How to Be a Christian in Today's World

I think Christianity is a joke. Transgender Day of Visibility, and by chance this year also coinciding with Easter. I don't care that you're a Christian. I feel like it's a clown show. I think it's a joke of a religion. Man's lives matter. You live in a fallen world. You're going to suffer adversity. You're going to suffer persecution. You're going to suffer people taunting you, jeering at you, making fun of you. You have to realize, what do I want more? Acceptance in this world, in society, or do I want eternal life? When you have a heart that says, I want to see God glorified, I don't care how much I'm misunderstood. How much I'm maligned, how much I'm insulted, you're going to know which one to do.

Cute and cool idea to talk about, but when it comes down to it, it costs something.

To me, this is one of the most important chapters in the whole New Testament, because to me, right now, in the day we're living in, this is what we've got to pay attention to. All right, Arden, here we are. We're on the John Bevere Podcast. John Bevere Podcast.

Yeah, now you're making me feel uncomfortable about the name.

I'm glad, because I've been feeling comfortable every time we've done this thing. But you know, we are doing this because we wanna see disciples made. You know, Jesus didn't say, "Go into all the world and make converts." He said, "Go into all the world and make disciples." Disciple is a pupil, that's what the word means. But it means a pupil who is closely following the one he is being taught by. So that means in our Christian life, we have got to engage with the Scripture. It is so important. In fact, it is so important that we are told to exhort one another daily. And I love this about YouTube. I love this about even social media, about cameras, video. We have the ability to preach the gospel to each other every single day, and they didn't have that. They had to meet in house to house, and they met daily in house to house. And so I think one of the reasons we've lost so many people from the faith is because they've not engaged daily with the word of God. We, we know this statistically. Only 27% of the Christians in America read their Bible more than 4 times a week. And they have proven that you have to read at least 4 days a week for it to make a difference in your life. You know, a neuroscientist actually did a study.

Wasn't he not Christian, right? Uh, or was he?

Maybe it was actually a her. Okay, she is a believer. Okay, they connected people however they do it, and they had them read history books, science books, Quran, Bible, all these And the only one they saw significant changes in were the people that were reading the Bible. Isn't that amazing? The Bible says that we are renewed— excuse me, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. So the word of God, it's almost like it goes from our mind down into our heart, into our spirit, and that's where we've got to be strong, strong in spirit. But today we are talking about something really important, and that is how to never fall away. Now, with over 30 million people walking away from the faith in the last 24 years, how to never fall away seems to be very relevant.

Yeah, and what you've been saying is none of those 30 million people entered into this relationship with God to walk away. Like, it was always their intent to never fall away. And so this is really important because how do we not allow ourselves to drift away? And allow the voice of the world to pull us away from God.

And with that, we're going through the book of 2 Peter, 'cause we feel like it's speaking to us about all these things. And I'm gonna start with verse 2. I'm not gonna start with verse 1. May God give you more and more grace and peace. Hopefully when you heard the word grace, you heard the word empowerment, not just forgiveness, not just a free gift, you heard the word empowerment. "May God give you more and more empowerment," grace, "and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord." And that knowledge is relational knowledge, okay? Verse 3, "By his divine power," grace, "the word of his grace, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself." I love that, called us to himself, "by means of his marvelous glory and excellence." And because of His glory and His excellence, He has given you and I, everyone listening, very great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable. Why do these promises enable? Because it's the word of His power, the word of His grace. See, grace and power are interchangeable. These are the promises that empower us, enable you to share His divine nature. That's mind-blowing. And escape the world's corruption caused by human desire. Now we come into verse 5, and this is where we get to learn how to never fall away. In view of all of this, this is verse 5. Now the ESV says, for this very reason, make every effort. So it sounds like we've got to exert some effort here, right? Make every effort to respond to God's promises. Okay, supplement your faith with a generous provision. And then he lists 7 virtues. Now, before I go to those virtues, I wanna read this out of the Amplified. The Amplified Bible says this, employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop these 7 virtues. So in the view of all this, now I'm going to read from a Bible commentary about this verse. The meaning is clear: growth in virtue is of the utmost importance and deserves utmost effort. Okay, employ every effort. The verb translated supplement your faith is far more colorful than translations might indicate. "It notes the expense, the effort involved in this growth in virtue. We do not automatically become more virtuous as if God infuses virtue into us intravenously. We need to make plans and to expend effort." That is straight from one of the top Bible commentaries. And that lines up. Listen to the Amplified. "Employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop," Well, to develop what? A generous provision of moral excellence.

