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The Alex McFarland Show-40-Letter to the American Church with guest Eric Metaxas

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The Truth Network Radio
January 12, 2023 7:00 pm

The Alex McFarland Show-40-Letter to the American Church with guest Eric Metaxas

Alex McFarland Show / Alex McFarland

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January 12, 2023 7:00 pm

The American Church at large has bought into a lie that faith is a private matter that shouldn’t overlap with politics. However, the Bible makes a clear case that the two are inherently interwoven and cannot be separated. On today’s episode of the Alex McFarland Show, Alex sits down with Eric Metaxas to discuss this topic through the lens of Eric’s latest book, Letter to the American Church. Eric explains why it’s crucial that Christians wake up and publicly take a stand for truth, before it’s too late.

Alex McFarland

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Faith and Family Retreat

Eric Metaxas 

Letter to the American Church 

If You Can Keep It

Bonhoeffer

The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask about Christianity 

alex@alexmcfarland.com

booking@alexmcfarland.com



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Welcome to the program today, folks. We have a very, very special show with a bit, but as we get settled in to talk about God and truth and how the Church is called to impact the culture, I remind you that the Word of God says that we are to be salt and light in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. That's Philippians 2.15. You don't hear many preachers today use words like crooked and perverse, but our culture is that way, really. Our culture that has turned away from the Judeo-Christian foundation on which we were birthed. Sin has become commonplace, and we've become comfortable and even affirming of things that used to shock us. But really, even worse, we've become comfortable with things that the Word of God explicitly condemns. Sexual immorality and moral deviancy and things like transgenderism. My goodness, earlier today, as I record this, I did an interview myself, and we were talking about how in public schools and in the pop media, and now even in medicine, the idea that gender is fluid and that merely by identifying as such a male or a female could change their gender, it's tragic.

It really is. We're a culture that is rapidly not only tolerating, embracing, but enforcing, enforcing delusion. But fortunately, at a time like this, God raises up courageous leaders and clear, clarion voices to call us to truth, one of whom is our guest today, Eric Metaxas. Now, artfully and consistently Eric Metaxas has proclaimed truth. I'm sure that you are aware of great New York Times best-selling books like his book Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, who was a great Christian leader 500 years ago, and Metaxas has written about Martin Luther. And of course, you might have seen the book that he wrote, If You Can Keep It, which, those were the words that Benjamin Franklin uttered when someone asked him after the Constitutional Convention, what type of government have you given us?

And Benjamin Franklin somewhat cryptically said to this lady, he said, a republic if you can keep it. That was the title of one of Eric Metaxas's great books, and more recently he's written a book called Letter to the American Church, and we're going to talk about that. But as we record this, two high-profile Christians in American life have changed their position on gay marriage and homosexuality. After years of standing strong for what Scripture says, people are changing their positions, and I won't name names, because I don't really want to demonize or marginalize anybody, but I thank God for Eric Metaxas.

This might sound kind of lofty, but he is a public intellectual, and he uses that intellect for the cause of God and country, and to speak truth. And he is not only a colleague, but a friend, and I'm very honored that we could have him on today and appreciate his time. Welcome to our program, Eric Metaxas. Listen, I am just so flattered and blessed and embarrassed, humiliated by all the nice things you just said, my brother. Look, I love you, and I feel honored to be invited on your program, and you know that anytime I can come on here, because anybody who resonates with me as you do, you're not just my friend and brother.

You're more than that. We are allies in a fight. We understand we're in a spiritual battle, and it really means everything to me, Alex, that you would think so highly of me. I know you think too highly of me, but I will say it blesses me deeply, because we are in a battle. We are in a battle we need to encourage each other. So first of all, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for introducing me to your radio audience. Well, God bless you, and you're very kind. We are allies, and I want to talk about your book, Letter to the American Church.

It's a very important book, but I want to go back a little bit, because it's always fascinating to me, Eric, to hear the journey of how God brings us to where we are. And I want to hear your story, and I'll throw it out this way. At what age do you recall? At what age did you become committed to truth? Because you are.

I mean, there's a lot I could say. You're a man, hopefully like myself, I hope I can say this of myself, I am committed to that what's true. I want to believe what's real. I want to believe truth. And I can look back in my own life, and I remember the season of my childhood when a light bulb came on, and I realized some things are true, some things are false. I better tether my boat to that which is true, and I know this is you as well. Eric, when did you become aware of truth, and you realized that you must commit yourself to it? Man, we really could do a whole show about this, and I'd be very happy to do that with you anytime because the answer is complicated. First of all, I know God had a call on my life from an early age, but I drifted away from God, not in a defiant way. Many people know my story.

