“Is God through with me?”

Steve Brown:
Is God through with me? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life, dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions, so here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with answers from the Bible that will make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you. We’ve said it a lot of times. Fridays are a lot better now, aren’t they?

Pete Alwinson:
We gear up for Sunday differently.

Steve Brown:
Oh, I know. That was a difficult time for me. I hated Fridays and Saturdays. And Sunday nights were wonderful, even if the sermon bombed, Sunday night was wonderful. You were free for a week.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re free, but there’s spiritual warfare that I think a lot of pastors don’t realize that’s what’s happening. You’ve got to give a sermon, but there’s spiritual warfare that makes it harder.

Steve Brown:
You know my wife recognized that sometimes. Sometimes she would see that my Saturdays were hard, and just out of the blue she’d talk about her devotional, she’d make sure to bring Jesus into the comment, and it was surprising how often the darkness would dissipate when she would do that sort of thing.

Pete Alwinson:
Totally. Totally. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
By the way, that’s Pete Alwinson. Check out ForgeTruth.com and if you’re a guy, man, that’s a ministry you want to be a part of, there’s a tremendous podcast there. And it’s fun, and you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll thank me for telling you about it. Pete, as you know, comes in on Fridays, and we spend the time answering questions. And we love getting your questions. You can ask a question any time you want, by picking up the phone and dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE and following the instructions. And sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can write us at

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

or in Canada, it’s

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

or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can to help us financially, please do. We’ll be faithful with your gift and squeeze every dime for the glory of God. And if you can’t, we understand, we’re not for profit organization, obviously. And so, we really do take what you give and apply it to kingdom work. So, help us if you can, and we’ll rise up and call you blessed. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer, and we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, we do come into your presence today and we recognize that you are the King, the King of heaven and earth. And we honor you and praise you today. Just, we’re so thankful that on this Friday, we can recognize that your rule has sustained us all through this week. And just knowing that you’re in charge and that you hear our prayers and are working in us through your Spirit, just gives us such great encouragement. Lord, we need encouragement, there are many of us who are discouraged because of work, of home, of health, of issues with our kids or grandkids, the state of our country. Lord, we ask that you would enable us to find grace and strength, every day because you’re the King and our Savior. Lord, be with our leaders this week-end. We look forward to getting to church, to being with your people, to being with the visible body of Christ this week-end. Help all of those leaders to have the words that they need to say and by your power Holy Spirit would you lead us into the presence of God. And now, we come with Q&A, ask for wisdom, Lord, to live the life that you have given us until you come again, Lord Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
Can a person who falls into sin, and it takes them years to get out, can they still return to the Lord? Or some people say that because you have soiled your garment, you cannot return.

Steve Brown:
Oh, man. Whoever told you that lie? You know, I get, that’s a misinterpretation of a couple of passages in Hebrews, and we don’t have time to sit down and exegete those passages, but you’ve got to know that the clear teaching from the whole counsel of God is that you can never be so bad you can’t come home. You can’t do anything that will prevent you from running to Jesus. There is nothing that separates us from the love of God, and that means, in Paul meant it in Romans, everything. And so, this man sounds like he’s been hurt by somebody because he did something bad in his past and quote soiled his garments. Listen, nobody has a white garment, that’s what the Scripture teaches about human nature. It’s not a pretty thing. So, don’t let people do that to you. And if they’re doing that at your church, go to another church, unless it’s Presbyterian, then God will fix it.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, you’re right about that. You know, the Scripture says.

We wear white garments, but only as we’re viewed through Christ.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Right? So, through Christ, we are viewed that way.

Steve Brown:
The righteousness, clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. We can fall and be in sin. That’s true. We wouldn’t deny that at all. And a Christian can fall into sin for a long period of time. That’s true too. But like you said, Romans 8.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And you know, and I’m sure you’ve run into, there are so many people, in fact, a lot of the anger, a lot of the critique of the church that is being published nowadays is written by people who are sinners and who were never taught the amazement of God’s grace and forgiveness.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
I’ve got friends, in fact, a number of them I pray for every day who are in dark places. And I say, Oh God, bring them home quickly. And that’s what the Prodigal Son teaches.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And it’s the kindness of God that leads us to salvation.

