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What is a Cultural Christian?

Family Life Today / Dave & Ann Wilson, Bob Lepine
The Truth Network Radio
December 28, 2020 1:00 am

What is a Cultural Christian?

Family Life Today / Dave & Ann Wilson, Bob Lepine

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December 28, 2020 1:00 am

America may be the largest mission field yet. Why? Author Dean Inserra explains there are plenty of people who claim to be Christians-they believe in God and are good people, but when it comes to Christ's atoning work on the cross, they are clueless. Inserra talks about the best way to reach people who don't know they're lost.

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You probably have friends or family members who go to church regularly who, if you ask them, would say, of course, I'm a Christian. And yet, you still wonder if they're saved. Pastor Dean and Sarah says, there's a reason for that. We have to realize that the God and the Jesus they've heard about their entire lives is not the God and Jesus of the Bible. It's an American, vague, imaginary friend kind of creation. It's a person that maybe wanted enough of Jesus, and I'm putting air quotes in the air with Jesus, enough of Jesus to be associated with, but not enough to be inconvenienced.

And when they actually hear someone talk about what is the gospel, they've never heard it before. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. Dean and Sarah says we live in a country that is full of what he calls unsaved Christians. We'll talk more about what that means today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. So, Pastor Dave, I should just remind our listeners. You pastor a church in Detroit, right?

Yes, I do. But you'd never call me Pastor Dave until just right now. So I don't know where this might be going. I want to know from Pastor Dave if you think you have any unsaved Christians at your church. We just had this conversation this morning, actually. Oh, yes. I would say definitely. I'm guessing that every church does to some extent, but yeah, for sure.

I think that's right. And of course, our listeners are going, what are you talking about, unsaved Christians? Well, if our church had a better preacher, they probably wouldn't have unsaved Christians, but we definitely do.

We are borrowing that phrase from Dean and Sarah, who wrote a book called The Unsaved Christian. We're going to talk more about that today. But before we do, we've got a message for all of our listeners from the president of Family Life, David Robbins. This is a pretty important week for us here at Family Life. This Thursday is the last day of 2020, and it's the last day to take advantage of our Matching Gift Challenge.

We are still trusting the Lord to meet our match goal. So if you want to make sure Family Life Today stays on air in your area, we need your support today. Please take time now to either pick up your phone or go online to familylifetoday.com and make your donation to keep Family Life Today on the air. We are so grateful for those of you who have already given, and we know without your generous support, none of this would be possible. This is crunch time. We need more partners. We need stakeholders like you who want to keep Family Life Today on air, broadcasting on this local station, and advancing into new digital platforms across the nation.

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That's right. Today is the perfect day for you to make a year-end donation. You can do it easily online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. In addition to your donation being matched dollar for dollar and you helping us take advantage of this matching gift opportunity, we'll also send you a couple of thank you gifts, a copy of my book Love Like You Mean It, which is all about what real love looks like in a marriage relationship, and a flash drive that includes more than 100 of the best Family Life Today programs from the last 28 years. We'll send you both of those thank you gifts when you donate today online at familylifetoday.com or by calling 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And please pray for us this week that we will have the necessary funds come in and we'll be able to take advantage of the matching gift that has been provided for us. Now, let me introduce our guest who is joining us on Family Life Today, Dean and Sarah. Dean, welcome. It's great. Thank you. It's great to be here. Dean is a pastor in Tallahassee, Florida, pastor at City Church, and the author of a book with that provocative title, The Unsaved Christian.

I like that title. So, we should start off. Can you explain exactly what you mean by an unsaved Christian?

Well, it is great to be with you. This book is about what I believe is the largest mission field in America, and it is a group of people. They're everywhere. They're in every church.

