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Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm, Chris Carr. Welcome back. How you doing?

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Chris
 I'm pretty good. Yeah. Good.

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Brenton
 Good.

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Chris
 I'm getting ready to dive headlong here into a new year of ministry. Yeah.

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Brenton
 So we've got a lot going on here.

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Chris
 It's August in the office and staff. Yeah. So-- For sure. Really kind of-- we're kicking off a little bit earlier this year. Normally, we don't do it until that week, the school starts, which this year is August 23-ish. But we're going to kick it off a little bit earlier to get us back in going. And it seems like

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Chris
 we're kind of ready for it, the way that people have been responding and diving in. So yeah,

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Chris
 we're ready to go. That's great. Or we're going to be ready to go. Maybe.

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Brenton
 I can't say. It's by Sunday. Yeah. Great. So yeah, we have-- as we wrap up the Minor Prophets series, we're going to go into a two-week, another all-in series. You want to talk about that a little bit?

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Chris
 Yeah, I mean, again, we've said this from the beginning. And then repeatedly, this is a journey. It's two years. We are about 15 months in, so roughly nine months or so left to go. But it's never been simply about buildings, projects, and raising the money to see that happen. That's certainly a significant part of it. But it's always been about each and every one of us taking the next step or steps in our journey with Christ and growing in our love for Him and out of the overflow of that, our love for our neighbors. And so we've tried to be really intentional about

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Chris
 coming back to this great commandment over and over again and going deeper and deeper in it so that we experience transformation and then, hopefully, through us.

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Chris
 A lot of other people in our communities are being transformed. And I think that that's actually what's happening and occurring. And there's been a lot of fruit. Last Sunday, we had over 20 people who we announced as members. We've got a geobaptisms coming up this Sunday night. So there's a little plug for that.

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Chris
 30, maybe as many as 40 people are going to be baptized.

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Chris
 Almost all this is fruit from the all-in journey. And we could go on and on and on. And so specifically over the next couple of weeks, we're going to talk about how we live out our identity as salt and light, Matthew 5, 13 through 16.

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Chris
 And this has been a vision of our church for a long, long time. And it's really not our vision.

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Chris
 It's the vision of our Savior because he has made us salt and light. And then our vision is like, OK, how do we actually carry that out here in southeast Iowa and west central Illinois? What does that mean? What does it look like? And this is going to give us an opportunity to, in some ways, celebrate how that is already occurring, but then to just,

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Chris
 OK, all right, let's take the next step here. So looking forward to that. And then after that, we'll dive into the life of Abraham. So we can promo that more in the next week. Yeah, for sure. So that's a big deal coming up, too.

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Chris
 I'm not a guy who uses the word "epic" very much. But there is no greater spiritual giant in the Bible than Abraham. So it's going to be great to study his life, too.

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Brenton
 That'll be good. Cool.

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Brenton
 OK. So yeah, like we said, we just wrapped up this series in the Minor Prophets. I'm just curious, what was your biggest takeaway from all of this?

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Chris
 I mean, in some ways, it was a very personal one. It's just like, OK,

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Chris
 there's a lot more here than even I really thought that there was or

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Chris
 had really considered. Many of the

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Chris
 books that we went through, I was like, OK, we probably need to come back and do a whole series here, because there's that much to talk about. I mean, like last week with Zachariah, we were only really scratching the surface. And there's a lot of great things to talk about there. And really, you could go through almost all of them

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Chris
 and do full series on several weeks, if not longer than that. So there's just some great stuff. And I'd also say it's just another

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Chris
 way to see God's heart revealed. The Minor Prophets as a whole, but the Minor Prophets especially get kind of a bad rap. It's either just angry guys kind of calling down God's judgment and condemnation on the good ways. They are, I mean, in some sense. But I think that we get the picture that they're angry. I don't think that they're angry. And we got to remember that it's not actually them. It's their conveying that the Word of the Lord comes to them. That's even what they say. The Word of the Lord to

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Chris
 Malachi or to Haggai or whoever.

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Chris
 But really, the word we haven't even talked about this

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Chris
 is that God's jealous. He's jealous for his people's affection. And we can have the tendency to think that jealousy is wrong, but it's

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Chris
 actually a sign of love if we're jealous for someone who we're in a covenant relationship with. For sure. Like it's right for you to be jealous for your wife's love. That's a good thing. If you weren't, that's actually like you don't care about the relationship. God cares very deeply about his relationship with his people. And so

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Chris
 the Minor Prophets are voicing that. Sometimes there is consequences for disobedience. And the consequences though are not meant ultimately to punish. They're meant to

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Chris
 return to me, return to me. That's the

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Chris
 title that we have in the series. And that was one of the easiest titles ever to come up for a series because you just very simply go into the Minor Prophets and we see it over and over and over again.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Okay.

