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June 24, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
55:22
JESUS. GUNS. AND BABIES. w/ Dr. Kandiss Taylor ft. Pastor Tom Seaman
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Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.
We have the Holy Spirit much more powerful than these demons and these evil spirits that are crossing America.
But we just got to call the people of God to wake up and go back to war.
Hey, everybody, welcome to Jesus, Guns, and Babies.
I'm your host, Dr.
Candice Taylor, and I have a wonderful show for you tonight.
I have a pastor, and I'm so excited.
I've met him on the phone several times, and I'm going to be able to talk to him and go into some really good topics.
Y'all are going to be just so excited too, and you're going to learn things.
I want to learn things, and so it's going to be a great night.
We're going to start with one of the verses that he loves, because he actually is a worship pastor, and As well as a pastor.
And it is John 4, 24.
God is a spirit.
And they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
So we'll let him talk about that more.
But I want to welcome to our show tonight, Pastor Tom Seaman.
Thank you, Ms.
Candice.
Great to be here.
Excited.
I'm not only a pastor, but I'm also a professor of music and worship at Simpson University.
So that's my other hat that I wear.
You surely are.
And you wear a lot of different hats and have your own church as well.
And you're a husband and you're a daddy and you're all kind of things.
And so why don't we start with the scripture?
And I know you do a whole teaching on this, but why don't you just give us a nugget?
Okay.
The nugget is...
The church has taught people how to read the Bible and how to study it.
They've taught people how to pray.
They've taught people how to evangelize.
They've taught people how to do small groups.
But very, very few churches have actually taught people how to worship.
And yet here it is, one of the most important things of life, our reason for existence, our purpose.
So this is one of the key verses that we use when we teach on worship, is it comes from Jesus, who is the greatest teacher of all.
And so it's like Jesus, it's short and it's compact, but it's packed full of awesome truths that we break out in our classes and in a book that I wrote.
I agree, because worship is warfare, and you're supposed to come before Him with Thanksgiving, and it's so many things, and worship is my most favorite thing to do.
I pray all day, every day, but worship is my most favorite thing to do, and I want to learn.
I love good teaching.
In fact, I get frustrated when pastors are a little bit narcissistic, and they want to just do what they want to do and not what the Lord tells them to do, and it's obvious.
So, worship is, that's it for me.
It seems like revival always comes through worship, is what it seems like.
They're very connected together.
All revivals bring about new songs and new forms of worship.
You can trace that back through music history.
And you know, because you teach this, right?
I do.
I teach numerous classes on this.
It's one of my favorite classes to teach.
I had to write these classes and design them because very few colleges and universities, even seminaries, don't really have a good course on worship.
And so it's one of the lost jewels in the church.
It's what some of the theologians have called it.
It's just missing.
And we need to teach people about it because it's so important.
Well, tell us, Pastor Tom, what made you get into ministry?
And I know that's probably a huge question, but I know you're a conservative, you're a patriot.
And if you can just touch on your background and growing up and kind of what made you get involved or who made you who you are.
Okay, well, it starts with my family.
My mother was not only a musician, but she was the daughter of a Baptist preacher.
And my father was the superintendent of a Christian high school out in South Dakota.
So I grew up in the church.
I was in church from the day I was born.
Summer camp, vacation Bible school, Sunday school, attended Christian schools.
I've been around the Christian kingdom and the church all my life.
I was able to attend this Christian high school where we had Bible classes every day, every week for four years.
We had chapels every day.
I was so blessed to grow up around the Word of God and great teaching.
I started as a music minister.
I was traveling in high school as part of a music group.
We traveled to seven states doing We're worship and concerts and churches I went to college decided to become a music teacher and my second year there the theology department came up and asked me to if I would be willing to start preaching in a small country church they already figured out way then that I like to talk or whatever so I started pastoring Abbeville Baptist Church when I was 19 years old in college in Kansas So way back then.
And of course, I graduated with a degree in music education, been a music teacher, music professor for over 25, 30 years.
And when you're a music guy, churches are always calling you, asking for help.
So we have served in over 15 different denominations, churches.
Leading worship, directing choirs, doing that sort of thing.
And after a while, one of the bishops came to me and said, hey, you've been a music minister.
How about you throw your resume in?
This church needs a lead pastor, a senior pastor.
I said, sure.
So we've been lead pastoring now for the last 15 years.
And tell us, Pastor Tom, what denomination you're with.
Because that was just, it was awesome because I just watched the movie.
So it was great.
So will you tell them?
Yeah, we're with the Vineyard Fellowship, which the Vineyard is one of the newest denominations in America.
It was started back in 1982 out in Anaheim, California, as part of the Jesus Revolution.
It came right out of that.
Three million young people, hippies, were saved and came to Jesus.
And they were so excited.
And there was a gentleman there named John Wimber.
Who became the apostle of that and started that church.
And now there are 1,500 vineyard churches worldwide and 450 in the United States of America.
So it's an exciting group to be a part of, just part of that revival movement.
Wow.
So how has the movie affected your church or the domination and the conversations y'all have had?
Well, we had a lot of new people in our church who weren't familiar with the vineyard.
So we all went to go see the movie together and they loved it.
They're like, oh yeah, this all makes sense now.
Yeah, we got to meet some of the names and, you know, I can see this is exactly where the vineyard came out of.
So it was a really great encouragement.
So what, as far as, so I understand, you know, Christianity and it's kind of just happened for you.
You know, I think about people that I know personally who feel called to the ministry and they have had such a hard time finding a church to pastor or someone recognizing that gift in them.
