This episode of Clearview Today is brought to you by Le Bleu Ultra Pure Water.
David, how many bottles of water do you think you drink a day? Well, actually, I only drink Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew, Strawberry Yoo-Hoo, and the occasional Pepto Bismol. Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew? Do they even make that anymore?
Fun fact, no. I have to make my own with McDonald's Sprite, and you guessed it, Texas Pete. I am genuinely horrified to hear that.
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Where's my Mountain Dew? You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm John Galantis, and you can find us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Or if you have a question for Dr. Shah, anything that you'd like to write in, suggest we talk about here on the show, send us a text at 252-582-5028, or you can always email us, contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.
We check that email every single day. We love hearing from you guys, and you can help us keep the conversation going by supporting the show. You can share it online with your friends and family. Leave us a good five star review on iTunes or Spotify, absolutely nothing less than five stars on any of those platforms that you get your podcasting content from, your podcasting content.
We're going to leave a couple of links right there in the description so you can do just that. Today's verse of the day is coming to us from 2 Chronicles 7-3. It says, When all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement, and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endures forever. You know something?
I don't blame them. Imagine being there. I've been to the Temple Mount with Dr. Shaw and with David and with my wife.
There's a mosque there now, but we have seen the site where the temple actually stood. I can imagine Solomon's Temple, it was supposedly one of the greatest religious temples in all of human history, covered in gold and sparkling and immaculate in the sunlight. I can imagine fire falling down and the glory of the Lord enveloping this temple. What a sight it must have been. It's like, yeah, I'd be falling on my face too.
I'd be worshiping the very ground that that fire fell on. That's the thing. People want this type of experience. I think even non-religious people, they want this type of otherworldly, supernatural experience.
That's one of the things that people always say. If you just show me, if you just show up in the most obvious, grand, spectacular way, then I'll believe. Then I'll worship. It's one of those things that any worship service you've been to, I feel like every Christian has had at least one or two worship services where it's like the Spirit is moving, the energy in the room is just unmistakable, the Holy Spirit is here and we feel it. But the thing is, those moments are few and far between. What ends up happening, and I've seen this, is people chase those moments.
When they don't get those moments in their worship service, the way that they experience God, the way they want to experience God, it ends up being this thing where they're chasing what is essentially an emotional high. Our encouragement to you guys today is if you know what I'm talking about, if you're relating to this, don't chase that emotional worship experience. Don't chase that feeling. Chase Jesus. Chase the person that he actually is. Pursue him and his truth and his wisdom. A lot of our verses of the day have been from Proverbs this week. Pursue his wisdom. Those feelings will follow.
The more that you go through life, you're going to have more and more and more. They're not going to be every single time that you come into the assembly of God, but man, the fulfillment and the joy that you get from chasing God's truth and chasing God's wisdom. That's one of the things that I really appreciate about our church. We are founded on truth.
We're not founded on an experience. Our music is excellent, but it's never designed to lull you into this hype or this trance or this big emotional catharsis. We keep our worship grounded on the truth of who Jesus Christ is, and I got to tell you, the satisfaction that not only myself, but our worship team and our congregants get from that is unparalleled. It's really transformed the way that I've approached worship as a Christian. We want to remind you guys that this episode is sponsored by the Date the Word app.
You can get it for free right this very moment on Android or iPhone. Every single day connects today's date to God's word with the hope of making it more memorable for you. It is Wednesday, my dudes. You guys have been with us since the very beginning of this week since the, I want to say, cold, cold betrayal of Ryan Hill going on a mission trip.
If you've not been here for the week, if you're just joining in for the first time Wednesday for some reason, or maybe this is your first episode ever, I usually have a co-host in Ryan. We kind of banter off of each other, but he said, you know, sayonara, sucker, I'm going off to Hendersonville on our mission trip. And I said, please, please, please don't leave me. I don't know how to host a radio show solo dolo. And he said, don't worry, you've got Dr. Sean Nicole.
