Episode 125: Jacob's Journey in Sovereign Grace

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Well, the question I've got to ask you, brother, do you believe in...

What is your theological position on sports teams being cursed?

I would say that I don't believe it, but after last night, bottom of the ninth inning in Omaha, I don't know.

I'm starting to have doubts. We're recording this the day after.

Too soon. The day after, so it's June 19th. Actually, Spurgeon's birthday, MacArthur's birthday.

We're recording the day after Arkansas loses to LSU in the bottom of the ninth, going into the ninth with a two -run lead, five to three, and they found an absolute devastating way to let that game go.

I don't care what you say. You can make fun of Arkansas all you want, but you have never experienced sports pain.

Never. Like an Arkansas Razorback fan. And also, Jacob, not just in one sport.

I've felt it in football. I've felt it in basketball, and now twice within 10 years in baseball.

So when you didn't tune in to hear that, welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your host,

Alan Nelson. You hear me say this often. I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, and today we are privileged to have the other pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

How you doing today, Pastor Jacob? Doing good. It's always good to be on the

Rural Church Podcast when you don't have guys like Tom Askle or Sam Waldron that'll come on.

You come and you get me to come on. No, you're top level.

You're like the cream of the crop here. None of those other guys are my pastor, and you are, so it's an honor to have you on today.

Recently, and I'm not sure a timeline when this is gonna come out, but recently I told you I talked with Joseph Allen, a mutual friend, great brother.

We're grateful for him. And he shared a little bit, and we've done others like Nick White.

Others have kind of shared their story of how they came to the doctrines of grace.

I've shared mine. Maybe I'll share some thoughts today as well, but in this episode, we're gonna give

Pastor Jacob an opportunity to just kind of talk about his journey to the doctrines of grace.

I may interject a few times if I have questions, but pretty much just gonna hand him the reins as it were and just let him talk about his background and how he got into the doctrines of grace.

And then at some point in the episode, brother, let's talk about why this matters practically in our churches today and maybe evangelism.

We'll just see where it goes, but I'm gonna turn it over to you and why don't you just, you take the episode, bro, where it will go.

So here it is. All right, so I do appreciate this opportunity to talk about this.

A little bit about my background is I grew up in a Free Will Baptist Church, really the same

Free Will Baptist Church all the way up. We didn't move around churches. From the time

I was born, I was in the same church until, let's see, 2021.

So four years ago, I'd been about 29. So we're 29 years in the same Free Will Baptist Church.

Grew up there for a time. My grandpa was the pastor there.

My dad was a deacon there, or still is a deacon there at the church. And then

I actually pastored that church for five years. And so I grew up Free Will Baptist. You had your wife there, right?

Yeah, my wife, she spent part of her time at a different Free Will Baptist Church.

And then I think maybe around 11 or 12 years old, she came to that church. So big part of our life, big part of my life,

Jack's first few years were there. And so if you don't know what, you hear

Free Will Baptist and you don't know, okay, what does that mean? So Free Will Baptist, there's really two different camps as far as their beliefs and why they would call themselves

Free Will Baptist. Part of the Free Will there is they do believe you can lose your salvation.

There's two different camps. Like I said, one is more, they would call themselves Reformed Armenians.

And they would hold to the belief and they use Hebrews kind of as their support for this, is that once you're saved, you can lose your salvation.

Lose your salvation. And they use Hebrews 4 as kind of,

Hebrews 6, Hebrews 6, I'm sorry. They use Hebrews 6 as the support text for this.

But they don't believe like you fall out of grace, then you come back in, you fall out, that over time you can go to a point where you're no longer saved, but that you can't return back from that.

And then there's a different, there's more of a Wesleyan kind of influence in Free Will Baptist where I believe you can backslide where you're out of grace and then come back in.

And I would say in growing up, I was around people in both camps and maybe throughout my life,

I might be at one time or another, believed both of those. But I started pastoring at this church in 2016.

And I would say maybe later part of 2017 on Facebook, somebody shared a

Paul Washer video. And this Paul Washer video was the shocking youth message.

And so I listened to this. I'm like, I really like the way this guy preaches. I like the way he handles the word of God.

I kind of like that he's not afraid to tell the truth. And so I wanted to listen to more. So I look up more and listen to more and more

Paul Washer videos, listening to sermons. Let me back up for just a second and ask you this question because I think it's true, but I just want to hear you say it.

