Save America Ministries

Announcer: This is Viewpoint with attorney and author Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint is a one-hour talk show confronting the issues of America's heart and home. And now with today's edition of Viewpoint, here is Chuck Crismier.

Chuck Crismier: What does it mean to believe? Are you a believer or a beggar? That's our conversation here today on Viewpoint. I'm glad that you've joined us for this conversation as always with ever-increasing conviction, talk that transforms. If you go into stores, it almost depends on whatever store you want to go into, almost all stores will seem to have some sort of a sign that says, believe.

Believe what? Well, just believe. Believe what? Believe who? Believe about what? Well, just believe, believe, believe. Well, it sounds good. It gives good feelings, good vibes, but in reality, it doesn't mean very much because belief has to have an object. Belief has to have an object, and the object of your belief will determine whether you're a beggar or a believer, a real believer.

So today on Viewpoint, we're going to have a great conversation with a new guest to the program. He's never joined us here. He's joining us here from Oklahoma, and he says that he gained an insight concerning the nature of belief, concerning the nature of faith, and he said it has to do with my outlook, my viewpoint as to whether I'm a beggar or a believer.

Now, as you know, here on this program, Viewpoint, we say always determines destiny. We're not talking about this program that's determining destiny. We're talking about your viewpoint, my viewpoint. There are no neutral viewpoints. Every viewpoint is based upon a belief. Every viewpoint is based upon a belief, some sort of belief or a series of beliefs, and they do determine destiny. So there are no neutral viewpoints.

But what we believe has everything to do with what happens in our lives, whether or not we receive God's blessing or not, whether or not we walk in the straight and narrow way that Jesus promised, or whether we walk in the broad way that leads to destruction. And isn't it interesting that Jesus addressed all of his statements not to unbelievers for the most part, but to those who professed to be followers of the one true God, the Jewish people.

His apostles also addressed those who claimed to be followers of the one true God, Jews and/or professing believers in Yeshua, Jesus Christ. They did not address pagans for the most part. The Bible does not address pagans for the most part; it addresses believers. And it's a calling for believers. But what if we don't believe the way God intended for us to believe? Because he said, "My ways are not your ways. My ways are higher than your ways." So what ways is it that we're believing in and for and through and to?

That's what we're talking about here today on Viewpoint. It might sound a little confusing at first, but as we get into the conversation here today, I think ultimately you're going to be edified, you're going to be strengthened, you're going to be encouraged, maybe even a little bit corrected, maybe exhorted in many different ways. So our special guest today, Kelly K, is joining us. He doesn't want to reveal his last name because he wants you to believe him whether or not you know his last name. And he said we need to stop begging God for what he's already promised. Kelly, it's good to have you on the program.

Kelly K: Good to be here, man. Thank you so much. I'm honored.

Chuck Crismier: Well, is anything good happening in Oklahoma?

Kelly K: That's a big question. There's a lot good happening. The fact that I'm in Oklahoma has nothing to do with it. But yeah, there's a lot going good in Oklahoma. It's getting warm. I'm getting to spend some time in my pool. That's a good thing right there.

Chuck Crismier: Well, this matter of belief is a big deal. One of the things that I have come to realize, Kelly, is that belief is directly related to two other words. One is the word faith, and the other is the word trust. And they're all rooted in the same root word, but they're different facets of the same root word. So when we say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," what we're really saying is have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and you be saved, and trust him with everything you have so that faith, belief, and trust all come together as one composite. Does that make sense to you?

Kelly K: It does make sense to me, but it may not to everyone listening today because our culture has changed what it means to believe, especially in belief in God. When we say believe in God, believe in Jesus as the Son of God, that doesn't mean acknowledge that he was a real human, he was a person, that God exists. We see two types of belief in the Bible, but most people never notice it. We see belief that saves and we see belief that doesn't because the Bible also tells us demons believe in Jesus. Well, we know there's no salvation for them.

Chuck Crismier: Well, not only does it say that demons believe in Jesus, it says they tremble. And we don't know very many Christians today that tremble at the word of God.

Kelly K: For sure, for sure. So we got to figure out what this even means. What's he talking about? What are these different beliefs? What is that really about? I want to make sure that if it's belief that saves me, I want to make sure, at least me anyway, that I've got the right one.

Chuck Crismier: Well, yeah. And so it's so important that we discuss this because from a Greco-Roman viewpoint, and I'm sure that you're not Jewish, you're not Hebrew, so that means you're Greco-Roman mostly because the whole Western world is Greco-Roman. And so that's our heritage. That's how we look at things. That's how we form our viewpoints. And so we tend to think that belief means to give assertion or affirmation to certain facts, certain truths.

