Unlocking the Power of Deep Bible Study with STEPHANIE PAVLANTOS

Ever wondered how Bible study could steer your life's course amidst trials? Join us as we uncover this profound mystery with our guest, Stephanie Pavlantos. Through sharing her personal journey, Stephanie illuminates the transformative power and significance of Bible study. She takes us back to the pivotal moment in her spiritual life, the result of an intensive study of the book of John, laying bare the essence of stories like that of Abraham and Isaac. Alongside this, we delve into myriad resources that you can harness to invigorate your Bible study experiences.

Diving deeper into our discourse, Stephanie unravels the intriguing influence of the Bible's context - the ancient Near East - on its narratives and interpretations. She shares how appreciating this context can profoundly enhance your grasp of its verses. Moreover, Stephanie recounts how her calling to teach was unearthed through her Bible study, emphasizing that reading the Bible is a continual process, offering timely insights for every season of life. We conclude by underscoring the importance of a personal commitment to Bible study beyond merely gleaning interpretations from others. Join us on this enlightening journey as we explore the boundless power and importance of Bible study.

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Transcript

0:00:00 - Ruth Hovsepian
The word belief is about a tent peg that is driven into the ground to hold a tent. And think about their big tents back in the days of Abraham. So they had these big tent pegs that they hammered into the ground, and that's what belief is. Belief is putting that tent peg into the ground and saying it's unmovable, it's not going to where this tent isn't moving. I don't care what kind of storm comes, I don't care what happens. This peg is in there and it's firm and it's in a good foundation and it's not moving. And that's what belief is. 

0:00:39 - Stephanie Pavlantos
Hi, I'm Ruth Hubsapkiyan. Welcome to the Out of the Darkness podcast, where we help you navigate life's trials based on faith and biblical truths. My guest today is Stephanie Pavlatos. She is back today and we are speaking about Bible studies. What is a Bible study, how do you do a Bible study and why we should do Bible studies. Welcome to Out of the Darkness, stephanie. I'm so glad that you are back, and today we are going to be talking about sort of one of my passions, as, besides prayer, is Bible study, so I really wanted you to come on and have this discussion with me because I think it's so important and I know you are very passionate about it as well, so welcome. 

0:01:32 - Ruth Hovsepian
Thank you, ruth. I appreciate you having me on again. I enjoyed the first time so much, and so I'm glad we could do it again. 

0:01:39 - Stephanie Pavlantos
Well, I'm glad that you are back. So let's go in, because Bible study is such a big subject, a broad subject, and there are so many things that we can cover and tell me a little bit about how your Bible study life started, because there's always that pivotal moment in our lives where something happens that pushes us and we become such fervent you know, sort of we are just so fervent for Bible study and telling others about it. 

0:02:15 - Ruth Hovsepian
Well, it's funny because we had started a new church and we were encouraged to start one of the small groups. So we went with the pastor small group and we had very specific books that we were going through that were very in depth, like not just how to study scripture but, you know, really asking deep questions to make you really think about the scriptures. And we were supposed to read in John and so near the beginning of John and I was reading in my own time, like this was just in preparation for the class, and so I'm sitting there in my chair and I would always try when the children were small I would get up about 6 am because I knew they wouldn't be up till7 and then I would have time just to sit and really pray and but more concentrate on the scriptures without being distracted by anyone. And as I'm reading John and the book of John, and then John the Baptist comes into the scene and he's going to baptize Jesus and he makes a point of pointing out Jesus and says look, behold. You know he's making attention stand out to him and he's like behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And it was like suddenly the Holy Spirit spoke and look and just like, look at this verse, look, really look, and let me tell you what this means. And it was like suddenly my eyes were open and I can't even explain. It wasn't anything I did, it was just me like suddenly this understanding, because now that's a simple verse and we've all heard it all our lives, probably if we. How long you've been in church? I heard those voice verses since I was a child. 

