Adapted to Darkness

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): On the latest podcast, I’m so excited about sharing it with you because I was asked the question, what can people do? What should people be doing? I’m going to give you that. I’m going to tell you one of the best things I’ve ever learned and taught on the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:14 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, non-profit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:39 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:14 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life, and subscribe and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:25 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, the voice of revival. I’m here with my wife, Kathy. We’re going to talk about those kinds of things, revival and what’s stopping revival. And we’re going to talk about what you can do personally to help yourself get free of things and get set and ready for what God wants to do in the world and in our country. Right, Kathy?

0:01:49 – (Kathy Gray): Yes. You know, I’ve got some questions for you today.

0:01:51 – (Steve Gray): Okay. Yeah, let’s just get right into it. Should we just get right into it?

0:01:55 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, I think let’s get right into it. So you said this, that America doesn’t need another program or political situation. It needs a spiritual reset.

0:02:06 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And.

0:02:06 – (Kathy Gray): Okay, what is, what does that mean? What’s. Is that a religious term? You know, let’s reset.

0:02:11 – (Steve Gray): No. Well, I haven’t heard it, but I said it, I wrote it. It needs a reset because what we have to realize is we’re not set. It needs a reset because what we have is not set. It’s not the kind of church religion attitudes as I’ve said before, if you go Back to the 1st century Christians, Jews who became Christians and non-Jews who became Christians, what are they teaching? And you could go back and study, find things that they were teaching and saying. You know, it’s not the biblical type thing, but it’s just stuff.

0:02:45 – (Steve Gray): And you don’t find any references to what evangelical Christianity has done to America and the world. You don’t see any reference. If you were to die today, do you know you’d go to heaven? There’s no heavenly talk. It’s all talk of God coming down and what God is doing now in the world and among them. And yes, there’s some references to paradise or if you die, we do go to heaven, obviously, and there’s that paradise place. But their emphasis was not. Well, you’re going to go way.

0:03:18 – (Steve Gray): Their emphasis was you’re coming back. And we don’t even get that today. If you ask, I’ll say 90. I’ll just pick a number. 90% of pastors, especially evangelicals, it’ll go up 99% probably of what is the gospel about and why did Jesus die for us? And all that kind of stuff. They’re going to say so we could have our sins forgiven and we could die and go to heaven instead of going to hell. There’s no reference to that at all. Hundreds of years, particularly the first 300 years of Christianity. There’s no reference. It was all even not a reference to going to. Heaven’s barely there, although they had the idea of a paradise type place.

0:03:59 – (Steve Gray): But it was coming back. And their biggest teaching was, guess what? Your body, like Jesus, who’s the first fruits, is going to be raised from the dead. You’re going to get your body back. It will be a glorified body, which we don’t always know what that means, but be a glorified body. And that was the gospel. The resurrection of the dead is coming. You, there’s hope for you because you’re going to be raised again to life with your body, complete salvation, spirit, soul, body.

0:04:27 – (Steve Gray): You don’t even hardly hear about that. I mean, you hear about an Easter maybe or, you know, resurrection Sunday or whatever. So anyway, so it’s. We need to reset because we’re not saved, Right. Yeah, that’s, that’s not, that’s not the.

0:04:39 – (Kathy Gray): Way that we need new programs, church programs or something.

0:04:42 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And, and people read 5000 Got SA. You know, they’re reading we’re born again in the Bible. How come we don’t see that? Because we’re talking about Flying away to heaven and trying to say. And some people, you know, Kathy, some people, if you can’t put them in a crisis, you know, in one of my books, what is it? Guilt ridden, anxiety driven. If you can’t get a person to feel guilty or have anxiety about their sins, you’re done. You have nothing to say.

0:05:08 – (Steve Gray): Because if they say, well, I don’t care right now what happened, you know, I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care, I’ll just go to hell and be with my friends, you know, say something stupid like that they’re lost because that doesn’t work. And it’s. We’ve, that’s what, we’ve tried to get people to get born again out of fear. But they’re not doing it out of Jesus. Cause they love God. They’re doing it because they love themselves.

0:05:30 – (Steve Gray): And it’s self-love that doesn’t want to go to hell.

