Can anyone really say for certain that they are a Christian? (The answer is yes.) Are there some who think they’re Christian but they’re really not? (The answer, again, is yes.) Pastor and author Mike McKinley helps us think through and wrestle with these eternally urgent questions.

Recommended Resources:

Am I Really a Christian? by Mike McKinley (9Marks, 2011)

Health, Wealth, and the (Real) Gospel: The Prosperity Gospel Meets the Truths of Scripture. by Sean Demars and Mike McKinley (Christian Focus, 2022)

Transcript

Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and my conversation partner today is Mike McKinley, my good friend and co-teacher. I'll tell you a little bit about that in a moment. Mike is the pastor at Sterling Park Baptist Church in Sterling—Is that right? Yes—Virginia and a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary. He's written a number of books. We're going to talk about a few of those today. Mike, welcome to Questions That Matter.

Thanks for having me.

Embracing The Gospel of Christ

We’re so grateful. I should tell our listeners a little bit: Mike and I taught parallel sections of the same course out at Patrick Henry College for a number of years and compared notes. It was really lots of fun. The class was called Principles of Biblical Reasoning, which really meant we could teach lots and lots of different things, as long as it fits somewhere under an umbrella of principles of Biblical reasoning. But it really was fun comparing notes and viewing that as an opportunity to disciple dozens of students all at the same time. I always laugh when I think about that, though. Well, first of all, they don't have us anymore, so I don't know what that means. But God has blessed Patrick Henry College to the point where they could actually now hire a full-time real professor there, instead of having these—what do they call us? Adjunct professors. Anyway.

Yeah. They’ve got a grown up on the job now.

They've got a grown up on the job. And I always found it fun each semester. There would be like this trickle of students who would go to your class, your section first, and they found out you had tests. And the rumor going around was that Dr. Newman didn't have tests. And I thought, “Well, no. I don't have tests because you have to grade tests,” so there was always this trickle. But then when they got into mine, they found out, “Oh, this isn't a picnic either.” Anyway, so we're partners in crime, but I'm delighted to have this conversation.

Well, so, Mike, you've written quite a few books, and there's one coming out in just a few months on the prosperity gospel. It's called Health, Wealth, and the (Real) Gospel: The Prosperity Gospel Meets the Truths of Scripture. That's not what we're going to be talking about today, but I just wonder if you want to give a little commercial.

Yeah, thanks. It's a relatively short book that I wrote with my friend Sean DeMars, who's a pastor down in Alabama. And it's basically aimed at being a clear and hopefully biblical and a little bit winsome presentation of the true gospel and a sort of take down of the prosperity gospel. So, it's meant to be something that you could, like… we probably all have that aunt who watches TBN and sort of flirts with the prosperity gospel preachers. And it's meant just to be a book that you can give to someone like that, who's a well-meaning but perhaps poorly taught Christian who's attracted to those things and just help them kind of think through some of the issues, some of the texts in the scriptures that the prosperity gospel twists and manipulates, and trying to help people see the real gospel that's actually better than the fake one that the prosperity gospel people are peddling.

Well, I look forward to seeing that. And maybe we'll have you back or maybe we'll have your coauthor on a podcast sometime. But I want to zoom in on your second book, way back in 2011. It's amazing, so many years ago already. You wrote a book with the catchy, one might even say provocative title, Am I Really a Christian? So, this is a book about how do you know if you're really a Christian and can you really know and can you have assurance of salvation? What was it that prompted you to write this book?

Defining A Christian

It was actually…. There's a conversation I had with a friend of mine who grew up in the Bible Belt and went home for the holidays. And he came back, and he was kind of a sarcastic, maybe even borderline cynical guy, and he had had such a frustrating experience going to church and talking with old friends, and of course in that region and in his hometown, kind of everyone thinks they're a Christian and everyone goes to church still. And so, he's just so frustrated having conversations with people that are clearly living in ways that seem to indicate they have no interest in the Lord whatsoever, but would certainly consider themselves Christians. And so, he just off the cuff said, “You know, Mike, you should write a book called You're Not a Christian, so that when you're having a conversation with someone, you can just be like, “Here, read this book.” And I was like, “Ha! That’s funny.” Then I thought, “Well, actually, that might be useful,” and then the publisher said, “Well, you can't insult your audience before they've even bought the book, so how about we call it Am I Really a Christian?” So calmer heads prevailed, and we settled on that title, but that's how the book came into being.

