January 11, 2024 • 62 mins
In this episode of "Between Sermons," Pastors Brent McQuay and Carlton McCarthy dive deep into the complex themes of Kingdom living and personal identity in Christ. Engaging in a candid and thought-provoking conversation, they explore how living in the Kingdom of God intersects with, and sometimes challenges, our daily lives in the secular world. From discussing the role of the Holy Spirit in gaining wisdom to the importance of maintaining Christ-like character, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking guidance on balancing their spiritual journey with the practicalities of everyday life. Whether discussing the nuances of biblical interpretation or the impact of personal actions on faith, "Navigating Life's Kingdoms" offers a fresh perspective on what it means to be a true ambassador of Christ in the modern world.
If you're looking to get even more out of this podcast episode, check out the full sermon on the same topic on our YouTube channel https://go.clc.tv/ps41.
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Episode Transcript
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(03:22:50):
Hey, and welcome back to between sermons. We've been
(04:00:24):
off for a couple of weeks, so this is
(05:15:34):
a brand new podcast starting the year off. I'm
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excited. I hope you're excited as we get to
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continue the conversation from our sermons on Sunday. And
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so, as always, you don't have to have been
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a part of the church or even listened to
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the sermon in order to get something out of
this conversation. Although I think it would be great
if you did watch the sermon to kind of
catch yourself up to some of the stuff we're
going to be talking about today. And as always,
I got my favorite guest, Carlton McCarthy.
Favorite guest? Wow.
We're throwing it out. Mean, if you look through
the YouTube list, I think your face shows up
more than anybody else. In fact, there's times when
I'm not on there, but you still are.
I'm like the fail safe.
You're the backup because literally your desk is on
the other side of the wall.
Hey, Carlton, what are you doing right now?
Like, hey, Carlton, we forgot to get somebody for
this week. So you want to come out? No,
no, I think this is great. We have good
(21:18:30):
conversations. There's a danger anytime you and I have
a conversation about stuff because we have very similar
personalities, very similar ways of thinking, looking at things.
I guess I should have been an accountant in
a previous life or something. I don't know. I
don't know what that means. But, yeah, we're both
(23:44:47):
a little bit analytical, a little bit black and
white. Like it's just cut and dry. Like truth
is truth. And stop being emotional about it.
Exactly.
Which makes it for a really great office environment.
Yeah, that same culture doesn't do so well when
we're leading.
They come to me for some love and they
don't get it. And then they're like, well, let
me go to the executive pastor.
Thank God for Pastor Asa.
Yeah, man, for real. We had to bring in
a guy that just exudes love in order to
balance us out.
Right.
So we kicked off a brand new series on
Sunday called Kingdom. And funny thing is, I saw
like eight other pastors that I'm connected to that
also started a series.
Oh, wow.
Like either the exact same thing or something so
similar that I'm like, did we steal from you
or did you steal from us?
Maybe there's a movement.
No, I think that the Holy Spirit is like,
you know what? I think people need to start
the year off with a better focus. Yeah, I
think that's what's going on. And so that's what
we're doing. We're starting with our focus not on
(23:58:59):
ourselves, but on the kingdom. And so I got
to ask you the question that you're hoping that
I'm not going to ask you, Carlton, what is
the kingdom of God?
Oh, man. Yeah. So what I've learned from the
sermon yesterday. No, but for me, I do understand
it to be a way of living that's different
from the physical place that, you know, the rules
and the authority of earth. It is not. It
is the rules and the authority of how Jesus
wants Carlton to live. And I take that as
the kingdom. And so it helps that he gives
us a tons of stories and parables to kind
of describe what the kingdom is without describing a
physical place. So that's a little tricky. But I
think, for me, I've always taken it as a
way to.
No, I'm on board with that. Yeah, I think
we joke about. How do you describe the kingdom?
Because Jesus spent most of his communication describing the
kingdom, and everybody walked away going, what was he
talking about?
Yeah, even the disciples came back later. It's like,
jesus, can you rehash what you said and tell
us what you mean?
Yeah, I read through. Earlier today during our prayer
meeting, I read through Matthew 13 again because I
told everybody to read it. And so I was
like, I should probably do the thing I tell
people to do. So I open up Matthew 13
again, and it's man. He has seven parables back
to back to back, talking about what the kingdom
of God or the kingdom of heaven is like.
And then in between, I think, two or three
of them, there's like a scene where his disciples
say, could you explain that one to us? My
favorite thing, though, is somewhere towards the end of
it, he says, do you guys understand what I'm
saying to you? And they all say, yes. No,
they didn't. Clearly, from everything that they're asking, they
didn't fully get it right. Yeah. So it does
become this complicated thing to talk about because I've
run into people that are like, well, the kingdom
of God is about the church. No, it's not.
Well, the kingdom of God is about heaven, the
physical location where you go when you die. No,
it's not like, if you read what Jesus is
talking about kingdom. I think the challenge is instead
of describing what it is, he describes how you
should respond to it more often than not. So
he's like, okay, so when you hear the word,
this is how you should receive the word in
light of the kingdom, like the way you hear
the message of the kingdom. Of God, right? So
he tells this parable of seed being sown, and
is it landing on rocky ground? Is it landing
in thorns? What happens to the seed? And he's
like, well, this is the kingdom. So is the
kingdom a garden?
Exactly.
We keep looking at it like, okay, describe to
me the place. And he's like, it's not a
place.
Right?
And so I went back to the Greek for
it, which is, I'm not a greek scholar or
anything. I listen to people that are greek scholars,
and then I just repeat what they say. But
from my understanding, from several different sources that I
looked at the Greek there, it's the reign of
the king is, like, the better definition of what
a kingdom is. And so it's not really about
a location at all. It's referring to the authority
and the power that God has. And so then
if you want to put a location to it,
then it would either be everywhere, or you could
even personalize it and say, well, the kingdom of
God is in me, right? So now I need
to behave. And that's really what all of this
comes down to, is, how does your behavior change
in light of God's kingdom?
Right? And I think the thing that we do
struggle with is that we are born in the
world, right? And the first thing that we understand
is, how do we live in the world? And
then we come to salvation and understand, wait a
minute. I don't belong to the world. I belong
to.
You've been transferred as God, right.
And now you are understanding and learning this new
way to live that is in opposition to what
you have been living or what you were taught
since you were born. And I think that becomes
a real struggle for us. And then it doesn't
really help that Jesus is using these parables that
kind of don't relate to where we are. So
it takes a little bit of studying and understanding.
The disciples were eleven on a regular basis.
The disciples were confused, and they were living in
the culture that Jesus was using to explain what
the kingdom of heaven is. And so it becomes
very difficult for us to understand that, okay. Some
of the things that we need to do related
to our relationship with Jesus is different than how
we would react in the kingdom of the world.
And I think that it takes a lot of
know, knowledge, understanding, some wisdom comprehension, but also a
lot of practice. We need to be practicing the
way to live in the kingdom to get a
better understanding of the kingdom.
Yeah. And to complicate it or make it even
more challenging is while we're living in the kingdom,
of God. We're still living in the kingdom of
the world.
Absolutely.
Our physical address is still. So we see culture
and we see the kingdom of the world and
the way it wants to live and way it
wants to operate while we're still trying to not
be a part of that, but be a part
of this other thing. But we still have to
go to work on Monday morning and we're going
to a secular job, and there's a kingdom there.
There's a way of operating within that that is
contrary to the kingdom of God that we're supposed
to be living under. And it can get confusing
and it can get challenging.
Absolutely. Yeah. There are some practical things that we
need to do in order to live on earth.
We need to eat and work and take care
of our families in a practical sense. Our children
need to go to school. We need health care,
things like this that we absolutely need in order
to live on earth. But the things that we
need to live on earth and how we live
on earth, I think, can be the difference of
understanding our position in the kingdom versus our position
in the world.
Something interesting about that, too, is I do run
into christians that try and compensate for that by
creating their own christian bubble. So it's like, okay,
we're going to get christian health care and we're
going to get christian workplace and we're going to
do a christian school. So they try and remove
everything from the world, and that becomes direct opposition
to what we're going to talk about in a
minute, that you have a job as an ambassador
of a kingdom. Now, if you completely remove yourself
from the kingdom, how are you an ambassador?
Right.
You're just representing God to people that already know
him. And it just becomes a whole complicated.
You can't have an embassy in another country and
not do anything in the country in the doesn't.
I think a better illustration would be having an
embassy in your own country.
I'm going to the US embassy in Illinois. Yeah.
That doesn't make any sense. Right.
And it's not for the outsiders. No, just for
me. Yeah. So there's a challenge there. We're going
to get into that a bunch in a bit.
But the other challenge, and this is where it
gets offensive for people, honestly. But culture says you're
the king. Right? I mean, it's become a popular
phrase. There's brands of clothing that's just all around
like, hey, you're the king, you're a queen. And
under this kingdom of God, there already is a
king and it isn't us. And so while the
world tries to say, hey, you're the king, so
act like, know Jesus over there going, hey, I'm
the king, so act like it.
Right?
And so a lot of us, I don't think
we want to have that submission to a king.
And I think that may even be a hard
concept for Americans to grasp because even our president,
I'm not submitted to the president.
Absolutely.
Biden walked in right now and told.
Me, do something, especially because they change.
Every four kind of, it doesn't apply in the
same way for us today. But, man, at that
time, when you say, hey, the king said, do
this, or the king said, don't do this, you
have no other choice but be submitted to the
king. And in american culture especially, we want to
buck the system. We want to be independent, and
I want to do my own thing, and I
want to do what makes me happy. And so
we are supposed to be a part of one
kingdom while living in another kingdom, while trying to
make it all about ourselves when the other kingdom
is saying, it's not about you. How do you
navigate all that?
Yeah, I think we get really caught up in
our own authority over ourselves. We try to fight
the government culture, and we even go so far
as saying that I'm my own person. God made
me this way. But we forget that he wants
us to be transformed. He forget that he wants
us to be new creatures in Christ. And we
fail to understand that how we are born in
this world is not who we should be and
where we should be and what we should identify
as. We should identify as being in Christ. And
Christ becomes our identity and not ourselves. And we
get in a lot of trouble in our relationship
with Christ when we put ourselves first, because it
changes how we pray, it changes how we worship.
It becomes about us and not about him. We
don't submit ourselves to him. And Jesus got to
be looking at us like, okay, all right, if
you could have died on the cross for your
sins, then you would have, but you can't, and
you didn't. I did. So I am your king,
and you need to submit your entire life to
me and not follow the identity that you've created
for yourself.
And I think the part of what you just
said there is, it's everything. Like, my entire identity,
everything about me needs to be submitted. I think
we run into this problem of we try and
just give piecemeal to him where it's like, okay,
you can have these things. I'm going to keep
these things. We're having a negotiation it's like, all
right, well, I'll do this if you'll do that.
And Jesus is like, no, I'll take all of
it or none of it.
Right? Especially when we think we know what's right
in our everyday lives, the decisions that we make,
the visions that we have for our family and
our own lives, the things that we want to
do. It's like, well, are we doing this because
of our own desires, because of the things that
we want for ourselves? It's kind of a selfish
motive, but we need to consult the king to
say, hey, I've given my life to you. You
are my king. I'm submitted to you. What direction
do you want me to go? What desires do
you have for my life? How do you want
me to live? And 95, 99% of it has
been laid out to us in his word.
Yeah. So we're left in this place where our
identity is as citizens of a kingdom that has
a king that isn't us, and so we have
to submit our identity to him. And I think
that that becomes, even in and of itself, such
a huge challenge in this culture, in this day.
Now I'm going to try and choose my words
carefully so we don't get in trouble.
Say corn.
Not that conversation, but that was funny. So, in
our culture, if me as a white man tries
to make my white manhood, my identity, culture tears
me a new one, right?
Absolutely.
You as a black man, if you don't make
being a black man the pinnacle of your identity,
culture tears you a new one.
Absolutely.
And so, in this scenario, neither of us can
make our racial identity the most important thing about
us, if that becomes the biggest identifier in our
lives, is I'm white, you're black. That's what matters
most. We are missing what Paul says, that we're
a new creation. And now it doesn't matter if
you were Jew or Greek, slave or free. If
he was writing that in 2024, he would say,
it doesn't matter if you're white or black. So
how do you navigate that? From my side of
it, it's like, well, that's an easy one because
culture wouldn't be happy with me anyways.