They're oftentimes in every family, in every neighborhood, in every job place, sports team. There are people that if you ask them if they are a Christian, they would say yes, and their reason for being so actually has nothing to do with Jesus. It is because they aren't atheists. They aren't Muslim or Jewish. They're not agnostics. Therefore, they are Christians. In fact, if they were going to fill out a survey that asked you to indicate your religion, in a moment, they would check Christian without even thinking twice about it. Because, again, they're not atheists, they're not Jewish, they're not Muslim, so that means they're Christians. And if you ask them what makes you a Christian, the reasons they would give you are that they believe in God, that they are good people, and that'd be about it. Notice in that answer, they said nothing about Jesus. But in the Scriptures, there's no such thing as a saving faith apart from faith in Jesus Christ and his gospel. So that's why I call them unsaved Christians. Well, and there were more of them ten years ago than there are today, because more and more people are saying, I'm not going to be a hypocrite about this, I'm a nun, so no religious affiliation. But we still have a wide swath of people, and I'd even take it, Dean, I'd take it one step beyond what you described, because I think probably for three or four years, I was an unsaved Christian.

This is a little bit of my story. When I was in high school, I grew up going to a mainline church, pretty faithful, not because of God, but because of the choir, and because that's what good kids did, so I went and sang in the choir and was a good kid. I mean, good in terms of how I was viewed in the community. I started going to Young Life when I was in high school, and that's where I first heard the gospel. And I was attracted to what I was hearing. I was attracted to Jesus, I was attracted to the people I was hanging out with, we were having fun, we were singing cool songs, the girls were cute.

I mean, it was a great environment to be in. And I think somewhere along the line, I thought to myself, yeah, I think I believe this. I think there's a God, and this is the tribe I want to be affiliated with. So I got to college, and a guy I knew from high school came up and said, hey, you were in Young Life in high school. I said, yeah. He said, we've got a group here. We're leaders, like we go into high schools and we lead clubs, Young Life clubs, for high school students. I thought, well, that'd be fun to be a leader, right?

So he says, come to the group. So I went to the group, and for three years I was a Young Life leader going into high schools, and I was doing the talks, I was talking to people, giving the messages about Jesus, I was pointing people to their need for Christ. If you'd have come to me during that time, I'd have said, well, yeah, I'm a Young Life leader. Of course, I'm a Christian.

Yeah, kind of look what I do. I remember one night I went to a, Marianne and I had started dating, and she wanted to go to see James Robison, who was doing a crusade in our city. And at the end of that night, he was given the invitation, and I thought, this is a guy who's given an invitation to make saved people really doubt whether they're really saved.

It was one of these strong, you need to come forward, and after the first wave, he came back with a second wave, and then a third wave, you need to come forward. And I remember sitting there thinking, I'm not going forward, but God, we're good, right? I mean, do I need to pray this again? Did I really ever pray it?

But we're good, right? And that was kind of where I left it. And then we were at another evangelistic event. Somebody said, you need to write down the date that you prayed this prayer. And I thought, I think I prayed this before, but I didn't write a date down, so I'll write a date down, all of this stuff. So fast forward to a Bible study that I'm in.

This is the summer after my junior year in college. And we're going to this Bible study, and a guy comes up to me at the end of the Bible study, he says, could I get together with you this week? I've got some questions I'd like to ask you. And my thought was, I wonder what he needs me to explain to him.

Now, that should have been a little tip off that pride is still a huge issue in my life, right? But the questions he had were not questions about my interpretation of Scripture. We sat down, he said, I don't think you get it.

I said, what do you mean? And this is interesting, because this ties to what you write about in your book, Dean. He opened to Romans 3, and he said, I want you to read starting there at verse 9. There's none righteous, no, not one.

Nobody seeks after God. It's this whole description of depravity. And he said, that's about you.