And I said, check this out, though. I really don't have them up until the end of the, you know, after the intro and after the ad read. And he said, sorry, I just got to do me. And I've been struggling, feeling kind of bitter, feeling kind of resentful. So, I figured maybe today it would be good to bring him back in. Maybe we could call him on the phone right here.
OK, it's ringing. I hope this is coming through the audio. I hope he's excited to hear from me. Is he going to pick up?
I don't know how busy it is on the mission field. Bro, who's going to let this thing ring? I'm really about to get my feelings hurt live on air. Hey, Ryan, you're live on the Clearview Today show.
Yeah, I don't know if that's ever happened before. How are you? I'm good. Hang on just a second. OK, put that down.
Oh, sorry, go ahead. Is that a little kid or is that one of your little kids? Oh, no, it was one of the leaders. Oh, one of the students.
Yeah, one of the adults. We're on the mission trip, so it's kind of like I'm trying to focus here. I'm with you.
I'm with you. Yeah, well, you're on the radio. Are you recording right now?
Yeah, you're live on the radio, so try to focus up if you can. I've been going through some feelings of abandonment and hurt and I've just been kind of needing a friend right now. And I just wanted to call in and see how you were doing on the mission. Oh, I'm doing good. Yeah, it's good to hear from you. I hate that I haven't been there in person, but we're having fun. We're having a great week, you know, serving people, learn about God and growing closer together with our students. It's been good. Amen. Do you feel any guilt over betraying me? What's that?
Do you feel any guilt over? Lunch is not for another 20 minutes. Lunch is not for another 20 minutes.
Your attention. I'll tell you when it's time to go to lunch. Sorry, John. Hang on just a second. You're good.
I'll tell you when it's time to go to lunch. OK, maybe we can cut all this out one more time. I'm sorry. No, it's good. It's just that your focus seems to be kind of split. And I've been feeling some I've been feeling some some some kind of hard feelings. OK, hard feelings.
Well, yeah, because, John, I hear you. You lost your key. This is chaotic.
Where's the last place that you had it? This is bad radio. OK, we'll go check the cafeteria. We'll check the right field later. We'll cut all this sorry. Sorry.
No, the last. You're good. You're good.
We'll cut. Go ahead. No.
Yeah, it's just feelings of abandonment. Yeah. This is insane. I'm on the I'm on the I'm on the Today Show right now. The Clearview Today Show. We're recording it. We're trying to record right now. He doesn't even call you right now. I mean, we got to do the radio show.
This is crazy. He's got a box. Hang on. Hang on just a second, John. I'm sorry.
Let me let me take care of this phone call and then I'll be over. OK. OK. All right. Sorry.
No, no. You're good. Yeah, I was just saying. And it's kind of weird to even bring it up at this point, but I was just saying, I feel like right that I just felt a little betrayed, a little abandoned. But I think it's good because you're still on mission with with Christ and it's just that your focus seemed a little. Well, you know, we're running on eight minutes, so I really I might let you go. I'm going to have a. OK, I'm going to have a. Yeah, it's all good.
So. All right. It's good. It's good to hear from you. It's good to hear your voice. I miss you. I miss you, too. And I'm excited to be back at the today show soon. Praying everything's going well.
Oh, oh, that's yes. What is it? It's on fire. A bathroom situation.
The bathroom is on fire. John, I got to go. All right. See you. I got to go. All right. Well, I missed. He's gone. That was a.
That was a rough segment. I don't know how to I tell you what, I'm going to have a quick I'm just going to excuse myself. We're going to go to an ad read. I'm going to hit the restroom just not to cry, just because. To go. So we're going to bring Dr. Shy in a moment. If you guys have any questions or suggestions for new topics, you can text in 2525.
Sorry, 5825028. Or you can visit us online at my best friend abandoned me dot com. And we'll be right back after this. Hey, what's going on, listeners? My name is John.