Right.
But you have to navigate a different dynamic with
that.
Right. And I think that it's who I trust.
Okay. So if I go in every circumstance that
I'm in, and I lead with me being an
African American, me being a black American, then I
have to assume or project how culture is going
to perceive me or whatever environment that I'm in
here on earth. But when I lead with me
being, my identity is in Christ, and I am
a Christian now, my faith of what happens to
me is on Christ and not on society or
on culture. And that gives me the confidence to
say that I don't have to lead with the
color of my skin. I can lead with who
my faith is in. Because if my faith and
my identity is in Christ, then it's up to
him what happens to me. Because the kingdom of
God is greater than the kingdom of the world.
And if I live based on me being in
the kingdom of God, then I only have to
answer to God and he controls what happens to
me. So I think that's kind of where I
see this, because it can get scary if you
believe that the world determines what happens to you
if you do not live by the rules of
the world, if my identity isn't based on what
the world has given me. And so I don't
play those identity politics with what the world has
given me, my identity is in Christ. And because
of that, I only answer to him.
Yes, man, that's a boldness to be able to
have and a confidence to have. I mean, that's
what we're all called to do. I don't know
that everybody has your level of.
This is what it is, a level of. I
don't care.
Yeah, probably the right way to say that. How
do you help somebody then? That's struggling. That's saying,
man, maybe it's fraternity, culture or something where it's
like, man, I'm in an environment right now where
if I don't push that identity first and foremost,
then they're going to claim things about me.
Right. Well, the first thing you have to do
is understand what it means to have your identity
in Christ. Because he's given us attributes, he's given
us an advocate, he's given us promises. There's a
whole thing there that comes with having the identity
of Christ. And the more you get into understanding
my provision, my healing, all the things that come
along with identifying in Christ that I can live
in and that God has for me is so
much greater than anything that can happen to me
in the world, including persecution. Once you have that
understanding, it becomes a joy to live in the
kingdom and a joy to identify in Christ, because
you know that the kingdom of God has so
much more for you than what the world could
give you or take away from you. And I
think that is what gives you the confidence. My
hope is in glory. My hope is in eternity.
So it doesn't matter what the world does to
me or what they think about me. As long
as my identity is in Christ, I have that
hope for glory.
That's good. I like that. I think that I
got to be cautious here and tell people I'm
not trying to whitewash everything. I'm not trying to
say you being black doesn't matter. Absolutely. Engage in
your culture and be proud of that. That's totally
good. It cannot be the primary. And I think
that's really the heart of it. The world tries
to make one of four things. Your primary identity,
your sexuality, your gender, your ethnicity, or your political
leaning. So your political identity, all of those can
be important parts of your life, but they can't
be the number one thing. And so what has
to happen is all of those are secondary identities
that have to be submitted to the primary identity
in Christ. So if my sexual identity doesn't line
up with what my identity in Christ is commanding
or telling, then guess what has to change.
Sexual identity.
The secondary identity has to be submitted to the
primary. And, hey, maybe that gets us in trouble
for saying it as bluntly, but it's the reality
of where we live. That culture keeps trying to
push these things as the most important part of
your identity, and they're not. And every single one
of those has to be submitted to your kingdom
identity. I mean, political leanings, I probably lean more
conservative than anything else, but honestly, man, I'm totally
going to get in trouble for this podcast. This
is going to be a great one. Most likely,
I'm not voting in 2024, and the reason for
that is right now it looks like the choices
are Biden and Trump. And I didn't like that
choice the last time around.
Right?
And I don't like that choice this time around.
And I feel like I would be compromising my
kingdom identity by backing either one of those men.
And so, look, I get it. My God given
right as an american is to vote. And I
need to vote, man. I just feel like either
direction, I'm getting in trouble.
Yeah. I mean, God made me black. So there
are some parts of me that enjoy black culture.
There's some things that I absolutely love, and I
thank God that I'm black. And he's given us
the diversity on this world to experience our culture
and other cultures. But there are some parts about
black culture that I absolutely detest, I can't stand.
And so just because I'm black doesn't mean that
I have to accept all the things that come
with the culture that I'm in. So if you're
conservative, that doesn't necessarily mean you like the person
who won the primary. In the same way, God
has given us these things on earth for us
to experience and enjoy. He's given us life and
he's given it to us in abundance. But the
first thing that we need to understand is that
our priority is our identity in Christ. The kingdom
of God needs to be paramount in our lives.
And then everything else is second, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
whatever.
And honestly, people ask us all the time, hey,
why don't you talk about politics more at ClC?
And it's like, because we talk about kingdom.
Exactly. Kingdoms are more important.
Like, hey, I get it, politics are important. Certain
decisions are being made that it's going to affect
how you operate and your taxes. I get it.
It's still not as important as the kingdom.
Right?
And if I only have 52 sermons a year,
we got 52 Sundays. You got 30, 35 minutes
to make one of those. About politics.
Yeah, it's impossible. There's too many subjects of Christ
that we can go into that are better for
our lives than going into politics. And then once
we orientate ourselves to Jesus, he'll guide us in
what we need to do on earth, including politics
and culture and everything else. I mean, I think
that's the thing, is that our focus shouldn't be
on the other things that we can identify as
our focus. Our orientation should be on Christ, who
is our identity, and then he will take care
of us as we live in this foreign land.
Yeah. And I'm convinced that if you truly submit
yourself to the kingship of Christ and you pursue
knowledge of him, to know what he likes, what
he doesn't like, all of that. When you do
all of that, all the other stuff lines up
in the right, right. Like there may be something
from your old identity, something from old culture that
you're like, oh, this is really good. I don't
need to correct that. If I can just get
you submitted to Jesus, he'll correct. So that that's
my focus.
Absolutely. I mean, Jesus lived under, you know, he
didn't like the things that the roman empire was
doing. He paid his taxes, know, so there's some
things that we have to understand. There's parts of
our culture and our lives here, and I'm calling
this foreign land, I'm taking those words from you
from Sunday, that when we live in.
The world, that's Paul's words. He said, you're no
longer foreign.
Absolutely right. That we have to do here on
earth. But the way that we live and how
we orientate our lives need to be in Christ
Jesus.
Yep. So we have an identity. It's the only
identity that matters. That's really strong language. The only
identity that matters. Yeah.
Is it not the most important what other identity
matters?
None of them matter as much if.
I was Eskimo, right? Would it matter in relationship
to my identity?
In. And maybe people don't know that. So my
wife is from Mexico. Sometimes she's Mexican, and then
people are like, well, how long has she been
living here? And. No, no. She's, like, from didn't.
English is her second language. Right. And so we're
raising multicultural kids. So, like, over Christmas or January.
What is it? January 6 is King's day, which
is a mexican holiday around when learning something here.
Yeah. The three kings, the three wise men. We
don't know how many there were, but this is.
Hey, go with me. The three kings came and
brought presents for Jesus. So on January 6, the
kings leave presents for the kids in your house.
So it's part of mexican culture and heritage, and
we participate in that. We bring that culture into
our home so that my three kids, who look
whiter than I do, will actually be raised with
an understanding and an appreciation for the culture that
they come from. So I'm not trying to get
rid of all culture. And, man, this podcast, we're
getting so much trouble.
No, it's good. It's all Carlton's fault.
I apologize to Joni and Taisha. They're going to
have to figure out some way to deal with
the comments on this one. But if you're still
watching at this point. Hey, thanks for hanging out.
Yeah.
All right.
No, but I understand. My wife's from Trinidad, and
I tried to get Spencer, my son, to eat
pay Lao. And he's like, no. And I'm like,
you're a disgrace to your heritage, your culture, your
legacy. And he was like, dad, I was born
in America. I said, yeah, but this is your
culture. This is something know you can appreciate and
identify as you're part trinidadian. Get with the program.
What else is good in Trinidad?
Oh, curry.
Goat curry.
Yeah. Stew.
Isn't oxtail a pretty big?
Oxtail is amazing. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a lot of
things. But he picks and chooses because he has
the freedom, what he identifies as depending on what's
for dinner.
Okay. All right. See, we're raising up kids from
different cultures.
There you go.
Trying to figure out how to navigate that. No,
I love it, but I want to be able
to stress for people how important this conversation is,
how important this identity in Christ is, that anytime
we put anything else above our identity of Christ,
that's why I don't even like when somebody says,
I'm a blank Christian. I'm a white Christian, I'm
a black Christian, I'm a gay Christian, I'm a
straight Christian, I'm whatever. Anytime you put a qualifier
before Christianity, it drives me nuts.
Right. Because is that identity leading your faith? Is
it leading. Exactly, your discipline in Christianity, your theology,
the doctrines in which you live by?
Because now that first piece of the identity is
shaping the secondary, and it's, no, no, I'm a
Christian, right. So I don't like the know, conservative
Christian or liberal Christian, all of those. If your
Christianity needs a qualifier, then you're not following Christ,
right? It's him or it's nothing, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah. We get a little. Somebody said I was
spicy on Sunday, so I don't know if this
is the Spicy podcast part two. I don't know.
I don't think it was spicy because it was
truth. I mean, if the truth is spicy.
I mean, you eat a lot of trinidadian food,
so spice is different for you.
Exactly, yes.
All right, so salvage this thing for me, man.
Help this podcast not crash and burn. So we've
got this kingdom identity. We're new creations. We've been
transferred from the kingdom of darkness, is how it's
described in those passages. That's the world into this
kingdom of God. But then God does something really
interesting. He takes us out of something so that
he can put us right back into it.
Right.
It's kind of weird, right? I mean, so he
removes us from the kingdom of darkness, gets us
saved, gets us following Jesus, and then slaps an
ambassador badge on us and kicks us right back
out into the community, into that kingdom of darkness,
so that we can represent him to the world.
And I think that that representation, then, is why
this kingdom identity becomes so important. Because we are
supposed to represent Christ everywhere we go, so that
when people see us, they're seeing a reflection of
him, not a reflection of us. But if we're
so mixed into the identity of the kingdom of
darkness and so wrapped up in the culture around
there that we're not reflecting Jesus anymore, it makes
us bad at our job. I love the memes
where it's like you had one job, all the
lines are one way, and then one's crooked. Like
you had one job. That's Christianity, right?
Absolutely.
You have one job.
People need an example of what it is they
are being asked to follow. Okay, we're asking people
to. We're introducing Christ to people. And for a
lot of people, they don't know what that means
or who he is in context to the culture
that they're living in, to the age that they're
living in. And they need a real life example
of what it means to live as a Christian
and what Christ is like. And that's through us,
through believers. We're sent out into the world so
that we can be the representation of Christ to
the world. And so when they see us, they
should be seeing Christ. Now, of course, we're not
perfect, but we should be striving to live as
Christ wants us to live, and that is the
kingdom of God. And then when people see us,
they know. I want that because I see how
Carlton lives. I see how he operates. I see
how he moves. I see the fruit that's in
his life. There's a joy there. There's a peace
there, there's a comfort there. There's love there. There
must be something that's in him that's different than
what I see around me. And that's Christ Jesus.
That's my identity in Christ being shown out to
everyone in the world so that when people see
me, it sparks conversation, it creates some interest, and
then I'm able to share the love of Jesus
to them, and they can get it tangibly.
Yeah. I love this idea that when we read
scripture, when we approach the text, that when we
make it all about us, we miss a lot
of the point of what it is, that it
is just so that we can be a reflection
of him. He says, you're salt, right. The purpose
of the salt is to be useful, right? And
he even says, if the salt isn't useful, what
do you do with it?
Right. You throw it away, trash it.
Right? And he says, you're a light. Right? You're
supposed to be illuminating him in the world. There's
a world of darkness. So he says, all right,
you're the light. Go in there and shine brightly
for me. Right. He says that we're supposed to
produce fruit, right? The fruit of the spirit. We've
talked about this in the past. Like, does the
tree eat the fruit?
No, the fruit is not for the tree.
The fruit is not for the tree. The fruit
is for those around. And so when we make
Christianity and our walk with God all about us,
and it's like, well, I need this from God,
and I need this from him, and I need
this it's like, man, okay, turn your head the
other direction because you're looking at yourself and you
need to be looking at the world, right. Because
God has sent you as an ambassador and we
need to represent him well.
