0:00:00 - 0:00:22 All right, I got an interesting email about asking effective questions and I think this is a wonderful thing to talk about. So we're gonna address it here. It, it made it its way to the top of the queue before I get into some, some writing here. I'll start, I'm not gonna read you the whole email. There 0:00:22 - 0:00:46 are personal elements to it. But this writer says, if you were your audience, how would you want them to reach out to you with questions, especially about doctrinal things. And then there's a bullet of four sub questions. So I want to start actually in reverse order of how they appear. The last bullet 0:00:46 - 0:01:08 is how much preparation and seeking on their own for answers. Would you want them to show you they've done? Now, this person presupposes that this depends on the question and that that's true. But this is actually a really hard question to answer, I guess in, in short, in a short answer, I'd say to do 0:01:08 - 0:01:36 due diligence as far as you see it. So in other words, to do what lies within your power as far as you know, to get the answer yourself So why that's important. There's a host of reasons. Um So first off, as this writer says, there are going to be a lot of times where you actually have the capacity to 0:01:36 - 0:02:00 answer the question yourself. And as this writer says, some of those times the price will actually be quite high, you'll think. Oh, well, I have this list of things I think I could do to try to see if I could find the answer, but I just don't want to spend that time in general. Everything we do in God's 0:01:59 - 0:02:26 kingdom is not just a surrogate, but it's a, it's an instance of what we do with him. It's really bad practice to ask the Lord about something or ask him to do something that you're not willing to do for yourself. He, he doesn't like that and it doesn't go well. So if you're lucky, the result will be 0:02:26 - 0:02:57 that he ignores you. So if you could tell I've had some experience in this, but my little chuckle, um more likely is he's going to chastise you in some way for being a knucklehead and doing what he is often described as uh often requested that we don't do. So if you don't care enough to complete the 0:02:57 - 0:03:19 due diligence as you see it, you don't actually care enough to get the answer and it would do you greater harm than good to receive it. What if you do the due diligence and you don't get the answer. What if you expect that you're not going to get the answer even if you do the due diligence? Well, here's 0:03:19 - 0:03:46 why you should always do. It. Value comes from the price paid. So suppose someone knew the answer to your question and you're not willing to pay the price as you see it to get it. Well, first off, almost all the time, the price is actually higher than you think it is. And a lot of the times it's a lot 0:03:46 - 0:04:13 higher than you thought. Sometimes people who know, will help you see this by refusing to answer the question and actually just giving you tools to help you be aware of and willing to pay a price that exceeds what you thought would be required. So a good father will do this if a son or daughter asks 0:04:12 - 0:04:35 a good father for something and the father knows that the child has the capacity to get the thing they're asking for themselves. They just don't have an understanding of what it truly costs yet. Then the father can, can help with that. And the, and the examples of that abound. So a good, a good mentor 0:04:34 - 0:04:57 will respond to a question by saying, well, what do you think? And then telling the person to go look and, and, and that's even when they know that the person, there's no chance of the person getting the answer. It helps build their understanding of the price at least in a surrogate kind of way in a 0:04:57 - 0:05:35 , in a proxy, a way by proxy, it's still gonna be a much lesser appraisal of cost than what it actually costs. Everything costs more than you think. So, everything you don't know, costs more than you think it does. And that might be the main reason you don't know it yet. So that's, that's what's required 0:05:34 - 0:05:56 in order for me to have a pleasant disposition when someone asks me a question. So what does that look like? What does that look like? It's different for every person and every question, different personality types will do this differently. There's a gentleman who will actually make a slide show explaining 0:05:56 - 0:06:16 his question. It is not 30 minutes long, but he spends more than 30 minutes actually formulating the question and making this slide and, and recording his presentation of it. And that's really nice because I can increase the speed when I completely understand what he's saying. And I can decrease the 0:06:16 - 0:06:42 speed or play it again if I don't understand what he's saying. And then, and then I can go from there, other people, they'll write something up and again, this isn't a question of length. It's a question of thought and concern. So desire really is the the coin of the realm