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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
Welcome back to the overflow with Brandon and Susan Thomas. We're excited to hopefully encourage you today. We're gonna be talking about things that have really encouraged us and we're hoping it overflows to help you too.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. And here we are episode two. One of the things that we believe in with all our heart is that culture is created by default or it's created by design.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:the way you have an intentional culture, see a default culture means you're just kind of winging it, you're going with what you feel, but when you decide, here's the culture we want, that's when you're ready to change your family tree.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And at Keystone, we have developed an intentional culture. We're still working on it, of course. We're always growing and getting better. But our intentional culture is created by a series of values that we treasure.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Mission is given to us by God. Vision is how we see ourselves doing it. But values are those things in a season of your church that you are intentionally installing to create the church or the company or the family that you want. And so our values, we're gonna address one of our values today that's super exciting and we think it really is helpful in your life. It's a value that'll make a difference in your rhythm of life, how you do life with your kids.
Speaker 2:It could be incredibly value for your business, but it's been invaluable for our church.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I wanna just make a note, kind of another side note comment about culture and how it happens either by default or by design. And I just think it's so important, and we'll probably talk about this on multiple, you know, times together on this podcast. But I think this is where worldview, which we talked about previously being one of the things we're gonna talk about, biblical worldview, where we have to understand that if we allow culture to happen in your home, in your church, in your friendships, with your physical health, with your sexuality, with your mental state, I mean, you name the thing, with your money, your finances, if we allow things to happen by default, the default is always destruction.
Speaker 2:The default setting in life is not life. No. The default setting in this world is death and decay.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:The default setting in your body, if you just let it go, is not abs and muscles and a perfect blood pressure.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:The default setting is cholesterol, bad blood pressure, and you're on meds. Yeah. That's the default setting. That's where we're all headed. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, we're all headed to death. Yeah. That is the default setting. To, bring life, you have to have that by design. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You may stumble on it here and there just by going with the flow, but really, you've gotta become intentional.
Speaker 1:You have to become intentional. That truth
Speaker 2:is a life changer.
Speaker 1:It's profound. That alone, if if that can sink into our lives, we begin to ask the question, so what do I value? Because in addition to the default setting gonna be the slow tug to death, to destruction, to basically losing things that you do love. In addition to that, your own desires, my own desires are gonna reach for things and elevate things that end up hurting me further.
Speaker 2:You know, we were we had dinner with Pastor Kevin and Sheila Gerald, and they began to talk, when they talked, something just came up where this is a great, great couple that you're gonna get to know because we'll have them on, but they are doing an incredible work in the Pacific Northwest. They have an incredible network of churches, great influence. But one of the things I was struck with is they actually have an intentional, like, this is who I am. This is what I do. And they have it down to a phrase like, am, I think he said, I bring wisdom and I preach the word or something.
Speaker 2:Like, it was down to it, and she's like, I exhort and I encourage. I mean, I'm probably not getting it right specifically, but they were so dialed in. They were clear. Really, I was like, man, I wanna be that intentional. They're like, this is who I am.
Speaker 2:This is what I do. This is what God has made me to be.
Speaker 1:That's really good. It's really good.
Speaker 2:That's design.
Speaker 1:It is, that's design. And hopefully it's obvious, we want our design, whatever the design is for the values you choose in your life or in your church, that it be biblically driven and biblically based.
Speaker 2:Now through the years, we've had some values that currently we're not really teaching. We still value them, but values can kind of move. So like if you have small kids, you're gonna have some values that really change when they get a little older. Yeah. You may still value them, but they're not upfront.
Speaker 2:And so we're talking about the things that are upfront on our mind, and we're teaching regularly because we need it right now. There's seven values in our church. We're gonna talk about one of them today. Yeah. We'll hit these periodically, different ones, but let's go through all seven and then we'll choose the one.
Speaker 1:And you'll be able to discern which ones of the values will never change. Because there are some values that are in stone.
Speaker 2:Starting with number one, Jesus changes lives.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:We are utterly, everything is about Jesus.