0:05:33 – (Kathy Gray): There you go.

0:05:34 – (Steve Gray): And that’s, that’s why we need a reset.

0:05:35 – (Kathy Gray): That’s why we need a reset. Okay, so you’ve said this. America’s deepest wounds aren’t political or cultural, they’re spiritual. You know, and you said until we address the spiritual rot, nothing else will change because we’ve mistaken religious activity for spiritual power.

0:05:57 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And so we keep people really active, really busy, busy with church and activities, but we’re not addressing their spiritual. So they come in and we keep them busy. And I don’t say we because we try not to do this at our church, but people understand what I mean. So we keep people busy with programs. And so they come in and they’re so busy, busy at church and they go home, they’re so busy, busy watching TV and watching Hulu or whatever. They watch Netflix or whatever and they just keep themselves to that. But they don’t get to the root of it, of why they’re depressed or why they feel empty or why they’re thinking of getting divorced or why they were lonely and they thought, well, I’ll have children. That’ll solve it. Now I have children now I’m still lonely and still don’t feel great. You know, all these things are going on under the current, but we’re not addressing them.

0:06:48 – (Steve Gray): Well, wait, we do address them, but we address them like the world does. We just trying to make them feel better in their crisis or better in their feelings. We’re going to feel better about yourself, even though yourself is not changed.

0:07:00 – (Kathy Gray): So you’re saying that we are treating the symptoms of real root rot, which.

0:07:06 – (Steve Gray): Is what the world calls root rot. Yeah.

0:07:08 – (Kathy Gray): And you know, I have to share real quick. We have in our yard right now places there’s huge big old yucky looking tannish brown mushroom type things.

0:07:18 – (Steve Gray): Yeah.

0:07:19 – (Kathy Gray): And I looked that up.

0:07:20 – (Steve Gray): I did too.

0:07:21 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, well, you do? Well, did you find out this then that they’re springing up because the soil underneath them there are rotten or dying tree branches growing. And so these little spores are feeding off of that stuff. That’s way deep down. So even if you mow them like you know, we just had our lawn mown and they’ll be gone for now by tomorrow morning they will spring back up because they feed on the stuff that’s way down deep. And the article I read said you got to get really rough with that. You got to take an aerator and go down deep and then you got to dig out by hand the spongy, rotten junky. And I was reading that and saying, I ‘m not doing that.

0:08:04 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to.

0:08:05 – (Kathy Gray): Do this is a job for someone to hide.

0:08:07 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, I don’t think I’ll do it either. But. Yeah, but yeah, and it’s actually. Did you read it’s kind of like a fungus?

0:08:13 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, it is.

0:08:14 – (Steve Gray): Out of all the rot, it’s a fungus among us and it’s toxic. Yeah.

0:08:19 – (Kathy Gray): They say keep your children, keep your pets and please do not think that you’re going to pick some and fry them up yourself if you’re a big person.

0:08:28 – (Steve Gray): Well, you know the story of my life. Yeah. When I was two years old, I did eat them.

0:08:33 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:08:33 – (Steve Gray): I was sitting out in the yard and there they were and I ate some and my sister, my older sister Diana figured out and saw what was going on and panicked and yelled to my mom. They scooped me up and took me right to the hospital and they pumped my stomach and they gave me minutes to live. It’s so toxic. Minutes.

0:08:52 – (Kathy Gray): What a picture.

0:08:53 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And that was me at 2 years old getting toxic growth. How do we get on that subject?

0:09:00 – (Kathy Gray): Well, I was talking about the rot.

0:09:01 – (Steve Gray): Oh yeah.

0:09:03 – (Kathy Gray): Spiritual rot.

0:09:04 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So we’re not. Yeah. We’re addressing symptoms. Yeah. And that’s what the world does, fungus grow. It only knows how to deal with symptoms, but God knows how to deal with the, the actual roots and clean it up and take us to the root and re-establish us and help us start anew and be transformed. And so it goes away. Just like you’re saying. You dig down and dig it out.

0:09:24 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah. It’s got to be you got to do really rough with it, too. Yeah, but they said don’t put any real poisonous stuff on them either, because then that messes up your surrounding lawn.

