Growing Spiritually in 2025
Jan. 10, 2025
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Guest: Bob Lepine
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 1/10/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Isaac Crockett:
Welcome to our Friday program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and our normal co-host, the Honorable Sam Rohrer is not with us today. He’s unable to be here because of a funeral that he’s a part of. There’s been a lot going on this week. We’ve seen President Carter’s funeral and the different things going on with that. We’ve seen weather issues going on. Many of you have experienced part of this big chill that has hit parts of America that sometimes don’t get snow and cold weather. And then there’s been the wildfires out in California, of course, that we’re all praying for those in the wake of that as well as even the snow, some of the places getting snow that don’t normally get it could be quite a terrible experience. So there’s just a lot going on, but hopefully today we can look at what the Lord is doing.
Look forward to the year that we have here in 2025 that we are just starting in. And I think we have a special treat for you today. Many of you are going to recognize, I think the voice of our guest who’s actually used to not being in the winter Wonderland, but I think he’s actually in the path of getting hit with some of this winter snow and stuff too. But our guest today is somebody that I consider to be kind of Christian radio royalty Pastor Bob Lepine. Many of you’ll remember him from a long time that he spent Family Life today as the host, and also he’s the morning host on Family Radio and a co-host on Truth for Life. He’s a pastor, he’s an author and many other things as well as a husband, a father, and a grandfather. So Pastor Bob Lepine, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be with us on Stand In the Gap today.
Bob Lepine:
Isaac, it is a delight to be with you. Thanks for the invitation.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, I know that you’re getting kind of a chilly start to the new year down there in Arkansas where your church is and where you’re located, but as we start this new year, I really want to have a conversation with you about cultivating helpful spiritual habits in 2025. And I actually got the idea of it from you from something you had written about. But before we get into that topic and talk more about some of the things you’ve been writing, Bob, could you just give us a synopsis? A lot of people recognize your name. They maybe have read your book. I remember, I think it was maybe your first book about the Christian husband. I met my wife in 2000 and we got engaged in 2003, so that was one of the books that I was given. We got married 20 years ago, 2004, one of the books that I read for premarital counseling and things, and I was just thinking, I was just looking at a new version of it, an updated copy of it. I was thinking I should read that again now 20 years after being married. So a lot of people would recognize you, but could you maybe give us a little synopsis of how you came to be involved with Christian Radio and really where God has led you as far as Christian Radio Ministry goes in your life?
Bob Lepine:
If we go back to my teen years and my time in college, my plan, my intention all along was to go to law school when I graduated from college. And that was my plan until I took a summer job right before law school working at a local radio station and they liked my work and offered me a raise. I liked what I was doing and didn’t really look forward to getting back in the classroom and opening the books again. So I thought, okay, I’m going to stay with radio for a while and just have some fun and we’ll see where this goes. And I’ll go to law school eventually if radio doesn’t pan out. And that’s still my plan. I’m still planning that. I’ll go to law school if radio doesn’t work out, but that was back in 1978 that that happened. I was first in General Market Radio doing news talk and then became interested in Christian radio.
Not long after that, Christian radio was beginning to mature, I would say it was evolving. There were new programs that were on Christian radio, like Focus on the Family Insight for Living with Chuck Swindall Grace to You with John MacArthur. These were all brand new fresh programs for Christian radio. And I found myself attracted to those programs and also found myself attracted to the music that was developing as well. And so I went to work for our local Christian radio station in 1979 and worked in local Christian radio for 13 years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in Phoenix, Arizona, Sacramento, and in San Antonio, Texas. And then in 1992, Dennis Rainey reached out to me, the Ministry of Family Life was looking at developing a nationally syndicated radio program. I had interviewed Dennis on a call in talk show that I hosted on a couple of occasions, and he reached out to say, we’re looking for someone who can help guide this effort.
