Honest Christian Conversations
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Honest Christian Conversations
Do You Have Enough Faith?
Is the prosperity gospel leading believers astray? Pastor Chad Wagner from Excelsior Springs, Missouri, joins us to dissect the controversial Word of Faith movement and its New Age influences.
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Chad Wagner, the pastor from Excelsior Springs Church in Missouri, joins me again for another fascinating discussion about the Word of Faith movement and how it is detrimental to the Christian faith. If that statement affected you negatively, don't shut this off until you hear what is said. Be sure to write down any disagreements, comments or questions you have so you can send them in with the link in the show notes after the episode. Let's get to it Before the episode starts. Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode. Hello again, chad. Thank you so much for coming back to the podcast. We can talk about a very important topic and also very it's definitely going to rub people the wrong way. Not that the other one you were in didn't do that, but this one's definitely going to do it too. But before we get in today's topic, why don't you share a little bit about who you are for those who haven't tuned into that episode yet, Sure, yeah, and thanks for having me back again.
Speaker 2:The last one was fun and I assume this one will be the same.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I pastor a little church here in Excelsior Springs, missouri, which is near Kansas City, and I've been here for about six years and I pastored in Minneapolis for five years prior to that, and we're independent Baptists, so we're not charismatics or into the Word of Faith or any of that charismatic stuff, but I'm familiar with it through studying it and preaching about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's jump into it. We're going to talk about Word of Faith, or, as some people say, who are against it, blab it and grab it, name it and claim it prosperity, gospel, all those things are rolled in the words of affirmation, I think, or affirmation statements, maybe it's called. There's laws of attraction, all these buzzwords that have seeped into Christianity and they are starting to lead people astray. So you said that you haven't had too much experience with this. I know I have.
Speaker 1:Up until probably a little after COVID started, I was still into this. I listened to Joyce Meyer. It started, I was still into this. I listened to Joyce Meyer. I didn't really listen to Joel Osteen or Stephen Furtick. They both just kind of rubbed me wrong from the very beginning. Anyways, their style and there's something off about them. But I was really drawn to Joyce Meyer, who was my stepdad, who was the one who kept trying to be the voice of reason, trying to tell me there's something off about her. It's not right. I just wasn't listening. I was a total Joyce Meyer. I don't even know what you call it apologist, I guess until I started listening to Doreen Virtue and some other people who were talking about how this is new age. Then my eyes were open, the scales came off and my stepdad's like ah, you finally get it. So what have you studied about this and what is your opinion about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sort of stumbled into it by accident. I had heard about the Word of Faith movement years ago in sermons from my pastor. He basically just touched on it and I thought it was mostly just about the prosperity gospel and the name it and claim it and if you believe you'll be rich, you will. Or if you have enough faith that you'll be wealthy, you will. But I didn't realize the extent to which the Word of Faith thing went and so I didn't really have any reason to look into it. And then here a couple of years ago, one of the regular attendees of our church asked me if I would review this book. He wanted to share it with other people in the church, but he wanted me to look over it first and just make sure it was okay. And so I said yeah, sure, and asked him what the book was. And he said it's by Charles Capps and it's called the Tongue A Creative Force. And so I thought I'll suspend my doubt right now, because just the title of a book called the Tongue A Creative Force just sounded like it couldn't possibly be a good book to me, unless the title was completely misleading. And then I thought, okay, I'll read it and just see what it's about. Maybe I've totally misjudged judging a book by its cover, its title.
Speaker 2:So I got the book and I didn't get past the first sentence in the book which essentially said God created the universe by the power of his words. And he's got power in his words, and so do you and you can do the same thing, essentially. And I'm just like what in the world, why would he recommend this book to me or want anybody else to read it? And I thought I need to have a talk with him. But I'll read through the whole book first and then we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2:And so I'm reading further and further and I didn't quite get through the book yet. And then I get an email from him and he's like oh, I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong book. From him and he's like oh, I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong book. And he was thinking of some other title and wasn't referring to this book at all. And I kind of breathed a sigh of relief because I thought, boy, if you believe this stuff, we definitely need to have a talk. So anyway, by reading that book I learned what the Word of Faith movement's all about, because Charles Capps was one of the big names in this, he and Kenneth Copeland are probably the two biggest names.