Moral excellence, yeah.

All right, so what is moral excellence? Here's the definition. The Greek word means to bring to maturity excellence or merit within a social context.

Okay.

Tell me what that says to you.

I mean, so my first reaction is social context. I'm kind of focusing on that. That makes me feel like it's more around like showing people this excellence in the way that you live. So that kind of when you hear moral—

yeah, well, moral excellence, not just excellence.

Yeah, moral excellence. And that's what I remember when I was in high school walking into different things and when I had come back to God is I remember going into these parties and people just saying like, there's something different about you. And I wasn't partaking in the things that they were doing. And so to me, that's what I'm kind of seeing is that you walk into situations in society in a different way and people see this difference in you. And that could be wrong.

No, you know, that's what I'm knowing. It's just saying this, you know, it led me to, or really got my attention and started leading me to Jesus. Yeah. I'm in my college fraternity. I'm an NCAA Division I athlete. I started for Purdue. Produced tennis team, one of the best athletes in the state, was in my fraternity. Yeah, we would have our keggers. We called them keggers. They were just nothing but wild parties. The girls are all there, we're all there, and I always watched him come down. He's drinking a 7-Up. Yeah, every single time he's drinking a 7-Up. He's got a big smile on his face. He's kind, he's gentle. Girls were drawn to him like crazy. We were drawn to him because he was such a gentleman. And when we all got plastered drunk, he was all of a sudden gone. He wasn't around anymore. He came down there to just shine the light of Christ in front of all of us. And it got my attention because when he came up to my dorm room and shared the gospel with me, the Four Spiritual Laws Campus Crusade for Christ, I received Jesus Christ as my Lord that January 1979, right in my fraternity. He displayed moral excellence.

You know what's cool is I'm thinking back to a story when I was in high school, and I remember I was at one of those parties, and I had a close friend. He had long, long hair, and I would stay at those parties for the exact same reason. And I remember God said, when I got set free from drinking, I remember God said, it was about a year later, he said, I want you to go back into those parties because he said, you were those people and go be a light to them. And so I would do the same thing, only drink water. But I remember I had a friend, he had long hair. You probably remember long, thick hair. And at one of those parties, he just got so plastered drunk and he went downstairs and everyone let him alone. And I went down there and his moment of weakness, uh, he is just throwing up. And I remember I kept being like, let's position you over the toilet. He throws up right next to the toilet. Let's position you over the bathtub, throws up right next to the bathtub. And I'm, I'm cleaning up his throw up. And in these moments, he is unburdening his soul to me of some situations with his dad. And I'm watching him like, wow, you're at this moment where most of those people all just wanted to leave you alone. And I'm here in this opportunity where I am able to better understand you and speak into the situations. I still keep in contact with him.

Wow.

I wish I could say that he has fully given his life over to Christ. But I shoot him a text almost every single year on his birthday. And every single year he's like, I cannot believe that you would take the time and reach out to me. He's like, it shows that you are truly, like, genuinely a real one in terms of, like, just following and believing what you're saying.

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And so I love that, is that right away we get an opportunity to show Christ's love and this new revelation in this progression of faith that we have. But that just made me remind of all those great days of throwing, cleaning up throw-up.

