
Truth Wins Podcast
Truth Wins Podcast
Episode 94: Something Worth Dying For
What on Earth are you here for? That’s a good question everyone should ask themself, but unfortunately, most people just get through each day, week, and year trying to survive and achieve “success.” There is a significant purpose for every life though, and that purpose is discussed in this episode of Truth Wins.
- "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." – Mark Twain.
- “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” - C.S. Lewis
- 5 key questions of life:
1. Where did I come from?
2. Who do I?
3. What gives my life meaning?
4. How should I decide what is right and wrong?
5. What happens when I die?
Visit our Truth Wins website!
Follow us on our Social Media Pages!
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Tiktok | Youtube
Todd 0:07
Welcome to the Truth Wins podcast where the truth hurts sometimes, but it could save your life. Our heart on this podcast is for you to know why you believe, what you believe and to be able to give a defense for it. This is episode 94 titled "Something Worth Dying for". My name is Todd Sherman. I'm your host, as always with me is Stu, hey, Stu. Hey, Stu. Good to have you back. Thanks for coming back. Yeah, it's always good to be here. Are you? You're gonna be you're gonna be nice during time to Stump Stu, are you still feeling a little edgy? This one's not so bad. Okay, I'll be nice to this guy. So I only let him see him like just a minute or so before the episode because I do want to kind of throw a curveball at him. He does. But yeah, sometimes he gets triggered I find when you're triggered. Us Keep saying their name. You like keep saying Well, Frank, let me tell you, Frank. This is not what
Stu 1:02
Let me be perfectly frank with you.
Todd 1:06
So I know when he's upset. Plus, his face is red and his ears are twitching. But other than that, he's a happy guy.
Stu 1:12
So if my ears Twitch that produces a lot of wind.
Todd 1:17
Like it he you can poke fun at himself. Right is I'm sure there's a saying somewhere, he can make fun of himself, Confucius probably said something. All right now for the silliness. Let's have some time to Stump Stu.
Alright, William, maybe I shouldn't say their name. So you can't just keep saying their name. I'll tell you at the end what the name is. But too late on this one, William said it's like a box of six jigsaw puzzles were dropped and put together by folks who had no clue which came first, they axes to grind and did the editing of the pieces to make them all fit. Basically talking about figuring out what life is all about. We're just kind of winging it with the six jigsaw puzzles.
Stu 2:01
I think what he's referring to is like the idea of the Bible, kind of the way all these different pieces were edited or something. So I would encourage William to do some study into the historicity of how that we got the Bible, there's a great book called that very title, "How we got the Bible", by I don't remember exactly right now. But there's another one called the "Story of the Bible" that has manuscripts that they used. And it has a lot of the historical evidences, and it has copies of like the Dead Sea Scrolls in it and things like that, that are really, that you can actually read. It's pretty cool. So but his point is, is good in a way, because you need the top of the puzzle box to know how it's supposed to look at the end. And that's the whole point of why the Bible is unique, because it does have the whole picture for us. And that's why we know how it all fits together. Also, everybody's got an axe to grind. People that hate the Bible have an axe to grind. And they do their own editing of pieces to make them fit their own worldviews. The problem is, if your worldview doesn't work, you're in trouble and the way the Bible's points, my own sinfulness and things like that out to me. I know it's true. I see what it says. Because it's reading me it's seeing my flaws in my, my errors, and it shows me that I need a savior, because I can't do this on my own.
Todd 3:45
Well put, Ian looked it up. Is it the Neil Lightfoot? Yes, that's the one because the one "how we got the Bible" by Neil Lightfoot. Thank you, Ian.
Stu 3:56
Ian is our stead guy. He comes up with everything. Yes. Everything.
Todd 4:01
So we need to have you on again soon. Because you know a lot about a lot. So not today. Well, maybe I don't know. But anyways, that's our time to stump stu.
Do you want to do Do you want to do constructify today? They're tired of hearing me talk about this great company, you tell them about this great company.
Stu 4:21
All right. So this Truth Wins episode that we're about to do is brought to you by constructify your go to solution for home improvement and energy efficient projects, where they construct it for you. And they'll tackle your windows siding, roofing decks painting project, we're actually working on our decks and that's something we're gonna have to probably do here. So are they stacked in touch with this?
Todd 4:49
Are you stacking the deck? Now, first paun of the episode. We'll chalk it up to Todd
Stu 4:55
And he's, he's along the front range. He works all along there Front Range of Colorado. And you can call her text Joe and his team at Constructify 303-502-1096. You ask for that number again. 303-502-1096. So check out www.constructify.com or his email at info@constructify.com or go to the Facebook page. Now, if you mention the Truth Wins episode podcast that we're on, you receive a 15% discount on your next order. Boom, boom.