Would you be available? And the long story made shorter is that God made it really clear to my wife and me that this was his plan for us. So we moved from San Antonio to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1992 and helped launch family like today. And I was the co-host of that program with Dennis for 28 years before stepping away from that back in 2021. And since that time, I’ve continued to be involved in radio. Some listeners will recognize me as the person at the beginning and the end of Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. You mentioned the morning program that I’m doing on Family Radio, which is a network that plays Bible teaching and hymns. And I loved the hymns. I’ve always loved hymns since I was young. And so to be able to set up and introduce these hymns and do that as a part of the morning program is something I enjoy doing.
But for the last 17 years, I have been the lead pastor at a church. We helped plant in Little Rock Redeemer Community Church. And so I am the primary preaching pastor at that church and give leadership to that church. I’ve done it bi vocationally because of my work with Family Life and these other involvements that I have. But God has blessed the work of the church and we’ve got a thriving staff in congregation and excited about how God is using Redeemer and this chapter of my life where more of my focus these days is on the work of the local church than on the other efforts that I’m involved with.
Isaac Crockett:
Oh, that is so exciting. I think we could spend a whole program on that real quickly. We only have about a minute before the break, but do you think that Christian radio is still being useful and effective even in this day and age?
Bob Lepine:
Oh, I do. I mean, I’m still involved with Christian radio and I know that content distribution, audio content distribution, there are a lot more opportunities, a lot more channels for audio content to get to people, whether it’s listening to music on Spotify or downloading podcasts or any of the different distribution channels that exist. But there are still millions of people every day who walk out to their car and turn on their radio and they want somebody else to be picking what they’re going to be listening to and they appreciate what they’re doing. So yes, I see God using Christian radio in significant ways in our day, and I think it’s just settling into the overall media mix of things that we listen to and things that we engage ourselves with.
Isaac Crockett:
That’s so neat. And it’s just so amazing how God has used you and put you there. And it’s kind of funny to me when you said you wanted to be a lawyer and you’re still going to do that if the radio thing doesn’t pan out. But my dad was also planning, my grandfather was a lawyer, but actually God used Christian radio in my dad’s life to get ahold of his heart and for him to accept Christ out of a life that was not very Christ honoring. And then he became a pastor most of his life until the Lord took him home. And in your ministry, I remember even as a teenager when I would work before school and things and jobs I’ve had, we’re doing a lot of driving, even still listening to Christian radio, listening to you on Family life today and to others just so neat and people listening to us right now on radio, some of you are listening to us streaming it from your computer or your smartphone.
Some of you are listening on our app or on a podcast or something, Spotify or Apple Music. So many different ways. We’re so excited. We have a lot to talk about with Pastor Bob Lepine looking at New Year’s resolutions and some advice from Bob for starting the new year. Right. We’ll be right back after some brief messages from our partners. Welcome back to our program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and we are talking with Pastor Bob Lepine, the lead pastor at Redeemer Community Church in the Little Rock Arkansas area. But many of you may be, I remember hearing him and Dennis Rainey on Family Life today or on other radio programs or you’ve read his books or maybe you remember him because you’ve been at the sing conference in Nashville with our friends at Getty Music. Bob is the mc or something I guess you’d say there at the sing conference.
In fact, I knew of Pastor Bob for years, but I actually got to meet him this past fall in Nashville. He agreed to sit down and do an interview with us on Stand in the Gap Media, so we’re so excited to have him with us today. And a few months ago I saw on your social media, on your Facebook that you started giving links to something that you’re writing and you called it ear reverent Ear, like an ear that you have and reverent, and it’s really, I enjoy the articles you put on there and they’re so practical and so much of your pastor’s heart that’s visible in that. But could you just tell us a little bit about what your reverent is?
