94. Freedom in Mental Health Part 3 with Samuel Stephens

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, John Hollifield and James Safer. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Here again with you, myself, James, and John, our co-host. And excited to come to you today in our Mental Health Awareness Month, highlighting this month of what is mental health, mental issues, psychological labels, how that all affects our psyche, our body, and our soul. And we're having a guest today. Before we get to him, John, how is your week doing? Going well. Going well. Just finished up preaching the book of Jonah. And we've been preaching through the Minor Prophets. We started that and had a good Mother's Day. And so we're recording this on a Monday. And so it's sort of like feeling that Monday fog, if you understand that. But yeah, James, how about you? That was good. I got to preach yesterday as well on Mother's Day, which, you know, as an associate, I don't get to preach often, especially at our church, but our pastor's on vacation. And so I preached on Priscilla and making an impact. And so it was a pretty great time there talking to our moms. And we had just a great, great time. Got to spend time with my mom yesterday. And I know you've been out of North Carolina. You're not able to be here with your mom. And I know that's tough. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, like James said, that this month, we've tried to do a different topic each month. And this month, month of May in our world is sort of known as Mental Health Awareness Month. And so since we sort of speak into the area of counseling and a biblical worldview, we wanted to sort of address this on the podcast. And if you've stayed with us in the last two episodes that James and I did, then you have an abandoned ship. You're interested to hear a little bit more. And so that's what we want to do. We're going to bring a couple of guests to you that can speak to this a little bit more in detail than what we can. And so the guest we have today is Samuel Stevens, Sam Stevens. And he is the director of training center certification at ACBC, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. And he's also an assistant professor of biblical counseling at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. And so, Sam, it's wonderful to have you on today. Thank you for making time with us. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing well, John. Thanks for having me and James. I appreciate both of you guys and what you do and for having me on this morning. Yeah. Sam, would you mind taking just a minute or so to tell a little bit about just your family? And you're there in, is it Kansas City? We're in Kansas City, Missouri, the Missouri side. That's important to note. People get confused. It's confusing. Yeah. So, yeah, I'd love to. You mentioned a couple of things that I do. I'll note the most important parts of me as an introduction. My wife, Hannah, speaking about Mother's Day yesterday, we've been married nine years this summer. We have three children, Audrey, Alice, and Ethan, seven, five, and two. So we're a busy household right now. But the Lord's been good to us in that. And I would say another part of my role that to me is even more dear, and I love ACBC. I love what I do at Midwestern. But I'm a lay elder at our church, local church here in Missouri, at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri. Been an elder there, lay elder there for about a year now, working on a year. Love our church. Love what we do locally. So, yeah, so that's a little bit about me, my family. We've been up here now for about five years. So moved up when ACBC's home office moved up to Kansas City from Jacksonville. Awesome. Yeah. Well, Sam wrote, he's wrote a couple of booklets for ACBC. And one that we wanted to discuss today, he wrote, was titled The Deception of Psychological Labels. And man, a booklet with that title right there is already going to initiate a reaction to somebody when they pick it up. But I was able to get it at the last conference, and I read through it, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I took a couple of copies, and I put it out at our church. I wanted some people just to – because what we've been talking about in the last two weeks has really been approaching this subject of mental health with a worldview, a biblical worldview. And so I really think that what your work did, Sam, was really push that forward a little bit with saying, all right, what's your worldview? How are we approaching this? Right. Well, I like what you said. The way I think about those titles are conversation starters. But no, it is meant to grab the attention. I'm not – the purpose of the booklet wasn't to be controversial for controversy's sake, but to help prompt some thinking. Because I think you guys had mentioned this in previous podcasts, this whole point of even this Mental Health Awareness Month largely, which is recognized nationwide. This isn't just a few people recognizing this. This is built into the fabric of our culture and our society. And so we want to help equip, you know, Christians to counsel faithfully, biblically, right? But they're going to address these issues. This is not an if situation. It's when. When they have counselees that come in that have either self-diagnosed or have been given a diagnosis or some sort of label or some sort of description on their mental anguish that isn't necessarily built into a Christian worldview. We've got to be equipped to handle that. We've got to be equipped to be, yes, winsome and engaging but knowledgeable. And so this booklet's not, you know, exhaustive or comprehensive by any means. But I'll tell you a neat story of how it came about, actually. Most people kind of find this surprising because, again, the title itself can be a little