And so we have in the journalistic field: who, what, where, when, and why. Well, you get a lot of the who, what, where, and when, but very little of the why. And the reason is because it's deemed too dangerous to get into the why territory because that involves assertion of a serious viewpoint, and we don't want to go there. So who, what, where, and when, that seems to be the viewpoint of Christians as to discipleship, as to what it means to study the word of God. It's about information, not transformation.

Kelly K: Yeah, and that's a problem. That's so funny that you say that because what I teach constantly is it's not about the what, it's about the why. Everything in our walk with God is about the why. And what you just said blows my mind and it fits perfectly with why I wrote the book, is that nobody wants to look at why.

We don't want to look at why we do what we do, why we say what we say, or why the Bible does what it does and says what it says. But finding the why reveals the heart. So if I want to know the why of anything or the heart of God, I've got to look at why. Why did he do this? Why did he say that? Why do I do it? Why do I say it? That's what's going to reveal our true beliefs is the why, and that's the one you said we don't want to look at. That right there is already massive.

Chuck Crismier: Well, it's interesting because when we first launched this program as a former trial lawyer of 20 years from California, we were interested, lawyers are interested in the who and the what and the where, all those factual information pieces of information, we call it evidence. But then also we need to somehow convince the jury that somewhere along all of that evidence there's a why, and that may go to whether a person is actually a criminal or not, may go to whether or not they actually did something that was civilly wrong and should be punished or not. And so we're going to talk about this matter of belief, friends. It's very important.

Chuck Crismier: Welcome back to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Crismier. It's conversation as always with ever-increasing conviction, talk that transforms. And you see, when we talk about talk that transforms, we're not talking about talk that informs. Now, in order to get to the transformation, normally there has to be a certain amount of information.

But it's not for information's purpose. And so here on this program, unlike many so-called Christian talk shows, it's not about information. The information is important, but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is why the information is given to us by God who reveals everything to us. Why? Why did God say what he said?

Our answer to that question will determine whether or not we're going to live by faith or not, whether we're going to trust God or not. So this word believe is so incredibly important. Our guest today says, he opens his book saying the truth is every person in this world is a believer in something. They are the reason you do what you do, why you dress the way you dress, why you say what you say, why you love what you love and hate what you hate, whether you realize it or not, you live out and for your beliefs.

But those beliefs, are they transforming you? Or are they actually conforming you? Conforming you to the way the world looks at life. The way our normal, natural human instincts and so on cause us to think and appraise what we think are the factual evidences around us.

The apostle Paul put it this way. He says the natural man cannot perceive or understand the things of the spirit of God, for they're foolishness unto him, neither can he know them for they are only spiritually discerned. So today on Viewpoint, you could say actually one of the main purposes for our program today is to move from natural discernment to spiritual discernment, to try to understand more accurately what it means to believe, which has to do with what it means to walk by faith and what it means to truly trust God. So tell us, Kelly, what is it that really motivated you to write this particular book?

Kelly K: Really, it was kind of two struggles I was having at the exact same time that funneled into this. First, I grew up in church. I don't remember not knowing Jesus or God or hearing the gospel. And I looked at my life, I'm in my thirties at the time, and I looked at my life and I'm like, wait a minute, I don't see any of the promises of God in my life.

I believe them. I believe that it's true that he has prepared a way for me, that he's the provider and he's going to make a way and all these things, and my family, we were just struggling. I'm like, wait a minute, this doesn't match. And at the same time, I was reading John 14:12 that said that if I claim to believe in Jesus, because I believe in him, I should be doing the same things he did and even greater.

And I was like, well, I'm not doing that either. But this says if I believe. It didn't say I could; it said if I believe, I will do the same things Jesus did. So I realized there's something broken in my belief because I'm claiming to believe in the Father, I'm believing in Jesus, but I don't see the promises.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, so you had the factual belief. You believed that God existed, you believed that Jesus existed, that he was the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth. You believed all of those things, but it hadn't reached the point of transforming your belief system into truly trusting God.

Kelly K: Yeah, I just wasn't seeing it in my life. I wasn't seeing the evidence of what I claimed to believe.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you know what that does? What you're basically saying is you were not a Hebraic foundational Christian. Because if you had been a Hebraic Christian, in other words, you had been like the disciples or Jesus himself, who was born as a Jew, a Hebrew, you would have understood that they have a very different view of what it means to believe.

For them, to believe is not the Greco-Roman view of assertion of agreement with certain facts, but it actually means that yes, those facts exist, but because they exist and I believe them, I'm going to conform my life to them. In other words, it causes transformation in my life. So when Jesus talked about believing, when the Apostle Paul talked about believing, he wasn't talking just about asserting of certain facts that we agree with. He was talking about hanging your very life on what you say you believe.