Bob Lepine:
Yeah. I have for many years with our local congregation, every week I’ve sent out just an essay, kind of a devotional that I do midweek to help encourage our folks. And over the years I’ve had people say to me, how can I get that or I enjoy it. We’ve sent it out via email. And so this year I noticed the advent of something called Substack. I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with that or not, but it’s kind of a content distribution, a blog conglomerate if you will. And so I started a Substack channel where I post these devotional thoughts that go to our congregation, but now go to a broader audience as well. And it’s just something, whatever I’m reflecting on in the middle of the week because we have a snowstorm coming. Yesterday I sat down and thought about how what snow does in a landscape is like what God’s grace does in covering our sin. Isaiah makes that point, and Isaiah one when he says that our sins were as scarlet got has made them white as snow and snow covers debris and gives it a beautiful landscape look. And I just thought, I’m going to take a few minutes and reflect on that. So that was yesterday’s meditation and I guess if folks were interested in that, they could Google my name and substack or irreverent as you said, EAR reverent and see if it pops up and then you can subscribe. It’s free. It’s just something that I enjoy doing every week.
Isaac Crockett:
I’ve been enjoying it since this fall when I realized what it was very helpful, easy, quick to read, but helpful stuff. Very good application. And one of the articles you recently wrote here at the beginning of the year, I think the title was Add a Spiritual Healthy Habit in 2025. And in that you say something like trying to come up with New Year’s resolution sometimes can kind of set us up for failure. And I’m just wondering why you think that we have to be careful. I think sometimes the world does this too. They try to make resolutions in January, but they don’t really make any real changes. Why you think about that versus what we can do to approach goal setting with a biblical mindset?
Bob Lepine:
Well, I’ve found over the years that there are two times in the year when we kind of do a healthy recalibration of our lives. One is when the school year starts in August and September, the other is at the beginning of a new year. And I think it’s a good practice to set aside time and to look at our lives and say, where are areas where we need to grow and how can we excel still more? How can we grow in godliness? So that’s not a bad thing to do, but my own experience in doing resolutions in the past has been I will come up with some noble or lofty idea that I haven’t really thought through the implications of and say I’m going to going to go to the gym three times a week and by about the third week in February or January, I’m not doing that anymore.
And then I just give up on the whole thing rather than trying to set a goal that is not so much activity based but that is performance-based. So I’m looking, what is it I want to do? Well, I want to lose weight or I want to read the Bible more. Those are the common New Year’s resolutions things. And so how can I begin to cultivate habits of grace that will help me in that area rather than a resolution that I’m going to fail on? Is there a habit I can cultivate? And the thing about a habit versus a resolution is when you make a resolution and you don’t follow through, then you’ve failed. If you’re trying to cultivate a habit, you just need to build the repetition in. And if you miss a day, that’s okay, you just need to pick it back up again. So I like to think about it in terms of cultivating healthy habits rather than making resolutions and setting yourself up for failure.
Isaac Crockett:
That is so helpful. One of the other things that you put in that article that really got me thinking, I love the imagery of it, was you compared a book that you’d recently read by Sahil Bloom called The Five Types of Wealth, and how do you see those ideas, the five types of wealth as lining up with actually some biblical principles as well?
Bob Lepine:
This was very helpful. It’s not a Christian book and the author as far as I know is not a believer, but he was talking about the fact that as we look at our lives, we often measure success in terms of material wealth or financial wealth. And he said, that’s not inconsequential, that’s not something that we should ignore, but life is much more than your bank account or your balance sheet. And so he was saying, we need to be thinking about wealth in other areas. So relational wealth is one of the things that we should be investing in and looking for dividends from. And then there’s our physical wealth, our physical body, again, how can we invest in that and how can we get dividends from our investment there? So he set up these categories that expanded the idea of wealth to say a well balanced life is not focused exclusively on money and acquisitions, but we consider the other priorities.
The one he didn’t include that I feel needs to be at the top of the list is our spiritual wealth. How do we lay up treasures in heaven? Jesus used that language. So how can we be investing spiritually in our own lives and in the work of the kingdom and how can we be looking for growth in those areas and how can we be looking for asset appreciation? And if you put it in financial terms, how can we look for dividends to come back from that? And again, the Bible makes that Jesus said to the one who was given five talents, the goal was to invest it and to see a return. And so we should be thinking about these areas of our lives, not just our financial health, but we should be looking at our physical health. We should be looking our relational health, we should be looking at how we invest our time. It’s the greatest asset that we have, so what’s that going to go toward? And it just was a good framework for me as I begin a new year to map out the plan for 2025 and say, have I allocated enough time for family and relationships to see the grandkids? Have I allocated the right amount of time for taking care of my body? Have I allocated the right amount of time for getting rest and sleep? Those kinds of things are a part of what lead to a wealthy life.