Speaker 1:There is no hope, there is no help without Jesus. That's right. And from Jesus, we have such practical steps. And with his power, we're able to walk out those steps.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Number two is the Bible is our truth. Another one that's going to always be up front and center. Always. The Bible is our truth that our worldview comes from the word of God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not my truth. It's not your truth.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:It's not even our truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a definite move in our culture where you have your own individual experience and you'd like to define your world through the prism of your experience, and it's summed up in my truth. Yeah. You know, this is my truth. This is my living experience. And it's true you have an experience, but we believe God is objective truth.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so the reason we have that as a value is our culture is one that is lessening its belief in objective truth. We are more and more and more believing that truth comes from you. And it just doesn't hold up to reality. Yeah. Truth is that which corresponds with reality.
Speaker 2:And so the Bible's our truth. So when the Bible says, I have made man and woman, I made them. That means we don't get to decide if I'm a man or a woman. God's already decided.
Speaker 1:It's premade.
Speaker 2:So the Bible is our truth. Good. Number three, we're in this together. We're in this together. And that's that culture of you do not walk alone.
Speaker 1:You are not designed, you are not created. God said Genesis two eighteen, it is not good for man or woman to be alone. He has a design and we believe with all of our heart that pre heaven on earth, God's church, God's bride is part of his great design to take away that aloneness. Obviously, marriage was the first application when he created us. And then here it is the church.
Speaker 1:It's no wonder or no no by chance that he calls the church his bride. And so, yeah, the church is a space to be a place where you find community, you find that relationship with other people and with God.
Speaker 2:That's why we really don't want Keystone to be a place for you where you just show up
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you worship and then you leave now, and you have no interaction. And listen, if it's stay home and do nothing or come to Keystone, show up and then leave, come to Keystone, show up and then leave, you're in the right spot. You're getting God's truth. You're worshiping with God's people. But if you want the full experience of the Christian walk, it is not meant to be done alone.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:for those who would be online only, I would say it is not meant to be done alone. You've gotta get with the believers. You gotta walk with them. You gotta be challenged by them. We're in this together.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Makes me think I'm a picture person and this may be the most terrible picture, but in my mind, I just saw like this, I don't know if it's a bank account or like this mound of cash. Say And that there's like a $5,000 in an account and popping in and popping out, you get a certain amount, but there's all these thousands left. Like, but you have to engage to experience the benefit of that resource. And I think that's the reality of the church is you're gonna you're gonna get, you know, benefit just coming on a weekend.
Speaker 1:I mean, God's gonna do powerful things in that time together, but there's even more. There's even more. That is so important and there's other things so important, so.
Speaker 2:So good.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The next one is passion drives us. Passion drives us, and we just believe passion pours out of you. It doesn't need to be pulled out of you, and we're just so committed to not begging people to do what God's asked you to do. Yeah. We're not gonna beg, we're gonna present the truth, and then our heart is that this would be a passionate place.
Speaker 2:We need more Christ followers that are passionate
Speaker 1:Oh, about following come on, light fire, a Lord.
Speaker 2:And a little warning. Something that'll make you passionate real quick is suffering.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And God's design is not that the church is a suffering church in order to become passionate. Yeah. God calls, the people of Israel kept saying, be passionate, be passionate, be passionate. Don't just bring me your sacrifices, I want your heart. Bring, be passionate.
Speaker 2:And then they're not passionate, so inevitably they're straying away from God. And then when they suffer, they turn to God, they get passionate, and then his blessings rain down. Okay. How about we just skip the suffering?
Speaker 1:And stay passionate. Yeah. And I'm gonna share a little personal window into my, like, prayer life. Will not surprise you at all. But when I pray and I talk to God, there's so many times when this is literally my prayer.
Speaker 1:God, please keep me soft so that I don't need breaking.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I'm moldable. God, please. And by the way, side note, suffering is unavoidable. Suffering does not always mean we've strayed from God and we'll do probably whole talks on that too because that's a theology and a worldview. Suffering is unavoidable.
Speaker 1:Jesus said in this world, you're gonna have trouble. He let us know, but take heart, I've overcome the world. So, you know but with that said, some of the trouble and the suffering, like you said, it happens because we stray or we just drift or we just get tired and we're not intentional and we find ourselves in a hard place and then suffering, it literally draws us back to Christ. And so my my private prayers sometimes are, God, I I don't wanna bring extra suffering on myself. And so I'm just praying, Lord, will you help me not require that to feel close to you and more importantly, to be close to you.
