May 29, 2025 • 43 mins
Tjbhpodcast@gmail.com
does real Christian growth look like? Not the Instagram-perfect version, but the messy, challenging reality that shapes authentic faith. In this compelling episode of Navigate, hosts Justin and Tim dig into what they call "the Christian process" – the cycle of growth every believer experiences.
Faith isn't about having all the right answers or maintaining a comfortable spiritual status quo. Instead, it's about taking your armor off to fight battles in ways that feel counterintuitive but ultimately lead to growth. As the hosts powerfully assert, "the opposite of comfort is not discomfort – the opposite of comfort is life." Just as a flatline on a heart monitor indicates death, a Christianity without challenges and growth indicates spiritual stagnation.
The conversation explores how we often approach our faith journey like spectators rather than participants. Many Christians wear the badge and speak the language without doing the difficult work of following Jesus. This approach might work temporarily, but becomes exhausting over time. True faith requires continuous confession, repentance, acknowledgment, obedience, hope, and renewed faith – a cycle that repeats throughout our lives.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey guys, welcome to Navigate.
Justin.
What's up, buddy?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
What is up, my dude?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Oh, Justin.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
My brother, my shield brother, shield brother.
Yeah, you're the man.
Oh yeah, you're the man.
Thanks, you're the guts of thisshow, tim.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That rugged, deep voice you have, I don't think
I'm you can grab any cynic offthe streets and do my job here.
Nah, dude, that's true.
That goes for both of us.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I had a listener come up to me actually and she's
like so I got a question for you, tim.
I'm like what's up?
He's like do you know theanswers to the questions you ask
?
You're like usually, why do youask?
Yeah, I Really, but not always.
But it just made me laugh.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Tim's goal is to ask questions that other people
would ask not because he doesn'tknow oftentimes, but because he
wants you to know and he,unlike myself, is in touch with
you, dear listener, and I am not.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm wondering where you're going with that.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'll just float away.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm much more grounded.
That's true.
Thank God you're here, Tim.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I would be in the sky .
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I'd have to carry around a 50-pound bag of dog
food, just so I didn't float off.
I'm sorry, that's an insidejoke.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
It is.
You could laugh a little harderthan I should have.
Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, you actually brought this topic up.
Oh snap, you called it theChristian process.
Yeah, do you remember this?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Man, I think we were just talking about the cycle of
growth that kind of everybodywalks through and what that
actually looks like.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Because I think it's different for everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
All right, and I guess the start of the process
was the conversion almost right,of I'm not saved, but now I am
yep, it's like what happensthere yeah, you know it's, it's
such a funny, um, such a funnything.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
We, we tend to think about salvation in moments, you
know what I mean, and it's notreally a moment, it's kind of a.
It culminates in moments.
But it almost seems like thoseculminating moments happen again
and again and again, in somekind of cycle as you slowly
learn to lose yourself and gainChrist.
You know, and I think we oftentimes want it to be one
(02:19):
magnificent moment where, poof,and now I am something else
entirely and it's yeah, you're,you're a new creation, but, um,
man, the process of coming faceto face with jesus, you know
what I mean, are those momentswhere you think you have it put
together and having to drop backat his feet and, like,
(02:40):
constantly be transformed by himand find out that you are a
finite being, being confrontedwith the infinite, is so key and
ultimately, that starts whenyou're a baby.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You know what I mean, like I remember, I look back
and sometimes, because I grew upin the church like you yeah,
you know thought I was aChristian many times and then, a
lot of times I wasn't, but alot of it was.
I want to be like Daniel.
I want the superpowers, I wantto walk on water and I'm told I
could because I believe in God.
Therefore, I can raise the deadand do all these awesome things
(03:14):
.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Have you ever done that thing, tim, where you close
your eyes and you step out onthe lake and you're like, okay,
god, do it, nobody's looking.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I haven't done that in a long time.
Nobody's looking.
Yeah, I was that guy.
I was also the guy who Just Godmove the pencil.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Move the pencil.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
When I had my apartment infested with
cockroaches, I was praying thatevery day, I would stare at them
and be like God.
In your name, kill this thingout of here.
It's a very true story.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
People are probably going to be more in awe that
there was a cockroach infestedapartment back in the day.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I would take my Bible and just be like all right guy,
what do you got?
And just kind of close my eyes,put it up in the air and just
scroll through the pages, yeah,and then just stop, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Put a finger somewhere.
I always joke about that.
I'm like that's the Ouija boardapproach to the Bible.
We're listening Guide my hand.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, but it wasn't until well, I just really felt
pressured by life and I firstheard God and what he told me
was what have you done for me?
Yeah, and that was kind of thewhole.
And like two weeks later iswhen you asked me to start
reading the Bible with you.
So it was kind of thisculmination.
To your point, this culminationof moments in my life where I
(04:24):
believed in God, I believed inpower, but I wasn't following, I
wasn't doing anything for him.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It was a weird transition for me.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's more just I'll wear the badge.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I'll speak the language.
It's not hard to speakChristianese.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
It's not hard to fake it in the short term.
It's incredibly hard to fake itfor a long time.
Yeah, that's very.
It can be totally exhausting atthat point and I think that's
why there has to be thisconstant like confession,
repentance, acknowledgement,obedience, hope, faith start
(05:00):
over.
You know what I mean.
Kind of this, this process thatwe, that we, have to walk
through, or else you end up, youend up being a liar, you end up
you Kind of this process thatwe have to walk through, or else
you end up being a liar, youend up faking your Christian
walk.
And I hate to say this, tim, butI think that can only be
induced by steps of faith thatproduce the difficulty that's
needed for you to anchoryourself to Christ and keep
(05:20):
going.
You know, like if you're alwaysjust in the kiddie pool, if
you're always just waiting, thenyou don't really need Jesus.
If you're great at services,you got that lockdown.
You even tap your chest once ina while during a worship song.
Maybe you have a rogue tearcome to your eye as you thought
about the.
You know, whatever it was, youhave to actually take steps of
(05:43):
faith to do the thing where,when you think about the word
sovereignty.
It shouldn't be like a big,grandiose word that makes you
feel good.
It should be a terrifying wordthat makes you want to put your
seatbelt on, take a deep breathand say, okay, it's a crazy
(06:04):
thing to do and, um, you know,hindsight hopefully gives you
some courage for that, althoughif you're a negative person,
usually it does the opposite.
You're like it didn't work outthe way I wanted last time.
But there's kind of a processthat you walk through of um, of
obedience, taking you to placeswhere you have to leave more and
more of yourself behind andgrow more and more in these
(06:26):
places that God is calling youto, and I was trying to explain
this to my kids.
I like to tell my kids bedtimestories, tim.
I always make up these stories,and the last one I was talking
about with them is I always loveto talk about battles and
dragons and everything else, andI was trying to explain to him
in this story, um, the value ofuh, let's say, wisdom and
(06:52):
vulnerability in certainsituations, and I was explaining
that.
You know, in this oneparticular battle, um to to
actually defeat these people, hehad to take his armor off and
fight a totally different waythan what he was used to doing
and how everyone was telling himoh you, you can't fight without
your armor.
That's not going to work out.
I mean, you know, in hindsightI'm like, oh, I'm telling the
story to David and Goliathwithout thinking about it.
But faith means, in a lot ofways, taking your armor off to
(07:16):
engage in a fight, and that'sthe daunting part.
If you feel safe, it's probablynot faith.
There are battles that God iscalling you to where you're not
going to be able to use thegifts and abilities and things
that you lean on so frequentlyto be able to say I'm a
Christian and I can do this.
(07:37):
Often, the things that God iscalling you to are more like
yeah, you're going to have toleave the castle for this, but
this is where all my armamentsare.
Yeah, that's actually.
That's the problem.
You're not growing anymore.
You've topped out becauseyou've built this thing and now
you're living in it, and faithis leaving the castle and taking
the armor off and trusting thatGod is going to be your armor.
(07:58):
You know that's stupid passagein Ephesians 6, right, put on
the helmet of salvation.
How many people are like ohyeah, I'm safe.
Now the sword oh, okay, swordof the spirit.
Wait, it's not real.
It's not a real sword.
Hang on, you got thebreastplate.
(08:19):
Oh, thank God, a breastplate ofrighteousness.
Wait, what I don't know?
I realize that everybody talksabout this, and we tend to talk
about it in very masculine tones, like you're trying to make it
sound cool, because, actually,what the whole passage is saying
is you have no protectionoutside of Jesus.
(08:39):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool, cool,cool, cool.
Also, some real armor.
Would be nice too, though, towalk through this.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, helpful.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Or in your financial situation yeah, but some real
funds would be helpful to walkthrough this.
Or like, yeah, god, but somereal friends would actually be
helpful.
Joke goes right.
Like everybody knows.
It's the same lesson you haveto learn again and again and
(09:09):
again.
If you are a father or a motheror a teacher or you know
whatever, where you're in aposition where you're supposed
to guide other people, you tellthem have faith, trust God, read
the Bible, pray, just do thenext thing that God is telling
you to do.
And then you got to go throughit yourself.
You're like, dang it, thissucks so bad yeah.
I did the wrong thing at somepoint and God's punishing me now
(09:32):
I think there's a there's a taxthat you pay for ministry, and
that taxes you must walk throughwhat you're calling other
people to walk through yourself,yeah, and it's a healthy thing.
But if you start punting on it,you know, if you start doing
this thing where I tell otherpeople what to do uh, because
I've done it before, not becauseI'm doing it now you, you get
(09:54):
fat, you yell, you, you juststart getting spiritually
lethargic and at some point, man, if you don't change that you,
you become that person thatnobody actually wants to listen
to.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
You're the person who you're the.
You're the 50 year old mantalking about how much you know
about dating.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Cause that girl you met at 17 worked out you know,
he bought your house for 20grand yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah Well, pull yourself up by your bootstraps
you know all the boomerismsRight and.
I'm not, and I'm not hating onboomers.