here. You really should want 0:06:42 - 0:07:12 to know. In fact, we would probably improve our relationship with God by asking him fewer things. I know that sounds heretical. But caring a lot more about what we ask. In other words, I, I think the ideal might be something like only ever ask God what you want to know the most, only ask God about what 0:07:12 - 0:07:33 you want to know about the most. Start there. And then as you pop those questions off, you'll go into things you care less about and eventually you'll hit the point where you don't care enough for Him to answer you. And with time you actually become so sensitive to this, that you know, that threshold 0:07:32 - 0:07:56 , you don't have to a young child or even a puppy will push boundaries to test, to see where they are. Uh, farm animals do this too. Although some more than others, sheep won't test fences. Goats will all the time. Pigs will too. And Huskies do all the time. They'll test fences to see if they'll, if 0:07:56 - 0:08:19 they can get through. But you can be a sheep. You don't have to be a goat. You can learn the threshold of real intent where God responds. And then, you know, so, so sometimes people will ask me a question and I'll say, I don't know and I don't care. And it, it's not the uh, flippant thing to say what 0:08:19 - 0:08:43 , what I mean by that is. And sometimes I explicitly say this, I know that I don't care enough to ask God and have him answer me. I know where that threshold is. And because of that, I don't have questions that I don't have answers to. That's not the only reason that that's true. But imagine that, imagine 0:08:42 - 0:09:05 living a life where God answers your questions so quickly and so thoroughly that you don't have any, even though you ask them every single day. And that's a promise. I'm sorry, I can't pull it up right off the top of my head, but you can look it up and put it in a comment here. It's in Isaiah that if 0:09:05 - 0:09:33 we live, live a certain way that he will, I believe it's in Isaiah, maybe it's in Jeremiah. Uh If we live a certain way, he will answer us. Even before we're done asking the question, it is possible to live in that blessing because I do, I know that that's possible. So um the, the way you get there is 0:09:32 - 0:09:58 one of the ways is learning and living real intent, maybe, maybe we'll go through this in reverse. So the, the second to last question he asks are, is what questions do you never want to get? Don't I, I would prefer if people didn't ask me things they didn't actually care about. But one rule of thumb 0:09:57 - 0:10:35 when you're asking questions of God is don't ask Him anything you're not willing to live according to the answer, I'm struggling on the grammar of this. Don't ask him questions for which you're not willing to live. The answer. One potential obstacle with this is that there is an ever present presumption 0:10:34 - 0:10:58 of all the things that God would never ask you to do that would He would never say to you, et cetera, et cetera. And this is where we get back to this idea of, don't ask God for anything except what you care the most about. One of the reasons for that is if something, if you care about something more 0:10:58 - 0:11:26 than anything else, by definition, there are no limits to what you're willing to do to get it. We could get deeper into this. But there are, there are all sorts of pockets of things we say and do that actually make very little sense. That's being generous when you actually look at them and you pin them 0:11:26 - 0:11:49 to the mat and say, hold on, let's understand this, what the heck is going on here. One of those is this phrase, the ends justify the means. Now, I know how that's used and I know why people think that that's universally a bad thing. All you have to say is the ends justify the means. And everyone assumes 0:11:48 - 0:12:26 that whatever you're talking about, whoever believes that is evil as far as evil goes, but all it means is that there's a top to your priority list, right? That in and of itself, not only is that not evil, it's required for good. You have to have a global prioritization of things in order to be good 0:12:25 - 0:12:54 . God certainly does have that the top of his is love. By the way, love justifies the means. That's a huge, huge key. Of course, you need to have the right definition of love which the world doesn't have. But you all understand that if you've watched this channel, you have it, you might not believe it 0:12:54 - 0:13:26 , but you've heard it anyway. So it's not a question of whether the ends justify the means. It's a question of what your ends are. So tethering this back to the email here, what questions do I never wanna get? Let's just start with those that you don't actually care about or those, those whose answers 0:13:26 - 0:13:50 you're not willing to live according to with the assumption that if you don't know the answer to a question, you also don't know what it entails or what it doesn't entail. So you better be pretty open minded or else it is more likely than not that the