Kelly K: Right. But I didn't even really know what to believe. I didn't know the accurate things to believe. I just believed that if I raised my hand in church, said a prayer after the pastor, then God was going to start doing all these things in my life. That's how it had been presented to me in church anyway.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, so what was it that pierced through the din, the blindness? You talk about Blind Bartimaeus in your book. Apparently, you were a bit like Blind Bartimaeus, like so many Christians, crying out to God, but you're blind as a bat, can't see out of the other eye.

Kelly K: Right. And really what I came to find out, the whole book is based on the story of Blind Bartimaeus, and truthfully, Blind Bartimaeus is the only one who wasn't blind in the story. He's the one who knew exactly what was going on. He just didn't have physical eyesight. He had all the spiritual eyesight. It's everyone else in the story that needed eyesight, not him.

Chuck Crismier: Isn't that interesting? So isn't it interesting that the prophet Isaiah, God spoke to the people through the prophet Isaiah, he said having eyes to see you see not, and having ears to hear you hear not, lest at any time I should heal you. That was repeated in the New Testament: having eyes to see you see not, and having ears to hear you hear not. And actually, he was speaking that of the religious leaders who were supposed to be the leaders of Israel.

Kelly K: Yes, and sadly we see the same problem today. The leaders of Israel were supposed to be teaching the Jews the truth in the right way, and they were actually keeping everyone out of the presence of God by making it all about these rules and this list of things to do and mark off boxes, and I hate to say it, but we're kind of still there today. We haven't improved much.

Chuck Crismier: Well, yeah, but then you have those who want to get rid of all the rules and say they don't apply, I'm free in Christ and therefore I'm free to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it, however my feelings move me.

Kelly K: And that doesn't work either. That leaves you just as miserable as trying to follow the rules.

Chuck Crismier: You speak very poignantly to that in your book, and that's what really caught my attention. I said here's a guy that really gets it. Here's a guy that for once really gets it. If you listen to the majority of Christian pastors and teachers today, not all but the majority, even those who are very prominent on television and so on, what you find out is they are teaching us or presenting truths about God, but not causing people to actually trust Him. There's a radical difference, and that's the transformation that you're talking about in your book, isn't it?

Kelly K: Yes sir, 100 percent. And if no one ever tells you, you'll never know, and you'll just be frustrated. And that's why we see people come to church, they get on fire for God, and six months later they're done. You're like, what happened? Well, I didn't see in my life what I was told in the church. And it's because you got the right information, but you didn't have the understanding. It wasn't presented to you in a way that you could grab hold of it. That's what happened to me anyway.

Chuck Crismier: And the apostle Paul spoke to that. He spoke to that in the Corinthian church. Here was a church that thought that they were the most spiritual of all of the churches in the New Testament. They really did. They had all the spiritual gifts, Paul talked about that in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 and 14, and I mean they really had it all together, they thought.

But then their lives did not coordinate, were not consistent with what they said they believed. And all of the epistles of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians are about correcting and trying to help them to understand that they didn't understand, that they were living the who, what, why, and where, but they weren't living the why, and therefore their viewpoint was not consistent with God's.

Kelly K: Correct. Yeah, I agree.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, that being the case, you say for your everything is being affected. It all hinges on what you believe about who God is and what his purpose is for you. Now, most people would say I believe who God is. He's omnipotent, he's omniscient, he's sovereign, he's all of those things that we historically say about God in our discipleship classes.

But how about his purpose? Well, is his purpose just to go out and evangelize? That's not what I read in the Great Commission. The Great Commission says go and make disciples, teaching people to obey everything that God has commanded. Well, the reason for that is God's reason. Why is it he wants us to obey? It's not just to keep some rules. It's for something else, isn't it?

Kelly K: Yeah, I mean, he's the creator, right? We're the creation. The truth is I can go jump rope with a water hose. I can play baseball with a guitar, but that's not what those things were created to do. And they're never going to be used to the full potential until we tell them this is what you were created for. There's not about a list of rules; it's about God knows you better than you. He knows what's going to bring fulfillment in your life. And we got to remember why did God create humanity in the first place? For fellowship, to be dependent on him. And what is the one thing we don't want is to be dependent on anything but ourselves.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that's exactly why you see we go to the Declaration of Independence and we say we're independent, where the scripture says no, God says I want you to be dependent upon me, independent from sin and the one who is trying to rule you like a slave, and I want you to be totally, unreservedly dependent upon me.

