Hello, hello, hello ladies and gents. I'm Kirby Kelly and thank you for joining me here on the bot and beloved podcast for another weekly episode.

In case you don't know, I put out new episodes every single Wednesday, so feel free to follow or subscribe to be notified when they pop out, when they pop up, when they go out. But hey, I'm so glad that y'all could be here today.

I know that over the past few weeks, I've had multiple guests appear on my podcast. I had my friend Kate Warman, Kelsey Chapman, Nat Cassiano. I have plenty more that are going to be making their way here over the next few weeks.

It's been such a joy to just have conversations that not only uplift you in your walk with the Lord, but also sharpen me within my own community.

But I wanted to take this week to give you some really awesome information, some biblical, historical and cultural context, and answer the question of what was Jesus' childhood like?

What was Jesus like as a kid? What was he like as a youth, as a teenager, as a young adult? Because it seems as though that chunk of scripture is missing, no?

Like in the four gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Matthew and Luke are the only two that record the early life of Jesus. Mark begins with the start of Jesus' ministry, and John begins with this deep theological prologue.

And I've always wondered, as I've walked into my faith as a believer, what was Jesus like at my age when I gave my life to Jesus at 14 when I became a Christian?

I was like, okay, I'm reading about what he did when he was in his 30s, but what was he like at my age? How did he deal with this? What was life for him then?

What did he do exactly between his years of being a baby to that one snippet that we get of him as a young boy to when he began his ministry in his 30s?

Now, I did this question thing on Instagram the other day. You know how on your stories you can ask a question to your audience or whoever's following you and they can submit their questions or their answers or just fill in that box?

Well, I did one of those. By the way, follow me on Instagram or any of my other social medias at Kirby is a boss if you want to.

But I did that, and one guy asked a question regarding this topic saying, hey, I know nothing about Jesus' early childhood. What does the Bible have to say about that?

And I just thought it was so timely to talk about this one because this was something that I studied not too long ago when I was a student at D.B.U.

I remember one of my mentors and I we did a whole study on one of the verses that we're going to be talking about today.

But two, I'm in a course right now a New Testament interpretation class where it really is just all about the New Testament.

And this was something that was covered was the lifestyle of Jesus and just the culture and the context and the history of that time.

So although today's episode might not be so much as preachy preachy, we'll get to that a little bit at the end, but it's going to be more teaching teaching.

And that's good because as we grow in our knowledge, we can have a better basis for understanding scripture and solidifying our faith and witness.

And I want to shout out my university real quick actually, dalsbaptist university because it has not only been one of the greatest gifts to me in my own personal study of the word.

But in my higher biblical education, I've been able to study these things nowhere to find reliable sound references and implement them into my understanding of the Bible as a whole and antiquity, right, the times of Jesus.

And I'm so grateful for the opportunity that I do have to further my education. I'm actually getting my masters right now in theology at D.B.U. as we speak.

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