MHR EP 2546 - Spiritual but Not Religious

Do you think America is more or less spiritual than 10 years ago? We look into a research study and what it tells us about American Adults and if their needs are being met. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

What do you say? Americans are more or less spiritual than 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

What if I told you that there's more to it? That there are benefits and reports from heaven that are available to help you in this life. And you've never heard of them. Are you hearing more people into making heaven real?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome back to Making Heaven Real. If you were with us last time on our last episode, we kinda left off with discussing how heaven communicates with us here on earth. And some of that kind of got into people communicating for heaven, here on earth, as well as spirits communicating with us from heaven. So that's why we started out with the question I asked at the beginning of the episode, which was do you think Americans are more or less spiritual than ten years ago? It's interesting that we brought this up about this point in time because there was a study that was recently done that was just published a few weeks ago. Basically, it said seven out of ten U.S. adults describe themselves as spiritual in some way. And thirty percent say they have personally encountered a spirit or unseen spiritual force. So from this information, it kind of sounds like America is more spiritual now than they were ten years ago, but maybe with a little bit of a caveat. While Americans say they're spiritual, Americans also are leaving organized religion in droves. Why? It doesn't take much to understand that people who actually show up inside the four walls of a church are down. Some seem to think that's blamed somewhat on COVID. And certainly during the time that COVID was on its peak, people weren't going to church. But even now that COVID is no longer a major force, attendance within a church is down. Is there a reason for that? This particular topic about why attendance is down as a church probably will end up being brought into more detail and dug into deeper in another episode. But let's just say most people now, when they're looking for a church, look online. People who may become church members with inside a church now get their first taste online, may attend online four or five times before deciding whether it's for them or not. Which makes us wonder how strong is your ministry online? But I digress. Looking for something other than what they were getting within their church, and were not feeling comfortable in that church anymore. Approximately sixty-four million Americans, or one in five, identify by a new term called spiritual but not religious. SBNRs say that religion causes division and intolerance. So if we go back and look at what we had just found from the survey where more than half of U.S. adults believe in an afterlife, and that people definitely or probably can reunite with a loved one who has already died. Forty-six percent say that dead people definitely can assist, protect, or guide the living. Forty-four percent are aware say that those who have passed are aware of what's going on among the living and can communicate with people who are still living. Forty-six percent say that those who have died can help the living. But that's down from ten years ago. Are we seeing a division a uh dwindling in church attendance due to division intolerance and restrictive dogma? Or is the main reason people are looking online and still searching in high numbers for answers and not so much in the church? Is it because of the negative experience they've had in church? Or is it because we're just not providing answers at the time of need? I know one of the things I was taught going through grief counseling was one of the things that you really needed to focus on in order to help with your grief and help you handle and deal with your grief is you need a community. One of the first places they suggested for you to find community was at church. So if we're not going to church as much as we used to, where do we find the community? We mentioned in one of the previous episodes that our culture has no idea how to handle grief. As advanced as our culture is, and advanced as our technology and our science is, we still can't figure out how to handle grief. And as such, we have failed those who are currently grieving. That's nothing like what we hear from professionals on dealing with grief. That's nothing like how we should be supportive and helping someone in their time of need. But according to these figures as well, have we just proven for the most part that churches have failed in this area as well? Not just society, not just culture, not just the workplace. But if churches fail to answer this question as well. I know that was definitely the case for me. In my lifetime, I grew up and was an active part of two different denominations. And at the time that my wife passed, neither one was available to help me. Neither one had answers that I needed. Neither one provided me with the support to get me through this. However, what we're discussing at Making Heaven Real is what has gotten me to progress in handling my grief. I think in episode one we were talking about how I was sent to a grief group that was pronoun predominantly all one denomination of people sitting there. And all of those people went around the room and introduced themselves to me and told me that the actually the person who had gone the least amount of time since losing someone was a little over two years. And that ranged from two years to five. As I'm making