 There is nothing like leaning on the Lord and that is our hope for you today. And we're so glad that you're joining us for 30 minutes. We love to encourage you and inspire you. I'm here with Tom and Amanda and we are going to be talking about our dependence on God today, Tom. You know, you know, I gotta think of it this way. Do you ever wake up in the morning and it's foggy outside? You can't, look at your window, you can't see anything. And then you're like, can I even get to work? You start to drive and you just see shapes and you can barely move forward. And sometimes my relationship with God has been like that. It's been foggy. You know, we see through a glass darkly, but God has done so much to get a right concept of who he is to us. We're gonna talk with Ron Block. He's a Grammy award-winning musician and he is gonna talk to us about dependence on God, abiding dependence, but also about what is that right concept? Can we get a right concept of Jesus, what he's like, what his relationship to us? It's gonna be a great conversation. Don't miss it. That's right. And we all have the choice. There's a song bubbling up in my heart this morning. It was, I will make room for you to do whatever you want to. And I believe that's what God is saying to us. Make room for me. Are you willing? Because God's asking you to make room for him, Sidney. But there was stuff, you guys were at a conference this weekend, right? You're making all kinds of room. You were speaking. Yeah, we had an opportunity. So, Amanda and I, we were at the Arise conference. Sue Willis and our team, they put on, they do it every year and this year was focused on unveiled and what it means to be unveiled in the presence of the King of Kings. And it was just a wonderful time. And there's just something about when the daughters of God get together and you're able to worship, you're able to lay down your burdens, you're able to put it all down at the altar. It is an amazing thing. And so, Amanda, what were some of your takeaways from our event that we went to? Oh my goodness. Well, Sidney, I, you know, every message just built upon but we had a lady there who shared about her testimony of God healing her from cancer. I mean, just she was given a very limited time to live and Jesus and she did not even know him when she got the diagnosis, but a prophetic word through her sister-in-law came and she received it. And so, she encouraged us that don't think that that prophetic word that God gives you can't be given because, well, that person isn't in a right position with the Lord. Where in our humanity, we feel like, oh, we need to, you know, I shouldn't give that to that person. They're not ready for that yet. That word literally is what caused her to go to the throne room in her living room. And Jesus Almighty touched her body and she's 20 years later. Cancer, like cancer-free and on fire for Jesus. And so, just want to encourage you today is that you need maybe today that there's something you're waiting on. Maybe you have a sentence or something that you heard a report, but just trust and lean on the Lord. God is on the move. And one of the most powerful ways that I know something, her name is Tracy Weiss that she was sharing, is just about, like, it's experiential. I think a lot of times it's like, yes, we know what's in our head. We have a lot of head knowledge, but do you know Jesus? Have you encountered the living God? Because when he shows up, everything changes. When you're in the presence of the Lord, I don't like, when you've experienced that glory of God, that's what's even happening right now. We see that's breaking out all over the world. Like, I saw reports in the Philippines, like mass baptisms and things are happening because they're having an encounter with Jesus. There's something that happens when Jesus shows up in the room. And so we just declare and decree today that wherever you're watching from, maybe it's your living room, your bedroom, maybe you're watching no matter where it is in Pittsburgh and beyond, that you would have an encounter with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and he would show up in your space, in your place. Because when that happens, everything changes. Amen. And we're gonna be talking about that and what it means to know Christ as a, as a, as he really is. That's what's so important about this conversation we're gonna have, to know him as he truly is is the greatest thing. Right now though, we're gonna play a little game. We call Stump the Host. Here we go. So right now, this is our first question. Da da da, Amanda, you're gonna have to pull it out for this one cause we're gonna get this. What is the last word in the Bible? Amanda has the Bible and she wanted to use it today. So we're gonna use the Bible. The Bible is so gross. That's why I was gonna say what we're gonna make sure. Yes we can. Come on, come on, come on. You're not cheating though. We got the word, it's so large. You're right. You're right. It's alright. The last word in the Bible. We're gonna say, is it amen? Amen. Amen. Yes. Just for the record, I said that before we looked. No, it's so good cause Amanda did say she's like, I'm gonna use her Bible today and look at Lord, he's an on time God. Thank you, hallelujah. All right, here's the second question again. We haven't seen these so play along with us. Who built the first altar to God? Oh, was it Jacob? I was gonna say Abraham. Wow. Oh boy. Now this is. Abel ended up dead so we know it wasn't him. Or Noah. It wasn't Cain and then Seth. What about Noah when they got out of the ark? I was saying Noah. What about Noah when they got out of the ark? That sounds like a good answer. You wanna go with that? Let's try. Yeah. Oh, Amanda. There we go. Amanda's rescue us here. All right, here's the last one. Amanda, get your Bible ready. Who said this? What I have written, I have written the Lord. God said it. Pontius Pilate said it. It was Pontius Pilate. I'm pretty sure. I mean, I'm sure the Lord believes that too or says that to him. I'm gonna say Pontius Pilate. Oh, hey, I wasn't there. I wanted to know and where to look. Well, thank you