30. Celebrating 10,000 downloads & Let's Talk Books!

And here we go. This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. And to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now here's your host, John Holyfield. Welcome everybody to the For Freedom Podcast. I am your host, John Holyfield. And along with me is the other host. That's what I was calling. I don't know. Should we say co-host? Mr. Co-host. The other host, the other guy, James Seyfried. And it's good to have you on board, James. How are you doing? I'm doing well, John. Having a good time. And just finished painting my upstairs. John, it was the first time I've used an industrial sprayer to spray paint stuff. And it was amazing. I did 10 gallons in three hours. You rolled it afterwards, right? No. I just sprayed the whole thing. It was incredible. You just rolled it after you sprayed it. No, I didn't. It looked good. Why don't they roll it again? I did two coats. Well, I was... Go and roll it in. It wasn't like putting a lot of pressure on rolling it. I don't know why we're giving paint tips right now. You don't either. We're not a painter. We're not painters at all. No. It's like, let me tell you how to paint industrially. It was just cool. Yeah. I bet it was fun. Whenever something is going on quick and it's a big project, it is very satisfying. It was. It was. Well, we are glad to be back with you this week. We have some cool things to do today. So let's just jump into it. First of all, though, we need to start with our This Week Roundup. All right. And some big news for the For Freedom podcast this week. And James, why don't you go ahead and do a... We'll do a jump drum roll and let everybody know what is the big news for the For Freedom podcast. Big news coming up today. We just hit 10,000 downloads. Come on! There's our own podcast that probably hit 10,000 downloads in two weeks. All right. But for us, this is episode number 30. And, you know, I wasn't sure if five people would listen to this when I started. And we've hit 10,000 downloads. And to be honest with you, it's probably... We've been to 10,000 downloads probably for a little bit. The stats that I track are on Anchor. And if you're interested in podcasting, I highly recommend Anchor. But the stats that I follow are the stats that come from Anchor. And I was probably about eight or nine episodes in whenever I started using the Anchor platform for my podcast. So it's only keeping stats after the first nine episodes had already come out. So before then, I definitely had downloads and listens to those episodes before. But since then, it just crossed the 10,000 download mark. And I just want to say, James and I both just want to say a huge thank you to everybody that listens and everybody that's commented to us since the start of this thing. And really, with the busyness of our schedule, it's one of the reasons why the 10,000 downloads, the fact that you're listening and that we are doing some type of helping is the reason why we keep doing it. Because we are, you know, it's not like we have a whole lot of extra time for this. But we keep making the time for it because it appears to be of use to some people. So thank you so much. James, you have something to say? Yeah. And, you know, just in the last two weeks, we've had to use this disclaimer. We'll use it again. This episode has not been sponsored by Anchor FM. This episode is not. If Anchor wants to sponsor us, we'll let them. But we are not. But, yeah, I do want to say thanks to the listeners. You know, it's been a blessing to me. Some people have reached out. And I just appreciate that. And like I said, anything we can do, I shared my phone number several weeks ago. If you want to reach out to us or connect with us on Facebook, you can. And we'll definitely want to be a blessing and a help to anyone that may be going through this. Not saying we know all the answers. But, you know, we are young. And we've been going through some things in life as well. So. Yeah. And so, with that, we are going to move on to our next thing. Not a whole lot happening this week. James, have you kept up with WandaVision? I have. I just finished the last episode. And it was great seeing Agnes and some little Easter eggs for Doctor Strange in there. And that was pretty cool to see. And I'm pretty excited about where it's going to be going. One episode left, right? Or two? Yeah. The finale's coming up. I had all these theories. And I don't know. Now, I feel like after the last episode, which I agree with you, I think the last episode was fantastic. I mean, I think, well, I was going to say, I think all my theories are like blown out of the water. I have no idea what they're going to do as far as ending this thing. But I think that last episode is going to get some awards attention because it's specifically the – I know the show has sort of dealt with the subject of grief. But that episode specifically really touched on grief. And I know it's been getting a lot of traction, that quote that's in the episode. But it was good. What is grief if not love persevering? That's a great quote. It is. And so hats off to the guys over there at Marvel with putting out a great product there. Speaking of those that produce great comic book products, one of my frustrations and loves is DC. And the Snyder Cut drops in a few weeks. And so I know I'm excited about it. James, you're excited about it. Oh, I'm so pumped. Me and my wife sat down the other day when I was telling her about it. And we re-watched the original – not the original, the former Justice League movie just so that she could remember. So when we start watching the Snyder Cut, we can see the differences and really excited. Also in the DC world, a new show came out on CW, Superman and Lois. It's a really good take on it. It's a take of Superman as an adult. I just wish they would get new stories. They stuck with the same Lex Luthor – not the same person, but Lex Luthor as well. They're reinventing it in a little bit, but it's good. It's a good story play, but I don't know. I wasn't as impressed as I probably wanted to be. Yeah, we'll see where that one goes. Last week, we were having a little bit of a – I was not drinking anything or smoking anything. I was probably overtired, but we were having some fun. And I mentioned that we had – I had a clip of Tony Hudson preaching about a tambourine. And this is going to bring us into a new segment of the show that we are going to begin doing. I found my old IFB sermon CDs. And so what we're going to be doing is we're going into the archive of John's old IFB days. And we're going to pull clips out of some of these crazy ones and play for you one each week. And so this week, we're going to – I told you I was going to play the tambourine clip. So let me play the tambourine clip from this message that was preached at the church and college that James and I attended. This was in 2005 at