Don't just sit there, do something. I'll tell you what, on this edition of He-Life. That's the Foghorn Party since Steve Brown. And this is He-Life designed to get you home with freedom, joy and faithfulness. If that is your desire, stay tuned, and Steve opens God's Word. Thanks, Mike. If you have your Bible, you might want to open it to the book of Job. Probably referring to that. And I'm going to start tomorrow talking about discouragement that happens when you... But I'm not going to do that today. Just give you a preview, sort of a teaser of what's going to happen tomorrow. Because you know what happens when you go through a hard time. You get discouraged. You begin to think you're ugly, and your mother dresses you're funny. And we're going to talk about that tomorrow. But let me finish what we're talking about from the book of Job. We're using Job's friends and we're talking about what to do and what not to do when a brother or sister in Christ is going through a hard time. We saw yesterday or we saw last week that you ought to be there. You ought to be quiet. Shouldn't gossip. Don't go talk behind their back. Give your friend freedom. Cut some slack for your friends. And Job's friends did all of that. And then we're talking about what you shouldn't do using Job's friends as an example of that. Don't be an intellectual. I don't care how much you know. People who have broken hearts don't need to get a lecture on philosophical and metaphysical implications of the problem of suffering. You do that a lot later if you do it at all. And then we saw that you weren't beyond reproach. And I meant that mostly in terms of being sinful. You know, we're all sinners and we need to recognize that. And then yesterday I talked about you not that we shouldn't speak for God. Too many people pontificate as if they had gods from his mouth to their ear and they would just speak it. I remember a television evangelist one time in a healing line. He put his hand on somebody who looked up at the sky and went, yes. And I want to go. That's home to that. That's what you can't do that. So don't, we don't speak for God. God speaks for God. And then let me, let me tell you something, this is a little bit more and I've already covered some of this. But remember that none of us are immune from suffering. I said this before, but let me say it all, in the second cycle of debates. This is Job 1520. Alaya Vaz told Job, and this is what he says, the wicked men is the 20th verse. The wicked man rise in pain all his days and the number of years is hidden from the oppressor. Now you didn't know that what Alaya Vaz was saying to Job is less important than what he was saying about himself. That is, it bad people suffer than good people don't. I'm not suffering, therefore I must be good. Further, Alaya Vaz was suggesting that because he was good, he would never have to suffer the way Job was. Don't bet on it, Alaya Vaz. Whenever our Christian brothers and sisters suffer, we need to realize that the same thing that is happening to them today could happen to us tomorrow. We must be careful of the words we dish out now. We might have to eat them sometime later. Let me give you one more. Don't be impractical. This is the final thing that Job's friends didn't do anything practical. They just talked. Job needed somebody to bind up his wounds. He needed money. He needed a hug. He needed somebody to help him get his fields back and his farms back. He needed somebody to go through the, he needed somebody to be practical. The story is told about a little boy who was sent to the grocery store to buy milk. On his way home, he dropped the milk bottle on it, broke, splashing glass and milk all over the place. A little boy began to wail, attracting, one man told the boy that his mother would understand. Another person said that it was no use to cry over spilt milk. That was helpful. But one woman said to the child, son, I care that you spilt your milk. Then she turned to the crowd and said, I care, a quarter is worth how much do you care? Doing something practical is often just what he's needed when you have a friend whose rope is broken. CS Lewis is one of my few heroes. You know something, after Lewis died, it was discovered that he had carried on extensive correspondence with people all over the world. He always personally answered his letters. In the introduction, he didn't have a radio ministry too. When we first started this broadcast, I answered every letter and then it got up to be about 7,000 a month and then there's no way. But I'm in touch with it and I answer a lot of letters. He answered every one of his letters. There's a wonderful book and it's still in print. It's called Letters to an American Lady. The editor Clyde Kilby said about the woman Lewis was writing to. So, book has these letters of things that he said. Once financially independent, she had fallen upon privation and what was worse serious family problems. In due course Lewis arranged through his American publishers a small amount of money for her and this continues to the present even after his death. When I found out what Lewis had done financially for this lady, whom he had never met, the words he wrote in his letters to her carried far greater weight. Sometimes when our friends rope is broken, when they're going through suffering, our friends simply need somebody who can meet a few practical needs who'll fix dinner. Someone who knows how to tie knots. That's what Christians ought to do. They ought to go around tying knots. Do you think about that? Well on Wednesdays, we take some time to answer some questions. My pastor will be in on Friday, Pete Owl once and we'll answer some questions then too. But it's our practice for a few minutes on Wednesday to answer