We're all part of a conspiracy. It's just a matter of which side.

Conspiracies are nothing new. They didn't start with the 2020 election, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., or the President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

There's a long history of conspiracies (or related theories) involving leaders.

Julius Caesar was assassinated because of a conspiratorial belief he was going to proclaim himself king. Saul hunted David for years because he was convinced David was conspiring to overthrow him.

But the greatest conspiracy of all? When evil tried to overthrow God. Although they were kicked out of heaven, evil didn't quit. They just moved to a different tactic and place. Hurting God's kids and turning them against Him on a planet called Earth.

Join in as we launch into a discussion centered in Dallas Willard's excellent book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.

Empower yourself and your family to engage fully in God’s grand story. Get original content, recommended resources, and helpful links with the weekly newsletter, Hi(Impact).

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Which conspiracy side are you on?

Because make no mistake, you are on one side of the conspiracy or another.

If your desire is to become spiritually stronger, emotionally healthier, and relationally smarter, you're at the right place.

Speaker and writer Stephanie Smith inspires and equips you to achieve these three key aims.

If you're a parent, you'll also learn how to raise empowered kids ready for adulthood.

Let's get started.

It is election day here in the United States, and what a contentious election this has turned out to be.

And no matter what the results are on numbers of elections, there will be cries of conspiracy.

No matter how things turn out, whether that those cries last for days, weeks, months, years, who knows.

But they will definitely be here.

Conspiracy theories are nothing new.

They didn't start with this election.

They did not begin with the 911 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon, World Trade center, and what was likely going to be an attack on the White House.

You know, one of the longest running topics in the United States that involves conspiratorial questions is the assassination of President John F.

Kennedy.

But assassination related conspiracies, well, even those aren't new.

Going back many, many, many years, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of people who thought he was determined to set himself up as king.

Now, to declare yourself king was the highest form of treason in the ancient Roman republic.

And that's why, even when Roman leaders eventually came to rule like kings in the Roman Empire, they were not called kings, not in their official titles and not even in casual conversation.

They eventually took Caesar's name as a title, but they never called themselves a king.

We can go back even further and we can read in the Old Testament that there was another king.

His name was Saul, the very first king of Israel.

And he was convinced that there was a young upstart who was out to take over his throne.

That young man's name was David.

To be fair, there was some truth to this, just as there's always just enough truth in every conspiracy to fuel its existence.

Because the truth is, David had been anointed to be king of Israel by the prophet Samuel, the very same prophet who had originally anointed Saul.

And this happened when King Saul was still living.

And yet David had never given Saul reason to believe that he was trying to dethrone him and to force him out so he could step into that role.

As a matter of fact, it was quite the opposite.

David had faithfully served Saul in more than one capacity.

He had Demonstrated over and over again.

He was willing, not just in some theoretical way, but in his life, in his actions and how he actually showed up that he was willing to support Saul, that he wanted Saul to succeed.

David had never acted in a way that was anything other than supportive of Saul.

Even on more than one occasion.

He had the opportunity, and not just the opportunity.

He had some men who were tired of being chased around by Saul, who was convinced that there was this conspiracy out to dethrone him.

And these men were tired.

And to them it looked like, oh, God's given you the perfect opportunity here to get rid of your enemy and to go ahead and step into this role.

Come on, David, I mean, you know, you were anointed by Samuel.

He's God's prophet.

This is God's work right now.

See the situation.

But David said no.

He knew that he had been anointed to be king, but how and when that happened, he was absolutely determined what happened.

Because God orchestrated the circumstances in such a way that there could never be any legitimate questions or accusations that David had acted in his own self interest.

But even that wasn't enough to deter Saul from his conspiratorial thoughts.

You know what, conspiracies can become very powerful once they get embedded in someone's mind or a group of people's minds.

You know, the research shows that even when things don't turn out, the evidence doesn't show up that supports the conspiracy, but it actually shows up to support just something very different.

People who have really bought into this will double down on their beliefs far more often in far higher percentages than they will accept the evidence that's placed in front of them.

It's pretty remarkable and actually scary the degree to which the human mind is capable of self deception.

When we prioritize protecting ourselves, when we prioritize protecting ourselves from the potential embarrassment or what, we might feel as shame as saying I was wrong.

Conspiracy ideas can drive people to think some weird stuff and to even go so far as to commit some horrific acts.

But even for those who don't go to the extremes, everyone, and yes, that includes you and I, is involved in a conspiracy.

It's not a matter of if, it's just a question, which side are we on?

Because you see, the original and the most significant conspiracy began where in a kingdom, there was a ruler, there was a subordinate who wanted to take over, who wanted the ruler's position.

And just like most subordinates and people in that position do, rallied other forces to his side.

And eventually there was a war.

The subordinate lost and got kicked out of this kingdom along with his army.