0:09:34 – (Steve Gray): Right.

0:09:34 – (Kathy Gray): And see, then I just kept getting such a sermon out of that because then the root rot springs up, bears these toadstools that have all these spores.

0:09:44 – (Steve Gray): You did spread all around.

0:09:46 – (Kathy Gray): I just sermon on this.

0:09:49 – (Steve Gray): You’re inspired.

0:09:49 – (Kathy Gray): But that happens. That’s why there’s so many rotten toadstools or mushrooms sitting in the pews.

0:09:54 – (Steve Gray): Okay, I gotcha. Next.

0:09:57 – (Kathy Gray): Next. All right, here’s another thing. Okay, so what I’m wanting to know then is what are the practical steps then that need to happen in the church to deal with all this and heal the souls of America and make people useful again? What needs to be done, what pastors.

0:10:16 – (Steve Gray): Need to do, churches need to do, even politicians can do it to a certain degree. Influencers could do it. Is we need, which I’ve said in some books I’ve written, which they can get, by the way, at https://stevegrayministries.com. They can get the Mighty Like Gideon book. Excellent. You can get When The Kingdom Comes, Follow the Fire, My Absurd Religion, and things like that—and other information. But anyway, I deal with this idea when you say, what can you do?

0:10:49 – (Steve Gray): You have to get a true diagnosis, an accurate diagnosis. And that’s part of the job of the church. It’s not to tell us that we’re sinners or we’re bad or we’re going to hell. I mean, okay, there’s some theology to that. I get it. But. But what they really need is a correct diagnosis. So you could say, well, you’re a bad person. Okay, but why am I a bad person? You have. Why do you feel bad? Why do you do this? Why? And so we need a diagnosis, and we’re not diagnosing our own sicknesses. We’re covering it up and, like you said, treating symptoms. Okay, so let’s go to a.

0:11:26 – (Steve Gray): Let’s go to a Bible story. Okay, so let’s take a trip with Jesus across the Lake of Galilee. And he goes, and he. When he gets on land, then. And he is met by a demonized man. Okay, now this is a pretty exaggerated case because a lot of people could have, you know, demons and stuff then, but this is that. So this guy is an unusual guy. He’s got a legion, they said, lots and lots of demons. And he goes around naked. He doesn’t wear clothes, and he goes around naked.

0:11:59 – (Kathy Gray): It’s pretty bad.

0:12:01 – (Steve Gray): But they tried to chain him. They Tried to deal with him in their own way. So they put chains on him. He could break chains. And so he would break the chains. And so this is a scary, scary figure, right? Very scary figure. He breaks chains, he has no clothes. He wanders around. And so when Jesus comes, the demons begin to speak, and there’s a lot. They beg Jesus not to send him to the abyss. So there’s all this stuff going on.

0:12:33 – (Steve Gray): But when the man. We’ll say the man comes up with Jesus, they begin to speak. It sounds like he’s speaking, but it’s really the demons. It said, what do you have to do with this? Jesus, leave this place. Don’t torture us. Don’t do all these things to us. And if it was the man speaking, excuse me, then it would be obvious that it’s weird because he says, don’t torture me. And I’m thinking, like, you already demonized, naked, breaking chains and living. I mean, you’re pretty tormented right now.

0:13:02 – (Steve Gray): And so. But anyway, the demons speak, and Jesus then frees him, gets him free of these demons. And so one of the first things they do is put clothes on him. Smart move. Very good. So they. And the demons, then, when they’re out. This is a side story. It’s not really important to what we’re saying today, because it’s about pigs. Unless you’re a pig, you might find it interesting. But the pigs, they beg Jesus, let us go into the swine.

0:13:34 – (Steve Gray): Okay, Bad decision, because the swine go nuts now. They’re as crazy as the man was. He lets them do it, and they go and run off a cliff and drown. So now they’re all dead. There’s. That didn’t work. But anyway, so now the man’s free, he’s clothed, and they say he’s in his right mind, okay? And so then the people come out and they see it, and they come back and they see it, and they see a man in his clothed and his right mind.

