July 7, 2026 • 47 mins
America is at a crossroads: judgment or revival. In this episode, Greg Laurie makes the case that our nation's future depends on a spiritual awakening — and that it starts with everyday Christians choosing to live differently.
Drawing from the Sermon on the Mount, Greg unpacks what Jesus meant when He called His followers "salt and light," and why isolation isn't the answer to a darkening culture. Instead, we're called to infiltrate — to influence the people around us with authenticity, truth, and the gospel.
In this episode:
- Why the breakdown of the family sits at the root of America's crisis
- The two Georges who shaped America (and why one is often forgotten)
- What salt actually did in the ancient world — and how that applies to us
- How AI, deception, and cultural drift echo the warnings of Scripture
- Four practical ways to influence the culture without being compromised by it
- A closing invitation to put your faith in Jesus Christ
If this message encouraged you, share it with a friend who needs hope for our nation.
YouTube timestamps
00:41 The genie and the impossible wish
02:18 America's moral and spiritual crisis
04:16 The Alaska wake-up call prank
05:47 Judgment or revival: two options
07:37 Salt and light in a dark world
09:34 AI and the illusion of progress
11:12 The Titanic and human pride
12:24 Infiltrate, don't isolate
14:24 America's Christian foundation and the two Georges
16:29 Speaking a language people understand
19:44 The gospel as a fragrance
21:47 What it means to be salt
25:31 The rapture and the removal of restraint
27:33 Stimulating spiritual thirst
30:52 The pepper flakes confession
33:34 Light exposes and shows the way
35:23 You alone represent Christ
36:11 Three things America needs
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Life audio. I believe we have two options in front
of us as a nation right now, judgment or revival.
And by revival I mean the spiritual awakening. And if
we don't have another spiritual awakening in America, I believe
that judgment is inevitable. Here. I heard a story about
(00:35):
a woman that was walking on the beach in southern
California and she looks and sees a bottle embedded in
the sand. She reaches out, picks it up. Wife says
stand off, and a genie appears. True story, and the
genie says, oh, master ible, grant you one wish. She says, wait,
one wish? What up into three wishes? The genie said,
(00:56):
times are hard, we had to cut back one wish.
She thinks about it for a moment, says wow, and
then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a
map of the Middle East and says, Genie, I want
to see peace in the Middle East. They're always fighting there,
all of this conflict. Yes, peace in the Middle East.
Since she thought about it for a moment, thought wait,
(01:17):
if I only get one wish, she said, let me
amend that, Genie. I want peace in all of the world.
Global peace. That is my one wish. And Genie looks
at the map says, are you crazy? This is unreasonable.
Come up with something else. She thinks about it for
a moment, she goes, I've got it. I have never
(01:39):
found the right man man. I have searched for the
right guy and I can't find him. But this man
has to be special. He has to be considerate and fun,
and he needs to enjoy cooking, and he needs to
help with the housekeeping. And he needs to spend time
with my family instead of sitting around watching sports all
day long. And the woman continues, he needs to smother
(02:02):
me with love and affection him for the rest of
my life. That's a genie. My wish is for a
good man. A genie lets out of science says, let
me see that map again. You know, some things just
don't seem possible, do they. But listen, the Bible says,
with God, nothing is impossible. So I want to talk
(02:23):
a little bit with you about our country. I believe
it's the greatest nation on the face of the earth,
the United States of America. But there is an evil
encroaching into our society and culture in America like never before.
Socialism and outright communism are permeating our nation right now.
(02:47):
There are people who want to undermine and destroy this
great country. In many ways. Our nation is in a
state of moral and spiritual crisis. At home, the family
is under increasing attack. The bottom line is the breakdown
of the family. Is that the root of almost all
(03:07):
of our societal problems we see today. It's been said
that a family can survive without a nation, but a
nation cannot survive without the family. A man and a woman,
a mother and a father, married in a faithful relationship
that is God's order. Then when children come, those children
(03:30):
are raised in this intactome, in a loving environment, and
even an environment a faith where they go to church
together on Sunday, where they read the Bible together, where
they pray together. Remember that old saying, the family that
prays together stays together. Oh, people left at that Now,
I don't know if they're laughing anymore. Because our culture,
(03:52):
our nation is unraveling, because we have lost well it's
sometimes called the nuclear family, this foundation of our country,
and we tamper with God's order to our own peril.
So we see the repercussions of that played out in
our nation. We're seeing that we have sown the wind,
(04:14):
and we have reaped the whirlwind. As the Bible says, America,
this is your wake up call. Speaking of wake up calls,
I was back in Alaska years ago with my friend
Richie Furay. Richie is a founding member of the legendary
rock band Buffalo Springfield. He's a very strong Christian. He
(04:34):
was a pastor for many years. So anyway, Richie and
I are in Alaska and he's singing and I'm speaking,
and then we both had to fly home. Richie lives
in Colorado, I live in California, so we had to
get up in the morning and go our separate ways.
And so I decided to do a fake wake up
call for Richie. So I called up the front desk
(04:56):
and I said, Hi, I need a wake up call
for this room number. And I gave them the room
number of Richie, not even my room number that I'm
calling from. I give another room number call this room
at five o'clock for a wake up call, and then
if they don't respond, I want you to call him
back again at five point thirty. Okay. So I caught
(05:16):
my flight, left got home, and then a day later
Richie calls me and says, do you know what happened
to me and Alaska? I said no. He goes, well,
I got a call at five in the morning. I
knew it was probably a wake up call that you
set up, and so I ignored it, he says. So
I went back to sleep, and all of a sudden,
some guy from the hotel is in my room shaking
(05:39):
me to wake me up out of bed, saying, sir,
you're gonna miss your flight. I said, wow, I didn't
planet that way, but it worked up pretty well. Talk
about a wake up call. Our wake up call in
America is saying it's time to turn back to God.
I believe we have two options in front of us
as a nation right now, judgment or revival. And by
(06:01):
revival I mean the spiritual awakening. And if we don't
have another spiritual awakening like the last one called the
Jesus Revolution in America, I believe that judgment is inevitable. Now. Look,
judgment is coming to the whole world. It's coming to
every nation in the world, including the United States, at
(06:22):
some point, and it may come sooner than we think.
But let's pray for a spiritual awakening. There was a
man named Peter Marshall. He was a chaplain to the
US Senate, and he once made this statement, and I quote,
the choice before us is playing Christ or chaos, conviction
or compromise, discipline or disintegration. End quote. Well said. And
(06:47):
I want to talk to you today about what I
hope will happen in America, a spiritual awakening, so that
gives me hope for the future of our nation. Yes,
I acknowledge things are dark right now, and our country
Wolk ideology seems to be spreading through everything. We see
it in our movies, we see it in our classroom,
(07:10):
we see it in our politics, we see it pretty
much everywhere. Yes, things are dark. But let me tell
you why I have a genuine reason for hope. It's
by returning to God and by returning to the message
that He has given us. We can all do that
as a nation, and we can do that individually. So
(07:31):
let's think for a few moments about the Sermon on
the Mount. I love that that's where Jesus spoke to
his discipleship. It's a funny thing. People envision Jesus as
speaking to a multitude, but the fact is a multitude
gathered there on the Mount of Beatitudes, as we call it.
And then we read that Jesus called his disciples to
(07:53):
himself and spoke to them. So the Sermon on the
Mount was not given to the multitude as much as
it was given to his own followers. To bring this up,
because sometimes people say, all our religion I need is
found on the Sermon on the Mouth. That's what I
live by. Well, number one, I doubt you live by
the Sermon on the Mouth. I would take it a
step further and say, I doubt you've even read the
(08:16):
Sermon on the Mouth. The Sermon on the Mount, as
we call it, are the words of Jesus to his
own people. These words are for Christians only, And if
we listen and obey what Jesus says to us on
the Sermon on the Mount, it can first change us
and then change our nation as well. Let me read
(08:36):
to you what the Lord says. He says, you are
the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses
its flavor, how shall it be seasoned. It's in good
for nothing but to be thrown out and trembled at
their foot by men. You are the light of the world,
a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
Nor did they light a lamp and put it under
(08:56):
a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light
to all who are in the house. So let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your
good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Salt and light.
Why did Jesus pick these two word pictures? Because the
world is dark and the world is corrupt. So the
(09:18):
world needs salt because it is corrupt, and it needs
light because it's dark. The biblical world on our culture
is very simple. It's dark and it's getting darker. Like
many people before I was a Christian, I believe that
man was basically good and we just occasionally did bad things.
But then when I began to read the Bible, I
(09:39):
read a different message. The Bible teaches that man is
basically bad. In fact, he's bad to the bone. He's
a sinner and he sins because he is a sinner.
That's our nature. But God can intervene and he can
change things. But look at the way our culture is
(09:59):
going right now as an example. Look at scientific knowledge,
medical knowledge, logical knowledge. But we can't change our nature.
