Understanding Peace (with Kathy Gray)

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, it’s Thanksgiving week and everybody’s going to be talking about being thankful. We’re going to go way past that and get you in a boat of safety for your future. On the next podcast, More Faith, More Life. Hello, everybody. Welcome again to a More Faith, More Life podcast with Cathy and Steve. Wait a minute, that’s not right. It’s Steve and Kathy joining together to talk to you about the great things of God to help you get more faith in your life. Kathy. Right. If they get more faith, they’re going to get more out of life, and people don’t know that.

0:00:29 – (Kathy Gray): Amen.

0:00:29 – (Steve Gray): Almost nobody knows that.

0:00:30 – (Kathy Gray): No, they don’t know that.

0:00:31 – (Steve Gray): All of them want to live life to the fullest. They want to enjoy everything they’re doing, and they don’t know how to get it. They don’t understand the faith walk. So a lot of people avoid faith because it’s too challenging. And, you know, we were talking earlier, not during this, but with some others, about it’s easier to be afraid, it’s easier to walk in fear than it is to have more faith. That’s why we do this.

0:00:53 – (Steve Gray): We want to encourage you because a lot of people don’t know what faith walking by faith will do to you and how it will help you. Well, also, Kathy, we’re excited, aren’t we? We’re kind of getting into that Thanksgiving celebration mood mode. That means that all the whole world is going to change until January 2nd and be crazy and be different. But that’s okay. I think you and I handle it pretty well. We got a good balance.

0:01:21 – (Steve Gray): We’re not.

0:01:22 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, we enjoy it and we have fun with the family and the kids and all that stuff, but it’s not like. It’s not like the highlight of our life or, you know, if we don’t get to have Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, we’re going to. The world’s going to collapse or anything. We’re flexible and don’t let those things rule us. But we use it a lot to just enjoy family, I think.

0:01:46 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And, you know, when we talk about more faith, more life, if that’s working in your life, then it’s hard to take a day and make it more special than your other days. Because if faith is working in your life, that makes your whole world different. And so you don’t put so much emphasis. Like you said, you enjoy it.

0:02:09 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah. And, you know, and every day is a highlight with Jesus. And you know how a lot of people do it. They put all their hope, like, in one day, like Christmas and Then it’s going to be perfect because I’ve got it all planned out, and this is how you know who’s going to be there and all the feelings we’re going to have. And then one thing goes wrong, or some person shows up late, and then, oh, my special day, you know, it was ruined.

0:02:35 – (Kathy Gray): Now my whole life is ruined because I put all my value and all my effort into one day. I know you. You put value and effort into every single day. And so, you know, challenges may come or someone may not show up on time, but you and I, we don’t get defeated or devastated. And I like that about how the way we can live.

0:02:58 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. Cause we enjoy it, but it doesn’t overwhelm us with, like, we have to make it so special because we have so many things. And that’s why if you live by faith, it’s different. You’re not putting your hope in a day or a holiday, but you’re putting it into a person.

0:03:16 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:03:16 – (Steve Gray): And that person’s around all the time. Jesus. Here. Every day. And so it’s just a way of life that is so much easier and better. Yeah. We’ve had different holiday experiences. We’ve tried different things because our schedule’s really, really busy. Our family’s getting bigger, you know, trying to squeeze everybody into the room and dining room and all that. So we’ve tried different things. We’ve gone to restaurants.

0:03:39 – (Steve Gray): We made the food ourselves. You made the turkey, Bobby. Our daughter made the turkey or whatever. And then a couple of years, though, remember, we called a grocery store and said, hey, this is a great deal. You just pay them this money, and everything’s catered, and it’s all wrapped in aluminum foil and everything.

0:03:57 – (Kathy Gray): Not just the turkey, but all the fixing. All the fixings.

0:04:00 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So in it came when we sat there waiting for it, and then in it comes. It looks like a lot of food, but after we got eaten and, like, it was just so. So if I remember right, it was okay. It was okay.

0:04:10 – (Kathy Gray): Well, but it was great to me because I’m not the greatest cook in the world. So it tasted really yummy. Delicious.

0:04:18 – (Steve Gray): Yeah.

0:04:18 – (Kathy Gray): To me. But I know the rest of the family was like, ew.

0:04:22 – (Steve Gray): She might have been the greatest cook in the world, but I ruined it. First six months of marriage, or when it was first time she tried to make a pie. Wasn’t it a piece? And she tried. She made a pie.

0:04:35 – (Kathy Gray): Let’s just say that. You got to remember, I did not have an oven in the house. We were renting. All I had was. What do you call those little toaster ovens.

