Walking by the Spirit in an Age of Deception

Walking by the Spirit in an Age of Deception

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Renton Rathbun

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 7/13/26. 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.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Monday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in as today we’re going to tackle a topic. Well, very relevant, I would say. It’s a topic hitting, I’d say the very core of our daily walk. And we’re entitling this today, Walking by the Spirit in an Age of Deception. When we look out across the cultural landscape, what do we see? A lot of frantic people and frantic voices, most trying to vie for some kind of control yet completely out of control. With the sudden death of US Senator Lindsay Graham over the weekend that shocked the world, a lot of things will be unfolding coming out of that. His death, and I’m going to say the near death condition of Senator Mitch McConnell as an example from the Senate, those together threw a bit of a political monkey wrench into the function of Washington DC by at least temporarily shifting functional majority control to the Democrats.

And the spiraling out of control with Iran in that war in the Middle East when, well, peace was pronounced not long ago as we know, victory declared months ago, an all out war between Ukraine and Russia erupting. Truly the world and the world’s system is out of control. But as Christians, we are not called to drift with that current, but to live by an entirely different power source joining us today to unpack this truth and that’s what we’re talking about. We don’t need to go in that direction. My guest today is Dr. Renton Rathbun’s been with me many, many times. Not a stranger to you who listened to this program. This is a month that we focus on or the day and the month when we’re together on apologetics, biblical worldview and education. So this theme today kind of arises out of that. Dr. Rathbun’s a regular speaker for biblical worldview instruction for BJU Press.

He’s a veteran college professor of over 20 years and currently pastors a church as well in upstate South Carolina. Now today in our first segment, we’re going to dive into a first consideration of our theme, four different themes, four different segments as we normally do. This first one we’re going to look at is the mandate and the metaphor I’m calling it. It’s the command to be filled. Where does that come from? Well, Ephesians 5:18, the Apostle Paul there issues a striking contrast that serves, I want to say is a permanent wake up call. It wasn’t just for the believers then, but for us now where he said this, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit.” Now in the original Greek, this isn’t a passive suggestion. It’s a command. It’s a continuous meaning that we keep on being filled moment by moment.

And the Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of drunkenness to illustrate his point. Just as someone under the influence of alcohol has their walk and their speech and their judgment entirely altered and controlled by that substance, a believer must have their entire existence permeated and governed by the Holy Spirit. So if we ignore the command, there’s no neutral ground. That’s the thing about it. The automatic default in life is the outbreak of what the Apostle Paul and Galatians calls the works of the flesh, moral compromise and relational ruin. So just leaving that there and that’s a foundation. Renton, welcome to the program. I know you’ve been going over the book of Ephesians. This verse falls into that book that you’ve been dealing with. So it’s great to have you back as we look at this truth.

Renton Rathbun:

Thanks for having me back. This is going to be great. I love talking about Ephesians.

Sam Rohrer:

So let’s open up this text and this truth, Renton, and let us go here. Why is understanding, I’m going to say the sheer weight of this command because it’s a big command. Why is it so absolutely critical for true believers, particularly living in our current age of great deception?

Renton Rathbun:

Well, the book of Ephesians, you can imagine as kind of split into two sections. The first half is setting up the conditions by which the second half is possible. So the first half is telling us that the Father has this vision for his son and the vision is this, that the son will have a body and the body will be the church and Christ will be the head of the church. Now the second half of Ephesians lays out how Christ’s body will conduct itself. And this is very important because this happens, this is born out in chapter four verse 13 where it says that the body will rise up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. I mean, how are we going to do that? We’re humans. We’re sinful people. How is it that we as the church, as his body, how are we going to be measured up to the stature of his fullness?

Because in the next verse it says this so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. And so if we’re going to be the body of Christ, we cannot be people that fall for this age and fall for the schemes of this age. And so when you get to chapter five, it says, “This is how this will be possible. You will be imitators of God.” But that even perplexes us. How can we conduct ourselves as imitators of God? How is that possible? Well, you get to verse 18 of chapter five and that’s where it says, “Be filled with the spirit.” And this filling of the spirit makes this conduct where we can be held to the measure of the fullness of Christ possible.