Kelly K: Exactly. But we're not. Most believers are not.

Chuck Crismier: And that's what your book is about. How do we become dependent upon God? We don't like the word dependence in America because the foundation of our country, I mean, here I am in Richmond, Virginia. What is Richmond, Virginia known for? The City of Rebellion, right? The capital of the Confederacy, the City of Rebellion. So I asked Peter Marshall Jr., whose father was the chaplain of the United States Senate years ago.

Peter Marshall Jr., who is a Christian evangelist much like you, and we had developed a friendship over the years, and he came to be the speaker, the keynote speaker for a gubernatorial inauguration here in Virginia. And so he came over to my home that night, we had dinner, and I drove him down to his hotel that night and I asked him, I said, Peter, with all of your historical understanding of the colonies, he had written the book *The Light and the Glory*, he was very well ensconced in the understanding of our country. I said, from what you know of Richmond, Virginia, how would you describe it? And he without even hesitating, he said, "Stubborn pride and rebellion."

Kelly K: Yeah. Those words actually describe the majority of Christians' lives today, don't they?

Chuck Crismier: Absolutely. And that's why you wrote the book, because the problem is it's not what we believe, it's why we believe it and where does it lead? We're looking at the wrong things. Okay, so you have a chapter called "It's about the Why, Not the What." So when God asks us to do something, it's not always about the specific act or action; it's because of the why behind it. A motive, a goal, a purpose. It makes total and complete sense to God. We just need to trust Him. That's the hardest thing in the world, isn't it?

Kelly K: It can be, yes, absolutely.

Chuck Crismier: Why is that?

Kelly K: Because you can't trust somebody you don't know. And we know a whole lot about God, but very few people actually know him. They don't know his heart. And the fact that we see the Bible as a list of rules shows me that we don't know his heart because the only reason he gave us the rules was to expose our hearts and to see we don't match him.

Chuck Crismier: In other words, what he was doing is exposing the fact that we were rebels at heart and we want to keep staying that way.

Kelly K: That's it. 100 percent, and it will change your life when you understand this. It will change everything when you understand this.

Chuck Crismier: And yet the Prophet Samuel spoke to the first king of Israel and he called him a rebel, and he said God desires obedience but you have been persuaded by rebellion, stubbornness like witchcraft in your life, and so God, he removed His spirit from him because he refused to humble himself and surrender and truly trust God and take Him at His word.

Kelly K: Yeah. Our culture takes pride in being a rebel. I used to. Oh, we're rebels, we do what we want. But when I read in Samuel that the Bible equates rebellion with witchcraft, I'm like, well, there's a problem here. And then I figured out rebellion is actually the first sin that ever was ever committed.

Chuck Crismier: Oh now wait a minute, we're going to have to go into depths on that one, I know, and we're going into a break here friends. I want you to get a copy of this book because as you get into it, your eyes are going to be opened and you're going to be able to see things about your life that might just actually transform it. Sixteen dollars will put the book in your hands, *Beggar to Believer*.

Chuck Crismier: Are you a beggar or a believer? You might say well, I'm a believer, but I think maybe I do a lot of begging. The question is why do we do begging? See, that's the issue. Why? Why do we do begging if we're truly a believer? Our belief can be based on something that changes day by day or minute by minute, but it has to be based on something solid that never changes.

That's the nature of true belief. And it's not just about facts. It's not just about religious facts. It's about taking God at His word. That's what it means to believe. That's what it means to walk in faith. But how do we take God at His word? Well, it's a choice. It's not just a one-time choice; it's an all-day every-day kind of choice. Every hour of the day, every minute of the day.

Kelly, you're a lot younger than I am. I'm probably about twice your age. But I've gone through having have go through exactly the same course of things. I was raised in the church, my father was a pastor for 50 years. I didn't eat, drink, or chew, didn't go with women that did. I never fell away from the faith. I went to a church-related college, graduated with a summa cum laude in psychology and religion, and yet God had to get my attention concerning this matter of what it really means to believe, to trust Him, to take Him at His word. Why is that so difficult in our lives, Kelly?

Kelly K: Because your flesh craves everything the complete total opposite of the Father. That's why. You're born, you're born this way, you're born into it. You don't know any better.

Chuck Crismier: So is that what David meant when he said, "In sin did my mother conceive me"?

Kelly K: I don't think that's exactly what he meant, but it could be, yes.

Chuck Crismier: In the flesh did my mother conceive me. So indeed, the flesh refers to the carnal nature, the fleshly nature. It's a way of seeing life. It's a way of seeing time and eternity, isn't it?

Kelly K: It is, yes.