Yeah, there needs to be a trust that all
of those things will be taken care of. If
a country has an embassy with an ambassador in
another country, believe you me, that country is going
to back that embassy and that ambassador. Anything that
they need, they should be able to pick up
the phone and make a call to get what
they need. The provisions of the country is in
that embassy. And even though they're detached as far
as distance and they're in a foreign land, they
have all the rights and access and everything that's
in the country that they're from. Now they have
to operate in this new country, in this foreign
land with the people and their culture and their
way of operating the infrastructure and how they live.
But just like we are part of the kingdom
of God and we live on earth, we have
access to what the kingdom has for us. And
so we should be able to pray and to
call on God for the things that we need
while we're here living in the kingdom of the
world.
Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I think that there's
a natural component of that where like you said,
an ambassador is being provided for by his home
country. Same thing is true in the supernatural side.
Like hey, he's sending you out in the world,
but he's providing for you, he's protecting you, he's
guarding you, he's doing all the provision side of
things on your behalf. And I think that we
need to rely on him in that more than
we do.
And if we seek him, then our faith trust
is that he's going to take care of all
the other things and that should completely change how
we think about how we're living here on earth.
Because if we have a selfish mentality, well God,
I really want to be an ambassador, I want
to create disciples, but I need to do for
myself first. And I'll get with you as soon
as I can. Once I get this business taken
care of, once I earn a certain dollar amount,
once I get to a certain level of wealth,
once I'm comfortable in my living here, then I'll
be able to focus my attention on you. And
the kingdom is the opposite of that. The kingdom
is focus my attention, my energy, all that I
am on the kingdom of God and what he
has for me. And then through me he's able
to not only take care of me, but the
people that he wants me to ambassador for.
Yeah. The world says, me first.
Right.
And honestly, it's how we're born, right? We're born
into darkness. So we are raised thinking, me first,
me first.
Me first.
You have to teach people how to not be
selfish. You don't have to teach your kid how
to be selfish. They come out knowing, oh, yeah,
absolutely.
I think most kids first words is no or
mine.
Yeah, we just have to. Within this context of,
I'm part of a kingdom, it has a king,
it's not me. And he's given me a job
to do, so I need to do my job.
I need to make this whole thing about him
and stop making it about me and what makes
me happy, what makes me comfortable, because I think
when we have that me first kingdom, it just
messes up our ability to do anything that God's
calling us to do and especially to be able
to do it well.
Yeah. Because we're always judging what God wants us
to do with the thing that we have set
as our desire or the direction that God wants
us to go in for kingdom's sake with a
vision that I've created for myself here on earth.
Well, God, I wanted to do this, but you're
calling me to do this. Well, that kind of
doesn't go with the thing that I want for
myself.
I think it's even worse than that. I mean,
how often does the vision that we have for
our life do? We try and justify it with
God? We're like, right, but God, if I get
all that money, then I can tie more to
you. But God, if I get famous, then I
can use that influence.
I got a platform now.
Yeah, preach the word or spread the gospel, whatever.
So many people start with this, me first kingdom.
And it's like, but if you'll allow this, then
I'll be more effective. It's like, can you just
trust him with the plan?
Right.
Because maybe his plan for you is to not
do any of those things, right. And a lot
of times we do, we try and justify our
plans and saying, but my plan is good for
the kingdom.
Right?
It's really good for me and it's kind of
good for the kingdom. So it's a win win,
and we've got to stop the foolishness.
Yeah, absolutely. God's looking at us like, you know
exactly what's best for the kingdom, right? A kingdom
that you can't even explain back to me. You
know exactly what's best for the kingdom. We got
to trust that God has parts all over the
world, in all of humanity, for all of human
history. He has a plan. And who are we
to tell God how he should conduct his plan
for all of humanity, for the salvation good for
my life?
How am I going to be the one to
come up with a plan for all of it?
Yeah, it's just wildness. So in the message on
Sunday, we try to make it as practical as
possible for people to grow in this ambassadorship, right?
So if you got a new job, you'd hope
you get some on job training. Somebody would tell
you, okay, this is what you're supposed to do.
This is what you're not supposed to do. And
so we tried to lay that out and I
gave people three things, and I'd love to just
kind of get your take on each of them.
So what I said is we need knowledge because
you can't represent what you don't know, right? You
need wisdom because you need to know what to
do with that knowledge that you have. And then
the biggest one is character, right? I don't care
if you don't know nothing and you don't know
how to use nothing. As long as you walk
in character, you're still a better reflection of Christ
than people with all the knowledge in the world.
Tons of wisdom. But, man, how many scandals have
there been in the last few years of pastors
and christians?
Right? But you're not going to go there in
this podcast. I'll be another podcast for later.
Just trying to keep us on here. No, my
job is not to bash people and to talk
about what other ministries are doing or not doing
and to lay judgment on things that I know
nothing about.
Right. I tag all those that's not interested on
YouTube.
Same. Yeah, man, the algorithm was going nuts for
a while. It just kept giving me stuff and
I'm like, no, you're interested in this. No, stop
it. No. But forget about everybody else. It's me
and it's God, and I want to be the
best representation of him as possible. And the only
way I can do that is if I'm walking
in character, but take all three of those. So
when it comes to knowledge, what's your knowledge level
of Jesus and how does it improve?
Yeah, I mean, there's a baseline need to understand
what in the world are we even talking about?
Where does it come from? There's a source of
information that's there that provides us with the foundation
of all of this, and that's the Bible. The
kingdom is expressed in the entire Bible. But in
our gospels, Jesus expresses the kingdom more than anything.
I think Matthew has over 50 times where Jesus
mentions the kingdom.
80% of all of the New Testament mentions of
kingdom happen within the gospels and out of the
lips of Jesus.
Right? Yeah. And I think it's like one and
a half times every page in a traditional Bible
that you'll get an example of kingdom coming from
Jesus. And so that's the basis of my knowledge.
Right. And then with that, I need to have
understanding of that. I need to be able get.
Dig deeper into resources and other reference scriptures. I
need to read through Paul's writings to get a
better understanding of what the kingdom is and what
it means for all of humanity. And I think
that's the start of knowledge. At least for me.
It is.
I think. I've asked you this question. We did
a podcast a while back about Bible reading and
all that, but what's your go to translation?
New living translation? Because I'm not that smart.
You're an NLT guy. Yeah, I'm not that smart
either. So I do ESV to pretend to be
smart, and then I do standard version. Yeah. So
I do ENglish standard Version, which is arguably one
of the two most well respected. ESV and NASB
are probably the top.
Closest to actual translation.
Yeah. And so then I'll also read the ERV,
because sometimes I read the ESV, and I'm like,
I don't know what that means. People are like,
wow, Brent, you're so smart. And like, no, I'm
an idiot.
The new living translation to me kind of reads
like a story that I can receive, if that
makes. So I do like.
So I used to do NIV NLT, and then
I swapped NIV for ESV. And I swapped NLT
for ERV.
There you go.
And I think both of them, it's like I
had two that were kind of middle pack, and
then I went really, really simple, and then really,
really not.
So I need to graduate to an easy to
read version, is what you're telling me.
Downgrade? Is that what that is? I'm so sorry
for whoever produces the ERV that I just referred
to it as a downgrade.
Well, I mean, it's great.
I love the ERV. Although I used it on
Sunday and it translated compassion.
To feel sorry. To feel sorry for you.
No, I'm not on board with that one.
It didn't need to be that easy to read.
It could have just used compassion.
You still use compassion. It's more accurate.
Right.
Okay, so what does Bible reading look like? For
you? Do you use a devo, do you use
a Bible reading plan? Are you a hunting peck?
Like you just flip it open and point at
something?
No, I use a Bible plan for sure. I'm
in chronological. We started the year, so I'm in
the chronological Bible now, but I like reading books
of the Bible. And then when I read the
book or before I read the book, I try
to do a little bit of the survey of
the book to get an understanding of the context
of the culture, the government, what's happening in the
book. I do a lot of Bible projects to
kind of help navigate that. For me, if I'm
getting into something a little bit deeper, say I
want to get deeper into a parable. I love
life in Christ by Charles Spurgeon. So I'll get
an author or some books that kind of dig
deeper on a particular topic. But the baseline is
just reading the Bible in chronological order because I'll
read it as a big story because I'm the
kind of guy that I want to know what
happens next. I don't want to be reading first
kings and then jump over to first chronicles and
like, wait a minute, I just read this. It's
the same story. No, I want to read it
as a big story. I want to know what
happens next and how we end up. Where we
end up.
Yeah, I'm trying something new this year. I don't
know how it's going to work out. I'm just
focused on the New Testament this year, which is
hard for me. Some people focus on the New
Testament because they hate the old. I love the
Old Testament.
Love the Old Testament.
So much richness in the Old Testament. So it's
actually a sacrifice for me. Just focus on the
new. But I'm actually doing something. I think it
was actually, it was John Bever that I heard
talk about at one time, which he's coming to
our first love.
Absolutely.
Friday, January 26, January. Going to be awesome. But
anyways, he was talking about his Bible reading, and
basically he just buys a Bible and just starts
going through it, reads until he gets something from
it and then puts it back on the shelf
and then picks it back up and picks up
where he left off and highlights things and takes
notes and has a whole system for it. But
he's like, it'll take me two, maybe three years
to get through a Bible. And then I get
another one and I start over. I was like,
okay, that's interesting.
Wow.
And so I'm taking a similar idea. So I
found this thing where it's basically, it's the New
Testament, but they're individual books, so they go into,
like, this one binding altogether, but you pull them
out one at a time. So it's just the
book of Matthew, and it's a total separate thing.
Oh, nice.
And it's the scripture on the left hand side,
and it's lined paper on the right hand side.
So you're reading and you're taking notes, and so
I'm taking a much slower time, like when I
would usually read, like, three to five chapters a
day. It's like I'm barely getting through one chapter
now, but I'm spending more time.
That's why I stopped reading application bibles, because I
don't know. I know it's not a race for
me. I know it's a marathon and not a
sprint, but I would compare my thoughts with the
other guy. Yeah, with the application editing team. Yeah,
the editing team. And I would be like, okay,
I see where they're going with that, but, you
know, that this could also mean. And then I
just get stuck. So I was like, okay, I
got to stop this.
Yeah. So I'm taking my time, but, yeah, it's
another process. Okay, so that's knowledge base. Any other
places where you gain knowledge?
I mean, church, our sermons. I get the privilege
of sitting in sermon planning and sermon planning. When
all the pastors get together and we dissect the
scripture, we look at the sermon, we help the
speaker put it together, that kind of thing. I
get a lot of knowledge and understanding, background information
about what's going to be preached on Sunday from
there and then Sunday service. I bother my wife
all the time. I said, you know, we talked
about this being a part of this, and we
can expand this and talk about this. And she's
like, I just want to hear the sermon. But
Sunday sermons are fantastic for us to pull out
scripture and unpack it, and I think that's just
a brilliant way to get more knowledge of what
we're reading.
Yeah, I think that there's a danger happening now
where sermons become TED talks and they become more
entertainment than knowledge based. And I just want to
always be cautious of that. I'm not one of
those guys, like, man preachers shouldn't be entertainers. No,
I think they probably should, too, because Jesus was
a good communicator telling stories. People were like, oh,
tell me more. I want to hear how this
ends. So there is something to be said for
the entertainment side of preaching. And I even hate
using the word entertainment, because that's not the point.
But anyways, so I'm not super hyper on that,
but I think that the meat of it, the
message, should be giving somebody something to run with.
If I'm listening to a sermon and it gets
me all hyped up and I'm all excited. And
the preacher, he's entertaining, right? He's shouting, and it's
exciting, but then he says, amen. And I'm like,
now what? What am I supposed to do with
that? I feel let down, and so I try
not to do that. As a preacher.
Yes.
I want to make sure that I've given you
something to either talk about, think about, or do.
Yes, I do this with my wife sometimes, and
she'll listen to someone, and I'll say, 15 minutes
later, I'll say, did he go back to that
scripture that he referenced at the beginning of the
sermon?
You've told me the story before, so I know
which preacher you're talking about.
It's like, okay, when he gets to the actual
sermon, call me. It's like 15 minutes later. So
what was he doing all that time?
Dangerous. All right, so knowledge, I like that. And
there's tons of resources out there, but we need
to be students. I think that's one of the
things that I love about this word, discipleship. Like
disciples. Disciples were students. They. They had a master,
and they sat at the master's feet. And so
as a disciple, it was like, okay, teach me.