What John saw was the very beginning of Jesus ministry, but what we knew, we knew the end of the story. So, to me at least, I took those words for granted and I didn't think of John as a prophet and that's what he was doing. He was literally prophesizing that he would be the Lamb of God, he would be that Passover lamb. But what was really amazing is that that was only half the story for me, because 20 years later, literally 20 years later, I read a teaching on Rosh Hashanah, which we're coming up into right now. 

But they always read the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac at this time of the year, for the fall feast. So I was reading a little bit about that, the story of Abraham and Isaac. We don't always understand that Isaac was a grown man, he was probably about the same age as Jesus and he's carrying the wood that was going to be used for his own sacrifice. And so when he looked around, when they got to the spot that he was going to be sacrificed, of course Isaac says Father, where's the lamb? And Abraham says the Lord will provide the lamb. 

But when you read it or you listen to it, if we all understood the Hebrew and could listen to it, he said Lamb, just like we might think. But what was there in the thickets caught by its horns? But a ram. Well, we may not see a difference in that, but those are different words and they don't sound the same. Like they do in English, they don't sound the same in Hebrew. So what the readers and listeners of that passage of scripture throughout time would have heard is ram, that they were waiting for the lamb. Because God didn't provide the lamb. He provided a tall, a grown male sheep. But they were waiting for this lamb. 

And so what is John telling them? Here's the lamb. Here's the lamb that we've heard of since Abraham, since Abraham told us that God would provide the lamb. Here's the lamb, and it's more than just a Passover lamb. It's more than that. It's the lamb that was promised to Abraham, and it's such a beautiful thing. But it comes together so easily now. But back then I didn't know that, and I didn't know that he was only giving me part of the equation and that he would wait 20 years before he gave me the rest of it. 

0:07:03 - Stephanie Pavlantos
Yeah, it's interesting because there are so many books out there and podcasts and all kinds of Bible studies and I don't have an issue with them. I love them. I have one, I've written one, a Bible study on prayer, and I think that there is merit, there's a place for that. But I always encourage people to take the word of God and to dig into it for themselves and not just follow a commentator or my words or anybody's Right. 

As I said, those are good, but we need to know the word of God ourselves so that if Ruth says something wrong, I can pick up on it. Right, and if I'm unsure about it and I think we should do the same thing with our pastors, right, because not all pastors are equal If we don't know the word of God for ourselves, how do we know if the pastor we're listening to or the person that is speaking is speaking the truth, what is in the word of God? So for me, this is like paramount. This is so important and I don't know if we emphasize this enough for people to dig in to the word of God. 

0:08:28 - Ruth Hovsepian
And I think the way that, an analogy kind of that the Lord just kind of brought to my attention or kind of just kind of planted in my heart, but if we think of the scriptures, the Bible as we know it, because there is a difference between the word of God and scriptures. So scriptures is this book. It's a book that was printed and written by man. 

But the word of God is the word may flesh. And those words that never leave us, that never forsake us, that we never forget, just like that verse I told you in John. I mean behold the Lamb of God, it takes away the sins. That's the word of God. It's in my memory, it's in my heart. There's meaning to it. That's the word of God. So we can't worship this and we can't worship the version of the Bible that you read the translation oh, that is a spicy subject. 

I know and I'm not afraid to go there but because you know and I want to get to what you said, but I can't help it. But when I remember teaching a class and I had them write reports and this was a graduate level, but it was it was he they had to write a report and give me I don't know her report, this one student of mine. Her report was on the word, the Bible, the word of God in that sense of scriptures, but she, she started writing about the sacredness of this and how we don't put anything on it. 

I grew up with that, stephanie? Oh, I know, so did my husband, my husband's Greek. So we, we know this, and so so you don't put anything on it, you don't? You know you kiss your Bible. You do very, very, you know. You treat it with such reverence. That's not a bad thing, okay, yeah. But then I, at the same time, just days before, I'd heard a sermon, and this sermon was about the sacredness of the church, meaning when we come into this building, we're sacred. This is sacred place. And the Lord spoke to me and he just said whatever you make sacred, you will worship Mm he said I am the only one who is sacred. 

