The 21st Century Christian Community

Well, we are in the 2st Century (it says so in the name). Host/Producer Karyn Beach, could only go so far without harnessing the power that is social media. In this episode, Karyn introduces The 21st Century Christian Online Community! It includes Facebook and a YouTube channel.

She also announces 3-2-1, a downloadable one-page document especially for new Christians! It covers 3 things new Christians should start doing, 2 things they should stop doing, and 1 thing they should always remember.

Join Us!

The 21st Century Christian YouTube Channel (subscribe!)

The 21st Century Christian on Facebook (follow!)

Download 3-2-1 for New Christians

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Join The 21st Century Christian Facebook Group!

Follow us on Instagram!

Concepts & Clarity: Follow our site – learn more with our Christian Courses, be inspired by our blog!

Support The 21st Century Christian Podcast with a monthly donation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

If you're listening right now and you're a follower of Christ, then you, my friend, are a 21st century Christian. And if you're new to the faith or interested in getting deeper into it, you're in the right place. Welcome to the 21st Century Christian Podcast. Welcome one and all. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of the 21st Century Christian Podcast. With me, your host, your girl, Karen Beach. Now, this episode is going to be a little different. We still have a timely topic. We have trivia in the Did You Know segment. And we even still have a great virtuous verse and a call to action. But what we don't have is a guest. You're gonna just have me. And there's a reason why. This this episode might be a little short because I've got a lot to say, but I don't have a lot to say. But you see, what I'm doing right now is I'm creating the 21st century Christian online community. For new Christians who want some direction, some instruction, and some inspiration, and that goes for Christians that maybe fell away and want to get back into their faith. It's also, however, for more seasoned Christians, the ones who might want to offer assistance to new Christians, answer questions, give encouragement. Yeah, girl, boy, it's for you too. So I'm gonna be updating the Facebook group. Yeah, I know Facebook, Facebook, but I'm Gen X, so hey. I'm gonna be updating that several times a week. Um, comment on posts and and all of that good stuff, offering prayer requests, doing everything like that. And then I'm also gonna be posting shorts and videos on our YouTube channel several times a week, just like Facebook. So tune in, subscribe, follow, because I'm doing this for you. So it'd be nice if you showed up, but to sweeten the pot, to make it even more interesting and more better, if you can make something more better. I have a free one pager that answers the question. Yeah, set them a question, but now what? And I call it 321. If you're a new Christian, you'll get three things that you should start doing, two things you should stop doing, and one thing you should always remember. And I distilled it down to one page, which wasn't that easy, but I did it. So it's easy for you to follow. There are easy things for you to stop, start, and remember. And you can find that at my website, the 21st century Christian.com. And you gotta put in the the or else you'll get a whole nother group of people. I'm sure they're great, but they're not me, and you're not gonna find my download and let you put the the in front. So we are the 21st century Christian dot com. So go ahead and follow me, subscribe to my channel, and we'll have a good time. But let's go ahead and get started. Now you know and I know that you need to read your Bible, but the truth is you have to get a version that you'll actually read. Meaning, if you don't understand it, you're not gonna read it. Now, I for one don't like the King James version. All the yes and the yees and the vows and the whole Shakespearean vibe kind of is a big disconnect for me. And I'm not gonna read a chapter a day, which is what I suggest you read, if I have a version like the King James version, it's just not happening. So when I found the English standard version, everything clicked for me. It was a lot easier for me to read and to digest. And since all of us are different, maybe that version won't work for you. Maybe you need another version, even still. So since we're all on our phones anyway, I encourage everyone to download the Bible app and download the app from you version, why you version. It has over a billion downloads, and yes, that's billion billion with a beat, y'all. And it includes at your fingertips a ton of Bible translations, so you can find one that works for you. And it's easy to switch between them, and it's free. The app is free. All these um translations are free. Now, there's some people who swear by the King James Version and who say that you need an actual old school book. You know, one where you can flip pages. But I'm gonna die on this hill. I stand by having a version that you understand and that you will actually read. Now it might be the King James version, maybe it isn't. But start with the Bible app and use it to find a version that is easy for you to read. If you like it, you can actually go and purchase that version. Amazon has them all. I'm sure you can find a bookstore if you want to and get it there. But you really should start with a chapter a day once you find the version that speaks to you. And you shouldn't start with Genesis. Yeah, it's a first book, and yes, it starts with the words in the beginning. Um, that was my James Oldrone's voice, Darth Vader. Um anyway, don't start there. Where should you start? Keep listening, and I'll tell ya. But for right now, let's have a word from our sponsors. This podcast episode is brought to you by Concepts and Clarity affordable Christian online courses for