Right.
And we needed to be doing the same thing
today. All right, so you need wisdom, though, because
if you just know stuff, but you don't know
what to do with that stuff, you got a
big head.
Yeah.
That's all you got.
Right.
So how do you gain wisdom?
Yeah, so this is a hard one, because the
way that I gain wisdom is that I think
God actually pushes me out there to go try
and do something, which can be very scary. Much
like the disciples, they were receiving information from Jesus,
and then they were watching Jesus do things, and
then Jesus brought them along to participate with him
in doing things, and then Jesus sent them out.
And in that process of watching, participating, and then
being sent out is where they gained wisdom, because
there's some cases where they got in trouble for
not having fruit of what Jesus told them to
do, and so they're like, okay, jesus, this isn't
working. Jesus is like, well, you needed this. Here's
more knowledge to apply to the circumstance that you're
in in order to accomplish what I'm doing or
what I want you to accomplish. And then there's
enlightenment, and that's where wisdom comes from. And for
me, it's like the trial and error of the
application of knowledge brings wisdom.
Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree. I would just say before
that moment, though, holy spirit. Absolutely. And it's funny
because you can use your illustration. So the disciples,
they ask all kinds of questions. They're gaining wisdom
that way. But if you look at Peter, Peter
is still saying stupid things even after he's sent
out and then coached and then said, you're Satan.
Stop it.
Right?
Peter is just constantly just open mouth, insert foot.
He's just all off. And then he preaches the
first sermon, and thousands come the faith, and he
speaks with wisdom, and there's a depth to his
understanding. It's like, okay, what happened between acts chapter
two, where Peter does this, and the end of
the gospels, when Peter was still cutting off people's
ears and being reckless. And, and so where did
the wisdom come from? Well, what happens in acts,
chapter one, right.
The Holy Spirit comes. Absolutely.
So there's a holy spirit moment, and all of
a sudden, this guy, that wisdom is not how
I would describe Peter. In the.
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But he is after, and
the Holy Spirit is a key source in us
applying the knowledge that we have, because the Holy
Spirit will move us, direct us, influence us to
go out and do the thing that we've been
studying and reading and just bring it into ourselves.
The Holy Spirit is like, all right, now it's
time for us together to go and do the
things that you've been learning.
I'm going to make a dangerous statement. Dangerous because
if you apply it in the wrong way, it
blows up in your face. But there's even something
(23:59:22):
to be said that there is some holy spirit
wisdom and kingdom wisdom that does not appear wise
from a natural standpoint. Like, the wise thing to
do in some situations is not the thing that
is telling you to do. So there absolutely is
these moments where it's like, okay, I need to
listen to the Holy Spirit because the world may
be telling me, hey, it would be wise for
you to pull back right now because you're extending
yourself too far. And the Holy Spirit's like, no,
go for it. I'm setting up this opportunity. I'm
the one behind it. And so we got to
listen to the Holy Spirit. Now, I say all
that with the caution. I'm not the Holy Spirit
in your life. So just because you heard me
say that just now doesn't mean you should do
a foolish thing. Make sure that you're actually hearing
from the Holy Spirit, get it confirmed by multiple
people, and then do the thing that the Holy
Spirit's telling you to do. But it's interesting to
me that there have been times in my life
when the wise thing, from a natural standpoint, was
not the thing that I was being told to
do by the spirit.
Right. Because you would think that the thing that
you're doing is good, or you hope that it's
good, and the Holy Spirit is like, I never
told you.
To do that, don't do that.
Or you're doing the thing that's opposite of what
I told you to do because you're living or
working or moving on sight and not your faith
in me. Yeah, I get it.
Wisdom. It's huge. I think. Absolutely. We gain it
from experience. We gain it from other people, as
I talked about on Sunday. But the Holy Spirit
component of it, I think I can't stress it
enough. That's why. That's my prayer for.
Right.
I started praying that prayer when I was, like,
17, so I need wisdom. I was wise enough
at 17 to recognize that I wasn't wise enough.
Right, there you go.
And now I'm pushing 40, and I still recognize
I am wise enough to recognize I am not
wise enough. Okay, and then we'll close with character
because it's the biggie.
Yeah, absolutely. Because I feel like the Holy Spirit
is not going to compete with a character that
you've decided to have that's in opposition of him.
And I think that's a really big one as
far as this process goes, knowledge, wisdom, and character,
because we have to have christlike character. And when
we have christlike character, when we have the attributes
of the Holy Spirit and we remember what Christ
has said and has done, then that leads our
character, and then that's when the Holy Spirit can
use us. That's when we become ambassadors. That's when
we can create disciples. That's when we can go
out to the world and spread the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
Yeah. What do people always say? Your talent will
get you in the room, but it's your character
that keeps you there.
Right.
Man, the number of people that have destroyed something
God was doing because of poor character, and the
number of people I've talked to where they're just
like, man, I know I'm messing up in this
area, but God's grace is enough to. It's like,
okay, yeah, God's grace is enough to get you
to heaven, but what about all the people that
are watching you right now?
Right.
All they're seeing is a reflection of themselves. He
talks just like I do. He drinks just like
I do. He's cheating on his wife just like
I do.
Right.
There's no difference between that Christian and the world.
You're just a horrible ambassador.
Yeah. How many times have people destroyed other people's
faith in Jesus based on their own character? Their
character. I mean, our job as ambassadors is to
get the good news of the gospel out to
the world and to bring people into relationship with
Christ. But we can't do that if our character
is tainted. We could be discipling someone and bringing
someone along as ambassadors and bringing them to Christ.
And we're living a life that can be blamed.
We are living a life that has sin in
it, where the character is just not of God.
And so what happens is that person then loses
faith in Jesus because they see the reflection of
Christ in us no more. They say, okay, well,
what happened, Carlton? Your character changed. And now it's
hard for me to continue to follow Christ because
the example of Christ that I had has failed
me or their character has failed. I see the
sin in their lives, and now it's like, well,
what's the point of all of this? Because you're
the person that I was, and I can see
that now.
And there's an aspect of it of, we teach
people, don't put your pastors on pedestals because they're
human, too, and they make mistakes, too. But the
reality is when you stand on a stage, you
are in a position. I mean, even scripture says
that those who teach the word are going to
be held higher standard. And so there is a
caution for us in that, for non preachers or
non celebrity pastors or whatever, for everyone. We've got
to have a caution with this. People probably don't
know a ton of my story, but this is
part of why this means so much to me
is I've called three men my pastor in my
life that. Not just a pastor, but they were
my pastor. Three men. Two of the three had
a moral failure. That's not a good statistic.
No.
Only one out of three didn't have a moral
failure. Now, thank God that the one that didn't
is also my father, because if my dad was
part of that mix, that'd be really bad.
Had to do the math on that one.
Two of the three. Now, I'll say both of
them, there's been repentance, there's been restoration in their
lives. So both of those are guys are in
ministry today. But their ministries took a major hit.
And I know of people personally that as a
result of their failures, they walked away from God.
Oh, wow.
Because they saw the person that they were following.
The person. They're emulate the person. And that's the
danger. You're supposed to be following Jesus, not a
preacher. But when you start putting so much of
your identity into, okay, this person is living this
way, so, okay, that means it's true. And then
all of a sudden they fail. And now you're
questioning, okay, is all of this true?
Right.
It's a horrible place to be in. And so
I've sat so close to people that have had
these failures of character that for me, I don't
care if I'm the worst preacher on the planet
as long as my character is upright.
Right.
And the moment that I put anything above being
able to stand upright before God kick me out,
I'm done.
When I first got ordained, I went to the
mall with my son and a lady of the
church, a member walked past me and said, hey,
Pastor Carlton. And I said, even at the mall?
And she said, yes, even at the mall.
Yeah.
That was all the conversation. We were walking past
each other while we said this, and I had
to think for a second, wait, I didn't get
ordained for the walls of ClC. I got ordained
on earth. My character, what I do, the way
I live, it's not that people are out there
watching every move that I make or anything, but
God is watching me. And I don't know where
his people are who are looking at me as
an example of how to live in Christ Jesus.
And so I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was
shopping. But it just hit me all of a
sudden, like, man, I have to live a life
that's blameless everywhere that I am because I don't
know where God is going to use me, where
people are going to see me. My character needs
to be intact. Not only that, but for my
own salvation. Right? I don't want to be in
a place in sin where there is no repentance
for me. So I think that's important.
We can recognize that clearly because you're a pastor.
But remove the pastor title, it still applies.
Absolutely. And when you remove pastor, you may think
it's a free for all, right?
But it applies to every christian because every Christian
is an ambassador. And so I said, on Sunday,
there are no days off. So, yeah, even at
the mall, right? You're still representing Jesus at the
mall, at the movie theater, you're still representing Jesus
at the grocery store, because I.
Would hate for anybody to go to work. And
their coworkers say, I thought you were a.
Super, super transparent moment. This is big for me,
too, because I was not this in the prime
moment of my life. So I went to a
really big high school, tons of kids as a
preacher's son, as a lifelong christian, I got filled
with the Holy Spirit when I was like six.
Speaking of talking to the baptized, at six years
old, my life was like Jesus. Senior year, somebody
was asking me what college I was going to
go to. And it was a moment of weakness
where I was like, man, I don't really know.
I'm thinking about military, thinking about this thing. Then
there's this church internship thing that I might go
to. And the moment the words came out of
my mouth, I realized I've never once admitted to
any of these friends that I'm a Christian, let
alone a pastor's son. And all of a sudden,
it was one of those moments where I was
just like, I don't know, maybe this church internship
thing. And they were like, hold up. What? And
in that moment, I was petrified. I was like,
oh, my God. Looking back on that moment and
those years in school, I'm like, man, I blew
it. I missed. When will you have that many
people around you all the time that you're building
relationship with? I mean, I think today of how
many people could I have led to Christ if
I was a high school student that took his
faith seriously? I missed the prime moment of evangelism
because I wasn't a good ambassador.
Yeah. In high school, people knew that I was
a Christian, but it didn't impact them. Me being
a Christian had no impact to them. And I
think that's where I failed, because if I have
a group of people who know that I'm a
believer, then their lives should be impacted by being
around me. And it know, because I was doing
some things that was just bad, just not of
God at, you know, they will look at my
life and be like, oh, well, Carlson's a Christian.
If he's checking a box on the, you know,
if there's an application, say, what is your religion?
He's going to check Christianity. But it's not that
my life reflected that or my relationship with them
reflected that.
Yeah, it's sobering, isn't it?
Absolutely.
What I really want to hit is that this
applies to ambassadors, not just pastors. Right. It isn't
just about us. And, yeah, as pastors, you usually
have a greater level of influence because there's more
people that see you in that role. But for
every believer, you're an ambassador. How are you representing
Jesus in your community at the HOA meeting when
everybody's losing their minds? I'm new to the HOa
world, and it's a weird world, but when everybody's
cussing each other out and getting mad because of
the garbage on the curb and all this stuff,
like, how are you representing Christ in that conversation
when you're in the workplace and there's people that
are cutting corners and coming in late and hiding
from the boss, and how are you behaving in
a way that represents Christ?
Right.
Like, wherever you go, whatever you're doing, you are
an ambassador. So live like it.
Absolutely.
Because he's the king. Yes. Good place to start.
To stop.
To stop. Start and stop.
Make a sandwich like Mark, the markian sandwich. I
love it. This is awesome. All right, well, I
don't know. I hope that this was beneficial to
somebody, this conversation. I think if I had to
sum it up, there's a kingdom. We don't fully
understand how to describe it because it's this nebulous
concept of the authority and the power of God
to rule wherever he is, wherever he goes.
Right.
There's a theological concept of the already not yet
kingdom. There's another one. We didn't talk about the
upside down kingdom.
Upside down kingdom.
Upside down. We could have spent a lot of
time in this podcast talking about the upside down.
Well, we got two more weeks.
Two more. We'll talk about upside down kingdom another
time. But, yeah, I want people to live with
an understanding that there is a kingdom that they
are a citizen of, and they're the citizens, not
the kings, but they are ambassadors. So they represent
the king wherever you go. And you've been taken
out of a kingdom so that you could be
sent back into the kingdom in a new way.
So let's live like it.
Sweet.
Cool.
Let's do it.
All right, we'll see you next week, and hopefully
we'll offend less people in that podcast.