deceptive. It's not necessarily a polemical work. It's not meant to kind of spark, again, like I mentioned, controversy. It actually came out of a conversation I had with a gentleman on an airplane. I was flying out to North Carolina to do research for my dissertation, and I was sitting next to a gentleman that had actually worked out in the oil fields of Texas. He was heading back home to Georgia. We were flying into Atlanta. And we struck up a conversation. And people always ask, so what do you do? At that point, I was a seminary student, which always elicits all different types of responses. But when I tell them I'm studying counseling, he just turned towards me. And the rest of the plane ride, we had an in-depth conversation about problems, his problems, life struggles. And I welcome that. I thank the Lord for that. I always like to throw that out whenever I have conversations because it's an open door to the gospel. And he began to share with me, not really about himself necessarily. It was more about, at that time, his fiancée, who had had a lot of mental health issues, had been in and out of different facilities, had had a lot of different counselors. And he was really concerned about her. He was really concerned about her spiritual state. And out of that long conversation and some experience I'd already had with counselees that had had these issues, this book was born. I landed, literally we landed. I went to my hotel room and I wrote this book. I mean, it didn't come out perfectly. I edited it a lot. But the main pieces were there from that conversation. So it's born out of a desire to be helpful to people. I want that to be the – if your listeners kind of walk away with that, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to help people. Yeah, exactly. So in your words, how would you define a psychological label? Even in this conversation with this man, did he throw out labels? Was there something that he said that sort of sparked that interest? Or what would be your definition there? Yeah, these labels are essentially diagnostic terms. So I don't get into all the weeds necessarily in the booklet. But basically these represent mental disorders. We're talking about mental health. Well, the other side of that coin is mental illness. That's the whole point of general psychiatry, of the psychologies. They're trying to address a problem that they've identified as mental illness. So the way that it's come about through the history of psychiatry and the development of that profession is a list of diagnostic criteria, different diagnoses of disorders. They're not diseases. They're disorders. That's by design. And these disorders have different labels. Now, sometimes people come in and they're given something a little bit more official, right? I've been diagnosed with bipolar 1 or 2 or something like that. Other times it's more general. I mean, again, like I mentioned earlier, I would say in Western society, although it's getting into the East now, psychology is a pretty dominant force. And I mentioned in the book, popularly digested by people through media, social media, in more clinical settings when they're going to a doctor. And so you find it in different ways, right? People talk about personality types. They talk about their own, you know, disorders, however they want to put it. Or they've got actual, you know, medically provided descriptors. So that's generally what I'm talking about when I talk about these labels. They're affixed to people by either professionals, doctors, or by the people themselves. They're very deterministic in a sense. Yeah. One thing that we mentioned in one of our last episodes, and it sparked my interest as you were talking there, John had made a statement. And he said that, you know, when someone is labeled as bipolar or whatever mental, whatever illness it may be, they begin to take on that identity. I am bipolar. I am. But he made the statement when someone's diagnosed with cancer, they don't say I am cancer. Right. Right. Yeah. That's part of the reason that came out of this book. I mean, it's, and this is, again, this is a little bit broader conversation, but it's what marks psychiatry as a quote unquote medical profession, marks it so different from what I would identify as traditional medicine or more classical medicine. It's these types of disorders are about the inner man. That's the primary focus. And so when people are given these types of things, it's very dominating. It becomes not just how they think about themselves, it's who they become. And they are very deterministic. They're very limited. People believe they can only operate within the parameters of the diagnosis that they were given. And you don't find that. People have cancer. They have, you know, kidney problems, whatever that may be. They have migraines, but they don't, they're not those things. They're not the sum of those parts. And with, I find with psychiatry in general, the way it operates is whether it's intended or not, I'm not necessarily speaking to motive, but that's how it, that's how it comes across. They, they, they are a sum of those independent criteria and, and, and that's who they are. It's part of their identity. Yeah. You know, Sam, I, I think maybe before I was, uh, born, but I think there came a time in our country where I think people, people realize that there's, the cancer had, had become such a widespread thing that whether you've had it or not, you knew somebody within your, uh, your reach, your touch, your, your vicinity of, of circle, um, that had some type of cancer. And then we saw this happen with even divorce. Like divorce had become so widespread that, you know, wherever you were, you knew somebody who had been affected or, and I feel like it may be rapidly. Now we're sort of getting to that point with, with, um, psychological disorders to where, you