The Dialog

Archaeologists have found ancient Hebrew inscriptions that pair God's name with a Canaanite goddess: "Yahweh and his Asherah." Israel didn't trade God for Baal. They kept both, just in case. An insurance policy.

We still do it. We just call it something else.

A guy DM'd me on Instagram and asked if we'd ever talk about manifesting. So Nick Surface and I did, and to answer it we had to go back to Mount Carmel, where Elijah asked Israel, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions?" (1 Kings 18:21)

Is manifesting biblical?
Manifesting says you are the source of your reality. That puts you on the throne. If you think you control your life, you don't worship God. You worship yourself. God isn't concerned with moving in your direction. He has a plan, and your decision is whether you'll be part of it.

Is prayer just Christian manifesting?
In one sense, yes. If you want to manifest something, pray about it. But prayer isn't a transaction. "Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4). Delight in Him, He changes the desires of your heart, and then He gives you what He wants for you.

Contract or covenant?
Nick put it this way: in a contract, you build the breakup before you ever break up. God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). You can't do enough good to make Him love you, or enough bad to make Him stop.

Scriptures
1 Kings 18:21 · Psalm 37:4 · Romans 5:8 · Romans 4:17 · Ecclesiastes 3:11 · Proverbs 18:21 · Proverbs 3:5-6 · Ezekiel 36:26 · Ephesians 3:20 · Luke 18:1-8 (quotes: ESV)

Thinkers and books
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God · Arthur C. Clarke · Socrates and the sophists · Charles Capps

Chapters
0:00 Cold open and show intro
0:53 Before we pressed record
4:12 What is manifesting?
5:10 We're created to worship (A.W. Tozer)
9:10 Worship is what you believe controls your life
10:12 Idolatry isn't just ancient: Baal, the storm god
13:01 Ancient worship was a transaction
15:29 Contract vs. covenant
18:34 Is any human love unconditional? (Romans 5:8)
23:56 Worshiping God and other gods
25:02 Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18)
27:25 Baal and Asherah as an insurance policy
31:22 IVF, medicine and trusting God
33:39 What do we worship now?
36:53 What manifesting really claims
37:36 Prayer is Christian manifesting
40:20 Psalm 37:4: delight yourself in the Lord
44:27 The manifesting test: God's will or mine?
46:07 Romans 4 and the power of the tongue
49:22 We keep trying to do both (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Previous: 1.41 / What is the church for? 4 roles the Bible gives it
Next: 1.43 / 39 lessons in 39 years (Season 1 finale)

New episodes most weeks. If this challenged you, follow the show and send it to one friend who needs it.

Follow Nick on IG / https://www.instagram.com/nicksurface1/
Follow me on IG / https://www.instagram.com/joshuakcraft/
Go to my website / https://jkc.is

What is The Dialog?

Ancient philosophers used the dialog to find answers to life’s greatest questions. The Dialog is a search for truth in modern life through the lens of ancient philosophy, history, and theology. This podcast will challenge your assumptions, change your thinking and show you how to master modern living.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I'm interested in one thing, the future, and believe me, I know the only way. To get there is together. What we've got here is failure. Milk Cake. You may think you know what tribut, but believe me, you. Don't what the truth. You can't handle the truth. For centuries, philosophers have used the dialogue to search for truth, because it's through conversation, through the logos, that we find it. This is the dialogue where ancient philosophy, history, and theology meet modern life. Together, we'll wrestle with big questions and give our answers to the way we live. Let's start the conversation. And now it's been forty minutes, we've been sitting your childhood up. I'm just just here to hang out my friend. You know that. So it's like, if you happen to us record while we're hanging out, I'm good it. You know, you know what. That's a good starting place because we just sat her for forty minutes and talked about life and stuff before we even pressed record, which is kind of what this podcast is about. Yeah, well, today I'm actually i'm super pumped actually to get into this guy. What I love is like you never tell me what you're gonna say, and so I'm always like I always feel like we it's a genuine reaction and conversation. And yeah, I was thinking about this today. You are now Josh, father of five Nations, because this guy is like I had this guy in my in my Bible college. His name was a chem and he was from Zambia and he had like that's how he was introduced himself. My name was a Keema him father of five visions, and like I didn't know what he meant at first, and I was like, oh, you've had five kids because like where he came from, your age, how many kids you were, and also how much weight you had on were like big like status symbols. So he hit the dude, he hit the food hard. His goal was a gain as much weight as possible so people would think he was wealthy. He put on twenty four pounds in our in one year of our Bible college. Wow, Winnie, Yeah, tell him that's really how it works in the West. We look, man, I just was gonna let him do his thing, you know what I mean, Like with their friends, I. Mean, it wasn't even picking a battle. I was like, get it, man, you know what I mean, like if that's if that's uh, I knew he was going back to where he would not have that quite abundance of selection as we ate, Like chocolate cake. It was just stupid. I mean, it was British food. So it was only. Anything I knew that would get you anything, anything worth doing, worth over again. But yeah, my my brother, my brother in law, my wife's sister's husband. Right, they have five kids, and so I've always called him a craw nation. And then I'm like, oh, five kids, so I'm kind of like craft nation, craft nation. Yeah, all right, man. We we we We've. We've been talking. We talk about a lot of stuff on this podcast. Like if you're a new listener and you're just kind of like, what are we talking about? We're talking about life, We're talking about everything. There's a lot of niche. There's a lot of like niche world that like I live in and do. Like we're getting ready we're probably gonna switch gears at some point this year. Talk a lot about stewardship and money and stuff, but I like just having conversations about whatever's topical whatever's going on. And I've been getting a lot of questions recently about manifesting