Can a Christian smoke or drink? - Pastors' Perspective 02/25/2021

[Music] this is pastor's perspective we're here every monday through friday providing answers on a variety of topics including the bible end times other religions and the family call right now with your question at one triple eight five six four six one seven three that's eight eight eight five six four six one seven three you can also post your question at facebook.com slash pastor's perspective and now here again is your host brian perez welcome everyone to the first of two hours of pastors perspective today that's right this is the day every week that we're here for an extra hour so we're going to be here till 5 p.m pacific time to answer your questions about the bible the christian faith just about anything that's on your mind even if you're not a christian and you have questions about what christians believe and you know you you thought the bible is filled with contradictions and all this other stuff give us a call we'd like to talk to you about that 888-564-6173 is the number to call between now and five o'clock today again that's triple eight five six four six one seven three answering your questions today our author and apologist dr bobby conway from the one minute apologist channel on youtube you can also find out more about him at oneminuteapologist.com and here in the studio with me is pastor brian broderson from calvary chapel costa mesa in southern california welcome gentlemen to the program today well thank you very much brian perez great to be with you and uh dr conway lovely to see you as well lovely to see you as well my friend okay we got to jump right in because i've got [Laughter] i've got something that i want to talk about based on um i was listening to the program yesterday sounded fantastic and the subject of marijuana came up and bobby gave a very thorough and in many ways a really really excellent answer but there's something in my head that i i still want to go back to it because i'm not quite sure that you can put marijuana on the same level as alcohol and here's the reason and bobby let's talk about this because you know i if you could put it on the same level then i think your answer was superb it was fantastic but seriously though i just have the question you know is it really the same sort of thing and this is my this is my reasoning because you talked about you know like a glass of wine versus smoking a joint and i think a glass of wine as a means of relaxing doesn't necessarily at all include any kind of inebriation so you know you sit down with a glass of wine you're you you know it's just a relaxing moment you're you're sipping your wine you you know you have your glass of wine you're you're not at all affected by it in the sense that you know your reasoning is impaired you know nothing you're not at all drunk or tipsy or anything you just had a glass of wine and now you move on and but it was a relaxing moment the the problem i'm having is that you cannot smoke a joint without getting high i don't think that that is a possibility so my you know my argument is you can drink a glass of wine or you can have a beer without getting high but you can't do pot without getting high and so that's where i think there's a distinction between these two things and so i think that you know recreational marijuana use i would feel like it is just this is a a restricted area for believers this is not this is not an option for you as a believer to just hey i need to relax a little bit i'm just going to sit down before i read my bible smoke joint and uh now now people have done that so that's why i'm bringing it up now is it possible that like you said the glass of wine like you drink the whole glass eight ounces 12 ounces whatever it is maybe taking a hit one hit from a joint would it have the same effect where it doesn't quite make you well i'm just i'm just trying to put you know like just the whole idea because you know when you talk about a glass of wine you generally do talk about it as a means of just sort of unwinding you know you want to relax a little bit maybe you've had a stressful day uh you know so you you kind of talk about it in that context again like what is one hit off of a joint going to do so i don't know so you know pot the the the purpose of pot is to get high that i don't know that anybody smokes pot leisurely without the the goal of i'm gonna get high that's that's what i'm going to do right now that's you know what i mean you can smoke a cigarette for leisurely purposes and people do i've had friends that you know were smokers and they would tell me that man you know after a good meal there's nothing like a cigarette it's just amazing to just sit back and relax and smoke a cigarette great okay uh your lungs might be getting messed up but it's not affecting your brain you know so so i'm just throwing that out what do you think well i'd i would agree as it relates to um smoking marijuana and that's probably something that i obviously failed to mention i think you're right especially with today's thc levels and marijuana back when i was younger if i got a cheap bag of brown weed you could take a hit and you wouldn't feel much off of it you got a good green bag and you would feel something off of one hit uh i i would not uh even for medicinal purposes see it being wise to smoke marijuana uh i think it's because of some of the edibles that are out there if the fda could truly regulate the amount some would argue that they uh have or that it's been regulated by the milligrams but i've also heard that it can be inconsistent and so if it could truly be regulated on an edible where you were able to equate okay this drink has this percentage of alcohol and the this uh marijuana has this um you know amount of milligrams and if they could scientifically equate that to kind of create a governor to ensure that you weren't going to be high that's all i'm saying it might be too