Our lifestyle speaks a lot louder than we even know. When we walk with Jesus and we're adhering his word and we're obeying his word in the midst of a social context, it speaks a lot louder. You know, Arden, I remember when I was in high school, I was a loudmouth and I was very, very vulgar, and I was very much away from Jesus. I drank a lot, and our high school had 3,000 students, and there was 1,000 in each grade because in West Virginia where I graduated, it was 10, 11, and 12 was high school. And when I was a senior, here I was, I was hanging around with all the athletes because I'm, you know, we, we won the state high school, uh, tennis, tennis the state high school tennis, and I won the state high school individual tennis division 3. And I mean, there was a girl that was a sophomore. I didn't have one class with her. She had blonde hair. And I still remember her name. Her name was Sharon Montgomery. She didn't carry a big Bible. She didn't have a big cross around. She just carried herself in a way, in an excellent way, and a moral excellence that convicted me. I got around her and I was nervous because I knew I was looking at a woman who walked with God.

And she didn't have to like call you out for those things.

She didn't.

It's just the way she lived.

Now here's what's interesting. My lab partner, my junior and senior year, he listened to all my vulgar, all my vulgar speech, kind of snickered and laughed once in a while. And my freshman— or my sophomore year, I got saved. And I came home that Christmas and I went over to my friend's house to play pool, my lab partner. And I remember when we were shooting pool, I told him, I said, Dave, I need to tell you something. I met Jesus. I'm a believer. I gave my life to him fully. And he went, John, you met Jesus? I said, yeah. He said, praise God, I'm so happy you met Jesus. I went, Dave, that's amazing. You met Jesus too? When did you meet Jesus? And he said, I've known him most of my life. And I remember I'm at that pool table and I'm bewildered. I thought all the way I talked, the way I behaved, and yet —You would've never known. —I would've never known. And here's a girl I didn't even have a class with, but because of the moral excellence she walked in, she carried the presence of Jesus that brought me under conviction when I was around her. And so we are to employ every effort in our faith to develop moral excellence. We have to do this. Now, add, then he says, And to moral excellence, employ every effort of your faith to add knowledge. Now, what is this knowledge? This is actually a different Greek word. It's gnosis. Gnosis, I guess that's the way you say it. But it's not epignosis, all right? Gnosis is a knowledge that would basically be, we learn as we spend time reading, as we spend time thinking. It's not conversational where I grow to know somebody. It's where I learn more about that person. So in other words, let's say I've got a dinner with somebody that's very well known. I actually get the knowledge of his life so I can ask better questions when I'm in conversation. That's good. So this knowledge is, is, is more of a knowledge that I'm going to pursue the knowing of somebody. Okay, so add to our moral excellence knowledge, and to knowledge Add self-control. Yeah. All right, self-control.

Let's talk about it.

That's one of the fruits of the Spirit. Yeah. So we say it's bondage. I don't say it's bondage. Paul, when he talked to the very wealthy, wealthy man named Felix, you know what he talked to him about? Righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come. And he scared the guy so bad, he said, you know what, Paul, I'm gonna— you just go away. I'll call you at a more convenient time. Yeah. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. So in other words, we're able to control ourselves in a situation where we're tempted to do something contrary to the word of God. Yeah. That's something that can be developed in us. Yeah.

So I love what you're saying there about Felix is that he was not telling him what he wanted to hear. And I think that is something that a lot of people navigate is that they're scared to share about their faith, are scared to talk about these things because sometimes their perception of Christianity is a bunch of things that it's like, if I say yes to God, I have to say no to all these other things. And so they're scared to do that. And so even when they're sharing about their faith and having these conversations, they shy away from those things. And I think that further speaks to the 30 million people walking away is because how you get people is how you're going to have to keep them. You package it one way and then they come to find out it's a different way. They're going to feel, I was betrayed and I didn't really actually sign up for this. And yet I love that he is giving it to him right as it is and just saying, here is all is so much to an extent that he said, I can't take it. Go away. Come back another day.

You know, God loves us so deeply. He died for us. But yet Jesus said, the only way you can follow me is to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Peter says, "As Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourself with the same mind." You live in a fallen world, you're going to suffer adversity, you're gonna suffer persecution, you're gonna suffer people taunting you, jeering at you, making fun of you. You have to realize, what do I want more, acceptance in this world, in society, or do I want eternal life? Now, eternal life doesn't just mean living forever. It doesn't mean just going to heaven one day. It means living in the life of God.

