 today on this fabulous Tuesday we're your host Amanda Brocker and Tom Hollis and today we are definitely going to give you hope so that you can stand firm in your faith in this world that literally is falling apart Tom. Well yeah we're going to talk about that a little bit but we're going to talk about it from another angle you know life is unpredictable and the world's increasingly unstable people have never been so confounded and confused everything seems like it's sparring downward where where is God in all this where there's good news the apostle Paul he also experienced a lot of setbacks even persecution he was thrown in prison for preaching the gospel and he wrote a book about it in the book of Philippians and pastor and Bible teacher Robert Morgan is going to be with us he's going to help us unpack the book and what it means for us today and how we can rejoice in times I mean most of us have not been through that kind of trial but Paul talks about rejoicing even in that I can't wait to ask some questions you're going to want to call someone up let them know Cornerstone is having an amazing interview on hope today and he brings a wealth of wisdom to us Tom you were just reflecting on this book I mean it's something that you said could be used in a small group yeah yeah there's so much in it again the book is called whatever happens how to stand firm in your faith when the world is falling apart and it is just a a great study in Philippians there's so much to dig into there it's going to be great also if you if you need prayer remember that we always have prayer partners standing by they're always there ready to pray that's right you know prayer is an essential part of cornerstone television it's been from the beginning and we are thankful for that opportunity it's it's like coming to the altar so in a church service well we're a television station so people are out there watching us maybe on their phones or in the hospital bed or at their in their car I mean they can be anywhere literally watching us and just one call you could literally be like at the altar and having a prayer person pray for you I love that that's right we do well our next guest is a great friend of ours as we mentioned here at Cornerstone Robert J. Morgan is a Bible teacher an author and he's written a new book called whatever happens how to stand firm in your faith when the world is falling apart Robert it's great to have you back with us on hope today thank you I'm always glad to be with you guys it's a wonderful blessing to be a part of the ministry that God has given to you well it's a wonderful blessing to just talk to you and dive deep into some of the parts of scripture and and you know I love to do that and you've done that with this book and you've done it in the book of Philippians so could you tell me just about the significance of that why is this an important book for us again Paul was running into some really difficult times when he wrote this book could you just unpack that for us well I've been studying the book of Philippians for a half century I have taught through it and preached through it many many times and it's one of the favorite books that people have in the Bible and I've met a number of people that have memorized it there's only four chapters there it's got several great themes but it comes out of a very interesting background the apostle Paul had wanted to go to Spain for his fourth mission trip instead he was arrested in Jerusalem and then he was narrowly beaten and then he was narrowly assassinated and then he was taken to Caesarea for two years while he was under arrest and then he was put on a ship that sailed into a hurricane and crashed wrecked and then he washed up on the island of Malta and was bitten by a viper and then finally he made it to Rome and he was under arrest there in his own rented house for two years and people in Philippi thought what has this man gone through we must be we must help him and so they sent him a gift and someone to help him and he wrote back the book of Philippians and he said you know whatever happens stand firm in the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's full of joy it's full of fortitude and it's full of ways to help us in very practical aspects of our lives be joyful and strong even when everything in the world seems to be falling apart well I mean that is a wonderful goal it sounds a little kind of like pie in the sky how do we do this how do we really you know stand firm when everything uh even even some of our institutions and things we depended on maybe in our life or someone's going through a marriage breakup or who knows what there's just something that is is uh that they thought was dependable all of a sudden they're on unsteady ground how does this book help us out how does Philippians help us in that well I think one of the things we do when we find ourselves and a difficult place is to go to the book of Philippians and study it there are so many verses there that help us this is the book that says that the things that have happened to us turn out rather for the furtherance of the gospel this is the book that says let the mind that is in Christ Jesus be in you this is the book that says rejoice in the Lord always I will say it again rejoice this is the book that says I can do all things through him who gives me strength this is the book that says God will provide for all of your needs through the resources of his endless wealth so I've gone through the book of Philippians and pulled out 31 different lessons one for every day of the month and I think pouring ourselves into a book like Philippians when we're going through a difficult time or the times around to seem unstable is a tremendous way to be grounded and strong and joyful because joy is one of the themes of this little book yeah I love that I love the joy is in there even in the most difficult circumstances so what is a strategy how do we develop a strategy a plan for difficult times maybe beforehand but even when we're in them how do we develop a strategy for that joy well that's what the 31 chapters