much mental gymnastics but for the record yeah i would not advise anybody to smoke weed i was just wondering i didn't think that you were advising anybody to smoke weed yesterday but i but i do think that you know you were you were using those as you know kind of parallel options for relaxing and i and i just got to thinking about it like i said i thought it was a really thoughtful answer you know you walk through a lot of different scenarios i thought it was really good but then i started thinking about you know the thing with pot too pot affects you know people differently with pot you can have hallucinations which you really wouldn't have you know with a glass of wine or you know beer you can develop paranoia you can develop uh anxiety you know things like that uh to me it's just again it's just you know smoking pot it you get high that and and like you said bobby my phd levels today um you know even one hit can get you high or get you i would say uh to your point though i'm wondering with the whole paranoia and and stuff that takes place on the kind of level that i'd be thinking i wouldn't see that like let's say somebody was a cancer patient they were prescribed edibles by a doctor it was a certain amount but to be consistent i could also see a skeptic saying okay well wait a second bobby uh heroin is going to get legalized california's already you know making its push so what if we can just take just enough heroin to take the edge off and this is where my own inconsistencies are going to fall apart yeah so i think that in some ways i do think we would be better as a culture without alcohol at all yeah uh if i'm just being honest i know people enjoy it so i'm not somebody i think i think every individual is going to be wisest to not drink i mean you're drinking basically i mean it's practically gasoline for crying out loud i mean it's flavored poison uh i mean it's not like it's some healthy uh substance that we're taking in so i th my personal stance would be that we would be a much healthier culture if we didn't try to figure out how to regulate any of this stuff if we just got rid of it but i don't think that's realistic so i just try to say how can we help people to stay sober and moderate yeah and i thought your um your perspective on the medicinal side uh was really good and even to the point of you know take let's just take away the stigma of marijuana if you know we had a cancer patient and somebody said hey we've got this medication that's going to help you to be able to um you know overcome this nausea you're going to be able to eat you're going to be able to retain your weight um i thought that was really really good so i'm i'm thinking more just very strictly in the recreational category you know because to me that's where um that's where you crossed about it's like it's like because you mentioned opiates you know you know well if i'm going to take opiates for recreational purposes uh that's a problem right yes and those are really addicting i mean that opiates will get in your system so fast yeah um i mean i remember uh having surgery uh my wife if i have surgery she won't even let me touch that stuff because i number one i'm not an angry person um by nature um you know and i'm thankful for that i talk about all of my weaknesses i can get angry like anybody else but that's not you know my my go-to emotion but when i when i had surgeries and i jump on that i can become mean as a hornet and not only that i get um i can feel the lure to addiction with those things so quickly in fact i remember after a surgery it was like oh four days uh you can have this well immediately the attic in me is counting my four hours and i'm thinking okay now i get my new dosage and then four days later you know i'm getting in a squat position looking for pain yeah there's still a little bit of pain here so that i could take some and then i had to flush the things down the sink just because i'm going this i'm playing mind games here yeah man we're so glad you're safe buddy you know right yeah totally now we did get this comment on youtube andrew sent this in he says pastor brian i had a person once tell me that he takes lsd and acid to interpret the bible well oh well i'm yeah i you know i don't know why he would do that he would come up with some strange interpretations but you know back in the back in the jesus people days uh people did that all the time i mean that is in the earliest days of what we call the jesus people movement uh they would get together and have a bible study or they would go out and witness and they'd lead somebody to christ then they'd celebrate by everybody um you know taking a hit of acid really yeah oh my yeah like hey all right hey brother you just came to jesus here let's take this seriously seriously and in in the book god's forever family which is a great story of what happened in that jesus people revival there's one um incident that's described there where they they had been witnessing to this guy for a long time and they led him to christ and then they all took acid together and he went and tried to jump off the golden gate bridge and so they realized but this is their this was their thinking they realized they never thought like lsd was a problem but then when they saw that the reaction of their friend they thought well you know jumping off the bridge and killing yourself that's surely not a good thing so we know god wouldn't want that to happen and the lsd probably prompted some of that so maybe we shouldn't take as much acid that was their conclusion but you think you know this is a very slow uh sanctification process that was going on with some of these people back then but um yeah i can remember brian when i was younger uh we would sit in rooms you know this is before i heard of jesus and uh you know we would commonly say i'm gonna go find myself yeah and uh we would get our journals and we would sit and and we would stick pink floyd the