Chuck Crismier: So when you talked about Blind Bartimaeus, he couldn't see in the natural, but apparently he had better sight in the supernatural than those around him that told him to shut up because he was crying out to Jesus, have mercy upon me.

Kelly K: Yeah, yeah. The world teaches us, let me see it and then I'll believe it. And that's what it's all based on. Proof it, pictures or it didn't happen, prove it. And God works the exact opposite. You got to believe it and then you'll see it. You won't see it if you don't believe it. So we are trained to to work counter opposite of the way God is is commanding us to work right out of the gate. So it's nobody's fault; you are just taught wrong from the very beginning.

Chuck Crismier: You know, this brings us up, and I'm going to step on, you know, they say fear fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And so I'm going to be a little bit of a fool here and rush into this. But in reality, if you go back about 50 years, there was a movement that began called the Charismatic movement and the Word of Faith movement. Maybe 50, maybe 60 years ago.

And originally, it was a corrective movement. What it did was help us to see that God wants us to take Him at His word. Don't just pray about things by rote every Wednesday night when you go to prayer meeting about healing this and this and that the other, actually trust God. Take Him at His word and believe that he means what he says and says what he means, which the traditional evangelical church did not really do.

It was a form without substance. So the Charismatic and Word of Faith movement came in to correct that and to say no, it's time that we actually take God at His word. If God says I want you to prosper, then he wants us to prosper. But here's the problem: it was converted and marketed to the flesh. And of the flesh it reaps corruption. So we have all of these leaders in the so-called Charismatic and Word of Faith movement that corrupted the very thing that God was using by His Spirit to bring correction to the unbelief of evangelicals.

Kelly K: Right now, I see this. You know, at the end of the day, it was the enemy; it's a tactic of the enemy. I don't think that they came into it, not all anyway, with the wrong motive of trying to pervert something.

Chuck Crismier: Well, I agree with that. I agree with that. But the flesh is weak and we want to take our place in the sun, and so it began to be used as a way to market the Master, and the Master became nothing but a mascot to the marketing techniques of Charismatic and Word of Faith manipulators. and so it destroyed the fundamental message of the correction that God was trying to bring.

Kelly K: You know what, though? You've said this multiple times, and I'm just going to bring it up because it makes all the sense in the world. You keep saying take God at His word. We've got to take God at His word. And I think also what happened in this time of TV evangelists popping up and radio and preaching everywhere is that we stopped taking God at His word and we started taking pastors at theirs.

Chuck Crismier: Oh why? Many a truth is spoken in not so much jest.

Kelly K: I'm just saying, it's just true. Why do I need to read the word? Because somebody else is going to tell me what it says. But I've got to make sure, I tell all my listeners, my followers, do not take my word for any of this. You need to go get in your Bible and see it yourself because the enemy will steal away a revelation that you get second-hand.

But it's very difficult for the enemy to steal a revelation that you got from God himself. So when you read it yourself and you see it in black and white that we were healed, that he has made a way, that these things are all past tense, then you can actually start to believe, wait a minute, I am taking him at his word, I am healed already. I'm in eternal life already because I know him. He's made a way for me. This isn't a test in my day; this is the plan for my day. I already passed the test when I surrendered my life.

Chuck Crismier: Well, here's the problem: maybe we didn't surrender our life. Maybe we got on the bandwagon out there in California and jumped on the baptism program and decided to baptize thousands and thousands of people on a single day or a single week, and not one of them or few of them actually surrendered their life, didn't confess sin, didn't repent. They just were glad to get baptized because it made them feel more religious.

Kelly K: That's it, man. That's good. You're right. 100 percent.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. We're trying to be real here. That's what we do here on Viewpoint because it's easy to talk about Christian things with Christianese. But God's not interested in Christianese; he's interested in Christ and whether or not we truly follow Him. Now, Jesus made some very strong statements in Matthew chapter 7.

One was straight is the gate, narrow is the way, and precious few there be that find it. But broad is the way that leads to destruction and many there be that go in thereat. He's talking to people who claim to believe in God, who were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the chosen people. That's who he's talking to. And he says many of you are not going in. You're going in the broad way that leads to destruction, and the same thing is true of professing Christians. Why is that?

Kelly K: You know, I love that we're talking about the narrow road because I was so deceived for so long thinking that the narrow road was hidden. But he never says it's hidden; he says it's hard. And really what I've come to learn is that that narrow road is not hidden at all; it's rejected. Because the cost, the cost of walking that narrow road is way too great because it takes total surrender. That's called the cost of discipleship, isn't it?

Chuck Crismier: Absolutely.