Okay, we all have our ownfoibles and problems, but there
is a real Hezekiah problem, youknow, and the next generation
will just deal with it.
I'll be okay, at least it won'thappen in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I feel like you're talking a little bit about
comfort when it comes to oursalvation and Christianity and
how we're living.
Yeah, you're talking aboutarmor, armor, and you're talking
about stripping that off andbeing vulnerable.
Really, yeah, it's like theopposite of gosh.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I'm trying to think of the best way to say this.
The opposite of comfort is notdiscomfort, the opposite of
comfort is life.
You know, yeah, and I don'tmean life in the generic.
I'm breathing, I have air in mylungs, since because you can be
dead walking around like that,just like you can be divorced
with a marriage certificate.
(11:12):
You know what I mean.
Yeah, um, I'm talking aboutactually doing the things that
god has called you to do meansengaging in aspects of myself
and the world around me that areuncharted territory, and I am
afraid to go there.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
That's living, is that constant, though, like if
I'm comfortable say, hey, thingsare actually working out pretty
well, yeah, yeah, is it wise,is that sinful?
All of a sudden now, like no, Ijust think it's impermanent.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, you know, can you think of somebody in the
Bible who?
You know what I mean?
Everything went the way thatthey thought?
Or is every story a series ofups and downs and just a crazy?
You know?
It might as well be a rollercoaster ride for every one of
them, where they get to the endand they're like, oh my gosh,
I'm not dead.
Oh wait, I am.
Yeah, I'm on the other side.
I think some of them wereterrible.
(12:06):
Others had those ups and downs.
I think most of them are aseries to me of crazy things.
We look back with theserosy-eyed glasses on stories
like David, you know, or Joseph,or all the heroes of the faith.
I'm like dude, they had itawesome.
God was with them the wholetime.
Yeah, you too.
Wait a second.
You're saying that can happen.
(12:27):
Well, I'm saying, actually it'sprobably supposed to.
Um, if you don't have to havefaith that God is going to take
care of you in the decisionsthat you're making, the way that
you're living, the desires thatyou have, I don't know that
it's real, In the same way thatI would say if you aren't
(12:49):
actually in difficultconversations with your family,
if you're not working reallyhard through frustration,
difficulty and good with yourwife.
If you're not wrestling withthe things that are frustrating
and take effort andintentionality and life to do,
do you really love, do youreally care about it?
(13:10):
And I think Christianity is,unfortunately, something you can
have an experience with once,like a marriage, and then put it
on your shelf and just expectit to stay and it'll be fine,
and I have that now.
That's up there, but I haveother things that I want to
focus on now and those thingsare nearly as difficult as that
was.
But, man, I remember howdifficult that was and I I did
(13:31):
it then.
I think that's a form of death.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I do.
I think it's like this I'mgoing to stop living now.
I did that once, man, it wascrazy.
I want to tell stories about it, but I'm not alive anymore.
Um, I think, uh, jonah is theperfect picture of this right.
God calls him the Nineveh andhe's like actually, I'll choose
death.
I'm going to go the oppositedirection.
And the typological picture isit kills him, he dies, he ends
(13:56):
up.
He thinks he's going to be moresafe, but actually no, the
difficulty is where your life is, the monster that swallows you.
You know, that's the uh, that'sthe actual end of a, of a life
that punts on what God hascalled him to do, and it doesn't
totally get out of them.
You know cause?
Cause he's still sitting undera plant later hoping for comfort
(14:17):
.
You know, while, uh, while thething that God has called him to
is, uh is sitting in front ofhim happening and he's just not,
he's not involved, he doesn'treally want anything to do with
it.
All of us are guilty of that inour heart at some level.
Dude, we don't want to work.
No, we don't want to.
We don't want to have to havefaith.
(14:37):
It's faith is incrediblyinconvenient and it's incredibly
time consuming and it it itrequires an immense amount of
mental fortitude.
It's something that's active,it's not passive and we deeply
want it to be passive and it'snot so much of the scriptures
(14:58):
like.
Your life is this.
Now and now you're in a war andthere's light and there's dark,
and there's bombs going off,and it's inside the church and
outside the church, and it'sthis there's dark and there's
bombs going off, and it's insidethe church and outside the
church, and it's thisunavoidable thing that you
constantly have to walk throughand our attention is like man.
I don't really want to do that.
I don't think you understandwhat Jesus was calling you to
Right.
This idea of dying every day isalso the Bible's equivalent of
(15:21):
living every day, as opposed tothe death that it says most
other people live in.
They love darkness rather thanlight.
Why?
Because they don't want toacknowledge God.
They don't want to actually dothe thing that they were meant
to do.
That's a lot harder and thecost is way higher and all the
things that go along with it.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
But yeah, but doing those things all the time it
gets exhausting.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I think there's rest in the process, but that doesn't
mean you don't have to havefaith, tim.
I can sleep in the middle of animmense trial because I trust
God, but that doesn't make thetrial go away or the need for
faith to go away.
Yeah, right, yeah, I thinksimple stuff like you can either
(16:05):
quit the job you know what Imean or stay the course and
trust God through it, but thetension doesn't get removed,
even when you're trusting God.
The tension is perhapsalleviated by the fact that you
have a God who's going to carryyou and see you through to the
end.
But you know, I'm assumingJoseph didn't necessarily feel
that when he was being throwninto prison for doing the right
(16:26):
thing.
I know he believed that God waswith him.
I know that he had convictionsand was going to keep doing what
he was supposed to doing inthose situations, but it doesn't
mean that in the moment youknow he was like man.
This is so restful.
So God just had peace in Jesus,right, and I just think we
think about those guys likeskipping around, you know, doing
(16:47):
whatever interpretive dancethey have, because they just
love the Lord so much in thatmoment.
But I don't think that's thecase.
I think it's more of a rollercoaster and that's how you know
you're alive.
I've brought this up on thepodcast before.
But if you think about like aheartbeat Tim, on a monitor,
it's got beep.
You know, beep is the up andit's the down and we want life
(17:09):
to just be.
Stop with all the ups and downs.
You know what I mean.
I'm sick of.
I'm sick of the hilltops andthen the valleys, and I just
wish it could just be normal.
And what we would call that isa flat line.
That means you're dead, Flat.
Flat lining is the equivalentof saying I don't want to do
this thing anymore.
Where I actually have to liveand be engaged with the world
(17:32):
and the circumstances around meand what's happening, I just
want to flatline.
And our culture shows this dudelike.
I don't know if you've seenthis, but I think euthanasia, um
, this assisted suicide, tim, Ithink it's the fifth leading
cause of death in Canada rightnow.
People are just opting toflatline, just ending it.
(17:53):
They're done.
They're like you have a lot ofdepression, you got a lot of
anxiety.
We'll find somebody toencourage you and help you and
tell you it's okay to flatline.
And the whole Bible is sayingdon't flatline, don't give in,
don't give into Satan, don'tgive into the dragon, don't give
into his schemes and hisdesires, because he desires
(18:15):
death and destruction.
That's what he is about.
And living is this beautifuladventure where you're above the
surface and you are catchingthe sunlight and the the.
The sea foam has hit you in theface and it's work and you're
having to take breaths, butyou're enjoying the good thing
that's happening.
Flatlining is allowing to takea breath of water and sinking
(18:37):
down to the bottom and it mightbe more peaceful and, you know,
placid down there.
But ultimately that's not life,that's death.
And I think those thoughts wreckpeople, man, and oftentimes
people are looking back like,well, if it wasn't like this?
Or you know it wasn't like that.
And I mean it's just the Bible.
There's nowhere in the Biblethat has this idea of gosh.
(19:01):
What's the word I'm thinking of?
Tim?
Nowhere in the Bible is thisidea of looking back fondly and
wishing you used to have whatyou used to have.
A good thing.
Like you, look back inremembrance to get courage for
what you need to do goingforward.
But yeah, reminiscing in thatkind of way is really not in the
Bible.
In fact, I think it'sEcclesiastes 7, you know.
(19:21):
It says do not say why is itthat the former days were better
than these?
For it is not from wisdom thatyou ask about this Wisdom.
This is that picture I wasgiving you of keep your head
above the water, keep swimming.
(19:42):
But the advantage of knowledgeis that wisdom preserves the
lives of its possessors.
Consider the work of God, forwho is able to straighten what
he has bent.
In the day of prosperity, behappy, but in the day of
adversity, consider, god hasmade the one as well as the
other.
I mean, I think that'sincredibly helpful and I hate
(20:02):
that too, because it's literallysaying hey, you know, god did
both of these things right.
You know the mountaintop?
That's him.
You know the valley?
That's him too.
And I don't know how people doit without a belief that God is
the one driving their life anddoing the things that he's doing
.
I mean walking in faith, dude,like I said, it's a crazy thing.
(20:23):
Being married is a crazy thing.
Having kids is a crazy thing,you know, when someone has quit,
because everything around themstarts to die, oh yeah and it
gets peaceful, but it's not.
That's not the way andeverybody knows that.
Tim, you remember when we wereworking at like senior living
places back in the day, when wewere doing different stuff, you
(20:43):
could tell that there were somepeople who were going to live a
long time and you knew itbecause they wanted to be there.
They were still engaged in whatwas going on and they still
love their family and they'recalling people and they're
engaged in life and some peopleyou could tell are just done,
they're waiting to die and Imean it is just proven fact.
People that don't have a willto live died 10 times faster.
(21:04):
They just do, they just go.
Died 10 times faster.
They just they just do, theyjust go, yeah and um, the the
sad thing is is a lot of people,I think, die before they you
know, before they actually dieUm, yeah and uh, give up, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and I think we uh,we've seen a lot of people
resign themselves to um a lifethat is actually more of a a
slower death, and I think Satanloves to use that and he pitches
(21:28):
that it's going to be better.
But honestly, all of thosepeople are miserable.
They're not more happy in theirdeath.