know, maybe you don't have one, but you know, somebody who has been given that label. It's become, and I don't know, do you think that that's happened very quickly? Well, absolutely. And, and, and interestingly enough, we get part of the answer as to why that is from within the psychiatric community itself. Um, you know, Jay talked about this many, many years ago when he's writing early, um, early writings, uh, he had, uh, what he identified as co-belligerents. He identified people within the fields themselves that were critical of, of the way the field operated. These weren't believers. Well, actually within psych, psychiatry is a fragmented struggling profession. It doesn't seem like it from most lay people's side of things, but it is, it is, it is, it is, it is very, uh, fractured. It's going in a lot of different directions. It's been, uh, in, in one, in one, in terms of one, uh, a critic who, who herself is a pretty well-known psychiatrist. It's a, it's a field in search of a science to defend itself. It's always been that way. And one reason why it's so, uh, it seems like, I think you're bringing up a good point, John. The reason why it seems like it's become so widespread is because the parameters by which we define mental illness has become broad. It's become, it's becoming ever more broad. Uh, when you look at the DSM, I've, I've, I've, I've used that term a few times for your listeners who weren't familiar. It's the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. It's a massive text that's published by the American Psychiatric Association. Uh, now in its, um, fifth or sixth iteration, um, it is exploded. It is, it's over 500 diagnoses now. And it's, there's no, there's no stopping that trajectory. And so, uh, uh, the, uh, the task force chairman for the DSM for, uh, Alan Francis, uh, probably one of the most prominent psychiatrists in America, even today, very vocal critic of psychiatry. Still a practicing psychiatrist, definitely believes in the systems that it purports. And he's, I don't believe he's a Christian. Uh, but he himself was very critical of the way the DSM is structured, the way that it doesn't rely on any type of scientific, uh, design. It is literally, uh, diagnoses and criteria that are put together by committee. And it's just, so it's built on a worldview that's just expanding, uh, the, uh, the notion that problems are actually diseases, that we shouldn't have any problems. And so when we do, it's, it's because it's a disease, it's something organic is going on that's wrong. Right. And that gets into the word disorder. And I think the area about it that, that we're not thinking about is, so what is their standard of what they're saying is ordered? Right. Well, that's the issue with mental health. And this is why it's a term I find to be pretty problematic, even for Christians to use. What's the standard? What does mental health look like? How do I know someone's mentally healthy versus not? And, and again, the other side of the same coin, mental illness is the same moving target is the way I put it. It's always changing. It really depends on who's using it. Interestingly enough, when you read the DSM, which is about as authoritative in the field as you can get, they're very clear that the term mental illness and mental health are just fictive placeholders. I mean, that's what one critic put it, but, um, they're, they don't, they don't have consensus of what those terms mean. You know, and so, uh, you know, you have to read the, read the preface. No one ever does that. I do cause I'm a nerd, but it's there that it's, it's, it's philosophical. This is a philosophical pursuit. It's not a scientific pursuit. When you read the physician's desk reference, you're not going to find that type of talk about what constitutes a disease, but you do in the DSM. You do when it, when it comes to the psychologies and psychiatry in particular. So they're not the same. And I think that most people, this is something else in the book I'm trying to at least get at and have a conversation started with is let's just be honest with the fact that we can, we can put aside. It's helpfulness or it's usefulness, but let's at least put before us that they do not operate within the same rules. And so for us to say that it's science or there's consensus or that there's even the same way to operate or see these things across the spectrum. No, that's why the DSM even exists. The whole purpose of the DSM exists, at least in its current form since the 1980s is to help standardize the diagnostic process because you would have this, you could take the same person, put them in front of five or six or seven clinicians and get potentially six or seven different diagnoses. And that's because there's no science or stability or consistency behind how that's often diagnosed or brought out. Yeah, I remember hearing David Pallison, the late David Pallison talk about this in a way that he said that there's, the problem is, is people think that there is psychology. It's not, there's, it's actually psychology because there's like over 200 approaches. There's not one agreed upon scientific method of how you approach these issues. It's like over 200 of them. Right. They're based in worldview and this gets to kind of what you mentioned before, right? So, and again, I want to be clear here. I'm not in the business of impugning motive. I believe at, you know, I want to believe that for the most part, all these people are trying to be helpful to people that are in anguish. The problem is they're, they're, they're defining the problem initially wrongly, and then they're coming about it built off of that wrong, those wrong perceptions. And so that's what we're trying to do, right? As biblical counselors, we want to be helpful, but I think it's important. I always tell my students, you need to define first off what