“Big Mac and Jesus.”

Steve Brown:
Big Mac and Jesus, on this edition of Key Life, when we answer questions.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus in the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us, but there is a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author, Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing? You’re making me hungry. I’m ready to go.

Steve Brown:
I was thinking exactly the same thing, man. You know, this gets, this is hard work.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
Let’s go get a hamburger and we’ll come back and finish.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it. I love it.

Steve Brown:
And just walk out. That’s Pete Alwinson. And I’ve told you a thousand times, you don’t listen to me. Go to ForgeTruth.com and you’ve got a podcast too.

Pete Alwinson:
We do, yeah. Go to our ForgeTruth.com and you can link into our podcast. Love to have you, all things men.

Steve Brown:
How often do you do the podcast?

Pete Alwinson:
One comes out every week, every Monday.

Steve Brown:
Okay. And you, What do you talk about?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, all things men and grace and the Gospel. What it means to be a man following Christ. We have fun.

Steve Brown:
You ought to check that out. Check out ForgeTruth.com. By the way, we love to get your questions. You can ask your question by picking up the phone and dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE. And hit the right button and then record your question. And we often put your voice on the air. Or you can write to

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

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

And you can e-mail a question too to [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. We recognize that a lot, in fact, only about 10% who benefit by this ministry are able to help us financially. So, when you help us, you help your brothers and sisters in Christ, who can’t help financially.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Amen.

Steve Brown:
And that’s a double blessing. So, if you can help us, be as generous as you can. If you can’t, say a prayer for us, it’s an expensive ministry. And the bills have to be paid. And they’ve always been paid. I mean, God will scare the spit out of you, but he’s never failed yet. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, that’s great. Well, Father, we do come to you now and we do admit that at times we go through our weeks that we’re scared, We’re scared spitless. There’s so many things that we face in our key relationships at work, with the economy, with our government. There’s so many things that scare us. And so, it’s good for us to come to you right now and to remember you’ve been in charge all week long, all history long, that you are the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Father, our Savior and Redeemer. And so, we lean on you. We bring you our issues, our pains, our sins. And we ask that you continue your great work in our life. Lord, you know us, you know every one of our listeners and what they’re going through right this very second. And we do ask that you would speak to us through your Holy Spirit. Give us your power through your word, through our pastors, priests, teachers, leaders this week-end, as we go to church. So, we commit all of these things to you. We ask that you would continue to lead us and guide us and the way we should go, counsel us with your eye upon us. And we commit this time of Q&A to you right now as we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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

Caller 1:
My best friend, she has an eating disorder where she eats four Big Macs in one day and then drinks the Diet Coke and donuts and everything, and I was hoping you could teach me how to get her to believe in Jesus and not eat so much and help her lose weight.

Steve Brown:
That was not a good phone line. The line was not that clear, so I’m not sure, but I think she’s got a friend, who is a Christian, but who eats four Big Macs a day. Which is a bit much, it seems to me.

Pete Alwinson:
No, she’s not a Christian. She said she was not, it wasn’t very clear, but I think I got,

Steve Brown:
She said she wasn’t a Christian.

Pete Alwinson:
She wants to get us to do a diet plan and an evangelism plan.

Steve Brown:
At the same time.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I mean, you’re trained for that, aren’t you, Steve?

Steve Brown:
Of course.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re a dietician of some sort.

Steve Brown:
You know, this issue with weight is a big issue. And people who have a problem with weight know it. They really do. I mean, billions of dollars are spent on plans to deal with people’s weight. So, you probably don’t have to tell your friend something your friend already knows. Why don’t you make that a subject of prayer, and then ask God to show you the things you’ve got to change, and then talk to her about Jesus and let Jesus do the diet.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s good. I like that. In other words, don’t make that, you know, you are concerned for her life. I mean, I like Big Macs, you know, as we said in the intro, making me hungry. I think we ought to stop right now, go get a Big Mac.

Steve Brown:
There you go.

Pete Alwinson:
But the reality is four of them in one day. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
That’s a big much.

Pete Alwinson:
Some would say four ever, one ever, you’re an idiot. But no, I think you’re right. You’re saying focus on health and maybe get to Jesus. Hey, maybe when she goes out to eat those, maybe you go with her and you talk through, can we talk through one of the gospels or something? You know.

Steve Brown:
You know, it’s very easy for us as Christians to make secondary issues, which have nothing to do with salvation, no matter how much she weighs, Jesus will love her. And no matter how much she loses, Jesus will love her. That’s not even the issue. And yet we find things in people, maybe their political views, maybe the fact that they use language that we wouldn’t use, maybe their hair’s too long, maybe we don’t like their tattoo. Listen, that’s none of your business. Our business is to point to Jesus. And let him do the straightening out.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. We do want to fix people, don’t we?