Yeah, and you talk about suffering for his namesake, and you frame around it the two different things, 'cause sometimes we can take about it from a kind of a religious spirit's framework, whereas understanding, no, this is what I've lived for, and because of that, there's gonna be—

can you talk about that? Yes, so the religious person, somebody who's trying to earn their way to God, who doesn't know God at all, will seek out suffering in order to please the god, little g, he or she serves. The true believer will say, I live in a fallen society. I live in a world that is literally controlled by the prince of the power of the air. I'm gonna obey God knowing that I'm going to receive affliction, persecution, suffering as a result of my obedience. So the object is obedience. And what self-control does is it gives us the ability to obey even in the face of suffering.

So let me ask you this, self-control when it comes to social media, because I'm just going to ask this because I feel like social media is probably the biggest area that people lack self-control. I know for myself, there's so many times that I want to jump on there and I'm like, I see something that I don't agree with and I want to jump on there and I want to write out a big long message. And then oftentimes I will just delete that message, thankfully. So I feel like there was a little self-control, a lot of wisdom there. But people have lost self-control on social media. Right. So how does that play out in an area where it feels like you can have what you can say, whatever you want, and there's no repercussions, or there's very little repercussions, and people have gone so far down that route now?

Right. Self-control means that I'm going to respond with obedience to what God says. So now let's just, I can find anything I want from scripture and I can justify a lack of self-control. Let me give you an example. Read to me Proverbs 26, I think it's 4 and 5.

Yeah, this is out of NIV.

Now read it slowly 'cause I want everybody to hear this.

Do not answer a fool according to his folly or you yourself will be just like him. And then the next verse says, answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

You just had two different responses. Answer a fool, don't answer a fool. Okay, if I just live by the letter and I don't have the Holy Spirit's leading, which one of those do I obey? One tells me to answer, one tells me not to answer.

Your lack of self-control side would say the second one.

The lack of self-control side says, be sure to answer a fool, right? Well, now you're gonna become like him. So what I'm saying is self-control means you're able to put your personal desires down and exalt his desires beyond yours. When you have a heart that says, I wanna see God glorified, and I don't care how much I'm misunderstood, how much I'm maligned, how much I'm insulted, I want to glorify God and serve this person the way he wants me to serve this person. You're going to know which one to do. Yeah, you're going to know I need to keep my mouth shut right now or else I'm going to become just like him. Or I need to answer this person right now because if this just hangs out there, people are going to get deceived by it. Yeah. Now that's self-control. I have my agenda has been crucified. The agenda of the kingdom now gets exalted. Now you start seeing things from a kingdom viewpoint. Yeah. And this is something that I would say as a person who's been in ministry for 40 years plus, I've— it took me time to learn. Okay, I'm young in ministry. I'm brash. I'm like, I'm going to answer everybody. If they're wrong, I'm going to let them have it. And that's foolishness. I'm going to say to myself right now, is this creating damage? Will this hurt other people's lives by this thing just hanging out there? Is this something I can just quietly remove and just let it go? Because this person just wants to get into a fight. You know, I, I'll, I'll never forget the time when I had a situation where I wanted to answer this guy on social media. I wanted to let him have it. And instead, I answered in a way that said, you know, Let me ponder about this. I think you've made a very good point, and I do want to grow. And I remember that guy ended up being a pastor in England, and he, he went right back on social media and he said to me, I've never seen somebody come back with this kind of an answer. Yeah. Okay. I really want to hear what you have to say now. And I thought, wow, I almost let him have it. And I knew I was wrong. I wasn't going to help him. I was going to help our followers. I'm just going to answer in a very humble way that kind of, not kind of, that says, I'm gonna learn, but here's what the word of God says. And the man responded. I love that.

