This broadcaster has 1238 podcast archives available on-demand.
Keep up-to-date with this broadcaster on social media and their website.
March 27, 2022 10:00 pm
Can we enjoy the simple things in life and still honor God? Author Joe Rigney discusses how the the good things God gives us are invitations to know and enjoy him more deeply.
Show Notes and Resources
Find resources from this podcast at shop.familylife.com.
Find more content and resources on the FamilyLife's app!
Help others find Familylife. Leave a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Check out all the Familylife's on the FamilyLife Podcast Network
When I read the Bible it says your word is sweeter than honey were to sweeter the pumpkin crunch cake. I've never tasted the sweetness of the pumping crunch cake that verse doesn't mean anything. Similarly, when my kids grow up and they read your father loves you. Will that have anyone wait to act, will they go. I know what that's like, because my dad to take a fight with me all grown up. Like school when I was with were there be a kind of residence and experiential bike sensitivity that they have because they groove my home for this is the scary thing is they go up and I will have taught them falsely welcome to family life today to help you relationship the matter mouth, and with Dave Wilson and you can find is like today.com or on our family life, family life will drumroll numerator of the loss Park yes I do. I think we stood in line 1981, super excited career married one year I had hair there you go. That's what Ira yet and I remember thinking this is just my movie and you know you got the ark of the covenant it anything you like. This is how great God is. So I was really excited about adventure. We are on staff with crew at the time, and somebody told me a few days later you know that Bill Bright, the founder of campus Crusade for Christ went to that movie and Mike was so amazing and they said he walked out and suddenly why did he luck out. He said now this is bad use of my time.
I could go home and read the Bible and experience the real truth of it I felt like the biggest loser and lack of faith. I thought every time I go to movie Bill Bright would've got in here. I am enjoying it and the thing that you think I remember Doug about this, but you think if I really love Jesus a knuckle of things in this earth like a movie that are enjoyable. Yeah I'm just I'm can be so in love with Jesus the things of this world are just going to be not that important anymore. A movie a football game near my will get out your knee is a really interesting topic because we have a guy sit in studio with us today. Joe Rigney you've written about this. This is some your passionate about.
I could see it in your face you're looking over at us like you had the same dilemma as well.
Absolutely Joe, let me first say this welcome back to family life.
Today we were in your city. Last time we interviewed Minnesota Minneapolis but now you're in Orlando Florida where it's really really cold here and it's just super cold. Almost 70°. I just came it was -5 when I got on the plane so I get here and there, like so cold sure really cold forward Roger here and I know you had a pretty interesting couple few months where you are just name the second ever president of Bethlehem college and seminary. And that's the esteemed honor way to go regulations and am very excited. We feel honored to have somebody so distinguished in our ago that people should absolutely express I would. You were not sure this is Bethlehem colleges and got all the gear ready to go your way. I'm very excited.
I am a second president of both college and seminary intentionally small Christian liberal arts school, which is great books in light of the greatest book for the sake of the great commission and we really want students to grow up in maturity. So were we live in an age of extended adolescence and we want to accelerate adulthood.
We want our students to grow up and be mature, wise, capable, competent adults, whatever vocationally go into and want them to have a deep ballast in their boats. We want to talk about education in serious joy with you do that.
That's the joy in Jesus is the ballast in their boat that helps them to weather the storms and trials of life because they're gonna come and that we want our students to be ready for life not just ready to make a living.
But ready to go to school there. Yeah I saw that old guy either bring it up and come and come I need am working on Dr. O, we will we offer master of theology is a number of different letters that you can get what Joe I gotta say you know everything about have you back on your name sort of reminds me of something that you know I love of the world and its music and so you know, our team here. We had a little discussion about how can we properly introduce you and welcome you to family life today so you know what came up with the song that we've never done it. So this is good, right know this became a very famous song back in the day goes like this. The people the be harmonized or welcome. Joe we need a man who now see John five and Andy Giddens. My only passion for baseball with punk crunch cake on his lips really on all the follicles, or empathize all jealous and the only be think of our little welcome so that I fact which is unusual.
I usually say but I'm actually speechless that you actually have heard of Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles. I've heard of that thing was just a fun way to say welcome family. But here's what we talk about today and I thought to be fun to sing okay your box strangely bright, correct is based on a line of the song right yes it is, you know, turn your eyes upon Jesus, or let me sing it by guessing it perfectly better than Eleanor do a little I know you change the word I have.
I have been known to change words. The song sometimes as you to focus, I've never heard anybody right or even think the way you have approached this whole idea and I think it's ingenious the think okay the song says you know when I look full in his wonderful face the things of this earth will grow strangely dim right and you asked the question why is that is that it really true.