are about it's a 31 chapter strategic plan for doing it for example one of the chapters says develop one of the chapters in my book says develop a life motto and that's based on Philippians 127 Paul gave us his life motto for to live as Christ and to die as gain now there's something interesting that I discovered is our research for this book the word Christ in the Greek is Christos and the word gain in the Greek is Kerdas and Paul wrote this book originally in the Greek so when the original readers read it it was very terse and and alliterative it said to live Christos to die Kerdas and what a great slogan that is if we go on living then we do it for Christ and if we end up dying well that is tremendous profit that is gain for us that is better by far he says so having some life slogans and motos like that that's one of the 31 strategies that help us in times like these and to me it's hard to find a better life slogan than to live as Christ to die as gain that pretty well covers everything doesn't it it sure does I just have to ask go ahead and plan on this do you have a life motto or do you have a I mean obviously that one do you have any others that really have directed your life yes when I was in college they wanted us to put our life bible verse or our life motto uh under our picture of the yearbook and so my life motto that I chose for that picture was the will of God nothing more nothing less and so I've kept that but I've sort of also adopted Philippians 127 you know in the Greek to live Christos to die Kerdas I haven't quite had had the time to make that made into a plaque but I think for us to have a guiding verse or motto in our lives to have it maybe put in calligraphy or or engraved on a plaque and to keep it over our desk or in our bedroom or something it's very helpful because it summarizes for us and a very easy to remember statement what we need to do the truth that we need to do to make every day an overcoming and a victorious day amen that is powerful information you're giving us I encourage all of us including myself to sit down write out our life motto so that way we know why we believe what we believe it it makes it easier to share it as well well Robert I was just thinking about you spoke of in your book creating a mental hymn book and so I'm really interested to find out you know in your mental hymn book you know are there newer old hymns we we want to know what this is like I can't tell you how important this is you know I wrote a series of three books called then sings my soul a number of years ago that are still on the best-selling list on then sings my soul is a series of books about the great hymns of the faith so I love the new music and I love the old hymns the reason that I put this in the book it's in one of the early chapters because in the background of the book of Philippians we have Paul and Silas and Timothy going to the city of Philippi to start a church Paul and Silas are arrested and stripped and whipped and they are chained in the middle of the dungeon where there are no lights and they are hurting and bleeding and no doubt traumatized but at midnight they are singing songs and these songs were hymns of praise to God I went through the book of Psalms to try to determine which ones they might have been singing because they undoubtedly were singing one of the 150 Psalms from the book that David gave us in the middle of the Bible because the Jewish people all knew those and sang them and it reminded me that we don't always have like they didn't have words projected onto the walls of that prison they didn't have hymns books they could open they had to know these songs by heart and even this morning when I woke up before I got out of bed my mind was you know beginning to wake up and some of the great hymns came to my mind holy holy holy Lord got almighty early in the morning our song shall rise to thee and one that I love I don't know if you know it but it says Jesus I am resting resting in the joy of what thou art I am finding at the greatness of thy loving heart so to me this is a form of meditation we meditate on scripture but we also meditate on the old and new songs and what frightens me is that we used to have longevity to our music so when my wife Katrina was nearly dead I mean she was passing away she was almost unconscious but she began quoting she's in heaven now but the last bit of her life she started quoting hymns and uh and they came to her mind very clearly because she had sung them all of her life so we need some songs that we sing when we're 10 years old and 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and a lot of today's music is disposable it comes and goes too fast for us to memorize it so I really encourage as a spiritual discipline the singing of some songs over a lifetime and long enough so that they become installed in our minds because in the middle of the night we need to be able to have a song to sing when we're on an airplane and tired and we lean against the side of the plane we need to have scriptures and hymns that come to our mind uh because I can't tell you how transformative that has been to me so based upon Paul's experience in Philippi I've added that chapter you know I love the story in there where you're talking about that about the elderly man who was uh far into the dementia and uh someone started playing hymns and and he just got up and sang didn't he sing and like lead a congregation that wasn't there it was just him and the piano player but it all came back to him that's right that happened at America's Kezik not too far from where you guys are and uh Bill Welty was the um director who sat down at the piano and the man got out of his wheelchair he went up actually onto the platform as though he were leading music had been a worship leader all of his life he led every verse of every song that Bill played and then he sat back down and he never said another word for the rest of his life but for that half hour he was lucid because the lifelong images of those hymns were written very deeply in his heart and we're all going to need those in our latter