We can't change our bend toward evil. Why because this
world is a very dark place and need of some light,
and even a little light would help. Natural We come
(10:21):
in as Christians, acting as agents of both salt and light.
But sadly, this world is going to get worse before
it gets better. The Bible says in the end times,
and I believe we're in the end times. I believe
we're in the last days. I believe Christ could come
at any time. And speaking of the last days, the
apostle Paul writes, and two Timothy three evil men and
(10:45):
impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Let's talk about AI, or artificial intelligence, and look at
some of the challenges it poses. You know, we've never
been more capable and yet never more dangerous to ourselves.
We have medical break throughs because of AI that would
(11:08):
seem miraculous to previous generations. Yet the same technology that
can translate the Bible into a thousand languages can also
flood the Internet with one thousand lines. The same intelligence
that can write a symphony can also design a bio weapon,
and this deception can run deeper than many people realized.
(11:29):
Did you know that over half of all Internet activity
is now generated not by people but by bots, fake accounts,
artificial voices, artificial videos, armies of them, in many cases
deployed by foreign governments specifically built to so discord and
to spread hatred. They don't even have to fire a
(11:52):
single bullet. For some AI is even taking the place
of God himself. Basically, man has built a tool in
his own image, and now he bows before it and
does what it tells him to do. I'm reminded of
the statement of General Omar Bradley, who, in an armistice
speech said, way back in nineteen forty eight, and I quote,
(12:15):
we have grasped the mystery of the atom, and we've
rejected the sermon on the mount. The world has achieved
brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants
and ethical infants end quote. Swap the word atom for
the word algorithm, and he could be describing today. So
(12:35):
instead of getting better, we've gotten worse. Man's discoveries and
accomplishments have simply provided new ways for us to show
ourselves what we really are, sinful and wicked. So modern
man has only been in more ways to corrupt and
destroy himself. As an example, we go from war to
greater war, we go from crime to greater crime because
(12:57):
our heart is dark. The spiral is always downward, it's
never upward. Think back to the nineteenth century as an
example of this. There was a buoyant optimism as who
came to the end of that century and the beginning
of the twentieth century. Author Mark Twain described that time
as the Gilded Age. A new philosophy was emerging as
(13:20):
a new millennium down and man believed he was going
to build literally heaven on earth. It's thought that men
could even best nature, and even best gone through technology.
And in that day it wasn't ai computers or rockets
or anything of that nature. The cutting edge technology of
that day was ship building. So they decided to build
(13:45):
the largest, most luxurious cruise ship the world had ever seen.
It would harness the latest tech, it would be virtually unsinkable.
It launched, and they called it fittingly, that Titanic. Interestingly,
the vice president of White Star Line, who created the Titanic,
said it was unsafe. And by the way he said
(14:07):
that while it was sinking, it was said God himself
could not sink this ship. Well you know the rest
of that story. Someone hearing me say this might say,
that's right, Greg. The world's going to hell in a handbasket,
and there's nothing we can do about it. So let's
just build a Christian city and we'll have Christian stores,
(14:27):
and we'll have Christian cars, and we'll have Christian food.
We'll have Christian dogs and Christian cats. Maybe that's going
too far, but I would disagree if that's the position
you hold, because the point is we don't want to isolate.
We want to infiltrate as Christians in our culture. So
(14:47):
we may try to remove ourselves and our children from
the culture, but the bottom line is the culture will
still find us, and in trying to do this, we
sometimes end up building a Christian subculture. Our objective is
I want to go a whole day without any contact
with anything of the world. Listen, Jesus has not called
(15:09):
us to isolate. Jesus has called us to infiltrate, not
to evade, but to invade. We're meant to impact the
culture without being compromised by it, and I know that's
a tricky balance. Jesus put it this way in John seventeen.
He said to the Father, I'm not asking you to
(15:29):
take them out of the world, but to keep them
safe from the evil one. They are not part of
the world anymore than I am. As you sent me
into the world, I am sending them into the world.
Did you catch that Jesus is sending us into the world.
What are has words to us? And what we call
(15:50):
the Great commission? He says, go into all the world
and preach the Gospel. So Jesus, our commander in chief,
is sending us into the world. This is a battle.
It's a spiritual battle. The Christian life is on a playground.
It's a battleground. And in this battle that we're all
(16:10):
engaged in, we're either advancing or retreating. We're either gaining
ground or we're losing ground. So as believers, we need
to realize that we are behind enemy lines. So I
was watching a World War two film a while ago,
and there's a scene where the commanding officer tells that
paratroopers of Easy Company who are dropped behind enemy lines.
(16:34):
A panzer division is about to cut the road south.
Looks like you guys are going to be surrounded. And
the lieutenant in charge of easy companies says, we're paratroopers, Lieutenant,
We're supposed to be surrounded. And you know what that's
true of the Church. We're paratroopers. We're supposed to be surrounded.
(16:55):
We've been dropped in by God himself behind enemy lines,
and I know it feels that way. Sometimes you look
around and all you see is the enemy at work,
wreaking havoc in the lives of countless people. So the
question arises, how can we impact our culture and make
a difference. Coming back to what I said earlier, we
(17:16):
must not isolate, we must infiltrate. We must influence people.
You know, there's a whole category of people now who
describe themselves its influencers. Maybe you're an influencer. Maybe you
have a lot of people that follow you on your
social media platform. But here's the bottom line. If you
have a million followers, or if you have ten followers
(17:39):
or no followers, you're still an influencer in a way,
meaning that you influence people around you as a follower
of Jesus by what you say and do. But the
bottom line is every one of us has a sphere
of influence. We all have our platform, we all have
our pulpits, so to speak, So use it and influence
(18:02):
and permeate and infiltrate and affect other people as a
follower of Jesus. Now others go in the opposite direction.
They'll embrace everything culture offers without reservation. But that, of course,
is a huge mistake. Much of our popular thought today
runs contrary to scripture, and our country is going through
(18:23):
a massive cultural shift right now, so far from the
original template that our founding fathers laid. America was clearly
built on a Judeo Christian foundation, and our founding fathers,
with a couple of exceptions, were believers in Jesus Christ.
(18:44):
Take George Washington, our first president, who made this statement,
and I quote, to the distinguished character of patriot, it
should be our highest glory to also add the more
distinguished character of Christian end quote. But someone say, oh no,
it's not true. America was not founded on Christian principles.
It's not true. John Adams, our second president, made this statement, quote,
(19:09):
the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other
See here's the thing that a lot of people don't
know about American history. There's more than one George and
Our story. There's George Washington, who led the Continental armies
(19:30):
in victory against the most powerful finding force in the
face of the earth at that time, that of the
United Kingdom, and of course then he became our first president.
But what we don't realize is the other George and
Our Story was named George Whitfield. George Whitfield came from
England and came to the colonies and preached the Gospel.
(19:53):
And by the time Whitfield was done, eighty percent of
the colonists had heard him speak in person, and thousands
and thousands of them came to faith. There was a revival.
It was the first great awakening in America. So that
became the soil that our founding fathers like George Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others put the
(20:17):
seed in. So it was built on a moral foundation,
and specifically it was built on a biblical foundation, and
that's what makes America unique. So our culture is shifting,
Our culture is drifting. It's our job as Christians to
point people back to Christ or point people to Christ
(20:41):
for the first time. How do we do this. Number one,
we must stand for the truth, whether it's popular or not.
Oh listen, this is a non negotiable. There's no wavering here.
We as Christians stand on what the Bible says on
every topic. The Bible says, let God be true and
every man a liar. And by the way, you don't
(21:03):
get to pick and choose the parts of the Bible
you like or don't like. Speaking of founding Fathers, Thomas
Jefferson had his own version of the Bible. Jefferson went
out and apparently cut out all the portions of the
Bible that dealt with miracles. He just saw Jesus as
a moral and philosophical leader. Well, you can't do that.
(21:24):
You can't edit the Bible. You take what the Bible
says on every topic. So we must base what we
do on what the scripture says. Number two, we must
use a language that people understand. You know, I think
sometimes as believers we get frustrated because as we talk
to people about our faith, they don't seem like they're listening. Well,
(21:45):
maybe the reason is we're speaking in a different language.
For instance, we'll go to a non believer and will say,
excuse me, uncircumcised philistine. Let me ask you a question,
are you saved? Are you washed in the blood? And
are you part of the body? And then we don't
understand whether they don't even respond to us. Well, think
about what you just said. That makes no sense. You
(22:06):
just ask them if they're washed in blood and part
of somebody. They don't know what you're talking about. You
might say, well, Greg, are you suggesting I don't use
biblical terminology. No, what I'm suggesting is you don't assume
the person you're speaking to knows biblical terminology. You know,
I've been preaching the Gospel for over fifty years, and
(22:28):
I can tell you as I preach publicly and even
talk to people privately, people are more illiterate biblically today
and they've ever been. They don't know anything about anything.