And I'm Ellie. And we just want to take a second and let you know about Dr. Shah's new book on the market right now called Can We Recover the Original Text of the New Testament? Boy, that is a long title.
True. But it's a very simple message. The original text of the New Testament is not only attainable, but there are lots of different ways that scholars go about discovering it because a lot of people out there saying that the original text is lost forever or that it's hopeless to actually try to find it or that there's many texts of the New Testament. But alongside Dr. David Allen Black, Dr. Shah has actually compiled papers from some of the world's leading experts in textual criticism, including one written by himself on various methodologies for extracting the original text. And listen, if you're interested in textual criticism, this book is a great introduction to the field. You can pick up your copy on Amazon or you can buy it from our church website. That's ClearviewBC.org. We're going to leave a link in the description box so you can get your copy today.
Love that. Ellie, let's hop back in. Let's do it. Welcome back to Clearview Today, the daily show that engages mind and heart with the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at Clearview today show dot com, or you can always email us at contact at Clearview today show.com right into the show. Send us a text to five two five eight two five zero two eight. If you've got questions you want Dr. Shah to answer or suggestions for new topics that we can talk about right here on the show. And we are here today, live in the Clearview today's studio with Dr. Abadan Shah, who is a Ph.D. in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full time pastor and the host of today's show, along with from a guest drum roll, please.
Here it is. It's not your longest running stint yet, but we're coming up close. It's getting close. It's getting close. It's good to see you guys.
Yes. Spoke to spoke to Ryan on the phone earlier. We did an intro together and I don't know if he's having a lot of fun and it's one of those things where like I'm happy for him, but I'm really kind of bitter. Like when someone's off having fun and you're like this would be happy. Like this is your deal now.
This is kind of well, yeah, this is kind of my deal. But then I also got to do what Ryan does, which is kind of difficult. He makes it look pretty easy. He makes it look real easy. It's a lot of things. Ryan makes it look easy. Yeah.
It's easy until you until you try to do it yourself. And then it's one of those things where like you even know that like if you're if you're if you're a woman and you call up your guy and he's out with friends or whatever and you hear him having fun, I don't know. I just kind of set your teeth on it. Just like, what's so funny that you're doing over there with your boys that you couldn't be doing here at the house? I said, what's so funny or what's so fun? What's so both? Like, like if I call like if I were to call Ellie or if Ellie's to call me and I'm out with like my friends and I'm like, oh man, this is the best night of my life. What's so funny?
Yeah. She's like, what's, what's so funny? What, why are you having so much fun? She's like, you know what? Just go and do you.
I'll be here when you get home. Like she wouldn't probably feel that way if she didn't get to have to be left home with the kids. Could be, could be the case. That's what I'm saying. Like I feel like Ryan, it's not like a betrayal, but it comes close.
It comes to pretty close. I mean, I can see that you would say hashtag Ryan's the betrayer, Nicole, your green check mark on that. I don't know if I would say go that far, but we are talking about relationships and uh, you know, that's one of the things that I feel like Ryan needs to work on. And again, I feel bad.
He's not, he's not here to defend himself, but we are talking about that. And then we've been talking about marriages, relationships. There's things that, you know, people do in relationships that, you know, you can kind of learn to live with. Then there's some things where it's like, I got a real problem with this. And uh, communication on that front has not always been the best, especially in marriages.
You would agree? I'm not the segue. I am trying to get back on track here. For those who do not know, trying to see John do both be John and Ryan. It's like watching a man have a boxing match with himself. It's like watching a monkey.
It's like watching a monkey juggle, but then he's got to put the balls down and go like do tax returns. All right. So when it comes to relationship, an important step in finding and keeping a relationship is knowing three things. Number one, what matters, what doesn't matter and what can be worked on. And if you put those three things, consider them like a concentric circle or consider them as concentric circles. And if you put what's supposed to be in the inner core, on the outer core, and then you take what's on the outer circle and bring them in, it's a mess.