And so, and I feel like, you know, the enemy tries to steal it any way he can.
So that's probably, you know, a little bit what's happened with them.
But for you, it just sounds like it was just...
Really, you were just kind of pushed into it.
Not that it's been easy, because ministry is probably the most difficult job on the planet, but at least it has been more easily available for you to have access to.
Sometimes I think access is denied.
God opened up doors for me all along.
It was a God thing.
Actually, when I was leaving high school and going to college, I had to make this big decision.
I had to decide whether I was going to go be a pastor or music teacher.
So I was actually thinking about that.
I was kind of on the fence, you know.
After thinking about it, I just kind of felt for that time, I felt I wanted to go be a music teacher.
Okay, pastors get to speak to them like once a week, maybe twice.
If you're a music teacher, you get to talk to them five days a week, and they're trapped in there, and you got them.
So even when I was a music teacher, I was preaching, I was teaching, I was discipling, and I got to teach in Christian schools all my life, so I didn't have to hold back.
We could preach and teach every day in the music department.
So that was easy.
I mean, yeah, that was easier.
And then you having these churches open their door.
So tell me about because you're very much conservative politically and you're very concerned about what's going on in our world.
And you're very I feel like you talk about that with your congregation.
But can you talk about how how How the church marries that and the authority that they have in government that might be missing, because I feel like it's missing.
And when I talk to you, you're like a breath of fresh air in that way.
You know what the word says.
And so can you speak to the politics for a minute?
Sure.
Well, the Bible talks a lot about authority and government and how it's supposed to be in the law of God and the kingdom of God.
So, I mean, it's integrated into the scripture.
You have to do a lot of damage to the Bible to separate that.
There was a movement a few years back.
Secularism came in and tried to put this line up saying, okay, this is sacred.
This is the church.
This is secular.
This is politics.
They shouldn't mix.
That's not biblical, okay?
Jesus said, we're the salt of the earth.
We're the light of the world.
If you stop shining your light and stop being salty, you're no good.
So it all fits together.
And in my theological studies, I discovered there is no such thing as secular.
To God, everything is sacred.
He created it all.
So some people are called specifically to the ministry of pastoring.
That's great.
Some people are called to teach or even go into government and be politicians.
If God calls you to that, it's a sacred calling.
So politics is sacred for everybody, and I really believe God wants us all to be involved in it, especially because so many of the issues we're dealing with now, they're spiritual issues.
I mean, dealing with the life of children and abortion, how can you say that that's a secular issue and the church shouldn't deal with that?
You know, or even defense of your family or education or homosexuality in the community.
These are all spiritual issues that the Bible has a lot, a lot to say about them.
And so one of our goals is we want to be relevant as a pastor.
We want to teach about things and share the Bible with people so it relates with where they're at and what's happening.
And so it's all combined together.
And transgenderism that they try to force on our children.
Yes.
I love that.
What you said about everything is sacred.
Because I think that, you know, they want to say politics is secular.
Jesus was crucified because of politics.
And it's definitely not secular.
Our whole country is founded on Jesus.
It's founded on Christianity.
That's why we have a country.
And that's what common law is.
Our whole system is founded on common law.
Common law comes from the Bible.
And it's rooted in the Constitution.
And it's what our judicial system is framed after.
It wasn't an idea that man thought of.
It was an idea that God thought of.
He's the one that breathed into that.
And he's the one that wrote the Bible and inspired men to write it and gave them the words that never contradict themselves.
And nothing that vast could be created and written by man.
It was inspired by God and he created it.
And I believe the Constitution was inspired by God as well.
And that's why we're the best nation that's ever been.
But right now we have a shadow government that's not really who we've elected and it's a whole mess.
And and that's why we're where we are now and our economy is failing and everything's fallen.
And so we need pastors who know the word to stand up and speak the truth.
And so what you're saying is it's honestly rare.
There's not I mean, I have pastors on here to talk about it all the time, but finding you guys.
It's almost impossible.
It is crazy how many pastors do not want to get involved.
I'm followed by televangelists, and I can name their names, but I won't call them out.
Y'all can go on my page and see who's got the blue checkmark.
But I'm followed by them, and I think it's just because they know that I talk about Jesus so much, and I'm holding their feet to the fire, and they're gauging the comments, and they're gauging how far can we go.
I mean, what do you think, Tom?
What do you see?
You follow these people.
You know what they're saying.
Yeah, yeah.
Again, we've been in the church all our lives, so I've seen this for years, you know, dozens of years.
And again, it's that whole bad philosophy that came out of the Supreme Court, 1947, Emerson case, where they said, tried to quote Jefferson, it came up with this separation of church and state, this high wall separating.
And a lot of Christians fell into that in the 50s and 60s.
I'm actually...
Teaching about that this Wednesday in our Bible study again, because this month, you know, there's just so much spiritual warfare going on.
I'm just trying to help all our people to, like, have the answers and know how to communicate and know how to have these discussions.
But the fact they're saying, you know, church isn't supposed to be involved with the government.
But the fact is, Or things like, you know, you can't legislate morality.
These things are all false.
Every law legislates morality.
Every law tells people what's right and what's wrong.
Every law is based on religion.
You can't take religion out of government.
All you can do is change the religion.
You can decide that our laws are going to be based on Christianity, our laws are going to be based on Islam, our laws are going to be based on atheism or whatever, but Every law is religious.
Every law is based on some kind of religion.
Absolutely.
And why do you think that spiritual warfare has increased?
Because I feel it.
I know everybody that I'm around and talk to, they feel it.
