Welcome to Speak The Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual in local church and counseling and discipleship. Hello. Hello. Hello. We are back with another episode on discussing our tracks.

And today I have Brad Hambrick with me as we talk about really understanding emotions. They're gonna be looking at anger, bitterness, and pride. And Brad is the track leader. Brad, how are doing?

I'm doing great. I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about the track that's coming out this spring.

Absolutely. And this is by far over the last two years, our most sought after attended track outside of Jeremy's, emotions. And then even in our webinars, this has been a well attended track and in some of those subsequent teachings that we've done. And so thank you for your continued partnership in that. Brad, you just wanna share a little bit about yourself and then share just those you're gonna be having in 2026.

Yes. For those that don't know, my name is Brad Hambrick and like many of the folks listening, I wear more than one hat. And so I serve as the pastor of counseling at the Summit Church in Raleigh Durham, North Carolina. I also serve as an assistant professor of biblical counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And then from time to time I get to do cool things like hang out with the folks at ABC and get to be a part of this ministry.

And I really like the team that we've got for this track. It's the same folks that we had for last year's when we addressed guilt, shame, and regret. So you've got Shannon McCoy. You've got Jeremy Pierre. You've got Andrew Daly.

If you know those folks, you're probably gonna learn something deep and meaningful, and you're definitely gonna have a lot of fun because we're for people who enjoy one another. We each come from a little different background in terms of what our primary day to day ministry looks like. And this is not a track team where the participant has to worry about man, everybody from that track is coming from the same background and if I'm not doing what they're doing, I'm not gonna feel like I can benefit from that. It's not just that I like the people and their personal convictions and their character. I like the variety of backgrounds that we come from and what that means we bring to the subjects we get to address together.

Yeah. That's great. Not to mention you've got Southeastern and Southern on this track with partnering with Jeremy Pierre. And so we've got two seminary level professors in this track. And so that's always fun to your point about just having just a mix.

So that's great. Brad, as far as this track is concerned, you mentioned last year's topics within Understanding Emotions, but in 2026, looking at anger, bitterness, and pride. Can you just go over briefly just what's the objective this go around?

Yeah. So what we always try to do is we wanna give a deep, rich, practical theology of our subject. And then we also want to do a bit of differentiation. That when scripture speaks to a subject, it doesn't speak to it in a one size fits all way. And so when we get to thinking about anger, there is the hot, expressive, sharp anger.

But then there's cold, concealed, passive anger. With pride, there's the kind of pride that thinks I am better than everybody else. And then there's the pride that thinks I ought to be better than I am and is not content. We're also going to look at differentiation in terms of any of these things that are bad. They're bad because they distort something good.

And so pride is only pride. It's only bad because it's a distortion of the good confidence that God does want for his people to have. Bitterness is bad because it's a destructive alternative to lament. And so as we go through our subject, we're gonna be helping folks understand this from a theological perspective. We're gonna be helping them make differentiations and asking the question for that person that you're working with that maybe they struggle in one of these areas, but self awareness isn't their strong suit.

Like they would be the person who would scowl at you and go, I'm not angry. How do we cultivate self awareness and how do we point them towards the good thing that God would have for them in that part of life that is it's bad because it's distorting the good that God wants for them.

Yeah, that's really good. It's really good. Brad, would you just walk through the eight track sessions that you're going to be walking through with your team member and their topic and a brief summary of kind of what they're gonna be teaching.

So we're gonna kick off with Doctor. Pierre. He's gonna help us that thing that I was talking about flesh and spirit, that bad things are bad because they distort what God intended for good. Doctor. Pierre is gonna help us understand that.

And then Andrew Daly, he's going to come in with the next two sessions and he's going to initially start with counseling pride. Like what happens when we think we get to give the final verdict on life? But then he's gonna come behind that with how do we cultivate a humble confidence that says God really did mean for us to be agents of change in our life and how can we assert that role that God would have for us to have. Then the next two sessions I will be talking about anger and I'm going to start with how do we cultivate awareness when anger is bad and conviction about that anger. Because there's probably no more anger that we no more emotion that we defend as being good when it's bad than anger.

Then I'm going to pull a little bit of phrase from David Pallison when he talked about what is it that God wants for us instead of anger. David coined the phrase the constructive displeasure of mercy. So we're going to unpack that and tip our hat to David as one of the forefathers of our movement. Then we're going to have Shannon McCoy and she's going to talk about bitterness. How do we help people see in a way that they can embrace when bitterness is the problem?

And then how do we invite them into a healthy lament. And so I was really excited to hear the way that Shannon was talking about that. Then at the end we're gonna let Doctor. Pierre come back and do an inquisition to the three of us drawing out implications, areas where we overlap, areas where we've done things a bit differently. And depending on how long he chooses to inquire upon us, we almost also may take some questions from the audience there.

Great. Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to just let us know about the track and just different things to be excited about as far as these particular emotional topics are concerned. And thank you guys for listening. Again, you can go already to calledtocounsel.com and register for the conference twenty twenty six, and that's gonna be held April 23 through the twenty fifth at Doxology Bible Church in Fort Worth, Texas. We'll see you guys next time.