I am the only one who is sacred. We can't worship this Bible, no matter what, how much we love it, no matter what we think of the translations of the versions, we cannot worship this book. It is man made, it is man printed. We worship the word made flesh, the word of God, because the word of God in scripture is actually Jesus. It's throughout the scriptures, throughout the old New Testament, as we call them, it's still the person of the Trinity who we call Jesus. He is the word made flesh, he is the word of God. So so anyway. 

But getting back to this analogy, when you think of the word of God, or even the scriptures, if we want, we can go there too, as being an ocean. So this book is like an ocean. You can either snorkel along the first few inches of it or you can put that sweat suit on and go with the oxygen and deep dive into it. Which are you going to do? Are you going to be a snorkeler or scuba diver when it comes to God's word? And I think that people would tell me and make kind of like these, I don't know, almost to make. I felt like they were trying to make me feel badly, honestly. But they're like Stephanie, not everybody can be like you. 

Not everybody can study the Bible, like you do, and I said, but I'm not, I'm not expecting everybody to do that. I want you to join me and I'll teach you how. I want you to join me and I'll show you what I find. I'll bring up those treasures to you and I'll show you what those treasures are, because I love snorkeling. I love snorkeling, but I love scuba diving even more into God's word. 

0:12:52 - Stephanie Pavlantos
I've had people tell me oh, I read my Bible daily and you know it's so difficult. I love to be that thorn in the flesh sometimes and ask people those difficult questions. It's really interesting that you say that, because I have an issue sometimes when I hear people say I read my Bible every day. And I know I can be a thorn in the flesh to some people. But I think it comes in my case because for years I didn't read my Bible. I read it as a child because I was afraid of dying and going to hell. That's what I equated it to, right, just like not putting something on top of my Bible, not doing this to my Bible. So you know, when I came back to the Lord eight years ago and started a new, this new journey, I wanted to make up time and it was difficult to get into it right, breaking old habits, praying that the Lord showed me the right way to do things and not fall back to those old, traditional ways of doing things. And I discovered very quickly there is reading your Bible, which is like a snack, right. And then there is, you know, the Bible study, where it is a little bit more of a light lunch, and then, as you said, the scuba diving that down. There is that deep, personal reading of the Word of God and going from maybe sticking to a word or sticking to a verse or for as long as necessary to understand what the Lord is saying to you. 

And I ask this, and many times people will say what do you mean? I go to Bible study every week at church and I will say, yes, that's great, that's wonderful, but what about your time with the Lord? And I understand, I've been a mother of three children, raised them on my own. You don't always have the time, but what is important to us we make time for, we do. And I used to have that excuse about prayer and studying my Bible, about when it becomes intentional, you know, it becomes second nature for you to do it. 

And I have so much to catch up on. You know it's I'm 58 and I have all those years to make up for. But that's what, that's what we do every day, right? Just find out and do it. How do you recommend someone? Let's take me, for example. Okay, I'm still fairly new in my study life. I'm still, you know, just starting scratching that surface, right, because there is so much to study in the scriptures Right. What should be our first step? How do we start that process, or those that journey to dig in deeper? 

0:16:14 - Ruth Hovsepian
But number one I would. I mean, there's a lot of people who are going to tell you to start in the Old Test New Testament. I started started at the beginning because because, honestly, something I've learned is that when you understand the first 10 or 11 chapters of Genesis, really understand them, then it sets a stage for the rest of the Bible. There's it's no accident that the writers of the New Testament quote the Old Testament. That was all they had. They quoted the Tanakh, as we call it in Hebrew, the Torah. The Torah is the first five books. The Tanakh is the whole Old Testament, as we might think of it, the Hebrew scriptures. But they quoted that because they were Jewish men who quoted the verses, the Bible, the scriptures they knew. 