Kelly K: Yeah. But what we say today is no, salvation is a free gift. But for somewhere along the line, we've turned free gift, we don't understand that free gift actually means something is required. We think free gift, nothing required. You know, my cell phone was a free gift, as long as I pay for the contract every single month. Right?

Chuck Crismier: Well, as they say, freedom isn't free.

Kelly K: No, nothing is. See, but what is free about our relationship with God is that now we can have a relationship with him. That's free. We couldn't earn that. Jesus had to give his life for that. But now to be a disciple, Jesus said count the cost. And the cost is to surrender. To walk this life, it actually costs you everything you have. So to walk around saying, "I'm good, I got the free gift of salvation," son, you don't even know what you're talking about. You don't even understand.

Chuck Crismier: So if you're following Jesus, we used to sing a song, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace." Well, we don't see the things of earth growing very strangely dim in the minds and hearts of most Christians today in America. In fact, what we do see is the thinking of the world growing ever more bright and glorious in the ways of our eyes. And because of that, we cannot walk the narrow way that leads to life. So where does the other way lead?

Kelly K: To death, to destruction, to pain, to burnout, to everything else, everything that you're trying to escape.

Chuck Crismier: So even those who claim to be believers actually because of their viewpoints become beggars.

Kelly K: Sad to say, most professing Christians are beggars, not believers. Now, I didn't say that they're not going to heaven, they don't have a relationship with God. I didn't say that. But I did say that most professing Christians are beggars, not believers. And you can tell because their prayers sound like, "God if you could, if it be your will, if you can." Those are beggar prayers. Believer prayers say thank you. Thank you, it's done. Thank you, you already made a way.

Chuck Crismier: In other words, gratitude is at the very heart of the walk with Jesus.

Kelly K: That's right. That has to be the basic foundation of: you did it all already, there's nothing left for me to do. You did it.

Chuck Crismier: But I have to obey, don't I?

Kelly K: Absolutely, but that's what you signed up for.

Chuck Crismier: So here's the deal. We have belief and we have trust and we have faith. Those three words all come from the same root word, so they are different facets of the same thing. So let's imagine that they make up the legs of a stool, a three-legged stool. This is the Christian life. So you've got the Christian life: belief, trust, and faith. Nobody would disagree with that. But what happens if you have legs on a stool that aren't anchored together?

Kelly K: You end up on the ground.

Chuck Crismier: That's exactly right and we'll talk about that when we get back, friends. You got to get a copy of this book, *Beggar to Believer*. It will inspire you as you get into the book. The deeper you get in, the more you'll be inspired. Sixteen dollars will put the twenty-dollar book in your hands.

Chuck Crismier: Got to get a copy of the book friends, *Beggar to Believer*. You see, it's not about the what, it's about the why. And we're talking about this three-legged stool of the Christian faith. Where you have one leg is faith, one leg is belief, and the other leg is trust, and they all come from the same root word, so they're hinged to the seat of the stool. But the problem is that those legs are going to splay out when any weight is put on them. So what keeps those legs from splaying out and causing you to tumble? It's one word. It's a four-letter word: O-B-E-Y.

Obey. That's the reason why God over and over and over again emphasizes obedience to the children of Israel and also to you and to me. In fact, in John chapter 14, four times Jesus said, "If you love me, obey me. If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. If you don't love me, you won't. But if you do love me, I and my Father and and obey me, I and my Father will manifest ourselves to you." It's the key to the linking together of belief, trust, and faith. Without that, we're going to be very unstable in our Christian lives and may collapse.

So the question that I have for you, Kelly, is why is it that so many pastors and para-church leaders have admitted on this program over the past eight to ten years that the word obey is the most hated word in the church?

Kelly K: Because again, like I said, because your flesh craves the opposite of God. Obedience goes against everything the world teaches you since you're little. That it's all about you. You, you, get what you need. I mean, you see it everywhere: live your best life, do you. Obey says, wait, it's not about me.

Chuck Crismier: So what's the word, the opposite, the spiritual opposite of obey?

Kelly K: I would have to say selfish.

Chuck Crismier: Well, we're looking at it right here on page 149 in your book: Rebellion.

Kelly K: Oh yeah, rebellion. Let's go.

Chuck Crismier: Isn't that the root of all sin? Not pride, but rebellion?

Kelly K: Yes, 100 percent true. Rebellion is the root of all sin.

Chuck Crismier: So what is rebellion? How would you describe it?

Kelly K: I would describe it as taking your eyes off the Father.

Chuck Crismier: All right, or how about disagreeing with what he says?

Kelly K: Absolutely, that well that comes from it. If I'm going to disagree, I gotta look away from you. If my eyes are on you, I'm in agreement with you. For me to disagree means I'm taking my eyes off and I'm going to look at something else. That's how we got into this mess with Lucifer.