Speaker 1:I've heard of Kenneth Copeland, but I've never heard of the other one before.
Speaker 2:I hadn't heard of Capps either. This book had been at least the copy I have. It's sold 900,000 copies, so it's quite popular. And so what I learned in this book was that the idea is that we have power in our words and they twist a few scriptures. There's one in Mark specifically. I can read it here. It's in Mark 11, 22, and down a few verses.
Speaker 2:And Jesus, answering, said unto them this is to the apostles have faith in God, for verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things which he sayeth shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he sayeth. Therefore, I say unto you whatsoever things you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them. And there are other parallel verses and there's a few other verses like that in the Bible. And so they take that verse and they say that therefore, you just whatever you want, you just say it, you believe that you have it and you'll have whatever you want. And so Capps would say that if you so, for instance if you're sick, if you have a cold or a flu or something. And he says if you feel you have symptoms of the flu, and you say and this is what everybody does he says and he's right the first thing you do is tell somebody I think I'm catching the flu or I think I have the flu. Devil, because the devil's trying to put this flu on you. And then you have just said I have the flu. So you have affirmed what the devil is trying to give you and you've basically accepted it and now you have the flu. You weren't sick before, you just thought you were, but now you're going to be sick because you've professed faith in what the devil is trying to give you.
Speaker 2:What you should do, according to Capps, according to Copeland and guys like this, is you should say I am not sick, I may feel like I'm sick, I am not sick, I am well in the name of Jesus, and believe what you said and there's power in your words and you won't be sick. And this would be if, maybe if you've lost your job, the same kind of thing. Instead of going to God and saying I've lost my job and now I don't have money to pay the mortgage, nope, you've just professed faith in the devil. He's the one that's trying to impoverish you. What you should say is I am not poor, I am wealthy, I am rich. In the name of Jesus, and you'll have whatever you say.
Speaker 2:And so when I realized that this is what he's talking about, then I thought, wow, this is extremely dangerous because for one thing, it's just flat out not true. This is a total twisting of what Jesus was talking about. For one thing. For two, jesus specifically I don't know I can get into this now or later, but Jesus was speaking to the apostles, and then they did have this supernatural, special gift of faith that if they I literally believe that if they would have had faith and said to a mountain, remove hence and be cast into the sea, that it would have happened. I don't think Jesus was speaking with hyperbole or exaggerating. They, as the apostles, had that gift of faith. Paul says, though I had faith that I could move mountains in 1 Corinthians 13.
Speaker 2:In 1 Corinthians 12, as we talked about in the last episode that we did together on the spiritual gifts, the sign gifts, the miraculous gifts, in that passage there in 1 Corinthians 12, probably 8 through 11 or something like that several gifts are listed there that are miraculous in nature Knowledge, the gift of knowledge, the gift of wisdom, the working of miracles, the gift of faith. It says tongues, interpretation of tongues, healing all those are miraculous gifts and they're all listed there together. And I think a lot of times people, when they see wisdom, knowledge and faith, they think that that's referring to normal wisdom, knowledge and faith and faith. They think that that's referring to normal wisdom, knowledge and faith, but in that it's grouped together with those supernatural gifts. It's a supernatural gift of knowledge, wisdom and faith that the apostles had. The apostles could know things through revelation, through direct revelation, that we wouldn't be able to know just through natural means. And it's the same with this gift of faith. They had that kind of faith that they could have moved mountains, they could have cast a tree into the sea right, they could have done the things that Jesus said. And as we looked at last time, those gifts have passed away. They've passed out of existence by the end of the first century and so that gift is not given to us today.
