Grace Fellowship Church - Saturday Q &A Panel

The following recording is from our Grace Fellowship Church Conference 2025. Please visit us at graceedmonton .ca to learn more about us. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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So what I have sought to do is to put together all of the Q &A questions so that we they're a bit more thematic. So in some of you, we had multiples, sometimes two or three of the same question in some variation.

So listen for your question. It might be worded slightly differently, but I've tried as best I can to get them in. And the first question, and this is directed to both of you brothers, it's pertaining to day one, Michael, your sermon.

And the question is, how do you distinguish between emotionalism and a spirit-induced biblical emotion?

That's a very good question, and it is a challenge these days. But it's not a hard question. The difference between emotionalism and genuine biblical corresponding emotions is emotionalism is the desire to seek and feel emotions for the sake of feeling.

Emotionalism is not what we're seeking. What we're seeking is not even emotions. We're seeking truth. But now listen very carefully. Emotions are involuntary. And what do I mean by that? You just don't sit down and just decide, I'm going to make myself happy or I'm going to make myself sad.

Emotions follow thoughts. For example, if you got a phone call right now and a person that you trusted said, you just got a check in the mail for $50 ,000. I saw a smile or two out here. Just that thought brought a sense of elation, right?

So what created the sense, that emotion of joy or happiness? The thought. And you believe the thought, and therefore you felt happy. Equally opposite, if you got a phone call that somebody you loved very much was sick at the point of death or had died, you would immediately feel sorrow.

When you read your Bible with desperate dependence upon the Holy Spirit to make that truth understandable to you, and when he does that, and he will, faith is ignited because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

In the moment faith kicks in, faith sees that truth as reality. And so if it's real, there's a corresponding biblical emotion. Joy or peace or many other corresponding biblical emotions. Do you see the difference?

One, I'm not seeking that. I'm just seeking to believe what God has said to me out of the abundance of his heart. And the moment I do, it will happen. It can't help but happen. That's the way we have been made by God.

We never want to seek experiences for the sake of experience or emotion for the sake thereof. But at the same time, you must not, you cannot deny biblical corresponding emotions because if you do, you've stripped the heart and soul out of Christianity.

Amen.

Mack, would you add anything to that, brother? Well, I can't. Is this on?

Might need to turn it on, I think. No, it's on. Okay, you're good.

I can't top that, but I can add a little more go. Maybe it'll be sweet dessert. I think there's, Michael's my technician. He fixes everything. He fixes everything in my life.

Technologically that I can't. That's the only reason he brings me along. I tell him to invoice.

Me for the hour when they were building. So I think in our day, to me, this is a practical issue. God has made us with emotions. True emotions are not sinful. In fact, you can't worship God without emotion.

One of the things I'm going to mention briefly in the closing message is that emotions are not theoretical. They're experiential. I mean, you can't be happy in the Lord without feeling happy, right? Emotions are always feelings.

But in our day, go back into the Puritan era. They affirmed that worship involved the totality of man, soul, and mind, and heart. Emotions are part and parcel of that. In our day, there's a growing tendency for the creedal, stiff, reformed movement to downplay emotions.

And that's wrong. Because if we are told that emotions, feeling them and expressing them, are the equivalent of emotionalism, then we won't express emotions, and we're afraid to. And we'll be quenching the Holy Spirit when we walk in worship.

So, there's a growing tendency because of the overreaction of the charismatic movement, which is all emotion, all experience. You know the whole nine yards. There's a pendulum that's swung that any of that that smacks of emotion is suspect, is dangerous.

Don't give in to it. Just use your mind to hear the truth and believe it, but suppress your emotions. And that will not be a healthy Christian at all. So, each person, some are more emotional than others.

Some have highs and lows. Some are steady. But when you feel joy in the Lord, embrace it. When you feel the desire to, you know, maybe raise your hand in worship and you've never done it, go ahead. These things are biblical, right?

When you feel, I was preaching, I was on vacation, holidays, is that your word? In Destin, Florida, a couple years ago. And we attended the, a small, wonderful Presbyterian church. Tremendous pastor and preacher.

And he was preaching a marvelous sermon from Psalm 16. It was spot on. It was full of life. And every wonderful statement he made, about every four minutes, I would say, Amen. Well, later when we met, he said, I knew you were a Baptist.