So when you start back in Genesis and you start really understanding and and ask the Lord, of course we're going to have to ask the Lord for help, because he's the Holy Spirit within us and he's the one who knows it, he's the one who understands it. But we also have to do some research on our own, because it was written for people in the ancient Near East and the Lord used, like, for instance, the Covenant that the that the Lord created between he and Abraham. That was a covenant that Abraham was very familiar with because it was an ancient New East type of covenant. So if you read those scriptures carefully in in I think it might even be 15, genesis 15. But he, when he tells, when God tells Abraham the instructions of like, get me this animal, this animal, this animal, the five animals he then said, doesn't say what to do with them. But the next thing we know, abraham has sliced them in half and put them on the side of a mountain, of like a gully, so that the blood would run down. 

And and in that type of thing, that covenant, that covenant was for a higher, like a king to their vassal. It's called a suzerain, suzerain, vassal, coverant, and I probably said that wrong, but suzerain, yeah, there we go. So, so they. So it meant that the one who didn't keep it would be like that animal who was cut and bled out. But it was the lesser who always walked through the blood trail. 

But in this case God changed all that and said no, I'm going to walk through it because it'll be my blood that shed if you break it. Yeah, that's not how it went. So he, but he took the same thing they understood. But then he put his spin on it Like it's going to be my blood that will be shed. And it was his blood. It was his son, of course, as we know. 

But even going back further, when we understand that type of priesthood that started in the garden with with Adam and Eve, and that Adam was that priest and he was put into God's garden God's garden and it's just, it helps you understand how God told a story that they would get, because that's how they understood the world at their time. So I read books. I read books about the ancient Near East, understanding the ancient Near East, understanding of covenant, of the Garden of Eden, of the tree of life, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What did these things all mean? Because they have a deeper meaning than our Sunday school explanation of the creation of the world the. 

Garden of Adam and Eve. There's a much deeper understanding, but you have to start somewhere. So start there. Read, but also get other books. There's lots of books out there. 

0:20:27 - Stephanie Pavlantos
And there's you. I listened to your podcast. Oh, thank you, I do, I, you know, and it's interesting because when I started as well, you know, like, as I said, I, I didn't have the habit previously and I thought, okay, I, I, this is a fresh start, I need to do this right. And I started in the Old Testament, as you said. And then I, you know, I got curious about something and I started researching and then I went down that rabbit hole, you know, and I found myself going deeper and it's so interesting for me to. It is well, let me, let's put it this way I have a Bible reading time and this year I am going chronologically, that's a Bible reading time that I do. But then I have this deep dive Bible study, and I sometimes find myself going from, you know, down this tunnel and branching out, and it is so fascinating for me because it brings to life, as you just said, to life things that I would just skim over in the past because I didn't live back then. You know, I did and I'm not part of that culture. I don't understand it. 

And, and you're right, sometimes we read things and, and, and I believe, you know, and I encourage people to read and sometimes they say I don't understand. And I'll say you will understand what you need to understand for this reading Next time you read it. You'll know more and you go down another layer, sort of like that onion you know, peeling it back. And that's what it is right. We start to understand why we need to understand when you know the person writing it whether it was Matthew or Peter is writing the time and what was happening culturally and socially at that time, so that we understand what it is that they're referring to and what they mean to say with whatever the story, the analogy, you know. Sometimes you read the New Testament and you're reading the letters to the churches and you're like what, what did they? It doesn't make sense. But you're right, you know we start, we built a foundation and I love that advice about starting in the Old Testament. Start with Genesis and build on that. 

0:23:06 - Ruth Hovsepian
Yeah, and there's lots. Now this may sound crazy to some people who've grown up in the church as we know it a Gentile setting but if you really want to understand the Old Testament, find a website, search Google for Torah portions, Because even though, okay, you may not call yourself Jewish or Messianic or any of those things, it is an awesome way to start understanding the first five books of the Bible and that is a very good foundation for the whole Bible. But if you go and just look those up, they're weekly and they give you the portions to read and usually they're kind of long, but they give you a week to do them. So you might get four chapters of a certain like of Genesis. So you might read Genesis one through four and then they will give you a Torah portion on not the whole four chapters, but maybe one chapter or even three verses. 

