“Are we barbarians because we didn’t pray.”

Steve Brown:
Are we barbarians because we didn’t pray? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions. So, here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with answers from the Bible that will make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete. I’m, not a barbarian.

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
And Jesus likes me a lot.

Pete Alwinson:
He does.

Steve Brown:
He likes me more than he likes you.

Pete Alwinson:
Probably, but Jesus likes barbarians. I want you to know.

Steve Brown:
So maybe if you’re not a barbarian, he doesn’t like you as much. That’s Pete Alwinson and be sure and check out ForgeTruth.com and if you haven’t read the book, Like Father Like Son, you ought to read it. It’s a life changing book and you can get it at Key Life at bookstores from Amazon. And this would be a good time to give it as a gift to your friends. Like Father Like Son by Pete Alwinson. Pete comes in and we answer questions on Fridays together. And we love your questions and you. If you’ll call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, and follow the instructions, you can record a question and sometimes we put that on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

if you live in Canada, it’s

P.O. Box 28060

Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

and you can e-mail your question to [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. I promise that we’ll squeeze every dime for the glory of God. And if you can’t, we understand, say a prayer for this ministry. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Our great God, what a joy to come today. It’s Friday and we come into your presence as your children, so thankful that we have been forgiven and because we’ve been called to be your daughters and your sons through faith in Jesus Christ. And we do again on this Friday, put our trust in him and him alone for our salvation as well as for our life. And we follow you, Lord Jesus. And Lord, we want to follow you, even though work is difficult and complicated and life and home and relationships and our country, there’s so many things, Lord, we want to follow you. And we pray for those who are in governing positions and leadership from the president on down, we ask that your kingdom, and your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we come now and we pray for the people of your kingdom that will meet this weekend. Lord, we’re looking forward to that. And we ask that you would be with our pastors and priests and teachers and all of our worship directors and those that are serving to lead us into your presence in worship. Use them in a big way, and Lord touch our hearts. May the gospel continue to set us freer and freer every day. We commit this time of Q&A to you right now that you would use it. And be honored and glorified in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I’ve been listening to you since the mid 90s, that’s like 30 years. And you’ve always gone before the throne. In the Easter week, you started off on a Monday with Pete Alwinson. Surprisingly, two pastors were there on this radio show. And again, you guys didn’t go before the throne. And then two weeks later, you had Justin Holcomb on. Justin never goes before the throne when he starts off on a Monday. That, I’ve got an issue with. My one question is, is prayer not important to you guys anymore?

Pete Alwinson:
Now, he’s got a gift, doesn’t he?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true. You know, I’ve often wondered if Justin was saved. I know that he’s a Bishop of the Central Florida Diocese of the Episcopal Church. And I’ve never had a Bishop on my staff before. It’s kind of heady to be, I don’t know whether to kneel in front of him,

Pete Alwinson:
kiss his ring, you know

Steve Brown:
kiss his ring, or what to do.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. It’s terrible.

Steve Brown:
I’m, yeah, sometimes we forget. I can’t believe we didn’t pray.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
And Justin never prays. So, you can wonder whether he’s saved. Who else did he say? Oh, you and I, we didn’t pray either.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I know.

Steve Brown:
But well, I wonder about you sometimes.

Pete Alwinson:
Sometimes we forget, but you know, that comment, I love that comment because at Forge we talk about the, we have the gift of shame and abuse, you know, and that’s what man talk is, right? And so, he heaped out a little shame and abuse on us right there. But in Jesus, we’re still, our identity is intact. And brother, that’s a good reminder. We’ll just keep praying. We do pray.

Steve Brown:
And we would remind you that we’re quite spiritual. Rather than just pausing to pray, we pray without ceasing.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, silently, quiet, we’re never out of prayer.

Steve Brown:
Just because you don’t hear it doesn’t mean we didn’t pray.

Pete Alwinson:
Amen. Amen. There we go.

Steve Brown:
You know, we wouldn’t even kid about this in a thunderstorm. You know that, don’t you?

Pete Alwinson:
We do pray a lot, man. I tell you, we both, Steve and I, see our weaknesses and how we need the strength of God. And we do commit things to God. So, thanks for the exhortation, brother.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s good. This is an e-mail, Pete. In Matthew 16, what does it mean to deny oneself? What is the cross that Jesus wants us to take up?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

If any man wants to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.

You know, the whole calling to death to self is just big. Fenelon is my hero on this. And he says.

