Episode Transcript:

Hey, friends, welcome to the Life Renovation Podcast.
We are your co-host, Glendie Loranger and Elizabeth Morrison.
And together, we're breaking down the walls that divide us through meaningful conversations around faith, family, and sexuality.
Morning Elizabeth.
Good morning.
So good to see you.
Yeah.
Bright and early.
We always tape this on a Monday morning, and we are one day past Palm Sunday.
So this is Easter week, heading into Easter.
And one of the things that we wanted to do on the podcast this week especially was to focus on faith, especially heading into Easter, and focus on the resurrection of Jesus Christ is what we're going to celebrate on Sunday.
But we also look back on Friday to the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for us.
And so we know that especially at our church, Elizabeth and I, Easter is probably one of the biggest attended days in the church in America.
And it's also a day when people either feel obligated or they come just wondering, who is this God?
Who is this Jesus Christ that we all talk about?
And oftentimes they encounter Him, and then they also encounter their own sin.
And so we wanted to have a special guest join us in the studio.
We've got my good friend, Pastor Bobby Moore from River City Church.
Morning, Bobby.
Good morning, Glendie.
Thank you for having me.
So good to have you join us.
What we want to talk about this morning is, are you good enough for God?
Oftentimes we have questions there.
Stuff comes up. 
Do we feel like we have to earn His love?
Do we feel like we've done too much?
So Bobby, we are hoping that you can kind of help us navigate that a little bit this morning.
You've been doing this a little while.
So I want to kind of give our listeners an idea of who we're talking to.
So I know a little bit.
You and I sat in the stands because our kids played ball together.
But you played a lot of baseball.
Yes.
Grown up college baseball.
Can you just fill us in on who the heck is Bobby Moore?
Yeah, absolutely.
And truth be told, I was better at baseball, but my favorite sport is basketball.
So March Madness and the season that we're in right now, Go Zags, is really fun.
But I did.
I did play baseball as a young man.
I had dreams of playing professionally.
I got to play at a junior college in California for two years.
And then I went over and played at University of Hawaii for two years.
And I got drafted by three different professional teams by Oakland and by Boston.
And then I signed with Texas my third year and I got to play four and a half years in the Rangers Minor League Organization.
So cool.
Yeah.
Not many people we know who can say that.
It was a fun ride.
One of the cool things about Bobby is you also have a special connection to life services here.
Your wife, Becca, is on our Board of Directors.
Yes.
We love that woman.
Well, so do I.
You are blessed to have her.
She is still the apple of my eye and I wouldn't want to walk through life with anybody but her.
We've been happily married for 30 years and she is in New York right now actually learning how to be a better vice principal in some low income schools there.
But she's a constant learner and she sharpens me every day.
Yeah.
And Rebecca is a vice principal of a fairly large high school here in Spokane.
Yes.
Rogers High School.
Yeah.
Tell us a little bit more about family and then if you could kind of dive into your current role.
Yeah.
Becca and I have three amazing children.
Caleb is 22 and he is working here in Spokane and doing great things just kind of trying to figure out what his next step is.
Yeah.
Coolest kid.
Olivia, my daughter for the last two years has been down at Long Beach State playing basketball and her major is biochemistry.
So that in and of itself is daunting, let alone being a student athlete.
So she's a little smarty pants.
She takes after her mom, yes, a lot.
And she's actually looking at new things.
She entered the transfer portal yesterday and she's got some discussions with some coaches here this week and we're really excited for what God's got in store for her.
That's cool.
And then Sam, our youngest, is 18 and a senior at Meade High School here in Spokane.
And he actually loves baseball.
He's taking after his dad a little bit in that and he desires to play in college and beyond.
But he is facing some adversity right now.
He had a hip surgery on his labrum and that's about an eight month recovery.
And he found out that he has to have his other hip surgically repaired, which is another six and a half months probably.
And so he's facing some adversity, but God's taking him through some great things right now.
Oh, that's hard as a high school kid.