And everything after that verse 5:18, everything after be filled with the spirit. Everything after that is the consequence of our fullness being filled with the spirit. And what’s interesting is he compares us to alcohol as you said before. And what alcohol does is it kind of controls our neurotransmitters in our brain. In other words, it deadens our signals of danger. It heightens our signals of inhibitions and it kind of reveals and bears out what’s already hidden within us. It increases our sense of freedom to play out our desires and it literally directs us away from reality. It’s debauchery. However, it says, be filled with the spirit. And he controls us in a similar way, but he leads us to the ability to imitate God. He actually causes us to be mindful, not mindless, to be wise, not foolish. The spirit bears out what is in us, which is Christ because we have a new self and he increases our sense of truth, righteousness and faith.

He literally directs us to the reality of God. And with that kind of a contrast, you see that there is this directing and this control, but it’s not to debauchery. It’s to the reality of God.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, Dr. Rathman, that is a great opening. And ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, we’re embarking on a theme walking by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit in an age of deception. Obviously we are in an age of deception. The world is vying for our attention, seeking to control our thoughts through substances or who knows what. But the scripture speaks to this. When we come back, we’re going to go a bit further now into this concept looking at two paths and one step at a time. That’s how we’re supposed to be walking, right? One step at a time. We’ll talk about that. Well, if you’re just joining us here today, thanks for being on board. Our theme, if you’re just stepping in with us, is walking by the spirit in an age of deception. And we’re pulling this off of teaching throughout scripture. And if you stay with us, you’ll see as we walk through this.

But there’s a verse in the book of Ephesians that talks about walking by the spirit, not being drunk with wine. You recognize that probably. And my guest today, Dr. Renton Rathbun, who’s with me monthly, explained that briefly. So if you were able to not grab that segment, go back and get this program in the archive form and then re-listen to that. But I’ll just share at this point, Renton also has a podcast that he does. Again, it’s geared towards Christian education to parents, grandparents as well who have young children. And he calls it the Renton Rathbun Show. Renton, it’s a very practical title for your program, but Renton Rathbun Show. And you can find that at rentonrathbun.com. So he deals with questions and issues that are facing our children and grandchildren in this very, very confusing and deceptive age in which we live that are vying for their attention.

But we know we have things that vie for our attention as adults too. So that’s the reason for going for this direction here today. Now in our last segment, we established the idea that there’s an internal reality that’s defined by being filled. That’s the idea of being filled. And it’s almost like having our heart and a canvas on our heart upon which something is written that’s completely under the influence of the Holy Spirit but be filled with the spirit. But how does that translate externally? The Apostle Paul I think bridges this at least in one way in Galatians 5:16, a book that he also wrote where he says there, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. He there links walking in a step-by-step progression. That makes sense for all of us, doesn’t it? Scripture links this sequence step by step directly to faith.

So walking by the spirit, it links it to faith where he does in two Corinthians five: seven where the Apostle Paul there says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” So there’s a choice in there. We’ll talk about that, but the Apostle Paul didn’t come up with that. He pulled it from an ancient Old Testament picture. Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 10:23 tells us there that it is not in man to direct his own steps. David, the Psalmist in 119: 133 cries out to God to steady his steps knowing that the word is a lamp strictly for his immediate next step. When we walk by sight, we dangerously seek illumination to our own horizon. When we walk by sight, we want to see all the way to the end. But when we walk by the spirit, we let God establish our steps. One faith-filled choice at a time.

Keeps us more dependent upon him. All right. Now, Renton, as I consider this truth, it seems to me that this is kind of like where the rubber meets the road. Walking by sight or normal human desire means kind of like navigating days based on human ingenuity or pragmatic survival and I’m going to say the anxious calculations of a fallen world that we see all around us. And we look daily. The normal is to look to the daily news headlines for direction. Groomed into the deception of thinking that, well, some political figure is going to bring peace or greatness and prosperity, but it never ends up working out that way. Walking by faith on the other hand means taking many unseen steps strictly on the unchanging promises of God’s word and the stakes and consequences couldn’t be higher. Ladies and gentlemen, one verse here that the impossible also says, Romans 14:23 declares that whatsoever is not from faith or of faith is sin.

So when we step out in independent self-reliance, even doing a religious deed or something good, we end up literally walking by sight and operating in unbelief. Renton, those are some thoughts I laid down as I tried to research this and walk through this principle. But if you would now connect this truth of sight versus faith and sight equaling walking by sin as we consider the outward working of our, I would say incremental choices with the inward filling of the Holy Spirit.

