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Extra Grace Required: How to Love Difficult People | Dr. Winfred Neely · Coffee and Bible Time Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: No human being is exempt from our love.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: Now, this does not mean that we approve of everything, that we go along with everything, but it does mean that hatred of any person is off limits for the child of God.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: I think I said on another podcast that there was someone that I was not able to say that person's name.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: That alone played for that person for a couple of years.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't even say his name.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: I prayed for the person this morning.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Do I agree with what they've done?
0:28
SPEAKER_01: No.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Have they hurt a lot of people that I know?
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: But I'm praying for their repentance.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm praying that God will touch their heart because I want to see the best for them.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: And in all transparency, it was still a struggle.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: This morning, I wrote a book on this topic because the struggle, the struggle is me.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: The struggle is fundamentally my own heart.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: The Coffee and Bible Time podcast.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Our goal is to help you delight in God's word and thrive in Christian living.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Each week, we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times, and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian love.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: We are so glad you have joined us.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm Ellen, your host.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Is there someone in your life that you know you're supposed to love, but honestly, you just don't want to?
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus's command to love one another sounds simple, but when we put it into practice in our families, our friendships, our churches, and especially with people we strongly disagree with, it can become incredibly challenging.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: But this isn't just a nice suggestion from Jesus.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a command.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: So what does it actually look like to live out Christ-like love when our feelings aren't there, when we've been hurt, or when someone is just really difficult to love?
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, today I am so honored to have with us Dr.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Winfred Neely.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Neely has spent decades serving the church as a pastor, professor, and ministry leader.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: He served for more than 20 years at Moody Bible Institute and is the retired vice president and academic dean of Moody Theological Seminary.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Neely, welcome to Coffee and Bible Time Podcast.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Ellen, for extending me the invitation, and I'm honored to uh spend some time with you this morning.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm just so glad to have you.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Before we really dive in, I'd love to hear your heart behind this topic.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: In your years of ministry, was there a moment that you realized just how desperately the church needs this message?
2:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it has been on my mind for many, many years, but it became more acute, more pronounced during the pandemic, interestingly enough, and it's continued to grow and expand in my mind in terms of the urgency of this biblical message.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: I see.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And we're living in a time now when Christians can disagree very strongly.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: How do we pursue biblical unity and love when we genuinely disagree with one another?
3:25
SPEAKER_00: How do we transcend that?
3:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, no matter what we do, if we carry out everything that God has called us to do without love, we're not acting Christianly.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: So to answer your question, the way we navigate this is to begin in love, to continue in love, to end in love.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: If we are not doing that, we're not acting Christianly, irrespective of what the issue is.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes, honestly, and truly it makes so much sense when you think about it like that.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: There's so many beautiful passages in scripture about love.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about agape love a little bit.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: What would be one of those scripture passages that you would refer to about what it means for Christians to love one another?
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, here is one text, and we don't quote this one much in the life of the church, and it's talked away in 1 John chapter 4, verse 30.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4, verse 20, I beg your pardon.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: This is what it says.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: If someone says, I love God, now keep in mind, that's a big claim.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: I love God and yet hate his brother or sister, he or she is a liar.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: For the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: So that the claim to love God carries with it another reality that we love people.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: And if we hate people or we we're not concerned about people, we do not love people, according to 1 John chapter 4, verse 20, we in reality do not love God.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: And this is where it seems to me, Ellen, that the church is missing the mark right here.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Neely, I was reading your book called A Love to Live By, and you impressed that, and it really made me do a heart self-examination.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think it's so hard for us to actually obey Jesus in this area?
5:43
SPEAKER_01: We cannot love, in the biblical sense of Agabe love, in our own strength.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: We are desperately dependent upon God, and we need God's grace, help, and strength and power to live this way.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: And so it seems that the real reason why we have such a hard time practicing this is because we're not experiencing his power.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: And let me hastily add, when I say loving people, I don't mean willy-nilly, I mean biblically informed, theologically grounded, holy love, lived out in the power of the Spirit is an indicator of whether or not the power of God is being expressed in the life of us as individuals and in the church corporately.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: That's such a concept that we really need to come to grips with.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: And I love that you call it out.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Um you use this scripture, you challenge us.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Can you explain for those maybe who aren't familiar with the term agape love what that actually means in our life?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: How would you explain that?