I've written about it in my book, Fish Out of Water. I grew up in a working class home, and my mom and dad came from Europe. My dad came from Greece.

My mom came from Germany. They went through hell. They went through the war.

They went through hunger and difficulty. All of those things will ground you. You can't be an idiot ideologue if you have dealt with what's called reality in life. That's why if God has humbled you, you can get great wisdom from that. I was raised in a home where we knew right from wrong. We were not evangelicals. We didn't read the Bible, but the basics.

I think a lot of people in this country get the basics. They understand. A rooster can't lay an egg. Men can't become women. Stealing is wrong. We should revere God.

Maybe we don't know how. There are a lot of people who have that. I think I had that. As I write in my book, Fish Out of Water, in high school, I got more of that. But then I went to Yale University, which is basically a Marxist indoctrination camp.

It was in the 80s when I was there. I drifted away from God into who knows what's true type of thing. It was around my 25th birthday.

If people go to my website, ericmataxas.com, there's a video, an I Am Second video. I write about it in my book, Miracles. The Lord very dramatically miraculously spoke to me in a dream.

It was game over. Jesus is Lord. The Bible is true.

I was dramatically born again around my 25th birthday. I think once you know God, first of all, who cares about truth? We're talking about God. Because the question is, is there such a thing as truth? There are a lot of people that they're like, I don't even know what is truth. How do I even know what is truth? But when you encounter the God of the Bible, you encounter the one who is truth, who invented the universe, who created the universe.

It was right around then, around my 25th birthday, that these things began to take a hold of me. It's where you get this proper fear of God. You go, there's this thing called reality and truth. I got to take that seriously. In fact, if I don't, I'm an idiot.

I'm a fool. It's been a journey for me, and it really has been a journey for me. But here we are. Thank you for asking. Indeed.

God is good to bring us to where we are, and to a point of usefulness for Him. Now, we're just getting started. We've got to take a break. Eric, your website is simply your name, ericmataxas.com, right?

Yeah. People can find everything there. I hope they'll sign up for my newsletter, because I do some amazing interviews and send out stuff that I don't get to do on my radio program. So ericmataxas.com. Folks, stay tuned. We're going to come back after this brief break. More with our friend Eric Mataxas. Stay with us.

Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. What are you doing next summer?

Hey, how about this? I want to invite you to join me in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, August 6-11, 2023, for the Faith and Family Retreat. It's going to be awesome. We'll talk about foundational things. What does it mean to be a disciple?

How can you defend your faith? Family time, concerts, renewal of wedding vows. It's going to be great. Then fun, a trip to Dollywood.

Who wouldn't like that? And then faith in action. There'll be a mission outreach talking to people about Christ. So again, August 6-11, 2023, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Go to faithandfamilyretreat.com. I hope to see you there. He's been called trusted, truthful and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here, so honored that you're listening. By the way, you can listen to this program again. You can share it with others. You can go to my website, alexmcfarland.com. We're heard on terrestrial radio stations throughout North America, but also on all the podcast platforms wherever you listen to digital content. I would urge you to please listen again and share this with your friends.

Speaking of friends, we've got Eric Metaxas on the line. He's the author of the new book, Letter to the American Church. Eric, I want to get to the content of that book in just a minute, but give a little foundation for the context of it, perhaps.

Here's a question on which you and I could do hours of content. Eric, what's wrong with America? Well, it's what Solzhenitsyn said about what happened in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. All the old people were like, what's going on?

What has happened? They basically said, man has forgotten God. It's that simple, really. If you forget God, you go to hell on every level, not just literally, but on every level, things fall apart because God created reality. When you move away from God, you move away from reality and everything that's holding everything together. This is something that happens in stages, in cultures, and so on and so forth. The reason I wrote Letter to the American Church is because, first of all, I've never felt God call me to write a book the way I felt him call me to write this.

I never had an experience like that. It's the shortest book I ever wrote, Letter to the American Church. But I believe he called me to write it because it is his will that a remnant would wake up, that there are people who can still be reached.

They may be sleeping, but they can be awakened. The Lord wants to reach them for his purposes in this nation and the world. I believe that he wants to use this season to use my book Letter to the American Church and to use the suffering that we're going through right now, to wake people up to say, do you see what's happening? Do you see where things will go when you take your eyes off of me?