and. Stuff like that. Me and you were kind of texting a little bit about that at a guy DM me on Instagram. So hey, would you guys ever talk about this? So here we are, but I. Don't know if I'll asked you about it and then. Yeah, but what I like about this Josh, so like you, you kind of gave the Josh version of the intro to the podcast, and I'm going to give that. I'm your friend, and I think I have I'm gonna put my marketing spin on a little bit. I think what you bring that's very unique, And why I would say you should listen to this podcast is because what you do so well is you take everyday topics that people wrestle with and you blend in a really deep knowledge of ancient philosophy, history and theology to give like godly answers for how to live today. And you would call that philosophy. Your philosophy is just basically the way you live your life. And but you do a very good job of showing the threads that have gone throughout human history and to like lead us to where we're at so that people can have a broader perspective on it. And I personally really enjoy it. I always tell you what my favorite, uh my favorite preach of yours ever was, and it was when you did that masterfully. But let's dive into this, man, because like, so, first of all, for those that don't know what is manifesting, because I'm you know, it can mean a lot of things. Well, I mean I think, yeah, I mean I think we can start there. But I think. The the there's a there's like a central premise. I think that we have to understand like about humanity, and and we're like I I want to say this, like on the podcast, I'm wrong a lot and a lot of times when we're having these conversations, I'm talking off like the top of my head or with like a like a general like I'm a I'm a pretty big generalist when it comes to knowledge, Like. I know a lot about it. I know a little bit about a lot of stuff. So you know, usually an expert when they listen to me, an expert on the topics like, ah, you got some of that wrong, which I understand. So I don't know why I'm qualifying it. But if I'm wrong, then you know, I reserve the right to change my mind, which you say all the time, which is I got that from ear So so there's a there's a there's a premise that I want to invite people to consider, okay, And the premise is that human beings are created to worship things. So we're where we. Have a strong pull towards worship of something, which uh the the oldest, like the oldest. I think this is one of the oldest impulses in humanity, is this desire to this this idea of worshiping something. And we've talked about worship before on the podcast, and the topic of this isn't just specifically about worship. But aw Towser talks about this in the Pursuit of God. It's a great book, it's really sure, but he talks about how there's a there's basically a human a shrine that's inside our heart, right, and that shrine is a place that God created within us, that's reserved for Him and the problems in our life. And this is like the whole premise of this book, the Pursuit of God. The problems in our life arise when we when we remove God from this shrine, this alter, and we allow other things to enter. So so now by our nature, this is what Tozer talks about. Now, now, by our nature, we don't have any peace right because God isn't crowned in our heart. So the thing so, human beings, I'll say it in the way I'm kind of. Human beings are created to worship stuff. We have something within us that is an alter, that's a shrine that we pursue. Okay, so I'll practically define that for the sake of our conversation. We pursue things that we consider to be deeply meaningful. Yeah, right, Human beings are like this is this is the pursuit of purpose, the pursuit of meaning, the pursuit of identity. Right, So we pursue things that we consider to be meaningful. And when we don't pursue God, we live a life without peace because we achieve or we accomplish, or we attain whatever it is that's on the altar, on the shrine of our hearts. But all those things are false, false kings like they're false. They're things that you know, people they live their life, they pursue money, they worship money. They idolize money. It's all they think about. Right, So if you want to know, you know what, if you want to know what you worship, what do you spend most of your time considering? And the decisions that you make, what do you make those in service to? You know? Paul Peter Peter talked about that in the New Testament. He says, we must you know, we we we must please God rather than rather than men, which is like, you know, Paul Peter's perspective was his driving force is how can I please God? Right? Right? So everyone everyone has a center, everyone has an altar, everyone has things that they're pursuing. The question is not whether or not we worship things, it's do we worship the right thing? Right? You know? So I think before we get into manifest thing, it's just it's we have to kind of like land on that premise, right, Yeah. Now, what would you say for somebody that's like I think, for if you're a Christian, and I would imagine a lot of people listen to this are It's like he's put etorney in man's heart, right, and yet no man can fathom what God's done from beginning to be the beginning to end. It's Ecclesiastes three to eleven. So, like, we do have a need for purpose, and I think a lot of people can see that. But like, but do you think the need for purpose is tied to the need to worship? Is that kind of what you're what you're pointing towards. Is that that's why people put things like money on the altar or power or whatever insert whatever it may be validation because they like they're trying to fill like an eternal longing. Yeah, I mean the question of worship is what controls your life? Right? Okay? Right? So what do I believe controls my life? So the pursuit of purpose? If I like, man, I watched Disclosure Day the other night. Sorry, oh, I loved it. I don't know why you didn't like it. I thought it was so amazing. People have slated that I have. I don't know, actually know anything. I don't know. I'm just a movie guy and I've loved Spielberg my whole life. But one of the characters in the movie is like, I don't they've lived their whole life, Like, I don't know my purpose. I don't know my purpose. I don't know my purpose, And they finally, like in the movie, realize their purpose, right, right, And and so for a lot of people, purpose controls their life, right, the pursuit of meaning, the pursuit of purpose, Well that's not like the pursuit the pursuit of meaning and purpose is not ultimately about purpose and meaning. It's elf. It's about God, right, right, It's about