Does God really like you? The answer to that and other questions on this edition of Key Light. I am Mike Kellogg and you are now listening to Key Light, where you can find honest answers to honest questions about God's Word. Now, here is Steve. Thanks Mike. My pastor, Pete Owlinson, has come in as part usual on Friday to help with these questions. Appreciate you're doing it, man. Good to be here. You're doing well? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm going to give you some information. Then Pete's going to lead us in prayer thereafter. We will go to the answering of questions. All right. If you have a question, you've got to write it down. Send it to Key Light. Office Box 5,000, Makeland, Florida, 32794, or Key Light Canada. Post Office Box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H5N3. Or you can email us at Steve at keylife.org and include your regular mailing address. And don't use the 1-800-keylife number for questions. You can get a lot of neat stuff free, like pamphlets and tapes and stuff, magazine. But you've got to write your question. And you can also make a contribution when you go to the 1-800-keylife number. And by the way, if you're listening from jail or prison, we have this wonderful Crossroads Bible Institute course for you. And if you'll let us know or have a friend let us know, we'll get the information out to you quickly. It's absolutely free. It's trust me on this. It's a wonderful Bible study course from the Crossroads Bible Institute. So give us a call. And if you only have one call, make sure you call your lawyer instead of us. But if you want a call or you can get a friend to do that, we'd love to get that information out to you. It's absolutely free. He wanted to leave us in prayer and then we will get on with these questions. All right, Father, we thank you. That at the end of this week, we can come into your presence in prayer. Our lives are defined by you and not by us, not by what we've done in the past, but by the work of Christ. And so Father, we are grateful to come and say today that we are Christians. And that Lord, you have transformed us. Thank you for your grace. Thank you that your grace accepts us today, tomorrow and in the future, and that the work of Christ is complete for us. And so we look forward to worship this weekend. We do ask that you'd call us and help us find a place to worship if we don't have a church, but to find a place where we can, with your people, give praise and honor to you. Be with our leaders, our priests and pastors, teachers. Be with pastors wise and the kids of the pastoral families, Lord, that so desperately need your sense of encouragement and strength as they are very visible people. Encourage them. Use your leaders, Lord, to teach us and speak to us and lead us before your throne of grace. And now we have a time of questions, Father, we just ask for your wisdom, that you would answer the questions that we are asked here at Key Life, but also the other questions that we have in our life. Be all to us what we need for you are infinite and immortal and invisible. You are the only God and we praise you in the name of our Savior Jesus, Amen. Amen. This is an email, Pete. I heard something from you that I had trouble believing God doesn't just love you. He likes you or their times when God doesn't like us. All right, since that was your statement and I didn't make it, but I like it. Good. You answered first. I think what I was trying to do when I made that statement, and yes, I stand by this statement, is that we use love so much. You know, lay a little love on me, babe, what the world needs now. I love sweet love. And we use it in the church so much. And rightly so, I think. But I think it loses some of its power and it's oomph, and it's sizzle. And it doesn't have the ring to it, at least to those of us who have been believing that all of our lives. And so when you say, God really likes you, people go, whoa, and all of a sudden they again realize the importance and the depth of what God has given. And that is his unconditional love. You know, what this writer, I think, is dichotomizing is that I love my children, but I don't always like them. But if your children were perfect, you would always like them too. And we are, as I understand it, given the imputation of Christ's righteousness, always perfect before God. None of the mean he's blind and says, I see no evil, he doesn't know who we are. But he knows that the perfection of Christ is our perfection. And we claim that righteousness, and yes, he likes us all the time. He delights in us, and that, and I love that statement. What's that? Oh, he delights in us. You just said that. That's an amazing statement. You know, it really is. And I thought of this in relation to a series that I'm doing I'm going to do here in a while. And that is when God created us, right, he looked at what he saw as it was good. And not, okay, that's good. It's, you know, God is perfect in what he makes. He delights in. And we lose that. Because as you said, what happens in the churches, we say, well, you know, I don't necessarily like so and so. But they're a Christian. They're a brother. They're a sister. I've got to love them. And so we end up thinking, well, God's got to feel that way about me because I'm not loveable. I'm not likeable a lot of times. And I delight. He made you with all your uniqueness. He didn't make your sin. Yeah. Nor the dysfunction. But you haven't surprised him with any of that. That's right. And so as a, as a potter would be excited about his production on the, on the potting wheel. Yeah. I mean, God is really, he really likes, he likes spending time with you. You know, my friend, Rusty Anderson, whom you know. Yeah. Rusty is the most earthy Christian. I can't even quote him too much. But Rusty was with his granddaughter. And she did