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Brenton
 The main point of this sermon from this week was about spiritual apathy. And you said that that often begins with thanklessness, with being, you know, without being thankful for what we're given. And so why do you think gratitude is such a powerful safeguard against an apathetic heart?

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Chris
 Well, first of all, it's what God deserves. Yeah. Second is what he calls for.

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Chris
 And the third thing is, is like our hearts just tend to go sideways in the sense that they tend to focus on what's wrong and

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Chris
 the woe is me kind of mentality. That's in some ways the default mode of our hearts. And so we have to have a

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Chris
 real intentionality to redirect it. And thankfulness, gratitude is a primary way in which we can do that, is that it will get our minds and hearts off of our circumstances and off of the things that are not good or we don't think are good and helping us to get them focused on what they need to be. And ultimately that is on him.

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Chris
 So we could talk about that more. But we have, we've talked about it on a regular basis here, but it's just

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Chris
 the antidote.

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Chris
 It's really the primary antidote. I mean, you tie it into all the passages where we're called to praise the Lord, praise and thanksgiving

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Chris
 are really two sides of the same coin. So if you take all the commands and calls to praise God and to thank God,

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Chris
 you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of them in the scripture. Why are they there? Because God knows that that's, A, again, what he deserves, but B, it's also what we need in order to

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Chris
 counter where our hearts tend to go to.

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Brenton
 Is this as simple as making thankfulness a part of our spiritual habits? I mean, we talk about acts, right? The way of praying, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. Is that sufficient?

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Chris
 I mean,

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Chris
 no, I don't think it's that simple. I think that that's a big part of it. I do think that there is a need to be disciplined about it

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Chris
 and to actually make it part of our daily habits, if not more often than daily. But I think this is why corporate worship is also important. It is that we're

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Chris
 called to do this together.

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Chris
 Colossians 3, 16, 17, "Let the word of Christ to unknew richly," and talks about how we're to come together and we're to teach and admonish one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs.

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Chris
 Those things include, by

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Chris
 definition, thanksgiving, and we're thanking God together. And

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Chris
 as I hear you thanking God for things, that will produce thankfulness in me and probably also for what you're thankful for, and then also point me to what I should be thankful for. And so we need

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Chris
 community. And so it's not only corporate worship, it's whether it's just other people in our lives.

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Chris
 This is why I think music is important, and singing good gospel-rich songs are listening to them

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Chris
 is really important. So there's other parts to that as well. I think we need a

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Chris
 wholesale kind of approach to this, so personally and corporate.

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Brenton
 Yeah, that's good.

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Brenton
 In chapter two, Malakai connects faithfulness and marriage with faithfulness to God.

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Brenton
 And I think this, you spent some time talking about marriage in your sermon, and I think it could be seen as kind of tangential to this

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Brenton
 book, but at the same time, I think it reflects how

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Brenton
 we handle covenant, how we think about covenant, the way we deal with marriage. And I think it's obvious that our culture does not hold marriage in high regard, and we've also been seeing that growing in the church, this kind of carelessness towards marriage.

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Brenton
 What do you think has contributed to that kind of drift away from

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Brenton
 not taking this covenant of marriage seriously?

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Chris
 Well, I think there's a lot of things.

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Chris
 One thing I would go back and say is it's not tangential to the book at all, and really,

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Chris
 I didn't have time to get into this, but you just have to wonder, and actually not even wonder, because if we actually look at Nehemiah,

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Chris
 and Malakai's got to be thinking here, you guys are out and you're marrying foreign women. Do you not recognize what this has done to our nation?

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Chris
 And it's not the women, and don't put the onus on the women. The point was is that they're marrying foreign

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Chris
 women who worshiped idols, and the long-sorted history of Israel is that this is what happened over and over again, and the men invariably then would take

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Chris
 and start worshiping these idols. They'd give themselves idolatry. And it

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Chris
 really above all was what brought God's judgment upon the people of Israel time and time again, because they foreign women, they ended up in idolatry, and

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Chris
 they're... Story back to Solomon. Like, right.

