I hope that's true. The Bible says it. So unless God is a liar, let's break it down. Unless God is a liar, that's true. And to not believe it is really to be sinful. It's to hurt. It's to break God's heart to say, like, I don't know, that's a nice idea. I don't know. So I kind of feel like things are when things get crazy, it's one way of God driving us to choose, do I really believe this or don't I? So a lot of people who are today, maybe they're being silent or they're hanging back, I'm here to say God has allowed these difficult things to happen, to drive us to actually believe, to stop hanging on the edges of belief and to believe and to start walking in and to start sharing our faith. As though it's true, because here's an idea. It's true. We have, we have about 30 million, about 10% of America are already God loving Christians, like us, okay. And Muslims are so close to a victorious life, but God is sterilizing you with fear. Is kidney where you just have a hint of doubt and you just, you want more, you know, you want more in your life. You want to have victory, you want to have fun or you want to have adventure, but you don't quite know how to do it. Share your faith, living for God's purpose opens the door. And he says, when you share your faith, I point his mind, we're just so that you will believe, and when you believe you can't hold it back. And that's what this whole thing, the whole ministry of Ignite is about. And Eric says, it's a better, far better than me. You've lived it, you, you, you, and you know it's true. And it's so, what do I have? That's what I guess, one of the reasons we get along so well, we share this common. We need to encourage each other in this stuff. And I think that, listen, I, I really understand that people are wondering what's going on. And I think that in history, and this is why I think my Bonhoeffer book is resonated with people because they, they think, look at this. They got allowed this madness to come into Europe and all this evil and all this, but it gives you a picture of what would it look like to believe in Jesus in the midst of that madness? What would it look like? Well, I'll tell you what it would look like. It would look radically different than the way most people, most so-called Christians live, live their lives. And God wants to inspire us and to say, I want you not just to say you believe, or to hope you believe, but to know these things are true and to walk in that with no fear of death, with no fear of anything, with the joy of knowing that God loves me and God wants to use me in the midst of the craziness. I really think sometimes people do look at circumstances. The circumstances should drive us to Jesus. We shouldn't let the circumstances drive us away from Jesus and into this paralysis. So I would say, I believe revival is already happening in America because there are people who, because of the craziness, are finally saying, what's going on? There's millions of people praying now that would not be praying now, had things gone differently in their peace and tranquility. That's right. So I've not heard you say this specifically on your programs. It's easy for me to say that specifically. And we haven't talked about it personally, but is there a relevance between World War II, German Christians, and 2022 American Christians? Is there a relevance? Well, there are many parallels, but the central one is this. Bonhoeffer, who was a German pastor in the midst of this madness of the Nazis taking over Germany, he was trying to wake up the church. He was saying to the church, hey church, if you do not live out your faith now, right now, tomorrow you won't be allowed to. So you've got to live out your faith. Now, live it as though it's true today. Stand up to the tyranny, stand up to all of these things without fear. But if you don't, then tomorrow you won't be able to. So it's kind of like somebody says, like, spend your money for God's purposes today, because tomorrow the government will take it away from you. You won't even have the choice tomorrow. So you better get serious now. The freedom you have today, you better use that freedom to speak truth, or tomorrow it will be taken away from you. So the story of what happened in Germany in the 30s is that the church basically did not heed the prophetic call that Bonhoeffer was giving to them. And they experienced what it's like to say, not yet, we're going to keep silent just a little more, we're not ready, we're not ready, we're just going to hang back, see how it goes, see how it goes, and then suddenly the window was shut and the opportunity to do the right thing had passed. I believe God gives us the story of Bonhoeffer and the German church in the 30s as a warning to us. And when I say a warning, I mean a warning folks, meaning that he's basically saying exactly what happened to them, exactly what happened to them will for sure happen to you and to the church in America unless you learn this lesson and don't do what they did. If you use your voice today, as though you won't have it tomorrow because you won't. If you use your money, your talents, your energy, all of these things for my purposes today with zero fear, then I will bless you and you're going to see things you can't imagine. If you