So we cannot assume that our listener understands what we
mean when we use terms like saved, regenerated, the need
(22:50):
to repent, etc. We need to break down and explain
everything to everyone. Paul put it this way in First
Corinthians nine. He said, I try to find common ground
with everyone so I might bring them to Christ. I
do all of this to spread the good news. Another
translation puts that same thought of Paul this way, I
(23:13):
have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in
order to reach a wide range of people, the religious,
the non religious, the meticulous moralists, the loose living immoralists,
the defeated, the demoralized. Whoever, perfectly said. When Jesus spoke
to Nicodemus in John chapter three, he would be described
(23:36):
as the meticulous moralist. This was a man that tried
to live by the rules, that tried to live a
good life, very religious. But the problem is Nicodemus, the
deeply religious man, did not have a relationship with God.
But then you go from John three to John four,
you come to the woman at the well. She had
(23:57):
been married in divorse five times and was living with
some dude at the moment when Jesus approached her. She
would be the loose living in moralists. But notice how
Christ engaged her and she ultimately became a believer on
that day. When Paul spoke to the people in Act
seventeen on marsh Hill, those would have been the non religious,
(24:19):
the secular people. When Simon Peter spoke to the people
in Pentecost, those would have been religious people, and in
every one of those situations, they adapted to their audience
without compromising the content. Number three, we need to bring
people the message of the gospel. Now, look, when we
(24:40):
share the gospel with people, some are going to respond
favorably and come to faith and believe shockingly. So you'll
just talk to them a little bit and they'll believe
right there on the spot. And then others will be
very resistant. It just depends on the person. The apostle,
Paul says, and Second Corinthians too. Now, wherever we go,
(25:01):
he uses us to tell others about the Lord and
to spread the good news. Like a sweet perfume. Our
lives are like a fragrance presented by Christ to God.
And this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are
being saved by those who are perishing. Now think about
it this way. You know, some people wear way too
(25:22):
much perfume or cologne. By the way, if you're a
cologne where less is more. Now, I don't really wear
cologne myself, and the reason is I'm allergic to it.
I even have an allergic reaction to those little cards
that they put in magazines that are scented with Colonne,
or if I'm walking to a department store and they say,
(25:44):
can I give you a little of our COLOGNEA no, no,
keep it away from me. So my experience goes back
to high school, where I used to wear something called
Jade East, and also there was another one called Hi Karate.
Do you remember those? You have to have lived a
long time ago, but I do think they sell them still.
But here's my point. Some people will like the smell
(26:06):
of a certain colonna perfume and others will not. The
same is true with the Gospel. You could compare it
to garlic. Garlic is amazing when it's cooking. Garlic is
amazing on food. It's not so amazing on your breath.
So here's my point. We go to some people with
the gospel, they love the aroma of it, they love
(26:27):
what it is, they embrace it, they respond to it.
And you go to Weathers with the gospel and they
hate it and they impose you for even bringing the
message to them. But don't worry about that. Your job,
my job, our job together is to bring the Gospel
to people and to live it out before them. Number four.
Before I can effectively tell someone about Jesus. I need
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to personally walk with Jesus. Why because nothing is a
worse witness than a hypocritical Christian. There are some people
that I would actually ask to not preach the Gospel
because they contradicted by the way that they live and
as a result, they undermine it. Listen to this. What
(27:11):
this culture is looking for is authenticity, not perfection. Authenticity.
In other words, we must be before we can effectively
say we need to practice what we preach. So let's
go back to being salt. Jesus said again. Remember you're
the salt of the earth, You're the light of the world.
(27:32):
What does it mean to be salt? Jesus says, if
the salt loses its flavor, it's good for nothing now
quent Beeck. Historically, salt had enormous value in Jesus' day.
The Romans believed that, except for the sun, nothing was
more valuable than salt. Sometimes Roman soldiers were even paid
(27:52):
in salt. That's where we get the phrase, hey, he's
not worth his salt. So let's understand what salt represented
back at this time and what salt actually did, so
we can understand how to play to us. Number one
in the first century, salt preserved. So if you went
on and caught some fish, you had to eat that
(28:13):
fish really quickly because you could not refrigerate it. So
if you could eat it quickly, you would rub salt
in it to preserve it. You would do the same
with other kinds of meat as well. You would take
the meat, cut it into slender strips and soak it
in a salt solution. You know, maybe our modern equivalent
is beef turkey. You know those little strips of beef
(28:34):
that you can buy in the market that costs like
one hundred dollars a bag. That's you know, preserved meat.
So the mean function of salt at that time was
to preserve something. Now, in the same way, we as
Christians are acting as salt and our culture and we're
here to preserve. What does that mean. It means as
(28:54):
believers we stand up for what is true, We speak
out against what is wrong. That is part of our job.
So preaching the gospel is yes, I'll get to that
in a moment, proclaiming the truth to others, but it's
also standing for what is right and true in our culture.
We're preserving I mean, bottom line, the very presence of
(29:17):
a Christian can change a conversation. Have you ever walked
into a room where maybe some people are telling a
dirty joke. In the moment you walk in, the joke
stops and they can smell, hey man, how you doing okay?
And then you walk out and they pick their story
back up. That's not a bad thing. That's a good
thing because that means that you represent Jesus Christ. You
(29:38):
just change the temperature of the room. You know, a
question you can ask yourself is are you a thermistat?
Are you a thermometer. A thermometer tells you the temperature
of a room. The thermisttat affects the temperature of the room.
I don't want to just be a thermometer blending in.
(29:59):
I want to be a thermistat. I want to change
the temperature of the room. I want to change the conversation.
I want to preserve what is good and true, and
I want to speak out against what is evil. So
Christians are the preserving influence in our world today. The
Bible tells us an event is coming when all two
(30:21):
followers of Jesus will be caught up in a moment
in the twinkling of an eye into the presence of
the Lord. This event is sometimes called the rapture. The
word rapture comes from a Greek word reptorus, which is
based on another word harpazzo in the Greek, which means
to be taken by force. So the Lord will come,
(30:44):
for his people will be caught up to meet the
Lord in the air, and then the anti Christ will
be revealed. The Bible also calls him the beast. If
Satan never had a son, this is him, and this
wicked man, the anti Christ, will bring about a time
of deception, and he will be in power during that
(31:06):
time called the Great Tribulation period that will last seven years,
and you will see darkness break out and evil on display.
How is it that can happen because the preserving influence
in the world has been removed, that is the Church,
the Bible says in Second Thessalonians too, the mystery of
(31:27):
lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains
will do so until he is taken out of the way,
and then that lawless one will be revealed according to
the work of Satan, with all power, signs and line wonders,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his
mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. So
(31:48):
bottom line is the preserving force in the world today
is the Church. Just like salt. Once we're removed from
the earth, caught up to meet the Lord in the
airth all help breaks loose with the leadership of the Antichrist.
That's why our presence makes a difference. Jesus said, you
(32:09):
are the salt of the earth. Another thing that salt
does is it stimulates thirst. You know how it goes.
You go to the movies and maybe you order some popcorn,
and you know the law for you three size this.
Here is a really small one that's fifty dollars, here's
a bigger one that's one hundred dollars, and here's a
(32:30):
really gigantic one that you can refill over and over
again for one hundred and two dollars. Oh, they want
you to buy the big one. And then you buy
it and it's maybe over salted, and so you go
back and you buy a soft drink that costs another
seventy five dollars. But the point is, when you eat
something salty, it does stimulate thirst. And I think that
(32:52):
when we're walking with Jesus Christ as we ought to,
we will stimulate a spiritual thirst and other people for God.
Let me illustrate. I was in Israel years ago leading
a tour and I had a tour guide who I
was having constant discussions with. And this guy liked to
argue and disagree, and we went back and forth for
(33:15):
hours and hours as we drove around the Holy Land together.
And I never really made much progress with this tour guide.
And one day we came to the end of our
journey and the driver came to me and said, I've
been listening to your conversations with your tour guide. I said, right,
and he said, and I'm really jealous of your relationship
(33:36):
with God. Now what's interesting about this is the Bible
says that we, as gentile's non Jews, have been grafted
into the promises of Israel, the promises given to Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, and so we are being blessed by
these promises given to God's people. But God says, and
(33:57):
this happens to provoke them to jealousy. So, in a
very technical sense, this Jewish driver was saying to me
that I, as a non Jewish person who is a
believer in Jesus, and I had been grafted into the
promises of God was saying and doing something that made
him jealous for a relationship with God. So he invited
(34:20):
me over to his home, and he gave me and
my wife a wonderful meal. In fact, we filled up
in the first course and didn't know there were four
more courses to come. He had his entire family, maybe
thirty people, gathered together in his front room. Some of
his children were serving in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces,
and he said to me, say to all of my family,
(34:42):
what you are saying to that tour God. So I
was able to share the Gospel with this man's entire family.
