Key Life Network

Matthew: Welcome to Key Life. I'm Matthew, executive producer of the program, and our host is author and seminary professor Steve Brown. The church has suffered under "do more, try harder" religion for too long, and Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. If you were listening over the last day or two, we have looked at preliminary observations on what we're going to be doing over the next few weeks. We're going to be talking about fear, shame, guilt, and regret. That sounds horrible, but it's not because the Bible deals with all of those issues in an amazing way. It doesn't fix them, but it makes it a whole lot better.

Christians ought to dance more than they do. Christians ought to laugh more than they do. Christians ought to be freer than they are. Believe it or not, the Bible gives a map on how to do that, and we're going to be talking about that over the next few weeks.

Before we get into lies, so much of what I'm going to be teaching over the next few weeks may sound like I'm angry at, or a denunciation of, the church and its leadership. That's the nature of calling or trying to critique and correct some false narratives that I've believed and others have believed, seeing lies for what they are.

But you need to know that this series and the book I'm working on about the horrors of the church and the abuse the church has caused—and there are a lot of books around on those subjects, some helpful and others not so much—I love the church. The church's teaching has been the bedrock of my life ever since I knew some of these truths.

The church really is my mother. Just like so many others, I've believed, taught, and tried to live the narratives that we're going to examine. My series on Key Life and the book I'm working on are not "look what they did to us." It's about a dark and destructive place that we all sometimes go together—you, me, and everybody else you know.

Last Sunday, my pastor opened his sermon with a question that was so cool. He asked, "Have you ever had your favorite song sung by a singer who botched it?" I've thought about that question a lot. As my pastor pointed out, I honestly believe that the Christian faith is the song of Jesus to a world that has forgotten how to sing.

The problem is that we don't sing the song very well. We often sing off-key. Our voices are sometimes scratchy and harsh or, in my case, sound like a bullfrog. We sometimes even have trouble getting the melody right. Almost all of us try to sing the song of Jesus, and that's a good thing. When a dog plays checkers, you shouldn't be too critical of the dog. You are just surprised that the dog is playing checkers at all.

If I say "them" or "you" more often than I say "we," I need to repent, and I regret that. What's going to follow in this series and in the book is the way to look at guilt, shame, fear, and regret more as a result than a cause. Back to the metaphor of slain dragons, "there are dragons here," the old maps used to say.

That's the bad news on a map indicating dangerous places, places of great pain in our lives. The good news is that those dragons—the lies we believe—once identified and named, really lose a good deal of their power in the light. And so, we're going to be talking about those lies.

I suppose to start with, we should talk just about lies and their nature. John 8:44 says this: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

That's what Jesus said about Satan. That's what Jesus said about the dark side. That's what Jesus said about what is sometimes our proclivity. "Everybody lies." That's what Dr. Gregory House said—did you ever watch that on television? He said it repeatedly in that series, *House M.D.*

While that was a cynical observation, frankly, there's some truth in it. The often-used phrase "take everything with a grain of salt" is a recognition that House had a point. Tomorrow, as we begin this series, we're going to step back and look at the nature of lies and what they do to us. It is incredible, some of the dangerous things we believe. When you get the truth, it can change your life in some radical and wonderful ways. You think about that. I'm in.

Matthew: Thanks, Steve. You know, Steve said Christians should dance more than they do. I don't know, I've seen some of you dance. At the very least, we could certainly agree we need to live more fully in the freedom that Jesus has given us. We'll explore more from Steve's new book tomorrow; I hope you'll join us.

When is the last time you read Psalms? If they all kind of seem to be the same thing, you might want to pay attention. We recently spoke with Chad Bird about his new book called *Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms*. Take a listen to part of that conversation.

Steve Brown: *Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms*. Jesus isn't in the Book of Psalms—are you crazy? That's the Old Testament. No, seriously, say a word about that.

Chad Bird: I suppose the best place to go to answer that question would be to Jesus himself. He says in the last chapter of Luke, after his resurrection, he's already appeared to the two Emmaus disciples and told them that everything written about him in Moses and the prophets had to be fulfilled. Now he says, repeating himself but adding to that, he says to his disciples that everything written about him in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms had to be fulfilled.

That's a beautiful thing about the Psalms. They're, in one way or another, the prayers of Jesus or are about Jesus. So Jesus is the writer of everything you read in scripture; he is the written word also.

Steve Brown: What do you mean "untamed"?

Chad Bird: When I was working on the book, I was trying to come up with a title that was going to encapsulate what I'm really wanting to get across. I landed on "untamed" because if there's anything that is kind of shocking to people who are new to the Psalms, it's that these seem a little wild. When you start praying through the Psalms, if you're just kind of used to your Sunday school prayers or your eloquently written prayers that are sometimes used in church—I'm thinking of the traditional collects from the *Book of Common Prayer* or things like that—and then you encounter the Psalms, you're like, "Whoa, what is going on here?"

This is some crazy kind of language that's used. I'm not just talking about hyperbole, even though there's plenty of that there, but the things they say to God, the things they say about their enemies around them, the raw honesty that they use to talk to God about their fears, their frustrations, their anger, their feelings of betrayal. All of that, I thought, was summed up with "untamed." These are not domesticated prayers that you're typically going to hear in church; instead, they have a very raw flavor to them.

Steve Brown: That's a great title and a great truth, too. Atheists don't pray because they're afraid God might show up, and Christians don't pray because they're afraid he won't. And the reason he won't, he says, is because "you're boring me silly. I'm going to go do something else and listen to somebody else because you tell me you love me when you don't. You make all kinds of promises you're never going to fulfill. You use words that are boring words. You never yell at me, you never question me, you never tell me the truth about yourself. So, I'm going to go listen to somebody else." Would that be an appropriate response from God?

Chad Bird: It does often come across that way. I can't tell you how many times in the past I would pray something, and at the same time, I'm having a conversation in my head saying to myself, "You're not being honest. You're not really telling God what you think, what you feel, what you're experiencing, what you're afraid of because you're afraid if you tell him the truth, he's going to pull out a hammer and hit you in the head or something." What the Psalms do is they teach us that God wants you to be honest. God wants you to just lay it all out there and let him be God and hear you, and then respond in a way that is fitting with his good and gracious character toward us.

Matthew: If you've ever struggled with knowing what to pray or how to pray, you need to hear this conversation. We'll send it to you on CD for free. Just call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at steve@keylife.org to ask for that CD. To mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada. Again, just ask for the free CD featuring Chad Bird.

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