We don't do that here. But the people loved it. And he and I are good friends now. So, Brother Lloyd, Martin Lloyd Jones said, in the 80s, maybe, maybe 70s, maybe earlier. Yeah, he died in 81. So, he had 80s that were one year, he could have said it.

He said, I believe the reform movement is guilty of quenching the Holy Spirit. And we don't want to be stiff, starchy, eggheads. Emotions are a gift of God, and they're wonderful to express in private prayer, properly in corporate worship, properly in the prayer meeting.

But, yeah. So, that's all.

Very helpful, Brother. Very helpful. Again, Mack and Michael, but Michael, maybe I'll speak to you first about this. In your exhortation, or guiding us, encouraging us to abide in Christ, the questioner asks, I have entrusted myself to Christ.

I have a deep abiding desire to have this relationship with Him. But I struggle with what this looks like in practice. What does it look like, boots on the ground, to have that relationship? And if I can add, maybe someone asked almost the same question, but in the life of the local church.

So, individually, and then to expand that corporately.

Abiding in Christ Through the Word and the Spirit

When John 15 verses 1 through 9 became real to me, it was truly one of those transformative moments in my life. And that is a passage of scripture that I always return to. John 14 through that 17, that whole discourse.

Because what Jesus is wanting to do with those disciples, in fact, I would love to be able to come back sometime and just teach on the parable of John 15, the whole thing. Because when you understand what Jesus is doing, He knows He's no longer going to be bodily with those brothers.

And here for three and a half years, they've depended upon Him in a physical way. You know, one of the reasons their prayer life was terrible, because they didn't really need one. If they had a problem, they'd go to run to Jesus.

They had God in the flesh, who, by the way, was filled with the Spirit without measure. And so He's trying to teach them, but then that they're going to have to be weaned from the physical in order to now operate in the spiritual realm.

That's all that that's about. So if you learn that that's the theme of that whole discourse, then you can now read it and you can learn how to do the same thing. Because that's our problem too. We're weaned to the physical.

Our physical senses drive much more than they ought to drive. They are given to us to operate in a material world, but they have a limit. They have no help in the spiritual realm. God is Spirit and God is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

So let's take those two words, Spirit and truth. And herein is how you abide. Again, I wish I had four or five sessions just on this. But so to say it succinctly, it is to take your Bible and number one, don't read it for information only.

Quit doing that. In fact, you'll be interested to know that there's not one verse in your Bible that tells you to read the Bible. There is a New Testament verse. Paul tells Timothy to not neglect the reading of scripture, but he's talking about corporate reading.

The Bible doesn't tell you to read it, but it does tell you to study it, to memorize it and to meditate on it. And of course, in order to do that, you have to read it. But we are reading for the sake of reading.

We have a poor mentality. We think that if we read a chapter a day, the devil will go away. We read it as if it's some checklist or preventive maintenance. And if I don't read my chapter a day or three chapters or McShane's reading, whatever your schedule is, then somehow you will not receive the favor of God that day.

That is not why God gave you the Bible. He gave you the Bible that you might know him and his heart for you. And so now, as I'm reading the scriptures, I'm praying, Holy Spirit, quicken, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things in your law.

And as I'm reading, I'm doing something else. I am reading it. I'm meditating, which again, we need more time to explain what that means. But then I'm also praying it. I'm praying what I'm reading back to the Lord.

And while I'm meditating and I'm praying, I assure you invariably the spirit takes what I'm reading and my faith is quickened because the word is illuminated to me. And when that happens, that's fellowship.

That's as much an encounter with the living God as Moses had at the burning bush. It's no less an encounter. It may not be a sensational, but it is an encounter with God. And that's that's how you abide by the spirit and by the truth.

It takes the truth of God spoken by through the word, but it also takes the Holy Spirit. We have a misnomer. We're so afraid. We're so afraid that the charismatics and the Pentecostals and anybody that believes that God subjectively leads them, that this is going to diminish the sufficiency of scripture.

That's ridiculous. It's not even logical. It's the scriptures that tells me what experiences are valid and which ones are not. God never leads contrary to scripture. But it requires, the scripture requires the Holy Spirit to illuminate it, to give you understanding.

And if that doesn't happen, all you've done is intellectually increase your knowledge of the Bible, but you have not experienced fellowship in God. Does that help?

It helps me. Hopefully it helps the person asking the question that really needs several hours of.