their camp meeting. And this was Tony Hudson preaching. Here's a clip of – I said, Ben, come on up here. Y'all, we're going to take up an offer. Y'all go ahead and kick it off. And he put that banter on. Just banters on the pulpit, I start to feeling things. Any church with a banter – I said this one time. If we had a church where we didn't have a banter picker at our church, I'd set a banter up there on a rack just to let people know, sir, if we had one that could, he'd be playing it. I got a tambourine on my platform. It's out of tune, but I've got it. I keep it there just to keep them college graduates on their toes. Amen. Because they're not going to intimidate me. If I want to shake – I thought the thing – when the man gave me the tambourine, I just thought it was a fancy offering plate. But if I want to shake it, bless God, there ain't no Bible for you to tell me I can't. But I've got a whole lot of Bible to tell you why I can. Don't you die on me, man. Listen, I'm almost through. But if you start dying on me, I'll sit down right here and preach on it for a little while. I'll sit down. I will sit down up here, and I'll preach, bless God. I will preach till I get through, bless God. You better like my tambourine. Hallelujah to God. You better like my tambourine, baby. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, there you go. Now, James, I believe that this was actually preached the year before you came, or two years before you came. But I was there, and he mounted the pulpit when he said that. When he said, I'll sit down right here, he was actually sitting down on top of the pulpit saying that. And so, I mean, he's actually talking about legalism. Shocker. We'll play some more clips of this as the weeks go on, because I have several clips taken from this message. But he's actually talking about legalism, and, man, he's like intimidating you to like what he says you ought to like. Exactly. I just like that he said, I'm going to just preach it right here, and you're going to like it. You're going to like what I'm going to preach. Oh, I love Tony Hudson. You better like it. You better like it. You better like it. You better like it. Oh, my goodness. Or else what? All right. Now, this is going to be the actual archive clip that we play. I told you I'd play the tambourine clip, and so we did. So this is the actual clip from this message, and I just want you to hear how he just, man, this is, and it's amazing, James, as you listen to it, you think, man, I love that kind of stuff back then. But now you just feel so awful about yourself because, listen back to it, it's just so wrong. And so this was one where he talks about feeling something with music, and he goes off on a guy in the audience. Hey, brother Ben, they got the thing that got handled it all, and I got rather emotional. Got the feeling. And, sir, look up here, Bob Jones graduate, sir. Look up here at me just a minute. You trying to tell me something big as God moves in you, and you can't feel it, then you ain't got what I got. You trying to tell me something big as the Holy Ghost takes up residence for the tabernacle. Sir, you trying to tell me that God, the Holy Ghost, can move in, and you not know he's in there. Sir, you better tell that lie to somebody else because you ain't got what I got. You ain't got what I got, bless God. You ain't got what I got. You ain't even close to it, bless God. Amen. You ain't got what I got, Professor. It's preaching time. Yeah. Preach on, preacher. I said, hmm, I feel something on that. I'll be honest, I was there. Now, I don't know who he was talking to or preaching at. I was in the balcony watching this. I don't know specifically who he was preaching to, but I've got to tell you, I was there. He was looking and pointing at someone on the main level. I don't know if it was theatrics and there wasn't really anybody. I tend to believe it was someone he was going at. But can you imagine being that person? Not only is this massive man screaming at you like this. Yes. But you also have everybody else screaming and shouting him on like he's exactly right in that. I mean, do you imagine like you probably feel like you just want to get out of there because they're about to be violent or something. I don't know. But it was crazy. Listen here, Bob Jones graduate. Listen here. You ain't got what I got. And he just kept saying that. And he close. Yeah. You know, I'm a huge. That's what passes for old time preaching. Yeah. I heard this the other day. I was listening to some things and some old stuff. And a guy said that he, and it may have been on a podcast that I listened to, I don't know. But he said that he was a huge Jerry Clowers fan. And I'm a huge Jerry Clowers fan as well. I love Jerry Clowers. Good old school comic relief. Very clean. Clovis led better. Yeah. Old Clovis and all those guys. Marcel. Marcel and all those. And one of the guys, he said that he heard Tony Hudson use Jerry Clowers stories in his preaching and pass them off as his own stories. And, you know, the more I got to listen, the more I can hear the resemblance of Jerry Clowers and Tony Hudson and the way they say things. You know, maybe we can just listen to Tony Hudson as a comic relief like we did Jerry Clowers. I don't know. So, but you're saying that your hypothesis is that Tony Hudson's theatrics are ripping off Jerry Clower. That's what I heard on a podcast or I heard somewhere else. I'm not saying that. It sounds familiar. But there's a lot of like mannerisms if you listen to the two. That's a hot take right there. It is. That's a hot take. Hot takes only right here on the For Freedom podcast, everyone. Yes, sir. And you are right here on the For Freedom podcast. Yeah. Well, today is going to be an interesting episode. We are getting ready to venture into the specific areas of legalism. But to be honest with you, life has been absolutely crazy. James is a, your official title is youth pastor or assistant pastor? Associate pastor of youth and children. Associate pastor of youth and children. But quite honestly, James has been the acting pastor there at his church for quite a while now. And I say that because most of all the pastoral duties have been resting on his shoulders while they're in the middle of a pastor search. So James is not a guy who has a whole lot of free time. Myself, I have just accepted the pastor here at our church. Our church is much smaller than James's. But I also work by vocationally three days a week. And so my job that I work at really doesn't allow me much time to work on anything else. I pretty much am focused on that job when I'm there. It keeps me pretty busy. And then when I come home, I'm determined to be home. And I know James has the same conviction to be there with his family. And then we all, we also determined to have at least one day off and focus on our family on those off days. And so that leaves me with two days a