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Chris
 And I think the application for us today, I know I'm a little bit off from where you were going with the question, but I think this is an important point to make is, this is what happens today when we date and then marry unbelievers invariably. We're not going to be necessarily bowing down to the bail or anything, to actual physical idols, but I've just seen it. It's not hard to see is

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Chris
 someone who dates an unbeliever and marries an unbeliever. Now, there are good stories where

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Chris
 that person becomes a believer, and that's great.

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Chris
 And sometimes people are going to say, "Well, hey, look, it turned out okay." Well, but that's, in some ways, a lot of times the exception, not the rule. And what the rule tends to be is that

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Chris
 the believer wanders away,

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Chris
 and then you may have kids and there's a struggle and a challenge with, "Do we take the kids to church, and what does this look like?" and all of those kind of things. But it does not lead, generally speaking, to healthy

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Chris
 homes and healthy believers.

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Chris
 But what's going on in regards to marriage is,

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Chris
 I do think it's one thing...

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Chris
 We can come at this from a lot of different angles, and we could analyze culture,

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Chris
 things like the sexual revolution and all of that. I think I would rather talk about the church and the church's failure to

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Chris
 faithfully teach what the Bible has to say about marriage covenant,

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Chris
 how we've been, a lot ourselves, to be way too influenced by the world.

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Chris
 I think we also have had a lot of hypocrisy where we've at times say, "This is what we believe about marriage, but we haven't actually lived it out ourselves."

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Chris
 And

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Chris
 I think

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Chris
 another thing, is problematic, and this is hard too. I talked about this on Sunday, but divorce is the church has really not in many ways been faithful to teach what the Bible has to say about divorce, and then also to actually practice what we call here Harmony Church restoration, where when people actually do pursue divorce unbiblically.

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Chris
 Now, there's nothing quite that gets more uncomfortable in church leadership than saying, "You don't have biblical crowns to get divorced."

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Chris
 There are biblical grounds, as

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Chris
 I mentioned on Sunday, but there are also unbiblical grounds, and so how are we going to actually shepherd people in regards to that? Are we just going to let them... And this is with the church, and I'm not talking about Harmony specifically, but church in general has just kind of like, "Well, if people want to get divorced, we're just going to let them get... Maybe throw our hands up. We can't do anything. We may not agree with it, but we can't do anything." And I think that's actually led to some of it, because to take marriage seriously by the church means is like, we're not

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Chris
 going to stand by and let people get divorced unbiblically.

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Chris
 Now, on the other hand,

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Chris
 the church also has a track record of not actually handling those situations in grace and compassion either.

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Chris
 And so we've gone wrong on a number of different ways in regards to that. But if we really want to go even further here, it's just

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Chris
 where our culture goes is like the self.

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Chris
 It's the right

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Chris
 to self determination. Like I have the right to determine what's right and good for me, and this is what's best for me, and I need to follow my heart, and this is what my heart is saying, and we've just been terribly influenced by that.

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Brenton
 So...

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Brenton
 Yeah, I can't disagree with that.

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Brenton
 You mentioned early in that some of it has to do with the way the church hasn't taught on covenant of marriage. Like, what would you want to be... I know we've gone through a lot of different series in family things in marriage, but what specifically do you think is important for

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Brenton
 a church to teach their people that isn't necessarily happening in

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Brenton
 places?

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Chris
 Well, we just did a series back in February,

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Chris
 created and called where we went to Genesis one and two, and we talked about the family specifically, and

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Chris
 we explored a big part of that is what a covenant is, and it's not a contract. We think today that marriage is a contract, right? Like, you do your part, and I'll do my part, and whenever you don't do your part, then I'm going to stop doing my part, or this is a contract, and whenever I want to break it, my cell phone, if

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Chris
 I'm with T-Mobile, but if Verizon is going to give me a better deal, I'm going to break that contract and go over there. That's

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Chris
 what a lot of people think that marriage is about, or marriage is about making me happy and meeting my needs, and

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Chris
 so we just

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Chris
 have the wrong... And quite honestly, the church has even reinforced that in some ways, and

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Chris
 so we need really counter formation and counter... It's not only teaching, but it's also then what I would say discipling, which it means going further and coming alongside and providing

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Chris
 good premarital counseling and preparing people. Because so I'm just going to make a case here that is probably the first time I've said this publicly, but I really think that couples should do premarital counseling before they get engaged, and they should actually... The church should come alongside them and help them determine if they should get married in the first place.