Isaac Crockett:
One of the things my dad used to love to talk to people about my brothers and I especially, but others was redeeming the time because the days are evil to walk carefully not as fools, but as wise redeeming the time. And that’s what you’re talking about. Just real quickly as we wrap this part of the program up, could you maybe define, if somebody says, I would like to start redeeming my spiritual wealth, I would like to start allocating more towards my spiritual wealth, what kind of are we talking about and then maybe application of that. Could you maybe tell us any goals that you are looking at trying to set up for 2025?
Bob Lepine:
Yeah, I think when we think about our own spiritual health and cultivating spiritual wealth, I think we want to look at how can we grow closer to Christ and how can we invest ourselves in serving him? So I’d break it down into those two categories. How can we grow in grace and then how can we serve Christ? And honestly, serving him is one of the ways we grow. So it’s really all about cultivating a deeper relationship with him. But there are spiritual practices, habits, disciplines. A couple of books that have been helpful for me in this regard, Don Whitney’s book, the Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life have been very helpful. And then David Mathis book, habits of Grace, these are two that I’ve leaned into to help me say these are the kinds of spiritual workouts I need to be doing on a regular basis, like going to the gym and doing physical workouts. These are spiritual workouts, bible study, meditation, memorization, prayer fellowship with other believers. This needs to be built into the rhythm of my life if I intend to grow in these areas.
Isaac Crockett:
Oh, that’s great. I’m so glad you mentioned Don Whitney too. I love his writings. I love what he’s done with praying scripture and then really spiritual disciplines by Don Whitney was something that was transformative for me as a young man in my teens when my youth pastor went through that with me and some other young men in our church. It’s something that I have used repeatedly in my life a few years ago, several of my nephews were all in college, some of them were in Christian college, some in secular college, and I got them together and we started going through that book. And then we weren’t always together, but we would catch up on phone or whatever and go through it chapter by chapter. I’ve done it with men in the church. Just a great thing to do to develop spiritual wealth or spiritual health by taking these things. And so if you’re looking for something, I would highly recommend that book especially. We’re just seconds away from the break here, Bob, but could you repeat maybe a couple of those books that you just mentioned in case people wanted to look at that?
Bob Lepine:
Yeah, spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life. I’ve got my copy right here next to me by Don Whitney. It’s published by Nav Press and they’ve done a revised edition of it, so it’s great to have. And then Habits of Grace. And David Mathis is the author of that book and interestingly, you can download the PDF of that book for free from the Desiring God website, so folks could look for a free PDF that book.
Isaac Crockett:
Oh wow. So practical, so helpful. Alright, well we’re going to take another break to hear from some of our partners, but when we come back, I want to look at picking a good Bible reading plan that’s so important and much more than just that. We have a lot to talk about. We’re going to hear from some of our partners and then we’ll be right back right here on Stand In the Gap today in just a few moments. Welcome back to Stand in the Gap today. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett. If you’re just joining our program, we’ve been speaking with Pastor Bob Lepine, he’s the lead pastor at Redeemer Community Church in the Little Rock Arkansas area. And many of you maybe have heard him either as the morning host at Family Radio or you, maybe you remember him from Family Life, family Life Today Program or maybe you listen to Truth for Life and you’ve heard him at the beginning and end of the programs there.
