Overcoming Cultural Christianity

0:00:00     Oh, I want you to hear today’s podcast and listen to it several times because I’m going to teach you how your culture is robbing you of life.

0:00:08     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, nonprofit leader, bold, truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:33     When I was in my early forties, 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.

0:01:08     So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to more faith, more life, and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:21     Hello everyone and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. So glad to have you with me today, us to be together. I want to help you get more faith and if I can help you with your faith, I’m going to help you produce and have a better life and I want that for you. Have you got the book When The Kingdom Comes yet? You go to morefaithmorelife.com and we’re offering it as an ebook. We’re not making any money and I told some people if we are making any money, it’s like a dollar or two. If we are, I don’t even know if we are.

0:01:49     But you need to get that book. If you’re a Christian believer, you’ve gone to church, you’ve heard a lot of sermons, you need to get the book because you’ll read scriptures that you know about, you’ve read before, but you never saw it this way. And so there’s a lot of context, historical fact, all those kinds of things and you’ll read it and go, wow, I didn’t know that’s what that meant. And one of the reasons why I’ll move from the book. But you need to get the book. You can also make a donation, which you’ve  got to choose who you’re going to support. You just don’t give money everywhere, but you do need to give money to the right thing.

0:02:24     But we’ll move from that. But one of the things about the book that we have is you’ll read things and hear things that’s so much in context to what we need to have today and it’s going to help you understand life better. And it’s in about six or seven languages. I always say that because I really don’t know. It could be eight. And it’s used as a textbook for many schools and colleges in the religious realm and revival when they study it. So anyway, get the book When The Kingdom Comes. It’s an ebook, you can get it. It’s not that expensive. And of course there’s still My Absurd Religion, which is worth reading. It’s got stuff in it too.

0:03:08     So I want to talk to you today about that and not about the book, but about more faith, more life and how much we need books like that because we’re so culturized that we have I don’t like this phrase, but I’ll say it because you’ll understand it. We have a culture Christ, we have culture Christianity, and you don’t realize it until you get to the roots of it. Or in my case, I spent lots of time in Israel with Jewish people.

0:03:40     And not just Jewish people, I did great people, but just Jews that are not Christian like I am. They’re just Jews studying, but they love God. They love God’s word. And you just watch them and listen and you’ve got 4000 years of history of loving God and serving and all the great names, you know, King David and Jeremiah and Daniel and all those people. And they’re there. But when I’m there, I realize I’m so culturized in Christianity that I don’t even know how to relate and have a conversation with some of the Jewish people who I’m holding the same Bible. Okay, I have the New Testament, but still, I got all the Old Testament, too. We’re holding the same Bible and I can’t hardly even communicate with them because my culture has made me more what I am than God.

0:04:33     My culture has made me more of what I am than Christianity. I call myself a Christian, but what we did, in my opinion and I said in the last podcast, I’m trying to be a father to you. I’m trying to speak like nobody else would. I’m not trying to make a friend, I’m not trying to be your buddy. I’m not trying to raise money. I’m trying to do my part in our society today. And so what happens is instead of allowing Christianity to change our culture, at least our personal culture, our family, oh, we met Jesus and we read the Bible or whatever, and we go to church now and our whole culture and thought changes. But what happens to most people at least, is we only take on the Jesus that is formed like a commercialized Jesus.

0:05:25     It’s Christianity that is accepted, middle of the road. It’s okay. There’s no challenge. It doesn’t change our culture. Our culture has made itself fit into Christianity. What’s the result? It’s inspiring, it’s good, it’s boring for a lot of places, it’s friendly, it’s smiley, but it’s not life changing. It doesn’t give you more life. It’s not life changing. So Christians face the same thing that the non Christians face, they just do it.

0:06:00     I wrote in some books, and it might be in one of the books Wen The Kingdom Comes or whatever, or whatever book. But imagine this, god’s got big plans for your life, and I believe that anyway, and all you’re getting is a cleaner life, a cleaner morality, okay? It’s not changing you. You’re just getting a cleaner Christianity, a cleaner lifestyle, and so it’s cleaner than it was. So now you only watch the good movies, and you don’t let your kids watch the bad movies. Your neighbors do. Your neighbors watch everything, and you hope your kids don’t watch it with them.

