Dungeons & Disciples

Tony Benda 0:00
Hey everyone. It's Tony from dungeons and disciples and thank you guys for listening to this episode. It has been some time since we've been back on the air. Part of that is from Christmas. Part of that is from life changes and different things happening with us. But we are so excited to bring you guys some new content coming up. So thank you guys for being patient with us. We have a lot in store for 2025 and we're so excited to let you guys in on some of that here very soon. So we'll be releasing some of that within the next couple weeks again. So stay with us on our social media and keep listening to the new episodes as they drop. And with that, here's episode 15.

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to dungeons and disciples. My name is Tony Benda,

Josh Shaw 0:59
and I am Joshua Shaw. It is so good to be back. Yeah. And this is episode 1515, that's crazy. That is nuts. You know what's nice, though, we're not recording in our usual studio.

Tony Benda 1:13
I know it's kind of fun, a little different, but it's good. We are in

Josh Shaw 1:16
Tony's house with his dogs present and the windows beaming.

Tony Benda 1:22
We have natural sunlight in here today. I know it's kind of crazy. It's a little overcast. We still have natural light flooding through the windows, which we don't have any other rooms, correct? Because it's a dark, enclosed space with no way out. I mean no natural light with no

Josh Shaw 1:35
we're in a church, brother,

Tony Benda 1:39
I know. And we have dogs here today, which are great. So you may hear some jingling of collars in the background, or some wrestling of the dogs, because they like to, you know,

Josh Shaw 1:48
jingle bells, jingle bells.

Tony Benda 1:50
It's almost that

time too.

I love Christmas. Christmas is fun. It's one

Josh Shaw 1:56
of my favorite holidays, to be honest with you.

Tony Benda 1:58
Yeah, I absolutely love it too. So I think for me, it goes Thanksgiving, Christmas. I don't know what else after that.

Josh Shaw 2:05
Easter is probably about saying I literally. Are we wrong for for not saying Easter first? Is that or

Tony Benda 2:11
is that? I don't think it's a wrong thing. I don't know. I love Thanksgiving because it's centers around people. And let me rephrase this, folks, listening, listen, listen, I love holidays, etc, themselves around Jesus. Please believe me when I say that. But I think it's fun to come together as family and friends, and you don't have to be blood to, like, get together and hang out and fellowship and all of those things. That's my Thanksgiving to me is like my number one.

Josh Shaw 2:40
Maybe it's just a weird thought for me, but I also feel a little convicted that it wasn't Easter, because I would rather celebrate a season of or a, uh, in in the eyes of others, like, especially, like, I actually heard a dude at work say this. He's like, how come we like to celebrate Thanksgiving as Christians, when it's a holidays dedicated to gluttony.

Tony Benda 3:02
I love to eat. And

Josh Shaw 3:04
then he was like, he's like, how come Christians love to celebrate Christmas, because it's a holiday dedicated to to storing up treasures that are not of heaven, bro. But in in defense, you know, when you take a look at it biblically, Thanksgiving is all about giving gratitude, and Thanksgiving Christmas is all about the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and Easter is all about the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yes, I do remember that. But his comment made me laugh very, very much, because in in ways, in the world's perspective, that kind of is truth.

Tony Benda 3:43
No, I agree. I knew a

Josh Shaw 3:44
guy in the Marine Corps. He was incredibly fit, incredibly everything, but he would literally starve himself for like two days and go hard in the gym, all for the build up of his Thanksgiving meal. And it was ridiculous. What I watched that individual eat on a Thanksgiving Day.

Tony Benda 4:04
It is pretty extreme. What some people will do to their bodies for food. Oh, it's too much like extreme eaters, for example. Oh my gosh. Like watching some of those competitions is a little crazy. I'm curious if Canaan was a real person, not that he wasn't real to me, because he was. He's still

Josh Shaw 4:22
real to me. I don't care what end you guys say. You guys may have killed him. Imagine Canaan

Tony Benda 4:26
doing Power eating in real life, how he would have to train for that.

Josh Shaw 4:32
We say this all because he literally went, we went to a town

Tony Benda 4:37
called One more time,

Josh Shaw 4:39
called jigao, and we, I participated with Jerry's character Creon in a meat pie eating contest. And apparently these meat pies are the sides of, like, New York, like New York style pizzas. Or maybe I could be wrong about that. Either way, he ate like five meat pies, and I remember rolling some kind of I think it was a constitution. Check on each meat pie, and I just got such good rolls. I absolutely slaughtered meat buys. You did? I just picture my mind like a, like a chicken, like a, like a pizza sized chicken pot pie, almost, and I ate five.

Tony Benda 5:19
Yeah, that

Josh Shaw 5:20
sounds yummy. I also didn't have to roll for any kind of bathroom checks after that. Praise the Lord. That is wonderful. Because I could have, um, lost a lot of hit points just spending time on the toilet about what have probably would have come out of me.

Tony Benda 5:34
You probably would have been on the John for five hours straight. How did we get here? I don't know character development. I'll chalk it up to character development.

Josh Shaw 5:45
I mean, to be fair, I was and I told Tony, I would share. You know, folks, when you when you write content and stuff like this, after the contents done, you begin to think yourself, okay, I've written the content. So what's an episode title? Usually, Episode usually, it's backwards for me. Usually episode titles come before the content, yep. But for whatever reason, this time, content came before the episode title. So out of just like curiosity, I was like, let me just go through chat G, P, T, and just, and just see, just see what it gives me, not gonna lie, it produced some decent ones. I'm telling you right now, today's episode, it's not gonna be from chat GPT. It was just so funny to me, but I really wanted something different. I mean, it was giving me good stuff, and I just typed in make it, make them quirky. And it started to just give me some, some really weird ones. So needless to say, while it gave me a good laugh. I don't think our listeners want to want to see anything that says Peekaboo, I see you as a as a title, I don't think so either that would. I mean, if you guys want a title that says Peekaboo, I see you. I mean, if we're talking about scrying, then it kind of makes sense. But like, still, it's a little weird. It's no it's like if someone put out if I looked on my phone and I woke up at three or four in the morning, all right, oh, man, the next dungeons and disciples episodes out, and it's episode title, 15, peekaboo. I see you. I'm not gonna listen to it. It's a little creepy. Or if it's, like, extremely cheesy and that's just weird, like holy relics Batman, what did I just detect

Tony Benda 7:26
that's kind of fun,

Josh Shaw 7:27
that one's kind of fun. But all that to say introducing a fun, fun topic today. Tony, what are we got talking about? Because usually our listeners could probably pick up at this point what we're possibly talking about, but I think at this point, we've just confused everybody.

Tony Benda 7:43
You know, you confused even me, too, Josh, I'm not gonna lie. I think looking back at our notes, we're talking about things and spells that help identify, detect, or even see the future, to talk about the true subject of identity, but not our own God's identity, that's

Josh Shaw 8:02
gonna be a fun one. Yes, we started this conversation, and we I was originally saying, like, let's talk about our identity. And then Tony was like, we were just kind of talking about it, bouncing back and forth. He brought it up on we brought that subject up, a little bit about our identity and who we are in Christ, but I realized we hadn't really touched base on, like, who God is, and I thought that'd be a really cool topic. But before we started out, we're going to be we obviously have to go from the D and D perspective to open things up, to make it kind of fun, and we're just going to start off today by just kind of talking about what it means to identify objects, spells, casting identity, or seeing the identity of something. And it was kind of weird to start with an episode like this, because we were like, Okay, well, all I could, all we could really think of in the moment was, like the identify spell, which I think we talked about before, was just instantaneous, right? Like you can just if you have this by identify you, it's just an instant cast, and you can identify it correct pretty

Tony Benda 9:07
much. Ah, yes, another use of the identify spell,

Josh Shaw 9:13
classic quote. But then there's others. There's other cool things you can use, such as like detect magic, uh, Tony, you brought up fairy fire, and I've actually never heard that spell

Tony Benda 9:22
spelled F, A, E, R, I, E, fairy fire. Each object in a 20 foot cube within range is outlined in blue, green or violet light, your choice. Any creature in the area when the spell is cast is also outlined in light if it fails a dexterity saving throw for the duration, objects and affected creatures shed dim light in a 10 foot radius. I like that. So any attack roll against an affected creature or object has advantage if the attacker can see it, and the affected creature or object can't benefit from being invisible. Ooh, that helps show an outline of a person. And even if they're invisible,

Josh Shaw 10:01
it's kind of like third it reminds a third person, like third person games where you can just like, you basically turn on that feature and it's like, okay, you're highlighted green, so you don't it's yourself or others, and the other enemy is highlighted red. I like that. Other simple things like detect thoughts, which you use quite frequently, yeah. And I use it enough. You use it once a session. No, not that once or twice, like

Tony Benda 10:25
once, maybe every two or three sessions. I would say, all right, fair enough.

