2006 Heart-Cry - Question Answer Panel — Paul Washer

2006 Heart-Cry - Question Answer Panel — Paul Washer

To our schedule here, we have scheduled a wonderful time of Q &A. This is generally a well-received part of the conference as well. And I would again, my name's Tom Clay. I'm the worship leader here and extemporaneously going to try to emcee this event.

I want to introduce to you the gentlemen who are sitting on the stage here. They are comprised of the speakers of the conference, as well as our pastor here. And on my immediate left, we have Brother Matt Tomlinson, all the way from Texas.

It's good to have him here. And Brother Bill McLeod, who is, I guess, would kind of be considered our keynote speaker for the conference. He came from Canada, so it's great to have him here. Brother Bob Jennings, in the middle, is also here.

He's a wonderful contributor to the conference in years past. The guy next to him, I think you already know, Brother Paul Washer, who just spoke. And then to his left is our pastor, Dr. Jeff Nowlett. Let's all make them welcome to this time.

Now, this session is being recorded. So when you ask your questions, we need to make sure that you ask it into the microphone. So my partner in crime, Brother Chad Haygood, over here is going to be handling the microphone on this side, and I'll be running the microphone on this side.

So please make sure we get to you before you start your question and do your very best to project as you ask your question. All right. So we will begin. Just just wave at us. If you have a question, we'll get to you with a microphone.

Don't everybody ask it once. The question is in regards to how sin affects prayer. We know the scripture verse. It says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Does it simply refer to if we refuse to humble ourselves and deal with it or if we have dealt with it, but we have yet to carry it out?

So to speak, we've surrendered it to the Lord. What effect does sin have in regards to prayer? Again, the question, what effect does sin have in regards to prayer?

Sin, Confession, and the Hindrance of Prayer

Don't everybody speak at once. Well, the Bible makes it very clear that if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So then it's useless praying if you have unconfessed sin in your heart and you're aware of that.

I think that's made very plain in different parts of the Bible. Even praying for sick people, as in James chapter five, it goes on to say, after saying the elders, the prayer of faith will save the sick, it then says, and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

But sins are not forgiven if they're not confessed. So in other words, the elders have to find out, they have to talk to the person they're praying for to find out if there is perhaps sin in their life and the sickness may be because of sin.

It isn't always, but sometimes it is. And that's the way it goes. So sin in the heart, God doesn't listen.

Anything else, gentlemen? If there anything can be added to that.

I think that one thing that is very, very important is the one to whom the Lord looks has a contrite spirit and trembles at his word. There is so much. I am so dull in my heart so many times and do not know a secret false.

Many ways until I come into, you know, maybe the spirit revives me or in the word or brother rebukes me. And I think one of the things that is so very important is this idea of of a continual brokenness before the Lord.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. There is a sense in which, you know, it's very dangerous when a person looks at their life and say, well, you know, I don't have any sin.

And they walk around pretty arrogant, you know, until something walks him over the head. But I think that there is a constant state of brokenness and humility before the Lord that even when we have confessed all that we have confessed, there's still this reality of such grace and that when he does speak to us and answer us, it is a work of tremendous grace.

Well, in that passage, isn't a key word regarding. Isn't there a difference between regarding sin and committing sin?

It is just it is a recognition and holding on to. You know, the thought occurred to me that if I'm praying with known and confessed sin, I'm in effect praying to an idol, not God, an idol that I'm making him out to be because known sin in my own life is against him and against not just his law, but his very character and nature.

So why would I talk to him anyway if I'm against him? So just I don't know. It just came to my mind. Then any prayer effort with unconfessed sin that's known would have to be prayer to your own idol, not to the true God that you know you're sinning against.

Very good. Let me also say that your questions do not have to be specifically on prayer. Am I correct in that, Brother Paul? Any questions that are on your heart? Yes. Infrared series is a mirror. You know, anything like that.

Superlative revelation. OK, we got several possible. Start with the front here.

Confessing Sin and Seeking Greater Assurance

Brother Wesley, we talked about confessing our sins. Each night I tried to confess my sin, but I find sometimes it's hard to recognize a particular sin. I know that I fall short of God's glory every day, but how?