wall in or we had watched the doors and uh as if some great epiphany for life purpose was going to materialize in the midst of our lsd trip and you know what i really came to learn in time is that god first revealed himself to me and then he revealed me to myself i would never find myself until god first found me so god first revealed himself to me and then he revealed me to myself and the only way i was going to know who i was was to know who my creator was and that's not frying on lsd that's not the pathway that's not the pathway that's right all right great conversation to start today's pastor's perspective episode pastor brian broderson and dr bobby conway discussing uh marijuana and uh it's merits not so uh give us a call 888-564-6173 is the number to call between now and 5 p.m pacific time we can talk about just about anything that's on your mind maybe even some stuff that's in the news today like uh the house passing the equality act that happened today and uh what was the other thing oh a few days ago the founder of celebrate recovery went home to be with the lord and uh the transgender potato head do you guys hear about that yeah they're gonna what uh transgender potato head like the toy like so it's not mr or it's not gonna be mr potato head anymore it's just uh just the potato head i was just going to say well i've really been ruminating you know um i did my research in in moral philosophy and i i think i've said recently but i i thought it would be good just to even remind the audience uh when you see this kind of stuff coming up um we've talked a lot about being a culture of moral relativism and um as i'm watching the culture and i'd be curious to hear your thoughts uh brian to see if you would concur i i do think moral relativism is still in existence um but i see more of a new kind of moral absolutism um and this new moral absolutism is you must embrace critical race theory you must embrace my gender preference you must embrace lgbtq you must wear two masks and if you don't you will be canceled and so this new moral absolutism and the crazy thing is is the church is always being accused of of you know having these rules well look who has the rules and not all that the church is accused of not having grace well this new moral absolutism comes with no grace comes with no forgiveness comes with no mercy comes with no unconditional love the only canceled culture that christianity knows of is the cross where christ cancels our sins and i'm just thinking about an apologetic evangelistically speaking we've got a much better narrative that i think trumps this new moral absolutism yeah and you're right i think moral relativism is is now only uh when it's convenient you know when it fits the narrative and then the moment it's no longer convenient then you switch to the moral absolutism which is you know rooted kind of in the relativism but then it becomes absolute so and the equality act is um that's a dangerous act you know and so i mean this is gonna a number of things are gonna happen but it's gonna fill the courts with battle after battle after battle because you know so this is in a sense i mean this is like trumping the first amendment in in that's their goal that's their objective you know to um you cannot discriminate say uh against you know certain certain groups of people or certain ideas you know you are you no longer have um free speech you can't say things about this and this is happening this isn't just happening in the states this is happening uh in uh the state of victoria in australia they've passed a bill there where uh you can't pray for an lgbt person to be freed even if they come to you and ask would you pray i don't want these desires i don't want to live this life anymore would you pray for me that i could you know have a victory over this it is against the law in victoria australia to do that yeah and similar bills are in canada um in ontario canada they're uh similar kinds of legislation that they're they're trying to impose so yeah this is um you know this is this is dangerous stuff and so you know somebody somebody um commented on my uh social media one of my social media threads today and you know kind of criticizing me for why aren't you talking about religious liberty and well you know we can talk about it all we want but it's obviously not affecting the people in the house or representatives because they're just going to do what they want to do so we got to do the same things that the church has always done we've got to pray we've got to live the christian life and we've got to preach the gospel that's what we've got to do because the only way any of this changes if is if the hearts of people change and so um i mean the thing to be encouraged about in all of this and is for us to remember you know it gets discouraging when we think about the rise of the nuns and uh you we we start hearing about how the church is shrinking uh but let's be encouraged christians that uh true what ed stetzer refused refers to as convictional christians i believe um or committed christians we're not losing true christians true christians are eternally saved from eternity past so what's happening is nominal christians uh you know when church is no longer socially acceptable uh they're walking away but this is a time for the true bride to stand up and so let's not get discouraged thinking that the church is dying the church isn't dying jesus said i will build the church and the gates of haiti shall not prevail yep absolutely good stuff uh 888-564-6173 is the number to call but before we get to the calls one question bobby please explain what you mean by the rise of the nuns i know what you mean by the rise of the nuns but i think people out there might be the rising but none there's a new there's a new movement with these nuns mm-hmm and yeah remember the flying yes yes yeah well it's kind of like that they're sort of rising up okay got it got it okay just