Never before have we been through a nationwide quarantine in a worldwide pandemic. What better time to share some much-needed encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ? Michelle and Amy recently asked for and received our listeners’ most comforting and encouraging Scriptures, acts of kindness, prayer requests and more. This has turned out to be our favorite episode so far!
Christians believe the Word of God is inerrant; that it’s true, and that it is without error. But do you believe it is sufficient? Or are you looking for something more? More exciting, perhaps? Did you know that the Bible is all we need to equip us for a life of faith and service? The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is a fundamental tenet of the Christian faith.In this episode Amy and Michelle explain why this doctrine is so important to understand and embrace.
Welcome to another “Glad You Asked” episode! Here are the listener questions we’ll be answering this time:
Since Sarah is held up to us as a woman we should strive to emulate, was she right to follow Abraham’s instructions to lie about their relationship to Pharaoh and Abimelech?
Are Believers violating Scripture by not gathering for Sunday services and other church events during COVID-19 quarantine?
How should I address a female “pastor” who introduces herself as “Pastor Beth or Joyce or Lisa”?
God is bringing me out of New Apostolic Reformation heresy, but my husband is still deeply entrenched in it. How can I cope and minister to him?
We’re always collecting questions for the next Glad You Asked episode, so drop us an e-mail or social media private message with your questions any time!
In this episode, Michelle and Amy address two more objections to discernment when warning about false teachers:
“That teacher may not always be right but that doesn’t mean she’s a false teacher. We all get things wrong!”
“Maybe this teacher says some things that are wrong, biblically, but she says some good things, too. I just ‘chew up the meat and spit out the bones.'”
“You say that this female Bible teacher is in disobedience to Scripture because she preaches to men. You’re just as guilty because you have a blog and social media pages that men can read!”
In this episode, Michelle and Amy take on a common objection to naming false teachers, and that is the idea that women ought not do podcasts, blogs or post on social media if their content has Scripture. Nonsense! Tune in and find out why.
Have you ever had to confront a brother or sister in Christ about their sin against you? In this episode we are going to examine a section of the book of Matthew, in chapter 18: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” But does this apply in every situation? Nope. One of the biggest misunderstandings of applying this particular scripture to how we are to talk and warn about teachings that are not biblical is the idea that we need to go to the teacher first, in private.
When Christians build a church building, we don’t usually erect a wall around it, but there’s a very real enemy we need to keep out and protect ourselves from – false doctrine. There’s a huge need for this in the church today, and unfortunately, some churches have left themselves vulnerable to attack, and the enemy has already infiltrated and taken over. In this episode Michelle and Amy discuss some foundational ways pastors can build a wall – an invisible, spiritual wall – around their churches to keep false doctrine out and to protect their congregations from being attacked by this vicious enemy.
This episode is going to get political, but not in the way you might think. We are just at the beginning phase of the election season, a time when our country here in the United States is in a frenzy over who ought to be our next president For many Christians, it’s a time when politics and pundits eclipse everything else. The trap that we can fall into is that we can become so busy reclaiming America that we forget we’re here to proclaim Christ. Amy and Michelle go to Scripture to put politics and patriotism in perspective.
Are there too many persnickety old people in your church? Do you long to reshuffle the congregational deck and get some young blood in the pews? Is your church “dying” because there just aren’t enough millennials making your church hip and cool? Recently a church in Minnesota made national news headlines for doing just that – and even secular media took notice! In this episode, Amy and Michelle discuss why this is not only a bad idea, it’s unbiblical.
Words stand for something, right? The words we use in our Christian faith used to be fairly clear cut, but over the last few years some definitions seem to have become somewhat murky: evangelism, preaching, and how Christian women biblically fit into that equation.
It is not God’s will for us to worry. No matter how strangling our fear may feel, God wants us to trust Him in everything, from the most dire situation to the most mundane. But how can we do that? In this episode Michelle and Amy discuss some biblical and practical ways to stop worrying and start trusting God.
The S word – it scares us doesn’t it? We’re talking about the word “Submit,” and for many women, being in submission sounds like a door to abuse.
What a comfort to know that submission doesn’t mean being abused, following a list of rules or being treated like a door mat, but it is an easy yoke that Jesus asks of all His followers. In this episode Amy and Michelle discuss why submission is mocked as a sign of weakness, but in fact is one of the strongest pillars of society.
This is the time of year when lots of people are making (or by now, breaking) New Year’s resolutions to “be a better you.” Those resolutions tend to be very self-focused, so Michelle and Amy instead discuss some “holy habits” that every Christian ought to pursue all year long. Here are Eight Ways to Walk Worthy in 2020:
Are nativity scenes and Christmas pageants violating the second commandment? What about Advent observances and candle-lighting ceremonies? And why do we celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th anyway? These are all great questions sent to us by our listeners, so today Amy and Michelle dig into Scripture and church history to share the answers, in this “Glad You Asked” Christmas edition!
Resources:
Scriptures mentioned in this episode are linked in the resources below
It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, and with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, it’s easy for the Gospel to get lost in the shuffle. But the Great Commission never takes a vacation, and the holiday season provides some unique opportunities for sharing the gospel that we don’t have during the rest of the year.
Michelle and Amy discuss ways to share the Good News that are unique to the holiday season.
Resources
10 Ways to Share the Gospel During the Holidays Michelle Lesley- Discipleship for Christian Women (most of the resources we mentioned in this episode are linked in this article) Note: In this episode (as well as in previous editions of Michelle’s article linked here), suggestion #3 was to give to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (International Mission Board). Due to pervasive corruption of various sorts in the SBC, we no longer recommend donating to any SBC entity including the IMB or LMCO.
