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Navigating Modern Chaos: Reflecting on Morality in Modern Times · ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this is your spirit by design, with todd andrewson as I help you figure out how to have the spiritual life that you desire.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Even when you can't make it to church, you struggle and there are lots of things that are going on in your life.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So for that reason, we're opening up a new podcast today.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: New episode up a new podcast today, new episode.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Last week, if you're following the podcast, last week I missed an episode because where we live we're right in the middle, right in the path of Hurricane Milton that hit Florida and so we had to evacuate and sealed up the house, evacuate up the family, and it was a very interesting time, to say the least.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: A lot of damage, not to our house, but in the area near where we live.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And so pray for all those that have been victims of the hurricanes over the past few weeks, the two hurricanes that came through North Carolina, tennessee, alabama, georgia, florida, especially praying for all you that suffered in the wake of the hurricanes.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Today let's talk about chaos in the world.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, you see the lines of division forming, similar to the days of Noah.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: All the world is turning away from a standard of morality.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Have you seen it?
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I've seen it, which is probably the reason why I'm speaking about it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: You know I've spoken about the fall of Rome, but let's talk a little bit about the climate of spirituality, or the lack thereof, during the time of Noah or farther back to the time of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, sodom and Gomorrah and the experience of Lot and his wife and the experience of Lot and his wife.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Too many people in the world today, especially in the US and in Europe, believe that the false belief that our God and Jesus Christ, that their primary sentiments are non-judgment and inclusivity.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Now, I don't know where they got this idea.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Where does this worldly view come from?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I do know it comes from churches, from pastors, from priests that are afraid of offending or preaching accountability for fear of losing membership.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: You world is becoming increasingly atheistic, and so churches want to continue to have as many members attending as possible, so that some have turned away from their core values and their core beliefs and have begun to preach us this tolerance of sin and this acceptance of anything goes, but God is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: This is confirmed in all the books of Scripture.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So to see the possible future, we need to look to the past.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: If we don't learn from the past, we are destined to repeat it.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I've said that many times.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: This is true of governments, churches, our personal lives.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: It's just a truth that if you don't learn from the past, you're destined to repeat it.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: So in the time of Lot, he was told to flee the city because it had become so amoral, so wicked, that the Lord could not stand to look at it anymore.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Lot was given a simple command flee and don't look back.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Now his wife.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: She disobeyed and she looked back and she was turned into a pillar of salt, destroyed for her disobedience.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: In the time of Noah, the people had become so wicked that the Lord regretted creating man and putting him on the earth.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Noah found favor with the Lord and was saved with his family and those that came on the ark, but every other person that was not on the ark was destroyed.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Think about this Every person on earth, save those that were on the ark, were destroyed.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: The depravity on the earth today exceeds that of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Rome, at its fall, fell because it had fallen into depravity.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: If our world is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, then the only thing keeping us around is that there are still good people, righteous people, on the earth, and so our goal is to increase our righteousness, increase our spirituality, because every man is a sinner, every woman is a sinner.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So, learning from history that God is a vengeful, albeit loving God, he is subject to universal laws of justice and mercy.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Christ died for us to provide mercy, to counter justice, but that does not mean that there are no consequences in this life for aligning and promoting and serving forces counter to God and Jesus Christ.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: You want to be a moral and just man or woman?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: That's just.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this podcast, that's what you want to be.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: It's a constant battle against the natural man.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Today's discussion how can we do battle with the natural man and repent daily, as we are asked?