So, if you listen to different Torah portions on Genesis one through four, you can get a pretty good idea of because different people are going to teach on different things within those four chapters. So then you can start understanding. So, say, you get two numbers or even Leviticus, and you're like, okay, oh, my goodness, I don't even want to read this. But what you don't realize is that Jesus is throughout that book. He is in that book and it's even interesting because when you look at the Hebrew words, there's a word that is where one letter is more capitalized than the others, and because in Hebrew they don't really capitalize letters. So, but in this particular book they did. They capitalize one of the main words and it's in when they do that there's a very, very significant reason for the, for the author, the writer, to have capitalized a letter and made it unusually large, and it's it's to draw attention and because what that book is trying to tell us is about the sacrifice and about even the high priest. 

So in Peter, you go to Peter and you read about that. Now we're a royal priesthood and you're like, oh great, what does that mean? How do I become a, how am I a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Well, yes, while that is talking about Israel, it's also about us as the church big C, the church of messianic believers in in the Messiah. So, but how do you know what it means to be a priest unless you go back to the Torah? 

and read what it means to be a priest. Why was God so strict about what he allowed them to do? Because he wanted them to be holy. You want to know what it means to be holy? Go back to the Old Testament, go back to the Torah, go back to Leviticus, to find out what it means to be holy, as God is holy because he made those priests he said they even had a read had for something on there. The high priest had a banner here that said Holy unto the Lord. He had to be reminded that he was a holy man, that he was holy unto the Lord, and every time he came into the Lord's presence he was holy, he was to be holy. It just helps us understand who we are, because we now have Jesus as our high priest and we are under a new priesthood, that first priesthood like. 

So I did a Bible study on Hebrews and when you get to Hebrews, like five, seven, I'm sorry, five through eight, you'll read all about the the priesthood and Under Melchizedek, okay, or I should say in the order of Melchizedek. So what's happening is this old priesthood? Is it's not the new covenant, it's not the old covenant, it's the old priesthood. He says in eight, that the old priesthood is becoming obsolete. Why? Because we have Jesus, the son of God, who is the new high priest. He's the new priesthood, he's the new priesthood that we are now to follow and be under and be priest in his kingdom. 

So and this is this is one of those things that gets me as a Bible teacher, because In the, in the Greek scriptures, in the original Greek language, there is no word there in chapter 8 that says Covenant. It was added later because it simply says first and second or first and last, and there's no and this in our English Bibles. It says covenant, but what it's actually talking about is priesthood, because it's that priesthood that is becoming obsolete, and and, and it is obsolete, and in the law, in the Torah, it's that priesthood that that doesn't apply to us anymore. So it's it's just. There's so many cool things in my opinion About scripture, about the Old Testament, and I've come to just love the Old Testament, but it's it's unfortunate that 85% of all pastors across the United States never teach on the Old Testament. 

0:28:41 - Stephanie Pavlantos
Yeah, that's a whole other subject of what is being, what is being taught and or not taught, specifically from the pulpit. I really enjoy listening to you because when you talk I hear such a passion and so much knowledge and in In you know your years of studying and teaching. So a little bit of a more of a personal question how and why Did you start this? You know to become a Teacher. Essentially to teach us how the what the Bible is saying it's funny because it's. 

0:29:23 - Ruth Hovsepian
It's a funny story in a sense. So as a, as a Young girl you know, early elementary I love to teach. Even all summer I would make my younger sisters sit and I teach them or Hold up books and read, and you know stuff like that, and and, and even before that, if I didn't have an audience, I put my Barbies and my stuffed animals in front of me and I was their teacher. And then and it was just funny because I Think back on those years, never really knowing that it was something that God put inside of me. And then, but then I went to college and I was gonna go into medicine, I went into cancer research and whatnot, but there was a anatomy class that I was taking and I'm also very passionate about the body. 