uh, what controls what ultimately controls my life because because that's what So we think of something, we think of a term like idolatry, right, and idolatry is this weird ancient behavior that other people that like the ancient people practiced, and we don't think that we're idolatrous anymore, you know, we have we have secularism now, and people don't really worship like the rain gods and you know, like like Bail, right, Bail in the Bible. So, but Bale's talked about a lot. Bail was the storm god. He was the god of rain and thunder and also the god of fertility. What's really interesting about the ancient rod is pretty much every god is the god of fertility, right, like, no kidding, you know. Important. So, so worshiping Bail was about weather. So we don't we You know Arthur C. Clark, he said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And so we we. Discount spirituality a lot in today's world because we have a lot of technology and explanations for things like you go back if you if you take h if you take a weather forecast back to the ancient world and you say like here's here, they'd be like, wow, you you talk to the gods. It's like, no, we have developed the technology to interpret the weather patterns and we actually know where it's going to rain, right, So we don't We don't pray that God will make it rain. Now, we just look at the weather patterns, right. So that doesn't mean that God's not there. It's just there's always been this dynamic of trying to figure out the unfigure outable. Yes, and usually in our life, the things we can't figure out are the things that control us. So that's worship. So it's the. Stuff that I meditate on, it's the stuff that I'm consumed by. So the question of worship is what do you believe controls your life? Right? Okay, that's good. I appreciate you breaking that down because I want to I was just thinking for the person out that it's like, oh, I don't know about that, Like, I want to understand how you were viewing worship. I would agree with I think everybody has their mind set on something predominantly by and large, whether you will rate them as to whether they're good or bad. Like, oh, he's a family guy, and everybody's like, yeah, that's good. So you know, well done. But you know, it's what controls your life, Okay. Friends like you know, and and I believe in balance. I think balance is the thing. Yeah. I have friends that they believe that money controls their life, so they make everything about money and they sacrifice their family on the alter of money. Okay, I believe I have friends are the other way, right. They they they're they're they're not providing for their family, they're not doing the things that they need to do because hey, for them, family is everything. But then they have a lot of instability, right, So it's figuring out the balance of these things in terms of what really is going to be the controlling factor in my life. Life. So in the ancient world, and we'll get to manifesting, I think right in the ancient world, no guarantees But in the ancient world, worship wasn't about like appreciating nature. It wasn't about oh, look at these trees and this is so amazing. It was about how do we get how do we prove our sincerity so that the gods or God will bless us. So if I perform the right rituals, make the right offerings, say the right words, do the right things, I'll prove my sincerity and. God or the God or God's. Will produce rain, fertility, a good harvest, whatever it is, this transaction. So this is kind of the same dynamic of God in the Old Testament with the children of Israel. It's like, make me happy and I'll bless you. Disappoint me and I'll curse you. So which is. That's not the exact dynamic, Dude, I'm. A lot of it. I mean a lot of it was in their mind, is what I'm saying. Oh, in their mind, I was gonna said, I don't believe that that was actually God's heart when he gave the comport. Okay, Yeah, So what's important for I think what's important for us to understand is there's there's like God's perspective on what God says, and our perspective on what God says and what we see a lot played out in scripture is our perspective on what God says. And then God always going yeah, that's not the right way to think about it, right, So there's always this back and forth there. So, but the Israelites, like the people like so, the Israelites, like the people that lived at their time, believe that God or God's that it was about transaction. Right. God is never trying to make our relationship with him about transaction, right, But the Israelites believe that then, and we believe this now. So we believe that our relationship with God, because this is how human beings work. Believe that our relationship with God is a transaction. So I'm gonna worship God and God is gonna give me purpose. I'm gonna worship God and God's gonna bless me. I'm gonna read the Bible and then I'll be wise. You know, there's there is a there is We can't help but do this. And this is one of the reasons, ultimately, as human beings, why we worship things is because I'm gonna worship this thing and I'm gonna achieve this outcome because I worship the thing, right and people won't. Be aware that this is how they're relating to God, right, like, because I think what you're saying is really there's a lot to it, man, because people really struggle to understand grace and uh and and what actual covenant is, and so they'll they'll default. The contract, which is what you're saying. And like you and I if we both have a contracts like, well, I'm gonna do this and you're gonna do this, and the moment one of us doesn't do that, like, there's some repercussions in here, and you know, and we're gonna build that in like in a contract, you build the breakup before you actually break up, right, you know. That's why prenuptial agreements are such a like ungodly thing, because. It's like you're planning to divorce this person. Yeah, well, and if you're entering into a covenant, you're committed to the person. Like when you when you read about God talking about covenant, he's talking about I will remember my covenant with you, and I desire to show you grace because of that covenant. Because he's committed to the people. You're you're interesting. You're entering into a covenant not just because of the person, but because of God. Right, It's like, that's what people don't understand about marriage, is my marriage. The covenant with Courtney is partly based on me committing to her, but it's more based on me committing to God that God will. Make this marriage work even when I can or she can't. Well, because who's who's the most faith Who's the only one who's