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Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Bretton Grimm.

[00:03:04:02 - 00:03:23:20]
Brenton
 I wanted to, right at the top of this episode, just apologize for missing last week as well. So the week before that was planned that we wouldn't have one, but then some other scheduling things came up last week. So apologize for that, but we are back today. And we're back with Nathan Williams. How's it going?

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Nathan
 It's going good. Good to be here, Bretton.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah, so Andrew, we also preached in Danville, but he was unavailable today. So just going to be the two of us, but I'm excited for our conversation.

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Brenton
 Well, so you had John 15 still.

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Brenton
 And this is really an important passage in the way that Jesus calls us to live in this world. And so let's start out with you. You emphasize that following Jesus means counting the cost. And I'm curious, what are some practical costs in your mind that believers face today?

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Nathan
 Well, of course, we talked a little bit. Yesterday was praying for the persecuted church, and so around the world, of course, it could be your life, I mean, or whatever. But right here, even in the United States, I no longer get out of that sermon or the service yesterday.

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Nathan
 And this lady came up to me and said, hey, my daughter, my daughter worked for this big financial company. She was high up in the company. She was making like $500,000 a year, big money. But she said, I always told my daughter, she says,

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Nathan
 stay true to the word. Well, they were pushing some agendas that weren't biblical.

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Nathan
 And she stood up for that and lost her job. And that just recently. So that is one of the costs. You know what I mean?

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Nathan
 We are going to have companies, individuals, who own companies that could mean, hey, you're not going to work for them anymore.

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Nathan
 Now, here's the deal. Am I willing to risk that at the cost of following Jesus or not? That's counting the cost. That's counting the cost.

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Brenton
 For sure. Yeah, I think there are bigger ones. Like you talked about the persecuted church. There's our lives in some cases, but you go down from that, you go to our livelihoods, our jobs, but even down from that, I think that we can have maybe an inflated view of what our persecution looks like today on a day-to-day basis. And not to discount it because it's still real, but losing friendships, losing,

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Brenton
 or just having very uncomfortable conversations with people, I think that we can really build that up as a big thing.

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Nathan
 Yeah, absolutely. I went to the bigger cases, obviously. And, but yeah, we can be persecuted or hated right in, writing your workplace in your school, just by people that shun us, that don't want anything to do with us, because they know we talk about Jesus. They know we read our Bible. They know we might pray before a meal, even at lunchtime, right? And they're like, yeah, look at them. And you're basically ostracized, which isn't a nice thing. I think of kids in school. Oh my goodness. When you're just trying to fit in, and it's hard anyway. And then to be shunned like that, made foot of, oh, there's that Jesus freak, there's that weirdo. It's hard. But am I willing to stand up for the sake of Christ? Someone else reminded me after the sermon after the meeting that says, hey, remember when you and Matt Shin went down to the city council, and I'd forgotten all about this.

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Nathan
 Burlington was thinking about making, having a pride month, I think it was. I can't even remember, but we just went down and said, hey, why are we doing this? Didn't make a big fuss about it. It's just like, hey,

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Nathan
 why do we even have to do this? Let's just hold the line and just say, hey, we're for everybody. And not specially give glorification for something like that. And yeah, there was a lot of pushback, I'm told, on Facebook. Not to your face. I didn't go seeking after, but there was a lot of hate going on there. Now I could have gone down that rabbit hole and just like, oh, and then maybe pushback. But I'm like, hey, let them say what they wanna say. I'm not even gonna look for it.

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Brenton
 Yeah,

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Brenton
 that's fair. So what are some areas today where you think the believers are most tempted to compromise?

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Nathan
 I think basically when you say Christians, you know what I mean?

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Nathan
 Are you talking about actual Christians or people who call themselves Christians? Because really when you talk about people who call themselves Christians, I would say there's a lot of churches even. And I talked about the politician in Finland who stood up against her own church for wanting to partner with a pride event. You know what I mean? So when you see churches that call themselves Christians, I would say they're not Christian because they are literally celebrating sinful activities that are against the Bible. So they're the ones who call themselves Christians. Now, I would say there are actual believers who know some of these things, but they are tempted all the time. Our culture is so changing all the time. It's like, yeah, well, you know, I mean, just, well, we're like married, you know what I mean? But we haven't actually got married, you know what I mean? But in God's eyes, you know, we're married and you know what I mean? And so living together and these compromises are just,

[00:09:15:10 - 00:09:39:21]
Nathan
 it's so wishy washy, but in the eyes of the world, the world knows, you know what I mean? So I think that's one of those things where we're so willing to compromise instead of saying, no, I wanna stand up and do what's right. Not only the eyes of God, but in the eyes of the people, you know what I mean? Because they see us, they know whether we're really believers or we're wishy washy.