Steve Brown:
Yeah. We really do.

Pete Alwinson:
And we really can’t. Jesus is the only one that can do that. And boy, but food can be that narcotic that people go to, to suppress their pain. So, usually when there are food issues, like alcohol issues, there’s other trauma in life.

Steve Brown:
There really is. So, be gentle and forgiving, cut slack. And then, no, I started to say something really snarky. I’m not going to do that.

Pete Alwinson:
Don’t do that. Don’t, don’t do that.

Steve Brown:
I’m a Christian.

Pete Alwinson:
You get me in trouble.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Hey, this is an e-mail question. How do you know when God’s answered your prayers?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, that is a fascinating question.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, lately when I realized, it is kinda like, you kind of have and after you’re like, Whoa. God answered, that was an answered prayer. And I think sometimes God could cause God doesn’t always answer them in the way we think. But then you kind of after that, after the fact go well, you know, that it worked out. It worked out differently than I thought, but I think he answered that prayer.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. You see and you have to, Let me tell you something that I found, when God does answer a prayer and he moves. You have the opportunity to say, Man, what a coincidence.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right.

Steve Brown:
Or to say, Wow, that was you. If you say, What a coincidence, Jesus will still love you. But if you say, Wow, look at what you did. I think that increases your faith.

Pete Alwinson:
Boy, I love that. That is so good. That’s, and you know, one time I, there are times when I really know God answers my prayer. It’s usually around attitudes. Like, I don’t want to do this, Lord. And I’m angry about it and I’m frustrated about it. And I spent some time in his word and I pray about it and I give it to him, and then I get up and you know, and I’m good. I’m good with what I have to do cause he’s done something in me and it’s kinda like, oh yeah, okay. And I can’t take credit for that. That was clearly an answer to prayer.

Steve Brown:
So true. As you know, I wear hearing aids and I’ve told Jesus a number of times you could heal me and if you love me you would. And then he reminds me of some other prayers that I’ve prayed. Make me kinder. Don’t let me talk so much. And he said, Look, you don’t get it both ways.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. I know.

Steve Brown:
So, I took your hearing away so you’d have the other things you wanted. I’ll give you hearing back and then you can once again be a jerk.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, I love it. Make me humble and do it right now, you know.

Steve Brown:
And God does answer every prayer.

Pete Alwinson:
He does.

Steve Brown:
I mean, he can say no. He can say yes. He can say wait. And we accept that on faith because the Scripture says that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Yeah. I do think there’s a lot of times when God says no and it should, you have that sense of, I’ve got to stop praying about this, and you just do because it obviously is not something that he wants you, the Spirit gives you that sense.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. What do you do? This is an e-mail too, about my ongoing struggle with guilt?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, for all of us that is going to be a reality. And Satan loves to use it. So, one thing is to know that Satan just loves to use that to continue to cut away at our faith.

Steve Brown:
And you know, they’re people, and I’ve been there myself, who think of things they’ve done 10 years ago and are still struggling with it. So, the first thing you do is you deal with the truth.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
If Jesus says you’re forgiven, nobody else has the right to tell you you’re not.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it.

Steve Brown:
Including you.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it. I love it.

Steve Brown:
And every time you still feel guilty about something that God told you, you’re forgiven, you are in effect saying, that God is a liar. And you ought to confess that. Be guilty about that cause that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
That is so powerful. That is so powerful. We feel guilty about what we did. Have you ever had, have you ever started to confess something again that you confessed a million times?

Steve Brown:
Oh, a lot of times.

Pete Alwinson:
And then you hear, you hear this, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not talk about that. I don’t want to talk about that. Don’t bring that up again. Sometimes I get that. It’s kind of like, what, you didn’t trust me the first time when you brought it to me? And, it’s a rebuke almost, that we’re not taking him at his word. He does forgive us. And it’s a weighty thing to always be living unforgiven.

Steve Brown:
It really is. I don’t know how people do it? That’s the reason, that’s what the Christian faith is about.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You’re loved. And you are forgiven.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And that’s a fact. It’s eternal, it’s legal, and it’s true. And you can lean on it and claim it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And so, every time, guilt has one purpose for the Christian and that’s to drive you to Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And after it does that, kill that sucker off. We’ve got to go. I wish we had time for another question.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, it’s good stuff.

Steve Brown:
We have time for you to sing a little bit.

Pete Alwinson:
That is not going to happen.

Steve Brown:
Well, we’re going to go before you do. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.