He’s a co-host or maybe you’ve read books of his or heard him at Sing conference with Getty Music or many different things. But we’ve been looking at talking with Pastor Bob Lepine about being intentional and seeking spiritual growth in your life this year about looking at it like wealth, like something that we are investing in redeeming the time that we have with our spiritual health of our lives. And so a lot of exciting things, a lot of really practical things, Bob, that you’ve had for us. I just want to take a quick chance to ask our producer, Tim Schneider, if you could just come to the microphone and give us some ways that we were talking about some resources like the book Spiritual Disciplines from Don Whitney and different things, but maybe you could give us some of the resources we have at the American Pastors Network or Stand in the Gap media that people could also be using this year, Tim, to benefit their lives.
Tim Schneider:
Sure, I can. Isaac, good afternoon to everybody. Hopefully you’re doing well today and happy New Year to you. Want to let you know about some resources that you can use as we were talking about resources, hear from the American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap Media. We are on social media just in case you’re not aware of that. We are there. You can like us on Facebook. You can follow us on X Formula Twitter by searching for American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap radio. Also, we are on bit shoot subscribe there by searching for our channel by looking for Stand in the Gap today. All very places that you can find us on social media. Also, we have two great websites, American pastors network.net and stand in the gap media.org. Go and check out those sites and see what’s posted there and articles and lots of other different things.
You can also sign up for our e-newsletter. We promise we won’t inundate your inbox with spam, but we’ll send you information about the ministry that you might find useful for the days and weeks and months ahead as we go into 2025. One of the things you can sign up for is our e-newsletter. And on that e-newsletter we have information about things that are happening here in the American Pastors Network. And also you can get an email weekly of a recap of the previous week’s radio programs. There’ll be transcript in there, there may be some podcast q and a clips and a bunch of other different details about the previous week. So go and sign up for our e-newsletter at American pastors network.net. Also, please pray for this ministry. We cover your prayers and thank you for praying for us and please continue to pray for us. We appreciate your prayers so much. Also, if the Lord has blessed you financially and you’re blessed by this ministry, please consider giving financially. No amount too big, no amount too small is too much, but if the Lord would put it on your heart to give to us to continue to help us to do our mission, we certainly would appreciate it. So that’s some of the information I’ve got here, Isaac, and I’ll go ahead and send it on back to you.
Isaac Crockett:
Great, well thank you so much Tim, pastor Bob Pen, I want to ask you about Bible reading plans and it’s so important to cultivate this spiritual discipline of meditating on the word of God. As a father, I’ve been so excited to see all three of my children really taking to scripture, reading and memorizing verses. My son is 15 and he goes to the gym with me in the mornings several days a week and he’ll be memorizing verses as we drive into the gym and to see my daughter, she reads on a Kindle or an iPad reading the Bible, even my youngest son, 10 years old, even during family alt alter them having opportunities to read the passages and things. But it’s so important to read God’s word. We have it, let’s use it. But could you talk to us, I don’t know if I’d heard of this reading Method by Robert Murray Machine until a number of years ago as a pastor. I was at the Basics Pastor’s Conference and they were talking about it piqued my curiosity and I remember going through it. But I think you did that plan last year. Could you talk a little bit about it and maybe the impacts it had on you last year?
Bob Lepine:
Yeah, I did. This is a plan that was set up by a Scottish pastor more than a hundred years ago, and Alistair Beg is a big proponent of this plan. And so I did use it last year and one of the reasons that I used it is because the Gospel coalition, they’ve got a program set up. They will send you a daily email with the chapters that you’re assigned to read each day. And with the McShane plan, you’re reading typically two passages from the Old Testament and two passages the New Testament. Each day you read through the whole Bible in a year, you read through the gospels twice and you read through the Psalms and Proverbs twice and it usually takes about 20 minutes a day to do it. And if you use the gospel coalition’s email along with the scripture passages that they make available for you to read, there’s also a commentary from DA Carson where he’s commenting on the passages that you’ve read that day.
So you have that additional input and getting that daily email. And here’s what I had to do. I had to decide, and I didn’t do this every day, but I purposed that before I would read any other email that had come into my inbox overnight, I would read my Bible reading plan before I would log on and check Facebook or log on and read the Wall Street Journal or anything else. I just said, you can’t read the other things until you’ve read God’s word. And I will say about a Bible reading plan, when you do this, you’re really reading your grazing as it were on God’s word every day. And I think that’s a good and healthy discipline, but it’s not the only way we should interact with the scriptures. So I read the newspaper differently than I read if I’m studying for a test.