for playing along with us. That was fun and it's always especially fun when we get them right. Well, our next guest is a Grammy Award-winning musician and songwriter who's been a member of the band Allison Kraus and Union Station since 1991. Ron Block has also recently released a 40-day devotional called Abiding Dependents, living moment by moment in the love of God. Ron joins us now to share how you can continue to grow in your faith and to express that God is always with you no matter what the circumstances you're going through. Ron, it's great to have you with us on Hope Today. Great to be here, Tom. Thanks. I got to ask you about your career as a musician. I mean, you played banjo on Man of Constant Sorrow. I mean, one of my favorite songs ever. So I have to ask you like, when did you know that you wanted to be a musician? I was about 11 and I asked for a guitar from my dad. My dad had a music store and he got me a guitar, but I just kind of strummed. I didn't really learn a lot until I got a banjo at 13 and then I just absolutely went nuts. Like dad says, I bought you a banjo when you were 13 and you didn't come out of your room till you were 21. So it was kind of like that. Yeah. Well, what was it like as you grew in that and what was it like, I mean, when did you come to Christ? And then how did you integrate being a Christian in the entertainment music industry, which could be a challenge? Yeah. Well, my mom had just short. My mom had a really tough childhood abuse and all kinds of terrible stuff. So by the time she got saved in 66, I was two. So I grew up kind of with a different mom than my brothers did. She really changed and I grew up in her love. And so I went forward in church when I was six. I don't know, God honored that, but I still had the Zeus, God as Zeus idea in my head. God was good, but he got angry with me when I sinned and all that kind of stuff. So all that carried me forward until I was 17 and I was playing music and I had gotten involved in a very legalistic church and came out of it. And my friend Eric sat in a car with me and said, we're saved by trusting God, not by what we do and don't do. So God wants us to trust him. And that was a huge moment for me. So all through the years of playing music, trusting God has been the thing. It's like, you know, no matter what I'm doing, I try to go, if I feel anxiety or fear or whatever temptation, I simply go, is God, where is God? Well, he's all around me because he's omnipresent. He's in me and so he's gonna live through me. I'm gonna trust him to do that. And so that's the place to turn to. Of course, we always pop out of abiding like that, but it's just something we return to immediately as possible. So I've lived my whole life in the entertainment business. Playing music with Allison and you had its ups and downs. It causes you a lot of different problems at times. So yeah. You know, just to be timely with what's going on, what's your reaction to the Asbury revival? What have you seen in the area where you were at? I know it hit Lee University. Well, what are your thoughts related to that? I think anytime people are going to church and spending time worshiping God and praising God and getting a deeper experience of who God is, I think that's a good thing. I mean, people, there's people who criticize that, but I just say if college kids are willing to go to chapel and worship God for hours and hours, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's a great thing. So that's my opinion on it. Yeah, that's great. College students are usually ready to get out of chapel rather than go to it. Right, right. Let me just talk a little bit about what you share in abiding dependence. Let me ask you about, you spend a lot of time, especially in the early part of the book, talking about the humanity of Christ. Why do you stress that so much? In fact, even to some things that I thought were really interesting about how Jesus limited himself, even though he was God. Could you enlighten us a little bit about that? Yeah, in the church, I grew up hearing Jesus is God and he's man, so he's 100% God and 100% man. But what that really translates to in most of our minds is we see all the things Jesus did and we see the perfect life he lived and then we go, oh, well, he was God. So of course he could do that, I can't do that. And that's the opposite of what he came to do. He came to be a fully human. Now he remained God, but he set aside his, he became local. He was no longer everywhere, present everywhere at all times. He didn't know everything. There were things in the gospels where he said, who touched me? Or he said, of that day and that hour, no with no man, neither the son. So there were things he didn't know. And of course he got tired and he had to sleep and he got weak when he fasted. So he was not omnipotent. So he retained all those qualities, but he set them aside, Philippians says. And he became fully human. He became just like you and me. And so throughout the gospels, especially in John, he says, the father in me does the works. And it's the father's words I'm speaking. So he was getting intel from the father and living from the father and what the father inside him wanted him to do. And he was, he's not only a model or example, he is the Christ, he's Jesus. He's not only a model or example, but he is a model and example as well as being the son of God. So our gig is to trust him inside of us because Paul says Christ in you is the only hope of glory. So we trust his life inside of us the same way that he trusted the father. So where the son is, Christ is in us. Where the son is, all three of the Trinity are. So in our hearts as believers, there's the Trinity. God lives there. The father lives there. The son lives there. The Holy Spirit lives there. And we have access to him. We have total access in any temptation moment, any moment whatsoever to come to him and say, I'm struggling with this and I know that your love is in me for that person. I'm struggling with anger and hatred for them, but I know that you love them. So I trust you to manifest yourself through me in this situation. So we have