Speaker 2:And furthermore, the idea of saying I'm not sick. Jesus never taught anything like that. Paul told Timothy to have a little wine for their stomach's sake and that often infirmities. He didn't tell Timothy, you just say I don't have a stomach ache, I am well in the name of Jesus. He said have a little wine. Paul went to the Lord three times that the thorn in the flesh would depart from him. He didn't go and say I have no thorn in the flesh, I am well in the name of Jesus. He asked God to take away the thorn in the flesh. He acknowledged he had a thorn in the flesh and asked God to take it away.
Speaker 2:So this whole idea of the word of faith is just nonsense, this saying what you want and it will happen. And furthermore, it's a, it's a, I don't want to say it. It's a misuse of language. For one thing, because if what you mean when you say I am well, if you really mean I believe I'm going to be well, but you say I am well, then you're not using language correctly. Because if you are in fact sick and you say I am well and you mean I am going to be well, well, then you don't understand verb tenses right. So you've misused language for one thing. For two, it also turns a person into either a liar or a lunatic, because if you are in fact sick and you say I am. Well, I am not sick. There's two possibilities Either you're sick and you say you're not sick, which is by definition a lie, so you're lying.
Speaker 1:Denial too. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:Or you're crazy because you are in fact sick but you don't think you're sick and you say you're not sick when you in fact are sick and therefore you are divorced from reality. So you don't understand, you're out of your mind. So there's just so many things that are wrong with this idea, but anyway. So I read that book, just getting back to that, and it was providential, I would say, because we had a person in our church that had been involved in this Word of Faith movement and at the time when he joined I didn't really know what he had been involved in this word of faith movement and I didn't. At the time when he joined, I didn't really know what he'd been involved in in the past, or I thought he kind of you know that was in the past.
Speaker 2:Well then, as time goes on, he was using language that was just a little odd to me. He kept talking about how our confession is important and I thought he's using the word in a biblical context context because the Bible uses the word confession or profession and basically interchangeably to refer to you, are, you are declaring certain things like your faith, your, your confession of your faith would be declaring it before men, telling men what you believe, or confessing your sins to God, telling God your sins, asking for forgiveness, things like that. And so when he's using he's saying, your confession is important, and I'm thinking, well, yeah, yeah, it is important. But it didn't make sense in the context in which he was saying it to me, because I didn't understand the terminology. But what he was referring to is this thing called positive confession and that is part and parcel with the word of faith.
Speaker 1:I was very heavy into that, close to the end of me being involved in this. In general, I was doing a lot of the no, don't say you're sick. I would hound my husband if he was looking like he was going to say he's sick. I was like, no, don't say it, don't speak it, and then it won't happen. I don't know why it never clicked before. That that's not how it works. You can think it and you could still get sick. What are they going to say about that? Your mind is saying it. I never understood how I got into that and didn't see a problem with it.
Speaker 1:It puts you in bondage. Basically is what it does. We're supposed to be set free in Christ when we accept him as our savior. That's not freedom. To constantly be living that way, that, no, I can't say this because then this is gonna happen, or I can't do that because this is gonna happen. That's not freedom. That's being put back in different chains. You have just put yourself in a new bondage. Yeah, I was definitely into the declaring things, positive statements. You can't be negative, don't be negative. I tell my kids stop being so negative, be positive, and there's a time for that. Yes, there's always a time to be positive. You don't have to be all negative, doom and gloom. There's always a time to be positive. You don't have to be all negative, doom and gloom. You don't have to be uber positive. There's a time for both, and the Bible clearly tells us that we are going to suffer. So either he's a liar or whoever's telling us we're not meant to suffer and we're meant to be rich is a liar. Rich is a liar.
Speaker 2:Well, if you think about it, the prosperity gospel is essentially telling people that if you have faith you're not going to be poor. And if you are poor or if you're having financial problems, then it's because you don't have faith. And yet that is not a scriptural position. The Bible says blessed are the poor in spirit. If you have a poor man, come into your assembly, don't say boy, there's a man who has no faith.