Renton Rathbun:

Well, one thing we need to remember is this putting on the armor, and this is in chapter six and I know probably most of your listeners are familiar with Ephesians six where it says put on the whole armor of God and it goes through all that armor. But standing, that armor is designed for you to stand against the schemes of the devil. And putting on the armor, standing, all of that is made possible through being filled with the spirit. Without being filled with the spirit, there’s no putting on all this stuff. But when we get to Ephesians 6:16, it says, “Take up the shield of faith in all circumstances that this shield has the power to extinguish these schemes and these attacks of the devil.” Now, if I were the devil, the number one part of the armor that I would hate aside from the sword itself would be the shield because it’d be frustrating to me if I were Satan.

So what I would do is I would try to make people believe that they have faith when I’m really just tantalizing their sight. Now this can happen to Christians because they get tantalized by sight. Like the serpent in the garden tempting Eve when he said, “Did God really say?” I would ask that same question just in a different way. I might ask, “How can you know the Bible is true?” Which isn’t a bad question to ask, but Satan never asks a question without giving you the conditions by which you are to answer that question. And if I were Satan, I would want everyone to hold to the condition. When I ask if the Bible is true, I want them to hold to the world’s standard of what is logical, to the world’s standard of evidence, to the world’s standard of truth. And all of that always involves sight.

I’m bringing this up because we try to have faith and it’s a faith that ends up being Christless faith. We want the world standard to know how I can know that the Bible is true or know that these steps that I need to take are the right steps and all that sort of thing. How do I trust? I trust through my sight. And so we need certain sight evidences to know if the Bible’s true or it has to fit some logical scheme that Plato had or it has to be the standard of truth that the world has told us and all of it is always pushed to our sight. What would terrify me if I were Satan would be the idea that the Holy Spirit is the power of my faith and my faith is not in these conditions that he spent. My faith is in a person.

My faith is in Christ. And I think we have lost that in our country.

Satan is not discouraged when we have faith in things. He just gets discouraged when our faith is in Christ. Ephesians two: eight is one of those things that tells us that faith is a gift. It’s a gift from the spirit. And the spirit fills us and gives us confidence and certainty. He enlightens us. He gives us wisdom. He opens the eyes of our hearts as Ephesians 1:17 through 18 says. And when things like that happens, boy, we see a real difference in where our faith is going. Our faith is not going into something the world told us about. It’s in Christ through the power of the spirit.

Sam Rohrer:

Rent, let me follow up on that because you talk about faith in our age. I forget what George Barna’s last survey’s numbers were. Something like it’s in the 70s and even Pew has done research. It’s like in the 70% of people say they are people of faith. Yet they say it’s not really important what you have faith in as long as you have faith. That’s a deceptive thing right there because build out on that a little bit about the object of faith as we’re talking here. It has to be faith in a person. Otherwise, what is it?

Renton Rathbun:

Yes, that’s exactly right. So when we’re talking about faith, scripture always brings us back to the object, like you said, the object of faith. What we want is our object of faith to be a logical construct that we can hold onto as humans and then make God conform to our construct. Make God conform to our deductive or inductive logic. Make God conform to the faith we have in our evidences, whether it be the Grand Canyon or we find gopher wood on a mountain somewhere, whatever it is, something that I can be comforted by something I have found in the world that I can conform God to so that I can have my certainty of faith. And we’re always pushed back on that in scripture. Scripture is always telling us our faith is not in these things that we see. Our faith is actually in that which we cannot see, which is our faith is in Christ.

And we say, well, how is that possible? How can I have faith in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit? And the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ. And we say, well, that’s all out there. That’s all spiritual stuff. I need something here that I can see and touch and feel. And the Lord says no.

The Lord says the real power is in the spirit’s work.

Sam Rohrer:

Ladies and gentlemen, again, we’re all alike. We want to walk by sight because we think that what we see is real as compared to walking by faith. But the devil also knows that. Does he not masquerade as an angel of light? We look at something and say, oh wow, it’s got to be, it’s not real. And in this age of AI, how much are we walking into that’s not real even though we see it? Next segment we’ll talk about those things that are, well, angels of light. Well, since we know that as true believers, we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. That’s where we’re starting this, this title, Walking by the Spirit in an Age of Deception. We know that we are to be filled with the Spirit and not with other things like alcohol, which is what the Apostle Paul talks about there in Ephesians chapter five.