questions. And we love to get your questions. But don't use the 1-800 number for that. You can get the new booklet we're offering. You can get the magazine free, become a part of key life tape free. But you got to write your question down. Also you can make contribution. But send your questions to key life post office box 5,000 Madeleine Florida 32794. Key life Canada post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H5M3. Or you can email us at steveatkeylife.org with your regular mailing address with your question. You always get an answer from me or a staff person or on the broadcast or in the magazine. And we take your questions seriously. Two-three business items. First, be sure you're winning your writer call to give us the call letters of the station. Secondly, reminder key life is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, ECFA. Council is widely recognized as a Christian financial organization created to assure ethical monetary practices by its members. Don't forget about our website, www.keylife.org. You can listen to today's program in the previous 30. And then one other thing, if you're listening in prison or in jail, we have a dynamite Bible Institute program for you that will help you grow in grace. If you will drop us a note or give us a call to the addresses I gave you or the phone number or have a friend do that, we'll give the information out to you. And we'll get the process moving. It's absolutely free. It's from the Crossroads Bible Institute. And this is for you can write or email or call key life. And we'll get the process going. Trust me, you're going to like it. It's really good. I don't know if let's get to some of these questions. This is from Missouri. What exactly is meant when the Bible says in Exodus that God hardened Pharaoh's heart? Let me teach you a principle. God greases the tracks in the direction you have decided to go. You say, what? You say it again. God greases the tracks in the way you have decided to go. And I believe that that is the meaning of Hebrew 6 and Hebrew 11, some of the questionable passages. God greases the tracks in the direction you have decided to go. So what had happened is that Pharaoh had decided he was going to be his own man, self-made. He wasn't going to refer to the God of the universe and he was going to ignore God's people. And as he began to make those decisions, those decisions, God began to push. Now this doesn't deal with the issue of God's sovereignty over Pharaoh before that because God ordains all that is without violating our freedom and our responsibility. And you say, explain that. I can't. But I can't explain God. But the point is here that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. But if you'll read the text, Pharaoh had already done some bad stuff before that. Okay. What did Jesus mean when he referred to Peter as the rock? Well, that's a very controversial question. For those of you who are Roman Catholic, for those of you who are Protestant, we've been dealing with it forever. Those of us who are Protestants say, no, no, no, no, no, it wasn't Peter. He was talking about Peter's confession. And the Roman Catholics say, no, I was Peter. He was the first Pope. Jesus was going to build his church on Peter's shoulders. Well, you know, I take the Protestant side after all I am a Protestant. But it could have been Peter too. I don't know if I would draw from that the implication that Peter was the first Pope or that he began apostolic succession. But he could have said, you know, Peter's going to be the leader of this thing. And I want you guys to recognize his leadership and his authority. And so those are the three different interpretations. You can pick your own. This is from Nova Scotia. How were you saved? That's with the implications that you don't think I'm saved. We had a lady right, he lied one time and said, you used to say when you offered your testimony tape that that was for those of you who didn't think I was a Christian. And she said, I go to a Bible study and I told him that I listened to you. And now they don't think I'm a Christian. Yes, I am saved. I just want you to know that. I'm not sure about a lot of things, but I'm absolutely sure about that. I went forward at a Billy Graham. Well, it wasn't a crusade. He was speaking at Montreux Danderson College. And when I was a young teenager, I went forward and made a public profession of my faith in Christ subsequent to that time. I became an agnostic. And so Jesus had to hold onto me when I wasn't doing any holding. But I got a compass that day. And the compass always pointed home. And God knew that I was his. And he was going to let me wander a little while in the far country. But I came home. You always do want your his because you can't get out of it. If I started to say right for the testimony tape, but I don't even know if they have any downstairs. So, but I am saved. So there. This is from Florida who created God. Nobody did. He's eternal. Always was. It's the same problem that philosophers have when they deal with the problem of infinity or eternity. It's just hard to imagine that because we live in the context of a timeline. And we think in a linear way, everything's got to have a beginning and an end. Now, when your child asks who created God, you can't say what I just said because they're going to look at you like you're crazy. So just say, God always wants. No matter fact, that's probably how I should have answered the question. That's adequate. He just always wants. But I'm not. I'm out of here. Now, whenever you're right or go, be sure and give us the call letters of this great station. A lot of people make this broadcast possible. We like to know things. 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