Speaker 1:And so that's just that's an ongoing prayer in the heart of
Speaker 2:this world. Passion drives us. We sing loud. We sing loud. We have a culture of worship.
Speaker 2:At Keystone, it's just, this is who we are. Yeah. Passion engages our worship, and we're a church that there's nothing wrong with quiet worship, and we have moments of reflection in our services, but we wanna be a passionate worshiping We love worship, and we value it. You know, if you're one, if you're a person who believes that, you know, I'm just gonna kinda show up to church late, and then when the singing is over, then I'll get the main meat, and that's the preaching. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we believe that the Bible teaches it's the whole package. Oh, That there's something supernatural that happens when you sing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait to talk about that
Speaker 2:one. And then we bring our best. Yes. We bring our best.
Speaker 1:But God says do everything as unto the Lord. And that's a whole exciting one to talk about because as you're changing diapers, young mom, as you are helping your teenagers, as you are loving your spouse, as you are doing your job well at work, whatever it is that you're putting your hands to and your mind toward, God says do everything as unto the Lord and we do it for him and we bring our best.
Speaker 2:And the final one that we'll, this is the one we're gonna talk about today is this one, we're serious.
Speaker 1:Very serious.
Speaker 2:About
Speaker 1:having Having
Speaker 2:fun. Now this is one of those that is a value that has risen. We may not have to talk about this as much later when it's fully embraced, but this is a value that we love right now, and we are teaching it because this is something that is highly contested in church circles. Let me read a quote for you. There's an article that I was reading, and in this article, someone said this.
Speaker 2:He said, I am grateful to God that I was not raised in a cool, exciting, attractional church. I am thankful that I was raised in an assembly by a godly father and mother, good, that was not worldly. We won't disagree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great.
Speaker 2:Ours was an unsensational, unexciting, fully Baptist congregation, it preached the word and the gospel. It's hard. Wow.
Speaker 1:Can I just say the first thing about
Speaker 2:that? Wow.
Speaker 1:You're gonna dive in to unpack that, but can I just first say, why do you gotta critique other people?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why can't you just thank God for your journey and experience and celebrate the experience of someone else? If these two experiences, they could be completely polar opposite in personality, but they're both presenting Jesus and the risen Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and lives are being changed, why do we have to criticize one another?
Speaker 2:And there's a whole thing called dumb dichotomies. Again, pastor Kevin Gerald preached that one time. Good. Good. I've never forgotten it.
Speaker 1:Oh, so good.
Speaker 2:So today, I'm saying pastor Kevin Gerald said dumb dichotomies. Next time, I will say, as I always say, dumb But dumb dichotomy is that your church is either a, love Jesus, God is high and lifted up, and we focus on the gospel. Or you a church that draws the lost, and you have a lot of fun, and you do all, and I'm like, that's a dumb dichotomy.
Speaker 1:And instead of giving those people meat of the gospel, you're giving them cotton candy
Speaker 2:that
Speaker 1:doesn't matter and makes them sick.
Speaker 2:What there is another way where you can exalt This is something that we're serious about. We are deeply serious, and we never get tired. Every single service, we exalt high the name of God. When we're planning worship services, one of the things that we will talk about with those that are in the room, we'll say, Hey, go vertical, go vertical, go vertical, go vertical. Life should not just be, and we'll talk about worship, but it shouldn't just be horizontal, me and you, and how do I feel, and No, what am I no, no, we need to go vertical.
Speaker 2:And so regularly, maybe almost weekly, we lead the church to imagine themselves singing, and our voices are in the hallways and in the throne room of God, singing with the angels to God. God is the object of our worship. We are serious about an elevated vertical, high and lifted up. We take God seriously. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we also believe you can have fun.
Speaker 1:Well, and the reason, the reason is because God is the author of fun. He is a fun God. He's the creator of fun. And you often use illustration of he could have made eating something that was just boring and Manila and nothing, but he gave us taste buds to where foods will just excite the taste buds in our tongue and in our mouth and it's desirable. Why?