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Nathan
 What's Jesus say to the seven churches?

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Nathan
 You know, because you're neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mind. We need to be on fire for the Lord. We need to be hot. And I think there's too many of us are,

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Nathan
 in this day and age, it's so easy to compromise. You know, we could look at a hundred different scenarios. You know what I mean? So pick one and we could talk about it. But the reality is, is like, am I willing to stand up for the truth of the gospel at the cost, the consequences of, oh, people are showing me, people hating me. People maybe not wanting to hire me. You know what I mean?

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Nathan
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 So you said that the world responds to love with hate.

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Brenton
 And I think sometimes I think Christians can confuse being persecuted for Christ's sake with being persecuted because they're honestly just being jerks, right? So the Christian message is offensive on its own and we really don't need to,

[00:10:53:02 - 00:11:09:02]
Brenton
 we don't need to soften any of that. Like we need to leave that offensiveness in the message, but we also don't want to add any unnecessary barriers to that. Right, right. And so how can we rightly draw the line between these two things?

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Nathan
 Yeah, you're 100%. I think a lot of Christians think, I've just got to be a jerk against everybody. You know what I mean? Who's not a Christian? And that doesn't help at all. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Now,

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Nathan
 I think people, Christians go out of their way sometimes and I use that word Christians literally here,

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Nathan
 to pick a fight and to try and be offensive. You know what I mean? Just for the sake of being offensive is like, you know, I'm gonna, you know, and when we go about it that way, we're not gonna win anybody. You know, we gotta do it in a way that shows that we actually care about them, not that we're doing it out of spite or hatred or being mean spirit or whatever. It's like, if at all possible,

[00:12:04:14 - 00:12:07:14]
Nathan
 we gotta live a peace with people. That's our goal. That should be our goal in there.

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Brenton
 Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think that this is where like what you were talking about that we need to speak the truth and love is, it's important, but you know,

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Brenton
 I think it's so easy when you hear that to kind of ignore the truth part of that and just like, you know, kind of lay off of what we should be saying, but like, can you just kind of describe to us what, in your mind, what does speaking the truth and love mean?

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Nathan
 That's really good. So speaking the truth and love, well,

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Nathan
 what's our goal? I guess, what's our goal in all this is our goal. So I also talked about, there's two sides.

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Nathan
 There's one side who is fathers of Christ and there's the other side who are basically in the camp of Satan, right? They might not recognize that, but the truth,

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Nathan
 Bible says before Christ, we were enemies of God, right? So there's enemies of God and followers of God. So the goal is, what's my goal? Is it just to defeat the enemy and say, yeah, beat you, or is it to win them over? Now, if I'm gonna win them over, I'm not going to do that with a mean or harsh rhetoric. If my goal is just to win a debate,

[00:13:35:05 - 00:13:50:06]
Nathan
 as in, hey, I was a better debater than you, guess what? They're gonna walk away feeling like, oh, and they're not gonna be, they're gonna be saying, I gotta study up, come back and beat you better, you know? But if I can win them over with compassion,

[00:13:51:06 - 00:13:57:04]
Nathan
 with love, and sort of say, hey, you know what? And that comes with a lot of humility.

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Nathan
 So pride never won anything over. Pride comes before a fall, right? We don't all know that. But if I can go to someone and like, I've said to, I don't know how many people, hey, you know what, you're a sinner. And they look at you like, what? And then I'll say, right away, just like me. And all of a sudden you see that softening, because they recognize you're not standing there in judgment over them. But you're putting yourself as in, you know what?

