Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Embracing Our Imperfections with Jared C. Wilson
451 Plays1 year ago
Rush spends a fun and freeing time with Jared C. Wilson. They talk about how owning up to our imperfection as Christians is both frightening and immensely comforting. And yet it is the only way we can overcome the fear and enjoy the comfort is by daily embracing the gospel in deep, fresh ways.
JARED C. WILSON ONLINE
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Ruth: Redemption for the Broken
Friendship with the Friend of Sinners
Gospel Wakefulness
The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
Learn more about the podcast here.
Timestamps:
1:41 - Intro
3:03 - Jared’s Story of Ministry
16:52 - Why Do You Feel Like An Alien?
25:54 - Understanding Gospel Wakefulness
33:07 - The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
37:01 - Farewell
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Straight to the Heart'
00:00:00
Speaker
But there's not a moment of my life clothed in the righteousness of Christ, accepted, adopted, seated with Him in the heavenly places. There's not a moment where I mess up that Jesus says, I really thought you were better than this. There's not a moment where He says, I had no idea you were like this. He never says, I've had it up to here with you. In that sense, I fully believe we do not have the disappointment of God over us. We have the delight. We are the apple of His eye.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm Rush Witt and you're listening to Straight to the Heart, a podcast from New Growth Press. Each episode includes thought-provoking conversations with leading Christian writers and thinkers. We hear who they are, what they believe, how they approach their work in ministry, and the moments and people who have changed their lives. In Straight to the Heart, we go beyond the books to connect with the remarkable people behind them.
Conversation with Jared Wilson
00:00:55
Speaker
I spent a fun time today talking with Jared Wilson. He's a pastor and directs a pastoral training center in Kansas City, Missouri, as well as being assistant professor of pastoral ministry and author in residence at Midwestern Seminary. He's the author of numerous books, including The Imperfect Disciple, Gospel Driven Ministry, and Love Me Anyway. We talked about how owning up to our imperfection as Christians is both frightening and immensely comforting.
00:01:24
Speaker
And the only way we can overcome the fear and enjoy this comfort is by daily embracing the gospel in deep, fresh ways.
A Backwards Sabbatical in Kansas City
00:01:35
Speaker
This is Straight to the Heart. So what's going on in Kansas City today? Man, I have no idea. It's been a low-key summer for us, so we're just been hanging out at home.
00:01:50
Speaker
No travel the last couple of months, no writing deadlines or speaking engagements. So I've been trying to treat May and June as kind of a, it's kind of a backwards sabbatical because I have been preaching at my church and I serve as a pastor at our church. So I'm not taking a break from that, but from everything else. So it's kind of a,
00:02:14
Speaker
a church-only sabbatical type. Yeah, that's nice. That's always nice when those seasons come along and we have a chance to catch up or catch our breath. What are you catching your breath with? What's filling your time during this little bit of downtime? Long walks every day, doing a lot more reading for pleasure, things that it's sometimes hard to get to when you've just got a full schedule. I do have
00:02:42
Speaker
a residency at our church that I direct. That's kind of my primary frontline of discipleship for me. So I've been meeting with those guys one on one. I just had three of those guys on Wednesday and another one yesterday morning. So it's been good to kind of have some margin to spend more time with them.
Jared's Path to Ministry
00:03:03
Speaker
And so what's sort of the background of your life in ministry that's brought you up to this point? I think I know a little bit of it just from reading, but what's kind of been your path up to this day and this podcast? Yeah, man.
00:03:22
Speaker
It's along a winding road. Let me see if I can do the kush-nose version of it. I love it. Yeah, you know, I grew up in the church, in Southern Baptist churches, and was saved at a young age and believed that I was called to ministry when I was in junior high school. And so, kind of went through my later adolescence
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, with just, you know, believing, knowing I'm going to be in vocational ministry. Now, you know, obviously, I didn't have all the, you know, it wasn't a clear vision in some sense, like I didn't know exactly what that was going to look like, but I just knew I wanted to serve the church and I believe the Lord had called me to do that, to be a pastor of some kind.
