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Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Faith, Finance, and Tithing · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
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  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
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  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what we bring to your table today might
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  add some spice to your life welcome back to another episode of relish i'm roe
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  miller and this is don patterson don how are you doing i'm doing well yeah doing
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  well for the shape we're in a little fuzzy on top A little flat on the bottom. Yeah.
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  We're all right. Yeah. Ready to roll this morning. Ready to roll.
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  And I've got a question for you.
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  All right. From our little box of wonderful questions that we ask people.
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  What role has prayer had in your life?
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  Yeah, I think now as you're starting to look at colleges and career and finding
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  God's calling for my life, I've definitely leaned into that and kind of like,
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  do you want me at this college or is this what you have for me?
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  So I think I've been able to kind of narrow it down, I would like to think.
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  Cool. But it's still not very hard set.
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  So I think earlier in my life it gave me peace,
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  and just let me relax, kind of get away from whatever is going on. So let's see.
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  Yeah. Given your senior year and all the things that are making,
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  all the decisions you have to make in that year.
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  Yeah. There's a really good, solid part of that. Right. And I,
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  we have to say prayers so we get ready for this too.
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  What would Rowan have for us today? Well, we got quite a few here.
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  Oh, dear. Yeah. Brace. Brace.
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  Well, we'll start with...
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  This actually comes from stock market game at school. When we're investing in
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  companies, we have $100,000 to invest and then simulates the stock market.
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  So should we, as Mennonites and believers in peace and nonviolence,
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  invest in a company that is like a defense company or something along those lines?
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  It's not in scripture, but I think it's fairly important.
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  Put your money where your mouth is.
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  If you're going to speak peace and those kinds of things, and you better put your money there.
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  So that's fairly simple. Now, simple in one sense. So then do we do that?
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  Do we put all our money there? Yeah. Well, I'd say it really depends on how
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  you're going to measure your witness to others.
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  If you're going to witness to the guy who's the stockbroker,
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  you know, and the people you converse with and, uh, those who are working your
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  portfolio, if you will, uh, it's a good, uh, good vocal point.
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  Now, if you're doing it privately on your computer, I suppose you don't have
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  quite the same, but still people are going to watch.
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  People are going to be aware. And most importantly, you're going to wear,
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  you're going to be aware.
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  And so it solidifies where you have drawn the line, I guess you would say,
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  because you can't say, well, I don't do this if you actually,
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  you are doing it on the stock market.
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  So I'd say you need to put your money where your mouth is.
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  Jesus in chapter 6 of Matthew would say, you know, don't put your money in treasures
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  here on earth, but instead treasures in heaven and he can't serve two kingdoms.
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  We might as well go to the scripture since we've got it in our hands.
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  And then he goes on to say, where your treasure is, there your heart will be
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  also. And I think that's sort of saying the same thing.
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  Put your money where your mouth is.
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  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So where is your heart? Are you into that?
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  Then you need to reflect that. Yeah.
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  Kind of following up with another money question. if
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  you're they always say tithe your
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  10 so does that is that
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  your tithing of 10 go strictly to your
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  church in like the offering or does that within that tithing include other giving
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  such as like uh another like a donation somewhere or like supporting a child
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  in oh africa or something like just another way of giving like that.
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  Is that included? I think that additional.
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  Well, okay. For.
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  I found that when I actually went to the tithe, and really most Christians talk
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  about tithe, and at most, I
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  think across the United States, Christians are giving 5% of their income.
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  There's very few that really go to the full tithe. And so if you're doing the
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  full tithe, exclamation points to you.
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  But I think it's sort of the same scripture.
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  Where your treasure is. What do you treasure? What do you treasure?
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  Do you treasure relationships?
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  Do you treasure your church? Do you treasure what the church is able to do?
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  There your heart is also.
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  And I think 10% of the church feels good to me.
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  And then beyond that, I mean, God allows us to use 90% for ourselves.
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  I mean, really. Percentages are there.
