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The Independence Podcast helps everyday people discover that true freedom isn’t found in self-reliance but in total dependence on Jesus Christ. Each episode blends honest conversation, biblical truth, and practical application to help listeners move beyond emotional devotion toward consistent, daily surrender. Whether you’re new in your faith or longing to grow deeper, you’ll find encouragement to trust God fully, live from His grace, and follow Christ with courage in a world that celebrates independence but neglects dependence on the One who truly sets us free.
Bryan Dunham (00:01)
There is something deeply wrong in the American church, and it's not primarily a lack of passion or resources or even access to truth. It's this. We have a generation of Christians who claim to follow Jesus, but do not consistently engage his word. And we have normalized that. We have built church cultures where someone can attend weekly, serve occasionally, feel deeply,
even believe sincerely, yet remain largely untouched and untransformed by scripture. And the result? It's a Christianity that looks alive, but lacks power. It's a faith that speaks the language of devotion, but lacks the substance of transformation. I want to say this as clearly as I can. It is not possible to be a growing
transformed follower of Jesus while neglecting the daily digestion of the word of God. And that is not just my strong opinion, that is a biblical reality. Welcome to episode 24 of the Independence Podcast, where we discuss how to live in daily dependence on God. And it is through that dependence on God's directives that we find freedom. As David said in the Psalms, I run in the...
path of your commands for you have set my heart free. I am your host, Brian Dunham. And this episode is not a part of a series and it's not what I would call a bonus episode, because it's not in addition to the normal episode. This will be the one I'm releasing this week. And it's kind of a standalone and it came from a number of conversations that I have had with you, my listeners. ⁓
who reached out to me directly with concerns about things that you are seeing not only in your own churches, but in the Big C church. And I gather, and I feel compelled to talk about this topic. We need more prophetic voices in our current cultural context, specifically when it comes to the relative lack of importance we seem to place on knowing the book.
And by the book, I mean the Bible. And I could not in good conscience continue with the Bound for Freedom series until I got this off my chest. So I will just say it like this. If you are desiring to be a follower of Jesus, spending time in God's word daily is a non-negotiable.
It is foundational to what it means to be a Christian. It is essential to our growth in Christ's likeness. And it is not a secondary issue. It should be an expectation of every follower of Jesus, regardless of how long you have been following him and regardless of the stage of maturity that you're at. And that should not be up for debate or discussion. And that is not my opinion.
This is what the Bible says about this topic and Jesus is not ambiguous about this topic. So in John chapter 15, Jesus talks about abiding in him and that we have to abide in him if we are going to bear fruit at all. And our job really is to abide. And he says in John chapter 15 verse seven, if you abide in me and my words abide in you,
ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. For by this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." And so proof of being a disciple of Jesus is that you and I would bear fruit. And earlier on it says the way that we bear fruit is by abiding in the vine and the vine is Jesus. And so it's all about abiding and
his words abiding in us, as it says here in verse seven. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say, if you attend church or if you believe the right things or if you have spiritual moments where you feel lit up by the Holy Spirit, he ties abiding in him directly to his words abiding in you. The word abide in Greek is meno.
And it means to stay in like a place or like a location to like take up residence is what abide means, to continue, to dwell. So here, as Jesus is speaking, you cannot separate the presence of Christ from the words of Christ. And yet that is exactly what many of us are trying to do. We want the comfort of his presence and the promises of his blessing, the identity.
of being in Christ without the daily submission to his word. But Jesus never offers himself that way. To abide in his word is, to abide in him is to remain in his word according to Jesus. And if his word is not dwelling in you, then by his own definition, you are not abiding. Jesus goes even further in John chapter eight.
verse and 32, Jesus says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. The word for truly here is aleth. The word for truly here is alethos. And alethos ⁓ means,
in accordance with fact or demonstrably valid and therefore genuine. So it really means reflecting the true reality. So Jesus is saying if you abide in His word, you are actually reflecting the reality that you are truly His disciple. This is a defining statement. It's not a suggestion.
It's not a bonus mark of maturity, not for the extra credit Christian. Jesus says that the defining mark of a true disciple is to abide in his word.
So in the benefit, it's in verse 32, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. This phrase set you free is the Greek word, elutheroou.
Improperly that means to release from bondage. Figuratively, this means to remove the restrictions of sin over your life because you've been delivered by God into true spiritual liberty. So the marks of a disciple, according to Jesus, is the one who abides in his word and as a result of that, walks in freedom from the bondage of a lifestyle that is defined by besetting sins.