And so we need to understand that sometimes we will read the Bible more casually and just look for God to speak to us through his word. But we also need to combine with that serious Bible study where we’re going deep, where we’re not reading four chapters in a 20 minute period, but we may be digging into three verses over the course of an hour to see what exactly is that text telling us. And then you mentioned memorization and along with that is meditation to just take a single Bible verse. Here’s something I heard somebody share about meditation that was really helpful for me. They said, if you want to meditate on a verse of scripture, take each word in that verse and emphasize it when you go through the verse, time after time, just emphasize it. So we would say a verse like Romans eight, one, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
You could think about that verse and say, there is therefore now no condemnation. What’s the therefore? Therefore what’s that point there is therefore now no condemnation. What’s the now reference there is therefore now no condemnation. No condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And see each phrase of that gives you a different nuance of meaning. So when I’m meditating on a verse, I will often use that kind of a technique to help me get everything I can out of that verse and understand what God is saying through that verse.
Isaac Crockett:
I love that. And the Puritans were really good at that in our adult Sunday school class, at our little church we went through Thomas Watson has a whole little book about Romans 8 28 and he goes through and emphasizes each word and basically it’s almost like a little chapter, a little devotional on each one of those. We’re getting ready to start another little booklet of his on repentance. Wow, that is so helpful. And getting into God’s word. I remember a guy who Lord allowed me to lead to the Lord at a church plant I was at and he liked to just open his book to any passage. He would just randomly open it. Look, you got to be intentional about it. And again, I think sometimes we’re saved for a long time, but we don’t know the way the whole Bible goes together, fits together. So having some sort of a plan, maybe you’re not reading the whole Bible through, but some sort of an idea, some sort of a plan and then taking time to also meditate on it. Bob, let me just ask you what you would recommend for somebody who’s listening to us right now and he’s sitting there, she’s sitting there and they say, you know what? I would like to start a Bible study, a regular Bible study. How do I choose one that works for me? I’ve never done this before. How do I start?
Bob Lepine:
So I would say take your first steps. And my wife’s using a devotional book this year that is a read through the New Testament. It’s not the whole Bible, but it will give you the New Testament and give you a starting place. It takes her about 10 minutes to read through. There’s again a short commentary related to it. You read from the gospels and then from acts through the epistles and revelation as two passages each day and start with something small and bite-size like that, meditate on that. And I think if you cultivate this, if you say, okay, this is where it’s going to go in my day. I’ve found myself setting my alarm clock a little earlier than I might otherwise be setting it. If I’ve got a meeting that I’ve got to get to at eight and I would think, okay, I need to make sure I’m up by 6 45. Well now if I’m going to do my Bible reading six 15, so I’ll set it earlier so that I can get up and do that and just build that into the rhythm of your life. Start your day. Maybe you’re better off ending your day. The last thing you do before you go to bed is you spend your time reading God’s word, but put it into the regimen of your life and start small, take some steps and then expand out from there.
Isaac Crockett:
And real quickly again, Bob, we’re right at the end again, but as a pastor and you mentioned being involved in your local church, how does being involved in a local group of Christians through a local church really help foster spiritual growth for that spiritual wealth we were talking about?
Bob Lepine:
Oh, I think it’s essential. I think it’s foundational. In fact, if you have to start somewhere, that’s where you start. David Mathis says this regular active involvement in a local church is the baseline of spiritual health and spiritual disciplines. We add to that Bible reading and prayer and service activities, and maybe journaling is a part of what you do or solitude. There other practices that you could do, but regular corporate worship, you need to be not just watching it but participating in it live with other people. There is something that the spirit of God does in corporate worship that doesn’t happen anywhere else. And we are joining our voices together in a communal affirmation of the truth of God’s word. So I think post covid, a lot of people kind of fell out of the practice of regular church, church attendance. And I’ve heard people say, well, church, Sunday Church is a Saturday decision. And I would say, no, it’s not a Saturday decision. It’s an every week decision. It’s on your calendar. You’re going to church every Sunday unless some emergency pops up.