Speaker 2:That's not what Jesus or James said, that it's not a shame to be poor. If you're poor for the wrong reasons, if you're poor because you're stupid and you make dumb decisions and waste your money on stuff, that's one thing. But if your lot in life is to not have very much materially, there's nothing wrong with that. Jesus Christ himself had. He said the son of man hath not where to lay his head. So Jesus didn't have his own house. Jesus wasn't. He says he became poor for our sakes. So there's nothing wrong with being poor. And you have example of both rich and poor believers in the church, both Old and New Testament. Lazarus and the rich man right. The rich man went to hell and Lazarus the rich man's dogs were licking the sores on him and he was eating the crumbs that fell from his table. That man is a righteous man in heaven, right? So your standing in this world does not determine the lack of the amount of faith you have or don't have. So that's a malignment of what the scripture teaches.
Speaker 1:It's very toxic. It can send someone away from Jesus Christ because they, if they don't get healthy, if they don't get wealthy, they must not have had enough faith. So they need to figure out how do I get more faith? And a lot of them say, oh, sow more seed, which is their code for give us more money, or whatever they say pray more, do this more. What does more mean?
Speaker 1:Nobody ever knows, nobody ever tells you this is it, this is where you will arrive and this is when it will happen. They don't tell you that because they don't know, because they don't have a way. They're just making money off of all these desperate people who want to have a true relationship with Jesus, want to be free, want health and wealth. We all want to take care of our families, we all want to stay healthy, but this is not our home and we aren't meant to be here forever. When it's our time, it's our time, and if we're not meant to have wealth, if the Bible talks about how, if you're not faithful with the little, how can you be faithful with much? Why is he going to make a whole bunch of people rich when you clearly aren't making right choices with what you have. They aren't sharing the gospel and because of that there's a whole bunch of people in new legalistic bondage and it drives people away from God.
Speaker 2:It's devastating. The way that the devil usually operates is he'll mix a little bit of truth in with a lot of lie, and so in almost any false system, false doctrine, false religion, there's always some truth in them. And in the Word of Faith movement there is some truth in that. In the prosperity gospel there's some truth. The Bible does teach in Proverbs 3, 9, and 10, honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first fruit of all that increase, so shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. And that is true.
Speaker 2:I've experienced it in my life and I've seen lots of other people experience it. When people give to the Lord, he does, he provides for them, he blesses them. But it's not a one-to-one thing, it's not something. Oh, I'm just going to give this amount and I know I'm going to get more back. But so anyway, there is an element of truth to what they're saying, but it's taken and it's twisted and it's used for their own benefit. They're like the Pharisees that devour widows' houses and they've deceived unknowing people, ignorant people that don't know the scripture, and turn them into headless followers, basically, and then they just do whatever they're told and then they end up being sold to Billy Goods. It's just, it's terribly sad.
Speaker 1:What do you know about laws of attraction? It's, it's um, those in the word of faith and prosperity. Gospel wouldn't specifically talk about this, but they're positive affirmations and positivity. You can't be negative. Don't speak this. All that stuff is laws of attraction, which is a new age practice. Have you learned anything about it and, if so, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm not familiar with the laws of attraction.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I can fill you in, but I want to hear your opinion on the idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean as far as the positivity thing, again, if you go back to the scripture, read through the Psalms. How many of the Psalms is David mostly David, but other psalmists too lamenting, crying out to God about the terrible affliction they're in, how they're being persecuted, praying to be delivered from their enemies? Or Jeremiah? Look at Jeremiah in Lamentations where he says the Lord was like a bear unto him and he was just waiting to catch him and he had a false idea of God. But he clearly was not. I mean, the book is called Lamentations for a reason. He was lamenting the horrible destruction of Jerusalem and this is inspired scripture, right? So you can't say nobody would say that the book of Lamentations is positivity right.
Speaker 2:Obviously not, and he was speaking under writing, under the inspiration of God, and you just look back through, look through the Bible, and just all the hardship that Paul endured and how he was beaten and shipwrecked and imprisoned, right, I mean, is that positivity? Right? I mean, he's relaying what happened to him and it was true, but he wasn't being positive necessarily as these people would have us to be.