week to work at the church and get my things prepared for. I preach twice a week. And that takes quite a bit of time to prepare that. And so the other church duties that I have check on people as well. So always fighting for a minute here. And so for that reason, we are a little bit behind on scheduling some things. And so this week is sort of opened up. We needed a week to get some things ironed out. So we're going to do that actually tomorrow. But today we, if you want to call this a filler episode, it is. But we wanted to talk about something that actually might be of help to you. So this episode is going to be completely about books. Now, we both rest on the sufficiency of Scripture, the importance of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, and the Bible as our sole book that we go to for life and godliness. But we also understand that God has given men that have, that God worked in their lives to produce to us materials, books that are enriching for the body of Christ. And so books are a very key important thing. One of the things that got me to reading back several years ago is that this statement that I heard, and I'm not saying this is Bible truth, but it was a statement that was said that you are no different 10 years from now than you are today, except for the people you spend time with and the books you read. And so I really started self-evaluating myself and asking, am I growing? Am I growing? Are the people I'm spending time with growing? Therefore, is that leading me to grow? And I got to be honest, I wasn't reading at all. So I couldn't mark that down as something of growth. Now, as far as my walk with God, yeah, that was struggling too at the time. And so I started asking myself, what can I do to start growing as an individual? I don't want to be the same spot that I am 10 years from now. So I started reevaluating my walk with God. I started looking for books to read. And so books, I think, are very important. So we have a couple categories we want to look at. We're going to talk about some books today. And so these are the categories we're going to do. The books that have impacted you or the book that's most impacted you. We're going to talk about books that have influenced you in legalism, on your view of the Bible, ministry, and family. What book are you currently reading that you love? And then we're going to talk about, wrap it up with a couple of books in your Amazon cart or on your bookshelf that you are looking forward to reading. All right. So, James, why don't you, I just gave the long introduction. I'm going to turn it over to you to start us off. And if you want to say some introductory comments or something, but the book that has most impacted you. Yeah, well, thanks, John. You know, it's been, my reading journey has been very tough, I would say, in my life. I'm not a big reader. I have to want to read. And so what I've done is I've had to develop myself as far as finding things that are going to interest me in reading. I just can't go to a bookstore and find something that looks good and read it. I'm a history guy and I'm a religion guy, leadership, things like that. And so as I've grown in my reading, I've grown in the ability to pick up books. And right now I'm in three or four books that I'm reading currently. But outside of the Bible, as John said, the Bible is our go-to soul authority guidebook, you could say, of life. Outside of the Bible, the most impacted book that I've read was really about seven years ago as I was coming through my journey out of the independent fundamental Baptist movement. And the book that I read was Real Christianity by Carrie Schmidt. I don't know if you've ever read that book, John, but it is a fantastic book. He talks about religion. He talks about gospel-centered life a little bit. It's just a great book that I read when I was there in Idaho. And I really started transforming the way I thought, the way I acted. And Carrie Schmidt, his name's going to be on here another time as well for me because he's been a very impactful writer person for me personally. That's awesome. And no, I have not read that book. I actually haven't even heard of that book. So I wrote it down. And I meant to say this earlier for our listeners. Go ahead and get your pen and notepad out. You're going to be writing some of these titles down because we're going to be talking about a lot of books. And we'll try to put them in the show notes. Do what? We'll try to put them in the show notes too. Well, see, I thought about that, but this would be like, I mean, this would be really long. It would take me probably as long as the podcast is to get the show notes together for this. If we listed, we tagged every book that we're going to talk about. I mean, I have a lot of books here. Okay. Let me talk about my reading. I'll just explain to you why I started reading. And the first book, so I read a little bit in college because, right, you got to, right? You got to read the assignments and stuff. So I was reading in college. Once I graduated college, I didn't crack open a book again for the next four years. I did not open a book. I didn't even, reading was not even on my radar. And then my brother told me he was reading a book that he thought was very helpful. And I'm giving you part of my journey, but I'm not necessarily recommending this book. So this was the right book at the right time for me. And he gave me a copy of Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald. And to be honest with you, where I'm at right now, I would not recommend Gordon MacDonald's writings. But reading that book, it shook me. And I could not, you ever hear people talk about when they're reading, they couldn't put the book down or they couldn't, you know, stop turning the pages on the book and keep going. That was me in this book. I was devouring it. It, God used this book. From there, I was looking for the next book. Like, I was thirsty. I was starving for what I just got out of this book. And so I was looking for the next one. And another friend of mine had mentioned that he was picking up this book by David Platt called Radical. I would recommend Radical. That's a good book. I picked up Radical. Yeah, that'll change from my life. Oh, Radical is probably one of the reason I am no longer in the IFB. Because Radical shook me to the core and woke me up to the point of what am I doing in the ministry that I'm in? Because this does not line up with what I believe Jesus' ministry was about. And it's what's caused me to leave there. Now, there's a whole slew of God's sovereign acts that has led me out of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. But Radical was one of the catalyst things. Those are the two books that I would say that helped me move from there. Now, if I thought about this, the book that has most impacted you, I'm going to mention one book and then I'm going to give two honorable