Skillful Living

Well, today is Monday, July the 17th. I'm Jon Glantis, and I'm here with Dr. Abaddon Shah, and you're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abaddon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You can find us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Or if you have a question for Dr. Shah, anything you'd like to write in and suggest we talk about, send us a text at 252-582-5028. You can also email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com. And don't forget, you guys can help us keep the conversation going by supporting the podcast, sharing it online, leaving us a good review on iTunes or Spotify, anywhere you might get your podcasting content from.

And we're going to leave a link in the description of this podcast so you can do just that. And Dr. Shah, today's verse of the day is coming to us from the book of Matthew chapter five, starting in verse 11. It says this, it says, blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Shahil Shah Coming from the greatest sermon ever preached. I know, right? Well, we actually stood there. We actually stood on that exact mountainside where he did that. Shahil Shah Several times.

Yeah. What was that like for you? Shahil Shah It was very surreal, just sitting there or standing there, actually, and just thinking about how it must have looked like. Because you can see the Sea of Galilee out there. And you're standing on the mountaintop. And then it's not that Jesus stood on the top of the mountain and spoke down, but he actually stood at the bottom of the mountain, right? Coming off the boat, stood there and he spoke and his voice carried because the Sea of Galilee has this amazing, unexpected wind tunnels that happen. I mean, just when you're like least expecting, all of a sudden the wind will pick up and next thing you know, it's just like, whoa, are we going to go down here?

And so his voice must have carried up the mountain. And sitting there are all kinds of people. His disciples are there. The multitudes are there. The soldiers are there.

The Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, tax collectors. I mean, they're all there and they're listening to Jesus and he's telling them something very important. He's reminding them when they say all these things falsely for my sake, it's not just that they say these things.

Like anybody can be harassing anybody, but they're doing it for my sake. Then you have the right to rejoice. That's right.

That's right. And I think that's something for us to keep in mind because we tend to give up in those moments or we tend to look the other way or pretend it's not happening or find some other way to deal with it. But Jesus actually says to rejoice. That means you're doing the right thing. When they, when they persecute you, they say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

That's when you should, you should be glad. And that's not a, that's not an emotion we equate with, with persecution. Well you want to go a little further on this?

Yeah, let's do it. So when it comes to self love, because that's what, that's what is, is being attacked here. When persecution of this kind comes, it goes against, it feels bitter. It hurts whether it's physically hurting or just emotionally hurting. You have to be willing to take this without any reservation and without any expectation of that persecution alleviating. So if you're like, I'm gonna hang in there because tomorrow it'll be over. No, it's just like, it is what it is.

Now don't misunderstand me. Fight for our rights. Stand for our freedoms. Make sure America remains a Christian nation.

I say all that because if not, you'll be in a bad situation. Having said that, if you are going through a form of persecution, people in your home, people in your workplace, people in your community are harassing you because of your faith, take it. And what will happen is in that process, God is going to crucify that self life in you.

And he will give you a peace and a joy that no other way can happen for you. Yeah. I think that's, I think you really hit the nail on the head there. Cause we tend to think like if I just, if I endure, if I just grit my teeth and get through it and just wait for the end, God's going to reward my patience. It's not that he's rewarding your patience.

He's like you said, he's crucifying that, that self that sits on the throne. Yeah. Because how, how proud can I be when I'm being persecuted? Right. You know, how like arrogant or prideful, I guess, can I be when I'm going through all this stuff?

It's not that he's like, okay, good job. You endured. It's, it's that now that pride that was within you has been crucified. Instead of being bitter, you're choosing to receive it.

That's right. Knowing that those people who are doing are not good. They need to get saved.

Knowing that yes, you try to fight for freedom, but persecution came anyways, but you're willing to take it when you are truly willing to take it, then that's when you can truly rejoice and be exceedingly glad. I love it. I love it. We've got an excellent show for you guys today. We're going to start in just a moment. If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, anything that we can be talking about here on the show, make sure you text us 252-582-5028, or you can always visit us online at cleerviewtodayshow.com.

We're going to be right back after this. Well, good morning, afternoon, evening, Clear View Today listeners. My name is Jon and I'm David and we just want to take a quick second and let you know about another way that you can keep in touch with Dr. Shah's work.

And that is his weekly podcast series, Sermons by Abhijan Shah, PhD. As a lot of you may know, or maybe some of you don't know, you don't know you do now. And if you don't know, then maybe just hop off the podcast. David, I'm just playing.

