Interview with Jim Orrick

Well, friends, hello and welcome to another edition of the Reform Rookie podcast. My name is Anthony Avenio, and I'm your Reform Rookie host, bringing you all things from a Reform perspective. My goal is to take this podcast to give you the deep, rich truths of the Reform tradition and help you see the beauty in them and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better.

Understanding Reform theology, or better yet, the doctrines of grace, will help us better know the God of the Scriptures and help us better appreciate His grace and His glory. So to that, I say, separe famanda.

Jim Orrick on Mere Calvinism and the Doctrines of Grace

Now today, I got a very special guest on with me, and I tried to get a hold of him a while ago, and he was going back and forth with some different things. I have Professor Jim Oreck, who is the author of Mere Calvinism, which is my new favorite go-to book for new Calvinists, somebody who's looking to understand this tradition.

He also has an affinity for Charles Spurgeon, which I do too, and even better than that, he put the Baptist Catechism to music to aid children and parents to memorize it, which is tremendous. So welcome to the show, Professor Oreck.

How are you? I'm well, Anthony. Thanks so much for having me. I do very much appreciate you being on the show, and I just want to, again, give another plug to the book, Mere Calvinism. It came out in February 2019?

That's correct. Yes. And has it performed as well as you thought? Did it get what you thought it would?

Well, I'd prayed earnestly for it, and so I had high expectations that the Lord would use it mightily. I'm not sure that the publisher had as high expectations, and I think that they have been pleasantly surprised.

So I think that, I can't say this for sure, but PNR, the publisher, puts out a circular advertising their books about twice a year, and in the last two circulars, as they're advertising bestsellers in theology, Mere Calvinism is featured first.

So I'm not sure if that means that it's selling more than others, but it has sold well. I'm very happy about it. Well, congratulations.

I think it's a great book. It's the first book that I recommend people to read if they're exploring Calvinism. So one of the things that you had talked about is that even before you became a Christian, you actually were a Calvinist, right?

So how did you become a Calvinist before becoming a Christian?

Well, my dad was a very faithful preacher of the truth. He preached the Bible, and he was a Calvinist, and so I grew up hearing Calvinistic preaching. And so I can remember having arguments with my classmates when I was in grade school about the doctrine of eternal security of the believer.

And then I can remember in junior high school having arguments with people about the doctrine of unconditional election. So even though I, sadly at that time, was not yet in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, I still knew the Bible well enough and was sufficiently adept at logic that I could see this is what the Bible teaches.

If we're going to go by what the Bible says, then these things are true. In the grace of God, when I was about age 14, he brought me into a joyful submission to himself. And then, of course, doctrines that I had only known in my head became very precious to me and I came to understand them much better.

Amen.

Amen. So that obviously was your, you had an intro into Reformed theology before actually being a Christian. So it wasn't like most Christians come into a relationship with Jesus and then come to understand Reformed theology and move in that direction, but it was actually the opposite way with you.

Right. Exactly right.

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to believe what my parents believed, had great respect for them, and never saw any inconsistency in their lives. And so I was predisposed to think favorably about the doctrines of God's sovereign grace, which is what we called them.

I heard you say all things Reformed are better yet the doctrines of grace. That's what we called them. We called them the doctrines of grace. And in fact, when I was probably 40 years old, my dad asked me, what is Reformed theology?

Oh, wow. So that was just a phrase that we never used, and we talked about the doctrines of grace. But while I was predisposed to want to believe what my parents believed, and by the way, I think that's a good thing.

Sometimes people who are 17 and 18 years old feel ashamed because their theological system is essentially what their parents have believed. I don't see that as a bad thing when you're 17 or 18 years old.

Now, if you're 27 or 28, been a Christian for 10 or 15 years, and you still just believe it because that's what mommy and daddy said, that's a problem. If you have a good solid foundation, then it gives you a place to stand where you can examine ideas.

And so that's what I did. I began studying the Bible earnestly when I was converted at age 14. And then I began preaching at age 17 and really kicked up my Bible study a notch. And so I believe what I believe, not because my mom and dad believed it, not because C .H. Spurgeon believed it, not because George Whitefield believed it or Jonathan Edwards or John Calvin, but believe it because I think it's what the Bible teaches so clearly.