They're just terrified of whatit might feel like to spit the
water out of their lungs andbreathe in fresh air and take
the climb again.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I started thinking of someone you brought up having
difficult conversations withyour family and all that stuff.
That stuff is.
That could be rough you knowwhat I mean Especially if you're
not seeing eye to eye on things.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I'm finding out instead of praying.
God, give me wisdom, give methe right answers right.
It's give me the strategy.
Like, what's the strategy here?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, and that's not a bad thing.
That's not a bad thing.
That's not a bad thing.
I find that God answers myprayers and strategy all the
time.
Or maybe a less weird way tosay it would be a plan.
Oftentimes God is like do thisor don't do that, shut up right
now, yeah, okay, okay, I can dothat.
(22:22):
You know that's not a bad thingto pray, but if the goal is,
ultimately, I just want to getthrough this, that might not be
bad thing to pray, but if thegoal is, ultimately, I just want
to get through this, that mightnot be the best heart posture.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah Well, when you're trying to stand on truth
right, and you have that, theopposing against that constantly
that pressure it's.
It's difficult to you startturning into this peacekeeper of
a person.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Kind of like all right, well, this time I'll I'll
let this slide, Can I?
I just don't want to deal withthis anymore.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, let me speak to that for a second, cause we've
talked about the difficulty inbeing a peacekeeper and a
peacemaker on the podcast.
A lot, yeah, like being apeacekeeper is.
I'm constantly avoiding thedifficulty and I sweep it under
the rug cause I don't want to,somehow, in my delusions that by
doing that it will be better,all right, being a peacemaker is
intentionally walking intodifficult situations to resolve
(23:11):
them, not so that they're sweptunder the rug, but so they
actually go away.
Right, here's the deal.
What I mean by being apeacemaker is not that I am
taking every fight that presentsitself in front of me.
There is an order of priorityin the difficulties and things
that you're dealing with.
All right, if my son isreaching for boiling water on
(23:35):
the stove and I'm in a difficultconversation with my wife, I'm
going to go ahead and take careof my son real quick before he
burns his face off.
All right, that just commonsense.
Some people just love to fightand they think it is my moral
duty to take every fight thatcomes my direction.
That is not what I mean bybeing a peacemaker.
A peacemaker is being strategicin the fights that you pick so
(23:57):
that you can resolve themajority of what's going on.
Usually one difficulty insomebody's life, tim, is
producing three or four frontswhere there is a battle.
You need to be wise enough toknow what battle I'm supposed to
take to resolve the other four.
And that's not.
That doesn't mean I have to hitevery one of those head on,
just like when somebody saysthey're struggling with
(24:17):
something, usually what they'restruggling with is not what they
say, it's what's somethingthat's going on underneath that
right, the sin under the sin, asmost pastors will talk about.
And anytime I do sit down anddo some soul care with somebody
or helping them work throughsomething, it's rarely the thing
that's coming up right up top.
That's the actual problem.
There's usually a deeper rootthat I'm trying to process and
(24:39):
pull up.
And, for the record, you'reonly good at doing that in
somebody else's life if youspend an immense amount of time
doing it in your own, becauseyou can't spot roots in other
people's lives if you haven'tseen them in your own heart
first.
It's just true, um, and youcan't help somebody find life if
you're not actually living ityourself.
Imagine trying to take somebodythrough a jungle you've never
(25:01):
been through.
It's not getting.
We're all getting eaten bycannibals.
You know that's how.
But being a being a peacemakerdoesn't mean picking every fight
that presents itself in frontof you.
It means strategically knowingwhich fights are actually going
to have the greatest impact, um,for what needs to get done and
what battle actually youactually need victory over.
(25:21):
And that doesn't mean you getto pick all the small ones to
navigate around the elephant inthe room.
It means identifying Goliathand going out and killing him,
even when everybody is tellingyou that's the one.
You shouldn't.
Don't do that, don't touch that.
Those are the places that Godis probably calling you to go.
And David didn't just pick umhow he was going to do it.
(25:42):
It was timing too.
You know what I mean.
He didn't just immediately runout there.
No, he got some stones, hetalked to the King, he tried on
some armor.
Ironically, that wasn't goingto work for him, um.
And then he went out there anddid it in a way that actually
made sense, as opposed to a lotof people who just cannonball
into the nonsense and create abigger problem.
Uh, you know who you are.
You get swole on it and youlove it.
(26:04):
Sometimes, 24 hours before youaddress it is probably a better
idea.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
I'm finding with people too is that they love
confrontation, but they'reterrible at conflict.
Yeah, it's a weird thing.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, people knew how to fight.
They'd save their marriage alot faster.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, or solve conflicts?
Yeah.
Some people just want thatfight.
They want the because they wantlike kind of what you were
talking about.
When it comes to the actualconflict of the matter, they
don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
They don't want to deal with it, but they'll fight
you on it, or they see it as anassault on themselves as opposed
to trying to solve a problem.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, just getting defensive.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's hard to do.
Admittedly, even in my own life, somebody wants to bring
something up.
My first thought is take itpersonal, tim, an area where I'm
terrible at this.
Just full disclosure.
If my wife is struggling withsomething in her life, I
immediately am like what am Idoing wrong?
My first tendency is to make itabout me.
I must be doing something wrongand that's why this particular
thing is happening.
(26:58):
And what did I just do?
I just sucked the oxygen out ofthe room and made it about
myself.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Identify what the actual issueis and don't immediately let
your insecurity compound theproblem and make it far worse
than it was.
But these are the.
These are signs of life.
You know, being really angryabout something is a sign of
(27:20):
life.
Being really, you know,wrestling with something hard is
a sign of life.
It's a sign that you haven'tgiven up.
It's a sign that you haven'tlost hope and you think you can
still fight forward, or thatthere's something worth fighting
for getting after having faithin and that's every story in the
Bible, dude, is thisresurrection story of God
(27:42):
meeting you in the lows andmeeting you at the high points
and traveling with you throughall those different things that
are happening and you meet Godin those scenarios that you
would not have chosen foryourself, that he chose for you
so that he could begin to growyou in a place where you don't
have your armor up, because thearmor doesn't just protect you
(28:02):
from the circumstances, it alsoprotects you from the work that
God is trying to do in your lifeand man.
He's taking you to those placesand it's so key that when that
happens, you don't immediatelyhide and run and, you know, do
whatever else.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So this is my question, because you just
brought up this Ecclesiastesverse.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
But in these tough trial times, like I reminisce a
lot on when God brought methrough stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
To gain hope.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
To gain.
Okay, he did it before.
He will see me through this now.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
But that's bad.
Like reminiscing is bad.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
No, Think about it this way If you're looking back
to gain hope for the step thatyou need to take forward, that
is incredibly biblical andeverywhere you don't see any
place where people are lookingback in a godly way and be like
man.
Those days were so great.
Ah, miss that.
Wish we were there again.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Wish I could do that again.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
That's not really a thing.
That doesn't sound like a badthing to me, I guess.
I think it's trying to live inthe past.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
What's the point of having a memory, you know, like
having good memories.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Well, I think memories are to teach you to
learn.
I think they're to teach you tomove forward.
But even Paul say things likeI'm not focusing on what lies
behind, I'm straining forwardfor what lies ahead.
I want to remember the toolsthat I need to take with me to
continue forward.
But a lot of people are notlooking back at the past,
(29:31):
digging for tools to take themforward, but looking back at the
past and psychologically livingthere instead of in the moment
that they're actually in.
And you can't really justifythat position in scripture.
I mean, that's kind of thewhole point of this verse is
he's saying don't do that.
In fact it's not wisdom thattakes you to a place so you can
find some psychological comfortin what used to be.
You're looking to the wrongplace to try to find peace or
(29:54):
hope, and actually it's kind ofit's the Uncle Rico, if they
would have put me in fourthquarter.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And then you try to rewrite your own life in a
different way that I can seeright, because I do that too.
It's like man if I didn't getthe shoulder injury, would I be
able to play baseball still?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
What would my life look?
Speaker 1 (30:11):
like, or if I would have married this girl instead,
or something terrible.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You start kind of yeah, you tryto rewind the clock and face
what's in front of your face.
You know you actually got todeal with what's there right now
and you have to place yourfaith in the sovereignty of God.
And we would way rather placeour faith in man.
If I would have made thesedecisions and done that, which
(30:42):
is kind of another way of sayingyou know, I would be a really
good God.
I could plan this thing reallywell if I wanted to.
I would be great.
I mean, I got to believe thatthere's no way David picked the
cave of a Doolam.
There's no way that Joseph waslike.
You know, I hope all mybrothers try to murder me and I
end up in Egypt, thrown inprison.
You know, getting hit on byPotiphar's underloved wife.
You know like I what aboutregret, though?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Is that a form of reminiscing?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
You know, I think regret can be a godly thing or
an incredibly ungodly thing.
If regret, regret is your wayof punishing yourself so that
you can continue to live in aplace where you're being
disobedient or frustrated orbitter or shameful, that's
(31:30):
ungodly.
And I would say regret is acomplicated thing in that I
could look back and be like man.
I wish I would have done theright thing there.
That's one thing.
But if I'm wearing it as anidentity of the things that I
did not do and this is who I amnow it's an incredibly powerful
pull to live that way.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Or an excuse to live the way you are now.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
You get to be sage, wisdom to others you know what I
mean and you isolate yourselfso that you can tell yourself
that you know I had to gothrough this and nobody really
understands.
But I've drank this cup down tothe bottom.
Now the problem is you onlydrank the cup halfway and now
you're just staring at it.
You actually have to getthrough the whole process.
Regret is meant to have an endpoint and that's repentance.
(32:16):
If regret makes it torepentance so that you can have
faith to take steps in obedience, then it's good regret.
But if regret takes you to thepast and reminiscing and sorrow
and makes you live out a sin ora problem or a foible again and
again and again, well, that'snot repentance, that's not faith
(32:36):
, that's nothing.