Todd 5:37
Hey, great segue from that you missed your calling. You're like Mr. infomercial. I think you really you really brought that. And that's what we want to talk about today is finding our calling finding something worth dying for. Was that not
Stu 5:49
A great way you did the segue? Yeah, maybe I missed my column used to segue to segue. Wow, this is becoming multi leveled meanings depth
Todd 5:59
That would be cool doing a segue while on a segue. Yeah, that's cool. Someday, I'm gonna put that in the old bucket list. Okay, so we want to talk about what do you guys as listeners and gals have, that you would say is worth dying for? Hopefully, hopefully, you have more than just one thing, hopefully, at least one thing. But I think if we're truly honest with ourselves, we have to say, okay, am I living my life each day, in a way that, that I'm willing to die for the things that I think are important, and I'm willing to engage in those things on if not a daily basis, at least a weekly basis. And that's, that's an important thing for us to ask ourselves. And we all have good weeks and bad weeks, good years and bad years. But we need to come back to alright, why on earth am I here? And that's we want to talk a little or a lot about today.
Stu 6:52
And like we were talking at the beginning there about the jigsaw puzzle box top. So you know what the big picture should look like? There's five questions that almost every worldview has to answer, you have to be able to figure these out, or you have no real concept of where you're going, why you're trying to get there. What's happening. So the key questions are 1) origin. Where do I come from? 2) Identity, who am I? And not just your name? But you know, what makes you you?
Todd 7:26
Would you do a pronouns in that when you who am I? Would you add your pronouns? Is that what you're talking about? Are we talking about a different? or so?
Stu 7:34
You're like, trying to turn this? Yeah, going back to the transgender conversation from this specific question we're dealing with today? What gives your life meaning and purpose? You know, what's the thing that God made you for? And fourth is morality. How do I decide what's right and wrong? And fifth is destiny. What's going to happen to you after you die? That's, those are the key questions. Every worldview has to answer. And if you look at some of the worldviews out there, they don't have very good or satisfactory answers to these questions. But we kind of came up with this episode idea because of a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. And so yeah, you want to roll it should he's got it on his, he's got it on his computer here, and we're gonna we're gonna try this out. This is actually from MLK quote, or a little speech that he was given where it was the speech Do you know, doesn't say I have to on earth, there was somewhere on Earth, we're giving a speech, and they recorded it, and Steve is gonna play it right now.
Recording 8:44
Sean may even have to face physical death, we must come to see some things. So I attended it true, that there was dying, man has not discovered something that he will die if he didn't fit to live.
Stu 8:58
And that's a good point. If the man hasn't discovered something that's worth dying for, then is he really fit to live? What in your life means more to you than just you? You know, what would you be willing to expend yourself for a greater cause than just yourself? And the sad part is too many people in our culture have no answer for that one out, and they wouldn't expand their life for anyone else. So it's all about them. They're wrapped up in themselves.
Todd 9:33
Yeah, it's the I think it's the true epidemic that's going on in there is that just people don't have that purpose or mission in life. And I'm not talking about the purpose or mission when you go to your next multilevel marketing thing or your next business like your yearly vision meeting and you make a poster with a with a hawk or an eagle and here's our mission for there. It's like no what what is your life about what is really important to you? What are you passionate about? And certainly there are new passions and then passions that may be weighing in life. But your core being what are you here for? It's that it's answering that question. You know, what's, what am I here for what gives my life meaning and the Bible talks about that. But they're also, as you mentioned, time stump stu they're things that only confirm what the Bible says about that, when you don't have that purpose and meaning that nothing else matters and all these things is that it's that law of unintended consequences when you don't have purpose and meaning then not only are you just becoming like a robot for the rest of your life, but it affects the people that you effect and then you devalue other life. And then, you know, so it just goes on and on from there, would you would you agree with that?
Stu 10:42
That's like, kind of CS Lewis talked about men without chests, you know, a time where you have people who don't really have any reason for being here, they don't have any heart. They have, you know, you have knowledge, you know, you can have information and things like that in your head. And my students always would, you know, say, Oh, Mr. richer, I can get that answer on my phone. You know, it's like, well, what happens when there's an EMP or something in your or your phone runs out of juice? Are you done thinking? You know, you can't, you have to have things that you carry with you in your head. But you also have to have your heart. That's the other key component to this. It's the same it's like the Christian faith. That is just mere head knowledge. Versus is it changing my life? Is it changing how I live? And who I care for? Yeah.