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Speaker 1:So laws of attraction is pretty much it sounds like the idea of karma you give what you get. So if you speak something out into the world, it better be something positive. Otherwise you're going to get what you spoke out and if it's negative, that's going to come back on you. So you have to work really hard to choose what you say, how you say it. Vision boards are very big. With this idea, you put a vision board up with a whole bunch of different pictures of what you want out of life. Maybe it's a future spouse, maybe it's a home, a job, and you just say these mantras of I am, this, I am that I can do this. It's very self-centered, is what it is and it is a new age practice that has seeped into the word of faith. The positive affirmations, the name it and claim it prosperity, gospel, all those things just smack. They're all together now and I got sucked into some of this, never did the vision board thing because I already had what I wanted. I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and praise the Lord through every difficult circumstance I've been in, through all three of my marriages, god was still faithful and he allowed me to do that. I don't even know how only God that I was able to, especially now in today's economy, I'm able to still be one. That's all I ever wanted to be was a stay-at-home mom and a writer, which I am, and now a podcaster. So I've got what I wanted. I didn't need to vision board anything, but I did do a lot of the other stuff.
Speaker 1:The positive affirmations I am this. I am that. I had a hard time believing it because I couldn't get past the first one. I am a child of God. I knew I am child of God. I know these things headwise, but I never believed it in my heart. I have low self-esteem that I'm still kind of working on in certain areas. But if you can't believe it in your heart, then it's probably not helpful to say those things anyways, because then at that point you're just saying a mantra. So I did all that, I tried really hard to say positive things, told my whole family shush, shush, don't say anything negative.
Speaker 1:If my parents were saying something negative I'd shut them down. And sometimes you shut people down just because you don't want to hear negative. You don't need to hear negative Again. There's a time and a place where maybe you need to hear it.
Speaker 1:My stepdad trying to tell me the dangers of listening to Joyce Meyer. To me it was like oh, you're trying to bring my, you're harshing my mellow or whatever you want to call it. You're bringing me down. Man, don't do that. But that's not what he was doing. He was trying to tell me why don't you take a deeper look at who you're following? Maybe there's something wrong and because it came from family, maybe my I'm not going to listen to my parent, kind of thing just turned me off. Eventually I figured it out on my own.
Speaker 1:But it is a dangerous idea laws of attraction that you're going to attract these things to you if you do these things. That is not how it works. God is not a genie. We can't make him do what we want. We can't manifest things. That's another thing that's really big. I've heard it in a lot of different Christian circles too. They'll say the word, and I cringe now when I hear that, because it's a complete new age term and it's definitely big with the laws of attraction and all this word of faith you can manifest.
Speaker 1:It goes back to what you read in that very first paragraph of that book, that our words are powerful. Jesus or God spoke the world into existence, and we have that power too. No, we do not. Or God spoke the world into existence and we have that power to. No, we do not. If we did, then where is my bundles of money that I used to say we were going to have? Where is my child, who is still a prodigal child right now, going through some stuff? Why is she no longer? Why is she not no longer a prodigal? I guess that makes sense. It's like these things that I spoke into existence.
Speaker 1:I would go to the devil and say you can't have my children, they belong to Jesus, telling him off like he's standing there and I'm having a go at him and he's probably just sitting there laughing at me, but I feel super powerful because I'm telling him like it is and that he can't do this in the name of Jesus. But it wasn't working. It didn't work. He still has one of my children and I still have a health issue that gets me to three, four times a year that affects my nerves because of something stupid I did when I was younger. He may have healed it where it's not contagious when I get one of those issues flare ups, but I still have it. He may have healed part of it, but he didn't heal all of it. So does that mean my faith wasn't good enough?
Speaker 1:I stopped for a while speaking that I wasn't sick, but I think I got sick the most during those times. I don't do that anymore and I haven't really been sick. I mean winter's here soon, so who knows, we'll see but I've also been eating better, so that's one thing, but it's just. This is very toxic. It messes with faith, it messes with your brain waves, it messes with your heart and I do not like it at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's absolutely destructive to faith because it sets you up for major disappointment If you think that as a believer, if you just believe, everything's going to be fine, because the Bible is full of examples of people that were believers and bad things happened to them. I mean look at.