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Chris
 So here's what happens, okay?

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Chris
 People will come and say, "Hey, we've gotten engaged, and now we want you to do premarital counseling and get us ready for marriage," before they seek real counsel about, "Is this

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Chris
 a good idea in the first place?"

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Chris
 It's all up to, "This is what we have, and this is our culture." And just even in the church, it's the individuals that you get to decide who on your own, if this is the person that you want to marry, and you might get input from other people, but you don't really need to. Yeah.

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Brenton
 Which ideally should be happening in the home, right? Parents should be involved in these conversations.

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Chris
 Ideally, but we know that that's not happening a lot, and I think there is a role in

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Chris
 the church, and historically that is very much the case.

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Chris
 I think this trend, and I'm really going to get it with the trend about having weddings

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Chris
 and the wedding venues, and the weddings going outside from the church facility,

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Chris
 I don't think it's all that healthy thing, because now people don't even think in terms of the church when they get

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Chris
 married. It's not so much the building, but it's like this,

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Chris
 we're a covenant community, the community that's coming into this, because if marriage is truly about the gospel, then the church has got to be in there somewhere.

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Chris
 And a lot of times I just find even when I might be doing weddings, it's like I'm kind of a side show, and it's not about me, but the pastor, he's here because he's got to be here because we need somebody to do the wedding, it's really about this, it's an event.

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Chris
 Instead of like, no, this is

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Chris
 something in which we are making a covenant to one another before and with God, and that's the center of it. You see, what becomes the center of it is the event,

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Chris
 and not the actual gospel and what it's supposed to be. And again, what's your email address so I can make sure everybody knows where to send all of this to.

[01:22:27:17 - 01:22:29:03]
Chris
 Ask

[01:22:30:21 - 01:22:31:06]
Chris
 at furtherpodcast.com.

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Brenton
 We'll take any and all. What's your cell phone number?

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Chris
 I don't know.

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Chris
 I'll just end on this. We talked about guarding our spirit. How do we guard our spirit?

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Chris
 That was the twice repeated God's command, guard your spirit and don't be faithless. That, in my opinion, begins, and I think we even have indication of it in this text, that begins not after you're married, but before you're married. Marrying, understanding what marriage is about, committing, making the true covenant between you and your spouse and the Lord. Marrying a believer,

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Chris
 understanding we're here to display the gospel. That's what our marriage is about.

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Chris
 And then, of course, that should carry on throughout marriage.

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Brenton
 No, I think a lot of that's helpful. Obviously,

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Brenton
 you are in a position that is dealing with a lot of the fallout of the way that marriage has been treated. That's just a pastor's role, and we have pastors here that deal with that a lot. And so, yeah, there's just the reality of broken.

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Chris
 Yes. But here's the thing, is that we all actually are impacted by this because marriage and the family is the

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Chris
 fabric of our culture and our community. And so, when marriage is fray, families fray. And when families fray, the very fabric of life frays. And that's not to minimize singleness, and that's a gift. And we need single people, but single people should be in, their families too, they're in here and they're impacted by this.

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Chris
 And so,

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Chris
 that's why even guarding our marriage is like... Guarding marriage is not just something for married people.

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Chris
 It's like, I have a role, not just as a pastor, but as a believer to support other marriage and the institution of marriage. Like this whole...

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Chris
 And again, we're familiar, very alpha, very familiar about the attack on marriage, whether it's from the

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Chris
 issue

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Chris
 of homosexuality or now transgenderism, all of those things.

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Chris
 What's at stake there? The gospels at stake for sure, number one, but then related to that is the very fabric of our culture,

[01:25:12:00 - 01:25:15:23]
Chris
 because you're tearing apart what God has designed marriage to be.

[01:25:17:12 - 01:25:17:21]
Brenton
 All right.

[01:25:19:08 - 01:25:27:13]
Brenton
 Okay, let's move on to greed. How about... Yeah, why don't we do that? You made the point that it's one of the easiest sins to be blind to,

[01:25:29:04 - 01:25:37:09]
Brenton
 and it's also not one that we talk about often. Why do you think that this one specifically is so difficult to see in ourselves?