answer will include what you don't want to hear and 0:13:50 - 0:14:15 what you're not willing to do more often than not. The reason if it's just one thing, the reason why. So let's say the main reason why most people don't receive what they ask for from God is because they're not willing to pay the price associated with what they're asking for. It's not because it's impossible 0:14:14 - 0:14:37 according to reality. Although some things are, it's not because it's, you're too old. It's not because you're, you know, you made bad decisions in the past. It's not. And all of these things can absolutely take options off the table. It's not because of the people who are or are not around you. Jesus 0:14:37 - 0:15:02 said, when he was talking to hard hearted people in his time, he said, God can raise up from the stones, Sons of Abraham. It's not a hard thing for him. That's not the bottleneck. The number one reason you don't get what you want from God is because you're not willing to pay the price that's associated 0:15:02 - 0:15:28 with that blessing. You're not willing to obtain and live the law and those are two different things to obtain it and to live it upon which it's predicated. So don't ask questions that you're not ready to hear the answer to and you should assume that even with what seemed like simple questions, the answer 0:15:27 - 0:15:50 might involve 10 levels from where you are, whatever that means, right? But just it might involve a whole huge scope of information, life experiences and everything else that you're just not ready for. And so when I get hit with those questions, it's really difficult for me. Although I'm getting better 0:15:49 - 0:16:16 in judo deflection with these questions, but it's really difficult to me, for me to sincerely answer questions that, you know, will require a whole book to answer. And not because I'm not willing to write a whole book for a single person that's not theoretical. I've actually done it. OK. At least once 0:16:16 - 0:00:00 . But the published version that, that provides evidence for this is teaching for doctrines and commandments of men that was written for one person who by the way has not read the book. So I'm not exaggerating when I say I am willing to write a whole book to explain something to someone, one person. 0:00:00 - 0:17:13 So don't, don't underestimate what the Lord and people who love him are willing to do to make, make, to, to deliver what people seek sincerely what they're willing to pay the price for. But having written that book, would I do it again? Well, I'd have to have a lot more evidence that, that someone means 0:17:13 - 0:17:36 it when they say I would, I would read and consider such a thing, let alone someone who wouldn't read or consider such a thing. So, so if you, this is one reason why there needs to be evidence of preparation and seeking on your own because if all you're willing to do is write an email with a simple question 0:17:35 - 0:17:58 , you probably don't care that much, right? So if you are willing to think about it and you show that you've taken the time to do that, then you've taken the time to search out the the sources you have at hand, including taking time to look through. If you're gonna ask me something, then look through 0:17:58 - 0:18:21 the things that I've written or recorded. And hopefully sometime in the future, we'll have more helpful tools for that in terms of searchable transcripts for these videos. For example, although on that note, if you haven't, you can experiment with the search on youtube. Obviously, there's the general 0:18:20 - 0:18:40 search bar. But if you look below that right now with the layout of the site, there's a little question mark at the top of a channel, you have to go to the channel. There's a little uh I said question mark, it's a magnifying glass and you can search for words and it will actually because youtube does 0:18:40 - 0:19:00 transcribe videos, it will pull up. It's pretty good. It's a pretty good search of videos that, that address, I guess contain those words that you're searching for. So you could use that. And uh I encourage you to avail yourself of that what we're envisioning for the new site, which is ambitious. So 0:19:00 - 0:19:22 we'll see if we ever get to it. But uh because we're just running on, on volunteer time, we're, we're hoping that we can have a single source search that searches through books, blogs and videos and then shows you the text surrounding the relevant search terms. That's what we're hoping to get to so that 0:19:22 - 0:19:43 you could click on a video and it takes you to that time stamp and you could just jump right in. There are a lot of reasons I really don't like that, but sometimes you just have to deal with the costs and I'm not just talking about the development costs which are considerable. I I think that this is 0:19:43 - 0:20:10 going to enable a lot of evil, but sometimes we have to allow for that in order to provide what's necessary for the good to occur. All right, what would you wish people would ask about less? So the person says