TPW # 8 | My Testimony To Grace

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Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived.
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The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.
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The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers.
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They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.
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Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture.
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That was the day of wrath. That was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation, brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our unity to Christ.
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Welcome to the Protestant Witness. I'm your host, Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church. A little talk that I did just uploading to sermon audio, just kind of from my heart to the younger generation that's rising up and sharing my own testimony of grace and how
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God has saved my soul and also some of the things that the Lord has taught me in the years
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I've been a Christian since I was about 18 years old. I'm 43 now, so I've walked with the Lord for a little while.
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I've been through some things and just wanted to share my heart. And the reason I'm uploading this to a podcast here on the
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Protestant Witness is this was chosen as a staff pick on Sermon Audio's website.
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I don't know who picks the staff picks. I guess it's the staff of Sermon Audio. But anyway,
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I was very pleased that they did that. This wasn't scripted. I just kind of, you know, pushed record and started talking.
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But I uploaded this, I don't know, it's probably been a few months ago, and it's had a very positive response. I've been very thankful.
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A number of people have contacted me and thanked me for uploading my testimony to grace and some of the things
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I've learned in the years I've walked with Christ. And so I hope this is edifying to you, and thanks for listening.
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I wanted to speak from my heart just for a few moments. To the younger generation and also to people who are married.
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When I was about 18 years old is when God finally broke through and showed me the depth of my own sinfulness and showed me the great need
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I had for reconciliation with Him. And I grew up in a
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Christian church, and my parents are two of the godliest people I know. They still are two of the godliest people
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I know. And my father was a
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Vietnam veteran, and when he came back from Vietnam in 1967, he and my mother had been married just for a short time and he quit going to church for about 10 years.
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And he was not saved himself until I was about two years old. And so I never knew my father as anything other than a godly man.
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I never knew him as the hostile agnostic. And my dad does some preaching himself, and he has a great sermon called,
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My Agnostic Friend Now Deceased, where he talks about himself and how he came to Christ.
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And I was about 18 months old or two right around that time when he became a
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Christian. But my mother was one of those mothers whose husband wasn't a
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Christian, and she would scrub my sister, who was a little older than me, and myself, I was the youngest.
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She would scrub us down and get us dressed and take us off the church. And so she did that when we were little.
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And then when my father finally became a Christian, everything changed and he became the spiritual leader, you know, that my mom thought he was when she married him.
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My father was the president of the Baptist Student Union at the University of Cincinnati when they first met.
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And he was a professing Christian, but the year he spent in Vietnam really changed that and made him really struggle for a long time, for 10 years of his life.
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And my mother never wavered in her commitment to him and to me and my sister.
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My mom told me when I was 18 that she would see my dad in my bedroom, in my sister's bedroom, on his knees praying for us.
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He'd put his hand on the back of my head and pray for me, for my future wife, for all my children.
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And when I think of all of the good that God has done me in my life and how totally lost
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I was when I was a teenager, it really is incredible to me that God would show the patience to me that he has and that he would show me my own sin and show me his word and help me understand what it means, what it says.
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It was the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, about the priestly work of Christ.
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That's how God saved me. That was the passage. I remember looking and reading those chapters over and over again my freshman year in college and just being overwhelmed.
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Look at what he did. We have a high priest who has entered into heaven itself to appear in the presence of God for us.
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And by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
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And just looking at the obtaining of eternal redemption, the once -for -all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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And that's really what brought me to that saving knowledge of Christ, was looking at his priestly work as it's spelled out in the book of Hebrews.
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And then later, just by the grace of God and him stirring my heart, just was reading the Bible just constantly and wanting to know everything about God.
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And God really made huge changes. He liberated me from all kinds of sin, all sorts of things that I had been, that I had struggled with and that had plagued me my whole life.
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And I think of myself and my wife and my children. I have nine children and my older children are all professed to be
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Christians and so far everything's been has gone really well. But when
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I was 17 and 18 years old, I wanted to make lots of money and I wanted to drive a nicer car.
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My car that my dad had bought me when I was a teenager was a 1972
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American Motors Hornet. It was red, I think it used to be red, but it was kind of faded red, a little kind of orange, and I had white wall tires.
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Now, of course my friends in high school thought that was pretty cool and everything else and it was it was a bit of a, it was a bit of an eyesore to drive and I was a little self -conscious about it.
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But I used to think, you know, someday I'm gonna drive me a really nice car, a sports car and have a top -down and have a really nice sound system and everything.