[00:14:26:10 - 00:14:54:15]
Nathan
 I needed Christ too. I still need Christ every day. But for sure, I needed Christ to save me from my sins. And to date, you know what I mean? I've never talked to somebody. I know somebody, you'll probably find somebody somewhere that says, yeah, I've never sinned. But most people are very willing. John says, and in first John's, if you claim to be without sin, we are a liar. You know what I mean?

[00:14:55:16 - 00:15:12:17]
Nathan
 But most people at least admit that, yeah, I've sinned. And if you can put yourself, if you can identify with a person, we're starting out in the right way in that we're saying, I love you. I was where you are.

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Nathan
 And it gives us a chance to be able to come alongside them. Now, speaking the truth in love also means speaking the hard things. So I don't go out of my way to best necessary. Well, Paul says, it's my job to judge those in the church, not just those outside of the church. So do I go around to gay parades and hand up signs that you're all going to hell or whatever? No, no, I don't. Because, and I don't think Paul did that. He went up to the Hill of Mars

[00:15:42:13 - 00:15:47:22]
Nathan
 and had all these idols, you know what I mean? And he didn't go on and says, hey, these are all wrong. He says, hey, look,

[00:15:48:22 - 00:16:37:05]
Nathan
 here's one to the unknown God. Do you want to know about him? Do you want to know about him? And so that's a very soft approach and sort of saying, hey, let me tell you about Jesus. And when we start telling people about Jesus, you know what? The first thing that happens is they recognize their sin, they already know. That's why the conviction is there. That's why they hate Jesus because they don't want to be confronted with their sins. You know what I mean? And there will be some that'll be super offensive. Now, if somebody asks me, somebody asks me, I'm going to tell them, you know what I mean? If he says, hey, well, I live this lifestyle. What do you think about that? Am I going to hell? I literally had someone ask that. And I says, hey, it's not up to me. But let me show you what the Bible, and I open up the Bible and I just read to them. And they're like, oh,

[00:16:38:08 - 00:17:13:15]
Nathan
 where's that written? Can I write down that reference? I'm going to go home and look that up. And they never came back. But it's not me that speaks. It's the Holy Spirit that speaks. You know what I mean? When we read the scripture, you let the Holy Spirit do the talking. And you do it in a sense of love. You know, if you point the finger in a very like malice way, you're not going to win anybody. But also if somebody asks and you want to know, I'm going to say, hey, I love you. I don't want to see you heading down a path that's leading to destruction.

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Nathan
 I want to see you. I want you to come over with me. Come on over here. Jesus loves you. He died for you. That's speaking the truth in love. But not,

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Nathan
 speaking the truth in love is not condoning sinful actions either. For sure.

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Nathan
 So that's where the line is drawn right there, I think.

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Brenton
 Yeah, no, I certainly agree that motive is an important, it's a good indicator of where our heart's at. If we are just wanting to win an argument, then that's, we're not going to get very far going that way.

[00:17:50:07 - 00:18:12:03]
Brenton
 And I also think that our minds always probably go to like a street preacher, right? Like when we've seen kind of this very loud, you're going to hell kind of type of guy. Now, I certainly wouldn't say that all street preaching is bad. I think that a lot of people do it well.

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Brenton
 And I think that we should be confronting like actively people's sin in an attempt to bring them in to the kingdom. But I think I would also maybe add that we do this because we should do this because we love the people, we want to see them come to Jesus. But I think even more than that, we do this because we should want to do this. Our motivation should be because we love God, right? And we're jealous for his glory and we want to see his glory go out into the earth. And so when those are your motivations, I think it becomes a lot easier to take ourselves out of it, go and approach it with humility, understanding that we aren't different than them.

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Brenton
 We're now saved and Jesus is the difference between us, but without Jesus, we're in the same spot. So there's a big dose of humility being, that's necessary there.

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Nathan
 Yeah, I think too often we forget to look at the plank in our own eye

[00:19:19:03 - 00:19:46:18]
Nathan
 and we just see everybody else's fault, you know what I mean? And reality is like, we need to check the plank in our own eye first and then sort of say, all right, do I really want what you want? Yeah. Now, what does God want? It's not God's will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, right? That's his desire. It's his desire that he sent his son into the world so that to save the world, right?

[00:19:48:10 - 00:19:51:17]
Nathan
 So with that in mind,

[00:19:54:00 - 00:20:10:17]
Nathan
 it should really shape the words I say and how I say them to anybody who I know because of a biblical context or walking down a wrong road. But how do I persuade them is huge.