You know, most of the time when you have sin, if you know you're under conviction, you confess your sin right then. But at the end of the day, when you look back at your day and there's no you can't pinpoint your confessed sin.

You know, how do you draw that out in order to come to have a closer walk? You know. Yes, I always want to defer to my elder. She has so much more wisdom than I do. I can hear him say something. Then I know if I give an answer, I pretty know which parameter I can work in.

Could you repeat that? I think the question was, where do you draw the line? You know, how can you make sure you confess every sin that you ever commit? And where does grace fit into that?

And well, sometimes if I'm correct, sometimes the idea is you can you feel like at the end of the day, you need to confess sin, but you don't really know if you've got you don't really know any specific sin and you're just wondering what you should do about that.

The one scripture that comes to my mind may may relate is search me, oh God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

It's obviously not a legalistic work that we have to remember everything and then confess it. What the Holy Spirit brings to mind, we need to quickly agree with the Father about. And then we know that we don't know our own hearts.

And so an open, honest heart to the Father that says, Father, search me, cleanse me, that's sufficient in light of that question, I think.

I could add something here, perhaps from the book of Job. It runs like this. It says he never takes his eyes off the righteous, but with kings are they in the throne. He establishes them forever and they are exalted.

And then comes an if and if they bound in fetters and held in cords of affliction, what then? Then he shows them their work and their transgressions, which they have exceeded. And he opens their ear to discipline and he commands that they return from an ignorance.

So sometimes people, they say, well, I prayed and asked God, he didn't show me anything. Yet I know there's something there. Well, wait a minute. God said it says there so clearly in Job. He shows them their work.

He shows us our transgressions. What it really means is we're not listening. Maybe we don't want to hear it.

You might want to get Paul's study on the attributes of God. And that helps me. There's one thing that and I totally agree with everything that's been said. One thing that bothers me sometimes is the Holy Spirit in his work.

He convicts us of sin. He convicts us of righteousness also. And I sometimes think that believers also, if I'm renewing my mind with the word of God, according to Romans chapter 12, verse two, if I'm seeking to follow hard after Christ.

You know, I trust and I'm asking God to search me. I am really dealing with that. I trust that the Holy Spirit will search me. He will tell me. And sometimes he may even use other people to come and rebuke me and so many things.

But at the same time, I'm always worried that I don't hear a lot of believers rejoicing rejoicing in in godliness, rejoicing in righteousness, being convicted of that. I feel like a lot of times believers are just many times under the accusation of the devil.

That even if even if after they pray and ask God to search them and they're really, you know, desiring to be pure and to walk with God, even if they don't hear something and and there's no apparent sin, they still almost walk under this guilt and this condemnation.

And sometimes I know you can get off balance with this, but sometimes I'm happy in the Lord because I know he's done a work in me and is doing a work in me. And and yes, overcoming. So I don't think that believers need to assume.

I mean, we know that we sin. We know that the Holy Spirit points that out. We know that there's sometimes secret sins that maybe lay there until a greater work is done or God shows us more clearly. But at the same time, I think we have to be very careful.

It's just walking in this assumed condemnation that we've we're always in rebellion because that's not true. Paul said that he exercised himself to have a conscience void of offense before God and men.

So he exercised himself. He searched his heart. And but then it says, you know, on John, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. We know when our heart is clean and conscience is clear.

Yes, it's a question back here.

Discerning God's Will Through Scripture and Godly Counsel

I don't know how thoroughly you can answer this question, but I know that I sometimes have an inclination or I feel that God may be leading me to do something, maybe witness to somebody or sometimes, like you said, some crazy things.

I was just wondering, is there a way to discern between what is God's will? If he's leading you to do it or if it's your own thoughts or if it's maybe evil. I was wondering if you could answer that.

Do you hear that with a bill basically dealing with discernment? How do you know the voice of God versus your own voice versus the voice of the devil?

Let me just say, first of all, that people get in a really bad trap in this. They're not really renewing their mind in the word of God as a practice. And then they come to a crossroads where they need to discern the will of God.

And so they go to the Bible as though a magic book to find the answer for God's will. And that is not really how God has set it up. In Romans 12, too, we go back to that, the idea of renewing your mind to know what the will of God is.