uh what bobby is that not what it is bobby's frozen i think but he's frozen with laughter oh man that was a great screenshot there yeah then he's gonna wait there he is he's back so the rise of the nuns so did i get that right is that the rise of the noun swabbing yes uh the the the catholic church is just being inundated with new people surrendering to nunhood uh no uh they want to make us not in u.n yes they want to make it a habit um touche that's funny uh it's n-o-n-e-s those who have no spiritual affiliation but what's also interesting about this it's not as if uh these nuns these no nes that they don't have any religious affiliation it's not like they're just rampantly turning to atheism though and that's what you would sometimes think by the narrative a lot of these people are still deeply committed to some form of privatized belief uh you know playing with stones uh seeking out uh mediums so they're very open to spiritual experiences it could be astrology it could be a number of things but the reality is as christians there is no christianity without a church and so those christians that are out there thinking i'm just going to kind of do my own thing individually there is no christianity without a church that's what jesus came to die for and to purchase and to begin was a church through his death burial and resurrection amen triple eight five six four six one seven three let's talk to jim in tennessee you're our first call today jim thanks for calling good afternoon gentlemen and i just want you to rest assured that there's no bible reading on a high going on here because my version says and lo i am with you always [Laughter] that was great there you go anyway so my question is is uh i went to a person and forgave them recently for something they had done to me only to get the response uh well i didn't do anything to you to be forgiven of so my question is is was i supposed to actually go to that person to do that it was it necessary and two what do i do now all right bobby what would you tell jim about this technically speaking we provide forgiveness to somebody who's asked for it so if somebody hasn't asked for forgiveness the question is is have we forgiven them i understand the sentiment and i certainly think that our heart's posture should be ready to forgive but forgiveness for example god forgives us when we confess our sins we forgive somebody when they ask for forgiveness so unfortunately what can happen is if people don't recognize their wrongdoing or their sin against us and they don't ask for forgiveness then we're left in a position where when our hearts want to forgive it kind of makes the healing process harder for us so what can we do then well we can still unconditionally love that person we can still treat that person fairly we can still wish the best for that person but for reconciliation to take place it requires somebody to acknowledge their wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness and for somebody to forgive them and then hence fourth you have reconciliation brian yeah that was good i don't nothing to add okay jim what do you think that's it clears it up perfectly thank you very much all right thank you for calling us from millington tennessee 888 564 is our number and uh let's go to laguna beach now here is rainey hello rainey good to hear from you hello hello hello what's on your mind today rainey um well i um i'm i'm so glad to to talk to you guys i love you guys you do great things on the radio so god bless you thanks rainey thank you i i wanted to i mean i called in because i wanted to to really to share but they had they're like you have to have a question i'm like okay i'll have a question but you know with the marijuana thing um i just wanted to let you guys know that you know to be vulnerable i went through a season of time when i was marginally backslidden and i i grew up my family like they grew the stuff i grew up in hawaii and they grew the stuff and so i didn't really know how wrong it was until i became of age and i found christ the thing is is that like brian was saying with the wine i mean i can't drink wine either but with marijuana my experience is that it's almost like a false sense of the spirit of god and that's the caution i think for people who are dabbling in it in the church even the younger kids it feels like you're in the presence of god but you're really just high um and you know i the holy spirit will you know do its job and convict its children you know that this is not the way to go about life and that's what ended up happening to me it just became so miserable for me god made it so miserable but it was highly addictive especially with the way they can you know use it through a vape pen you know and i think my question you know to stay in line with how i'm supposed to be on the radio show my question is where do we draw the line you know it's like i know i can't say that what's wrong for me is wrong for you but i think in some areas we sort of need to be able to say that right i mean as a as a believer there are things that are just wrong and that's true for example for i mean yeah i just you know how some people will say oh i'm a christian i don't go to the movies other christians are fine with going to the movies so at what point are we to say no that's wrong no that's okay brian we'll start with you well i mean this is why we have a bible the bible is our our source for what is right and wrong and gives us direction and gives us guidelines so when you know where the bible is clear then we draw a clear line and just say okay this obviously the scripture says that christians are not to engage in this kind of behavior there are places where the bible doesn't address things that we maybe wish it did you know and there are many things that people have thought well surely that must be sinful but the bible doesn't address it and it ends up being more cultural than actually you know spiritual or