Speaker 1:Why did he do that?
Speaker 2:God's the one who gave us eyes.
Speaker 1:Yes, to see.
Speaker 2:To see a sunrise or a sunset. What Yes. Does that do? God's the one who gave us ears that you hear a song and you cry. God's the one who gave you the sense of smell.
Speaker 2:You can smell your grandmother's, or you can smell a pie cooking.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden you're transported into your grandmother's kitchen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And like you said, God gave you taste buds.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's nothing in the evolutionary theory for the smell, taste buds. There's nothing in evolutionary theory, cold, determined evolutionary theory that says that we are to laugh. Yeah. Humor. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And all of everything I just said is elevated in the word of God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. And so when you think about God being the author of fun, why in the world would his church be the opposite? Why in the world would his church somehow think we're more holy the more miserable we are or the more serious that we are? We can have again the both end, a high, high reverence, a holy fear of God. I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love my neighbor as myself, and at the same time celebrate the goodness of God.
Speaker 1:Celebrate the fact that he made us in his image. And our God, all through the old testament, he had required celebrations. He drew and led the people to celebrate, and he's still doing it today.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he commanded feasts. Jesus, whenever he, his first miracle was what? Taking water at a wedding and making it into wine. Right. Over and over and over again, you see Jesus, he gets criticized by the Pharisees, why?
Speaker 2:Because he is at a social gathering, and it's in the context of that gathering that he's connecting with those far from God. Yeah. Now, in a moment, we'll talk about some of the dangers and pitfalls, but first, let's just sit on this a little bit longer. I think it can all be summed up by this phrase, God is a blast.
Speaker 1:He is a blast.
Speaker 2:God is a blast. And the danger of separating your life where I'm serious about God and I'm fun over here. I'm serious on Sundays, and I grill out and have fun on fourth of July with my buddies. I'm serious on Sundays, and I have fun at the movies. I'm serious about Sunday.
Speaker 2:This divided life-
Speaker 1:Terrible.
Speaker 2:Where you have failed to incorporate, and some Christians have said it's unholy to have fun at all. What you do is you basically, when you believe God is the biblical beatdown, when you believe God is the cosmic killjoy, then he is the last place you will go for any good time. And that is a dangerous place. We have a young generation that is catching that message from others, and they're gonna go over here and have a good time. Then they're coming to church and either confess up and try to get back, or just live a double life.
Speaker 1:Yes, Or compartmentalize life, like you're saying, where, you know what? God touches this part of my life, but God, I need you to exit or go to a different room while I partake in whatever it is that I'm doing right over here. And we're talking specifically, you know, about the church, and this is one of our seven values, as you said. But I wanna take a moment. Let's just talk for a second to all the families who are listening, moms and dads, whatever age, whatever stage.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about and maybe think of some memories that popped to your head because I've gotten some popping in mine. The power of having a culture in your home of fun. Because if you are a mom, we have four kids and it has been the joy of our life to parent our four children, They're now all entering into adult world, like young adult world. We got one teenager, or rather high schooler left in the house. But with that said, you have to be intentional because parenting's hard.
Speaker 1:It's one of the hardest things. And what are some memories, and I'm gonna give one, where in the middle of the hard, you choose to have a culture of fun. And I'm thinking of one about you and it's You're in gonna the early just
Speaker 2:go there.
Speaker 1:I would tell you in the early days of Keystone Church, and even when it was really hard, I mean, Keystone started from pretty much nothing. And there were some moments, particularly moving into the furniture store where you were like, can we even, you're moving into the furniture store and you're like, can we even do this financially, right? There's hard times, you got pressures at work.
Speaker 2:Big risk, big
Speaker 1:Big risk, you've got things at your job or things in your adult life that are pressure, high pressure. And we had young children at home and maybe three at that time, maybe it's four, but I just remember you coming home. And the first thing you would do is you we had a hallway, you walk in the door and you just walk down this hallway and then there's the kitchen and it opens in the living room. And you would just lay in the hallway on the carpet, just lay down on your back.
Speaker 2:Those little munchkins.