But like, so the Free Will Baptist position, what would you say the

Free Will Baptist position was or maybe is still, I don't know, on when they look at the typical

Southern Baptist church? Okay, that's a good question. So the

Free Will Baptist position on your typical SBC and they would say, you know, we say perseverance of the saints.

When I was growing up, I always heard, once saved, always saved. And what they really worry about and how they kind of view your typical

SBC is the belief that is actually really too prevalent in SBC churches of, we go up to the front, we say a little prayer, say we're saved, there's really no fruit, and then we go and live however we want, do whatever we want, die in that state of no obedience to the word, no change.

And then at your funeral, everybody will say they were saved because when they were a kid, they came up and they repeated this prayer.

So growing up, that's a good point. Growing up, I was very much aware that that was wrong and that there will be fruit.

You will be sanctified. And so I do not agree with the

Free Will Baptist doctrine today, but I do agree with, growing up, kind of the view that that was wrong.

I still hold that. I still hold that that's not biblical as well. That's what I want to say because I just want to make clear, it goes without saying, we're a

Reformed Baptist church. We're a confessional church. We hold to the 1689. It goes without saying that we have strong disagreements with the

Free Will doctrine of eternal security. But I just want to say publicly,

I greatly appreciate them looking at the, quote, unquote, once saved, always saved mentality that is in not just SBC, but that's a big part, and them having a problem with that because we should have a problem with that.

It's not you just pray a prayer and then you're set for the rest of your life and probably both of us have been to funerals where it's like, there's no way this guy, unless something happened at the end, there's no way this guy was converted, but they talk about, well, at one time in his life, he prayed a prayer.

But I just think that's important for the context of the Paul Washer shocking youth message because I remember when

I first saw that, I wasn't a Doctrines of Grace guy then. I saw that when I was at Arkansas Tech University, go

Wonder Boys, and I was like, dude, this guy's on fire. But you appreciate that because you see something's wrong in evangelicalism.

Anyway, turn it back to you. No, that's a good point. And so I am grateful for that.

And I may later say, I do want to say some things I'm grateful for for my upbringing in the

Frual Baptist Church. But with the Paul Washer, I really like this guy. So I go and I'm listening to sermons and I'm just like, yes, yes,

I agree with this guy. And I really think it really was Paul Washer when he's talking about in the sermon, and I've preached this text before, when he talks about the sermon of what was in the cup, the wrath of God being poured out upon his son on Calvary, to hear that and be like, that's it, that's the gospel.

And just, it's not just about the cat of nine tails or the thorns or the nails, and we don't want to make light that Christ had to physically die.

He did, he did physically die. He had to physically die. But to hear about the wrath of God being poured out upon his son in my place, as a believer and as someone in Christ, in my place, really changed everything for me.

And then I, but as I'm listening to Paul Washer, I'm sure I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah, that's good, brother

Paul. That's good, brother Paul. Wait a minute. I don't agree with that. You know, there was something about, you know, maybe if there was some mention of election and not, or some mention of perseverance of the saints, like, whoa, you know, that's wrong.

So it drove me to scripture because I was going to prove Paul Washer wrong.

I was going to. What year are we at now? So 2017, first heard him. Probably 2019,

I would say. Around 2019, I'm going to the scripture.

I'm going to prove Paul Washer wrong. You're a pastor now. I'm a pastor, yes. Yes, I'm pastor, Free Will Baptist pastor.

And so I go and I ended up, to make a long story short, going through the scriptures, I proved myself wrong.

And I started having to deal with texts that I had never really dealt with before and really having to try to reconcile these texts with my beliefs that I'd held my entire life.

And I ended up, I didn't go, I do want to note this, I didn't go with this goal of,

I want to change my beliefs. Like I started out like, you know what? I'm tired of being a

Free Will Baptist. I want to go change my beliefs. Really, I was going to prove my beliefs right according to scripture.

And I saw that scripture didn't support it. And so that really started the journey for me of doctrines of grace.

And just a really quick side note, there were a couple of other Free Will Baptist pastors that were going through the same thing and people still don't believe this today, but we didn't talk about it.

We just kind of, it was going on at the same time and we were afraid to mention it to each other, afraid of what the other one would say.