actually faithful totally? Everyone proclaims his own goodness, but a faithful man who can define and what makes God's the reason God can work with covenant and other people is because God is faithful. He's never changing, and he demonstrates that to us. If you look at the story of the Book of in the Old Testament about the Israelite people, God demonstrates what covenant actually does. I'm going to commit to. You, Oh you're gonna walk away thousands of times, I'm committed to you. Now you know, and you read. It and it's it's absolutely mind blowing, and it just highlights how much we are not faithful. But I think that that's like when you have that revelation that God's committed to you, like that. I think that's when you can start to accept grace. And one of the greatest things that you could ever accept is to know that there was that you could never earn it. And I feel like God, like we people come to that. A lot of times people come back because they hit rock bottom and like it's so obvious that they have not earned it that they finally get to a. Place that they accept it. But I also believe that you don't have to hit rock bottom. I believe that you can have a revelation of just realizing like who God is and just you know, it's like all have fallen short, right, and like we all like know that scripture, all have. Fallen short of the of the glory of God. Okay, all of a sudden fallen short totally, but like in our heads to the point that you make it's like, but you know, my sins really haven't been that bad. Like I didn't cheat on my wife, I haven't murdered anybody. I didn't like, you know, defraud people or whatever you think of bad sin is. I didn't commit abortion like whatever you think of bad sin is. But then if something like that happens, like for people who listening out here if they've had a divorce and they realize, like God, divorce is an abomination God's I was like, oh no, but it's like, look, God is the blood of Christ greater than all that. Yeah, but it's such a hard Like what you're saying is I want to I'm just reiterating. It's so profound to say, like we deal on a transactional basis. So sorry, man, I just I think that I want to look at the application of that from a subtle the subtleties of that. Yeah, well, I think that you know the scripture Paul says in Romans five right, that God demonstrates his love for us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Right, and so. Every every aspect of our human life is conditional. It's all conditional. There is no such thing on this side of eternity as I'm conditional anything, especially between people. They're like, my wife is the most my My relationship with my wife is the most unconditional relationship that I could have. And maybe I could cheat on her once or twice before she leave me, But if I cheated on her ten times, she'd leave me. R Right. I want to be I want to unconditionally love my kids and unconditionally be with them. But if my child is a serial killer, I'm really fine not having a relationship. Like our relationship is conditional, right there. You say that, dude, I would challenge you on that. I think you're being a little cynical here. No, I mean they're in every human relationship. There are conditions, even if they're buried really really deep somewhere like there, it would change the relationship. But you went like a band. You wouldn't be like, you're no longer my child, right, I mean, dude, you can't walk away from your kid. There could be something that could happen, right, it could get bad enough, right, but God, but and that's but that's. Just huh, that's a dark thought. Bro. Well, I think that's just human like, And that's that's why we look at relationships as transactional so much, right, because the way that we by default approach life is as a conditional thing. It's like, as long as we talked about that with the church, with these episodes on the Church, like well, I'll be a part of this church as long as X happens or as long as you hurt my feelings as long as like whatever, as long as uh this this, you know, this situation that I don't foresee doesn't happen, right, I mean I think that that there's a lot in human relationships that but but like covenant, there's a lot of human relationships that we think is unconditional, but we're not actually capable of unconditional relationships. But God is right. That's why I covenant. It's so important because Courtney right. If I'm mature in my walk with God, Courtney might not meet my conditions for us to be in relationship. But if I've made a covenant, what I know is that God makes up the gaps because God is unconditional. So what I mean by that is that there is no other relationship we can quantify that is an unconditional relationship like the relationship God has with us. So God unconditionally loves you, which is not a transaction, like you cannot do enough good to make him love you, you can't do enough bad to make him not love you. I don't know if I'm a once saved, always save person, but I'm like a once saved really hard to get unsaved person. You know, I think that the grace of God is unfathomable to like the human mind, and so if we're not careful we approach. We think that the way God thinks about us is the way we think about life, and that's conditional. So that means that we are responsibility is to make God happy enough so that God will do good things for us. And this is literally the biblical definition of self righteousness. Right, So self righteousness is me thinking that I did enough things today to make God happy, right right, Like I'm in right standing with God because of what I do. Now, what I do matters. Yeah, people, Sorry, now I was gonna say it. Help me tie the thread here, man, because we asked about we asked. We asked about about whether or not like about manifesting. I asked you to define manifesting. You said, we have to have the understand that the premise that ever were made to worship. Then from there we talked a little bit about idols and about transactional relationship. So how is this tying? Like, how how is this time together? Like I want to follow. Your old I mean, I think it's understanding that the fundamental nature of humanity is not God's fundamental nature. And if we if we don't notice that we turn really, we turn our relationship with God into a transaction. Even if we've walked with God for a long time, we still can turn our relationship with Him into a transaction because you come to God, you receive his grace, and then you start to think that your walk with God is indent on you doing things Rhich, It's not like your success in life. There's a difference between winning in life and