7:00
SPEAKER_01: That's a very good question, and it is a question that we need to understand because we do have various misconceptions of love.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Now, there were a wide range of terms for love in the Greek language.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit of God takes up the term agape.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: We know what agape love is from the way that God acts to show his love to us.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: We know, for example, that when we are called to love one another, it is not a call for us to reach out to people for our own advantage so that we can be enriched.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: That's because God needs no one.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: He's complete in and of himself and could have continued for all eternity in his triune life, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they could have continued like that forever.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: He, however, chose to create so that his love spills over, not for his own enrichment, not for his advantage, but for our advantage.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: So one of the key things about agape love is that agape love reaches out to promote what the highest good of the other without any self-centered advantage being cloaked in the love for someone else.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: And another thing too, Ellen, the only way that we can know what agape love is is from God Himself.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: There isn't a thing that we can learn about this from people.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: It's God Himself who helps us understand.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: This is why the Bible says, by this we know love that he laid down his life for us.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: But here is the kicker.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: God wants his triune life dynamics and his love to be reproduced in you and me.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: This is what he's calling the church to do.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: To be a kind of embodied expression of God's triune life in a fallen world.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that incredibly rich explanation of agape love.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: And it is something that we really need to wrap our minds around and understand more deeply.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, something that stood out to me that you talk about in your book is love being an act of obedience rather than the emotional application that we typically think of.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Why did that distinction was important for you to call that out?
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, because emotions come, emotions go, emotions fluctuate.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I, for example, have been married for 50 years.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: We did not stay married for the last 50 years because we were happy every day.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: We stayed married because of vows and because of commitment and because of loyal agape love to one another.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: This is not to say that our emotions may not be involved, but it is fundamentally an act of the will carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit that impacts our emotions and how we feel about others, but is spiritually empowered.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: It is, it is.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to just touch on this a little bit more about loving the people that we don't like.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus doesn't tell us just to love people who love us, that's the easy part.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: But he tells us to love our enemies.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: What does the New Testament teach us about what that kind of love actually looks like?
11:06
SPEAKER_01: In the Sermon on the Mount, Lord Jesus has a discussion which was no doubt a shocking, subversive bombshell for those who first heard it, where Jesus says, You have heard that it's been said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you and despitefully use you, so forth and so on.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And then he begins to talk to us about God's ways and providence and to exemplify the commandment.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: God sends rain on the just and the unjust.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: And what Jesus is saying to us that no human being is exempt from our love.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: So this is the starting point.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: No human being is exempt from our love.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: Now, this does not mean that we approve of everything, that we go along with everything, but it does mean that hatred of any person is off limits for the child of God.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: That's the starting point.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: And he talks about enemies and what's happened.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: We spiritualize, you know, I've heard it said in the church, well, our enemies are spiritual people are not your enemy.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, it that's true.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: We do have spiritual enemies, but sometimes these enemies are embodied in persons.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they may be people in our own family.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned family members, and I know a number of Christians who have experienced their sons and daughters-in-laws that have hurt their children, children that they raise in the fear of God.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: And that son-in-law or daughter-in-law does something absolutely egregious, the marriage ends.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: And if you're not careful, you actually find yourself hating that person who hurt your own adult children and is harming your grandchildren.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: You can hate the person.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: And in these kind of scenarios, no one is helped.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Ellen, listen, I get it.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: I do.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: I can understand.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that we have to do when that happens is acknowledge that.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I hate this person.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: I think I said on another podcast that there was someone that I was not able to say that person's name, let alone play for that person for a couple of years.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't even say his name.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: I prayed for the person this morning.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Do I agree with what they've done?
13:19
SPEAKER_01: No.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: Have they hurt a lot of people that I know?
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: But I'm praying for their repentance.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm praying that God will touch their heart because I want to see the best for them.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And in all transparency, it was still a struggle this morning.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book on this topic.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Because the struggle, the struggle is me.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: The struggle is fundamentally my own heart that must yield to the Spirit of God.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: So I prayed for that person this morning.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: One other thing I wish I could have said more about the book about loving unsaved people in general, because God tells us not only to love the church, but to love all people and in particular our enemies.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: But God is calling the church to love all people, including unsaved people, and how we respond to them.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: We don't always like what they do and how they live.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: It bothers us sometimes, but we still have to love them.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and that truly can be so challenging.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: I think one thing you said there that I have found helpful is like in the Psalms, just being completely honest with God, like you said, and saying exactly how you feel and praying and asking God to move my heart beyond that.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: And I know you also mentioned in the book that it's okay to have boundaries and things like that.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: But we can also ask God to help us to love that person and pray for that person.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: I didn't mention this in the book, but I served at Lawndale Community Church on the west side of Chicago in the late 90s and the early 2000s.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: And to this day, one of the things that I can say is that this church has loved its neighbors well in the name of Jesus.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, Lawndale had an infant mortality rate in that community that was higher than some third world countries back in the 70s and 80s.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: Yet the Christians over there started a health center in the name of Jesus.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: Lawndale Christian Health Center, one of the largest employers in North Lawndale, started to love the neighborhood, to love the people, to show the love of the cross to people.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: They started Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, helping provide housing, teaching them home ownership.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: Only this in the name of Jesus, the Hope House Ministry, where men who were incarcerated or addicted to drugs could get into these programs.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: And we've seen so many men delivered and families transformed and reunited through these efforts because they love God and they love people.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: And we've got tangible evidence of this love in the community.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: They didn't invest a lot of money in building huge cathedrals, but they invested their money in love being efforts to help the people in the name of the Lord Jesus.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: God made love.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: It's all done in love, Ellen.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: It's it's love.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And this is where we we've missed it.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: We we've missed this, right?