And instead of giving up, they launched a conspiracy.

If they couldn't overthrow the ruler, they would cause as much harm and hurt as they could, but not directly, but by hurting his children.

And that is what Satan's lie to Eve in the Garden of Eden really was.

It was the opening salvo and the evil conspiracy.

We are each part of two warring conspiracies.

We're either on the side of the evil conspiracy or, as Dallas Willard named it in his book, the Divine Conspiracy.

Because that is what the coming of Christ really was.

It was a divine conspiracy.

In a matter of weeks from when this podcast originally airs, we will begin the season of Advent, a time when we commemorate the first coming of Christ to earth and we look forward to his return.

We look back at that first coming to see the meaning and the significance of that.

And then we also use that season to look forward to when he will come again.

Because he has promised that he will come back not as a vulnerable infant, this time to live among men as the God man, and to die as punishment for our sins, but this time he will come back as a conquering king, taking back his kingdom in full.

In the meantime, we will take sides either by default, and by default, we are not part of the divine conspiracy.

By default, we are part of the evil conspiracy, or we will take a side by decision, we can become part of the divine conspiracy.

You know, sadly, for way too long in Western culture, the emphasis on having right beliefs has limited our participation in this divine conspiracy to just an initial sign up, what we theologically call salvation.

But this is just the first step in joining the divine conspiracy.

After that, we are to be trained to put our beliefs into practice.

This is the other part of Christianity, it's beliefs plus practice, or what we read about in the New Testament as belief plus works salvation and works beliefs and practice.

And the Bible makes extraordinarily clear that it is not that our salvation is dependent upon our practices, but it's that our salvation motivates our practices.

And Paul goes so far as to write that in this debate, which has been going on for quite a long time now, about which one is more important.

And basically it's a matter that this isn't a matter of which one is more important, it's a matter that both are part of what it is to be a disciple of Christ, to be fully engaged in this divine conspiracy.

You know, it's like a recruit who enlists in the military well, they don't enlist and then say, okay, that's great, I'm here.

Okay, and then go home and then go on with life and then just wait to be called up when they're needed for an assignment.

And sadly, sometimes that's how Christians can live.

It's like, okay, I've.

I've been saved.

Now I'm going to go home and I'm going to live my life and I'm going to wait until I die or I'm going to wait until Christ comes back and I'm making it into heaven.

And in the meantime, I guess I'm just going to kind of do the best I can.

And that's, you know, not do anything too terribly bad.

And that's being part of this divine conspiracy.

No, that's not how it works.

When that recruit enlists in the military, that is when it gets hard, that's when it gets intense.

That is when they go through intense training.

And they don't just do that once.

And then, okay, I'm done.

I'm good.

I'll go home.

Now.

The training goes on and it continues to occur.

Now, it varies in intensity, it varies in type over time.

But the purpose of that training is so that this enlistment is prepared when duty calls.

And that's just the same for us.

We will go through times of more intensity than others.

We will have different types of trials that come to us.

We have different types of things that we need to learn in order to grow our knowledge needs to expand in order for us to fully engage in what all of this divine conspiracy is about.

Because it's not just about getting me into heaven.

It is about restoring the kingdom of God in the hearts and lives of everyone who will decide to become part of this divine conspiracy.

Over the coming weeks, I am going to walk through some of the major themes in Dallas Willard's book, the Divine Conspiracy, Rediscovering our Hidden life in God.

Let me tell you this, though.

I'm an avid reader and I enjoy a lot of different genres and there's not too much material that's written that I'm intimidated by.

Some, yes, but not a lot.

But Dallas's book is one of the few books that I cannot skim read.

It's like every line counts.

And it's not because it is this hard to read book.

Not at all.

It is because he was such a gifted thinker and an astute writer that every word, every sentence has meaning.

I conducted a book study one time with a group of women and These were women who had been Christians for a long time.

They were learners, they were knowledgeable, they were smart.

And we all agreed that this was a book you had to take your time to work through, because otherwise there's so much richness in it that you would miss something.

It would be like being being taken to a big old chest and opening that heavy wooden lid and seeing it filled with ancient treasure, maybe treasure that had been lost in a sea, a wreckit sea, maybe treasure that had been looted by pirates.

And it's filled with all of these different kinds of jewels and coins and medallions and works of art in small ways.

And you would want to take your time pulling out each one.

And a jeweler would not only just look at each one as an individual, a jeweler is going to put each one of those individual stones.

Stones under their equipment and be able to look at each individual stone.

That would take a lot of time, and we are not going to get that in depth.

I wish we could, but I could spend, like an entire year doing nothing but covering this book.

And we're not going to be doing that.

And you're going to be able to hear from a number of other people who have different messages and resources and ways to help accomplish the mission of this podcast.

And everything that I do, which, if you've forgotten what that is, it's to build spiritually strong, emotionally healthy and relationally smart women and families.