Objections to Calvinism and the Meaning of Election

Right. Do you, in your walk, get opposition to your doctrine? Do you get pushback? Do you see that people understand what you believe and push back on you?

In my present situation, I have just, I've just finished a career of teaching at Boyce College and at Boyce College and Southern Seminary, the administration and the professors are very sympathetic with the doctrines of God's sovereign grace.

And so I never got pushback there. And then I'm also the preaching pastor at a church here in Kentucky, the Bullet Lick Baptist Church in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. And when they when they first contacted me about serving them, they specified that they wanted someone who was reformed in their theology and someone who was an expository preacher.

And so in my two main jobs for years, I have been surrounded by people who are sympathetic to the doctrines of grace or else persons who are sitting under my teaching, listening respectfully to what I have to say.

So while I'm not encountering opposition in my regular ministry, in talking to the students at college, there were the sort of questions that would be raised in a situation of opposition or a controversial context.

And so I perfectly welcomed those. I told them that they were welcome to ask anything that they wanted. And so they would raise the sort of questions that someone who was opposed to the Calvinistic system might ask.

So while I'm not in constant controversy, yet in a, you might say, a constant state of apology in the classic sense of the word, that is defending the truth that I believe the Bible teaches.

Okay. Okay. So what would you say is the biggest objection when you say you're a Calvinist or when somebody's asking questions, what would be the most popular or the major objection to Calvinism?

Yeah. Well, first of all, when someone asks me, are you a Calvinist? Then I say, I'm not sure what you're asking me. Could you please ask me what you want to know without using the word Calvinism or Calvinist?

I'm not ashamed to say that I hold to Calvinism, but most people don't understand what it is. I learned this lesson very early in my life when someone asked me, I was probably in my early twenties, Jim, are you a Calvinist?

And I said, well, yes, I am. And then a look came over his face and I said, but wait a minute, what do you think a Calvinist is? And his definition of a Calvinist was really close to his definition of a chainsaw massacre.

And so I said, no, if that's what you think a Calvinist is, I'm not that. And I tell the story in the book of how I was sitting across the table from someone who had probably just heard that I was a Calvinist and was worried about it.

And he said in two sentences, what is a Calvinist? And I said, well, in two sentences, the first one is God is in control of all things. And the second sentence is God initiates and completes the salvation of everyone who goes to heaven.

And he was looking at me with a puzzled look. And I said, but what you probably want to know is, do Calvinists believe in missions and evangelism? And the answer is yes. Absolutely. A big, happy grin came on his face, end of conversation.

That was all he wanted to know. Did I believe in missions and evangelism? So I haven't forgotten that your question is, what is the most controversial or most misunderstood? And I'm going to give two answers.

OK, the first answer is not so obvious. And the second question is obvious. The first question that is not so obvious is that most people don't really believe that God does as he pleases. Anybody who believes the Bible believes that God may do as he pleases.

But somehow he's decided that he's not going to take advantage of that right. And so he doesn't. And so I think that that is the foundation of most people's objections. They think that God is not doing whatever he pleases and that he doesn't have, he doesn't have, in some cases, they'll say that he doesn't have the right to do whatever he pleases.

After all, he's created us with a free will. So that's, I think, is the answer that is not obvious. The answer that is obvious is that most people object to the doctrine of unconditional election. They they dig in their heels at the doctrine of unconditional election, mostly because they have they get so angry at unconditional election that they have not the not yet have the patience to hear the doctrine of particular redemption.

If they heard the doctrine of particular redemption, I think that's the one that would be most, most misunderstood.

Right. That's an that first answer was excellent. I'm I can't wait to go and rewind this and listen to that again. That was really good. Yeah. From from my perspective, obviously, it's the limited atonement portion that people reject that Jesus didn't die in the place of every single person.

And obviously that has ramifications. So let's get to your book, because that's that's why I wanted to bring you on. I loved it. It's got such incredible illustrations. And I'm going to go through a couple of those.

The one that stands out in my mind is the rabies illustration when we're talking about total depravity. But before we get that to that, why another book on Calvinism? Was there not enough books on Calvinism out there, Pastor Jim?

Total Inability, Hydrophobia, and Regeneration Before Faith

Well, when the representative from PNR came to the campus where I was teaching at the time, I I pitched to him two or three book ideas that I had. And one of them was this book on Calvinism. And he asked me that question.