That is you sitting in the mindof a condemning spirit that is
making you relive the thingagain and again and again, in
hopes that you take all of yourstrength emotionally and put it
there and remove all of yourfaith in God, by convincing
yourself in that process thatGod won't use you anymore.
You can't do that because I didthis thing, which is ultimately
(33:00):
just trying to erase thesubstitutionary atonement and
what Christ actuallyaccomplished for you.
It's the uh, it's the chickenbeing raised as a cat.
You know what I mean.
I think I'm this, so I act thisway and I've convinced myself
of it.
Regret has a funny way ofputting you in a cage.
Uh, bars, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That aren't actually there, but you demand the world
sees, yeah, and the world sees,yeah, and if they can't see him,
then that kind of world thatyou've created with the regret
turns into your own comfort.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, depression, anxiety, fear, all those things
are more comfort, comforting Ifyou live with them.
They, they, these reallynegative, let's say
psychological traits don't wantto be.
Let's say psychological traits,don't want to be, let's say
friends.
They want to be your lifepartner.
(33:54):
You know what I mean.
None of them want to be.
I shook anxiety's hand and Ikept walking.
All of them want to be.
No, you have to carry me aroundwith you the rest of your life.
You won't be comfortable if I'mnot here.
I have to.
You know what I mean.
They all become these friendsthat you become, you know, used
to carrying around in unhealthyways.
None of them want to be.
(34:15):
None of them want to be momentsin your life or trophies on
your shelf of things that youconquered.
All of them want to be a rideor die partner and those things
aren't supposed to be thingsthat you carry with you.
There are moments and enemiesthat you face, not friends that
you make yeah, yeah, that makessense.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Going back to, like, the process of christianity, man
, there's a I feel I feel kindof guilty for thinking this, but
there are times where I seepeople who come to the faith and
they get so excited and they'relike on fire and they're just
going at it.
Man, in my head I'm like justyou wait you got to burn.
Just you wait.
Enjoy this snowball while youcan, but it's getting smaller
(34:53):
and smaller, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
You know, there's a lot of excitement for people who
joined the military at firsttoo.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
right yeah, it's all new and stuff, and then all of a
sudden kind of like we've beentalking about, you know, life
gets hard, like Christianity isone of the hardest things I've
ever to do.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, I mean the, it's the tale is oldest time we
look for the heroes of the faith.
You know what I mean.
To go back to the military, youknow everybody wants to be the
guy who is just amazing on thefield commanding the troops
getting it done.
(35:32):
Nobody wants to go through whatthat guy had to go through to
get there, you know, and if youpunt on the trials and
difficulties that go into that,then you never become that
person, and I think a lot ofpeople are okay with just not
becoming the fullness of who Godhas called them to be, because
it's it's just too painful.
Yeah, but it's this again.
It goes back to this Would yourather be a dead or alive?
Though, you know, and I justthink some people choose death
(35:54):
along the way, I think there's alot of Christians that are
doing eight hours in front ofthe television every day,
calling themselves a Christian,going to work, checking in,
checking out and thinking likeI'm doing it, I'm alive.
No, you're not.
That's not it.
There's no way that God hascalled you to eight hours of
television a day, working abasic job, not talking to people
and just trying not to makewaves.
(36:15):
That is not life.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, but not making waves at work or watching TV
eight hours a day, like you'retalking about.
What, then, do we do?
Are we supposed to beconstantly confronting people on
a daily basis?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Dude, let me man.
That's such a.
It's a great point, becauseeverybody's scenario is a little
bit different.
Okay, so I am.
I am plagued to, unfortunately,always give somewhat generic
answers, unless I'm sitting withsomebody helping them navigate
the particular situation they'rein, unless I'm sitting with
somebody helping them navigatethe particular situation they're
in.
But I would say you're alwaysgoing to be choosing faith, and
(36:48):
choosing faith means you'realways headed for conflict, and
that conflict means you'realways going to encounter God
and you're always going toencounter evil.
And on the other side of thatmoment, whether you choose
worship or you choose sin, iseither opportunity for more
growth, an opportunity to drawcloser to God, or an opportunity
(37:12):
to jump right back into thesame problem that you refused to
solve because you caved.
You know what I mean.
It really is like that.
But there's this passage in Judewhere he closes out the chapter
this way, and I feel like ithelps me think through conflict
difficulty.
What am I supposed to be doingconsistently?
I'll just read it to you.
He said but you, beloved, oughtto remember the words that were
(37:35):
spoken beforehand by theapostles of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Okay, so he's immediatelyappealing to scripture that they
were saying to you in the lasttimes, there will be mockers
following their own ungodlylusts.
These are the ones who causedivision, worldly minded, devoid
of the spirit, basically.
Hey, just so you know, crap'sgoing to happen, you're going to
have people, you're going tohave problems, you're going to
(37:56):
have issues.
These are the ones that causethese things.
But you, beloved, buildingyourself up on your most holy
faith.
Okay.
So he's saying, I need you tokeep growing in your faith,
building yourself up on yourmost holy faith, like grow in
this, take it seriously, prayingin the Holy Spirit, keep
(38:17):
yourselves in the love of God.
Again, this is like this activething, like you're either green
and growing or like ripe androtting.
Right, there's no in betweenwith these things.
And if you choose that inbetween, it's not going to go
the way that you think it'sgoing to go.
It's not going to go well foryou.
You have to stay there.
This is the word.
Abide, right, menno, like to bewith, to hang with, waiting
(38:44):
anxiously for the mercy of ourLord Jesus Christ to eternal
life.
Okay, so now hang on and justkeep waiting for Jesus and that
eternal life in my opinion, yes,that is this ultimate will meet
him in glory.
I also think it's an encounterwith real life.
Eternal life is also a personthat we encounter in those
circumstances.
So I'm waiting for Jesus inevery difficulty.
(39:08):
I'm waiting for Jesus to meetme, grow me, teach me, give me
peace, give me strength,whatever and he does.
Tim, I don't know about you, butlike every difficulty I've made
it through, I feel like if I'mtrusting in God, he meets me in
that and sees me to the otherside.
Either you get to the Red Seaand you pray and you wait for
(39:28):
God to part the waters and youget to see it, or you quit and
go back into slavery before youget to see the miracle.
And that's the tension I wassaying between sin and worship,
when the intersection oftrusting God and the fact that
he's taken me this far is atthat same place where you're
dealing with temptation to turnand run.
That's the intersection ofworship and sin.
(39:49):
You got to choose worship andhe says here, have mercy on some
who are doubting.
Like, not everybody around youis going to see the same things
that you see.
You can't just deal with ityourself.
You're going to have to giveother people's courage.
And he says this save others,snatching them out of the fire,
and, on some, have mercy withfear, hating even the garment
(40:11):
polluted by flesh.
Okay, so some people are goingto be doubting.
You're going to have to givethem strength.
Some people are going to betrying to run the opposite
direction and you need to grabthem and you need to pull them
with you to help them make itthrough this thing that's going
on, but make sure in thisprocess you're not getting
caught up in sin and nonsenseyourself.
(40:31):
So there's this massive tensionof like okay, trust God, trust
what he said.
Know the difficult things aregoing to happen.
Keep working on your faith,keep abiding with Christ, keep
praying, wait for God to show upultimately, but also in the
moment, and have mercy on thepeople around you when you're
dealing with your own stuff,cause what happens when you're
(40:52):
struggling is you tend to ignorethe people around you unless
you find them helpful in yourparticular situation.
Don't use people.
Be the person that can helpother people through those
things.
And then he says this for thoseof you right now who, like me,
are like well, that soundsincredibly daunting and
difficult.
Now to him, who is able to keepyou from stumbling and to make
(41:12):
you stand in the presence of hisglory, blameless, with great
joy, to the only God, our savior.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord,be glory, majesty, dominion and
authority before all time andnow and forevermore, amen.
So who is ultimately going tomake sure that you're able to do
this, jesus, if you keeptrusting and keep pushing and
(41:34):
keep doing these things thathe's telling you to do?
What he's saying is, ultimately, one day, this map leads you to
the feet of Jesus and you don'tget that because you're not
actually the guide.
Jesus is the guide and he'swalking with you and if you
continue to follow him, it'sgoing to be awesome.
And it says that he's the onethat keeps you from stumbling
and he's the one who makes youstand in the presence of God and
(41:56):
I said this here, I don't knowif you guys caught it To only
God and Savior through JesusChrist, the Lord.
Be glory, majesty, dominion andauthority before all times, now
and forevermore.
What does that mean?
He's not missing in my life orcircumstances right now, and
that's why I'm saying a lot ofyou listening to this might be
at an intersection.
Do I choose death or life today?
(42:16):
Choose life why?
Because he's with me now and ifI don't punt, I get to see this
Red Sea road made and it maynot be the way that I want.
Maybe I was hoping for anotherpath and I don't punt, I get to
see this Red Sea road made andit may not be the way that I
want.
Maybe I was hoping for anotherpath and I wouldn't have to have
the Egyptians, you know,running from behind me trying to
cut me down in a giant pillarof fire falling from the sky and
waves on a sea and everythinglooking horrible first.
(42:37):
But you don't get to meet Jesusin comfortable places.
You get to meet him in theuncomfortable places.
While he's taking you to thecomfortable places and newsflash
, those comfortable placesbecome uncomfortable again when
he says, okay, it's time to packup camp, let's go.
You know what I mean.
But that is how you find thepromised land, that is how you
(42:57):
end up at the feet of Jesus.
It's this process ofremembering what God has said,
what he's called you to, knowingthat difficulty is coming,
staying in this place of prayer,building up your faith, staying
in love with Jesus, waiting forhim to show up in your
circumstances, and then look tothe people around you, pull them
up, encourage them, help themand realize that God is with you
(43:21):
right now in that process.
He is your guide and he was theone who trailblazed the path
not just to the cross, butthrough the cross, and he will
be the one to do that in yourlife, not just to take you to
the cross, but through the cross, so that you would be at the
right hand of the father withhim.