help means. You know, biblical counseling, the goal of biblical counseling is not to relieve anguish. Now, I don't, that doesn't mean I enjoy people being in anguish or pain. I don't, but the Lord uses, there's a theology of suffering. There are purposes behind those types of things. And if my whole framework of counseling is to eradicate any, as, as one social commentator put it, any dis-ease, not disease, but any dis-ease. If my whole goal is to eradicate that or to, to alleviate that in any kind of way, that's my intentional goal. I may very well sidestep the gospel. I may, I may very well sidestep essential teachings of the Bible, because there are certain things that we're called to do that don't necessarily invite pain and suffering, but may include it. And the Lord uses those types of things. So worldview is extremely important in those types of conversations. Well, let's continue on down that road, James. Yeah, actually, I want to flip the two questions, John. Yeah, I think that's a great idea, too. I was thinking. Just to leave that one for the last thing. Yeah. So when we encounter a counselor, when we encounter someone that has a psychological label, are the labels deceptive or can they be deceptive? And elaborate a little bit if you answer yes or no. No, that's, that's a good, that's a good question. I want to go back to what I said earlier. When I use this term deceptive, I'm not necessarily trying to impugn, you know, the motives of those utilizing those systems. There are some Christians. Obviously, I would disagree in how we utilize, you know, psychology and view it. There are Christians that we would identify as integrationists who see value in the systems that we're talking about. I believe they're trying to help people. I think there's some misguidedness and there's a lot of misguidedness, but I don't impugn their motives. And even the secularist, the professional, I'm assuming, and I read a lot of these books. I don't just read books written by people who agree with me. I read, you know, people that are in the field currently, what they're talking about. And I'll tell you, one takeaway that I get from a lot of these books is they seem to really care for the people that they're trying to address, whoever is reading their text and trying to advance the field. So by deceptive, I'm not mean that they're necessarily being malicious. Now, with that being said, I think the whole framework, the whole psychiatric framework, the mental health complex, that whole paradigm, I do not believe it's helpful. I do think it's deceptive. I think it points away from the true realities that the Bible lays in front of us. And especially in the three areas, the three schemes that I bring up in the book with purposes of identity, responsibility and purpose. I definitely think that, you know, giving a lot of credence to the psychologies and psychiatric language and terms and concepts and diagnoses in particular, these labels, they're at best, they're not helpful. And at worst, they are deceptive. They blind people to what we're called to look at in the scriptures. And that's the sinfulness of our own heart. We cannot ignore sin directly done by us, of course, but the impacts of sin. I mean, we live in a fallen world. So some of these things are expected. Not to say they're not disordered. I don't mind the term disorder. I use it in the Puritan sense. They used it a lot, and I love the Puritans. But it's disordered in the sense that things are not as they ought to have been. And that's since Genesis 3. And so we don't ignore that. We see that for what it is. So in terms of that, that's why I use that term deceptive. I don't think that they're helpful. Are there certain insights that even secular psychologists can make that could be marginally helpful? Sure. Not even ACBC. Most people are kind of surprised if they're not familiar with us, or maybe they know a little bit about us, that we would say that. But you take someone, and you mentioned John Pallison mentioned this several years ago. You take someone who studies something for several decades. They're going to make some general observations about human behavior, maybe motive to a certain extent, that are going to be somewhat accurate. But at the same time, I would say that a broken clock is right twice a day or once a day, however you want to view it. So there's going to be some things that are right. But on the whole, I believe what the scriptures say. The natural man does not discern the things of God. And they're missing on the most fundamental aspects of who we are as people. Anthropology is definitely skewed from a psychiatric perspective. There's no doubt about that in my mind. And so if we're going to utilize any of it, do so very sparingly and warily. I would urge, though, that if we spent half of the time spent in trying to redeem some of these godless ideologies and studying the scriptures and making them helpful, we would be much further along in our progress as a field. And so I'm a biblical counselor. I love what we're doing as a field. There have definitely been avenues and areas of use being one of them where we have not developed as much as we could have in the past 30, 40 years. And I'm excited to see that these are areas that we are going to be growing in and we're going to be moving forward because the Bible speaks about these issues. But I would like to see us focus on building a biblical theology of suffering and all these different particulars of issues that people face and stop trying to focus so much on trying to make other systems work. They don't. Many of them are contradictory to a biblical worldview. That kind of answers your question. Yeah, absolutely. I love the way you said that they're not intentionally been malicious and they genuinely want to help. I do. Yeah. But when you don't have the truth, it's hard to