What do you think has caused this, and what do we do to combat it?
Wow, you just opened up a whole exciting one here.
I just completed a book by Jonathan Cahn called The Return of the Gods.
Really?
I've been following Jonathan Conner.
You've got to get this one.
I've got five of his books.
This is the best one yet.
He explains this whole thing, what happened.
You see, Jesus said in Matthew that if you cast the demon out, he'll go around the arid places looking for a place to land.
If he can't find anything, he'll come back to that house and find it empty and find it swept out.
And he'll come back into that house and bring seven demons even more evil than himself.
Jonathan breaks this all down and says, this is what's happened to America.
Our leaders cast God out of the house.
We were started as a Christian house with God, and God we trust, and whole heritage there.
We could talk about that for two hours and not cover it all.
But short story...
Our leaders, through the prayer out of schools, through the Bible out of schools, through the Ten Commandments out, said you can't post that.
Through Ten Commandments out of everything, telling all the churches, you've got to stay out of this.
So they kicked out of the house, they left it empty.
And what came in is the ancient gods.
The gods that caused the downfall of Israel, God's other covenant people, Baal, I want to give him credit because he's the one that God gave this vision to and this insight.
But that's what's happened to America.
These false gods have come in and they are trying to destroy Christianity and destroy the people because that's what they are.
It's the God of destruction.
So what do we do, Tom?
How do we combat this?
How does a normal person watching this combat it?
Because I believe that.
I believe that as we've lifted our hand up and we've taken God out of schools and children don't know and immorality is pervasive and it's just permeating society and we're just more and more in sin.
It's like Sodom and Gomorrah.
And it feels like before the flood, right?
It just feels crazy.
But we know that.
We know we've opened the door and they have legal right.
We know their spiritual law and we know they have legal right to be here and all the things.
But what do we do as a Christian who believes in it, who knows the authority we have in Jesus, what do we do to combat it?
You have to put on your spiritual armor.
Ephesians chapter 6.
Okay, the devil is roaming around like a roaring lion seeking to devour.
Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand.
Almost everything that we're up against is based on lies.
Because our enemy is the father of lies.
He does not speak the truth.
Everything he does is a lie.
And so when you put on the armor of God, do you remember what the first piece is?
Hell in a truth.
Nope.
Bells of truth.
Helmet of salvation.
Yeah.
Belt of truth is the first thing.
And when I teach on this, people go, why do you put on the belt of truth?
Why is that first?
Because that's how the enemy wins.
At least I got truth right.
I got truth right.
That's good.
Yeah, you got the truth right.
You did good.
So that's what we got to put on.
We got to speak the truth because the truth defeats lies.
And so we have to speak it.
That's another thing.
People have to speak out.
That's the power of speech.
The power of life and death is in the tongue.
And the problem with a lot of Christians is they're too quiet.
They're not speaking.
They're afraid.
They're timid.
They don't want to hurt people's feelings.
That's what happened in Germany.
The Lutheran Church decided to be quiet and not speak out against Hitler.
And they were quiet so long until it was too late.
And Nazism destroyed the whole nation.
So the Christians have to wake up.
Put on their spiritual armor.
They got to start speaking the truth because God's given us the authority to defeat the evil one.
Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.
We have the Holy Spirit much more powerful than these demons and these evil spirits that are crossing America.
But we just got to call the people of God to wake up and go back to war.
And you know what, Pastor Tom, what we see, I just got back from the Republican Convention this weekend, and even doing my district convention, because I'm District 1 chair in over 15 counties in Georgia, but what we see is we have people mad.
They're very angry because they felt the elections are stolen, and they feel like their elected or selected officials are not listening to them, and they want to censure them.
That's what you can do with resolutions through the Georgia Republican Party.
Right.
And they want to censure them and they want to say, no, you're not going to speak in our meetings.
We're not giving you a platform because the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, too, the reason why we have a party system is so that we can find people to run for our seats.
We can help fundraise and help them campaign.
We can hold them accountable and we can replace them when we need to.
But we have Republicans who participate in the Republican Party who've been here forever and they don't want to offend the politician.
And they're like, well, we can't offend them.
We can't make them mad.
We can't say things.
You know, you don't do that.
And I'm like, where did that come from?
Like, where did that mentality come from?
This is not patty cake.
This is not tea hour.
This is war.
We're at war right now for the soul of our nation.
Everything is falling apart and you're worried about offending a politician.
You can love them as a brother and sister in Christ, but if they are acting on behalf of themselves and not on behalf of the people where they swore to God to uphold the Constitution and we don't hold them accountable, that's on us.
Yep.
That's right.
And we have a spirit of fear, and that's not right.
Scripture clearly says, God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.
So we've got to challenge people.
Don't be afraid.
I mean, we've been using Joshua 1-9 a lot.
Be strong.
Be courageous.
Do not be afraid, for the Lord your God is with you.
You've got to go out and speak.
And we do need to do some training, because sometimes people don't know how to speak.
And that's one of the things I was forced to learn as a teacher is how to talk to people, how to teach people, how to get them to understand without offending them.
And there are certain ways of doing that that are better than others.
So it'd be good to pass that on to others as well.
Yeah, because people want to do something and they don't know what to do.
They're mad.
They're angry.
They're like, what do I do?
But what do I do?
And I'm like, start going to the school board meetings.
Start going to the county commissioner meetings.
Start going to the board of election meetings.
Watch the people in the room.
Watch the elected officials.
Write down who they're connected to.
Write down what they're voting on.
Hold their feet to the fire.
Expose it in the newspaper.