Teaching and preaching on to really prove the arguments that I'm postulating here in just three.

Minutes. Could I say something about asking questions in general? You know, most of the things we really learn, God teaches us over a period of time and we're taught of the Lord. So beware of wanting quick answers from leaders who aren't experts in everything.

There aren't any. And it's kind of like you're interested in a topic, you're deeply burdened about some help or something, and you go to someone you trust, whether your own pastor or elders or a man at a conference.

The question is expressed and they'll give a five minute reply maybe. And you latch on to something that sounds good. And then you go away and you just take the report of how to view that theme briefly.

And then you think you understand it. You think you have all the answers, or maybe we presume we do. I studied one aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit for 20 years, hammering it out in the scriptures and in reading and then asking men I trusted as light dawned and understanding came.

There are no quick fixes in sanctification or in coming to understand the truth of God more. Be patient with yourself. And God himself will be your teacher as you're in the Word regularly. And as you're praying for the Holy Spirit to teach you, he will show you the things of Christ and you'll see things that you get from God that are far superior to what you get this weekend from men.

So beware of depending just on questions for your answers. I need to do a follow up.

I would like to describe that experience of God. When the Spirit takes the Word, there will be one of two responses or both, either conviction or joy or both. I've never been convicted by God that I didn't have joy, that he loved me, did not let me get by with sin.

That's what happens when you're reading the Word and the Spirit illuminates. And that is that encounter. Now, I need to be balanced here. I don't want anybody to take something and go to the extreme. When you're reading your scriptures, you have to read two different ways, intellectually and devotionally.

So first, intellectually, I mean, you need to understand what does the text really mean. We're not here to find some new novel interpretation. No, no, no. We want to know what did the author mean and intend to the original audience.

So that's reading intellectually. But now that I know that, now I read devotionally. How does this apply to me? And you pray through it, you meditate on it. And as you're doing that, that's when the Spirit at his prerogative will teach.

So I want to make sure we're balanced here. We're not just saying not to study the scriptures or not to read the Bible, but to read two different ways, intellectually and devotion.

Amen. Now, I'm supposed to ask the questions, but I want to give part of an answer too. As just as I'm thinking about this, I remember a conversation we had a couple of days ago, brother, and how much I've learned from Christian biographies as well, just to see how other men have done it.

Not that it's a prescription, but that it can render some assistance in how men have done this in the world in which we live. And I think of George Mueller. Every day he sought, it was his purpose, to open the scriptures and to become happy in the Lord.

That was, I have a quote pulled up in front of me, the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord. And walking with the Lord, with your Bible before you.

And Donald Whitney, I recall reading a book, Praying the Bible, which was a very, very simple book. And yet, just a revolutionary idea for a new Christian to pray with my Bible open. And there's the information aspect of it and the transformation aspect of it, if I can use that cliche.

I quoted that in the session to the pastors, that quote. Oh, that's where it was. Okay. Forgive me. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not original with me. You get it twice if you're here for both sessions. Okay.

Assurance of Salvation and Looking to Christ

Here's another question. I believe the gospel with all of my heart and I desire to please him. But when I look at my life, I see very little evidence of the kind of change that should accompany regeneration.

How can I discern if I am truly saved?

That's a question and I appreciate it. But this is probably not the best forum for that. Because each person is different here and there is no pat answer. The book that was on the table, The Fight of Faith, How a Christian Can Experience Assurance Salvation.

I go through a lot of this, but each person is different. Their experience is different. Their backgrounds are different. The personalities are different. And so it has to be more of an individual approach in dealing with that soul.

But in general, I would say this to everyone, whether that person would be lost or saved. And one more thing before I do give you that. I think our approach has been wrong when we're dealing with these kinds of folks.

Our approach is often to try to encourage them and to make them feel better and to make them to feel like, yes, I am a Christian. That's the worst thing you can do. I think it's biblically, logically wrong.

How do you know the heart of an individual? I seldom know my own heart. My own heart deceives me. How would you be able to know that in counseling that person? I always assume they are lost because if they are saved, I'm not going to hurt them.

But if they are lost and I assume they're saved, I could damn their soul or contribute to that. So that's why I want to be very careful in this forum about answering that. But here is one thing I would say to whether saint or sinner, the problem is looking into your own heart.

