7 Cornerstones to Building a Biblical Worldview

7 Cornerstones to Building a Biblical Worldview

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. George Barna

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/28/26. 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 special edition of Stand in the Gap Today, as it is our monthly focus with Dr. George Barna on the theme of culture, values, and biblical worldview. And we’re going to tie all of those together today in a different way than normal. I’m joined again today by co-host Dr. Isaac Crockett, who frequently leads our Friday programs and a lot more here on Stand in the Gap Today. And as he and I do together, Stand in the Gap TV program and have for many, many years now. Now, every day we face a culture that demands compromise, doesn’t it? It demands compromise on what? Objective truth, secular humanism, post-modernism among others, have aggressively pushed biblical principles, not because they like it, but they pushed it to the margins, leaving many Christians struggling, struggling how to navigate an increasingly complex, and I’m going to say hostile world.

And sadly, but objectively, our culture here in America, by any honest biblical measurement, would reflect the culture, I’m going to say of the Israel of old, where the prophet Isaiah announced in Isaiah chapter 59 and verse 14, where he uses the phrase, “Truth is fallen in the street.” That’s what the King James says, translates it. The ESV translates that truth has stumbled in the public squares. Well, as believers, we’re called to be aware of the presence of evil and the institutionalizing of what the scripture calls is wickedness in high places. We’re in the world, but we are not to be of the world. For the true believer, we are not to conform to the surrounding culture, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. To what? Well, to truly think as Christ thinks. And joining us today is our true friend here at APN and the faith of witness to the calling that God has placed on his heart many, many years ago, the founder of the original Barna Group, Dr.

George Barna, who now serves as a professor and director of research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. He spent nearly 40 years tracking faith, culture, and worldview in America. And he has a new book that’s coming out and we’re going to build today’s program around that, getting to learn about the book and why he wrote it. It’s entitled How to Think Like Jesus: Seven Cornerstones to Build a Biblical Worldview. And in that book, he lays out the vital non-negotiable beliefs required to process all of life through a biblical lens. And that’s a biblical worldview. So George, that’s a great topic. It’s something that we talk about on this program and have with you for so long. So welcome to the program.

George Barna:

Sam and Isaac, always great to be with you. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, let’s get right into it, George. Before we get into the meat of the book, let’s get a little bit of the why and the wherefore. Let me ask you this first question. What prompted you at this specific moment in your life to write How to Think Like Jesus?

George Barna:

Well, Sam, as you probably realize, I mean, I’m getting toward the end of my career here. And a few years ago I sat back and tried to figure out, I want to end well. I want to finish well. What’s that going to look like? And that’s really what brought me to Arizona Christian University, but it’s also refocused all of my research onto the things that I think are going to make the biggest difference, the things that are going to matter the most, the things that are going to have the biggest impact for the kingdom. And so that led me to putting aside pretty much everything I’m doing other than focusing on issues of worldview development, disciple making, and cultural transformation. And I think those three things go hand in hand. And as I’ve looked at the research and as we’ve talked on this program, time after time, America is experiencing a worldview crisis.

We’ve been seduced. Most people who attend churches regularly have been seduced into believing that they have a biblical worldview. And yet through the American Worldview Inventory, which is our annual assessment of the worldview of Americans, we’ve discovered of course that only 4% of Americans, only 6% of those who call themselves Christian actually have a biblical worldview, which is the ability to think and act like Jesus and therefore to be or become a true disciple. What we believe really matters because you do what you believe. And so if you want to be Christ like you got to think like him so that you can act like him. So this book, How to Think Like Jesus is my attempt to try to prepare people to think like Jesus, to develop the foundation on which we can build a comprehensive worldview. Worldview, if people are uncomfortable with that phrase, it simply means your philosophy of life, how you think things work, who you think you are, why you’re here, your spiritual perspective, all of those things.