00:04:02
Speaker
And so that's what I did. As soon as I graduated high school, the summer I graduated high school, I had my first job, my first ministry position was as a youth minister for a Chinese church that was near ours in Houston. Actually, they met in our
00:04:22
Speaker
our building in the fellowship hall on Sunday mornings. And so, you know, that was my first role, did some student ministry for a few years. The major sort of emphasis in ministry in those days was the turn to kind of the secret church paradigm. And so, I was trained for ministry, my first mentor in the ministry. He was a great man that I love a lot and taught me a lot.
00:04:46
Speaker
And when he planted a church, I went to be his youth minister there. The first book we did together was The Purpose-Driven Church by Rick Warren. And that was like the very first sort of ministry training I had was sort of working through that book together and figuring out how to do student ministry, especially in kind of the attractional church paradigm. And that's sort of
00:05:11
Speaker
when I cut my teeth on for a number of years. At the same time, however, I was indulging in private sin and really rotting from the inside trying to maintain this outward appearance of respectability, of creativity, of even godliness.
00:05:32
Speaker
and ambition in church life. My wife and I married in 1996, so two years, for me, two years out of high school. And then a year later, we moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
00:05:45
Speaker
And we joined a church, a rather large, uh, uh, attractional church, because that's where kind of our ministry philosophy was. You know, we looked up churches in the Willow Creek association and, uh, cause that's where our values were and found a church that, that we liked. And it was kind of an up and coming church plant and getting bigger by the moment. And.
00:06:06
Speaker
At the same time, I'm trying to finish school. I'm trying to get published as a novelist.
Struggles and Turning Points
00:06:13
Speaker
Nothing's really panning out for me and I'm medicating with pornography and slowly crushing my wife's heart and killing my marriage.
00:06:25
Speaker
just really edging towards a kind of despair and bottoming out. And the turning point kind of came the day my wife basically said to me, I don't love you. I don't know who you are. I don't want to be married to you anymore. And I mean, it was the punch in the gut that
00:06:51
Speaker
I needed to kind of wake up, to see the ruin of my life. I didn't have consolation in it, but it was sort of what pushed me to repentance, I suppose. It turned me from my sin. I didn't quite know what I was turning to because everything that I looked to before was not available to me, including my marriage. So I spent about a year kind of,
00:07:22
Speaker
in a really deep depression, and I was repentant of my sin. I wasn't engaging in my sin, but I was really in a dark place, suicidal, contemplating how to take myself out, and living in the guest bedroom of our home, and not knowing. Any day, my wife could say, I want you out of the house, or here's the papers I'm filing for divorce.
00:07:49
Speaker
So we just kind of live like roommates in the house. And I was every night just kind of begging God to do something, fix me, fix something. I had no assurance. I had no energy. I was just kind of clinging to the hem of his garment, you know.
Gospel Realization and Renewal
00:08:07
Speaker
just in desperation and I for about a year and then one night and you know I don't remember the date but there was one night I was doing what I was all what I had done every night which is basically just cry into the carpet and beg God to do something something happened like brother something changed the the it was like the Lord reached into that guest bedroom and grabbed a hold of me and the lights came on and somehow
00:08:36
Speaker
I knew for the first time, or as if for the first time, that the good news was for Christians. You know, I'd never really faced that reality. What I heard in my heart was not any kind of new message. It was the Lord saying, I love you and I approve of you. And it was exactly what I needed to hear in my lowest moment. And it just kind of woke me up.
00:09:07
Speaker
at this moment I call gospel wakefulness. I became awake to the good news and didn't have, of course, all the ins and outs of gospel centrality figured out. I had not heard that phrase. I didn't go to a gospel conference or those sorts of things. It just kind of came through the wreckage of my life. And man, things just began to change.
