You're the man. Or you could be. Let's talk about it on this edition of Key Life. That's Steve Brown. He's no guru, but he loves Jesus Christ. He loves the Bible, and he loves to teach him. The program is Key Life, and here's Steve with a teaching for today. Steve? Thanks, Mike. If you have your Bible, turn to Second Chronicles. We are continuing with our Old Testament survey. If you were listening yesterday, we were talking about the good old days not being so good, except when God himself periodically brings revival to his people. And I had shown you earlier that the latter part of Second Chronicles could be geared around five great awakenings that took place among the covenant people of God. Aize Jehozaffat, Jehoash, Ezekah, and Josiah, and we're going to be talking about those as we go along. You know that you need to start thinking about the good old days. Somebody sent this to me. I'd read it to you. If you just try to enter your password in the microwave, are your daughter sells girl scout cookies via her website? Are you call your son's beeper to let him know it's time to eat? And he emails you back from the bathroom, what's for dinner? You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone's at home. Are you reason for not staying in touch with your family is that they don't have an email address? Are you wake up at 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom and check your email on the way back to the bed? That's when you need to start thinking about the past, but the good old days were not just good old days. They were only good old days when God did his thing. Now, yesterday I talked about chapters 1 through 9 of 2 Chronicles and I talked about divine earthly retribution and divine earthly reward, and I suggested yesterday that that's not an absolute principle. I don't care what anybody tells you, if they tell you, if you exercise the principles of faith properly, you will be wealthy and healthy and everything will be alright. They lie to you, that's not true. But there are laws built into the universe and you'll find them in the scripture and if you obey them and live by them, and so far as you do that, you're going to be better off. Listen to me, I've done it God's way, I've done it my way. Still do both, but it's better to do it God's way, it's better for me now, divine earthly retribution and reward. Now, if you have your Bible, turn to 2 Chronicles 15, 1 through 7. The Spirit of God came up on Aziraya, the son of Obed. He went out to meet Aiza and said to him, hear me, Aiza and all Judah and Benjamin, the Lord is with you while you're with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without the law. But when in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel and sought him, he was found by them. And those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in for great disturbance afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. They were broken in pieces, nation against nation and city against city. For God troubled them with every sort of distress but you take courage, do not let your hands be weak for your work shall be rewarded. Now, let me tell you about Aziraya. I don't know anything about Aziraya. In fact, this is the only time in all of the Bible where we ever read about Aziraya. I don't know. I don't know his parents were. I don't know anything about him. And the great thing about him, he's one of those people who appear in Scripture who speak word and it's God's word and God's word brings revival. You ever think that you maybe could be that kind of person. You all know who D.L. Moody was. He was used of God in a tremendous and wonderful way. I have a friend who sent me an actual letter written by hand by D.L. Moody that hangs in my office at the seminary. I have one from Spurgeon and I have one from Wibble Force and they hang in a number of others and they hang on the wall behind my desk and sometimes students come in and they just look. I look at him sometimes and I think they speak to me. They say, Steve, don't you show his shall. We were sinners too and we blew it some too but don't you show his shall. You be faithful. And so when I look at D.L. Moody, I think of what he did and how God honored what he did. It was just amazing but let me tell you something about two old ladies. I would like to tell you their names but we don't know their names. They came to him in Chicago when he was depressed and down and his ministry was working and they talked to him about the power of the filling of the Holy Spirit. You know what Moody did? Moody locked himself in a room and he pleaded with God for the power of the Holy Spirit and he received it and it was thereafter that God used D.L. Moody as an explosion but I don't want to talk so much about D.L. Moody right now. I want to talk about those two old ladies. You don't know their names. You can call them as a riot if you want to. Significant people who come at a significant time say the right thing and do the right thing and God uses it in an amazing way. Did you know that when Whitfield preached in America and he was a great preacher, there was no doubt about it. There was an old crippled man who stayed in the hotel room and prayed for him while he was preaching. Whitfield found this man because he was a prayer and he knew how to pray. Now when you read about the great awakening and Jonathan Edwards in George Whitfield one of the things you ought to remember is that man who was crippled who was praying while Whitfield was preaching. Don't know his name. You can call him as a riot if you want to. You ever think that you're