0:04:44 – (Steve Gray): Oh, I didn’t know that.

0:04:44 – (Kathy Gray): But I tried to do the pie in it. Yeah.

0:04:47 – (Steve Gray): And then I came home, I was sitting on the counter and I made a huge mistake that changed our lives forever. I said, what is it? And it just didn’t look right, but. Because you used that funny oven. But anyway, so I’m going to blame.

0:04:59 – (Kathy Gray): The funny oven, but tell them the result of that comment. What you said, what is that? And I said, it’s cherry pie and I’m never going to bake another one.

0:05:10 – (Steve Gray): But I think I was a hero. I think I did try to eat some of it. Just.

0:05:14 – (Kathy Gray): I know.

0:05:14 – (Steve Gray): So anyway, so it’s Thanksgiving time. It starts the holiday season. We got to get our heads on straight. We don’t want you to be disappointed or hurt or afraid or depressed or anything. And that’s why we want you to shift your faith into the man Jesus and his kingdom and the way this all operates so that you’re not fooled by anything. And you know, maybe, maybe it is a lonely time for you, but okay, you’ll get over it because you got more life coming through faith. So it’s just a principle we’ve learned. We’re trying to push it on you to make your life better.

0:05:48 – (Steve Gray): And it will get better, whatever you’re going through. Right, Cathy?

0:05:50 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, it will. You know, Steve, I’ve been going back through your book If You Only Knew: A Guide for the Clueless Generation.  And I went through the first chapter with my heart was now, Lord, help me to pick out some of these main principles in this first chapter that really apply or that people, you know, young adults, old adults can really grab ahold of. Like maybe I read a paragraph and I thought, wait a minute, this is emphasizing peace within chaos.

0:06:29 – (Kathy Gray): And then I started praying and God opened up to me more and more just from that paragraph in chapter one. And you know, friends, this book is really rich. If you only knew. It’s so full of many, many nuggets. And today I thought maybe you would share. One of the words that really jumped out was peace. Understanding peace in the midst of chaos.

0:06:54 – (Steve Gray): Actually too I want to say too really, it’s just, it’s really just a booklet.

0:06:57 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, it is a booklet.

0:06:59 – (Steve Gray): I don’t. If I say this is my book, that’s not much of a writer. So I have a major book coming out with my son in law in February which will be in all the bookstores and everywhere and you’ll be hearing about it. It’s a big. It’s 18 chapters. I think it’s a real book. This is a booklet for people who don’t have a lot of time and want to get to the point. What’s going on in America right now? And what’s it. So, okay, I’ll give it back to you to hold.

0:07:24 – (Kathy Gray): One more thing. Now say this before all these witnesses. I think each of these chapters now, with all those principles I found just in the first chapter, you can make this into a much bigger book. Yeah, you could probably do four chapters off of chapter one and really help, you know, get. Then you’d have a big book.

0:07:47 – (Steve Gray): Well, if people read this and they don’t get it, then I could do a sequel called I wish I only knew. Sorry you missed it. Okay, so back to what you were saying. All right, so I call the book if you only knew, and of course the subtitle, A guide to the clueless generation. But if you only knew. And I get that from what Jesus said. So looking at the world today, the church today, the spiritual atmosphere of today, and what’s going on, I compared it to what Jesus saw in his day.

0:08:19 – (Steve Gray): He obviously had been preaching, trying to change the world, making impact, but not totally reaching the nation of Israel. So we blanked out over here. Our screens went out and our lights went out. So somebody tripped on a cord or something and so thought, I just notify the tech guys.

0:08:43 – (Kathy Gray): It has returned.

0:08:44 – (Steve Gray): It has returned. I don’t really need it, but. Because I wrote the book.

0:08:50 – (Kathy Gray): Exactly.

0:08:51 – (Steve Gray): But Jesus comes and he weeps over Jerusalem. He’s looking at Jerusalem and he weeps over Jerusalem. And that’s when he asks them. He makes the statement, speaking over the city. If you. Jerusalem, if you. The city, if you’re this city only knew what would make for peace. Okay. But it is hidden from your eyes. You don’t know. And there’s. There’s a reason that God. How God makes peace. We need to know how he does that.

0:09:19 – (Steve Gray): And then we need to know why we don’t. Why don’t we know? Why are we such a clueless generation? I find very few people, Kathy, that are putting. I mean, I don’t want to sound like I’m a know it all or anything, but I just find very few people that are putting the pieces together that they can. You know the old saying, you know, one plus one equals two. And they don’t understand the one plus one. They don’t. They say, how do you get to two well, you add one plus one and I don’t think they’re putting together what we see in the world, what we’re seeing in our country, what we’re seeing in governments, not just ours, but governments, and what that means for the future.