So before a situation ever comes into place where I have to discern is God leading or not, one of the things I need to be sure of is that as a life practice, I am constantly renewing my mind in the word of God because that holds promise.

Secondly, if I believe knowing that and checking my life there, if I believe God's leading me to do something, clearly we know this. If it contradicts a direct command of scripture or biblical principles, we know it's not the Holy Spirit leading us.

But let's say that that I'm renewing my mind in the word of God. It does not contradict commands or principles or to do it doesn't contradict other things. Then one of the things that I will do, of course, I pray, but I'll also seek godly counsel.

I can recall several times in my life when I've gone to men that I greatly respected and authorities over me and asked them to pray about in opinions. And usually by renewing my mind in the word of God, searching the scriptures, praying, you know, and checking out my motives, you know, am I seeking first the kingdom of God, going to godly, godly men to pray with me and to pray for me.

Very rarely have I have I tripped up that way. I'm sure someone can add to that. Anyone have anything else to say?

If all hearts are rest on that answer, then brother Bill, did you have anything? I didn't know if you were preparing to answer. I didn't want to interrupt you, brother.

Well, of course, it has to be what is what you're hearing or feeling has to be totally consistent with the word of God. And one of the problems today is this, that the average Christian knows very little of the word of God.

I remember one time this fellow taught a Sunday school class in a local church. And he heard me preach and he said, you quoted a verse and I just couldn't locate it. And I know my Bible very well. He says, I know the New Testament off my heart.

He said, but that verse. I said, what was the verse? Well, he said the verse was, how shall we escape? We neglect so great salvation. He said, well, where is that? And I said, in the book of Hebrews. Oh, he said, I knew it had to be in the Old Testament.

I know the New Testament off my heart. You know, there's a lot of that kind of stuff going. People don't know the Bible, so they're open to satanic deception constantly. And if they don't pray, you have to get along with God and wait on God.

You know, the big trouble today in the church or among Christians is this, I'm in a hurry and God isn't. And the Bible says, wait on the Lord. It means exactly that. And you have to spend time with God, maybe some hours at times, even not be, not make hasty decisions on some impression we have or some impression somebody else gives to us.

To piggyback on his question, can we get to the point to where we are so concerned with following God's will that we are just we we we miss the point. Oh, God, do you want me to have cereal this morning or waffles?

You know, my wife always makes those decisions. What one thing I tell college students, and this is very important, college students are famous for this or infamous for this. They wear themselves out emotionally, physically and spiritually, trying to figure out God's will for their life.

They're going to graduate. They don't want to marry this girl, this and this and back and forth. And I always tell them a very childlike thing that I've worked just in my own life. And it's this. I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing and following the Lord and his commands the best that I can.

And I do not worry about a deviation from that until God makes it so clear to me that I know I need to do something else, that I know that if I don't do it, I'm in disobedience. And to that point, I don't put a lot of just I don't waste a lot of energy trying to work through that.

Let me just say, you know, bloom where you're planted. As a pastor, I often have energetic, enthusiastic, sometimes young Christians. How do I know the will of God? And then I'll check and they're not real faithful in Sunday school.

I'll check and they don't come to our outreach visitation program. They're not in accountability group with another believer to sharpen themselves. And so the basic things that we should be doing, we're not doing.

We want God to give us a special direction for some spectacular thing over here. Make sure you're faithful where you are and exhaust yourself in the commitments you have where you are. And I'm just convinced you're not going to miss God's will if you're faithful in the small things, let's say, the everyday things of your local church family.

So many of the decisions we make, you know, it's it's surprising how many decisions we make without, you know, without a prayer meeting or without having to have a Bible verse or something like that. You know, it's like 1 Thessalonians 3.

Paul says when when he could endure it no longer, we thought it best to be left behind. Is it at Athens alone? And he said, we thought it best, you know, and so here's a Christian. He has a renewed mind and he's to that level of spirituality.

And and so, you know, it seems best. This seems like the right thing to do. Seems like the right thing to do to put my shoes on in the morning and a lot of things like that. And so sometimes we just don't have a striking revelation.