So, and that kind of got me to that point, still a Free Will Baptist pastor, ended up leaving on really good terms.

But that kind of gets me to the doctrines of grace. Reformed theology, as far as ecclesiology, all that really came later.

And that may be the same with you. I don't know if doctrines of grace was first and then reformed, ecclesiology, all that came later, but that's really how

I got to doctrines of grace. I'm going to take you back a minute and see if, you may or may not want to answer this, but I think it's helpful because there are times, okay, so we both had the position that pastors stay, stay in your church, stay and pastor.

So, but there are times to leave. And I think that,

I think you made the right choice. Obviously, we're grateful in God's providence that you're here and all that, but you want to talk about anything like, is there a certain position in churches that at times you're like, look,

I can't, it's really not, I can't reform this and it'd be better if I just leave.

So we want to just talk through your rationale with that for a second. Yeah, absolutely.

So it was very hard for me to leave because I love those people.

I love that church to this day, I do. And here in a minute, I will, I would like to say some things

I am very grateful for, for that church and for my upbringing, but really, so this could be a whole nother episode to get into this, but after I left, actually there was a time when

I talked with this church about going back, believing how I believe now and them knowing how

I believe now. But really there was, I think, actually some wisdom there of the deacons there and having discussions with me of as much as they love me and I love them and want to come back, there would be in the future great disagreements.

And so I want to say this. I feel like, and I feel like Pastor Quatro would be the same, if a

Free Will Baptist Church called me today and said, hey, we'd like you to come preach. If Pastor Quatro and myself, we talk about it and they're like, okay, yeah, all right, that's fine.

Go preach there. You can go, you can preach. I think I could probably go and preach and preach something that would be beneficial to the church and would not start some kind of argument.

It wouldn't start some kind of contention, because there are a lot of things that we can find common ground on.

Now, if the Lord impressed something upon me that I have to go preach it and it's contrary to their doctrine, then so be it.

But pastoring would be a little bit different. If I preach through a book and we come to something like election or predestination,

I can't just skip over that. And I don't think anybody would want me, I don't even think that church would want me to skip over that.

But when I preach it, it's gonna be different than what the church believes and it's gonna cause,

I think, it could cause arguments, it could cause some major disagreements.

And now, pastors have done this. And I'm grateful for that, but really,

I think it really could have caused some great disagreements.

Yeah, I think, I agree with that. And I would say, I'll give you an example of baptism. If you're in a

Presbyterian church and become convinced of credo baptism, or if you're in a Baptist church and you become convinced of pedo baptism, you shouldn't stay in those churches.

I mean, and also, let me say this, you should be open. And also,

I would even argue, if you come to a major theological shift like that, and I know you probably weren't thinking this,

I'm just kind of giving general counsel, it might be a good practice for you to step away from the ministry, not any kind of disqualification or anything, just step away and get yourself grounded.

This is where I'm at. Because I see some guys on X and places like that, it's like, they seem to be coming to new positions every day.

They're like, look, you got to step away and get yourself grounded. So I do think there's a time to step away.

And obviously, I'm in agreement with you, but I also think you got to be open. I don't think it's fair to your congregation to continue to preach when you know that you hold a position that's not only not held by the church, but is actually runs doctrinally contrary to the position that the church holds.

So, okay, the next thing, let me just ask you about this. We all have made mistakes. So you're coming to the

Doctrines of Grace, and you're looking back now, and maybe someone listening, you can help give some counsel, but are there things that you say, you know what, as I came to the

Doctrines of Grace, maybe there's some things I could have done better, or I don't know, maybe you don't have any of that.

But just talk about that for a second. Like, what kind of counsel would you give to others who are now, you know, they're at the position you were five, six, seven years ago?

Yeah, I think that's something really, really that I have thought a lot about.

And there's really two ways I wanna answer this. Because when my doctrine changed, so I do wanna say, maybe it would be different if I grew up in a home where doctrine wasn't a priority, church wasn't a priority, you know,

I didn't really grow up in church, came to church, came to Doctrines of Grace, maybe that'd be a little bit different. But I am very grateful.

I grew up where, in a place, and so I will mention a couple things I'm grateful for because I think it's gonna lead in to answer your question.

I'm very grateful for the church that I grew up in. Even though we wouldn't agree on doctrine, especially soteriology, we wouldn't agree on that.