called to be an as a riot? Instead of throwing rocks at your pastor, why don't you praise him? Why don't you love him? Why don't you tell him what God told you about him that God like what he was doing? See what God does with your words. There are people that make a difference and we don't even know their names. If Jesus had another incarnation and came to this in studio right now, I suspect you would send me all kinds of questions to asking. And I would ask him, I would say, who's the greatest Christian who ever lived? I mean who is the most used Christian who ever lived in the history of the church? Jesus would say, I'm not going to tell you. And I'd say, how come? He'd say, because you wouldn't even know the name. Well, maybe it's as a riot. You think about that? I mean. Well, we have few minutes to answer some questions as we do on the Wednesday broadcast. We'll do the whole broadcast on Friday when my pastor, Pastor Pete, comes in and we answer questions together. A couple of items. We have a website keylife.org. You ought to check out. You can hear the broadcast the day if you thought I was a heretic and you want to check it out and write me a letter. Or you can go back for a 30 previous broadcast. You can get a think spot devotional every day on our key life website. There's a lot of great material. If you haven't checked it recently, why not check it out? It's keylife.org and a lot of good stuff there. A lot of good places to go from our websites. I'm going to check it out. And by the way, on Sunday, that's the 22nd. I'm going to be speaking at the National Christian Radio Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I like going there because I don't have an accent. And I realize that most of you aren't even near Nashville. But if you would say a quick prayer for me, I would appreciate it very much. Let's get to some of these questions. We'd love to get your questions, but you got to write them down. Send them to keylife. Post office box 5,000, Madeleine Florida 32794, keylife Canada. Post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, N3H5, N3, or you can email us at stevetkeylife.org with your regular mailing address. And the 1-800 member is to make orders, to make a contribution, to become a part of key life tapes. You got to write the questions. And we love your questions. All right, this is from Rhode Island. What do you, what's your belief about water baptism? Well, I believe in pato baptism. I believe that infants can be baptized and are. And I believe that baptism in the New Testament is the biblical equivalent of circumcision in the Old Testament assigned to the government. I also believe in believers baptism. If I were the pastor of a church and it was an independent church, I would explain both of those views to the people in the church. And I would let parents make their own decision about what they were going to do. Because it can become such a divisive issue. Now, I want you to know my convictions are clear. If I didn't believe in infant baptism, I'd be a Baptist. I'd be in the church of Christ. But I recognize that there are other views. So don't send me letters and don't try to convince me. I'm already too old to change. But the thing that is required in baptism is water and the triune formula, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. This is from Pennsylvania. How can I be more joyful? What is the difference between joy and happiness? Let me answer the second part of that first. Joy is something that's a gift from God. Joy is something that you can have when you lost your job. But some you can have when your girlfriend says that she doesn't want to have anything more to do with you anymore. Joy is something you can have when things are really bad. Happiness generally is associated with circumstances. Eric and I are sitting here recording these programs and we record two or three weeks at a time. Happiness is when we finish. When it's over, that's not joy. Joy is when we mess it up and after recorded or when I mess it up, after recorded over and over again and still feel a sense of it's okay. That's joy. You said, how can I be more joyful? You know what God does? There's a great, and I gave this to you a few weeks ago and I can't remember the exact quote. But Brennan, Manning and Abin addiction said, may you lose something like? May you lose everything you ever had? May every one of your plans be thwarted? May you fail big time in everything so you can laugh and sing and dance before the God who loves you and has compassion on you. And who is father, son and Holy Spirit? I'll tell you real joy and in fact happiness as a side benefit comes from the place where you don't have anything left to lose. And where he is the center of it and where you know you're free, that he loves you and you'll never be angry at you. Just think about that for a while. See what it does for you. This is from Tennessee, did Jesus ever descend into hell? I don't know. There are some passages in First Peter 3 and First Peter 4 that suggest that he did hell being aides or sheo the place of the dead. Not to the burning place and the Apostle Street says he descended into hell. But that can be interpreted in a couple of ways. One is that he just died and he was really dead. What we talked about last week on Key Life. The other could be that he went to a place in fact and the Bible is not absolutely clear on that. And I asked out about it, he said I didn't have to know it. I've got to go whenever you write a call, give us the call letters of this station and Key Life is the production of Key Life Network.