And I mean, even on a thing like that, like Paul was talking about, he says, I thought it best to be left behind at Athens alone. We sent Timothy. And so some things are like that. We have another question here.

False Conversions and the True Gospel

This grieves my heart. Are we hurt that. Our churches have a lot of lost people in them and I think they are safe. They're at least attending the Sunday morning services.

And I've heard it said a lot. And it's very greedy. I was wondering how you felt about that question about false conversions, folks attending church without a true regeneration experience. How do we do your thoughts?

How much time do we have? Right.

First of all, it's true we do. And it's not just confined to Baptist. It's confined. It's not confined. It's rampant in evangelicalism today. And the reason for it is, first of all, the gospel that is preached is no gospel at all.

It's a gospel reduced from Christ, the God man going to a tree and dying under the wrath of his father and rising again from the dead and seated at the right hand of the father and calling all men, commanding all men to repent and believe that the proof of saving faith is the continued fruit in our life.

We've reduced all that down to five things. God wants you to know our four spiritual laws. And if you jump through each one of those and say yes, and then pray the little prayer in the back, some evangelist who should spend less time preaching and more time studying his Bible declares you say I'm very opinionated with regard to this.

That's just the point. So our gospel, second of all, there's it seems to me that when I look at. I don't consider the Catholic Church to ever have been a church, but when I look at the Catholic Church, when I look at Anglicanism and what was going on in England, when I look at what was going on in New England and what goes on today, it seems to me that always the devil works it out so that the great assumption is they're saved.

The least amount of time it seems eventually is given to discerning what is the gospel and whether a person is truly saved. If they just walk up front and they pray that prayer, we declare them safe and start discipling them.

We should maybe be working with this person for months that they come to a biblical assurance. And so our churches are filled with lost people. And it's by and large because the superficiality of pastors and most of them have gone to church growth schemes and turn their church into a six flags over Jesus.

And they no more are preaching the gospel than a man on the moon. That's not a it's not just a contemporary. No problem. I read this week for A .W. Pink. I mean, he could he got pretty discouraged at times and could be seemed like he could be harsh.

But in his day, in the 1930s and 40s, he made the statement that he wondered if two percent of Protestantism were born again at all in America. Well, even the great one of the greatest, most well-known evangelists in America today has said that if even five percent of all the people that have been converted in his meetings are Christian, he would be happy.

And another thing about is so important is the idea of a compassionate, loving church discipline. I find it very strange that people do not practice church discipline because they love their congregation more than Jesus does.

Jesus commanded them to practice church discipline, not upon sinful people. We're all but upon rebels who show no fruit and will not turn. And see, and the thing that's really bad is we have just come out of a liberalism.

There was a move among many denominations, especially the Southern Baptist Convention, seeing that liberalism is out. We're going right. It hasn't taken us not even a decade to go right back into neoliberalism, which, in my opinion, the new liberalism is basically the church growth movement where everything is done on on marketing strategies and finding the, you know, tell us what kind of church you want, and that's what we'll give you instead of asking God what kind of bride he desires.

I have a daughter named Joanna, and she professed to be saved, was baptized, joined the church and seemed to be a very genuine Christian. When she went to school, she always had a Bible on top of her school books.

The principal of school told us, he said, sure, like having your daughter in our school. And I said, why? He said, if there's any hanky-panky going on and your daughter finds out, she blows the lid off this place.

He said, we're so glad she's there. Then during the revival, she came to me one night and said, Daddy, I'd like to be saved. I said, what? You mean you're backslidden? She said, Daddy, I've never known the Lord.

I knew the language. I got the language from you and Mom, but I never known the Lord. And so I led her to Christ. And then before the revival, I had an assistant pastor, great song leader, and great teaching children.

But he was with us for six or eight months, and the deacons and I felt he's not producing. And we had talked with him, and finally we had to ask him to leave. And he did. During the revival, he phoned me one night long distance, and he said, last night I was praying, and God showed me that I'd never been born again.

Can I come down to Saskatoon and you spend some time? I said, certainly. So we came down. We got some pastors together, and he knelt, and we all knelt, and we counseled with him, and he prayed. And I'll never forget, he suddenly cried, God is real.