Josh Shaw 10:30
But you'll do it on like, you'll do it in the most heated moments. Zuk will just be over there. I could literally, I just picture it this way, such hard conversation going. And I just imagine, like that meme where that kid's veins are just popping up because he's, like, squeezing his head so hard. I just a picture Zuck staring at something, just saying, I cast detect thoughts, and it's just going, yep, just like, shaking, just standing there, looking like, if it was from that kind of view, everyone's just arguing, and you're just trying to, like, detect the thoughts of somebody. Yeah, I love that. Oh, another one Jarek uses, or Creon detect good and evil. Oh yeah, that one's fun. I don't think it's I think it's worked, sort of, it's worked a bit kind of like daunting roar. He's used it almost all the time in 55 sessions, and it worked once of the 55 he

Tony Benda 11:15
uses it more for joke purposes than the actual thing, which is still fun though.

Josh Shaw 11:21
There is one that I like that kind of identity, sort of identifies as sort of detecting things, but it's one that I frequently use grim psychometry. Oh yeah, that one's in the blood Hunter class. And it's essentially like, um, for, like, my Star Wars lovers out there, when, Ahsoka, like, if you watched any of the Ahsoka series, or if you're if you're a baller like me and love Cal cast us like Jedi survivor, yes, when they touch objects, they can essentially see like outlines of the future grim that is exactly what the blood Hunter class. That's exactly what grim psychometry is like. You're able to touch an object, any object you want. And if you roll high enough, the DM, could give you a vision of the past and what that particular object, how it pertained to them. So like in our campaign spoiler, it has literally revealed so many things that I have not told you, any of you guys, I believe that I've seen things that I'm like, Oh, that makes sense. And you got to leave that out of your Yeah, I got to leave it out. And then you guys are just like, why is Ezra so so bundled up? And I'm like, because I see things you don't I see dead people. Technically, the characters thought, I can't spoil too much. But the other thing with that too.

Tony Benda 12:43
I'm looking at you because you don't want to spoil things. I'm curious

Josh Shaw 12:45
now, no, I'm not gonna spoil that. I was gonna move on and saying like, but with these things, things like detect magic, things like identify a lot of those characteristics are based off of the intelligence ability score, which, not gonna lie, folks going into the podcast, you you basically can see this all unfiltered. If we had a Patreon, you would definitely see probably about the five minute momentary pause of blanks, of trying to figure out that intelligence is an ability score because I drew a blank, and then a random dive into a subreddit that I read in well, we were just paused that basically said, what intelligence score do you consider it a character, illiterate, illiterate, illiterate, like, unable to read.

Tony Benda 13:33
I would say that's like, flat intelligence, but it has to be like, but like, yeah,

Josh Shaw 13:38
like this sub. I was like, What score would you consider someone like, illiterate,

Tony Benda 13:43
oh, like, a three, a three, I don't think because, like, the way I do ability scores is like, we roll three, well, we roll four dice and drop the lowest. If you roll four ones on 4d sixes, that would be insane. It would be absolutely insane in like, statistically almost, well, not impossible, but statistically incredibly difficult. But like that would give you three ones to keep for your ability, sort you could be. I would call it three illiterate. This guy's DM

Josh Shaw 14:19
said that the his, that his dwarf has intelligence of eight and that he couldn't read. And I'm like, That's generous, yeah? I'm like, Well, no, that the dwarf couldn't read, but like, I don't, I don't know, like, an eight intelligence is only a slightly below commoner, you know, I'm saying, Yeah, but granted this guy, granted this guy's character also said, I have an intelligent of eight, but of wisdom of 15.

Tony Benda 14:48
How does that make sense? I mean, you could be

Josh Shaw 14:52
don't say you can be book smart but not street smart.

Tony Benda 14:56
That's exactly what I was thinking. You can be book smart but not. Street smile.

Josh Shaw 15:00
Your dwarf is very capable of navigating the streets, however, scholastically you are about a peanut. Yeah, you've got the intelligence of a peanut. That sounds about right? I love that, though. I love that. But when you do, when you build your characters, and you're wanting to build a character off of identifying things, using heavy spells to touching, detecting magic, seeing through things, stuff like that, finding those things you obviously want a more firmly built character on intelligence. Find me a barbarian with a tart with an intelligence of a 17, please. That'd be great. It's

Tony Benda 15:36
hard to find a smart Barbie not I shouldn't say that it's not terribly difficult to find a smart barbarian

Josh Shaw 15:42
my Goliath, my Goliath Jensen would like to take a swing with class, please. And a Crump of tea. A Crump of tea. I mean, I meant to say a crumpet, but it came out as a came out. Came out as a Crump of give me one crumb. It came out as a Crump of teen. It's pretty great, but let me talk about this. There is something. There's kind of a deeper subject that we can also talk about that I think the Christian game communities slightly Passover, and I've seen it done a couple of times. I we've already referenced Creon multiple times in this episode, but so Creon play is a Paladin, yeah, and Paladins tend to favor more of like, the religious side of things, following specific Gods within d and d, and a lot of times he follows a specific one based on his character. And they're in just being fully transparent. There are multiple within the realm and the world of D and D, and oftentimes you can use identify and spells like that on like specific like statues or literature or store or like stories that you see in the realm of D and D that actually identify gods in the story, like identify gods, and you can, you know the DM can disclose through like DM manuals and things like that, like exactly what this particular God is for, how it's used, and can reveal that to the character. And if we're honest, a lot of people not in a bad way. A lot of people stray away from that because they don't want to get themselves involved in that as they play. And then a lot of parents, even people, won't play because of those specific things. Yeah, that makes sense, and we're in full support of that, like I'm not each person should

Tony Benda 17:37
be able to control their table how they want to control their table

Josh Shaw 17:40
Exactly, exactly. And that's that's exactly how we support here at dungeons and disciples, yeah, but I think it's okay to shed light on the fact that there are the in this game. There are the presence of multiple little g gods, yes, just be smart with how you play the game when it comes to identifying these gods, if you want to play with those gods, those things like that. This episode is not going over the point of that. However, why we talk about that is because we kind of, as we pop away from the D and D subject into that, we start to talk about identifying what the world believes versus what's actually true. You know, I'm saying, Yeah, you catch him on drift Tony, I think I'm ready. I'm catching. I'm catching. It's official. Then I cast identify on God and what the world believes. But I'm also gonna roll because

Tony Benda 18:38
I want to. I roll a five. I just rolled the net 20,

Josh Shaw 18:41
yes, which means it's gonna be great. You take the highest win advantage. Let's bring

about that other there's like, God, if I do this, please someone, let someone roll the net

Tony Benda 18:56
20. That's fantastic. So

Josh Shaw 18:58
this is what we want to start with. We're going to pray because this kind of subject and revealing exactly what the world believes and what the Scriptures believe take very careful handling, and this has taken very careful planning about how we're going to do this. So I'm going to pray us in and we're going to kind of jump into the Christian perspective of casting identify on God and casting identify on what the world believes about him. Yeah, Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus. I thank you for the initial fun and laughs and just talking about D and D, God Father, even though we play a game where there is the the writing in the description of of Gods within the game God, we continuously come to you and know that you are the one true God, Lord, that even though it's even though it's written in the material God, we. It has no power, it has no weight. There is no there is nothing that it has against you, Lord. So Father, I pray as believers, God, we continue to lean into our game tables in a holy way. God, that we continue to play with you in mind. Father, it is such an important thing to find our identity in you, but God, we can never do that until we really read and discover who you are, Father, I pray that as we reveal what the world believes about you, Lord God, that while we continue to not believe those words, God, we pray for those that do not believe in you or that believe something of you, that God is just not true. God, we pray your knowledge to fill their hearts. Fill our hearts. God. God do not give us condemning attitudes, but God, let us just continue to seek your word Lord. God that we can gain wisdom and love and build relationship God, because it is so far beyond knowing just who you are. God, it's about discovering and being with you, God. Thank You, Lord for this time, for being present with us in this place. We praise You, God, the great I AM. It's in your name that we pray. Amen. So Tony has done something very, very cool prior to this episode. So we've already rolled and it's a NAT 20, so no stopping it now. We already kind of said we're going to cast identify on the world. What you're about to hear is a compilation of just a couple of different things about what people have said or what people believe about God. I will say this. A lot of these statements are just completely false according to the Word of God. Some of these statements are have have truths in them that make them sound biblical. But when you really dive into the Word and who God is, they are not biblical. We're not showing you these things to make fun of anybody, to call anybody out to you know, if any voices are recognized, it's not to bring shame or condemnation on those people that is the farthest thing from what we want. We don't want to bring that upon anybody. We're just trying to show people that these are comments that have been said. They are floating around social media, and to be honest with you, they're not healthy mindsets to have, but still wise to hear exactly what people believe. So check this out, or check out this audio, just to kind of hear a couple things about what people believe. Do you

Speaker 2 22:46
think that God can intervene in the universe as he wants? Or is God too bound by the laws of science?