We’re also to walk in and by the Spirit, which referred to that where the Apostle Paul spoke about that in Galatians. And we’ve connected the idea, the truth, that when we don’t walk in the Spirit, we’re actually walking by sight. And when we do that, we’re actually walking therefore in sin. So it becomes very, very critical that we understand. But what he tells us to do is step by step by faith. But the question naturally arises, at least it does to me in my mind anyways, is then what are or who are, what are those tempters? Even a scripture talks about angels of light, masquerading those things masquerading as angels of light who vie for our faith and our trust, making discernment in this age of deception so very, very critical. When we walk by faith and yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit, striving to remain filled with the spirit, every true believer must recognize that we are walking through a highly deceptive spiritual minefield.

And we really are in this world. And if you’ve walked with the Lord any length of time, you know that to be true. The Apostle Paul again in two Corinthians 11:14 to 15 stated this, that Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light. So it’s no surprise that if his servants also then disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. And this is where the deception steps in. So Dr. Rathbun, the greatest threat to the modern believer, I think as all those listening to us have known if they walked with the Lord at all, is rarely blatant upfront obvious wickedness. It’s not the devil who comes to us and says, “Okay, I’m the devil. Now come to what I want. ” But it’s a highly sophisticated, I won’t say spiritual counterfeit. Scripture actually speaks of this as the spirit of the age and the spirit of antichrist already active in this world.

The forces don’t look dark. They look really attractive. But scripture does not leave us defenseless because God’s told us very strictly to test the spirit. So Renton, here’s what I’d like you to do. As you deal with worldview and apologetics every single day in dealing with helping to advise parents and grandparents about how to help their children and grandchildren confront these things we’re talking about. How would you recommend based on the teaching of scripture that those with ears to hear and eyes to see spot these modern angels of light who are leading so many people astray, who appeal to the flesh, appeal to us to walk by sight and actually do what the scripture commands to test the spirit so that we don’t walk astray.

Renton Rathbun:

Well in Ephesians five, I think there is a kind of system that’s kind of borne out that kind of helps us know how to spot and what to do. If you look at Ephesians five, starting on verse five, it says this, “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become partners with them. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light for the fruit of light is found in all that is good, right and true. And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. And so what I see is five different principles here that we can follow. Number one, being able to recognize that these sins, these sexual immorality impurity and idolators, these sins are not just a slice of someone’s life, but it actually is exposing a root problem, a root evil. And it takes wisdom to be able to recognize these things. That’s why being filled with the Holy Spirit always accompanies wisdom. It’s what Ephesians was even based on, that they would have the spirit of wisdom as Paul says. Number two, to resist their empty words. And so there is a warning here. They will give you words that will tempt you to be like them. They long for company and you need strength. And that’s another thing that’s promised in the book of Ephesians, that you would gain strength from the spirit, that you might resist these kinds of people.

And again, you need wisdom to recognize empty words from words that are filled. You also need to reject. And the word there that was used in the ESV is do not partner with them. But the Greek word there is do not partake with them. So reject is partaking with them. Create a separation between you and people that are sexually immoral, impure and idolators. And yes, we must reach out to the world and reach them for Christ, but this is talking about a kind of closeness and a partaking with them. In other words, maybe not even doing the same thing they’re doing, but approving of it as Romans one warns us of. And this takes determination, perseverance that you can only have in being filled with the spirit. You also want to discern the truth is something that what is pleasing to the Lord is what the truth is.

And so you want to discern that. That takes a lot of study in God’s word. And that study helps you see the truth enough so that when you see something counterfeit, you recognize it immediately. And number five, expose them. And this takes courage. It’s not enough just to recognize it and avoid it and reject it. You need to expose it. You will be looked on as someone that is mean or mean spirited or hateful. And it takes a lot of courage to expose the evil of this world. But that’s exactly what the Lord is asking of us in this. Because he says in verse 15 of chapter five, look carefully how you walk. Not as the unwise, but wise. Making the best use of the time because the days are evil. And boy, that is so true for today.

