#94 | Misconceptions of Persecution & Pain in Contemporary Christianity, Pt 2 | Nik Ripken

The number one thing missing in Western church life is fathers like you and me leading our family and worship in our homes. It is the number one missing piece of DNA.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

A.

Deep conversation with my friend, author and missionary, Nick Ripken. Now, Nick has been a frequent guest on our show because Nick's story is really incredible.

Having been a missionary or been on the mission field for 35 years in some of the most difficult places on the Earth, Nick has insights for us. You know, our culture shifts all the time, especially for those of us in the west and really all over the globe.

Technology, globalization, secularization, and things like that are coming at us each and every day at not even miles an hour anymore. It seems like kilobytes per second just flying at us. And it shapes the way we think and we see the world.

And oftentimes we don't realize how much we've been shaped until we encounter someone outside who shines a light on it and questions some of our practices. And this is what I really do value about Nick Ripken.

Nick, having been on the mission field, yet still a Westerner, comes back and uses many of the principles that he's noticed and that have helped shape his ministry and then applies them into our current cultural climate, helping us to see and understand who God is and what he's doing in the world.

And today, he really shines a light on the home in the west after looking at some of the methods that they've employed to develop relationships, to reach people.

For Jesus on the mission field, he's using those same methods and encouraging us to apply those methods in our current culture today, because times are hectic. How do we parent in the middle of this crazy world? What about our homes?

It seems that our homes have become where we retreat from the world to get away from everybody. Not hospitality centers where we welcome other people in to share meals and share life with.

It's been noted that we're just way too busy in our world today. And I want to stop and ask the question, why? Why are we so busy?

Could it be that we've swallowed a lie, that we need to be doing all of these different things?

Maybe we have believed something wrongly, that in order to be functional or productive or successful in our society that we need to be busy from dawn till dusk.

Really, if we admit it, we saying that we're busy is just a badge of honor for our accomplishment and all that we're doing and our industry and our zeal and our accomplishments. But is that what God wants? It's not that God doesn't want us to be productive. No, that's not the case at all.

But maybe, just maybe, we have adopted a wrong pursuit and we're pursuing the wrong things.

And perhaps we need to reconsider why we're so busy and then decide whether or not the things that we're doing are really kingdom things that God receives glory from.

So I want you to listen into this conversation that Nick and I had and then ask yourself about what Nick is saying and say, what does God want to say to me through this? What changes do I need to make?

What beliefs have I wrongly taken in that I need to correct so that I might be transmitting the faith to my kids and being hospitable to those who need hospitality so that they too might know who Jesus is?

And then when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about some of the things that we can do in order to water our faith so that we might then go water our world. Happy listening.

The number one thing missing in Western church life is fathers like you and me leading our family and worship in our homes. It is the number one missing piece of DNA.

And I'm not going to deny that.

Having been in urban youth ministry my first six years of ministry, I remember having 17 young men on my back porch in Chicago on a Friday night, 11 o'clock at night, talking about what it means to be a man. And only three of them had dads in the home. And I have a two part question that comes out of this. Number one, why are the men missing?

Number one in those Christian families and worship? Number two though, how do we create something when you've got just unbelieving men in general that are not in Christ?

The women are handling the spiritual duties in many ways of these, these absentee fathers. So how do we go about that? It seems like a two parter on one hand.

I look at it and I go, yes, we're to reach families and our families to lead in worship. But I know when I'm leading a church, they're not there. Those guys aren't there. I can't get them to lead if they're not even there.

And I'm trying to build relationships Trying to do all this. How do we go about that?

When I ask pastors, what's their number one need? We need men to step up.

So the way we do church neuters guys from allowing them to be the spiritual leaders of the helping guys to lead their children to Christ. Baptizing their children with their wives involved in that. Well, you already know the wives are involved in that.

And nurturing men to be the spiritual leaders with the church being the cheerleader the way we do professional clergy neuters guys from being the spiritual leader.