going to heaven. I'll say it that way. If you do what scripture teaches you to do, you'll have a good life, right you, You'll be fulfilled, you'll have good marriage, you'll have good relationships, you'll probably make good money, you'll be a good steward, on and on. You can go to heaven without any of that. Right. So, so the relationship with God is not conditional on you and I doing the right things. A lot also like, well, I'll yeah, we'll come. We'll come back to that at some point on the podcast, because we'll have this whole conversation about conditions. But I want to get back to what we're talking about. So the human, the human thinking about God or God's or higher powers or worship is about a transaction I'm gonna do this so I get this, okay, in the ancient world, and this is what people miss in scripture. I think this is something that people miss in the Bible is that it wasn't like they worshiped other gods instead of God. Right, Okay, So think again, think about what I'm saying, those of you that are listening. Our tendency is to worship things. We turn worship into a transaction, and most human beings worship God and other things, not God instead. Of other things. Yes, so you don't have one God, you have many gods, right right? This polytheism, this is what Hinduism is in the you know, Behid the Bahigh faith. The Bahiah faith believes that all religions kind of point to this greater sense of God and all religions should be equally respected. Hinduism that the reason that it's hard to reach Hindus with Christianity is because Hindus just add Jesus to their pantheon of gods. Everything's a God, we worship everything. We just have this generally spiritual nature. So that's really more how humans are than singular in their one God approach. So in you know, one of the most famous stories in the Bible is when Elijah goes to Mount Carmel in the First King's eighteen and he challenges Bail and the bail and the prophets of Bail and the prophets of Asherah to a battle basically against God. But one of the things Elijah says that we miss is in uh later later, and it's like somewhere in the chapter he says, how long will you go limping. Between two opinions? Yes? Yeah, right, And so the idea of that is how long are you going to waiver in your loyalty here? So they weren't atheists, they weren't secularists. They weren't people that worship Bail instead of God. They worship God and they worship they worship Bail and so they and you see this throughout the Old Testament as it relates to what's called asher A. Polls yeah all the time. Yeah. And they didn't worship Astra instead of God. They worshiped Ashra and God. So they're like, Okay, we got God. But also like we we need fertility and we want to have children and we need we need it to rain, so like we'll worship yahweh bail every and and and insurance policy. Well, and this was normal right thousands of years ago because most most ancient cultures are polytheistic, right, so Canaanite culture, Babylonian culture, these different people that were all around the Israelites worshiped, you know, worshiped everything, right, So it puts it in different it puts it in real perspective. For the Elijah story, if you if you're listening, you didn't realize that bowl or baal however people are bail however you want to pronounce. It was the god of like storm, the storm god when he when when God makes it dry for three years and you have a drought, and then they have this showdown where it's like we're going to have someone basically it says fire from heaven. What that essentially is lightning, which would once again be as Lord God. It's like God's doing everything he can to let the people know. Look like it. Bowance is not a god, right because I mean he set the conditions up where he's like, you've been slashing yourself for three years and nothing's happening, and I'm gonna even go as if that wasn't enough to show you that you're you're that that he's not a god and that you need to trust in me. I am going to do this first, and. Then when Isaiah or when Elijah gives the word, then it'll rain. Ye so to them yah. So for the ancient Israelites, bail and astrarah were an insurance policy. Right. It was like yeah, okay, well yeah, yeahwehs cool man, like we were down. That's our identity, Like we're the children of Israel and we have we have a special God that only we have a relationship with. But also like we'll we'll worship your gods too, just in case that works. Yeah, right, And so they like, I want the true God, but also I want this like insurance policy that it's going to rain and uh that where there's going to be fertility. And so so they erect what's called Asheri poles all throughout the nation of Israel. Right, so we know how the story ends that Elijah praise a simple prayer. The prophets of Bale are destroyed. On and on right, the righteous kings come in throughout the Old Testament and they tear down all the asher poles. You have a guy like Gideon in the Book of judges that runs around tearing down other people's ashra poles and they get mad at him. But but like the thing we think is that they're worshiping another god instead of God. But the thing is they're worshiping both. Okay, so. And and these these polls. What what's really interesting is I'll say two things about history and then we'll jump into like the modern world. So they've found like different asher poles and shrines, like in the Middle East, like in Israel, there's there's the one that they found that that the Israelites had written an inscription on it that said Yahweh and his Asherrah. So like people erected the idolatrousse and these you could google an ashra a pole. It's just a pole. It's like a it's a place they would just set up and they would worship and it just looks like a pole. So there's nothing really cool about it. But they set up idolatrous poles to worship God just in case, Like in my mind, this is all kind of like just in case stuff. I know, God loves me as a plan for my life, but also like there's a transaction here, right, so in just in case, there is a transaction. I'm going to keep this as an insurance policy. And then what I find is really interesting is after So they haven't found any of these figurines that were after the Babylonian any of these figurines or like astra poles or anything like that that were made after the Babylonian exile. H So something broke in kind of Hebrew society that was like, you know what, We're not going to do this anymore. Right. And the second thing is that I find really interesting, which is a whole other conversation I think for another day, but it's worth mentioning, is that Jesus said when he went to