sinful so where the bible speaks clearly we need to speak clearly uh it might not be just a particular text it might be accumulated um you know text from just the totality of scripture you you understand from various portions of scripture that this is the reality here and this is how we uh understand it you know homosexuality is a great one because of course today this is the big argument today is from some people is the well the bible doesn't really condemn homosexuality you know those old testament passages they they're always taken out of context and the new testament doesn't really mean what people think it means about that um but the the the texture pretty straightforward they're pretty clear tells you the behavior that god does not approve of and so we have to be clear on that pastor's perspective continues in just a moment stay with us [Music] welcome back pastor's perspective continues with your question to one triple eight five six four six one seven three and now here again is your host brian perez let me give you that number again because you're gonna need it for the next 90 minutes that's right we're here till 5 pm pacific time today and would love to hear from you 888-564-6173 in the studio today brian broderson the senior pastor of calvary chapel costa mesa in southern california and on the bobby cam we've got author and apologist dr bobby conway from the one minute apologist channel on youtube and oneminuteapologist.com on the world wide web now right before the break we were talking to rainey and laguna beach pastor brian the music started so i don't know if you had finished your thought or i don't know if bobby wants to chime in as well but uh um yeah pretty pretty much i mean i'm just saying you know because rainey's asking you know where do we know how to draw the line how do we know when to you know when it's just an opinion versus you know i think this you think that i might be right you might be right but so the answer is the bible the bible gives us that now that's the simple answer the complicated part is oh yeah but well the bible doesn't really say that you say the bible says that but the bible doesn't say that so it's properly understanding the bible and this is this is why we have great guys like bobby conway who has spent many many years you know studying apologetics because there is a right and a wrong way to understand scripture to interpret scripture and to apply scripture and you know again when we're living in a world where the biblical text says something that seems pretty crystal clear to most people then you have somebody come along and i'm going to go back to the homosexual issue you have somebody like matthew vines come along and matthew vines is a young guy who's a harvard student who's same-sex attracted who decides he's going to drop out of harvard and he's going to go on a mission to tell everybody that the church for 2000 years has been wrong about homosexuality the bible really doesn't teach what christians have been saying that it teaches about homosexuality and so the the passages that you know you would commonly point to that tell you about you know god's will in regard to our sexuality he just dismisses them or reframes them in a way that makes um same-sex relations acceptable because that's the way he wants to see it and so this is the challenge of our day right bobby yeah it sure is and you know to your point brian um you know i mentioned before on the show kind of the difference of approaching the bible that martin luther and john calvin had as reformers one of them john calvin his philosophy was if the bible doesn't say you can you can't but martin luther's philosophy and approach in the bible was if the bible doesn't say you can't you can and you can kind of see these flares within different denominations and people's bent and uh and different pastors might be more calvinish uh i mean martin luther he would have his disciples over and catharina van boros she would be making beer for them and they would drink beer in the upstairs room i've been to the place in germany a few times and they would have theological discussions called table talc and so um obviously not condoning drunkenness in this situation but he would be somebody who would be partaking uh and so i think that uh my personality type is gonna be one that would be more if the uh if the bible doesn't say you can't then we need to be open i don't think we can draw the line so you can right i mean i can think the bible doesn't say you can't get a sex change but it doesn't mean you can so i think that we can find a loophole in this and i think luther would agree with that by the way um but he would some people would say oh yeah yeah he would yeah well let's speak calvin calvin though of course he would now calvin when the bible doesn't say you can you can't i i see a lot of problems in the church with that philosophy though for example mental health ministries as it relates to taking antidepressants or something like that well the bible doesn't say you you can you can't well i think if the bible doesn't say you can't we should be open to looking at the broader theology looking at the heart of god trying to understand all of this in a proper context so that we could bring a biblical world view to bear and so i appreciate rainey's question on this and i understand that a lot of people's past experiences with marijuana uh might give them a a unique perspective on it um i know somebody who is older uh grew up in a very strict kind of a baptist church setting uh would never be the type of person who would touch drugs and alcohol but is dying of cancer and has found marijuana to be helpful on a medicinal uh level uh somebody who would never even think of taking it some people would say oh she should never do that and so uh you know i'm not saying i have the the perfect clear-cut answer and i would encourage our listeners to be good bereans and think theologically uh