So I think because he saw something in us that
was desirable, it created a spiritual thirst in him. The
greatest compliment that can be paid to a Christian is
when a unbeliever says, I want what you have. Why
(35:04):
are you so joyful? Why do you want peace in
the midst of your hardships and difficulties in life? How
do you keep going as you do? I want? Would
you have? Salt stimulates thirst, But first I need to
be thirsty for God. The samas rites is the deer
pants for flowing streams. So my soul pants for you.
(35:27):
Oh God, let me ask you a question. Do you
hunger in thirst for righteousness? Jesus said, if you hunger
in thirst after righteousness, you will be filled. So let
it start with you. But don't be crippled by sin
and be living a compromised life, because that will turn
away to the best of your ability. As I said earlier,
(35:49):
live a godly life, not a perfect life. You're going
to fall short. We all do. Sometimes we even have
to apologize for things that we say and do as Christians.
I remember years ago I was going to get pizza
with a friend and we went to a restaurant and
as I was sitting there, I looked over at a
(36:10):
table next to me and there was a man that
looked very familiar to me, And I said, excuse me,
is your name Paul? And he said, yes it is.
I said, Paul. We went to elementary school together. You know,
some people look the same that they looked when they
were younger, just they're bigger now. But other people changed
so much. Paul looked exactly the same. He goes, yes,
(36:31):
well who are you? I said, well, I'm Greg Lourie. Well,
I didn't look anything like I looked in elementary school.
My hair was blonde and parted on the side. When
I had hair, beautiful blonde hair. By the way, I
had a great wave. Now I just have beach very
sad anyway, But now at this point, as I was
talking to Paul, my hair was parted in the middle
(36:51):
down to my shoulders, and I had a beard, and
so he didn't recognize me. And he said, you know, Greg,
I remember you. You were always getting in trouble in school.
You were always getting sent to the principal's office for
disrupting the class. I said, yeah, that's true. But Paul,
I've changed. He said really. I said, yes, Paul, I've
become a Christian. He said what I said, I'm a
(37:13):
Christian now, Paul, I'm not the old Greg you used
to know. And then I said, and not only that,
I'm a pastor of a church. I think Paul's thinking,
who are they giving churches to these days? Are you
kidding me? And I said no, I'm a different person
and Christ has changed my life. And Paul said, well, Greg,
I can see you seem to be happier and you
seem to be changed that's wonderful. I said, well, it's
(37:37):
nice to talk to you, Paul. Meanwhile, my friend had
to go to the restroom for a moment, and we're
waiting for a pizza and it arrives, and I had
a devious thought. I thought, wouldn't it be really funny too.
You know, I already told you I did a prank
wake up call to my other friend. So now to
this guy, I thought it would be funny if I
took the hot red pepper flakes and poured them over
his side of the pizza. Then when he eats it,
(37:59):
you know it'll be hot, it'll be hilarious. So I
take out the pepper flakes and point them on my
friend's side of the pizza. And I'd forgotten about Paul,
who had been talking to and I hear him say,
haven't changed much, have you? Greg? Busted Geeah. Sometimes we
mess up and we have to apologize. But to the
best of your ability, live a godly life, and don't
(38:22):
put red pepper flakes on your friend's pizza. You see,
we cannot be used by God to stop the corruption
of sin and others if sin has corrupted us. Going
back to the statement of our Lord again, you're the
salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its flavor,
how shall it be seasoned. It's good for nothing but
(38:43):
to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by man. Good
for nothing. So years ago I traveled overseas to Europe
to be at a speaking conference, and Kathy was with me,
and Jonathan was a very little guy, little toddler at
that point, and so you know, when you travel, you
have all of this hardware you take with us. I
(39:05):
had a stroller and I needed a backpack to carry
him as well, and I came across something called a
backpack stroller that seemed brilliant to me, so I bought
it without trying it first. So I get overseas and
I pull it out of the box and I use
it as a backpack. And it was the worst backpack
ever because they had these big wheels that dug into
(39:26):
my back. I was like in pain carrying them around.
So it was the worst backpack. But then as a
stroller it was equally lame because it didn't have back
wheels to support it, so you had to hold it
up the entire time. So I finally abandoned it. You
know it was good for nothing. And guess what. A
Christian that isn't salting, a Christian that isn't walking with
(39:49):
God as they ought to, are as useless as a
backpack stroller. So unsalty salt is pointless. It's like a
coke that's lost its carbonation. It's like tepid coffee or
even worse d calf coffee. You know, some people going
to a coffee place and they'll say, I'll have a
(40:10):
low fat latte decalf with some vanilla oak toash. Stop.
Just go to thirty one Flavors, you know, get coffee
with caffeine, and be a salty Christian, and be a
Christian that makes a difference wherever you go. But then
Jesus also says in the Sermon on the Mount you
are the light of the world. A city that's said
(40:32):
on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light
a lamp and put it under a basket, but on
a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who
are in the house. So taking together salt and light
paint a vivid picture. Salt is hidden, light is obvious.
Salt works secretly, light works openly. Salt works from within.
(40:55):
Light works from without. Salt is more the indirect influence
of the gospel. Light is the direct communication of the gospel.
Salt works primarily through our living Light works primarily through
what we say to others. Salt is largely negative. It
can retard corruption, but it cannot change corruption into incorruption.
(41:19):
But light, in contrast, is more positive. So how are
we to let our light so shine? One thing that
light does, it exposes the darkness. Have you ever lost something,
say in your car at night, maybe that brito you
were eating on the way home a month ago, and
you dropped it. You don't know where it went. You
(41:40):
turn on the light and there it is. Oh wow,
I wonder where that went. Light doesn't just expose the problem,
It shows you the way out of the problem. When
I was in darkness, I couldn't see much less find
the door. But when the light switched on, when I
saw my need for Jesus Christ, when I heard the gospel,
when the light went on, everything changed for me. So
(42:03):
we need to let our lights so shine before men
so they will see their need for Jesus Christ. Here's
another interesting thing. When Jesus says you are the salt
of the earth, you are the light of the world.
It could better be translated, You and you alone are
the salt of the earth. You and you alone are
(42:23):
the light of the world. Think of it this way.
What kind of world would we live in if every
Christian behave just like you do? How many people would
be drawn to the Gospel or turned off by it?
What kind of general opinion do you think people would
have of Christianity if you were a sole representative. And
you might be saying, well, Greg, that's kind of a
(42:45):
lot of pressure to put on one person. Well maybe,
but here's the fact of the matter. You are the
only representative of Jesus Christ that many non believers are
ever going to see. They may never read the Bible,
but they're going to read your life. It's been said
Christians are walking epistles written by God and read by men.
(43:08):
You are the salt of the earth. You are the
light of the world. So let's wrap this up. Is
there any hope for America? Yes? There is, And there
are three things we need to do. Number one, as
they said, we need to infiltrate, not isolate, be both
salt and light. God has dropped us behind enemy lines.
Our job is to infiltrate, to permeate, to saturate, not
(43:33):
to evade, but to invade. To live the Christian life
with authenticity, we need to be salt and light in
the culture. A w Tozer said it well. The world,
he said, is waiting to hear an authentic voice, a
voice from God, not an echo of what others are
(43:53):
doing insane, but an authentic voice. Be an authentic voice.
Number two, we need to pray. We need to turn
to God as a nation, and we need to turn
to God as individuals. Remember the words of Second Chronicles
seven fourteen, where the Lord said, if my people, which
are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray
(44:14):
and seek my face and churn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin
and heal their land. That was given contextually to Israel,
but it applies principally to any nation, including ours. We
need to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face.
(44:35):
And notice that it says turn from our wicked ways.
Let it begin with us. Let revival start with you,
and let it start with me. And number three, we
need to preach this message of the gospel. God has
told us to go into all the world and preach
the gospel. America needs to hear the gospel. America needs
(44:59):
to see the gospel. Remember, Jesus said, you and you alone,
or the light of the world. So yes, there is
hope for America, and there's hope for you. Let me
say this in closing. Maybe as you're listening to this podcast,
you're thinking, well, I don't really have this relationship with God. Well,
here's the good news. Christ can change your life. Jesus
(45:23):
can forgive you of your sin. You see, you're separated
from God because of your sin. The Bible says all
of sin and fallen short of the glory of God.
But the Bible also says, while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. I love the way the apostle
Paul personalized it when he said he loved me and
he gave himself for me. Listen, Jesus loved you and
(45:47):
gave himself for you. And if you will turn from
your sin and ask Christ to come into your life,
he will forgive you and come into your heart and
life and change you and change your eternal address from
hell to heaven. He's only a prayer away. If you
would like to ask Jesus to come into your life.
(46:09):
You could just pray a prayer with me right now.