There's your problem. If I look into my heart right now, after all of these years of walking with God, I'm going to tell you it's like a dumpster dive. You know what dumpster diving is, don't you? Jumping into the big, big old trash bin and scrounging around to salvage something or find something of value.

When I look into my heart, it's the exact same thing. I cannot find anything good. So in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, Paul says, examine yourself to see whether or not you're in the faith. And we've taken that verse as an exhortation that we ought to be always examining, introspectively looking within.

That's not what Paul is talking about. He's talking about you need to judge me the same way you judge your own hearts. They were actually doubting Paul was even maybe converted. But there is a healthy biblical introspection.

But here it is. Are you listening? Say amen. It is that you look into your heart as long as it takes to find a reason to look away to Jesus. So it is healthy to look at your heart, but with the intent to find a reason to believe in the gospel again.

So that's what I would encourage anyone who says, I think I love Jesus. I want to please the Lord, but I just don't know if I'm saved. The answer, whether they're lost or saved, is the same. It's the gospel and that you believe the gospel.

Believe that Christ is your only advocate before the Father. Now, again, we could go much deeper and it would depend upon the individual and the answers, because I have a series of diagnostic questions I would.

Ask that person to try to get a better grasp of where they are. Okay. Okay. I'm curious if I can follow up on that. Just for maybe local church pastors who are counseling, what would some of.

Those diagnostic questions be? The most important one is not, tell me about an experience you had that you might subscribe to or ascribe to salvation. Rather, my question, and I lead up to this, but this is the ultimate.

Tell me what happens when you sin. Describe to me your state of mind and heart when you have sinned, because a sinner can never answer that properly. If they're honest, they cannot. But a Christian, if he is genuinely saved, there's a biblical response.

He may not even know it, but he will tell it to me in one way or another. I'll hear it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mack, would you add anything to that brother? Well, you know, Michael was right when he initially, when he talked about this, the answers for different people, it's going to be on a case-by-case basis.

For instance, part of the question was, the person said, I don't see evidences of maturity in areas or... Just that, what some would call.

The instantaneous change that some would expect, regeneration. Well, it's a wrong presupposition.

To hear someone else's testimony or read an account and that you necessarily will have an instantaneous change, a powerful conversion. Some do, some don't. It's like Jesus said, you know, regeneration is like blowing in the wind, but there will be change.

But some people who are perfectionists or legalists are going to begin to introspectively look for real evidences. They hear, they read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, or is that what it was called? Or they hear, you know, they compare themselves and their heart and mind to a godly Christian they know, which is always wrong.

And so they think they've got to have advanced sanctification to even be a believer. And no kind of maturity or sanctification or change inwardly is necessary to believe the gospel. We come naked, we come empty-handed, we come maybe feeling emotion, we may come feeling not much, but we can come to Christ freely, unconditionally, and believe the gospel.

And when I was converted when I was 19, I was out of church then. I was raised in a non-gospel preaching church, got bored by it, got out of it after high school. I was in college, and the night I was converted was a complete surprise.

I had no spiritual stirrings, I wasn't interested any longer, I was not hanging out with any Christians. And so that Saturday evening, July of 1973, was a complete surprise. And I broke down. I didn't know how to pray, but prayers came out.

And what I prayed was, Jesus, I have nothing to give you but my sin and myself, but I know you're the Savior of the world, Lord, I'm all yours here. That was my sinner's prayer. And so I came freely. No one under conviction and no weak believer who struggles with assurance needs to look anywhere inward.

Be honest with what you feel, but we don't look inward, we don't look outward at others, we look upward. And assurance will come as believers walk in obedience, walk in the life they have, and do what God has commanded in.

Scripture. Amen. It reminds me of a quote that I often share with our church from McShane, for every look at self, take 10 looks at Christ. That idea, that obsession, that just as you said, brother, we look inwards just long enough to see our need for Him, and then we look to Him.

But I'll tell you what, it's a lot easier to quote McShane and do what he says. Because you know, when you sin, and you're grieved and sad, and emotionally, you're so grieved, what is our first response?

Naturally, we don't look to Christ. But 1 John 2 is so fabulous. It's the only verse that specifically tells a Christian, that addresses the Christians when they sin. If any man sins, what's the next phrase?

He has an advocate. Now think of that, when a Christian realizes they've just sinned, the immediate answer from God is not to look here, but to remember the gospel. I have an advocate in heaven who died for that sin I just committed, and he loves me, and it's forgiven.