He said, why, why, why another book on Calvinism? And I said, because the ones that are out there are difficult to understand. And he agreed with that. And PNR has a very widely distributed book on the five points of Calvinism that they still keep in print.

I've not read it, but I have confidence in the people at PNR. And I know something about the people who wrote that book. It's probably a very good book and probably answers some questions that my book doesn't answer.

I felt like there was a need for something very simple that you might hand to a high school student or an inquisitive college student or a lay person who has only a high school education or maybe not even that much and who would be able to read and understand what what the five points of Calvinism are.

So that's why that's one of the main reasons that I wrote the book. I wanted to write something that was very simple, lavishly illustrated, easy to understand.

You certainly accomplished that goal because it's irenic. It's so pastoral, gentle and easily understandable. Honestly, if I had time, I would have read it all the way through from beginning to end. I just didn't have that time.

I got kids and work and all kinds of stuff. But I kept being drawn back to it and listening just to your experiences, just in everyday life and bringing them into the book and showing how that pointed to one of the doctrines of grace.

In fact, total depravity happens to be my favorite out of all the doctrines of grace because it's the only one that I can get right every time, you know, but I love the way you explained what total depravity is not.

It's total distribution of sin, not total saturation of sin. Can you elaborate on it?

Yes. So when people hear the phrase total depravity, and by the way, when I go through the five points of Calvinism, if I think there is a better term for the doctrine under consideration, then I say that.

And in the case of total depravity, I think that the better term is total inability because what we're really talking about is the total that sin has so devastated each human that apart from divine intervention, no one ever will come to Christ.

And Jesus says as much in John 6, 44, when he says, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. And so I prefer the term total inability because when people hear the term total depravity, then they have a tendency to think, oh, you're saying that people are as bad as they possibly can be.

And that's not what we're saying. We are saying that as a result of sin, well, sin has so thoroughly saturated every aspect of human nature that it makes people unable to come to Christ. The illustration that I thought of was and I use this in the book.

If you were to take a sponge and submerge it into a bucket of vinegar, it wouldn't be long until it was saturated. You could not get any more vinegar into that sponge. And that would be that would be total saturation.

But if you if you take the sponge out of the bucket of vinegar and squeeze it as hard as you can until there are no more drips coming out, that sponge is still going to be damp with vinegar and it's going to smell like vinegar.

Every part of it is going to be damp and smell like vinegar. And that's the way it is with sin affecting human nature. The understanding may not be as depraved as possible. The will may not be as depraved as possible.

The affections may not be depraved as possible, but they are so affected by sin. They are so depraved that it renders someone unable to understand the truth, unable to love the truth, unable to choose the truth.

And that's why it's necessary for God to draw everyone who comes to Christ.

Right. Yeah, that's that's an excellent point. I like the way you put that. Can you tell us a little bit about hydrophobia? Because I learned that in the book, too. I didn't know that that was the medical term for rabies.

Hydrophobia. How did you come up with that illustration?

Well, I I do I sit around and think a lot and I have deliberately decided not to use like I don't carry a cell phone and spend very little time on the Internet. Don't watch much TV and so on. Some people are just shocked.

They'll sometimes ask me, how do you do all the things that you do? And I tell them, well, you know, I've never in my life sent one text message. I don't read anybody's blog. You know, it's all this stuff.

And there I just kind of I don't ever play video games. And the young people are like, what? You don't ever play video games. And so I do try to think of illustrations just to specifically help. And then I just try to keep my eyes open and my ears open.

And it occurred to me that when an animal has hydrophobia, and so it may be that some of your listeners have never heard that, always heard it just called rabies, but hydra, water and phobia, fear of water, then there is an aversion to water or they can't drink water.

But anyway, they need water. They're going to die of thirst if they don't get water, but they don't go to it. They can't avail themselves of it or they are afraid of water. And that's how it is with us as sinners.

What we need most is the grace of God and his lordship in our lives. But that's what we don't want. We're afraid of what we need most.

Right. And I love that illustration. And I'm going to tell you, I'm going to send you one of the talks I did. I spoke at a conference and I did a talk on total depravity. And in using the hydrophobia illustration, I called it pneumophobia.

They're afraid of the spirit. They repel and reject the spirit. And as soon as I read that in your book, I went online and I Googled hydrophobia. And there was a picture of a man who must have been bit by some animal and had rabies.