but let's have some room for grace as we try to filter out the best way to think about this because what we can do is start demonizing other people and i love the way pastor brian started the program he kind of raised an objection and it gave me the opportunity to publicly say oh i'm not saying at all you should be smoking this stuff i'm just trying to think through well if it was looked at this way sometimes my speculations make people nervous i understand it and i'm thinking out loud but give me the opportunity to hear a better point and i'm happy to concede okay so one one last thing on that and um and this this goes back to you know scripture on on this uh issue and somebody just texts me the word pharmakia uh bobby you know pharmakia is used in the new testament in galatians chapter 5 where paul is describing the works of the flesh and then he says at the end and you know i've told you that those who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom of god pharmakia is there in the greek but the english never translates it like so we would say pharmakia of course it's the basis for farm pharmaceuticals you know so drugs but the the scriptures never translated that way they always translate it as sorcery or witchcraft and the reason for that is because in all throughout all of history even to this very day where people are engaging in sorcery and witchcraft and things like that there's potions and there's there's all of these kinds of components that are kind of a pharmakia type of a connection so that's where we would often you know use galatians 5 as a reference to say right here this says you know pharmakia explain kind of the connection with pharmaceutical and so those who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom of god so this is not to be the practice of the behavior of the people of god but then again because because no english translation translates it um with making the modern drug connection then you you know you have the challenge of explaining sorcerer witchcraft somebody says look i'm just having a joint i'm not worshiping the devil i'm not involved in which witchcraft um it's interesting ourselves up though huh yeah open ourselves up that we open ourselves up yeah and and you know i was thinking of that passage in samuel remember when um when saul is disobeying god and samuel comes to him and saul is protesting and he's saying no i i did i you know i did what god said samuel says no you didn't and then samuel says to saul he says to obey his is better than to sacrifice and he says for um rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as idolatry so wow okay so but that's a great point bobby you're opening yourself up for something and that's the thing that people need to recognize yes indeed all right great conversation rainey thank you for calling us today on pastor's perspective and looks like we have a somewhat of a follow-up here from trey in virginia what did you want to know trey well uh first time caller first time listener and awesome i love you guys wow you already love us this is the first time you've heard us and you already love us that's awesome look listen y'all y'all are doing such a great justice with uh your critical thinking and your examiner theology and it's it's funny my question was somewhat answered and and solidified in myself because you brought up pharmakia you brought up witchcraft idolatry i've had i i'm 15 year marijuana smoker um i started when i was 14 started young i grew up in a very rough culture of a motorcyclist and drugs have been somewhat of a uh like exactly what uh the other gentleman just said about uh opening yourself up it was it's a gateway it's a whole nother kingdom well there's kingdoms of darkness and principalities right right so when you go into that you're going into that gate so guess what you're going to suffer the consequences of letting that in regardless of how you sugarcoat all this stuff all right i'm getting away from it i'm supposed to ask you all a question i'm just i just want to say uh there's many different vehicles that the holy ghost uses to touch us and to bring us down to earth and uh humble us and either alcohol whatever it is it's all a tool of satan if he wants it to be and people have to understand and be able to discern their in their spirit when something has too much control over themselves and the only person who can break those chains off of them is the holy ghost it is it is the lord himself we are completely at the mercy of this earth and what is on it if we are not you know have the arm of god then you're you're you're the complete mercy of all of it if you accept it in your life man you know it's you're building up strongholds in yourself you know thankfully i i was raised the baptist and even though i walked away from the faith that the hound of heaven never let go of me he never gave me peace so you're not you're not doing marijuana anymore trey i fell for a roof uh blew my back out didn't want to take opiates i am medicinally consuming i do i do still partake okay i can tell you right now it's a vice it's a thorn in my flesh i live with it and i know as long as i hold on to this one thing i am i am withholding blessings that he wants to pour out onto me and i just want to say to everybody out there listening if you're struggling with something he loves you regardless he's right there with you ask him to take it away from you and help you find another outlet trade um wow great to hear from you and you know what what a cool thing that you just literally found us today and this is what we're talking about and you called in so so i think he clarified that he's due to an injury so this is a medicinal versus a recreational situation but as he's saying it's still not it's not a good thing yeah and you know because there are other ramifications to it so um yeah well lord we pray for trey we just pray that you would give him the grace he needs to just