00:09:35
Speaker
in my world after that not immediately i mean my marriage wasn't immediately fixed or anything like that but i'm beginning now to walk with a joy and an energy that i didn't have before i'm loving my wife for the first time without any kind of
00:09:53
Speaker
string attached to any kind of like this is contingent on your response. You know, she continued to be cold towards me and I just every day sacrificially loving her. What I didn't realize but of course was praying for was every day the Lord was using that to soften her heart and see that I had changed
00:10:13
Speaker
And after a long while, she expressed to me, it was actually the same day. And one morning, she said to me, I want you out of the house, which was like my worst fear come true. And yet, because of what had happened to me by the hand of the Holy Spirit, I thought,
00:10:35
Speaker
Okay, God is with me. He's good. This is my worst fear come true. And yet, if I have Jesus, I have everything. And I told her, okay, can you give me to the weekend to figure out where I'm gonna go, what I'm gonna do? And she said, yeah, you can have the weekend. You can have the weekend, but I want you gone on Monday. And I was like, okay. And she left for work. And at lunchtime, she called me and she said, I don't want you to leave.
00:11:02
Speaker
I know you've changed. I don't know what that means, but let's figure it out.
00:11:08
Speaker
And what she would say now or what she said after kind of looking back was like she knew I was different for a long time, but in her mind, it was like she was too hurt. I had heard her too much that it was just sort of like it's too late. Yeah, you know, you've you've you've burned me too many times. That's great if you're different now, but that's too late for us. You know, I don't want anything. And the Lord was really kind of softening her heart through that, seeing that even in
00:11:35
Speaker
um, the coldness of her response, the lack of love that I was not going to stop loving her. And in her mind, she's like, it must be real because he's never loved me without, you know, some sort of expectation or that sort of thing. And so the Lord began to stitch us together.
Spiritual Unfulfillment and New Desires
00:11:52
Speaker
Well, brother, this whole time we're in this sort of attractional mega church where
00:11:57
Speaker
the preaching is increasingly self-help, moralistic, kind of less and less Bible, almost no Jesus. If Jesus shows up, it's like as some sort of moral example, maybe Jesus was good, was nice, so you'd be nice kind of thing, but never grace, you know, never the gospel, just a lot of self-help type stuff. And suddenly for the first time, and we were in that church almost 10 years,
00:12:22
Speaker
for the first time we're beginning to feel like this isn't feeding us, like this isn't actually, you know, we never realized how deficient it was because we just didn't have the vocabulary or even the value, you know, for it. Suddenly we're craving grace. We want to hear more about Jesus because of what he's done in our life. And we go on Sunday and it's just like,
00:12:48
Speaker
Nope, no Jesus today, you know? And that became really kind of, in the midst of that, I was asked to begin leading the young adult ministry at that church. And I said yes, because I saw that as an opportunity to preach Jesus and to begin to minister the gospel. And so that was kind of my first sort of Bambi on the ice moments of like, how do you do this gospel-centered stuff, you know?
00:13:16
Speaker
Our thing grew a little bit, but as the young adult ministry in sort of a, you know, seeker sensitive church model,
00:13:27
Speaker
Expositional preaching seems weird to everybody. Christ-centered ministry seems weird to everybody. Even the music we were doing, which was just stuff off the radio, even that seemed weird because it was explicitly about God and not really vague spiritualism and things. So if you liked what we did, you typically didn't like the main church. And if you liked the main church, you didn't like what we did. And so we ended up with a church within a church, which is just not
00:13:56
Speaker
what we had set out to do, but it's what happened. And eventually my wife and I realized we didn't want to raise our kids in that church because we wanted them to be in a place where Jesus was the main point of everything. And so I just went to the elders and said, I'd like to take the young adult ministry and plant as an independent church.
00:14:18
Speaker
And they said, yes. How did that go over? Yeah. They said, that's great. So I did. I planted a church and it was kind of my first foray into lead pastoring and pastoring into the gospel-centered perspective. Where was this church? This was in Nashville, Tennessee.
A New Beginning in Vermont
00:14:37
Speaker
Nashville still, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:39
Speaker
And then a few years into that, my wife and I were getting kind of restless in the sense of life. So we'd been in Nashville 12 years, and doing ministry in the Bible Belt was really difficult. I saw guys that I think were called and were wired for it, and I felt increasingly like an alien there.
00:15:03
Speaker
So I just began to look like, well, where could I go? Where could we go that might feel like more of a missional opportunity? And we'll be right back. Now this is exciting. Jared Wilson has a new book called Friendship with a Friend of Center's.
