Ask Me Anything: Episode 02

00:00 - Speaker 1
Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

00:09 - Speaker 2
Hey everybody. It's one of those moments where we're going to do Ask Me Anything questions. So get ready and we'll dive into some very cool questions that have come to us.

00:23 - Speaker 1
You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbscom slash podcast Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

00:52 - Speaker 2
Hey everybody, thank you. Just a few hours ago I asked if you guys would help me out personally, because when I show up to do a podcast, I'm like a lamb to the slaughter. I show up and everything is set up and then in many of the gatherings, podcast or whatever it might be, they throw the topic at me with about a two minute warning, and so I thought I would team up with you to kind of throw them a curveball. And so I asked you guys on Facebook if you would send me a topic, and we we got how many topics? Zillions of topics, hundreds of topics. So we don't have time to answer hundreds of topics, but we'll do three right now, and I want to say that we're going to be talking right now regarding what Evelyn right now, regarding what Evelyn, what Evelyn has written, and Evelyn has written this regarding prayer. In fact, she cites Proverbs 28, verse 9, and she talks about that when a man is not right with God, even his prayer is an abomination unto the Lord. And can our prayer make God sick, sick to a stomach that is Nauseous, repulsed? The answer is absolutely yes, evelyn. When we're not right with God, he doesn't want to hear from us. When our children are not right with us, they've done something and they're in the penalty box, we don't talk to them and they don't want to hear from us. When our children are not right with us, they've done something and they're in the penalty box, we don't talk to them and they don't talk to us, they have to go to the room, they have to sit and think about what they did wrong and then they come out and face the judgment of what they've done. God deals with us the exact same way. Now listen when believers pray. Then the Lord hears us as we walk with him in the light.

02:50
Read 1 John. Read 1 John, chapter 1, because there the Bible tells us that if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin If we confess our sins. He's faithful just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Okay, the key is to walk with Christ. Does God forgive people who are not walking with Christ? Answer Absolutely not. Question Does God hear the prayer of an unbeliever?

03:22
The answer only one prayer will God hear from an unbeliever? Only one. He will never answer a prayer, according to his Bible, of an unbeliever, except one, and that one prayer is the prayer of repentance, the prayer of faith coming to Christ. This is just pure fact, hardcore theological fact. God does not listen to the prayers of the wicked. By the way, god also says don't repeat to me your prayers. Stop repeating prayers like the heathen do. I don't want to hear it. And then he also warns don't pray so long the unrighteous pray so long, thinking for their many words, words they will be heard. Jesus said nope. In fact, the Old Testament says when you come before the Lord in prayer, let your prayer be to him efficient. Not much in word be exact. So listen, evelyn. Yes, our prayers can be an abomination to God when we're not walking with him in the spirit.

04:29
As believers, keep this in mind. In Matthew, chapter six, jesus says if you don't forgive others, your heavenly father will not forgive you. Does that mean, if you're having a hard time forgiving somebody, that you're going to go to hell, even if you're born again? Some people, somebody that you're going to go to hell even if you're born again. Some people teach that you know that's not what it means. Number one if you are a believer.

04:58
We are called to forgive our enemies. Sometimes it takes us a lifetime to forgive our enemies. Depends upon the depth and the gravity of the pain inflicted. It's hard. We have to work at it. We have to ask God to help us. But listen, when Christ has forgiven you and I so much.

05:12
If we withhold forgiveness to somebody else who's done so little to us compared to what we've done to God, god says I'm not going to be talking to you. Our fellowship's broken right now, that sin that you just did husband, christian husband, christian wife and you're tearing each other up and you don't ask for forgiveness. God says I'm not talking to either one of you. It doesn't mean you're aborted from the kingdom of God's family. It means he's not listening to you anymore. So what basis do you say that, Pastor Jack? I knew you would ask. So it's Isaiah, chapter 59. Isaiah 59, verses 1 and 2, says my hand's not short, that it cannot save you, neither is my ear deaf that I cannot hear you, but your sins have separated you from me so that when you pray I will not listen and when you're in trouble I will not rescue you. God is saying keep a short account, forgive people, walk before me and be my child, those who are not his children. Their prayers are an abomination to God.