mentions. I know. I can't stay with one book. I'm so sorry. But one book, and this is the book that if anybody says recommend a book, I recommend this book 100% of the time, every single time. And this is a book that if you forget any books that I say today, I want you to write this one down, put this in your Amazon cart, buy it. And that is The Mortification of Sin by John Owen. It is a get it in a Puritan paperback form. It's a little bit easier to digest in the way that the banner of truth and trust have put that together. But this book really, and I'm going to talk about a book that helped me on sanctification later. But this book transformed my life with the way that my battle with sin was in my everyday Christian living. The Mortification of Sin by John Owen. I don't think anybody's gotten close to being better with talking about sin in the Christian life as this guy. Two honorable mentions that really have impacted me are The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul. Must read. Must read. And if you're looking for a bigger one to devour and you're like, okay, I'm ready for the heavy stuff. And I say that because it's a thick book. The Desiring God by John Piper. Everyone should read those three books. But if you're only going to read one of those three, read The Mortification of Sin. But Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul. Desiring God by John Piper. Desiring God is just so great. It's so good. It's so good. And Holiness of God is a must read. So that is the book that those books have most impacted me on my journey. I know I sort of broke my own rules there with giving, actually ended up giving five books. Let's move to the next one. All right. So back to you, James. Let's talk about books that have influenced you. Let's start with the category of legalism. All right. Now, John is what we would call an overachiever. Just let our audience know if you tell him to do something. It's going to go above and beyond what you even asked or expected. Let's just full disclosure, James. How many books are you reading right now? Three. I'm reading three. You're reading three. Okay. John's reading like 10 probably right now. One, two, three, four, five. If you don't count the commentaries on the messages I'm studying, I'm reading about six books and one booklet. Yeah. So there you have it, guys. He's an overachiever. I am not a fast reader either. It takes me a lot longer to read a book. I can read a book, a pretty good sized book. It takes me about two months just with everything going on. But unless it's one of those books I can't put down, then I'll read it more often. So the first book, and so just another thing to talk about, me and John came through different paths of coming out of the IFB. And so some of our books are going to be different authors, different. And that's good because it's good to show you that it wasn't just one person that helped develop us and help, you know, mentor us through as we were reading them. And so the book that helped me out of legalism, John, I don't know if you've ever even heard of this guy already, but I'm sure you've heard of him. But it's Bob Goff, his Love Does and Everything, Everybody Always. So I read Love Does five years ago, and it had been out for a while. And I was working at Chick-fil-A, and my Chick-fil-A owner said, hey, why don't we read a book together? And I said, hey, I want to do some more leadership training. I want to do some stuff like that. And so we sat down every week and we read this book, and it rocked my world just to read and to see the things that he went through as a normal person and how God used him just by loving people. And that's the thing. The independent fundamental Baptist world, they may say they love people, but you just heard the loving Tony Hudson get up and really love that Bob Jones graduate. His other book, his second book that he came out with was Everybody Always. And he goes more into depth of the first one. So as soon as it came out, I bought it from Hobby Lobby because it was on sale there, and I read it in a couple of weeks' time. But it was just two really, really good books that helped me. And so that's sort of where I'm at. All right, pause it. Okay, so the book that has influenced me in the area of legalism, and if you've listened to me, even if you've listened to the very beginning episodes of this podcast, you've heard me recommend this book and talk about this book several times. And that is the book called The Grace Awakening by Chuck Swindoll. I think the single best work I've ever read when it talks about the issue of legalism in the Christian faith is Grace Awakening by Chuck Swindoll. It has been a huge impact on many believers' lives. I've read it at least three times. I can't say enough about it. One other – well, two other ones that I have here are books that in 2018, James and I got to go to Together for the Gospel, T4G, in 2018. And one of the great things about T4G is they give you tons of free books. They do. And sometimes I don't even know who the authors are. And you never, you know, find something. It's sort of like, you know, you don't know anything about a movie or a show you're about to watch or whether it's a piece of food that you're about to eat. You don't know anything about it, but then you either watch it or you eat it, and it's just, like, amazing. And just the feeling of just the delight of discovering something amazing. All right? I felt that way when I read these two books because when I got these books, when they gave them to us at T4G, they were by the author of a guy named Andy Nacelli or Andrew David Nacelli. And I was like, who is that? I never heard of him. Never really had a whole lot of excitement and desire to read them, but I had done a thing with it because we came away with so many books after T4G. I was like, well, I'm going to start chipping away at the books that I got. So I made an order, and I started reading one after the other, one after the other. When I got to Andy Nacelli's book, I was just extremely delighted and so excited that what I was reading was just amazing. And so I haven't read a whole lot of Andy Nacelli, just these two books. So I don't want to say anything Andy Nacelli writes, grab. But these two books are must-haves. I know I keep saying that. But as far as helping me with legalism and coming out of legalism, these two books are ones that I want to quickly recommend. And that is Conscience, What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ. This is by Andrew David Nacelli and J.D. Crowley. This book is amazing. I love this book. I've gone back and referred to it several times. We're probably going to do an episode on the conscience, and we'll be using this book and going to it. And so if there's questions about that, if you have questions about how coming out of legalism and liberty work with the 1 Corinthians 12 passage and the Romans 14 