00:15:25
Speaker
The Bible calls Jesus the friend of sinners, but it's hard to imagine what friendship with Jesus really looks like. We so often don't even know how to do friendship with the people around us, despite all the options we have to connect. So how are we supposed to feel that close to a wholly perfect and invisible God? How do we see Jesus as the real person he is? And how do we experience true friendship with him?
00:15:50
Speaker
when we struggle to maintain true friendship on earth. Well, in his book, Friendship with a Friend of Sinners, Jared Wilson explores what it means to be a friend of Jesus. Through candid personal stories and insights into the Gospels, he uncovers easily overlooked details
00:16:08
Speaker
of the close relationship Jesus had with his followers. He reveals the ways we often hold Jesus at arm's length and shows how to draw close to him through radical honesty, consistent communication, and unconditional love. If you found yourself lonely and longing for connection and friendship, it's time to discover the remarkable possibility of closeness with Christ.
00:16:34
Speaker
Look anywhere you buy books. For Jared Wilson's book, Friendship with the Friend of Sinners, the remarkable possibility of closeness with Christ. And now back to the show. What was it that made you feel like an alien in kind of that Bible belt culture of church life? I don't know Russia, except I've always felt that way. Even I grew up in Texas,
00:17:05
Speaker
in the Rio Grande Valley, and then we moved to Houston, and Houston is home, basically, but I feel like an alien there. I've never felt, everywhere that I've grown up, everywhere I grew up, I felt like I didn't belong, and I feel that way about the South for some reason, and about the Bible Belt. I like to visit, but I just don't feel like, I don't know, it doesn't feel like home.
00:17:29
Speaker
And so when I began to look where we might go, my wife wanted to come home. She wanted to step away from work and be at home with our kids. And we looked at this church in Vermont that was looking for a pastor. And we moved from suburban Nashville area to a town of about 600, 700 people in rural Vermont. The church was about 40 people.
00:17:58
Speaker
It's a 200 plus year old church.
00:18:01
Speaker
It's the furthest thing from the seeker type deal that I could get. You got as far away from the South as you could. That's right. Another two hours and you'd be in Canada. There was something really appealing to me about that and refreshing to me about that. The clarity. Vermont is the least churched state in the nation, or at least it was at that time, least churched.
00:18:30
Speaker
And I like the idea of ministering in a place where people who aren't Christians know they're not, and even don't want to be. Whereas in Nashville, and to some extent, the places I grew up in Houston, there is still pretty Bible-belty and pretty cultural Christianity. And I'm grateful for the guys that do ministry there. I don't think it's easy to do ministry there.
00:18:55
Speaker
I don't think either one is harder or easier than the other it's just how you're gifted and how you're you know how you're called and I just found it really
00:19:05
Speaker
I don't know, it felt like home. New England felt like home to me and still does, even after we've been in Kansas City eight years. So I, you know, went to pastor of that church, saw incredible growth, you know, revitalization of that church, basically. And number of years in, as the church continued to grow, I began to feel as the only staff person in the church that my leadership
00:19:34
Speaker
reservoir was too shallow for what was needed, which was a shock to me. I plan to be there forever. I wanted to be there forever. I miss it. I think about it every single day. Still do. But my wife and I both, independently of each other, were beginning to believe the Lord was calling us away. She didn't want to share that because she knew how much I loved the region and loved being there.
00:20:04
Speaker
I didn't share that because I was afraid of people saying that I had lied or that I was talking a big game or trying to climb a ladder of some kind or something. But eventually, in conversations, we realized, oh, we're both sensing this. There must be something to it. And we were just kind of praying about it. And I came in 2014 to Kansas City to preach at the very first For the Church conference at Midwestern Seminary.