[00:20:10:17 - 00:20:11:19]
Brenton
 For sure.

[00:20:12:23 - 00:20:13:04]
Brenton
 Okay,

[00:20:14:13 - 00:20:33:01]
Brenton
 one thing you did toward the end was you drew encouragement from the early church's response to persecution, which you mentioned it earlier, but they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer. I think if I had to guess, that's probably a pretty uncommon attitude today.

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Brenton
 What do you think, first of all, gave them that kind of joy in those situations? And then how can we better embrace this idea today?

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Nathan
 Yeah, it's really easy to look at them and say, yeah, that's me, I would do that. But until we're actually in this situation, would I, you know what I mean, would I? And I think that's why we've got to, how we react is how we mentally prepare and the truths of the gospel, you know what I mean? So those passages, it says, bless those who persecute you. If I've got an attitude of blessing those who persecute me, it's gonna be totally different than how I respond to that persecution, as opposed to if I'm just like their persecutionist, I hate that person, you know what I mean? Because then when I'm persecuted, I'm just gonna go into a deep, dark hole, you know what I mean? But if I know that Christ has commanded me to do that and that he is more powerful, it changes my attitude about this, that person, you know what I mean? For Jesus to be able to hang on the cross and pray for the people there who are hurling insults at him, that they would have a heart of repentance so that they could be forgiven as like, oh my goodness.

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Nathan
 If I could even have a small amount of that empathy,

[00:22:14:06 - 00:22:34:01]
Nathan
 that sympathy for people who are my enemies, who are persecuting me, and then to think, what was Romans 8, 23, we know that all things work together for good to those who love me and are called according. God, if you can bring something good out of my persecution,

[00:22:37:06 - 00:22:48:02]
Nathan
 glory to God, you know what I mean? But here's the thing, we don't always think that. How do we prepare our minds for that? How do we think that? That's the whole thing.

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Brenton
 One thing you said on Sunday was, if we truly love someone, we will want the best for them, even if that means warning them

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Brenton
 that they're headed for destruction and they need Jesus.

[00:23:02:14 - 00:23:07:04]
Brenton
 And I'd say that many of us struggle with this more than we'd like to admit,

[00:23:08:19 - 00:23:13:12]
Brenton
 the idea of just like staying silent when we should speak up.

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Nathan
 Right.

[00:23:15:06 - 00:23:19:18]
Brenton
 How would you encourage someone to be bold in these situations?

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Brenton
 And given everything we've already talked about, speaking truth and love and whatnot, but to convince someone that it's worth the trouble to be bold in these.

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Nathan
 And once again, are we talking to believers or non-believers? For believers, we are commanded to admit, the one another's, the 59, one another's new testament, the one another's new love, one another's encouragement, but one of them is admonish one another. If I'm going down the wrong path, Brent, you're actually told to admonish me. Grab ahold of me, say, Nathan, what are you doing? Why are you going down that path? Get back here. So you're doing that in love because you care about me. You're restoring me, right? Now, for a non-believer, it's a little bit more difficult because like, hey, we could say they don't know any better, but let's just put it in a family context, right? So I got someone in my family who's, we'll say is going down a path that is just in rebellion to God and living out sinful activities, like whatever.

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Nathan
 And if I have the opportunity to talk to them, I shouldn't say, hey, whatever you're doing, you do whatever you want. You know what I mean? That's that libertarian viewpoint is like, hey, if it doesn't hurt anyone else, you do it. You know what I mean? Or do I say, hey, I know what you're doing. I care about you. And here's the deal. You know what I believe. You know I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. And I want the best way. I want you to come and trust in Jesus Christ. And that's going to mean saying, hey, recognizing what you're doing, it's only going to lead to harm. And that's probably a good starting place. You know what I mean? If they're going to listen, they'll say, tell me more, or can I talk to you more about this or whatever. And that might be just planting the seed, you know, for them. Because you see a lot of times, people that are walking down a hard path, I see it in Celebrate Recovery actually all the time, that people will come, you know what I mean? And they kind of know they need help, but then you don't, they come once or twice and then you don't see them for about two, three years. And all of a sudden they're back and they have hit bottom. Now they're ready to do something. And now they're ready to listen. Now they're ready to listen to the gospel or ready to listen to it all. Now they're ready to turn their life around, you know what I mean?