16:15
SPEAKER_01: And I'm hoping that people will embrace love in this crucial, critical time in our history to see God do something fresh in our own day.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I think it's that kind of love too that turns heads and makes people question what is there's something about that person.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to know what makes them tick, you know.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: I think we all have at least one person in our lives who we can find difficult to love.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: As a pastor, what's some practical advice that you would give for someone who's trying to show Jesus' love in their real messy human relationships?
16:57
SPEAKER_01: My goodness.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: You see, here was the problem.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: God's people, some of them are very difficult to love.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: One preacher called them extra grace required people.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: And how do you love them?
17:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, you love them, you establish boundaries.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes you have to be firm with them.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: There was some one person who coming to see me and was put in their job every two weeks, wouldn't keep a job, and very difficult to work with people.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: And I told the person, why are you coming to see me like this?
17:32
SPEAKER_01: He says, Well, this is why you're here.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: You're the pastor.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: So I this is why I come to you.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, I tell you, this is what I would like for you to do.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: I need you to keep a job for one year.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: And after you've worked at the job for one year, come in and see me and let me see how you're doing.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: See, I I love the person, but they have to be told, and you know what?
17:49
SPEAKER_01: That person kept a job for one year.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: He came to see me at the end of the year.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: Pastor Neely, I did it.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: I I kept the job.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: Good for you, and and you, you know, and sometimes people say things to you that hurt, and we cannot respond to them in kind.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, the the scripture says in 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 24, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: But listen to this, but be kind to all, kind to all, skillful in teaching.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this, patient when wrong.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't say that you're a doormat, it says patient when wrong.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be love with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition, strength under control.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: It's another expression of love.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: I care.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: If perhaps God may grant them repentance, wait a minute.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: So now my loving that difficult person now becomes the vehicle in God's hand to bring them to repentance, right?
18:57
SPEAKER_01: This is what it says leading them to repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth, that they may come to their senses, the text says, and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: There is literally too much at stake for us to be impatient and short with people when in fact they need our love.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: And we love them in such a way that the Spirit of God will take our attitudes toward them and convict them, and hopefully they'll come from their senses and be delivered from the powers of darkness.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: And I think those are the kinds of things that we need to keep in mind as we confront difficult peoples.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: It is fundamentally not about us.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: It really isn't.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: There are larger issues at stake here.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: And if we have not done well with this, well, we acknowledge God, Lord, I didn't do well with that one.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: I dropped the ball on that one, but don't become obsessed with these past missteps that we've made.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: We have to move forward and say to God in the present, Lord, by your grace going forward, I'm gonna do better.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: I need you to help me.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I love that you spoke to that person with wisdom and sharpening.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's almost like they just needed that challenge.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, and and that's a beautiful thing that he worked an entire year.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's exactly what he needed.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of times it's loving and sharpening at the same time can be hard, but it truly is what we're called to do, and you did it in a very loving way.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there have been times when I didn't do it in my in my many, many years of pastoral ministry.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And when you don't do it, this is what's going to happen.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Generally, the issue will shift from the person, the issue will shift from their own issues, the issue will shift from their own sin to you because you have not been handling things biblically.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: So we want to conduct ourselves in such a way that we do not give people the opportunity to shift the focus from what's really, really critical to our own attitudes about their shortcomings.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I think to bitterness that can surface as well when we bypass that loving, we only end up hurting ourselves more.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: And the bitterness is a real thing.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: The bitterness is a real thing, and we become obsessed with that.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: Again, I talked to my wife a lot about my own uh spiritual things that I'm going through.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And I was in prayer the other day and kept going back over something that happened 30 years ago, kept going back over something that happened 40 years ago.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And I looked at her and I said, Why am I still doing that?