Speaker 3 22:59
The question of whether God is bound by the laws of science is a bit like your question, Can God make a stone that is so heavy that He cannot lift it? I don't think it is very useful to speculate on what God might or might not be able to do. Rather, we should examine what he actually does with the universe we live in. All our observations suggest that it operates according to well defined laws. These laws may have been ordained by God, but it seems that he does not intervene in the universe to break the laws, at least not once he had said the universe going,

Speaker 4 23:52
do you believe in God? Me, yeah. So I'm the more I look at the universe, just the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on. I have no problems. If, as we probe the origins of things, we bump up into the bearded man, if that shows up, we're good to go. Okay, not a problem. There's just no evidence of it. And this is why religions are called faiths collectively, because you believe something in the absence of evidence, that's what it is. That's why it's called faith. Otherwise we would call all religions evidence, but we don't, for exactly that reason. I

Speaker 5 24:35
was working on a flat tax proposal, and I accidentally proved there's no God. We'll just see a bad thing. Well, maybe he made a mistake. Nope, it's air tight. Can't let this little doozy get out.

Speaker 6 24:53
I don't believe in a God. I mean, what you can say if you're a cosmologist, what you should say is. We know that the universe was very hot and dense 13 point 8 billion years ago. We don't know how it got hot and dense. We don't even know, actually, if the universe had a beginning in time.

Speaker 7 25:10
Whatever knowledge you have about God is just pure nonsense, cultural nonsense, depending upon which kind of culture you are in, that kind of God you have, isn't it? It can only be experienced. Experience does not mean you can eat it or you can grasp it. No you can experience only by dissolving in it. There is no other way.

Josh Shaw 25:34
Again, we want to reiterate. There's probably voices you may or may not know in that again, we are not calling out people. We are not trying to shame people. We are not trying to do

Tony Benda 25:45
just sharing their ideas Exactly.

Josh Shaw 25:48
They're sharing what they what they believe about God. And there are some are completely not true, and some are missing the mark and what they perceive to be their religious or biblical way. But it's important to understand how the world is turning to view God, like Tony, hearing some of those things, what are your thoughts on that? Like, how people view God in this time?

Tony Benda 26:13
I think people are delusional. I say that with Wow,

Josh Shaw 26:16
oh, wow. Okay.

Tony Benda 26:19
Some people take super creative liberties with some of this stuff, but other people have just no idea the truth that they're missing or they're living in the world and what they call their truth, which I believe, is fully nonsense. Each person cannot have their own version of the truth, or else, truth is not subjective. Truth has there has to be one ultimate truth, or else it's not considered truth, considered conjecture or opinion. So anyway, that's kind of my blanket statement. I think it's all obviously false what the world says about God. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Not to draw a hard boundary, but, I mean, but like, yeah, for truth to be proclaimed accurately and truthfully, using, I guess, truth and over and over again, in the same sense, we have to really draw that line somewhere. So

Josh Shaw 27:15
Tony's drawn that hard line tonight. Usually, I'm the one that draws those hard lines. And Tony's like, this, is it? We can't mess it. Truth is truth? No, I agree with you. I'm not trying to not cast light on it like and that's the real truth. Is that there are people that are delusional, not in the sense that they just I think people get to that delusion because there's so much pain, there's so much hurt, and there's a lack of understanding about it. I truly do, you know, I think there's a part of me that holds, like a righteous anger for things people say about God, but I've grown in maturity over the years that, you know, my God is, is God. You know, we're going to touch base on this here in just a minute, but like, yeah, God is God. He doesn't need me to defend him. God is God created the entire universe. God created everything in it. He created me in his image. You know someone saying you're not created in God's image. It's not going to stop me, because when you're foundationalized on what the truth says, like you, like you said, what the truth says, Yeah, your foundation is not shaken. But if you begin to listen to the world and your foundation, foundation begins to shake, I would say to that, open the Word and start to build your foundations on God's word. Yeah, right. So the world, as we listen, the world says those things, and we need to draw that hard boundary. So we begin by drawing this hard boundary. And we're just, we've written down a couple notes about who we believe God is, and this is honestly just gonna be open conversation, yeah, as we continue, right? So what do we know about who God is? I think there's an important distinction we need to make. First, we need to talk about God. We need about Jesus. We need to talk about the Holy Spirit. This is called the Trinity, the three in one. Yep. We have to understand this the way, for what it's worth and for what it is, right? So, God, who is God? We believe God is the great I AM, or Yahweh. And this is not just a, oh, man, what's that band that sings the great I AM, who sings that song beside me?

Tony Benda 29:23
There's a couple there. Oh, the mountain shape.

Josh Shaw 29:28
That's, like, that's like, early, 2000s vibes where I grew up in, like, I don't know who it is. I know Phillips cracking Dean did the Reddit, yes, yes, yes. That's the one I'm thinking of. Is it that is the one I'm thinking of? It's such a good song, new life,

Tony Benda 29:44
new life, new life. Worship is one I'm familiar with. And there's also worship initiative with Shane and Shane, ah, looking back, they did such good stuff. That's

Josh Shaw 29:52
what I'm saying. But sorry, we get offside. So, so God is the great I AM, right. He is Yahweh. He is. And that's not just a that's not just a fun song we do that actually is based on the scriptures. In fact, it was spoken to Moses in Exodus. Chapter Three, Moses is about to be sent to the people, and it's so much time being shepherded or not being Shepherd. Well, yes, being shepherded, but also becoming a shepherd. Moses. I'm sorry, God comes to Moses, and the Word says, Then Moses asked God if I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your ancestors has sent me to you. And they ask me, what is his name? What should I tell them? God replied to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites I am has sent me to you. God also said to Moses. Say this to the Israelites, the Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name for ever. This is time to be remembered in every generation. That's good. So calling God the great I Am is because he himself said I am who I am. And notice that there is no there's no one specific title when we look at God, let's look at a couple attributes, right? God is a comforter. God is God is God is a peace giver. God is merciful. God. God the Merciful God the loving. This is not just think qualities God gives. This is qualities of who God is, and that's beautiful. And even even the New Testament confirms in John, chapter one, verse one in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Tony, honestly, you know what kind of blew my mind a couple weeks ago? When I open up God's word, I'm not just opening up a word to to like to learn about who God is. I'm opening the very thing of who God is. Yeah, and not mind blowing crazy. Tony, when you think of the great I AM, or Yahweh, what do you think? Like? What pops into your mind

Tony Benda 32:07
a vastness that cannot be explained. Ooh, he rolled

Josh Shaw 32:12
a 20 on his intelligence.

Tony Benda 32:17
It is. It's incomprehensible. Like, how we are such, like minute things in the in the grand scheme of universe and time, and that, like, a, you can't even say, a person or a thing, like God pot, like, put a pause to his eternity for a moment, and was like, You know what? I'm gonna create all this stuff. And, like, I don't know, just the whole like, I'm feeling like, Neil deGrasse Tyson here for a minute. We're not calling on anybody talking about the cosmos. No, I'm just saying this in a good way, talking about the cosmos and the vastness of space and time, like I feel like I'm talking about, like, Doctor Who type level stuff right now, because, like, but

Josh Shaw 33:08
you are, I will, but that, but that's the truth. Is

Tony Benda 33:12
when so he's so massive in terms of where God sits in space and time, he sits outside of space and time, he's got to, because what else can create something out of nothing, reside over it for an eternity, be worshiped and still have infinite eternities in which he can do the same thing over and over again. I'm not who's to say that we're the first timeline of this whatever. I don't know multi versus craziness. Josh, I'm going off a tangent here. Josh,

Josh Shaw 33:46
I don't know about the multi versus thing. Personally. I don't know. I know you're just going off that, but like you're so right though my actually, my counselor was talking to me, and she just her statement stuck to me when, you know, my wife and I were there, and she it was just like a random statement from her. She said, You know how beautiful it is that you are God's imagination. And I was like, What do you mean? That's good, yeah. I mean, that's crazy, isn't it? She said she's like, You were created in the image of God and His likeness, which is Genesis chapter one. But then she went on to say, like, if you're created in someone's image, that's because you are put in his imagination, like you you were part of God's creative, imaginative design. When, if you're an artist, or you're a musician, or you're any or you're anything. When you draw something, you either referencing something, or you're building something with imagination. Like, I remember you being younger, building Legos, and I would just start to create things here and there and everywhere,

Tony Benda 34:55
like there's an inspiration based off of something you've previously experienced. Correct.

Josh Shaw 34:59
But. God formed it based off of nothing, correct, unless

Tony Benda 35:03
he previously experienced you in his mind's eye and then, oh, decided to create you. Yeah, in that future sense, that's crazy. That's

Josh Shaw 35:11
what I'm saying. God. God is God was God always will be. God can see deep into the future. He can see from the very beginning when there was nothing, and even prior to that, because he was and can see right here in the present moment of everything you go through. Yes, that is God. That's God. This no one can comprehend it, folks, you we all talk about even, even scientists would confirm that the world is massive and the world is nothing in the comparison to the universe. Yet God is so big he holds the world in the palm of his hand. When I look at the palm of my hand and he holds this little ball in his hand that's considered the world like he is bigger than everything.