I'm just playing. Keep listening. Dr. Shah is actually the lead pastor of Clear View Church in North Carolina. Every single weekend he preaches expository messages that challenge and inspire us to live God honoring lives. One of the four core values of Clear View Church is that we're a Bible believing church. So every sermon is coming directly from scripture, which is great because that guarantees that there are timeless truths that are constantly applicable to our lives. This is a great resource because whether you're driving, whether you're cleaning the house, whether you're working out, you can always benefit from hearing the word of God spoken into your life. And God's word is always going to do something new for you every time you hear it.

Sometimes it's conviction and sometimes it's encouragement. But know that every time you listen to God's word, you're inviting the Holy Spirit to move and work in your life. You guys can check out the Sermons by Abhijan Shah, PhD podcast. First and foremost, check it out on our church app. That's the Clear View app. You can get that in the Google Play Store. You can get that on iTunes. But you can also find the podcast on the Apple Podcast app or on our website at ClearViewBC.org. And listen, if you've got a little extra time on your hands, you just want to do some further reading, you can also read the transcripts of those sermons.

Those are available on Dr. Shah's website, AbhijanShah.com. And we're going to leave you guys a little link in the description so you can follow it. But for right now, David, let's hop back in.

All right. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abhijan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can find us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. Or if you have a question for Dr. Shah, anything you'd like to write in, suggest that we talk about on the show, send us a text at 252-582-5028.

You can always email us at contact at ClearViewTodayShow.com. We love getting those emails, love hearing what you guys want to hear. So that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to bring you more of it. And if today's your first time ever visiting with us here on the Clear View Today Show, I want to let you know exactly who's talking to you. Dr. Abhijan Shah is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. And Dr. Shah, might I say, you are extremely good at what you do. You are, seriously, you are very...

I don't know where you're going with this. You are very, very skilled at what you do. And I think one of the things, absolutely, one of the things that motivates me working here at the church is working for someone who's good. Have you ever worked for a clown? Like worked for someone who is very inept? Or like you worked for someone where you're like, I could, if I were in charge or if I were doing this, I would run circles around this guy. It's very demotivating. Like where you think it would build you up, be like, wow, I'm actually really better than him.

It drains you. But when you work for someone and you work alongside someone who is really good at what they do, it inspires you. Like, I want to be like that.

That's right. Well, I'll, I don't want to just return the compliment, but truly heartfelt. I mean, you are very good at what you do and I'm grateful because this radio show would not be possible without you.

Thank you. So, you know, you're, this is a guy, ladies and gentlemen, who plans it out, who consults me, looks over the calendar, finds out the special days and, you know, goes through whatever's happening in the season of life or time of the year or, you know, what's happening in the world, the craziness. And he finds it and we discuss along with Ryan. And then of course, David and Nicholas are there as well. It's a team that makes this possible.

Exactly. I was just going to say that we have got a all star team here. Very skillful team, if I may.

Very skilled, very nice segue, my friend. They are skillful. And listen, that's, that's the thing is we find that a lot of times in churches or in life, people just don't have the, the, maybe they don't have the skills, but they don't hone those skills over the course of their Christian life.

Yeah. It's one of those things where when you're not skill or you haven't honed those skills, you don't have that like sense of discernment. Like we talked about on Friday, you end up making foolish decisions. You end up making really costly decisions in your life. You use the wrong tools for the job and you have the right tools, but they're locked up somewhere. Sometimes people like that are reckless in the face of hazardous materials, or sometimes they're overestimating their abilities or misjudging their obstacles.

I mean all kinds of things. And basically it reflects a lack of skills and lack of discernment. I don't know what to say to you, but I'm so sad for you. I have felt that way in my life where I see people and I'm like, man, I used to look up to you. I used to really, I used to turn to you for the answers, but now I feel pity.

I think one of the things I've seen coming from you is that you live skillfully, not just because you're naturally good at what you do, but you turn to God for wisdom. There's times like, like I've seen things happen in life or things happen in the church and you're like, guys, we need to pray about this right now. Like we need to gather, we need to drop what we're doing. Let's come together. Let's pray about this. A lot of leaders wouldn't do that.

They would just jump to react or they would jump to start putting things in position. But I've seen you time and time again turn to God for wisdom in your life. And I think that's the only way to do it.

That's true. How else can you survive in this life unless you turn to the truth of God or to, which is the Bible, or you turn to God in prayer and in fact together, both those things have to go hand in hand for you to have the skills to live a good life. And I couldn't survive without the word of God in prayer.