[01:25:40:19 - 01:25:47:20]
Chris
 I think it really has to do with what I talked about today is like, if you're a fish, you don't know that you're in water until

[01:25:49:00 - 01:26:05:07]
Chris
 somebody takes you out of water, you're in a bottle of water. That's just... You don't know what water is because that's just the environment that you live in. And we live in an environment that actually operates on materialism. Sure.

[01:26:08:04 - 01:26:12:19]
Chris
 Let's talk about capitalism for a second. Okay, so again, here, may as well. Yeah.

[01:26:14:14 - 01:26:16:10]
Chris
 There's a lot of good things about capitalism,

[01:26:17:10 - 01:26:17:16]
Chris
 but

[01:26:18:23 - 01:26:24:10]
Chris
 let's not be fooled that, just like everything else, there are real

[01:26:25:10 - 01:26:36:22]
Chris
 downsides to it or ditches that you can fall into. And one of them is that our capitalism has produced a very materialistic society. Yeah.

[01:26:37:23 - 01:26:41:10]
Chris
 It's unfettered, unfettered capitalism.

[01:26:42:18 - 01:26:43:13]
Chris
 And

[01:26:44:13 - 01:26:46:11]
Chris
 so, again, I'm not...

[01:26:47:12 - 01:26:53:03]
Chris
 Don't anybody say I'm anti-capitalist. That is not my point. It's just

[01:26:54:14 - 01:27:01:06]
Chris
 for us to think that it isn't just a good without potential downfall, our

[01:27:02:10 - 01:27:20:10]
Chris
 problems is naive and actually is blind. But we are inundated continually with advertising that promotes our materialism. And materialism and greed are basically twin sisters. Yeah.

[01:27:22:08 - 01:27:31:08]
Chris
 And you want more money or you hold onto your money more because you want more stuff and more things.

[01:27:32:11 - 01:27:38:14]
Chris
 And by the way, you can be greedy if you like a spender or a saver.

[01:27:40:19 - 01:27:53:10]
Chris
 Sure. Yeah. So here's one way that we can be blind to it is there are people who are just like they... They're really good with their money and they are really... They're very, very frugal.

[01:27:54:12 - 01:28:02:16]
Chris
 But it's all about their security is in what their stock portfolio looks like or their bank account balance is. Totally. Okay.

[01:28:04:16 - 01:28:15:08]
Chris
 It's not either... So yeah, it's easy to... Well, they spender. Quatter. They're in massive debt or they're way in debt. They got credit card debt or whatever. Obviously, they got a problem with greener money.

[01:28:16:09 - 01:28:36:02]
Chris
 And we think the person who lives a very frugal life is not... And they very well may be just as greedy. They just have a different way of expressing it. And it's really where is our trust in. But I guess, again, back to your question, we can just be blind to it because this is

[01:28:38:01 - 01:28:42:15]
Chris
 a culture we live in. The other thing that we can say is... And this is

[01:28:43:22 - 01:28:50:09]
Chris
 just as true in the church, I think, is in cultures. We have this idea that how we handle our money is a private thing.

[01:28:52:10 - 01:28:52:21]
Chris
 And

[01:28:55:09 - 01:29:00:15]
Chris
 the Bible would tell us that it's personal. The Bible never indicates that how we handle our money is private.

[01:29:03:01 - 01:29:03:05]
Chris
 Yeah.

[01:29:06:02 - 01:29:07:06]
Chris
 And I mean,

[01:29:08:21 - 01:29:19:05]
Chris
 Ananias and Sapphira are the perfect examples of that. How they did it was personal. In fact, Paul even... Not Paul Peter even says it. Once you sold it, it was yours to do with it. It's personal.

[01:29:20:06 - 01:29:20:14]
Chris
 But you're

[01:29:21:20 - 01:29:29:07]
Chris
 not telling... He actually said you lie to the Holy Spirit. And they were called into a calendar in this. But

[01:29:30:12 - 01:29:36:20]
Chris
 one of the reasons we're so blind to it is because we have this idea that nobody should know what we do with our money.

[01:29:38:16 - 01:29:44:10]
Brenton
 Yeah, for sure. That's true. So, okay, I was going to ask,

[01:29:46:16 - 01:29:53:02]
Brenton
 what are some practical questions we can ask ourselves to root this out

[01:29:54:03 - 01:30:00:11]
Brenton
 in ourselves if we're not seeing it? But maybe that's a better question. It's like, what are some practical steps to...

[01:30:01:22 - 01:30:05:00]
Brenton
 What is accountability in that will look like?