So cool.
Well, thanks, man.
Thanks for talking today.
Hope that's encouraging to someof you guys and to some of you
guys.
I hope so, and I know it's kindof maybe a weightier topic
(43:44):
today, but I also feel like alot of people are just they're
in life right now.
Y'all are living it, and I'djust rather encourage you to
stay above the waves, keepswimming, keep trusting God and
wait for him to show up.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
All right guys.
Well, hey, catch you all nexttime Y'all have a.
Hey guys, welcome to Navigate.
Justin.
What's up, buddy?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
What is up, my dude?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Oh, Justin.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
My brother, my shield brother, shield brother.
Yeah, you're the man.
Oh yeah, you're the man.
Thanks, you're the guts of thisshow, tim.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That rugged, deep voice you have, I don't think
I'm you can grab any cynic offthe streets and do my job here.
Nah, dude, that's true.
That goes for both of us.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I had a listener come up to me actually and she's
like so I got a question for you, tim.
I'm like what's up?
He's like do you know theanswers to the questions you ask
?
You're like usually, why do youask?
Yeah, I Really, but not always.
But it just made me laugh.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Tim's goal is to ask questions that other people
would ask not because he doesn'tknow oftentimes, but because he
wants you to know and he,unlike myself, is in touch with
you, dear listener, and I am not.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm wondering where you're going with that.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'll just float away.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm much more grounded.
That's true.
Thank God you're here, Tim.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I would be in the sky .
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I'd have to carry around a 50-pound bag of dog
food, just so I didn't float off.
I'm sorry, that's an insidejoke.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
It is.
You could laugh a little harderthan I should have.
Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, you actually brought this topic up.
Oh snap, you called it theChristian process.
Yeah, do you remember this?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Man, I think we were just talking about the cycle of
growth that kind of everybodywalks through and what that
actually looks like.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Because I think it's different for everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
All right, and I guess the start of the process
was the conversion almost right,of I'm not saved, but now I am
yep, it's like what happensthere yeah, you know it's, it's
such a funny, um, such a funnything.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
We, we tend to think about salvation in moments, you
know what I mean, and it's notreally a moment, it's kind of a.
It culminates in moments.
But it almost seems like thoseculminating moments happen again
and again and again, in somekind of cycle as you slowly
learn to lose yourself and gainChrist.
You know, and I think we oftentimes want it to be one
(02:19):
magnificent moment where, poof,and now I am something else
entirely and it's yeah, you're,you're a new creation, but, um,
man, the process of coming faceto face with jesus, you know
what I mean, are those momentswhere you think you have it put
together and having to drop backat his feet and, like,
(02:40):
constantly be transformed by himand find out that you are a
finite being, being confrontedwith the infinite, is so key and
ultimately, that starts whenyou're a baby.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You know what I mean, like I remember, I look back
and sometimes, because I grew upin the church like you yeah,
you know thought I was aChristian many times and then, a
lot of times I wasn't, but alot of it was.
I want to be like Daniel.
I want the superpowers, I wantto walk on water and I'm told I
could because I believe in God.
Therefore, I can raise the deadand do all these awesome things
(03:14):
.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Have you ever done that thing, tim, where you close
your eyes and you step out onthe lake and you're like, okay,
god, do it, nobody's looking.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I haven't done that in a long time.
Nobody's looking.
Yeah, I was that guy.
I was also the guy who Just Godmove the pencil.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Move the pencil.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
When I had my apartment infested with
cockroaches, I was praying thatevery day, I would stare at them
and be like God.
In your name, kill this thingout of here.
It's a very true story.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
People are probably going to be more in awe that
there was a cockroach infestedapartment back in the day.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I would take my Bible and just be like all right guy,
what do you got?
And just kind of close my eyes,put it up in the air and just
scroll through the pages, yeah,and then just stop, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Put a finger somewhere.
I always joke about that.
I'm like that's the Ouija boardapproach to the Bible.
We're listening Guide my hand.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, but it wasn't until well, I just really felt
pressured by life and I firstheard God and what he told me
was what have you done for me?
Yeah, and that was kind of thewhole.
And like two weeks later iswhen you asked me to start
reading the Bible with you.
So it was kind of thisculmination.
To your point, this culminationof moments in my life where I
(04:24):
believed in God, I believed inpower, but I wasn't following, I
wasn't doing anything for him.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It was a weird transition for me.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's more just I'll wear the badge.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I'll speak the language.
It's not hard to speakChristianese.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
It's not hard to fake it in the short term.
It's incredibly hard to fake itfor a long time.
Yeah, that's very.
It can be totally exhausting atthat point and I think that's
why there has to be thisconstant like confession,
repentance, acknowledgement,obedience, hope, faith start
(05:00):
over.
You know what I mean.
Kind of this, this process thatwe, that we, have to walk
through, or else you end up, youend up being a liar, you end up
you Kind of this process thatwe have to walk through, or else
you end up being a liar, youend up faking your Christian
walk.
And I hate to say this, tim, butI think that can only be
induced by steps of faith thatproduce the difficulty that's
needed for you to anchoryourself to Christ and keep
(05:20):
going.
You know, like if you're alwaysjust in the kiddie pool, if
you're always just waiting, thenyou don't really need Jesus.
If you're great at services,you got that lockdown.
You even tap your chest once ina while during a worship song.
Maybe you have a rogue tearcome to your eye as you thought
about the.
You know, whatever it was, youhave to actually take steps of
(05:43):
faith to do the thing where,when you think about the word
sovereignty.
It shouldn't be like a big,grandiose word that makes you
feel good.
It should be a terrifying wordthat makes you want to put your
seatbelt on, take a deep breathand say, okay, it's a crazy
(06:04):
thing to do and, um, you know,hindsight hopefully gives you
some courage for that, althoughif you're a negative person,
usually it does the opposite.
You're like it didn't work outthe way I wanted last time.
But there's kind of a processthat you walk through of um, of
obedience, taking you to placeswhere you have to leave more and
more of yourself behind andgrow more and more in these
(06:26):
places that God is calling youto, and I was trying to explain
this to my kids.
I like to tell my kids bedtimestories, tim.
I always make up these stories,and the last one I was talking
about with them is I always loveto talk about battles and
dragons and everything else, andI was trying to explain to him
in this story, um, the value ofuh, let's say, wisdom and
(06:52):
vulnerability in certainsituations, and I was explaining
that.
You know, in this oneparticular battle, um to to
actually defeat these people, hehad to take his armor off and
fight a totally different waythan what he was used to doing
and how everyone was telling himoh you, you can't fight without
your armor.
That's not going to work out.
I mean, you know, in hindsightI'm like, oh, I'm telling the
story to David and Goliathwithout thinking about it.
But faith means, in a lot ofways, taking your armor off to
(07:16):
engage in a fight, and that'sthe daunting part.
If you feel safe, it's probablynot faith.
There are battles that God iscalling you to where you're not
going to be able to use thegifts and abilities and things
that you lean on so frequentlyto be able to say I'm a
Christian and I can do this.
(07:37):
Often, the things that God iscalling you to are more like
yeah, you're going to have toleave the castle for this, but
this is where all my armamentsare.
Yeah, that's actually.
That's the problem.
You're not growing anymore.
You've topped out becauseyou've built this thing and now
you're living in it, and faithis leaving the castle and taking
the armor off and trusting thatGod is going to be your armor.
(07:58):
You know that's stupid passagein Ephesians 6, right, put on
the helmet of salvation.
How many people are like ohyeah, I'm safe.
Now the sword oh, okay, swordof the spirit.
Wait, it's not real.
It's not a real sword.
Hang on, you got thebreastplate.
(08:19):
Oh, thank God, a breastplate ofrighteousness.
Wait, what I don't know?
I realize that everybody talksabout this, and we tend to talk
about it in very masculine tones, like you're trying to make it
sound cool, because, actually,what the whole passage is saying
is you have no protectionoutside of Jesus.
(08:39):
Yeah, yeah, that's cool, cool,cool, cool.
Also, some real armor.
Would be nice too, though, towalk through this.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, helpful.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Or in your financial situation yeah, but some real
funds would be helpful to walkthrough this.
Or like, yeah, god, but somereal friends would actually be
helpful.
Joke goes right.
Like everybody knows.
It's the same lesson you haveto learn again and again and
(09:09):
again.
If you are a father or a motheror a teacher or you know
whatever, where you're in aposition where you're supposed
to guide other people, you tellthem have faith, trust God, read
the Bible, pray, just do thenext thing that God is telling
you to do.
And then you got to go throughit yourself.
You're like, dang it, thissucks so bad yeah.
I did the wrong thing at somepoint and God's punishing me now
(09:32):
I think there's a there's a taxthat you pay for ministry, and
that taxes you must walk throughwhat you're calling other
people to walk through yourself,yeah, and it's a healthy thing.
But if you start punting on it,you know, if you start doing
this thing where I tell otherpeople what to do uh, because
I've done it before, not becauseI'm doing it now you, you get
(09:54):
fat, you yell, you, you juststart getting spiritually
lethargic and at some point, man, if you don't change that you,
you become that person thatnobody actually wants to listen
to.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
You're the person who you're the.
You're the 50 year old mantalking about how much you know
about dating.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Cause that girl you met at 17 worked out you know,
he bought your house for 20grand yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah Well, pull yourself up by your bootstraps
you know all the boomerismsRight and.
I'm not, and I'm not hating onboomers.
Okay, we all have our ownfoibles and problems, but there
is a real Hezekiah problem, youknow, and the next generation
will just deal with it.
I'll be okay, at least it won'thappen in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I feel like you're talking a little bit about
comfort when it comes to oursalvation and Christianity and
how we're living.
Yeah, you're talking aboutarmor, armor, and you're talking
about stripping that off andbeing vulnerable.
Really, yeah, it's like theopposite of gosh.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I'm trying to think of the best way to say this.
