“How do we know if we’re right?”

Steve Brown:
How do we know that we’re right? The answer to that question and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you think laughter isn’t spiritual, or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn’t for you. But if you’re looking for honest Biblical answers to hard questions, then welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author, and seminary professor, Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Matthew Porter:
Hey man. How are you doing?

Steve Brown:
I know, ask me how I know I’m right.

Pete Alwinson:
How do you know?

Steve Brown:
I’m ordained.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, yeah, right.

Steve Brown:
And if you’re ordained, you can’t make mistakes.

Pete Alwinson:
You have the true grace of God every day, all day.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. That’s Pete Alwinson. And listen, go to ForgeTruth if you live in Central Florida and you’re in driving distance and you have a number of chapters around the country, too.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, we do, but come live if you’re here in the Orlando area, love to have you.

Steve Brown:
And go to the website and you can get where you can find them, ForgeTruth.com great podcast, great material, great teaching, video and audio teaching. And it’s life changing. So, go there, ForgeTruth.com As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we spend the entire broadcast on your questions. And we love your questions and we take your questions seriously. You can ask a question by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, listen for instructions and follow those and record your question. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or you can send your question to [email protected] and I would be so pleased if you sent some money along with your question. In fact, I will pray over your question if you put a check in. I can’t do this, can I?

Pete Alwinson:
No, you can’t keep that up.

Steve Brown:
Listen, if you can help us financially, please do. We are a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both of those organizations are great organizations that credential our ethics. So, you can know when you give, you’re giving to an ethical organization. And if you can’t give, we understand. Maybe you’re not even led to give, we understand that. Say a prayer occasionally for this ministry. And Pete, you say a prayer, and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Sounds good. Let’s pray together. Our Great God, we come today just for a minute, into your holy presence, thanking you for your goodness to us, thanking you for being the one who loves us and has drawn us away from our self, and our sin, and our past, and into a new relationship with you. Thank you Lord, that when we’re alone, we found that you were the comforter of our soul, that when we felt the weight of, and the burden of our own sin, you took it from us. And Lord Jesus, that you did everything necessary to put us right with the God who loves us. And so, we worship you. We come to you now and we ask that in every way we would hear your voice, be with our leaders even this week-end as we get ready to go to church, as we join with your people, making that visible demonstration of our faith in Christ by coming to church. Lord, help us to worship, to listen, to learn, to be transformed by the gospel of grace. So, we pray now for this time of Q&A. Thanks for Steve and Key Life, so many who do so much behind the scenes to serve others. And we just pray that you would bless them and bless our people who are listening, even now. We pray in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this is an e-mail. How do we know we have the truth right?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, you said it was ordination. Now, you’re backtracking from that?

Steve Brown:
Yes, I am. I repent.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, okay.

Steve Brown:
By the way, before we answer that question, in order to know the truth is right, you’ve got to believe in truth.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
We’re living in a culture where whatever you believe is true, as long as you’re sincere about it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t want to go to a doctor who thinks that way about medical practice.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t want to fly with a pilot who thinks that about aerodynamics. I want them to believe there’s one truth, I’m going to do it the right way, and I’m not going to kill my patient or my passenger.

Pete Alwinson:
There you go.

Steve Brown:
So,

Pete Alwinson:
thank you

Steve Brown:
yeah,

Pete Alwinson:
I believe that.

Steve Brown:
you’ve got to start with believing there’s something like truth.

Pete Alwinson:
There’s something like truth that there is a right and a wrong and that it really is outside of us that we don’t determine what is truth. Now, we have to do the research and the good thinking to determine what is right, in many cases.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Even this whole idea, is there a God. We have to do some good reasoning and thinking and look at the evidences, and good people can agree to disagree. In the church, we can become quite dogmatic in our opinions and hurt each other unnecessarily because we can be too strong.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s very true. But the church, by the way, and that’s, Pete and I talk about that a lot. It’s good that you, cause people will, there is no lie so big that some people won’t believe it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And there is no weird leader so weird that some people won’t follow them.

Pete Alwinson:
Amazing.