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And that's what the kinds of thing, the kind of thing I was thinking about. Everything was always about me. When I was a teenager,
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I was an utterly self -centered person. When I got married even, and I was pretty young,
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I was only 20. I had just turned 22. I was still in college when I got married. Things were still about me as a
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Christian. It was, someday I'm gonna get published and I'm gonna publish books on this and that and the other thing. And I want to to accomplish this and accomplish that.
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I'd like to, I play the piano too, as you can see. If you have watched any of those videos, I always thought I could perfect my piano skills.
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And I want to do this and play that piece and try to release a CD and I've composed a lot of music. I want to try to do this and that and everything else.
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One thing that God has showed me though, over the course of my life, is while we ought to redeem our talents, and you think of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25.
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And yes, we should invest the gifts that God has given to us and use them for his glory. But the main thing
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I've learned as a married man and as a father, and I, you know, I've been up to my eyeballs in children for a long time.
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My wife and I had four children. And then we, I was never comfortable. She was never comfortable with any kind of sterilization or anything like that.
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So we just didn't do it. Everyone we ever talked to told us, yeah, four's plenty. You don't want to have any more kids. We never did that though.
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And eventually, it was like the same week. We decided, I wonder, I wonder if God would give us more children. And so we had one, our fifth child.
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Lily, a little girl. My four older kids, you know, there's a five -year gap between the youngest of the first four and then my fifth one.
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The first four were born like 18 months apart, 16 months apart, 20 months apart. And then there's a five and a half year gap between the fourth and the fifth.
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My older kids loved that little baby, Lily, so much that the four of them got together and had a little meeting.
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And then they all came to Amy and me and told us, we want you guys to have at least three more children so that each of us can have our own baby to take care of.
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And I laughed. I laughed at the idea. I said, no, no, no, this is, this is it right here.
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This, we're not gonna, we're probably not gonna have any more kids. So then we had the sixth. Okay, and then we had the seventh and then the eighth and then the ninth.
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So not only did we have three more, we have four more. So we had one for each of them and one extra on top of that.
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And, you know, as much as my thoughts were confined to myself when
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I was a young man, and even as a young Christian man, my thoughts were confined to me. It was all about me and what
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I want to do, what I want to accomplish, and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that and so on and so forth.
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And now I, I understand life better now. You know what life really is all about?
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You know what my Christian life at its core, there's two main things. Number one, the glory of Christ and faithfulness to his message in Scripture.
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That's the first thing. The second thing, how well did I do loving that woman God gave me? How, how well did
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I do listening to her, studying her, seeking to understand her? First Peter 3 .7
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is a text I always tell young men. They need to tattoo to their brain. Husbands, dwell with them with understanding.
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And it's not hard, or it's not easy to understand your wife because she's a moving target.
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She's gonna be changing some too, and you need to study her. You need to understand how she needs you to love her.
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I think about my children. Of all the things I could be doing, of all the hobbies and everything else that I might get into, as much as I would love to read more at home and love to practice the piano,
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I would love to do all sorts of other writing projects and everything else, as much as I would love to do all that.
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The main thing that God has called me to do is to love my wife and to love my children. And so outside of my ministry, outside of the work that I do for God and expositing
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Scriptures and preaching and teaching and evangelizing and defending the gospel, the main thing
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I'm called upon to do is to love my wife. And I've told young guys, one of the ways you can tell if a man is truly godly is how happy his wife is.
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Now, there's a picture of me and my wife as we were leaving the reception and at our wedding, and it was about 1030, and we were holding hands and we were walking out of the the ballroom at the
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Holiday Inn Express where we had our wedding reception. And my mother -in -law walked up behind us and said,
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Pat and Amy, and we both turned around at the same instant and smiled, and she snapped my favorite picture of all time.
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And it's the two of us standing there. And the main reason I love that picture so much is not because I have hair in that picture, but because of the smile on Amy's face, on my wife's face.
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That right there, that smile that she had there, where she was just glowing, that's the gauge right there.
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When that smile starts to fade, and she doesn't look happy and doesn't look as loved as she did there, that's how
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I know I'm not doing well in my Christian walk. How well I'm loving her, that's going to be the main thing
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I'm thinking about when I die. When I look back, it's not going to be so much about did
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I accomplish this or did I accomplish that with my talents, as much as I do want to accomplish things. I do have book projects
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I would like to do. There's writing projects I would like to do. There's all sorts of things I would like to do. I want to see churches planted.