And I was like, wait, what are you saying? He said, no, it's about me too, but it's about you. He said, I don't think you understand sin the way the Bible describes sin. Well, from this perspective, dead on, I'd seen sin as a few bad habits I had, mostly good guy with a few bad habits. If Jesus had to die for those habits, I don't understand how a lot of that works, but that's God's business, you know. So I'm a mostly good guy with a few bad habits that I guess Jesus had to do something for, but I'm kind of, I'm on the team because I decided to be on the team, and maybe I can bring some value to this whole Christian thing that's going on. Well, this guy in one afternoon sits down and lays up an understanding of sin and then says, and God is the one who intervenes.

God's the one. I walked out of that place, and I was weak in the knees. I was going to ask, how did you respond?

And at that moment, I was just kind of dumbfounded and didn't know what to do. But I walked out, and I thought, okay, God, is what he said for real? I was going to go to the Bible. He was sharing things about the sovereignty of God and about the doctrine of election.

I'm going, I don't know about all of this. In fact, I was going to go to the Bible and start in Genesis and show, no, it's all about free will. I know what you do. And over time, so I started reading the Bible, the Holy Spirit working on my heart. That's where I look back and go, three years after being a young life leader, I think God finally saved me. You've heard stories like that right and left, right? Oh, you basically just told my story.

I was going to say, Dean, what is your story? I was raised mainline Protestant. And that's not to say there aren't some remnant great mainline Protestant churches out there.

There certainly are. But sadly, there are many who have gone the way of what I just call gospel-less preaching. It was a nice church with nice people and a great family atmosphere. Unless we were sick or out of town, we were there every Sunday. And again, if you'd asked me if I was a Christian, I would have told you, yes, of course, I'd have been offended if you suggested otherwise. We prayed before dinner. I knew a few Bible stories. I could tell you a few of the Ten Commandments. The Lord's Prayer? You could recite the Lord's Prayer. I could definitely recite the Lord's Prayer and the doxology. And I probably could even do some of the Apostles' Creed because we read it every single week. But I never had anyone actually tell me that I was a sinner who needed to be saved, that only Jesus actually was the one who could provide that. Do I believe in Jesus?

I believe he was born a manger in Bethlehem and was a good teacher. I mean, I knew that as a historical event. But the significance of that for me and for others, it just didn't mean very much. So I went to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes retreat when I was 13 years old. And he mentioned the pretty girls at Young Life.

One of the reasons I went as a middle schooler was because some of the pretty girls invited me to go. And I was an athlete. And I was, of course, a Christian because, again, I'm not an atheist and I'm not Jewish.

Therefore, I'm a Christian. And I went to this retreat. And the pastor of the retreat during the assembly time gave a classic Gospel presentation. And he read from Matthew chapter 7, verses 21 through 23, which really is the base scripture for the entire book, where Jesus says, On that day, the day of judgment, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't I prophesy in your name, perform miracles in your name, cast out demons in your name, and I will tell them, Away from me, you evildoers, I never knew you. So he read that text and said, Some of you are the people he's talking about in this passage. And he gave like a come-forward invitation.

And I went forward. I'd never seen one of those in my entire life. And I joke I'm the only person to ever come to faith in Christ and be angry about it. Now, don't get me wrong, I had joy. But I seriously was thinking how I've been in church my entire life and no one has ever told me this before. And I had one of the coaches kneel down with me and taught me what it meant to trust in Jesus, repent of my sins, have faith in his Gospel. And the thing about that text that's so important is a lot of people want to just take the I never knew you part in Matthew chapter 7 and then preach a sermon on how it's about a relationship with Jesus, not a religion. Is that true?

Of course it's true. But that's not the main primary purpose of that part of the text. What's happening in that text is here are people appealing to themselves and to their actions for their righteousness. They're appealing to their own good deeds for why they should be in heaven and be with God. And they're not atheists. These are religious leaders he's talking about.

Again, they've performed miracles in his name, cast out demons in his name. So what Jesus is saying is your appeal must be to me, not to yourselves. And that's what cultural Christians miss. It's about cultural Christianity.