I'm very grateful. I grew up in a church where the word of God was prized. And although we disagree,

I grew up seeing men and women, but I can think in my mind right now of men that I would see them handle the word of God and be like,

I wanna handle the word of God like those men. We would have Sunday school and you just had men in the church that would just, well, they wouldn't have to turn to places in scripture.

When something came up, they were just going to scripture, going here, going here. And, you know, I think about my father, my uncles, my grandpa, and I was very,

I was very privileged to grow up in a home where the word of God was prized. You're expected to know the word of God.

You're expected to read it and to be able to shape your world around that.

So I'm very grateful for that. I grew up in a very conservative home and it was conservative because of Christian principles and values.

That's the church that I grew up, was that they didn't care about being mainstream. They wanted to please

God. And so I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful for, you know, there's some things that I still completely hold, absolutely the way

I did growing up. You know, I grew up all millennial. Grateful for that. I grew up in a very non -charismatic church, you know, and so I'm grateful for that.

And so I really honestly can say I have no ill will towards any of that.

I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for my parents, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, people in the church who helped really shape me into who

I am today. And so I can't talk about this without mentioning who I am today as a believer.

God used my upbringing and used that Free Will Baptist Church and all those people there. And I love them so dearly.

Whenever I came to the doctrines of grace, it really affected more than just my relationship with that church.

It did affect, but also family. You know, you think about, you know, like maybe some confusion.

Okay, why are you no longer Free Will Baptist? Why has your doctrines changed? Are you joining a cult?

You know, just things like that. Like, what is Calvinism? You know, and then you, you know, growing up, what little

I had heard about Calvinism was not good. And so I think whenever I first, you know, said the words that I was a

Calvinist, which that doesn't mean I affirm everything John Calvin believes.

It's really just talking about doctrines of grace, about soteriology, about how I believe about salvation. There was some confusion.

There may have even been some anger at first of some people like, okay, what do you mean you believe in election?

What do you mean you believe in predestination? There were conversations I had with my family of, okay, are you sure?

What about this about John Calvin and that? And I really think there's some ways that if I could go back,

I would handle that differently. I think there was some immaturity on my part. And what

I mean by that is sometimes I went looking for an argument over this. I remember

Sunday lunch going in and I had this new doctrine that I, man,

I thought I was so smart to have this new doctrine in which I believe it's right.

Like, I wouldn't hold it if I didn't think it was right. You know, that to me would blow my mind.

Somebody said, I don't really know if this doctrine's right, but I'm going to hold it. No, you ought to believe what you believe is right or change it.

And so, and so I would be lying if I said I don't want other people to believe how

I believe. Like, okay, then do I really believe I'm right if I don't want other people to believe?

But I think there's a right way and a wrong way to go about this. And I don't think going into a Sunday lunch and just bombarding your family with why they're wrong and why you're right is the correct way to handle it.

And I'm not saying I did it all the time, but I would. I would find little things and it would start arguments. And I think there was some immaturity there.

I think that is something I have repented of that I should repent of that that wasn't the way to go about it.

There are some things I wanted to happen and I still want to happen with my family or I would say to somebody who is a free will

Baptist is know why you believe what you believe and be able to stand, you know, have scripture to support it and be able to deal with the scriptures that are hard ones, like be able to deal with Romans 9,

Ephesians 1, things like that. And just like I have to deal with, I've had scriptures thrown at me that I've had to reconcile and go to the text and understand and really either going to affirm what

I believe or it's going to show that what I believe is wrong. But really what I would go back and change is how

I handled it with friends and family of instead of going and just being like, hey, my doctrines changed on this.

Can we talk about it? Can you tell me why you believe what you believe? I'm going to tell you why my doctrines changed.

I kind of would go in there, not necessarily looking for a fight, but I would go in there just trying to shove my beliefs on them.

And at first there was a lot of confusion and then

I even remember having a conversation of with somebody that, you know, your kids are never going to come to Christ because they're just going to sit around and they're going to wait on them to be zapped with salvation and they're just never going to come to Christ.

And I remember this conversation and it actually ended up going really well of just kind of explaining what

I believe and kind of that, you know, growing up my parents prayed for my salvation.

They showed me the word of God. They showed me the gospel. I'm going to do the same with my kids. I'm going to share the gospel over and over and over.