Jerusalem, he said that the temple was going to be destroyed, right, Yeah, And people thought he was talking about his body, but he was, and he's talking about the physical, the actual temple in Jerusalem. And for the Israelites, a requirement of Judaism is that you make sacrifices at the temple, right, this is a requirement of following God. Will well. Emperor Trajan in the history of the Roman Empire, he destroys the temple at Jerusalem where Jews can't like to this day, a Jew could not go make a sacrifice at the temple because there's literally a mosque where the temple used to be, right, and so it's actually impossible to practice Judaism in the way that God describes it in the Old Testament, right, And so what rabbis have said, if you read the Talmud, that they what they said. What they've said was, oh, well, temples not now, our hearts are a temple. God never said that. That's just kind of like what we've adapted, right. So God, what's. Interesting is God pretty much if you seek him, you'll find him, and he'll make a way where you can't worship anything else except him, right rights, And that's where we can get into like manifesting, because I'm drawing these historical comparisons. Okay, can I ask you a. Quick question, though, man, Because as Asher was the god of fertility, right, and they were worshiping both and bel or Baal, however you want to say, it was the storm god, which was basically their sustenance, and the two are so closely tied because if you didn't have descendants, you couldn't you know, everybody was a farmer, right, like everybody was kind of you needed your family to help you live, not to mention, so that you would continue your line and you would give everything to your descendants. And so it was very important these two things. What's the modern day here? Because it's like I suppose on the one hand, you could say, like, well does this make like modern medicine and hospitals? Is that not trusting God? Like you know, this is a controversial one, but there's IVF like and and you know where is trust in God with IVF? You know what I mean? Like these are these are things that can become real wrestling topics. And so that's why I'm asking you, like what do you think this looks like modern day? Yeah? I And that's so like you know, if you like reading, it's not as neat like as we think, right that the ancient world and the way they approached God's was not as neat so like even how they approached God like they use secular so like there's a God in the ancient world named l right, and and and some of the language that's used for these like pagan gods becomes language that's used for God, not like yahweh, but like the words like l or elohemlo, like these words are were secular first, right, yeah, and so then this is like this is the real God. So even in the ancient world, l and asherah we were married and bails in the mix, so like it was common for people to go, oh, yeah, like I. Know the yahweh guy, like he's he's. Asher's husband, which is not how God's defining himself. But again, humans, like we're always trying to contextualize our experience in the midst of what we know already. So so but to your question, yes, we live in a world. You know, we live in a world, I think. So I'll say I'll say again what we've said on the podcast right so far on this particular one is we're created to worship stuff, right, Okay, So idolatry is not any different today than it ever has been. We just worship different things or we put different language on it. So, well, what do we worship now? Like, we worship ourselves, and we worship our own mentalities and our you know, that's. That's not like a new thing. But like there is a. Socrates would have these debates with people, which these guys were called sofis, and I'm not going to get into all that stuff. But he's in a there's a particular debate that he had with somebody where this person said, man is the measure of all things. Right, So, and a lot of people that are secular like live in that context where we're the highest being, where the highest level of anything that exists. And so our our perspectives, our definitions are desires are the chief desires in the universe. Right, This is a part of self worship. Right. We are surrounded by people that even if you're a Christian, you can be a secularist that you can think the problem is the government. That's secularism, right. Right. You can think that if we write better laws, then we'll have better people. Right. You don't admit that the problem is the human heart. The problem is society. The problem is we just haven't had a good enough idea. We just don't have the you know. And there's a balance. I mean, I think people can I think people can over spiritualize their life and their experience. I think people can understand rutilize their life and experience. So things like IVF or medicine. You just got to decide where you land on those particular those particular things, right. Yeah, So you're saying it's where you ultimately put your trust in. If I'm hearing you right, because like you talked about the secondarest examples you gave. When you're like, oh, well if we. Because to me, if you're like, if we had better laws, we'd have better people, it's like, well, who transforms hearts? Right? So even Christians, I mean and even Christians think that, well, no, we can do that. If we get the right president, it'll fix everything. Yeah, right, if we get the right if we get the right state senators. If if I just do enough, like if I do enough, well, God will fix my marriage. If I do enough, well, I'll be a good enough parent. I think one of the things that I'm really more aware of than ever is like, I'm my responsibility in my families to raise my kids right. Their decisions are not are not. Really reflective of well, well to an extent as my kids get older, their extent their decisions are reflective of my parenting. But that's maybe fifty percent of the equation. The other fifty percent is their decisions are reflective of their own personal character that they develop. Right, And I think there's this there's this desire that we have again it's transactional because there's the desire we have. To control outcomes, right, And. So we live in a culture today where we're not paying attention to the aspect of us that's set up to worship, and so we we live in you know, to the question that we got that I got today, it's about manifesting, right, So can we talk about Christian manifesting? Okay? I say to think about it enough and vibrate at the right frequency that it comes to being that type of thing. So fundamentally, right, manifesting is you are the source of your reality. You are