Expose it on social media.
We have to get involved locally.
We're a bottom-up government.
Our foundation is our local government, and then we move to the state and the federal.
We want to start the federal, and the news media covers the federal.
That's all they care about.
That's supposed to be this big.
It became this huge umbrella, but it's supposed to be this big, Tom.
I know it became a monster.
Because nobody knows the 10th Amendment.
I go around and ask people this.
You know the 10th Amendment?
Hardly anybody can tell me what it is.
One out of 100.
And that's the amendment that all of our politicians are breaking.
They're not keeping their oath of office to defend the Constitution.
They either don't know the 10th Amendment or they don't care about it.
And they're not following it.
They don't care.
They don't keep the First Amendment either.
They don't keep the Second Amendment.
They don't care.
They care only about their power.
They don't think it's our power.
It's our power.
But they think it's theirs.
And they own the position.
And it's their power.
And how dare you say something about my seat, not your seat.
The seat belongs to the people.
And then they care about their money and their bank account.
And they don't care about anything else.
That's all they care about.
I thought it was about the money.
And it is about the money 10%.
But 90% is about the power.
It's about power.
I love it.
It's like a demonic spirit that feeds on that power.
They change.
They're different persons.
They're possessed.
They totally change who they are.
They can be the greatest Christian.
You think they're a wonderful person.
They get elected and then it's just like a total different person.
It's crazy.
I think part of that is the flesh of human nature.
Sometimes we blame the devil for things.
That is us.
We're the ones that want to gossip.
He doesn't have to make us gossip.
That comes from the flesh.
And the people's desire for power and money, that comes from the flesh too.
So we've got those three enemies.
We've got the world, the flesh, and the devil.
And sometimes people don't understand those either.
They don't know the three enemies we fight and that you fight them each differently.
Yeah.
And then you open up yourself to spiritual law and the enemy being allowed to attack you as a Christian because you've opened yourself up to all the sin and all the other stuff.
And then you're a victim then.
And it's like, then you want to play the victim.
And it's just this cycle that never ends unless you have a miraculous deliverance from your mindset and from the enemy, from the Lord.
You know, you just don't ever get over it.
It's scary where we are.
Honestly, it's really scary.
I am encouraged, though.
And so even though I present the scary stuff every week, we try to keep our church up on this.
We try to be relevant.
I also try to pass on encouragement every week as well.
Like this week, just yesterday, the...
Oklahoma Sooners women's softball team won the national championship third time in a row.
Don't know if you caught this, but they were interviewing the girls.
The captain of the team came on.
They said, so how do you feel about this?
You know, how are you guys doing?
And she went like this.
You know what this means?
This means keep your eyes on Jesus.
Everything we do on this team is for Jesus.
And almost everybody on that team is a Christian.
They've had baptisms and baptized team members.
After every single game, they meet out in the field.
And every single girl on that team prays.
And they invite kids from other teams to come and join them.
I mean, that's encouragement.
Here's these young ladies, and they are doing the right thing.
And they are not afraid.
And, you know, the kingdom of God is still moving.
So I'm encouraged by that.
Absolutely.
Revival's coming to America.
We've seen spurts of it popping up, but I believe it's going to be vast, and we're going to see the wheat and the chaff.
You're going to see the separation.
We're already seeing that.
It's going to be more evident, but we're going to have great revival.
And I believe people that have taken the vaccine, that wasn't really the vaccine, but the shot and all that, that they're going to see healings, miracle healings, and cancer's up 900%.
I read a report today, 900% cancer is up.
And I believe people are going to be healed and they're going to, you know, would have died had they not been miraculously healed.
And I believe God for that.
And I think it's going to be the greatest time to be alive.
And I'm humbled that God allowed me to be alive during this time.
But I'm not going to sit around and allow things to happen and not take authority and not go and work.
Which is what a lot of Christians are doing.
They have the mentality, well, it's the end times and God's in control.
And so, you know, it's going to be whatever it is.
Like, why are you doing all this and putting yourself out there?
Why?
I mean, why?
Because God told me to?
Because God wants you to go and take authority and advance his kingdom?
Like, you're not supposed to sit around and twiddle your thumbs.
You just brought up a really, really key point.
Here, Candace, and that's Psalm 115, verse 16.
A lot of people don't know this verse.
The highest heavens belong to the Lord God Jehovah, but the earth He has given to man.
God gave us the earth.
He delegated that to us.
And a lot of these people say, well, God's going to do what he's going to do.
And they don't understand that every time God wants to do something, he always works through a person, a human, a man or a woman.
Always.
Always.
And somehow we lost that teaching in the church.
And we've got to teach people, yeah, God wants to do something, but he wants to do it through you.
Okay?
Romans 16.20 says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan.
Under your feet.
Under your feet.
God's going to cross a saint, but he's going to use us to do it.
And people just don't know those verses.
They don't know this principle.
They don't know their Bibles well enough.
And that's part of the problem.
That's so powerful.
So what you're saying, and I want to tell you, I grew up Baptist, and so I've always heard God was in control.
I had a best friend that her son was killed in a car wreck, and for some reason it shook me so deeply.
I was almost atheist in my thoughts for several weeks until I had somebody come.
That's when I got baptized with the Holy Spirit and told me, John 10, 10, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.
And Jesus comes to bring life more abundantly.
And for some reason, you know how when you hear scripture, sometimes it pierces you where you need it.
And it was like the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.
So steal, kill, destroy.
God does not allow you to die, does not kill you.
He's not schizophrenic.
He doesn't have the same persona as Satan.