a very reasonable price. Get excited about reading the Bible, the version that speaks to you, and getting to know God better. Right now we have courses on women in the Bible, Jesus and his parables about money, and my favorite, all about those sheep, which really is about sheep, why there are so many references to them in the Bible. And coming soon is a course on marriage. And after that, we'll have courses on the Trinity and more, and you can find it over at conceptsandclarity.com. That's concepts and clarity.com. Did you know? The King James Version might be the most popular translation, but is it the best translation of the Bible? Which was written in three languages Hebrew, Aramaic. Uh when we talk about translations, we're talking about three types. The word for word translation, which will give you the most literal translation, but it's often the most difficult one to read. Then we have thought for thought translation, which offers a greater interpretation of the text, but one that's often easier to read. And then the one that's easiest to read is the paraphrase version. Um this is the easiest to read, but as far as details in what was originally written, it offers the broadest interpretation. Um, the King James Version is a word for word translation. Add it to the these and thou's and all that mess, and you see why it's often the most difficult one to understand. Now, as far as accuracy of the word for word translation, the NASB or the New American Standard Bible is considered to be the best word for word translation. Now that's number one, followed by King James. No, actually, sorry about that. It's the New American Standard Bible, followed by my Bible, the English Standard Version. That's number two. King James is number three, and the New King James is number four. So if you want a word-for-word translation, NASB or ESV is where you want to go. When it comes to thought by thought translation, the Christian standard version is considered to be the best, followed by the NIV, the New International Version, or the NLT, the New Living Translation. Now, as far as the ones that give the broadest interpretation, but are written in a way that you can very easily understand it, you have the Good News Bible and the message. And again, those are paraphrases, so they're the loosest translations. And you might be sacrificing some accuracy there. Now I use my Bible app and I read the English Standard Version. If I run across a verse where I want more clarification or that appeared a little confusing, I might change over to the Good News Translation or the American or the New American Standard Bible translation. And again, if you're on the app, it's very, very easy to change versions. It's another reason I highly advocate that over just going with a book. And for me, again, that's Facebook, as a Gen Xer, and YouTube. I don't want to do this, I didn't want to do it. I've been putting it off for a long time, but I really need to develop this community, and I need to do that, not necessarily for me, but for you, so that you can ask questions, so that you can recontext things in context, so you can have questions you didn't even know you had answered. So I'm taking the time to put together the 21st century community, the 21st century Christian community. And I need to do that with social media, and honestly, I need to do that with you. It doesn't work if it's just me posting content. I need you to be there with me. Now I developed the one pager, the downloadable document to kick things off. 321. Three things you need to start doing as a Christian, two things you should stop doing, and one thing you need to remember. Again, download it on my website, the 21st CenturyChristian.com. And again, put in the the or you'll end up at a completely different site. Now I'm sure those are great people, but it ain't me. If you want my download, you'll put in the the 21st century Christian dot com. And if you have any doubt, just go by the description for this podcast because it's there. Just click on it. Christianity really it's easy, but it's not really easy. So after you've accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, meaning that you believe he died on the cross for your sins and was resurrected, brought back to life three days later, you're at the beginning of your faith walk, what I like to call your faith walk or your faith journey. So what happens next? Normally you're baptized, submerged in water. I know the Catholics have that thing when you're a baby, they just put a couple drops of water on your head. No, you need to be submerged. Boom! Go under the water, come back out, you're a new person. Um, that's the next step. And for this next step to work, you gotta actually go to the church. You have to show up in the building. You're not watching it on a YouTube channel or on a reel. Um, you're not sitting in front of your TV looking at your favorite televangelist. You're gonna have to go to the actual building, get in your car, get on the bus, get on the subway, go to the building, walk through the doors of the building, have a seat, you look up front, they got a big tub where you will be submerged in water. That's a baptism. So, what the second thing you need to do, and we're not gonna go on into it that much, is find a church. Um, but the first thing you need to do, and that's what we're gonna talk about today, is spending time with God. You want to carve out some time every day to spend time with God. Now, I'm not saying you need to do an hour a day, a half hour, um, five, ten minutes a day. Just carve out, it's not a matter of how much time, it's a matter that you're carving out that time for God. Now, we talked about finding a version of the Bible you can read and understand. Once you have that version, you start at page one, right? Wrong. Genesis is the first of a collection of 66 books that make up our Bible. The Ethiopian Bible has 88 books, but that's another podcast episode, it