So here's something you'll get a kick out of and probably be surprised. My second church, it was the opposite problem. We had so many guy leaders, we didn't have enough female leaders. It was a weird problem.

Societal perspective, it was the opposite.

Why? Why did you have that?

You know, I'm not exactly sure. I think it's because I try to preach the word of God unfiltered. And the Bible says a lot of stuff that we try to gloss over, explain away.

And I think you do an injustice and you. The Bible hits both men and women.

And I think that sometimes what we have done is we have not talked to men as men, and we get caught up in a lot of the externals and past battles that we don't understand the current landscape of what people are dealing with and know how to take the word of God and show them the challenge that God has placed upon them. And I think when men are challenged, that they will rise to the occasion.

And of course, it's not that way always, but I think more times, nine out of times out of 10, is that we've softened the blow. I think men want to make. They want to make a change. They want to do something that is quote unquote manly.

And I hate to use that terminology in that way, because sometimes culture determines what men are like, because Jacob and Esau are both men. But yet if you were to put them in our situation today, people would say that Esau was more manly.

And I do think that we have a misunderstanding of masculinity and femininity. But we would just preach and we'd say, okay, God calls men to do this and calls you to be the leader of your home and your family.

And you need to step up and do that and we'll help you the resources. But this is what it looks like. And to show them that there wasn't always a one size. Again, one size fits all. It's a conversation with your kids.

There's a reason why in the Shema, you know, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord our God is one. It's followed right after with, and you shall teach them to your children.

And it doesn't always mean always a formal devotional time, although I try to do that.

But it means, are you talking about it when you're talking, when you get up in the morning, when you go out, when you're in the kids, the car with the kids? Talk about your faith, talk about your life, share those things, because kids are craving it.

Our young people are craving something of substance today.

And I think, though, a lot of men, because they've been nourished in churches where they haven't got substance, they don't have any substance to give.

It was horrible, brother, to go to the mission field and not know how to feed my wife and kids, because I thought the way I fed them was through Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday, back in those days. And I got to the mission field where there were no churches and there's persecution. I didn't know how to spiritually feed my, my wife and kids.

And one of the things that we love the most about the mission field, it's not male or female dominated. Our kids were 100% involved in ministry, as Ruth and I were. There was no division.

And they watched me as a father and a husband as well as Ruth as a mother and a wife. And they saw quickly. I may have told you this, but a very well ado African family came to our house out in the middle of nowhere for a meal.

And I was nervous about their visit and roots in the kitchen getting the food ready. And I'm telling our sons, pick up your toys, put your clothes away and get those books out of the floor.

And that African family put their coats on and walked out the door. And I ran and said, where are you going? They said, we're going home.

We've watched you with your kids and you're kind and you're loving and you're gentle with them.

And it's obvious that our presence here is making you nervous and causing you to discipline your kids in a way that you wouldn't do if we're not here. And we're not going to be responsible for you being mean to your children.

So we're going to go and we'll come back when we don't cause you so much stress. And I said, no, you can't leave. Ruth will kill me.

You cause me more stress.

You have to stay in the. You know what Africa taught me? You know why we discipline our children because of the stuff we give them. We discipline our children.

Our two major reasons is because we've given them so much stuff they can't manage it. And secondly, I'm having a bad day and I need to discipline somebody.

There's not a young couple in the mission field we don't talk to about that really. That the two major reasons we discipline our children is we've given them so much stuff.

You do an African kid in the rural parts, when he washes his clothes, he's naked. So you're never going to have to fuss at him for putting his clothes away.

You're not going to ever have to tell that child in the rural parts to finish his food. He goes to bed hungry. You never have to tell him to pick up his toys because if he has a toy, he made it.

We discipline our kids because of the stuff we've given them that they can't manage. And you know and I know that every Christmas our kids unwrap their presents and play with the boxes, right? And so we overwhelm them with stuff.

And then when I'm having a bad day, that's when I also treat my children harshly. And Africa taught me how to be a loving, caring father. And I don't know if I told you, they named the children when our first.