God doesn’t want to just fix all your problems. What he really wants you to do is die.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. That’ll do it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’ll do it. But death to self is important.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it is. It’s just remember, it’s remembering that Jesus. is what’s important and you’re not. And if you make that the focal point of your life, sometimes you’ll deny some things. And don’t become a legalist about this and tell your husband, if you really loved Jesus, you’d stop smoking. That’s what it means to deny yourself. Well, maybe, maybe not, but you’ve got to be careful when you get to specifics that it’s not just your favorite sin that you have to give up. You have to see it as a lifestyle and a worldview where Jesus is number one.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s really the big idea, isn’t it? It’s to give up all our other idols. And all those things that we run to and look to for personal salvation, personal significance or whatever that we’re looking to beyond Jesus.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And then taking up your cross, you’ve got to be careful there too. People say, you know, my husband is my cross. What’s that question? That a friend said to this lady, do you wake up grumpy? And she said, no, sometimes I let him sleep.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But that Jesus isn’t talking probably about your husband or your wife or other things, taking up a cross is what we’ve just been saying about denying yourself. It’s a worldview that sees Jesus as the center and the one that’s important before whom we don’t have a vote, only our submission.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, that’s good. That’s good. And there are things that many times Jesus commands us to do things, like when he says, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. Sometimes that means, talk about me to other people, even though you don’t want the negative feedback.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. I’ll tell you something, Pete, this is aside from the question, but if we don’t get over our being intimidated into silence, we’re going to be in serious trouble.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh yeah. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
I mean, if you, I know, cause I’ve got those friends, who get irritated every time I mention the name of Jesus. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to double the times I talk about Jesus around them. And if I’d lose their friendship, then so be it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But we need as Christians to start speaking up about what’s right and what’s wrong, about our faith, what we believe, and why it’s important. Because being a Christian doesn’t mean necessarily being nice all the time.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Or nice as the world wants us to be nice. They can be incredibly un nice, and then when we stand up for what we believe, they call us not being nice.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Drives me nuts.

Pete Alwinson:
Grace and truth is what we need.

Steve Brown:
Makes me angry.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I know, we’re going to have to talk about forgiveness again. But

Steve Brown:
I know.

Pete Alwinson:
we do have to love our enemies, and sometimes it’s hard.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. It really is. But don’t let them do that to you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Pete and I voted it, and Jesus voted it, so that’s three of us. Two of those votes didn’t count, but Jesus did. This is an e-mail. What makes Christianity different from all other religions in the world?

Pete Alwinson:
Wow!

Steve Brown:
Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
Jesus!

Steve Brown:
You know, somebody said, somebody really well known, a scholar said.

The thing that makes Christianity unique is the identification that God has made with human beings.

Which is Jesus, again. You know, there’s, you can find a lot that is taught by the Bible, by the Christian faith, in a lot of different religions. I mean, there are, in other religions, all kinds of principles, and things that are important that are good, but there is no Jesus. And if Jesus isn’t there, go somewhere else.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. So, almost every other religion has either a moral structure that is different from Christianity. Christian moral structure is unique, but it always, other religions always have a self salvation pathway.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Oh, good point.

Pete Alwinson:
That Christianity simply does not have.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. We’re dead.

Pete Alwinson:
We’re dead.

Steve Brown:
And dead people can’t do anything.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
So God’s got to do it. That’s unique. We could probably, if we sat around and prepared these questions and our answers, which we don’t, by the way. We hear these questions when you do, so we’re speaking from not total ignorance, we’ve been doing this for a long time, but we don’t do a lot of preparation. But I suspect that if we sat down and really researched this, we could find a lot of areas where the Christian faith is different from other religions.

Pete Alwinson:
It really is. And even make some of those clarifications. Like Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a philosophical way of life.

Steve Brown:
You can be an atheist and be a Buddhist.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And if you’re going to be a consistent Buddhist, it’s a withdrawal mentality, which is completely different from Christianity. So Christianity is not a withdrawal movement philosophy of life.

Steve Brown:
It’s not.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a Christian, it’s a salvation pathway that Jesus has done for us that engages us in culture and with people.

Steve Brown:
You know, as we talk all kinds of ideas, but we’re running out of time.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
Christianity is not passive by the way.

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
A lot of religions are, but that’s enough. Work on that and we’ll give you an examination once you’re ready. We’ve got to go. I’ve got three seconds, so I’ve got to stretch this out. But Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.