And they were trying to give him a glass of water. And he had it in his hand and he was trying to pull it to his mouth. And his hand was shaking. He could not bring the water to his lips. Oh, my goodness.

This is such a picture of total depravity. It's right there. He knows he needs it, but he's not willing to to bring it to him. And again, that just accentuates the grace of God in extending himself to us and drawing us to him.

Yeah, it's just a complete act of grace. So I really appreciate you bringing that up. And that's an illustration I'm going to use, Lord willing, to the day I die. So you had also said with regards to us being dead in sin, I love this quote.

A doctor might help you if you're critically ill, but only God can help you if you're dead. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. And that point is you go ahead.

Yeah, that's right. It just if you are if you're a little bit alive, I sometimes tell people dead is the worst thing that you can say about somebody. Yes. Dead is worse than critically ill. When you're critically ill, you might recover.

But when you're dead, then you're not going to get any better without without divine intervention. So, yeah, that's just what I believe the Bible teaches about, right, about the resurrection from the dead spiritually.

So that would necessitate that regeneration would precede faith, not faith preceding regeneration.

That's right. Yeah. Unless, yeah, the Lord's effectual calling is the work of God's spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, lightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ and renewing our wills.

He doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel. That renewing of the will is the great work of regeneration. And it's the work of the spirit. So he has he has to give us life or unless we're born again, we'll never even see the kingdom of God.

Right. And do you believe that in that in that term, in John chapter three, that C means to perceive or understand?

Like, yes, I do. Right. Yeah, I do. You're never you're never going to understand these things. So I think I think Nicodemus has come to him and I like Nicodemus. I think he eventually became a believer.

So I don't want to throw him under the bus. I think he is a humble, a humble protester at this point. When he says, we know that you're a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do the miraculous signs you're doing. If God were not with him.

Right. And I love Jesus. And so I don't want to make Jesus out to be a smart aleck. But essentially, I think Jesus is saying, Nicodemus, you don't know anything. Right. You think you know all this stuff.

I'm telling you, unless you're born again, you're not going to see any of this stuff. Right. So, yeah, I think he is saying to Nicodemus, you must be born again or you'll never see the most basic and elementary truths about the kingdom of heaven.

John 3:16, World, and Particular Redemption

Do you think when in Jesus's conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus says, we speak of what we know, we testify to what we have seen. Do you think that Jesus is talking about the born again experience being something prior to his death, burial and resurrection and an Old Testament reality?

I don't. I think that what you have said is true. And I think that he brings that up when he says, are you Israel's teacher and you don't know these things? But when Jesus says, I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, we testify to what we have seen.

I think he is saying, I am a divine messenger. I have come from heaven. I'm telling you the things that I am an eyewitness to, that I am an ear witness to. And so I think that's what he's saying there.

But like I said, I think that the point that you bring up is later brought up in that same discourse. And while we're in John chapter three, the average Christian is going to bring up John 3, 16 as a great protest against the idea that God has chosen only certain people to be believers and that Jesus died only for certain people.

And the Holy Spirit died only for certain people, because after all, they will say, John 3, 16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And then they they assume that the word world means every human being who has ever lived.

But the word world almost never means every human being who has ever lived. Instead of meaning all persons without exception, it often means all peoples without distinction. So in the case of Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, Nicodemus was the quintessential Jewish man.

And he assumed, like most Jews, that the kingdom of God was going to be only for Jews and that the world was going to be condemned and destroyed when the Messiah comes. Jesus says to Nicodemus, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, even so the Son of Man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Right. It's not just it's not just Jewish. It's whoever believes in him. Why? For God so loved, not just Jews, he loved the world, Gentiles as well as Jews, and he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. So whoever believes in him is not condemned. But whoever does not believe in him, I don't care who his grandfather was.

Right. Whoever does not believe in him is condemned already because he is not believing in the name of God's only begotten son.

Election, Limited Atonement, and the Triune God

Yeah, good point. Would you say that some people put an overemphasis on the word so, like he so loved the world? I'm under the impression that it means God loved the world in this manner. Not as a like an an overemphasis on the so part.

Right. Yeah. So, yeah, I agree with you. OK, OK. Yeah.