Speaker 1:And all four of our little munchkins would crawl and jump and just get all over you. And you would just lay there and they were so happy daddy was home and they would laugh and squeal and you would play with them. But that is being serious about having fun. And it's not just for this one goal of my pleasure, which that's not a wrong thing either we'll talk about, But it's bigger than that. It's a culture of this is who we are.
Speaker 2:Well, know, just being transparent, even when our oldest daughter, Elle, when she got married, Tyler grew up in a family that would play games.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Board games, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we were never into that. We would go see movies, we would watch shows, but that was the main form of our entertainment. Yeah. Go to movies, watch shows, maybe some games, basketball games, football games, whatever. That was really it for us, maybe playing football in the back with Beck, sports, you know, but we were not board game kind of people, and we went on our first family vacation where Tyler was Yeah.
Speaker 2:You remember this? And we were in Galveston in this one bedroom, just slammed into this place. This wasn't that long ago. And Tyler was like, Hey, let's play a game. And we're like, Okay.
Speaker 2:No, honestly, I'm the one who's like, No, I don't want to in my heart. But I'm like, Let's be a good sport. Let's do it. Come on Tyler, show us how, show us what we're doing here. And we had so much fun.
Speaker 1:So much fun.
Speaker 2:And that's where I've always said Tyler made our family even better.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But that's one example is just he installed a little more fun. And that's what I'd say in a family, fun has to be intentional and you gotta push yourself sometimes to try new things.
Speaker 1:And to look for the opportunity to laugh. I'm telling you, sometimes we gotta decide. We're gonna be a family that laughs. We're gonna be a family that's warm because here's the deal, you could have come home from work and not laid on that floor and been a cold father with a lot of stress. I need a moment, I need to be by myself.
Speaker 2:That's what I was feeling. And I know exactly what you're talking about. I've talked about it many times. And I mean, it was a high stress season because we were taking the biggest leap of our lives after starting the church. Starting the church was the first, but then this was a big moment.
Speaker 2:And so when I would come in, I had a burden on me, but God, the Holy Spirit was just telling me, just get on that floor and play with those kids, push. And that's where culture is
Speaker 1:Chosen.
Speaker 2:Is chosen. It's by definition. You either define your culture or it's by default. Default, I would have gone and sat in the chair. Would have disappeared into TV or Right.
Speaker 2:Something like Okay, so that is so important. God is a blast if you don't predetermine. Now, what does that look like in church?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So what that could look like is that Critical article where he basically feels like you have to choose. And I do understand. If a church is, I do wanna acknowledge this, that sometimes in our attempt to reach others, some, and maybe us at times, can't confess to this because I don't know that we've ever done it intentionally, but I wanna be open to that. But in our effort to reach others, sometimes we made what's called jump the shark. It's from a Happy Days episode, one of their last ones where they went too far.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's just like too much.
Speaker 1:With Saffanz?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Fonz was like surfing and then he jumped With lot the the people. Yeah, know, sorry guys. Where you jumped the shark, you just, it's like, okay.
Speaker 1:Too far.
Speaker 2:Too far.
Speaker 1:Gratuitous, not
Speaker 2:Gratuitous, too there's no purpose, you know, and I get that, and I feel that. And honestly, there are things we did earlier in our church that I wouldn't do today. I just feel a sense of, that's just too much, and maybe it's age, I don't know. But I do believe, and so I do acknowledge that there's a point where, are you still the church? Like, are you doing?
Speaker 2:Where is the tie to the things of God? Where is the bridge to the truth? What are you doing? But with that acknowledgement, okay, with that acknowledgement, and I'm avoiding the whole talk about attractional church. Me, I will say this.
Speaker 2:The attractional church is really a season of church where we were basically, the church was attempting to reach people. That was the heart. We wanna reach people, we wanna reach people. And so basically just do what whatever it takes to reach people. And I love that heart, and I share the heart.
Speaker 2:Reach people with everything you got. But at times, where we've come to now is that was largely, that ethic and that thought was largely done in a culture where the thought of church doing things that spoke the language of the culture was so different, because church was a foreign language to the culture. It really won a lot of people to the Lord. We're in a culture now that is really kind of anti church, and whereas that thrived in a neutral or even a positive church environment. Now what would have existed all along and did exist all along and where I think a lot of the church that maybe some that used to be attraction are kinda coming around is just the power of God.