probably things like polygamy, maybe things that might be considered deep doc doctrine for 0:20:10 - 0:20:41 lack of a better term, like multiple mortal probations. You know, it's not about topics or depth or whatever. It's actually about relevance to your daily life, your motive in asking and what things might be more important for you right now, which has to do with your motive for asking to you. It might 0:20:40 - 0:21:09 seem like a minor thing but only a minorly offensive thing or something very important to ask about something like polygamy or to ask about some obscure far off f you know, let's talk about the, the thickness of the walls in New Jerusalem. For me, that's like nails on a chalkboard while I'm being punched 0:21:09 - 0:21:41 in the face and having my toenails ripped off at the same time because for me, it's a huge neon sign of what of why you're asking. It's not about, I want to know more about what Jesus is like so that I can live my life similar to hit how he would. It's I want more trivia. I want to feel like I know something 0:21:41 - 0:22:04 while not actually making changes in my life or sometimes fortunately not, not frequently anymore. You're you're panning for things that you can use against me and it's really obvious. So put another way and you find this again and again in the New Testament with how people treated the Lord, you're asking 0:22:03 - 0:22:25 me questions, not so that you can understand or see more about my reasons for why I believe or even to test those against your reasons why you don't believe all those are fair game and good. But you're asking because you're searching for things that will enable you to dismiss out of hand, some effective 0:22:24 - 0:22:52 call for repentance that I've given you or more accurately that the spirit has witnessed to your conscience through your, to you, through your conscience of things you need to change and you don't want to. And so you invest massive effort in finding what is sufficient for you to dismiss that through 0:22:52 - 0:23:15 finding something I've said or done or believe or whatever that you know, you don't agree with. And then if you can fixate on that enough, you can blur your vision to not see the thing about you that's bothering you. In other words, you're, you're making me a proxy for your conscience so that if you 0:23:15 - 0:23:36 can take out my character as you see it, you will alleviate your own guilt. Those are questions that I'm really not interested in asking. And if you want to predict how I'm going to respond to those, you can read The New Testament and see how Jesus did. And I will try to model his behavior to the best 0:23:36 - 0:24:01 of my ability and it's not fun to deal with. So I, I wouldn't do that if I were you. So, but again, most questions that I would say that I'd prefer people to ask less are already taken out by the real intent criterion. If, if someone really cares, we're probably in the realm of something that I can help 0:24:01 - 0:24:27 them with that, that I would like to help them with. I should say whether I can or not is a different question. Finally, the first question he asked was, what questions would you hope they would be asking? This is this is a really good question. So first off, I know I've made some videos about this in 0:24:27 - 0:24:54 the past about uh curating comments on the channel. I don't get a lot of comments on the channel right now and that is what it is. I don't think it's a good or bad thing. It just is, there are pros and cons to that. I am surprised that there aren't more comments and I know from what the Lord has shown 0:24:53 - 0:25:12 me that at least part of that is because it's John chapter three, people don't wanna come to the light because they're afraid of what the light's going to show. And that's of course not the case in all situations. But there were so many examples if you want a read through on this, just read through the 0:25:12 - 0:25:39 gospel of Mark. He does a good job at highlighting these of just how many times people around Jesus had questions, but they didn't dare ask him because they, they had an idea that his response would not be something they wanted to experience or, or, or hear. And that's, that's not fun to, to see because 0:25:38 - 0:26:15 , oh, I'm trying to boil this down to one sentence and it's a book worth of material angels. Keep the way of the tree of life. You have no idea what that means. But I'm going to explain it to you here, at least in one facet. It doesn't mean that there is one or more angels standing with a flaming sword 0:26:14 - 0:26:48 at some real gate to some real place. Although that is true, there are actually many gates and many angels and flaming swords. But one of the most important meanings of this is that an incredibly important function of angels, which that just means a servant of God is to prepare people to interact more 0:26:47 - 0:27:25 fully with the Lord. And the way they do this is through exposing you to a lesser degree of fire. It's what the swords are all about. And while in the world, we would not