I couldn't. And so skillful living comes when we turn to God for wisdom and guidance. And more specifically, when we talk about wisdom, we're talking about Christ, that He becomes our life and we begin to live skillfully through Him. And so He's not just over here or somewhere in heaven or deep in my heart. No, He is my life.

He is everything. And I'm cognizant of that when I'm living towards Him. And I want Him to use me and I want Him to give me the wisdom, the direction, whatever I need to live.

That's skillful living. That's Christ living. And I think that's kind of the point of it too, is that He directs you. When I'm trusting in Him, when I'm not just saying, okay, like you said, you're in heaven somewhere and I'm trying to get to where you are. So let me make the right choices to try to get to be more like you. But Lord, you dwell in me.

You're the one who's living in me. And if you give me more of your Holy Spirit, you continue to trust in Him. That's when He makes that path.

He starts to lead you and guide you more, obviously, I guess. And it's a biblical principle. It's a passage that is probably a live verse for some of the people who are listening or watching, which is Proverbs chapter 3, 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.

Wow. What a wonderful verse. I have lived too much of my life living, leaning on my own understanding and trying to put pieces together and understand the things that are happening around me and then make conclusions just based on that, what I see or even worse, what I feel. Well, I want us to sort of walk through this passage because if anybody here today is lacking skills in their life, I mean, you feel like, I don't know how to live with my spouse, or I don't know how to raise my children, or I don't know how to deal with my parents. I'm struggling with my siblings.

I'm struggling with relationships in the church body, in my workplace, in the community. Today's lesson is for you. There's a lot here. Absolutely. And I love that it's coming from Proverbs because maybe this is just me, but I feel like Proverbs is one of those books of the Bible that people kind of downplay a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. Compared to like Genesis, Exodus or Romans and Revelation, they feel like Proverbs is like second grade, but that's not true. And there's a passage that I've quoted before and I want to quote it again, which is Jeremiah 18, 18. It says, for the law shall not perish from the priest nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet.

That's the third office. So you have prophet, priest and King. Kings need wisdom. There you have it.

So counsel is a category where Proverbs will fit in. And he puts them on the same level. On the same level. I see that. Yeah. But these are the word of God. That's it.

Yeah. And so let's think about this passage before we read it. Proverbs 3, 5, trust in the Lord with all your heart.

This goes completely contrary to what the world says. Cause I grew up hearing, trust your heart, follow your heart. You will never go wrong. Just follow your heart.

All of a sudden a bunch of Disney movies came to mind. Suddenly. Yeah. Follow your heart. Yep.

I've always heard that growing up. Follow your heart. If you follow your heart, how can you possibly go wrong? Well, I don't know. My heart's kind of wicked. So somewhere the Lord with all has been stolen by the enemy. Yep. That's true.

Trust in your heart or trust your heart in the Lord with all. With all is gone. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So trusting in your own heart to me is like the guy who attached the safety harness to himself. Or like you, you go to plug in a power strip and then you plug all your lamps and your computers into it. And then you take the power strip and you plug it into itself.

Back in, back in. It does nothing. It doesn't work like that. You know what the Bible says about the heart? What's that? Jeremiah 17 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

Wow. I, the Lord search the heart. So if you're trusting in your heart, if I go by my, this is how I feel, man, this is how I feel.

And this is what I'm going to, I'm just going to go for it. Do you really trust your heart? Yeah. It makes the heart. It makes my heart the key. That's the object rather than this God who gave me my heart, who gave me this spirit rather than him. Now my heart is the full.

That's the end goal. And it's just my happiness. And what people are usually meaning by that when they say my heart is they're talking about my feelings, my emotions.

Do what you want to do. They're not talking about heart as in my, the inanimate part of me. You know, a human being is animate, inanimate. Animate is the physical part of me, the flesh and bones. Inanimate is my spirit, my soul, my heart.

But here, that's not what they're talking about. They're not saying my inanimate part wants to do this. My spirit and my soul wants to.

No, no, no. My desires. My desires, my emotions. This makes me feel happy. This makes me in charge and control of my life. Yeah. I think follow your heart really at maybe at its core saying, do what you want to do and don't let anybody stop you. Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it.

Just follow your heart. And a lot of times, especially in our generation, people are saying, are you happy? Are you happy? Let me tell me, are you really happy?

I was until I started having this conversation. So my question to those people is, what is happiness? Happiness is like, I feel giddy for a while. Happiness means like I'm in control for the next 24 hours.