And then the role that I'm in right now, we're in our 10th year at River City Foursquare Church.
We're a Life Center transplant, a Life Center plant.
And Life Center was my home church for 15 years prior to that.
And you were the college pastor there.
I was the college pastor.
I was the junior high pastor.
I was the next gen team leader.
Before we went over to the new Life Center, we were at the building that we're in right now.
And I got a chance to do newcomers and welcoming and ushers and greeting.
And so it was a good platform to learn how to be a lead pastor.
And so you've been lead pastor now at River City for quite a while.
This will be our 10th year.
Yeah.
Well, one of the things I do know about you, Bobby, you helped coach when my son was playing baseball and I know that you're a get-or-done guy.
And so this whole topic of good enough for God, I think just fits you to a T.
Yep.
And definitely there's lots of questions.
And I can imagine for not only myself, but for the general populace, there were a lot of questions about if you're good enough.
And I'm always a people pleaser.
And if you don't have margin in your life, you can constantly be a go, go, go person.
And God is very specific about keeping the Sabbath day holy.
So I've had to manage through a lot of that.
But I've also had to see myself as who God sees me, and not who other people see me, not who my mom and dad see me as, not who other people want me to be, but who God really wants me to be.
Bobby, we have a bunch of different people that listen to this podcast, kind of all spectrums of their faith walk.
I think there's people that have been in the church their whole lives.
This is, you know, they totally know what Easter is about.
And then there's people that this might be their first experience, or they've had negative experiences.
So if we can just start with, I want to say it's a simple question, but I don't think some people see it as that.
But talk to us about God.
You clearly have a personal relationship with Him that's come out.
But what can you tell us about the relationship between man and God?
Just give us a foundation, if you will.
Yeah, well, I'll take you back even in my story, when I was going to school and I was going to my father-in-law's church and I knew that he was preparing sermons for me specifically because I was dating his daughter and I didn't have a relationship with the Lord.
And I knew that he was speaking to me because of those facts that I just listed.
And it was really God that was speaking to me through him.
And then I began to realize, especially in my life, because I'm a striver, you know, like you said, Glendie, I like to get things done.
And I realized even some of the characteristics that I saw that were not good in my life, no matter how much I tried to get a handle on those things, it wasn't good enough, I mean, to be perfect before God.
And I realized that I had sin in my life, and that is anything that falls short of what God would have for you.
And later we can point out in Scripture what that specifically means.
But I realized that I needed to have that relationship in order to be the person that God had called me to be, and maybe not that person that my mom or dad or this world would want me to be.
Yes, you know, you have relationships with your pastor, your girlfriend, your parents, but this is a different relationship that you're painting with God.
Well, yeah.
And the way that I've described it in the past is, you know, the person that got to define what the cell phone was, was Steve Jobs.
And the reason is because he was the creator of that.
And God gave me that picture of me being created by him.
And so he gets to have ultimate authority of who I am.
I don't even get to have that authority, even though a lot of people in today's day and age, they want to think that they have that say so.
It's actually the creator that gets the ultimate authority.
Yeah.
And the amazing thing about Christianity is that we can have a personal relationship with that creator.
We don't have to be afraid of him.
Yeah, that he isn't far off, and we may even get into this a little bit more, but he actually came near and in the person of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, and he actually bridged that gap because obviously we are not perfect, and yet he is perfect.
And the only way that we can have relationship with perfect is if we become perfect, and the only way that we can do that is through Jesus.
Yeah, so tell us more about Jesus.
Okay, well, the foundation of Jesus is he is the third person of the Godhead.
You know, as we read God's Word in the very beginning, in Genesis chapter 1, it says, in the beginning, God created.
And in the Hebrew language, it's a beautiful language, if you know it, and the word for God in Hebrew is Elohim.
And that actually encompasses God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
So when you read in Genesis chapter 1 verse 26, let us make man in our image, it would look like it would be more than one God.
Yeah.
But it's not.
It's Elohim, God, it's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit being one God.