Tony Benda 36:01
Little kids sing the song. He's got the whole world in His hands. That's like to sing that at that age, and then to sing it now and try to understand the the VA, like I said, the vastness of that concept. He's got the whole world in His hands,

Josh Shaw 36:20
like he's got universes in his hands. It's again, he comes down to our level. That's it. That's the crazy, cool thing. That's the one. Yeah, that's, that's point number two, and it's a perfect draw. And he is the one. He is the one who sent, the one who redeemed us. Yes, he is the one who's always wanted to redeem and sent the one who would do the redeeming, right? So in here, and here's honestly, where people get confused, and I and I understand it, right? I do. I really, I try to take a step back and see from their perspective, people only look at the concepts of the Old Testament to attempt to understand who God is so when you look at arguments for the Bible, right? I can go on YouTube and look them all. People start quoting Leviticus, Deuteronomy, numbers, all these crazy Levitical laws and and things like, like, so many people are like, you're a Christian. You shouldn't eat shellfish, right? Because the Bible says so. There's so many like different contexts with that, but that's purely Old Testament context that is called Old Testament, or old covenant, which we'll talk about in a minute, right? But even though, let's just be honest, the Old Testament does show God's judgment to a disobedient people, correct? That's the thing is, people miss that everyone blames God for His harshness, yet we don't look at the harshness of people towards others. We think war is bad now, folks take time to research exactly why God cast judgment. I'm serious. It's crazy. You'll begin to understand Jonah in a different perspective. Jonah believed that God was, was a redemptive God, yet Nineveh was so filled with sin. I mean, they were just, you just need to look up the hundreds of years of violence and terror and horror that Nineveh was causing, so much so that Jonah knew about that history. Knew it was in Nineveh ran away from God, swallowed by a whale, delivered to Nineveh via whale, sees the redemptive Hand of God work. In Nineveh, they all turn and repent, and Jonah is the only one that's left bitter and sour, because God actually fulfilled his word and forgave Nineveh of everything, because in Jonah's mind, it was God, why are you redeeming sinners? And he was like Jonah, why are you not loving sinners? But God is a redeeming God, right? And I can prove that. We can prove that to you, right. Genesis three, verse 15, Adam and Eve have sinned. They've fallen. God begins his addresses of people. But do you notice in verse 15 is when the address, or verse like 14 is when the addresses begin, verse eight or 14, but 15, he addresses the serpent first. And what does he say? I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. Most theologians, I forget the formal term of it, but all theologians not say all, because I don't know all. Most theologians agree that this is the first predominant statement of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. This is revealing. God is revealing to the serpent that he will strike your head and you will strike his heel, meaning that you're going to hurt him a little, but he will defeat you in the end. Yep, gonna be crushed. He's gonna be crushed. So Genesis three, right in the beginning of Genesis 315 he is already introducing the redemptive story of what Jesus. Was going to do is the first biblical mention of it, go down to Exodus. Going further, we all understand that Exodus and Egypt story is very similar to the storyhood of Christ, about how he redeems his people. But look at Exodus six verses six through seven. Therefore tell the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You will know that I am the Lord, your God who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians. God said, I will redeem you. You will be my people. I will be your God, not at a notice how that inviting, that is, that is not just dominating. People are hurting. People are suffering. God said, I will defeat your enemies. I will take you as my own, and I will be the one who provides for you. And even David recognized that redemptive power. Psalm 103, verse four, he redeems your life from the pit. He crowns you beautiful language crowns you with faithful love and compassion. That's old that's Old Testament. That is just a that is just God saying redemptive. But God sent Jesus to redeem us from the bondage of sin and slavery. The Old Testament talks about it in Isaiah nine, verse six, For to us, a child is born. This is the Advent season for coming into Christmas. To us, a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. No wonder who God is. This is who God is. Right, Jesus, Christ came and died on the cross for our sins and Tony, check this scripture out. This is so revealing why people don't understand who God is. Because Paul talked about it Second Corinthians, 312, through 17. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face, said, the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end, but their minds were hardened, for to this day, when they read the Old Covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Says that a second time, anytime scripture repeats itself twice in a row, it's delineating importance yes to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. This famous scripture everyone knows now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom, right. He desires more for us than just living out the life with half hearted truths or experience we talked about that it's not just some half hearted truth we have to draw the boundary line of where what we believe and what and what we just say. Didn't know what the world says is wrong. Because of Jesus, He desires us to walk in relationship like it is someone who we truly love. It is love that the world fails to understand. We fail to understand because He is love, and if we don't understand him, we can't if we don't understand that love, we can't possibly understand him. And if we don't love him, we will never willingly understand him, because we're not choosing to love we're choosing to believe a lie from the world, and we're choosing to believe that God is not who he says he is. In fact, I would even say so much times it's kind of like a trial in a in like the opposite sense, right? When we're on a jury, we hear the defendant and we hear the um, what's the other one?

Tony Benda 44:04
The defendant and the plane? No, not the plaintiff, Prosecutor, plaintiff, plaintiff,

Josh Shaw 44:08
yeah, whichever you want. We know what we're talking about. We, on the jury, hear both sides of the story. We go in, you go into a room, and then decide if he's guilty, if he's not guilty. But so many times we play this one sided game, and it's like, okay, I hear what the world says about God, so I'm just gonna assume that that's what the truth is about God, and I'll actually take the time to know who God is. I love the book, The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel, because that man said, I hear what the world's saying. I want to know who this God is really true. And as he dug into research about it, he through overwhelming evidence, yeah, found that God was real. It's

Tony Benda 44:50
such I didn't read the book, but it's such a good movie. It is so moving, like, I hope people who saw that that weren't Christians. I'm very. Years to, like, find out people's responses and their reactions to that film, and like how it may have opened doors right into the kingdom for them. That is, that's

Josh Shaw 45:07
incredible. But where we also gather that from, and why Christians are the way they are, why we were walking in this is because through Christ, God gave us the power of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. So we we understand that God is God. He is Yahweh, that God also sent Jesus, but he is Jesus, Him and the Father are one. Jesus himself says that I understand that's confusing. We're all still confused. It. It's in it's uncomprehendable, right? But God is also spirit. In the book of John, it says that God is Spirit, and give us the power of the Holy Spirit. When you believe in Jesus, you are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Yep. But what does he do with it? Ephesians, chapter one, verses 13 through 14, says in him, you are also sealed with the promise, the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed, the Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory. That's who the Holy Spirit is. That's what he does. Jesus Himself even identify. There's an even another identifier of God. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is the helper. In John 1526 said, but when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of me, Tony, all this is like when we cast identify on God. It is so crazy, the things we find very much. So, yeah, right there. He just said, essentially, in John 15, that the Holy Spirit is the helper that God is the spirit, yeah, who proceeds from the Father, the Spirit that lives in you will testify about Jesus, who Jesus confirms to love the father, who also resides in these things. It is just, what are your thoughts on this? It literally, it just blows my mind.

Tony Benda 47:18
I'll add to the mind blowing level of it. Just to agree and say that it is mind blowing. I love it. It is quantum physics is an incredibly complex topic that very few people understand, and when they feel like they understand it, they still don't fully understand it. That's like the Christian faith to me, like there's a lot of biblical scholars that truly understand, or feel like they truly understand parts of the word, yet there may be some, like little things that they still don't fully understand or will never understand. So the Bible is like quantum physics to me, like we're never going to fully understand all of it, and I don't know that we're supposed to here on Earth. I

Josh Shaw 48:04
and I think we're called to understand as much as we can. But I heard it said once, the only thing that's ever going to be constant is change. Yes,

Tony Benda 48:16
in the world,

Josh Shaw 48:17
in the world, yeah, everything is changing. All these things are changing, right? You mean, look at your own personal life. Oh my, there's, there's seasons for everything. Very much. You could plan every day, every 365 days of next year. I can't even plan tomorrow without it changing. That's what I'm saying. You could do that. You could say I'm gonna sit down with every day and plan out exactly how it's gonna go, exactly what I'm exactly what I'm gonna do. And I guarantee within two days, all that is going to change.

Tony Benda 48:45
Well, within two hours, my morning changed this morning. That's great enemy, see, that's

Josh Shaw 48:49
what I'm saying, is we all try to plan and make this constant in our lives. I'm actually going to take back my statement. I just said that the only thing constant is change from our perspective, things won't be constant where there's seasons, Ecclesiastes talks about seasons, but the perspective we actually should take that I'm now going to change, is this, the only thing constant is God. God is the only constant variable in our lives. God is not changing. God will never change. He's the same yesterday, today and forever. So I'm actually gonna take back that statement.