Therefore, the goodness of God will lead me to repentance.

Amen. Thank you, brother. That's excellent. Next question I have. When the Lord first saved me, and I think this is probably a question that many Christians can relate to, when the Lord first saved me, I enjoyed a close walk with God.

But as I grow as a Christian, I'm afraid that it seems that my zeal for God is less than it once was. Is this a normal experience, and how can I remedy this? Those boys, 139, 137, they still remember that.

Yeah, but we tried to do things like that, and we always did that every day, and we prayed with them, but they weren't lengthy because they couldn't handle a lot of it. And then when they became teenagers, you had to become more creative.

A little longer, but not a whole lot much longer, no more than 20 minutes, included singing, prayer, and then I would teach them a brief devotional.

Yeah, I just think that's exactly right. Brevity is important. Creativity, where you engage at their level and endeavor to make it interesting. The worst thing imaginable is for some father who thinks he's a Puritan to do a 50-minute reading.

I've seen it happen, and I've also saw the faces of the teenagers, children. They're very respectful, but that's a very great mistake to make. Brevity, creativity, applied, a memory verse, a singing of a hymn, and including them as they get older.

They can read, they can participate, and you keep it 15 minutes or thereabouts, they will not get bored with it. They won't start dreading it, and so that's what it ought to look like. Well, you just never know.

I mean, I just realized hearing his, how I never did family worship in a quality creative way. I never dressed up, you know. I'm kind of joking, but those boys have never forgotten that, and so, you know, modeling as a husband and wife an enjoyment of family worship, modeling an excitement about it where it's not a legalistic beauty, because the vice parents put off, the children are going to recognize and see, okay, so,.

Yeah. When we were doing family devotions, we didn't have the resources you have now, and I want to give you a resource, and you may need to help me. Reformation Heritage just puts out, what's the book that goes through every chapter of the Bible?

The Family Worship Bible. That's it. Yeah. Man, I wish I'd have had that. Yeah. That would have been so wonderful, but there are, you have resources now that we didn't have, and so, avail yourself to those, but let me say one final thing quickly.

It's not just the family devotions that are powerful. In fact, I think there's one thing more powerful than that, and that's just an opinion. It's not something I can prove. It's the conversations throughout the day.

Seize. Don't just save everything for the family devotion. Throughout the day, look for things to happen with your children that you can teach them about their heart, about God, the gospel. Just little snippets.

Don't make a sermon out of it. Maybe wise, more wise to just ask them questions, but I was always looking for things to be able to turn the conversation to something about God and teach them, whether when it was outdoors and, you know, something of nature, which is nature's full of sermons.

Just a little, just a little nugget here and there all.

The time, all the time. Amen. If that, if that doesn't happen, if we don't do that, we're compartmentalizing the natural and the spiritual in an unhealthy way. That is, might be more important than having a set time.

So, that's very good.

That's excellent, and I'll make mention of it. If they're still at the table, there is the Family Worship Bible Guide on the table, as well as another book that I would recommend, if I can sneak in and answer edgewise, and that is, it is called Theology or Theology, depending on how you want to pronounce that, and that, it has wonderful illustrations.

It's a systematic theology for children, and my children, probably wherever they are, they can still, I imagine, still remember that the page where there is, speaking of the putridness of sin, a bird sitting on the edge of a glass with its droppings in the cup, and the idea of sin, not just distorting those, the whole idea was, well, if you can just scoop the droppings out, you can still drink the water, right?

No, sin ruins everything in the glass, and they would regularly ask me, Dad, can we read the bird one? Let's read the bird story again. So, that can be very helpful.

Speaking of resources, this is for the parents, not the children as much. I give this, I say, I encourage young parents all the time. Ted Tripp's book, Shepherding the Child's Heart, is excellent. You need to read it if you haven't, especially if you have children in the home.

Amen. Okay, I'm going to shift gears again, and we're just to speak about pastoral ministry and missions for a moment. I'm going to combine two questions, so those of you who ask the questions, you know who you are, but a brother or a sister, at least in missions, how would they a call, properly discern that, and for a brother, discerning a call to ministry, something that's perhaps just outside of that objective desire, if we can say it that way.

Well, I think both.