When your first child is born, the parents has a husband come and stay two weeks and study your home and name your firstborn according to what he finds in your marriage, in your house. And the second born, the wife's family come and do the same thing.

And the African leaders came to our house and said, when your third son is born, we're going to come and stay with you for two weeks and we're going to help you name your child. And I said to Ruth, Ruth, it might be better if I go somewhere for these two weeks so this kid can get a good name.

He's going to be named stressed out.

I was just half kidding. And they ended up naming him Si Abulela, which in Xhosa language means we're praising or we're thankful to God.

And he goes by Sabu, which is like Bill is to William.

But what would your children be named if somebody came and studied your marriage, studied the interactions of your family, and named your children according to what they found in your home? I find that fascinating, terrifying, loving. I find that just all kinds of good and. And hard stuff.

But again, that shows you how what goes on in your home is the center of church.

Well, that's the foundation. And I think that's also why the devil has come against the family so often.

Because if he can tear apart the family, he tells apart the foundation of everything else.

And that's why 70% of missionaries today, it's like 73% are in Christian countries. Did you know that? Still 73%. Because in the unreached places and the hard to reach places and places where persecution is, you can't build buildings.

It just makes you a target. It just gives a place for the persecutor. Do one stop shopping.

And so you learn the very essence of the faith by having extended families in your home. You might have to change where you're meeting and move the house to house, as they do in China.

But still, again, when the house is the center of your worship, you don't separate your church from your family. One kind of dress and tone of voice that you use in church and another that you do in your home, it makes you a consistent believer in Christ.

Taking that into consideration, this, this house, church. And you're not the first person, of course, to advocate this, but you and I both are well immersed in a world where the church is centralized.

It's not in the home, it's outside of it. I know that Barna and others have advocated that the future of the church is much more of a house church movement.

Nevertheless, the institutional, quote unquote, institutional church that we're a part of, that's centralized is not going to be decentralizing anytime soon. How then do we serve as a part of that without blowing the entire thing up? Or do we?

Yeah, I said earlier, I think you have to do both. Except the center seven days a week, or at least six. Excuse me, is worshiping as a family.

And it's not going to have all the bells and whistles of an organized church building. But your character comes out in your worship. And early on, your kids are telling the stories back to you and they're asking to sing these songs.

And more than that, they're listening to you pray. Our 7 year old grandson and our daughter in love. She.

She was raised, like me, in a very rough environment and I'm not going to tell much of her story. But our grandson. I have seldom heard anybody in my life talk to God the way this kid talks to God.

Oftentimes when Jonah says whatever he does, amen, or whatever he does, I'm weeping. He just talks to God with an intensity and a depth that's unbelievable. He would never have that opportunity in church.

He probably wouldn't have opportunity in Sunday school, the only place our children are going to begin to exercise their gifts. And what we're working with him now is he's not comfortable with being that person of prayer and witness at his school.

And he didn't learn that from anybody.

As part of the fallenness that I can see when his friends come to a meal at our house or at his house, he's already more reluctant to pray and be that insightful talking to God type of person. So we're working on a consistency there. But again, if he does a church thing, where would I, where would that ever come out?

If we don't have devotions where our kids get to express what they think about scripture, we listen to them talk to God. And when you listen to them talk to God, you know immediately whether they're walking with him or not.

And when they, if they don't listen to their daddy talk to God in their home and he doesn't get to talk to God in the church, how can there be any depth of faith? How can you see why we have seven single women overseas? Because the only mentor our young men have is the pastor teacher.

Because the evangelist and church planner is going to be that construction guy, it's going to be that shop owner, it's going to be a bi vocational person at the very best. And yet it's still going to be centered in our homes.

And I'm not fighting or advocating in America for only a house church methodology because I don't think you can get away with that. But in persecution, you, you don't have anything but that biblical option.

You, you again, in the context of the New Testament, what do you have other than house groups? You don't. Now it said that they continued going to the temple daily until he started going through the Gentiles.

