Ask Me Anything!

good afternoon for joining me this is father anthony mesa here uh for my weekly ask me anything where as the name implies you get to set the agenda of our discussion by asking me whatever questions that you want uh you can submit those questions if you're watching on youtube or on facebook or also on twitter you can submit questions there pop up on the screen i do my best to answer them right here so before we get into the questions big announcement okay in case you aren't following important announcement this weekend we have a very major event that i um invite all of you who are local to join and those who are not local you'll be able to watch it online um and that is we are doing a groundbreaking ceremony on saturday that's right this saturday september 4th uh we'll start with liturgy in the morning for those who are local and then at 12 o'clock noon we'll be heading over to the site of our future building um um and we're going to do a uh special prayer there and a ceremony groundbreaking ceremony with his grace bishop peter who's coming in town just for this event and we'll do a special prayer that's called the prayer of the laying of the cornerstone um you know that verse where it talks about how um the stone to builders rejecters become the chief cornerstone um and uh the whole idea of the cornerstone um basically the church turned this into a prayer where we pray over a few items okay and then it's something that we lay into uh the foundation of the building okay so we're not quite at the foundation level yet but we'll pray over a box you know with the bible inside um and some event like think of it kind of like a time capsule kind of a sort of thing um that the bishop will pray over we'll all pray over um and um then we will have pizza okay we have some pizza coming free lunch for anyone who's going to be there but if you're not there to our online audience we're going to be streaming the event um here um on on facebook and on youtube uh maybe on instagram as well so uh be sure to follow us there and uh and stay tuned and watch it and like i said if you come in person get free ice cream um so that's that but uh what we're doing right here is as i said is an ask me anything so you get to ask me any question that you want it can be spiritual it can be personal it can be sports the only thing i can't be is politics we try to avoid politics and religion as much as we can um on the on the on the stream here but hey whatever area that you want i'll do my best to answer uh so feel free to fire away so our first question after so many years of service to god and serving people according to his will what is the number one and most important thing god has taught you and serving people by his will taught you i i always i hate when it's like what's that one thing that you've learned so i'll say what's on my mind but i will reserve the right that if someone asked me this question next week i may give a completely different answer um but just the first thing that popped in my mind arson when when you said that what god has taught me is that is that truly everyone is different um indifferent isn't bad i feel like oftentimes we have this picture in our mind of what like a good person should look like a good person should go to church you know this and should listen to this kind of music and dress this way and kind of live in a certain way and what i've learned especially at stsa where we are pretty diverse um most people who come into our community say it's something that's noticeable especially for an orthodox church we're extremely diverse um is that really god made us all different um and that's okay that diversity is not only okay it's actually a good thing is that we're better off like i i've often said is that like politically we're obviously a very politically charged area and we don't all believe the same thing politically we view the world very differently and i think that's good i would caution you if you go to a church where everyone thinks like you and votes like you and talks like you i would caution you that that might be kind of dangerous because that's when you kind of get into the with the blinders and you start to believe your own narrative a little bit too much especially these days um with the echo chambers that exist online so i would say that is that everyone is different and god can use our different gifts and talents all for his glory like i'm different than most priests and in the beginning of my priesthood i tried to kind of fit the mold of what a priest should look like um but i felt god telling me no don't do that um be who be who i made you to be that's why i felt god tell me and i would say the same thing to everyone out there um and jesus was the same way like jesus was kind of like a revolutionary he was kind of a rebel he went against the establishment so to speak and i'm not saying against the establishment but i guess my point is he didn't do things in the customary way he ate food that he shouldn't have eaten with people he shouldn't be with on days that he shouldn't have um but um you know he he followed the will of god so that's my answer sorry there's a long answer to your question but like i said you may ask me the question next week i may give you a completely different answer but that's what i would say is appreciating that god made us all different uh semhar from zambia hello to you as well uh thank you for joining us right here uh mahadaya forgive me if i'm mispronouncing the name what does life after death look like um do we take our physical body's flesh to heaven and we'll recognize each other obviously when it comes to life after death i gotta say never been there so hard for me to to speak definitively hard for anyone to speak definitely of something that's obviously after death but there's certain things that we know so without without trying to make it too much into like a formula and exactly um this is exactly the way it's going to be exactly how it's going to go we do know that we will have bodies okay we can look at christ um