And so you need to know which one goes inside, which one is a second circle, which one is the outer ring. And when you get those things in the proper order, then you can at least have a chance on a good relationship if not a good marriage. Now I hear people asking, so what are the things that do matter and what are the things that don't matter?
Or have you ever met people who were like, every problem is on the same level. In a marriage, any problem that you have has to be dealt with swiftly and with divine retribution. Right. And it doesn't need to be. And neither do you need to see people as, well, we can work on that later. Because yes, there are certain things you can work on later, but then there are certain things you cannot. Because it really goes down to a fundamental question which is, do people change? And in my experience, without the grace and the power of God, people do not really change. Would you agree with that?
They continue in their same values, whatever that value may be a negative value, but they stay in those values. And that's why you need to be very clear what really matters, what doesn't matter, and what needs to be worked on or what can be worked on. That's a great point. Are those things relative to the person or is it just across the board? These things matter, these things don't. I would say at least what matters is across the board. What doesn't matter, that can be relative.
There's some wiggle room there to work with. Like for instance, like one of the deal breakers or one of the things that matters is, is this person a Christian? Across the board, I would say that. That really matters.
That's very concrete. And I feel like just from my point of view, I feel not only is that person a Christian, but do they have the same or very similar values? Because if they don't, that's grounds for a lot of arguments. Yeah, true.
True. And that's kind of maybe goes back to what we were talking about yesterday with incompatibility. Maybe these are conversations that you're getting married to this person and you don't really know their values. You've never had those conversations about, well, what do you value? What is it that you really think is important in life? We call them the deal breakers.
So imagine those three concentric circles in the innermost circle are the deal breakers. And there we are putting those two things. And again, we're talking to believers here now. The two things are number one, is that person saved?
Do they know Jesus Christ as their savior and as the Lord or savior, as the King or savior and their God? We're talking about the same thing there. Right. Now, I'm not saying for a moment that they need to be deeply spiritual person. I mean, they need to have a vital relationship with Jesus Christ.
Yes, I hope they do. Okay. But keep in mind, we're all work in progress. I've known people who when they first met, yes, they had a relationship with Jesus Christ, but they did not have a strong walk.
But with time that came. But if it's not there and then you expect a spiritual walk to take place, it's not going to because the seed is not there. You cannot expect a plant unless the seed is there. Salvation is the seed. Spiritual growth is the plant or the fruits.
So what I would say is don't have too many high expectations. Like does he read his Bible every day? Does he have a dedicated prayer time? Does he do evangelism or like a street evangelism every week on Friday night?
Does he work in some ministry in church? Okay, you can do that parents. But if you raise that bar a little too high, no one's ever going to meet it. No one's ever going to meet it.
And then you'll be like, well, I don't know why you can't find somebody because he told me that he's got to be this or she needs to be all these things. Salvation is the base minimum. If it's more, hey, that's great.
Thank God for that. Yeah, that's true. Values are also very important.
Would you agree with that? Values are huge because if here's, here's my opinion and here's where I've seen it kind of go wrong. When you first get married, your values, you're like, oh, I can, we can live with that. You know, it's okay. We can live with the differences of opinions.
To give some example, to help people understand values like in today's world, the whole gender, sexual orientation issues. Oh, I have a friend who is gay and I'm cool with that. I mean, they can come over and hang out with us.
Uh, he and his boyfriend or she and her girlfriend and they can come over and we can hang and we can go places together. I would put that in a deal breaker category because at that point it's like, do you really want that? Do you really want those people to be your best friends? It's true because it's like, what, what influence are you gathering from them? Like, are you like, how do you, how do you know that your filter, your moral values, your Christian walk is so good and so strong that absolutely zero of that influence affects you? Well, that's that example. I mean, think about the things that are important to you now if you're unmarried, but, and it's really hard to imagine your life with children, but when your children come along, then sometimes your priorities change because you really want to protect your children.