Do you see where things will go when you say, well, I don't care about the government or who's the president. I'm just going to focus on my Bible. Well, if you focus on your Bible, you're going to care about everything else in the world, including who leads the nation because people have died so that you could vote and choose who leads the nation because people's lives are affected. If you don't care about that, you don't care about what God cares about.

So I really think that we're in a season now, which is comparable to where Germany was in the thirties as Hitler was taking power. The church in that time chose to ignore God's call on them to stand up, to speak up, to fight, to do everything possible to speak up for those who had no voice. Bonhoeffer says, and in my book letter to the American church, there's a lot of Bonhoeffer in it because Bonhoeffer was a prophetic voice at that time and the church effectively ignored his voice. So my question is, will the prophetic voice of Bonhoeffer reach the ears and hearts of the American church?

That's why I wrote the book letter to the American church. What he said then was ignored by the German church and the hell that came to Germany and Europe as a result of the failure of the church to be the church is so ugly, but we can look at it and we can say, okay, the exact same thing is happening now. Will we repent?

Will we hear the voice of God? Will we avoid the mistakes that the German church did not avoid? And by the way, Alex, they were not all wicked people. There were a lot of good people who got it wrong.

And there are good people today, good pastors, good Christian leaders. They're getting this totally wrong. They're being silent in the face of evil.

They are some of them advocating silence in the face of evil. They think that's the biblical answer. They are wrong. Bonhoeffer made it clear to the German church in his day and they blew it off. And I'm making the same case with Bonhoeffer's arguments. It's not my argument.

This is the Bonhoeffer's arguments. And ultimately this is scriptural arguments to say, church, God has called you to speak and to stand. If you do not, the Lord will hold you accountable because you're the ones that claim to believe in truth, to believe that Jesus defeated death on the cross. You're supposed to have no fear. You're supposed to not fear. There are people all around the world risking their lives and everything for their faith in Jesus.

What are we risking? So I am hopeful, but the church has to wake up and hear what God is saying. I believe the Lord, that's the Lord's will. It's not his will to abandon us. But if we insist on avoiding what he's calling us to do, if we insist on being silent in the face of evil and saying, oh, I don't get involved in politics. Okay, well then the Lord will let us have our way and it will get much worse than it is right now, just as it did in Germany because the abdication of the German church.

Exactly. You know, one of the things that's kind of a core value for Angie and me, my wife Angie and I, early in our marriage, we prayed. I'm not sure we've always lived up to this, but we said, Lord, we want to live all of life in terms of stewardship, you know. And I happen to think one of the greatest stewardship issues for every personal believer is the life of the mind, learning to think critically and have discernment. And that being said, Eric, a lot of younger pastors that I interact with, they have embraced what I would call a false dichotomy. Either you're living for heaven or you're immersed in the world.

Well, think how bad that is, Alex. I mean, you know, you put it very kindly. You say it's a false dichotomy. It is a demonic lie that many in the church have embraced. It is so evil and it's exactly the lie that was bought by the German church in the thirties. Good pastors bought that lie. And when some of them woke up to it, it was too late.

So the question is, will the good pastors, will the good Christian leaders who are buying that lie today, will they wake up before it's too late for America? That is my question. What year was it when you began work on the Bonhoeffer book? It was basically 2008 when I wrote most of that book. And I had a prophetic sense. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back on it now that I'm writing this for a larger purpose.

I didn't know it really consciously. I just thought, I'm just writing a biography of a great hero, a Christian hero, just like my book on William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace. This is a great man. I've heard about him. Somebody needs to tell his story.

So I did that. But when I wrote it in 2008, I could kind of sense this is coming, but who could dream how it would come? Nobody could sense how is this going to, how is this going to play out?

Well, we get to see it now. We get to see how these things could happen in our generation and they are happening. And I think the good news is I think there are people waking up.

The bad news is not enough people are awake. We need to understand we are in a battle between life and death, between good and evil. And if the church does not rise to the battle, it's all over. And again, the story of Bonhoeffer, it's clear to me the Lord called me to write that book now in retrospect as a warning to say, you want to see exactly what happens when the church says, nah, not yet. When the church says, nah, we're just going to focus on preaching the gospel. The Lord's going to say, well, okay, if you're so theologically confused, you want to do that.

Here is what will happen because there's no such thing as just preaching the gospel. When people are being, when people are suffering horribly, when evil is being prosecuted, if you do not speak, God holds you responsible. You can't hide in your prayer closet and say, oh, it doesn't concern me. The Lord says it concerns you.