And we don't have that word in the English language, and that's why it says, and it looks like it's pluralistic.
It's the us and the hour in that text.
And so Jesus is in perfect relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
And they want us to come into that relationship.
And so that's why God sent Jesus, his Son, to this earth to bridge that gap.
And that's honestly what we're celebrating this week in Easter, is the resurrection of Jesus, that he is very much alive and desiring to have relationship with us.
And so to summarize, we have this God that is God, and we have humans that are flawed with sin, which we already kind of talked about.
And in order to get to God, we had to cross this chasm, this space, and to be perfect, and we couldn't.
And so he sent Jesus, who is the perfect sacrifice.
He never sinned.
He's fully God and fully human, and he could bridge that for us.
You should be doing this right now.
You did a perfect job of explaining that.
And so then this week, we're gonna keep talking about Easter, but we celebrate Jesus dying and then being risen to life.
That's right.
It was an empty tomb.
Bobby, I love that you use that term, bridging the gap, because I think so often people stand on one side of the chasm and we just feel like this God, this relationship or this even heaven is just something so unattainable, so.
Untouchable.
We're talking with Pastor Bobby Moore from River City Church and we'll be back in just a moment.
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And we are back on the Life Renovation Podcast with my good friend, Pastor Bobby Moore.
We're talking about how can someone be good enough for God?
So many different thoughts come to mind, just even with that phrase, good enough for God.
And so Bobby, I know you know my story, that I had an abortion when I was 17, and I really considered that the unforgivable sin, that there was no way that the Lord was gonna allow me into heaven.
And I know so many other people have stuff like that.
Maybe it's not abortion, but maybe it's another issue in their life where they're like, God would never accept me.
How would you respond to somebody?
Yeah, that's a very real question.
And the way that I would respond to it is very gently, because you don't want to assume that you know what somebody's going through, that we know that God does.
And then I would direct people to His word.
And I mean, there's a lot of things that go through our minds of why we justify the things that we do.
And even one of the questions that you asked me is, what do you think sin is, or how would you define sin?
And it really, it doesn't matter what I call sin, it really matters what God does.
And so, in not being good enough, God says that we are good enough, that we're His masterpiece.
And it's through Christ that we get to live life.
And so, I can certainly understand the decisions that we make in life.
And some of those are not in alignment with who God would want us to be, whether that be in how I treat my spouse, or how I talk to my kids, or how I make decisions of a life living in me.
Those decisions, we can't go back and change anything.
But if we're going to experience God's grace, and God's grace is a gift, according to Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, and I would direct our listeners to that, it says, for by grace you've been saved through faith.
It is a gift from God, lest anybody should boast.
And then it goes on to talk about us being his masterpiece.
But if God's grace is a gift, it's nothing that we can earn or attain.
And if anybody looks at themself in their worst moment, no one would be able to be before God.
And God sees all of our life.
And so God says that we can have his forgiveness and his grace even in the midst of any and all decisions that we would make in our humanness.
And you look at the Old Testament, you look at David, he was a murderer.
You look at Solomon, he was a murderer.
You look at the Apostle Paul, he was a murderer.
And God's grace was sufficient.
And again, his word reminds us that his mercies in our life in Lamentations 3.23, they're new every morning.
I need to hear that.
Yeah, thank you for that.
I love that you started out gentle.
I mean, you're a big imposing guy.
If we were on video, you guys would all see that Bobby kind of towers over all of us.
So, the fact that you started out gentle is such a reminder of the way Jesus approaches us.
And that gift that he offers us of grace, there's a peace and a comfort.
Even as you spoke that over me again, and I've received that for my own actions, just even being reminded is so powerful.
Yeah, and I was also reminded of a quote that Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said.
He said, where sin goes unacknowledged, grace goes untapped.
And I love that quote, because oftentimes we can hold on to, or we have a hard time forgiving ourselves, and if we can't forgive ourselves, and yet God is, do we really have the audacity to think that we have a higher standard than God?
And there's no way that that's the case, because He is perfection.