And so when that pierced my heart, I was like, of course, God's real.
He's not in control.
I know everybody wants to say he's in control.
He is not.
There's spiritual law in place.
And is he, you know, ultimately sovereign?
Yes.
But he gave us authority over the earth and people totally are lackadaisical and just, you know, he's in control.
It's easy to say that it's a cop-out.
It's a partial truth.
It is true.
God is in control.
But it's not the whole picture.
And a lot of people, you need the whole picture.
You see, in order to properly interpret scripture, it's context.
And they miss Genesis 1.26, where God told Adam and Eve...
Okay?
I give you dominion over the fish of the sea, over the cattle of the earth.
I give you dominion over all the earth.
The earth is yours.
You're in charge of it.
And people complain and say, God, the earth's a mess.
Why don't you do something?
And God says, look, I gave it to you.
You do something.
I'm here.
I sent my Holy Spirit to give you the power to help you.
I sent my son down to defeat Satan.
He's defeated.
You've got the power now, but you've got to get off your butt and get out and do something and do your part.
It's a partnership.
God and sons working together, you know, for...
6,000 years.
Go back to the psalm that you talked about, the heavenlies and the earth, and restate that if you don't mind.
Psalm 115, verse 16.
The heavens, the universe belongs to the Lord God Jehovah, but the earth he has given to man.
He's delegated to us.
He's not going to take it back.
He says, this is your home, and you and I are working together.
My kingdom is supposed to come, but it's going to come through you.
And that's why he sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help us, save us from sin, to give us the authority to get that back that the devil stole in the garden when he stole the earth.
When Jesus came, he called him the prince of this earth three times.
The prince of this world is the devil.
He's the ruler because he stole it from us.
But we are supposed to take it back.
Jesus took it back and gave it to us.
I also like 1 John 3.8 where it says, this is the reason Jesus came into the world is to destroy the works of the devil.
He came to destroy the works of the devil.
We are his disciples.
We're supposed to follow him and partner with him in destroying the works of the devil.
What's he doing?
He's lying.
He's cheating.
He's stealing.
He's ruining kids with transgender.
He's ruining people's lives with homosexuality, drugs, everything, divorce.
He's behind all of that.
He's the destroyer.
And we got to partner with Jesus and get off our butts and get back to work.
So you're telling me that I need to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
And when he tells me to do something, I need to do it because maybe, just maybe, he's going to operate through me, through me.
And people said, why are you running for governor?
Because the Lord told me to.
He gave me a dream.
I dreamed I was doing it.
He said, yes, you're to do it.
And why, though?
I mean, you've not ever been in politics before.
Why?
Because the Lord told me to.
And there's things He wanted to deposit in His people through me speaking all over the state and me running for governor that wouldn't have gotten released had I not been obedient.
I'm filled with the Holy Spirit.
I love Him.
I won't be bought.
I was offered millions of dollars.
I wouldn't take it.
So...
There's a reason why when He tells you to do something, you do it.
Maybe it's as simple as you go and encourage somebody and say, the Lord wants you to know He loves you.
He said that for me before, told me to go tell somebody that, and they went into tears and they were suicidal and wanted to kill themselves until I said those words.
It wasn't me.
It was Holy Spirit.
Right.
That's the key, the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, it's better for you that I go away.
Disciples like panic.
What?
How can that be?
I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit.
I have things I can't even teach you tonight.
We don't have enough time.
But when the Holy Spirit comes, He's going to teach you everything.
He's going to lead you into all truth.
And so that's the key.
The Holy Spirit knows where to go and what to do.
He's leading us, but we have to listen to His voice and follow, like you just said.
I'm going to tell you what, and I knew this already, but it exploded in my heart when you said it a while ago, and I think there's people watching this that's going to do the same thing for them, is that, you know, we pray for God to move and God to move and God to move, and we think, okay, God moved there.
But we have to recognize He always uses a person.
And so we have some responsibility in that, and we have responsibility in that we hear His voice, and when God sends someone to us, we don't get offended and reject it.
Yep.
And the reason we're in this mess is because the Holy Spirit and God was depending on people to stick up and be salt and light in the world, and they didn't.
They sat home in their churches and sat in their comfortable pews in their churches and didn't do anything.
That's why we're in this mess.
Well, God is like exploding this inside of me right now.
Just thinking about all the things that maybe I'm not recognizing that he's doing for me, which is, you know, when I get a check in the mail and he used someone else to do it or like found an error in something and then it's sent to you or anything, you know, anything that he does.
He does things all the time, but you're right.
It comes through people and their obedience and them listening.
It doesn't just happen by happenstance.
I don't believe in coincidences.
Nope.
No, there's no luck.
The word luck's not in the Bible.
It's the Holy Spirit leading.
He leads to close doors and open doors.
What else do you teach when you're teaching about this?
What else do you say to people to help them understand this more clearly?
Oh, wow.
That's a big one.
I like to teach people...
The art of teaching, because there's so much teaching we need to do.
There's so much ignorance out there people do not understand.
It's called the Socratic method, after the famous Greek teacher Socrates.
He learned to, rather than preach at people, which causes people to get angry and causes division, he learned to teach by asking questions.
And I was reading the Bible.
I noticed there's another really great teacher who used the same method.
His name was Jesus.
He was always asking questions of his disciples.
Like, hey, who do people say that I am?
Oh man, some people think you're John the Baptist.
Some people think you're Isaiah.
Well, who do you think that I am?
And Peter goes, oh yeah, you're the Messiah.
You're the Christ.