I'll pray it out loud. And if you want to
be forgiven of your sin, if you want Jesus to
come into your life, why don't you just pray this
after me? Just pray, Lord Jesus. I know that I'm
a sinner, but I know that you're the Savior who
died in the cross from my sin and rose again
(46:31):
from the dead. I turned from my sin now, and
I choose to follow you from this moment forward in
Jesus name, I pray. Amen, if you just pray that prayer,
I want you to know that Christ has come to
live in your heart, and he has forgiven you of
all of your sins. And I'm going to help you
(46:52):
get started on the right foot and following Jesus Christ.
And I'm going to send you at no charge, a
free copy of the New Testament. We call it the
New Believer's Bible, a special edition of the New Testament
and the New Living Translation with hundreds of notes that
I wrote. And if you'll contact us at a harvest
(47:12):
we'll send you your own copy of the New believer's Bible.
You might also go to our website no good dot
org k and ow good no good dot org. You
can find out more there here. Until next time, God
bless you.
Life audio. I believe we have two options in front
of us as a nation right now, judgment or revival.
And by revival I mean the spiritual awakening. And if
we don't have another spiritual awakening in America, I believe
that judgment is inevitable. Here. I heard a story about
(00:35):
a woman that was walking on the beach in southern
California and she looks and sees a bottle embedded in
the sand. She reaches out, picks it up. Wife says
stand off, and a genie appears. True story, and the
genie says, oh, master ible, grant you one wish. She says, wait,
one wish? What up into three wishes? The genie said,
(00:56):
times are hard, we had to cut back one wish.
She thinks about it for a moment, says wow, and
then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a
map of the Middle East and says, Genie, I want
to see peace in the Middle East. They're always fighting there,
all of this conflict. Yes, peace in the Middle East.
Since she thought about it for a moment, thought wait,
(01:17):
if I only get one wish, she said, let me
amend that, Genie. I want peace in all of the world.
Global peace. That is my one wish. And Genie looks
at the map says, are you crazy? This is unreasonable.
Come up with something else. She thinks about it for
a moment, she goes, I've got it. I have never
(01:39):
found the right man man. I have searched for the
right guy and I can't find him. But this man
has to be special. He has to be considerate and fun,
and he needs to enjoy cooking, and he needs to
help with the housekeeping. And he needs to spend time
with my family instead of sitting around watching sports all
day long. And the woman continues, he needs to smother
(02:02):
me with love and affection him for the rest of
my life. That's a genie. My wish is for a
good man. A genie lets out of science says, let
me see that map again. You know, some things just
don't seem possible, do they. But listen, the Bible says,
with God, nothing is impossible. So I want to talk
(02:23):
a little bit with you about our country. I believe
it's the greatest nation on the face of the earth,
the United States of America. But there is an evil
encroaching into our society and culture in America like never before.
Socialism and outright communism are permeating our nation right now.
(02:47):
There are people who want to undermine and destroy this
great country. In many ways. Our nation is in a
state of moral and spiritual crisis. At home, the family
is under increasing attack. The bottom line is the breakdown
of the family. Is that the root of almost all
(03:07):
of our societal problems we see today. It's been said
that a family can survive without a nation, but a
nation cannot survive without the family. A man and a woman,
a mother and a father, married in a faithful relationship
that is God's order. Then when children come, those children
(03:30):
are raised in this intactome, in a loving environment, and
even an environment a faith where they go to church
together on Sunday, where they read the Bible together, where
they pray together. Remember that old saying, the family that
prays together stays together. Oh, people left at that Now,
I don't know if they're laughing anymore. Because our culture,
(03:52):
our nation is unraveling, because we have lost well it's
sometimes called the nuclear family, this foundation of our country,
and we tamper with God's order to our own peril.
So we see the repercussions of that played out in
our nation. We're seeing that we have sown the wind,
(04:14):
and we have reaped the whirlwind. As the Bible says, America,
this is your wake up call. Speaking of wake up calls,
I was back in Alaska years ago with my friend
Richie Furay. Richie is a founding member of the legendary
rock band Buffalo Springfield. He's a very strong Christian. He
(04:34):
was a pastor for many years. So anyway, Richie and
I are in Alaska and he's singing and I'm speaking,
and then we both had to fly home. Richie lives
in Colorado, I live in California, so we had to
get up in the morning and go our separate ways.
And so I decided to do a fake wake up
call for Richie. So I called up the front desk
(04:56):
and I said, Hi, I need a wake up call
for this room number. And I gave them the room
number of Richie, not even my room number that I'm
calling from. I give another room number call this room
at five o'clock for a wake up call, and then
if they don't respond, I want you to call him
back again at five point thirty. Okay. So I caught
(05:16):
my flight, left got home, and then a day later
Richie calls me and says, do you know what happened
to me and Alaska? I said no. He goes, well,
I got a call at five in the morning. I
knew it was probably a wake up call that you
set up, and so I ignored it, he says. So
I went back to sleep, and all of a sudden,
some guy from the hotel is in my room shaking
(05:39):
me to wake me up out of bed, saying, sir,
you're gonna miss your flight. I said, wow, I didn't
planet that way, but it worked up pretty well. Talk
about a wake up call. Our wake up call in
America is saying it's time to turn back to God.
I believe we have two options in front of us
as a nation right now, judgment or revival. And by
(06:01):
revival I mean the spiritual awakening. And if we don't
have another spiritual awakening like the last one called the
Jesus Revolution in America, I believe that judgment is inevitable. Now. Look,
judgment is coming to the whole world. It's coming to
every nation in the world, including the United States, at
(06:22):
some point, and it may come sooner than we think.
But let's pray for a spiritual awakening. There was a
man named Peter Marshall. He was a chaplain to the
US Senate, and he once made this statement, and I quote,
the choice before us is playing Christ or chaos, conviction
or compromise, discipline or disintegration. End quote. Well said. And
(06:47):
I want to talk to you today about what I
hope will happen in America, a spiritual awakening, so that
gives me hope for the future of our nation. Yes,
I acknowledge things are dark right now, and our country
Wolk ideology seems to be spreading through everything. We see
it in our movies, we see it in our classroom,
(07:10):
we see it in our politics, we see it pretty
much everywhere. Yes, things are dark. But let me tell
you why I have a genuine reason for hope. It's
by returning to God and by returning to the message
that He has given us. We can all do that
as a nation, and we can do that individually. So
(07:31):
let's think for a few moments about the Sermon on
the Mount. I love that that's where Jesus spoke to
his discipleship. It's a funny thing. People envision Jesus as
speaking to a multitude, but the fact is a multitude
gathered there on the Mount of Beatitudes, as we call it.
And then we read that Jesus called his disciples to
(07:53):
himself and spoke to them. So the Sermon on the
Mount was not given to the multitude as much as
it was given to his own followers. To bring this up,
because sometimes people say, all our religion I need is
found on the Sermon on the Mouth. That's what I
live by. Well, number one, I doubt you live by
the Sermon on the Mouth. I would take it a
step further and say, I doubt you've even read the
(08:16):
Sermon on the Mouth. The Sermon on the Mount, as
we call it, are the words of Jesus to his
own people. These words are for Christians only, And if
we listen and obey what Jesus says to us on
the Sermon on the Mount, it can first change us
and then change our nation as well. Let me read
(08:36):
to you what the Lord says. He says, you are
the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses
its flavor, how shall it be seasoned. It's in good
for nothing but to be thrown out and trembled at
their foot by men. You are the light of the world,
a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
Nor did they light a lamp and put it under
(08:56):
a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light
to all who are in the house. So let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your
good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Salt and light.
Why did Jesus pick these two word pictures? Because the
world is dark and the world is corrupt. So the
(09:18):
world needs salt because it is corrupt, and it needs
light because it's dark. The biblical world on our culture
is very simple. It's dark and it's getting darker. Like
many people before I was a Christian, I believe that
man was basically good and we just occasionally did bad things.
But then when I began to read the Bible, I
(09:39):
read a different message. The Bible teaches that man is
basically bad. In fact, he's bad to the bone. He's
a sinner and he sins because he is a sinner.
That's our nature. But God can intervene and he can
change things. But look at the way our culture is
(09:59):
going right now as an example. Look at scientific knowledge,
medical knowledge, logical knowledge. But we can't change our nature.
We can't change our bend toward evil. Why because this
world is a very dark place and need of some light,
and even a little light would help. Natural We come
(10:21):
in as Christians, acting as agents of both salt and light.
But sadly, this world is going to get worse before
it gets better. The Bible says in the end times,
and I believe we're in the end times. I believe
we're in the last days. I believe Christ could come
at any time. And speaking of the last days, the
apostle Paul writes, and two Timothy three evil men and
(10:45):
impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Let's talk about AI, or artificial intelligence, and look at
some of the challenges it poses. You know, we've never
been more capable and yet never more dangerous to ourselves.