Sam Rohrer:

Renton, listening to you on that, I’m going to go a little bit further here on that in that what came to my mind was the book, The Screw Tape Letters. I think a lot of our listener probably looked at them and that’s kind of how that tracks through how the demons, the emissaries of the devil actually plots tailored plans of temptation before people to pull them off of their walk with the Lord. And we would say being filled with the spirit walking by the spirit. And as I’ve traveled the world, and I know you have as well, there’s some places you go in the world where people have nothing. They’re dependent for every day on what they’re going to eat. And those believers in places like that have struck me of having a different type of a walk with the Lord than perhaps believers in our country who don’t have to worry about finding food and shelter and that kind of thing.

We’re on our 250th year as a nation. There’s a lot of things happening. This is our anniversary this year to celebrate obviously July 4th, but it’s really, it’s an entire year should be of reflection. From your perspective, what would be the most persuasive areas of appeal and deception perhaps here in our nation to Americans, which we’ve been blessed with so many, that you can point today that are those perhaps angels of light that pull people into walking by sight and not living by faith?

Renton Rathbun:

Boy, I’ll tell you, our last administration did us no favors. Satan loves reactionary systems of belief. In our nation, we have this big fight even within the conservative movement regarding a proper response to migration in America, to race relations, which always gets worse under democratic control. So how are we to respond to all this? Well, right now I see young conservative Christian men responding to all this by way of making an idol out of their own flesh. They see partiality as a way of responding to race fatigue that many feel. They start saying that whites have a superiority as they put it because they have been so fatigued by all the different racial issues that have come up in the news and all the different things that are going on even through people’s response to ICE. And of course there’s ways to responding to that as Christians and we need to respond.

But to respond in a reactionary way where we just go the other direction and we say, “Oh yeah, well, we whites actually have a superior history. We haven’t sinned like the rest of people that have There’s more color to their skin and their cultures and all that sort of thing and they have just doubled down on it. Only the filling of the Holy Spirit will help us understand how to respond with wisdom at a time where leaning a little too far to the left or a little too far to the right creates a danger of making an idol out of something. We have got to be careful we are not making an idol out of our skin, out of our country, out of our victimhood, but rather we are concentrating only on the Lord through the power of the spirit, in which case we may not be liked by either side.

Sam Rohrer:

And with that, Renton out of time going into this next segment. Ladies and gentlemen, understand that’s why so important as we often refer to being recalibrated by the word of God, our thinking, our action, our choices. Yes, being filled with the spirit. When we come back, we’re going to talk about this matter of choice. Well, thanks for staying with us here through the program. An hour is all we have. It goes very, very quickly and I know that you sensed that as well. Again, just a quick reminder, all of our programs that we do, this one, Stand in the Gap today. The weekend program is slightly different. Stand in the Gap weekend and the minutes that are within this program, Stand in the Gap Minute programs are all in archive form on our app or on our website. And you can search there. I just actually heard from somebody just, well, actually this morning, a listener from Minnesota in her note was saying that how valuable she has found the archives to be because you can search them and go back and find programs on specific themes with specific guests and hear how we’ve dealt with them in the days of relevance in their day.

Biblical truth never changes. That’s the great thing about it. But anyway, I just want to encourage you to know that that’s possible. And my guest today, Dr. Renton Rathbun, has his website where his podcast that he does geared to parents and grandparents of children generally, that’s probably the primary purpose for helping them to walk through and deal with questions about how to identify and respond to those issues that are vying for the attention and the minds and the hearts of our children in this very humanistic age. So you’ll find that very valuable, rentonrathbun.com. Okay. Now with that in mind, let’s continue here. And I’m going to look at this last part here. I’m calling it the crucible of choice. And you’ll see why in just a minute, why that title, why that sub-theme was chosen. But we’ve looked today at the command to be filled with the spirit.

The practical reality of walking by faith, walking by the spirit, that came from Galatians, and the high stakes necessity of understanding that there are false spirits, the spirits of our age, the spirit of antichrist that have talked about and how that all relates to walking by sight. Two paths, two choices. Now within that, the logical, and I think the ultimate question now becomes, in light of these truths, those facts I just stated there and more and the extraordinary implications, how do I practically apply and execute them today and this week and the days ahead? For every believer, when we come and confront truth, we have a responsibility to deal with it. Is it going to change our life or are we just going to ignore it? Now my own personal life, I’ve walked with the Lord. The Lord saved me when I was seven years old.