What cultural Christians miss is they admire Jesus and like Jesus and have a vague belief in God, but they appeal to themselves in their own goodness, not actually to the work of Christ on their behalf. Yeah, and when you were coming out of seminary, you start the book with that conversation with your buddy Matt, who really says, well, tell that story about how you're going to end up in an area where you're going to see a lot of this. Well, I have what I call missional insecurity. Missional insecurity is like it's spring break when all your friends are going to work in an orphanage in a third world country and you're going to the beach and you sort of feel bad about it. My buddy, who's my seminary next door neighbor, was going to Northern California to be part of a church planting group, moving his family across the country. I really admired that.

It's a very secularized area, such a need for churches. And here I'm going back to my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida, that is about 15 miles from the Georgia line and less than an hour from Alabama. So again, so basically I'm going to the beach for spring break and he's going to the orphanage in the third world country. That's how I felt. So I felt like I was really kind of selling out, taking the easy road. And I just, you know, when you're insecure about certain things, you try to say something spiritual to sound better. So we're in the parking lot and I'm just kind of saying, may the Lord be with you and Godspeed.

I don't know what Godspeed means, but I said that. And he just, I said, I so admire where you're going and what you're doing. And he cut me off. He's like, oh, stop it. And I was like, what? He said, where you're going is probably more difficult than where I'm going.

I said, what in the world are you talking about? I don't want to debate which place is more difficult because the enemy's everywhere, so everywhere is difficult. But his reason was, he said, where I'm going in Northern California, again, these are his words, there's no confusion over who's a Christian and who's not. Either you are believing in the gospel and following Jesus or you're not.

Where you're going, everyone thinks they're fine. Like there's so much confusion. There's no clear starting point for a gospel conversation. Where I'm going in California, the starting point is unbelief or disinterest. Where you're going, you have to find a starting point. It's almost as if someone has to get lost in order for them to get saved. And at that moment, I almost had this, it really was kind of a moment in the parking lot. And I don't think I've had very many of those in my life, but I had this moment where I said, wow, like there's ministry to be done in the Bible belt and in cultural Christianity.

But since then, I've realized it extends everywhere. Because again, most of your neighbors, almost with the exception of maybe a few small regions of the country, most of your neighbors and coworkers are not atheists. They would claim to believe in God. But is it the God of the Bible? Is it the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

Probably not. It's usually a very vague and generic God. But we worship a God who has made himself known. Like he's revealed himself to us through the scriptures. He's not vague.

He's not generic. He has told us who he is. And we have to make sure that we help people understand that. So I'm passionate about this kind of ministry. It's often easier for us to have evangelistic conversations, gospel conversations, with people who, as you said, are clear-cut, the Northern California people who would say, yeah, I'm not a Christian. And they're open to having the conversation, but the lines are clear. You sit down with somebody to have a gospel conversation and they're regular churchgoers. It's like they've tuned you out because they figure they already know what you're talking about. Yeah, the difference that cultural Christians see between themselves and someone who actually is following Jesus is they just think you're more into it. But they don't think you're different than them. They just think maybe that you're just really religious, they might say.

Like, oh, they're just really into their religion. And that makes it really complicated when they don't see an actual distinction. We're not saying look at me. We're not saying that we're the example of what it means to be a Christian. And also we're not the judge of who's a Christian and who's not. I want to make that clear. That's not our job. But the Bible is. The Bible makes clear what is a Christian and what is not and what saving faith looks like.

And I think one of the most important things about understanding cultural Christianity and what I call unsaved Christians is a mistake we've made is that we see it as a discipleship issue where they just need to get more serious about following Jesus, just kind of repent of their sins. Like, just let's go, man. Let's lock in. Let's get serious about this. Don't be casual.

Don't be lukewarm. And I argue that's actually a false understanding. This is not a discipleship issue. It's an evangelism issue because I believe cultural Christianity is a different religion altogether.

