January 17, 2023 Show with A. M. Brewster on “Growth Requires Shame & Sorrow”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 17th day of January, 2023.

I am thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest, and in fact, he is now a monthly guest on this program. His name is A .M. Baruster, and he is president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker.

He is also a sponsor of the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program. Today we are going to be addressing what may likely be one of the most unpopular themes that you could ever hear addressed, but one that is vitally needed to be heard.

You will never hear this from the pulpit of Joel Osteen, and sadly, you will likely not hear it from the pulpits of even many theologically sound churches that in other ways are sound and faithful to the scriptures, and yet, this subject may be one that is shied away from by many men who should know better.

But the theme of today's program is, Growth Requires Shame and Sorrow, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M. Baruster.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Looking forward to this conversation. You're right, it definitely is not a popular one.

Right, and let our listeners know about Evermind Ministries and your biblical counseling ministry in general.

Gladly.

So, Evermind Ministries was started a number of years ago as an idea that began as a blog that has grown significantly. Evermind Ministries exists to keep God's truth at the center of the human experience.

It's really too easy for us to go to church on Sunday and then to really not think about God too much more after that. Yeah, we do our token prayers, and we go back to church in a midweek service, but so often our daily life in our jobs and in our parenting, in our homes in general, in our entertainment, we really are exceptionally godless, if I can put it that way.

We're not thinking about him, we're not living for him, we're just doing our thing. To put it in the vernacular, you do you, and I do I. But the reality is, we need to have God's truth at the center of our experience because we're supposed to glorify God in all things, we're supposed to give him the preeminence in all things, give him first place, and so that needs to be an intentional reality.

So Evermind exists to do that. The second of the Evermind Ministries that came on board was Truth, Love, Family, which seeks to keep God's truth at the center of our life at home. And then from there, we've had other ministries started that identify key areas in our lives.

For example, the yearlong celebration of God is about discipleship and worship, not just on Sundays, but about every day of the week. We have Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship, which is a ministry dedicated to helping those who want help, either in what we might call crisis counseling, there's a huge issue in their lives and they need help understanding what God's word has to say about it, or they want to just grow in their discipleship.

And then we also have A .M. Brewster Ministries, which is the ministry through which I do most of my traveling and my speaking. And again, all of that, whether it's in the family or the church, at work or wherever, the goal is to make Christ preeminent.

And I know that one of your websites is TruthLoveParent .com, TruthLoveParent .com, and the other is, I believe, AMBrewster .com?

Yep.

And we also have CelebrationOfGod .com, and we're growing those dot coms as we have information to put out there. In fact, if you go to TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron, you will find a lot of really helpful information there that will relate to Chris's and my conversations.

But I have to say, over the past week, we've been in a very difficult position. Our previous website host was transitioning the ownership of our website to another host. And in that process, our websites kind of got lost in the mix.

And I have not been able to access or log into those websites now for quite some time, which means that as of right now, if you went to TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron, you're not going to find resources for this conversation right now already there.

But I promise you, by God's grace, as we are able to get access to that again, we'll have a lot of resources there that build off of our discussion today. So if you want to take this deeper, if you want to learn more about this, we'll have resources there that you can check out.

And then, of course, all of Chris's and my past conversations, as well as the resources for those conversations, are still there at TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron.

And today's date, for those of you who are listening to a recording, you could be listening to a recording of this interview years after it has occurred. This is January 17th, 2023. So if you're listening to a recording, this all may have been cleared up by then anyway.

Lord will.

Yes. And we'll be repeating this information later on. And so this subject, for the sake of clarification, there are likely going to be many listening who might even be rolling their eyes and they may be thinking to themselves, you know, I have been trying to escape from the stereotype of Reformed theology, Calvinism, and Puritanism for a long time.

And here these guys are probably just going to be further instilling in the minds of people that we who are theologically Reformed are supposed to be walking around with scowls on our faces. We are supposed to be humorless.

We are supposed to be joyless. And if we are anything else, if we ever crack a joke, if we are ever heard laughing, and if we are walking around with a big stupid grin on our face, we are not as deep and as serious and as biblically minded as we should be.

So if you could clarify what exactly you mean at the outset by the fact that growth requires shame and sorrow.

Joy, Sorrow, and the Meaning of Shame

Yeah, that's a fantastic observation, and I want to agree with those people in a certain.

Way.