0:06:41     But you’re not going to have that. You’re going to clean it up. And even if you’re single, you’re just working. I’m going to clean it up. I’m not going to do drugs, I’m not going to do alcohol. I’m not going to be a drunk, at least. And I’m going to be honest. And when I date, it’s going to be falling in love with and all the things. It’s going to be clean and right. Clean is not the same as Christian, okay?

0:07:06     Anybody can clean their life up, but not everybody can connect to God and know that they’re connected and have that God influence that creates faith and life, right? So that’s what I want for you. But I want you to understand most, and maybe you’re not like that, or maybe you’re not even close to it because you don’t even go to church, or you seldom go, or you go to traditional church. You just sort of show up, mumble the songs and go home.

0:07:33     Okay, what is lacking in our country of why teenagers, they don’t want to go to these traditional churches or they’re dropping out. They say, our church is not that way. We don’t have it where teenagers are dropping out or they don’t have millennials are not going to church. Zion knows you’re one of them, right? And we got a large group of that age group. 30 ish 20 to 30 ish to write age. They’re not even 40 yet, most of them. They’re most 30 ish, lots of them. Okay, why?

0:08:06     So you need to know why and maybe check us out if you live in the area, or you can go online and Revivekc.com, go to YouTube or whatever, watch our Sunday morning service at ten and see what’s going on. But anyway, it’s because what they’re happening is, well, they’re anti God. They’re antireligion. They don’t want to go to church. My parents went to church, but I’m not going to go to church. All these things, it’s not relevant. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s because what you’re really saying is you’re not rejecting God.

0:08:42     I believe you would love to have a visit from God. I believe you’d love God to talk to you. God wouldn’t start talking to you and telling you stuff, and you, I could care less. Let’s go watch Netflix or something. That’s only God. Let’s go watch a great movie or sports. You wouldn’t do that. You’d love God to talk to you, guide your life. Okay, so you’re not really anti God, what you are, and you’re not really anti Jesus or Christianity or anything like that as much.

0:09:11     You’re anti culture Christianity. Our culture Christianity is built culture first. It’s religion that makes us comfortable. It’s religion that makes us feel safe. And it’s religion in a lot of churches where everybody gets to have a vote and you get to vote the pastor in and vote the pastor out, and you make all the decisions and the pastor just preaches, right? And that’s comfortable Christianity.

0:09:42     And it’s a smiling place. Unchallenged. We don’t get too much into the spooky stuff, right? We’re not going to talk about the Holy Spirit much or what Holy Spirit does or miracles. We’re not going to get into that. We certainly would never say the word speaking in tongues, the three words that frighten so many churchgoers because they don’t know anything about it. And nobody’s going to teach them all the things that have been removed.

0:10:09     Removed, loyalty, sacrifice, challenges, courage that they had in the Bible and since then have been removed. Because our culture doesn’t want to be challenged. We don’t want to be corrected. We don’t want to be told we have a problem and we don’t want to be told what to do. We want to be soothed, but not saved, right? And I’m not talking about saved and going to heaven. I’m talking about saving you right now.

0:10:38     Saving you right now in your life. Your finances, your housing, your food prices, your kids education, your emotional state, your mental state, your past is daunting. It’s just overwhelming. All those things that are making up the stress society we have today are curable, but not by the current religion, because our current religion is as cultural as divorce, right? Because Christians, half of Christian marriage, maybe more than half Christian marriages end in divorce.

0:11:18     But it’s true because it’s culture Christianity that doesn’t save us, rescue us, teach us, but it soothes us. And the reason it does that is because the people, not everybody, but many, however many you want to say, pastors, leaders, denominations, churches, they can be nondenominational, they can be denominational, they can be first church, second church, whatever are set up, they set up to be like a buddy, to be your best friend.

0:11:49     And they want you to come and meet friends, right? Fellowship, friends. Everybody gets to talk, everybody has an opinion, everybody’s special, everybody’s important, right? And you’re never going to find you could go back, go back 2000 years to the very first churches that were started, influenced by Jesus, started by Paul and some by Peter. Go to those churches, you’re not going to find any of that yet. They had miracles, signs, wonders. They were courageous. They stood up against tyrants.

0:12:25     And the vibrancy of what was there is not here. But it’s because we wanted to remove all those things. And we want to be comfortable. We want to be soothed and we want to be told we’re okay. And Christianity is not you’re, okay? This has nothing to do with you’re, okay? In fact, it’s not even about you’re, okay? It’s about being changed, transformed. And so you need to have faith that God knows what he’s doing.