The opposite of comfort is notdiscomfort, the opposite of
comfort is life.
You know, yeah, and I don'tmean life in the generic.
I'm breathing, I have air in mylungs, since because you can be
dead walking around like that,just like you can be divorced
with a marriage certificate.
(11:12):
You know what I mean.
Yeah, um, I'm talking aboutactually doing the things that
god has called you to do meansengaging in aspects of myself
and the world around me that areuncharted territory, and I am
afraid to go there.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
That's living, is that constant, though, like if
I'm comfortable say, hey, thingsare actually working out pretty
well, yeah, yeah, is it wise,is that sinful?
All of a sudden now, like no, Ijust think it's impermanent.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, you know, can you think of somebody in the
Bible who?
You know what I mean?
Everything went the way thatthey thought?
Or is every story a series ofups and downs and just a crazy?
You know?
It might as well be a rollercoaster ride for every one of
them, where they get to the endand they're like, oh my gosh,
I'm not dead.
Oh wait, I am.
Yeah, I'm on the other side.
I think some of them wereterrible.
(12:06):
Others had those ups and downs.
I think most of them are aseries to me of crazy things.
We look back with theserosy-eyed glasses on stories
like David, you know, or Joseph,or all the heroes of the faith.
I'm like dude, they had itawesome.
God was with them the wholetime.
Yeah, you too.
Wait a second.
You're saying that can happen.
(12:27):
Well, I'm saying, actually it'sprobably supposed to.
Um, if you don't have to havefaith that God is going to take
care of you in the decisionsthat you're making, the way that
you're living, the desires thatyou have, I don't know that
it's real, In the same way thatI would say if you aren't
(12:49):
actually in difficultconversations with your family,
if you're not working reallyhard through frustration,
difficulty and good with yourwife.
If you're not wrestling withthe things that are frustrating
and take effort andintentionality and life to do,
do you really love, do youreally care about it?
(13:10):
And I think Christianity is,unfortunately, something you can
have an experience with once,like a marriage, and then put it
on your shelf and just expectit to stay and it'll be fine,
and I have that now.
That's up there, but I haveother things that I want to
focus on now and those thingsare nearly as difficult as that
was.
But, man, I remember howdifficult that was and I I did
(13:31):
it then.
I think that's a form of death.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I do.
I think it's like this I'mgoing to stop living now.
I did that once, man, it wascrazy.
I want to tell stories about it, but I'm not alive anymore.
Um, I think, uh, jonah is theperfect picture of this right.
God calls him the Nineveh andhe's like actually, I'll choose
death.
I'm going to go the oppositedirection.
And the typological picture isit kills him, he dies, he ends
(13:56):
up.
He thinks he's going to be moresafe, but actually no, the
difficulty is where your life is, the monster that swallows you.
You know, that's the uh, that'sthe actual end of a, of a life
that punts on what God hascalled him to do, and it doesn't
totally get out of them.
You know cause?
Cause he's still sitting undera plant later hoping for comfort
(14:17):
.
You know, while, uh, while thething that God has called him to
is, uh is sitting in front ofhim happening and he's just not,
he's not involved, he doesn'treally want anything to do with
it.
All of us are guilty of that inour heart at some level.
Dude, we don't want to work.
No, we don't want to.
We don't want to have to havefaith.
(14:37):
It's faith is incrediblyinconvenient and it's incredibly
time consuming and it it itrequires an immense amount of
mental fortitude.
It's something that's active,it's not passive and we deeply
want it to be passive and it'snot so much of the scriptures
(14:58):
like.
Your life is this.
Now and now you're in a war andthere's light and there's dark,
and there's bombs going off,and it's inside the church and
outside the church, and it'sthis there's dark and there's
bombs going off, and it's insidethe church and outside the
church, and it's thisunavoidable thing that you
constantly have to walk throughand our attention is like man.
I don't really want to do that.
I don't think you understandwhat Jesus was calling you to
Right.
This idea of dying every day isalso the Bible's equivalent of
(15:21):
living every day, as opposed tothe death that it says most
other people live in.
They love darkness rather thanlight.
Why?
Because they don't want toacknowledge God.
They don't want to actually dothe thing that they were meant
to do.
That's a lot harder and thecost is way higher and all the
things that go along with it.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
But yeah, but doing those things all the time it
gets exhausting.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I think there's rest in the process, but that doesn't
mean you don't have to havefaith, tim.
I can sleep in the middle of animmense trial because I trust
God, but that doesn't make thetrial go away or the need for
faith to go away.
Yeah, right, yeah, I thinksimple stuff like you can either
(16:05):
quit the job you know what Imean or stay the course and
trust God through it, but thetension doesn't get removed,
even when you're trusting God.
The tension is perhapsalleviated by the fact that you
have a God who's going to carryyou and see you through to the
end.
But you know, I'm assumingJoseph didn't necessarily feel
that when he was being throwninto prison for doing the right
(16:26):
thing.
I know he believed that God waswith him.
I know that he had convictionsand was going to keep doing what
he was supposed to doing inthose situations, but it doesn't
mean that in the moment youknow he was like man.
This is so restful.
So God just had peace in Jesus,right, and I just think we
think about those guys likeskipping around, you know, doing
(16:47):
whatever interpretive dancethey have, because they just
love the Lord so much in thatmoment.
But I don't think that's thecase.
I think it's more of a rollercoaster and that's how you know
you're alive.
I've brought this up on thepodcast before.
But if you think about like aheartbeat Tim, on a monitor,
it's got beep.
You know, beep is the up andit's the down and we want life
(17:09):
to just be.
Stop with all the ups and downs.
You know what I mean.
I'm sick of.
I'm sick of the hilltops andthen the valleys, and I just
wish it could just be normal.
And what we would call that isa flat line.
That means you're dead, Flat.
Flat lining is the equivalentof saying I don't want to do
this thing anymore.
Where I actually have to liveand be engaged with the world
(17:32):
and the circumstances around meand what's happening, I just
want to flatline.
And our culture shows this dudelike.
I don't know if you've seenthis, but I think euthanasia, um
, this assisted suicide, tim, Ithink it's the fifth leading
cause of death in Canada rightnow.
People are just opting toflatline, just ending it.
(17:53):
They're done.
They're like you have a lot ofdepression, you got a lot of
anxiety.
We'll find somebody toencourage you and help you and
tell you it's okay to flatline.
And the whole Bible is sayingdon't flatline, don't give in,
don't give into Satan, don'tgive into the dragon, don't give
into his schemes and hisdesires, because he desires
(18:15):
death and destruction.
That's what he is about.
And living is this beautifuladventure where you're above the
surface and you are catchingthe sunlight and the the.
The sea foam has hit you in theface and it's work and you're
having to take breaths, butyou're enjoying the good thing
that's happening.
Flatlining is allowing to takea breath of water and sinking
(18:37):
down to the bottom and it mightbe more peaceful and, you know,
placid down there.
But ultimately that's not life,that's death.
And I think those thoughts wreckpeople, man, and oftentimes
people are looking back like,well, if it wasn't like this?
Or you know it wasn't like that.
And I mean it's just the Bible.
There's nowhere in the Biblethat has this idea of gosh.
(19:01):
What's the word I'm thinking of?
Tim?
Nowhere in the Bible is thisidea of looking back fondly and
wishing you used to have whatyou used to have.
A good thing.
Like you, look back inremembrance to get courage for
what you need to do goingforward.
But yeah, reminiscing in thatkind of way is really not in the
Bible.
In fact, I think it'sEcclesiastes 7, you know.
(19:21):
It says do not say why is itthat the former days were better
than these?
For it is not from wisdom thatyou ask about this Wisdom.
This is that picture I wasgiving you of keep your head
above the water, keep swimming.
(19:42):
But the advantage of knowledgeis that wisdom preserves the
lives of its possessors.
Consider the work of God, forwho is able to straighten what
he has bent.
In the day of prosperity, behappy, but in the day of
adversity, consider, god hasmade the one as well as the
other.
I mean, I think that'sincredibly helpful and I hate
(20:02):
that too, because it's literallysaying hey, you know, god did
both of these things right.
You know the mountaintop?
That's him.
You know the valley?
That's him too.
And I don't know how people doit without a belief that God is
the one driving their life anddoing the things that he's doing
.
I mean walking in faith, dude,like I said, it's a crazy thing.
(20:23):
Being married is a crazy thing.
Having kids is a crazy thing,you know, when someone has quit,
because everything around themstarts to die, oh yeah and it
gets peaceful, but it's not.
That's not the way andeverybody knows that.
Tim, you remember when we wereworking at like senior living
places back in the day, when wewere doing different stuff, you
(20:43):
could tell that there were somepeople who were going to live a
long time and you knew itbecause they wanted to be there.
They were still engaged in whatwas going on and they still
love their family and they'recalling people and they're
engaged in life and some peopleyou could tell are just done,
they're waiting to die and Imean it is just proven fact.
People that don't have a willto live died 10 times faster.
(21:04):
They just do, they just go.
Died 10 times faster.
They just they just do, theyjust go, yeah and um, the the
sad thing is is a lot of people,I think, die before they you
know, before they actually dieUm, yeah and uh, give up, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and I think we uh,we've seen a lot of people
resign themselves to um a lifethat is actually more of a a
slower death, and I think Satanloves to use that and he pitches
(21:28):
that it's going to be better.
But honestly, all of thosepeople are miserable.
They're not more happy in theirdeath.
They're just terrified of whatit might feel like to spit the
water out of their lungs andbreathe in fresh air and take
the climb again.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I started thinking of someone you brought up having
difficult conversations withyour family and all that stuff.
That stuff is.
That could be rough you knowwhat I mean Especially if you're
not seeing eye to eye on things.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I'm finding out instead of praying.
God, give me wisdom, give methe right answers right.
It's give me the strategy.
Like, what's the strategy here?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, and that's not a bad thing.
That's not a bad thing.
That's not a bad thing.
I find that God answers myprayers and strategy all the
time.