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  And so then that might tell us a little bit more where our heart is.
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  I mean, where are we willing to invest?
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  Because our money is...
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  Does reflect where our heart is. So I, yeah, I, I still, I talk about on Sunday
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  morning, our gifts, our ties and our offerings. Ties are 10%.
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  Uh, gifts that's above and beyond. And our offerings are something I believe
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  grow out of a, a dedication to God.
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  And so it might be a special occasion. Like we have coming up in,
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  uh, this week, a mission offering.
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  And so it's going to be separate from the regular offering.
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  That's an offering it's above and beyond uh the the child that needs uh that uh we can help,
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  that that real time there that real need is there uh where is our heart in that
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  well i'd hope it's it's above the 10 now that being said uh i would hate for
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  us to be legalistic about this. Yeah.
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  Because that on your 10% and then. Right. Because that also says that we have
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  put more emphasis on the rules than on the relationship.
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  And so if our relationship is with God, our giving really isn't going to be
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  a problem because if our heart's with God, we're going to give.
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  Yeah. Bottom line, because that's, that's a relationship.
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  It's something we cultivate like if
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  i joined short changed you when you move snow for me you you would know that
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  yeah yeah and it would affect relationship right well what if we short changed
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  god i mean that's what malachi talks about in malachi 3 uh he says uh.
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  I, the Lord, have not changed, return to me. Will a man rob God,
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  yet you rob me? Can we think about that?
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  But you ask, how do I rob you in tithes and offerings? You're under a curse,
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  the whole nation, because you're robbing me.
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  Bring the whole tithe into my storehouse, that there may be food in my house.
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  Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I don't throw open the floodgates
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  of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you'll not have enough room for it.
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  I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and vines in their fields.
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  I will not, they will not cast their fruit.
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  It means that they won't drop their fruit before it's ripe, says the Lord Almighty.
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  Then the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land.
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  Can you imagine that? I mean, And we don't take that very serious anymore today,
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  but I wonder what would happen if we did.
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  I just want to move away from the rule of saying it's got to be 10% to having
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  a relationship that reflects 10% is the bottom end.
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  Yeah. God loves a cheerful giver. That's true. If you're so hard set on your
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  tightening of 10%, then you won't be so cheerful when you're getting over that.
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  You got another one yet? Oh my. You're loaded, dude. Yeah, we got lots more.
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  Okay, I probably should have taken an extra vitamin this morning.
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  Yeah, maybe. I took mine this morning. Okay. Yeah.
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  Is there anything in our lives that God hasn't given us that we have actually earned?
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  Ah, there's the kicker at the end of that question, that we've actually earned.
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  No, there's nothing that God has not given us that we've actually earned.
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  We've all sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God.
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  We've all come from a need for God to even bring us into His realm and into His glory.
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  He don't owe us nothing. He don't owe us nothing. In fact, God's running from the other side of it.
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  Out of all the blessings that we've He's given us everything that we can handle.
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  I guess I believe He's given us everything we can handle, and then He will give us more.
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  That is not a—we can't out-give God.
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  But when we get to James, the things that He will give us, like crowns—we don't
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  think much about crowns in Mennonite theology, but it talks about that,
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  that we'll earn a crown. Well, what are we going to do with that?
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  You know? Got to wear it. Then we get to Revelation and we cast our crowns before him.
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  We can't outgive God. No way. Right. And he...
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  Okay, from my perspective and my faith, I'm always in his debt.
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  I can't outpay the fact that Christ came on my behalf,
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  died for my sins, brought freedom to not only me physically,
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  but spiritually, and healing.
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  And those are things that I can't build a university for.
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  They're things that God has already given. So I'm not sure we can out give God.
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  And I don't think I want to keep a ledger.
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  We talked earlier in one of the earlier episodes about keeping a ledger in our relationships.
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  I don't want to do that to God either.
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  Because when we start keeping a ledger, it's not love that holds us together. It's obligation.
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  And obligation doesn't hold us to God. It's a relationship.