We have medical break throughs because of AI that would
(11:08):
seem miraculous to previous generations. Yet the same technology that
can translate the Bible into a thousand languages can also
flood the Internet with one thousand lines. The same intelligence
that can write a symphony can also design a bio weapon,
and this deception can run deeper than many people realized.
(11:29):
Did you know that over half of all Internet activity
is now generated not by people but by bots, fake accounts,
artificial voices, artificial videos, armies of them, in many cases
deployed by foreign governments specifically built to so discord and
to spread hatred. They don't even have to fire a
(11:52):
single bullet. For some AI is even taking the place
of God himself. Basically, man has built a tool in
his own image, and now he bows before it and
does what it tells him to do. I'm reminded of
the statement of General Omar Bradley, who, in an armistice
speech said, way back in nineteen forty eight, and I quote,
(12:15):
we have grasped the mystery of the atom, and we've
rejected the sermon on the mount. The world has achieved
brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants
and ethical infants end quote. Swap the word atom for
the word algorithm, and he could be describing today. So
(12:35):
instead of getting better, we've gotten worse. Man's discoveries and
accomplishments have simply provided new ways for us to show
ourselves what we really are, sinful and wicked. So modern
man has only been in more ways to corrupt and
destroy himself. As an example, we go from war to
greater war, we go from crime to greater crime because
(12:57):
our heart is dark. The spiral is always downward, it's
never upward. Think back to the nineteenth century as an
example of this. There was a buoyant optimism as who
came to the end of that century and the beginning
of the twentieth century. Author Mark Twain described that time
as the Gilded Age. A new philosophy was emerging as
(13:20):
a new millennium down and man believed he was going
to build literally heaven on earth. It's thought that men
could even best nature, and even best gone through technology.
And in that day it wasn't ai computers or rockets
or anything of that nature. The cutting edge technology of
that day was ship building. So they decided to build
(13:45):
the largest, most luxurious cruise ship the world had ever seen.
It would harness the latest tech, it would be virtually unsinkable.
It launched, and they called it fittingly, that Titanic. Interestingly,
the vice president of White Star Line, who created the Titanic,
said it was unsafe. And by the way he said
(14:07):
that while it was sinking, it was said God himself
could not sink this ship. Well you know the rest
of that story. Someone hearing me say this might say,
that's right, Greg. The world's going to hell in a handbasket,
and there's nothing we can do about it. So let's
just build a Christian city and we'll have Christian stores,
(14:27):
and we'll have Christian cars, and we'll have Christian food.
We'll have Christian dogs and Christian cats. Maybe that's going
too far, but I would disagree if that's the position
you hold, because the point is we don't want to isolate.
We want to infiltrate as Christians in our culture. So
(14:47):
we may try to remove ourselves and our children from
the culture, but the bottom line is the culture will
still find us, and in trying to do this, we
sometimes end up building a Christian subculture. Our objective is
I want to go a whole day without any contact
with anything of the world. Listen, Jesus has not called
(15:09):
us to isolate. Jesus has called us to infiltrate, not
to evade, but to invade. We're meant to impact the
culture without being compromised by it, and I know that's
a tricky balance. Jesus put it this way in John seventeen.
He said to the Father, I'm not asking you to
(15:29):
take them out of the world, but to keep them
safe from the evil one. They are not part of
the world anymore than I am. As you sent me
into the world, I am sending them into the world.
Did you catch that Jesus is sending us into the world.
What are has words to us? And what we call
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the Great commission? He says, go into all the world
and preach the Gospel. So Jesus, our commander in chief,
is sending us into the world. This is a battle.
It's a spiritual battle. The Christian life is on a playground.
It's a battleground. And in this battle that we're all
(16:10):
engaged in, we're either advancing or retreating. We're either gaining
ground or we're losing ground. So as believers, we need
to realize that we are behind enemy lines. So I
was watching a World War two film a while ago,
and there's a scene where the commanding officer tells that
paratroopers of Easy Company who are dropped behind enemy lines.
(16:34):
A panzer division is about to cut the road south.
Looks like you guys are going to be surrounded. And
the lieutenant in charge of easy companies says, we're paratroopers, Lieutenant,
We're supposed to be surrounded. And you know what that's
true of the Church. We're paratroopers. We're supposed to be surrounded.
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We've been dropped in by God himself behind enemy lines,
and I know it feels that way. Sometimes you look
around and all you see is the enemy at work,
wreaking havoc in the lives of countless people. So the
question arises, how can we impact our culture and make
a difference. Coming back to what I said earlier, we
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must not isolate, we must infiltrate. We must influence people.
You know, there's a whole category of people now who
describe themselves its influencers. Maybe you're an influencer. Maybe you
have a lot of people that follow you on your
social media platform. But here's the bottom line. If you
have a million followers, or if you have ten followers
(17:39):
or no followers, you're still an influencer in a way,
meaning that you influence people around you as a follower
of Jesus by what you say and do. But the
bottom line is every one of us has a sphere
of influence. We all have our platform, we all have
our pulpits, so to speak, So use it and influence
(18:02):
and permeate and infiltrate and affect other people as a
follower of Jesus. Now others go in the opposite direction.
They'll embrace everything culture offers without reservation. But that, of course,
is a huge mistake. Much of our popular thought today
runs contrary to scripture, and our country is going through
(18:23):
a massive cultural shift right now, so far from the
original template that our founding fathers laid. America was clearly
built on a Judeo Christian foundation, and our founding fathers,
with a couple of exceptions, were believers in Jesus Christ.
(18:44):
Take George Washington, our first president, who made this statement,
and I quote, to the distinguished character of patriot, it
should be our highest glory to also add the more
distinguished character of Christian end quote. But someone say, oh no,
it's not true. America was not founded on Christian principles.
It's not true. John Adams, our second president, made this statement, quote,
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the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other
See here's the thing that a lot of people don't
know about American history. There's more than one George and
Our story. There's George Washington, who led the Continental armies
(19:30):
in victory against the most powerful finding force in the
face of the earth at that time, that of the
United Kingdom, and of course then he became our first president.
But what we don't realize is the other George and
Our Story was named George Whitfield. George Whitfield came from
England and came to the colonies and preached the Gospel.
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And by the time Whitfield was done, eighty percent of
the colonists had heard him speak in person, and thousands
and thousands of them came to faith. There was a revival.
It was the first great awakening in America. So that
became the soil that our founding fathers like George Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others put the
(20:17):
seed in. So it was built on a moral foundation,
and specifically it was built on a biblical foundation, and
that's what makes America unique. So our culture is shifting,
Our culture is drifting. It's our job as Christians to
point people back to Christ or point people to Christ
(20:41):
for the first time. How do we do this. Number one,
we must stand for the truth, whether it's popular or not.
Oh listen, this is a non negotiable. There's no wavering here.
We as Christians stand on what the Bible says on
every topic. The Bible says, let God be true and
every man a liar. And by the way, you don't
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get to pick and choose the parts of the Bible
you like or don't like. Speaking of founding Fathers, Thomas
Jefferson had his own version of the Bible. Jefferson went
out and apparently cut out all the portions of the
Bible that dealt with miracles. He just saw Jesus as
a moral and philosophical leader. Well, you can't do that.
(21:24):
You can't edit the Bible. You take what the Bible
says on every topic. So we must base what we
do on what the scripture says. Number two, we must
use a language that people understand. You know, I think
sometimes as believers we get frustrated because as we talk
to people about our faith, they don't seem like they're listening. Well,
(21:45):
maybe the reason is we're speaking in a different language.
For instance, we'll go to a non believer and will say,
excuse me, uncircumcised philistine. Let me ask you a question,
are you saved? Are you washed in the blood? And
are you part of the body? And then we don't
understand whether they don't even respond to us. Well, think
about what you just said. That makes no sense. You
(22:06):
just ask them if they're washed in blood and part
of somebody. They don't know what you're talking about. You
might say, well, Greg, are you suggesting I don't use
biblical terminology. No, what I'm suggesting is you don't assume
the person you're speaking to knows biblical terminology. You know,
I've been preaching the Gospel for over fifty years, and
(22:28):
I can tell you as I preach publicly and even
talk to people privately, people are more illiterate biblically today
and they've ever been. They don't know anything about anything.
So we cannot assume that our listener understands what we
mean when we use terms like saved, regenerated, the need
(22:50):
to repent, etc. We need to break down and explain
everything to everyone. Paul put it this way in First
Corinthians nine. He said, I try to find common ground
with everyone so I might bring them to Christ. I
do all of this to spread the good news. Another
translation puts that same thought of Paul this way, I
(23:13):
have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in
order to reach a wide range of people, the religious,
the non religious, the meticulous moralists, the loose living immoralists,
the defeated, the demoralized. Whoever, perfectly said. When Jesus spoke
to Nicodemus in John chapter three, he would be described
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as the meticulous moralist. This was a man that tried
to live by the rules, that tried to live a
good life, very religious. But the problem is Nicodemus, the
deeply religious man, did not have a relationship with God.