something bad and he said, honey, don't do that again. She did it again. And she said, sorry, granddaddy. And he said, okay. And then she did it again. And he said, and he said, I told you not to do that. And she said, sorry, granddaddy. And he said, no, don't do it again. And she did it again. And she said, I'm so sorry, granddaddy. And he said, sorry, he's not enough. Yeah. And he said, Ben, God said to him, it was enough for me. Oh. And sometimes we read into our proclivities for grandchildren, our children, our irritation. And that's not God. Hmm. Good. That's good. Good. That's a gospel-based statement there. So dear friend, he really likes you. I know. It's hard to believe, but he does. What does the Bible teach about eating habits? That's an email. No, there's a lot on the Bible, really, about gluttony. And what does define gluttony? What is gluttony? I have to think about that a little bit more. But the Bible does say a lot about that. And Proverbs talks about how parents are unhappy if their kids become glutton. So, you know... There's a lot about it. You can take that principle and do it to almost anything. Even good things that we do to excess that control us, as well as bad things. So the Bible says, don't do it. You can also become very self-righteous if you say, I don't eat those things or I take care of myself and my body's a temple of God and look, look at me. So we can become very self-righteous about those things. You know every banquet I've spoken for in the last 15 years. God's put me next to that person at the head table. That person you're describing. Really? And the only thing good at those banquet is the dessert. I mean, the peas and the chicken just gets old. But there's always a cherry pie or blueberry pie or cheesecake. And they always say, you're not going to eat that, are you? And you say, yeah. Heck yeah. And they say, you know how bad that is for you. And then I get the lecture. And then it messes up what I was going to say when I was going to speak. It's really from Satan. And then you met that guy I went to lunch with you and you said, you order first. And so I ordered this Caesar salad, chicken Caesar salad, you ordered that dessert, that whole plate. Oh yeah. Remember that? Oh, excuse. I was appalled that you would just eat that a lot. Well my doctor, who is not a Pharisee, you guys stopped doing that. So I don't do that. All right, okay. But it bibles us a lot about. Let me bring up one of the things in this context that I thought about. If you're in the church, is it easier to be fat than it is to be divorced? Probably. But I don't know. Divorce has changed. Certainly years ago. Yeah, certainly years ago. Well let's go to something else. No, we're going to get a lot of it. But there. But it's acceptable given the fact a lot of preachers. Their girth is quite excessive. Yeah. And I'm not real proud of mine either. But given that's true, I can get away with that in the church. But I can't get away. I mean, nobody's going to acknowledge me about that. They may kid me about it. But if there's divorce, or if I'm an adulterer or a rip in it, or if I'm gay and I'm trying to turn from that lifestyle, there's some sense that are acceptable and some sense that aren't. That's right. Like the Christians that went over to Europe and found that other Christians over there were drinking alcohol. But the Christians over in Europe were appalled that we were drinking coffee. And the coffee was at one time called the Devil's Brew. And now I call it the nectar of the God. But some of our sins are culturally defined. We need to be careful of that. And we do need to take seriously that passage that are by the temple of spirit and think that through. Which without laughing at or not taking seriously the other sins that I mentioned. Which are very serious. Was King Saul saved? That's from Colorado. I don't know. Not King Saul. The question. Colorado. What do you think? I'm not sure. I don't think there's anybody to say. How can we know? We know that in a national sense, he was a part of God's covenant people. But contrary to a number of people, for instance in Hebrews 11, where there are a number of Old Testament saints that are named, he is not there. He's never mentioned in the context of a good example. He's always a bad example. But we're going to be surprised that a lot of people are there, I think. So a good answer to that is nobody knows. Nobody knows. And if anybody tells you they know, don't buy a used car from them. That's right. There you go. Let me see. What does the Bible teach about church membership? That's from Massachusetts. You know, if you, first Corinthians 12, 13 says that if we are, if we believe in Christ, we are baptized into His body. When we are members of Him, we are put in union with Christ and one another. So there's a sense in which if you're a Christian, you are a member of the church. But I think this is talking about a local expression more particularly. And as far as I know, there is no passage. It says you must join a church by accepting the by-laws and et cetera, et cetera. But I believe you should. Yeah. I believe, you know, I think in this day and age, I think back when we were more of a Christian culture that it wasn't so important you have your name. But I think today it's a sign of conviction and a sign of saying, you know, I'm with this people, formerly, and I want the whole world to know it. And that used to be, but of course, that's not true anymore. No, you're right. And that's why I say do it. Do it because your tendency is to not be committed and be committed to three or four churches and just consume them. Great. You want to do this for me next Friday? Yeah, I'll be here. You're a genuinely nice person. Guys, we got to go. But one other thing before I leave, key life is a listener-supported production and a key life metaphor.