I’ve walked with the Lord now for nearly 64 years. And in my study of scripture, I find that the Christian life revealed in God’s word there’s many things there, but there’s one aspect, a beautiful yet dynamic paradox regarding human responsibility and divine power. Philippians 2:12 – 13, for instance, says this, “We’re commanded to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. It says, for it is God who works in you both to will and do of his good pleasure.” Galatians six warns us that God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows that he will reap. So if we choose to sow to the flesh through independent self-reliance or worldly compromise, we are going to reap corruption. But if we choose to sow to the spirit by presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, saturating our minds with the word and immediately obeying the promptings of the Holy Spirit, well, then we are actively, I’m going to say, hoisting the sail to catch the fullness of the blessings of God because God blesses obedience.

Now Brenton, as we close our hour here, I like what you do is this. Lay out a practical roadmap of choice and surrender for the believer because they’re both involved here working out, command to work out or live out our true faith. But at the same time, it’s the Holy Spirit who works in us. And then the concept of yielding our bodies, presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice and the choice of surrender. Put these together for how a person who wants to be filled with the spirit to walk by faith and not by sight actually goes about doing that.

Renton Rathbun:

Now that’s an excellent question because when you look at the grammar of Ephesians five and you see that Paul is telling us to be filled with the spirit, what’s weird about that whole grammar setup is that that verb indicates that you both must be filled. So there’s this command, be filled, do it. But at the same time, the way the verb is constructed to be filled is something that must be done to you. You must be filled. You can’t fill yourself, but you have to be filled. So you are commanded to be filled, but this filling has to be done to you. So then we get into the nuts and bolts of living out our lives throughout Ephesians and that only possible by being filled. You see these imperatives and these commands start coming forward. It says wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives.

Children, obey your parents, servants, obey your masters. Put on the whole armor of God. Stand against the wiles of the devil and these commands for you to do these things. So it’s not saying, and this is important because this is a group of people that have really pushed this falsehood on people that once you are saved, all you have to do is just look back on God’s goodness to you of being saved. Don’t worry about all the rules. Don’t worry about the commands and all that. That’s stuff that the old fundamentalists believed. But now all you have to do is just enjoy the Lord. Just enjoy him. And people will say that stuff and they become what we call antinomian against the law as if the Lord is no longer interested in his own character and he just wants us to be happy. But rather the Lord loves his character and his character is brought out with these commands so that we might be like him.

And so the roadmap that I would give you is right there in Ephesians six when it says to put on the whole armor of God. You see it goes from truth to righteousness, zeal, faith, thankful over to the salvation, the sword and prayer. Let me just go through this just very quickly, a roadmap to how I think the Lord is asking us to do. Number one, the belt of truth is about surrounding yourself with truth. And this is a difficult thing for us today where we are surrounded by social media, talking heads, TV and all kinds of things that are bombarding our brains, bombarding us with constant falsehood to the point where there’s some falsehood where we kind of allow into our lives because of how convenient those falsehoods are. And there are so many conspiracies and so many different things to latch onto with our brains.

And we maybe give ourselves a small little short diet of truth, maybe in the morning with God’s word, and then we just become enveloped in this world’s falsehood. We need to stop starving ourselves from truth and indulge in truth. And part of that is committing to God’s house particularly. But number two, we need to love righteousness. What we find in God’s word is Romans chapter one taught us that before Christ, we hated truth and we actually suppressed it with our unrighteousness. So loving the righteousness of God, studying his word and finding out what that righteousness is and loving it. Number three, asking the Lord for zeal for the gospel. We are ashamed as Romans 1:16 tells us, we’re typically ashamed of the gospel. What we need to be is have zeal for it. Let it be on our feet and let us race to people and declare the gospel.

We need to strengthen our faith in Christ, not just our faith in things of this world, but in Christ himself. We need to be thankful to the Lord. We need to sharpen our sword, which is the spirit and God’s word and we need to pray and those things are the things we need.

Sam Rohrer:

And with that, Renton, we’re right to the end of the program. Thank you so much for being with me today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. And I trust that this has been helpful to you as well as has been to us. God bless you. Walk in the spirit.