Yes, exactly. I mean, we really don't have the luxury to opt out and say, you know, hey God, you've got the wrong guy. I mean, throughout scripture. And I think about very vividly in the book of Ezekiel when God told Israel, you know, if you see the wicked man die or you see danger on the horizon and you don't warn him and he dies in his sin, his blood will require your hand. I mean, that's one of the things about truth and our awareness of it.

We are on the hook. And Romans one and two says that regarding rejection of truth or the suppression of known truth, these are frightening words where God says, thou art inexcusable because we really did know, didn't we? But think about it today. We have a lot of pastors in the comfortable evangelical church in America who they blow that off and they go, no, no, no, no, no. Those are not gospel related issues. First of all, it's a made up term.

What does that even mean? That's not a biblical idea. What's a gospel related issue?

A good issue, an evil issue, a true issue, a false issue. God is concerned with everything, not just with some thin theological piece of the Bible. He wants us to take the gospel into every sphere of life. And so you're supposed to care for the poor. You're supposed to care for everyone. So if you see people preaching socialism and Marxism and you don't speak up, that's a gospel related issue.

But there are a lot of people say, no, no, no, no. I don't want to offend people in my congregation. I won't talk about that stuff. Well, God will hold you responsible because he has charged you with caring for your brother and your sister. And if you don't speak on those issues that are going to affect all kinds of people beyond your church, you're also affecting people in your church. You're giving them the impression that this is not their concern. Like you said earlier, they buy this lie that, oh, we're supposed to be kingdom focused. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to be kingdom focused, you need to love your country. You need to love your family. People don't say, you know, you're loving your wife and that I think you should love God more. And you'd be like, well, of course we're all supposed to love God more, but you're telling me that my love for my wife and my, my children is competing with God. Maybe my love of God will make me love my family more. It will make me love my neighbors more.

It will make me love my nation more. So the lie that I have that you either I'm a kingdom citizen or I'm a citizen of the American, the United States of America, that's preposterous. You are called to be both. You're called to be fully both.

And if you abdicate your citizenry as an American citizen, that is going to harm people. God calls us to this. He doesn't say, forget about me and focus on politics, but he doesn't say, forget about politics. If you, if you care about what God cares about, William Wilberforce spent his whole career in politics to end the slave trade and to end every other kind of wicked thing because of his faith in Jesus, he was called to politics. So this crazy idea that we're not, we're not supposed to be political. We're not supposed to take sides is just, it's unbiblical. It's a lie from the pit of hell and it is harming not just the American church, but infinite people beyond the American church.

And that's part of what my book letter to the American church is about. We need to get that right yesterday. We've got to take a brief break. Stay tuned, everybody. We'll continue our conversation with Eric Metaxas when the Alex McFarland show resumes.

Don't go away. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Over the last several decades, it's been my joy to travel the world talking with children, teens, adults, people of all ages about the questions they have related to God, the Bible, Christianity, and how to know Jesus personally.

Hi, Alex McFarland. I want to make you aware of my book, the 21 toughest questions your kids will ask about Christianity. You know, we interviewed hundreds of children and parents and families to find out the questions that children and people of all ages are longing to find answers for. In the book, we've got practical biblical real life answers that they have about how to be a Christian in this modern world. My book, the 21 toughest questions your kids will ask.

You can find it wherever you buy books or at resources.afa.net. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarland show. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. We're talking with Eric Metaxas. He's author of the new book, Letter to the American Church. Eric, give us kind of the overview of what this is and let's then drill down deeply into some of the points that you especially want to make today. So the book, take us in there.

Well, it's the shortest book I've ever written. Letter to the American Church is called Letter to the American Church, but I was going to call it Faith Without Works is Dead. Because at the heart of this lie that we've been talking about that many in the church have embraced today and that many in the German church embraced in Bonhoeffer's day, allowing the rise of Hitler and tremendous satanic evil, at the heart of that lie is, oh, it's all about faith. It's all about faith. Well, you say, all right, it's about faith. So let's talk about faith. Faith without works is dead. The scripture says faith without works is dead. So even though you do not earn your salvation by works, if your faith does not produce works in the real world, that is evidence from scripture, you actually don't have faith. So if you're saved by faith alone and there's no works as a result of your faith, then perhaps you have no faith and perhaps you're not saved. And I think we're not preaching that. We're acting like, oh, it's all up in my head. I believe this stuff.