right, You are the one that controls the outcomes, okay. And the more you believe, like conceive, believe, achieve, the more you step into seeing in life what you want to see and really not like just believing it's going to happen, but knowing in your soul that it's going to happen. Like this is how people talk about manifesting. The more the more that life is going to happen for. You, okay, And. Let me let me balance that with a thought process, and then I'll answer the question because I want to. I want people to think about this and I want to say this prayer is Christian manifesting. Right, what do you mean by that? Prayer is? Prayer is Christian manifesting. If you want to manifest something. Pray about it. Now. Here's the thing about prayer, though, okay, is there's a tension that we have to live in. Number one, right, which is back to worship. Who do you believe controls your life? If you are a person who thinks that you control your life, you don't worship God. You worship yourself. And this is where this is where the fundamental idea of manifesting. Even if a person says they're a Christian, if they believe in manifesting to that extent, they're not a Christian. Now, if you're listening to this, I'm not saying you're not a Christian. But what I am saying is that if you think that you are the measure of things and that you control your reality and you can manifest whatever you want in. Your life, you do not worship God. You worship yourself. You worship your own thoughts because you think, if I can think high enough, then I'll have the life that I want to have. Right, Okay, So prayer is Christian manifesting. But the thing is we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what prayer is. Right, we think prayer is again back to this whole conversation you and I have been having, and this is like us bringing it to in a circle. What we think prayer is is a transaction between us and God. Right. I think prayer in my immature state is about me asking God for all the things I want, all the things I desire, and him either saying yes, no. Or maybe to those things. Right. Yeah, And that's how prayer. That's how Christian songs about that as well. That's how prayers taught. Prayers taught as well. Just ask God, Just ask God, Just ask God, Just ask God, and sometimes he'll say yes, and sometimes he'll say no, and sometimes he'll say maybe. That is just so I think it's a fine place to start. But it's also so spiritually immature to think that way about prayer. Because it's it's a it's a people that And. This is where I have frustration personally with like pastors who are like theologically and educated and don't read the Bible very well and don't study the Bible. Because you have I have. A responsibility to teach people a biblical way to think and to show them what the scripture teaches, right, and to have this simplistic idea of prayer sabotage is the faith of everybody who follows me. Okay, okay, so so view so manifesting is thinking that you control reality, you control the outcome, and if you get your thoughts, your intentions, or your vibration high enough, the universe is impersonal and it'll just come to you. Okay. What is Christian manifesting? Right? Psalms thirty seventy four. Says, delight yourself in the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart. Okay, this is actually a process, right, So what comes first is not delight in yourself? Right? Okay? So, so fundamentally, at the most basic level, who has the plan for my life? Do I have the plan for my life? Or does God have the plan for my life? If I think that God has the plan for my life, then my focus is not going to be on making sure that what I want in my life happens. This is where manifest becomes not Christian, not Biblical. Because you're you're on the throne. When you're sitting there saying here's what I want and the universe. God, however, whatever word I want to use, is going to move in my direction. Now, if I know anything about God in the almost forty years of my life, right, if I know anything about God, it's that God is not concerned with moving my direction. Right, Like he has a plan, He's working it out, and I get a decision to make. Am I going to be a. Part of the plan or am I not going to be a part of the plan. That's the decision. It's not change. I change the plan based on what you think it should be. So there has to be an understanding of who's in control here. Right again, back to worship, I had a great. Real quick to what you just said. I think C. S. Lewis gave one of the best knowledgies ever. He said, like, the timeline of humanity is like a cruise ship, and like you have a lot of choice what you do to be on the cruise ship, but the cruise ship is going to get where it's going, and you don't get to change that. So you can choose how much you enjoy the cruise and where you go on the ship, but the ship is still going to arrive. And that's what you're saying. And there's this tension, there's this tension between the sovereignty of God and the agency of humanity, and we always have we always have to figure out how to navigate that, right, So how do we navigate it? Prayer Psalms thirty seven for delight yourself in the Lord, who'll give you the desires of your heart. The first place where manifesting is unbiblical is we do not delight in the Lord. We're delighting in ourselves. So where God wants us, what God wants us to do is delight in the Lord. Delight ourselves in God. Like, understand that God has a plan. God's working out the plan in your life. Right. So the Greek word for prayer, one of the Greek words for Greek words for prayer that's used throughout the New Testament is this word prosecue my, prosecute o mine. And what that word means is to exchange wishes. Right. Yeah, And this is what I want people to really understand about what it means to pray. Right. First, Thessalonian says to. Pray without ceasing, like we should always be in an attitude of prayer, right, But you have to understand what prayer is. Prayer is if I truly delight myself in the Lord, then what I want. What I do when I pray, and this is such a spiritual exercise. What I do and I pray is I tell God what I want. But then if I really really seek God, then what's going to happen is He's going to change my heart to desire what he desires for me. Yes, So delight yourself to all. Yeah, So delight yourself in the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart. Well there's an in between part. Delight yourself in the Lord. He'll change the desires of your heart and then he'll give you what he wants for you. Yes, which is better than anything you and I can ask, think or imagine. Okay, And what