consider getting chopped up with a flaming sword as a good thing in the Lord. It is a good thing. It's correction which he packages 0:27:24 - 0:27:55 together with his love. He explains it as a function, a piece of receiving his love. It goes together with that whom the Lord loveth, he chasten for example. And so one of the roles of angels is to prepare people to dwell in greater quantities and intensities of fire. Because God dwells in fire. There's 0:27:55 - 0:28:26 scriptures for everything I'm saying here, you can look it up if you'd like, I will give it to you later. If you, if you don't care to look it up now. And so by not interacting with God's servants, you remove yourself from the blessing of what that process, what only that process can deliver. So the 0:28:26 - 0:28:56 one of the nicest examples of this in the scriptures is that of Joshua. And you can go and, and look at his life and his experiences with Moses and how that changed him and prepared him for the time after Moses was no longer with Israel. And maybe that's enough said on that topic. If Joshua had had as 0:28:56 - 0:29:20 little interaction with Moses as the average member of the camp, Joshua could not have done any of the things he did after Moses and we wouldn't even know his name. Not that that matters, but he wouldn't have been able to help Israel in the ways that he did. So that's, that's one of the downsides of 0:29:19 - 0:29:46 less interaction. But one of the plus sides is just time when someone asks me a sincere question, I have an obligation to do what I can to help them. And that takes sometimes a lot of time, sometimes a lot of time. So what questions would I hope that people would be asking that they're not asking? Well 0:29:46 - 0:30:13 , I, I did start doing these questions, not asked presentations. I have a huge list of these and some notes that I just don't have time to go through right now and make videos for. But I know there's at least one that I made of that and I think it's published already. So this, I call this QN A not question 0:30:12 - 0:30:42 and answer, but question, not asked questions, not asked, where I will ask myself a question that I wish someone else would have asked me or I am surprised no one has asked me. Sometimes the most helpful thing someone can do is to assist you in formulating your question. Questions are so important that 0:30:41 - 0:31:08 they're frequently that the key that unlocks the answer to such an extent that in many cases, if someone gives you the question, they've given you the answer, it becomes very easy, maybe even automatic to get the answer after you have the right question sometimes. But I don't have questions that I hope 0:31:08 - 0:31:40 people would be asking per se because I feel like those questions would probably have to do with their daily lives and, and putting into practice the things that the Lord has taught or given examples of. And I wouldn't expect those questions to be numerous if, if I had done a good job explaining what 0:31:40 - 0:32:05 I'm trying to explain. But if they did exist and this is the answer to, to the question, this is my answer to that question. What questions would you hope they would be asking? Here are the most helpful questions for me are the ones that reveal a gap between what the Lord has taught me and what I have 0:32:04 - 0:32:43 effectively taught you. Those are the questions that I'd really like to hear. You will have questions that you really want to ask. And those are also very valuable, they have a fairly sophisticated way of using those interactions to the greatest possible advancement of the books that I'm writing. So 0:32:43 - 0:33:06 how I write things, I'll, I'll, I'll try to merge how I would write it in the book in a response to someone. And then I will take that and actually put it in the book with whatever changes I need to make to it. Or sometimes just the interaction helps me see that I haven't, maybe I have a question, a 0:33:06 - 0:33:32 new question out of all of that. And so I'll get the answer to it or it helps me see a perspective that is far enough from my own that I, I can do better to address that in these books. But the main value of questions that you asked me to me is in identifying areas in which the Lord has taught me something 0:33:32 - 0:34:05 that I have not effectively taught you. So that's helpful because it's easy. I, if I've been thinking about something for some astronomical amount of time and, and intensity, it's very easy for me to lose a correct perception of what I've said about that in public. And often times it's not, it's not 0:34:05 - 0:34:27 infrequent that my understanding of something would progress dramatically from the last place I left off on it publicly and I haven't noticed. So that's probably enough said this is longer than I expected it to be, which is good because I probably wouldn't have made it if I knew how long it would take 0:34:27 - 0:34:39 . But I hope this helps you the person that asked the question and I hope it asks everyone else take care. I hope it helps everyone else take care.