0:09:54 – (Steve Gray): And so Jesus looked ahead and he knew that if the Jewish culture, the Jewish people, well, the Israelite leaders basically were planning a revolt, which they did. They had the idea that God is going to help him so we can revolt against Rome. We will win, drive Rome out, and it’ll be kind of like when David was king again and Jesus is trying to tell him, okay, I get it. You’ve had a great history of God rescuing you.

0:10:23 – (Steve Gray): This time it’s different because you don’t understand how to get there.

0:10:27 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:10:27 – (Steve Gray): You don’t understand how to get. You want the peace. You’d like Rome to be gone and have peace in the land, but you don’t know it’s hidden from your eyes.

0:10:35 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:10:35 – (Steve Gray): Consequently, if you don’t know how to get it, when you want peace, Kathy, and you don’t know how to get it, what are you going to get? You’re going to get something else.

0:10:42 – (Kathy Gray): You’re going to get turmoil and totally disrupted self and family, but the whole world, all society around you. And you know, when Jesus did speak this over Jerusalem, he, He was seeing demon possessed people, poverty, very ill people, impoverishment, being ruled by Rome. He was seeing all that the people were saying, we, you know, what’s going on here? And he looked and he, and he did weep over Jerusalem.

0:11:17 – (Kathy Gray): And when he said that, if you only knew, you’ve made the point many times over the years, real, that real peace, the way that leads to peace is alignment with Jesus. So he was looking at Jerusalem and he was looking at all the Jewish people that he came to live and die for. And he was saying, if you only knew, you can have all this, all these troubles, but if you knew the way to peace, you would align yourself with me.

0:11:46 – (Kathy Gray): And so they didn’t get it. And then, you know, we go to today’s cities and what if Jesus today would walk through New York City or Chicago or downtown Kansas City, and what would he see and how would he feel and what kind of message would he bring today?

0:12:05 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And when we see that he’s trying to tell them what will bring for peace and obviously they’re not going to get it. So he tells them, look, you’re not getting it, since you’re not going to get it, he says, your enemies are going to come and get you. Your enemies are going to come and get you. And they did. And they killed him and they murdered a million of them. And it was horrible. And they destroyed the temple. They destroyed Jerusalem. They destroyed the temple.

0:12:29 – (Steve Gray): And so he said, and he’s weeping because he’s looking ahead and saying, I see what’s going to happen to you. I see what’s going to happen to this beautiful city. It’s going to be destroyed. The beautiful temple. It’s going to be destroyed. And the deal he’s trying to say is, but it is preventable. If you could find the way of peace, then that won’t happen. But if you don’t put it together, it’s going to happen. So here we have the idea.

0:12:53 – (Steve Gray): We want to have this piece and we want to put it together, but people are not putting it together because in his. We’ll go back to his day first and then ours. When he looked. Well, you already said it. Everywhere he went, there were demonized people, sick people, crippled people, miserable people, poor people, because someone had their land taken away. It was miserable. And everywhere he went was his misery.

0:13:18 – (Steve Gray): And he was cleaning it up. And he was showing the kingdom of God and the power of God and saying, there’s a way out of this, but they’re not going to get it. Now, when I said put one and one together, makes two. See, what they weren’t getting was their religion was full of compromise, hypocrisy, love of money, power, prestige, all those things. What they didn’t get was it’s that which is going to cause the destruction of Jerusalem.

0:13:49 – (Steve Gray): Yes, Rome will do it, but it’s your own weakness. You refuse to repent of what you’ve made religion out of and your commitment. They believed in God, but they believed in. I can be selfish. I can be hypocrite. You can’t have hypocrisy, Kathy, and not have bad things happen. So today, if people, you know, people want. I’ve never heard anybody say this. Well, I have. But when I was in a seminary class, I caused a riot, if you remember that, because I suggested this.

0:14:22 – (Steve Gray): But I don’t hear people. They’ll say, well, why do bad things happen to good people? Well, that doesn’t mean those people are bad people. It doesn’t mean bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people and happened to good people, you know, vice versa. And so. But they don’t put together that if you’ve got hypocrisy in the church. It’s going to open the door to bad things.