But let's get back to the divine conspiracy.

And in this, as we go through this, I will definitely be summarizing, because again, if I don't, it would take me forever to get through this.

I encourage you to get this book for yourself.

This would be a phenomenal read for you.

Whether you get the print version or it is available in audio as well.

It's about 18 hours worth of audio.

And you do not have to sit down and go through it all at once.

It's one of those that you can.

You can listen to or you can read and you can set it aside and you can come back to it.

And it's not like a novel that if you let it sit for too long, you have forgotten the characters and the plot and what's this book all about?

That's not like this.

So I encourage you to get this book because it can absolutely revolutionize your life.

And Dallas opens this book by talking about the importance of our ideas and ideas in the culture and tracking through historically how we have come to have the ideologies that we have at work in our culture today.

You know, on this day, when this podcast airs, many people are going to.

Millions of people here in the United States are going to go and they are going to participate in our democratic process and they're going to cast a vote.

And more often than not, that vote is going to be based on an ideology.

It's going to be based on a set of beliefs.

And those beliefs will come down to what they think is right and what they think is wrong.

Now, to be certain, there are plenty of people who walk into polls and for a lot of different offices and even for different constitutional amendments.

Or it might be something that's at a very local level.

Maybe there's a ballot initiative in your city or in your county, in your school district.

And certainly there are times that a person walks in and says, you know, I can see both sides of this and I don't have a strong view one way or the other.

Sometimes people walk in and say, I don't really like the ideology of either side or either candidate on this.

And sometimes they vote by not voting.

That's a different decision than just excusing yourself from having to engage in this difficult process.

But for the most part, even if a person votes by not voting, it's still because of an ideology.

It's a set of ideas, it's a set of beliefs.

And they're not just these abstract preferences.

They are grounded in what we believe is right and wrong.

About my rights and responsibilities as an individual, about the rights and responsibilities of government, about the rights and responsibilities of other individuals.

It all comes down to that.

All voting ultimately, well, all of life ultimately comes down to what do I believe are my rights and my responsibilities as an individual?

What do I believe are the rights and responsibilities of other people?

And then why do I believe that?

What is that rooted and grounded in?

And Dallas does a beautiful job of walking us through in an easy to understand way of how we have come to have this idea in our.

In our culture, in a lot of Western culture, that our beliefs about rights and responsibilities is really rooted in this foundational idea that, well, whatever appeals to me, whatever, I think there is no objective outside measurement of right and wrong.

But eventually that proves to be absolutely impossible in the real world.

And then throughout the book, Dallas breaks down for us just powerfully what it is to be part of this divine conspiracy.

Not just that initial recruitment step, not just the salvation, not just coming to a belief in Christ, but living that out in the fullness of our life, in real space and in real time.

So I hope you'll join me because you are not going to be disappointed.

And especially again, I encourage you to get the book for yourself and read it, listen to it, don't be intimidated by it.

Just walk through it slowly.

Because it's absolutely not only okay to do that, but I would actually encourage you to take that approach.

A lot of times we can read a book and we kind of skim through it and we can get the meaning and the message and there's nothing wrong with that.

But this definitely is not one of those books that I recommend that you do that with.

All right, my friend.

Hey, if you are listening to this on election day, I want you to remember that God is not sitting in heaven watching the news, waiting to see how this election is going to turn out.

God is not having some of his angels sitting over in one side of heaven watching the news from the, what we might call the left media and another set of angels over here watching the news and giving him reports from what we might term the right, the right wing media.

God already knows how all this is going to play out, and he is still focused on bringing people into this divine conspiracy, that he paid the ultimate price by giving up his son on the cross to die and to be resurrected.

So that eventually when Jesus does come again, there will be people here who are looking up for his return.

Not because they just want to escape the mess of this life, but because they have such a deep love and appreciation for him.

Hey, if you haven't already, and if you haven't, you need to do that.

You need to do two things.

Number one is you need to subscribe to the podcast.

That way it just continues to show up and you don't have to go back and find it.

And actually, I'm going to revise that.

You need to do three things.

You need to subscribe to the podcast.

So whatever app you're listening to this on, just hit that subscribe button, share this podcast with one friend, with one person, and say, hey, you know, here's something that I think is going to be worth your time listening to.

Just give it a try.

It'll give you something in common to talk about that's actually meaningful and valuable.

And it's not just twaddle that sometimes wants to fill our airwaves or our social media channels.

And third, you need to sign up for High Impact, my weekly newsletter.

There's original content on there that only my subscribers get.

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And why?

Because I want to see you maximize your immeasurable, eternal, and irreplaceable impact.

Have a wonderful day.

Thank you for listening.

Visit the website stephaniepresents.com and sign up for High Impact to join the mission of building spiritually strong, emotionally healthy, and relationally smart women and families.

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