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I would like to do some piano composition and do some recording. I would like to do all that stuff, but that's not going to be what
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I'm thinking about when I'm dying. There's going to be two things I'm thinking about when I'm dying. Number one is the blood and righteousness of my
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Savior. Thinking about Him, because it's His work. Jesus Christ's righteousness was imputed to me.
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My sins will not be imputed to me because they were laid upon Him at the cross. God made
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Him who knew no sin to be sin in my behalf, so that in Him I would become the righteousness of God.
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My hope is entirely and only in Jesus Christ. Do I think that there will be an assessment of my works for rewards?
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Yeah, the Bible teaches that. Is that reward justification or eternal life? No. Nope.
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But are there degrees in heaven? Yeah, and it seems that there's degrees in hell too from what
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Jesus taught. Some will be beaten with few stripes, some with many. But my acceptance with God is solely, completely, and only in Jesus Christ and by faith alone in Christ alone.
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I'll be thinking about Him and I'll be wondering did I keep that smile there on my wife's face?
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Did she know that she had a husband who was loyal to her, faithful to her, and adored her and loved her her whole life?
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Even when, you know, my poor wife has given birth to nine children.
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You know, it's been hard and she homeschools all of them. And it's a lot of work.
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It's a lot of work. And, you know, when I come home, I jump right into the fray. I have no choice. It's I got to help out here.
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I got to keep this house clean. We don't have any downtime. I mean, we just don't. But you know what? It's good to be worn out loving people.
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It's good to be worn out for the right reasons. And it's those people. I tell my younger kids this and my older children who are teenagers.
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Yes, I understand you have talents and you have gifts and all of them are bristling with potential. But the main thing, the main thing
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God is calling you to do is to be faithful to Him and to His word and to love people. Love the people that God puts in your life.
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Lord willing, when you get married, you want to dedicate yourself to loving people. You know, I do a lot of visitation in the congregation.
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I pastor here. And over the years as an elder and as a pastor, since I was about 20, 23 years old,
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I've been doing that. So 20, wow, two decades. I am getting old. Goodness. I've done a lot of visitation, a lot of discussions, a lot of pastoral care over the years.
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People who are married ask me all the time. They'll say things like this to me. You know,
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Pastor, I really, I just, like, I just want to know how can I really serve Christ?
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How can I really just love the Lord, like, with my life? And they'll be sitting there, a married couple.
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You know, I've had married women ask me that. What can I do? How can I really serve the Lord? And I'll point to their husband.
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Love that man. Make him the best man he can be. When men ask me who are married, how can
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I really, really love the Lord? How can I really serve Jesus Christ? And I'll point over to their wife.
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Love her. Like Christ loved the church. Make her walk with Christ your number one priority in this world.
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Pray for her. Understand her. Make her happy. Do things that she likes.
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Make that glow that she had when you were engaged. Make that follow her all the days that she lives in this world. I'll tell you, that's where you separate men from boys.
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That's where you separate godly men from people who are only pretending to be godly. How well do you love your wife?
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Are you faithful to her? Are you loyal to her? That's the main thing that you're called to do in this world if you're married.
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If you have children, you want to pour your life's blood into them. You want to pour your prayers, your tears, and your time into them.
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Believe me. At the end of the day, and I'm pretty worn out, you know, there's a lot of work to be done here at the church, and I have a lot of work
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I do on sermon preparation, and there's other stuff. I'm on two committees in our presbytery. I'm the chairman of the examinations committee.
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There's all kinds of stuff that goes on. And yet the main thing I'm called to is faithfulness to Christ, first of all, in my own life, and faithfulness to his word, to what it teaches, and then to love my wife, and to love my family, love my children, to love my church, and to shine the light of God into the world around about me.
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That's why I'm so thankful for the true gospel. You see, only the true gospel can create true piety. Only the gospel of a full, perfect, and free salvation by faith alone, not by works, can produce someone who really loves people.
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Only that can produce someone who really does love people from a clean heart.
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Why do I love my wife? Is she an object through which I'm trying to gain merit for myself so I can get my way into heaven or anything like that?
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Of course not. How silly is that? How nonsensical is that? And I've always loved the way the
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Heidelberg Catechism divides up its three main sections, guilt, grace, gratitude. Guilt.
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What is our state before God? Utterly helpless, destroyed. Our wills are enslaved to sin. We have no interest in God.
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Unconditional electing grace. God chooses who he's going to save, gives them mercy instead of justice and fairness, gives them mercy, and makes them alive in Christ.
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And then how are we to live the rest of our lives in this world? In light of the fact that we have a righteousness that is given to us as a pure gift, as Paul says in Romans 5, 17 -19, how much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life through the one.