Obviously, one of the key things that all Christians are called to have and to be is they're called to have joy, and they're called to be joyful. I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ smiled, that he joked, that he had a good time.

A lot of people disagree with me on that. Some of the same people who would say what you just said, Chris, still get this picture in their mind of Jesus being very stoic. But I believe that he loved his creation.

He enjoyed his creation. Doesn't mean there weren't very difficult times for him, but Jesus had perfect joy, and we are called to have joy as well. I love to laugh. I love to smile. And in fact, quite often, I find all of the most inappropriate times to do that.

So I cannot necessarily be condemned in that particular way. But it's true to suggest that spiritual growth requires shame and sorrow. I'd be really easy to characterize that. And so I want to kind of just give your audience an idea of where this started for me.

It really started primarily with a study of shame. So as a biblical counselor, biblical family counselor, I keep my finger on the pulse of really what the world is saying about families and so on and so forth.

And that's a really depressing conversation. But a lot of the pop psychology, whenever else, a number of years ago, was really all hitting on this concept of the idea that shame, utilizing shame in our parenting is bad.

And that it is just really wrong for our children to feel shame. And so therefore, we need to do everything we can in our parenting to keep that from happening, to protect them from that. And I read one article in particular that really summed up the position that they were saying, you know, they summed it up well, it wasn't a good position, but they were summing it up how they wrote it.

And that started a little study of mine, which became a podcast episode, that podcast series, actually, that we looked at what their claims were. We wanted to understand it biblically. We wanted to say, OK, well, is this psychological idea accurate when we look at the concept of shame in scripture?

And the reality is, is that the word shame and ashamed and words like that actually do show up in scripture. And they're not necessarily what a person would expect to hear. For example, Second Thessalonians 3 .14 is a perfect place to start.

Paul says to the Church of Thessalonica, if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him. Now, why would Paul want us to do that?

OK, Paul tells us exactly why in the next phrase, so that he will be put to shame. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says we need to do these things because that person needs to be put to shame.

They need to experience that. So as I grappled with that, and as I studied more scriptures, I started to see that shame can be a very, very good and necessary thing in our lives. In fact, it is a necessary thing in our lives.

However, there is good shame and there is bad shame. And we need to understand the differences, and we need to be able to respond to them correctly. And so from then, from there, the Lord led me into other studies of the scripture.

Again, being a biblical counselor, I oftentimes meet people at the darkest times of their lives, the hardest times of their lives, and I'm able to see oftentimes them in that sorrow and see what God is able to accomplish in that sorrow.

And many theologians, men wiser and smarter than I am, have made the observation that really the greatest times of spiritual growth for most people, most Christians happen in times of sorrow, difficulty, hardship, darkness, pain.

And to be completely honest, all we have to do is turn to Matthew chapter 5 or any other passage of scripture that references how we come to know Christ. And that starts, that relationship starts with pain.

In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said, blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who recognize their spiritual depravity, and subsequently those who mourn over that, who are grieved over that. If I don't recognize my sin, and when I finally do see my sin for what it is, if I've not grieved over that, I will not humbly go to Christ and ask him to forgive me.

I will not be seeking for a Savior because I'm fine the way I am. I came to know Christ because I was grieved over my spiritual condition and my lack of relationship with him. And James tells us the exact same thing.

It tells us if we want to change and we want to grow, you know, I don't have the passage right in front of me. I think it's James chapter 4. Am I thinking correct? Yes, James chapter 4 verse 7, submit therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

We like that. We like draw near to God and he will draw near to you. We like that. We're okay with cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. But the next verse says be miserable and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.

Why?

Because God is a killjoy? No, because that is the response of a person who sees his sin the way God sees his sin. But the beauty of sorrow, the beauty of shame is that God does not intend for us to stay there.

Shame and sorrow is the doorway through which we walk as we mature in Christ. That's the doorway that we need to walk through in order to grow in our maturity. So today as we have time, and I'd love to take questions from your listeners, but as we have time, I'd really like to talk today about five different kinds of biblical sorrow and which also is going to include shame.

And to see how these sorrows and shames are different from each other, what they're intended to do, how some of them are good and how some of them are bad, how to embrace the good sorrow and the good shame so as to grow spiritually, and how to reject the bad sorrow and the bad shame.

Well, that's excellent. Why don't you start with the first example?

Okay, perfect. So one of the links that I hope you'll be able to access at truthloveparent .com forward slash iron is another podcast called Truth in Love. It's the podcast of the American Association of Biblical Counselors, and a gentleman named Nick Ellen and the executive director, Dale Johnson, was having a conversation about sorrow.