I don't think we've offended anybody. Everybody's fine.
I try and toe the line.
You see what's on YouTube these days.
This is. Wow.
Wow.
That's all I have to say.
So we're not offending anybody?
No. This is like the most vanilla podcast.
Ever should be on YouTube.
Spicy at all. This is like milk. Spiciest milk
today. God bless. Hope you see you. Hope to
see you around next time.
Hey, and welcome back to between sermons. We've been
(04:00:24):
off for a couple of weeks, so this is
(05:15:34):
a brand new podcast starting the year off. I'm
(07:08:19):
excited. I hope you're excited as we get to
(09:38:38):
continue the conversation from our sermons on Sunday. And
(12:46:32):
so, as always, you don't have to have been
(16:32:01):
a part of the church or even listened to
(20:55:05):
the sermon in order to get something out of
this conversation. Although I think it would be great
if you did watch the sermon to kind of
catch yourself up to some of the stuff we're
going to be talking about today. And as always,
I got my favorite guest, Carlton McCarthy.
Favorite guest? Wow.
We're throwing it out. Mean, if you look through
the YouTube list, I think your face shows up
more than anybody else. In fact, there's times when
I'm not on there, but you still are.
I'm like the fail safe.
You're the backup because literally your desk is on
the other side of the wall.
Hey, Carlton, what are you doing right now?
Like, hey, Carlton, we forgot to get somebody for
this week. So you want to come out? No,
no, I think this is great. We have good
(21:18:30):
conversations. There's a danger anytime you and I have
a conversation about stuff because we have very similar
personalities, very similar ways of thinking, looking at things.
I guess I should have been an accountant in
a previous life or something. I don't know. I
don't know what that means. But, yeah, we're both
(23:44:47):
a little bit analytical, a little bit black and
white. Like it's just cut and dry. Like truth
is truth. And stop being emotional about it.
Exactly.
Which makes it for a really great office environment.
Yeah, that same culture doesn't do so well when
we're leading.
They come to me for some love and they
don't get it. And then they're like, well, let
me go to the executive pastor.
Thank God for Pastor Asa.
Yeah, man, for real. We had to bring in
a guy that just exudes love in order to
balance us out.
Right.
So we kicked off a brand new series on
Sunday called Kingdom. And funny thing is, I saw
like eight other pastors that I'm connected to that
also started a series.
Oh, wow.
Like either the exact same thing or something so
similar that I'm like, did we steal from you
or did you steal from us?
Maybe there's a movement.
No, I think that the Holy Spirit is like,
you know what? I think people need to start
the year off with a better focus. Yeah, I
think that's what's going on. And so that's what
we're doing. We're starting with our focus not on
(23:58:59):
ourselves, but on the kingdom. And so I got
to ask you the question that you're hoping that
I'm not going to ask you, Carlton, what is
the kingdom of God?
Oh, man. Yeah. So what I've learned from the
sermon yesterday. No, but for me, I do understand
it to be a way of living that's different
from the physical place that, you know, the rules
and the authority of earth. It is not. It
is the rules and the authority of how Jesus
wants Carlton to live. And I take that as
the kingdom. And so it helps that he gives
us a tons of stories and parables to kind
of describe what the kingdom is without describing a
physical place. So that's a little tricky. But I
think, for me, I've always taken it as a
way to.
No, I'm on board with that. Yeah, I think
we joke about. How do you describe the kingdom?
Because Jesus spent most of his communication describing the
kingdom, and everybody walked away going, what was he
talking about?
Yeah, even the disciples came back later. It's like,
jesus, can you rehash what you said and tell
us what you mean?
Yeah, I read through. Earlier today during our prayer
meeting, I read through Matthew 13 again because I
told everybody to read it. And so I was
like, I should probably do the thing I tell
people to do. So I open up Matthew 13
again, and it's man. He has seven parables back
to back to back, talking about what the kingdom
of God or the kingdom of heaven is like.
And then in between, I think, two or three
of them, there's like a scene where his disciples
say, could you explain that one to us? My
favorite thing, though, is somewhere towards the end of
it, he says, do you guys understand what I'm
saying to you? And they all say, yes. No,
they didn't. Clearly, from everything that they're asking, they
didn't fully get it right. Yeah. So it does
become this complicated thing to talk about because I've
run into people that are like, well, the kingdom
of God is about the church. No, it's not.
Well, the kingdom of God is about heaven, the
physical location where you go when you die. No,
it's not like, if you read what Jesus is
talking about kingdom. I think the challenge is instead
of describing what it is, he describes how you
should respond to it more often than not. So
he's like, okay, so when you hear the word,
this is how you should receive the word in
light of the kingdom, like the way you hear
the message of the kingdom. Of God, right? So
he tells this parable of seed being sown, and
is it landing on rocky ground? Is it landing
in thorns? What happens to the seed? And he's
like, well, this is the kingdom. So is the
kingdom a garden?
Exactly.
We keep looking at it like, okay, describe to
me the place. And he's like, it's not a
place.
Right?
And so I went back to the Greek for
it, which is, I'm not a greek scholar or
anything. I listen to people that are greek scholars,
and then I just repeat what they say. But
from my understanding, from several different sources that I
looked at the Greek there, it's the reign of
the king is, like, the better definition of what
a kingdom is. And so it's not really about
a location at all. It's referring to the authority
and the power that God has. And so then
if you want to put a location to it,
then it would either be everywhere, or you could
even personalize it and say, well, the kingdom of
God is in me, right? So now I need
to behave. And that's really what all of this
comes down to, is, how does your behavior change
in light of God's kingdom?
Right? And I think the thing that we do
struggle with is that we are born in the
world, right? And the first thing that we understand
is, how do we live in the world? And
then we come to salvation and understand, wait a
minute. I don't belong to the world. I belong
to.
You've been transferred as God, right.
And now you are understanding and learning this new
way to live that is in opposition to what
you have been living or what you were taught
since you were born. And I think that becomes
a real struggle for us. And then it doesn't
really help that Jesus is using these parables that
kind of don't relate to where we are. So
it takes a little bit of studying and understanding.
The disciples were eleven on a regular basis.
The disciples were confused, and they were living in
the culture that Jesus was using to explain what
the kingdom of heaven is. And so it becomes
very difficult for us to understand that, okay. Some
of the things that we need to do related
to our relationship with Jesus is different than how
we would react in the kingdom of the world.
And I think that it takes a lot of
know, knowledge, understanding, some wisdom comprehension, but also a
lot of practice. We need to be practicing the
way to live in the kingdom to get a
better understanding of the kingdom.
Yeah. And to complicate it or make it even
more challenging is while we're living in the kingdom,
of God. We're still living in the kingdom of
the world.
Absolutely.
Our physical address is still. So we see culture
and we see the kingdom of the world and
the way it wants to live and way it
wants to operate while we're still trying to not
be a part of that, but be a part
of this other thing. But we still have to
go to work on Monday morning and we're going
to a secular job, and there's a kingdom there.
There's a way of operating within that that is
contrary to the kingdom of God that we're supposed
to be living under. And it can get confusing
and it can get challenging.
Absolutely. Yeah. There are some practical things that we
need to do in order to live on earth.
We need to eat and work and take care
of our families in a practical sense. Our children
need to go to school. We need health care,
things like this that we absolutely need in order
to live on earth. But the things that we
need to live on earth and how we live
on earth, I think, can be the difference of
understanding our position in the kingdom versus our position
in the world.
Something interesting about that, too, is I do run
into christians that try and compensate for that by
creating their own christian bubble. So it's like, okay,
we're going to get christian health care and we're
going to get christian workplace and we're going to
do a christian school. So they try and remove
everything from the world, and that becomes direct opposition
to what we're going to talk about in a
minute, that you have a job as an ambassador
of a kingdom. Now, if you completely remove yourself
from the kingdom, how are you an ambassador?
Right.
You're just representing God to people that already know
him. And it just becomes a whole complicated.
You can't have an embassy in another country and
not do anything in the country in the doesn't.
I think a better illustration would be having an
embassy in your own country.
I'm going to the US embassy in Illinois. Yeah.
That doesn't make any sense. Right.
And it's not for the outsiders. No, just for
me. Yeah. So there's a challenge there. We're going
to get into that a bunch in a bit.
But the other challenge, and this is where it
gets offensive for people, honestly. But culture says you're
the king. Right? I mean, it's become a popular
phrase. There's brands of clothing that's just all around
like, hey, you're the king, you're a queen. And
under this kingdom of God, there already is a
king and it isn't us. And so while the
world tries to say, hey, you're the king, so
act like, know Jesus over there going, hey, I'm
the king, so act like it.
Right?
And so a lot of us, I don't think
we want to have that submission to a king.
And I think that may even be a hard
concept for Americans to grasp because even our president,
I'm not submitted to the president.
Absolutely.
Biden walked in right now and told.
Me, do something, especially because they change.
Every four kind of, it doesn't apply in the
same way for us today. But, man, at that
time, when you say, hey, the king said, do
this, or the king said, don't do this, you
have no other choice but be submitted to the
king. And in american culture especially, we want to
buck the system. We want to be independent, and
I want to do my own thing, and I
want to do what makes me happy. And so
we are supposed to be a part of one
kingdom while living in another kingdom, while trying to
make it all about ourselves when the other kingdom
is saying, it's not about you. How do you
navigate all that?
Yeah, I think we get really caught up in
our own authority over ourselves. We try to fight
the government culture, and we even go so far
as saying that I'm my own person. God made
me this way. But we forget that he wants
us to be transformed. He forget that he wants
us to be new creatures in Christ. And we
fail to understand that how we are born in
this world is not who we should be and
where we should be and what we should identify
as. We should identify as being in Christ. And
Christ becomes our identity and not ourselves. And we
get in a lot of trouble in our relationship
with Christ when we put ourselves first, because it
changes how we pray, it changes how we worship.
It becomes about us and not about him. We
don't submit ourselves to him. And Jesus got to
be looking at us like, okay, all right, if
you could have died on the cross for your
sins, then you would have, but you can't, and
you didn't. I did. So I am your king,
and you need to submit your entire life to
me and not follow the identity that you've created
for yourself.
And I think the part of what you just
said there is, it's everything. Like, my entire identity,
everything about me needs to be submitted. I think
we run into this problem of we try and
just give piecemeal to him where it's like, okay,
you can have these things. I'm going to keep
these things. We're having a negotiation it's like, all
right, well, I'll do this if you'll do that.
And Jesus is like, no, I'll take all of
it or none of it.
Right? Especially when we think we know what's right
in our everyday lives, the decisions that we make,
the visions that we have for our family and
our own lives, the things that we want to
do. It's like, well, are we doing this because
of our own desires, because of the things that
we want for ourselves? It's kind of a selfish
motive, but we need to consult the king to
say, hey, I've given my life to you. You
are my king. I'm submitted to you. What direction
do you want me to go? What desires do
you have for my life? How do you want
me to live? And 95, 99% of it has
been laid out to us in his word.
Yeah. So we're left in this place where our
identity is as citizens of a kingdom that has
a king that isn't us, and so we have
to submit our identity to him. And I think
that that becomes, even in and of itself, such
a huge challenge in this culture, in this day.
Now I'm going to try and choose my words
carefully so we don't get in trouble.
Say corn.
Not that conversation, but that was funny. So, in
our culture, if me as a white man tries
to make my white manhood, my identity, culture tears
me a new one, right?
Absolutely.
You as a black man, if you don't make
being a black man the pinnacle of your identity,
culture tears you a new one.
Absolutely.
And so, in this scenario, neither of us can
make our racial identity the most important thing about
us, if that becomes the biggest identifier in our
lives, is I'm white, you're black. That's what matters
most. We are missing what Paul says, that we're
a new creation. And now it doesn't matter if
you were Jew or Greek, slave or free. If
he was writing that in 2024, he would say,
it doesn't matter if you're white or black. So
how do you navigate that? From my side of
it, it's like, well, that's an easy one because
culture wouldn't be happy with me anyways.
Right.
But you have to navigate a different dynamic with
that.
Right. And I think that it's who I trust.