help the nature of man. When you don't understand the nature of man based on a biblical worldview, which is what we're going to get to in a minute, it's hard to help. But they genuinely, like you said, want to help. We went through an article on the last two episodes through psychiatry.com and we agreed with a lot of what they said because they genuinely want to help, but they just don't understand, again, the nature of suffering and the nature of man. And I do want to just say this as a side comment. I mean, and I do believe that's true. But we cannot, and this gets back to what I said earlier, we cannot forget that if we're going to talk about what help really means, we've got to define that term. For me, reading the scriptures, there is no help outside of Christ. And that's not just an eschatology, eschatological comment, right? In the times, in the fullness of time comment. It's here and now. People cannot live fruitful, purpose-filled, functional, the way that we were designed to function lives without being born again, without the truth of the gospel relating to everything that they are experiencing in life. And so in a sense, yes, they want to be helpful, but they can't offer help. Not really. They can offer some alleviation of pain. I said there's an extra four-letter word that all Christians should adopt that we can't say, and that's the word cope. We don't do that. That's a four-letter word. We don't like that word. Why? Because we're not called to cope. That's not a Christian idea. But the world is built around that. I mean, it's all about whatever it takes to cope, whether that be through distractions, you know, whatever it may be, you can do that. You just got to get through. You know, fake it till you make it. Keep calm and carry on. And that's not the Christian life. The Christian life is a call to actually, you know, a call to pick up your cross and follow Christ. It's a call to come and die. And so I think there's a lot to even, that could be a whole different topic, but I really want to press upon my students. They come and they want to be helpful. And I'm all about it. I really am. I'm all about helping people. That's why I do what I do. But we've got to get that. We even have to get that right. Because if we get help wrong, it may seem pretty insignificant from the outset. We're going to end up in a place that's far away from where we want our counselees to be. Yeah. Yeah. I had somebody along that lines ask me a question. It was in regard to a totally other subject. And I said, well, I said, the reason why I don't want to go that route is because if I had a young person come to my office and said that they were struggling with their gender identity and that kind of thing, if I go to them and begin in Genesis and start talking about their made in the image of God and the fall and the sin, then a lot of what the state guidelines would say, I would be very much in trouble. And the person replied to me this, Sam. They said, well, don't you think maybe that would be something that you could put aside in order to help them further? And I said, no. I said, because that's where I'm going to start with the gospel. I said, and then I'm going to take them to the gospel. I said, that's like giving somebody a blanket and a pillow and trying to make them as comfortable as they can be when the plane's going and crashing into a mountain. I said, you're making them more comfortable on the road to hell. I said, I don't want to do that. I said, that's not help. It's not. I love that you said that. And in fact, I often say this. Any counseling system that does not bring Christ, you know, first, foremost, the gospel is not the center, really the center of all the counsel provided. You can call it whatever you want, but it's not Christian. And I don't say that in a maligning way. But we've got to be very clear about that. In any kind of situation that I may be in that would say, you know, you can share the gospel, but only when it's brought up by your client or only in a roundabout way. I'll just say this personally. I don't want to be involved in that. Why would I choose to do that if I believe Christ is the most? It's like me saying, well, I'm going to keep this back for when I can really find a way or at best, I may never bring it up at all. And current integration literature now has just gone off the deep end. It's already it's way it's always been kind of that direction. But now they're openly advocating for a universalist type of approach to things. And I've read a book that was published back in 2020 that said, you know, written by integrationist. I mean, key foundational ones, it's not this is not a, you know, a marginal book. And they're talking about, well, we're just going to work with whatever worldview or religious background our clients have. And that's just that's unchristian. I mean, that's that's just that's right. That's blasphemy. So we should be very careful about that. And that's what James and I have sort of hammered hammered at the idea. Even a couple of months back in some episodes that the worldview matters, because honestly, and I know this could get us sidetracked a little bit, but I believe that the secular worldview is not going to hold any prisoners. I mean, you either you're either with them or you're not. And I think that the the the area of of gender identity is one of those topics that is really going to separate. I mean, I know that there is a large world of the integrationist world, but I see it shrinking because you're either going to be on their side or you're not. Well, I'm actually to say I'm looking forward to it's not the right way to put it. But I think that the day the day is already here, frankly, where you're going to find the people that truly do trust in the Lord and his word. And they're willing to because sufficiency of scripture is an easy thing