And we could go, of course, do a whole episode on that. But this, that led to a deeper intimacy between you two. And like, that is what essentially, you know, Matthew 18 talks about where it's the deepening of when you have a disagreement, the deepening of a relationship is the whole goal of that. And it is, we've set up into a society where it's just divide, divide, divide, divide. And that's really difficult. So I think that's powerful in thinking about self-control because it's hard. And I'm watching as people on social media, it's so easy to hide behind your phone. And so this is a really powerful thing to be able to not think you know everything, but then have to self-control to be able to have the wisdom react.

The wisdom to know when to be quiet, not say anything. Exactly. And the wisdom to know when to speak. And when Jesus spoke, it usually silenced his opponents.

I mean, that's something that you've shared with me so many times. When I feel like, no, I am being unjustly maligned, or I'm being unjustly betrayed, or someone's spreading rumors, you always would tell me, Jesus stood there and said nothing. Like Jesus is being maligned, accused, and in a court of law, And he does not say a word.

And it caused Pilate to marvel. Yeah, because he wasn't defending himself. Yeah.

And to me, that always gets me set up. I was like, okay, I'm not my defender. God is. I don't need to speak up. Like, I don't need to. I need to have the wisdom to know what to say, obviously. And God will speak to me if I'm being in this greater knowledge of him, of being able to be worked through him.

But I do not need self-control. Is when you know not to defend yourself, to let God defend you. Yeah. And self-control is also knowing when to defend the helpless, the orphan, those who can't defend themselves. Yeah, I love that. All right, add to your self-control patient endurance. What does endurance mean? What is patience? Patience means that I stay consistent no matter the circumstances. Endurance means I am able to continue behaving correctly even when I'm suffering. Yeah.

And I think we love perseverance because it's essentially what it's talking about. I mean, we love the idea of perseverance in today's society, but even as what we've been talking about, the 30 million, there wasn't perseverance there. Yeah. And so it's a really cute and cool idea to talk about, but when it comes down to it, it costs something. Yeah. And I think that's the hard part, and that's where the kind of rubber meets the road. In this is you maybe can't get to perseverance without going through all those other things. And I think self-control.

Exactly.

And I think we're like, we want to be persevering, but we're not doing excellence. We're not going through moral excellence. We're not going through this knowledge. We're not learning self-control.

So verse 6 says, and the knowledge, self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness. So godliness is the next one. One. It's the Greek word that actually means the fear of the Lord. It's the very first definition that comes up when I go to the Greek dictionary. The fear of the Lord. Okay, reverence for God, which is what produces a life of holiness, a life of being set apart. People can see that we're set apart for God, right? So what I love about this is The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowing God intimately. It's the starting place of where we come to know him intimately. And when does that— when do those promises take effect in our lives? In our knowledge of him. So this holy fear is something that we must develop in our lives. And that's why I wrote the book The Awe of God, because I believe that will help people to not fall away. That's what we're talking about in this podcast. Okay. All right. Then he goes on to, brother, brotherly affection. So not only are we to love people, but we're to be affectionately kind to people, right? Which, that's a definition of love, is kind and patient, right? And add to brotherly affection love for everyone, or agape love, which is the love of God. Now, these are the 7 traits he just talks about: moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, patient endurance, the fear of the Lord, brotherly affection, and the love of God. Now, the Bible tells us we are to employ every effort of our faith to make these things developed in our life, correct? This is what we're getting to. Verse 8 goes on to say, the more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be. "the more productive and useful you will be." You wanna get more productive? You wanna be more useful? I'm talking about eternally productive, eternally useful. Grow in these virtues. He said, "The more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus." In the ESV, it says it differently. I think it's interesting. "For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective." or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. So it kind of goes the opposite direction, but both are saying the same thing. Verse 9, but those who fail to develop in this way are short-sighted or even blind. This is verse 9, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. So what is the first thing that happens when we become blind? We forget we were forgiven of our former sins. In other words, we forget how great of a sacrifice was paid in order to free us from what separated us from God. This is a little personal check I do. I'm going to— I'm going to get into— I'm going to get into the mind of John Bevere. Every morning when I go into my prayer closet, I remind myself in prayer, I remind— I actually bring it before the throne of God what Jesus did in order to set me free, what he went through, my creator went through. I will actually walk through the despising, the mockery, the torture, the beatings, the spits, the insults, the whipping, the fact that he didn't even look like a human being by the time they nailed nails into his hands and feet. I run through this every morning to remember the sins that he set me free from. He went through all of that to set me free. So a person that's become blind and short-sighted, they take for granted that I was forgiven. Yeah, they take for granted now, oh, I'm a Christian. It's very easy to slip into that. So dear brothers and sisters, work— now listen, here's, here's what we're getting to, and we're going to end with this. So dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you are really among those God has called and chosen. Do these things and you will never fall away. Okay, why did I want to talk about 2 Peter on my— on our podcast? Because I want to tell people how to never fall away. How do we never fall away? We use our faith and we use effort to develop moral excellence, self-control, knowledge, right? Patient endurance, godliness, the fear of the Lord, brotherly kindness, and Christian love. We exercise effort to develop those, and that gives us the ability that we will never fall away. Okay, I think that's a good place to stop right there for this, this particular podcast, because I want you to stop and think about it. God— not John Bevere, not Arden Bevere, not any preacher, not even Billy Graham— God Almighty said that if we do these things, we will never fall away. This is what got my attention on this, this book. Wow. He is telling me how to never fall away. Yeah. Now, with 30 million people walking away from the faith, falling away from the faith, this should get our attention. Yeah. Okay. Everything that we've read in this, just these verses, it's taken us 4 podcasts just to get through verse 10. And I actually rushed this one to get here.