this episode right now, it has been twenty months since my wife passed. Those people in that group range from two years to five years. We are sitting here now discussing things that heaven provides for you as people that it's concerned about, that it loves, that it surrounds you. And that support is what has not only generated this program, but has also gotten me to this point where I'm able to sit here and discuss this with you having lost my wonderful wife twenty months ago. So what are we missing? You know, we started off in the initial episode talking about you don't know what you don't know because you don't know that you don't know it. And then it came back to why don't you know it? And then we went down another little rabbit trail of if you spent your life growing up in church, then what why is there something in the Bible that you still don't know? Anybody who's had any time in the military will probably recognize this phrase. Where you see one, do one, teach one. But if you go back and look at that a little differently, you can't be expected to teach what you've never seen, what you've never done, what you've never experienced. If we've never had a situation where the person who is teaching you, mentoring you, someone that you're looking up to has never been through this themselves, they don't know how to teach you. If they've never been taught this from someone who's experienced it. They don't know where to start. One of the examples I refer to every once in a while that I'm not I don't remember right now, I may have referred to it in one of the past episodes, even, was when it came time for me to be married the first time, there were some questions in my mind. And I cornered one of the preachers that I knew for a long time, and asked him about what I was experiencing and what he thought I should do. I think one of the saddest things I remember from that whole confrontation with him was that he turned to me and said, if you're looking for a good, happy, robust marriage, you're getting that from Hollywood. That never happens in real life. So what we have to do is we have to follow certain principles, we have to go by certain guidelines, and we have to do the best we can do and make the best of it. And what concerned me leaving that particular meeting with that preacher was this is the person that people looked up look up to. This is the person where a couple young people growing up in that church will probably come to him for marriage counseling before getting married. And this is the person who cannot define for them a true connected happy marriage. Because he just admitted he hasn't been in that situation himself. So if you can't experience it, you don't know what's going on, you haven't been there, you can't teach it. If you've never been taught what heaven has for you, what is available to you from heaven during these times of grief and need, how would you know what to tell somebody? There are certain things that just about every denomination teaches you and and you hear and witness on a regular basis. There used to be a joke that went around the church that we had when I was growing up. You know, there's a list of five do's every week and probably at least fifty don'ts, which was a little lopsided on its own and something to be discussed at another time. But the idea is if that was that well known, then obviously you were taught those five things real well. Because more than likely those five things were taught to the person who's teaching you now, and passed down from person to person to person, the more you hear it, the more you know it, the more you understand it, the more you can teach it. But if you've never been through this kind of grief, and you've never been this raw on your emotions afterwards, and you've never been in a situation to have to depend this strongly on heaven's resources, you probably don't know how to teach it. So it's not probably not provided in a church during your time of need. When I first went to college, one of the things I was looking forward to was I was wanting to get into commercial broadcasting. And I remember at one time I was in college and I was at a religious university, and I was delivered a message that I needed to make an appointment to go sit and speak with the president of the college. No details, no nothing. Just go see him and sit and talk to him. And when I went in the door, the first thing out of his mouth was, Well, I see that you're in a broadcasting major, but I also find out that you're working for a secular radio station. Don't you think you should be working for a religious radio station instead? Well, there's lots of things wrong with that. Number one, the religious radio station was automated, so not many things that you could do there, not much you can learn about broadcasting when you're sitting there watching a computer. The other part of that is there was only one in town, so that kind of limited your possibilities. And finally, I just kind of looked at him and I said, Okay, I know that you've got a broadcasting background yourself, and you've got a broadcasting degree yourself, so let me put it to you this way. My biggest concern in any part of going into religious broadcasting is are we meeting the need? And he couldn't answer that. Because in most religious radio stations, you can't answer that. Most of it is a somewhat cut and dry curriculum of things that are provided, and a certain standard of music that's provided, and then it's just like, okay, here it is. Almost to the point of take it or leave it. And I'm gonna let it let you in on a little bit of how old I am, but at the time I provided to him two different books that were written by James Engel. That were