Or maybe a less weird way tosay it would be a plan.
Oftentimes God is like do thisor don't do that, shut up right
now, yeah, okay, okay, I can dothat.
(22:22):
You know that's not a bad thingto pray, but if the goal is,
ultimately, I just want to getthrough this, that might not be
bad thing to pray, but if thegoal is, ultimately, I just want
to get through this, that mightnot be the best heart posture.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah Well, when you're trying to stand on truth
right, and you have that, theopposing against that constantly
that pressure it's.
It's difficult to you startturning into this peacekeeper of
a person.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Kind of like all right, well, this time I'll I'll
let this slide, Can I?
I just don't want to deal withthis anymore.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, let me speak to that for a second, cause we've
talked about the difficulty inbeing a peacekeeper and a
peacemaker on the podcast.
A lot, yeah, like being apeacekeeper is.
I'm constantly avoiding thedifficulty and I sweep it under
the rug cause I don't want to,somehow, in my delusions that by
doing that it will be better,all right, being a peacemaker is
intentionally walking intodifficult situations to resolve
(23:11):
them, not so that they're sweptunder the rug, but so they
actually go away.
Right, here's the deal.
What I mean by being apeacemaker is not that I am
taking every fight that presentsitself in front of me.
There is an order of priorityin the difficulties and things
that you're dealing with.
All right, if my son isreaching for boiling water on
(23:35):
the stove and I'm in a difficultconversation with my wife, I'm
going to go ahead and take careof my son real quick before he
burns his face off.
All right, that just commonsense.
Some people just love to fightand they think it is my moral
duty to take every fight thatcomes my direction.
That is not what I mean bybeing a peacemaker.
A peacemaker is being strategicin the fights that you pick so
(23:57):
that you can resolve themajority of what's going on.
Usually one difficulty insomebody's life, tim, is
producing three or four frontswhere there is a battle.
You need to be wise enough toknow what battle I'm supposed to
take to resolve the other four.
And that's not.
That doesn't mean I have to hitevery one of those head on,
just like when somebody saysthey're struggling with
(24:17):
something, usually what they'restruggling with is not what they
say, it's what's somethingthat's going on underneath that
right, the sin under the sin, asmost pastors will talk about.
And anytime I do sit down anddo some soul care with somebody
or helping them work throughsomething, it's rarely the thing
that's coming up right up top.
That's the actual problem.
There's usually a deeper rootthat I'm trying to process and
(24:39):
pull up.
And, for the record, you'reonly good at doing that in
somebody else's life if youspend an immense amount of time
doing it in your own, becauseyou can't spot roots in other
people's lives if you haven'tseen them in your own heart
first.
It's just true, um, and youcan't help somebody find life if
you're not actually living ityourself.
Imagine trying to take somebodythrough a jungle you've never
(25:01):
been through.
It's not getting.
We're all getting eaten bycannibals.
You know that's how.
But being a being a peacemakerdoesn't mean picking every fight
that presents itself in frontof you.
It means strategically knowingwhich fights are actually going
to have the greatest impact, um,for what needs to get done and
what battle actually youactually need victory over.
(25:21):
And that doesn't mean you getto pick all the small ones to
navigate around the elephant inthe room.
It means identifying Goliathand going out and killing him,
even when everybody is tellingyou that's the one.
You shouldn't.
Don't do that, don't touch that.
Those are the places that Godis probably calling you to go.
And David didn't just pick umhow he was going to do it.
(25:42):
It was timing too.
You know what I mean.
He didn't just immediately runout there.
No, he got some stones, hetalked to the King, he tried on
some armor.
Ironically, that wasn't goingto work for him, um.
And then he went out there anddid it in a way that actually
made sense, as opposed to a lotof people who just cannonball
into the nonsense and create abigger problem.
Uh, you know who you are.
You get swole on it and youlove it.
(26:04):
Sometimes, 24 hours before youaddress it is probably a better
idea.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
I'm finding with people too is that they love
confrontation, but they'reterrible at conflict.
Yeah, it's a weird thing.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, people knew how to fight.
They'd save their marriage alot faster.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, or solve conflicts?
Yeah.
Some people just want thatfight.
They want the because they wantlike kind of what you were
talking about.
When it comes to the actualconflict of the matter, they
don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
They don't want to deal with it, but they'll fight
you on it, or they see it as anassault on themselves as opposed
to trying to solve a problem.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, just getting defensive.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's hard to do.
Admittedly, even in my own life, somebody wants to bring
something up.
My first thought is take itpersonal, tim, an area where I'm
terrible at this.
Just full disclosure.
If my wife is struggling withsomething in her life, I
immediately am like what am Idoing wrong?
My first tendency is to make itabout me.
I must be doing something wrongand that's why this particular
thing is happening.
(26:58):
And what did I just do?
I just sucked the oxygen out ofthe room and made it about
myself.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Identify what the actual issueis and don't immediately let
your insecurity compound theproblem and make it far worse
than it was.
But these are the.
These are signs of life.
You know, being really angryabout something is a sign of
(27:20):
life.
Being really, you know,wrestling with something hard is
a sign of life.
It's a sign that you haven'tgiven up.
It's a sign that you haven'tlost hope and you think you can
still fight forward, or thatthere's something worth fighting
for getting after having faithin and that's every story in the
Bible, dude, is thisresurrection story of God
(27:42):
meeting you in the lows andmeeting you at the high points
and traveling with you throughall those different things that
are happening and you meet Godin those scenarios that you
would not have chosen foryourself, that he chose for you
so that he could begin to growyou in a place where you don't
have your armor up, because thearmor doesn't just protect you
(28:02):
from the circumstances, it alsoprotects you from the work that
God is trying to do in your lifeand man.
He's taking you to those placesand it's so key that when that
happens, you don't immediatelyhide and run and, you know, do
whatever else.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So this is my question, because you just
brought up this Ecclesiastesverse.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
But in these tough trial times, like I reminisce a
lot on when God brought methrough stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
To gain hope.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
To gain.
Okay, he did it before.
He will see me through this now.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
But that's bad.
Like reminiscing is bad.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
No, Think about it this way If you're looking back
to gain hope for the step thatyou need to take forward, that
is incredibly biblical andeverywhere you don't see any
place where people are lookingback in a godly way and be like
man.
Those days were so great.
Ah, miss that.
Wish we were there again.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Wish I could do that again.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
That's not really a thing.
That doesn't sound like a badthing to me, I guess.
I think it's trying to live inthe past.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
What's the point of having a memory, you know, like
having good memories.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Well, I think memories are to teach you to
learn.
I think they're to teach you tomove forward.
But even Paul say things likeI'm not focusing on what lies
behind, I'm straining forwardfor what lies ahead.
I want to remember the toolsthat I need to take with me to
continue forward.
But a lot of people are notlooking back at the past,
(29:31):
digging for tools to take themforward, but looking back at the
past and psychologically livingthere instead of in the moment
that they're actually in.
And you can't really justifythat position in scripture.
I mean, that's kind of thewhole point of this verse is
he's saying don't do that.
In fact it's not wisdom thattakes you to a place so you can
find some psychological comfortin what used to be.
You're looking to the wrongplace to try to find peace or
(29:54):
hope, and actually it's kind ofit's the Uncle Rico, if they
would have put me in fourthquarter.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And then you try to rewrite your own life in a
different way that I can seeright, because I do that too.
It's like man if I didn't getthe shoulder injury, would I be
able to play baseball still?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
What would my life look?
Speaker 1 (30:11):
like, or if I would have married this girl instead,
or something terrible.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You start kind of yeah, you tryto rewind the clock and face
what's in front of your face.
You know you actually got todeal with what's there right now
and you have to place yourfaith in the sovereignty of God.
And we would way rather placeour faith in man.
If I would have made thesedecisions and done that, which
(30:42):
is kind of another way of sayingyou know, I would be a really
good God.
I could plan this thing reallywell if I wanted to.
I would be great.
I mean, I got to believe thatthere's no way David picked the
cave of a Doolam.
There's no way that Joseph waslike.
You know, I hope all mybrothers try to murder me and I
end up in Egypt, thrown inprison.
You know, getting hit on byPotiphar's underloved wife.
You know like I what aboutregret, though?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Is that a form of reminiscing?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
You know, I think regret can be a godly thing or
an incredibly ungodly thing.
If regret, regret is your wayof punishing yourself so that
you can continue to live in aplace where you're being
disobedient or frustrated orbitter or shameful, that's
(31:30):
ungodly.
And I would say regret is acomplicated thing in that I
could look back and be like man.
I wish I would have done theright thing there.
That's one thing.
But if I'm wearing it as anidentity of the things that I
did not do and this is who I amnow it's an incredibly powerful
pull to live that way.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Or an excuse to live the way you are now.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
You get to be sage, wisdom to others you know what I
mean and you isolate yourselfso that you can tell yourself
that you know I had to gothrough this and nobody really
understands.
But I've drank this cup down tothe bottom.
Now the problem is you onlydrank the cup halfway and now
you're just staring at it.
You actually have to getthrough the whole process.
Regret is meant to have an endpoint and that's repentance.
(32:16):
If regret makes it torepentance so that you can have
faith to take steps in obedience, then it's good regret.
But if regret takes you to thepast and reminiscing and sorrow
and makes you live out a sin ora problem or a foible again and
again and again, well, that'snot repentance, that's not faith
(32:36):
, that's nothing.
That is you sitting in the mindof a condemning spirit that is
making you relive the thingagain and again and again, in
hopes that you take all of yourstrength emotionally and put it
there and remove all of yourfaith in God, by convincing
yourself in that process thatGod won't use you anymore.
You can't do that because I didthis thing, which is ultimately
(33:00):
just trying to erase thesubstitutionary atonement and
what Christ actuallyaccomplished for you.
It's the uh, it's the chickenbeing raised as a cat.
You know what I mean.
I think I'm this, so I act thisway and I've convinced myself
of it.