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We have the gift of righteousness, as Paul says, it is imputed to our legal account. The righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to our legal account.
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That's the great gift that God gives to us. And when we know we have that, now we can live lives of lives of gratitude to God.
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Now I love my wife. You know why I love my wife? Because God commands me to. And it's my joy to do that. It's my joy to obey him.
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I'm not trying to gain anything for myself. How silly. How much would that destroy the motive behind true holiness anyway?
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And John Calvin told Cardinal Sadaletto, when he tried to lure Geneva back to Rome, he told him, your piety confines a man's thoughts entirely to himself.
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So that he can never even think about sanctifying the name of God. Or doing anything for God, because all you would ever have us do is think about ourselves.
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Because everything we ever do, every person we ever love, every good deed we ever do, everyone we ever try to help or give money to or give alms to, anyone we ever try to reach out to, why are we doing that?
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To save ourselves. Calvin's point is, that is an utterly self -centered piety. Christians love people out of gratitude to God.
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2nd Corinthians 4 .15, that grace having spread through the many would cause the giving of thanks.
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To abound to the glory of God. That's the Christian life. I don't put sin to death and pursue holiness to try to save myself or to get myself into heaven at final salvation or anything of the kind.
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I am accepted in Jesus Christ, as Paul says in Ephesians 1, 7, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.
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Not according to our works or our process of sanctification or anything of the kind.
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And so, why do we love the people around us? It's gratitude.
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It's thankfulness to God for the salvation he's given to us and because God's beautiful and we want to do what he tells us to do.
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Because we love him and he's our father. He's adopted us as his children. I'm not trying to become adopted or get adopted.
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I'm not trying to get into heaven. Heaven is my secured possession. That's what
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Peter's talking about. 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 through 9. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
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To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.
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What, really? So everyone who's born again has that inheritance? Yeah, yes. As verse 9 says, receiving the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.
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Not the outcome of your works, but the outcome of your faith. You believe in Jesus Christ, that inheritance is yours.
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That inheritance is yours. It's reserved in heaven for you. And so the Christian life is one of gratitude.
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It's a battle against sin and it's a war against unbelief and against the trials of life and it's a war against remaining in dwelling sin and putting that sin to death and and seeking to grow in the grace and knowledge of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. To try to save ourselves? No. To show our thankfulness to God and our gratitude. That's the great irony.
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That's the great irony. Paul the apostle, because he preached exactly what I just said about justification by faith alone, that salvation is not by grace enabled works or anything of the kind,
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Paul heard the objection. Well, you're just saying we can live however we want and still go to heaven. And Paul's answer to that in Romans 6 1 is,
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God forbid. Shall we sin so the grace may increase? May it never be. May it never be. God forbid.
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Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live in it any longer? God set us free from the dominion of sin and has made us slaves to righteousness.
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Does that mean we don't struggle with sin? Romans 7 14 to 25. The very things I hate, those things
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I often do. Who will rescue me from this body of death? He says in Romans 7 24 and 25.
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And then that triumphant indicative in Romans 8 1. Therefore, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
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And so, what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Since our salvation's been secured,
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I can actually focus on other people. I can focus on that woman that God gave me.
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That jewel from his crown that he entrusted to my care. I can focus on love. I can focus on loving and discipling my children, loving my church family, and I can lay my head on my pillow at night in peace.
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Because Jesus Christ has satisfied divine justice against me. No charges can be brought against those whom
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God has justified. Romans 8 33. Who will bring a charge against God's elect? It is
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God who justifies. Who is he to condemn? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
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How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? This is the most precious promises that a
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Christian could ever know. That anyone could ever know. And now, I just want to love the people that God puts in my life.
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They're not objects for me to gain merit for myself. What a blasphemous way of looking at life.
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I love my wife, and I love my children, because God has asked me to, and they bear his image, and that's my mission.
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And so a piety like that produced by Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, or even by John Piper's errant theology.
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A piety that confines your thoughts so much to yourself in your own salvation. That's not
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Christian piety. Christian piety is gratitude to God for having already saved us in Christ.
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We look to the law of God, that third section of the Heidelberg Catechism. Gratitude, that whole section is what?
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It's an exposition of the Ten Commandments. We look to the law. This is how
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I show gratitude. This is how I express my thankfulness to God, by obeying him out of love.
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Not fear, out of love. Not slavishness. We're sons, not slaves.