So tell us why you that's a discussion good. So the song is a great way into it because I think the gal's name is Helen level wrote that song and I'm almost positive that in her head was the passage in Colossians. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth, so she's thinking of the biblical passages you don't want to things your switch in that context is sinful things.
You know, sexual immorality, and covetousness and idolatry. Things like that but I know that is going up interesting songs like that, you kind of begin a transition is not just sinful things that you support the grow dim when Jesus shows up, but it's just writers of the light things in general. That's right, it's just the normal stuff that the good things and and there becomes attention because you begin to think well if Jesus shows up all of these other things are worthless and there's a kernel of truth, there was 1/2 with Russ with his language in the Bible.
He gets us there. But that's not the whole picture and so this tension is there is a real tension both in the Bible attention. I think it then flows over into our experience of how do I if I want to love and honor God. If I want to treasure him about everything. That's the way we talk what we treasure Jesus.
If I want that to be my life. What do I do with all of these things that surround me on every side.
Every day that I live and move and they're all there there so potent and powerful and delightful. How do we do that just the tension.
I spent a lot of time think about this over the last 15 years and this book is my best effort to make as accessible as possible.
How I have tried to wrestle with the Bible over that problem yeah and so you end up taking the word out GQ changes even in the song from strangely dim to strangely bright yes my own experience, I noticed that whatever I most full of Jesus whenever the Holy Spirit is alive and kicking. I find that my wife and my kids are more delightful. I enjoy the more there there more what they ought to be up seeing them rightly because I'm singing in the light of his face. So Jesus shows I'm seeing them in the light of his face and they're not dim their brighter and more glorious because he's more glorious and so that was my experience and so that was where kind of the little spin on the on the song came from was the things of earth grow strangely bright when Jesus shows up because they're in their proper place. Yeah I mean I love this dilemma.
This tension because I think there really is a question in our mind.
If I'm full of Jesus. If I'm fully obsessed and surrendered. Would you call treasure treasure. He's my treasure hundred percent.
I think what and experiences. Sometimes we feel guilt if we have any enjoyment of anything that sinful things, but beautiful things, even of like a movie or a song or you mentioned baseball I say football is much westward. What I mean, there's parts of assess like always I feel almost guilty, or almost.
Maybe even sinful to enjoy the pleasure of the world and put my finger on this low-grade guilt that people have simply because their creatures in God's world enjoying the things that he's made and it's there, it's a real thing.
And there's reasons for it, because we are sinners. Do not just creatures were sinners and were prone to make things more valuable than they are and exchange the glory of God for images and like that idolatry is real thing. So I tried to get into that as part of that we have to rest with the fruit of the whole Bible people, but we start from this notion of God made everything and it's good everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving. That's what Paul says in first Timothy four and so there's this need to really get into. How do we do we take the passages on the one hand that say things like divine heaven, but you and on earth. There's nothing I desire besides you, and then if you say that in your church you sing a song that expresses that and then you look down the road and there's your family and you're going did I mean what I just said what about them and their how do we bring those together and so that was the tension that's a real one in my heart how it was for a long time and I think I don't live it out perfectly by any stretch the imagination but in terms of knowing what I'm aiming for. I think God is as help me to see in the Bible the way forward. So one of things that Joe Rigney looks.
He said down the aisle, look at your family are there things in life that you like how I just really love this and there's nothing wrong with loving this.
So you write a book like this and always try to think of examples and after some point I started going back through my examples and it was well apparently. I really like my family and food because all of the things that I was not sure there was there was others sports fan. I like baseball as a whole chapter of this book on on baseball and how baseball is a special thing for me, but a lot of it is food and relationships. So, that's because I think those are universal for everybody. Yeah, not everybody is going to love baseball. There was no love football. They revisit the Beatles but everybody's gonna love food, some food, or other penny-ante food you and everybody's going to have people that they deeply value that are about right.
And so it goes. Was really good at it would not let your food my food. In the song that I did so, the one that came up is actually funny story or is on pumping crunch cake this dessert that my wife makes default to sound the sound like a fall dessert and it is you know pumpkin filling with kind of you know cake mix over the top with lots and lots of butter moments thrown in there and it's it's fantastic is my favorite. You also make a whole thing of it for me and I will eat it for like multiple meals like breakfast just like I don't like. That's the equivalent of a doughnut wheat cake all the time for breakfast or scum doughnuts. So is that in the hundred lunch as I I love this thing. It's right in my first attempt at a book like this called the things of earth to bigger bigger book than when were talking about. I talked about this all the time so than the most common thing I go speak at a church on this.