0:14:05 – (Steve Gray): And guess what it says after that? And they were afraid. Isn’t this the absurdity of America today, too? We see Jesus and good things happening in America, too. And people are afraid of the good things. What’s the natural. What’s the natural response? You see a man who’s been naked, tormented, tortured, breaks, change, obviously, you know, they should have rejoiced. They should have been happy. They should have said, this is the most wonderful thing we’ve ever seen.

0:14:37 – (Steve Gray): And I can’t understand it because it says, and then they were afraid. Both of us are a little why are we coughing today? But anyway, and you know, like, we have daughters, right? And we have granddaughters, lots now coming. We’re going to have four soon. And, you know, if I was living in that neighborhood and there was a naked man breaking chains wandering around the neighborhood, I’d be afraid. I wouldn’t want to let my kids out of the house, you know.

0:15:07 – (Steve Gray): But now it shows the perverseness of the minds of some people who are also demonized. They’re not demonized like this man. They’re not over the top. They don’t break chains. They wear clothes. They can look fairly normal, but their response is demon. It’s demonized response. So they come back and they see Jesus has healed, delivered a man. He’s in his right mind. He’s dressed, clothed, in his right mind.

0:15:37 – (Steve Gray): And now they’re afraid. What was wrong with them before then? See, what was crazy that they weren’t afraid of what was going on around them. And that’s why, you know, you see so many people in our own country today fighting for causes that they should be afraid to try to keep criminals in our country to try to fight for certain things and certain things and certain things. And they’re rioting or, you know, against these things. You go, like, what are you thinking? And then when they take criminals and send them away to another country or send them back home, now they’re afraid.

0:16:13 – (Steve Gray): Now they’re afraid. We’re losing our country. We’re losing democracy. We’re going, what are you thinking? It shows that there’s demons in our country too. All right, so this is the point, what I’m saying, because your question was, what can people do? Okay, so most of people listening are not naked right now. They’re not demonized with a legion breaking chains out of their minds. Everybody knows they’re crazy and that.

0:16:45 – (Steve Gray): No, they’re. They’re the neighborhood folks. They’re the ones that own the pigs, you know? Yeah, they’re the regular folks that people. But their thinking is off, right? And the thinking is off because of what’s happened to people. Now God has given us a great gift. Do you know? Let’s see, today here in Kansas City. Today you have to say, excuse me, excuse me. So today, well, they do it on tv once in a while, they cough. Not very often.

0:17:19 – (Kathy Gray): No, the professionals don’t at all.

0:17:22 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so today in Kansas City, I don’t know what the temperatures. It was yesterday at least, and today it’s in the 80s. Okay, in a few could any time. Now we’re during this Year in Missouri, the temperature changes rapidly, right? And it’ll be 50 degrees, 55 degrees. Everybody is cold. Everybody’s putting on, I am cold. It’s freezing in here. My mittens out, it’s 55 degrees. We’re cold. We’re freezing, right?

0:17:52 – (Steve Gray): Then we go through winter, right? And it gets to be February, it gets to be March, and we’ve had sub-zero temperatures and it’s snow and it’s ice. And one day we wake up and guess what? It’s 55 degrees. And people go, it’s warm outside today. It’s warm. What are we, nuts? Yes, maybe we are. But why is that? It’s because God has given us the gift of adapting. So what feels cold now? What feels hot then? We adapt to it.

0:18:23 – (Steve Gray): And that’s why people from northern countries or states or whatever come down and they think it’s so hot here. Or they come up from the south and they think it’s so cold here. They have adapted to their region, see? So God has given us the gift of adapting. So we adapt. Now, it’s a gift because we need it, but it’s also not a gift. It’s also bad because we not only can adapt to temperatures, obviously, but we adapt to our surroundings, we adapt to our circumstances.

0:18:54 – (Steve Gray): We adapt to everything that’s going wrong in our home or our kids or our marriage or whatever. And guess what? Instead of fixing it, we adapt to it. People adapt to poverty. People adapt to homelessness, right? They adapt to it. So it’s a gift from God. But it can be a terrible thing to use it in the wrong way because we’re not supposed to adapt to poverty or to bad situations. We’re supposed to be transformed, okay?