I find like so what I find so interesting like attached to this. Okay, this isn't about having a vision board. This isn't about you know, you got to tell God's stuff that you want. Scripture says to do that, like tell God, make your request, pray, fight for cast all your cares on him. Right for Jesus. Jesus taught that praying is like the widow who talked to the judge who didn't care. Right, So, so here's the question, here's the question of manifesting. Okay, here's the test. Is my heart like, am I submitted to God's will? Or am I trying to use God as a tool to accomplish my will? If you're if you're trying to use God as a tool, you're you're manifesting. You're you're living in a space where you're the measure of all things. Right. It's when you're tied to an outcome, isn't it. When you're tied to an outcome, that's whenever you start moving away from the place where you can actually hear from God. And that's why it's like the trans actually that I shouldn't say a transaction, but God does business with you at your heart level, right, He's you know, he talked about how they offer me, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And that was like the absolute and like not what God wanted was that your heart would be far from it. So it's like that that is really where this is done. And it's hard, man, because you like to quote all the time, your heart is wicked deceitful above all things? Who can who can know it? And it's eye the Lord search the hearts of all men. And then thankfully and Ezekiel thirty sixty said, I'll give you a new heart. I'll replace your heart of stone aka heart hearted, heart hearted with a heart of flesh. Right, and I'll write my law on it aka He's gonna put his spirit in us. Praise the Lord for that. So what's the thing that God wants to do? And is the change? Is fundamentally right when you decide to worship God and you and you, and you decide to live your life in it to an extent that you go, you know what, God controls the flow of my life, and I'm going to do everything I can to just like serve him. You don't get his concerned about what you do or don't have, how things are going or aren't going right. So but God, I mean, here's the fundamental thing, and like we can we can land here. But this is kind of like a deep thought, right. So in Romans four, the Bible says it's God who speaks things that are not as though they were. So Christians will take this and go, well, I can do that too. God is the great manifesto of everything He makes. He makes impossible things possible. Right, there's there's. There's no such thing as things that are impossible with God. Right. The word the in the Old Testament when God speaks. The word that's used in the Hebrew for the speaking of God is creation. So when God talks, he creates. The Book of James says that death and life are in the power of the tongue. Charles Capps has a great book about the power of the power of the tongue, right, the power of the spoken word. Like we have we're created in God's image and we have we do have the ability. I think our words are creative, like and my words are creative in like a fundamentally practical way where like with my kids, right with your kids, how I speak about them determines how they see themselves. Yeah, big time, that's creative. That's creative for us. If I tell my kids they're great, if I tell my kids they can do it. If I tell them that they're tough, if I tell them that they're brave, if I tell them that they're special, They're gonna that's gonna manifest in their life. Right, So, it's not that manifesting doesn't happen. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. The tongue like our thoughts and our speech is not just imaginative, they're creative. Right. And if you if you zoom in, the smallest quantum level thing that they've found that exists is vibration. Right, Everything's made of vibrations. So like these ideas of frequencies and vibrations, they're not they're not wrong right right when we speak, like, there's resonant frequencies, right, all mass has resonant frequencies, So what we speak creates things at the quantum level beyond what we can see. Like, there's a lot of implications for this. So god creation and destruction is a frequency issue. It's a vibration issue. But here's the thing. God wants to manifest certain things, and I have power within me to actually manifest certain things too. But if I live my life trying to manifest what I think should happen, I'm going to miss what God thinks should happen, which is always better. So it's not that God hasn't I don't think that spiritually right, this works the same where like we have the same power as God, but we do have God like power in our life over what we speak. But here's what God wants to do. What God wants to do is get us on the same page with him so that we can think like how he wants us to think, live how he wants us to live, speak how he wants us to speak. And if I want to live, if I come back to worship, I put God on the throne in my life. If I put him on the altar, and I believe that God controls the flow of my life, then my responsibility is I'm going to delight myself in the Lord. He's going to change the desires of my heart, and the desires of my heart are going to happen. And what God wants for me is always way better than what I want for me. But the tension, and this is where we can maybe come back on a later episode. The tension for the Israelites as well as us, is not whether we manifest or worship God. It's not whether they worship bail or God. It's we're trying to do both. And what God says is it's just me or it's anything that's not just me is idolatry, So thinking about what you want. The thing like you said it a second ago. The thing that we ultimately have to land on is that my plan for my life and God's plan for my life are not the same thing. His plan is better. It also won't make sense to me, and this is Proverbs three. Why yes, right, do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways. Acknowledge God and He'll direct your paths. That's fundamentally what it's about is me going you know what, I don't. Understand what's happening right now. This doesn't make a lot of sense. My responsibility is to keep God in his rightful place in my life, Delight in him, love him, worship him, and then He will direct the flow of my life to a better place than I could ever imagine. Thank you for listening to the dialogue. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe, and also if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me what I think, speak and write, you can go to Joshuacraft dot com or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.