look at christ after his resurrection and we say he's the first fruits so that means that we can see what we will become there's a verse from first john chapter two or chapter three i believe i think it's chapter two which says we don't know what's gonna become of us but we know whatever he is that's what we're gonna be so christ had a body after his resurrection so we'll have a body it'll be a body but not not like this body like that body went through walls okay we call it the glorified body so we will have a body it won't be necessary like this body but it was recognizable to his disciples right so they they they could recognize him so i guess that's what i would say is that we will um have a body um but that doesn't mean it's like i died 86 i'm an 86 year old in heaven we don't know what it's going to look like but we know it'll be we know it'll be an upgrade from 1.0 version right here okay we know that body won't get sick we know that body they won't have cancer all right so that's what i would say to that okay arson the number one reason i love your channel and what you teach and how you teach is because i am like you okay congratulations good man i love making analysis i'm an i.t guy and all that you're clearly a good man i was an i.t consultant uh way back in the day as well so yeah it's good to know that we're kindred spirits out there arson um i look forward to meet you one day hopefully in person um samhar asks as orthodox church perspective does god want us to be closed minded i mean are we allowed to explore other churches without fully involved um so for sure like the first part of the question isn't necessarily the same as the second part so art does god wants to be closed-minded that that's a term that means different things to different people so on the surface you would say no we shouldn't be close-minded and we should be open-minded and listen but if there's sin and evil yeah i want to be close-minded towards that so i'm not open-minded towards like you know should i commit this sin no no no so i don't want to like i'll stay away from the closed-minded open-minded because i can get me in trouble but i would say god wants us to be discerning for sure and discerning again there's a verse from uh first john is epistle i want to say chapter four but i'm not 100 sure talks about just testing the spirits okay and discerning okay um what is from god what is not from god what's from the evil one so god wants us to for sure be discerning and when we find something is dangerous then of course we should um you know not explore it so i don't see that as closed-minded i see that as wise to be honest when i see something as dangerous now how does that relate to other churches that that's a different story as well that's why you asked like three questions right there is that i don't want to be to the point where i say that anything that's not exactly the way i am is clearly evil in sin um so yeah god wants us to be discerning avoid the evil but by the same token um not be quick to label things as evil phil says this ben simmons is deeply troubling to me how can i have peace with what god has provided for my life um for those who don't know phil is from philadelphia ben simmons is a basketball player from the 76ers i don't know if something happened today i'm kind of out of touch with the world of sports but i think what he's saying is about how ben simmons can't make a free throw so i think you're saying that's disturbing to you um i'm not sure if that's related to the second part how do i have peace with what god has provided for my life um easy just let go of philadelphia and become a washington fan phil like that's that's a no-brainer you'll have peace when you realize that god put you here in dc to be a fan of the washington football team formerly known as the redskins the wizards uh we got baseball the nationals just embrace it man just embrace it you'll find much more peace in your life um senai says i'm scared of living please advise me father no don't be scared of living why scared of living um first of all you're doing it so i mean no don't be scared um you know it sounds like you know you me i would encourage you maybe to talk to someone who you can share what it is exactly that you're scared of because god is good okay right outside here the sun is shining okay god is good so let's talk about that daniel says why wouldn't god just introduce baptism in the old testament okay so maybe i won't say necessarily baptism but let's talk about a greater broaden the question a little bit old testament new testament one of the problems with the word old testament okay we in general think of old as bad okay so we think of like my old car and my new car my new car is better than my old car my old shoes and my new shoes my new is better than my old but that that's not the right way because it's a testament or a covenant with god and the new fulfills the old but it doesn't abolish the old in the sense that we throw away the old so instead of old and new the way we think of it there think of it like i would say with my children think of it like first and second so i have like my old child and then my new child but the old is not worse than the first then the new sorry the old and the new is that they're both my children and they're each have they're each my children so with that look at it this way that in in in the beginning of time look at mankind a humanity as a person not as many individual people but as a person that was born in genesis chapter one okay that humanity was born and and from that moment humanity okay first was an infant then was a toddler then an adolescent then or whatever whatever whatever you deal with people at different stages of different ways based on their maturity so with an infant it's don't touch this you're not to go there don't do that that was kind of like a lot of the very beginning with the law don't touch that you're not allowed to do that and then as as humanity grew up a little bit and matured the prophets came along and gave them a little bit higher