Three different podcasts come together for one giant cross over! Amy and Michelle recently joined Lauren from Tulips & Honey as well as Emily from The Aquila & Priscilla Hour. The ladies make up four different generations, and discuss Biblical discipleship from a woman’s standpoint.
Ever since the Me Too movement exploded on social media a couple of years ago, we’ve been hearing more and more heartbreaking stories of women who have experienced physical and sexual abuse. If anyone can help and should be helping victims of abuse, it ought to be the church. But, unfortunately, it seems that the people in the evangelical spotlight who are stepping up to advocate for victims are often popular false teachers.
Michelle and Amy talk about ministering to women who have experienced physical and sexual abuse.
You might not bow down to golden statues of God, but we’ve all magnified things in our lives that eclipse our love for the Lord. We know it’s wrong, but our hearts are prone to wander. Today Amy and Michelle tackle the tough subject of idolatry. Not only for us individually, but for churches, collectively.
If I leave my church for doctrinal reasons, is it gossip to tell my church friends why? What’s the difference between the true sin of oppression and claims of social injustice? These are just some of the questions we get from listeners, so Michelle and Amy turn to Scripture for answers. Be sure to listen to Glad You Asked, Part I.
How can we tell whether or not someone is really saved? It can be hard to tell with someone we don’t know, like a celebrity, but even with people we know personally – family members, friends, co-workers – is there really any way to know for sure? Michelle and Amy explore what the Bible says in light of true and false conversions, and why it matters.
What’s a “soft” Complementarian? Is it wrong to have youth pastors or worship pastors since neither of them are specifically mentioned in the Bible? Should I serve in ministry with someone who teaches Spiritual Formation? We’re digging into our mailbag, and into Scripture to see what God’s Word has to say about these great questions.
You may go to a church where you hear terms like intersectionality, and “woke.” In recent years we’ve seen Social Justice become an issue in the evangelical church where many teach that Social Justice is an essential part of the Gospel; and if we don’t understand that it’s a part of the Gospel, we don’t have the true Gospel at all.
Amy and Michelle show you through Scripture that Social Justice is not only NOT part of the Gospel. It is a serious hindrance to the Gospel. It actually sabotages the truth of God’s Word, and it uses God’s Word to do it.
Over the last few episodes, we’ve been talking about the topic of discernment – how to handle things when we encounter false teachers and false doctrine.
In our “Doing Discernment” episode, we took a look at how to determine if a teacher is trustworthy and whether or not you should be following him or her. In our “Words with Friends: How to contend with loved ones” episode, we talked about how to approach and gently warn a friend who’s following a false teacher.
But what about when false teachers or false doctrine impacts your church? What’s the right and biblical way to address it? Michelle and Amy discuss how to talk to your church leaders about false teachers.
What do we do when our loved ones get caught up in the snare of unbiblical teachings? Should we say something?
And if so, how do we approach them in love? In this episode, Amy and Michelle discuss how to have “Words with Friends.”
How do we know if a teacher, conference speaker or book author is biblically safe? The best way to guard yourself against falsehood and false teachers is to know the truth. Only by being thoroughly familiar with the truth will we be able to recognize a counterfeit. In this episode, Michelle and Amy offer some practical tips on “doing discernment.”
What is true repentance? In the Bible, a tax collector named Zacchaeus encountered Christ and immediately repented for stealing and lying. What does repentance look like in the lives of believers today? It should look no different than in Zacchaeus’ life!
When prosperity preacher Benny Hinn says he repents, how do we know if it’s the real deal? Michelle and Amy dig into Scripture to look at what real repentance is and is not. Note that our program today is not so much about Benny Hinn, but about how to discern true repentance from something else. However the news does give us a good springboard into this conversation.
It’s all over social media; everybody’s talking about it, and some churches are even teaching classes on using it. The Enneagram is the latest “shiny new thing” to hit evangelicalism, but is it just a harmless personality test, or is there a more sinister side to this popular fad? Today, we’ll be taking a look at the Enneagram and what the Bible has to say about it.
The New Age & Quack Spirituality Origins of the Enneagram at Fighting for the Faith (Steven Kozar’s interview with Marcia Montenegro focuses mainly on the historical origins of the Enneagram and includes additional helpful links.)
On this episode of A Word Fitly Spoken, Amy and Michelle are covering a topic that’s a little sensitive – pornography – and even though we’re not going to be graphic in any way, this episode might be one you’d rather listen to without the kids around.
Pornography is such a plague on society in general, and, unfortunately, even Christian men and women have been tempted into using it. What can you do if your spouse is addicted to these images, or is having an emotional affair? What if you’re the one who is caught in the snare of sexual immorality?
As always, we’ll be looking first and foremost at what the Bible has to say, since the Bible is our authority as Christians.
Do biblical churches exist? How do we avoid churches that are incorporating unbiblical teaching into their services and programs? The good news is that you can find a doctrinally sound church, if you are willing to do some investigating. Amy and Michelle discuss what that looks like, and questions you’ll want to ask.
Can one kiss Christianity goodbye? In other words, what do we make of a celebrity preacher and author who has lead people to true salvation, but then declares he himself is no longer a Christian? How is that even possible?
It happened recently to a man who has made headlines, but you need to know this happens a lot more frequently than you might think.
In this debut episode of A Word Fitly Spoken, Michelle and Amy discuss what the Bible has to say about losing your faith.