06:27
Next one, maryland, writes, and I'm wondering is it Maryland? Is that your name, maryland, or are you from Maryland? I don't know, but you're Maryland anyway. And so you said that you've been blessed by a lot, hundreds and hundreds of people's testimonies regarding their near-death experience. What do I think about that? Number one do you know these people? Did they write it? Is it video? How do you know them? Number two how do you know it's not chat, gpt speaking? How do you know it's an actual, real thing? Could it be some sort of a fictional thing? Let me answer you more specifically. Is what is it that interests you about people's near-death experience? Why are you interested in that? Because if you want to read about someone's near-death, why mess around with a near-death experience when you can read Matthew, mark, luke and John and find out about an absolute total death experience and being resurrected from the dead experience. Here's the reason why experience. Here's the reason why Dreams or visions that even happen while under anesthesia.

08:01
The doctors say you are flatlined, know this, you're not dead until God calls your spirit out of your body. In fact, when your spirit leaves your body, that's when you're really dead. You and I have visited people who are on life support and the family's talking to them and they're holding their hand and stuff and the doctors almost always say are you, pastor, jack? Yeah, okay, look, can I lean on you, pastor? Can you go in there and tell them that their daughter's not here. She's on life support. She's probably been dead for a couple of days. Can you break that news to them? Yes, sir, yes, ma'am, what happens? You speak to them, can't go through it right now, it's too long. But they pull the plug and what happens? Everything stops. They left that body a long time ago. When the spirit leaves the body, the body's dead.

08:57
But when people write things like this watch this, marilyn, this is important. When somebody says I saw Uncle Bob in heaven and he had wings, humans in heaven, according to the Bible, never have wings. Humans don't get wings. So what's going on? Or somebody says I saw this and I saw that.

09:25
I find it interesting that the near-death or afterlife come-back-to-life experiences that I have read many times they contradict each other and always Jesus is no big deal. Jesus is either there or he's not there. I've heard a lot of people say, oh, I had a near-death experience, or I died on the operating table and I'm not afraid to die anymore. Oh, that's great. Did you meet Jesus? Oh, no, no, no, not, not at all. Um, no, I had this very, very esoteric out of body thing. It was very cool. And I don't need Jesus, I don't need, I don't need Buddha, I don't need Hinduism, I don't need nothing. Um, I'm it's, I'm good, my goodness.

10:18
That is a deceiving spirit and a doctrine of a demon, because the Bible is the authoritative book on life and death, and what you always want to do is compare that experience to scripture. I actually do not read any more books or articles written by people who had an out-of-body experience. I would recommend to you, though, if you're really interested in this, you should get the book by Randy Alcorn called heaven. Heaven by Randy Alcorn and study the theology of heaven. But I'll leave you with this.

10:53
Marilyn is that in second Corinthians 12, paul the apostle is speaking about himself. He was stoned to death and he dies, and he saw heaven and God allowed him clearly to come back into his own body. And what did Paul say? Paul said things were seen and experience was experienced that it is unlawful for me to speak of. I will not speak of it because there's no earthly words to describe. That's the closest we can get to a man bringing us a report, a human man bringing us a report as to what he saw in heaven. I would not believe anyone's message or story, no matter who they are, that they had an out-of-body, near-death experience, without comparing it to the Bible. It's got to be spot on with scripture or you're going to be led astray. And then, finally, you guys are running out of time. I think Countdown, we have some time. Maybe. Here Is Bo. Bo wrote or sent us a message on Facebook, sent me a message, bo sent it to me, marilyn sent it to me, evelyn sent it to me and not our team, because we're doing a little trick or real right now and answering these from you directly, and that is this Regarding the confession of sins, james, chapter five, tells us that we can confess our sins to one another.

12:22
If we confess our sins, there's healing, that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, that the elder should anoint with oil. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But listen, we want to be careful, because you were asking, bo, regarding the confession of sins to people. When we confess our sins to others, we get healing. Listen, bo, please don't misunderstand that when the scripture says we should confess our sins one to another, number one, the scripture requires, regarding confession, that the confession should be made within the circle of the sin. So if five people know about a sin that you committed, you should confess to those five people, not a sixth person, not a seventh, eighth, tenth or twentieth.

13:16
You should never, never, go up in front of the church with a microphone because the pastor says so and says let's obey the Bible, confess your sins, friend, to the congregation. Never, never, do that, ever do that. That's not what God has called you to do. You're not supposed to do that. And boy, when that does happen, there's a lot of charismatic groups that do that and it leads to absolute destruction. There's a lot of charismatic groups that do that and it leads to absolute destruction. If I sin against you, bo, then I'm supposed to ask you, bo, to forgive me for the sin that I committed against you. I do not go to Mike and Fred and Johnny and Karen to tell them what I did to you. That makes me a sinner in the area of gossip and tailbearing. The Bible says God hates that If Fred sinned against Wilma or Wilma against Fred, their confession is to stay among them and no one else.