Speaking about election, Michael Horton says it like this. God made the choice for you that you would never have made for him. And I like the way he put it. And you put it you say when you're talking about election, you said if God chose everyone, it would be meaningless because it didn't accomplish anything.

Right. Right. Could you explain that a little bit?

Well, first of all, I should when I was I remember reading this track when I was on the bus in high school and it was it was a track just called Election and it was by C .H. Spurgeon. It's one of the sermons of C .H. Spurgeon.

And so any of your any of your listeners who want to look it up, if you just look up election and C .H. Spurgeon, you put election in quotes. It's likely that you'll come up with this sermon. It was a sermon when he preached when he was a very young man, if I remember right.

It was just in the first two or three years after he had gone to London. So maybe in his 21, 22 years old. But that's that's the first time that I remember hearing that he proposed if God chose everyone, then on what basis does anybody get saved if everybody has been chosen?

It is an election that means nothing. So that's that's effectively what's where I got it.

And I think what it means. Yeah, no, I listen, if you got it from Spurgeon, how could it be wrong, right? In talking about limited time, it's something that I started thinking about. I believe that God finishes everything he starts.

We don't believe in a God who tries and fails. So if God sets his love upon you, it's an eternal love. He gives you eternal life. It's not temporary life. But then I started thinking about the principle and I want to bounce this idea off you to see what what you think.

I thought about the principle of sowing and reaping. The scriptures say you're going to reap what you sow. Right. So if Jesus's intention on the cross was to die for every single person in the world and not every single person in the world is rescued from their sins.

Doesn't that not prove the Bible wrong in that Jesus does not reap what he sowed?

Yeah, I think so. I think that's just another way of saying that he shed his blood in vain if he died for the sins of persons who then are going to die for their own sins. Then that looks to me like God is not being not being just to the people whose sins have been paid for and punishing Jesus unnecessarily.

Yeah, I think that what you have said is a good point.

OK, yeah. And I think it would probably violate the the triunity of God in that it would separate the father, son and Holy Spirit. The father would work with one group of people. Jesus is going to die for every single person and the Holy Spirit is going to do the best he can to woo whoever he can to Jesus.

So you have father, son and Holy Spirit working with three different groups of people versus the triune God sharing one mind, knowing who those people are that the father's chosen, knowing those people whom the son has died for and knowing those people whom the son is going to raise to life.

They're in perfect unity when it comes to the salvation of those people. Right. Right. So has the book made the impact you were hoping for?

The Purpose and Reception of Mere Calvinism

Well, I I get so many encouraging comments about how easy to understand the book was and how engaging. So that's very gratifying for a writer to hear that. As I mentioned earlier, that was a great goal of mine to make it easily, easily comprehensible.

And so so far, yes, I hope that the book will continue to sell well through the years, not not because I'm making money off of it. If anybody thinks they're going to get rich off of Christian publishing, then they know something I don't know.

So but I do hope that I pray on almost a daily basis that the Lord will use the books that I've written and that he will use it for the salvation of sinners and to bring millions of people into the kingdom of God.

Amen. Amen. And I think and I heard just yesterday I got an email from a a pastor who said that his daughter had just finished reading the book and that it apparently had been instrumental in bringing her to Christ.

What a joyful, joyful. News, a bit of news to hear, and so I just I love it when I hear that people are understanding things that they never understood before and and then when people get converted through reading the book, it's just such a thrill.

Amen. That's that's beautiful. So is there a future book on the five solas in the works or potentially for us reform rookies?

Well, well, since you asked, I don't have a book on the on the solas in the process, but I am nearly finished with a book that Free Grace Press is going to publish, and the working title is Seven Thoughts that Every Christian Ought to Think Every Day.

And it is it's not a commentary on the model prayer commonly called the Lord's Prayer, but rather it is it is an examination of the transformational thinking that takes place when someone is born again that leads them to pray the model prayer.

And so, for example, I have been adopted into the family of God. God is my father. Therefore, I say our father, which art in heaven. I believe that God is worthy of worship. Therefore, I pray. Hallowed be thy name and so on.

So I'm, I'm nearly finished with that book. And the publisher tells me that it should come out in the fall. And so if anybody likes. Mere Calvinism, then I hope that they would pick up the book. I'm not sure what it's going to be called.

Now, the working title is Seven Thoughts that Every Christian Ought to Think Every Day.

