From Generation to Generation (ft. Pastor Daniel Ligon)

Play Video

In the 1700s, a Moravian missionary named Nikolaus von Zinzendorf uttered an infamous instruction: “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.”

WOW! Hard words! But they remind us of part of our goal is Christians, which is to keep the light of Jesus burning from generation to generation without getting too focused on ourselves.

If you have a saving faith in Christ, you also have an obligation to share it. And right now, the devil would love to see America’s Christian heritage snuffed out at the end of our lifetime. I am joined by a man who is doing his part to keep that from happening, the delightful Pastor Daniel Ligon.

Join us for some great conversation and encouragement!

Share

Transcript

Elaine Beck 0:00
Elaine Beck, Hi everyone. I’m Elaine Beck. And as you know, our show is it’s not about us, because it’s about our Father in Heaven and the Creator God who made us and that we are here to serve. And I love that. And as you know, we love to share the Good News of what’s happening in the country. And I think one of the best pieces of news that I can give you today is that we have a pastor here, as we have been having other pastors come on and talk that understand that, yes, it is our place to understand what’s happening in our country and to be politically involved, at least in the manner of understanding that God, if he’s in control, how can he do that when we let All the people that love the devil and follow the evil ways to run our country. So I’d like to introduce you to a local pastor. I mean, he’s minutes away from our front door here, and he works with my pastor as well. Pastor Armstrong, and so can you please tell them, Pastor, Daniel, how to pronounce your last name?

Speaker 1 1:23
Yeah, I’m Daniel Ligon and pastor, North Valley Baptist church right here in Oro Valley, Arizona. Lived out here going on four years now. Nice,

Elaine Beck 1:32
nice. So was this? What brought you here? Was the church was, yeah,

Speaker 1 1:37
moved out from Missouri, before that, Oklahoma and before that missionary kid in Africa? Yeah, everywhere,

Elaine Beck 1:42
yeah. I thought that was fascinating. What part of Africa May I ask? Nigeria,

Speaker 1 1:46
West Africa, okay, okay, biggest country in Africa over, over 200 million people now, wow. And

Elaine Beck 1:53
you spoke to them all,

Speaker 1 1:57
but was over there with my parents. We’re church planting. Missionaries started a couple of churches there in the 90s and early, 2000s Right,

Elaine Beck 2:03
right? Well, you know, it is a big world, and it is open now, and we have the ability to speak to everybody. And so we’re trying to build our show bigger and bigger all the time. Because, you know, what God wants us to do, I believe, is to learn how to speak out and stand for him. You know, when he said that we should all share His Word, I think that with the world so big and so many, I mean, there’s literally not just millions, but billions of people on this earth now that it is a big job for us to spread the word, yeah, and I’m always so pleased and happy to have people on my show that that know the Word of God And that are willing to stand up and say, We have to understand what’s happening in the world right now and speak to that, yeah,

Speaker 1 3:07
and I think that, just like light shines even brighter and more noticeable in a dark place, I think there’s a great opportunity for Christians today. Honestly, the more wicked our society gets, there’s an opportunity for Christians to shine brighter and more clearly the truth and the love of Jesus, I

Elaine Beck 3:25
love the way you put that. I’d never seen it in quite in that light. And I do because I think you’re right. And God never gives you something without the tools to do it, the power to brighten that light, the direction to do that. And I know that you’ve been doing that. Can you tell us a little bit how you feel that we should spread God’s word more? Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 3:53
politically, you know, number of years ago, there was kind of an emphasis that began on kind of a grassroots movement politically, starting, you know, instead of top down, changing things at the ground level. And I think that’s a great analogy to what is going on in Christianity today, is when that change can start at the grassroots level. I’m talking with local churches and with conversations between coworkers and at school and with neighbors, that’s the level that the greatest spiritual change in our society is going to happen is at the grassroots level, in our neighborhoods, our communities. Yeah,

Elaine Beck 4:29
I’ll never forget the first time I had a pastor stand up in a church where I was and say, you know, you think everybody thinks that the pastor is the one that does all the spreading of the word, he said, It’s not us at all. We can only direct you about what the Bible says. And then as you go out and you go to work or you go to the store or you go to your friend’s home or to your neighbors or your family. Right? It’s you who has the opportunity to be amongst all the people and spread the word. And I was like, wow, that is a great way to look at it.

Speaker 1 5:12
Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a church member who’s an instructor in the military that he’s working with younger soldiers. I don’t know those young men, I don’t have an impact in their life, but, but this church member of mine is sharing his faith with them. He’s given out Bible studies, he said, over the last year, given out like 50 Bible studies. And that’s just each person you have, somebody that you know, someplace that you can have an impact, that maybe I couldn’t, or somebody else couldn’t, but you can, right?