passage, or I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians 8 passage, you need to read conscience. You need to read conscience. Andy Nacelli, I believe, is a professor at Bethlehem College in Minnesota. This is the college that is attached to the church. Well, I don't know if it's attached to a church, but I think he's close with John Piper's ministry. But very, very good. Another one, and this is probably the second most important book that's helped me with the idea of sanctification, and that is no quick fix, no quick fix where higher life theology came from, what it is, and why it's harmful. Now, this is by Andrew David Nacelli. Now, this book is mainly about debunking the theology of this let-go-let-God movement, this Keswick theology, higher life theology that was written about, became popular in the early 1900s, and is there. Now, you may not be there, but one of the great things that I loved about this book was in counteracting that, he gives a very clear layout of what biblical sanctification looks like, and it was monumental for my life at the time that I read it. Absolutely loved it. And so those are my books, Grace Awakening, Conscience by Andy Nacelli and J.D. Crowley, and then No Quick Fix by Andy Nacelli. All right, so books that have influenced you on the Bible. All right, my books from the Bible that have helped me really, and these aren't books that you just sit down and read. These are more of my commentaries that have helped me. Of course, the John MacArthur commentaries, John references them a lot. I use them whenever I'm doing any book study. I'll buy one of his books on his commentary. And then the other one that I've just recently got into, I got a couple of them. The last T4G20 was the For You commentaries. I really like them. They are very easy to read. They're very applicable for teenagers in that area. Sometimes John MacArthur can go really deep, and I can get stuck in some of those things. But Tim Keller is one of the editors for those, right? Yeah, there's several editors that go through them. Danny Aiken's done some. So there's Tim Keller. Steve Lawson has done one. Yeah, Steve Lawson's done one. So whenever I go through a book, I'll grab, normally I pick up MacArthur's commentary, and I'll pick up a For You commentary. And especially depending on who I'm talking to. If I'm preaching through a book for my teenagers, then I'm grabbing the For You commentary, and I'm going to read through it. So those are two that have really helped me just in my studies, really, of the Bible. And I think that's where you want me to go, John. I don't know exactly. No, that's my fault. Okay. This is my fault. Sorry, we just figured this out on air. No, what I did is I wrote these things down. I gave James the list of what we're going to do. What I was talking about is a book that you've read that's helped influence your view of the Bible. Oh, okay. Go ahead, John. Sorry, James. So if you're looking for commentaries, those are the two that I use. Go ahead. Okay, well, I got three here. Of course. But that's good. I'm glad that you mentioned the commentary thing because that was actually one that would be needed that I didn't have wrote down because people are going to want to know about Bible study and what to go for for Bible study. So I'm glad that that actually happened. So three books that come to my mind when talking about that. One that we have talked about and recommended so many times, but it has to be mentioned that's helped me tremendously was whenever I found the book, The King James Only Controversy by James White. If you've ever been in any type of King James Onlyism or coming out of it, whatever state you are, this has to be a read for you. You have to read this book. And there have been a lot of other books that's been written on the King James Onlyism issue. This is, and I've read most of them. And the ones that I haven't read are on my bookshelf and I'm going to read, okay? This is the best. This is the best book on the issue. And regardless of what you may think about James White, this book, this issue is the best book on the market. The next one, the book that really transformed my view of the Bible and sort of helped me hang on to a view of the sufficiency of scripture was an easy, very digestible book. It's only about 200 pages from cover to cover. And I highly recommend it. It's called Why Believe the Bible by John MacArthur. And so I definitely recommend that book. He talks about canonization. He talks about sufficiency. He talks about inspiration. He talks about inerrancy. He talks about how to study the Bible. He talks about all of these topics in a very easy to understand way in this book. So I highly recommend this. And then one more that I just read. This is one that I actually just finished. One of my things, me and James set some goals as far as reading goes this year. And so one of my goals was, I want to read one book on counseling a month, one book on theology a month, one booklet a month on a counseling issue. And then I was going to read six biographies this year. And the first book that I picked up in the area of theology was this book called One Foundation. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble trying to find a place for people to purchase it because I was going to recommend it to our church. And I was going to say, well, this is where you can buy it. But I'm having trouble finding a way that people can buy it. But this was sent to me by Grace to You. It was a book that was compiled for John MacArthur's 50th anniversary. But relax. It is not like a big, everybody just sits there and dotes over John MacArthur throughout the book. Actually, he's only mentioned once or twice. The thing that I like about the book is they stick with the topic of the Bible. It's written, each chapter is written by a different guy. And my three favorite chapters are a chapter written by R.C. Sproul. There's a chapter written by Votie Balkum that's really good. And then a chapter written by Justin Peters on how God speaks. So one foundation is Essays on the Sufficiency of Scripture is another great book on the view of the Bible. So now let's move to the next one, the next topic here. Books that have influenced you and the area of ministry. Because I think we have people, we do have people that listen to our podcast that are in ministries and do ministry work. So I wanted to include this category in and help us because if you have done ministry in the IFB, it is, you really need a detox and a restructuring of how to do ministry afterwards. And so, James, I want to hear your thoughts on some books that's influenced you on the way you do ministry now. All right, we'll go back to T4G 2018, our big old stack of free books that we got. Disclaimer, T4G is not sponsoring this episode either. They are not a sponsor. But T4G, they gave out all those great books and it's hard when you come back, like