And this all kind of builds on Jesus in Matthew seven talking about how critical it is that you build on solid rock, not on sand. And so we know that a strong foundation is critical. The research behind the book showed that if you don’t just believe these seven cornerstones that we’re going to talk about, but you live them, you own them, they define who you are, 83% of those people then go on to build a full biblical worldview. But if you reject even one of these seven cornerstones, that probability drops to just 2%. And so I thought it was imperative that we clarify this for people and that we challenge Americans, people all over the world for that matter, but certainly Americans. We want them to rethink the foundation of their life on what are they building their life? Are they building it on solid rock, the solid rock of Jesus, the solid rock of God’s word, or are they building it on the sand that our culture constantly gives us?

Isaac Crockett:

George, we just have a moment before break, but what are some of the shifts that you have seen as you’ve studied this for decades now, some of the shifts that have made this such an urgent message for the church?

George Barna:

Well, I think Isaac, we’ve seen Americans become increasingly narcissistic. We’ve seen that fewer and fewer parents believe that they have the ultimate responsibility for shaping their child’s worldview. We’ve seen that churches increasingly have abandoned world intentional and strategic worldview development. We’ve seen that there has been no clear and tested teaching on this issue of a biblical worldview. We’ve seen that fewer and fewer Americans can be considered disciples of Jesus based on the definition that he gives us in the scriptures. And it’s astounding that even though we’ve got about seven out of 10 Americans calling themselves Christians, so few of them actually have a biblical worldview and we’ve seen a growth in biblical illiteracy. These are many other things that we can talk about, but I think the basic perspective is that what we’re doing is we’re putting ourselves on the throne. We’ve thrown God off the throne.

We’ve said life is all about us. We determine our own destiny, our own future. And so we’re going to do the best we can to get all the happiness that we can squeeze out of life.

Sam Rohrer:

And ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’ll be right back. Our theme today is Seven Cornerstones to Building a Biblical Worldview. Special guest Dr. George Barna talking about his new book. We’ll be right back. Well, if you’re just joining us, we’re just getting going on the program today. Our theme is this, seven cornerstones to building a biblical worldview. Ever think about that. We talk about biblical worldview on this program all the time. That’s why we are here in part, to emphasize the authority of scripture and a way of looking at life that reflects the way God would have us to look at life. So seven cornerstones to building a worldview comes right off of a new book that Dr. George Barner, who is our guest again today, is releasing and it’s be available just here in a couple of weeks and then he’ll explain to us a little bit more where that can be gotten.

But I have the book here right in front of me, an advanced copy. It’s called How to Think Like Jesus. And we’re going to talk about these seven cornerstones here now. Dr. Isaac Crockett and I are with George today as we often are. But with that in mind, in our first segment, Dr. Barna shared the urgency behind his research and why so many Christians today hold, actually just started to get into this, why they hold so many religious opinions without actually possessing a functional biblical worldview, some really staggering numbers, 6% and 4%. We’ll go over some more of those. And what’s disturbing to me and we’ve talked about before is that there can be so many, about 70% of people in America say identify as Christians, but they absolutely do not reflect the essential core components that would make a person a Christ follower, a Christian, a disciple of Christ.

And either there is such an ignorance that they’re not aware of that incongruity of though, or I’m going to say perhaps even worse, don’t care. Anyway, we want to talk some about this because in this segment we want to lay the foundation by turning directly to the first four cornerstones. I’m just going to tell you what they are right off, the nature of God, the reality of human sin, salvation through Jesus Christ, and the authority and reliability of scripture. We’ll go with these first. George, again, we’ve talked about it. It seems to me when I look at the book that you’ve actually taken the core of your calling over the years and the sum total of all these 40 some years of research that you’re doing and putting it all together. And that’s what I want to look at because as a part of what you’re revealing here, the key questions, who is God?

What is wrong with humanity? How is that brokenness restored? And where do we find ultimate authority? You say there, you have found that these core truths have so eroded that even within the church, fewer than half of American adults trust an absolute authority of scripture and only 27% recognize that the human heart is inherently sinful. That’s incredible. So let’s go here. Out of the hundreds of potential theological concepts, George, what did you research and what do you pinpoint these specific for starting in the God, sin, salvation and scripture as non-negotiable pillars for building a functional biblical worldview?