Elaine Beck 5:40
And you know, one of the things that I fight against all the time pastor is, you know, as a senior, and when God gave me my first vision, he made it clear that we were the last people that really understood and knew and lived in a free country that was not at war with itself, not at war within its boundaries, not hating and and and comparing ourselves to everybody, but instead living freely the way that it should be in a country that believed in freedom, whether it was In our little town. And I was raised in a dinky little town, we had two stop signs, and, you know, whether it was there or whether it was in the big cities. And when I was a little girl, the only thing that we ever heard was, you know, if the mobsters in Chicago, you know, had a killing. That was the biggest killing we ever heard of, sure. And so I think in my mind, what God has given me is as a senior, that all seniors should be outspoken about God and outspoken about the differences and share the true history of this country and the true love for this country. I mean, we didn’t go to school without praying to start our day without doing the Pledge of Allegiance. As a matter of fact, I was in junior high when that evil woman changed the way that things were done in this country ever since then. There’s very few schools that, unless they’re private Christian or private schools, that can do those things now. And I just think that, you know, it’s up to all of us, don’t you think,

Speaker 1 7:38
yeah, and I think there’s, there’s something especially that the older generation can speak to when it comes to, you know, here’s what we’ve seen. And every generation is going to have its own struggles, its own sure areas in which the church has to push back against the world. Every generation deals with that. But I think the, you know, the stakes are high and the differences are clear today, right? Obvious to see

Elaine Beck 8:01
Right, right? And, you know, I’ve heard grandparents say, Well, you know, I don’t dare say anything because it upsets my kids. Well, you know, upsetting your kids didn’t hurt you when they were teenagers, and you knew that the best thing that you could tell them was, no, they couldn’t run with that crowd. No, why are you backing down now? Yeah, why is it less important that’s your grandchild? Yeah,

Speaker 1 8:24
I think there has to be such a balance of having both the love and the truth. You know, amen, children, grandchildren, have to know no matter what, you always love them. You will always be there to talk to them no matter what, absolutely but you have to find ways, good ways, to also make sure that they understand what you believe, what you stand for. I mean, a lot of the people I pastor are in that older generation. I see a lot of them heartbroken over their kids or grandkids and the direction they’ve gone. And you know, my counsel is pray and love and speak truth when you can, how you can, but always you know be there as that presence they know will love them and and they’ll have those conversations one day. That’s my hope. That’s my prayer,

Elaine Beck 9:10
right, right? Well, I know many grandparents who have learned how to speak the truth and love, yeah. And that’s the way pastor puts it, yeah, and I know many grandparents who, you know, when they get the opportunity to spend time alone with their grandkids, they share a word about God. They they talk about, you know, their love of God, and how you know when you’re sad or you’re hurt or you’re going through a trial that you’re never alone, they share these things, and I think that’s so important. And to take your grandchildren under your wing is is a miraculous thing. I’m blessed. I have, you know, seven grandchildren, and I have seven great grandchildren. Yeah, and so I’m getting to see the next next generation, and getting to share my history with them. And you know, that’s the way to do the truth in love. You don’t have to say, don’t do this or don’t do that. Tell them the wonderful stories about how when you were in school and you graduated, that you went to Baccalaureate as well, because that was the way the church honored you for making it through school and stop. They don’t even have that most at most schools anymore. You tell them the wonderful stories about how when you were in school, that you were taught to pray every morning, and that God was your strength, and the Bible’s the most important book in your library, not the one you read after the teacher tells you to it’s the one you read every day. These are the things that grandparents can speak about and not offend mom and dad and not offend the children, but instead build them up. Yes,

Speaker 1 11:05
and I think I’ll tell you something else that’s missing in our society today. A lot of churches, unfortunately, have have gone into this idea we have to have a church built around a lot of similarities, and that comes down off into generations, and so you’ll have churches full of old people or churches full of young people, missing out on the beauty of intergenerational community, because it’s not just family. I mean, you want to be close with family and grandkids, and sometimes with distance, living somewhere else you can’t. But I love the fact in our church every Sunday, there are old people and little kids and everything in between, and they love and learn from each other that that multi generational church is just incredible. Well,

Elaine Beck 11:50
sadly, I know of a large church here, local, and I won’t give out names or anything, but at one point, the pastor actually got up in front of the church and said that they were focusing on the young people, and if the old people didn’t like it, that there’s the door literally said those words, can you imagine? And

Speaker 1 12:11
if the generations can’t figure out how to come together in a church, what hope is there for the rest of society? Right?