Isaac Crockett:
That is great. And that is going to be so practical and helpful for somebody to find a good local church to be involved in. If you’re in one, get as involved as you can be, even if you’re a pastor or a leader there, be involved in it. Use what God has given us. We’re going to be right back for our last segment. To wrap things up with Bob, well welcome back to the last part of our Standing Gap Today program on Pastor Isaac Crockett. And it’s been my privilege to talk with Pastor Bob Lepine for this whole program. And really Bob, we started talking about the articles that you’ve been writing, stuff that you’ve been sharing with your church that you’re now putting on Substack on that ear ear, like on your face, EAR reverent. And again, if you just Google it, that’s what I’ve done and it works really well.
Just Google Bob Lepine irreverent or substack or something and it’ll bring you right to your page. But we were talking about the one that you did recently here as we start the new year looking at spiritual habits and you compare to wealth, to wealth management, spiritual wealth management, you mentioned books by Don Whitney and David Mathis and different ones that help us with that. But then we went into some detail about Bible reading, Bible reading plans, bible meditating, and I’m really glad you brought out about church involvement being a member of a local church and involved in attending. And again, it’s been so easy for some people to just kind of fall out of church a few years ago, five years ago during Covid, but I’d like to talk to you, maybe there’s somebody listening right now and it’s not that they’ve never tried to read the Bible or that they’ve never tried being faithful to a local church, but they’ve fallen out of it and maybe they’ve just feel like, I just can’t do that.
It’s a struggle for them to be consistent with their Bible reading and I want to say their church attendance because I come across people often in my neck of the woods that used to read the Bible and they used to go to church and they’re just like, well, I don’t know if I could do it again. What advice would you have for somebody if they really say, you know what? I really want to this year improve, cultivate. I love that word, cultivate as somebody who’s involved with farming, I love that idea of cultivating spiritual habits and they really want this cultivate spiritual habits and they know that they ought to be in God’s word more and they know they ought to be in God’s house as far as being in the local church more, what would be some advice you would have for them, Bob, that might help them with that to be consistent?
Bob Lepine:
I will tell you that as I started my day today reading in Genesis, there was a paragraph that I read through and I got to the end of that paragraph and I thought, I don’t remember anything I just read. I’m not sure I could tell you what that was about. My brain had gotten sidetracked. I was thinking about other things I was reading, but I wasn’t retaining anything. I went back and reread that paragraph. And I’m reminded of the fact that when I sit down to read God’s word, there is an enemy who wants to do anything he can to distract and divert me from that, who wants me to feel like I’m failing, who wants me to give up? Who wants me to say I’m not getting anything out of this, or this is just a routine or rote or why bother? You’ve got other more important things to do.
So the question that I asked myself at that moment is, do I want to be on his side on this or do I want to be on the side of Jesus who said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So when it comes to Bible intake, bible reading, when we follow a pattern and we put our hearts and minds to it, we should expect that we’re going to experience opposition, that we’re going to feel like we failed. I didn’t do it for three days, so I guess I’m done. I guess I can’t keep up. That’s the enemy of our soul who wants to keep us away from God’s word. The same is true for church attendance. We can come up with all kinds of reasons why today’s not a good day to head out and be a part of a local church.
And when we do that, there are not angels smiling, but there are demons. I mean, I believe in an unseen world, there are demons who are delighting in that decision. And so we’re not on God’s side when we make those decisions. We’re on the side of the enemy of our soul who wants us to become spiritually lethargic and impotent, who wants us to be weak and flabby spiritually. But if we want to be strong and healthy spiritually, then we have to be in the places where God has said, my spirit is here. I’m present with you here. Grace operates and flows here, and that is time in God’s word, time in prayer time with the local church. These are the cornerstones of a healthy spiritual life. You can’t expect to be a healthy follower of Jesus and neglect these disciplines any more than I can expect to be physically fit and never show up at the gym.