to throw out. And people you talk to anyone. They're like, yeah, sufficiency of scripture. But when the rubber hits the road, that looks very different. I mean, you have people like Mark Yarhouse, who is the leading evangelical voice for integration in terms of people with, quote unquote, gender dysphoria. That's another psychological deceptive label. Right. And he he he advocates for two things. Sufficiency of scripture. And in some unique situations, surgical involvement for gender transition would be it would be OK for people that struggle with gender dysphoria. I.B.P. publishes his books. He openly advocates for this. So that's not sufficiency. You can call it whatever you want. It's not sufficiency because there's no way that you could counsel that. Right. So. So that's why, you know, when you get down to the particulars, you're going to really see a clear distinguishing line. And I think it's going to be helpful. I think it's going to be clarifying. It's definitely going to bring persecution. I don't think that's that's not me being dramatic. That's just true. You go to our brothers and sisters in Canada. They can tell you that right now. You go to certain states in the U.S. They can tell you that right now. And it's coming to the Midwest. It's coming to the South. It's coming. And so I think that soon it's going to be not just difficult. It's going to be untenable for someone that truly has biblical convictions. And they really do want to help people with God's word to operate in the secular sphere at all in a professional setting. Yeah. Well, I think maybe we could sort of say we've been negative. We've tried to have positive. But I say like maybe this final question, James, sort of sort of wrap it up in a more positive spin. Yeah. I don't think I don't think negative is the word. I think realistic is the word that you're looking for. I mean, we're just we're just talking what's happening, what's real, what's actually coming down the pipeline. And it's not necessarily a negative take on one point. It's just reality and where we're at as a nation, where we're at as a people and where we need to get back biblically aligned to. Yeah. And so with that being said, go ahead, Sam. Well, I was going to say I'm actually encouraged because I know I know the end of the story. Yeah. I know that the church is going to be victorious. The gates of hell will not prevail against her. And so it's not a call to retreat back to the church. It's a call to let the church be who she always was supposed to be. And that is it does include. I mean, we're all pastors here. Our role is not just to preach God's word. It is. That is essential. It is important. We're to counsel God's word. We're to help shepherd the flock. This is what biblical counseling is. And then not even that are our brothers and sisters who are church members who are redeemed people. They're also called to be about the one another's. All of those things are biblical counseling. It's about counseling. And this is, again, I love what Paulson has always articulated, right? It's bringing counseling back to the church and counseling back to Christ where it always belonged. So I'm very encouraged. He will sustain his followers. And the world is passing away. And it's lusts. But the word of God will stand forever. So we can take confidence in that. Well, I was going to say, give us a word of encouragement to go on for a biblical worldview. But I think you just did it. I don't think you could add on that. I wanted to preempt that. Yeah. I will say this. I can't add just this. You know, take heart. You know, the passages that come to mind, you know, don't grow weary in doing good. And, you know, for your listeners, for both of you, the world's always been opposing, you know, God's word. That's not new. There's nothing new under the sun. And so as we continue to do this work, I had a mentor tell me this a long time ago. And it was shocking when I heard it because I had a very naive view of all this ministry. But it's been probably one of the more encouraging things that I've kept in my mind. Sam, you need to measure your effectiveness, your success in ministry, not on the results, but on your obedience. And I love that because I have counselees that do take God's word. They take my counsel and there's wonderful change and God be praised. It's what I want to see in every life that I get to impact. But I don't always see that. But it's about me just being obedient, not me being pragmatic or looking at the results, not looking at acceptance from the world. The world will never accept what we're proposing here. I'm under no illusion that that would ever happen. Or, frankly, that maybe even the vast majority of the evangelical church in the United States would absorb what we're doing. Although I will say that there are many schools and churches. I mean, working for ACBC has been such an encouragement. There are faithful brothers and sisters everywhere. I mean, they're all over the world. And they're faithfully counseling God's word. It's wonderful. I mean, we're out there. You know, you're not alone. But I would just say to your listeners and to all of us, just day in, day out, just be faithful. And let the consequences, let those be up to the Lord. He'll deal with those. We won't even worry about the state or what the secularists would say or people who oppose God's word. Those people have always been there. But his word, it remains forever. Praise the Lord. We're going to be pleaded there. Amen. James, you have any closing comments? I'm good. I appreciate you coming on, Sam. Yes, thank you. And it's helped for all of us. I appreciate your time. Thanks a lot for having me. Yes, thank you. And until next time, it's our sign-off. To God be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom podcast. 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