[00:25:51:02 - 00:25:56:14]
Nathan
 It means speaking the truth to them that where they're going is not going anywhere good.

[00:25:57:14 - 00:26:19:23]
Nathan
 And celebrating Romans 1, you know what I mean? Although they know God's righteous decrees that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them. Now here's the deal.

[00:26:21:01 - 00:26:43:11]
Nathan
 I can't give someone my approval for a practice that I know is against God. Because if I give them my approval, they're gonna say, "Hey, well, Nathan, Brenton, they think it's okay, so it must be." You know what I mean? So they're gonna go deeper on that than the whole. And that's not loving.

[00:26:44:13 - 00:27:01:01]
Nathan
 You know what I mean? I'm gonna say, "You know what? I know you're doing this and yeah, it's a free country. You can do whatever you want, but I love you. And I just want you to know it's not going anywhere good. And God doesn't want this for you."

[00:27:01:01 - 00:27:05:14]
Brenton
 Do you think that silence can be seen as validation?

[00:27:06:14 - 00:27:08:02]
Brenton
 I think so, yeah, yeah.

[00:27:08:02 - 00:27:15:15]
Nathan
 Absolutely, for sure, for sure. And that's probably the coward's way out. Because I'll tell you what,

[00:27:18:05 - 00:27:25:00]
Nathan
 you know, as a pastor, as an elder before I was a pastor, there's plenty of times where I did have to confront people on different things.

[00:27:26:05 - 00:27:37:14]
Nathan
 That's not, I'll tell you what happened. Not in my stomach every time I have to do it. It's like, "Ugh, I have to go and do this." But you know, nine times out of 10, when you do it,

[00:27:38:15 - 00:27:59:18]
Nathan
 not always, but a lot of the time, the people will thank you for it. Because you know what I mean? They're like, "You know what? I needed to be talked about this." And you'll often see people breaking down and repenting. You know what I mean? So we gotta trust God in this and not our own emotions. Because we're trusting our own emotions, our cowardly emotions. We're not gonna do anything.

[00:28:01:02 - 00:28:11:07]
Brenton
 Yeah. Okay, so last question. How would you say someone is feeling convicted about this now, that just haven't been bold in their life

[00:28:12:07 - 00:28:26:11]
Brenton
 with confronting sin, or even with people in their family? It could be a lot of different situations. How would you encourage them to get started? Like, what are some steps that they could take to start doing this?

[00:28:26:11 - 00:29:33:07]
Nathan
 Right, well, I think the first thing is pray. You know, ask God to give you the words. You know what I mean? I also mentioned out that Jesus talks about, He's sending the Holy Spirit. And I think so often, we depend on, "Okay, what am I gonna say? What am I gonna do?" You know what I mean? We're depending on ourselves. And so say, "God, give me the words to say." Start praying for that person. Start, ask God to soften their hearts and give you the words to say. And then just start easy into it. Say, "Hey, so, hey, how you doing?" Or what's going on? Let them know you love them, because we do love them, which is the very reason we don't want to cause friction between us, and it may cause friction. But I think at some point in time, we have to be honest and say, "Hey, I know this is what you're doing. You know I don't agree." And that's hard because I still love you. And let them know you still love them. If at any time you ever want to talk to me about this, I am here. But let them know what you believe, I think, is really, really important. Speaking the truth in love,

[00:29:34:19 - 00:29:37:01]
Nathan
 it's a really fine line between,

[00:29:40:02 - 00:29:52:10]
Nathan
 yeah, I don't know. And maybe it's not a fine line. Maybe we just need to be bold enough to sort of say, "I love you, but I'm not gonna shy away from the truth. And I'm not gonna say something's good when it's not."

[00:29:53:13 - 00:30:01:18]
Brenton
 Yeah, you're right. Okay, we'll wrap it up there. I appreciate your coming in today and your work on your sermon.

[00:30:03:06 - 00:30:10:15]
Brenton
 If you have any questions at home, feel free to send us an email, askatfurtherpodcast.com, and we'll talk to you next week.

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