don't, if you say not yet, not yet, not yet, in a moment the opportunity will go away and you will realize that there was a window, the window is now shut and now you have to deal with the consequences. The German church in Germany has for 80 years been hanging its head in shame for failing to believe God and to act as though he had defeated death and as though he wanted them to speak out and there's only one way to live. That's the way to live. But God doesn't force us. And so he gives us these warnings from history and the story of Germany in the 30s to me, it's the ultimate warning because the parallels with today are so dramatic. I won't go into them, but they're so dramatic that if you pay the slightest attention you will see God is speaking to us through the story. This is a definitive message for American Christians today. The Bible makes it very clear that unbelievers are blinded by Satan and 80% of America is blinded. It's spiritual deception. I mean how else can you can write otherwise bright intelligent people want to promote all the crazy stuff that's going on today and politics can't change that. It just can't. As much as I'm a political junkie and we do our things in that world, but that's not going to really change it. You can't fight a spiritual war with politics in the minds of God. And you and I, we can't change the world, but we can change our world. Each of us has influence and it's not a political thing. I would say the most patriotic thing we can do today is to lead people to Jesus because every time we lead somebody to Jesus, the scales come off their eyes. Until we do that, they have scales their eyes. They see evil for good and good for you. The scriptures actually say that even to the church. We're seeing things going in the church we can't believe that in the last days there's a great falling away. We see all this stuff going on. This is this is a spiritual attack. And I believe what you believe revival is starting because of it, not in spite of it, but because of it. And we're asking for revival to start in you. Okay. And it's not about getting up on a soapbox and preaching. It's not about, I mean, you can support all the political stuff that's fine. But the fact the matter is 80% of the people you were with every day are lost. And they don't know there's a God who loves them. They just they don't know. I was with a star from a television series very popular right now that she's just despicable. And I have to be breakfast with I walked by and I said, I'm a Christian, I watch your show. And I am amazed by your roar. She says, everybody tells you I'm evil. And I said, boy, yeah, but you've also told the story of how broken you are. And there's reasons that's coming out. And as the royal play, that person doesn't know that there's a God who loves them. That has that wants them to be in heaven. She says to me, wow, you're a Christian. I like to spend time with. We need to be Christians that people want to spend time with. And it's not about getting their scalp or getting them saved today. It's it's just loving on them. Just love on them. And when they see your love is real, they open up and they tell you the things they won't tell their best friend. And then God, Luke 12, God speaks to you. His voice for it speaks to you. It's just the most wonderful thing. I got to tell you unless how are they going to know unless somebody tells them and how are people going to tell if they're not being sent and they're not being sent. Our churches aren't preaching this. They're not sending us. My pastor is, Jack Hipsons, but very few pastors are doing that. So we need to do that where we're we're just lay people save. We need to get ourselves into the game. Let's rise up troops. We can make a difference. We mandate we'll change the world. We can change our world. And you hit it right on the head. We can't be quite any longer. You can't sit on the sidelines anymore. We got to get off the bench into the game. And when we do that, our joy returns, our faith returns. And every day is an adventure. I mean, it's fun. And the worse it gets, the better it gets. The worse it gets, the easier it is to share faith, because people are terrified when they're in fear, they're open to the gospel. Well, you know, over 80% of all the unchurched are wishing there was a God right now and are looking for somebody to tell them if the food is ripe. The fields are white for harvest, but the laborers are few. We need to change that. You need to change that. At least in your own life, you need to change that. That's what this is all about. And you say it's so very real. Well, we're so, we, we have different diction, different perspective, but it's the same truth. Amen. It's the same truth. Thank you, Eric. I love you, brother. I mean, it's so much fun. Thanks for having me. We got to wait too long. I'm sorry, folks, but this is such a unique opportunity to have Eric with us and eyes of somebody who's really studied what happened in that poster in German. Oh, God gave us that story and that convinced to encourage us today. I don't have any doubt. That's a fact. God, so let's take advantage of the encouragement. God help us. This is very special. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. See you next time.