So now that I'm looking for that, I see it all throughout the scriptures.
Jesus is asking questions and teaching through questions.
And I have found this after practicing.
I was a little slow learner, but I finally got it after about 20 years.
Ask questions, make people think, and then follow up with another question and another question.
And that is the most effective way to teach people and help them understand what they need to learn.
So that's my best advice for people.
You gotta know what the truth is.
You gotta know where you're going.
So one of the rules as a teacher, you never ask a question you don't know the answer to.
So I always know where I'm going, but this is a good way.
And so even when I'm writing letters to the editor and I'm talking to the county commissioners here about getting rid of voting machines in Bryan County, I'm asking them questions and I'm making them think.
And then I come up with a question that leads them right to the correct answer.
So, I'm using this myself.
Well, even in counseling, you have a PhD in counseling, and that's what we're taught to do.
You reframe things, and sometimes you say it back.
But even if I make a statement, and it's in lack of question in a statement, you're making people think deeper.
And you make them have to apply things and kind of process it.
Because if not, it's regurgitation.
It doesn't get to their heart.
Yeah, engagement is the key thing as a teacher.
If your students aren't engaging with you, you've lost them.
Same thing as a pastor teaching a sermon or preaching.
If you don't engage your church people, you're losing them.
And they're not getting any.
They're walking out of there with just a sore bottom for sitting for an hour.
You've got to engage their hearts and their minds and their spirits.
So, Pastor Tom, let's talk about marriage for a few minutes.
I've been divorced, and so God's blessed me.
I have a wonderful marriage, and I have a wonderful relationship with my first husband, who is the father of two of my children.
But I want you to talk about, because marriage is something I'm so passionate about, looking back on my first marriage.
And think, as a counselor, I should have known.
We should have been in counseling.
There's things we should have done.
And our divorce was financial.
It wasn't, you know, infidelity, praise the Lord.
But it was financial, very stressful during 08 and the housing market falling and all of the things that happened there.
He lost his job and he was depressed and just so many things.
And I was selfish, never had been laid on a payment.
And I was so angry and blaming him for being the man and not being able to do and Both of us failed.
Probably me more than him, honestly.
Looking back, I feel more at fault.
And so I wish, you know, if you could go back in time, change things.
And so I try to show people when they come to me for counseling, like, Don't give up.
God can heal anything.
And I'm so thankful for my marriage now.
I have a wonderful marriage.
Wouldn't take anything for it.
Hindsight is 20-20.
But when we're in the situation with someone and we can help them save what their covenant was established upon you, try.
And so I want you just to, for a few minutes, if you will, speak about marriage and maybe give some wisdom and some nuggets because I promise there's people watching this right now who are struggling with depression, but there are people that are struggling in their marriage, always.
All right.
Well, a little context here.
I'm married to my wife, Jane.
We just are going to celebrate 42 years here in another week or so.
And our story is we were very opposites, culturally opposites.
I was a cowboy from South Dakota.
She was a city girl from Atlanta, Georgia.
We met in a small Christian college in Kansas.
It was not love at first sight.
We were so different.
We repelled each other.
It was a God thing.
He had to speak to Jane and it took me a long time to stop being an independent cowboy and realize that I needed to Asked Jane to marry me.
And so we have to learn quite a few things.
Of course, I grew up in the church, heard a lot of sermons on marriage, read a lot of good books on it from James Dobson and various marriage counselors.
And those are all, I highly recommend those, the five love languages.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah, yeah.
All of those about the difference between men and women are really important.
As a counselor, you know that.
One of the things that I learned, though, I think that's been the most helpful is going back to the book of Genesis, to the beginning where God set it all up.
And of course, Jesus also repeated this in Matthew.
I remember I was at Lockhaven University and they were having a homosexual come in to speak.
And one of the pastors in the town actually got up and said, you know, the Bible doesn't really say anything against homosexuals.
I was like, excuse me.
Matthew 19, Jesus said, From the beginning, God created them male and female and said, you know, what God has joined together, let no man separate.
It's quite clear there that this is God's plan for marriage.
But one of the things I had to learn, because I grew up in a very conservative, a lot of Baptist churches as well, is that there's some misunderstandings about the role of men and women and how they fit together.
One of the neat things I learned from Genesis chapter 1 is that God said it's not good for men to be alone.
Men or women.
He created us to work together in a partnership.
And he said, I'm going to make a helpmeet fit for him.
This is the same word in the Hebrew as the Greek parakly.
It's the same word as the Holy Spirit.
I'm going to give him a Holy Spirit to help him.
Her name's going to be Eve.
And so many times people don't understand that, how we work together.
Coming as equals there.
The other really key point that I discovered when I was studying about women in ministry, I had some questions about that in my church, so I bought seven different books on it and studied it in depth and found out that a lot of the scriptures that people quote about men ruling over their wives and everything were taken out of context.
You go back to the Greek and there's a lot of meanings there that were lost in the English.
And they meant well, but they didn't get it right.
And so that's one of the things that I have also been teaching is that equalness between men and women.
And that the curse of sin, this was really a kicker.
You go to Genesis chapter 3.
The curse of sin will be that the wife...
Okay?
Will be submissive to her husband.
Her husband will rule over her.
The ruling of husbands over the wife is a result of the curse of sin.
It's like, does that mean God wants that to continue?
Are we supposed to continue to promote the curse of sin?
And you go to the New Testament, you say Jesus became the curse for us.
Jesus lifted the curse.
In the New Testament, Jesus came to reverse that.