Go to my church's website. You'll see what I believe. It's written there. The statement of faith, baloney. God is not fooled by that fig leaf. The devil is not fooled. Nobody's fooled by that.

Some people who fool themselves. And so I wrote the book to say, listen, church Bonhoeffer wrote about this a ton and it's all in my book letter to the American church, but your faith is supposed to be active. Your faith is supposed to be lived out in every sphere. When you buy into this really enlightenment, rationalist view, it's an atheistic view that, oh, it's all in my head.

If it's all in your head, it's nowhere. It has to be lived out in your life. You have to live your life out self-sacrificially.

The agape love of God is self-sacrificial love for others, for strangers. You have to care about what's going on and you have to do what you can. Now everybody's called to do different things.

Not everybody can save the world in the way that William Wilberforce did or a Bonhoeffer, but we're all called in our spheres to understand this idea that God says faith without works is dead. And as I say, the American church has over the decades bought this lie that no, no, no, it's just what I believe. It's a private thing.

If it's a private thing, folks, it is nothing. It needs to be lived out. People are dying for the faith all over the world.

The Lord expects you to live the same way in this world where we have freedom. And he holds us far more accountable because we have freedom. We have voices. We have money. We have power. We have influence.

We have all kinds of things. And we say, well, I don't want to, I don't want to use that now. I don't want to, I'm just going, I'm going to keep my powder dry. And the Lord says, no, now is the time. And if you church do not wake up now and use what I've given you now tomorrow, you won't have it tomorrow.

It'll be game over. And I write in the book letter to the American church. This is exactly what happened in the German church. The German church was they were sophisticated.

It was an amazingly sophisticated Christian culture. It was not like a million years ago. And they thought, oh, that can't happen here. We're just going to, you know, the pendulum swings. We're just going to, we're going to keep our powder dry. We're just going to keep preaching the gospel from our churches.

We're not going to get involved in this stuff. Well, history shows what happened. And by the way, even if you don't know what happened in history, you just really need to read the scripture correctly and understand that the Lord always calls us to live our faith actively. And if we don't, we're trying to fool God. And there's a couple of chapters in the book about how we try to fool God with these concepts of it's only about faith.

It's like, well, yeah, as I said, what does that mean? Bonhoeffer in his book cost of the subship talks about cheap grace. Everybody in Germany, they were talking about it's grace, it's grace. It's like, okay, what is grace? Is it real grace or is it cheap grace? Where you, you basically mock the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross by doing nothing, by acting like it costs him nothing.

It costs me nothing. So we are in a moment in the American church right now that it is an impossibly difficult inflection point. If we do not recognize where we are and stand up and live out our faith dramatically now, a remnant, it's over. And so I wrote this book trying to reach those in the middle who were still not persuaded. Well, and you know, I think about how the Bonhoeffer book might've prepped you for the writing of letter to the American church. Also the book, if you can keep it, was pro legomena for this.

Wasn't it really? Oh, listen, the book, if you can keep it, I wish I could give that to every single American. When I wrote that book, I thought to myself, the fact that I have lived this long and not really understood this, what it means to be self governing and how God is unavoidably involved in American style self-government.

There's no way around it. That without God, without the God of the Bible, without the revivals of the 18th century, there is no America. And you do not sustain America without virtue and with faith.

I never understood this. And so you can see I'm a man on a mission. Well, exactly. And you know what? There are two other shows that I want to do with you sometime because I legitimately am fascinated by your journey and I've watched your story arc as a writer, if you will. And I mean, you're gifted, but I see the hand of God in your thought processes and ultimately the result on the printed page. The other show that I would love to do with you, and you and I could, I believe, have a very robust conversation about this, the miracle of America, the gathering of the brilliant, yes, folks, brilliant, godly, prescient framers of our nation.

And just this really is a miracle. And I think a lot of people miss that. But there's no question about that. I've been doing more research on that recently. And any time you want to have me on to talk about that or anything, Alex, this is this is really, really vital stuff.

So thank you for caring about it. It really is. And I mean, to try and to the best way we can muster to try to impress on people in the scope of human history, how rare is this thing called America? How precious and elusive is this thing called liberty? And it's been dropped in our lap and we stand to lose it.

I mean, we do. You've got a chapter in your book called Church Paralyzed. What's the paralysis and might we be freed from it, Eric?