The most common thing that people be lined up afterward and I think they're going to want to come up and say all we really appreciated what you just said which they typically did what they always had a question and it was always how do we get the rest crunch cake and so I kept getting asked this question is like oh what a missed opportunity so that I get to do the second book little cousin strangely bright and I got to rectify the error and include the recipe in the appendix, which is also greatly sell books because people know where you got that's right is a little cookbook at the backs of pumpkin cupcake is the quintessential exam when you put a recipe in a book that's right. Some people actually go make it. That's right. And we have somebody that major pumpkin orange cake right Rebecca Markham you an interview in your eating plan on no songs and I got thank you cake in this is the way you do it. I don't think is yours Rebecca did you follow the recipe yet. Now I will how you know what, I'm not a guy with this is really good. You can tell on-air that were eating because we are talking for so good it really is so great that this didn't grow strangely dim and I think I think this is actually really good example and in the Bible actually gives us an equivalent example.
So in the Bible that have pumping crunch cake start striking David, but will what they had was honey and in the Scriptures. Honey is a regular image that that the Bible uses for good things the other scriptures are sweet. You know sweeter than honey. The drippings of the honey, you may word be sweeter than honey and there's a proverb rubber 24 that says my son eat honey because it's good and the dripping of the honeycombs are sweet to your taste know that wisdom is such to your soul.
This was a paradigm verse for me when it when it when this is the one that I say okay if we get this back honey and then just go out from there we get it so you can substitute pumping crunch cake and the ideas your soul has taste buds just like your tongue does and you can according to that passage.
Train your soul buds by exercising your tongue buds some extent your training the soul I'm doing that right now doing it right now. That's right, but you can't just do it because if you just eat it.
You don't think about it, but what's happening on my tongue right now with the pumping crunch cake is something like what my soul should feel when it encounters God's wisdom that experience that experiential reality of my son, eat honey saying to his son go eat some pumping crunch cake and then meditate on. Think about that experience and say no then having okay now I got it experiential knowledge now know wisdom is like that to your soul, which means you can't know what wisdom is like unless you go through honey like the path to understanding God's wisdom is through honey through pumping crunch cake so something of creation reveals what God is like we got interesting because I good thing. It's a one is not a thing to feel guilty or not it's it's what celebrated God designed the world. This is the reason the world existed. I don't know if you guys know this, that many rabbis in Israel will go to an elementary school with five-year-olds in output wax paper down in front of every five-year-old in output honey in the hat. The kids taste the honey with their time and then I'll go to Scripture and say God's word is like this.
That's right sleep that same connection hundred percent. So my wife was a preschool teacher for the rear and when they would do Bible time, she would have skittles or something like that. Yeah, and you but here's a schedule and they were in your Bible verse and the goal was to make that exact connection because that's how the book.
That's what the Bible wants us to do. It's it's how God reveals himself to creatures like us that he made to receive him in that way you know since thing is I'm listening to you, Joan. When I read strangely bright.
This is critical to understand. Here's why. There's a lot of reasons I'm telling the author that this matters what you've written about. But when I was finishing college, I had a choice to make. Where my end of my life, everybody's trying to figure that out right. One of my options was to play in the NFL as a college quarterback.
I was going to get an offer and I got it. I didn't get drafted but I got a free agent offer from Cincinnati Bengals who won the Super Bowl this quote] I'm just saying. So here I am 22-year-old young man trying to figure out the future, probably 18 to 18 months to two years now brand-new Christian growing like crazy my faith. I go to my spiritual mentor on the campus and say how I think about this decision. Should I go try and play in the NFL. And I said absolutely not that Beeson I'm am calling no sin. He was God's called you to full-time ministry. You know that I know that the NFL is a waste of time. That is not to do it ministry that I'm sorry.
Paraphrasing but I walked away like okay that's not an option because I have to do one thing, it looks just like this.
I realize now you're looking at a guy you could tell this guy's a big play 10 years to develop automated I've been a backup for a couple years and then out but and I maybe would've made it knows but I didn't even consider an option because I thought it was things of this world and things of this world like football and playing football and I never consider one.
Maybe God wants to use that as ministry and by the way NFL is not a long-term decision.
It's a short-term decision, but I thought it's a critical understanding because I bought into what I would say now is not really.
I would say lie but a distortion of truth like there's a lot of ways you can do ministry based on who you are, what got you do it because it may not look a certain way doesn't mean it's second-best again right right you do there's just God has many different vocations.