Isaac Crockett:
I love that. And you were talking earlier about Donald Whitney’s book, and there’s another book that I have of his, and I can’t remember the name, it’s Leather bound book, sitting on my desk. I use it, but I think it’s something praying scripture back to God or something like that. And that helped me when I start to get distracted, I incorporate prayer and Bible reading together. And then the other thing, and I’m so excited about what Getty Music is doing with their hymnal is I also incorporate hymnals into my Bible reading. So if you’re just starting or struggling with it, start reading the Psalms or the proverbs, but also take a hymnal, buy a hymnal or use one online and start taking some of your favorite hymns, new and old, and just reading them, thinking about the words. And there’s so many neat ways, and I love that.
Like you said, Bob, there are unseen spiritual battles going on. And think about that when you’re getting distracted or when you don’t feel it going or doing that, don’t let Satan win. But at the same time, and I’m thinking of a lady in church plant that I was at who had come out of a sect, a cult really. And she showed me, they actually had checklists for them. There was weekly, daily, and monthly checklist for their members. And if they could check off all those marks, and they were told, you’re a godly person. And when she said, I love this idea of living by God’s grace, she said, but this is so much harder than my checklist. And she literally pulled out her checklist papers and papers of checklist that said, I’ve never seen it like that before. But many of us have that in our mind, and we feel guilty if we don’t do this perfectly. So then we just give up completely. What would you say about committing to developing habits without making them a legalistic form of a checklist or some sort of source of guilt for us? I
Bob Lepine:
Think that’s so important because you can go to spiritual disciplines and you can think, okay, I need to do this and I’ll earn brownie points with God, or I’ll experience this blessing. No, no. We go to our spiritual disciplines in the same way that I go to the dinner table, I go to the dinner table because I’m going to get fed, because I look forward to the taste. I look forward to the time because it’s a priority in my life. I need to nourish my body, but also it’s an enjoyable experience. Well, we want participation in spiritual disciplines to be just like that, but I’ve never found anybody who said, I just didn’t have time to eat today. I mean, we make time to eat because our appetite tells us I’m hungry, I want to eat well. We need to be in tune with our spiritual appetite, which is saying, I need time in God’s word.
I need time with the Lord today. I need to be in prayer. And rather than making it a legalistic ritual where we’re just doing it and checking it off our list, we need to cultivate a desire to spend time with God. And I think as you cultivate these habits, you will see the benefit that comes from it over an extended period of time. Again, expect spiritual attack, expect to become discouraged or to think, I didn’t get anything out of that today, but just keep showing up and God will meet you there and you will experience the richness, the joy, the blessing when you’re a passage and you go, I never saw that before, or That’s just what I needed. That’s the promise I needed, the reminder I needed today. These are ways that God will confirm for you the rightness of what you’re doing.
Isaac Crockett:
That’s great. Well, as a pastor and you’re so busy pastoring your sheep and things, what would you say to other pastors or other ministry leaders, or maybe it’s a husband or a parent who they have people under them, what would you tell those in those positions that they could do to help intentionally develop spiritual habits for those that they are involved with?
Bob Lepine:
Yeah, I think accountability can be very helpful in a situation like this. So to pair up with somebody, maybe it’s just two of you, maybe it’s a small group and say, okay, let’s commit to going through this reading program today or this year. And every day after you’ve done your reading program, just send a text and say, done my reading. Or I thought this was really interesting today. That kind of interaction and that kind of dialogue can be some positive peer pressure for these disciplines, and I think you’ll find benefit out of it as well.
Isaac Crockett:
So beneficial. I can’t believe it. Our whole hour almost has gone away. Pastor Bob Lepine, thank you so much for your time for being on here. Such practical, helpful advice for the new Year. All of you who are listening, please help us by praying for us. And until next time, stand in the gap where you are for the Lord today.
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