Steve Brown:
Oh yeah, it really is.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s his grace that energizes us to want to get better.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. Well, this is another e-mail. How are we to act when our government leaders push the immoral laws they legislate? It seems we are the criminals now for standing up for God’s word.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh boy, that’s true. I like that. You get the first take on this one.

Steve Brown:
Well, if God is sovereign and he’s over all of this it’s probably good for us. You know, we’ve had a free ride for a long time in America. And if you’re a Christian, you’re a patriot, of course. You love America, but that’s not where your primary citizenship is, your citizenship is in heaven. And we have a king that nobody ever elected in a caucus. And nobody will ever depose. So, sometimes it’s probably good for us to face the kind of criticism that our brothers and sisters have faced for years, and even now face. It’s probably a good thing. But it also means that you’ve got to speak truth. And you’ve got to speak truth, even if people won’t like you for speaking truth.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Just make sure that the truth is the issue, and that you’re not.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right. That’s so well said. And I think this, these are good times for us. There’s going to be a winnowing of the church, you know, and when we can stand up for God and speak for Christ and the gospel and the Bible, because there’s a lot of issues that are connected to Christian gospel that, like for instance, gender and marriage, who can marry who. These are very vital questions to us as Christians about family and, gender and those kinds of things. The primary goal is to get people to understand salvation in Christ and the reality of God.

Steve Brown:
Right. But that doesn’t mean we don’t speak truth.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And we speak it in love and we should, as Peter says, we should speak it respectfully. And I think that a lot of Christians struggle with how to speak truth at all.

Steve Brown:
I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, we don’t. And when we do, we’re not speaking it respectfully. And if we really love our enemies, that’s what God has to, then those who are enemies to us for the gospel, we can speak more kindly to and respectfully. And we should.

Steve Brown:
Of course. And that’s hard for me. You know, a lot of this stuff that’s happening in our culture. Politically, and this is right and left. I’m not just talking about a partisan position. It’s happening everywhere, where people have weakened the gates. Have, things are acceptable that shouldn’t be. That makes me angry. It makes me want to get a gun and fix it. And I’ve got to stop that because that’s not Jesus that’s coming from another place.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know that there’s two sides to this, real quick. One is that, is you look at how Jesus related and I encourage people to go back and read through the gospels, pick a gospel and see how he related. Jesus could be very forgiving and gentle and kind to the repentant. He could be very black and white and straightforward to the non repentant, to the self righteous, to the hypocrites, to evil. And he is our model for, not some silly sentimentalism. And so, we need to take the cue for how Jesus related to people and that means we can speak the truth in love, but that doesn’t mean we always have to come off as nice.

Steve Brown:
Nice is not why Jesus died for us, right?

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
Okay. Another question, e-mail. Does prayer change God’s mind?

Pete Alwinson:
So, how do we qualify that?

Steve Brown:
Well you don’t. We, you first got to say, are you crazy? No, it doesn’t. But it does seem like when you read Scriptures that people prayed and God did something different than what he seemed to have planned to do. But you’ve got to know that that’s under God’s providence and God’s sovereignty too, even the times when he seems to have planned to do something, all of that is a part of a plan of a sovereign God.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I like that. I like that. And that’s a better way of looking at it. You know, there was an old statement. Prayer changes things. Yeah, it doesn’t, when God decrees, it’s done and it will happen. So, we can’t mess with the decrees of God, but he does lead us to pray and works with our prayers. Prayer does matter.

Steve Brown:
And you know, and I know it drives you nuts when I do this, but this is a time concept. You ever think that before you were ever born, God took your prayers into his creation and your prayers were effective not only in your time, but in time, eternity in past.

Pete Alwinson:
And that is important for us to let sink in. I like it.

Steve Brown:
I do too. Or I’d stop praying. But I wouldn’t stop doing Key Life, but we’ve got to stop for now and we’ll see you next time. Before we go, we’re glad you’re here. And remember Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.