So we have to ask a hard question. What does it mean when someone claims to follow Jesus but does not abide in his word? Because Jesus ties those two things together inseparably. Biblical illiteracy is not just an educational issue. It is a discipleship issue. And not only that, it's a freedom issue. Without abiding, it will become immeasurably harder to distinguish the truth
from a lie. And in this culture, where truth is so hard to know and is a line that seems to be coming more blurred by the day, is there a more dangerous place to be? We have people who are familiar with church culture but unfamiliar with the voice of God. You cannot follow a shepherd whose voice you do not recognize. We have created environments where people can feel like they're growing without actually being transformed.
because we've replaced the word of God with emotional experiences, with really motivational messages, occasional inspiration. But in his high priestly prayer for the disciples in John 17, Jesus prays, and this is in verse 17, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.
sanctification is synonymous with transformation. And here it's happening through truth and truth is not defined by culture, by feelings, by personal perspective. Truth is defined by the word of God according to Jesus. So if someone is not consistently engaging in scripture, then we have to be honest.
they're not being deeply transformed. They may be encouraged, they may be inspired, they may be busy, but they're not being sanctified in the way that Jesus describes. So abiding in his word is one, the true mark of a disciple, as we talked about earlier and Jesus declared that. Two, allows you to know the truth and to walk in freedom from the bondage of besetting sinful lifestyle patterns.
And then third, abiding in the Word is the pathway towards sanctification, or in other words, transformation into Christ-likeness. The Bible is a supernatural book, but I'm afraid that many of us in the church have just reduced it to a level of information instead of recognizing its divine revelation. But scripture itself describes itself very differently. Hebrews 412 says,
The Word of God is living and active. This is not a dead text. And it's not just history. This is the living voice of God, still speaking, still piercing, still exposing, still transforming. When you open the Word, you are not just reading the Bible. The Bible reads you. It exposes your motives, your desires, your sin, your need.
And it does what no human message can do. It transforms from the inside out. But much of the church is so spiritually malnourished, we are the walking dead. Jesus makes this painfully clear here in Matthew 4 for, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Do you hear the implication?
The word of God is not optional nourishment. It is daily sustenance. So let's be honest. If you only ate once per week, what would you be? Emaciated, severely malnourished and unhealthy, you would be in an unsustainable state of starvation. Well, if someone only engages scripture once per week, what are they?
They're spiritually. They're unhealthy. They're malnourished. And yet we have normalized spiritual starvation. We have Christians who would never skip meals physically, but consistently neglect the very thing that Jesus says gives them life. And the result is exactly what we're seeing. It's a church that lacks discernment, is easily influenced by culture, that struggles with identity, that lacks spiritual authority.
that has become a place where wholesale transformation is the exception and not the rule that we see. Because a word neglecting church becomes a power neglecting church. God has not designed spiritual growth apart from scripture. And you don't drift into holiness. You drift into deception. Now, this episode is not about condemnation. It is about warning.
But more so it's about an invitation. The God of the universe has spoken and you have access to his voice every single day. Not through a preacher, as much as I like this medium, not through a podcast and not just in a moment of worship, but through his word. And here's the call, abide. Open the word daily, sit in it.
Let it confront you. Let it shape you. Let it transform you. And start really simply, five, 10, 15 minutes a day, but consistently, daily, every day. Consistency is more important than the quantity, particularly if you've not been doing this. Every day, consistently, again, for whatever amount of time.
And do it systematically. And by that, I mean, just have a system for what you're doing. Don't just do the lucky dip method that I used to do, which is like, I'm just going to open it up and put my finger and then look down and see what verse is there. Like have a system. Start in Proverbs. There's 31 Proverbs, one for each day of the month or start in the Psalms. One way to think about a system is what is referred to as the soap method. We talked about it in our previous podcast, which is just
⁓ SOAP, scripture, observation, application, and then prayer. Which simply just means you read the scripture and then you note, journal, what observations do you make? What do you notice? What stands out to you? And then the A, application, how does that apply to me? What needs to change in my life? What is the scripture saying to me? And then prayer is agreeing that those things need to change and then finally obey. You have to obey.
Abiding necessarily needs to then be followed by obedience. In 1 John chapter two, verse four through six, it says this, whoever says, I know him, meaning Jesus, whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected.
by this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. So here scripture is telling us if you claim to have a relationship with Jesus but you are not obedient to his word, you are a liar. That's what scripture says. And the person you're lying to is yourself, you're self deceived. You think you're following Jesus.
but you're not abiding in his word and you're not being obedient. You're lying to yourself. And if there's nothing about your life that is in pursuit of sanctification through obedience to his word, you're self-deceived if you think you know him, if you think you're following him. So let me leave you with this. If you want transformation without scripture, you are asking for a Christianity that Jesus never offered.
But if you will open this word daily, humbly, consistently, you are stepping into the very means by which God forms his people. A closed Bible produces an unchanged life, but an open Bible met with a surrendered heart becomes the place where God does his deepest work. Abide in him and let...
His word abide in you.
If you found this confronting or helpful or confrontingly helpful, please share with a friend. More of us in the church need to hear this message now more than ever. In a culture, an internal Christian culture that seems to look more and more and more like the world every day, we have to get in touch with the truth.
And the truth for us as Christians is contained in the Bible. And as we've already talked about, it is a supernatural living and active sharper than any two-edged sword. It is the thing that offers transformation for your life. You'll just get to know it if you'll just spend time in it. And that is my encouragement. That is my exhortation to you. It has changed my life immeasurably.
the list of people in whose lives it has changed is long and distinguished. Wouldn't you add your name to that list? That's my plea. That's my plea. So.
Until next week, my friends, grace and peace to you.