Well, where do you draw the line then? Yeah, because now I've got this person that I'm supposed to be raising this children with it turns out this person that are on the same page about all great, many important things in life. And that right there is a recipe for world war three. Yeah. Yeah. You're looking at this concentric circle where in the center you have these deal breakers, this core, you can't get around these things.
But then what's that second core? Some of these things that it's like, yeah, it's a problem, but we need to work on it together. Yeah, we need to work on it falls in this category, which is things like financial baggage.
If you expect dads, I'm talking to you, the guy who's going to marry my girl. I mean, he needs to have a job. Okay.
I agree with that. He needs to have a savings plan. He needs to have some land. He needs to have some, I mean, wow. In 2024, you want me to have land?
I'm 22 years old, bud. People you'd be surprised how people think. That's it. Yeah. They feel like he's got to have all, he's got to have all these things laid out. I mean, it's almost like they're looking at these young people as if they were where the parents are right now after 25, 30 years of marriage.
Maybe also the parents just had a good advantage because they grew up in a home where there was, they had, um, money and they had resources and they had, um, land and all these things were already part of your life. And so you feel like he needs to have that too, or she needs to have something to contribute to this marriage. What about like people who won't work or people who like are very adverse to work? Yeah.
That was a, that was a big thing that I noticed where, and I think it's happening a lot more now. Like people are becoming, well, not even becoming, they're anti-work. They're like, corporations are evil. Jobs are evil. Human beings were not made to work.
I don't want to do it. Do you think this is a result of, of the, of COVID? No, I think it was before that.
I think COVID certainly didn't help, but it bar to the surface. It legitimizes legitimized, uh, unemployment. It was like, Hey, this is okay.
This is good. Somebody needs to take care of you. The haves need to take care of the have nots. There are, that's exactly what it is. There are entire subreddits, which I'm not on Reddit anymore, but there were entire subreddits dedicated to anti-work, which it was exactly that. Steve Jobs could afford to feed every single person in the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all those guys. They can afford to feed everybody for the rest of our lives in the United States.
So they should, and we should not work. And there was, and there are people genuinely who think that. That's crazy. Yeah.
I thought it was satire, but it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah.
So poor work ethic, uh, quitting, quitting a job, going from job to job to job to job. Not a good thing. Not a good thing. I would say, please stop. Yeah.
Yeah. That's for, for me, that would be a red flag. It's a huge red flag because there you're not dedicated to anything. And if, I mean, think about it, if it can result, I'm going to, you can think about it from a mayor's point of view. Well, if this isn't working out, you're just going to go to the next one and the next one and the next one.
This is a person who is never satisfied and probably doesn't know what would satisfy them. You know, it's very, very unstable. Yeah. Second thing is also emotional baggage, emotional baggage. Yeah. And this is, this is huge because no matter, no matter what we think and no matter how much we think we've worked through a lot of things, which I mean, I believe you can, you take your childhood into your marriage, how you were raised, you take that into your marriage and the baggage, you know, that you take that and it's, um, it does affect, it does affect the rest of your life.
Um, I, I'm definitely not a proponent of, you know, that you're just a product of your environment, but I do believe that it has, it's a factor. A hundred percent. Or, or maybe, maybe I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this in your counseling, but on the other hand, maybe there's girls or maybe girls or guys, but people who've been hurt in past relationships.
So now they're not going to trust this guy. Oh yeah. Or this girl. That is, that is a definitely, I mean, that's bringing just baggage from past relationships or just your past into your present relationship. So here you have things like lying and you have, um, uh, anger and stealing, foul language, uh, unforgiveness. These are all part of that emotional baggage and get help. Talk to someone who can counsel you, give you, uh, you know, godly wisdom, uh, come from the angle of the word of God and they can help you find immature Christian person, immature adult who can walk with you to kind of, you know, cast aside this emotional baggage. There's, there's also the spiritual baggage that can go in the second circle we're talking about. I can, uh, we need to work on this. Spiritual is, um, things like misunderstanding of marriage expectations, uh, misunderstanding of marriage roles. Um, these kinds of things fall in that third bag.