navigate the you know his injury and all of that and also be free from any of these other uh vices as he referred to them in jesus name amen amen yeah you know we often hear the term uh everything in moderation i don't even know if that's in the bible that phrase i don't think there's anything in there that says that let your moderation be known to all paul said to the philippians that's one translation that's translated right right so does that include things like this no because sometimes people might no i mean you know let your adultery be in moderation you know no it doesn't right right no good point yeah oh boy bobby you wanted to add something hey you know yeah i just want to say that um well i appreciated trey just kind of on the air just kind of owned it you know i mean that that that's great um what i also appreciate okay it sounds like he had a recreational past with now he's on a medicinal path and so uh make no mistake trey that your past usage could be influencing the way you're looking at it on this medicinal tract but it's good that you're aware of kind of the hang-ups this can become because let's say somebody's taking it medicinally for the first time they need to be very aware that if they stay on it too long once it's served its medical purpose they might want to pick it up for recreational usage and so that can become dangerous as well so we need to make sure uh that we're being honest with ourselves i think that there's probably a lot of people if they were genuinely wanting to be honest uh even let's just bring up the alcohol thing they go home at night and three four nights a week their better days are the three to four days a week that they get to drink uh the the three four days that they don't drink are kind of a less fulfilling day and i i find myself uh reeling because it's like sunday is kind of my splurge food day and while i can be excited about that i i don't want my my life contentment to be based on uh feeling more fulfilled on the days that i get to act out with a little bit of gluttonous behavior and i think that we all need to be aware that all of these things looking too forward to certain foods looking too forward to alcohol all of this stuff can entrap us the thing with alcohol in particular in marijuana and drugs is it can numb us it can anesthetize us if we can go home and we can be missing out as rainy talked about you know you can have a false sense of peace but we're really missing out maybe on a deeper sense of conviction to where we need to surrender something to god so that we can go to the next level with them amen amen trey thank you for uh finding us today and uh thank you for calling in thanks really appreciate it um yep anything else call us again yes please do and thanks for listening on equip fm i think that's the radio station that you uh found us on or maybe you found us on youtube or facebook that's fine too all right uh 888-564-6173 remember we're here till 5 pm pacific time today we being myself brian perez and pastor brian broderson and dr bobby conway let's go to uh well looks like we've got another question on the same topic john and santa anna hello welcome all right oh wow it's gonna strangely i got i got a spot um how are you guys doing doing well what did you want to know good thank you uh well i'm a former um i've i've always i was raised christian um i've always read the bible and stuff but i fell away a while ago and i actually got addicted smoking meth and it's it tore my part my life apart in every way possible and today i've been clean for a while and i smoked marijuana to stay clean and it helps me it's kind of like a sense like if i drink alcohol i want to you know everything immoral i've ever done in my life is when i've been drinking and if i smoke marijuana i want to eat ice cream and go to sleep um it helps me practice empathy my father who's a strong christian and my girlfriend is a strong christian kind of agree that i'm a little bit better but i mean i'm a lot better of a person when i smoke it um and i i'm i immerse myself in the word when i smoke it too i i read the bible a lot and i've been finding out a lot of stuff about it i i wouldn't recommend it to anyone else really unless unless someone else was in my shoes but i wouldn't you know i'm not smoking joints with 15 year old kids and stuff and trying to promote it like that right i was just curious when i called i really didn't think i was going to get on the airplane this seems to be the topic everybody wants to talk about today okay because pastor bryant started it at the beginning of the president no no no no that's right yesterday it's just a continuation and we'll we'll keep talking about it if we need to so brian what do you tell john well john you know that's that's all very interesting and um so i have a friend a really really good friend as a matter of fact who um who was addicted to opioids in a severe way like he's gonna die if he doesn't get off these opioids and um and so the way he got off the opioids was he temporarily used marijuana as a you know kind of a transition uh away from the opal it sounds kind of like you know maybe what's happened with you with the meth and um but then you know there came a point where it was clear to him as a christian that this transition needs to end that this is not i you know i'm not going to go from one addiction uh to you know maybe a milder form of narcotic but i you know i'm still just kind of passing one addiction off to to the other so i would i would say to you john praise the lord that you've been able to i i i know crystal meth people and i know what the destructiveness of crystal meth so praise god that you are freed from the crystal meth i would say that you need to be thinking in terms of transitioning off the marijuana and asking god to give you the grace and the strength and to show you the path towards doing that and you know believe that you know he wants to set you free