And so, tell us a little bit about the life of the book. How have you used it and seen God bless it in eleven years or so? Again, it's a short book, and we'll dig into more of it, but just catch us up on how things have gone for a decade or so with that book.

Yeah, I think by God's grace, it's been useful to people. That's the response I've gotten. So, it's meant to be used as a tool for the kind of self-reflection that I think scripture encourages us to have. And God's been kind. And I've heard stories from people. The Lord's used it to help people see, “Actually, I'm not a Christian, and I need to turn to Christ in faith,” and the Lord’s used it to do that. I get emails pretty regularly from folks in youth group working with kids who've grown up in the church and who are wrestling with, “Am I Christian just because I've grown up in this? How do I know if I'm a Christian? And things like that. And so, I think it's been a helpful tool, hopefully, for folks who just want to work through that question. It might sort of pastoral experience. People tend to fall on one of two sides of the issue. Some people are convinced they're Christians, but maybe don't show any evidence of it. And then on the other hand, the other end of the spectrum, there are some folks who seem to give all sorts of evidence that they're Christians, but their consciences are very tender. They're very troubled by their sin. They're very quick to conclude that they must be outside of Christ or else they wouldn't struggle with sin in the ways that they do. And so, the book’s aimed to hopefully help both sort of ends of the spectrum.

And the old canard you afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. And so that's kind of the goal in the book, is to help people see, “Perhaps I'm not really a Christian,” or help folks who perhaps have a very tender conscience realize that there actually all sorts of evidence in their life that they are following Christ.

Yeah. Oh, this is really great. You know, I do a bunch of evangelism seminars and workshops, and pretty much every time I get this question, and it's almost always the most difficult question I'm asked at these things, and that is, “How do I witness to someone who already thinks they are a Christian?” Because, when someone who knows they're not a Christian and they don't claim to be, well, nothing's easy, but you can say, “Well, let me tell you about something that you should consider,” but for the person who thinks they're a Christian, well, like, “I don't need to consider this. I settled that years ago,” or maybe I never even thought about it because I don't need to. And so, your book kind of clarifies what this gospel message is, so that a nonbeliever who is honest with themselves can look at it and say, “Wait a minute! This is different than I thought.”

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think at the heart of it is the conviction that actually the Bible tells us that genuine conversion is always attended by certain fruits. We want to guard carefully justification by faith alone. And we don't want to fall into the theology of glory, where we look to something in ourselves for our salvation. So full stop. Yes, and amen to that. But there's more to the question. The Bible clearly expects that we are going to be able to look at certain things in our lives, and the absence of those things or the presence of those things will be a really genuine indicator about whether or not we're in Christ, that we can say we're in Christ, but actually find out that we're not. And so basically the book is aimed at being a guide to some of those things that scripture says.

Yes. Toward the end of your book, or the next to last full chapter is, “Can I Ever Really Know If I Am a Christian?” So maybe that's the question that matters in our conversation today. And I think you're saying, and you say in your book, “Well, yes. You certainly can know that.” So, you're not going to this, “I want to drive everybody crazy with doubt.” No, it's the exact opposite.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. My prayer is that everyone who reads the book would see these evidences in their life, produced in them by the Holy Spirit, by virtue of their union with Christ, and would come to the end and conclude, “Praise the Lord! By nothing I've done, I’m genuinely in Christ.” So that's the goal. So, I'm not generally a sort of confrontational and I hope an obnoxious person who likes to go around, you know, discouraging people and things like that. So, my hope is that people would read the book and see all these things in their life.

You know, we do this discipleship program at the institute, and it's called the Fellows Program, and it’s a year-long thing. And one of the very first units we have people read and reflect on and journal and discuss is true conversion. What is true conversion? And I think, over the years, we've had quite a few people who, in reading these things, look at it like, “Wait a minute!” So, it has a similar effect. And I think that's been true in the whole history of the church, hasn't it?