I'm going to pray that God would save my kids and I would think even my parents would say that they were trusting in God to save me, but they may believe a little bit different about how much of a part

I played in that. I don't think I played any role in that. They may think I played a little bit more, but it's not about that.

But having this conversation of saying, when I pray, I'm not trusting in my teenage son or my little boy to just one day realize

I need Christ. I'm trusting that God is going to provide that for them, is going to show them by the working of the

Holy Spirit, is going to convert them and show them their need for Christ. And so I really think

I would change how I handled those conversations because whenever I was convicted of that, repented, my relationship with my family and the members of that church right now is great.

And I thank God for that. And it really changed whenever I stopped being the aggressor and I stopped trying to have arguments about it.

And just when, say, my brothers would come and we would talk about doctrine, we still don't agree on everything today, but just having a conversation of, okay, tell me why you believe what you believe.

I'm going to tell you why. And let's look at these verses. Let's look at Scripture and let them bring

Scripture to me that they feel like supports Free Will Baptist doctrine. And then I have to deal with that.

I have to go to the text. I have to deal with that scripturally. And I feel like I have and I feel like it has really affirmed my belief.

But then just what I want for my family and what I want for the church that I grew up in is just know why you believe what you believe, support it in Scripture.

And if you can do that, if you can reconcile that, that's good.

And I'm not so much anymore going around just trying to, you know, hammer home to convert people to believe like me.

Like I said, I would love for everybody to believe like me because I believe I'm right. I'm not trying to be arrogant in saying that, but I really think there's a right way to handle it and there's a wrong way and the wrong way can really damage relationships that you don't want to damage.

Amen. That's good. We'll probably keep this for the next episode. I want to talk about how the

Soteriology moves into Ecclesiology. But, you know, we'll see what our time.

There's a couple of comments I want to make. The first is, I want to make this. You talk about verses and stuff.

Heard R .C. Sproul say, not, well, I mean, he said it long ago, but I heard it not long ago, when he said, there are not

Arminian verses and Calvinist verses and you heap up the Arminian verses and we'll heap up the

Calvinist verses and we'll just go to war. Well, no, it's one Bible and we need to be able to articulate what we believe and if you don't try to make the scriptures fit your system, you must, your

Soteriology must fit the scriptures and I think that's a big, so that was for me too.

I mean, I've shared my journey, but that's for me too. It's like when I just started reading the Bible, that's truly, that's when

I became reformed. Well, in my Soteriology, I became reformed Calvinist in just reading the

Bible because I realized God, you cannot escape God's sovereignty and for people to say, well,

God gave up his sovereignty to be, you know, he's so sovereign, he gave it up or something like, you just can't get that from the

Bible. So you need to, we need to make sure that our Soteriological position is in line with the scriptures and there's not a verse out there that we cannot talk about and I think you and I are saying like,

I'm not afraid of any verse. Bring Hebrew six, let's talk about it. Hebrews 12, whatever. So I think that's important.

Another thing I was going to mention, I think very wise what you said, we've all learned and we've all gone through it, but I've used this analogy before with you in a situation we've had, but your son comes to you and he's got a splinter in his hand.

You look around and you're like, well, I got this chainsaw here. Let me crank that up and I'll get that splinter out. Well, you could get the splinter out, but you're going to lose some other parts and doing it that way.

And I see this with guys all the time with doctrine. It's not and it's not just Soteriology.

It's like maybe eschatology. It's maybe doctrine of the family. You know, I praise God that we're kind of having cultural pushback where people are wanting to have more children and we have this recovery of, you know what, maybe it's not the best thing for our families.

Now, we've experienced this for a hundred years in America. Maybe it's not the best thing for our families to have the wife and husband working outside the home and we both agree, understand there's different scenarios and situations and tough things where that is a reality.

But the whole point I'm trying to make is when you come to these positions, I've seen many guys hurt people and break relationships and lose influence and even harden people in the wrong direction simply because they're coming in with a chainsaw.

And they're like, you know what? So cage -stage Calvinism is a thing, but so is cage -stage all these other positions too.

So I think that's wise that you shared that. I think it's encouraging to hear you say I had to repent of that and also

I can say as an observer, as an outside observer, I don't know your family as well as I would like but I do know them somewhat and I can see the relationship that you guys have and the love that you guys have and that's a really blessing and encouragement.