The Resurgence of Calvinistic Theology

OK, that's great. Do you see a potential resurgence in Calvinistic theology in our country?

It's astounding what I have seen in my own lifetime. So I'm nearly 60 years old, and I tell the story in the book of how when I was studying for my, my PhD at Ohio University, I was reading C .S. Lewis's book on literature in the 16th century, excluding drama.

It's part of the Oxford History of the English Language series. It's a magnificent work. And in that, in that book, C .S. Lewis says, talking about religion in the 16th century, he said it was very fashionable to be a Calvinist.

I think that's the word that he used. Very fashionable. One of the things that struck the people at the time was how young and how vigorous the young Calvinists were. Well, I was reading that in my office where I was pastoring in West Virginia.

And when I went home, I told my wife about it. I told her, can you, can you believe there was a time when it was fashionable to be a Calvinist? Because at that time, there were very few of us. And I can assure you it was not fashionable.

But amazingly, through the years, there has been a resurgence, already been a resurgence in Calvinistic theology that I don't think I could have predicted at the time. Back in those days, if you met someone who was a Calvinist, or if I met someone who was a Calvinist and I said, how did you come in contact with that doctrine?

You could be sure they were going to name one of two people. It was either C .H. Spurgeon or Arthur W. Pink. Almost always C .H. Spurgeon or Arthur W. Pink. But then by the time I came to Boyce College in 2002, and I would ask that question of students, they were saying names like John MacArthur, John Piper, Alistair Begg, R .C. Sproul.

So thank God for these, these faithful brothers that he raised up to preach the truth clearly and to write about it. And they have had just enormous influence on helping so many people to understand the doctrines of grace.

Amen. Amen. Amen. So with regards to your illustrations, I know you do a lot of thinking on those. Is there anything that you, any procedure or steps that you take to start the juices flowing? Or is it just you remember the things that happen in your daily life and just keep a catalog of them or jot them down?

Do you do journaling or diary, something like that?

I keep something that I call my thoughtful book. And when I come up with what I think is a helpful illustration, then I'm likely to write it down in my thoughtful book. And so I have, it's a composition book like you would buy for a dollar at the beginning of school.

And I think I filled up three of those. I would love to, I would love to publish it sometime. I think that people would really benefit from all of these little, these, it's mostly illustrations, but I will try to think through issues.

And when I think of an illustration that I think is a good one, then I'm likely to write it down in my thoughtful book. Trying to be a clear preacher has been so helpful to me. And trying to preach with a consciousness that there are children in my congregation, and I want them to be able to understand has been a real, has been a real thought starter for me.

So are the children going to have, are they going to have something that they can understand? And then, excuse me. Also, it's been enormously helpful for me to be around so many intelligent, inquisitive young people throughout my life.

I've taught college off and on for about, starting in about 1990. So it's been 30 years that I've been teaching college students on and off and on. And that has been very helpful for me to try and explain things in such a way that these intelligent, inquisitive college students can understand.

So just what I do in my daily life really helps me. I spend a lot of time memorizing. I memorize poetry. As I mentioned, I don't know, I don't think I did mention this. I was getting a PhD from Ohio University.

It is in English literature. And so English literature is a very rich source of illustration for me. I enjoy hunting and the outdoors. And so there are a lot of illustrations that come from hunting. I played athletics almost all of my life.

And there's just, there just, I think that if you just keep your eyes open, illustrations of God's truth are all around us. So I encourage some of your listeners. Don't always listen to the radio when you're driving down the road.

Turn off the radio and think. Don't listen to music all the time while you're working or while you're doing something else. Take time to be alone with God and to think through things. Take walks without your Walkman, your earbuds, whatever you call it, whatever they call it today.

Listen to the birds, feel the sunshine, talk to God, enjoy great literature, read the Bible thoroughly and carefully, and walk with God. And I think your mind will be bursting with illustrations.

Right Theology, Right Living, and Trusting God's Sovereignty

That's excellent advice. Excellent advice. And I know I've kept you quite a while now. I'm going to ask you one last question and then I'll release you. And thank you so much. Knowing that you don't spend time on the internet and listening to, with a cell phone or anything like that, it's an honor to have you here.

So I really, really appreciate you taking the time out. So I once heard, I don't remember exactly who said it, you may know. It says, right theology leads to right living. Right theology leads to right living.