And there weren't, weren't temples, so they didn't do either or. So I don't see why there can't be a pattern for that, that we continue going to whatever is a church building.

But still, I would advocate that 90% of faith lived out is going to be through our homes and where we work and where we do life.

I am in very much agreement with you. Talking with Tom Mercer, who's a pastor in California, he advocates this thing he calls the Oikos principle. And he says your Oikos is your household.

And he said These are the 8 to 15 people on the front row of your life. He said, if you go into a room and ask people, a group of believers, how'd you come to faith in Christ.

Like, was it through someone you knew or was it someone, I mean, that was a friend, he'd say 95% are going to be that way. And he said, it's the people that have observed your life over time that are in the front row of your life.

Right.

But you have to also be intentional with those people. You have to be. You have to take the time, as you mentioned before, because we are busy. We have so many things that are competing.

But I also think we need to take an honest look of the process of elimination of the things in our life, the things that are taking up time as Covid has brought to the forefront. Those are a lot of those things that we value before are not what we value now.

And I think there's a corrective that's going on that is actually very, very helpful.

Yes.

It's bringing people back to this, a better understanding of the power of family and relationships and the necessity of building those relationships intentionally for the kingdom of God.

Non church people on this, our new show I watched, said, you know, one of the things they discovered in Covid is that their kids don't have to play every sport.

And when Ruth and I came back after 35 years overseas and we found that not only lay people and deacons are taking days off, Sundays off so their kids can play sports, so are pastors.

Pastors and religious leaders are taking personal days on the Sabbath so their kids could play in the district tournament, the basketball tournament or whatever. And I have not been.

So seldom have I've ever been so astounded as watching religious leaders and godly men and women neglect the gathering of together so our kids could play a sport that is going to end by the time they get out of high school. That if. If taking my kids out of worship on Sunday to do sports, and that's the only day that I worship with my family, that is devastating.

But if that Sunday was one of seven days out of worshiping every day with my family in my house, then not doing that for one day is not as devastating as it is.

If that's the only day that I worship with my family was in that church building, I'm still not saying to go play sports instead of going to be with the body of Christ.

But I am saying if you're worshiping in your home with your family every day of the week, then going and playing a ball game is not going to be so spiritually devastating, provided that.

You have a family.

And what I mean by that is we're assuming in this conversation, and I want to make sure that I differentiate this from my listeners, that you have a husband and a wife in the home that are actively trying to seek and do what God wants them to do. And I think that's one of the challenges in our culture today because you're finding more and more people that's not the case.

That's not the husband and the wife.

But that also was something that was beneficial for the mission field. Very seldom, very seldom did we have a meal. Let me do it this way.

In the middle of all that Somali challenge, our youngest son at an evening meal said, what's wrong with us? And I said, well, a lot of things, but what's on your heart tonight?

He said, it's been four nights since we've had somebody eat dinner with us, the evening meal with us.

And my wife and I later on look back and for the last 14 months, 14 months, there were 14 nights we didn't have somebody around the table with us from our team. And so they were single women and single men and, and couples and people who had came overseas after having a failed marriage had divorced.

But what I'm saying is our kids, our family worship was never usually our family worship in the morning would be just our family. But by lunchtime and the evening meal, we had team members and we had community people in with us. And our faith was lived out together.

And so it was always, you know, singles and couples and second career people. And so you're exactly right calling me out on that because my language was, you know, the traditional family centric. But that's another thing.

In this culture, in the overseas culture, it wasn't that we didn't have. Control's the wrong reason. Travis, you might have to help me here. It's not that we didn't control our space.

It's just we always had people in that space and very seldom did we share a meal that there wasn't a team member or a seeker or a Muslim or a Hindu that was at the table with us. And they just were observing what we did as a spiritual and as a physical family.

Well, I think what you're advocating there is for just hospitality. You guys have. Hospitality is a high value and we all should as Christians, I mean, we're called to hospitality.

It's strange to me that it's become such a lost art and a lost practice among Christians where they're not opening their homes. They've become fortresses of solitude and retreat from the world. But I think Covid forced Everyone into retreat.