access like that, just like Jesus did. And that's the importance of the humanity of Jesus. And he had strong emotions throughout the gospels. We see him be fully human, yet without sin. But we often wanna jump to yet without sin before we talk about his temptations. So, you know, like, but he was fully human so that we could be fully human and human beings that are new creations filled with God in the Holy Spirit. Amen. As you're sharing Ron, you know, I'm just thinking about that intimacy that God is asking for each of us to have with him. But you know, I wanna ask you as a musician, how as the years have gone by, you know, did you ever place your role as a musician? You know, you're really good at it as your identity. And you know, what did that look like or why should our identity not be in what we're doing for the kingdom, but in Christ? Well, yes, you know, I came out of childhood with some circumstances, there were, I had a good childhood basically, but there were some really jagged circumstances. So there was a hole there and music came in to fill the hole. Even though I was a believer, I started to feel I was, wow, I'm really good at this. I can get better, I practice and I get better. So I felt good when I played really well. And so as I joined bands, as I gained some notoriety among players and when I joined the Allyson's band, my sense of worth was went high, but what goes up must come down. So anything that's connected in our self-worth to a fluctuating source, whether that's music or relationships or our job or how much money we have or whatever it is, anything that's connected to a fluctuating source is gonna fluctuate with the source. And there's one source that doesn't fluctuate. And that's what I found in the 90s. I began to find my identity in Christ through struggle, through fluctuating. I began to go, I need something more stable than what I've got. This is not working for me. So yeah, yeah, when you're young, it's just, you build your life on really on idols. That's, we call them coping mechanisms, getting your identity from music as a coping mechanism. But in biblical terms, it's really an idol. And so eventually you have to relinquish your idols. God will call you to that as you go deeper into the center of who he is. So yeah. Wow, I love that term, not being connected to fluctuating, to things that fluctuate like that. Yeah, getting our identity through that. Let me ask you, you spent a lot of time defining certain words, helping us understand. And I really liked your story about repentance and what that means. We're talking a lot. Revival has a lot to do with repentance. So that's kind of in our vernacular right now. What is, maybe you could tell us that story. Yeah, well, my mom just, she so believed in me and loved me. And so one time I, you know, I had older brothers that were always getting in trouble. They're gone now, but they were always getting in trouble. And so I, at about 13, I picked up one of their habits and it was stealing. So I started to do it just with small things, a deck of cards and, you know, this or that. And I thought it was pretty cool, you know. While I was doing it, well, then one day I was in a music store and I pulled a Wayland and Willika set out of the, you know, cupboard there. And I was looking at it and I dropped it in my pocket. Well, I got arrested. The woman saw me and I got arrested and I was terrified because I'd seen, you know, some of my relatives go to jail. And so the cop took me in and then he did all his paperwork. Then he said, now I want you to go back to school and I want you to go home and tell your mom what you did. And it was the worst day of my life to tell my mother that I'd done that. And so I was, I went to our trailer and I was on the couch curled up with stomach cramps. Mom came in and she said, what is the matter? And I just looked at her and I blurted it out. I said, I got caught stealing today. And she said, she went like this. She went, you? And she just stared at me. And then she went, well, I know you'll never do it again. And that was the end of it because she already saw what I came to find later was repentance that was metanoia. I was going one way is a change of mind. And then I now I'm going the right way. And so with God, repentance is simply turning away from idols, turning away from the ways we were going that were not beneficial to us or anybody and turning to the living, breathing God, the God who wants to live inside of us and breathe his life out through us to other people. So that's what repentance is. It's just simply turning. We often talk about the sorrow part of it. And that's valid. That's a good thing. But the main part of metanoia is simply turning from that way back to this way, the proper way. Yeah. I love the grace that your mother shared there, that the belief, she didn't beat you up over it. She never said another word about it. I mean, my entire life, she never even mentioned it. It was over. And you never stole again. I never stole a thing again. Yeah. Then when I started working for my dad, I thought, wow, I'm earning money and I can't believe I was stealing stuff from people. They earned that money and I was stealing from them. You know, you don't see that stuff till later. Well, let me ask you about someone who may be watching that has known the Lord for a long time, maybe like you and I grew up in the church, but things seem stale, seem old a little bit. There's nothing really fresh. What do you say to that person? What's the best direction for a long time believer to go that, I mean, you talk about abiding. What's that mean for the long time believer who's known Christ in truth for a long time? What do they do? Well, I do think, and you know, screw tape letters, C.S. Lewis, he talks about, screw tape talks about the law of undulation, which does mean that we do have some ups and downs even in our spiritual life. So sometimes, you know, with God, I don't feel God. I don't go around feeling God every day, but there's a choice that I make. And then I make that choice and especially if, you know, an argument's starting or something's going on, there's a choice to make. So that's the deal. You know, you still have a choice to make even if you feel dry. Like your feelings are like the weather. They don't, they come and go with the wind. So the thing to do is just keep going deeply into God and not just rest on what you've already done. It's today that matters. Your relationship with God right this second is what matters. And in the next second, it's that second that matters. So it's not a long, we're not thinking long, long phases of time, we're just thinking right now when we're abiding. Ron, thank you so much, Ron Block. It's been great to have you. I love the name of your book, Abiding Dependence. And it's even subtitled what you just mentioned, Living Moment by Moment in the Love of God. Ron, we've enjoyed your music and I enjoyed your book greatly. Great to have you on the show. Thanks so much, Tom. Thank you, Amanda and Sydney. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ron. Well, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we'll have a scripture and a time of ministry and prayer. We'll be right back. Tom, what you doing? Oh, I can't find anything good on YouTube to watch. The commentaries, the blogs, the tier videos, the gaming videos, it's all boring. Oh, have you thought about subscribing to Cornerstone's YouTube channel? Cornerstone has a YouTube channel? Of course it does. Hold on, taking a pause to remind you to subscribe to our channel. Hit that like button and ring that bell for notifications. Now, back to the video. I'll show you how to subscribe. Just search for Cornerstone Television Network and hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date getting filled with the Holy Spirit with consistent uploads every day. Keep up with your favorite moments and never miss a beat. Will you help us as we race to 100,000 subscribers? We can't do it without your help. The content is never ending with countless hours of entertainment. So subscribe to the Cornerstone YouTube channel today. Hope happens here. We just love to stay connected. So as Anna was just saying, like our YouTube page, go on Facebook like us, our Instagram. Wherever Cornerstone is at, we want to be connected to you. And you know, the word of God is always the most important thing to us. So with that, we'd like to turn right now to John 15.4 and read this verse together. It says, abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. And that is the truth. We don't use that word, abide too much anymore. It's kind of, it seems like an old fashioned word to us, but it just means to dwell with, you know, to be with, to stay right there, stay connected. So now I don't know what anybody can feel like they're following the Lord if they're not connected, staying connected to that, the trunk. You know, one thing I just think about when we were talking about the scriptures, just a moment that I experienced like years ago was at a conference, it was the Eisen Wings Conference, and I remember Heidi Baker was there and I'll never forget, she said, you know, we're gonna be silent for 30 minutes because there's a part in Revelation that says they're quiet for 30 minutes in heaven. And I remember there was a group of us, there was like a hundred people and we were all bowed on the ground for 30 minutes in silence. No one spoke, no one talked, there was no music in the background, we just were there. Sometimes I think a lot of times when it comes to silence, it's very awkward for us as Christians and just as people in general, but just in that moment, just to abide and to be still and know that he is God. And I feel like what's happening a lot of times in our society and even in our walk with God is we allow busyness and all these other things infiltrate our relationship. But what's so important when it comes to abiding, to dwelling, to being, are you making that space? Are you making that room? Carving out time just with you and God? I think a lot of times it's easy to lose that because of all the things we have on our to-do list and we gotta do this and that. But the thing that has changed my life is when I take those moments, sometimes it's 30 minutes, it might be a couple of hours. And I just spend time with my Heavenly Father, spend time with my maker. And there's moments when I do pray and I read my word, but sometimes I'm like, God, what do you wanna say today? What's on your heart today? And I think, Amanda, that is so important for us and our walk with God, even what we're seeing, these move of God that's happening, it's literally just abiding the presence and not, it's not about our agenda, but laying it all down for Him. I hear it again, that song that the Lord's saying, I will make room for you. And that is a choice that each of us has to make to make room for God because as Sidney said, we can busy ourself, but when are we gonna prioritize God? You know, something that was shared yesterday at church that just, it goes with today, Pastor Jared at Trafford Christian Life, the word trust, he broke this down and he said, the first he means where you turn to God first, don't run to other people, other sources, turn to God the R, resist shortcuts, don't try to do it your own way and think I can get there quicker. The you, uncompromising commitment, be all in the S, surrender your will, yourself to God and the last he take action and obey the Lord, Tom, it's time for us to trust. That's some good teaching right there. Amen. Way to go, Pastor Jared. God has great and powerful moments for you today. Don't miss them. Be part of what God wants for you this moment. And I just love that trust. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path. Take time today to lean on God, to trust on God, to seek his face because when you do that, that's the greatest hope that you can have today. Have a good one. On tomorrow's hope today, discover some of the challenges and struggles that today's church is facing. Author Trevor Whitman offers insight on some of the core problems he sees plaguing the church and provides solutions that will better help the church align with God's work. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.