George Barna:

Well, Sam, I mean, the boring but true answer is that this is statistics and so there are different statistical procedures that I use when I analyze data and one of them clusters concepts together to identify the strongest bonds or correlations between these different theological or philosophical ideas. The computer does that work. It chews through all the data and it brings things together in ways that would take a human weeks, weeks, months, maybe years to figure out. It does it pretty quickly. And in going through that coursing through the data, it identified seven beliefs and the associated behaviors that indicated if you don’t get these right, all of the other concepts that we’re looking at that are part of the biblical worldview won’t matter. You’re not going to buy into them because you’re not believing in the foundations on which those are based. So really that’s how we came upon this.

It was an unusually strong statistical correlation where we had dozens and dozens and dozens of factors that were being analyzed, thousands of combinations. And when the computer first identified these for me, I was so embarrassed because I though, oh, I must have written the formulas wrong because what it’s giving me is essentially Sunday school 101. So believe in God, know who he is, recognize that you’re a sinner. Understand that the only antidote to sin is Jesus Christ. There’s no other way. The Bible is truth. If you ignore it, you do it to your power. I mean, these kinds of things. And I’m thinking, man. But then as I really thought and prayed about it, I checked the formulas and I’d done them right. So I was trying to figure out how did this happen? And it occurred to me, you know what? When I think about every great philosophy that I’ve ever been exposed to, it was built on a solid foundation.

It started with basics, things that everybody can grasp, everybody can understand, everybody can build on. And that’s the beauty of simplicity. And I think that’s what the seven cornerstones are. They’re some of the simplest truths of the Christian faith, but we think that we’re so complex, so sophisticated, so well educated that we’re way beyond that. We don’t need to worry about the basics. I’m here to tell you, looking at the raw data, we better worry about the basics and we better get back to them. And the beauty of this is that they’re interwoven together. There’s kind of a natural relationship between these core truths that makes them so accessible and so valuable to us.

Isaac Crockett:

George, I’ve been this week going back over some of your writings, looking at the information from your team at the Cultural Research Center at this new book that’s coming out How to Think Like Jesus. I’ve pre-ordered it. Everybody listening, you ought to get this book. But I was looking at some of your older books where this is a topic you’ve been studying and talking about, warning us about for decades, I guess we could say. And I was thinking, I’m a child of the 90s, not the 1890s, but the 1990s. And in the 1990s it was this real popular WWJD, what would Jesus do? Which goes back to the 1890s, a book written in his steps by pastor. But we don’t know what Jesus would do because we don’t know as a culture what Jesus did, even in our Sunday schools, even our churches. They don’t talk about what did Jesus do?

What does Jesus teach? So I don’t know what he taught. I don’t know what he though. I don’t know how to think like him. So now I’m believing in a false version of Jesus. Muslims believe in Jesus as a prophet. Lots of people believe in Jesus, but they don’t have that biblical worldview. What you’re talking about here is so different. And as you’ve looked at this now over the decades, how has this collapsed, these compromises within the church, how have they changed it so that even if one of these cornerstones is pushed out, it really messes us up from really understanding how Jesus though. Can you talk to us about how important each one of these four becomes?

George Barna:

Yeah. I mean, really Isaac, it’s a unified whole. If you take something out of this group of beliefs and the associated behaviors, and I keep saying behaviors because a worldview is not just about believing the right stuff or understanding the right things. It’s about believing them so deeply, so sincerely that you wrap your lifestyle around those beliefs. Everything you do is in concert, in harmony with those beliefs. And so the whole foundation crumbles if you take out one of these cornerstones, you think about it. If you don’t believe that there’s the God of scripture who’s all knowing, who’s all powerful, who’s loving, who’s the definition of truth, who cares about us. Well, if you don’t believe in him, then you really can’t believe that there is absolute moral truth and therefore you’re not going to believe that the Bible is real and reliable and relevant and true.