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We serve God out of gratitude, not fear of punishment, or hope of rewards. We do what we do because we love
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God, and because we're thankful for the perfection of the salvation he gives to us. Any quote -unquote gospel that doesn't understand that is not the
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Christian gospel. And so, young people, I know that when you look at life, and that you want to use your gifts and talents, and you want to change the world, and you want to produce this, and produce that, and do this work of art, or music, or writing, or engineering, or being an attorney, or whatever.
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Just don't forget that of all the gifts that you have, and everything that you can do in this world, and all the ways that you can impact the culture around you, by using your gifts and talents, the most important thing that you do in your
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Christian life, aside from faithfulness to the text of Holy Scripture, is loving the people that God has called you to love.
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And if you're married, one of the most powerful tools of evangelism is a godly marriage.
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One of the most powerful ways that you can influence the world, men, is by loving your wife.
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By keeping that glow that she had when you got engaged to her, and the way she looked on the day you married her, keeping that smile, that glow there, that's one of the most powerful testimonies to the world around you.
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The family is in shambles in this country. It's completely falling apart. Adultery, betrayal, lying, cheating, that's the norm today.
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And so, a godly marriage, where people actually love each other, where fathers actually invest in their children, and love their children, and they're not, you know, doing the itinerant ministry, and are all over the place, and never at home, and never just investing time.
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If you're able, you want to invest your time in your wife and your children. And if you're a married person, you are able.
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That's what God has called you to do. I think strong families and godly marriages, in and of themselves, are so rare today in our culture.
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People can't help but be blown away by them when they see them. And so, you want to have an evangelistic impact?
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You want to really change the world? Men, first, love that woman God gave you.
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Love her. Maybe you need to go to your knees and ask her forgiveness, because you've been too distracted by too many other things, because you're into too many other things.
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You have too many hobbies, too many other things going on, to really listen to her. Maybe she needs to talk to you about the recipes that she's been looking at for family stuff.
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Maybe she needs to talk to you about things that you don't find overly interesting, but that's the woman
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God asked you to love. Maybe she wants to talk to you about all the different kinds of flowers, and the different types of butterflies that they might attract to your house.
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And those things need to become important to you. Because if the things that she's into and likes are not important to you, she doesn't feel important to you.
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Life is about laying yours down. It's about self -sacrifice. It's about loving her as Christ loved the church.
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You give yourself up for her. You lay yourself aside. You lay your desires aside. Self -sacrifice.
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Love the people God has asked you to love. When I was young and could see all my talents and gifts that God gave me, that I could develop and use for his glory,
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I wasn't thinking in terms of, how well am I gonna love the woman I marry, and how well am I gonna invest myself in my children?
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I wasn't thinking like that. I was thinking, I want to write a book about this. I want to write a book about that. I want to to play this piano piece.
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I want to compose music about this. I'm gonna write poetry about this, and set it to music, and this, and get it recorded, and it's gonna be really great, and I'm gonna speak at this conference and that conference.
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I'm gonna do this and that, and I'm gonna plant churches. I wasn't thinking about loving the woman God gave me. I didn't think about that as one of my most sacred tasks.
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I didn't think about loving my children as one of my most sacred tasks. Do you know who
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I learned most of that from? My father. My mom and dad have been married for 55 years now.
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55 years. And my mother is one of the happiest people I've ever known. Because my father is really good at loving her.
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He always has been. He has talked her up my whole life. My father has never said a negative word about my mother in front of me.
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Never. Every time he ever talks about her, he describes her as an angel sent from God.
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My father loved my mother and loved his children and prayed earnestly for us, for our salvation.
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So much of who I am is because I had a father that loved me. I had a father that invested in me. I had a mother that loved me and invested in me, and they still do.
30:50
I talk to them, my parents, every week. And I hope that that's the way it is with all my children, too.
30:58
Love people. Guys. Reform guys who... We need to defend the faith.
31:03
And boy, I tell you, the defections from the gospel are getting more and more ferocious. We need to stand up for it and defend it, protect it, lay our lives down for it if need be.
31:11
But never forget one of the most important ways you evangelize the world, or show the world that Christ is real, is in your marriage, is in your family life.
31:22
Don't forget that. Those people that God has put in your life, your wife, and if you have children, your children.
31:29
That's one of the most important things about you. And so, don't forget. You're supposed to love those people and love them with everything you've got.
31:36
Wear yourself out for them and for their sake. Lay your life down for your wife and your children.
31:44
And remember, the whole world around about you is watching. And as much as our secular culture can scream and yell and fuss at us, there's really no argument against a family that really loves one another, against a husband and a wife that really love one another.