Tony Benda 49:25
Retract. I do retract.

Josh Shaw 49:29
Because when I really think about that statement as I just kind of, and this is the beauty of podcasting, folks, we can discuss these thoughts openly. We can say something and say, oh, you know, I think the Holy Spirit dropped upon this, upon me. Why? Because the Holy Spirit, that's literally what we're talking about. The Holy Spirit is what gives this to us. He also says in John 14 verses, 16 through 18, says, and I will pray. This is Jesus talking. I will and I will pray the Father. I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Helper that he may abide. With you forever, the spirit of truth in whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I love this part. I love verse 18. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. It goes on in verse, 2614 26 to say, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I've said to you, this God is not going anywhere. If you have believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you've received the power of the Holy Spirit. He will dwell with you forever. And the beautiful thing is that when you do that, Jesus has said even before he left this earth, that I will not leave you as orphans, and that he will soon come. I love the chosen. Where he said, where God? Where the guy who plays Jesus is like, there's that word again. Soon. I love it. Let's see we have through all this to say, we have to establish an understanding that God is not a God of pain and torture, nor is he a massive figure that just sits on the throne and rules with an iron fist, right? God created the universe, and we were part of that design. It is man that sinned and fell, and God offered many times for his people to turn to Him, the entire Old Testament narrative. When you honestly look at it's just like this repetitive circle, God is present, and people worship God. God. People forget about God over time and man's sins, man begins to fall and go into their own way. God tries to make invitation, but then they refuse. God begins to punish, and people turn to repent of their sins, and they offer sacrifices again, and then they begin to worship God. The entire Old Testament is that kind of circle, until God finally, one day goes silent. And it's like I have had enough 400 years of silence between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and when we get to that point, because man refused to walk in the ways of the Lord and walk their own way, Jesus Christ was sent as the propitiation of our sins, bearing them on the cross for the redemption of theirs, ours, everybody's sins that were committed because of his sacrifice. We are free indeed, and have the power of the Holy Spirit to continue the works that Christ did, folks. This is God, and we're not just speaking out of illegitimate knowledge so many scriptures that have been applied Tony, there's a couple of other subjects I want to touch on, and I want this to be just free flowing. Is you and me just talking? Yep, ready? There's some deeper attributes. We've talked about who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is, the Holy Trinity, the three and one, right? But there's some deeper attributes I feel like are what cause a lot of the thoughts that we listened to prior in the episode that lead to that kind of mentality. Okay, so let's start. Let's start with this. We're just gonna shotgun ready some deeper attitudes, God as a father and friend. Yep. What are your thoughts? Where's this? Just open conversation. You don't need to

Tony Benda 53:28
look at the notes. I'm not looking at notes at the moment, thinking of God as a father and friend, I think first as like, the first thing that comes to mind is God, the Father of the Trinity. He's 1/3 of a whole, but still a whole. At the same time, he is a father figure in the I mean, my mind goes to music. Go ahead. Like just, just go for it. There's songs that we sing about you're a good, good father. It's who you are. There's songs that talk about his faithfulness, and songs that talk about His goodness and all the different attributes and and stuff. But the one that kind of sticks out is, is that father figure one primarily because there's we have our earthly fathers. Everyone has different relationships with their earthly fathers. Yes, for better, for worse, it doesn't matter. The one constant, the we could say that again, that constant in our lives is God, our Father, and then not just being father, but friend. Our parents on Earth strive to be both parent and friend, and I don't know that it can always be. It's weird. So like growing up, there's that weird balance of they have to be the disciplinary and they have to be they have. To be your external brain, because sometimes during developmental phases, you're not the smartest of the of the bunch Amen brother. So they try to be your brain, but then children get frustrated with parents, and so they're both parent and trying to be friend and be hip and cool and all of these things for they can't always be both, but I think it's a good thing that they're not always both. But God can be both. He could be that authoritative, that not like fire and brimstone, authoritative, but like the the loving, the nurturing, the you know, it's okay if you fail. Type thing, I'm still here for you, type thing, which also leans into the friend mode for me, because, like, we're supposed to have that good relationship where the Bride of Christ, and in order to be a in a bride, groom bride relationship, you have to kind of be a friend first. So then it also, my brain goes back to that old song, I am a friend of God, one of the most cheesy, cheesy Christian songs out there. I'm sorry if the writer is listening, I doubt that he is or she is, but we sang that over and over again growing up, and I got so tired of that song. But there is truth in it, because we are a friend of God, and he calls his friend. So that's where kind of my brain goes with those things

Josh Shaw 56:24
you hit on such really beautiful points. Because I think about, I really try to go outside of my internal circumstances or external circumstances, and I try to think about people and look at their hearts rather than the outward appearance. Because God does right, says in First Samuel, 17, ish, something someone did like, God doesn't view the outward appearance. He looks at the heart, yep, which is funny, because God already knows the outward appearance. He already made it. What does he need to know that? For he wants into His image. I look at people that they say God is father, like God the Father and I just hear this instant response of, well, I hate my father because he hated me. You know, how many people how? Let's just, let's just call for what it is. How many identity problems come from the fact that fathers weren't present in their children's lives? You're trying to fill the void with something that's missing. Yeah, another episode for another time. But same thing with friend. Why would you want God to be your friend when your best friend betrayed you? I'm not saying, mine, my, my, bet, one of my best friends, Keith, is probably listening. I love you as not what I'm trying to say, but I'm saying like

betrayer. He is the betrayer. Take him to the betrayer's rise. Replica.

Um, no, but like, I think about people that have lost their friends. I just heard of the story of one of my good friends that lost his best friend, not to death, but like to just to the a friend, his friend just coming to sin and then him not wanting to live in that lifestyle that that break. Why would you want God to be your friend when you're just filled with the trauma of, like, my best friend berate me, you know? And I think about God being a father, and I really wouldn't know how to respond to someone that's like, Well, my father died, or my father abused me. Like, why do I want God in my life? But I think the response I would have is, God wants to fill the void of everything that you believe you're missing in a father. Yep. Why? I don't want God to be my friend. My friends have always hated me, my friends, my quote friends made fun of me. My response would be, God wants to show you that your image is beautiful and wants to fill you with the very thing that you're missing. Because I feel like a lot of those videos in the compilation, they just tried to justify God as being this or being that because not only of their lack of understanding, but of voids that are missing. Yeah, and I traveled to John 15, verse 13 to 15, where Jesus says, Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. He says, You are my friends. If you do whatever I command, you no longer do I call you servants. For a servant does not know what his master is doing. That's powerful, but I have called you friends for all things that I hear from my father, I have made known to you. A friend and a father doesn't hide things from you. They reveal things. A friend meets you where you're at, and is not trying to be. It is trying. He is Lord. Let's not forget that a fear of the Lord still must be present, that he is such a friend that he wants to include you in those things that he has. And Jesus is not applying. He is applying a condition that he. You're my friends if you do whatever I command you, but it's not what we talked about our last episode. What unconditional love is. I'm not going to call that as like an unfair condition, right? If you're trying to be my friend, and I'm like, Hey, man, you should do this, and you constantly don't spend time with me. Are you my friend? In the worldly sense that makes sense, but in God's perspective, the only, the only person that's damaging that relationship is you. God is saddened and grieved when you don't spend time with him, but the only person that it inevitably is going to damage is you. Yep. So for those who are struggling with that, I don't fully understand the trauma you go through. I'm sure, Tony, maybe doesn't, either. I don't know. I don't get it. At least maybe you do, Tony, I don't know.

Tony Benda 1:00:49
Not, not in that sense, no. But we,

Josh Shaw 1:00:54
we are, we are here for you, and we want to point you to the one who is the father and friend, yep, all right, Tony round two. He is the One who desires to sit with us in our pain.