And so, through Christianity, one of the wonderful things is that Christians have set women free more than any other religion in the world.
Jesus came to set women free from that curse and to restore that relationship between men and women back to the way it was supposed to be in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were both to have dominion over the world.
They were both to rule the planet together.
And I think that's just a nugget right there that has been powerful in our lives and our ministry.
Yeah, and there's something you just said that really hit me.
Because as a counselor, I always know that women fight with the spirit of control.
And as a woman, I would always fight with that control, especially in my first marriage.
And so it is something I totally resist.
And I choose, even with my children, to give them a choice and to let them make mistakes and not be a helicopter mom.
And I've always...
Try to do that because I know inside of me, I want to control.
I want things to be perfect and I want to control.
And so when you said this about Holy Spirit, because a paraclete will come alongside of you and he compared it.
How I did not know that it was that Holy Spirit was compared to to women coming alongside a man and being the helpmate.
But what God the Holy Spirit just told me when you were speaking is and that is why women should not control.
Holy Spirit doesn't control.
And he just spoke that to me as you were talking.
And that's so powerful for us to understand and get that.
If we are mirrored after the Holy Spirit with our mate as our husband, Holy Spirit doesn't control.
We shouldn't be controlling.
No, that's right.
In fact, Paul says in Ephesians, and here's the verse that's skipped over a lot.
He says, let us be in submission to one another.
Husbands submit to the wives and wives submit to one another.
Both of them are included in that passage.
That's not preached very often.
But you see, the marriage is a picture of God.
We are creating the image of God.
God is a trinity.
How do three persons work together in unity without fighting?
Because, number one, they have perfect love.
That's the key.
Number two, they all submit to one another.
Okay?
The Father submits to the Son, the Son to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit to the Son and to the Father.
They have perfect love, and they are all submissive to one another.
And that's why they're not fighting for control.
And that's the picture, and that's what God wants us to have for a marriage, is two people who love each other and submit to one another with kindness, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, love.
Peace, gentleness, kindness, patience.
Man, you got all that stuff.
You're not going to have any problems in your marriage.
It's always when we don't have those, that's when the problems start.
Well, and you know, whenever I married the second time, I remember my husband saying to me, I'm like, you just love me so much.
It makes me want to love you.
And he said, well, I'm called to love you like Christ loves the church.
And he gave himself up for the church.
And so I'll do anything for you.
I love you.
I adore you.
And so because he did that and the way he loved me, it made me want to be submissive.
I want to be submissive because he loves me so much.
And so it's much easier not to fight for control, which is how the enemy comes at women.
He comes at you.
Listen to me, women.
He comes at you wanting you to control because that's how he comes at you.
God calls you to be opposite of that.
And he wants to bring you happiness and joy and intense, intimate love with your husband.
Outside of the control.
And that's kind of what God's done for me in this marriage.
And, you know, looking back, I wish it had been like that in my first marriage.
But I think that if couples could understand that, they probably could save their marriage.
Yes.
Yeah, that's powerful.
That will do it.
Well, I just wanted to hit on that.
And I want you, before we go, we have about 10 minutes, but I want you to teach us something about worship that we can apply now.
Because I know worship's your heart.
My husband's a worship pastor, too.
And he's actually writing a new worship album.
I'm going to have to share some songs with you he's doing right now.
And it's kind of birthed out of the new revivals.
It's a different, it's like EDM music.
The teenagers love it.
But I want you to talk about, because all of us worship in our own way.
We turn on worship music or we're at worship at church or whatever we do.
But Pastor Tom, I think that people watching this are going to be like, I wish he would teach me something about worship.
So if you can just give them something today that'll help them in their worship of their Savior.
Okay, first of all, we need to know that worship is the number one priority of God's people.
I grew up in Baptist churches.
I got the idea it was missions.
But here's John Brubaker, a missions director, who said, Evangelism is important.
Missions is important.
But it's not the ultimate aim we have as believers.
Our ultimate aim is becoming worshipers of Jesus.
That's the reason we have missions.
The reason we share our faith so they can be worshipers too.
So, I mean, it's the greatest commandment.
What is it?
Love the Lord your God with all of your heart.
That word in John 4, 24, Candace, that says the Father is seeking true worshipers, they that worship, that's the Greek word proskuneo.
It means to kiss towards.
It's a term of affection.
It's a term of love.
It's like blowing kisses.
God is looking for people who will blow kisses to Him.
That's what true worship is, to worship in that spirit.
The Westminster Catechism says the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Wow, that's worship.
Glorifying God, enjoying God is worship.
So we can go through.
I love the song by Lenny LeBlanc.
I was born, you were born, we all were born to worship you.
There is no higher calling, no greater honor than to bow and kneel before your throne.
There's many, many great worship songs.
So the first thing we got to get is that the priority of the church, the priority of God's people is worship.
Everything else is temporary.
At some point, there'll be no more preaching.
At some point, we get to heaven, there'll be no more evangelism, no more missions.
But worship will go on forever.
Worship is forever.
That's what goes on in heaven 24-7.
A.W. Tozer says, The purpose of God in sending his son to die and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was he might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship.
That's the missing jewel in the church.
We've made it about all sorts of other things, but worship is it.
So I'm kind of reading a few things out of my book, Becoming True Worshippers.
There you go.
But let me just talk about this.
One of my other favorite chapters is called The Nine Flavors of Worship.
The nine spirits of worship.
You see, Jesus said you have to worship in spirit and in truth.
There's truth.
It means reality.
You've got to have good doctrine.
You can't worship a false god.
You've got to worship the god according to the word.