Kansas City and Midwestern Seminary
00:20:33
Speaker
And I just thought it was a speaking gig, came and did my thing, spent some time with the folks here, getting to know them. I felt very much like an alien there because I didn't have a seminary degree. I never went to seminary before that. So to me, it was intimidating to preach at a seminary because I thought these are going to be all these smart
00:20:55
Speaker
people who are like, oh, they're gonna be picking apart all my stuff, you know? Yeah, I know how that feels. I know how that feels. It's not, does it feel good? No, I'm just not an academic type guy either. I mean, I, you know, I read a lot and write a lot. And I think, I think I'm, you know, I think I'm pretty sharp, but I just, I wasn't a seminary guy. So I didn't know anything about the culture. I didn't know anything about the environment, but I came and preached and went back home and thought that's all it was. And two weeks later they called
00:21:22
Speaker
and said, hey, we're really trying to rebuild something here. Jason Allen had been there I think at that time, two years, three years maybe. And they were beginning to try to build a team to kind of help rebrand the seminary and those sorts of things.
00:21:43
Speaker
At the same time, in the same week, I got a call from a friend of mine, also in Missouri, at a church who wanted to talk to me about coming to his church and working at his church. And I just thought, this is so strange. I don't have any background in the Midwest at all. And here in the same week is two phone calls to talk about two opportunities.
00:22:04
Speaker
in Missouri, both in Missouri, one in St. Louis, one in Kansas City. And I just thought, this seems like it could be from the Lord. I don't know. And so I just engaged both conversations. I just said, yeah, let's figure it out. And my friend in St. Louis flew me down to spend a day with the campus pastors at his church and just to kind of see my rapport with them. And in some ways, the job thing that he wanted to talk to me about was kind of a dream job.
00:22:32
Speaker
Um, but it was still kind of vague. It was sort of like, Hey, Jared, what are you, if you could do anything, what would you like to do? And I kind of, you know, pitch, you know, like teaching pastor, writer, residents, those four, you know, that's the, if you're shooting for the moon and he was like, yeah, that's kind of what I think I'd like you to do. And I was like, man, in what universe does somebody just say, Hey, whatever you want to do. Right. Whereas the Kansas city thing was like, we want you to come do content strategy. And I was like, I don't even know what that is. Uh,
00:22:58
Speaker
We want you to help build a website. I was like, I never built a website in my life. I don't know anything about it. I go to websites. Would that help you? But for whatever reason, the more I engaged both conversations, it was more and more clear that coming to Kansas City was the right door to walk through.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, so we came here in 2015 and I started out in the communications department helping launch a website called For The Church and kind of overseeing social media and, you know, doing some of the branding, marketing type stuff. It was a very small team then. There's only like five of us in the communications office and everybody was kind of a Swiss army knife. So like everyone's doing 10 different things.
00:23:45
Speaker
Now, the office is very specialized, one person who does this one specific thing. I don't hardly know anybody in that office anymore, but several years into doing that, got my master's degree there and now pursuing my doctorate. I've been in a faculty role for the last three or four years.
00:24:07
Speaker
Which is that is a dream come true. I get to serve as you know teaching pastoral ministry And they created an author in residence role for me as well So it kind of worked out what I was trying to you know, trying to get in can in st. Louis has worked out here in Kansas City And we'll be right back
00:24:28
Speaker
If you're enjoying this conversation, you should check out Jared Wilson's book, Ruth, Redemption for the Broken. It's part of the gospel-centered life in the Bible series of New Growth Press. Jared Wilson provides a clearer picture of Jesus through the story of Ruth. Ruth, Redemption for the Broken can be adapted for one-to-one discipleship, small group, or large group settings. The comprehensive leader's guide is included in the text, making it an easy-to-follow structure to engage men and women.
00:24:57
Speaker
By studying the book of Ruth, readers can enjoy the romance and drama of this compelling story with understanding how it applies to their own lives, finding Christ's undying love for them through this unforgettable biblical narrative.
00:25:13
Speaker
Jesus is the truer and better of every character in the book of Ruth and everything in the Bible points to him. Ruth reveals the truth that there are no sinners, no failures, and no victims so far gone that the sovereign hand of the Lord cannot reach rescue
00:25:32
Speaker
and even revise the story of their lives. Visit NewGrowthPress.com to learn more about Ruth Redemption for the Broken by Jared Wilson, as well as the rest of the Gospel-Centered Life in the Bible series. And now back to the show. So there's a theme here. I want to put a couple things together. There's a theme here that's been running through your story.