John said, to see all these books that were free. It's one thing to order one off Amazon and you read it when it comes in or you have it for study. But when you're just given 25 books, you know, where do you start? And so I sat them down just like John did. I took a picture of them. I started sorting through what I wanted to do. And I saw this title, Reset. And the subtitle is How to Navigate Life in a Burnout World. Something very similar to that. You got that at T4G? Living a Grace-paced Life in Burnout Culture. Yeah, it gave to us T4G 2018, I believe. I'm pretty sure it was that conference. I don't have that book. And when I read that book, it was like that book that John mentioned earlier when he just, it just rocked his world. It stopped everything. And I was- Who wrote it? It was David Murray. And I'm sitting there and my literally, you can talk to my wife, every day almost, I was coming home. Hey, I read this. Like I read the book twice. I read it and then I stopped and then I read it again. And I sat down with my pastor and I said this, this, and he's like, yeah, dude, I know these things. But for me, coming out of the IFB, reading this book, thinking about it, he goes through these checkout stations, like almost like terminals. If you're riding a train, every so often you're going to stop. Every so often you're going to stop and you're just going to reset at these checkout stations. And he goes through mentally how to reset your mind in a world when all you've been indoctrinating is to rush, rush, rush, burn out, burn out, burn out, burn out for Jesus. We've heard that many times. And man, it really rocked my world. It helped me out. And then him and his wife co-wrote the second book called Refresh. That's going to be later. It's in my Amazon card. I'm not going to mention that one. But it's one that I want to get and I want to read with my wife. And it is, it's called Refresh. And it's embracing grace-paced life in a world of endless demands. And just how to take this a step further. And so it's one that I want to read. I haven't ordered it yet, but it's by Shonda and David Murray. Him and his wife co-wrote it together. Fantastic book on reset. If you haven't read it, if you're struggling with this, if you've been burnt out, if you're out of ministry, I highly recommend this book helping you. It helped me so much. Oh, I wrote that one down. I think that will be the one that I get from your list, definitely. That sounds, well, I mean, I wrote all of them down, but I mean, that one has really got me intrigued. And I don't have it. I don't think you got that from T4G 2018 because I don't have that book. Unless you bought it at T4G, you didn't get it. Like it wasn't given to you. You went and bought it from the bookstore. So I thought I was given to me, but if not, either way. Okay. That's got me excited about a new book. All right. So for ministry, for me, that has really helped me. Of course, there's probably, probably one of the topics that I read the most about. So there could be a lot in this area, but I wrote down two, and I've already mentioned one book by MacArthur. This will be the only other book that I mentioned by that author. And this is The Master's Plan for the Church. You want a healthy ecclesiology, doctrine of the church, I recommend The Master's Plan for the Church. I really enjoyed this book. It helped me refocus my understanding of the church at a time where I was sort of going back and forth and trying to get a grasp on what the purpose of the church is and what the church should be doing. The Master's Plan for the Church by John MacArthur. And probably the single most book that I would recommend to anybody in ministry work if you have not read it, which a lot of people have, because it is a popular book, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever. I think that if you are a pastor or you do church work at all, you need to read this book. You may not line up every theological point with Mark Dever, but what he says in this book, I 100% back. I love the Nine Marks of a Healthy Church book. And he wrote a very condensed form with the same philosophy in a book that's a small, small pocket-sized book that's about 100 pages called What is a Healthy Church? And I think that book, you read ministry guys, pastors need to read Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. But I think they need to take that little book of what is a healthy church and their people need to read it. Because it would be a great tool of getting people on the same page of what the church is supposed to be doing and what church people are supposed to be viewing the church. Yeah. And John, I didn't get that book from T4G. I looked it up just now. It was not given out of T4G. I remember where I got it. I got it my first year here in Idaho, sorry, in Hidden Night. And I was at the North Carolina Baptist Convention and they had a young pastor's conference. And all the young pastors of North Carolina went to that and it was in a book, in a bag that they had given to us from the convention. That book was in there. And so that's where I got it from. Yeah. Okay. All right. Last category under books that have influenced you. We talked about legalism. We talked about the Bible. We talked about ministry. Lastly, we have family. James? We have two more, family and historical. But yeah, family. I think I added historical, John. I did. You did and you didn't tell me. I did. Sorry. So family, I have two books here. One, I'm in the process of reading. It's a short book, but I'm still in the process of reading it. But the one that I read years ago and that I've used here at our church is called Passionate Parenting by Kerry Schmidt. He goes through, I believe it's 18 or 21 different styles of parenting. And it is a fantastic book on, I really use it for teaching parents and helping parents understand what style of parent you are and the negatives and positives of that. So it's a fantastic book by Kerry Schmidt. The second one I got when I was looking at a, I was at a conference. It was a family conference and we went and did a small tour of the church and they had some books there at the table. And I asked, you know, why they've got them out here. And he said, these are free for parents to pick up. And he picked up the book and he said, this book I recommend and I give to every parent, especially in our day and age, but it's called The Tech Wise Family by Andy Crouch. And so I'm currently in the process of reading it, but it deals with technology and the family and how to model that, how to balance that in the family and not to let the technology overrun your family, but have time. And I think we know this and we say this, but have time to disconnect from technology. But a lot of times it's got to be modeled from the parents. I don't know how many times my wife will nudge me at the dinner table because my phone's out beside me