Yeah, keyword desires,

Tony Benda 1:01:08
desires to sit with us in our pain. God is a very empathetic God. There's thinking of D and D as this podcast is related to D and D and All Things D and D and G, T, R, P, G, S. In that world, there are many lower case gods, like there are, you know, all sorts of, you know, Gods of war, Gods of, you know, the sun or the moon, and this, that and the other, and they each have their respective, you know, quote, air, quote, domains, so to speak, Yahweh the CR like the Christian God, he is like, first of all, the one true God in Amen, in reality and in all domains. So to think of this, all powerful, omnipotent, omniscient, whatever being that, again, we can't fully comprehend who you know can wipe out civilizations with you know, a mere word, just because you know they disobey Him, type thing there. There is that vengeful side of of a God, judgment? Yeah, judgment. But it's justified. That same God is the one that will hold you close in the in the darkest moments of your life. Like the Bible talks about God being a comforter, and like, I just picture a warm, you know, a warm, fuzzy blanket being wrapped around you, like in your lowest moments. And just, I don't know, almost like an electric blanket type thing. Like, that's what I picture someone just like, coming up to you and just wrapping you in this thing and just handing you a cup of cocoa on the worst day imaginable, like this, is that empathetic God that I can, you know, think of and picture in my mind, you know, still smack me upside the head when I need it, but like he, like we said, He desires to sit with you in our in your Pain, and wants to walk you out of that valley, according to Psalm 23 like, because even in the valley of the shadow of death, will fear no evil. For thy rod and thy staff, they come from me, and he prepares a table for us. So after our pain in our dark places, he's got a table prepared for us. He's like, come on out of that dark place. You know, I'll sit with you in that dark place for a minute, but come on out. We've got food prepared a table before you in the presence of our enemies. So I,

Josh Shaw 1:03:50
I think a lot of people view God as you're talking about judgment earlier, and God is not a God of contradiction. So God is not just gonna inflict pain on you and then turn around and try to comfort you. God is not, yeah, no, sorry, um, contradiction is not the right word, manipulative. That's God's not manipulative, correct? God is not the one that's inflicting your pain and then trying to turn around and be of peace, right? God is the God is peace. God only desires peace and unity and love. There's a it is a whole episode's worth of content for this statement. God allows pain. God allows trials, but is not the one who's trying to inflict them upon you. Correct? That's hard for people to comprehend about God wanting to sit with us in our pain, because I think the argument is like, if God really wants to sit with me in my pain or be my comforter, why is he allowing this? Or why is he doing this to me? The sisters of Lazarus had a same response. Response to God in John 11, they said, essentially they looked at Jesus after being gone for three after Lazarus was dead, four days was like if you had only been here, my brother wouldn't have died. We all, I think we all make fun of John 1135, which is simply says Jesus wept. But I think that reveals so much more to us than we care to admit. Yeah, Jesus wept. Jesus is the Son of God. He is God filled with the Spirit of God. He was with God in the beginning. Jesus is. I mean, I think Jesus even says that before the law ever was I am, yet you're telling me that God Himself wept. That's powerful in Genesis 16, it's actually funny. I just learned this Tony Hagar. Hagar was the slave to Abram and Sarai, yep. And by all accounts, was a was abused and taken advantage of because one couldn't get pregnant, so she was forced into it, and after she was forced to being pregnant, even though the Bible doesn't disclose whether she was even okay with it or not, let's just assume that she made the fact is, she was gives birth to a son, Ishmael, and then kicked out. I watching my wife give birth to one child. Already goes through so much trauma just giving birth to one child, he imagined if me, as her husband, said, All right, cool. Thanks for birthing my child. Get out and take my son with you. That's crazy. That is crazy. That's so she gets kicked out and God meets her in the wilderness. Yeah, and you know what's funny in in Genesis, 1316, she says this, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me, and all of the story prior to that point from Genesis one to Genesis 16, Hagar is the first one noted to give God a name.

Tony Benda 1:07:35
That's that's a very cool point, right there.

Josh Shaw 1:07:39
Hagar a non Israelite slave woman is the first one in the Bible to give God a name, or I'm not gonna say, give God a name. Put an attribute to God, yeah, put a first delineative attribute, like God is the great I AM, but she's the first one to really put an attribute to God, and the first attribute for this for God is the God who sees me. Psalm, chapter 10, verse 14, says, But you God, see the trouble of the afflicted. You consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you. You are who you are, the helper of the fatherless. I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of pain that you if you're listening, that you've gone through, and there's a lot of pain that you know of someone you know, that they've gone through. And if this is you, or this is someone you know, you need to send this to them, even if it's just a little clip of this episode, of this part of the episode, because a lot of people don't feel like God is there, or God doesn't want them to be there, but Jesus weeps over Lazarus being dead. What makes you think God won't sit and weep with you where you are. How do I know this? Romans says, mourn with those who mourn. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Matthew Chapter Five says blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted, and God is the God of all comfort. So what are they being comforted by? Well, they're being comforted by, God. It's an interesting point. Another one Tony, potentially the last one we'll see where we go. Yeah, he is the one who desires you to be a part of His family.

Tony Benda 1:09:39
I think of, I don't know what I think of with this one. It's

Josh Shaw 1:09:45
an interesting one. It is,

Tony Benda 1:09:49
again, going back to music, there's that old Gaither song. Now, I gotta think of what it is. It's the family of God. That's the only line I'm hearing.

Part of the family, the family of God

Josh Shaw 1:10:16
that threw me back so hard.

Tony Benda 1:10:19
So it's this cheesy. Excuse me. Sorry, Bill Gaither, you were just, you're just in our church. Yeah, it kind of brings me back this old Gaither song, because they're part of the family, the family of God. That's what does it mean to really be part of the family of God. I mean, the Bible talks about us being children of God, co heirs with Christ, all these things that we have an inheritance because of our salvation through Christ. And I don't know that's it's in those are kind of like the points that my brain goes to after that song, of course. But yeah, we're one part of this great big family. It's kind of cool. I think

Josh Shaw 1:11:07
we were designed to walk with God in the cool of the day, and we were designed to sit with Him for eternity. I think God created everything, and could have just sat by himself with the multitudes of angels from the heavens and been completely satisfied. But I don't believe that God was completely satisfied until Man was created, because it's part of the creation story. God didn't create the whole world rest from his work, and then say, oh, yeah, um, I guess I'll put people here. Yeah. When you look at the seven days of creation, man is in that, my mind takes me to the story of Abraham, where Abraham just looks up at the star. God tells him to look at the stars and the grains of sand, and says this, the generations that come are going to be as multitude as these. And to Abraham, it's like in the moment when you think about that, like I think about today, like if God can be, is like Josh, look up at the stars, go to go to the Atlantic Beach. Yeah, everybody in your family, you're gonna have so much family that that that they I would outnumber the grains of sand on this beach. We're in the sky right now, in the moment, I'd be like, how is that even possible? Yeah, Abraham is in heaven, watching the the promise unfold Absolutely. I've the Bible says that every time somebody believes that there's a rejoice and rejoicing in heaven, and I think continuously, Abraham, like I would love to be Abraham, to just be able to look at Jesus, or to look at God and say, like, even now it's still mind blown, to just worship God and be like, Wow, your your blessing, your promises unfolding even as I'm here now continually, I lean on First Peter, chapter two, verse Nine, which says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, Jesus left his heavenly throne to come down as a baby in a manger to become sin, even though he knew no sin, just so he can pull you back as the redemptive sacrifice on the Cross, so you may join that family. That's God. That's who he is. Tony, we're gonna do one more, and I want you to throw one out there.

Tony Benda 1:14:15
Another attribute. You're saying one

Josh Shaw 1:14:17
more attribute. I mean, we could go all night by attribute to God, but, but one more that just cuts deep to the soul. One more that's not scripted, faithful.

Tony Benda 1:14:25
Oh, I think we can definitely talk about his faithfulness, starting with music again in my brain, because that's my default status. But, yeah, let's talk faithfulness. I think of a song, faithful, you are faithful. Forever You will be yes and amen. Is that song? Josh Baldwin, it's a great tune, and it talks about the faith. Ness throughout that song. And then also the goodness of God. Talks about, all my life you have been faithful. All my life you have been so, so good. With every breath that I'm able, I will sing in the goodness of God. And then yeah, and then we talk about the old you know him, Great is thy faithfulness. The Lying goes on to say, Great is thy faithfulness? O God, my father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not thy compassions. They fail not as thou hast been. Thou forever will be. It's so good. And then it says, Morning by morning, new mercies. I see all I have needed thy hand hath provided Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me, it's one of the most Sung and remembered hymns of like all time, especially since I can actually remember it some of the more popular hymns, but God's faithfulness biblically is proven time and time again. I mean, even talking about Abraham, his faith, the fact that there are still stars in the sky being discovered, like, indicates that the line is never ending. I mean, looking at the the nation of Israel right now, those are the descendants of Abraham. His people are still producing offspring. So, like his line will not end according to scripture. So there's faithfulness, there. There's faithfulness, you know, with Moses coming out of the out of the out of Egypt, there's faithfulness with even in those 40 years of wandering, the Israelites still had a God who was faithful to them. You know, time and again they won against their enemies. They defeated cities and conquered nations, and God was still faithful to allow them even into the promised land after those 40 years. Yep, God was faithful to Joshua when, when Moses was not permitted into the Promised Land, God was faithful to Joshua and led allowed Joshua to be the leader, and led him through many victories, and he was still faithful to Israel. When they asked for kings, they said, give us a king. And you know, they got what they wanted. Yep, wasn't always great, but they got what they wanted, and then faithfulness still to the end, talking back about the redemptive story where Jesus will come and crush the, you know, the head of the serpent, from Abram's line, from, You know, down David's line into the New Testament. We talk about when Jesus was born, which is that season we're coming into now that he's part of the the lineage of David and faithfulness all the way through to Jesus, he came and he crushed the serpent, from the beginning of the Bible, up until the beginning of the New Testament into the ministry of Jesus, He, like he still proved his faithfulness and and made true on that promise from the very beginning. So like faithfulness is all throughout the Bible,