Yeah. I think so, as far as I understand it. And I think that's the answer in some ways to the question that you get asked all the time about how do you witness to someone who thinks they're a Christian but they're not? And I think in some ways it's because, throughout the history of the church, we've been tempted to sort of lose the thread of what it really means to be a Christian, what the Bible defines as a Christian. And so, even at the beginning of the book, I start out by just looking at being a Christian in light of the doctrine of regeneration. So, you could say lots of things about being a Christian. You could say being a Christian is being an adopted child of God or having your sins forgiven, but the sort of definition that I use to kind of help frame the book is that a Christian is someone who has received the new birth as a free gift. Because that's actually the one thing that I find really helpful in sort of shocking people into some self-examination.

So, if someone claims to be a Christian. And even, like, I have lots of friends who are nominal Christians, and the one question I always want to try and get around to ask them is, “Hey, in John 3, Jesus says that no one will see the kingdom of God unless they're born again. So, what do you think he means? And has that happened to you?” And that conversation usually is really helpful, when the person goes, “Well, how would I know that I'm born again?” That's a great question.

Yeah.

Actually, the Bible says that regeneration produces all kinds of fruit in our lives, right? We can't see someone being born again. It’s not a physical thing that happens in front of us. But we can see the effects of it. I think that's why, in John 3, Jesus uses the image of the wind, right? And He says, “You don't see the wind blowing, but you can see the effects the wind has.”

Right. Yes.

If the wind blows through my office, I don't see the wind, but I see papers going everywhere. In the same way, we can't see regeneration, but we see the effects of regeneration in our life. We see, “Oh, I hate my sin in a way that I didn't.” “I love differently than I did before.” “I'm more concerned about the things of God and less concerned about the things on Earth.” And so, it’s that idea, that regeneration produces fruit, that I think can help us with that question we're asking.

I subscribe to a number of different newsletters, and I read about what God is doing around the world. And frequently, repeatedly, I see and hear pleas for the need for discipleship all around the world. That is the crying need of our time, and that is the specific focus that God has placed on the C.S. Lewis Institute. So, we're so very grateful to be involved, and have been for decades, in something that could very well be the greatest need of our world today. So please consider becoming a financial partner with us. It would be at the very core and centrality of what God is doing in our world today.

Yeah. We need to make more of that of Jesus’s analogy there to the wind. I think we just pass over that in our discussions, but it's such a very, very important illustration for us to incorporate into our conversations.

So, let me read for our listeners of how you begin this book, because even if people don't know you, they get to know you rather quickly at the very beginning. You say, “This is a book aimed at convincing you that you may not be a Christian. I want you to ask the question, ‘Am I really a Christian?’ Because I'm convinced there are a lot of people in this world who think they are Christians but are not. Hearing that, you might be tempted to ask, ‘What kind of a self-important jerk writes a book like this? Who delights in insulting and disillusioning people?’ And to be honest, I am a self-important jerk much of the time. You can ask my friends.” I enjoyed that. But then you say, “but if you will believe it, I am writing this book because I genuinely want to help. We who profess to be Christians in the world today have a serious problem. Many of us are confused about a matter that is larger than life and death, namely whether everyone who claims to be a Christian really is.”

Now, you wrote that back in 2010 or 2011. My goodness, it’s even more crucial…. I mean, I don't know how much bigger we get, but this has become a more disturbing and more important topic, hasn't it?

I think so. I think so. As I think the rise of a sort of thinner and thinner vision of the Christian life as it sorts of takes over, particularly in the west. I can't speak to every part of the world, but at least in my corner of the world, it feels like the kind of Christianity being taught and modeled in our churches feels thinner and thinner and further away from the call to discipleship that we see the Lord Jesus giving in scripture. And so, I think that's going to create more and more confusion on this question. And so, yeah, I think sadly, it probably is even a more urgent question now.

Yeah. Now, I'm always nervous a little bit about asking a question that I have no idea where this is going to go, but here we go:

Here we go.

This could go nowhere. We'll see. So, is this issue… is this part of your own story? Was there a period of time when you thought you were a Christian and found out you weren't? Is this part of your own story?