But then you go from John three to John four,
you come to the woman at the well. She had
(23:57):
been married in divorse five times and was living with
some dude at the moment when Jesus approached her. She
would be the loose living in moralists. But notice how
Christ engaged her and she ultimately became a believer on
that day. When Paul spoke to the people in Act
seventeen on marsh Hill, those would have been the non religious,
(24:19):
the secular people. When Simon Peter spoke to the people
in Pentecost, those would have been religious people, and in
every one of those situations, they adapted to their audience
without compromising the content. Number three, we need to bring
people the message of the gospel. Now, look, when we
(24:40):
share the gospel with people, some are going to respond
favorably and come to faith and believe shockingly. So you'll
just talk to them a little bit and they'll believe
right there on the spot. And then others will be
very resistant. It just depends on the person. The apostle,
Paul says, and Second Corinthians too. Now, wherever we go,
(25:01):
he uses us to tell others about the Lord and
to spread the good news. Like a sweet perfume. Our
lives are like a fragrance presented by Christ to God.
And this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are
being saved by those who are perishing. Now think about
it this way. You know, some people wear way too
(25:22):
much perfume or cologne. By the way, if you're a
cologne where less is more. Now, I don't really wear
cologne myself, and the reason is I'm allergic to it.
I even have an allergic reaction to those little cards
that they put in magazines that are scented with Colonne,
or if I'm walking to a department store and they say,
(25:44):
can I give you a little of our COLOGNEA no, no,
keep it away from me. So my experience goes back
to high school, where I used to wear something called
Jade East, and also there was another one called Hi Karate.
Do you remember those? You have to have lived a
long time ago, but I do think they sell them still.
But here's my point. Some people will like the smell
(26:06):
of a certain colonna perfume and others will not. The
same is true with the Gospel. You could compare it
to garlic. Garlic is amazing when it's cooking. Garlic is
amazing on food. It's not so amazing on your breath.
So here's my point. We go to some people with
the gospel, they love the aroma of it, they love
(26:27):
what it is, they embrace it, they respond to it.
And you go to Weathers with the gospel and they
hate it and they impose you for even bringing the
message to them. But don't worry about that. Your job,
my job, our job together is to bring the Gospel
to people and to live it out before them. Number four.
Before I can effectively tell someone about Jesus. I need
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to personally walk with Jesus. Why because nothing is a
worse witness than a hypocritical Christian. There are some people
that I would actually ask to not preach the Gospel
because they contradicted by the way that they live and
as a result, they undermine it. Listen to this. What
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this culture is looking for is authenticity, not perfection. Authenticity.
In other words, we must be before we can effectively
say we need to practice what we preach. So let's
go back to being salt. Jesus said again. Remember you're
the salt of the earth, You're the light of the world.
(27:32):
What does it mean to be salt? Jesus says, if
the salt loses its flavor, it's good for nothing now
quent Beeck. Historically, salt had enormous value in Jesus' day.
The Romans believed that, except for the sun, nothing was
more valuable than salt. Sometimes Roman soldiers were even paid
(27:52):
in salt. That's where we get the phrase, hey, he's
not worth his salt. So let's understand what salt represented
back at this time and what salt actually did, so
we can understand how to play to us. Number one
in the first century, salt preserved. So if you went
on and caught some fish, you had to eat that
(28:13):
fish really quickly because you could not refrigerate it. So
if you could eat it quickly, you would rub salt
in it to preserve it. You would do the same
with other kinds of meat as well. You would take
the meat, cut it into slender strips and soak it
in a salt solution. You know, maybe our modern equivalent
is beef turkey. You know those little strips of beef
(28:34):
that you can buy in the market that costs like
one hundred dollars a bag. That's you know, preserved meat.
So the mean function of salt at that time was
to preserve something. Now, in the same way, we as
Christians are acting as salt and our culture and we're
here to preserve. What does that mean. It means as
(28:54):
believers we stand up for what is true, We speak
out against what is wrong. That is part of our job.
So preaching the gospel is yes, I'll get to that
in a moment, proclaiming the truth to others, but it's
also standing for what is right and true in our culture.
We're preserving I mean, bottom line, the very presence of
(29:17):
a Christian can change a conversation. Have you ever walked
into a room where maybe some people are telling a
dirty joke. In the moment you walk in, the joke
stops and they can smell, hey man, how you doing okay?
And then you walk out and they pick their story
back up. That's not a bad thing. That's a good
thing because that means that you represent Jesus Christ. You
(29:38):
just change the temperature of the room. You know, a
question you can ask yourself is are you a thermistat?
Are you a thermometer. A thermometer tells you the temperature
of a room. The thermisttat affects the temperature of the room.
I don't want to just be a thermometer blending in.
(29:59):
I want to be a thermistat. I want to change
the temperature of the room. I want to change the conversation.
I want to preserve what is good and true, and
I want to speak out against what is evil. So
Christians are the preserving influence in our world today. The
Bible tells us an event is coming when all two
(30:21):
followers of Jesus will be caught up in a moment
in the twinkling of an eye into the presence of
the Lord. This event is sometimes called the rapture. The
word rapture comes from a Greek word reptorus, which is
based on another word harpazzo in the Greek, which means
to be taken by force. So the Lord will come,
(30:44):
for his people will be caught up to meet the
Lord in the air, and then the anti Christ will
be revealed. The Bible also calls him the beast. If
Satan never had a son, this is him, and this
wicked man, the anti Christ, will bring about a time
of deception, and he will be in power during that
(31:06):
time called the Great Tribulation period that will last seven years,
and you will see darkness break out and evil on display.
How is it that can happen because the preserving influence
in the world has been removed, that is the Church,
the Bible says in Second Thessalonians too, the mystery of
(31:27):
lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains
will do so until he is taken out of the way,
and then that lawless one will be revealed according to
the work of Satan, with all power, signs and line wonders,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his
mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. So
(31:48):
bottom line is the preserving force in the world today
is the Church. Just like salt. Once we're removed from
the earth, caught up to meet the Lord in the
airth all help breaks loose with the leadership of the Antichrist.
That's why our presence makes a difference. Jesus said, you
(32:09):
are the salt of the earth. Another thing that salt
does is it stimulates thirst. You know how it goes.
You go to the movies and maybe you order some popcorn,
and you know the law for you three size this.
Here is a really small one that's fifty dollars, here's
a bigger one that's one hundred dollars, and here's a
(32:30):
really gigantic one that you can refill over and over
again for one hundred and two dollars. Oh, they want
you to buy the big one. And then you buy
it and it's maybe over salted, and so you go
back and you buy a soft drink that costs another
seventy five dollars. But the point is, when you eat
something salty, it does stimulate thirst. And I think that
(32:52):
when we're walking with Jesus Christ as we ought to,
we will stimulate a spiritual thirst and other people for God.
Let me illustrate. I was in Israel years ago leading
a tour and I had a tour guide who I
was having constant discussions with. And this guy liked to
argue and disagree, and we went back and forth for
(33:15):
hours and hours as we drove around the Holy Land together.
And I never really made much progress with this tour guide.
And one day we came to the end of our
journey and the driver came to me and said, I've
been listening to your conversations with your tour guide. I said, right,
and he said, and I'm really jealous of your relationship
(33:36):
with God. Now what's interesting about this is the Bible
says that we, as gentile's non Jews, have been grafted
into the promises of Israel, the promises given to Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, and so we are being blessed by
these promises given to God's people. But God says, and
(33:57):
this happens to provoke them to jealousy. So, in a
very technical sense, this Jewish driver was saying to me
that I, as a non Jewish person who is a
believer in Jesus, and I had been grafted into the
promises of God was saying and doing something that made
him jealous for a relationship with God. So he invited
(34:20):
me over to his home, and he gave me and
my wife a wonderful meal. In fact, we filled up
in the first course and didn't know there were four
more courses to come. He had his entire family, maybe
thirty people, gathered together in his front room. Some of
his children were serving in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces,
and he said to me, say to all of my family,
(34:42):
what you are saying to that tour God. So I
was able to share the Gospel with this man's entire family.
So I think because he saw something in us that
was desirable, it created a spiritual thirst in him. The
greatest compliment that can be paid to a Christian is
when a unbeliever says, I want what you have. Why
(35:04):
are you so joyful? Why do you want peace in
the midst of your hardships and difficulties in life? How
do you keep going as you do? I want? Would
you have? Salt stimulates thirst, But first I need to
be thirsty for God. The samas rites is the deer
pants for flowing streams. So my soul pants for you.
(35:27):
Oh God, let me ask you a question. Do you
hunger in thirst for righteousness? Jesus said, if you hunger
in thirst after righteousness, you will be filled. So let
it start with you. But don't be crippled by sin
and be living a compromised life, because that will turn
away to the best of your ability. As I said earlier,
(35:49):
live a godly life, not a perfect life. You're going
to fall short. We all do. Sometimes we even have
to apologize for things that we say and do as Christians.