A missionary call and a call to ministry, how do you know the answer is the same for both? Actually, I categorize it in two categories of the subjective and the objective. When I was converted, I was going to be a coach, and then within three or four months after my conversion, I began to lose that desire, and I was in a good church.

I had a faithful pastor that did expositional preaching, and I was fed by him, and I was stirred by his example toward desires for ministry, and so internally, desires coming, if any man desires the office, he desires a good thing, right?

So there's got to be desire, and that's from within. That emerged, and it maintained itself growingly because I was faithful in church. From the beginning of my Christian life at 19 years old, God made me a churchman.

I was in the prayer meetings. I was in college. I was in the prayer meeting on Wednesday. I was in Sunday school. I was in worship, and so I was always there, and I grew in the context of local church life.

My gifts emerged, and my calling became deeper, so the subjective was there, but a person can have a subjective desire to be a missionary or a pastor but not have the gifting for it, and they don't know it yet, right?

And so the objective confirmation must come from your church and your leaders recognizing in you gifts that are clearly there. A man's gift, Scripture says, will make room for him. It doesn't say a man makes room for his own gifts.

A man's gift will make room for him as he grows in those gifts and as he submits to Christ to serve him and as his church gives the amen on that person's life or on that couple's life. The church will verify if the calling is legitimate, and every Christian should want the church, has to have the church, their own church, to confirm their calling either to.

Pastoral ministry or to be a missionary. Very good. I don't think I can add anything to that. That would be my answer. God's call begins with the desire that's planted by the Spirit of God in the heart, and it's confirmed by the church.

If your pastors don't think you're qualified, that you're not qualified. Now, there are exceptions to the rule through church history, but if they're godly men, they will recognize whether God's called you or not, and the church will know it as well.

So, but I do think he, I'm appreciative that Max said objective and subjective. It seems like we've made the call of God purely objective, and that's why we've got a lot of men in the ministry that shouldn't be in the ministry.

Subjective, I think. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we've eliminated subjective. It's all objective, and that's why there's a lot of men who go to Bible college and seminary, and they go out, and they're not called.

There's no equipping. There's no gifting. There's just a desire. But I remember when God was dealing with me, having been a preacher, and then get converted. I immediately didn't preach, didn't even pursue that for three years.

God had to deprogram me and then reprogram me with the scriptures. I had a lot of doctrinal baggage that had to be sifted and removed, but I remember going to work day after day after drive, 45 minutes, and I'd weep all the way there and weep all the way back, not because I had a bad job and hated it, but because I had this burning fascination desire to preach, and it just increased.

And here's one of the ways I think you can test this subjective here scripturally, is that if God puts something in your heart, it's not like human emotions. Human emotions are like roller coasters with time.

If it's human origin, it'll subside eventually until something fires that thing back up, but not when God's dealing with a man. It increases with time. It's like Jeremiah said, fire shut up in my bones.

I can't help but do this. When God was dealing with me about resigning from the pastorate and to go full-time as an itinerant and evangelist, it took me a year and a half to really say, okay, God, this is you.

I tested everything, all of that, but it began with a simple desire, and it increased over time. I remember telling my wife, sweetheart, do you think our time is over here at Oak Grove? And she said, no, I don't feel that.

So I never said another word to her about it. Never, never tried to persuade her. I went to my other two fellow elders, and man, they broke down and wept like babies and said, no, we don't think God's in that.

So I never said another word to anyone. Just started, just kept praying, and it intensified, and that went on for a year. And then God began to deal with my wife, and then I went back to the other elders, and I said, brothers, this thing's only growing.

Let's pray again. So for 90 days, we prayed, not talking about it, just prayed. At the end of the 90 days, we all three said, yes, this is of God. But I did something else, because the subjective has to be tested.

I called this man, because he knows me as well as anybody except my wife, and then another young man that I had discipled, who we helped, we planted a church, and I asked these two men, do you believe I have the gifts to be able to be an itinerant minister, an evangelist?

And they both confirmed it, said they've always seen that in me. But then finally, we had the confirmation of the church. So there is an objective, but there's also a subjective, and I believe in that, and you'll never convince me otherwise.

It may not be as dramatic for one person as it is another, but there's a call of God, and I'll tell you why. When you get into the pastorate and problems arise that you cannot resolve, if you cannot say, I know that I know that God put me here, you'll pack your bags and fold.