Speaker 2:I know it sounds crazy, but just having the ability for the power of God. And again, I'm not against creativity and all that, but make sure that there's some power of God in there, that there's moments where you are ushering in the presence of God. And I think that's probably where the heart, I feel like I'm rambling.
Speaker 1:You're believing the best if that's the heart. Yeah, we're believing
Speaker 2:the Yeah, rambling a little bit, but I'm, yeah. But here's the thing. All that to summarize and say this, that where we are.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Where we are is we wanna have moments that are fun. In And the middle of a service, we may have someone dance, you know? Or we're gonna have a party in our plaza, okay? We're gonna have food trucks, okay? Well, the gospel doesn't need food trucks, quote unquote.
Speaker 2:The gospel doesn't need LED walls. The gospel doesn't need a party on the plaza. You're tricking it up. You're trying to reach people. The gospel doesn't need that guitar solo.
Speaker 2:The gospel, and this is the criticism. Yeah. And I would say, you're right. Jesus said, hey, if you don't say it, the rocks are gonna cry out. The gospel doesn't need an LED wall.
Speaker 2:The gospel doesn't need a great sound system. The gospel doesn't need a beautiful building. The gospel doesn't need a party on the plaza. The gospel doesn't need food trucks that weekend. The gospel doesn't need a candy palooza on the weekend of Halloween at The your gospel doesn't need any of that.
Speaker 2:But what if some of it is just fun? What if it's just, hey, we're community?
Speaker 1:And what if it makes God smile?
Speaker 2:Yeah. What if we're doing it as spiritual family so you don't have to go out to the community to do those things? Hey, you could do it here too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we're created in the image of God and the same God, as you said, that painted the sunset, that painted the sunrise and this colors in the sky. We have his stamp of his image on us as we paint an LED wall, as we pick out creative graphics. And so what I would just say is that when it comes to our value of we're serious about having fun, we're really talking about an attitude of the heart. We're talking about a deep value that shows itself in all these different creative ways.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to we're serious about having fun, we gotta know God's design.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, and let me say this before we go there. There's also fun in our future, and this is important. I've got a couple of places I wanna take you to in the word of God. Isaiah 20 five:six, he said, On this mountain, the Lord of armies will prepare for all the peoples a feast.
Speaker 2:This is our future, when God makes all things new. A feast of choice meat, a feast with aged wine, Prime cuts of choice meat, fine vintage wine. Isaiah doubles down on the meat and the wine. The meat and the wine. It's good meat.
Speaker 2:It's good wine. Zechariah fourteen sixteen. Then all the survivors from the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the king, the lord of armies, and to celebrate the festival of shelters. Wow. So
Speaker 1:Celebrate. Celebrate. Mine.
Speaker 2:Mine. Then and then there's in another scripture where it talks about a child is leading a parade of animals, it's like a bear and a lion, and it's basically, these predators are playing with the child. It says the child will put his hand in a snake pit hole and will not be bitten. The point is our future is filled with fun and play, and there's no contradiction. But you were just heading us down the road.
Speaker 2:I wanted to make sure we heard that.
Speaker 1:That's so good.
Speaker 2:That it's not just now, it's forever. But in the eternity, we will nail pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We will nail pleasure. It will be done perfectly. Yeah,
Speaker 1:because we'll have jobs to do there too.
Speaker 2:We'll have It'll be perfect.
Speaker 1:No more thorns coming out of the ground and work by the sweat of our brow. It'll be work. We'll have assignments. We'll have vision. We'll have future.
Speaker 1:We'll have purpose.
Speaker 2:But in the today, we live in a broken world.
Speaker 1:We do.