And what makes it complicated is there's no category for it. When you go check that box that asked to indicate your religion, it doesn't say cultural Christian. It says nothing atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian. And again, there are none of those other things and they have a generic belief in God.

And they went to church with Nana when they were five. So you check Christian. And that's not a Bible Belt thing. That's an everywhere thing. In fact, if there was that box, can you imagine an unsaved Christian or cultural Christian, they would be offended.

Definitely. They'd be like, there's no way that even remotely describes me. So help me if I'm sitting down with somebody talking to them. How could I identify that they're an unsaved Christian? Well, it's definitely offensive. Yeah, it's definitely offensive for someone to suggest that you might not be a Christian when you've claimed to be one your entire life.

And again, I don't want to be a broken record, but again, we don't believe that we are the judges on who is and who's not, but the scriptures are. So I think what's really important to do is to ask good questions and not gotcha, back you up against the wall questions. We don't want to do that either. We want to be people of peace, right? But peace is not the opposite of confrontation and the opposite of difficult conversations. So what I try to do is ask, this is something I'm oversimplifying it, but the gateway in is simple. It's the rest of it that can be complicated. So I will just say, hey, I noticed that on your Facebook wall or on your social media account, sometimes you'll kind of post things that sound, you know, pretty religious, kind of use one of their words, you know, religious.

And if we talk about football, we talk about politics, you know, we talk about work and our kids, I realize like we've never actually like had to talk about our faith. Tell me about this. I assume based on what you say and what you've posted. Do you say that? I assume that you're a Christian.

Yeah, I will. Yeah. By what you say. And again, they're not actually saying like really Christian things that we would say are Orthodox that we would align with. They're more just very vague, almost new age, but it has that faith element in it. Stuff like we're praying for you. Things like that. Thoughts and prayers.

Stuff like God bless America. Yes. Okay. Things like that when God, you know, closes the door, opens a window, you know, there's those type of things. Godspeed. Godspeed. I'm still looking for that definition. That's the next book. What is Godspeed?

Searching across America for answers. And traveling mercies, you know, things like that. And so then I'll say, so what, so I've realized we've never talked about that. I'll even apologize. Like I'm just like, we talked about everything else. We never talked about faith before. Like, I'm sorry I've never brought that up before. It seems like it's important to you based on what you post. So tell me about your story.

Frozen. Tell me how, and I'm not trying to catch them. I'm not trying to, I just want to know. And so if you ask a cultural Christian about Jesus, about their faith, they're going to say things like, oh, well, it's really important to me.

I'm a spiritual person. They're not going to talk about Christ. They're truly not. Just those questions. You'll be shocked by the answers you're given when they actually do start talking. It's going to sound like some sort of new age confusion of like Oprah meets sort of Jesus meets, it really is.

And then that gives you this big open door for a conversation. And another thing that I've learned that's critical is those kinds of conversations, for someone to understand what Christianity is, they often need to understand what it's not. That's very trendy to say, to say let's not be known for what we're against. Let's be known what we're for. And I'm like, no, it's both.

We're just being about both those things. So I'll tell them like, this is what it's not. This is not what Christianity is in terms of being a good person. I've been to church before. And one of the gateways to seeing their eyes open is to actually invite them to gospel preaching churches. Because they're not hostile towards churches.

They haven't been in a long time. They're indifferent towards it. So you invite them to a church that's actually going to preach the gospel. I'm not talking about denominationally.

I'm not talking about a certain theological tribe. I mean, they're just clear on who Jesus is and what he's done and our need for him. You'll see their eyes open and go, what's going on here?

Like I've never heard anything like this before. And they really haven't, even though they live in the same exact town as you. They've been in church before, they went to vacation, Bible schools, kids. They've only seen Christianity presented as God kind of as a moral therapist in the sky that has no accountability, no real dealing with the affairs of your life unless things go really poorly and you need to join Carrie Underwood and ask Jesus to take the wheel or something like that. That's like really, that's really the only kind of time that he matters. And we have to realize that the God and the Jesus they've heard about their entire lives is not the God and Jesus of the Bible.