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  So, yeah. It should be sort of a model for us to keep other relationships going.
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  So, no, we don't out-earn what God can give us.
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  Yeah. Did I get most of that question answered? I think you got it.
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  Stomped around it for a little bit. Stomped around it, and yeah,
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  sort of like around Jericho seven times. Right, yep.
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  Can you see a time in the future when we do not have access to Scripture?
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  I think that's very plausible. In fact, I would make the case.
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  This is onry, but I'm onry. I would make the case that since Scripture is so
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  available and there's so many Scriptures on our shelves that we have.
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  Sort of shut off the fact it's there and said, well, you got it, you know, no big deal.
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  You know, it's sort of like when you, when you finally get something and you've
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  got it and you sort of, oh, well, I've got that and take care of.
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  And, and so I think a lot of people say, well, it's, it's there on the shelf
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  and I've got it if I need it.
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  And so I don't need to do anything more with it.
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  But in reality, we're to put the word in our heart.
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  I mean, it's supposed to be part of who we are. It becomes part of our personality.
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  It's to be a lamp unto our feet. Well, how can it be that lamp unto our feet
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  unless somehow we know it and study it and we have it in the present as we're walking.
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  If it sets on a shelf and we don't make it a part of our lives,
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  then what good is it? I mean, how can it be a lamp?
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  Especially in the situations that we get into as human beings,
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  where we have to make a decision based on our faith and what we believe and our background.
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  And we're walking and, oh man, I can't think of that scripture right now. What is it?
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  It's one book folks. And I don't know whether any of you have a library of books, but it's one, well,
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  about 1200 pages, uh, 66 books, uh, two dozen authors. What are we going to do?
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  I mean, this is, this is the only thing he asks us to master.
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  Right. So why not? I guess that's where I'm coming from. Uh, my,
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  What I've seen now is Bible literacy has gone down to a dangerously low percent.
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  You get among the elderly of our congregations, and they still have a lot of
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  things stored away in their minds that they learned as children in Sunday school.
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  Well, Sunday school has sort of become a extra. Not everybody attends Sunday school. Right.
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  And we don't do Sunday school like we used to do. When I was in Sunday school
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  as a child, there was a very methodical set of programs that would go through
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  the Bible, and it was well-written.
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  If anybody gets a hold of it, it came out of Mennonite Publishing House back
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  in the early 60s, and probably one of the more in-depth children's Bible studies.
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  And if you went through that then you had some pretty good Bible literacy.
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  That being said,
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  it's very hard to keep the attention span of children with that depth of material.
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  And so it is still available, believe it or not. It is still in print to this day.
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  It is in print with a conservative Mennonite group.
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  And so you can get the whole set of Sunday school material that was,
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  that dates back to the 19, early 1960s.
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  Good stuff. If you want to be wise like Don, then you gotta,
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  you gotta go get that. See, I didn't master it myself.
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  So I really, I did get a set of it and I started in it and it's good stuff. Yeah.
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  Yeah. I think another aspect of it is you can just have your Bible app on your
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  phone and you're just like, when, when won't I just have my phone with me to look something up?
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  So. And that is easy and nice and that's fun for right now.
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  But if you were in a dark jail cell in Lithuania, you wouldn't be able to have
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  either the Bible or your phone. Then what do you do?
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  Well, Lithuania. Maybe. Maybe. I just picked that out of the top of my head.
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  So Lithuania, don't write us. It's, yeah. Yeah. I just picked it.
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  All right. I think that's all we got for today. I think that might be good for today.
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  Yeah. Oh, man. Thanks for joining us today, Don. It's good to be here.
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  If you have, in fact, generate any questions, you have any more questions,
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  just let us know. Or discussion. Yeah. We want to hear it. Yeah.
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  Anything, share it with friend whatever but yeah,
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  we'll see you guys next time thank you for joining us for this podcast feel
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  free to become part of this ministry by sharing it with others our goal is to
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  help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is and is calling
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  to us in our daily lives thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.