and we're eating dinner and I'm on my phone or I'm texting a church member and she'll say, hey, we're doing dinner and the kids are trying to talk to you. And in my mind, well, my phone's here and they see, they're trying to tell me something in their seven-year-old mind, my phone is more important than what they have to say. And so it just balances, making sure your technology is in the right place, making sure you've got good balance in your life. And so I'm currently in the process of reading through that book. It's a small book. It's only like 110 pages. But like I said, I'm a slow reader. Good, good. I think that's very intriguing to most people because that's a tech-wise thing and something that we're all in the middle of and all curious about doing better at and need some help there. my book, one I have read, the other I'm currently reading. And the book that I have read on parenting is probably the single best book I've ever read on parenting. And it's called Parenting by Paul David Tripp. That's a very unique title, John. It is. It's got a subtitle of like 14 gospel principles, but it is gospel-centered, grace-centered parenting. And it's, if you're looking, if you're going to the book wanting, okay, what do I do when my child does this? It's not that kind of book. It is a book to get to the heart and philosophy of how you parent. And it is fantastic. I highly recommend it. Parenting by Paul Tripp. And then, I'm currently reading a book about marriage called, I'm reading a book about that, but I'm reading a book about marriage called Strengthening Your Marriage by Wayne Mack. More along the lines of, it's a unique setup of the book, but I love it so far and recommend it. But, halfway through it, I think, but Strengthening Your Marriage by Wayne Mack. All right. James, you said you had a category of history, so I imagine you got a book for that. I did, yeah. You know, as I was looking through my books of what I'd read and some things, this book stood out to me. This one was given to us in 2018 at T4G. It was the 21 Sovereign, Servants of Sovereign Joy, that biography of sovereign saints. And man, it has blessed me. I've just taken one or two of them and I've read through them and read through their stories. They're not long stories of their life, but man, they're so impactful reading some of these guys back in the 16, 17, 1800s and the things they went through and the trials they went through and how they still served Jesus faithfully. It shows that there's hope for us and it's just really helped me. I wanted to share that historically. I'm a historical buff. Oh, okay. So I see, I see what you're talking about. I mentioned something about putting out a biography on there. Yeah, yeah, I think you did. Okay, that's what it was. Um, okay, I see your 21 servants of sovereign joy by John Piper and I raise you. I raise you. um, this book of a similar vein and this is a book that I would highly recommend. Uh, both books that me and James are recommending here are not small. They're very thick, but they're intended to be like taken a portion at a time. You know, maybe read one biography in the book and come back to it a later time but this one is called Pillars of Grace by Stephen Lawson. Now, if you are not of the reformed stance, you're not of the doctrines of grace leaning, uh, I don't want you to be misled here. It is very, it's a, it's a book that points out the doctrines of grace throughout the history of the church in these men's lives. Um, if, if, if you're interested in hearing from, uh, someone who holds the doctrines of grace, a doctrines of grace position, then I highly recommend you read this book. Um, if it just bothers you so much, if you could get past that just a little bit and at least read the stories of these men because the way he set, he sets it up is he tells you first just the plain story of each of these men throughout church history and then at the end he talks about their theology and, uh, so I think the pillars of grace was a great book. It covers everybody from Clement of Rome who was a convert of probably one of the disciples of Christ and goes all the way to, I believe, uh, uh, Calvin, Luther, and those guys. So, highly recommend this. Um, he's got a great chapter in there on William Tyndale. So, 21 Servants of Sovereign Joy. The similar idea, he has different biographies through different church history. Uh, I've read, I've got the same book. I've read many of the chapters in that book. I agree with James. Highly recommend that. Um, highly recommend Pillars of Grace by Stephen Lawson and, uh, a long line of godly men through church history on those books. All right, so that covers our subject of the books that have influenced you. All right, John. we're gonna bring it, we're bringing it home. We got two more categories, but these are gonna sort of go together. What book are you currently reading that you love? All right, so we are, I've mentioned several books that I'm currently reading already, but the two that I'm currently, we have, uh, the two that I wrote down that I'm currently reading is What is a Healthy Church was what John said by Mark Dever. Uh, I just recently bought it. It was actually, I have read the Nine Marks, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, um, and on one of my Facebook groups, someone had said, hey, you should go and find this book. It's a really good book. And so I saw it, I went on Amazon, I found it, in fact, three dollars, and it was a used book, and so I bought it, and, uh, so I'm in the process of reading it, and the other one, I just got it at our last men's conference that we went to down in, um, Georgia. It is Unspoken by Johnny Hunt. Um, he's, uh, it's, it's a book that deals with, uh, men's struggles, the things that they struggle with, addiction, pornography, uh, pride, things like that, and he covers it, um, in a lot of different areas, and so I've just started reading it, just picked it up. It's on my book of, to read on my desk. So those are the two that I'm currently reading, plus the other ones that I said we're in the process of reading. Yeah, yeah, I did this same thing. Um, if I was going to mention two books here, one that I'm reading right now, uh, is sort of a biography, and the other is a book that I was recommended by my supervisor to read, help me with my counseling, but the book has been just, you ever get that book that you're like, oh, I'll read this, it'll help somebody else, help me help somebody else, and it just works you over like crazy. That's what this book has been doing. The first one is What is a Girl Worth by Rachel Den Hollander, and, uh, I've been enjoying that. It's a biography about, uh, Rachel Den Hollander's story. She was, um, uh, she's a lawyer and a gymnast, and she, uh, one of the ones that helped break the story of the U.S. gymnastics scandal, um, with the doctor that sexually abused, uh, hundreds, maybe thousands