[01:30:05:00 - 01:30:11:22]
Chris
 So first, what we can do for our own self is just look and say, are we actually...

[01:30:13:03 - 01:30:21:12]
Chris
 How much of our resources that God has given us, are we giving... Are we using for His purposes?

[01:30:23:11 - 01:30:25:04]
Chris
 And so it's just is...

[01:30:27:07 - 01:30:29:07]
Chris
 And that's just

[01:30:30:12 - 01:30:58:03]
Chris
 being honest with ourselves about that. And you can just look about how we are actually stewing... Really, the biblical, the New Testament term is stewarding our resources and just having to be real honest about that. But another way that we can do it is where we do have other people in our lives who have the ability to be able to speak into that, who we're seeking advice from, who...

[01:30:59:19 - 01:31:16:22]
Chris
 One of the dangers about having this idea that all our finances are private is that it allows us to be our own accountability. And there's very few things that are probably more dangerous than just being your own accountability partner. Yeah. Like we...

[01:31:18:04 - 01:31:24:12]
Chris
 Here's a... And I gave this illustration a little bit and a little bit different on Sunday. We would...

[01:31:25:13 - 01:31:39:00]
Chris
 Almost everybody would affirm it's great to have an accountability partner to ask you questions about how are you doing with what you're looking at in your quiet time. How many of us are comfortable saying, "Hey,

[01:31:40:06 - 01:31:43:12]
Chris
 I want you to ask me about how my finances are doing." Yeah.

[01:31:46:01 - 01:32:00:06]
Brenton
 Yeah. No, it is a weird thing. It is such a private thing in our culture. I don't know if that is... It's probably not universal either. Right? Like I don't know if every culture is like that, but in America, it's... Sure. That's... Yeah.

[01:32:00:06 - 01:32:00:23]
Chris
 Right.

[01:32:00:23 - 01:32:01:23]
Brenton
 Very private.

[01:32:01:23 - 01:32:09:14]
Chris
 Yeah. Well, but it's even more in the church. And I'll tell you one of the reasons it is in the church is because we've misinterpreted

[01:32:11:00 - 01:32:22:17]
Chris
 what Jesus has said in the sermon of the Mount where He says, "Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing." Yeah. Like don't give in public and all this kind of stuff.

[01:32:23:21 - 01:32:24:23]
Chris
 He's talking about,

[01:32:26:03 - 01:33:17:20]
Chris
 if you're going to pray, go in your prayer closet, all this kind of stuff. And we misinterpreted that and not understood that He's talking about doing it, doing these kinds of things, these acts of righteousness for people's attention to make people look at you and say how great you are, rather than doing it out of love for God. And He's not actually saying that you should never pray publicly, right? Or you should never fast publicly and let people know. And that's not even the way that the Jewish people did. They fasted, like they literally had fasted, they called for. And they would go to the temple and bring their offerings. So He's not saying like, "You need to come over here in the cover of darkness." What He's critiquing are largely the Pharisees who did it to display how to look at me. And so we've literally misinterpreted that

[01:33:19:08 - 01:33:29:17]
Chris
 and misapplied it and said, "Well, then I can't let anybody know. I shouldn't let anybody know how much I give or things like that and what I'm doing with my money."

[01:33:29:17 - 01:33:30:20]
Brenton
 Yeah.

[01:33:31:23 - 01:33:32:03]
Brenton
 Good.

[01:33:33:13 - 01:33:36:05]
Brenton
 All right. We'll open up all the books. That's not true.

[01:33:39:05 - 01:33:41:14]
Brenton
 So we had a question come in.

[01:33:43:10 - 01:34:00:19]
Brenton
 He said, "Even when we recognize the symptoms, why are we sometimes hesitant to admit that they're there?" And he gives the example of like a low tire pressure warning on my truck and our tendency just to ignore that. What is that that causes that in us?

[01:34:02:16 - 01:34:15:20]
Chris
 Well, it's hard because it means that we have to do something about it. The low tire pressure warning is on. Well, if I'm going to do something, I got to stop the car and I got to go over here and get my

[01:34:17:03 - 01:34:27:03]
Chris
 tire pressure gauge out. And I don't really want to know what it is because then I might have to actually put my spare tire on or have to go deal with it. Okay. So that's a silly illustration.