It's an American vague imaginary friend kind of creation. So they actually go to a church where they hear it. And I'm sure you guys in your church have seen this over and over again, where it's not the atheist walking in the door, even though we hope they come and that sometimes they do come, but it's a person that maybe wanted enough of Jesus and I'm putting air quotes in the air with Jesus, enough of Jesus to be associated with, but not enough to be inconvenienced. And when they actually hear someone talk about what is the gospel, they've never heard it before. Well, this was my story a little bit too, although I didn't grow up going to church. Maybe I was a creaster.

I'd go at Christmas, sometimes Easter, but maybe once a year. So my sister and I got a Bible and we started reading. I've never read the Bible, had never heard the Bible, even when I was in church. We were reading the gospels and I said to her, I don't get it. How do we get to heaven?

How do we know Jesus? So we made a pact with one another. Whoever found out first would tell the other. So she was older. She came back home.

That is awesome. Yeah, and she was bulimic. She was anorexic.

We had both had sexual abuse in our past. And so she came home this one time after living out of state and she looked great. And I thought something's different about her. And she said, Ann, I found the answer for us of how to get to heaven. And she shared the entire gospel of sin, of repentance, of what the cross meant, the blood of Jesus. And I had surrendered my life to Jesus, but I was mad the same as you, Dean. I had never heard the gospel in church.

And it's interesting. So I started going to a church that preached the gospel, that I heard the gospel, that I understood it, and then went to college, got involved in a church there and also with CREW, Campus Crusade for Christ. But Dave and I got married back in our hometown and so we had a conversation with this pastor before we got married.

Oh, I'll never forget. We sit down and, you know, going through the premarital part and he just sort of says, what are you going to do with your life? And we're like, we're going on staff with CREW. We're going to share the gospel. We're really excited. We're evangelists and we want to lead people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

I'll never forget this. He's probably 60. Yeah, probably. And also we were talking about the word of God in scripture and how it comes alive and how it's changed our lives. I mean, we're 22, 19, on fire, couldn't be more excited to change the world with the gospel. And he looks at us and he goes, yeah, you won't believe that in a few years. We said, what?

He goes, yeah, give yourself five, 10 years. You won't believe half the stuff in the Bible. You won't believe what you believe right now.

You're going to grow up and realize most of that's not true. He's a pastor of this church. Then we pointed back to the scriptures and he said, you can't take it literally. And Dave and I was on fire.

Like, what is happening here? You're not marrying us. And he did marry us and I'm wondering if it counts.

Way to redo this. That truly is, again, I want to be sensitive. There are some remnants out there, but that is mainline Christianity today. And it fuels cultural Christianity because a Christianity that means nothing, demands nothing, requires nothing, and really isn't dependent on Jesus. Or I would even argue that for a lot of mainline churches, the cross and resurrection could have never happened and it wouldn't change their faith.

So I'm dependent on that. I'm wondering if we're talking to people who are going, I wonder if I'm a cultural Christian. If you're talking to somebody who is wondering if they're a cultural Christian, how do you have that conversation? What would you say to the person listening? I would first ask them what they believe. What do you really believe about Jesus? Like, who is he?

I think that's where we're asked to go first. And I don't even mean this deep theological conversation, even though just a question of who is Jesus actually is a deep theological conversation, whether we realize it or not. You know, a seven-year-old's having a deep theological conversation when they talk about who is Jesus. Even the word believe is it an intellectual, just I believe knowing intellectually that he said he was Jesus, or he said he was God, or is it a belief that spurs you on to movement?

Sure. And that first movement is that I need him, right? That I need him for my salvation, not to be my buddy, but for my salvation. I was at a campus ministry one time and the gospel presentation was that Jesus wants to be your friend. And I'm like, well, there are definitely implications that we have Jesus as a friend, for sure.