Yeah, I don't think so, in terms of I don't think I've ever been a sort of nominal Christian. I didn't grow up in a church-going home until I was…. We didn't start going to church until I was probably about ten years old, nine, ten years old. So, in that sense, I didn't have a kind of built-in identity as a Christian. So, I think I was converted as a child when we first started going to church, the first time I heard the gospel. But I do think certainly I've wrestled with doubt, and I've wrestled with assurance in different seasons of my life and had to ask the question, “Actually, do I really know that I'm a Christian?” I was just preaching last week at our church from 1 Corinthians 9, and at the end, Paul says, when he's talking about this race, but he says, “I discipline my body and keep it under control lest, after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.” And I read verses like that and go, “Do I really take that seriously?” In fact, writing this book, writing Am I Really a Christian? was a challenge, in the sense that I thought, “I do not want to be the guy who writes the book Am I Really a Christian? and himself turns out not to be a Christian.” So, in some ways, the reflections in the book are reflections of my own almost 40 years of walking with Christ and wrestling with some of these questions and having to negotiate and navigate the different answers.

Living as a Christian

There's two chapters I want you to discuss, if you're willing. You've got one chapter, “You Are Not a Christian….” All of your chapters are: “You Are Not a Christian If…,” “You Are Not a Christian Just Because….” “You’re Not a Christian Just Because You Say You Are.” “You’re Not a Christian If You Haven’t Been Born Again.” “You’re Not a Christian Just Because You Like Jesus.” So, you've got two that I want to dig into, chapter four, “You’re Not a Christian If You Enjoy Sin,” and then seven, “You’re Not a Christian If You Love Your Stuff.” So, unpack that a little bit for us. I always want to say this: So, don't tell us everything, because we want people to buy the book.

That’s right.

Don't do such a great job, Mike, that we go, “Oh, I don't need to read the book. I heard the podcast.” No, this is an important tool. But even so, go after those chapters for us.

Yeah, I think obviously they're meant to be a bit provocative in the way that they're titled. So, there are times when I do love my sin, and there are times when I love my stuff. So, in that sense, it's not a very nuanced chapter title, but I do think that those two statements are true, there’s a way those two statements are true, and I think the way that they're true is really important. And that is, I think Scripture is really clear that one of the fruits of regeneration, the newness of life that we have, is we have a fundamentally different relationship with sin. Before regeneration, sin is what I love. It's all that I know. It's all that I can do. After regeneration, I still sin, and I think Romans 7 is a sort of classic unpacking of how we struggle with the flesh. But there's a different relationship that we have with sin. We don't continue on in it as a state. We don't love it, but we hate it. So, when I sin, let's say I say something proud or harsh to someone in our congregation, I'm struck by that, and I hate it, and I repent of it, and I pray that the Lord would help me to grow and that the Spirit would help me to be more peaceful and joyful and kind. I don't settle into it. I don't give my life over to it.

In 1 John 3, I think this is the place where you really see Scripture kind of unpack this issue. It says there, starting in verse one, “See what kind of love the Father's given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so, we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared to take away sins and in Him, that is Jesus, there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. For the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.”

And so obviously there's a lot you can unpack there. But this idea that, if you're born of God, this sort of habitual practice of sinning, not that we're ever going to be perfect, but this sort of life given over to sin, sort of, “I'm not running my race anymore. I'm pitching my tent in sin’s camp. That's who I am.” That, I think, is an indication that we may not actually be a Christian.

Yeah. Those are difficult words for us to hear in the scripture, but that's not the only passage you could have turned to. There are quite a few.

Sure.

And I think that that's at the core of the gospel message, that is one of many things that distinguishes it from other religions. There are other religions you can be born into, just because your parents are that religion. And it may not really matter what you believe or how you live, you are still—and I'm not going to fill in the blank, because that blank can be filled in with lots of different religions. But the Christian faith, by its essence and at the core of what Jesus taught, is, “Oh, no.” Well, first of all, nobody's born into it. And secondly, it's quite possible for you to think you are, without being. And so immediately I'm reminded of that just so penetrating and painful part of where Jesus said that, at the end of time, there's going to be people who say, “Lord, we did this, we did this, we did this in Your Name,” and He’ll say, “I never knew you.” And there are quite a few places like that. So, it's easy to miss it, so to speak, or miss the message.