14:26
Okay, but people today will say in a small group hey, let's confess our sins one to another, like James says to. Do you know those people in the small group? Well, we've been gathering for six weeks. I didn't ask you that. Do you know those people in the small group? Well, we've been gathering for six weeks. I didn't ask you that. Do you know them? Do you know them? It's kind of like the joke.

14:57
Actually, I think it was J Vernon McGee, or it might have even been Billy Graham, in a moment of candor, talks about this very thing taking place and the wrong atmosphere for it, and somebody says let's confess our sins one to another. So one guy says well, here's my, here's my sin, I'm confessing to you guys. I've been taking a little bit of money from the cash register every week, and so I've been stealing from the company. So I'm confessing my sin every week, and so I've been stealing from the company. So I'm confessing my sin. Okay, next guy yeah, you know what I've been. I've been looking at my neighbor. She's really hot and, man, I've just been having like really amazing thoughts about her and so I I confess my sin and people say, okay, great, next guy. Yeah, my sin is I have a problem with gossip and I can't wait to get out of this gathering to tell everybody what you guys have been doing.

15:56
You might laugh, but I've actually seen that happen in people's lives for real. So there's five guys together and they're confessing their sin because they think they're being really spiritual about it, and so they confess their sin. And then one guy goes home and tells his wife man, you know what Mike said today? I don't tell anybody. You just sinned, by the way. You just went home and sinned. And then your wife carries that over and eventually that guy's wife finds out about it and a few other people know. It's a catastrophe. It winds up splitting up and destroying a church, friendship or fellowship.

16:38
When the Bible says to confess your faults one to another, there's an assumption made in the book of James that you're talking to other mature believers in Christ who you know well. I don't know why we fall for this stuff. We read something and we get excited, or we don't read it in this context and we wind up making it a practice. I once knew a group of men, quite large by the way. They would break up into groups of 10 and they would go around their table and they would confess their faults and, lo and behold, one of the guys backslid. For whatever reasons, I don't remember, he stopped going, wound up, leaving his family, and then he wound up talking because he was backslidden or not a believer at all whatever the case is, god knows and he went around telling everybody about all the stuff he learned in that men's group, about how bad these dudes are. So I'm no worse than anybody else, because they all confess this stuff to me.

17:50
And now I'm doing this stuff and over about the course of three years, this men's group in there began to completely break apart because of practicing wrongly the Word of God. They took the truth and they applied their emotions to it and by doing that they operated themselves emotionally with even possibly good intentions. They did the wrong thing. You must be very discreet, the wrong thing. You must be very discreet and you must ask the question to whom do you reveal this sin to?

18:30
If you have a sin that's in your life privately, god is saying deal with that now Repent of it, walk away from it, cut all the tentacles or strings and chains that are attached to it and go and sin no more. But if your sin involves two other people, then you immediately go to them and say to them listen, I cannot do this anymore. I've been sinning against God. I encourage you guys to do the same, but I'm confessing this to you guys what we've been doing is wrong and I'm not doing it anymore. Christ has convicted me. And, listen, I'm not going to say a word to anybody, because it's been the three of us that have been talking about this thing. I'm not going to repeat it again. I encourage you to repent and do the same thing, but as to this topic and conversation, never again, never again.

19:29
Be very wise, bo. Be very careful, because somebody that you talk to on this topic had better be a proven, grounded, well-adjusted, spirit-led believer, and I can tell you right now you don't need many friends like that. I mean, I have probably on my hand five people that I can say things to. One of them's, lisa. One of them is Tony Perkins, a dear friend of mine. There's a few other brothers that I can share with, but keep it tight. Learn how to conduct yourself in all wisdom. So, thank you, listen. Hopefully we've answered. Some of your questions stimulated further study on your part. Listen, as always, it's time for us to live out what we believe in. It's time for real life. That's what we're all about is real life. So check us out on various platforms. Make sure you get the Real Life Network app, by the way. Subscribe there at your app provider, real Life Network. Join us. It's for free and until next time, god bless you guys.

20:59 - Speaker 1
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