0:12:54     God knows what he’s talking about. And sometimes faith that some of us people, some of us who have been around know what we’re talking about. The same thing I would tell my kids, and I tell them and tell them and have told them. I said, Listen, we live a blessed life. I live a blessed life. And I didn’t grow up that way, but I have it now. And if you’ll follow and honor God, it’s not that hard. You don’t have to be a perfect person.

0:13:18     But I teach. Honor God, make him important. Give Him a great central place in your life, a really important place. The other things are okay, but this is the center. You’re going to be blessed too, and you’re going to be safe. You’re going to be stronger still. It’s a dangerous world, no doubt about it. But if strength is what we need, then I want you to be stronger, right? If courage is what we need, then I want you to be the most courageous, right?

0:13:54     And when you go to work, be the best worker, have the best attitude. Why? Because there’s something going on of a God thing. And that’s what happened in the first century churches, they had something and people wanted to go and they grew and they saw God move and do things for them. And so today, though, we’ve got this culture that we don’t want too much God. Because if we get too much God, god might bother me.

0:14:22     He might bother me. He might require something of me, right? He might want me to change. He might tell me I’m not special. And God forbid that we vote a pastor in that’s going to say we’re not special. We want to hear and be soothed and inspired, but we don’t want to be told we need to change. But you’re not expected to change on your own. That’s where your faith comes in the power of God. And over time, you become a different person to where the phrase all things become new again, new creation is real.

0:14:56     It’s real. I was this way, but over time I’ve become a new creation. I’m different and I’m stronger and I’m better and I feel better about myself. I don’t need somebody to build up my self esteem and tell me I’m loved every constantly or else I’m going to fall apart. I don’t need that. I mean, I don’t need it. You know why? Because I’m stronger. I’m strong. I’ve got confidence. I’ve got strength. I have wisdom. I know what I’m doing.

0:15:24     And I was telling the other day, there’s a song we grew up, this is my father’s world. I’d hear about that. And I said, this is my father’s world, and I am a child of God. So in some ways, I kind of own this place. I kind of own the world with God. You know what I’m talking about? It’s attitude. I don’t really own the world, obviously, but it’s attitude. I got an attitude, right? I like that about our church. I’ve had people say, coming to your church is not religious.

0:15:56     It’s not religious. It is an experience. You come and experience God, and we’re a church with attitude. Not a bad attitude. No, we’re not going to have that. It’s an attitude that we should give him the place he deserves. And like Jesus said, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. And you know what belongs to God? You do. You do. And so more faith in what I’m saying right now will produce more life, right?

0:16:29     If you don’t do this, then unless something changes and I want to back up again, christianity is about people being changed, not soothed, not smile. God loves you. That’s true whether you smile or not. But it’s not. So you can have buddies and fellowship and fun and clean fun. We’re going to have clean fun. It’s not about that, right? It’s about he changes you into what he wants you to be, what he needs you to be. And little do most people know what you want to be.

0:17:07     And so you don’t need to be built up all the time and you’re lonely all the time, or you’re angry all the time because you’ve been changed. And if you’re not afraid of that, then you realize that’s what it’s about is getting you into position to become while on this earth, not have to die and go to heaven while on this earth to be the person that not only God wants you to be, but you want to be. You don’t want to be afraid. You don’t want to be a coward. I don’t believe you want to be a coward.

0:17:38     I don’t believe you want to live in fear. I certainly don’t believe you want to be in poverty or close to it. Right? Or without money, without finances to do it. You can’t buy the kids school clothes or whatever, and you don’t want to be the worst worker and nobody likes you and the boss wishes you’d quit so he can hire somebody that’ll work. You don’t want to be that person. You may be that person, and you may excuse yourself and say, well, I had a bad upbringing. I had a hard childhood. Nobody loves me. My husband left me. I left him.

0:18:12     I’ve been divorced once. I’ve been divorced twice, so now I’m ashamed of my failure. The list can go on and on and on. But you know what? Culture, I don’t know if you’re ready for this culture will put you in a support group. And guess who’s in the support group? Everybody that has what you have, right? Everybody that has what you have. And so they put all the alcoholics together in one room, and we’re going to support one another. Okay, that’s great. If it worked for you, that’s great. Let’s take something else.