Todd 11:35
Yeah, great quote from Mark Twain, bet my wife has it up in the house somewhere on a speaking of a picture with a frame, two most important days in your life are the day you're born and the day you find out why. It gets you to things like why am I here? Now? The Bible has answered that one of the answers that the Bible has to that is found in Ephesians, chapter two, verse 10, says that "We are God's handiwork" or another version is workmanship. It makes me think of Psalm 1:39, that "God knits you together in your mother's womb, unlike anybody who's ever lived", right? "You're one of a kind", whoever's listening to this, you are one of a kind, even if you have a twin, even if you're a triplets, quadruplets, whatever kind of it's out there, you're still unique, you're one of a kind, and God made you that way. And Ephesians too says, You're, you're God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus, for why to do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do. So before I ever took my first breath. God had already preordained some good works for me to do. Now, we have to be careful. We said good works, because we even talked in our last episode, you can't earning work your way to heaven, you can't earn God's favor, but when you have a good relationship with God, He gives you purpose, he gives you meaning. And these are good works that I can do with my life. And Truth Wins podcast as a part of it. That's why we do what we do. Because we believe this stuff at our very core, we believe God's truth, and we wrestle with it. And we want to share that truth on for those who are like, you know, I've tried all the other things out there and nothing seems to carry weight. And so our desire with Truth Wins podcast is for you to understand the Bible does have all the answers. And God prepared, prepared in advance for you. Good Works to do as he knit you together in your mother's womb, however many years ago.
The sad part is that many of us don't discover that reason until much later down the life's path. I was very blessed to have almost stumbled into it by the fact that I thought I wanted to be all these different things, you know, when you're young, you want to be you know, fireman or astronaut or some professional athletes, you know, yeah, I you know, you think I want to be a professional athlete or, and there's nothing wrong with any of those because God creates different people for all of those pieces. You wanted to be in the ballet and in your Yeah, make it there. But one to two, it just kind of made us do stew, you know, so it wasn't so. So good. Tie on to one. Yeah. Yeah, I never did actually want to be a ballet dancer. It's okay. We're not but I did want to be an astronomer for a while. And then I wanted to be professional athlete for a while and then God kept kind of shutting doors in a way that I wasn't going to do this. Astronomers have to stay up at night. I don't like that. I like to sleep. And they don't all have to stay up at night. I know. So astronomers don't text me and say that you don't stay up all night. But the other piece is what God has wired you for what are your gifts, what are the things you like to do? So one way to find this out sometimes, is to look at the things that you enjoy doing. What are the classes that you like in school? What are the things that float your boat that you're just happy when you're doing, hopefully not involving, you know, dynamite or something like that. But things that you enjoy, are usually something that God is kind of gearing you towards that kind of profession or, or what you're doing with some people are geared to be mothers. That's a wonderful college. Because The Hand That Rocks the Cradle rules the world. Remember that statement? I mean, that's so true. My mom had a huge impact on my life. And I think she wanted to be a teacher. And when was she thought she was? And it's like, how you start to realize, this is what God called me for when you're doing it. Sometimes you'd go, wow, this is I love this, I would do this, even if they didn't pay me. Which is not true. I, I do still want to get paid for every time I go to a school. So yeah, but you teach at church you teach in other platforms, because you're passionate about because you're, that's your that's how God wired you up, and you're a good teacher, a great teacher, and you but you put in the work to he just like, Oh, God make me a teacher. You study, you're still learning and growing. And every episode, you're preparing for it, not just coming like, I'll just I'll just go off the fumes of you know, the gas that I put in 20 years ago, you want to stay fresh, and like really study this. And that's one of the main reasons I respect you is like, yeah, you've, you know, you're calling and it doesn't mean that you can't do other stuff. But you're like this is this is what God wired me up to do. And I think the problem is, is that there's so many and this has been throughout human history. But I think unlike any other time, there are more distractions, and more substitutes for anything of substance out there than we've ever had before in human history that I know that's a really big statement. But because we have all these things at our fingertips now, there have always been distractions. There's always been sex, there's always been drugs, there's always been power. There's always been pleasure, always been ways to escape the reality and the hard things of life. But now we have them just at our fingertips. And it's easy to get especially we're we're living in the United States. And so I like how CS Lewis, you mentioned him earlier, but CS Lewis talks about, you know, just having something a passion is different than just some desires and temptations. And he says, Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but actually too weak. We're half hearted creatures fooling about with drink, and sex and ambition, when infinite joy has offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. That's a good quote. Yeah. And I, and I find that with my own self, especially as I get older, it's like, well, do I want to read? Or do I want to watch you know, an episode of Blue Bloods? Do I want to do this or do that, you know, it's that temptation, like, Yeah, this is better. For me, this is like a good meal. But I want the fast food of pleasure and just as quick and easy and tastes good for a little bit, but then you regret it later. And that's what a lot of people's lives end up becoming, because they've just been feeding themselves, you know, fast food, metaphorically, to a point where they're like, Ah, I don't even want to try to get out of this rut, I'm just gonna keep playing video games and wasting my life.