You know what's funny? I have made the dumbest decisions of my life when I was really happy. When I was really high on impulse and feeling high on the mountain top. I can't think of a time where I was ever like worried or nervous or anxious or cautious and I made a dumb decision as bad as when I was really happy. So when people say that, are you happy?

I mean, does this make you happy? I want to ask that person, what, what are you trying to get this person to do? You want them to follow what?

Impulse? You want them to follow some harebrained scheme? You want them to just give in to themselves?

You want them to say, you know what? There's a cliff. I'm jumping over it because there's life. Okay.

You're going to, it's going to be a very short, very short happiness. Yeah. Yeah.

And will you be there to catch him on the bottom? No, you're not. You're peace out. You're gone. You said adios and did a backflip out of there.

You're gone cuz. You're not there to catch that person. You don't care about the, you don't know the future, but you're telling this person, are you happy?

Yeah. Instead of trust in the Lord, trust in what's good. Just follow your heart.

Do what you want to do. You know what Jesus said about the heart in Matthew 15, 19, he says for out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, murders, murders doesn't have to be take a knife and plunge into somebody's chest. Murders can be ripping away at somebody's reputation, their credibility. So out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. All of those things come from the human heart. The human wickedness is not, I mean, it is a result of sin, but it comes out of our heart. Our hearts have been corrupted. It's not something that was something out there. It's coming from inside and I'm being told to trust what's inside. Well, then they're versed like that where like when people say stuff, they shouldn't say that.

That wasn't me. I didn't mean that, but it's what was it out of the abundance of the heart? The mouth speaks.

Yeah. So when we look at the word trust in Hebrew, it's the word batat, which means to lie helplessly face down. Kind of a servant waiting patiently on his master's command. Trusting in the Lord doesn't mean, you know, I hope things work out or I'm trying to hang in there. I'm trying to be positive and be strong.

I'm going to church and reading my Bible. It is what it is. I can't control my happiness or what happens. Trusting in the Lord is about having a deep personal relationship with God. And how do you develop that?

I know that's what people are going to say. Well, I want to have a relationship with God. I get it, but I don't know what to do.

How do you have a relationship with anybody? You can spend time with them. Oh, that's a good point.

That's a great point. Nobody wants to spend time with God. Can I say I have a great relationship and I mean, find some famous person. I have a great relationship with them. Oh really? How often do y'all hang out?

Oh, we don't. Yeah. Oh, so, so you grew up with them? No, I never met them in my life, but we're close. We're close. Yeah.

Imagine trying to do that with your wife or like your, your spouse or whatever. Like, yeah, I don't spend any time with them all, but we are really close. You listen, they talk to them. And so that's called having a relationship with God.

And it begins when you receive Christ as your savior, as your King. And the proverb sort of emphasizes that this trust has to be with all your heart. Nothing wishy-washy here. Nothing half-hearted here. You gotta go all in.

Yeah. It's too many, it's too many half-hearted Christians. And I've, I've been guilty of that myself to where my mind and my, my focus is on something else, but I know I need to be doing this. So I'm going to go ahead and just do it.

I'm gonna go ahead and do it so I can get it out of the way, say that I've done it and then focus on what I really want to focus on. And I think that's a, that's really prevalent in Christianity today. There's, there's a lot of half-hearted love for Christ. Yeah.

We say we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but in reality, we give him lip service, but then we do what we want to do. Yeah. But, but once you, once you start to understand him in a deeper way, once you do start to foster that relationship and you start to feel that deepness, I think a trap that I fell into was like, Oh, I feel it right now. I feel it. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to go even deeper. And I go deeper and I go deeper and I go, but the feeling still wanes.

You know what I mean? That, that rush of adrenaline that I get from feeling spiritual still wanes, even if I continue. Cause I always thought, Oh, I got the feeling I'm doing something right.

Let me keep going. It's with or without the feelings. That's the key in the Christian life is that we follow Jesus Christ. We seek to please him. We seek to focus upon him. We seek to do everything we do unto him, even loving our families, loving our church, loving our ministry.

We're doing it unto him. And so it's not about the ministry is about him. It's not about how I'm working hard and how I'm getting mistreated or how I am sacrificing myself.

It's, it's about none of those things. It's about not focusing on self, but focusing on him. Right.

Right. And saying, God, how does this please you? How does this glorify you? And I don't always have the feeling to do that. And I think it's one of those things where until I get that feeling, I'm just going to sit around and wait, just be inactive.