0:14:49 – (Steve Gray): Because Jesus said, beware of the. Of the. Of the leaders. Beware of the Pharisees and the leaders because they have hypocrisy. Beware of their hypocrisy. Well, we might think, well, hypocrisy, that’s just wrong. That’s being a fake. But hypocrisy produces fruit. And Jesus said, listen to this. He said, this is my wording. But he says, it can get on you. You know, it’s the cooties of religion, right?

0:15:16 – (Steve Gray): It gets on you. You get around it. It gets on you, it wears on you. It’s hard to escape it if you’re around it. Well, it was just going wild in Jesus.

0:15:24 – (Kathy Gray): It was going wild. And you know what? They were blinded to it. Maybe, you know, some Pharisee, when he first became a Pharisee, had this little conviction and saying, you know, I’m living like a hypocrite already. I’m putting stuff on the people that I don’t even put on myself. And Steve, I remember you telling that story how at that seminar you. They were all discussing why was this. Was it the bent over woman?

0:15:50 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, it wasn’t seminar. It was seminary.

0:15:53 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah. I didn’t want to quite.

0:15:54 – (Steve Gray): That’s okay.

0:15:55 – (Kathy Gray): And delegated.

0:15:55 – (Steve Gray): It was a class.

0:15:56 – (Kathy Gray): Seminary. It was a seminary class. Okay.

0:15:59 – (Steve Gray): It was an evening class.

0:16:00 – (Kathy Gray): It was an evening class. And they were all saying, well, you know, the teacher asked, why. Why has this woman been over for 18 years? And they all. All these students had all of their little answers, you know, because the water was bad or because she sinned sometimes.

0:16:18 – (Steve Gray): Or she had a grandmother that played with the Ouija board.

0:16:21 – (Kathy Gray): There you go. They were all having stuff like that. It was, you know, and finally you, Steve Gray.

0:16:26 – (Steve Gray): I waited till the very end of class.

0:16:27 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, my.

0:16:28 – (Steve Gray): And. But I’d like to have something to say. And everybody, I think they felt like, haven’t we said it already? Let’s just. Class dismissed and you have to mess it up. And I said, I can tell you why she was bent over. And they said, okay. And it was almost like they’re saying, okay, smarty pants, why? I said, just keep reading, keep reading, keep reading. And Jesus nails it right there. He says, there’s hypocrisy.

0:16:53 – (Steve Gray): And hypocrisy was among them. And Jesus came without hypocrisy and healed her.

0:17:00 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:17:01 – (Steve Gray): He was the only non-hypocrite in the house. And I told him I Said hypocrisy makes people sick. They rioted, they stood up, they threw their chairs aside, all that because I knew they were going to go back to people in their church that were sick. But I always say, I don’t blame the sick people. Mercy on them. God have mercy on us. But you could be a victim if we, if, if religion would clean itself up. Because Jesus did not go to the Romans and say, repent.

0:17:30 – (Steve Gray): He went to his own. Even when he tried to go to. When they wanted him to go to the Gentiles, he says, I can’t. I’ve been sent to the lost house of Israel. Who was lost? Israel was lost.

0:17:41 – (Kathy Gray): But you know, when you pointed that out there at the seminary, it clearly said the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they were the ones who got mad, you know, when Jesus pointed out, this is hypocrisy. The leaders who were feeding the people and leading the people, they were the ones full of hypocrisy. And look at the results then.

0:18:06 – (Steve Gray): Well, and also very similar. A lot of people don’t know that the Pharisees lived in what we might call the second best neighborhoods in Jerusalem. High on a hill, great houses. Now, the first, the Romans, lived in the best. Below that were the Pharisees, Sadducees and all those. Well, if you’re making all the money, you got best seats in the house. People bow and respect to you at the gate, and they think you’re knowledgeable and they respect you and you make decisions in the community also.

0:18:36 – (Steve Gray): Now Jesus says, I think we need to do something different here. Are you going to change? Are you going to say, sorry, I like things the way they are? And that’s what we find today. When you say, what would Jesus do if he walked through the cities today? Well, first thing he would notice is all the churches, how many we have and how many churches we have and how many problems we have that are not changing our country or the hearts of the people.

0:19:00 – (Steve Gray): And we live in a very unusual time that, as we’ve talked about, there’s problems everywhere, right? And so trying to get that cleared up. Okay, so here’s my — here’s what I’m trying to explain in this. So in an election year or non-election year, but we have, we elect people, we pass laws, we say, we need to start this agency, we need to cut inflation, we need to get better jobs. So we’re answering all these things, saying, this is going to help keep war away, or this is going to help us be happier or this is going to make more money for us.