Well, now they want to be open, but it's gone the other way.

If it is true in the Bible that the home is the center of worship, what do we have to do in such a busy, We've got to be involved in everything culture.

How do we say no to the, to the right things so that we, we don't have to worry about what our kids so much are watching on the Internet, watching on their cell phones and stuff because we're looking into their Lord, listening to their prayers and we're listening to their hearts. And it doesn't mean that our kids don't go to a far country. They're going to.

It's just the way life is and all of our kids aren't going to follow the Lord. But you know what?

When my kids wouldn't listen to me and there was just something, I would just go to one of their aunts or uncles, you know, since our physical families biological aren't there.

You know, I'm Uncle Nick to thousands of kids when the phone rings and I hear a voice say, Uncle Nick, doesn't matter what they ask, I'm going to move heaven and earth to give them what they want. I'll send them a plane ticket, will fly to them. It's just that.

And when I had times when our kids just couldn't listen to their dad and I'd call one of their uncles and aunts and they would come take them fishing or take them to some kind of event or out for ice cream and get them to talk about that thing that they wouldn't talk to their dad about. That's what we call church.

We're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors and we'll be right back. The most important Bible translation is the one you read at Apollos Watered.

We use several different translations when we're studying, preaching or teaching. But again and again we keep coming back to the new living translation, the nlt. That's why we are excited to partner together.

We are united in the belief that understanding the Bible changes everything. Because if you can't understand it, then you won't read it.

We want you to know the God of the Bible, to water your faith so that you will water your world. That's why we recommend getting an nlt. It's the Bible in the language we speak. It's not foreign or complicated, but up close and personal.

There's an NLT for everyone from kids to adults. Devotional Bibles, study Bibles and so much more. Get one today. Because understanding the Bible changes everything. And the NLT is the Bible.

You can understand.

Our meals. Evening meals usually would take two to four hours. And we're sitting there and we've got team members that come out of Somalia.

They could be two or three single nurses or a couple. And. And they're telling the funny stories and all this. And then they got talk about holding that baby when that baby died.

And they talked to that woman who had been raped eight times. And we're sitting there and the meal was finished. And we found out, and this was hard for my wife.

We left the table and the shared meal, went to the living room. People just left. They just first. So I just. We just worked hard on not leaving the table.

And we found in those four hours, we have laughed, we have cried, we have listened to each other's stories. And then there just comes to that point of brokenness.

And I'm sitting there at that table, and I pick up that loaf of bread and I break it, and I say, this is in remembrance of Jesus, who was broken for you, and you have been broken for him this week. You've been broken. And I take that juice or whatever, and I pour that out and I pass it around, and we do that in remembrance of him.

Our kids entered into the Lord's Supper because it was a supper.

And they took that broken bread and that poured out cup as part of that meal, knowing that we've watched people die and we've watched people come to Christ and we've watched believers have to flee for their lives, and that becomes part of that church and that conversation. And that shaped our boys and changed them forever. And sadly, they've had a very difficult time replacing that in their culture of origin.

My second church, we had something similar. It was harder to. To do those things because people had become very privatized, especially in the Northeast, Massachusetts.

And we did what I called a love feast, and we went down into the church basement. We didn't do it in homes. You know, in retrospect, we could have.

But what I did was, is I made the older folks and the younger folks sit at the table together. You couldn't just sit with your friends. And then I went around in order to warm them up. I asked them questions that they had to answer at the table.

And I said, like, what's the earliest car you remember?

She'd say Herbert Hoover, you know, and then I said, well, who's the early, you know, what's the thing you would have got in trouble for when you were young? And this One older woman, 78 years old, she, she had Alzheimer's, dementia. And she goes, I would skip church and go to the beach and go smoke.

And the kid across from her got wide eyed because he had been doing that exact same thing.

Oh, wow.

But the point was I wanted to cross the generations because our generations have become so stuck within themselves that we need those human interactions relationally. We need to be at a table, we need to be at eating. As you said, there's a reason why Jesus was eating a lot.