[01:34:28:15 - 01:34:32:10]
Chris
 But the

[01:34:34:09 - 01:34:35:21]
Chris
 great thing is a perfect example

[01:34:37:02 - 01:34:47:08]
Chris
 is, okay, yeah, I'm not being generous. I'm giving very little to the work of the Lord or nothing.

[01:34:48:23 - 01:34:54:06]
Chris
 And I know there, but I don't want to deal with it because then, well, you have to make some hard choices.

[01:34:55:14 - 01:35:10:17]
Chris
 Even when I just talked about like it's not, our finances are personal, but not private. Well, if I open that up to somebody, then I might have to, it might be embarrassing because then I might feel shame about where I'm at.

[01:35:11:23 - 01:35:21:09]
Chris
 And, you know, we all have experiences of being shamed so that can be understandable. But it's hard. I mean, it's hard. It's easier to stay

[01:35:22:09 - 01:35:25:07]
Chris
 in the moment. It's easier to stay stuck in where we're at.

[01:35:26:10 - 01:35:28:02]
Brenton
 Yeah, absolutely.

[01:35:30:06 - 01:35:33:12]
Brenton
 You had your whole section on unbelief as well.

[01:35:36:02 - 01:35:44:11]
Brenton
 And you said that ultimately that's underneath every form of spiritual apathy, this idea that we're not believing.

[01:35:46:06 - 01:35:47:10]
Brenton
 And that could be

[01:35:48:15 - 01:36:02:03]
Brenton
 many things that we're not believing. We're not believing God's promises or his character. How does failing to trust God's character eventually lead to the things that we've seen? And how can we see that coming maybe?

[01:36:03:16 - 01:36:05:15]
Chris
 Okay, so go back to the money thing.

[01:36:07:04 - 01:36:13:00]
Chris
 I just even know this personally. So I'm speaking out of my personal experience is like,

[01:36:15:10 - 01:36:28:03]
Chris
 why is it such a struggle to be generous at times? Well, because if I do, then am I going to have enough for, you know, where am I going to be?

[01:36:29:07 - 01:36:46:23]
Chris
 Am I going to have enough to do what I want to do, even just simply to pay the bills or things like that. But that ultimately is not trusting. You know, God actually says to the people of Israel, like, "You're robbing me in your tithes and contributions." And he says, "Just

[01:36:48:06 - 01:36:51:00]
Chris
 do it and I will open up

[01:36:52:02 - 01:36:55:16]
Chris
 the windows of heaven and pour down on you so we bless you. We'll have no more need."

[01:36:57:04 - 01:37:14:04]
Chris
 They were failing to believe that God was actually going to do what he promised. Or marriage, like, and we see this is so many times people start dating unbelievers because they don't believe that God's, they don't trust and wait on his timing for

[01:37:15:10 - 01:37:48:09]
Chris
 who he asked for them or to trust that he's going to provide what they need to be content in their current circumstances. And we can just go through all of those, like, thanklessness is just not, it's not really believing that all these blessings are like true and real blessings that God has given us and you can just go on and on through the list. And, you know, the token worship thing, we haven't talked about that much today, but we're just giving God our leftovers because we

[01:37:49:13 - 01:37:55:15]
Chris
 don't really believe that in bringing our first and the best, that's, there's blessing that.

[01:37:57:06 - 01:37:59:18]
Chris
 And so you can just go on down the list.

[01:37:59:18 - 01:38:00:04]
Brenton
 Yeah.

[01:38:00:04 - 01:38:01:00]
Chris
 Okay.

[01:38:02:04 - 01:38:06:18]
Brenton
 Or wrap on this one, you said that God's Word wounds so that it may heal.

[01:38:08:10 - 01:38:12:16]
Brenton
 And I don't, I don't know if that's a common way that we typically look at conviction. We should,

[01:38:13:17 - 01:38:18:01]
Brenton
 but how can Christians learn to receive this conviction

[01:38:19:19 - 01:38:30:06]
Brenton
 as an act of grace, as like what, what it actually is and how God intends it for us rather than, you know, to react with fear?

[01:38:32:07 - 01:38:32:22]
Chris
 Well,

[01:38:35:10 - 01:38:38:02]
Chris
 this is where humility is so important.