Elaine Beck 12:16
Exactly, if we can’t work together and know that God loves all of us, no matter what age, no matter what stage of life that we’re in, and that they need to see what grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles go through, and hear their stories in order for them to relate to the world, because it’s all about, you know, if you want to know God, you have to know him from a friendly environment, not from the evil people they hear at school and that give them that generational history, even the bad people in the family can be an experience that kids need to learn from right? Oh, yeah. And there, we’ve all got them. We’ve all got the people that went astray and never came back or or gave their life to something other than to the world, rather than to God, yeah. And that’s how kids learn good from evil and evil from good, yeah. So it’s all important. You can’t separate people in the church, yeah.

Speaker 1 13:27
And as a society, we’ve lost so much of that personal connection, you know, with the rise of social media dominating everything and screen time, you know, in the in the in the the numbers are just ridiculous, that we’ve lost what it means to have a personal conversation, to relate to somebody, talk to somebody who’s maybe not just like you and I love what you’ve talked about on this show over the past few months, just the phrase, we are not enemies. That’s right, and to apply that to politics, certainly, but to also apply that, just within churches and within families and all of these relationships that we have to understand we are not enemies. I mean, it has to start there,

Elaine Beck 14:08
and it starts with the family. You know, I tell everybody that my first run in with that was about a fam, but it was with family members, because that’s the people you’re closest to. And who do you relate to is the people that you are in your family first, and those will be the first people that will hurt you, yeah, as well as help you absolutely and and so when they do, it can leave scars, if you let it yes, this only scarring comes is when you accept that it was it was evil and bad. Instead of trying to say, what part did I play, and how do I forgive them, and why do I forgive them,

Speaker 1 14:55
and even seeing what God can do to overcome that evil, I mean, just. Right at the end of the book of Genesis, right? He tells his brothers, you did all this stuff to me. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.

Elaine Beck 15:08
Yes, oh yes, that’s that’s beautiful, as a matter of fact, one of these days on Fridays, we do a prayer group, and part of my prayer group is inviting in pastors to tell me their favorite scriptures. I’d love for you to be on the shows, on the phone call one of these days and share that with us, because I think it’s true. Throughout the Bible, it talks about forgiveness. It talks about loving your neighbor as you love yourself. How can you say you love your neighbor as you love yourself when you don’t what you don’t have the capacity to forgive them. I want to be forgiven, don’t you absolutely when if I do something wrong or say something even inadvertently that offends Somebody, please let us know so that we can ask for forgiveness and we can humble ourselves and admit our errors. God says he loves that, but he says he loves it even more when we pray for our enemies and say, God, we love them enough that even though they would do this stuff that we would never do ourselves, and we’re not condoning by forgiving, course, but instead, what we’re saying is, God, take the veil from their eyes and let them see you so that they too, can join us all in heaven someday,

Speaker 1 16:26
yes, and for the Christian, forgiveness is always motivated by the gospel. Ephesians, chapter four, you know, reminds us we forgive others, as Christ has forgiven us, amen. So if I understand, you know Jesus loved me while I was a sinner. Jesus died for me when I didn’t deserve it. If that truly, deeply sinks down into my soul, how can I not begin to display that same sort of forgiveness toward others who may not deserve it any more than I did. That’s why I’ve been forgiven. I

Elaine Beck 16:54
still don’t deserve it at all. The Bible says that non not one of us is deserving right, not one Absolutely. And so I love that. Well, listen, I hate to do this, but we’ve run out of time, and so we’re going to have to go. I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to come and be on the show. You will have to do this again sometime and talk more about it. I love having, you know, being surrounded by other Christians is the best place in the world to be, because then when we’re we’re around people that are of the world, we can still stand tall and we can represent God in the best way. And that is to mention his name. My favorite goal in life is I mentioned God to everybody I meet. It doesn’t happen whether I’m in a grocery store or whatever God it always comes into the conversation, because that is where my strength comes from. Yes, he deserves the glory, right? And when I say Jesus, I know that I have His power and i can i It’s meaningful to me, and I know, moreover, that that’s what he wants us to do. Amen. So God bless you, and thank you for being on my show, and thank all of you for coming and watching the show today. I hope it enlightened you and it gave you a sense of purpose and and what you’re doing today and throughout the week, and as you know, I pray for you always. Go to Elaine beck.com watch our shows. We love you. God bless you.

Related Posts

Natasha Owens Thumbnail - 1
Sing the Truth in Love (ft. Natasha Owens)
God-given talents are for God-given work! Natasha Owens has not had an easy journey to where she is...
Chad Connelly Thumbnail - 1
But God! (ft. Chad Connelly)
God is the author of it all. It is all in His hand. No evil power can compete with His glory. If it...
Rabbi Yaakov Menken Thumbnail - 1
The Moral Leadership of the Jewish People (ft. Rabbi Yaakov Menken)
Evil cannot abide the presence of a heart that loves God. We are seeing that play out here in America...