And that, that, that outer circle where it's like he put the spoons where the forks are supposed to go. And I promise on all that is good, I will tank this marriage. You can live with that.
You can live with that. Like they're odd habits. Um, Nicole has some odds, odd habits. Walking outside barefoot.
That's just from being from Georgia. Everybody in my family does it too. Uh, Ellie, Ellie will do it, but yeah, you're not, you're not for that. For me, I beat my shoes down every time to make sure there are scorpions in there. There's going to be scorpions here. Did you have to do that growing up where the scorpions are getting your shoes? That's kind of crazy.
If we were living in Texas, I would tell him to do that. But not here. What else does she do? Um, driving. She calls me a bad backseat driver.
That's not true. Nicole will drive right up on vehicles and I'm watching the whole time. I'm like, we're coming up on this vehicle. I know you should look in the rear view mirror, side mirror.
Look, there are people back there. If you go ahead and merge into the left lane, then you can go ahead and keep passing. You don't have to come out of a cruise control.
You don't have to put brakes on. And if you get right up to them, then these guys will speed up and they'll block you for a mile and you'll be stuck behind this slow vehicle. Move over and Nicole will not move over. She goes all the way up to that car and then look and look and then click about the time these cars are like, why, why, why do you do that?
She's like confrontational on the road. She doesn't do it anymore, but she used to, she would drink cans of like soda and then instead of throwing the cans away, she put them in the sink to drain. But then she just wouldn't, once they drain, she would just leave them in the sink. So then she'd start piling dishes under them. So our sink, we had a lot more room, but now the dishes are like falling out and I'm like, there's not that many dishes and I'd look and there's a whole army of cans under there. There's like a Mountain Dew squadron over here and a Dr Pepper battalion over here. And I'm like, why are all these cans in the sink? She's like, I put them there to drain.
I was like three days ago, but that's gotten better since then. But I guess all this to say, these are things we can live with. Have you met people, and I know we got to, we got to go here in a minute, but have you met people that can't live with them?
They make big mountains out of these things? Things like messy versus organized. They will fight and fuss with their wife or husband over how messy the house is or how super organized this person is and they're just driving them nuts. I would say usually it's not a big deal until there are bigger things that you've swept under the rug for a long time. Hey, that's a good point.
And then all of a sudden this little thing sets them off. So yeah, you're putting, you're putting wrong things in the wrong categories. That's a great point. Maybe we can, maybe we can talk about that a little bit more tomorrow, but I think this is a great conversation just to help us understand the difference between what matters, you know, what doesn't matter and what are things that we can work on.
Just like that, if someone's not saved, that's not something you get into a relationship and then start to work on. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a, um, we can work on this or it doesn't matter.
No, that should matter. And I'm sorry, salvation cannot be worked on. That's right. Yes.
There are times people get saved after coming to church or they've been coming for a while in a dating relationship and they get to know Christ. Okay. That happens. But it happens so far and few between that we cannot make that a norm. That's right. That's right.
We definitely cannot make that the norm. Fantastic. Fantastic point.
They're saved and have the same values. That's right. Amen. We're going to continue that conversation a little bit tomorrow. Thank you guys so much for bringing us this episode today. If you liked this episode and you want to hear more tomorrow, you can join us right here at ClearviewTodayshow.com or you can always email us contact at ClearviewTodayshow.com right in and let us know what you thought of the episode 2525825028. You can also text us future episode ideas, any topics, any questions that you'd like Dr. Shah to answer. We've got a whole lot of content coming at you tomorrow. We love you. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.