0:18:47     All the divorced people, right? And all the one how about this one? All the ones that feel like they have some kind of sexual thing going and they’re kind of dangerous, what do you think they do? They put them all in the same group, and now what are they talking about? They’re talking about their addictions. Like what? Right? You need to be around different people. You don’t need to be put in a group that’ll support you, that’s got the same sickness you got, right?

0:19:14     You need to get with healthy people, and I don’t mean real sickness. Healthy marriages, right? Healthy finances. How did they get where they got how do they pay their bills? How do they give to God faithfully? And yet they still have money to live. They get along in marriages. Their kids seem to love them. Their kids love school. Their kids love their parents. Their kids love to go to church, and their kids are just delightful, and instead of screaming, embarrassing, don’t want to take them over, nobody wants you to come over.

0:19:48     We had that, Zion. We had that once. We had it well, more than once. We had a family, but they always wanted to come over, and they’d bring their screaming kids, and their kids would run wild in the house. And then they grabbed the refrigerator door and hang from it. Finally, the refrigerator door broke, and we had to buy a new refrigerator because they hung on it like they’re at the playground and the door came off. And of course, the parents, oblivious, they didn’t tell them to quit. They looked at it like, oh, that’s really sad.

0:20:16     Your door on your refrigerator just fell off. And it was, you know, who wants that? And so there’s just a great life for you. And yes, it involves God, because he’s going to give you an advantage if you do this, right? If you stop letting culture, Christianity, which only wants to soothe you and make you feel better about yourself, be brave and say, I am ready to become somebody else, at least partially the person God wants me to be. And I want to start working on those things that hurt me and hurt other people, right? That’s all it is.

0:20:51     Simple. Why? Why would you want to keep something that hurts you? And so the old thing, if you don’t change anything, nothing’s going to change, right? But you can change even just your attitude about God, about church. Don’t go to some church that gets the first thing they do is throw you in and say you’re going to make friends here. We’re going to get you in a group, and you’re going to have friends and fellowship.

0:21:15     We got baseball and basketball and volleyball. What, just jump away. No, the first thing I want to know is, are you telling me you’re going to help me get connected to God? Then we’ll talk about connecting to fun things and fun people. But I noticed that’s the first thing churches grab people like, we’re going to give you friends and fellowship and community and food and fun and got a great place. Your kids are going to have fun in church. Finally.

0:21:47     Look at all we’ve got for them. All right, great stuff, right? But the first thing they should be telling you is, congratulations, you are at a place where you are going to encounter God, and it’s going to change your life forever. And that’s what you need. So I encourage you to find a church like that and tune into one if you have to on the Internet. But I want you to have more faith because I want you to have more life. I want to be a father to you.

0:22:15     And boy, do we need fathers, right? And guidance. People are hurting, but you don’t have to hurt. People are lonely, but you don’t have to be lonely. People are wandering, they’re confused. Doesn’t have to be that way. And I want to help you figure out the world. Figure out the world. I’m going to talk to you at different times about nations and world, and if world events change, which they probably will, if our country doesn’t do anything different, all right, then the other nations are going to come and take advantage of us. But that can change.

0:22:46     We can pray, we can change, we can vote, right? Okay. So I want to help you with all those things until your life gets better and you can help make other people’s life better. So this is not a broadcast to raise money. It’s not a podcast to be your friend. It’s a podcast to help your life get better through more faith that produces more life. And I hope you go to the website morefaithmorelife.com. There. You can get the book When The Kingdom Comes. We just made it available. It’s an ebook. It’s not very expensive. I think it’s like $7.99.

0:23:17     Probably cost us $6.99 to publish the book and then to make it into an ebook because we had to publish it first. So there you get it When The Kingdom Comes. It’s got lessons in it, it’s got examples from my life. It’s got great Bible teaching in it, and it’s an easy read. Okay. And then, of course, we already had my absurd religion available. It’s still available, and we’re going to make more stuff available, including some new books. So go there.

0:23:46     Don’t be afraid to make a donation because you say, well, I don’t know if I can afford it. You need to support people that are saving your life. Yeah. You don’t want these people, the voices that God’s putting into your life, you don’t want them to go away, and you don’t want to just hear somebody soothe you. Right? You want to have somebody save you. And so that’s what I want to do morefaithmorelife.com. Until next time. Bye.