Regret has a funny way ofputting you in a cage.
Uh, bars, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That aren't actually there, but you demand the world
sees, yeah, and the world sees,yeah, and if they can't see him,
then that kind of world thatyou've created with the regret
turns into your own comfort.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, depression, anxiety, fear, all those things
are more comfort, comforting Ifyou live with them.
They, they, these reallynegative, let's say
psychological traits don't wantto be.
Let's say psychological traits,don't want to be, let's say
friends.
They want to be your lifepartner.
(33:54):
You know what I mean.
None of them want to be.
I shook anxiety's hand and Ikept walking.
All of them want to be.
No, you have to carry me aroundwith you the rest of your life.
You won't be comfortable if I'mnot here.
I have to.
You know what I mean.
They all become these friendsthat you become, you know, used
to carrying around in unhealthyways.
None of them want to be.
(34:15):
None of them want to be momentsin your life or trophies on
your shelf of things that youconquered.
All of them want to be a rideor die partner and those things
aren't supposed to be thingsthat you carry with you.
There are moments and enemiesthat you face, not friends that
you make yeah, yeah, that makessense.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Going back to, like, the process of christianity, man
, there's a I feel I feel kindof guilty for thinking this, but
there are times where I seepeople who come to the faith and
they get so excited and they'relike on fire and they're just
going at it.
Man, in my head I'm like justyou wait you got to burn.
Just you wait.
Enjoy this snowball while youcan, but it's getting smaller
(34:53):
and smaller, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
You know, there's a lot of excitement for people who
joined the military at firsttoo.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
right yeah, it's all new and stuff, and then all of a
sudden kind of like we've beentalking about, you know, life
gets hard, like Christianity isone of the hardest things I've
ever to do.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, I mean the, it's the tale is oldest time we
look for the heroes of the faith.
You know what I mean.
To go back to the military, youknow everybody wants to be the
guy who is just amazing on thefield commanding the troops
getting it done.
(35:32):
Nobody wants to go through whatthat guy had to go through to
get there, you know, and if youpunt on the trials and
difficulties that go into that,then you never become that
person, and I think a lot ofpeople are okay with just not
becoming the fullness of who Godhas called them to be, because
it's it's just too painful.
Yeah, but it's this again.
It goes back to this Would yourather be a dead or alive?
Though, you know, and I justthink some people choose death
(35:54):
along the way, I think there's alot of Christians that are
doing eight hours in front ofthe television every day,
calling themselves a Christian,going to work, checking in,
checking out and thinking likeI'm doing it, I'm alive.
No, you're not.
That's not it.
There's no way that God hascalled you to eight hours of
television a day, working abasic job, not talking to people
and just trying not to makewaves.
(36:15):
That is not life.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, but not making waves at work or watching TV
eight hours a day, like you'retalking about.
What, then, do we do?
Are we supposed to beconstantly confronting people on
a daily basis?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Dude, let me man.
That's such a.
It's a great point, becauseeverybody's scenario is a little
bit different.
Okay, so I am.
I am plagued to, unfortunately,always give somewhat generic
answers, unless I'm sitting withsomebody helping them navigate
the particular situation they'rein, unless I'm sitting with
somebody helping them navigatethe particular situation they're
in.
But I would say you're alwaysgoing to be choosing faith, and
(36:48):
choosing faith means you'realways headed for conflict, and
that conflict means you'realways going to encounter God
and you're always going toencounter evil.
And on the other side of thatmoment, whether you choose
worship or you choose sin, iseither opportunity for more
growth, an opportunity to drawcloser to God, or an opportunity
(37:12):
to jump right back into thesame problem that you refused to
solve because you caved.
You know what I mean.
It really is like that.
But there's this passage in Judewhere he closes out the chapter
this way, and I feel like ithelps me think through conflict
difficulty.
What am I supposed to be doingconsistently?
I'll just read it to you.
He said but you, beloved, oughtto remember the words that were
(37:35):
spoken beforehand by theapostles of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Okay, so he's immediatelyappealing to scripture that they
were saying to you in the lasttimes, there will be mockers
following their own ungodlylusts.
These are the ones who causedivision, worldly minded, devoid
of the spirit, basically.
Hey, just so you know, crap'sgoing to happen, you're going to
have people, you're going tohave problems, you're going to
(37:56):
have issues.
These are the ones that causethese things.
But you, beloved, buildingyourself up on your most holy
faith.
Okay.
So he's saying, I need you tokeep growing in your faith,
building yourself up on yourmost holy faith, like grow in
this, take it seriously, prayingin the Holy Spirit, keep
(38:17):
yourselves in the love of God.
Again, this is like this activething, like you're either green
and growing or like ripe androtting.
Right, there's no in betweenwith these things.
And if you choose that inbetween, it's not going to go
the way that you think it'sgoing to go.
It's not going to go well foryou.
You have to stay there.
This is the word.
Abide, right, menno, like to bewith, to hang with, waiting
(38:44):
anxiously for the mercy of ourLord Jesus Christ to eternal
life.
Okay, so now hang on and justkeep waiting for Jesus and that
eternal life in my opinion, yes,that is this ultimate will meet
him in glory.
I also think it's an encounterwith real life.
Eternal life is also a personthat we encounter in those
circumstances.
So I'm waiting for Jesus inevery difficulty.
(39:08):
I'm waiting for Jesus to meetme, grow me, teach me, give me
peace, give me strength,whatever and he does.
Tim, I don't know about you, butlike every difficulty I've made
it through, I feel like if I'mtrusting in God, he meets me in
that and sees me to the otherside.
Either you get to the Red Seaand you pray and you wait for
(39:28):
God to part the waters and youget to see it, or you quit and
go back into slavery before youget to see the miracle.
And that's the tension I wassaying between sin and worship,
when the intersection oftrusting God and the fact that
he's taken me this far is atthat same place where you're
dealing with temptation to turnand run.
That's the intersection ofworship and sin.
(39:49):
You got to choose worship andhe says here, have mercy on some
who are doubting.
Like, not everybody around youis going to see the same things
that you see.
You can't just deal with ityourself.
You're going to have to giveother people's courage.
And he says this save others,snatching them out of the fire,
and, on some, have mercy withfear, hating even the garment
(40:11):
polluted by flesh.
Okay, so some people are goingto be doubting.
You're going to have to givethem strength.
Some people are going to betrying to run the opposite
direction and you need to grabthem and you need to pull them
with you to help them make itthrough this thing that's going
on, but make sure in thisprocess you're not getting
caught up in sin and nonsenseyourself.
(40:31):
So there's this massive tensionof like okay, trust God, trust
what he said.
Know the difficult things aregoing to happen.
Keep working on your faith,keep abiding with Christ, keep
praying, wait for God to show upultimately, but also in the
moment, and have mercy on thepeople around you when you're
dealing with your own stuff,cause what happens when you're
(40:52):
struggling is you tend to ignorethe people around you unless
you find them helpful in yourparticular situation.
Don't use people.
Be the person that can helpother people through those
things.
And then he says this for thoseof you right now who, like me,
are like well, that soundsincredibly daunting and
difficult.
Now to him, who is able to keepyou from stumbling and to make
(41:12):
you stand in the presence of hisglory, blameless, with great
joy, to the only God, our savior.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord,be glory, majesty, dominion and
authority before all time andnow and forevermore, amen.
So who is ultimately going tomake sure that you're able to do
this, jesus, if you keeptrusting and keep pushing and
(41:34):
keep doing these things thathe's telling you to do?
What he's saying is, ultimately, one day, this map leads you to
the feet of Jesus and you don'tget that because you're not
actually the guide.
Jesus is the guide and he'swalking with you and if you
continue to follow him, it'sgoing to be awesome.
And it says that he's the onethat keeps you from stumbling
and he's the one who makes youstand in the presence of God and
(41:56):
I said this here, I don't knowif you guys caught it To only
God and Savior through JesusChrist, the Lord.
Be glory, majesty, dominion andauthority before all times, now
and forevermore.
What does that mean?
He's not missing in my life orcircumstances right now, and
that's why I'm saying a lot ofyou listening to this might be
at an intersection.
Do I choose death or life today?
(42:16):
Choose life why?
Because he's with me now and ifI don't punt, I get to see this
Red Sea road made and it maynot be the way that I want.
Maybe I was hoping for anotherpath and I don't punt, I get to
see this Red Sea road made andit may not be the way that I
want.
Maybe I was hoping for anotherpath and I wouldn't have to have
the Egyptians, you know,running from behind me trying to
cut me down in a giant pillarof fire falling from the sky and
waves on a sea and everythinglooking horrible first.
(42:37):
But you don't get to meet Jesusin comfortable places.
You get to meet him in theuncomfortable places.
While he's taking you to thecomfortable places and newsflash
, those comfortable placesbecome uncomfortable again when
he says, okay, it's time to packup camp, let's go.
You know what I mean.
But that is how you find thepromised land, that is how you
(42:57):
end up at the feet of Jesus.
It's this process ofremembering what God has said,
what he's called you to, knowingthat difficulty is coming,
staying in this place of prayer,building up your faith, staying
in love with Jesus, waiting forhim to show up in your
circumstances, and then look tothe people around you, pull them
up, encourage them, help themand realize that God is with you
(43:21):
right now in that process.
He is your guide and he was theone who trailblazed the path
not just to the cross, butthrough the cross, and he will
be the one to do that in yourlife, not just to take you to
the cross, but through the cross, so that you would be at the
right hand of the father withhim.
So cool.
Well, thanks, man.
Thanks for talking today.
Hope that's encouraging to someof you guys and to some of you
guys.
I hope so, and I know it's kindof maybe a weightier topic
(43:44):
today, but I also feel like alot of people are just they're
in life right now.
Y'all are living it, and I'djust rather encourage you to
stay above the waves, keepswimming, keep trusting God and
wait for him to show up.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
All right guys.
Well, hey, catch you all nexttime Y'all have a.
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