Speaker 2:John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the greatest prophet that ever lived. According to Jesus, he did nothing wrong. He rebuked the king for his adultery and his wickedness and because of some foolish vow the king made, john ended up getting his head cut off. For no, he didn't do anything wrong, right? So I mean, if all you have to do is have faith, are we saying that John didn't have faith Because obviously he got his head cut off? Stephen was stoned, right? Stephen didn't do anything wrong. Stephen defended the truth and he was stoned for it. Did Stephen not have faith? Of course he did.
Speaker 2:Jesus ended up dying on a cross. Is it because he didn't have faith? Of course he had faith, right? So I mean, it's just nonsense to say that if you are faithful, that everything's going to go well for you. It's just simply not true. To set somebody up for that is to set them up for a crisis of faith when they've done what you told them to and things have not turned out well. And then they think well, it must have been me, because Kenneth Copeland obviously must have a lot of faith. He's rich, he's wealthy, he's doing well, so it's just me. Apparently, I didn't do something right, and then people could end up losing their faith altogether, which is terrible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feeds on emotions, feelings, the heart of somebody. I believe a lot of the people who are sucked into this are just hungry for truth, hungry for the presence of God, hungry for a close relationship with them. I know I was. And because you get all the feels with it when things go your way or when they tell you a really powerful quote, unquote sermon that speaks to where you are because they know how to speak to you and it's all about you and you may or may not have heard any Bible verses and you probably didn't have your Bible open to check and see if they were even said correctly you get that emotional high. You get that I am powerful feeling. I am the child of God, I can do this. You start thinking it, you start believing it, because your whole heart just wants to be what God has called you to be. And they're telling you what God has called you to be. And they're telling you what God has called you to be. And you're believing it and you're feeling it. And how can it be wrong with your feelings? Because you feel God's Holy Spirit is working in you right now and then you go and do something with that and maybe it works out for you.
Speaker 1:Satan's going to do what he's going to do, and sometimes that's going to be giving you what you want. He's going to make it seem like it's working. If he didn't do that, then people wouldn't be sucked into these practices. You don't get sucked into the occult if it doesn't work. If you're trying to channel your dead grandparents and you go to somebody who can't do it, that's not going to make you want to go back, because clearly they're a charlatan. You can't trust them. Why are you going to continue down that road? You don't use a Ouija board. You don't use word of faith if these things don't work. You use these practices because at some point they have done what they are meant to do. That's how you get drawn in. That's how you get sucked in. That's how anyone gets sucked into anything they like doing, over and over and over again, because at some point it did what it was meant to do. Satan's crafty.
Speaker 2:Human pride too, because you end up having people think that the in themselves which is pride, and yet the Bible says the opposite, that God resisteth the proud, but he giveth grace to the humble, and that we ought to have a low opinion of ourselves, not a high opinion of ourselves. And furthermore, it's putting confidence in man. I mean the man in this case would be yourself. And the Bible says cursed is he which trusteth in man. Because really, what you're doing is you're trusting in your faith. You're, instead of trusting in God's promises, you're trusting in what you have done or what you have said, and believing that the power is in you and you've essentially turned yourself into God. Because God it says in Romans 4, 17, that he calleth those things which be not as though they were.