completely from this stuff he wants to fill you with the holy spirit and the love and the joy and the peace and the kindness and the patience and the gentleness and the self-control and all of those fruits of the spirit he wants those to be the things that are dominating your life so um that that's what i would say to you and i don't know bobby wants to chime in on that but sure um you know i i i'm really thankful for how this program's turned out today i mean listen we're getting people calling up who've um got rough backgrounds with this stuff we're talking to different uh type of drug users uh and this is uh what we want to do at pastor's perspective hear minister to you um i would say that i understand uh what you're saying praise god that you're off crystal meth um i know when i got clean at 21 the first time i dipped a can of copenhagen a day and when i uh got clean i went to aaa this was back in day where you smoke inside i i picked up a couple new habits i started drinking coffee off the chain and i started smoking cigarettes again i hadn't smoked cigarettes for a while i hadn't smoked cigarettes in i think three years and within a week i was smoking a pack a day that's just kind of the attic brain that i've got right so why did i do that um well for a season the cigarettes helped me uh when i was jonesing and so i smoked cigarettes for a season now that doesn't make sense to non-addicts like oh you just picked this up but every addict out there is in their car they're in their house they're going i totally get what you're saying bobby so there is a little bit of a process sometimes i would say i hope you're working a recovery program and uh working your program in a deeper way uh will lead right to where pastor brian is saying to a deeper level of sobriety because as pastor brian just mentioned our joy and our contentment and our graciousness should not be being accelerated uh through the firing up of a joint but rather by being filled with the holy spirit now i'm not saying in this very moment uh you know just you gotta go cold turkey here that would be great uh i'm somebody that any time that i've quit things i've always had to set a date i've had to prepare myself for it mentally to get ready for something like that and so if this is a something that you're this committed to that on the phone you believe that it makes you a better person i think you need to start beginning to deal with some of the lies like oh it's possible that i'm believing a lie that this makes me a better person the holy spirit's what will make me a better person but i get that sometimes you wean yourself off of one thing you get off the crystal meth and you get off of the marijuana then you get off of the cigarettes and you move toward a deeper life of sobriety we all have to ask ourselves why do i think i need these things for my contentment um and that's tough i mean there's still to this day i mean i i keep telling myself i'm gonna eat good like ever since kobe kicked in like i'm really committed to health my wife's nutritionist i don't know what it is but i have had a ton of relapses on cheese and on pizza and on fried foods and i keep thinking that starting monday i'm going to become mr fitness again and what happens is by tuesday i cave in to something fried and delicious or a cake of sorts um you know and be aware we make promises isn't it interesting too we start the day off and our will is really strong and by the end of the afternoon the things that we said we weren't going to do we start justifying well you know what maybe and we start weakening as the day goes on yeah and those are all i mean and you know i've got the same exact same issues when it comes to food but i mean let's face it you know i mean food obviously can have negative impacts on you too but uh when you're talking about you know these kind of narcotics we're talking about things that have the potential to actually destroy you and your you know everything everything around you so it's a little bit of a obviously a different situation principle of the addiction is the same but the substance is what's going to make a big difference here so you know i was thinking because john is local uh brian um he would be a great candidate for uh celebrate recovery yes celebrate recovery meets at calvary chapel costa mesa on friday nights you can find out all about it john and everybody else here in the orange county area go to the cccm.com chapel costa mesa website and if you're out of orange county there's a celebrate recovery meeting near you you can just go to celebrate recovery.com to find out uh one near you okay so that's all the time we have on today's program this was the topic everybody wants to talk about and it looks like there's a few questions we're gonna continue into the next hour as well everybody on hold stay on hold do not hang up we'll be with you in just a few minutes and you can call us during this next hour as well eight eight eight five six four six one seven three god bless you guys good night thanks for listening to pastor's perspective we trust you've been blessed and had your question answered join us monday through friday and follow us on facebook at facebook.com pastor's perspective the preceding was sponsored by calvary chapel costa mesa california

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Keywords: kwve, kwve 107.9, kwve pastors, calvary chapel, calvary chapel chino hills, calvary chapel ontario, calvary chapel golden springs, calvary chapel costa mesa, calvary global network, calvary chapel association, brian brodersen, cheryl brodersen, chuck smith, pastor chuck smith, jesus people, jesus peopleesus, god, christian, christianity, protestant, catholic, religion, kwve-fm, kwve 107.9 fm, bobby conway, one minute apologist, marijuana, alcohol, drinking, smoking, weed, cannabis, pot, thc

Id: VVFO0_Y6vZc

Length: 55min 26sec (3326 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021