Well, again, we have paralyzed ourselves. We have kind of, you know, it's like if you think of in Gulliver's Travels, when the Lilliputians, these tiny, tiny people are tying down Goliath because he's asleep. If he's not asleep, they can't do that.

So they're working away, working away, working away, hoping he does not wake up. And that to me is the American church. If the church wakes up in time, it can rip up the cords.

No problem. It can crush the Lilliputians. But if the church remains asleep long enough, there comes a point where Gulliver wakes up and he cannot move. They have done it. They wanted to keep the church silent. That's what Hitler effectively did to the church in Germany. He said, let them be quiet. Let's keep them quiet. Let's keep them thinking we're on the same page. Keep them quiet, keep them quiet. And then finally it was too late and they could do nothing. That's exactly what is happening with the American church today. And the reason the Lord called me to write this book letter to the American church is to possibly reach those who can be reached so that we can wake up in time.

Amen. Where can people find a book, a copy of the book? Well, I tell everybody the easiest thing is always please go to my website, ericmataxas.com. There's links to everything there, to my radio program.

So if they can just spell my name ericmataxas, ericmataxas.com is the best place. Eric, we're just about out of time. And I want to throw a verse out and get your just off the cuff exegesis, your takeaway on this verse, one of my favorite verses. First Corinthians 15, 58. You know, First Corinthians 15, Paul talks about the resurrection. And that's so important because, you know, if Christ arose, and that is from an historiographical perspective, that's the most provable fact of the ancient world, that Christ rose from the dead.

If he rose, then God exists, Christianity is established. Okay, Paul says, in light of this, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know, your labor in the Lord is not in vain, Paul says. Eric, if you were asked, just extemporaneously, comment on that verse, please. Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. What does that verse say, Eric? We're supposed to live our faith out 100%.

And I think a lot of people are hedging their bets. They're acting like, well, I think he rose from the dead, or maybe he did, but, you know, the fact is the Lord has given us enough for us to know that to live the life that we have before we leave this life, we're supposed to live it utterly for him. And this doesn't mean being religious. This means in every way, living our faith out so that we glorify his name and we live for his purposes.

We're not living for any other purposes. And for some people that looks like ministry, ministry for other people, you know, they're going to be doing other things and they're going to be, but the point is to live at our faith totally. And somehow, and it's why I wrote Letter to the American Church, it seems like the American Church got this memo, this lie that church is a private thing.

I do it on Sunday mornings. It doesn't affect the rest of my life that much. Most people, anybody's being persecuted for their faith around the world, the exact opposite is true. Their faith is everything to them. And I think that people think that means, oh, I'm going to be like a religious fanatic.

No, no, you're not going to be religious fanatic. If you live your life according to the scripture, you're going to be fully human. And people are attracted to that. They were attracted to Jesus.

They didn't just say, well, he's just kind of a religious nut. We are meant to live out our faith in every sphere of our lives. And to the extent that we don't do that, and again, it's part of why I wrote the book Letter to the American Church is to say, this is what God has called us to. This is what he has created us for.

This is what he died for. Not to do this is literally to miss out on the great adventure to which the Lord has called you. It is beautiful. It is not religious.

It is not safe. It is wild and true and glorious. That's what God's church needs to look like.

And I rejoice in that idea. And so I present this to people not as a guilt trip, but to do not miss what God has for you, a personal living relationship with him, not a dead religious relationship, a living relationship with the God who chose to make the sky the blue color that it is. He is an amazing God, and he loves you more than you can imagine.

And he wants you just to give him everything knowing that he's not going to embarrass you. He's going to bless you. It's at the heart of faith, and it's a message that we need to hear it over and over and over again.

And during these very dark times, I think the Lord is giving it to us afresh. He's saying, now do you get it? Now do you understand you need to wake up? Now do you understand you need to trust me totally with your job, with your health, with your church? Trust me. Walk boldly. Fear nothing. Fear nothing but ignoring me. Mm.

Wow. Letter to the American Church by author, broadcaster Eric Metaxas. It's a book I urge you to read. His is a voice I urge you to hear. Eric, thanks for being with us today on the program.

My privilege. Thank you, Alex. Folks, you can listen again. AlexMcFarland.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

God bless you. Stand strong for truth. Alex McFarland ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at AlexMcFarland.com. You may also reach us at Alex McFarland, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404 or by calling 1-877-YES-GOD and the number 1. That's 1-877-YES-GOD-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of The Alex McFarland Show.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-17 00:38:27 / 2023-01-17 00:53:21 / 15

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