In fact, I've had the privilege to hear Dale in person speak and a really powerful speaker.

Yes, amen, amen. His ministry is so instrumental in my own life for sure. So Nick Ellen was on there and he outlined, I think, six or so different kinds of sorrow. And I think that that podcast is a great building that takes you to the next step for what we're going to talk about today.

I'm going to present it differently than Nick presented it, but I think he has some really great insight. And the first of these sorrows, the first sorrows that people tend to experience in their life is what I'm just going to call daily sorrow.

Daily Sorrow and Discontented Sorrow

Okay, this is the sorrow that's associated with the pains and the trials and the difficulties and the temptations and the testings of life. We live in a fallen world because of sin in the world. God cursed the world because of that.

We languish. We die. Things are difficult. My grandmother passed away in December and we just had her memorial service yesterday. It was a time of joy. She is with her Savior. So we're thankful for that.

But we had to watch her deteriorate over time and slowly slip into eternity. And that is one of those daily sorrows. And I think the thing that most perfectly encapsulates the idea of sorrow is the idea of loss.

To lose something, whether it's time or a person or money, loss results oftentimes in sorrow. So the defining feature of daily sorrow is that there is no sin involved in this sorrow. Okay, the sorrow is not a result of sin.

The sorrow is not a sinful response. There is no sinful response to the sorrow we're experiencing. It's just a result of having lost something. And we see in Scripture that Jesus exhibited this kind of sorrow.

In Luke 19, verse 41, we see him experiencing this particular sorrow as he laments over Jerusalem. We see him having similar sorrow when he wept in the face of Lazarus's being dead. So Jesus exhibited the sorrow.

I mean, it's not necessarily something of sorrow that we should say, oh, that is a sin. Oh, definitely not. And we know from Romans 8, 28 to 29, we know from James 1, 2 through 4, 2 Corinthians 4, 7 through 18, 1 Peter 1, 6 through 7, we know why these trials and these temptations and these testings come.

God's using the loss of friends, using the loss of money and health and safety and security and pleasure for a purpose. And what is that purpose? To conform us into his image, to sanctify us. So these difficult experiences are difficult, but they are for our good.

They are to mature our faith. And for that, we can be thankful. A lot of people say, you know, do you run towards sorrow? Do you look for sorrow? Do you plan sorrow into your life? And I say, no, you don't have to.

We're surrounded by it. It's everywhere. You don't have to do that. And we're not celebrating the sorrow. We're celebrating what God is doing through it. And that's the key thing. And if a person experiences daily sorrow and they respond to it correctly by acknowledging and resting on the sovereignty, wisdom, love, and purpose of God, then everything's going to be okay.

But the second kind of sorrow starts to come up when we don't acknowledge those things. When we don't rest in his sovereignty, his wisdom, his love, and his purpose. When we deny what he's saying he's trying to do through the daily sorrows, we will slip into this next category, which is called discontented sorrow.

These are all going to be Ds, by the way, just so you know. Daily sorrow, discontented sorrow. Hopefully, it may be a little bit easier to remember and categorize for ourselves. The discontented sorrow is a sorrow motivated by discontentment that oftentimes leads to the grumbling, the murmuring, and the complaining in our lives.

Now, we don't have to dig deep into the scriptures to recognize the fact that discontentment is a sin, okay? It is a sin. So that makes this category different than the daily sorrow, even though initially the daily sorrow and the discontented sorrow may grow from the same things, okay?

Because it's similar to daily sorrow in that this person is sad about the circumstances, the loss, the trials, the testings. But instead of resting on the provision and promises of God, they reject it or they neglect God's will for their lives, and this leads to the complaining and the protesting about the situation.

They're not accepting what he's allowed for the reasons he's allowed it. First Corinthians 10 .10 gives us an example of this. It says, nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer.

In that passage, Paul's referencing the Israelites grumbling against the Lord in Numbers 16 and 17. And Numbers 16 .41 reads, but on the next day, all of the congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, you are the ones who have caused the death of the Lord's people.

Well, okay, there definitely was daily sorrow involved in this because the ground had opened up and it swallowed a number of their friends and relatives. But they were also mad at God for doing it. They didn't acknowledge that those people had received the just condemnation of God for their sins.