Yeah. And the danger, and I think…. It's been ten, eleven years, and I've talked to a lot of people about this book, and I understand how some people hear it, and it grieves me. Some people hear it that, “Oh, I have to be good enough. I'm condemned because of my sin. I can't just look to Christ and trust in Him, but I have to somehow look to myself and do enough.” And, of course, that's not what we're trying to say. What we're trying to say is that there is the glorious truth that nothing we do can contribute to our salvation in even the smallest, slightest way. We bring nothing to it except our sin. But the good news is that Christ's salvation doesn't leave us in our sin. It says in 1 John 3 that He appeared to destroy the works of the evil one, right? And so, if you're still living fundamentally in sin, then either Jesus is really lousy at His job, because He came to save you and to destroy those works, or you haven't actually experienced the real thing yet.

So absolutely we struggle with sin. I struggle with sin. Everyone in my church—I'm a pastor. I know Christians struggle with sin. It is not at all to say that we're going to be sinless, but we do have a fundamentally different relationship with sin. We don't give our lives over to it. We don't love it. We don't coddle it. Paul says, “If by the spirit you mortify the flesh, you put the flesh to death, you will live.” And that's what the Christian life is. And so, if there is no impulse to crucify the flesh, there's no impulse to deny sin, you should at least be concerned that maybe you haven't experienced the real thing.

Are you a fisher of men? Do you want to be a fisher of men? Do you struggle with this call that Jesus places on us to be fishers of men? Discipling others is also a significant part of that whole enterprise, and it's a way to abide in Christ. It's a way for us to know Christ more fully, become more like Him, and participate in His work of building His kingdom. So, as we disciple, we become coworkers with Jesus. As He helps us mature, He allows us to help Him mature others and nurture them towards reproduction and expanding of His kingdom. And so, we have many free small group resources on our website, many different things to help you in this discipleship process, both to grow as a disciple and to disciple others. So please check out Study Courses.

Man, I'm encouraged and warned by your words, and I know that that's what you want to be. Let's talk about this bit about you're not a Christian if you love your stuff. I'm a little worried about this. Particularly, I’m sitting in this study, and behind me I have this new case that I just bought for putting all my camera equipment all in one really nice case, and I'm very excited, and I'm taking a lot of time deciding where each thing goes. And so, depending on how you answer this question, we may just edit this part out. Because if you're telling me I can't have my camera stuff, I don't know how this is going to go. But anyway, give it your best shot, and I'll talk to our editor about what happens next.

Okay, yeah, that sounds good. I'll try not to touch any sacred cows here.

Well, sacred cows are fine. It's the sacred cameras that I'm concerned about.

Gotcha. Yeah, and I think the Bible…. In one sense, again, it's easy to sort of be too simplistic about this. The Bible tells us that money is actually a good thing, which we all know. Obviously, if you gave me the option of having plenty of money or not nearly enough money, I would obviously choose plenty of money. So, money itself is not the problem. In fact, the Bible commends in many places, hard work, saving, all those kinds of things, saying that if you're…. Much of the book of Proverbs, right? If you're a wise, you can expect, under normal circumstances, to prosper in many ways, and that prosperity is obviously something that's held out as a reward. Again, the wise man has something to pass on to his children, those kinds of things. So, the Bible is not anti-money or suggesting that somehow, it's virtuous to live in extreme poverty, but because money is so good, it's actually dangerous. It basically has the power to compete with God in our hearts for sort of position as savior, right? Because money can do so many good things for us, it tempts us to put our trust and our hope in it and to love it instead of loving God.

And so, the Bible warns us that if our hearts are given over to the love of money, that we can't serve money and God. And Jesus couldn't be clearer about that. His interaction with the rich ruler makes it clear, when he tells that man, give away everything that you've got, and he goes away and sad because he's very rich. It’s clear the problem isn't that he had money, because the very next incident in Luke's gospel is Zacchaeus, who's very rich, and he gives away something less than half, or about half of all of his money. He doesn't give away everything. So, it's not like we have to give away everything. It's the posture of your heart. Zacchaeus experiences real conversion and just makes restitution and gives away. The man, the rich young man, he can't part with his money in order to take hold of Christ.