0:19:36 – (Steve Gray): I think Jesus would weep through the city and talk to his own people. He would not go to the drug addicts. He’s not going to go to the drug cartels and tell them, if you would repent, then everything would be okay. He went to his own people and said, here’s the deal. If my own people lack love for me, if my own people are hypocrites, if my own people are eating up this idea that religion makes money and comfort and power and prestige and all those kinds of things, then you don’t know what makes for peace.

0:20:07 – (Kathy Gray): No, you don’t.

0:20:08 – (Steve Gray): What makes for peace is you need to turn with all your heart and if you’re gonna be the people of God, be the people of God. Or as you said, I think recently, if Baal is God, remember the prophets of Baal and Elijah. If he’s God, why aren’t you serving?

0:20:22 – (Kathy Gray): Just serve him.

0:20:23 – (Steve Gray): Why are you going to church if God’s not God and money’s God or pleasure’s God or vacations or God or whatever go at, why are you wasting your time going to church?

0:20:37 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:20:37 – (Steve Gray): But if God is God, what are you wasting your time living a selfish life when eternity with the eternal God and the power of God can save you and your family?

0:20:48 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:20:48 – (Steve Gray): Now, what he did when he wept over Jerusalem, a lot of people don’t know this. Wept over Jerusalem, he said, but your enemies are going to come, they’re going to throw you to the ground, you and your children, and they’re going to kill you and they’re going to destroy this city. But he also said, when you see the armies coming now, who is he talking to now? The Pharisees aren’t listening, The Sadducees aren’t listening, but a lot of Jews are.

0:21:12 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:21:13 – (Steve Gray): And they’re believing in him.

0:21:14 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:21:15 – (Steve Gray): And he said, listen, when you see it coming, get out of town. Basically, that’s right. Or we would have said, I grew up in Kansas, western Kansas. Get out of Dodge.

0:21:25 – (Kathy Gray): Get out of Dodge.

0:21:26 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, get out of town. Don’t go down and get your stuff. Don’t start loading a cart up with junk and trying to pull it out and take it to get out of town now. And they did. A lot of them did. So he’s weeping because of. That’s what’s going to happen. So I think today what most people miss is the reason we can’t get all of the things, the blessings of God happening in our lives because we’re happy that if great things happen in the government and great things happen in the nation, fine. But it doesn’t take the place. God of the Kathy, of the people who have broken hearts, broken marriages, broken kids, broken lives, that they don’t know how to fix them.

0:22:04 – (Kathy Gray): You know, that goes along with Romans 12:2, where Paul was telling the people, don’t be conformed. Don’t get squeezed into the pattern of the world. The way of thinking, the way of responding, loving money, trying to dominate, hatred, all the greed, all those things don’t be conformed to the pattern of the world. And you know, a pattern is something you need to follow it exactly or it’s not going to come out right.

0:22:40 – (Kathy Gray): So the world has. Has a certain pattern it wants to squeeze you into. And when I read that word pattern, I think of my mom when I was real little. She would sew dresses for me and my sister, and she’d get out these little patterns and cut them out, then lay them on top of the material on top of the fabric and pin it carefully and then cut very carefully each piece of the pattern that would then make a whole complete dress.

0:23:12 – (Kathy Gray): And she had to conform to every single pattern and sew it the way they said and put it together. And that’s what the world wants people to do. That’s what happened then. And man, that is what happens now. The world is always pushing on people, God’s people, and to squeeze them in to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And like you’re saying, how hypocritical. You go to church on Sunday, but you love the world and you’re messing around with it. And you conform, you think like it, you dress like it, you respond, you spend your money and conform yourself to that pattern. Well, what are you going to get?

0:23:54 – (Kathy Gray): You’re not going to get a godly outfit. You’re going to start looking like the pattern of the world. And so he said, but be renewed by, you know, get your mind renewed, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then the Word of God is what renews your mind. Nothing else. You have to read the Word, study the Word, and let the Word be the pattern for your life. And then that renews you. And as you’re adjusting more and more and conforming on purpose to the pattern of God’s Word, then you become stronger and stronger and you’ve got that peace in the world, and you’re not. And Jesus won’t have to weep over you.

0:24:43 – (Steve Gray): And so we have today, when we Say, don’t conform, but be renewed in your mind. I don’t think people even know if. I don’t think they know whether they’ve been renewed or not. I know, and I’m trying to help you understand. I’ll tell you how you know you’ve been renewed is you’re not going to have the fruit of conforming to the world. Because if you conform to the pattern of the world it produces, and I don’t even think people know where to go with that. For instance, it says, don’t conform.

