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Triumph 111. Mike, welcome to the program. Thank you, Dr. Laura. It's good to talk to you. I'm a first time caller. Thank you. I just, I'm a pastor. I'm a pastor and I just listen to you and I'm on the road and with my radio.

I just want to thank you for expressing the wisdom of Solomon.

Tell you that you do a good work and I appreciate what you do for people.

Well, thank you. That's very kind of you to take the time to say that. Let me ask you a few questions if I may. Is that okay?

Sure. Absolutely.

As a pastor, you know, times have changed and I've been doing this for a span of 45 years. And the span of the time that you've been pasturizing.

Sorry, I made that up.

What has changed in terms of the problems that they come to you with?

Well, I will tell you that that's a long question, hard question. I've been past it for 36 years. People's problems, the relationship issues are more in depth.

Depth is a terrible thing. The stressors of of a life just seem to affect people so much more negatively. And what I hear you when you when you give advice, what I hear is you have to pay the price to solve this problem.

And what I see today and people is, is they're not willing to go the extra mile, pay the price to value their marriage or are their relationship with their children. And I think that's different. I think that's a lot different. People aren't willing to pay the price to fix the mess they're in.

So what do you think has in the 36 years you've been doing this? What do you think has caused that evolution? Negative evolution.

Well, I will tell you the devil for one, but you know, so much consumes the time of our families. You have used to have little league baseball when I was growing up on Saturdays, I was on the ballpark, a couple of nights a week, even once a week we were at practice.

But now it's it's it's traveling every weekend trying to keep up with the Joneses. All all the stresses of life people are so busy with things that aren't going to amount to a hill of beans to strengthen their family.

And so, at all, for the future, and I think just the busyness hectic of life, the values and family faith and and just fundamentals of the work ethic are all gone these days. Everybody wants something, but they don't want to work for it.

So people come to go ahead when people come to listen to you on Sundays, what's your most typical message that you're trying to get into their heads and hearts and souls and psyches?

Well, well, I'm an expository preacher. That means I preach the Bible verse by verse through books of the Bible. Like right now, we're preaching to 2nd Peter, which deals with false teachers and false doctrine. But of course, you know, I want people to know Christ and grow in Christ and live out faith in Christ, apply the Judeo Christian ethic found in the Bible.

And that's pre consistent message throughout the Bible, and the Testament. So that's my goal. And that's that's what I preach. I'm not a counselor. I, I, I, I buy young, young pastors to get out of the counseling business and, you know, help people if you can with media needs, but recognize your limitations and find some good solid counselors in your area and recommend people to them for long term care or even therapy.

And, but I always tell people, look, if you, if you, if you get in, in the Bible, especially after book of Proverbs, you know, that's a book for young people and it's a book about people.

And if you will spend time and invest in the, and just the book of Proverbs, you'll learn how to handle relationships.

And so that, you know, that's, that's what I try to do. And get out of the conversation. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you if I might the question that has been bandied about my religious or semi-quasi religious people trying to deal with me and the perspective that I present.

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