Welcome back again to another podcast of Struggling Well. And since I mentioned the word struggling. Well, let me just say though, there have been some of you have wanted to know where you can find my book on a Kindle type version and you cannot find that on Amazon, but on a Kindle type version, you can go to Apple Books, iBooks, and it can be found there.
And we're hoping maybe that one day that Jimmy Kallam will actually read the book and we'll put it on Audible if that's a possibility.
That's a possibility that you can write us about if you haven't. it is something that we're interested in. So, we're glad you're with us today and we are taking the threads that we have kind of dangled in front of you for the last couple of weeks. it's where our hearts have been. It's where we have been wrestling with God ourselves about the questions of, you know, God, where are you? Why do things happen the way they do? How are we as believers to respond to these questions? And how are we supposed to live and follow Christ?
Yeah. And what do we who do we see you to be and who do we see your son to be?
in Matthew 16 Jesus it says in the NLT again when Jesus came to the region of Cesaria Philippi he asked the disciples who do people say the son of man is well they replied some say John the Baptist some say Elijah and others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Then he asked them but who do you say I am? And I think that's a question we have to deal with as we look at events that are happening in our lives and in the world on a larger scale. you know last week I think we mentioned or maybe the week before we mentioned some events that had occurred and there are many many more than that from the global level national level and of course individual lives there's a lot of things happening that are hard to explain but as the disciples had been following Jesus they loved what he was doing. They most of them were probably hoping that he would be he would free them from Roman tyranny. But he asked that question, you know, who do the people say that I am? But the more important question is, who do you say that I am?
Yeah. And another event in the life of Jesus with his disciples comes when there's a the crowds of disciples and I use that term the followers of Jesus had had there have been many and then as Jesus got further into teaching what he wanted them to see and understand as to who he was, we're told that many of the disciples turned back and walked no longer walked with him. So then Jesus says to the 12, "Do you want to go away as well?" It's that follow-up kind of idea to who do people say that I am and who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered him and said,"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. So again it comes down to that personal understanding of who do you say and who do you say that Jesus is and what do you do with that in your life?
I think that's a question that we have to ponder because as we are trying to navigate life trying to navigate hearing about things 24/7 navigating our own lives, we've got to answer the question, who do you say that Jesus is? And I think a clearer understanding of who he is, who God the Father is, God the Son, and God the Spirit is, gives us the ability to walk through whatever we're walking through because we know who he is and we believe that and follow him.
Yeah. And in believing who he is, it's believing in his the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So that We understand that he is the Messiah, the son of God who is alive, who defeated death and has raised again. If he didn't raise, Paul says it later on, this is years after Jesus had ascended and gone back to be with the father. He said, "But if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain. Your faith is in vain."
So it comes down to understanding the completeness of what Christ did on this earth. and then he goes on and says, "If in Christ we have hope in this life only. We are of all people to be most pied. So he brings that connection not only to the life we live now. We're aliens here. We're pilgrims. We're strangers because this isn't our home. It is where we're living now. But our final home is eternity. And if that is not the case, Paul says we're wasting our time.
You know, you are going to be assailed with all sorts of things even today as you're listening to this. You may be sitting comfortably listening to this podcast and you know things may happen later on in your day that you had no awareness of and some I hope that lots of wonderful things happen but we also know life how are we going to navigate those things in a way that I'm jumping around here but I'm thinking back to Exodus 33 when Moses God had told Moses get up and go. It's time to go again. And Moses says to the Lord, to God, unless you go with us, how will people know that we're different? And that question haunts me all the time as I live my life day by day, how will anyone know that I follow Christ if my life doesn't look any different than the rest of the world? The rest of the world without Christ is afraid, living in confusion, living in constant fear, not having confident hope in God. But my life should look differently than that. And Jimmy said, I think the last our last episode, that doesn't mean that we don't mourn and whail and weep and cry before God as we see all throughout scripture, but we are to not grieve as the world does without hope.
Yeah. And so, it comes back to a theme that we've used many times in these podcasts and we'll continue to go back to it is where do I place my hope right now the world we live in is a divided angry world and so hope gets placed in a political party or hope gets placed in the economy turning around or hope gets placed in a new discovery of some cure for a disease. All those things will come up short but where we want our hope to be is to be in Christ in the complete finished work of Christ who rose victorious over death and has provided for us the pathway to eternity with God which is life with him. And so we want to thank you again for coming and joining us this week and we hope you have a great week.