level stuff okay they could understand like love of god again how god cares for you you know as a father has compassion on his children all right as a mother comforts her crying child so you started to like we started to advance a little bit new testament we look at it as the age of like okay now we're old enough to understand a lot of things that we didn't understand before and that's where baptism comes in actually i would even put new testament and then i would put like after pentecost the age that we're living in now because you kind of have like the era of the gospels and then you have the era of the holy spirit after pentecost and that's the fulfillment so i guess my answer to your question god raised man it's like asking me why didn't you tell your kid about where babies come from when they were four well because they weren't ready for it and when they were four i just kind of said yeah babies come from mommy's tummy and that's not a lie but it's like all they can handle or the stork or santa claus or whoever brings babies but then as they got older i said well actually a baby comes from here and then they went to medical school and they learned really where babies come from and things like that so it's the same way is that god gave to mankind as mankind was able to handle okay uh mary says hi hi to you too mary um arson i've forgotten to say i'm from sweden welcome oh yes arson from sweden yes serving the coffee community but i'm armenian heritage pleasure to meet you look forward to meeting you one day but sweden seems like a little bit of a commute uh why not purgatory uh malacca asks why not purgatory uh it's simple i don't have to say why not purgatory because i would view it this way is that purgatory was never part of the teaching of the church from the beginning it was a concept that was introduced don't quote me on this one i want to say like ninth tenth century somewhere around there um i remember reading about it a while back so it was something that was introduced so i don't need to say why not that as much as i say you know it was never part of the faith you know the faith once for all delivered to the saints you chapter one verse three and then of course if you want to talk about you know why it isn't particular that like we can talk about bible verses that you know kind of go against purgatory but the simple answer is wasn't there from the start uh makta hi to you as well uh samhara you're welcome god bless you as well anthony tetris how do i address a wife who who is disrespected by her husband in public how do i address a wife who's disrespected um how do you address her i think the one who needs to be addressed as the husband um yeah husbands and wives this is important sometimes in our culture um you know we think it's cute and like funny of like joking of like you know the old ball and jane and like you know we make those fun jokes because it's fun you know um carrier you know carry my cross um yeah but she's too heavy like funny things like that um it's very important how we speak about each other in public okay um not to say that i'm the best example of this but you'll never hear me disrespect my wife in public and you'll never hear my wife disrespect me in public that stuff that stuff is is a is a recipe for a toxic situation and what i would encourage all the married people out there is you actually want to do the opposite i actually did this last week you want to do the opposite you want to talk highly of your spouse in public okay and doing so a it will increase your love for the person but also what it'll do it'll increase their appreciation for you like i can joke with my wife and say something here and there she can do the same with me but in front of others um not a good situation so we need to stop that bad habit of you know if it wasn't for my own like we need to stop that stuff okay we also need to show the world about a good picture of marriage and we love marriage marriage is the best gift god ever gave us so why why in the world do we disrespect it so much as we do and in fact since you got me started here anthony sorry but if there's a problem with marriage the problem isn't the institution problem is us problems the way that we're approaching it and maybe talking bad about our spouse in public is one of the reasons okay actually sorry this last thing i said move on there's actually a couple that i know that um uh the wife used to really struggle with this and she would talk bad about her husband not in not meaning to talk bad but always like complain about him i should say um and i told her you need to stop doing that and i'm telling you when she stopped doing that the husband started reaching the expectation that his wife had for him so as much as she talked about him down he kind of lived down to that expectation and then when she raised her expectation uh he lifted it up so let's move on sylvia i wanted to ask about envy this is more egyptian thinking never believed that this should affect me as everything is planned by god lately i see the envy evil eye everyone is saying all what is happening to me is the evil nvi i did not believe that at all yeah i mean yeah it's kind of like it's kind of like fortune cookies or the horoscope you can make it true if you want it to be true so the fortune cookie that says today will be you will meet someone of importance yeah i mean you can make it work with whatever it is that you want or today you know will be a disappointing day like every day has all those things so i think a lot of that stuff becomes self-fulfilling prophecies get rid of that idea the power that's in this is always greater than the power that's outside of us we don't buy into that um stuff and what we want to do um is we want to have a spirit of second timothy chapter one verse seven god has not given us a spirit of fear but a power sound mind and love okay so sound mind that's what i want to focus on is sound mind is to think about things okay in a godly uh manner okay uh sinai suffer from trauma may god bless you i'll be praying for