Love, pray for, bless — and the situational gray area
- Is God pro self-defense, and where does loving your neighbor extend to protecting them from physical harm?
The hosts converge on the three commands Jesus gives for dealing with enemies — love, pray for, and bless them — while granting everything beyond that is secondary and situational. They float the 'ideal' Jonah solution (parachute preachers into Nineveh instead of armies, with joke about strapping parachutes on blowhards), frame the targeting of Christians as a religious form of genocide the UN would treat as an intervention trigger, and close with the honest wrap: answers are clear within the kingdom of God, but we live in a gray area; Christians who actually faced these situations seem to have had moral clarity, and 'it's God's prerogative.'
More on Holy Spirit
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'When God is silent': what counts as hearing from the Lord?
- What does it mean to 'hear from the Lord,' and how often should we expect it?
Mike brings a question from his Bible study, whose paragraph heading was 'when God is silent': the author wrote that he experienced God's silence for a couple of weeks and freaked out, and Ben expected a relatable years-long drought story — 'Oh, two weeks.
From No. 603 · Found Out
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Should following Jesus feel more comfortable as time goes on?
- Should following Jesus feel more comfortable as time goes on?
A host asks whether following Jesus should feel more comfortable as time goes on — noting the low-level tension many feel around am-I-doing-enough and the stigma that contentment equals laziness.
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Do accountability partners actually work?
- Do accountability partners actually do anything?
Mike raises his accountability-partners question: the standard dude-circle advice to get a buddy to hold you accountable for Bible reading, porn, church attendance, and drinking.
From No. 598 · Emphasis | Accountability, Worship and Praying with Strangers
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Mike frames the question: are more people hearing from God?
- Does it seem like more and more people are hearing from God — and is that real or a lie and a huge distraction?
Ben asks Mike for a two-sentence framing; Mike says listening to the book of Job while mowing made him furious when Bildad 'received a word from the Lord,' turning a bad human argument into an unarguable divine claim.
From No. 597 · Maybe A Word From God