Okay. I'm feeling good about the stuff that's behind me. You know, as I listen to you and as we've had lots of conversations, it does seem to me that we want kind of an either/or extreme, and the extremes in their own kind of strange way are simplistic. So, on one extreme is, “Okay, I've got to be perfect. That's how I know that I'm a Christian is I don't sin, period. So, if I sin, well, that just kind of messy and whatever.” But on the other side, there's this, I don't know, extreme sort of distortion of the idea of grace, of, “No, it doesn't matter. Jesus loves me, I'm accepted, and nobody's perfect.” So, both of those are kind of easy to understand, and you don't necessarily feel a tension in either place. The Scriptures don't land in either of those extremes. And that's so very often the case: We like these compartments that are easy to understand or feel like, I don't know, just very, very comfortable. But this issue of assurance of salvation, it's great news because it's based on the finished work of Christ, but it's also challenging news, in that we can't just presume, if we had an experience or a feeling once, that that’s all there is to it. Anyway, I'm repeating things. Let me give you the last bit here. Anything you want to wrap up on this very important issue of assurance of salvation and true conversion for us to take away?

Yeah. I think what you're saying is really helpful because, as you read through the gospel accounts, you do see this tension—I thought that's a helpful word that you used—between two realities, both of which are true. One is that Jesus holds out to us grace and mercy with compassion and tenderness that we can't imagine. “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you the rest for your souls,” right?

Yeah.

You see sin-sick, desperate people come to Jesus, and He’s so compassionate, so merciful, so accepting, so loving. That's completely true. And on the other hand, not to contradict that, but to hold in tension with it, Jesus says things about what it means to be a disciple that are shocking to us. He compares it to basically being crucified. He says, “If you're not willing to give up everything in order to be My disciple, you can't be My disciple.” He’d rather you not follow Him than follow Him on your terms. And so, repeatedly, Jesus says those things, and so we have to hold both those things together, that He’s loving and compassionate. But the demands of discipleship are beyond what we would sort of design if we were making up our own religion, beyond what we would imagine.

And so, I think, in the end, one thing I kind of counsel in that final, “Can I know if I'm really a Christian?” is Spurgeon’s old advice: “For every one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.” In the end, our assurance comes from Him, from how kind He is, how loving He is, how faithful He was, what He accomplished for us on the cross and in His resurrection. That’s ultimately our hope and our assurance. David Powlison, my professor at Westminster, the great biblical counselor, used the image of a yo-yo, that our lives are like yo-yos, up and down, up and down, and that's kind of discouraging, but pretty accurate. But he said, that's not all. We're yo-yos in the hands of a man walking up a flight of steps.

And so, my daily experience of my Christian life can be really up and down. And if I just look at myself all the time, I'm going to sort of feel that discouragement. “Oh, today's good! Oh, today's bad!” But if I look at the course of my life, I see how the Lord has carried me and changed me, and I can say, by God's grace, I'm not the same person I was in 2011 when I wrote that book. And Mike in 2011 wasn't the same person he was in 2001, because God's been at work. And so that's ultimately where our hope is, not in our own sort of skill and effort, but in God's faithfulness to us.

Well said. Well done. That's a good place for us to wrap it up. Thank you, Mike. I think you've really given us a whole lot to chew on and wrestle with. Let me say to our listeners, we're going to put a couple of resources, some of Mike's books, in our show notes. And I mentioned about our Fellows program and that unit on true conversion. I think that could be really beneficial.

But the one thing we didn't touch on, but I can't have a conversation with Mike McKinley without thinking about his great commitment to the local church. That's your life. You're the pastor of a local church. And all this discussion about being born again and true conversion, it is lived out in the body of Christ and it is lived out best with lots of brothers and sisters around us. So, we see these effects of being born again, not just in our own kind of wrestling, but in how we interact with other people. So, I do want to strongly urge, if you're involved in a good Bible-preaching church, dig in, get more committed. If you're not, find a good one near you. And we at the C.S. Lewis Institute could even recommend some, if you're searching for a good church. Please check out our other resources on our Website. And we hope that all of these podcasts and our resources help you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Brought to you by the C.S. Lewis Institute and the Questions That Matter Podcast with Randy Newman.