Okay. So if I go in every circumstance that
I'm in, and I lead with me being an
African American, me being a black American, then I
have to assume or project how culture is going
to perceive me or whatever environment that I'm in
here on earth. But when I lead with me
being, my identity is in Christ, and I am
a Christian now, my faith of what happens to
me is on Christ and not on society or
on culture. And that gives me the confidence to
say that I don't have to lead with the
color of my skin. I can lead with who
my faith is in. Because if my faith and
my identity is in Christ, then it's up to
him what happens to me. Because the kingdom of
God is greater than the kingdom of the world.
And if I live based on me being in
the kingdom of God, then I only have to
answer to God and he controls what happens to
me. So I think that's kind of where I
see this, because it can get scary if you
believe that the world determines what happens to you
if you do not live by the rules of
the world, if my identity isn't based on what
the world has given me. And so I don't
play those identity politics with what the world has
given me, my identity is in Christ. And because
of that, I only answer to him.
Yes, man, that's a boldness to be able to
have and a confidence to have. I mean, that's
what we're all called to do. I don't know
that everybody has your level of.
This is what it is, a level of. I
don't care.
Yeah, probably the right way to say that. How
do you help somebody then? That's struggling. That's saying,
man, maybe it's fraternity, culture or something where it's
like, man, I'm in an environment right now where
if I don't push that identity first and foremost,
then they're going to claim things about me.
Right. Well, the first thing you have to do
is understand what it means to have your identity
in Christ. Because he's given us attributes, he's given
us an advocate, he's given us promises. There's a
whole thing there that comes with having the identity
of Christ. And the more you get into understanding
my provision, my healing, all the things that come
along with identifying in Christ that I can live
in and that God has for me is so
much greater than anything that can happen to me
in the world, including persecution. Once you have that
understanding, it becomes a joy to live in the
kingdom and a joy to identify in Christ, because
you know that the kingdom of God has so
much more for you than what the world could
give you or take away from you. And I
think that is what gives you the confidence. My
hope is in glory. My hope is in eternity.
So it doesn't matter what the world does to
me or what they think about me. As long
as my identity is in Christ, I have that
hope for glory.
That's good. I like that. I think that I
got to be cautious here and tell people I'm
not trying to whitewash everything. I'm not trying to
say you being black doesn't matter. Absolutely. Engage in
your culture and be proud of that. That's totally
good. It cannot be the primary. And I think
that's really the heart of it. The world tries
to make one of four things. Your primary identity,
your sexuality, your gender, your ethnicity, or your political
leaning. So your political identity, all of those can
be important parts of your life, but they can't
be the number one thing. And so what has
to happen is all of those are secondary identities
that have to be submitted to the primary identity
in Christ. So if my sexual identity doesn't line
up with what my identity in Christ is commanding
or telling, then guess what has to change.
Sexual identity.
The secondary identity has to be submitted to the
primary. And, hey, maybe that gets us in trouble
for saying it as bluntly, but it's the reality
of where we live. That culture keeps trying to
push these things as the most important part of
your identity, and they're not. And every single one
of those has to be submitted to your kingdom
identity. I mean, political leanings, I probably lean more
conservative than anything else, but honestly, man, I'm totally
going to get in trouble for this podcast. This
is going to be a great one. Most likely,
I'm not voting in 2024, and the reason for
that is right now it looks like the choices
are Biden and Trump. And I didn't like that
choice the last time around.
Right?
And I don't like that choice this time around.
And I feel like I would be compromising my
kingdom identity by backing either one of those men.
And so, look, I get it. My God given
right as an american is to vote. And I
need to vote, man. I just feel like either
direction, I'm getting in trouble.
Yeah. I mean, God made me black. So there
are some parts of me that enjoy black culture.
There's some things that I absolutely love, and I
thank God that I'm black. And he's given us
the diversity on this world to experience our culture
and other cultures. But there are some parts about
black culture that I absolutely detest, I can't stand.
And so just because I'm black doesn't mean that
I have to accept all the things that come
with the culture that I'm in. So if you're
conservative, that doesn't necessarily mean you like the person
who won the primary. In the same way, God
has given us these things on earth for us
to experience and enjoy. He's given us life and
he's given it to us in abundance. But the
first thing that we need to understand is that
our priority is our identity in Christ. The kingdom
of God needs to be paramount in our lives.
And then everything else is second, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
whatever.
And honestly, people ask us all the time, hey,
why don't you talk about politics more at ClC?
And it's like, because we talk about kingdom.
Exactly. Kingdoms are more important.
Like, hey, I get it, politics are important. Certain
decisions are being made that it's going to affect
how you operate and your taxes. I get it.
It's still not as important as the kingdom.
Right?
And if I only have 52 sermons a year,
we got 52 Sundays. You got 30, 35 minutes
to make one of those. About politics.
Yeah, it's impossible. There's too many subjects of Christ
that we can go into that are better for
our lives than going into politics. And then once
we orientate ourselves to Jesus, he'll guide us in
what we need to do on earth, including politics
and culture and everything else. I mean, I think
that's the thing, is that our focus shouldn't be
on the other things that we can identify as
our focus. Our orientation should be on Christ, who
is our identity, and then he will take care
of us as we live in this foreign land.
Yeah. And I'm convinced that if you truly submit
yourself to the kingship of Christ and you pursue
knowledge of him, to know what he likes, what
he doesn't like, all of that. When you do
all of that, all the other stuff lines up
in the right, right. Like there may be something
from your old identity, something from old culture that
you're like, oh, this is really good. I don't
need to correct that. If I can just get
you submitted to Jesus, he'll correct. So that that's
my focus.
Absolutely. I mean, Jesus lived under, you know, he
didn't like the things that the roman empire was
doing. He paid his taxes, know, so there's some
things that we have to understand. There's parts of
our culture and our lives here, and I'm calling
this foreign land, I'm taking those words from you
from Sunday, that when we live in.
The world, that's Paul's words. He said, you're no
longer foreign.
Absolutely right. That we have to do here on
earth. But the way that we live and how
we orientate our lives need to be in Christ
Jesus.
Yep. So we have an identity. It's the only
identity that matters. That's really strong language. The only
identity that matters. Yeah.
Is it not the most important what other identity
matters?
None of them matter as much if.
I was Eskimo, right? Would it matter in relationship
to my identity?
In. And maybe people don't know that. So my
wife is from Mexico. Sometimes she's Mexican, and then
people are like, well, how long has she been
living here? And. No, no. She's, like, from didn't.
English is her second language. Right. And so we're
raising multicultural kids. So, like, over Christmas or January.
What is it? January 6 is King's day, which
is a mexican holiday around when learning something here.
Yeah. The three kings, the three wise men. We
don't know how many there were, but this is.
Hey, go with me. The three kings came and
brought presents for Jesus. So on January 6, the
kings leave presents for the kids in your house.
So it's part of mexican culture and heritage, and
we participate in that. We bring that culture into
our home so that my three kids, who look
whiter than I do, will actually be raised with
an understanding and an appreciation for the culture that
they come from. So I'm not trying to get
rid of all culture. And, man, this podcast, we're
getting so much trouble.
No, it's good. It's all Carlton's fault.
I apologize to Joni and Taisha. They're going to
have to figure out some way to deal with
the comments on this one. But if you're still
watching at this point. Hey, thanks for hanging out.
Yeah.
All right.
No, but I understand. My wife's from Trinidad, and
I tried to get Spencer, my son, to eat
pay Lao. And he's like, no. And I'm like,
you're a disgrace to your heritage, your culture, your
legacy. And he was like, dad, I was born
in America. I said, yeah, but this is your
culture. This is something know you can appreciate and
identify as you're part trinidadian. Get with the program.
What else is good in Trinidad?
Oh, curry.
Goat curry.
Yeah. Stew.
Isn't oxtail a pretty big?
Oxtail is amazing. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a lot of
things. But he picks and chooses because he has
the freedom, what he identifies as depending on what's
for dinner.
Okay. All right. See, we're raising up kids from
different cultures.
There you go.
Trying to figure out how to navigate that. No,
I love it, but I want to be able
to stress for people how important this conversation is,
how important this identity in Christ is, that anytime
we put anything else above our identity of Christ,
that's why I don't even like when somebody says,
I'm a blank Christian. I'm a white Christian, I'm
a black Christian, I'm a gay Christian, I'm a
straight Christian, I'm whatever. Anytime you put a qualifier
before Christianity, it drives me nuts.
Right. Because is that identity leading your faith? Is
it leading. Exactly, your discipline in Christianity, your theology,
the doctrines in which you live by?
Because now that first piece of the identity is
shaping the secondary, and it's, no, no, I'm a
Christian, right. So I don't like the know, conservative
Christian or liberal Christian, all of those. If your
Christianity needs a qualifier, then you're not following Christ,
right? It's him or it's nothing, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah. We get a little. Somebody said I was
spicy on Sunday, so I don't know if this
is the Spicy podcast part two. I don't know.
I don't think it was spicy because it was
truth. I mean, if the truth is spicy.
I mean, you eat a lot of trinidadian food,
so spice is different for you.
Exactly, yes.
All right, so salvage this thing for me, man.
Help this podcast not crash and burn. So we've
got this kingdom identity. We're new creations. We've been
transferred from the kingdom of darkness, is how it's
described in those passages. That's the world into this
kingdom of God. But then God does something really
interesting. He takes us out of something so that
he can put us right back into it.
Right.
It's kind of weird, right? I mean, so he
removes us from the kingdom of darkness, gets us
saved, gets us following Jesus, and then slaps an
ambassador badge on us and kicks us right back
out into the community, into that kingdom of darkness,
so that we can represent him to the world.
And I think that that representation, then, is why
this kingdom identity becomes so important. Because we are
supposed to represent Christ everywhere we go, so that
when people see us, they're seeing a reflection of
him, not a reflection of us. But if we're
so mixed into the identity of the kingdom of
darkness and so wrapped up in the culture around
there that we're not reflecting Jesus anymore, it makes
us bad at our job. I love the memes
where it's like you had one job, all the
lines are one way, and then one's crooked. Like
you had one job. That's Christianity, right?
Absolutely.
You have one job.
People need an example of what it is they
are being asked to follow. Okay, we're asking people
to. We're introducing Christ to people. And for a
lot of people, they don't know what that means
or who he is in context to the culture
that they're living in, to the age that they're
living in. And they need a real life example
of what it means to live as a Christian
and what Christ is like. And that's through us,
through believers. We're sent out into the world so
that we can be the representation of Christ to
the world. And so when they see us, they
should be seeing Christ. Now, of course, we're not
perfect, but we should be striving to live as
Christ wants us to live, and that is the
kingdom of God. And then when people see us,
they know. I want that because I see how
Carlton lives. I see how he operates. I see
how he moves. I see the fruit that's in
his life. There's a joy there. There's a peace
there, there's a comfort there. There's love there. There
must be something that's in him that's different than
what I see around me. And that's Christ Jesus.
That's my identity in Christ being shown out to
everyone in the world so that when people see
me, it sparks conversation, it creates some interest, and
then I'm able to share the love of Jesus
to them, and they can get it tangibly.
Yeah. I love this idea that when we read
scripture, when we approach the text, that when we
make it all about us, we miss a lot
of the point of what it is, that it
is just so that we can be a reflection
of him. He says, you're salt, right. The purpose
of the salt is to be useful, right? And
he even says, if the salt isn't useful, what
do you do with it?
Right. You throw it away, trash it.
Right? And he says, you're a light. Right? You're
supposed to be illuminating him in the world. There's
a world of darkness. So he says, all right,
you're the light. Go in there and shine brightly
for me. Right. He says that we're supposed to
produce fruit, right? The fruit of the spirit. We've
talked about this in the past. Like, does the
tree eat the fruit?
No, the fruit is not for the tree.
The fruit is not for the tree. The fruit
is for those around. And so when we make
Christianity and our walk with God all about us,
and it's like, well, I need this from God,
and I need this from him, and I need
this it's like, man, okay, turn your head the
other direction because you're looking at yourself and you
need to be looking at the world, right. Because
God has sent you as an ambassador and we
need to represent him well.
Yeah, there needs to be a trust that all
of those things will be taken care of. If
a country has an embassy with an ambassador in
another country, believe you me, that country is going
to back that embassy and that ambassador. Anything that
they need, they should be able to pick up
the phone and make a call to get what
they need. The provisions of the country is in
that embassy. And even though they're detached as far
as distance and they're in a foreign land, they
have all the rights and access and everything that's
in the country that they're from. Now they have
to operate in this new country, in this foreign
land with the people and their culture and their
way of operating the infrastructure and how they live.