I'm not going to do anything without the King's permission and I'm just going to just hold here. And when I feel it, I'll know, but then I spend most of my life just doing nothing and just waiting and growing further and further distant. Right.

Yeah. And so the Proverbs goes on and says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Our own understanding means your own ideas, your own upbringing, your own experiences, your own education, your own impulses. You don't lean on those things because that's what the world tells us to do. Hey, look within yourself.

The answer is with you. Do you ever feel like there's, do you feel like there's characters in the Bible who had to do that? Cause I'm thinking a lot of times in the Bible, the people who God called were people of nobility, people of, of pretty high status. And yet they did have to lay aside some of those, I guess that in that way, that was their own understanding. Abraham. Yeah.

Right. We're thinking about Abraham when there was a famine in the land, you know, in a moment of fear, he told his wife, Sarah, that the, the unholy pact that they had made, wherever we go, tell people that you're my sister. It was not a good thing to do. It was not right. Imagine what it was doing to her thinking the whole time, man, you think this whole plan is about you.

And we're the carriers, but really it's not we it's you're the carrier. And so you're okay with me going off with the Pharaoh, living my own life, building my own legacy while you keep God's plan alive. But God never had that plan for Abraham to have it. It was always supposed to be Abraham with Sarah.

Right. So he was leaning on his own understanding. Same with Joshua. You know, he, he decided to go up against AI with just a handful of men, two, 300,000 men.

But what he didn't realize is that he had failed to consult the Lord. He was too confident. We just beat Jericho. We just beat the, the city of Palm trees. I mean, this is the big city to conquer. We conquered.

AI is nothing. Wait, you cannot live like that. Even in like, I can preach a great message, but if I start living off the hype of that message, God will quickly bring me down. I've definitely done that in my life too, where we will play really well, like on a, like all three services do really well. And then for that evening, we may need to go play at some smaller church in another town, be like, this is easy, but everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. And we ended up not doing well. Or anything else or anything else in your own personal lives, you come off a high and then you try to live off that high in your own family, in your own relationships, in your own marriage with your own children. And you are sorely disappointed. You find yourself going, just about four hours ago, people were just amazed at my preaching or your music or whatever you're doing.

How did I end up here? I think about Peter too. Like Peter, Peter certainly found himself in that position where like Jesus, there's one where Jesus compliments him and then rebukes him like literally a verse later. Or he's like, Oh, I'm going to build my church on you, the rock. And then, or no, no, no, that's not it. It's not the one, but there's one where he, he compliments him and then immediately rebukes him.

Yeah. Or think about it the night before the crucifixion, Jesus washed his feet and in less than 12 hours, I'm not even saying 24, 12 hours, he was over there cursing Jesus, you know? So, so what we're saying here is that these are our ways, but instead in verse six, in all your ways, acknowledge him, acknowledge the word is yada, which means to admit, to confess, to acknowledge, to recognize him means as I'm, I'm let's say, let's say a bad thing just happened to you. Maybe somebody said something about you that just came to your ears, right? Maybe it is some miscommunications happen. Maybe you were expecting to go this way, but all of a sudden something or someone has just, just destroyed your plans. All your ways acknowledge him means immediately I have to ask the question, Jesus, where are you in this situation?

What are you trying to teach me? It doesn't mean for a moment that all of a sudden you have the angels step out of the heavens and start singing and you just put that hedge of protection around you. All of a sudden you sprout wings and start flapping them.

No, it's to the contrary. You feel terrible. You feel horrible.

You just want to, you know, just disappear. No, but all you is acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. The word is yashar, which means he will smooth your paths. He will straighten your paths.

He will write your paths and God will remove the obstacles in his will and his timing and you will live skillfully and it doesn't mean that there won't be any obstacles, but over time he will remove that and he'll make sure that you overcome those options. Yeah. And so I'd rather him do that.

That's right. Then to take him, take it in my hands, get depressed as get discouraged, get bitter, rather him do what he needs to do. That's skillful living. Amen. And that's our prayer for you guys is that, that through listening to this show and through a prayer and meditating on the word of God and thinking about it, that you would be able to live a skillful lives that you could finish. Well, if you guys enjoyed today's topic, if you have any suggestions for future topics, anything you want us to talk about, let us know by sending us a text at two five two five eight two five zero two eight. You can also visit us online at clearviewtodayshow.com and don't forget, you can always support us financially on that same website as well.

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