If you don’t believe that there’s absolute moral truth, well, then you’re not going to buy into Jesus as the only way to salvation. You’re not going to buy into the notion that you’re a sinner, that you can offend God, that God is offendable. If you don’t believe that success is consistent obedience to God, then you’re not going to think that sin matters if it even exists. You’re not going to believe that Jesus Christ is a savior, much less the only savior. You’re not going to rely upon God. You’re not going to buy into absolute more truth. I mean, what I’m trying to say is that all of these things are so tightly interwoven that if you reject one of them, essentially you’re rejecting all of them, even though you may give verbal assent or you may even think that you believe in some of these others, you can’t believe in them without believing in the others.

And that’s one of the things that I’ve come to learn about God’s word is that it’s not a bunch of phrases or statements or quotes or verses to be taken out of context because it fits the moment. That’s situational truth. God is not about situational truth. His truth is true in every situation, but the only way we know that is because it’s one interwoven body of truth. He is truth. He codified truth for us in the scriptures and every word in there is true, but you’re not going to understand it unless you see the big picture as well as all the details and how it all fits together.

Sam Rohrer:

And George, that brings us right up to the break here. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve listened to this program before, you know that what Dr. George Barna just said is true. That’s why oftentimes we will go right to the beginning of the word of God to Genesis. If God did not create, then there is no sin. There’s no need of salvation. But how do we know about all of that by the written word of God, the scripture? Well, is it all true or it’s not true? That’s part of the problem today. We say it’s all true. If it’s all true, then we got to deal with God. We find out about it and sin and the plan of redemption, biblical worldview. Stay with us. We’ll come back and look at the three additional principle cornerstones.

Well, continuing in our conversation now with Dr. George Barna, it’s in regard to a new book that he has coming out. I’m going to ask him just a minute to tell you all where the best place to find that is, but it’s entitled How to Think Like Jesus: Seven Cornerstones to Build a Biblical Worldview. And our focus today is looking at these seven cornerstones, and I’m not going to repeat all we’ve gone through. Listen to the program again and you can walk through and get the substance of this because the existence and the reality of God, that was one, human sin and that all people are sinners, that’s second principle, that only Jesus Christ can forgive your sins and save your soul is the emphasis of the third cornerstone. Fourthly, that absolute moral truth does exist. And I’m going to add into that, that truth is Jesus Christ, who is the truth, the living truth.

And the word of God is the very written truth of God alone, authoritative in all things. And as George said in that last segment, you can’t take out any one of those. They are an integral core. Minimize or remove any one of those and you’ve bought into the lie of the devil himself, the serpent who said to Eve in the garden when sin first came into this world, half God said.

Departure is very easy from the truth and the devil’s good at causing people. And that’s really what this information suggests. Now we turn to the final three cornerstones, the existence of absolute moral truth. I’m going to talk more about that, the true definition of success and life’s ultimate purpose. And while the first four I mentioned establish what we believe about God and his word, these final three I think dictate how we actually live, evaluate success, which seems to be so important, and then how we make everyday choices. Yet Dr. Marna’s research exposed when I look at it, and we’ve talked about it much in earlier programs, exposes a stark and troubling reality about America today where only 25%, a quarter, 25% of adults affirm absolute moral truth. They don’t think the truth is always true. Only 25%. Just 23% defines success as obedience to God.

So now you’re getting more precise and even the numbers drop in a microscopic 3%, 3% of American adults embrace all seven of these cornerstones simultaneously. The overwhelming 96% majority has adopted what George has described as syncretism. You could call it like this, a cut and paste type of faith. Right. George, these final three cornerstones focus on absolute truth, true success, and life’s ultimate purpose. Why have these practical application points been seen and identified as such a severe decline, even among regular church goers who substitute secular definitions of success for biblical ones? I mean, this is a big deal. Explain it please.