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: That's today, for the natural man is an enemy to God and has been since the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint and becometh, as a child, meek, submissive and full of love, etc.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I'm quoting from a scripture in the Book of Mormon.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: According to this, we need to humble ourselves and acknowledge our unworthiness, acknowledge our state of being as sinners.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: You're a sinner, I'm a sinner, we're all sinners and, as the rock artist said, none of us are getting out of life alive, so we need to recognize our weaknesses and become submissive.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: As a child submits to his father.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Now, if you don't have kids, you might not notice this, but you were a kid once.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Right, how does a child submit to his father?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Looking into the past my own children and now as I'm watching my grandchildren submitting means listening to and acting on the instructions given, depending on the age.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: It's not blind obedience, but it is choosing to do what is asked.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I say children don't blindly obey, because the number one question out of most little kids' mouths is why, why, why, why, why, why, why?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Or mom, mom, mom, mom, dad, dad, why, why?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Children are curious.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, they obey and they ask why they push limits and say they're sorry when they get in trouble.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: We won't be perfect as we're becoming submissive to the will of the father, but, like kids, it can and should be a daily learning process.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I'm 50 years old and I'm still asking why, still making mistakes and still asking for forgiveness.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Nobody is perfect on this earth.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: The Lord doesn't expect us to be perfect.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And here's where you say but in the Bible it says the Lord said be therefore perfect, even as I or your father in heaven is perfect.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Now sounds like I just contradicted myself, right?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Well, he didn't give a time frame for perfection.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: That's the way I look at it.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: We also learned that he learned line upon line, precept on precept, here a little, there a little.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: It is a constant battle that we will work our whole life and into the eternities to achieve perfection.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: That means that to become as a child today, the first thing that you want to do and to work on is acknowledging your sins, your frailties, your insecurities.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Become aware of who you really are.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Do a self-assessment.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: When was the last time you actually did a self-assessment when you sat down and kind of went through your life in your head and figured out this is an area I need to work on.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: This is an area I need to work on.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I'm doing okay here.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: That's one of the whole reasons for New Year's resolutions, right.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: New Year's resolutions, right, we're supposed to sit down, figure out where we need to improve in life and then we write resolutions for it, and most people are not very good at keeping those resolutions.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: But the idea is correct and it shouldn't be just one time at New Year's.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: We should weekly or constantly be reassessing where we are and where we need to improve.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this podcast, I'm assuming that you want to improve your spirituality and I'm giving you ways to do it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: So the first way for you to become like a child, to become submissive, to become humble before the Lord, is to do a self-assessment and know and acknowledge your weaknesses.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: After that, you take them before the Lord and you ask for help.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: A humble man kneels before God.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I already did a full episode on prayer, right, and yes, I did just quote Indiana Jones.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: A humble man kneels before God Saved Indiana's life.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, hey, it's important when you kneel before God and pray and ask for forgiveness and ask for strength, you also can ask for guidance.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I've talked about personal revelation in previous episodes that you are allowed and the lord wants you to seek his guidance to figure out where you need to improve in your life.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: If you can't tell, these are very similar to the 12 steps of the Alcohol Anonymous, because without the Lord, an alcoholic could never overcome his alcoholism is alcoholism.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: In order to overcome alcoholism, an alcoholic has to acknowledge that they're an alcoholic.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Humble themselves before the Lord.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Humble themselves before others.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Pay for some of their mistakes.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Repent, repent, seek forgiveness.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Those are two different things.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: When you've heard others, you need to seek forgiveness, not reparations, seek forgiveness.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: So these are very important things that you can do Now.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: The world, as we said.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: I started this out talking about the chaos that's going on.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: You see chaos in politics, in life.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: There's divisiveness, everywhere, wars are being fought.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: What would solve a lot of this, it's humility, acknowledging that we are not perfect before the Lord and becoming, as a child, submissive Doesn't mean that we're weak.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: It's a big difference between being submissive before the Lord and being weak, and that's an important distinction, because the world is full of weak men.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: The world is full of weak men.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: The world is full of weak men, and weak men cause problems for other people, and I'm including women when I say men.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I'm saying the world is full of people that are weak, that are struggling.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: When it's leadership that does so, that is weak.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Others prey on those nations and those cities and those countries, and we have a lot of history teaching us that we need to be strong.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: But the strongest, best leaders are the servant leaders, those that are humble before the Lord, those that seek the will of the Lord before taking action, but are decisive enough to take action.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's always a give and take, always.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: There is no perfect way to do things, but when you strive to do things the way the Lord would have, you do it and you are a humble servant leader and you seek to have the Lord in your life.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Those are leaders that I can follow.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Have the Lord in your life.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Those are leaders that I can follow.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Those are leaders that are able to stand up to tyranny.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Those are leaders that are able to stand up to enemies and say no, we don't need more weak people in this world.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: There are plenty of those.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: When you're weak, you give in to all your temptations.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: You give in to all your weaknesses.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: You give in to pressure, peer pressure.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: When you're strong, you stand for what's right, you know what is right, you develop and have a moral compass.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: These are all important things to have when you see things going on that are similar to what occurred in the time of Noah, in the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the time of the fall of the Roman Empire.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: These are the things that you need to see and have your eyes open to and be humble enough to ask the Lord for help, for strength and be strong enough to act, even if those actions are unpopular.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's not easy.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Trying to be spiritually strong in a wicked world is not easy, but I know you can do it.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I have faith in you.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You can reach out to me the email's in the show notes.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Send me an email, send me your questions.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I'll be happy to answer them and I want you to know that you are loved.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: The Lord loves you.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I love you, and my prayers go out to the victims of the latest disasters that have befallen the US.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: May the Lord bless you and may you improve your spirituality daily.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Have a blessed day.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: This is Todd signing out.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you.