Stu 18:42
I'm gonna imagine many of our male listeners might be football fans of some sort, either college or NFL or something like that. And so I remember fans to add some of our female fans, my wife actually enjoys football. And that's kind of cool. Like, it's you. She's not real happy with some of the things the NFL stands for nowadays. So she may be pulling away a little but the point was when I started to watch football, and then I could watch football from about 10am in the morning, to 8:30 at night. And then I started to realize that's my whole day. I've lost an entire day of my life as a vegetable, just watching other people get exercise. It's like I forget who said it, but he said, you know, a basketball game is you're watching you know, 10 people badly in need of a rest. 50,000 people in badly in need of exercise, or watching 10 guys need a rest. And it's like, you're like, Yes, I'm not participating in life. And like that's what you're saying. You're not being involved. You're just passive recipient. You know, of external stimulation, you know, and I used to get all carried away with how the Braves were doing, you know, and then I started to realize, I'm not playing. I have no impact on this game whatsoever. When you're a fan, you sometimes think, well, if I wear the shirt, you know, that's gonna help my team. It's like no, it doesn't.
Todd 20:21
That made me think well, one is a couple of things going around up there. One is years back. I think more recently, the Green Bay that Broncos won the Super Bowl. Do you remember that one when the Broncos won? I don't know. years ago. Remember the Broncos four or five years ago Super Bowl? Well, we did. And after the game, and it was fun. And we you know, we had friends over and as I say game, but they were like going around and there were only a handful of fans still up because this is our so after the game. And this guy with his wife and his son who's probably eight 910 sitting next to him. The Broncos gear on the go to interview and what do you think is oh, this is by far the best day of my life.
Stu 21:00
Wow, that's not good.
Todd 21:01
The wife that you married and had a wedding I'm assuming the kid that you hopefully were there when he was born? Maybe not. Maybe it was at the Broncos game. And in the the other thing in your mind is like there's nothing wrong. I like watching football. But I did the same thing. This last Sunday, I watched a lot of football. I watched the two o'clock game and then I rolled right into the evening game. Now you got Monday nights, you got Thursday night? Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just as there's nothing wrong with going to a movie. There's nothing wrong with playing a video game now and again, but when you binge and that becomes all you do, or the bulk of what you do, and there's nothing of value, then you're empty, there's no value. It's like, why are you here?
Stu 21:38
And the Greek said of saying nothing in excess. Moderation. You don't have to watch every play of every game. You know, you can watch a quarter or something and then go do something or, you know, there's, there's a real world out there for you to be involved in. So don't just become the couch, passive recipient of other people's, you know, achievements or failures. Yeah,
Todd 22:05
just watch them do stuff, right? And root for them or don't or root against them? Well, it's to the fast food metaphor. It's like, if I have like a craving for Taco Bell, it's not gonna kill me to have it. But if I get supersize, and every day, the all I'm eating is fast food, it will kill me, I'll be done. So everything in moderation, but you've got to have the good stuff for you too. And that's spiritually The Bible talks about the good stuff that the things of value, why on earth are you here? What are you here for? How would you say like, most succinctly, the Bible answers that question, why on earth am I here?
Stu 22:42
Because in John 15, and I'll start in verse 12, says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends." And we're reading a book in my class right now called A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. And if you haven't read it, I'm not saying you should read it immediately or anything like that. But it has some really important lines. Because there's a man who looks just like another man. And this other guy is on trial for his life as a spy. And these people say we saw him exchanging information with these other French spies. And basically, what they're doing, it's all circumstantial. And it turns out, this guy was not a spy. But he's being characterized as that. And they think they have a shut, closed door case, and he's as good as dead. But this one guy who's a lawyer, happens to be kind of a drunken lush guy. He doesn't really care much about life, he never is gonna go anywhere, do anything. But he notices that he looks like this guy. So he goes over and that has the other lawyer asked him the question, do you think that you could have been mistaken about who you saw? And they put him right next to him, and it's like, Whoa, that could have been that guy too. And you start to realize just seeing someone that you think you can't convict them of a crime. So, it turns out that the guy who's led off of the crime marries this beautiful girl, and her father is a doctor, and this guy promises he actually kind of wants to marry this girl, but he realizes he wouldn't be good for the drunken lush guy. So he tells her once he's comes to her house, and he says, I want you to know that one day, if it's possible, I will do something to save someone close to you, or that you love. And it turns out the other day gets arrested taken to France. And he's in the part of the French Revolution when all the people's heads are being chopped off. And yeah, so he substitutes himself for the other guy, and he gives his life for it. And it's really amazing. Yeah.