But then we've got to get the right spirit that matches that.
There are nine different flavors of worship.
Growing up, I remember in our church, we had our sweet worship leader.
She got up, she quoted one verse every week for my entire life.
The Lord is in his holy temple.
Let all the earth be silent before him.
That's the flavor of worship.
Be quiet.
But that's not the only one.
And then I found out worship is celebration.
There's a time to party for Jesus, like Easter time, where you celebrate.
We need the spirit of celebration.
There's the spirit of proclamation, where you proclaim.
There's the spirit of exaltation, where you exalt God and you lift Him higher.
There's the spirit of thanksgiving.
We do that, of course, during Thanksgiving season.
And then there's the spirit of intimacy.
And quietness and drawing closer to God.
There's the spirit of humility and awe where God is so awesome that we can't even speak a word.
We can't even sing because we lose our voices and all you can do is lay down on your face on the floor before the Lord.
That's a whole different spirit of worship than party time or being quiet.
Then there's the spirit of warfare.
Sometimes when we worship the Lord, that's when the enemy is defeated.
So there's nine of these different flavors and worship leaders need to know what the flavor of the worship is for the week.
I had a friend once, all he loved was vanilla.
Now I'm a big ice cream fan.
So every time I went there, he gave me vanilla.
I'm like, okay, how about a little chocolate?
How about a little caramel and some nuts?
Rocky Road?
You know, I like a lot of variety.
So that's one of the things as a worship leader, you're always trying to say, what is the proper worship spirit for this week?
And how can we enter into that?
And which songs will help us to enter into that spirit of worship?
And you can't do all nine every week.
Maybe do one or two, but you've got to flow.
into the correct spirit of worship and when that happens then the Holy Spirit shows up and powerful things happen Yeah, and I like Cookie Monster ice cream, just FYI, but it turns your mouth blue, but it's awesome.
But, you know, what's interesting is when I'm thinking about worship and all those different nine kind of themes or, you know, states that you get in, I've seen churches where they get a pastor and the worship pastor and the Pastor of the church, senior pastor, are not on the same page.
And so the senior pastor tries to control the worship pastor.
The worship pastor fights the senior pastor.
And so same Holy Spirit.
So whatever's going on that week that God's going to do in that church, it should coincide.
Right?
And so that, I was just, God was showing me that, like, you've seen it, Candy.
You've seen it happen here.
I've shown you.
You've seen it over your years.
So that makes perfect sense.
And so if you're watching this and you're a pastor or you're a worship pastor and you're not in harmony with your pastor, you probably are not in harmony with Holy Spirit.
And so y'all need to come together with Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Perfect.
That's what I did when I was a worship pastor for years.
I always sat down with the senior pastor.
What's the sermon this week?
What's the message?
How is God going to be revealed?
The whole purpose of church is to experience God.
So what part of God?
I mean, there's a lot of sides to God.
He's got 800 names.
He's got 800 different characteristics.
Okay, so which one of those are we going to experience today?
And then find out what the proper spirit is.
And that way the whole service can flow together in unity.
But when it's not there, it doesn't work.
You just don't get where you need to go into the presence of the Lord.
You have given us so many powerful things, Pastor Tom.
I just want to come over to your house church.
I told you that.
I'm going to come one week and be a part of it.
I want you to tell everybody, because you have a book and you have all these things, and tell people how they can reach you and how to order your book and just give them what they need.
Okay.
The book is called Becoming True Worshippers.
It's available on Amazon.com, Barnes& Noble, and Lulu.com.
Just make sure you get the one by M. Thomas Seaman.
That's me.
There's another book out by this topic.
Some came out after I printed mine.
And it's got 15 chapters in there that are great.
People use it for Bible studies.
It's great for discipleship, for worship team members.
Every pastor, every worship leader needs to read it because it's got 20 years of experience in there that I learned.
The other thing is...
You can look up our church, Vineyard Fellowship of Richmond Hill, www.vineyardrh.org, Vineyardrh for Richmond Hill.
And you can find us there.
We're a house church.
We meet in our house.
We call it Simple Church.
We don't have board meetings.
We don't have any building to take care of.
We just have Jesus, and it's really great.
We love it.
I'm going to come.
I'm going to come visit Pastor Tom.
I can't wait.
Thank you so much for coming on Jesus Guns and Babies.
We're delighted to have you and I can't wait to come to your church and I want to get your book.
I'm going to get it for my husband and I'm going to read it too.
I'm getting ready to do a second edition this summer, add three more chapters.
So if you get the book, just email me and I'll send you the extra chapters.
It's not in print yet, but it's coming.
And the other thing is, we do Zoom our services on Sunday morning and on Wednesday Bible Study at 7.
If anyone wants to chime in and get on our Bible studies this week, tomorrow night at 7 o'clock, we're doing a study on the Father of Lies.
This is Spiritual Warfare Month, and we're helping people understand all the lies that the devil is doing.
When you understand the lies, they fall down powerless, and we can defeat them, and we can speak the truth.
So, you're welcome to join us.
Thank you so much.
Thank you all for coming on this week.
I will see you next Saturday on the Student Peters Network at 8 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
Standard time.
I love you.
God bless you.
And God bless America.
Hey, everybody.
I want you to go to HeavensHarvest.com, promo code Candice, and I want you to get prepped.
We don't know what's coming, who knows, but regardless whether it's a hurricane, national disaster, or the whole government shuts down, they have awesome deals on freeze-dried food.
In fact, they have a new item, it's freeze-dried cans.
It's a lot less expensive than the big barrels.
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