days and I need them right now. Amen to that I have to ask you about uh just um you have a pretty good illustration I thought really timely for someone who is uh trying to follow God and they feel like a door is slammed in their face or that the door is closed let's just say the door is closed you had a good illustration of how I mean what do we do do we just turn away or do we try to bulldoze our way through the door but uh could you just share with us your thoughts on that? Yes so many people struggle with closed doors they uh they fall in love with someone who done reciprocate or they apply for a job and they don't get it or they lose their scholarship in college or whatever it is I mean there's a thousand closed doors Paul and Silas and Timothy went across all of Turkey looking for places to preach and it was a thousand miles from the east side of Turkey all the way to Trowaz and it says the Lord wouldn't allow them to go there the spirit of God prevented them they couldn't find a place to preach they had a thousand miles of open doors until they got to the westernmost coast to the city of Trowaz and then God sent a vision that said come over to european help us and that was the open door but it really struck me Tom and Amanda that they had a thousand miles of closed doors before they had the one open door and it reminds me that we have many more closed doors than we have open doors in life because for every one thing that the Lord wants us to do there are many things that he doesn't want us to do and when I go back and look at my life there were times when I really wanted something to happen or an opportunity to materialize and it didn't and I was disappointed I was crushed at the time but looking back I am so thankful because that wasn't what God wanted me to do he had something better later on so I've learned not to try to push doors open I may knock at them I may nudge a little bit but if I have to force it open it probably isn't what God wants me to do he has something better for me later on so I learned from that we shouldn't be discouraged when the doors slammed in our face because it's God's way of through circumstances guiding us to his very best for us this is just so much wisdom Robert we cannot thank you enough your book is chocked full of that in just real life situations and I feel it like this is what my life has looked like a lot of closed doors and then those few open ones and you're like okay God says go then you go but something else you bring up is about generous giving and how it's just important to be that generous giver as it is for the one on the receiving end yeah what I didn't fully understand until I studied for this book is that the church in Philippi is the bible's number one exhibit a when it comes to a generous church that supports missions and paul talks about it in the book in fact the whole book is a thank you letter to them for their continual support but in uh 2nd Corinthians 8 and 9 he devotes two chapters to talking about the generosity of the churches of Macedonia well that was primarily the churches that made up this Philippian congregation and so so this is a a church that more than any other this one church teaches us how to be generous and of course it's to this church that paul gave that wonderful admonition that that um that I refer to later in the book uh do not worry about anything but in every situation by pre-inputation present your request to God uh the whole makeup of this book of Philippians is so rich in so many ways uh that it does tell us that whatever happens here is a strategy for dealing with difficult times robert let's bring it to where people are at right now maybe someone's watching they've experienced those difficulties they've experienced uh struggles so for those struggling and with their faith what would you like them to hear right now what would you say to them in fact just speak to them right now uh the truths that God has shown you out of the book of Philippians yeah I'll say a couple of things and Philippians chapter 4 paul wrote the Lord is near therefore do not worry about anything instead pray about everything we need to learn to practice the presence of God he is with you if you know him as Savior then he is close to you right now he's in that very room he is within you he is around you he is surrounding you and you can lean upon his presence if you don't know him as Savior then this is the time to make a commitment to him but the key to the book is in chapter 1 verse 27 whatever happens conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ we don't know what's going to happen from day to day but whatever happens we can determine that we're going to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ you can do that and when you do that that is victory robert thank you so much and to everyone out there what are you waiting for go get yourself a copy of this book it will bless you highly recommended it is just a deep dive but an accessible dive into the book of Philippians thank you so much robert morgan for being with us today thank you thank you well we're going to take a quick break when we come back we're going to have a scripture we're going to have some prayer just for you discover what God's word has to say about healing and deliverance best-selling author john ecart makes topical bible study easy with his new book scriptures for faith deliverance and healing this handy reference is for those who want to have a greater understanding of healing and deliverance to incorporate God's word into their prayers ecart also includes targeted commentary to highlight key scriptures and life application his spirit filled perspective will enhance your time in God's word and encourages the spiritual disciplines of memorization and meditation request scriptures for faith deliverance and healing as our thank you gift when you support cornerstone television this month request your copy today if you want to strengthen the ministry of ctv in share your best gift by visiting us online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483 thank you for your