God is real. What a transformation. So there's likely lots of people like that to know the language. They've heard it from others, but they don't know the Lord.

This must have been a burden for the Lord Jesus, too, because one time it struck me that almost all, if not all, of the parables that the Lord spoke had to do with this matter of true and false profession.

I mean, the two builders, the sower and the soils, wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, and just almost all of the parables have to do with this very thing. Anything else, brothers? Greatest mission field today is the church, or what's called the church.

Amen.

Confessing Sins to Elders and Trusted Believers

I believe Brother Chad has a question over here for the Nathan. Yeah.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about especially men and maybe men in prominent positions, maybe like, you know, Brother Jeff. He's a pastor here at First Baptist. And when you get to places like even you guys are and even myself, where you're pastoring and you're a lot of people come to hear you preach and speak.

We're always convicted to confess our sins to the Lord and go before him in prayer. But how important is it, no matter where you are, who you are, to confess those sins to other men and to other believers?

And how important is it to always do that? And what would be the difference? And would there be a time where you would just confess to the Lord and not to someone else? One thing I can say is that there is a time where the Lord may lead us.

We even see the dictate in scripture to confess our sins to others. You have to use a tremendous amount of wisdom in doing that because most people and I mean most people are not trustworthy. Most most people are gossips and they will hurt you.

For me, if I felt like I needed to go and speak with someone, I would go to the elders of my church. I would entrust myself to those men. There are friends that I will. There are some things that I entrust with everyone.

If you notice, while I was preaching here tonight, I made quite clear some of my failings and my needs, especially with regard to spirituality. I feel very comfortable sharing that. There are some things that I can share with other brothers who are closer to me, maybe certain needs and weaknesses I have that I wouldn't share with the entire community.

And then there may be other things that I would want to go directly to my elders. Those who are elders in the church and deal with them are very, very close friends. Would anyone like to add to that?

You know, I must apologize for my bad hearing. I am 88 years old, but you know, it does have some advantages when your wife asked you to take out the garbage on a cold Canadian night. I tell people there was a time when I could hear a cat stamping his feet on a pillow at a distance of a mile.

Now, if an elephant fell out of bed next door, I wouldn't likely hear it, you know. But you know what? I spent $4 ,000 on a hearing aid and it doesn't work. You know, I might as well have bought a whistle or something, but I'm going to try again.

Sorry that sometimes I don't, or often I don't hear well.

Amen. Oh, goodness. I know a lot of pastor friends that I've worked with in the past. They like to have friends out of town, maybe not in their own church. Is there wisdom in that? Is that biblical?

Accountability, Wise Disclosure, and Pastoral Integrity

You know, that scares me. You've got a fellowship of believers that you're supposed to be tied to more than just about anybody on the face of the earth. Your local fellowship of faith. If I have to go out of town to find someone that I can trust, I need to be a part of a different fellowship.

I mean, you know, I mean, that's that's they're my family. I mean, they're, you know, and another thing, you know, this is very important. I had a young man. This may help some young men here. And he called me up one day and he was having he was just newly married.

He was having he was battling with his thought life. You know, he'd walk down the street, battle with awkward glance and things like that. And and he was confessing every battle with his thought life to his wife in order to be sincere or to be.

And I said, young man, I said, you're killing her. You're going to kill her. I said, you may be soothing your conscience. You may be calming your conscience, but you're killing this woman. And he pulled out a bunch of verses out of context and just railed on me and went away.

I would imagine he's probably divorced or either has a wife that's totally destroyed. And so be very careful. A lot of times we're wanting to confess something to get it off of our chest, but we keep it on the head of another person.

And, you know, I want to go back to church leadership. There is a reason for elders and there's a reason why you choose where certain men are chosen. And it's a comfort when you have men who are seeking to be biblical, broken.

They're trustworthy. It's such a comfort because that's what God has established.

We've got another question here. But I would love to hear you, Brother Jeff, speak a little bit about our accountability system and the way it works here in this church. I think it would be worth these folks hearing how we how we structure that to help answer what Nathan was asking.

Talking specifically about accountability groups and having that one on one accountability partner.