I was going to say you did go fast. I rushed this one.

Okay. How will you never fall away? Go over and over and over and over. And we're going to find out that Peter says 3 times, as long as I live and even after I'm gone, I'm going to make sure you remember what I just wrote. To me, this is one of the most important chapters in the whole New Testament. Because to me, right now, in the day we're living in, with so many people falling away from the faith, and even Paul saying before that day comes, many are gonna fall away from the faith. If you look at what Paul wrote to Timothy, many are gonna leave the faith, right? He said that they're gonna turn aside, find teachers that heap up, teachers that will speak to their itching desires. This is what we've gotta pay attention to. Yeah, that's powerful.

I hope people grab hold of that. I mean, this is no small thing. And I think every single one of these, as we— I felt like we actually went over them fast. And I know you said you skipped ahead, but like every single one of these, there's depth to it. It's not just taking it because I think sometimes people could read brotherly kindness. They're like, okay, well, I got to go be nice to everyone. It's like, that's not brotherly kindness. So that's not agape love, not just being nice to everyone. Like you have to go into depth onto those. And it's that discovery process that you get to go on with God of gaining the knowledge. What does agape love look like?

What does that really look like? You know, I think we're not really finished with this yet. And I think we'll start again and we'll go through these again next time and we'll mine more out of it because there's some more promises that I didn't even bring up yet. One of them, is a grand and glorious entrance into the eternal kingdom. What does that mean? We're going to talk about that. What does it mean? I mean, a grand and glorious entrance into heaven? Whoa, whoa, wait, wait. Does that mean that there's some people that don't get grand and glorious entrances? I mean, we want to talk about this. We want to talk about what's our forever going to look like. I think there's a lot more that the Bible speaks to than people even know. There are going to be people that are going to be saved, Arden. They're barely saved. That's exactly what the scripture says. They're barely saved as coming through fire. In other words, they got nothing left but themselves. Okay, then there's gonna be people that have grand and glorious entrances. That's got my attention, okay? And this, Peter talks about this, and we're gonna mine this out next time on the next podcast. What do you say we do that, okay? Sounds great. Sound good? Hey, listen, we want you, to meditate on these scriptures. Think about them, pray about them, employ them, use every effort of your faith to execute them and grow in your faith, because we don't want you to fall away. We care about you deeply. We want you to be successful. We want you to be effective in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's why we're sharing on this. So we love you so very much. Until next time, this has been the John Bevere Podcast with Arden Bevere and John Bevere.