0:25:11 – (Steve Gray): Here’s how people conform to the world. You already mentioned it. Conforming to the world. Okay, Am I conforming the world? People love money. People without money love money. Right? That’s conforming. So I got it, okay? But you know what people, you know, you can read, especially Christians about pretty well know we’re supposed to forgive. Everybody forgive and you’ll be forgiven for unforgiveness is a crime in the kingdom of God. Right?

0:25:37 – (Kathy Gray): Right.

0:25:37 – (Steve Gray): But they don’t put it together why they do it. Why do people. Do you know why people have unforgiveness?

0:25:45 – (Kathy Gray): Why?

0:25:45 – (Steve Gray): Because the Bible says sin is pleasurable for a while. Unforgiveness is pleasurable. People get pleasure. Now, it’s a very low carnal, not a very spiritual level. Right. It’s pretty low. But why would a Christian have unforgiveness when the Bible makes it clear the benefits of forgiveness for you and for everybody gets forgiven and it’s so positive and so good and it’s so powerful. And then you come across people with unforgiveness and I can’t forgive, and I don’t. And then. But they go to church, they read the Bible occasionally, they sing songs at church and all that kind of stuff.

0:26:19 – (Steve Gray): You know why? Because unforgiveness is pleasurable. It’s carnally, not spiritually pleasurable, but anger. People get angry. They get angry at people. They hold grudges. They get. You know why people get offended? It ministers to their carnal. It’s carnally fleshly pleasurable to be angry, to hold a grudge, to be offended and to have unforgiveness.

0:26:45 – (Kathy Gray): My goodness.

0:26:46 – (Steve Gray): Now, when you put it in that term, you say, but be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Be renewed in your mind and be changed by the change. Okay? How you know you’re renewed, you don’t have unforgiveness, you don’t love money, and that doesn’t mean you can’t have it. You’ll do great with it. If you have some, if you don’t love it, it’s great to have it so you can do something with it. You don’t love money. You don’t hold a grudge, don’t get offended. You don’t rise up in pride.

0:27:12 – (Steve Gray): You don’t. Did I say anger? All those things.

0:27:15 – (Kathy Gray): All those things, yeah.

0:27:16 – (Steve Gray): Oh, I’m not following. Everybody else is following that pattern. How about in our country now? Everybody’s mad at everybody.

0:27:22 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:27:23 – (Steve Gray): Anger, mad. Division everywhere. But thank the Lord, that’s so good, that’s changing. And right now we have, I think, a renaissance of unity is trying to break out in our country. But we need a renaissance, a revival of spiritual things because there’s only so far we can go with passing a law, better government. The government’s doing what you want, voting for this, voting for that, and all the. All the things around us that mold our lives.

0:27:56 – (Steve Gray): Right. But now. But you still don’t have the peace and you’re still going around angry and things are better. Why? Even anxiety? I ask people, they say, I’m having panic attacks and anxiety. And I’d say, okay, why? What’s going on in your life that you should be having a panic attack or anxiety? And so many times they say, I don’t know. My life’s not really that bad. So you need to renew your mind because.

0:28:22 – (Steve Gray): So get out of that.

0:28:23 – (Kathy Gray): Well, the pattern of the world tells you, maybe especially women, I don’t know about men, but always tells you how to be. So it tells you. You wake up and you hear the word be anxious today. Be anxious today. Be troubled today, and be mad today. You know, come on, you wake up and you go, oh, well, I’m in a bad mood. And that is the spirit of the world. And the pattern is coming right at. And that’s when I think I would pray for people. And I know I’ve had to learn it and remind myself of it, is when those bad attitudes, that conforming world thing comes at me.

0:29:05 – (Kathy Gray): I feel crummy. I feel yucky and dirty inside. And I know, wait a minute, I don’t like that. I don’t want to live like that. You know, I don’t want to live like that all day long. And it’s kind of like an inner warning because I’m being transformed to be like Jesus.

0:29:22 – (Steve Gray): And.

0:29:22 – (Kathy Gray): And then the bad things come to, you know, give in to, hey, Kathy, today, go shopping. It’s been $3,000. You know, that covetousness and that kind of stuff. But When I think that, I’ll tell you what, I go, ew. I don’t want to think like that or be like that today. And I think that would be another good way to judge yourself and see as a spirit filled believer who’s being transformed, how do you feel when those, those thoughts or those desires come at you?

0:29:55 – (Kathy Gray): Well, I would pray we all feel really yucky so that we could take another step in being transformed.