Todd 25:17
And that's, that's the gist of Jesus is what he did for us is he's our substitutionary atonement he, he was in the place of what you and I deserved, even though he was innocent, just as this guy was innocent of way when there and so there's a metaphor there. But it's, but not only that, it's like, John, that's the Gospel of John, you read chapter 15. But in letter, the first one we have first John 3:16, he says, "This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, He willingly just said, alright, I'll go to the cross, the excruciating pain and the cross where you get the, where you get the word, or crucifixion. And he says, We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. So we have to act like Jesus, the one whom we follow, we have to also be willing to do that. And so like you said, if I think it was in the last episode, right? Like, if, if a bad guy comes into my house, I'm not throwing my wife or my kids, Oh, stop her as a shield, stop them so I can get out the back or I can call it's like, no, as the man of the house, I need to be willing to lay down my life. And for random stranger to I mean, that's the thing that is nuts. When you see these violence going on, and people putting on Twitter, it's like, they're all videotaping, get in there, put your phones down, and go protect, go help that person who's being abused as like, we've lost that as a culture, because of all these different reasons. But if you have that purpose is like that, that audio you had from MLK. It's like, if you don't have something worth dying for, then you're not really living,
Stu 26:55
right? You're, you're basically a spectator. You know, life is like a coin, you only get to spend it once. So you want to spend it wisely. You don't want to spend it, look back and go, Well, I watched a lot of TV. You know, that's not much.
Todd 27:10
Now let's go back through history then and talk about a group of folks who did have that purpose and did. And what were some of the reasons why, like, what's the secret sauce of some of these great people who who lived a life of purpose, what were some reasons behind where they, they tapped into that when many of us today don't tap into that same kind of purpose.
Stu 27:31
And I one of my favorite things to teach my students, especially the males, the young, high school boys, young men, they were, you know, figuring out what they wanted to be and who they wanted to be in life. And I would teach them about Sparta and about how the Spartans would train. Now, I'm not saying everything that Sparta did was perfect, and it was wrong when they expose their babies and things like that. There were bad parts. But one of the things they did was they went away from home at age seven. You started in this Military School, which was basically like the Cub Scout Troop from hell. And they, you know, toughened you up.
Todd 28:14
There weren't stores and things like that going.
Stu 28:16
These camp outside now you had to learn to survive on little if nothing, you had to be able to take cold temperatures, you had to figure out ways to stay warm. They had to learn all kinds of things, but they had other Spartans with them, too. We're
Todd 28:32
Can I, can I insert something real quick? That myself a little in the back and my kids still tease me today with their little and we'd be on the road for like two hours like, I'm hungry. When are we going to eat and then say, Guys, we're going to eat at dinner. And dinner was like five hours out or whatever. So now they teach. Oh, we're gonna eat breakfast tomorrow morning, dad, you made us suffers like no, I toughened you up. Drink some suck it up. Shut your mouth. We're gonna hit the road. So yeah, why would you? Yeah, they always say why? Why do you need to eat now when we're going to eat like 12 hours from now? Is there a joke like Dad always made us? No. I told you have a little bit of self control and suck it up a little bit. So we're not quite Sparta at the household, the Sherrman household but at least I did my part to like try to come up a little quick the wine and bag
Stu 29:17
Morgan seems to be you know, she's pretty much She's tough. I know handlers.
Todd 29:21
I tell her I want to be like her when I grow up. She's like the toughest person I know.
Stu 29:25
But but it turns out that the Spartans the other part to this is that they're going through this difficult training and trial with other Spartans. And that's kind of the key. Everybody else is going through the same hardships and difficulties that you are. See you start to realize something. I respect those guys because they made it through this because I'm gonna learn respect for myself. Because I made it through this. I survived. You know, being you know, Todd's kid, I survived, you know, so Morgan and Jenna commiserate, they can commiserate with each other. We only ate once a week, but that was good. You know, that kind of