Steve Brown:
And so, the church becomes kind of an anchor, kind of the place where you go to check things out.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
If you’re getting a revelation from God and you’re the only one, you’re not getting that from God.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Because God operates within a bunch, that’s called the church. And the bunch is really important. But then the basic measurement of truth, at least from our perspective, is the Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And the New Testament Christians, early church, their Bible was the Old Testament, and then the growing body of apostolic literature. And so, Paul could say that the church is the pillar and support of the truth. And so, we ought to be getting, that’s why when we go to church on Sunday, we need the Bible to be taught to us because in culture every day, we’re getting propagandized by many different ideas that may not be the truth. And we need to be grounded in the Word of God.

Steve Brown:
Boy, do I agree. And that’s the purpose of the church. And in terms, when you get away from the verities of the Christians, that’s the basic beliefs of the Christian faith, there can be a lot of opinion, a lot of different views. And don’t ever think you’re right and everybody else is wrong. But in terms of those basic things that are true, there should be general agreement among Christians about that truth.

Pete Alwinson:
That is so true. I mean, the historic doctrines of the faith. The key and core, apostolic teaching, The Apostles’ Creed, Christianity. We have to agree around those things to be called Christian.

Steve Brown:
And listen, everybody does their own thing. That’s our presupposition and we believe that presupposition that you just stated is true, but everybody has to have a presupposition. Our presuppositions involved in what they believe and what they think and what they say. And so, make sure your presuppositions are right about Scripture, about the church, about apostolic teaching, and what’s going on for 4, 000 years.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. So, to use your point, and then we can move on, but your point about ordination is a joke, but some people, some Christians really believe that if you have an ordination, that it does take you to a higher level of spirituality. Actually, ordination is a higher level of accountability and training. And so, we are accountable to others to be Biblical.

Steve Brown:
Okay. The Bible says, this is another one e-mail.

If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins. and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Does that mean that if we confess every sin known and unknown, that we’re forgiven? And does it include the stuff we’re not aware of? Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, yeah. So, we are cleansed from all unrighteousness in Christ.

Steve Brown:
You know, I think, I don’t think we, that thing that Jack Miller said.

Cheer up, you’re a lot worse than you think you are.

I don’t think God shows us how bad we really are.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, man.

Steve Brown:
I think if we did, we would be depressed all the time.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re right. He doesn’t. And thank God for that.

Steve Brown:
Oh, yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
But as we continue to grow, he reveals our hearts. I think the longer we walk with him, the more we are humbled,

Steve Brown:
that’s true

Pete Alwinson:
by who we really are inside.

Steve Brown:
And the more acceptable that is to us without kicking against the goads, you know, confession is not an awful thing for me. It used to be. I mean, I remember what’s that old joke about the man who was drunk and his wife was a Christian and she’d been talking to him about Jesus all the time. And finally he was having the DTs and it was bad. And so, he said, would you pray for me?, to his wife. She said, okay, Dear Lord, my husband is drunk again. And he interrupted her and said, don’t tell him I’m drunk, tell him I’m sick. As if God didn’t know.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But you know, the older I get, the more I walk with him. Repentance is a gift of joy.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
It’s where you get loved, it’s where you get forgiven, where you get fixed.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a freeing time, isn’t it? Where you can actually hear God say, you’re my son and Jesus paid for that.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s so good.

Pete Alwinson:
Let’s work on it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
You know.

Steve Brown:
Exactly. Do you believe in spiritual warfare?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man, and the older I get, the more I do. I mean, you and I are Bible teachers and we’ve trained ourselves and have been trained to think rationally and to think Biblically. Well, the Bible’s very clear and the gospel is very clear about spiritual warfare, but I think we see it so much more on the surface in our culture now.

Steve Brown:
I really do. You know, Luther’s hymn. Demons filled earth with demons fill. I see that more clearly in so many areas that I didn’t at one time.

Pete Alwinson:
I know and I think it’s because American culture has more radically declined from being Biblically based overall. And I think evil has worked its way to the surface in more key ways, like it really was on the surface during the time when Jesus walked the earth.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
You see more and more people obviously possessed and I think today it’s not as clear, but we see so much evil, Satan is right there.

Steve Brown:
And there’s Biblical ways you can deal with it. The armor of God and knowing Jesus is praying for you. If you stand, he’ll stand with you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. We can never downplay that.

Steve Brown:
Okay. It’s time for us to leave, but before we leave, I’ve got to say. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.