I love the, the anatomy. To me it's just it. I was even told my husband this morning I was looking at his x-rays and helping him understand things on them. But it was like the body is Totally fascinating to me and I can see God's hands in every little part of our bodies. And it and it made me in high school, I have to say it made me realize that there was a God, not that I didn't already know and hear that, but it it made it just cemented within me that God Did this, this theme that we all have, that we had live in. God made it and he made it well and and so I Started actually just wanting to teach biology because I love biology, and then I thought about going into medicine and all those things. 

But long story, I, my one of my professors in college, said Stephanie, why aren't you teaching? He goes I get compliments about you when you help other students and they tell me what a good teacher you are and he goes. Why aren't you going to teach? Why do you want to go into medicine? And and I'm like you know at the time, it's like money Check difference there you know right and he goes. 

I really think you can, should consider teaching, and and I said, well, I could never be an elementary school teacher or anything like that, and in my mind that's what I thought of. 

I said I just couldn't, I wouldn't be satisfied doing that. And so what do I do? I have children and I have one with disabilities, and so I start teaching. I start teaching them at home. I home-schooled them for most of their lives. But but you, in my early 30s well, I was probably about 36. 

The Lord just gave me this vision, honestly, and I saw myself standing. If you want to say pulpit, you can say, but I was at the front of the church and I was teaching and I'm like Lord, what does that mean? And he goes I'm calling you to teach my word. And then he's. But even before that I was so interested in understanding his word and then he gave me the calling on. My life was going to be to teach. And he was the one. 

Through Bible study, through even other people's Bible studies, you know, written books, I just started understanding. And then he was putting it together for me and showing me and I just became very interested in the languages, the word studies. I don't know. It was kind of a natural curiosity, but it was also just the way he put me together. I like, I like research. I'm a researcher. That's why I went into cancer research. Actually. I just, I love to learn more and I love the research end of things, and so I researched for myself a lot of times. But then you know, like, even like on this last program that you and I did, it was on yoga. 

Well you know, I think I told you it's like why did the Lord? I asked the Lord why did you make me go through this whole thing, with the pain and understanding that he goes? Because I knew you'd write about it, I knew you'd teach it to somebody else. You know. That's why he does what he does. You know so, so that I don't know I hope I answered your question. Yeah. 

0:33:42 - Stephanie Pavlantos
I agree, and for anyone that wants to go back and listen to that episode of us talking about yoga and its place in a Christian's life, I encourage you to do that. But you know, stephanie, we, there is so much for us to learn. You know, we could, you know, learn something every day. We can live to be 100 years old and there will always be something new in the word of God Every time we open it up. And I've come to understand this, that we are in a different place. You know, throughout our lives, and every time we open the word of God, something pops up to us for that season. 

And I struggle now when I hear people say, oh, I find it boring. I, you know, I've read it through so many times. And but, you know, we, I think of all the things that we do, you know, repeating it over and over in our lives. Right, we watch TV all the time, we read all kinds of books. Why do we do that? Why do we exercise on a regular basis? That's what I think about it. You know, and I've recently said, that it becomes a muscle that we train the more we do it. 

And I was referring to prayer, but you know, when I think about it it also refers you know it could apply to Bible studies, right? Because I say when you start to pray it's like a muscle, you're starting to train it. It's hard at the beginning and then you just, it just happens, you do it, you enjoy it. And it's the same thing with a Bible study like that deep down Bible study. The first few times It'll be hard, Don't know where to go, right, but we need to do it, you know. We need to get off our duffs and start to dig deep, you know, and stop depending on other people for our faith walk Right. 

0:35:57 - Ruth Hovsepian
Right, because it won't last that way. 

0:36:01 - Stephanie Pavlantos
Yes. 

0:36:03 - Ruth Hovsepian
It'll be shallow and it won't be heart driven and it's going to go. I mean, I know people who their faith was their father's faith or their husband's faith or their spouse's faith, and when that spouse dies, what happens? Right To your own faith, because you were just doing what your husband did or you just did what your spouse did, or, and it's not rooted in anything. 