Speaker 2:God said and in the context he's talking about, when God said to Abraham I have made thee a father of many nations, when Abraham had no children. Yet God can do that, God can say God can misuse language, if you will, in the example that I used earlier, where God can say I have made thee a father of many nations, when he's not actually a father of many nations yet, Because God has number one. God sees the end from the beginning, and God has the power to enforce whatever his word says. So if God says he's going to do something, it's going to be done, period, because he has infinite power to accomplish that. We don't, because he has infinite power to accomplish that, we don't. But if you think that you do, if you teach somebody that if they say something that they're going to have what they say, you've essentially given them godlike power that they too can call things which be not as though they were, and that's just not true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, apparently, joyce Meyer and Stephen Furtick, I believe, have both said we're kind of little gods, which I think I stopped listening to her before. Who knows, maybe she said it before. I mean, when you're deep in this, I don't think you realize how many problems there really are with it until you are no longer in it. So I'm now seeing certain things and I'm like, oh wow, how did I not notice that before? Or why didn't? I think that that sounded wonky. I had some discernment. I knew that there was something off about Stephen Furtick. I knew there was something off about Joel Osteen, kenneth Copeland there's just other people where I was like I don't really want to listen to them anymore. Or I listened to certain people for a little bit Robert Morris, or the one who was just from Gateway Church. I used to listen to him for a while and then at some point, long before the bombshell came out about him, I had stopped listening to him because I was like I was cleaning house God was cleaning my house out of the things that I had trusted in and believed in, that were word of faith and all these things, and he was one of them that went, and I'm glad because that those kinds of things shake your faith too. When somebody you trusted, you listened to all their teachings and then, boom, something happened. You're like whoa, that's going to mess with your faith too. But you don't know the depth of how serious these things are until you're out of it. I've started believing that that's true, because if you talk to somebody who's into the word of faith and prosperity gospel, they don't really want to hear what you have to say. If you're trying to shut them down from being positive, depending on who they are, if you have a close relationship with them, maybe they'll listen to what you have to say. But you have to come at it gingerly. You can't just blurt out your opinion, but a lot of times they don't want to hear it because they view what you have to say as negativity.
Speaker 1:Like I said with my stepdad, he was trying to tell me about Joyce Meyer and I didn't want to hear it. I was like you just don't like her because she's a woman preacher and all. I don't believe in women preachers anymore. I don't think they should be doing that. But I was justifying all these different things and that's what you do when you are in.
Speaker 1:This is you justify, you bend over backwards trying to make it make sense Because somewhere inside of you I think you realize it doesn't make sense. Because I feel like, if you truly have a good handle on your position, you're okay to talk to somebody who doesn't agree with you. For believers trying to share the gospel, you should be willing to have a conversation with someone who doesn't agree with you and you should be able to be gracious about it, because what you believe is true and you don't need to bend over backwards, coming up with whatever you have your proof. If you don't have your proof, perhaps you should take a better look at what you're trying to defend and see why you're so hostile to hearing a differing opinion. And that's kind of what started getting me away from Joyce Meyer is.
Speaker 1:Every single time I started listening to her, I kept hearing his voice and I kept hearing other people who may have said something about her. And then all the podcasts I was listening to it started coming in and I started receiving it rather than pushing it away and saying, oh no, whatever, don't take away my elevation music or whatever. It gives me the feels, all these different things I allowed God to do whatever he was trying to do in me and I allowed him to have that chance to break me free from the false doctrines that I was following. I pray that the listeners will also have that heart posture of allowing someone to speak with love into your heart and share the honest truth. I mean, I am more than willing to bet Chad that you, if someone who's listening wanted to contact you and talk further about this, you would be open to having a conversation, right? Oh sure, sure, I would be open to it.
Speaker 1:There's people who are willing to have conversations. If you have more questions about this, don't just shut us off because you don't like what we're saying. There's truth to what we're saying. Listen to it. The Holy Spirit will guide you and that's what you need to listen to is the Holy Spirit, because there's a lot of people out there who are trying to deceive. There's some meaning. There's people out there who mean well within these false practices, but then there's a lot of people who don't, and you have to be careful and you have to realize who truly loves you. They're going to tell you the truth at the expense of your friendship, your family, whatever it is. They're going to tell you the truth and if they're willing to do that sacrifice, perhaps you should listen yeah, it's like david said let the righteous smite me, it should be a kindness.
Speaker 2:Let him reprove me, it should be an excellent oil which shall not break my head. So, yeah, the loving thing to do is to correct somebody when they're wrong, instead of allowing them to go on a self-destructive path I think about. I was just thinking about this as you were talking about how it can put people in such bondage. I knew a Word of Faith preacher here in town. I didn't know him really well but I had met him a couple of times and at the time I didn't know much about the Word of Faith. Well, then he ended up having a bad heart attack and they got him to the hospital in time to keep him alive and then I think he had a stroke and ended up being incapacitated and lived that way for, I think, a couple of years. It was really sad.