you but like i said try to talk to someone maybe they're gonna helpfully help you in acts chapter 10 verse 13 god tells peter to eat the animals declaring them clean and many interpret this by saying we don't need to observe old testament dietary laws but the orthodox church still does how come the old the orthodox church doesn't observe old testament dietary laws things that say like like those would say like you can't eat pork or things like that those laws he realized that god before there was uh a medicine in physicians it was god like god for example right now we're talking about viruses and quarantines and stuff like that you know all that stuff from the bible that you know that like humanity didn't understand this stuff but god's only said if there's someone who has this disease make them sit over there for seven days and then after seven days let the priest who was like the doctor let the priest check him out and if he still got the disease put him back in for another seven days but if he's clean then come out to the community you realize like that's all the stuff that we're doing right now right so god was the one who prescribed certain things same thing with the old testament dietary laws god knew what was clean and unclean and what people was going to get diseases from and what people were now things are different now things can be washed we can eat pork and things like that we still have fasting but we don't have fasting in an old testament way so i think you might be mixing like the church fastings which are given like for asceticism and for self-control and for spiritual discipline and as a form of prayer don't mix that with the dietary laws which were given for health reasons okay a lot of bad things happening in the world true but a lot of good things happening in the world too so uh how do i repent i really would like a proper way a detailed instruction how to repent i don't know how to start um i i think you're making a great start right there mr abstract dream or ms abstract dream i think uh repentance begins with a door to your room closed phone put away in your heart okay spend time and i like to write okay so i i think better when i write so i would encourage you to do the same to what it is that you want to repent of and just pour your heart out in front of god doesn't need to be fancy don't worry don't worry about the technique okay when it comes to spiritual life there's like there's desire and there's technique we focus 90 of our time on the technique and 10 on the desire when truly the impact comes 90 of the impact comes from the desire 10 from the technique okay uh henoch just finished whatever god loved it thank you thank you hannock okay for plugging my book right there whatever god you can go find on amazon 15.99 um thank you sylvia thank you i appreciate it uh sahar nice to see you good to see you as well okay um [Music] someone is saying about that old testament dietary laws their church does so yeah i can't really speak about that um don't really know um rahel says uh my husband cheat on a lot of money he loves it like another woman he's a narcissist would you advise me i advise you maybe to talk to your your your local priest right there he'd probably be able to advise you a little bit better than i would uh but may god bless you okay all right we are out of time um mr priests take a lot of conviction why are we seeing so many i'll answer this last one okay because it's hanan who's a good friend of mine and she's asking why are we seeing so many broken marriages again i think the problem is not marriages i think the problem is people i think we're seeing broken people um that's leading to broken marriages so what i would say to everyone out there um and i especially tell them this especially before you get married look here in life there are many things i'm gonna finish on this you don't have to ask any more questions in life there are many things that are valuable but there's nothing more valuable than something called the blessing of god nothing more valuable you fight for the blessing of god with all that you got that starts when you're dating so there's certain things you can do when you're dating that will lose the blessing of god don't do it it's not worth it the blessing of god is more valuable than a billion dollars someone said here's a billion dollars someone said here's the blessing of god it's not even close okay you can take the billion dollars and you can be a miserable miserable miserable person blessing of god that's the way to go to put a smile on your face and on your heart nothing to lose the blessing of god when you're dating okay when you when you get married sometimes there's this thing of like okay we're married when we're dating like we're praying and we're trusting in god then we're married and we kind of you know what and we skipped church here oh and then we got a brunch with so and so there oh and then the kids are busy with this don't do it don't lose the blessing of god for anything in life it also applies to me personally in individual way again when we are young we are zealous then we get old and we're about money in the size of our house and things like that so we're tempted to work don't do it blessing of god more valuable than anything else in life blessing of god more valuable than anything else in life only thing i got good in my life is the blessing of god and i pray that you would have that as well okay thank you sorry i didn't get to all the questions at the end but it is time for me to go god bless you all and like i said this saturday groundbreaking ceremony laying the cornerstone 12 o'clock noon come back here on youtube or on facebook or maybe on instagram as well or on our twitter um saturday afternoon 12 o'clock noon eastern time love to see you all there and we got some fun stuff planned some surprises so uh hopefully we'll see you all then take care everyone

Channel: STSA Church

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Id: 2kywKYKAZhk

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021