0:19:20 – (Steve Gray): But anyway, here’s what happened. Those people, when they had the demonized man, and he’s breaking chains, he’s naked, he’s dead. And everybody, he’s living in their neighborhoods and walking around. And sometimes he’d go into solitary places. They know about him. Well, here’s what happened. This is a demonized man with a legion of demons. Why weren’t they afraid of him? Well, they were adapted to his demons.

0:19:45 – (Kathy Gray): To his demons.

0:19:46 – (Steve Gray): They adapted to the demons and they got used to it. Now they’re not afraid. But then Jesus comes and frees the man. Now they have something new and they’re not ready. Now it’s 55 degrees and they’re freezing or it’s hot, whatever way it is. See, they’re not adapted yet to his freedom. And it scares them. It frightens Them, the freedom frightens them. They need to adapt to it. But that’s what people are backwards on today.

0:20:14 – (Steve Gray): Now, here’s the lesson that we need. Just the common people that are dressed today and going about their business or whatever. Most people have adapted, though, to demonic things. Let’s not say they’re demonized. We won’t go to that theology or anything like that. They’re good Christians going to church, but they’ve adapted to darkness. We are able to adapt. So now we’ve adapted to demons. We’ve adapted to our lifestyle.

0:20:42 – (Steve Gray): We’ve adapted to sin. We adapt to. We watch the news and we see people are killed. Tragedies happen, murders, shootings at school. And we just like, oh, that’s really too bad. And then we forget about it. We’ve adapted to our demons, even if it’s not yours, they’re floating around somewhere. They’re in the neighborhood. They’re in the neighborhood. And you’ve adapted to it. So now your question was, what should an individual do to get out of this?

0:21:13 – (Steve Gray): Wake up, realize. Look at what you have adapted yourself to. Violence or the news or certain shows on TV or whatever. And things that used to bother people 100 years ago, we don’t even blink at, okay, so get free of what you say. I’ve adapted. I have adapted to my misery, to my depression, to my miserable marriage, to my miserable kids, to my miserable job. I’ve just adapted. Rather than begin to pray that Jesus comes frees you, even if it takes time, that guy got it instantly frees you and gets you clothed in righteousness and in your right mind.

0:21:57 – (Steve Gray): And he will do it. But we’re not trying. That’s the problem. It’s not that God can’t do these things. It could be a lot of work for some people, but we have adapted so that we don’t even think about changing. We don’t pray about it. We don’t go to church and mention it, Right? We just have adapted ourselves to darkness. And it can happen to really good people. We have a gift from God that we can adapt to our circumstances.

0:22:24 – (Steve Gray): We can adapt to the weather, we can keep going, which is good. But if we’re adapted to darkness and demons, even if we say, well, I don’t have a demon, okay, I get it, but there’s evil out there and there could be evil things around you. That’s where I would start. I wouldn’t start with. I wouldn’t start with the government or a politician or my husband or my wife or my kids. I Start with me and say, I have to make. Maybe I’ll make a list of all the things I don’t like and are not good for me and are hurting my life and hurting my marriage or hurting my kids or hurting other people keeping me in poverty. Make a list and say, these are all the things I’ve adapted to. I don’t even pray about it. I don’t even ask.

0:23:05 – (Steve Gray): And remember what the Bible says. You have not. Cause you ask not. That’s what I would do. I would take the things that we’ve adapted to and start going after those one by one by one until we’re dressed in righteousness and clothed. Clothed and in our right mind. That’s what I would do. That’s why we’re talking today about more faith brings more life. And this is a talk on revival. This is the voice of revivals. And this is how you get revived.

0:23:36 – (Steve Gray): Good stuff.

0:23:37 – (Kathy Gray): Good.

0:23:37 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So you can read that story if you want to in the Bible, but just take it and adapt yourself to the spirit of God instead of all the darkness that’s in the world. How about that? Go to Steve Gray Ministries. Don’t forget to go to https://stevegrayministries.com. Tell your friends about it, and follow us and do all the things you’re supposed to do so you can keep up on these great teachings. Till next time.

0:23:58 – (Steve Gray): Bye-Bye.