They weren't seeking to grow and mature from the loss. And so in that, so that what could have just been a natural daily sorrow that God used to mature them because they rejected God's plan in it, it became a discontented sorrow and it became a sin.

By the way, the sorrow is made deeper and stronger by the fact that we are sinning through it because sin multiplies the experience of sorrow. Listen very carefully, friends today, please listen to me carefully.

Sorrow is a very real thing. It's not always bad, but sin multiplies sorrow. If I'm experiencing daily sorrow that is hard, I lost my grandmother. That is hard. Okay, I love my grandmother. But if I were to have a sinful response to this, why did this have to happen?

Why would God allow this to happen? And on and on and on, I'm going to become more sorrowful because I'm filling my head with lies and it makes it harder to bear the original daily sorrow. So this sorrow is primarily a sinful sorrow.

Now, hopefully this individual then will experience the third kind of sorrow. Now, Chris, you stop me when we need to go to a break or something like that. Can I go to the third kind?

Sure, we have time for that.

Awesome, okay. Now, praise God. He doesn't leave us there, right? If we slip from the daily sorrow into discontented sorrow, something else, we have another sorrow. It's called divine sorrow. This is the sorrow of God that reproves and disciplines us when we are in our sin.

This is the sorrow of the Holy Spirit, of which the Lord speaks in John 16, 8. And he, referring to the Holy Spirit, when he comes will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

John 3, 12 says, for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. It's our natural human condition that we are sorrowful and we don't like and we feel guilt and we feel judgment and we feel conviction and we feel shame when we are reproved and disciplined by God.

And that's what the sorrow is. It's the discomfort of being told that we're wrong. It's that feeling of shame and guilt. So this is where that good shame comes in. But again, as I mentioned earlier, there is a bad shame.

This means that shame and guilt are not inherently bad things to be avoided. In fact, if it's the good shame, then it's part of the divine sorrow God graciously brings into our lives when we sin. So let me give you a good example of good shame.

Ezra 9, verses 3 -7, when I heard about this matter, I tore my garments and my robe and pulled some of the hair from my head and from my beard and sat down appalled, Ezra says. Then everyone who trembled at the words of God of Israel on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles gathered to me, and I sat appalled until the evening's offering.

But at the evening offering, I rose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and stretched out my hands to the Lord my God, and I said, Oh, my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens.

And what's interesting is that this wasn't even Ezra's sin. Ezra was having this response to the sin of the children of Israel, the exiles. A chapter, a book that we don't read as often as we should, Obadiah 1 .10, because of violence to your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and you will be cut off forever, says the Lord.

First Corinthians 1 .27, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. Later in First Corinthians chapter 15, verses 33 and 34, do not be deceived.

Bad company corrupts good morals. Become sober minded as you ought and stop sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. So, my friends, listen carefully. When we sin, it's completely appropriate to experience shame and it's completely inappropriate to celebrate the sin that God is trying to convict us of.

We should feel bad about being bad. So, now, I do want to, just before we move on, I want to talk really quickly about bad.

Shame.

One form of bad shame is when we feel bad about doing right. The world tries to make us feel bad about doing right all of the time. You should never feel ashamed of doing what's right. That's a shame you don't have to bear.

The inverse of that is when we feel bad about not doing bad. The world tries to push that on us all the time. Do as we do. Accept what we accept. And we go, no, I can't do that. And then we feel bad because, you know, they're trying to make us feel bad.

That is not a shame you have to bear. That is a sinful shame. That is a bad shame. You reject that. We should rejoice that God has helped us to do right in the face of temptation. We should praise God for the spirit control necessary to eschew evil, right?

But that doesn't mean, just because that type of shame is shame that you don't need to experience, doesn't mean that all shame is that way. Divine sorrow that brings the conviction, guilt, and shame of God is a good thing.

And that's the third type of sorrow. We got the daily sorrow, the discontented sorrow, and the divine sorrow.

Well, that would be the perfect time to go to our first station break. If you have a question for A .M. Baruster, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And as with most of Aaron's subjects, since he is a biblical counselor, I could readily see there being many people in the Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience listening who do have personal and private questions and do not want to identify themselves because they are such a deeply personal and intimate nature.

We fully understand that, and we will grant your request to remain anonymous if you indeed are in that category. But please, if it's just a general question, a general question on what the Bible has to say about shame and sorrow, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away.

We're going to be right back right after these messages with more of A .M. Baruster, and our theme, Growth Requires Shame and Sorrow.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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