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we had a conversation and and I realized once again, we do have to move on.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: It's not that we don't remember, that's a whole nother area of development in the life of the child of God.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: How we remember redemptively.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: It's just a whole nother issue.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: But it's water is gone under the bridge.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: We've learned lessons from that.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: Now we have to reach for that which is ahead and press on toward the mark for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, asking God to help us learn from the missteps and victories of the past so that we're not paralyzed in the present, so that we're able to walk with God and do what He calls us to do.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: That's a tremendous way of pointing us in in the direction.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Of loving others with the love to live by agape love.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Neely, as we wrap this up, if you were sitting across the table from someone who is listening to this right now, and she said, Okay, I want to become more of a loving Christian, where would you tell her to start?
22:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would tell her, first of all, to have a little talk with Jesus.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: I would have a conversation with him.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm reading the book of Deuteronomy.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: The deep, deep devotional life that God desires for his covenant children.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: This is where I would start.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: I would say, go deeper in God first.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, deepen your prayer life.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Increase your intake of scripture, right?
23:22
SPEAKER_01: And then talk to somebody in your immediate sphere of influence for accountability purposes.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Let them know what your desire is.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: Be prepared for resistance, though.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: Because once we start to letting people know that this is what we're going to do, this is what our commitment is, the flesh is going to rebel.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: It's not that you're asking.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: I have a chapter in that about that.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: It comes unbidden because it does not want to yield to the Spirit of God.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: And I would say, start loving in your own home, your own family.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Now you may be doing, continue to do what you do, but I ask God to say, Lord, let me do it in love so that I'm just not going through the motions.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: Begin at home.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: Then expand that to the church.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: It just may be writing a handwritten note to somebody.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, I appreciate you.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to say thank you because it's tied to gratitude.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: You're looking at things that God is doing, and you're grateful for that.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: And you express love to people by letting them know that you are grateful and thankful for what God is doing in his or her life.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: This is what Johnny Erickson Tata calls small, drastic steps of loving obedience expressed to others.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: It's just little stuff.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: It's these little things.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: The smile, the agape hug, that word of encouragement that will linger in the hearts and minds of people until the day that they die.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: That's where I would start.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: And just imagine if everyone just took even that one small start, how radically changed the world would be.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And for our listeners, one small start too can be reading your book, Dr.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Neely.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: How do they find more information about you and your book, A Love to Live By?
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, the Love to Live By is available wherever books are sold.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Amazon, Moody Publishers, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, so forth and so on, primarily at Moody Bible Institute and YouTube, where people can find out about me.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, we will make sure we include all those links in our show notes so listeners can find them very easily.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Before I let you go, I have to ask our favorite questions here at Coffee and Bible Time.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you have many Bibles, but what is your current go-to Bible and what translation is it?
25:45
SPEAKER_01: My current go-to Bible is the NASB, but I do have a lot of the ESV, the New King James Version, the NLT.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: But my current go-to is the NASB.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any favorite Bible journaling supplies?
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Do you do Bible journaling?
26:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, my writing is where I'm doing that.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm doing I'm writing devotionals.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Now I just did one for Moody at the new version of seven-day devotional.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm writing a 31-day devotional for today and a word that's going to come out.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: So I write not only for scholarly reasons, Ellen, but for devotional reasons, which is very, very important to me.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I love that about the book.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, last one.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: What is your favorite app or website for Bible study tool?
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Logoff's Bible software.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: I got about 20,000 volumes of stuff on my laptop, which is kind of nice.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: And I I use it every day, especially when I'm engaged in Bible study.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is incredible, incredible.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, Dr.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Neely, what a joy it has been for you to just be with us today.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: I I can't thank you enough for bringing this topic to light and how desperately we all need to be showing more love in our lives.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for being here.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so very, very much.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: And do me a favor, say hello to your pastor for me and say boo to Sally.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: Tell her I'm sending that to her.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: She will know what that means.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: All right.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: I most certainly will.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what a joy.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we love Pastor David and Sally.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: They've just been an amazing.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're listening to this and wondering, a pastor that served under Dr.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Neely and seven years ago, I think now already become the head pastor at the church that I attend.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: And so what a joy.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you again.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And to all of you listening, I hope this conversation encourages you to look for one simple opportunity today to put Christ's love into practice.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: And if something from today's conversation challenged or encouraged you, we'd love to hear about it.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Leave us a comment or a review and let us know what stood out to you.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time on the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Have a blessed day.