0:30:02 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, well, you know, you were mentioning about that and how the world is. And it’s really interesting, isn’t it, in the book that I mentioned that just not Jesus looking over Jerusalem, but I compare it to Noah and the flood, because what was he trying to get those people to do? You see, Noah was not a builder of boats. He was a preacher. And so what was he preaching? He was trying to renew their minds.

0:30:29 – (Steve Gray): And there was all this kind of evidence, like, look at that huge boat. I wonder what this is about. Now here’s the thing. Noah and his family were saved from the flood by getting into a boat that he built. And he built it because he believed God and God wanted to do it. Now, interesting speculation here. If somebody had to listen to his preaching, right?

0:30:55 – (Kathy Gray): Right.

0:30:56 – (Steve Gray): Couldn’t that person had their mind renewed and do what? Go build a boat? Go build another boat?

0:31:04 – (Kathy Gray): Build a boat.

0:31:05 – (Steve Gray): Nobody says there can only be one boat. It’s just there was only one preacher that believed God and so he saved his family. They could have repented. They could have renewed their mind. And so it says today, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man. And a lot of people then say, oh, well, they go back and say, what kind of sins were they doing in Noah’s day? Yes, we do that one. No, we don’t do that one. Ooh, that’s a bad one. But I don’t think we do that. Oh, there’s one. We do. And they go, that’s not what it means.

0:31:33 – (Steve Gray): See, the reason they all drowned is not because they were sinful. Right? And it’s not because they were sinless. It was because they were clueless. Had they not been clueless, they would have built a boat too, today. That’s what we’re trying to say. Yes, yes, the nation might get better, it might get worse. Economy might get better, it might get worse. But as long as the people of God who are called by his name refuse to be renewed in their minds and stop conforming to the pattern of this world, then we’re going to be Clueless.

0:32:11 – (Steve Gray): And when it’s time to spiritually saying, it’s time to build our boat, save our family, build a boat, change the way we think. Right? Yes, Change it. It’s time for us in America to have a spiritual renaissance, spiritual revival. And I think we see signs of it.

0:32:29 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, I do, too.

0:32:30 – (Steve Gray): Change is coming. There’s a wind coming over our country where I believe people are going to start changing their minds. The sad part about it is the hardest people to get them to renew their minds is the people who’ve been sitting in church for a long time.

0:32:44 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:32:44 – (Steve Gray): And so that’s where we got to go. What’s the problem with America? Right now, it’s sick.

0:32:51 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:32:51 – (Steve Gray): It needs to be healed. It needs to have good economy. It needs to have good politicians. It needs to have good government. Right. Needs to have good laws. It needs to be just. We need a constitution. We need the Bill of Rights. All that’s true. Nobody’s going to argue with that. Where you’re going to get the argument is we need the church to be a true spiritual place that changes the hearts and minds of people, that gets them connected to God. So Jesus was trying to say, if you’d listen to me, you’d repent.

0:33:26 – (Steve Gray): And what they were repenting is just like you said, just a lifestyle that looked religious, but it was full of selfishness and pride and all that and hypocrisy. If you just turn from all that, you can save yourself. So he basically was telling his generation, there’s a boat called repentance. There’s a boat called changing your mind.

0:33:44 – (Kathy Gray): Hallelujah.

0:33:45 – (Steve Gray): But they didn’t do it. And so Jerusalem got destroyed. So his message continues to go generation after generation. So if we want to save ourselves, we cannot leave out the spiritual side. You are a spirit, soul and body. And we totally neglected the spirit in our culture. So what I’m trying to do, too, as you saw in there, is we need a revival of influencers.

0:34:07 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, you know, that really. You know, that really jumped out. You talked about that in this first chapter, that we need a revival of influencers. You know, people like to say, well, my career is. I am an influencer. You know, these people, 12 years old or 20 years old, that shouldn’t be influencing anybody. You know, it’s kind of funny, but they get these huge followings, and they can. They can. Some of them, you know, have millions of followers on all social media, and they.

0:34:38 – (Kathy Gray): They are influencing people to think like them. And I loved in the book, you said, wait A minute we need to have, we need God to raise up a whole group of those who can influence for good, for right and say, you know, wake up, time to build a boat, come on, you politicians, some of you need to be influencers for God or you know, the stars, come on, just take a stand. Influence for Jesus, you know, well, famous.