There's food is mentioned a lot in the scripture. And it's because when you have that acceptance, that relationship, that's where those conversations happen.

That's when you find out the real what someone really believes.

And it's not just this formalized, sterilized relationship that it's a very authentic place where the true part of who you are, if you are a follower of Christ, comes out. Hopefully how you treat your kids, how you interact and you're modeling it for your kids.

My wife is, has become really large into neurotheology, which is a new field where they can actually see how our faith is lived out and how it actually imprints and what it does in the brain. And we have these things in our brains called mirror neurons where we have to have it mirrored in front of us to show us how to do it.

Wow.

That's why we don't just tell people we have to model it, we have to show it even when we're young, how we interact, how we love, how we go about it. And so that's why we always need an example.

And that's why when a teacher even asks a question in class, I always tried to be the first to answer because I knew that would shape the question for everybody else. I was modeling in front of everyone else. And I think that's what you're advocating. You're saying we have to model this.

We have to get back to something that has been largely, that's still around the world, that was with our grandparents and great grandparents generation. But in this modern era, we've lost it. And it's not that hard.

It's inviting people over, it's changing the Priorities of your life and making other people the priority again. Let's discover relationships, let's build relationships with the lost and not try to just try to make it about the show. It's not the show.

It's not putting up someone in front all the time and have it's living it out yourself.

The question I want to answer that I can is by the time you get to Acts 4, they estimate over 10,000 people were in the kingdom of God.

And it says that really great scripture in Acts and they met daily in houses, breaking bread, you know, looking at the Word together and God added to their numbers daily were being sent the question that we need to ask. There's not going to be an answer, but the answer is implied. How do they fund all those homes for those 10,000 plus people overnight?

They didn't do it.

It is a clear example, if you will, of how many homes that Jesus and his disciples had touched, shared, been in, healed, fed, raised from the dead just in three years time that all those homes and had been touched by Jesus and his followers, that when thousands of people were baptized in the kingdom of God, they're in those homes immediately. They didn't have to go to Airbnb and find them.

They had already had a relationship with them before they were in the kingdom of God that could absorb all these thousands and thousands of new believers. So they did that.

So if we have see again, if the church that you and I love, if 5,000 people were to come to Christ this weekend, if Pentecost broke out, where would we put them? We can't afford to. If Pentecost breaks out across America, we can't afford to build those buildings and stuff.

But in Jesus's world, by sharing meals and touching lives and changing lives, those homes were just preconditioned to absorb all those believers.

Also looking at just the relational, that was such a culture where that was normal. I mean, having those relationships and this is where I go back to the modernity brings a lot of great stuff.

Vaccines, healthcare, transportation technology.

But they all have collateral damage where instead like we get homes now, but now we're isolated, where we've retreated, we go and we entertain ourselves with television and things like that and you don't interact. Even cell phones. They say now that technology's got to the point where it's so saturated that it becomes counterintuitive to what it creates.

A guy named Marshall McCullaghan was a big guru in the 60s and 70s on examining technology. He had these four rules of technology and he's actually one of the people that pioneered and said it's going to have a counter effect.

What I mean by that is this.

You can have two people in a room and the cell phone is supposed to foster communication, but both of them are looking at their phones and not talking with one another. And so some of these technological things that we have are actually doing the very opposite. It's disengaging us, making us restless.

Yes, it is a great tool, but it's actually doing the opposite of what it's supposed to do after a while. And that's where again I go back to what does the scripture say? What does the scripture show for us?

Even though it was a first century, there's still universal principles that we can see in the value of human relationships that will never change no matter what technology does or happens. And it doesn't mean that all technology is good.

To me, there is something about the gospel that affirms something in every culture and challenges something. It's up to us to know which does what. And because I hear some people say, oh, we got the technology. Get the gospel out there. That's wonderful.

But it also is isolating people in ways and it's communicating messages where, which is actually counter gospel and we need to rethink that and not do this so halfway.