Yeah, it really... So I don't think you'd mind me sharing this. So, you know, like me and my dad, we don't agree perfectly on doctrine, but we do find things that we agree on and we really talk about those.

You know, one thing and there may be some in the reformed world that would really not like what

I'm about to say but, you know, like me and my dad we'll talk about, you know, we see somebody who was once in church, who is out in the world and has been out in the world for a long time, who shows no love for the church, no love for Christ.

They are living according to the culture and this world and we can both look at that person and say

I don't believe they're in Christ. Yeah. What a free will

Baptist might say is they may think there was a time they're in Christ and I disagree, but one thing we can't, like one thing

I've said to my dad we can agree on is that person is not in Christ. I don't believe they've ever been in Christ and that person needs to hear the gospel.

And so little things like that. My grandpa has been a free will Baptist preacher and pastor for over 50 years and he's late 80s now.

I could go and try to argue with him about Calvinism and try to get my late 80s grandpa to be a

Calvinist and I think that would be very unwise to go and just try to argue with my grandpa.

He's in a later part of his life. What I do is I go and I know what he and I really agree about and agree on and we talk about it and he gets excited,

I get excited, we talk about it. One thing I think is great is I don't know that my grandpa has ever preached on the street in his life.

He's always, you know, he's preached in churches for over 50 years, well over 50 years.

But he's become a lover of street preaching through me talking about evangelism and it's so great to talk about evangelism and to talk about going out and preaching on the streets and my grandpa just gets excited about it and we just talk about it.

We talk about evangelism. We talk about being all millennial. We'll talk about the love for the church.

You know, I grew up and I know this really is getting back but I grew up with a grandpa and a church that preaching was primary.

Like in your service, preaching is primary. I remember being a young preacher arguing with my grandpa because my grandpa is saying our services need to revolve around preaching.

Preaching of the word is primary. And I remember arguing and saying, no, singing is just as important.

We can have services revolve around singing just as much. Now, I disagree with my former self completely and I agree with my grandpa.

Preaching of the word in our services, it's primary. You shouldn't have services on Sunday without the preaching of the word and just to really reflect on that and just to have that with him.

But you said something about soteriology really like forming your ecclesiology and everything.

It made me think of one more thing I am grateful for. Is towards the end of me pastoring at the

Free Will Baptist Church, there were members of the church who brought up and said, hey, our role needs to reflect who's here.

We've got so many people in our role who we don't even know if they're Christians because they're not going here.

We don't know where they're going or they're dead or all this. We need to shrink down our role, our church role to reflect who is actually active and who is here.

There shouldn't be inactive membership and active membership. And so I remember that and I thought, yeah, that sounds good.

Sure. Yeah, sounds great. But I really didn't have a foundation for why I thought that was great, but it was a thing

I appreciate. But really coming to the doctrines of grace, really diving in, the more

I dove in, the more it began to form things like ecclesiology and biblical church membership, biblical church discipline, things like that.

And so absolutely, I know that was a long way to kind of tie that back in, but absolutely, it's played a big part.

And you said something about stepping away. You know, preachers, sometimes they don't take that time.

I think that was huge for me. Step away, dive into the word, figure out where I'm at. And then that led me, by God's providence, here to, at the time,

Perryville Second Baptist Church. Shout out to Danny Thursby. Yeah, Danny Thursby played a huge role in that.

And so very grateful for that. And, you know, just, you know, one more thing

I would say to somebody who was in the same situation. Pastor Quatro has a quote he says all the time that I really, like,

I've kind of stolen it. And I say, I quote him every time, but I say it a lot. If I can convince you of something, somebody can unconvince you of it.

I want the word of God to convince you. And so that's really what has changed for me, is

I don't want to go out there and just me convince somebody to doctrines of grace. I want to show them in Scripture.

I want them to go to Scripture. I want to encourage them to go to Scripture, study what you believe, know why you believe it.

And I pray that Scripture, the truth of Scripture, shines true to them by the grace of God.

Amen. Jonah 2 .9, salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end. So that's good, brother.

Well, I think that that's a good place to stop now, and we'll have you on again the next episode because we're going to stop and then record again.

So there's that. But thank you guys for joining us on this week of the Rural Church Podcast, and I'll see you,

Jacob, in about 10 seconds. And I'll see you guys, or you can listen to us, next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.