partnership hope happens here wow what a powerful interview you know just the thought about practicing the presence of God and that you know the encouragement it brought to me i know it brought to you as well because he was just speaking truth real life truth and how to navigate using God's word as your guide and speaking of practicing the presence let's just reread that scripture that he spoke of at the end Philippians 1 27 and 28 it says whatever happens conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ then i will know that you stand firm in the one spirit striving together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you i know tom i have felt that fear you know come in like a flood sometimes and you need the word of God you need those hymns as he spoke about you know that just to come bubbling up out of your spirit to remind you of who he is in that moment you know i'm always amazed uh and probably naively so about opposition opposition to the gospel opposition to the things of God i mean it's good news right who's going to be opposed to good news but it's not it doesn't work that way because this news also calls people and authorities and principalities to account before him and so when we uh we will we will all who's all who desire to live righteous in God shall suffer persecution it says sooner or later persecution is going to come now i'm not talking about when we've done something wrong and we suffer for that there's a remedy for that as well it's repentance it's the blood of Christ applied and forgiveness and all those things and restitution and restoration all those things but i'm talking about now more of just we're just going about doing the things we think we should do and opposition comes or difficulties come or doors are closed in our face and we think God what is this look we've got to be able to fight through and stand through those things again i'm not saying fight in the natural i'm saying fight on your knees in prayer fight with the the principalities and powers that are coming against you or just say God is this not is this not the door you want me to walk through even though it seems so much like it is i don't know how many times a man i've heard people of God talk about closed doors and even death of a vision and how they've had to had to say oh god you call this vision why in the world isn't this thing happening um and but they've laid it down it's died in their heart they said okay lord i'm not picking that up again but then god resurrects it at a later time after maybe after some work has been done in here maybe some ground has been prepared god does that i loved how he said like the book of philippians and that little bit of history like how paul was on his way somewhere and i mean the katash freeze that were happening you know the shipwreck the viper bite the reality is we've all had those moments maybe you haven't i don't know you can call our prayer line we want to know what you're doing if you've not but for most of us i think we've gone through that where and you're like god what is happening you thought you were headed in one direction but i love what he said it was a furtherance of the gospel there was something you know i think of our own family like with our own child's waywardness and how the depths that that created in us as parents like because we had to dig into the word at a greater way than we ever had before and now to see it literally did cause the gospel to go forward because andrew is sharing in so many different places now your son andrew i mean he is moving forward with the gospel i mean it's it's so fantastic well i know you and gary have been through so much but god is doing something fresh and new coming out the other side and and that's that's i think what the message is here today is that god has the the path for you he has the way for you now what's great about this is it isn't done in a vacuum it is done with relationship with god relationship with jesus fellowship of the holy spirit getting to know the father heart of god all these things are part of this so we're not just like battling through in some kind of stale situation or some kind of secular earthly situation no we have a relationship with god and i have to tell you you never learn about someone as much as when you battle with them and when you're battling alongside jesus alongside the holy spirit he begins the poor things into you that are fresh and new and deeper and you you know what he even gives you a love for the the the ones that are fighting you because he loves them too and he wants to see them come to know him as lord and savior think of the person who wrote the book we were talking about today not robert morgan paul the book of philippians he was an enemy of the cross he was an enemy of those that were preaching the gospel but god saved him and brought him into a new place he wants to do that with you he wants to do that with those that oppose you because god is a miracle working god and he's going to do that for you today it is so important i just encourage you if you've never surrendered your life to christ i mean that's literally where it all begins he is right there ask him to come in and feel you choose this day who you will serve and may you choose to serve jesus what a powerful statement we can make so what what does that mean if you don't know the lord again he has left he has he has done so much for he's taken the penalty of sin we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of god you've sinned i've sinned everybody has we're all in this same boat we cannot save ourselves we need god to reach down and save us and he's doing that right now he's reaching out to you so what's your responsibility it's just to respond to respond and say god i open up the my life to you please forgive me my sins come into my life and be my lord and savior and i will follow you he will give you the strength he will fill you with the holy spirit he will give you a new purpose in life and you will begin to see life the way it was always meant to be seen through the lens of jesus christ have a great day