I remember years ago I was going to get pizza
with a friend and we went to a restaurant and
as I was sitting there, I looked over at a
(36:10):
table next to me and there was a man that
looked very familiar to me, And I said, excuse me,
is your name Paul? And he said, yes it is.
I said, Paul. We went to elementary school together. You know,
some people look the same that they looked when they
were younger, just they're bigger now. But other people changed
so much. Paul looked exactly the same. He goes, yes,
(36:31):
well who are you? I said, well, I'm Greg Lourie. Well,
I didn't look anything like I looked in elementary school.
My hair was blonde and parted on the side. When
I had hair, beautiful blonde hair. By the way, I
had a great wave. Now I just have beach very
sad anyway, But now at this point, as I was
talking to Paul, my hair was parted in the middle
(36:51):
down to my shoulders, and I had a beard, and
so he didn't recognize me. And he said, you know, Greg,
I remember you. You were always getting in trouble in school.
You were always getting sent to the principal's office for
disrupting the class. I said, yeah, that's true. But Paul,
I've changed. He said really. I said, yes, Paul, I've
become a Christian. He said what I said, I'm a
(37:13):
Christian now, Paul, I'm not the old Greg you used
to know. And then I said, and not only that,
I'm a pastor of a church. I think Paul's thinking,
who are they giving churches to these days? Are you
kidding me? And I said no, I'm a different person
and Christ has changed my life. And Paul said, well, Greg,
I can see you seem to be happier and you
seem to be changed that's wonderful. I said, well, it's
(37:37):
nice to talk to you, Paul. Meanwhile, my friend had
to go to the restroom for a moment, and we're
waiting for a pizza and it arrives, and I had
a devious thought. I thought, wouldn't it be really funny too.
You know, I already told you I did a prank
wake up call to my other friend. So now to
this guy, I thought it would be funny if I
took the hot red pepper flakes and poured them over
his side of the pizza. Then when he eats it,
(37:59):
you know it'll be hot, it'll be hilarious. So I
take out the pepper flakes and point them on my
friend's side of the pizza. And I'd forgotten about Paul,
who had been talking to and I hear him say,
haven't changed much, have you? Greg? Busted Geeah. Sometimes we
mess up and we have to apologize. But to the
best of your ability, live a godly life, and don't
(38:22):
put red pepper flakes on your friend's pizza. You see,
we cannot be used by God to stop the corruption
of sin and others if sin has corrupted us. Going
back to the statement of our Lord again, you're the
salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its flavor,
how shall it be seasoned. It's good for nothing but
(38:43):
to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by man. Good
for nothing. So years ago I traveled overseas to Europe
to be at a speaking conference, and Kathy was with me,
and Jonathan was a very little guy, little toddler at
that point, and so you know, when you travel, you
have all of this hardware you take with us. I
(39:05):
had a stroller and I needed a backpack to carry
him as well, and I came across something called a
backpack stroller that seemed brilliant to me, so I bought
it without trying it first. So I get overseas and
I pull it out of the box and I use
it as a backpack. And it was the worst backpack
ever because they had these big wheels that dug into
(39:26):
my back. I was like in pain carrying them around.
So it was the worst backpack. But then as a
stroller it was equally lame because it didn't have back
wheels to support it, so you had to hold it
up the entire time. So I finally abandoned it. You
know it was good for nothing. And guess what. A
Christian that isn't salting, a Christian that isn't walking with
(39:49):
God as they ought to, are as useless as a
backpack stroller. So unsalty salt is pointless. It's like a
coke that's lost its carbonation. It's like tepid coffee or
even worse d calf coffee. You know, some people going
to a coffee place and they'll say, I'll have a
(40:10):
low fat latte decalf with some vanilla oak toash. Stop.
Just go to thirty one Flavors, you know, get coffee
with caffeine, and be a salty Christian, and be a
Christian that makes a difference wherever you go. But then
Jesus also says in the Sermon on the Mount you
are the light of the world. A city that's said
(40:32):
on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light
a lamp and put it under a basket, but on
a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who
are in the house. So taking together salt and light
paint a vivid picture. Salt is hidden, light is obvious.
Salt works secretly, light works openly. Salt works from within.
(40:55):
Light works from without. Salt is more the indirect influence
of the gospel. Light is the direct communication of the gospel.
Salt works primarily through our living Light works primarily through
what we say to others. Salt is largely negative. It
can retard corruption, but it cannot change corruption into incorruption.
(41:19):
But light, in contrast, is more positive. So how are
we to let our light so shine? One thing that
light does, it exposes the darkness. Have you ever lost something,
say in your car at night, maybe that brito you
were eating on the way home a month ago, and
you dropped it. You don't know where it went. You
(41:40):
turn on the light and there it is. Oh wow,
I wonder where that went. Light doesn't just expose the problem,
It shows you the way out of the problem. When
I was in darkness, I couldn't see much less find
the door. But when the light switched on, when I
saw my need for Jesus Christ, when I heard the gospel,
when the light went on, everything changed for me. So
(42:03):
we need to let our lights so shine before men
so they will see their need for Jesus Christ. Here's
another interesting thing. When Jesus says you are the salt
of the earth, you are the light of the world.
It could better be translated, You and you alone are
the salt of the earth. You and you alone are
(42:23):
the light of the world. Think of it this way.
What kind of world would we live in if every
Christian behave just like you do? How many people would
be drawn to the Gospel or turned off by it?
What kind of general opinion do you think people would
have of Christianity if you were a sole representative. And
you might be saying, well, Greg, that's kind of a
(42:45):
lot of pressure to put on one person. Well maybe,
but here's the fact of the matter. You are the
only representative of Jesus Christ that many non believers are
ever going to see. They may never read the Bible,
but they're going to read your life. It's been said
Christians are walking epistles written by God and read by men.
(43:08):
You are the salt of the earth. You are the
light of the world. So let's wrap this up. Is
there any hope for America? Yes? There is, And there
are three things we need to do. Number one, as
they said, we need to infiltrate, not isolate, be both
salt and light. God has dropped us behind enemy lines.
Our job is to infiltrate, to permeate, to saturate, not
(43:33):
to evade, but to invade. To live the Christian life
with authenticity, we need to be salt and light in
the culture. A w Tozer said it well. The world,
he said, is waiting to hear an authentic voice, a
voice from God, not an echo of what others are
(43:53):
doing insane, but an authentic voice. Be an authentic voice.
Number two, we need to pray. We need to turn
to God as a nation, and we need to turn
to God as individuals. Remember the words of Second Chronicles
seven fourteen, where the Lord said, if my people, which
are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray
(44:14):
and seek my face and churn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin
and heal their land. That was given contextually to Israel,
but it applies principally to any nation, including ours. We
need to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face.
(44:35):
And notice that it says turn from our wicked ways.
Let it begin with us. Let revival start with you,
and let it start with me. And number three, we
need to preach this message of the gospel. God has
told us to go into all the world and preach
the gospel. America needs to hear the gospel. America needs
(44:59):
to see the gospel. Remember, Jesus said, you and you alone,
or the light of the world. So yes, there is
hope for America, and there's hope for you. Let me
say this in closing. Maybe as you're listening to this podcast,
you're thinking, well, I don't really have this relationship with God. Well,
here's the good news. Christ can change your life. Jesus
(45:23):
can forgive you of your sin. You see, you're separated
from God because of your sin. The Bible says all
of sin and fallen short of the glory of God.
But the Bible also says, while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. I love the way the apostle
Paul personalized it when he said he loved me and
he gave himself for me. Listen, Jesus loved you and
(45:47):
gave himself for you. And if you will turn from
your sin and ask Christ to come into your life,
he will forgive you and come into your heart and
life and change you and change your eternal address from
hell to heaven. He's only a prayer away. If you
would like to ask Jesus to come into your life.
(46:09):
You could just pray a prayer with me right now.
I'll pray it out loud. And if you want to
be forgiven of your sin, if you want Jesus to
come into your life, why don't you just pray this
after me? Just pray, Lord Jesus. I know that I'm
a sinner, but I know that you're the Savior who
died in the cross from my sin and rose again
(46:31):
from the dead. I turned from my sin now, and
I choose to follow you from this moment forward in
Jesus name, I pray. Amen, if you just pray that prayer,
I want you to know that Christ has come to
live in your heart, and he has forgiven you of
all of your sins. And I'm going to help you
(46:52):
get started on the right foot and following Jesus Christ.
And I'm going to send you at no charge, a
free copy of the New Testament. We call it the
New Believer's Bible, a special edition of the New Testament
and the New Living Translation with hundreds of notes that
I wrote. And if you'll contact us at a harvest
(47:12):
we'll send you your own copy of the New believer's Bible.
You might also go to our website no good dot
org k and ow good no good dot org. You
can find out more there here. Until next time, God
bless you.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com