0:35:07 – (Steve Gray): People, influencers, politicians, they’re pretty locked in and they know they’re famous or whatever like that. But they could change the destiny of a nation because they’re influencers. And just imagine why, what has happened to us that we’re embarrassed or we’re so hard hearted or we look at religion as bad. One of the reasons is though, when religion gets bad, when it gets corrupt, no wonder people start not even wanting to be a part of it or suspicious of it.

0:35:35 – (Steve Gray): And the best way to do that is to change it yourself. Is if you’re an influencer or whether it be with your children or your community or your church or your business or whatever, why not change it? One last story I’ll tell and then we’re going to say goodbye to everybody for today is you’ve heard it, it’s not in that book, but I might be in one of my books. And by the way, you can get this book for free still go to More Faith, More Life.

0:36:01 – (Steve Gray): Subscribe, tell your friends about it. It’s a download if you want to hold one like hers. You’d have to buy it, but okay, so I was about 20, 21 years old, maybe 19, I don’t know, somewhere in there. And I was, you know, I didn’t have a dad, my dad died. And so it was basically my mom, she’s trying to work, she’s trying to pay the bills, she’s really busy so I could pretty well do what I wanted. And I stayed out late all the time and I come back one 18 years old, maybe younger really to be honest.

0:36:30 – (Steve Gray): And I’d be dragging in after maybe partying around 1, 2 in the morning and oftentimes though there she’d be sitting waiting for me. And one night she tried to open up the world to me in the real way. And so she was talking about the church and Jesus and just the real thing. Do the real thing, Steve, do the real thing. And I used that line on her and I said, well, you know that the church is full of hypocrites.

0:36:59 – (Steve Gray): And surprisingly she didn’t argue with me. I thought that would end the conversation, you know, well, maybe she’d get offended or that’s it. Then I Don’t if that’s how you’re going to be, if that’s your attitude. So I said, well, you know, the church is full of hypocrites. And you know what she said to me? She said, that’s right. Why don’t you be the first to change that? And I didn’t have an answer.

0:37:20 – (Steve Gray): I didn’t have an answer. And I. And it was, what, about two, three years later, I got the answer and I did become a Christian. I got filled. I did speak in tongues. I did glorify God. And I set out to change it and not be that way. And you can do it. That’s what influencers need. They need. You’re not going to last forever on this earth. You’re going to get older. You might not look as pretty and beautiful as you used to in a few years, but you can influence and save this nation, because the missing link is the spirit side.

0:37:47 – (Steve Gray): I’m not saying everybody’s bad here, and I’m not saying good things are happening and bad things are happening. But if we neglect the Spirit, then Jesus is going to say, you could have brought peace, prosperity, saved us. See, we might be close to war, but it’s preventable. If the church or those who are called by his name will humble themselves and pray. Turn. Not just humble themselves and pray, but turn.

0:38:17 – (Steve Gray): And that’s repentance from wicked ways. And by the way, wicked might sound. I don’t know if they think wicked people go out and beat people with baseball bats or what, but it means turn from not having any care or regard for God. In other words, you’re very comfortable with that lack of God in your life. You’re very comfortable with the itsy bitsy bitty tiny part of God in your life. You believe in God, but you’re okay with the amount that you’re living with. And God says you got to turn and get the full amount of God and help turn the nation to a spiritual revival, which will bring everything else.

0:38:53 – (Steve Gray): And it will start turning this. Depression, anxiety, school shootings. Because when people touch by the spirit of God, they automatically change. You’re renewed in the spirit of your mind. It’s hard. And that’s. We can’t just pass a law to get people to stop shooting people. We got to pass the spiritual law, the spirit. And if you influencers, you people, you parents, if you’ll get this and go after it, we can stop all that stuff.

0:39:23 – (Steve Gray): Because people who are touched by the spirit of God don’t go shoot people right people who are so upset about abortion one way or the other. If you want to stop abortion, get a spiritual revival in your town, in your church, in your family. Girls, thousands of them I’ve seen, touched by the power of God, who would have got an abortion, decide not to get an abortion. And they didn’t go pick at a clinic or they didn’t threaten a doctor.

0:39:49 – (Steve Gray): They changed by the renewing of their mind. And they said, no, I’m not going to do it. So that’s what we need. We need people to pick up on the spirit. If you think things are going better in our country, that’s great. But to make it long term and safe for your children, we need to build a boat. We need to change. And that’s what that book’s about. So get the book. If you only knew. Stop being the clueless generation. It’ll tell you other things you can do to protect you and your family and build a boat of safety, of redemption, that no matter what happens, God is on our side and he shows himself powerful.

0:40:20 – (Steve Gray): How about that? More faith produces more life. Till next time. Bye.