But just like we are part of the kingdom
of God and we live on earth, we have
access to what the kingdom has for us. And
so we should be able to pray and to
call on God for the things that we need
while we're here living in the kingdom of the
world.
Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I think that there's
a natural component of that where like you said,
an ambassador is being provided for by his home
country. Same thing is true in the supernatural side.
Like hey, he's sending you out in the world,
but he's providing for you, he's protecting you, he's
guarding you, he's doing all the provision side of
things on your behalf. And I think that we
need to rely on him in that more than
we do.
And if we seek him, then our faith trust
is that he's going to take care of all
the other things and that should completely change how
we think about how we're living here on earth.
Because if we have a selfish mentality, well God,
I really want to be an ambassador, I want
to create disciples, but I need to do for
myself first. And I'll get with you as soon
as I can. Once I get this business taken
care of, once I earn a certain dollar amount,
once I get to a certain level of wealth,
once I'm comfortable in my living here, then I'll
be able to focus my attention on you. And
the kingdom is the opposite of that. The kingdom
is focus my attention, my energy, all that I
am on the kingdom of God and what he
has for me. And then through me he's able
to not only take care of me, but the
people that he wants me to ambassador for.
Yeah. The world says, me first.
Right.
And honestly, it's how we're born, right? We're born
into darkness. So we are raised thinking, me first,
me first.
Me first.
You have to teach people how to not be
selfish. You don't have to teach your kid how
to be selfish. They come out knowing, oh, yeah,
absolutely.
I think most kids first words is no or
mine.
Yeah, we just have to. Within this context of,
I'm part of a kingdom, it has a king,
it's not me. And he's given me a job
to do, so I need to do my job.
I need to make this whole thing about him
and stop making it about me and what makes
me happy, what makes me comfortable, because I think
when we have that me first kingdom, it just
messes up our ability to do anything that God's
calling us to do and especially to be able
to do it well.
Yeah. Because we're always judging what God wants us
to do with the thing that we have set
as our desire or the direction that God wants
us to go in for kingdom's sake with a
vision that I've created for myself here on earth.
Well, God, I wanted to do this, but you're
calling me to do this. Well, that kind of
doesn't go with the thing that I want for
myself.
I think it's even worse than that. I mean,
how often does the vision that we have for
our life do? We try and justify it with
God? We're like, right, but God, if I get
all that money, then I can tie more to
you. But God, if I get famous, then I
can use that influence.
I got a platform now.
Yeah, preach the word or spread the gospel, whatever.
So many people start with this, me first kingdom.
And it's like, but if you'll allow this, then
I'll be more effective. It's like, can you just
trust him with the plan?
Right.
Because maybe his plan for you is to not
do any of those things, right. And a lot
of times we do, we try and justify our
plans and saying, but my plan is good for
the kingdom.
Right?
It's really good for me and it's kind of
good for the kingdom. So it's a win win,
and we've got to stop the foolishness.
Yeah, absolutely. God's looking at us like, you know
exactly what's best for the kingdom, right? A kingdom
that you can't even explain back to me. You
know exactly what's best for the kingdom. We got
to trust that God has parts all over the
world, in all of humanity, for all of human
history. He has a plan. And who are we
to tell God how he should conduct his plan
for all of humanity, for the salvation good for
my life?
How am I going to be the one to
come up with a plan for all of it?
Yeah, it's just wildness. So in the message on
Sunday, we try to make it as practical as
possible for people to grow in this ambassadorship, right?
So if you got a new job, you'd hope
you get some on job training. Somebody would tell
you, okay, this is what you're supposed to do.
This is what you're not supposed to do. And
so we tried to lay that out and I
gave people three things, and I'd love to just
kind of get your take on each of them.
So what I said is we need knowledge because
you can't represent what you don't know, right? You
need wisdom because you need to know what to
do with that knowledge that you have. And then
the biggest one is character, right? I don't care
if you don't know nothing and you don't know
how to use nothing. As long as you walk
in character, you're still a better reflection of Christ
than people with all the knowledge in the world.
Tons of wisdom. But, man, how many scandals have
there been in the last few years of pastors
and christians?
Right? But you're not going to go there in
this podcast. I'll be another podcast for later.
Just trying to keep us on here. No, my
job is not to bash people and to talk
about what other ministries are doing or not doing
and to lay judgment on things that I know
nothing about.
Right. I tag all those that's not interested on
YouTube.
Same. Yeah, man, the algorithm was going nuts for
a while. It just kept giving me stuff and
I'm like, no, you're interested in this. No, stop
it. No. But forget about everybody else. It's me
and it's God, and I want to be the
best representation of him as possible. And the only
way I can do that is if I'm walking
in character, but take all three of those. So
when it comes to knowledge, what's your knowledge level
of Jesus and how does it improve?
Yeah, I mean, there's a baseline need to understand
what in the world are we even talking about?
Where does it come from? There's a source of
information that's there that provides us with the foundation
of all of this, and that's the Bible. The
kingdom is expressed in the entire Bible. But in
our gospels, Jesus expresses the kingdom more than anything.
I think Matthew has over 50 times where Jesus
mentions the kingdom.
80% of all of the New Testament mentions of
kingdom happen within the gospels and out of the
lips of Jesus.
Right? Yeah. And I think it's like one and
a half times every page in a traditional Bible
that you'll get an example of kingdom coming from
Jesus. And so that's the basis of my knowledge.
Right. And then with that, I need to have
understanding of that. I need to be able get.
Dig deeper into resources and other reference scriptures. I
need to read through Paul's writings to get a
better understanding of what the kingdom is and what
it means for all of humanity. And I think
that's the start of knowledge. At least for me.
It is.
I think. I've asked you this question. We did
a podcast a while back about Bible reading and
all that, but what's your go to translation?
New living translation? Because I'm not that smart.
You're an NLT guy. Yeah, I'm not that smart
either. So I do ESV to pretend to be
smart, and then I do standard version. Yeah. So
I do ENglish standard Version, which is arguably one
of the two most well respected. ESV and NASB
are probably the top.
Closest to actual translation.
Yeah. And so then I'll also read the ERV,
because sometimes I read the ESV, and I'm like,
I don't know what that means. People are like,
wow, Brent, you're so smart. And like, no, I'm
an idiot.
The new living translation to me kind of reads
like a story that I can receive, if that
makes. So I do like.
So I used to do NIV NLT, and then
I swapped NIV for ESV. And I swapped NLT
for ERV.
There you go.
And I think both of them, it's like I
had two that were kind of middle pack, and
then I went really, really simple, and then really,
really not.
So I need to graduate to an easy to
read version, is what you're telling me.
Downgrade? Is that what that is? I'm so sorry
for whoever produces the ERV that I just referred
to it as a downgrade.
Well, I mean, it's great.
I love the ERV. Although I used it on
Sunday and it translated compassion.
To feel sorry. To feel sorry for you.
No, I'm not on board with that one.
It didn't need to be that easy to read.
It could have just used compassion.
You still use compassion. It's more accurate.
Right.
Okay, so what does Bible reading look like? For
you? Do you use a devo, do you use
a Bible reading plan? Are you a hunting peck?
Like you just flip it open and point at
something?
No, I use a Bible plan for sure. I'm
in chronological. We started the year, so I'm in
the chronological Bible now, but I like reading books
of the Bible. And then when I read the
book or before I read the book, I try
to do a little bit of the survey of
the book to get an understanding of the context
of the culture, the government, what's happening in the
book. I do a lot of Bible projects to
kind of help navigate that. For me, if I'm
getting into something a little bit deeper, say I
want to get deeper into a parable. I love
life in Christ by Charles Spurgeon. So I'll get
an author or some books that kind of dig
deeper on a particular topic. But the baseline is
just reading the Bible in chronological order because I'll
read it as a big story because I'm the
kind of guy that I want to know what
happens next. I don't want to be reading first
kings and then jump over to first chronicles and
like, wait a minute, I just read this. It's
the same story. No, I want to read it
as a big story. I want to know what
happens next and how we end up. Where we
end up.
Yeah, I'm trying something new this year. I don't
know how it's going to work out. I'm just
focused on the New Testament this year, which is
hard for me. Some people focus on the New
Testament because they hate the old. I love the
Old Testament.
Love the Old Testament.
So much richness in the Old Testament. So it's
actually a sacrifice for me. Just focus on the
new. But I'm actually doing something. I think it
was actually, it was John Bever that I heard
talk about at one time, which he's coming to
our first love.
Absolutely.
Friday, January 26, January. Going to be awesome. But
anyways, he was talking about his Bible reading, and
basically he just buys a Bible and just starts
going through it, reads until he gets something from
it and then puts it back on the shelf
and then picks it back up and picks up
where he left off and highlights things and takes
notes and has a whole system for it. But
he's like, it'll take me two, maybe three years
to get through a Bible. And then I get
another one and I start over. I was like,
okay, that's interesting.
Wow.
And so I'm taking a similar idea. So I
found this thing where it's basically, it's the New
Testament, but they're individual books, so they go into,
like, this one binding altogether, but you pull them
out one at a time. So it's just the
book of Matthew, and it's a total separate thing.
Oh, nice.
And it's the scripture on the left hand side,
and it's lined paper on the right hand side.
So you're reading and you're taking notes, and so
I'm taking a much slower time, like when I
would usually read, like, three to five chapters a
day. It's like I'm barely getting through one chapter
now, but I'm spending more time.
That's why I stopped reading application bibles, because I
don't know. I know it's not a race for
me. I know it's a marathon and not a
sprint, but I would compare my thoughts with the
other guy. Yeah, with the application editing team. Yeah,
the editing team. And I would be like, okay,
I see where they're going with that, but, you
know, that this could also mean. And then I
just get stuck. So I was like, okay, I
got to stop this.
Yeah. So I'm taking my time, but, yeah, it's
another process. Okay, so that's knowledge base. Any other
places where you gain knowledge?
I mean, church, our sermons. I get the privilege
of sitting in sermon planning and sermon planning. When
all the pastors get together and we dissect the
scripture, we look at the sermon, we help the
speaker put it together, that kind of thing. I
get a lot of knowledge and understanding, background information
about what's going to be preached on Sunday from
there and then Sunday service. I bother my wife
all the time. I said, you know, we talked
about this being a part of this, and we
can expand this and talk about this. And she's
like, I just want to hear the sermon. But
Sunday sermons are fantastic for us to pull out
scripture and unpack it, and I think that's just
a brilliant way to get more knowledge of what
we're reading.
Yeah, I think that there's a danger happening now
where sermons become TED talks and they become more
entertainment than knowledge based. And I just want to
always be cautious of that. I'm not one of
those guys, like, man preachers shouldn't be entertainers. No,
I think they probably should, too, because Jesus was
a good communicator telling stories. People were like, oh,
tell me more. I want to hear how this
ends. So there is something to be said for
the entertainment side of preaching. And I even hate
using the word entertainment, because that's not the point.
But anyways, so I'm not super hyper on that,
but I think that the meat of it, the
message, should be giving somebody something to run with.
If I'm listening to a sermon and it gets
me all hyped up and I'm all excited. And
the preacher, he's entertaining, right? He's shouting, and it's
exciting, but then he says, amen. And I'm like,
now what? What am I supposed to do with
that? I feel let down, and so I try
not to do that. As a preacher.
Yes.
I want to make sure that I've given you
something to either talk about, think about, or do.
Yes, I do this with my wife sometimes, and
she'll listen to someone, and I'll say, 15 minutes
later, I'll say, did he go back to that
scripture that he referenced at the beginning of the
sermon?
You've told me the story before, so I know
which preacher you're talking about.
It's like, okay, when he gets to the actual
sermon, call me. It's like 15 minutes later. So
what was he doing all that time?
Dangerous. All right, so knowledge, I like that. And
there's tons of resources out there, but we need
to be students. I think that's one of the
things that I love about this word, discipleship. Like
disciples. Disciples were students. They. They had a master,
and they sat at the master's feet. And so
as a disciple, it was like, okay, teach me.
Right.
And we needed to be doing the same thing
today. All right, so you need wisdom, though, because
if you just know stuff, but you don't know
what to do with that stuff, you got a
big head.
Yeah.
That's all you got.
Right.
So how do you gain wisdom?