Chuck Crismier: So the whole idea of let's say, let's be real practical, how about pornography? We think of that as just a generic kind of a thing that touches all whole human beings. But what do you make of it when 70 percent of professing Christian men admit to engaging in pornography, 34 percent of professing Christian women admit to engaging in their form of pornography, and 30 plus percent of Christian pastors admit to being involved in pornography? What does that tell you about our trust, obey, and faith?

Kelly K: We don't understand it. We can say it, we can teach it, we say we do it, but we don't live it.

Chuck Crismier: In other words, we're resisting it, and you called it rebellion.

Kelly K: Yes.

Chuck Crismier: Isn't that what happened when Satan decided to lift himself up, his heel against God in the mount of God, in the heavenlies, and said, "I will be like the most high God. I will be like the most high God." He actually rebelled and led the angels with him, didn't he?

Kelly K: True, but I think the rebellion happened before that because for him to look at himself, that's why he said that. He look, the Bible says Lucifer looked at himself, saw he was beautiful and said, "I will ascend above the the most high." He took his eyes off God and put his eyes on himself. And oh, now I see me.

Chuck Crismier: All right. So what you're saying then by implication is that actually rebellion is not just a state of mind as we think about it; it is the actual condition of our fleshly being to resist God and look only at ourselves as our saviors.

Kelly K: Yeah, you said it way smarter than me. Yes, 100 percent, you nailed it.

Chuck Crismier: I was so impressed as I read further and further through your book. In fact, it almost cost me catching your call when it came in because I saw, you know, this guy is actually piercing through a lot of the din of the Christian life and a lot of the business-as-usual churchianity and saying, look, we've got to call things what they really are if we want to be what we say we mean we're going to be.

And rebellion isn't just breaking a rule; it's breaking a relationship. So isn't that why the Bible says, why God says, look, can two walk together unless they be agreed? No, the answer is no. If I disagree with what God has said in whole or in part, I'm a rebel. I can't walk with him in spirit and in truth, can I?

Kelly K: No, you cannot.

Chuck Crismier: But what if I do agree with him and surrender completely and say, "Okay, Lord, you know better regardless of what the culture's telling me, regardless of what my feelings are telling me right now. You have a greater, bigger, most honest, truthful viewpoint concerning these things, and I'm going to trust you no matter what."

Kelly K: Then buckle up buttercup, you're going for a ride. And that's a good ride. The best ride you've ever been on in your entire life. And take it from somebody that's on it. It's incredible. I'm telling you, I went from seeing none of God in my life to all of him in my life with just this understanding that we're talking about.

Chuck Crismier: In other words, your viewpoint, your viewpoint changed dramatically.

Kelly K: Yes, dramatically.

Chuck Crismier: And your destiny was changed dramatically.

Kelly K: In an instant.

Chuck Crismier: And you began to see things through a completely different lens than you did before, even though you professed to be a Christian.

Kelly K: Absolutely. I went from talking about it to living it.

Chuck Crismier: That's pretty liberating.

Kelly K: Very. And I want everyone to experience that. Everyone.

Chuck Crismier: All right. We are going to, this is one of the great illustrations of your book that begins in chapter 21, and we just cannot miss this. We're talking about full surrender, our eyes locked on Jesus, and thinking that the Christian life is about keeping our own cup full. Like the song says, "Fill my cup, Lord, it's overflowing, Lord, come and fill me, come and fill me, come and fill me." Well, you say no, the Christian life is not about having your cup full; it's about being a hose. Now, that doesn't sound very spiritual, but it's profound. Tell us what you mean by that.

Kelly K: It's actually very spiritual and it's all through scripture. You're just not looking for it, but let me show you. So we say things all the time like, "God, I just want more of you." We pray that. "God, I want more of you." Never realizing you're actually coming into agreement with a lie of the enemy, the very first lie that God's holding out on you. The truth is we have all of God right now, so I can't hold any more of him.

The question is not whether we have more of him; it's whether he has more of us. So that cup mentality always keeps my eyes on me. I'm always looking, am I full? Is God working in my life? Do I have what I need? Do I not? I'm looking at me. But a hose mentality says, if I'm the water hose and I'm connected to him, he's an unlimited source, it's not about looking at me; it's about looking at others and getting as much of the flow of God through me to them. And the thing about a water hose is a water hose never has to ask for water; it always gets wet because water is always flowing through it. That's what God called us to do. That's what he called us to be.