George Barna:

It’s huge, Sam, you’re right. And for those people who don’t take faith that seriously or don’t take Satan that seriously, it’s imperative that we all understand there is a spiritual war going on around us, through us every single day. And Satan is strategic. He promotes this kind of self-reliance, this self-trust, self-belief that facilitates these kinds of ideas popping up in our head. And it does go back to the very beginning of the Bible, back to Genesis in the Garden of Eden where Satan said essentially, “Oh, come on, you know better. God trusts you. So just follow your desires and your feelings. How could they take you any place wrong?” Well, they always take us to the wrong place because we’re selfish. We’re just not in tune with God sufficiently. And so we wind up determining our own truth. We say, “Well, everything depends on the situation, how we feel about it, whether or not it makes us feel good, whether or not it seems right in our own eyes.” And of course, throughout the scriptures, there are verses that talk about the dangers of that very thing.

And so you look at what Satan does in our culture and what he’s done is he’s helped us to believe that our feelings really are what determine truth. There can’t be any absolute moral truth because it depends on the individual in his or her circumstances. We rely on ourselves more than God because God’s not accessible or he’s remaining silent or whatever, or he doesn’t understand. Some people would say that. We’re trusting in the things that we own and possess and consume rather than that which we sacrifice to be more like Jesus. We’re looking for things that give us pleasure more than opportunities to serve. We’re more concerned about image than we are about reality. One of the things that drives Americans is the pursuit of happiness, which is interesting to me. I’ve done a lot of research on this too, and there’s a big difference between happiness and joy.

The scriptures tell us seek joy, that’s one of the fruits of the spirit, but we want happiness, which is something that comes and goes. It changes with the circumstances. Joy is based on our enduring relationship with and our understanding of and our commitment to God and his ways. We’re more interested in change than we are transformation. Again, two very different concepts, change being the cultural concept, transformation being what God wants to do in us and through us. We tend to believe that we’re good people rather than understanding that we’re sinners. So Satan the father of lies, he’s such an expert in deception has really led us astray. And so that’s why we see this severe decline. Who is it that we’re trusting to lead us down the right path? Well, we’ve chosen the culture which is directed by Satan rather than heaven and God’s ways.

Isaac Crockett:

We’re looking at 96% is the number that Sam just mentioned from your research. 96% of Americans practice the syncretism that we’re talking about as Sam just said, this copy and paste. So I like a little bit of this. So they can say that they’re a Christian, but they believe all kinds of different things and they involve, as you just said, George, their own thoughts. They make themselves ultimately God, humanism, and they take a little bit of this and that, maybe some postmodern thought here, maybe some socialism or Eastern new age stuff there. What does it look like? In 2026 in the church today, as you’re writing this book about this church, what does it look like in real life? And you’re talking about spiritual warfare. Why is this such a deadly attack on the church?

George Barna:

Well, because what we’re doing, Isaac, is we’re taking God’s truth and we’re twisting it. We’re twisting it for our own comfort. We’re twisting it so that we fit in. We don’t want to stand out when in point of fact, who stood out more than Jesus? I mean, that’s what made him so attractive. But what we want to do is we want to fit in. We want to be doing what’s commonly viewed as normal. Okay. Well, maybe we’re going to have to look at it a different way. So we look at these cornerstones. We know that yeah, most Americans would say that some God, some deity, some higher power exists. But when we think about that God, we form him in our own image. We remold him to be comfortable for how we want to live. And so we conclude that, you know what? If there is a God, he exists to give us what we want, give us what we need to make us happy, to help us, to please us.

This whole idea of being born sinners, most Americans reject that notion. That’s one of the cornerstones, recognizing that thanks to Adam and Eve, we’ve got this proclivity with this leaning towards sinfulness in our lives because we put ourselves first. That’s our first sin, is elevating ourselves above God and believing that what we need is what matters most as opposed to us being made for God’s purposes. So we say, well, yeah, I mean, we’re not born sinners. We can choose to sin, but really even if we do that, it doesn’t matter that much. There are no eternal consequences. We can make mistakes, but we’ve got reasonable motives. Maybe we didn’t understand what was going on, but we don’t have to worry about sin. And therefore, when we say The third cornerstone, we have to understand Jesus is the only answer to our sinful condition. Our sin has eternal consequences.