Speaker 2:And another pastor friend of mine here in town, I would ask him about him once in a while and he said, yeah, it's really hard to get any information out of his wife or family because he's in this word of faith thing and at the time I didn't know why would that matter? And but what I realized is, if you ask his wife, say how's brother Mike doing? Well, she can't say well, he's not doing well, yeah, he's basically incapacitated, he can't talk or he can't walk or whatever, and yeah, things aren't looking very well. She either has to say nothing or say, oh Mike is well, mike's doing great in the name of Jesus, he's healed, or whatever nonsense which isn't even true. And so you can't even have a conversation with somebody. You can't be honest about anything, because if you're not positive then you're going to invite the curse upon yourself. You think so. You have to be positive and you have to basically pretend things are not the way they really are, and it's just a terrible bondage to be in.
Speaker 1:It's heartbreaking and I'm still dealing with residuals from it. There's still times where I don't want to say something because I'm afraid it might happen, and I have to catch myself and say, no, I'm not going to live in fear. If I say it and it happens, it's probably not because I said it. It's probably because it was meant to happen anyways. And if it does happen and it had something to do with what I said, whatever, I can't do anything at that point. It already happened and I already said it. What are you going to do?
Speaker 1:So I've started trying to train my brain that I can't be afraid because God is in control, whether good things or bad things happen, and I trust that he loves me through it, and it's still something I'm processing through. I'm thankful that it didn't last too long with my family, to the point where my kids are already trained in it. They aren't, and my husband's still kind of a new believer. He's only been a believer for 10 plus years and I beat myself up a lot because I've been leading him down different paths based off of how I grew up, whether my parents were intentional about how they raised me or not, and the things that I learned as a child, as a young adult, the word of faith, all these different things. I was trying to suck him into those things too. Him and I are learning together now what is true, what isn't true.
Speaker 1:Never a dull moment in our house. One minute he was like well, I thought you believed in that. I was like that was a few years ago. Now I've done more study and I don't believe it anymore. He's like okay, so it's always a journey.
Speaker 2:The justice as the shining light that shineth more and more into the perfect day. That's the Christian life we should be as we go along finding more and more truth and rejecting more and more error. So that's just how it goes. We don't learn it all up front, all at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you so much, chad, for coming on and talking to me today about this. It's definitely one of the biggest movements in Christianity and it's one of the main things that really needs to go. Like yesterday, it needs to go. It's not helping Christians at all. If anything, I feel like it's hurting it.
Speaker 1:It's crippling us from being able to move forward in what God really has for us, because we are so stuck in this world and feeling that we need to be comfortable here rather than remembering our home is not here, it's in heaven. We can't store up treasures here. We can't expect good things here. This world is broken and we just have to accept that and trust that God is in control. We are not. We don't have the same powers that God has. We can't speak things into existence, or I would have a maid right now cleaning my house, so I don't have to. I would be able to go visit Russia, something I've always wanted to do. There's so many things that haven't happened for me that I tried to speak into existence. They never happen. You can't manifest these things. You may think you can and remember everyone listening.
Speaker 1:If it does come to pass, that does not necessarily mean that what you're doing works. It just means perhaps you should look at it harder and figure out was this God or was this Satan trying to lure me into something, into a trap? Because he doesn't have the same powers as God, but he does have some powers over this world and he is trying to trip up people, and the more Christians he can trip up, the better for him, because then we look like fools to the world and then why would they want to be Christians? I feel like he enjoys that most, as opposed to the people who just flat out say I don't believe in anything, I don't believe in God. I think he gets more giggles out of tripping us up because we claim Jesus and then we just ruined our witness.
Speaker 1:When we get sucked into bad things or it comes out that we did something wrong, and yeah. So just be careful, read your Bible, stay close to God, be open to criticism of the things you're doing from people who love you and who you can tell are risking something from it, because that could be God trying to get your attention. Well, thank you again, chad, for coming on. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're welcome, I've enjoyed it.