Josh Shaw 1:18:15
I looked up the definition of faithful now as when somebody asks something, I typically start with biblical exploration about what it is, and then I go to the definition, and then that kind of keeps my mind activated. And there's obviously, you can type in the word faithful on your Bible app, and you'll get plenty of scriptures about it, but the word faithful from the Oxford Dictionary is first definition is remaining loyal and steadfast, or even true to the facts or the original. And a similar word compared to that is the word constant, as we've been talking about. When I think of the word faithful, I think of God, you will say what you do, even if it doesn't match the timing in which I won. I think God. I think people don't love the faithfulness of God because they put timelines onto when his faithfulness will act. And I think people get very discouraged, and can be very discouraged because they don't believe God is faithful, because he hasn't acted yet. In fact, I was in a season in my life, for a very long time for something specific. I was waiting for or coming to the end of it, I was doubting his faithfulness. I'm like God, you told me not to do this. You told me not to do that. I've done these things. Why are you not being faithful to me? And it required patience, it required love. It required to. Into him. When I think of faithfulness, I just, I can't get my mind off of like we talked about in John 11, the story of Lazarus dying is my pastor said on Sunday, he said, I wonder if Martha, Martha's faith had run dry in that moment, because she said, If only you'd been here, this would never have happened. We say that all the time, God, if you were really real and you were with, you were here. You wouldn't let my brother die. You wouldn't let my mom die. You wouldn't let cancer resound. You wouldn't let the situation they're questioning their faith is questioning his faithfulness. And I believe when we take a step back and we let God be God, which is what he's really incredibly good at, we would begin to see that what is required of faith is simply just us allowing God to move outside of any expectation we may hold. And I just you can look at any story in the Bible and see God's faithfulness. You can we Tony mentioned a few of them. The few that are on my mind are the faithfulness of God from Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, not only the faithfulness to bring them out of the fire, but to meet them inside of the fire with them. You can look at God's faithfulness in the midst of David's we talked about Saul becoming king. What about David becoming king? God was faithful to Him, from anointing to appointing, and even when David had an affair with Bathsheba and lost their son. Yep. God was still faithful to the fact that David would that the Davidic line would be the line of Jesus Christ. Take that for size of the world if we think that Jesus is going to show up in this perfect way only to a specific group of people. God himself worked through the line of a man who was unfaithful to God and to the to the woman he married and tried to do that with another woman, yet God forgave him of those sins and was faithful to that promise. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of faithfulness. We do deserve the cross. We don't deserve the work that he did for us on the cross. When I think of faithfulness, I think of a man who is devoted, constant, unswerving, unwavering, abounding the well the Word says, abounding in steadfast love. And truly and truly, folks, we could go, we can go ham on attributes of God, all night long, all day long, forever, never, then eternity. But, but few. There's ways that you see an attribute of God. You know, at the end of the show, we'll give you our emails and our emails and our socials, and we want to hear testimonies and stories. And if you know of a friend or a person that is struggling with knowing who God is, we want you to send this to them. Tony, as we begin to close, what are some practical steps we can do as we learned about who God truly is, and trying to negate the world's view of who God is. What are some practical steps we can do to just lean into that, as we've discussed today,

Tony Benda 1:23:47
this sounds like the most Christianese answer. I want you to say it because I'm the one who wrote it. Say it. Well, you wrote it, but it applies. Get into the word. Build a daily habit of it. However. You need to do it to make it happen. Do it today. Sorry, Jamie. I just purchased.

Josh Shaw 1:24:06
You are not revealing

Tony Benda 1:24:11
that I just made a purchase today of a product that I'm going to try it like this is hopefully going to help me with my daily reading habits and actual study of the Word better than what I am currently doing, because I feel like even, even in the stuff that I'm working on right now, I could take it up a notch, and I think this will help me take it up a notch. So there is. I hate collecting Bibles. I mean that sounds, that sounds really bad. But the problem is, like, I get, I get scriptural ADHD, really, where, where? Like, I'm reading one version of the Bible, and I'm like, Okay, this is cool. But then I get in my head that I like, want to take notes in it so the text just. Small and there's not enough margin space, and then, like, the next so I get another Bible, and then I'm like, Okay, this is better, but it's like, it's not the right Bible for me. And the problem is, first of all, that I don't like, go to a physical bookstore and look at a Bible. I'll order it off of Amazon or something like that. So I can't, like, pick it up and feel it before I did that. So my last Bible I got was a super giant print ESV. I remember that, and it looks like you're reading a teleprompter. It is massive, but I love it, because it's so easy to just read through. So that one is actually like my reader Bible. The one I take, like I got, so I can take notes, and is, like, a, I think it's called, like, write the word or something like that. It's like a one that you could take notes. There's, like, a Bible, like, there's like, yeah, my lines, yes, I have one as well, yeah. But like, to me, doesn't feel like enough space still, because I love to write, and I love to highlight and do all that kind of stuff. And so I'm like, tentative with my note taking, and I'm tentative with my, like, the actual hands on approach to studying the word because, like, first of all, I really don't like writing on books. I'm like, a a true that doesn't shock me. No, I'm a true book person that, like, Don't bend the spine, don't do this. Like, if you have a nice quality book people, yes, I'm clapping because it's like, irks me, don't ruin your books. But the Bible is a weird one that, like, I want to preserve it, but I also want to highlight and take notes in it, so that's blessed. So I found something that is like the best of both worlds all of that long story to say, and yes, I'm apologizing to my wife. I didn't tell that I was making this purchase, but I was talking to her about the product before I pulled the trigger. It is called the spiral Bible, and this is not something that I like, can endorse just yet, but the spiral Bible is a spiral bound version of the Bible that has, it's, it's printed on like, thick paper, and it has, like, it's, it's a, like I said, a spiral bound Bible. So it lays flat. It has tons of space for writing and highlighting in notes, between the between the words and between the lines. Like you can actually, I don't know, guys, this is, this looks like the thing for me. For someone who likes this, is not a book. To me. This is a this is like a workbook, but it's the actual word of God in a lay flat workbook style. All that to say, I'm incredibly excited for this product to get in because I really, really, really want to dive into the word in this manner, and I don't feel like I'm ruining a book. You know what I mean? Like, if you're looking this up, don't look it up while you're driving. But it looks really cool, and it's more of a workbook. And I don't like I said, I don't feel guilty. I wouldn't writing all over

Josh Shaw 1:27:47
it. No, no, I'm, you know. And whatever you need helps, you know. And like Tony said, he's not endorsing us. He hasn't gotten it yet, but there

Tony Benda 1:27:56
are, we're gonna talk about it when I get it

Josh Shaw 1:27:59
there. But there's no, there's no shame in trying to explore and find that. You know, I mean, obviously don't you know if someone did this modern translation that doesn't make any sense. It's not been proven. They're taking things out of the work at

Tony Benda 1:28:11
the Gen Z version of the Bible. Please don't that's the actual word of God, because it ain't, yeah,

Josh Shaw 1:28:15
please don't. But like, use the Use what you have to be able to find like ways you can do Bible study. I also, I'm a very big proponent of whatever fits in the way that God has designed you fit it. Because for so many years, people are like, all right, brother, you want to get into the Word and really be devoted and see God change your life. Wake up at 4am read the word, take a take a cold shower, get yourself some breakfast and reread the word and I'm like, I can't get up at four. I I personally struggle with that, and I felt, can I condemned myself for that for a very, very long time, until I finally realized, God's not condemning me. So why am I condemning myself? Amen, brother. So I said, what times can I fit my Bible study? And I'll be honest, I fit it in at the end of the night, yeah, I take the time at the end of the night to spend in His presence. I for me in the morning, I get to spend time in I spend time in prayer. I while my coffee is being made, on my pour over. I, I know I love my pour over so good. I I just pray, and I invite the word into my heart, and then I just reflect on scriptures. And as I go into the night, I read the word and I pray, and then in the morning time, I continue to reflect on that. But that works for me. I do that. And then at my lunch time, I just read spiritual literature. You know, I get into that habit, and I would say I'm kind of skipping it, but like making that smart and making smart investments into your biblical walk, you know, reading biblical literature, whether it's like a book written by somebody that's that's trusted, that's studied, versus being on social media at the end of the night. I love my wife, but that woman can scroll for hours. You know, I want to spend time in study with the word or with another book. Yeah, same thing another like smart investment, prayer versus conversation with others. I'm not discounting conversation with others. But if you're having a conversations not producing fruit in the moment or giving the opportunity to produce that fruit, if it's just a for example, like, if it's conversations about gossip or the world or things of that nature, and you're feeling convicted not to spend time in that spend time in prayer. Another one is fasting versus partaking. Like, do you spend time just spending with the partaking in particular things of the world. Or do you do you feel convicted about something you want God to speak, spend that time and spiritually invest in fasting? You know, getting into the Word and making a smart investment is two, and is the two and one of the same thing, because all the Bible talks about these particular things so Tony, what else? What are the kind of practical things can we do?