Well, we’ve got to take a look at that and say, “Well, no, no, no. Jesus is the only way.” We’ve got less than a quarter of all Americans who not only trust Christ as their savior, but believe that he is the only pathway to forgiveness, to grace, to eternal life in the presence of God. How do we know these things? Well, because there is absolute moral truth. Well, where do we get that absolute moral truth from? Most people say it doesn’t exist. We are the source of truth. The Bible says something absolutely different. It says that God is truth, and what he’s done is he’s put that on paper for us as a guide for us. But what we’ve chosen to say instead is, well, the Bible’s a good book. It’s a helpful book sometimes. And so it’s useful to know some of its principles because you might need one of them someday to give you guidance or comfort.

But that again is just undermining what God has given to us to lead a great life. But what is our purpose for leading that life is to know him, love him, serve him with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul.

And yet what we say is not really. Faith is there just to give us a boost in those dark moments, but our life isn’t about God. God gave us life, obviously, just to enjoy and to make the most of it and to accumulate as much good, fun, worthwhile stuff as we can. Complete reversal of the way God sees it. When we talk about success being consistent obedience to God, that’s not the way that Americans see it. They see success being enjoying life, having happiness, accumulating stuff, being popular, going to the best schools, having the nicest

Sam Rohrer:

Schools. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’re at the break. The next segment we’re going to talk about now, so what? Now what do we do in light of all these things? Now, as we wrap up today’s program, Pastor Isaac Crockett and I have been talking to Dr. George Barna. We do that, well, oftentimes about once a month. As we deal with research and reports that have been released that Dr. George Barna has overseen. Today we’re talking about a book that he’s releasing. It’s going to be coming out and I will ask him here in just a moment to tell us how you can find it, but it’s entitled How to Think Like Jesus, How to Think Like Jesus: Seven Cornerstones to Build a Biblical Worldview. We’ve talked about some of those things, staggering numbers, like 96% of Americans now have a customized syncretic faith where they pick and choose.

You know what that means according to the word of God, where you pick and choose what you consider to be true? You know what scripture says about it? It’s staggering. Jesus said in Matthew 17, there’s going to be a lot of people stand before him one day, which we all will, and we’ll say, “But haven’t we done all these things in your name? What’s that mean? They said these were people who were professing to be Christian. In your name, we did these things. Even did some significant things,” Jesus said at the end of that sermon on the mount. And then he tells them the words, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. You thought you were okay with me, but I was never okay with you.” Put that in light of 96% who are in that category. How can I say that?

Well, because God’s word says that. Is it serious? Yeah, you can make the connection. Very, very serious. According to George’s research, a mere 1%, 1% of young adults possess the foundational cornerstones necessary to process life through a biblical lens. As he said, you can’t take out one piece. You can’t take out one cornerstone and come to true salvation and faith in Christ alone. Now, George, I could say a lot of things right here, but it brings us really to the point of saying, all right, so what? Now what? I’ve tried to give a little bit of an emphasis from my perspective because there’s a whole lot that depends on it. But before you answer that, where a person listening right now and say, “Well, you know what? Maybe I’ve bought into this. Maybe I’m one of those 96%. I agree with a lot of what I heard, but God’s word all true?

Everything?” They may not agree with that. There are gaps that people listening today may have, and it may be alerting them to maybe the Holy Spirit’s working in their heart. Tell us where they can find this book and then answer that question, please, George.

George Barna:

Well, yeah, the book is scheduled to come out September 15th and you can pre-order it now via amazon.com, but little secret here, I’m probably not supposed to say, but if you really want to get it now, you could go to georgebarna.com because we got my author’s copies and if somebody really wants them, I’d be happy to ship them out before the book officially releases. So you’ve got georgebarna.com and amazon.com. Those would be the places. The other thing to keep in mind is if you’re wondering where you stand, we’ve got the online worldview assessment that people can take. This book partly comes out of that seeing just how unfortunate the worldview of so many church people are, so many Christian school kids. We’ve got thousands and thousands of people using the assessment tool online, which you can get at acuworldview.com. But that’s a helpful, objective, comprehensive measure of do you have a biblical worldview?