Well, we begin 20 plus years ago, actually, with the students just having an accountability partner for what I like to say to keep the lazy streak in check, you know, being accountable, being accountable and quoting your verses for the week and having a daily quiet time and sharing the gospel regularly.

You can do that like a mechanical robot. We all know that. But if you love God, the power of shame is good. Brothers can help each other. And so that's been a very, I think, beneficial thing in the body here for four years.

Switching back to the original question, Brother Nate posed, I know he's going to be a pastor, has pastored and has that heart. I've been here 26 years and I have an incredible blessings confessing weaknesses and struggles with brothers.

I have also shared weaknesses and struggles with brothers who used it to try to destroy me. This church doesn't need me, but it does need God's called pastor. And so there's a sense in which you protect yourself and your reputation to the end of the good of the body of Christ.

And so I would say be very careful and wise, prayerful about that. And perhaps maybe young ministers, I guess, thinking about myself, we probably overdo that. We probably err by trying to be too transparent, too humble, perhaps had an older gentleman in my church six or so years ago and said, Pastor, would you quit telling us how weak you are and how you struggle in all these areas so people don't like you and they're using it?

You know, so and that was wise. That was not good. I think my motives were good, but I was unwise and immature. So you need to be careful. Great answers. Question to questions to continue on with what Brother Jeff was saying.

Pastoral Accountability and Preparation for Baptism

How does the pastor begin to lead his church men to hold him accountable? What would be the process for me to have men that would rise up in my church to hold me accountable, especially in the sense of seeing how many ministers are falling these days?

I know that I'm susceptible to falling myself. That's one question. The second question is not related. But the second question is in the early church, they somewhere on a minimum of three years of preparation before baptism and even in some moves, even before communion.

How much time should be invested in supposed new converts before baptism, before entry into communion? I'd just like to hear some feedback on that first.

The first question, how to start the process of raising up men in your church to hold you as a pastor accountable biblically. And then the second question, what what type of process to prepare for baptism and what length of time?

I think that on the baptismal issue that it is, you know, each person is so different as churches. We want to develop a system and run somebody through a machine. And that's not an that's an organization.

It's not an organism. And in my mind is that, you know, a person come to a biblical assurance, a biblical assurance. And, you know, that's through counseling. That's through loving, talking to them and waiting.

And some people, you know, there's going to be is going to come quicker than others. So the idea of biblical assurance is working with each individual, taking them through scripture and saying, you know, a lot of times during, well, Wednesday nights.

I mean, Jeff is back and that's it's all that he's doing is meeting with person after person. And it's not just one time. It's been times they meet with other people and it's just discern. It's not to try to make, you know, you've got to reach some certain level to be in this club.

It's just that if you if you're a pastor and you really love people, the thing you're going to work hardest on is that they if they have if they're not really safe, that that false assurance is destroyed.

And if they are really safe, that they have biblical assurance. And as far as accountability, one of the things that really hurt pastors hurts a pastor or anyone that God starts to use is you begin to think somehow you're different from everyone else in the congregation, that you're special, that there are rules that everyone else needs to go by that maybe you don't.

Personally, I'm just telling you what I've heard a lot of men who have fallen say was their catch. They thought somehow it was like they were God's spoiled rotten brat and could get away with anything.

And to one thing I was bothered about when I was praying before coming out to preach was that when you're I remember saying to the Lord, Lord, I'm more gifted than I am godly. That's a terrible thing to think about, your giftedness can get you in a whole lot of trouble because a lot of people will equate giftedness with godliness, and that's not true.

And so to know that another thing is, is. I feel like in my church and in the ministry here. That I have brothers and colleagues that it's not me here and everybody else down here, but I have this fellowship of people who hold me accountable, they love me, they respect my gifts, but they don't trust the arm of the flesh, even if it's attached to me or anyone else.

And so when when you're separated like you're the big deal, it's very dangerous. But when you have elders around you again, it's the idea of elders working together as brothers and holding one another accountable on the baptism question.

You look in the New Testament. I mean, the Book of Acts, you know, you see immediate baptisms upon confession. I mean, almost immediate. And Peter, I mean, Philip said to the Ethiopian eunuch, if you believe with all your heart, you may be baptized.