There's different way. We will honor him.
Whatever you what you eat what you drink whatever you do, to the glory of God. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, so there's that there is a broadness in the biblical call to say all kinds vocations all kinds of locations all kinds of any of that. The goal is how do you know God through it and help others to know God through like that's that that's the overarching category which means then that it's as whitest as the world is that he's made. That's right so apply it this way you know where a marriage and family ministry were trying to help our listeners pursue the relationships that matter most, which is her family. How does this apply in your home. There's a lot of ways that are pleasantly home. Will we be backup your site.
The final thing we get with pumping crunch cake which we then taken say that's a honey and then we say that's everything. Everything that God made is designed to reveal what he is like.
That's the baseline that's why the heavens declare the glory of God.
It's that principle and then you just run it's not just the heavens to do that. Everything does money does that pumping crunch. It is that which means made things make invisible realities visible.
So in their own general revelation general revelation, that's exactly you like to come because she's like she's I got so the idea there is that God has revealed himself in the things that he's made his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, clearly perceived in the things that are made now, so made things make invisible realities visible that step one step to your mate thing your mate think your mate well okay so all the logic. Therefore, you make invisible attributes visible. That's why God made you, which means now then you go can now write to the home which means what's my role in the home as a dad I want to tell the truth about what God is like.
So the way that we've come to summarize this in our church is what I want to be the smile of God to my children say that again that's good I want to be the smile of God to my children so God is a happy God. This is Christianity 101 within the Fellowship of the Trinity, the father loves the son of the son loves the father and that there's an explosion of joy that is the Holy Spirit, and so there's this you know God is a happy God and we see window pictures of that when Jesus is on earth that is baptism. When he comes up out of the water and the Spirit descends like a dove. This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. That's like the deepest realities. There is you don't get deeper than that. There's nothing behind that. That's more fundamental than God loves his son and then gospel God loves us in Jesus the same love that he has first son is extended to us because we are united to Christ by faith in Christ is ours. That's fundamental theology, fundamental gospel now bringing in your home and it's I want that to have experiential weight for my family is unbelievable to feel that kind of gravity there. What I want to.
Just like with the we do that with the cake here. I read the Bible it says that your word is sweeter than honey word is sweeter than pumpkin crunch cake if I've never tasted the sweetness of the pumping crunch cake that verse doesn't mean anything.
Similarly, when my kids grow up and they read your father loves you. Will that have any weight to it, will they go. Why know what that's like, because my dad to tickle fights with me all grown up. Like, what, when I was with were the be a kind of resonance and experiential like sensitivity that they have because they drove my home or this is the scary thing will they grow up, and I will have taught them falsely right in other words that's grumpy that's distant dead fathers are grumpy just Internet the smile I got another frown round of God is that without drop and so one of the things this does for me is like. Again, it pushes the weightiness on that it is true. Ever you go. It's not just in your home at Arrigo but it means likable from work.
I'm thinking I want to come into my house with that kind of communication happening because I'm showing them what God is like, or not I'm showing will God is really like were lying about God was the two options I'm going to speak I'm going to reveal and is either to be truth risk to be lost yeah and one other thing are not putting words in your mouth, but if I'm having a tickle fight with my boys on the family room carpet. I'm worshiping God. That's right, that's a worship God moment as a husband and that the soundtrack playing back your head when you're doing the rest of the kids is this is my beloved son, with whom I will pleased that's the soundtrack got a saying I'm bringing that and it's something that sort of offered to all but you have to actually receive it yet I see that's what this is. And the point of the book is to help people have that was David and Wilson talking with Brittany on family life today if you'd like a copy of Joe's book. Strangely bright, you can grab it@familylifetoday.com or you can give us a call at 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F peasant family L as in life, and then the word today what I told you that the foundation of your marriage isn't all on you to figure out sounds good right family last weekend to remember is three days for you and your spouse to get away together here from some great speakers and connect over God's word. Whether you want to take a road trip or stay close to home. There's a weekend to remember get away for you and when you sign up this week you'll get over 40% off the regular registration price. You can find out more@familylifetoa.com or by calling one 800 F peasant family L as in life, and then the word today and if you know of anyone who could benefit from today's conversation you can share this podcast wherever you get your casting while you're there and really help us out if you rate and review us.
Do you ever feel guilty for wasting your gifts and talents me to weld paving and Wilson will be talking again tomorrow with Joe Rigney about how to stop that training field that's tomorrow on behalf of David and Wilson.
I'm shall be added back next time for another edition of family life today. Family life today is the production of family life accrue ministry helping you pursue the relationship that matter most