It specifically breaks out your scores on the seven cornerstones. If your foundation is rotten, it will identify where within that foundation are you really struggling? Where can you start if you want to rebuild this and really have a worldview that enables you to become Christlike. Hopefully these tools will be useful.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. Well, thank you very much for that. Isaac, how about you just pose a question to George at this last moment here? I do want to close the program in prayer, but pose whatever you have on your mind to Dr. Barna before we wrap this up.

Isaac Crockett:

George, as somebody, I’m a pastor, I’m working with families, I’m a father, I have my own children that I’m trying to help instill a worldview with them that is biblical. What do you say to those who have impact on young people’s lives? Because we know that our worldview is pretty much mostly complete by the time we’re in middle school. What encouragement do you have for parents, grandparents, pastors who are impacting the next generation?

George Barna:

Isaac, a few years back I wrote a book called Revolution and the whole point of that book was to encourage people not to see the church as an institution or a bunch of events maybe on Sundays, but the church is meant to be a community of like-minded, repentant sinners who are supportive of each other and are growing together in God’s truth, in God’s ways and having the joy of worshiping him together. The exhortation of book Revolution, and it went deeper into it, but it was don’t go to church, be the church. What does that mean? It means if you’re a parent, your child is a gift from God, but that gift comes with a responsibility and success in raising your child isn’t getting them into Harvard or Princeton or into a fancy job or nice clothing. It’s making sure that they are bonded to God for life, heart to heart, that their God is just wedded to God’s heart and that’s what they’re living for.

Go back and read Deuteronomy six where it tells you as a parent, from the moment you wake till the moment you go to bed, you spend time with your children, you read scripture with them, you talk about the things of the Lord with them, you help them interpret the world around us, you pray together with them, you pray for them. All of these things, that’s what parents do. Make sure that you’re teaching them how to think like Jesus because when you can think like Jesus, then you will act like Jesus because we do what we believe. So that’s critical. As an individual, you’ve got to be modeling that Christ-like lifestyle, not only for your children, but for everybody else because the greatest impact that you’re going to have is on how you live and what people see you doing through your life. You can talk about Jesus all you want, but if you’re not living like him, your talk is empty.

It’s worthless. It doesn’t have impact. Spend your time studying God’s word, praying to the Holy Spirit to guide you in your interpretation of it and your application of it. Make sure that your relationship with God is the top priority in your life. Luke 14:26, God’s very clear on that. Jesus said, “You cannot be my disciple unless you put God first above and beyond anything and everything else in life.” Love other disciples. In John 15: eight, Jesus talked about, “You want to be my disciple? Prove it by loving other disciples.” I’m sorry, that was in John 13. In John 15, he talked about if you want to be a disciple, then you have to produce spiritual fruit. These are the things that we have to be focused on every day, not how do I get ahead in my job, not how do I buy a bigger house, but how do I become a better, deeper, more impactful disciple for the kingdom of God?

That’s really what our life is about. That is success.

Sam Rohrer:

George, that brings this right up here. Isaac, I’m going to ask you to close in prayer as well and pray for the things that you ask and what George has said. Ladies and gentlemen, the book, you can find the book, How to Think Like Jesus on Amazon or you can special if you wanted to go earlier, georgebarna.com, that website. Isaac, please close.

Isaac Crockett:

Our gracious father, I pray you’d help every one of us who’s accepted Christ as savior to think like him, to be conformed to his image, to be more like him. For anyone listening who has not accepted, put their faith in Jesus Christ, a savior, I pray that they would do so even today. We thank you for this program and for all that you’re doing. It’s in Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.

Sam Rohrer:

Amen and amen. Dr. George Barna, thank you so much and we certainly pray that God will use this book mightily. I’m sure that he will. Thanks for being with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today and go out. Not just thinking like Jesus, that’s where it starts, but act like Jesus would act.