Chuck Crismier: Well, isn't that what Jesus was on the planet? He said, "Look, I didn't come to do my own will. I didn't come to fill my own cup. I came to do the will of him that sent me. I came to fully surrender to the Father." And the test that Jesus was here to accomplish and fulfill was whether he was going to be fully surrendered to the Father or not. Was he going to truly be a replacement for the first Adam that refused to surrender, that wanted to do his will?

So Jesus comes and he says, "My will is to do the will of him that sent me. I don't say anything I don't hear him say, the Father say, I don't do anything I don't see the Father doing. That is my purpose." Then Jesus turned around as he was ascending back to the Father and he said, "Now, as the Father sent me, even so I send you." That wasn't an evangelistic call; that was a call to be surrendered to the Father, no matter what, wasn't it?

Kelly K: 100 percent. That's exactly what it is.

Chuck Crismier: Wow. That's a completely different view of those passages. And it's tremendously liberating because if that's what we're here to be, I'm not here to be a kingdom reservoir because reservoirs begin to stink if they don't have an outflow. I'm here to be a kingdom conduit. Blessed to be a blessing. Not blessed to be blessed.

Kelly K: That's why the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea is the Dead Sea. Nothing's living in it. There's only an inflow, no outflow. So if you're a cup, come on, there's a problem with that. Gotta be inflow and outflow.

Chuck Crismier: There's something tremendously liberating then once we fully surrender. My wife has for several years believed that the word surrender was the most important word for our time. We sing that song, "All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him, in his presence daily live. I surrender all." They're words and it's a beautiful song, but it doesn't really resonate very well and very accurately in most Christians' lives, does it?

Kelly K: No, because we don't understand what surrender means. Surrender means a change of sides. It's an allegiance shift. You know, in the early church to confess Jesus as Lord, that's what we say, "Oh you want to get saved just repeat this prayer confess Jesus as Lord." That's just words. But in the early church, to confess Jesus as Lord, Jesus wasn't Lord, Caesar was. So now if I'm confessing a different Lord, that's my life's on the line.

Chuck Crismier: Exactly, and that's where martyrdom came.

Kelly K: Yeah. So we don't understand surrender means a change of sides.

Chuck Crismier: Well, interesting, you know what's interesting today, if you say, if I say in a conversation with many other pastors, "Well, Jesus did not come to just be our Savior; he came to be our Lord. And if Jesus isn't Lord of all, he ain't Lord at all." You know what they'll say? "You're preaching works salvation." That's how they get around it. They say, "Lordship salvation, that's works. No, Jesus, we don't have to claim Jesus as Lord, just claim him as Savior." What say you?

Kelly K: Oh well, I'll show you how to end that conversation real quick. Is that in John 12, he says that eternal life is to know him. So if they're saying works-based salvation, meaning your salvation is coming later, you don't even understand what Jesus came to do. See, my eternal life already started. I'm a resident of heaven today. So the works I'm doing are not so I can earn a place; the works I'm doing are the receipt that shows I'm already there.

Now that I'm a resident of heaven, I live differently. I'm not waiting to get to heaven someday. Eternal life is to know him. I know him today, now. So my eternal life already started. So I'm not working to gain anything; I already got it. And that's what they don't understand, is they're waiting to get something someday and I'm living it today.

Chuck Crismier: Well, today is the day of salvation as the scripture says, and that's the beginning of things. You say every single person on earth is living up to or down to their own revelation of the freedom Jesus bought for them. Those walking on the narrow road understand exactly how free they are because they're constantly staring at the one who set them free. They understand that the law isn't a list of rules; it's a mirror to show you that you're dirty and you got to clean up. Jesus is the one who will wash you clean. The root of rebellion is shifting our focus, but those on the wide path will never fully see their freedom because they can't stop focusing on their own chains and their wants.

Wow. This is, I mean, you and I could talk for hours, Kelly. I really appreciate that. *Beggar to Believer*, friends. God doesn't want you to be a beggar. He wants you ultimately to be a believer. It's an attitude. It's an attitude of the heart. That's what God is after. He wants us to agree with him, to trust him, to truly believe him. Get a copy of the book, sixteen dollars will put the twenty-dollar book in your hands. On the website, saveus.org, call us 1-800-SAVE-USA, write to us at Save America Ministries, P.O. Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia 23255, and become a partner, friends. We're preparing the way of the Lord for history's final hour. Yes, even today, that's what we're doing. God bless and be a blessing. Be a believer, not a beggar.

Announcer: You've been listening to Viewpoint with Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint is supported by the faithful gifts of our listeners. Let me urge you to become a partner with Chuck as a voice to the church declaring vision for the nation. Join us again next time on Viewpoint as we confront the issues of America's heart and home.