religious books, but it was basically bringing to task the idea that the message we have is all-knowing, all-powerful, all encompassing. So just lay it out there, people come and get it. Conversely, from a commercial broadcasting side of things, you have all kinds of ratings, reviews, metrics, everything you can to identify who is listening or who is not listening. And if you can't get certain numbers for your station, can't get a certain group of people to listen to your station, you soon either change your format or go broke. From a religious broadcasting standpoint, you don't do any of that. You just put it out there and hope they come listen. So James Engel wrote two books. One, What's wrong with the harvest? And two, how can I get them to listen? And what's gone wrong with the harvest had a very interesting example. You can't come in and say that you have provided everything for somebody if you haven't provided it to meet their need. That's what we're seeing in some of the results that we're seeing in the survey here. People are spiritual, they say they're spiritual, they're looking for answers. They're using everything they can find at their disposal to find answers. But they're not going to church because of the division, the intolerance, the restrictions, and the lack of answers. Sounds like a what's gone wrong with the harvest scenario here? One example that has been presented to me within the last couple of weeks from a different scenario in a different situation was a person went to a new group to visit a new church to see what things were like there and see if they were able to be a part of that. And they made some comment about things that were going on in their life and had a little bit of a negative tone to it. And immediately two different people in that church group started to jump on them and tell them that, well, if you're having this going on, it's it's your fault because you were doing something wrong. Does what's going wrong with the harvest sound like a good option on this point too? If we're not meeting the need of somebody, you really can expect that they won't stay around. The main principle God gave us was to love one another to a standard that's almost impossible for us to do without his help, and that's to the standard that God loves us. Doesn't give you any room to be laying blame to somebody or accusing them of doing things wrong. If you love them, you will accept them, you will support them, and you will work to meet their need. So if we have all of this going on, and if we have people who understand that there's a spiritual part of everybody outside of this body and this existence on earth? Then why don't we address that in church? Again, part of what we have available to us, what we've seen, what we understand, what we read. Why has it not been taught? Mary Baxter in her book wrote, Our spirit inhabits our physical bodies while on earth. Let me read that again and catch the way that's written. Our spirit inhabits a physical body while on earth. The physical world around us exists within the spiritual realm. Our lives are also greatly affected by the unseen from the spiritual realm. Ecclesiastes 12 7 says when the body passes or when the person passes on, the dust returns to the ground from which it came, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. So if our spirit is put into a physical body while on earth and returns to God when this body dies, seems to be a whole lot more to our spirit's existence than just what we see here. Another author calls it, our spirit is in a biodegradable human suit. Goes on to say, all of us are spirits from heaven, and we inhabit this biodegradable human suit while we're here on earth. So if the human suit is here only when we're here on earth, but we're a spirit that exists before and after, now you understand where we were last session when we were talking about how we have all of this family and loved ones around us constantly. They're there to help, as we saw evidenced in the survey. Also evidenced in the survey. So if you're going to have a great cloud of witnesses with all these heroes of the faith from chapter 11, don't you think you have even more around you now? With your family and loved ones that have gone on before? Now, several things that we will probably get into in more detail going forward in further episodes, but there are spots in the Bible where it talks about communication straight from heaven to people here on earth. And I think a couple of them we may have mentioned already is uh Samuel and Moses. So obviously it's not something that's forbidden. It's not something that you're supposed to shy away from, it's not something that you're not supposed to participate in. You just have to listen. I mean, even Samuel was told, go back to your bed and when you hear the voice again say, Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth. Heaven is there to help us. And heaven helping us does not necessarily mean only God helping us. There's all kinds of things about heaven that incorporate the help that's available to us if we're willing and ready to accept it. I've kind of coined the term myself over the last twenty months, and I call it heavenly equity, which to me is a collection of heavenly resources, actions, and interventions needed to affect a change in our life. For example, like an answer to prayer. What all did heaven have to do and put behind that and organize for days, weeks, months, whatever, in order to make that answer to prayer happen? That heavenly equity is available on your behalf. That is how we make heaven real in our life.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

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