00:26:01
Speaker
whether you are in Houston or you're in Nashville, other places in the South or in Vermont, it seems like no matter where you go, it could be that you actually are an alien.
00:26:15
Speaker
Because everywhere you go, you feel like an alien. But in all seriousness, I think there's something to that picture and feeling that's so true because the kind of experience of God's grace and understanding of the gospel that we're talking about today is, as theologians would put it, an alien
00:26:36
Speaker
righteousness. It's not of our world. It's not of our natural makeup. And so it comes into our lives and changes us. And then we have no choice but to feel that kind of sense of, I don't belong.
00:26:52
Speaker
I don't belong really anywhere. I'm made for a different world and now I'm operating on that kind of worldview or that world's system, this better and true world. And I think that's what so many people, when they hear about feeling alien,
00:27:16
Speaker
some of what we're discussing in your story feels alien to them. And they need help coming to terms with it, you know, in terms of being transparent. And so I want to put that together with what I think comes up a lot in your story and in what you've written and what you're doing in ministry. And that is, I think, helping people cheerfully embrace their imperfection.
00:27:40
Speaker
which is so hard to do. It's frightening. It's not something that we want to be transparent about, but it is important. I think that's at the heart of gospel wakefulness, as you put it. Am I right about that? I think so.
00:27:57
Speaker
Part of it for me in being able to do that today and having been able to do it for a while is because I went so long trying to be the image, trying to impress, trying to look a certain way. And it just brought me to the end of myself. And it doesn't mean that I still don't struggle with wanting to look impressive. It doesn't mean that I still don't struggle with wanting people to like me and all those sorts of things.
00:28:25
Speaker
But for the most part, I just have this awareness of that goes to emotional, relational, spiritual bankruptcy. And if my story can help others, it's the most important thing that's ever happened in my life. And it makes more of Jesus
00:28:49
Speaker
to speak confessionally, to not act like I have it all together. And because of what he's done for me, I want to make that regular aspect of my ministry today.
Embracing Imperfection through Gospel Wakefulness
00:29:04
Speaker
And I think that's often what it takes is someone kind of coming to the
00:29:08
Speaker
sensing somehow, there's no hold in this, there's no value in this. It's not actually getting me what I even in the end really want. Yeah, the promise is empty. Yeah, exactly. And so being able to confess, or just to be transparent about brokenness and those sorts of things,
00:29:33
Speaker
You know, James relates that to healing. I think there's something about healing. And then John, it's really fascinating in 1 John where he says, you know, walk in the light as he is in the light. If we walk in light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, which I find really fascinating because he's not just saying if you, you know, confess or if you walk in the light, you have fellowship with God.
00:30:01
Speaker
I mean, you do, but he says you have fellowship with one another, which makes me want to say, okay, how is my walk in the light related to relational connection with others, with the church and in the social dimension? And I think what John is saying is that if we don't walk in the light, if we're not living
00:30:26
Speaker
in terms of authenticity and transparently. We don't really have relationships with each other's real selves. We just have relationships with each other's kind of best version. Yeah, with each other's religious avatars or something, you know? Yeah, which is what we do in church. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, which is the common struggle in every church is because of this personal struggle that we all have.
00:30:53
Speaker
I feel like I am the only imperfect person, and I can't let anyone know about that. All the while, every other person is feeling the same thing, and therefore we're never connecting and being able to really help each other the way that, obviously, the Bible frames out the picture of Christian community,
00:31:17
Speaker
And that is just a real shame. And it also is, I'm thinking as we talk about the role of the gospel in this, one of the most beautiful things in my mind about the gospel is that it does not simply free me to admit that I'm imperfect or that I'm a sinner.
00:31:38
Speaker
and to do so only in a groveling, despairing way. That would be more of the message of the law, because the law tells me I'm a sinner, but it doesn't offer me any grace. The gospel actually gives us a chance to cheerfully, not minimizing our sin, not making an excuse for it, not tolerating our sin struggles, but an ability to with hope say, I am
00:32:03
Speaker
a sinner or to echo words of the past that I am a great sinner in need of a great savior and I have one.
