If I have enough faith, will God heal me? The answer to that and other questions on this edition of Key Light. I am Mike Kellogg and you are now listening to Key Life, where you can find honest answers to honest questions about God's Word. Now here is Steve. Thanks Mike and Pete Alwonson, thanks for coming in. For those of you who are new with us, Pete is my pastor. He comes in for a variety of reasons, great answers, good insight, wonderful Bible feature, but also because he is on the board. You got to be nice to board members, and we want to make a statement about Key Life being having a high ecclesiology that we really believe in the church. By the way, we love to have your questions, but you got to write them down. Key Life, post office box 5000, Madeleine Florida, 32794, Key Life Canada, post office box 32150, Cambridge Ontario, N3H5N3, or you can email them to Steve at keylife.org with your regular mailing address, if you would like an answer and you always get an answer from us. And don't use the 1-800 key life number, that is open 24 hours a day, but you can make orders and get a lot of neat stuff from make a contribution, but we do prefer you write the questions down, and so that we have them in a solid hard copy in our files. Enough, would you leave us in prayer before this thing goes right down the tube? Oh Father, we come into your presence today, what a privilege it is, Lord, to pray. And Lord, not to take ourselves so seriously, but to take you seriously and to know that you are the only true God, the one God, our Creator, our Father, our Redeemer, and we honor you and praise you. We are just glad today to be your children because of Jesus. And Lord, some of us have a lot of money and some of us don't have much. Some of us have a lot of education and some never finish school. It doesn't matter, we're all yours and we're equal in your sight and dearly loved. So Father, we come to you today not because we've impressed you, but because you have drawn us and we couldn't stay away. We honor you and praise you and Lord, we pray that that would motivate us to worship you this weekend as we think of the gospel and how powerful it is in our lives that we would meet with your people and worship together. Until this weekend, Lord, we will meet and we pray that you would meet us, teach us and lead us through your leaders that you have duly appointed and give them strength and wisdom and boldness and love as they proclaim your word. And now we've got some questions, Lord, that we're going to deal with. And we just pray that you would help bring answers to these questions and other answers to our hearts and lives. Thank you for Steve and key life and we pray again for your benediction and blessing upon this ministry. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Pete, first question is an email. Will God heal us if we have enough faith and turn our sickness over to him? Maybe. Maybe not. Yeah. Sometimes Jesus healed people who didn't even know who he was and didn't have any faith in him. And other times, faith. You said your faith has made you willing? Yeah. So there is no, and I think if I could say one thing on the subject of healing, it would be this. In one way that it could be done and it's all of God. And yet there is miraculous healing. We believe that. And you've experienced it with your daughter and I've seen it in other people's lives. You know what? I think it's dangerous sometimes when people assume or make a statement, if you had the right enough faith, if you exercise the right principles, then you will be healed. Because then if they don't get healed, it makes a very negative statement about that person that may not be true. That's right. That's right. But it's the same kind of principle about Job and his, what he was going through. Well, Job, you must have sinned if you just repent, God will take it away. No. He was in a cosmic test. And so it's too simplistic and hurtful, I think. What do we do with those passages where Jesus says, if you have the faith, the grain of mustard seed or in John 15, we'll answer all of your, how do you deal with those kinds of things? Yeah, how do you deal? I don't know. Well, I think that coming to that place of trust, which is essentially what faith is, means that you desire God's will more than anything else, more than even. And so, while you could, you won't simply because you come to a new understanding that he's the king and he knows best and you trust him at that point. But I think, I do think that faith is an important ingredient. It's also a gift of God. It is. It is. And we ought to be growing in faith so that we do trust him and it's not a work. It's a grace. That's what you said. Yeah. A faithful, full of faith, he'll love us more. And that's what, yeah, or that if we can just work on it a little bit and that's why this question presupposes this kind that there's a faith faucet and if you can just turn it on, how do you get more faith? Yeah, you know, that's true from him. You get it from him. You get it as you immerse yourself in the word faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Right. So that's sort of the theater of it, but it comes by humbly being in his presence, I think. I agree. Good. This is from Ontario, Canada, is the role of pastors different than that of elders and if so, how? Not in our denomination. A pastor is an elder and an elder pastors, although we do make a difference between ruling elders and teaching elders. So all pastors are elders, but not all elders are pastors. Although we wouldn't we say that most elders do pastorine. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So they're not paid religious professional. I knew you were going with that. Absolutely. So the ruling elders are those elected by the congregation to serve as elders along with the teaching elders who are the vocational ministers. And that's the way we do that difference by calling teaching and ruling and making a separation. Is that chiseling concrete? No. I don't think so. First Timothy 517 kind of shows that leaders teach and teachers lead, so I mean, but those are both roles. Two sides, different sides of the same coin. Yeah. And you know one of the things about the New Testament is that the church was in its formative stages then. And there are really people who are artistic or congregational in their church polity. People who are Episcopalian in their church polity, believing in bishops. People who are elder led who believe that's the way you ought to do it, that the elder is only a pastor and that deacons are there to hold up his arms and to be there's a board of deacons. You know, there's justification for all of that. Yeah, there is. And so it's nothing is revealed that's absolute about church polity. There are certain things you can do that will violate it without accountability and certain things like that. I don't think that it's absolute. Now I agree. And it's sort of like the baptism issue. We fight over, you know, the type of polity or church government that we have as well as those scripture really fleshed out the whole thing. There's a lot of freedom, worship, there's a lot of freedom, baptism, there is freedom and we fight because we want to be biblically accurate. But we can't make it all work. But this from Tennessee our government leaders really appointed by God. I love the way you answered it when we kind of went through this. What? You said yes. Good on. Next question. Yeah, I'm teaching. I'm working on first heater now for a series that I'm doing and it's just so clear you can get around it. And then there are nuances that you say, well, what if you're what if you're serving under Hitler, did Bonhoeffer do the right thing and you have to say there is a place for civil disobedience to elected leaders or to leaders. The apostle said we must obey God rather than man, but those are very small, their exceptions to the rule that all leadership is from God. Yeah, you have to, you know, Romans 13 also says that says that government is a minister of God. Use the word minister. Yeah. So we ought to take that in consideration. Yeah. This is from Massachusetts. I believe God doesn't make any mistakes about how does God, that fit with God being sorry that he created man before Noah's flood. Well, you have to look at that and say, okay, as we look at the character of God, does God change? No. Scripture says God is immutable. And so you pointed out earlier that this is one of those great words, you can press your friends with this word, anthropomorphism. What does that mean? It means it is an anthro comes from the word man, it is a human expression that is attributed to God. And the Bible is filled with anthropomorphisms to help us by analogy, understand God. As Calvin said, the Bible is God's baby talk, and he accommodates to our definitely lower level. Now, does it mean that what he said is inaccurate, because it is accurate from human standpoint? Yes. Yes. In the general parameter of the meeting, meaning of that, of that text. So was he sorry? Was he sad? Yes. But does that mean that he said, oops, I made a mistake? Yeah. No. Okay. Good. How could I explain the term of these children and teenagers? That's yours from Rhode Island. That's yours. Without being a herodic, you know, working at a theological seminary can be a really dangerous to one's comfort zone, because about everything you say about the printed printed is some kind of heresy. You know, there's modalism, and you know, you can hardly explain it, even to adults, I mean, we know it's true. We know the Bible teaches 3-1-1-3. We do not believe in three gods, but we do believe that they're separate persons. Right. He says that. The Bible clearly teaches that sort of thing. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. God is the Alpha and the Omega, the Father, the Covenant God, and how many Alpha's are there, and how many Omega's? They're going to be one first and one last. So the Holy Spirit is referred to as God, God's Spirit. Jesus said, I am the fight. Well, you just go on, and on the Bible is replete with it. But when you start trying to be theological and explain this and to put it in language that works so people can kind of get a grasp of it, it's hard to do without being a heretic. You're right. And they burn heretics. So I'm not answering this question, especially in our denomination. Would it be all right to say to a child just as steam, waters in three forms, ice and water and steam, that's the Trinity? It wouldn't, would it? Every analogy breaks down, as you examine it and say, well, no, because it's the same thing in different forms, and that's the problem, that's the early heresy of the different form of God. So, no, I think it's not a good thing, but it helps to explain it, like you said. So I don't think God would be angry if he told your child that, say, not any. This doesn't explain everything. It's really what, it's really complicated for even big people. But this one helps you a little bit, and I don't think God does that stuff with that. I don't think, this is where, remember we talked about one other time about the difference in contradictions, and mystery, this is one of the most great things. Good state. Guys, we're out of here. Be sure and give us the call letters of this great station, by the way, whenever you arrive or call. One more thing, before we go, key life is a written or supported production of key life