[01:38:40:16 - 01:38:41:11]
Chris
 And,

[01:38:43:09 - 01:38:43:19]
Chris
 you know,

[01:38:45:07 - 01:38:47:05]
Chris
 I literally asked somebody to say to me,

[01:38:48:09 - 01:38:51:02]
Chris
 they were actually apologizing to me for something and they said,

[01:38:53:01 - 01:38:57:22]
Chris
 I was praying that God would give me humility. And then boy, oh boy, he

[01:38:58:22 - 01:39:08:01]
Chris
 answered that prayer. And so, you know, humility is a dangerous thing to pray for because it's,

[01:39:09:04 - 01:39:17:02]
Chris
 the way that God gives it to you is generally it's not, it's just like, I'm going to make you humble. No, he, he allows you to do things that humble you

[01:39:19:08 - 01:39:39:17]
Chris
 or things happen to you that humble you or both of those kinds of things. And, and yet it's, so it's the humility to recognize that if, if I'm in charge of my life and that if everything goes well all the time, it's, it's, it's going to make me proud.

[01:39:41:12 - 01:39:57:17]
Chris
 I'm just going like, it's almost impossible if everything goes well in your life as a sinful person to stay humble. Because your heart is going to naturally begin to believe that you, you know, you, you have produced that.

[01:39:59:10 - 01:40:00:12]
Chris
 And so,

[01:40:01:13 - 01:40:26:17]
Chris
 and I, I personally experience this all the time. Just about the time, like, you know, like this is going great. This is going great. Well, I nailed that. Nailed that. Well, then I'll say something I shouldn't or do something I shouldn't or a message will flow, but or at least I think that it does or whatever it will be. And just having the humility to understand that, that even in those times where God allows us to stumble

[01:40:27:17 - 01:40:28:10]
Chris
 can be

[01:40:29:11 - 01:40:40:15]
Chris
 a blessing to us because it produces in us humility and God opposes the prowl, but gives grace to the humble. Oh, that's just repeated in scripture over and over again. But I love

[01:40:42:01 - 01:40:43:06]
Chris
 Hebrews, you know,

[01:40:44:08 - 01:41:15:06]
Chris
 for the Lord disciplines, the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons for what son is there whose fathers does not discipline. If there were, if you're left out discipline in which we've all participated in your illegitimate children, not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respect to them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live for they disciplined us for a short time. It seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness.

[01:41:16:16 - 01:41:33:01]
Chris
 Makes us more like him. Now here's the, here's the key verse that I've read all that to get to this. For the moment, discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained for it. So it's a literally the other translate, it's a harvest of righteousness.

[01:41:34:02 - 01:41:40:13]
Chris
 Is recognizing that God wounds us to use the phrase,

[01:41:42:09 - 01:41:43:16]
Chris
 to heal us, to produce

[01:41:44:21 - 01:42:02:18]
Chris
 righteousness, a harvest in our lives. And so you've got to just the farming analogy. It's tough. You got to do the hard work and you got to wait. And there's going to be storms and droughts and like a lot of things that are going to make you question whether or not is the harvest going to come in.

[01:42:03:20 - 01:42:12:01]
Chris
 But that's where you believing that God is sovereign and he's good and that he's going to produce that harvest of righteousness and patience with that.

[01:42:12:01 - 01:42:15:20]
Brenton
 Yeah. All right. Good. Well, thank you.

[01:42:17:16 - 01:42:25:04]
Brenton
 Yeah. It was, I'm glad we went through that series, Mind and Prophets. It was, it was a, it was illuminating

[01:42:26:14 - 01:42:28:23]
Brenton
 books that don't typically get a lot of attention. Yeah.

[01:42:28:23 - 01:43:04:03]
Chris
 And again, it's hard. Like we talked about a lot of hard stuff. I mean, especially on Sunday, like this, okay, it's uncomfortable, but God's so gracious and good to us that He brings that before us because that's what we need. This is the danger in a lot of the church world today is that so many churches, it's all daisies and roses and you're wonderful people and, you know, and, "Hey, let me tell you how to feel better about yourself." And not that they're like, I'm being hyperbolic there a little bit, but

[01:43:05:04 - 01:43:19:12]
Chris
 not that there isn't plenty of time for encouragement. Like in Zachariah, like, okay, last week, like, okay, here's like what God has done for us. But, but we need the other part of it too. And we need to be confronted with our,

[01:43:20:18 - 01:43:27:05]
Chris
 with our failings, with our flaws, with our shortcomings so that we'll turn to Christ and see if His mercy and grace bless him.

[01:43:28:23 - 01:43:34:14]
Brenton
 All right. If you have any questions, ask at furtherpodcast.com and we'll talk to you next week.