Tony Benda 1:31:05
Well, I mean, we've kind of hit the most Christianese of the things. We

Josh Shaw 1:31:10
are Christianese, if you please, the I don't even know what that was. It's the Siamese cats from aristocrat. Is it really we are Siamese.

Tony Benda 1:31:23
I totally like missed that reference. That's hilarious.

Josh Shaw 1:31:28
I'm so dumb.

Tony Benda 1:31:30
Practical steps, kind of this goes with getting into the Word of God. But learn and memorize God's promises to you. And then when you learn the promises, learn how to stand on the promises. Oh, that's good. So as you discover what His promises are to you, you will undoubtedly find out his character. That's good,

Josh Shaw 1:31:56
that's good, that's true. It's the truth. Last one I would say, is find accountability. I that's part of making smart investments and having good conversation with others is having an accountability partner. 100% there is nothing wrong with catching up with friends. There's nothing wrong with having fun conversations. You don't have to spend every waking moment of your life in prayer. I think that can get very religious, which is why, like this is called for what it is. Monks, for example, they spend time in meditation and prayer, and they're like, I'm really centered, but I think it becomes to the point where it can become very religious rather than relational. Yes, so good conversation with others is very, very vital, but it's that accountability partner that helps right in good accountability partners, making sure to someone who is who is bearing fruit, not living in the world. You know, we understand wanting to go to your best friend. We've talked about that a little bit like wanting to go to your best friend, to talk about everything, but if that particular conversation is only leading you to the perspectives of the world, keeping right relationships with those who are partaking in the fruit of the gospel will direct you ultimately to the right direction. We can love people as much as we want, but there are certain people that I call when I need spiritual advice and I need that guidance, that wisdom. There are there. I have my people that I vent to. Don't get me wrong, I have them. I love it, and it does help, because we're called to not only just be relieved, we're called to grieve again, another episode, another time, but having that person, Moses had Aaron and her when he slipped up. So when we get weak, we need someone to lean on, very much so. And those are, I would say, those are our four practical steps. Get into the word by building that daily habit, learn and memorize God's promises to you, making those smart investments and finding accountability.

Tony Benda 1:33:56
Yep, accountability is huge. Yes. One last thing on accountability,

Josh Shaw 1:34:00
go oh yeah. Well, go for it. Go for it. This is

Tony Benda 1:34:04
less about biblical accountability and more about I did the whole 30 diet. Did you really? I did. I tried it for a whole 15 days. So the only good thing about the whole 30 for me, good thing was that I was able to lose the 15 pounds in those 15 days, which was crazy. I was at a weight where I was able to lose it and, like it actually stayed off for that short, very short period of time in my life. And I started it with, you know, a couple accountability people. There were two other people that were wanting to do this, the whole 30 diet, with me. Within the first five days, I lost both of them, wow. And I was like, What in the world, guys, come on. So here I am for the next 10 days, struggling through this whole 30 diet and hating my life because I can't have cheese and beans and other delicious foods that like I. Consume on a daily basis. And that was when I was working at UPS, which in the morning, I worked at UPS for about two and a half years. My gosh, it was, it was an interesting experience, and that's stories for another time. But I was having, like, hard boiled eggs in the morning with like nothing else. And I, I don't know, just the weird things for the diet. And I was I was struggling. I was a hungry boy, but that's where we need accountability to keep ourselves like in check and able to continue down a path that is very difficult to travel your on your own. Yes, so that's my last point about accountability. I love

Josh Shaw 1:35:38
that. That's so good, though that's so true. But Tony, I think we can go all night by talking about who God is. Yeah, steps everything. And let me just start well, let me end by saying that these, these things we've talked about tonight is, is barely scratches the surface of who God is. I will also say it barely scratches the surface about what the world believes about God. Oh, truly, please keep yourself locked in prayer and in the word, with accountability, with every with everything that we've mentioned tonight, because the attacks will come from the enemy, and we are trying to reinforce this all, not only just for you to receive God, guys, this is this. I was reflecting on this this week. This podcast is called dungeons and disciples. Yep, Jesus says to go forth and make disciples of all nations. And I, the Lord really had me stop and said, what is a disciple? We all want a disciple. It's a learner, it's a grower in the Word of God. Jesus spent three intentional years discipling 12 people, and we have the honor of those who listen to be able to help learn and teach people about the Word of God while we ourselves are being constantly discipled by others as well. The way that we can disciple others through this fruit is, if by is, if you share that you like, that you rate and that you share this with others. This will be a challenge. Every single week, send this to one person, yep, and have them listen and not only to send it to them, but to have conversation about what you've heard with them, because that is how we end up. Discipling, yeah, but today was amazing episode Tony, and it's kind of a teaser for some, for some, for something cool called, oh, is it? It is I, we both. I say I, because the Lord was did such a good work, absolutely. But we are excited to announce that this episode, Episode 15, is one of 16 episodes that are coming your way. We introduced about talking about the identity of God, but over the next 16 episodes, and there's gonna be sporadic episodes in there with some some guests that'll come on with some topics that I'm gonna keep a secret, but we're gonna be talking about the identities of of the character of the main character classes in the 5e manual, yeah, and y'all, some of the things that are locked in are gonna be incredible. I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited to talk about bards. It's gonna be so fun. But that's our next teaser for the next 15 or 16 episodes. Is just talking about these things and just what the Lord is going to do in those y'all tune in for a long time, because it's gonna be a great time. Yeah, Tony, why don't you promote our socials, promote our emails, mostly because I can't do it and I'll forget and I'll take several to do it, but I'll do it now. I'll do it next episode, scared and nervous,

Tony Benda 1:38:58
that's okay. Now I got it locked in, like Josh said, we are on social media at dungeons and disciples. That's dungeons a n, d disciples, on both Facebook and Instagram. Or you can send us an email at dungeons disciples@gmail.com the email does not have an and I'll repeat dungeons disciples@gmail.com check out our socials. Send us a message on whatever. Connect with us. We'd love to chat with you guys. There's some people that we're going to be talking to here in the future. Yes, and we're very excited to have some of those conversations. And we may air some of those conversations on here, depending. So we will see. I'm so excited. Anyway, I'm

Josh Shaw 1:39:40
excited for the future of vengeance and disciples. Oh

Tony Benda 1:39:43
my gosh, yes. And this is only season one. This is only season one. Who's to say that? What season two or three? If we ever make it, there will will end up being but I'm so I would love if the Lord gave us 100 episodes. Oh my gosh, he will be. Faithful. Oh, regardless of he will, he will, I mean, and he that began a good work, will seed it through to completion. Well, people

Josh Shaw 1:40:07
we won't always, typically want to, tend to say, like, you know, let's look at all the analytics and people that are listening. But at the end of the day, if

Tony Benda 1:40:15
we have three listeners, which I think we do not, including my mom, I think it'll be all right, yeah, if we

Josh Shaw 1:40:20
have two people that are not which I know of, of two people for sure, if two people are impacted by the gospel, and they can go out and make an impact in the D and D community or the TTRPG community, the Lord has done a work, and he has been faithful. Yep, I will shout

Tony Benda 1:40:34
out one person who constantly listens to our episodes that surprise me, not in a bad way, but just someone who is not a DD player and or in the world of TP, trpgs, and that would be my mother in law, Patty. So hi. Really hope you're listening, and thank you for listening so far. Yeah, we love having people learn and listen and all the things that's really cool. Love you.

Josh Shaw 1:40:58
Well, Tony, is it me bringing us out or you want price out today? Go for it. All right. I love it. You know I do spirit of living God, Father, friend Jesus. Thank you for this time. Thank you for everything you've done. Thank you for how you move, how you speak and who you are. Father, I know that the world says so much about you, but God, it's so incredible that even as people, people you know, the words just not speak highly of you, you still look at them with a smile on their on your face and let them know that they're loved. In their own way. God, I pray all those that have rejected you, God would come to the knowledge of you and begin to worship and praise you, father. I pray that this content alone would would span across the world we've seen it, and that people would begin to share. People would begin to become bold in the gospel and say, Listen to a friend. Say, listen, I know you may not be a part of this God thing, but I know you love D and D, and there's something you need to you need to hear God. I pray that You would give Tony and I the perseverance and endurance that if hard conversations come and when we would lose ideas for podcast, for content ideas, Lord God, that you would fill us with a fresh understanding of you, of what you want to be talked about. This time is so valuable. It is so fun, and I enjoy every moment of it. God, it is so much more than just giving content or creating content and for numbers. God, the time that I get to spend with my brother is valuable, uplifting and encouraging. May we continue to do your work, God, and may your will abound in this podcast and in our lives and in the lives of our listeners, it is in your name we pray and we seek you.

Tony Benda 1:43:09
Amen. Amen. Thanks for listening.