And so to truly receive grace, which is receiving something that we don't deserve, that's the beauty and the love of God.
Oh, that's so good.
So let me just ask, if you just heard that, and that's news to you, to not forgive yourself, really in many ways, what we heard Bobby just say is to reject the grace of Jesus.
I would just ask you to pause this podcast right now and just say it out loud, I forgive myself for whatever that is.
Because really to receive the grace that Jesus offers, we also have to be able to forgive ourselves.
Yeah, Bobby, I love what you said about that, of just people not feeling like they have to be good enough in the sense of like the choices that they've made.
That's a huge element.
I think the other way people can look at not being good enough for God is the actions that they take.
You're a get-her-done person, I'm a get-her-done person.
And so there's the other concept of, we earn everything in our life.
We earn our paycheck, we earn our degree, we can work on certain things and see the product of what we've put in and what we've got.
We've gotten out of it.
So wouldn't it make sense that if we feel like we should earn our way to heaven then, if we can earn a paycheck and earn everything else, how come we can't?
Right, that's a great question.
And I've had this conversation with a number of people.
And I ask them this question.
How much good is good enough to get you into heaven?
How much good is good enough?
Because their answer is spot on almost every time.
And it's, well, you have to be perfect.
And there's no way that we can be perfect apart from Christ.
And that's that free gift that he was talking about in Ephesians chapter two.
For by grace you've been saved through faith, it's a gift from God.
Because if you could earn it, then it wouldn't be a gift.
A gift, that's exactly right.
And I love that.
I love when people, the light goes on for people for that, because it isn't the currency that God operates in.
The currency with all the other things that you just mentioned of earning it are like the currency that we operate in, on the monies that says in God we trust.
That's America's currency.
But God's currency is totally different.
It's His grace.
When we stand at the threshold of heaven, and He asks us why He should allow us in, the answer is only going to be Jesus.
That's the currency that He operates in.
I love that picture, Bobby.
Thank you.
If these questions got you thinking, we encourage you to take it back to your small group, take it back to a pastor, take it to someone you trust, and work through these concepts of trying to work your way to heaven or feeling like you've done too much to even think about getting there.
Because that's not the truth, that Jesus came so that we can get to heaven, and it's through accepting his sacrifice that we get there.
Before we go, Bobby, we wanted to do a quick pick with you.
Sure.
It's not often that we have a former pro baseball player in the room.
That's true.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna ask you three questions and see what your answers are just immediate, what comes to the top of your mind.
Beautiful.
Who is your favorite baseball player?
Nolan Ryan.
What is your favorite food?
Sushi.
Sushi, nice.
What's your favorite movie?
The Hill.
And that is a recent movie of Dennis Quaid.
He was a pastor and his son had polio or something.
He really desired to play baseball and Dennis Quaid wasn't, he was trying to protect his son.
And you'll have to watch the rest.
And it's a true baseball.
Okay, here's the coolest part.
You just ended on a baseball pastor.
Jesus, movie.
Yes.
That's so you.
Well, hey, and I'm telling you, the Lord challenged me two weeks ago, and this is a God story.
At the beginning of the year, one of my goals was to spend 20 minutes a day with Jesus, just me and him, not praying for church, not praying for you all, not praying for my family, just me and Jesus.
And in that time, I felt the Lord challenged me to give my youngest son's baseball career over to him, and then to give his dreams over to him.
And then I got a phone call from a guy that I hadn't talked with in about three years, and he asked me to watch The Hill.
And then I watched it with Sam.
And one of the lines in that movie was the grandma saying, Dennis, you're a great dad, but before I leave this earth, you need to give your son's dreams over to the Lord.
True story.
So that's a hot off the presses.
There you go.
That's amazing.
We'll end with The Hill.
Well, thank you for being here, Bobby.
This was so special.
We appreciate you helping us navigate this topic.
Thank you so much.
We'll be back with another Life Renovation Podcast soon.
Don't forget to rate, share and follow the podcast for more.
See you next week.
Bye.