Dr.

We do that where we don't have other options or we do the technology in addition to body life in a lot of the world of persecution China now has become with the face recognition software and all the technology. And I can name the places where you have the up and out Islam, not the down and out. You know what we do? You know what we do when we're going to meet?

We put our cell phones in our cars.

We take the battery out, we take the chip out and we leave it in the car because we don't know who's being tracked, who's not being tracked, or we might not even bring it with us.

And everybody that's in that house that whole day, our cell phones are with, with, like I say, the battery and the chip is out of them in a vehicle or we left it in the closet at home. And so we don't, we don't have that for that whole day of meeting. And we do five days of this. Ruth and I will teach for five days.

And for those five days, the cell phones don't come on the property because we don't want to be tracked.

There's nothing that focuses you and gives you better insight than talking to those who are undergoing Hard persecution, talking about the methods that we've adopted, the thought, the thought forms, the beliefs that influence us every day.

It's great to get a different perspective such as Nick's, because Nick comes as one who has been in the inside of it and yet he's been an outsider for several years.

Having worked with those who are going through very difficult times, seeing how they function, seeing how their relationships are and taking some of those principles and applying them, applying them in our current cultural situation is encouraging. What is it that stood out for you? Is it the hospitality part?

Or is it the part of trying to transmit your faith to your church children in the everyday? Is it men leading? Is it trying to get men to lead?

Or perhaps it was talking about modernity and some of the things that we have adopted and belief systems that we've adopted and we think that they're there to stay and we can't escape. And that's not exactly true. While there are some things that are here to stay, there are some things that we can challenge.

And it's up to us to know what we can challenge in our world. Because the world is trying to catechize our kids. And it's great to have an outsider that challenges our perspective where we are.

Because the world seems to press in each and every day.

Whether it's the belief system of the world that contains all of the different ideas on how the world is to be and what it values and how it functions, or it's just simply the day to day rhythms in which we find ourselves. It's great to stop and rethink and adopt Kingdom priorities that help us to see and love what God does.

And we know that as we've gone through Covid, there have been things that have come up that have helped challenge some of our previous beliefs. And it's up to us now to apply those into our lives. What is God calling you to do? How is he calling you to open up your home?

Wherever you are, and I mean wherever you are, you don't have to have a mansion, you don't have to have great rooms, you don't have to have great furniture, you don't have to have everything great at all. I know that some of the best places that I've been have been in some of the smallest homes or apartments or dorm rooms or wherever it might be.

None of us has the complete I deal or very few of us do. But God calls us again to water our faith in our world. What is your world?

And don't be afraid, don't let the devil make you think that you are less than you are not. God has sovereignly called you and wants to use you to reach your world for the glorious gospel of Jesus.

And it's not just sharing the blanket gospel, although sometimes that it may involve that, but other times it involves conversations over time where we pull back the curtain of our lives to show how the gospel has permeated the very deepest part of who we are. To show that we are too. We too are in process.

None of us are finished products, but we want to show people that we truly do love God and we want them to know and love God as well. And we know that we're not going to do this perfectly. None of us is going to do it perfectly.

But God again takes crooked sticks and draws straight lines. So no matter what you've gone through, no matter what situation which you find yourself, don't be intimidated.

Open up your heart, open up your home and use all that God has given you to bring his name great glory so that others might see and know Jesus through you. If this episode has helped you so that you might water your world, would you consider partnering with us?

We're looking for watering partners to help this ministry grow and we are delighted by all of those who have partnered with us already in such a short period of time and we are 25% of our way there. But we need your help to get the rest of the way. Go online to ApolloSwatered.org and in the upper right hand corner is a Support us button.

Click that and then select the amount that is appropriate for you. And if this episode has impacted you, would you consider subscribing or leaving us a review?

Because it helps other people to be able to find this podcast. I want to thank our team, Kevin, Melissa, Donovan, Eliana, Rebecca, and Audrey. Water your faith, water your world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollos Watered. Stay watered everybody.