And I'll just give you a little thing, because when it talks about Abraham's belief, that belief is not rooted in anything. It's not rooted in Abraham's belief. That belief in Hebrew is very physical. It's a physical language, so there are more verbs than nouns in the language, and so it's all about doing something. And so the word fear is about how your gut feels when you're when you're fearful or when you're when you're full of anxiety. 

The word belief is about a tent peg that is driven into the ground to hold a tent. And think about their big tents back in the days of Abraham. So they had these big tent pegs that they hammered into the ground. And that's what belief is. Belief is putting that tent peg into the ground and saying it's unmovable, it's not going to where this tent isn't moving, I don't care what kind of storm comes, I don't care what happens. It's in there and it's firm and it's in a good foundation and it's not moving. And that's what belief is. 

And so when we, when we understand even those words and understand and I mean, and you can find this, it's not because I know some Hebrew that I know this. I look up everything. I look up to like Bible, bible, um, bible hub and any verse you use. You can click on strong and and all sorts of things, but you can also just do the hebraic meaning of certain words. Yeah, I Google that constantly. It's like Google knows I'm going to ask it and so so these things just start coming up for me because I want to understand the meaning and and how I can relate it to my own life. I want to be that tent peg. 

That's how I want my faith to be so firm and and that is how Abraham is described, that's what was counted as righteousness for him. His faith, his belief system was so firm, he didn't doubt God, and it's same thing. You know, when we think of covenant and having a heart like gods, that's actually what. How David is described. He had a heart like God and and he wasn't a man after God's heart. That's actually very that's an incorrect rendering of that phrase. It it was more that he had a loyal covenant heart like God does, and that's what God saw in him. 

And so when think about those things, when you think about the different people in the Bible, I'm one heart that has a loyal covenant making heart that's not going to look to this to the left or to the right, it's not going to be in sand, it's not going to be unfaithful, it's going to be a loyal covenant type of heart and and that's what's important and that's why these men are mentioned the way they are you know that there are there's, there are patriarchs, and we're grafted. Abraham is our father because we're grafted in and it's important concept to understand, because we can only know as much If all you listen to is your pastor, you will only know as much as your pastor knows. 

0:39:54 - Stephanie Pavlantos
Yeah, we talked about this once before. Yeah, I agree with that 100%, and we need to. And finally, I just want to say we, I really want people to stop focusing on on people out there, because they will fail. We're humans and they will fail and your faith will be tested at that time, and we see it all the time, right, we see it all the time. Turn your eyes to the Lord, turn your eyes to the scriptures and, as you said, use the, the, the people of the scriptures of our Bible. Try to emulate them, right, instead of everyone out there today. Well, stephanie, I really want to thank you, you're welcome. 

It's. It's been great. I enjoy my conversations with you all the time. There's always something to learn and I appreciate all the time and effort that you put in to studying the word of God and coming back and teaching us, and I really recommend everyone. Can you tell us what your podcast is and where people can find you? 

0:41:03 - Ruth Hovsepian
My podcast name is Grafted Jewish Roots of Christianity, and most of my guests are just people who, who understand the Old Testament. So they could be Jewish, they could be rabbis, but they are also pastors and teachers and writers. But but, my, my, you can find it not. Let me just say you can find it on most platforms, like Apple and Amazon, um, like Amazon music. But you can also just go right to my website, which is Stephanie peblantoscom, or the easier one probably is graftedjewishrootscom. Thank you, Stephanie. 

0:41:44 - Stephanie Pavlantos
I really enjoy listening in to your podcast there's. There's always something to to learn and come away with. So thank you and uh, have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful and blessed day. Thank you. Thank you for joining me. To stay connected, follow me on Instagram and Facebook. If you like this podcast, can you help me find new listeners by leaving a rating and review? This small step takes only a moment but really helps grow the listening audience. So let me thank you in advance. I hope you have a wonderful day and until next time let's continue on our journey as followers of Jesus Christ. I am Ruth Huffseppian.