00:32:13
Speaker
And that's a totally different mindset of being able to cheerfully embrace that. It's only believing that we have a great savior that you can admit it in the first place, right? At least admit it in a sense of freedom and boldness. You might do it as a way of manipulation or trying to get pity or something.
00:32:34
Speaker
The only way we can actually embrace this kind of transparency is by truly believing that if God's for me, who can be against me? You might judge me, you might condemn me, you might reject me, but I can risk that because the God of the universe is on my side. He's holding me in his hand and no one can snatch me out.
00:32:58
Speaker
It's so liberating to fully embrace, you know, what God has done for us in the good news. It's amazing.
00:33:07
Speaker
Are you familiar with, it's an older Puritan book called The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall? Yeah, Walter Marshall. Yeah, I read it a few years ago, yeah. Yes. And that has become one of my favorite books as I've just been taking what are for me always little steps in these directions. And there's one particular quote or point that's made in his book that really always stands out to me. And he says something, I'm not going to get it exact, but he says something to the effect of,
00:33:37
Speaker
No one will ever run to their enemy for grace. And he says, you cannot love God if you have this constant suspicion that he's actually your enemy. You have to first be assured of his grace.
00:33:54
Speaker
before you're going to be willing to come to Him. And that really brings back in what you were saying earlier about how it's changed the way you see and express the gospel, in particular in preaching, in which there is this front loading of the indicatives of grace
00:34:15
Speaker
before there's any imperative coming in to tell you to do something, the gospel is coming in to give us courage and help. And that's just one of, that's a line from that book that has always stood out to me because it was really fundamentally worldview changing in terms of how I saw really, I mean, really how I see God and my relationship to Him and the way that that brings the kind of cheerfulness
00:34:45
Speaker
to say, I am a sinner and I need to turn to the Lord again and again and again, and I can because He has promised me His grace. I think that's an incredible point that is coming through what you're describing. I had a guy at my church several years ago after the service came up to me and he said,
00:35:09
Speaker
You know, Jesus is never disappointed in you. And I thought, well, that sounds like heresy. I thought that can't be right. Because so much of my life I felt like, yeah, he's got to be disappointed in me.
00:35:30
Speaker
I'm not, again, this is another one of those things like, I'm not 100% sold on this, but I'm much more close to this conclusion. He said, Jared, to say that Jesus is disappointed in you is to believe that he's surprised by how you are. And I said, well, that's true. He's never surprised by how I am. So I'm trying to hold intention like, okay, I can grieve the Holy Spirit. I can quench the Holy Spirit. My sin in some sense grieves the Lord, yes.
00:35:59
Speaker
but there's not a moment of my life clothed in the righteousness of Christ, accepted, adopted, seated with him in the heavenly places. There's not a moment where I mess up that Jesus says, I really thought you were better than this. There's not a moment where he says... Yeah, he never says like, I had no idea you were like this. He never says I've had it up to here with you. In that sense, I fully believe
00:36:28
Speaker
We do not have the disappointment of God over us. We have the delight. We are the apple of His eye. And that, man, that is so heart changing and empowering for all the times of our lives, but especially the times
00:36:47
Speaker
where we know we have messed up, where we have sinned, to be able to run to, as you said, run to the one who has grace readily available to us.
00:37:02
Speaker
That's good advice. That's the advice I need. That's advice I think everybody needs. And so I appreciate you sharing that. And I really appreciate your story. I wish we had, you know, I wish we could hang out again somewhere. And that's not just podcast talk. Like I really mean that. I really enjoyed, uh, just hanging out with you today and just, you know, all the time in the world rush, we've got, we've got all of, we got all of eternity to hang out. All of you, just a couple aliens in eternity.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I hope we have a chance to maybe do that sometime. If I get around Kansas City, I can try to find you and have some coffee and hang out. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me on. You've been listening to Straight to the Heart, a podcast from New Growth Press. Our next episode releases next week, and I look forward to seeing you there.