Speaker 2:And in the broken world, you can get pleasure wrong.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so when we're elevating pleasure in this episode, and we're talking about the importance of play, and the importance of fun, and sometimes it's for the fun of it, and you need to bring fun into your walk with the Lord, It's important though to throw up some speed bumps.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:Some caution flags. Yeah. Caution flags. Because in our pleasure seeking, the Bible is also full of warnings.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:In our pleasure seeking. And there's a lot of different categories for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. And I think as we enter into some of those categories just to help you, and this is really so important what we're talking about here, That it is so important to, as we go into some of the areas that could be traps that we can fall into, is to again understand that we're serious about having fun. We're talking about attitudes of the heart, but we're also talking about pleasure and enjoyment. Those are two different things, and they both are equally a part of this conversation. And when we talk about the pleasures, that element of enjoying the fun, enjoying the good things, It starts with understanding that every good thing comes from God.
Speaker 1:If it's a good thing, if it's truly pure and good, That came from thing is a gift from God who made, the same God who made the heavenly lights is the same God who made that fine wine that we're gonna get to drink in heaven one day and it's gonna be the best ever.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, same God. And so what are some of the big gifts that he gives us today? Well, of the things that come to our mind we can hit on
Speaker 2:is Sex.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go there first. It's a gift. It's a gift from God. And that'll be like multiple podcasts, but it's a gift from God, but we wanna enjoy God's gift God's way. There is a plan that God has for the pleasure.
Speaker 1:And so we're serious about having fun, but we're very serious about having fun God's way. And we believe marriage is between one man and one woman and the covenant sex is to happen in that marriage, that covenant for a lifetime. That's where sex is supposed to happen. That's the design that God gave us throughout scripture.
Speaker 2:First Corinthians seven. Yeah. And we'll do a deep dive on this on another, a whole podcast on Oh, such good Full episode on this, but first Corinthians seven talks about the power of that sexuality. It should be a regular companion in your marriage. It's a gift from God to be enjoyed fully.
Speaker 2:And the way that it's to be enjoyed is I give you authority over my body, you give me authority over your body, And together, it's this cool thing. It's the same teaching about submission and how I am to live in an understanding way with you or my prayers will be hindered, the Bible says. And you are to live in a way where you're thinking about me in submission. So we are submitting to one another, we're thinking of one another, and that makes its way into the bedroom. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So some broken ways that sex can be expressed. Obviously, the big blinking light is pornography.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Pornography, I believe, is a cancer in our culture.
Speaker 1:There's no question.
Speaker 2:The pornification of our culture has led to sexual abuse, the rampant sexual abuse. It's often people who dabbled with pornography that got addicted to pornography, then that pornography, you begin to, you need more, you need different, or you were abused, and it caused sexual confusion, you're broken on the inside. Something has happened, and it's just messed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And there's so many different ways that we break bad when it comes to God's gift of sex. And I think when we talk about we're serious about having fun, I think an overarching help, whether we're talking about sex or one of the next things we're about to share, that there's two litmus tests, I believe, that are like the trump card. They're like the thing that we can go to to make sure, is my fun on the right path? Or have I veered to a dangerous place?
Speaker 1:And that is this, as you are having that fun, as you are enjoying that good time, are you at the same time loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? And are you loving your neighbor
Speaker 2:Bingo.
Speaker 1:As yourself? Those are the two tests.
Speaker 2:So good.
Speaker 1:And if it can go through that filter and you can absolutely say, yes, I am. And by loving God, by the way, he says in John, I think 15, he says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So we're not loving God when we disobey his way and his rules. And so that leads us to, you know, I think about wine, I think about alcohol. It's another very big one.
Speaker 1:And I think it is really impacting the church in some very destructive ways. But God has a design for alcohol.
Speaker 2:He sure does. And this is where I wanna be very, very clear that there's a lot of different teachings in the church about alcohol. On the one hand, there's a teaching that I grew up with, and that is complete and total abstinence.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I wanna honor that teaching. I wanna honor often that teaching of abstinence. Even my freshman year of college, I wrote a paper on abstinence from alcohol, and that's where I was at the time. And with alcohol, though, again, because the Bible is our truth, I began to dive in, and the strongest biblical argument for abstinence is that you've made the choice to abstain. But the Bible does give permission to drink.
Speaker 2:The Bible has permission to drink. But with that permission, again, Jesus' first miracle was taking wine, I mean, taking water and making it into wine. Right. We know God does not make evil substances. Right.