Yeah, so this is a hard one, because the
way that I gain wisdom is that I think
God actually pushes me out there to go try
and do something, which can be very scary. Much
like the disciples, they were receiving information from Jesus,
and then they were watching Jesus do things, and
then Jesus brought them along to participate with him
in doing things, and then Jesus sent them out.
And in that process of watching, participating, and then
being sent out is where they gained wisdom, because
there's some cases where they got in trouble for
not having fruit of what Jesus told them to
do, and so they're like, okay, jesus, this isn't
working. Jesus is like, well, you needed this. Here's
more knowledge to apply to the circumstance that you're
in in order to accomplish what I'm doing or
what I want you to accomplish. And then there's
enlightenment, and that's where wisdom comes from. And for
me, it's like the trial and error of the
application of knowledge brings wisdom.
Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree. I would just say before
that moment, though, holy spirit. Absolutely. And it's funny
because you can use your illustration. So the disciples,
they ask all kinds of questions. They're gaining wisdom
that way. But if you look at Peter, Peter
is still saying stupid things even after he's sent
out and then coached and then said, you're Satan.
Stop it.
Right?
Peter is just constantly just open mouth, insert foot.
He's just all off. And then he preaches the
first sermon, and thousands come the faith, and he
speaks with wisdom, and there's a depth to his
understanding. It's like, okay, what happened between acts chapter
two, where Peter does this, and the end of
the gospels, when Peter was still cutting off people's
ears and being reckless. And, and so where did
the wisdom come from? Well, what happens in acts,
chapter one, right.
The Holy Spirit comes. Absolutely.
So there's a holy spirit moment, and all of
a sudden, this guy, that wisdom is not how
I would describe Peter. In the.
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But he is after, and
the Holy Spirit is a key source in us
applying the knowledge that we have, because the Holy
Spirit will move us, direct us, influence us to
go out and do the thing that we've been
studying and reading and just bring it into ourselves.
The Holy Spirit is like, all right, now it's
time for us together to go and do the
things that you've been learning.
I'm going to make a dangerous statement. Dangerous because
if you apply it in the wrong way, it
blows up in your face. But there's even something
(23:59:22):
to be said that there is some holy spirit
wisdom and kingdom wisdom that does not appear wise
from a natural standpoint. Like, the wise thing to
do in some situations is not the thing that
is telling you to do. So there absolutely is
these moments where it's like, okay, I need to
listen to the Holy Spirit because the world may
be telling me, hey, it would be wise for
you to pull back right now because you're extending
yourself too far. And the Holy Spirit's like, no,
go for it. I'm setting up this opportunity. I'm
the one behind it. And so we got to
listen to the Holy Spirit. Now, I say all
that with the caution. I'm not the Holy Spirit
in your life. So just because you heard me
say that just now doesn't mean you should do
a foolish thing. Make sure that you're actually hearing
from the Holy Spirit, get it confirmed by multiple
people, and then do the thing that the Holy
Spirit's telling you to do. But it's interesting to
me that there have been times in my life
when the wise thing, from a natural standpoint, was
not the thing that I was being told to
do by the spirit.
Right. Because you would think that the thing that
you're doing is good, or you hope that it's
good, and the Holy Spirit is like, I never
told you.
To do that, don't do that.
Or you're doing the thing that's opposite of what
I told you to do because you're living or
working or moving on sight and not your faith
in me. Yeah, I get it.
Wisdom. It's huge. I think. Absolutely. We gain it
from experience. We gain it from other people, as
I talked about on Sunday. But the Holy Spirit
component of it, I think I can't stress it
enough. That's why. That's my prayer for.
Right.
I started praying that prayer when I was, like,
17, so I need wisdom. I was wise enough
at 17 to recognize that I wasn't wise enough.
Right, there you go.
And now I'm pushing 40, and I still recognize
I am wise enough to recognize I am not
wise enough. Okay, and then we'll close with character
because it's the biggie.
Yeah, absolutely. Because I feel like the Holy Spirit
is not going to compete with a character that
you've decided to have that's in opposition of him.
And I think that's a really big one as
far as this process goes, knowledge, wisdom, and character,
because we have to have christlike character. And when
we have christlike character, when we have the attributes
of the Holy Spirit and we remember what Christ
has said and has done, then that leads our
character, and then that's when the Holy Spirit can
use us. That's when we become ambassadors. That's when
we can create disciples. That's when we can go
out to the world and spread the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
Yeah. What do people always say? Your talent will
get you in the room, but it's your character
that keeps you there.
Right.
Man, the number of people that have destroyed something
God was doing because of poor character, and the
number of people I've talked to where they're just
like, man, I know I'm messing up in this
area, but God's grace is enough to. It's like,
okay, yeah, God's grace is enough to get you
to heaven, but what about all the people that
are watching you right now?
Right.
All they're seeing is a reflection of themselves. He
talks just like I do. He drinks just like
I do. He's cheating on his wife just like
I do.
Right.
There's no difference between that Christian and the world.
You're just a horrible ambassador.
Yeah. How many times have people destroyed other people's
faith in Jesus based on their own character? Their
character. I mean, our job as ambassadors is to
get the good news of the gospel out to
the world and to bring people into relationship with
Christ. But we can't do that if our character
is tainted. We could be discipling someone and bringing
someone along as ambassadors and bringing them to Christ.
And we're living a life that can be blamed.
We are living a life that has sin in
it, where the character is just not of God.
And so what happens is that person then loses
faith in Jesus because they see the reflection of
Christ in us no more. They say, okay, well,
what happened, Carlton? Your character changed. And now it's
hard for me to continue to follow Christ because
the example of Christ that I had has failed
me or their character has failed. I see the
sin in their lives, and now it's like, well,
what's the point of all of this? Because you're
the person that I was, and I can see
that now.
And there's an aspect of it of, we teach
people, don't put your pastors on pedestals because they're
human, too, and they make mistakes, too. But the
reality is when you stand on a stage, you
are in a position. I mean, even scripture says
that those who teach the word are going to
be held higher standard. And so there is a
caution for us in that, for non preachers or
non celebrity pastors or whatever, for everyone. We've got
to have a caution with this. People probably don't
know a ton of my story, but this is
part of why this means so much to me
is I've called three men my pastor in my
life that. Not just a pastor, but they were
my pastor. Three men. Two of the three had
a moral failure. That's not a good statistic.
No.
Only one out of three didn't have a moral
failure. Now, thank God that the one that didn't
is also my father, because if my dad was
part of that mix, that'd be really bad.
Had to do the math on that one.
Two of the three. Now, I'll say both of
them, there's been repentance, there's been restoration in their
lives. So both of those are guys are in
ministry today. But their ministries took a major hit.
And I know of people personally that as a
result of their failures, they walked away from God.
Oh, wow.
Because they saw the person that they were following.
The person. They're emulate the person. And that's the
danger. You're supposed to be following Jesus, not a
preacher. But when you start putting so much of
your identity into, okay, this person is living this
way, so, okay, that means it's true. And then
all of a sudden they fail. And now you're
questioning, okay, is all of this true?
Right.
It's a horrible place to be in. And so
I've sat so close to people that have had
these failures of character that for me, I don't
care if I'm the worst preacher on the planet
as long as my character is upright.
Right.
And the moment that I put anything above being
able to stand upright before God kick me out,
I'm done.
When I first got ordained, I went to the
mall with my son and a lady of the
church, a member walked past me and said, hey,
Pastor Carlton. And I said, even at the mall?
And she said, yes, even at the mall.
Yeah.
That was all the conversation. We were walking past
each other while we said this, and I had
to think for a second, wait, I didn't get
ordained for the walls of ClC. I got ordained
on earth. My character, what I do, the way
I live, it's not that people are out there
watching every move that I make or anything, but
God is watching me. And I don't know where
his people are who are looking at me as
an example of how to live in Christ Jesus.
And so I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was
shopping. But it just hit me all of a
sudden, like, man, I have to live a life
that's blameless everywhere that I am because I don't
know where God is going to use me, where
people are going to see me. My character needs
to be intact. Not only that, but for my
own salvation. Right? I don't want to be in
a place in sin where there is no repentance
for me. So I think that's important.
We can recognize that clearly because you're a pastor.
But remove the pastor title, it still applies.
Absolutely. And when you remove pastor, you may think
it's a free for all, right?
But it applies to every christian because every Christian
is an ambassador. And so I said, on Sunday,
there are no days off. So, yeah, even at
the mall, right? You're still representing Jesus at the
mall, at the movie theater, you're still representing Jesus
at the grocery store, because I.
Would hate for anybody to go to work. And
their coworkers say, I thought you were a.
Super, super transparent moment. This is big for me,
too, because I was not this in the prime
moment of my life. So I went to a
really big high school, tons of kids as a
preacher's son, as a lifelong christian, I got filled
with the Holy Spirit when I was like six.
Speaking of talking to the baptized, at six years
old, my life was like Jesus. Senior year, somebody
was asking me what college I was going to
go to. And it was a moment of weakness
where I was like, man, I don't really know.
I'm thinking about military, thinking about this thing. Then
there's this church internship thing that I might go
to. And the moment the words came out of
my mouth, I realized I've never once admitted to
any of these friends that I'm a Christian, let
alone a pastor's son. And all of a sudden,
it was one of those moments where I was
just like, I don't know, maybe this church internship
thing. And they were like, hold up. What? And
in that moment, I was petrified. I was like,
oh, my God. Looking back on that moment and
those years in school, I'm like, man, I blew
it. I missed. When will you have that many
people around you all the time that you're building
relationship with? I mean, I think today of how
many people could I have led to Christ if
I was a high school student that took his
faith seriously? I missed the prime moment of evangelism
because I wasn't a good ambassador.
Yeah. In high school, people knew that I was
a Christian, but it didn't impact them. Me being
a Christian had no impact to them. And I
think that's where I failed, because if I have
a group of people who know that I'm a
believer, then their lives should be impacted by being
around me. And it know, because I was doing
some things that was just bad, just not of
God at, you know, they will look at my
life and be like, oh, well, Carlson's a Christian.
If he's checking a box on the, you know,
if there's an application, say, what is your religion?
He's going to check Christianity. But it's not that
my life reflected that or my relationship with them
reflected that.
Yeah, it's sobering, isn't it?
Absolutely.
What I really want to hit is that this
applies to ambassadors, not just pastors. Right. It isn't
just about us. And, yeah, as pastors, you usually
have a greater level of influence because there's more
people that see you in that role. But for
every believer, you're an ambassador. How are you representing
Jesus in your community at the HOA meeting when
everybody's losing their minds? I'm new to the HOa
world, and it's a weird world, but when everybody's
cussing each other out and getting mad because of
the garbage on the curb and all this stuff,
like, how are you representing Christ in that conversation
when you're in the workplace and there's people that
are cutting corners and coming in late and hiding
from the boss, and how are you behaving in
a way that represents Christ?
Right.
Like, wherever you go, whatever you're doing, you are
an ambassador. So live like it.
Absolutely.
Because he's the king. Yes. Good place to start.
To stop.
To stop. Start and stop.
Make a sandwich like Mark, the markian sandwich. I
love it. This is awesome. All right, well, I
don't know. I hope that this was beneficial to
somebody, this conversation. I think if I had to
sum it up, there's a kingdom. We don't fully
understand how to describe it because it's this nebulous
concept of the authority and the power of God
to rule wherever he is, wherever he goes.
Right.
There's a theological concept of the already not yet
kingdom. There's another one. We didn't talk about the
upside down kingdom.
Upside down kingdom.
Upside down. We could have spent a lot of
time in this podcast talking about the upside down.
Well, we got two more weeks.
Two more. We'll talk about upside down kingdom another
time. But, yeah, I want people to live with
an understanding that there is a kingdom that they
are a citizen of, and they're the citizens, not
the kings, but they are ambassadors. So they represent
the king wherever you go. And you've been taken
out of a kingdom so that you could be
sent back into the kingdom in a new way.
So let's live like it.
Sweet.
Cool.
Let's do it.
All right, we'll see you next week, and hopefully
we'll offend less people in that podcast.
I don't think we've offended anybody. Everybody's fine.
I try and toe the line.
You see what's on YouTube these days.
This is. Wow.
Wow.
That's all I have to say.
So we're not offending anybody?
No. This is like the most vanilla podcast.
Ever should be on YouTube.
Spicy at all. This is like milk. Spiciest milk
today. God bless. Hope you see you. Hope to
see you around next time.
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