But that is nowhere near even remotely kind of a gospel presentation. Actually, the Bible says that we were God's enemies before. This is like Romans, like Romans five. We were enemies, but then we were reconciled.

We're not buddies. And again, it's a small view of God. Remember, cultural Christians have a really small view of God. So in the conversation, I want them to understand that sin is not a random mistake. Like it's not just, oh, God knows my heart. I'm sincere. None of us are perfect.

All the things we like to say. I think what's been lost in our country in general, even with some evangelicals, is that our sin first and foremost is against God. Like our sin is against God. Like the holy God, the creator of the universe. And if that is true, then I need to ask what are the consequences of that?

Because if God is any God at all, he must not let sin go unpunished. So what does that mean for you? And I like to say that are the things that we do where we talk about being a good person, having more good deeds than bad deeds, that really those kinds of things that have no basis for that belief, that's something to realize is that many cultural Christians and the things they believe, there's no basis for it. Like we actually have a basis and it's the word of God, but these people claim to be okay with the Bible. They're not opposed to it necessarily. So, okay, the faith that you claim to have, is it consistent with what the Bible says as a saving faith?

So I want to know what they believe and what that belief actually leads to. So somebody real quick that says that their good deeds outweigh their bad, that's like going to Chick-fil-A and getting four count nugget and extra large fry and thinking it all cancels out because you got a Diet Coke. It's just that that's- Hey, wait, wait, wait, that's exactly what I did.

Is that your game plan? I thought it did cancel out. That's what it's like to believe that our good deeds cancel out our bad. It's like, wait, wait, no, God can't let those, no matter how good deeds by American standards you've done, God can't let our sin go unpunished.

Yeah, and I love what you said earlier. If somebody asks you the question, tell me about your faith story, your Christianity, and the first place you go is to you, there's your tip-off that you probably don't have the faith story that the Bible is talking about. If the first place you instinctively go is to what you're doing, what you believe, what it's all about, rather than to Jesus and what he did and accomplished for you, you need to reconsider.

In fact, I'd encourage listeners, go to our website. There's a link on our website to something that's called Two Ways to Live that sets out the difference between someone who's actually walking with Jesus and somebody who's not walking with Jesus. Click on that and look at that and ask yourself the question, which one looks like me?

Which one is me? And then get a copy of Dean and Sarah's book, The Unsaved Christian, and read through these descriptions, Dean, that you've got in your book that help us separate biblical Christianity from cultural Christianity. We've got copies of the book, The Unsaved Christian, available for you online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get a copy. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com.

The book is called The Unsaved Christian, Reaching Cultural Christianity with the Gospel. You can order online at familylifetoday.com, or call 1-800-358-6329 to order. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. Now, as we mentioned back at the beginning of today's program, we've got just a few days left in 2020, and that means a few days left for us to try to take advantage of the matching gift opportunity that has been made available to us here this year. We need to hear from as many Family Life Today listeners as we can in the next few days.

We have not met the matching gift challenge yet. When you make a donation today, your donation will be doubled, up to a total of $2.7 million. In addition to your donation being doubled, we'll also send you a copy of my book, Love Like You Mean It, as a thank you gift, a book about marriage, and we'll send you a flash drive that has more than 100 of the best Family Life Today programs from the last 28 years, programs with Dennis and Barbara Rainey, with Dave and Ann Wilson, with many of the guests we've had on Family Life Today, programs about marriage and about parenting, about relationships. The flash drive and the book are our thank you gift when you donate. And again, please pray for us that this week we'll hear from enough listeners so that we can claim all of the funds from that matching gift fund.

You can donate online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. And thanks in advance for whatever you're able to do to help us out this week. Now, tomorrow we're going to talk more about some of the different ways that cultural Christianity is being lived out in our world. Dean and Sarah will be back with us again tomorrow. Hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team, on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-10 13:53:51 / 2024-01-10 14:09:40 / 16

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