of girls, uh, through the U.S. gymnastics, Larry Nassar, and, uh, she's telling her story, which is very cool because she is a believer and she's a, she's actually a Reformed Baptist and, uh, homeschool mom and, uh, highly recommend, I'm halfway through the book. It's just been great. I, I've really enjoyed it and, um, and so really well written. Rachel, very good writer. The book that I said was working me over is called Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul Tripp. This book, I'm telling you, it's, it's, it's really hit me like, oh my goodness, I gotta get right with God after every chapter. Okay. Um, but it's been really great at explaining how we set up our heart issues that, uh, keep us from worshiping and serving, uh, who we're supposed to and as God. Uh, so, current books that I'm reading that I absolutely love, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul Tripp and What is a Girl Worth by Rachel Den Hollinger. Um, so let's move on to the final topic. Final topic. Uh, three books in your Amazon cart that you are looking forward to reading or maybe on your bookshelf that you're looking forward to. I shared my Amazon cart with, uh, my wish list with, um, my family this year for Christmas and my birthday and so a lot of these books were taken off and so my Amazon book list is down to like seven or eight and so, uh, had some books that were, uh, that I really had wanted and so they're sitting at my house because I haven't brought them in my office yet but the first one is this that I'm looking forward to getting one day and reading is, uh, my family, we have enjoyed watching The Greatest Showman. We watch it a lot. We probably watch it every two months so we'll probably watch it six times in a year. My daughter loves dancing to it. She loves just singing and going crazy and so I thought I would watch it. I have not seen it. John, come on. I know, I'm a movie buff but I have not seen it. So, I've always, every time I watch it something will stand out and I'll say, was that really in the story of Barnum? Because, you know, there's a lot of, they're making fluff to it and some, most of it, it's like 90% of the movie is pretty much true. It's pretty much spot on but there is that 10% that is fluctuated that is, that is not true and so there's a book by Pete, it's an autobiography by P.T. Barnum called Barnum's Own Story and so I put it in my Amazon cart in my wish list for that one. I want to read it. The second one that's in there that I'm looking forward to getting, haven't read after these people, it's the, the Peacemaker Ministries. It's called Redeeming Church Conflicts, Turning Crisis into Compassion and Care by Tara Barthel and David Edling. Never heard of them before. I don't know if you've heard of them. Okay. It came up as I was looking for something that was one of those recommended things so I added it because you can learn from a lot of different people. It may be a horrible book. I may waste $10 on that book but I want to at least read it. I've got their other book in my cart. I think it's Resolving Peace or Peacemakers or something. I don't know but I didn't mention it because I'm more interested in this one first and then the last one that I put in is the book called Lead Like Jesus and this is Blanchard and Hodge wrote this book and it takes the life of Jesus and his leadership principles and they wrote a book about it and so I'm excited about getting it just to enhance my leadership ability. Awesome. That sounds great. So you want to know how many books are actually in my Amazon cart? How many John? 270. Good, good. You need to make that into a wish list not a cart and then people can buy it for you John. I feel bad. I feel like I'm bumming stuff off of people. No, no like for your birthday when someone says Mary says hey what do you want for your birthday or your mom says what do you want for your birthday or whoever hey here's my wish list go ahead and buy a couple things off of it. Why not? Well you may have to show me how to do that. I'm very technologically inept. Yes. Go ahead. All right. So it was it was a little bit of a struggle for me to pick out just three because I have 270 books in my Amazon cart and many on my bookshelf that I haven't read yet. So here are three that I most want to read like right now. Sometimes I wish that I had a UAE in the back of my head and I could just take a flash drive with all this information and just download it straight into my brain because there's so many things that I want to know I want to read I want this information I want what this these things that are written this information written in this book I want it now and I'm impatient. It's called audio books John. You know what if it's a novel I can handle audio books like I can stay with an audio book if it's a novel if it's not a novel if it's non-fiction or something like that it becomes noise to me in my ears and I just lose it I'm not paying attention to it at all. I don't know why that is with me but that's just the way it is. I am jealous of people who can devour audio books like the books that we've been mentioning all day. Yeah. Oh I know. I know. I can't do it either but I just wanted to throw that out there. Another interesting thing is Oh sorry. Sorry. All right. The three books The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson Spiritual Abuse is a topic that I'm very interested in trying to gather as much as I can to study that so I can work on my counseling with that issue. The next one is a book that everybody's been hearing recommend that I have not read yet and that is Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. I want to get that book yeah it's like okay I know I need to read this book and I want to just haven't got around to it yet I want to get that one and then the next one the last one is Putting Your Past in Its Place by Steve Vyers Steve Vyers is a biblical counselor and pastor of a church in Faith Lafayette and he's actually also my supervisor in counseling and so he has written some very good biblical counseling material and this is a book that he has written on putting the past in its place and overcoming your past situation so there you have it guys I know we just like totally dump truck loaded dumped books on you today you may want to rewind back up get some of these things down but this is something that James and I enjoy doing and so next week we'll have things mapped out and be able to get ready again thank you so much for the 10,000 downloads for all of you that listen share the podcast rate the podcast comment on the podcast send us messages and those things you guys are awesome and we love you and that is it James you have any final comments I'm good John alright until next time to God not Tony Hudson be the gloryrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrewrew Thank you.

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