ain't this one. Our Bible has 66 books, and you don't want to start at Genesis, even though it does say in the beginning. No, you don't want to start at the beginning. I want you to go to the New Testament and start with the Gospels. What are the Gospels? The books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that talk about the life of Jesus. And a lot of people will tell you to start with the book of John, the fourth of the Gospels. And you can't start there, um, but it starts kind of heady by describing Jesus as the Word, the Word of God, and letting you know that the Word has always been there from the beginning of time, from before creation, Jesus, the Word, was with God. Now, unlike a lot of people, I think you should start with the book of Mark. Unlike Matthew and Luke, it doesn't start at the beginning of Jesus' life. You're not going to get the whole Christmas story nativity. Mark just jumps right in to, hey, I'm John the Baptist, I'm in the wilderness, I'm telling you that Jesus is coming, and boom, Jesus comes. That's that's the book of Mark. That's where I would start if I were you. It's the most straightforward of the Gospels, and when you start with the Gospels, you're getting to know Jesus, who He was and what He did. Now, if you Google reading the Bible for New Christians, you're gonna find a lot of reading plans that are specific for new Christians. If you aren't up for reading the whole Bible yet, I would suggest reading a devotional. If you've downloaded the Bible app, there are a lot of devotionals, and devotionals are usually based by topic. Um, I'm a new Christian, I lost my job and I'm unemployed, I'm newly married, I'm having problems with my marriage, I have kids, and I need to know what I need to do about my kids, my teenagers, about my preteens. You find a devotional, and that devotional will have a short article that talks about the topic in your faith. And it ends by recommending that you read several verses or chapters a day. Devotionals are normally broken up into days. You can get a devotional that's three days long, that's a week long. Um, the one I'm reading right now is about six months long. But whatever you do, you're gonna get that devotional, you're gonna read it every day. That is, if you're not doing the Bible and reading a chapter a day. So that's the first part of part one. The second part of spending time with God is spending time in prayer. So you're reading the word and you're spending time in prayer. But what really is prayer? Prayer is talking to God. Now, a lot of us know or know of a prayer warrior. This is someone who gives long, luxurious, eloquent prayers. The way their the word rolls off their tongues, it's pretty impressive. Um, they've memorized chapters and verses, and honestly, for a new Christian, for a Christian coming back into the faith, prayer warriors can be a little bit um intimidating. But here's the thing: you don't have to be a war prayer warrior, you don't have to speak in tongues, you don't have to give these long, eloquent prayers. Um you just have to talk to God. A prayer could be as simple as, God, I need you. God, I need you, I need your help. Now, I personally had a very good relationship with my earthly father, to the point where over the years he became more than my earthly father, he became a friend. So when I pray, I talk to God like I talked to my earthly father, the same way I talked to my heavenly father. I can be honest and frank, even if I'm frustrated and angry, I can take that frustration, I can take that anger to him. But remember, this was my earthly daddy, so I was still respectful. So I'm gonna be respectful to God, but I'm still gonna be honest about what. I'm feeling okay. That's how you talk to God. Now I pray to God talk to Him honestly, frankly, truthfully. God, I know this is your plan, but I'm tired and I'm frustrated. How much longer do I have to go through this? What am I supposed to be learning from this situation? I need to learn it so I can move on. Sometimes that would be my whole prayer. 1 Thessalonians 5 17 says that you should pray continually or pray without ceasing. And to me, this means short prayers throughout the day. Think about how often you text your spouse or your best friend through the day. Later in that day, I might say, Thank you, Lord. I appreciate what you just did for me. Um I'm moving into my new apartment. I needed a TV. I got one off Facebook Marketplace. The girl was gonna charge me$100. When she got here and set it up, she ended up charging me$50. So thank you, Lord. I appreciate what you just did for me. So after you pray, these short prayers were especially if you set aside a time and a place to pray. You want to pray, but then you also want to leave a couple minutes of quiet to listen for a response. You might get one, and then you have to look for a response. So let me explain what I mean. I'd been out of work for a while, about a year ago, and I uttered a short prayer filled with frustration and a little bit anger. I said, Why is it so hard for me to find a job? I know I'm qualified. Lord, you know I'm qualified. I just don't know why it has to be this difficult. Amen. Okay, I didn't say amen, but I think me and the Lord knew that was my whole prayer. I was frustrated, I was angry, and I wasn't expecting a response, but I got one almost immediately. The thought came to me. Have you ever thought that maybe you have an issue with pride? Now this was not my fault. My thought. I didn't think I had anything to do with pride. I didn't think I was I thought of prayer of pride as being someone stuck up, someone, oh get away from me, I'm better than you. That's what I was thinking was pride, and I knew I wasn't that. I knew that this was God, and he spoke to me through a thought. And it was a thought that I would not have had. It was a thought that challenged me, it was a thought that convicted me. And when I really thought about it, my knee-jerk response was like, I ain't got a problem with pride. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was right. You see, I expected God to do what I wanted him to do when I wanted him to do it. I knew what was best. Yep. That was arrogance, that was pride. I expected to drive and have Jesus asleep in the back seat so I can wake him up just in case I needed him. He wasn't in control, he wasn't driving. I was. I knew what was best, I knew what job I needed, I knew what had to be done. So, yep, I had a lot of pride. And when Jesus spoke to me, he spoke to me in that instance almost immediately as a thought. There's a passage in the Bible that Elijah talks about God coming to him to speak to him, and he said there was a roll of thunder, but God wasn't in the roll of roll of thunder. Um, there was a fire, but God wasn't in the fire. Finally, there was a still small voice, and that is how God spoke. Wasn't in the big theatrical ostentatious way, it was very small. Now I know people, God speaks to them regularly through their dreams, God speaks to them through a Bible verse while they're reading, a well-placed song lyric that they hear during the day, um, something a friend or someone else says. So my point is you want to give a few minutes at the end of your prayer for God to speak to you, for him to come as a thought, as a word, maybe a vision that you're having right then. But know that his speaking to you isn't resigned to that time period. He can later on in the day, later on in the week, you hear a Bible verse, you hear a song lyric, someone says something to you, and you realize that that was a message sent by God for you. So we have to be aware of when God is speaking to us and how he's speaking to us, and that's not always in the burning bush by the tree. Remember the Ten Commandments. If you don't watch it, um, it comes on every year around Easter time. Um, but we have to look for how God communicates with us. Um, communication is a two-way street. We always talk about what we say, and that's half of it, but the other part is what we hear. So go ahead, download the 3211 page, or visit our Facebook group, um, join the YouTube page, subscribe to our YouTube page, and I'm gonna talk more about each step. We talked now about step one and what you should start doing, but there are two other things you should start doing. There are two things you should stop doing, and there's one thing that you should always remember. Lamentations three twenty five says the Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him. Now I want to talk mainly about the end of that verse to the one who seeks him. When we seek God, we're looking to know him. We want to know him. He wants us to come to him to know him. When we're reading his word, when we're praying and talking to him and listening for his responses, we are seeking him. And what he wants is a relationship with us, and we should want a relationship with him. Always a relationship, a personal relationship. And a personal relationship is not a cookie cutter relationship, it's not the same over and over and over again. Think about all of your relationships. Your relationship with your mother is different than your relationship with your father, your relationship with your best friend is different than your relationship with all your other friends. In fact, your relationship with each friend, each coworker, each neighbor, even with each pet is different. And your relationship with God is going to be different from mine. Each relationship is important to him, and each relationship is going to be different. What we pray for, what we get out of our Bible reading is going to be different. He wants us to have that different relationship with him. Our hope from the first part of that verse is with him, and we build up that hope by seeking him and spending time with him. Hey you guys subscribe. Subscribe to the 21st Century Christian YouTube page. It's going to be updated with shorts and videos several times a week. Follow. Follow the 21st Century Christian Facebook group. Comment on our posts, make prayer requests, ask questions. Cuz remember, I'm starting this group not because I need one more thing to do. I don't. I'm starting this group for you, and it only is going to work if you participate. So subscribe to our YouTube channel this week. Follow our Facebook group, and don't just follow the group. Comment, ask questions, list your prayer requests if you have them. If you have a thought, if you have something that's gone well, if you're having a problem with something, let us know about it. We can pray for you. We can ask for your help. We can ask God to help you. Um, you'll find links to all three: the YouTube channel, the Facebook group, and the downloadable file in the description for this show, for this episode. So that's your call for action this week. Subscribe, follow, and download. Now, if you like what you're hearing, you can feel free to donate at$ran beach 921. That's Karen K A R Y N Beach Like by the Ocean 921. Once again, that's$1 Beach 921 K-A-R-Y-N Beach Like by the Ocean 921. Once again,$1 Beach 921. Join us next week when we'll be back to our old format. We'll have a guest. Um we'll talk, we'll find out about their faith journey. We'll find out more details about what they're talking about. I know I have someone coming up talking about grief soon. Um, I have someone talking about grief soon. I have someone coming up talking about overwhelm and burnout and how to keep that from happening. I've got a lot of good shows coming up. So come back next week. Um, and we will delve into something with somebody, but I'm sure it'll be something with somebody you need to hear. So join me then, and I will see you later. Hopefully, I'll see you before then at the Facebook page or the YouTube page. Thank you. The conversation continues in the twenty-first century Christian Facebook group. Got questions, comments, feedback. That's where you go. God bless.