Speaker 2:Jesus made a gift to that party. Elsewhere in the Bible, talks about wine makes the heart glad, and then we just read about our future, beautiful, well aged wine. All that to say is there's not a strong biblical argument that the Bible says alcohol is evil, it is to be avoided. There's a stronger biblical argument if you wanna embrace abstinence that you are either saying, I wanna live my life where I just don't want that to be a part of it. That's a substance, it's too dangerous.
Speaker 2:There's too much addiction. I have addiction in my family tree, and that's just something I wanna put over there. Just watch, I don't want that in my life.
Speaker 1:There's freedom for this.
Speaker 2:There's freedom for you to do that. Another, so that's a choice from strength, where you're saying, I just don't want that temptation, I don't want that in my life, I don't need it. I don't like it. I don't care. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. The second category of abstinence would be I can't. That's where you cannot do alcohol God's way.
Speaker 1:Could be a genetic predisposition. It could be hereditary. It could be that you have abused it in your life, and your body has responded in a way that you can't stop.
Speaker 2:And that would be where, biblically, you're in the category of the weaker brother category in scripture, where it's like, this is something, back then, it would have been, I can't eat meat offered to idols. I can't do it. It bruises my conscience. I cannot do it. And Paul said, well, I have the freedom to do it, but I won't do it with you because you're my weaker brother, and I wanna love my weaker brother.
Speaker 2:The point of that is, hey, we all have We blind are all weaker brothers and sisters. If alcohol is your area, you know, then you have great biblical grounding to say, I'm going to abstain. There are also those who would say, I wanna enjoy God's gift, as prescribed in the Bible, God's way. And when we enjoy God's gift God's way, there's a phrase that you use that we have used in all areas of our life, and that would be in sex, that would be in the pleasure of chocolate and desserts. And it would be in the
Speaker 1:Ice cream.
Speaker 2:Ice cream and it would be in the area of alcohol and that is a plan, God's plan. But a plan for the pleasure. Yeah. And just the warning, the warnings are all over scripture about alcohol and the dangers of alcohol. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The warnings are all over scripture about drinking past to where you're buzzing, you're incapacitated. And I think that I'm convinced that a lot of people, what we call social drinking, you're actually, if you were to take your blood alcohol content, you are far beyond where you think you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so really, I think for the Christ follower to drink like the world drinks is not gonna work for you. Right. You gotta have a better plan for your pleasure. You gotta treat it as a gift from God if you're going to drink, but you also have to recognize the dangers of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's why, I think that's part of the why we say we are serious
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:About having fun. Even that phrase has multiple layers of meaning. We're serious because we believe God created fun and the church should be fun. God's a blast, the church should be a blast too. But we're also serious because we know the pitfalls because of our sin and our sin nature and the tug of desires that take us down a dangerous and destructive path.
Speaker 1:We're very serious that our fun glorifies God, that it's in his image and by his design. And when you lead and you experience a church that values this, together, it becomes a really joyful place. And it's not all rainbows and unicorns where we pretend like life's not hard. Life is hard and it hits us all, but how beautiful for God's sweet relief of laughter, of dancing, of enjoying meals together, of having a blast together. And as we walk this journey in the middle of it all, we see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
Speaker 1:So we are serious.
Speaker 2:And I'd wrap it up by saying, you know, again, another scripture I love is, The joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord. And we, as Christians, need to bring joy back. And I think it'll bring a whole lot more strength, and it'll teach the world what it looks like to suffer well with joy. You know, you can suffer and still have joy.
Speaker 2:It's not delirious. But also feasting needs fasting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's rhythm.
Speaker 2:It's important to have that rhythm of feast and fast, feast and fast. And so we'd encourage you that as you're exploring this for your life, man, just turn on your brain. Yeah. Open up your Bible, be prayerful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And let's enjoy life, and let's do it God's way. We're serious about having fun.
Speaker 1:We're serious about having fun.
Speaker 2:Alright. Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Overflow with Brandon and Susan. And we're excited to tackle more of these issues, maybe even tackle some of the things we brought up today in more depth with more time. We can't wait to do that. Love you guys and we'll see you next time.